People in the West don't want to hear it, but it is true that the Russians were desperate to avoid a conflict. The idea that Putin was chomping at th… - John Mearsheimer

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People in the West don't want to hear it, but it is true that the Russians were desperate to avoid a conflict. The idea that Putin was chomping at the bit to invade Ukraine so he could make it part of Greater Russia, it's just not a serious argument. The Russians did not want a war, and they did, I believe, everything possible to avoid a war. They just couldn't get the Americans to play ball with them. The Americans were unwilling to negotiate in a serious way. Period. End of story.

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About John Mearsheimer

John J. Mearsheimer (born December 14, 1947) is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is an international relations theorist. He is the leading proponent of a branch of realist theory called offensive realism, a structural theory which, unlike the classical realism of Hans Morgenthau, blames security competition among great powers on the anarchy of the international system, not on human nature.

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Native Name: John Joseph Mearsheimer
Alternative Names: John J. Mearsheimer
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We have a huge amount of evidence that it was nato expansion and the more general policy of making Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia’s border that motivated him to attack on February 24th... For Putin to have said time after time that nato, that Ukraine in nato, was an existential threat to Russia, when in fact it wasn’t, and this was all done to disguise the real motive, which was to incorporate Ukraine into a greater Russia for the purposes of satisfying his imperial ambitions is an argument that is just not supported by the historical record. Putin was very clear, as were all his lieutenants, that their great fear was that Ukraine was becoming a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders. For them, that was an existential threat. It was simply unacceptable.

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