[FlamesAddiction]

The only existential threats to Russia are that Ukraine has embraced Western values and the large natural gas deposits discovered in the Black Sea that would challenge Russia's ability to extort Germany by threatening to turn off the taps at least once per year.

All this stuff about NATO actually posing a military threat is Russian propaganda. NATO was not going to start a nuclear war with Russia.

It would be a lot less violent if Russia could just address the reasons why almost every post-Soviet country wants to join NATO, especially a country like Ukraine with such a long shared history and cultural similarity with Russia. Until they address why they can't win the hearts and minds of their neighbours, yet NATO can, the existential threat will always exist.

The notion of a NATO existential threat is no different that the McCarthyism in America during the 1960s and 1970s, as if Vietnam becoming communist was an existential threat to America, when in reality it was inconsequential. The existential threat to America was the ideology that led to war.