FTFA:<p>>pro-Russian Kyiv is vital to Moscow because:<p>The presence of a pro-Western EU/NATO member state on the <i>Northern European Plain (a corridor straight into Russia)</i> is too great a threat to allow...<<p>The idea that today one can use flat-earth geography in warfare just as was done in previous centuries is fatally flawed. Mountains and rivers remain effective barriers to men, horses and tanks but aircraft/missiles/drones
go right over them.<p>Thinking in terms of of 12th-17th (and even older) century battles and bold cavalry charges is a mistake on today's "battlefield".