Obviously they are sick and tired of Lukashenko's buffoonery.
Yes, but:
1) It is the representative of those people.
2) Anschluss-style events happen between two nations, not two governments and happen because of a cultural connection.
Oh but it absolutely takes a government's decision and ambition. Especially with the name's genesis.
The Russians gave the Ukrainains their views on numerous occasions before that, and the free trade zone was dissolved in 2015, not immediately.
Also, the whole Insurrection thing might have made them work slightly faster.
And here we have that problem again... Russia gives its views, Russia makes demands, Russia explains its needs. But as we see now with the diplomacy with NATO, that's a way of doing diplomacy that may be accepted by weak subjects, but other than that it doesn't get one friends nor favors.
As I have stated before I am just fine with having diversification of energy supplies within the EU, we should have built a lot more new nuclear power plants as well as a few backup LNG terminals to get gas from alternate suppliers, and bigger stockpiles, too.
We can agree to that point
Russia has had close ties with Vietnam, India, Cuba, Italy, Serbia and Mongolia, just to name a few.
The Serbs love them, even though Yugoslavia and the USSR were rivals.
I do not recall them invading or arm-twisting those countries into compliance.
Welp, getting along with more distant major powers has its advantages over close ones, both sides know that the major power in question has to worry about overstretch, and the local major powers are always there as an alternative, so they can't push their influence too hard or else, that is pretty universal. Its a similar deal with Poland's favored relations with USA. In case of Cuba and Serbia though that's outright dependence, while in case of Mongolia and Vietnam China serves as massive counterbalance that also plays hard.
My own country has had a checkered history with the Russians, sometimes they helped us, sometimes they fucked us over, but the dire and brimstone you describe was never there.
As i said, the extra distance makes the influence more dependent on willing cooperation rather than mere alternative to a relationship based on threat or application of troops on the border. Poland, Ukraine, Baltics have Russia right on their borders and both sides knowing that while negotiating.
Russia, while it will act in its own interests and guard its backyard, like any great power, is not expansionist.
Yeah, sure, Russia doesn't see itself as expansionist,
Russia only thinks its taking what it rightfully owns anyway.
Ironically, Russia suffers from exactly the problem you accuse Poland of. Projection much?
Russia is no longer a great power, its a former great power. Much like France, UK and Germany, which try to cheat their fate by combining their leftover power in form of EU, with... limited success at best.
Turkey, Spain, Poland, Japan and Italy are former great powers too, some for longer, some more accepting of that. But out of all the aforementioned, Russia goes the furthest in acting like the most arrogant of great powers did in their golden age. To a point where even the superpowers of today, USA and China, look subtle and reasonable in their moves, despite possibly having the weight to back such behavior if they wanted to.
It has legitimate economic interests in those areas, often there are Russian minorities living there, and cultural ties as well as stuff of strategic military importance.
By that logic Spain, France and UK have minorities, cultural ties and strategic interests all over the whole globe. Consider how much more reserved they are about acting on this than Russia.
Russia would be smart to treat the slipping away of their imperial possessions the same way UK dealt with losing places like India and Hongkong.
Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“
Frankly though, I see Russia's interests in Europe as secondary, with Asia being their main focus nowadays.
It should be. But it isn't, at least for now, and for a good reason - as i explained before, China is not a good ally, but it would be a terrible enemy for Russia, while for China, in status quo, Russia is perfectly fine by merely being a loud distraction to USA.
Europe would be a ok ally to have for Russia, but its a dream rival, onw who barely even fights back, and even then, very lazily.
Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“
TL;DR
Russia does what the USA does, what the UK does, what France does when their interests in their near-abroad are threatened.
Welcome to the 19th century, actually to every century besides the 20th, and even there the Realpolitik paradigm still worked to a far greater degree than Castle in the Sky ideologues would admit.
You mean what they used to do in 19th century, when they could get away with it. And USA maybe could get away with now, but doesn't feel like trying because that would be a waste.
Newsflash, its not 19th century, the world is smaller, with less space for great powers to have their domains, and Russia is now a country with economy in the same league as Italy, Turkey or Brazil, definitely not countries famous for issuing outright demands to superpowers and getting what they want. What Russia has over those are disproportionally large compared to economy remnants of military power inherited from Soviet times and lots of ambition. Unfortunately for Russia, a certain superpower has an annoying habit of getting in the way of Russia's attempts to use these to try become a great power again, causing great frustration and resentment towards it.
Russia would need the economy of Japan to back its ambitions properly. Quite fittingly Japan is one of the few countries that could probably get away with playing a great power, if it had the domestic and foreign policy setup to do so, but due to post-WW2 order and still lasting US alliance it has neither need nor will to do that.
This is how Rome dealt with Carthage, this is how Byzantium dealt with the Sassanids, this is how the Arabs on the Iberian peninsula dealt with their neighbors, this is how the city states of Italy during Maciavelli's lifetime dealt with each-other.
This has happened before, it will happen again!
Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“
Go read some Kissinger, and Kennan and Mearsheimer.
Consider the examples you gave here... That's how countries deal with their mortal enemies, plain and simple.
Don't be surprised they fight back, and try to summon a bigger fish if they can't.
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