Ode to Bubba

Much is being made these days with regard to Vlad The Impaler's ambitions in Ukraine. Some take his 'Ukraine was always Russia, and must be again' at face value. Some assert that he's on the march to rebuild the USSR. Still others (my take, early on) that he's out to outdo the USSR, and restore Imperial Russia which encroached on Europe.

But, what's the point? As a country, Russia is by far the largest already. Why does it need more ground?? Well, the simple answer, to steal from Bubba Bill is, 'It's the resources, Stupid!' Most of Russia is frozen wasteland, and has from the beginning always pushed West into more temperate land. The Imperial Russia was that, USSR was that, the post-WWII Satellites was that. Ukraine has been know as the 'Breadbasket of Europe' for at least a century. Wheat doesn't grow so well on tundra. And, of course, you can't do nearly as much trade without year-round ports.

At the height of its expansion, the Russian Empire stretched across the northern portions of Europe and Asia and comprised nearly one-sixth of the earth's landmass; it occupied modern Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Finland, the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), the Baltic Republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), and significant parts of Poland and Turkey. The vast plains with few natural obstacles affected the Russian Empire's expansion into Eastern Europe and, beyond the Ural Mountains, to the Pacific Ocean, and even into Alaska and California in North America. However, with only a coastline on north of the Arctic Ocean, the Russian Empire continually searched for a warm-water outlet.
[my emphasis]

Note that Ukraine has such ports.

Here's the map of Russia by population density. It's not snuggled up to its Western borde as drastically as Canada is to the USofA, but nearly so. Were it not for petro resources, Russia would still be a third world country. Note the graphs: production and export didn't amount to much until the mid-1990s. Guess how that came about?

Egoistic empire building is the easy answer to Vlad The Impaler, but the real reason, as it has been for centuries, is natural resources. The kind you can actually use.