Russia (Soviet Union) has successfully fought off several attempted invasions in its history, so its an ingrained feeling among the Russians to feel that the expansion of NATO to Ukraine (albeit they're not a member, but have received weapons and training-even before the current war) is literally an existential threat. That is why they attempted to avoid war through Minsk 1 and 2 and the Istanbul Agreement. It has NOTHING to do with money and everything to with protection of Russian society.
Russia (Soviet Union) has also been the aggressor several times. the 1939-40 Finnish Winter War, the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, the destruction of Grozny in the Chechen wars, the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the destruction of Aleppo in Syria, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the Donbass war from 2014 through to the 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine.
Zelensky is no longer the President of Ukraine, as his term of office has expired. It would be akin to Starmer cancelling the next GE but staying in No.10. (!!)
There was no General Election in Britain between 1935 and 1945. Does that mean that Winston Churchill was not really the Prime Minister?
Zelensky has banned opposition media, banned the Orthodox Church (has arrested Priests), banned the use of Russian language (even though it's his mother tongue) and some of his ultra-right soldiers openly display swastikas – as have their vehicles.
I suspect that Britain was similarly intolerant towards dissenting voices during WW2 and had German Lutheran Churches been common across Britain, I expect they'd have been shut down as well. As to the Orthodox Church, or more properly the Russian Orthodox Church, the Bolsheviks and later Khrushchev shut down thousands of churches across the USSR and priests were sent to the Gulags or murdered. So it's not uncommon in that part of the world and who knows what those Russian Orthodox priests were preaching from their pulpits in Ukraine?
The expansion of NATO, despite the US Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990, provides ample evidence of who should be trusted.
Russia is a signatory of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up the nuclear weapons they inherited from the USSR and signing the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It also specifically prohibited the 'Nuclear Powers' signatories, Russia, Britain and America from using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine. I bet the Ukrainians regret that now, as Russia can't be trusted.
Finally, if the the now-defunct Warsaw Pact had welcomed Mexico as a member, how would that have been viewed by the US?
Ukraine is not a member of NATO and membership has always been a distant prospect. My own view is that had Ukraine joined with all the other former Soviet republics, we wouldn't be where we are today as they would have had the security guarantee of NATO membership and Russia wouldn't have invaded.
I'm for peace, trustworthiness, freedom of speech and worship. 
You're backing the wrong horse then!
Maybe you should move to Russia and see how you get on!
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Topic: Ukraine peace deal (Read 9014 times)