Ukraine

SamAndreas said
Ukraine has a lot of natural resources. Any place that has a large salt sea, and hot springs tends to be a mineral store house. And Ukraine has that in abundance as do the United States. We have the state of Nevada and Utah.

They also have oil and natural gas.

Insofar as "wealth of nations" agricultural production is true wealth. They have a nice climate, plenty of fresh water, and they can grow crops kind of like California does in the central valley. Even without the natural mineral resources they would have a lot.

They are a lot like California plus Nevada. Very comparable.

They also have have Steel like Michigan does with their motor city infrastructure. Russia is trying to steal that part.

They have a lot of economic potential. They were the major production center for the Soviet Union. By comparison Russia is kind of poor.

I think most people who post here realize the whole NATO line was propaganda.

I believe, and plenty of others do as well, that Ukraine was invaded for primarily two reasons after they rebuffed Russia's influence:

1. Sevastopol is Russia's only deep, warm water port.
2. Ukraine has plentiful ONG deposits inside of their EEZ focused around Crimea.

If Russia loses Crimea the war is a total loss for them.

If this seems confusing, Russia doesn't care to ever develop those oil fields around Crimea, but they want to make sure Ukraine never does. That motive is lessened now that Europe has ended it's dependence on Russian ONG. The world was very different in 2014.