[Geopolitics 2] Why Russia is Called Cowardly [Russian History] #409

Geographical risks of vast plains created anxiety.

Russia lacks high mountains and deep seas, featuring flat plains where enemies can advance in a straight line. With a history of fearing "where will we be attacked from next?" for hundreds of years, and traumatized by the German-Soviet War during World War II, it is a country with an exceptionally strong obsession with national security.

A historical defense strategy of making Eastern Europe a buffer zone.

After the war, the Soviet Union socialized neighboring Eastern European countries into satellite states, attempting to create a "buffer zone" to prevent direct confrontation with itself. It forcefully maintained its influence by conducting military interventions against liberal reforms in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

There is a fear that connects to the collapse of the Cold War and the current situation in Ukraine.

With the East European Revolutions of 1989, the satellite state system collapsed, and Russia lost its buffer zone. Furthermore, the eastern expansion of the EU and NATO is progressing today, and the sense of crisis that if Ukraine joins NATO it will share a direct border is said to be the background of its current actions. Please be sure to listen to the full episode.