Sivert

Here's why I believe Ukraine was, and remains, such a threat to Vladimir #Putin: In 1989, Putin was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed. How did that collapse happen? East Germans who were (illegally) watching West German TV saw that their neighbors to the West had a life, and lifestyle, far superior to the one in East Germany. More freedom. More income. More opportunities. Better quality of life. So, East Germans voted with their feet and fled. Putin soon experienced the collapse of East German firsthand. Today, Putin's worst nightmare is a #Ukraine that holds free and fair elections, and has a free media, human rights, freedom of speech and religion. Ukraine, Russia's neighbor, already has a higher standard of living than Russia. Ukraine has not yet reached its potential, but unlike #Russia, they've already made some significant strides in that direction. (Compare the respective trajectories of North and South Korea since 1970 if you want to see a historical precedent.) A successful #Ukraine is simply a ticking time bomb for an autocratic revanchist Tsar in the Kremlin, plain and simple. So yes, you could say that Ukraine was an existential threat to Putin's kleptocratic regime. But not for the absurd reasons the #Kremlin has claimed.