J. WESLEY BUSH: What’s Really Happening in Ukraine? “As with most Russian nationalists, Putin cannot be happy with a country; Russia can only be great as an empire. The alternative theory, that Putin is afraid of having NATO and the EU on his border, simply doesn’t fit the data. NATO members Latvia and Estonia already border Russia. No serious person thinks Europe has a military interest in Russia — Germany, the largest country, could not muster 44 tanks for NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. It also fails to explain his aggression elsewhere on Russia’s borders.”