Title: The Real Reason Russia Invaded Ukraine | The Motley Fool
Headings: The Real Reason Russia Invaded Ukraine
The Real Reason Russia Invaded Ukraine
There have been a lot of explanations offered for why Russia has invaded Ukraine. But the true reason might be much simpler than many analysts have assumed.

Content: Russia, which straddles Europe and Asia, has sought a role in the rest of Europe since the reign of Peter the Great in the early 18th century. An alliance with Ukraine preserves that. " Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire," the American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1998. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to join his Eurasian Union trade bloc, not the European Union. Russia's Black Sea naval fleet is headquartered in Sevastopol, a formerly Russian city that now belongs to Ukraine. Last year Russia's state-controlled Gazprom (OGZPY) sold about 160 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe -- a quarter of European demand—and half of that traveled through a maze of Ukrainian pipelines. Those pipelines also supply Ukrainian factories that produce steel, petrochemicals, and other industrial goods for sale to Mother Russia. " Ukraine is probably more integrated than any other former Soviet republic with the Russian economy," says Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. But is it possible that the true explanation is even simpler? Could it be, in fact, that Russia's decision to invade Ukraine had merely to do with a handful of natural gas discoveries off the coasts of Romania and Ukraine?