Ask Lemmygrad

Are you seriously asking in good faith why Russia did not invade Sweden and Finland?

Do you see how that could…maybe be a horrible idea???

“Allow” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. What do you imagine they could or should have done to disallow it?

Russia has some valid casus belli: defense of the russian population in former Soviet territory. NATO having more borders to place nukes are very bad but Nazi-NATO powered Ukraine was worst.

might have to do with terrain and proximity to the capital. last time i checked, the terrain in ukraine is mostly flat and devoid of all trees - making it ideal for tank movement

Another day, another curious question from a person known for them.

We've been discussing Russia's situation and the war for years now here. Given the west's response to Ukraine, given the amount of troops Russia has committed to Ukraine already, given how long this war has gone on and will likely continue to go on with western support before Russia achieves victory.

Do you think they should have just nuked the Fins and Swedes to take them out of the picture? Used some imaginary lever they have called "crash nordic economies". What pressure and what ability do they have to stop them other than military force in a full on invasion that they don't have the troops for? And which would put them in a direct conflict with NATO and fully realize and cement the idea in Europe that Russia is expansionist and aggressive and must be put down no matter what.

Now the better question is why did they allow the baltics to join NATO? Why didn't they draw the line sooner and stop the expansion eastward? And the answer is Putin is a naive liberal, Russia was very weak after the collapse of the USSR and frankly they couldn't afford and still couldn't afford to get into a full war with NATO. He believed in Minsk, he was a sucker who resisted the reality because he wanted to avoid conflict. Yes in a magical scenario where Russia's economy didn't matter, where they'd fully implemented war communism and could conscript tens of millions of willing, eager to fight and die Russians they could probably beat the Europeans bloody senseless and mess up the face of the US pretty bad but that's not the reality. That hasn't been a reality since the 1980s when the USSR existed.

I mean you're getting into liberal fantasy land of Asiatic hordes and Russia just being able to conjure up huge armies to wage war on the entire west and defeat them. To say nothing of the liberal nature of Russia's leaders meaning they don't want this and have always wanted integration and cooperation for profit and only begrudgingly at the last hour finally realized the threat and took action against Ukraine. And even now it shows Putin is a compromising guy. He hates doing this, he doesn't like fighting the west and he has delusions of them compromising sooner or later that I think are hurting the overall strategic vision for Ukraine by the Russian military. He still thinks after this is over that after a bit of time he can go back to selling Europe gas and oil and slowly re-integrating. Some Russian thinkers declare the door to the west is closed and Russia has started to pivot to the east but they really don't want to, the leadership like Putin wants to believe they can get back in with Europe.

Because it has no choice or reason to.

Finland and Sweden were always a threat to Russia's (and before that, the Soviet Union's) borders IMO. Their joining NATO was simply making things official in that regard- not that it wasn't a provocation, but it was a fait accompli- something that had already happened, honestly over a century ago at this point (with no real divergence since then, rather things have only gotten worse). Nordic "neutrality" was always just a convenient lie to keep the heat off the Scandinavians till they would smell blood in the water- and all this shows, is that nowadays, they are so vassalized, so thoroughly compromised by the US/NATO, that even that criteria has gone out the window.

Because opening multiple war fronts is always a great idea, not like any nation in history who did that got their shit kicked in or anything...