But it's not.... your explanation makes sense for Lugansk but not for Lviv.
What you're saying makes no sense. From the standpoint of NATO, Ukraine will be treated as a single country. If Ukraine joins NATO, NATO is going to start legally/diplomatically harassing Russia about Crimea. "Crimea is a region of Ukraine now, which is a member of NATO. Leave or face the music." And so on. NATO will never agree to a partitioning.
If NATO pushes its border to Lugansk... this would definitely be a volatile situation, for the reasons you have already described.
And that's exactly why Russia is taking the actions that it is taking (probably all past-tense by now, as far as I can tell, all the news coming out of that area now is fake.)
If NATO pushes its border to Lviv..... shrug? I fail to see how this would present an "existential threat" to Russia? Lviv is about as far west into western Ukraine as you can get. Russia does not care about Lviv.
Which is the reason I mentioned Lviv. That's the line where Russia doesn't care or, at least, that's how it seems to me as an outsider.
Why would Russia care about what happens in Kiev? If Kiev is rioting, why does Russia care? It's not a Russian region.
For the same reason the US would care if the FSB were to instigate crime and riots in Mexico City. It's cover for political and strategic fast-balls.
If Kiev were shelling Donbass, Putin would care (as is happening today). But if Kiev were otherwise minding its own business, why does Putin care about riots in Kiev?
Putin does not directly care about Kiev. But the idea that Ukraine is as disconnected from Russian affairs as, say, Iceland is, is ridiculous. If you think Moscow doesn't pay extremely close attention to what's going on in Kiev... I don't know what to say. The Maidan was a counter-Moscow coup. The purpose was to evict Russian political influence in Kiev. Ukraine and Russia are next-door neighbors, it is a matter of course that political influence occurs across their borders. Therefore, Maidan was a strategic signal to Moscow that NATO has aggressive, hostile intentions in Ukraine. Crimea was the price they paid for their stunt.
Putin annexed Crimea not because of what happened in Kiev, but because what was about to happen in Crimea.
Putin does not otherwise care about Kiev.
He doesn't care about Kiev itself, but he absolutely cares about NATO and the encroachment of NATO on Moscow's doorstep. I don't think Moscow has a casual attitude towards the northern encroachment in Latvia, etc. but Moscow has made it crystal clear that Ukraine is a
red line. I'm basically repeating what I hear Lavrov say in interviews, so I'm not sure why I need to convey any of this information to you... it's right there in their public statements, there is zero speculation involved. And Russia has no reasons to lie because they have a purely defensive stance on their western border. So yes, I believe Russian official statements in this respect, and I do not believe NATO or US propaganda despite the fact that I'm an American citizen. This is the weirdness of Clown World and apparently we all just have to get used it in Klaus Schwab's bug-eating "New Normal"...
Yes and this clown $#@! will probably start WW III. For no good reason other than clown $#@!
And nothing we can actually do about it at this stage except bemoan our plight...
