phantom000 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:48 pm
BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:35 pm
I doubt Putin personally cares about Ukraine and it's more about appeasing his constituency.
That might be the case because what does Ukraine have that would be of any use or value to Russia? Ukraine is not a 3rd world country but it's not exactly stinking rich either. It's value, aside from just more territory which always has its uses, seems mostly symbolic.
I wonder if this Putin trying to restore Russia's international prestige, to show the world that Russia is still a force to be reckoned with.
Ukraine is the world's largest producer of vegetable oil and grain- bread prices in Europe are set to rise because a lot of that bread is Ukrainian. It is known as the bread basket of Europe because of this and for its other resources. There is a reason that Holodmor happened there- Stalin took most of the food from Ukraine to feed the rest of the USSR because that's where a great deal of the food came from in the first place.
It is the 10th largest producer of steel in the world and has 10% of the world's iron reserves. It has the 5th largest reserves of mercury in the world and the 2nd largest of graphite. It also has the largest titanium reserves in Europe.
It also, of course, has a lot of gas and oil reserves too, as well as Europe's largest reserves of uranium.
I hope you get the picture. Ukraine is absolutely packed with natural resources.
Geographically, it is also a hostile region on the southern border (even if that hostility is due to its past relationship with Russia) and furthermore it has a large border on the Black Sea. It is an extremely valuable country to Putin and to Russia in general.
