JRL NEWSWATCH: “America’s leading ‘realist’ keeps getting Russia wrong” – The Hill
“… Putin and his comrades see Nazis where there aren’t any … [and] see militarization where there isn’t any …. They insisted in late 2021 and early 2022 that they would never, ever invade Ukraine — and then did. They deny, still, targeting Ukrainian civilian targets. They deny, still, having destroyed the Kakhovka dam. The list could go on ad infinitum. And yet, bizarrely, when Russians say they fear Ukrainian membership in NATO and U.S. nuclear weapons on Ukraine’s eastern border, Mearsheimer believes them … [H]e should be asking … whether such ostensible fears have any grounding in reality and what the real reasons might be. … [A]bsolutely no one, including the Russians and Ukrainians, expected Ukraine to become a NATO member for at least 20 years. … Ukraine mattered to Russian perceptions, not because of any actual military threat … but because of the ideological threat the democratic Maidan Revolution posed to Putin’s claims to be a legitimate autocrat. Obviously, official Russian statements would never admit to such an interpretation. …”