[Always A Marine]

Crimea is not the key to the Black Sea. The Bosporus and Dardanelles are. Putin is not keeping NATO out of the Black Sea, because he cannot do so. NATO can project power into the Black Sea whenever we choose to do so. Putin did not gain any strategic advantage by invading Crimea, in fact since he already had a military base there he did not achieve anything at all.

The Bosporus and Dardanelles were key to NATO's defense in bottling up the Soviet fleet in the Black Sea. But if NATO wants to project offensive naval power into the Black Sea, keeping those straits open becomes NATO's liability. The Black Sea contains Russia's only warm water ports, and that makes it a strategic necessity for Moscow. There is no way that Russia will let is naval base at Sevastopol and its two protective air bases fall into hostile hands. NATO has now been caught twice with itsclandestine hands in Russia's Black Sea cookie jar, in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, and all we earned our naive clients was a smackdown each time. It's time to stop meddling on Russia's border and to mind our own business. This is a problem for Europe to work out.

[GeronL]

So you think Russia has every right to treat it’s neighboring countries this way?

[Tailgunner Joe]

Russia's navy is indeed bottled up in the Black Sea which is exactly why it is strategically useless. NATO does not need to project power into the Black Sea, we just need to keep Russia bottled up. You also seem to forget that Bulgaria and Romania are part of NATO and have long Black Sea coastlines. Putin cannot keep NATO out of the Black Sea because NATO borders the Black Sea.

No NATO did not provoke Putin's illegal invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. That is just a dirty Russkie lie to try to justify KGB Putin's completely unprovoked Neo-Soviet imperialism.

NATO is the most powerful military force in history. No it's not going away and yes it will continue to expand into Russia's FORMER sphere of influence as Russia continues to contract and collapse. Indeed Putin's desperate flailing aggression against his neighbors is a sign of his insecurity and fear. He has only ensured that NATO will concentrate itself on its primary mission of confronting and containing the Russian terrorist rogue nation.