From Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, addressing a top-level Defense Ministry meeting, announcing aerial missions over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, according to a ministry statement:
In the current situation, we are obliged to ensure our military presence…and also conduct aerial reconnaissance with long-range aircraft of foreign military forces and shipping.
The Wall Street Journal, “Russians Dial Up Military Threats,” 11/13/14
The US has not been invaded since the 1800s (Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were attacks, but not invasions). Russia, on the other hand, has been invaded countless times, most often from the west, with Poland and Ukraine the usual doorsteps. During World War II, the USSR sustained more dead, around 18 million, than all the other Allied nations combined (the US lost 300 thousand). Most of those deaths were on the Eastern Front, fighting the German invasion (about 30 million total died on the Eastern Front).
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO and the EU have incorporated eleven nations that were part of the USSR or within its sphere of influence. Now the western alliance is on Russia’s doorstep, Ukraine, after deposing a democratically elected ruler and installing a western puppet. If a foreign power had invaded the US through Canada and killed 18 million Americans, we would be understandably touchy if Canada ever fell under the influence of a hostile nation. Professed US “mystification” at Russian touchiness over Ukraine is mystifying. Assurances that the western alliance is devoted to military defense and economics, posing no threat to Russia, ring hollow to Russian ears. The USSR had a nonaggression pact with Hitler, until his invasion through Poland and Ukraine.
So Russia is going to give the US a tiny sip of its own medicine by flying over our “sphere of influence.” Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor has it ever been considered a vital US interest. However, it looks like one of the lines our newly assertive, more muscular foreign policy is going to draw in the sand runs through Ukraine. John McCains and Lindsey Grahams rush in where angels fear to tread.
