> Russia: stop pointing the gun at me

Poor victim Russia. They were forced to start the war, really. Had they not embarked on their campaign of conquest and genocide, NATO would surely have invaded on the 25th of February and killed them all. Luckily, Russia showing their might by stalemating a war against a neighbor a third of their population has deterred evil NATO from directly invading, like what they were surely planning to do. It's evidenced by the absolutely nothing that NATO did towards Russia in the preceding decades, but if you stomp your foot enough about your neighbors freely joining an alliance explicitly designed to safeguard against Russian bloodthirstiness, then you can almost make yourself look like the victim. Almost. At least the Russians buy it, they've been printing the same shit in their media for over a decade now and they can't get enough of it.

Note that Warsaw pact fell not because russia allowed it to, but because russia was too weak to do anything about it. You just lost the cold war and became 2nd or 3rd grade country. You should wake up and let go of your imperialistic ambitions. You no longer matter that much, all you can do is try to destabilise other countries, but that's not enough to matter. An annoying fly is not superpower.

> I read an article in early 2000 that stipulated that EU and USA are borrowing so much money that eventually they will HAVE TO recoup through war, Conquering Russia.

Lol. Not how money, nor borrowing as a nation-state works. Probably from a trader-adjascent idiot who thinks he understands econ 101 because his qwants makes him money. Macro-econ is probably the subject with the biggest dunning-kruger syndrome you can find, so I advise you to either read a lot (and I do mean a lot), catch up at least to the bachelor level and continue reading econ books (written by economists PhD, not wall street insiders that journalist claims are economists), or just avoid the field completely and never believe anything an 'economist' write or say on TV, if he/she isn't a PhD.

Some syndrome here, for sure.

I've read already 4 different explanations here for why you've invaded Ukraine, each dumber than previous (ok, maybe not each - the one with CIA fundraising white supremacist that performed genetic experiments and tortured children is still top). Who was pointing gun at you? Ukraine? It's just laughable. Poor russia, always the victim, even when you start unprovoked war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths you are still the victim.

Russia earned their paranoia the hard way - Napoleon and Hitler. They remember an invader that reached Moscow, took it, and held it for weeks, then burned it on the way out. They remember another invader that came within 35 miles of Moscow. That invasion started from the middle of Poland; they don't want to face one that starts from the eastern edge of Ukraine.

Of course, this is still paranoia, no matter how honestly they come by it. NATO is not Hitler, nor is it Napoleon. NATO is not going to launch an unprovoked invasion of Russia, no matter what happened in the previous two centuries.

But when Ukraine talks about joining NATO, Russia feels the gun pointed at it. There is no gun, but Russia feels it.

Yes, I understand how their delusions work, though I'm sure it's not universal - it's obvious that for most of higher ups the real reason is that they feel sad they can no longer control their neighbours. What's interesting is that they don't see it the other way - in XX and XXI century it was actually russia that kept attacking their neighbours, so demilitarization when you are neighbouring russia is basically death sentence.

I'm not sure that it's wanting to control their neighbors. I think it's fear of their own populace. A functional, prosperous democracy next door, with people of the same ethnic and cultural background, might give Russians the idea that they can govern themselves, without needing a strongman. Putin is terrified of them thinking that. He's afraid of his own color revolution.