[kyykky]

This "buffer zone" demand is much older than 30+ years. Putin wants another Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to invade his neighbors, to be called 'Putin the Conqueror'. Everything we see are his ambitions to rewrite history. He won't resort to nukes because then there is a risk of no one reading the history of the new glorious Russian empire by Putin the Conqueror, and that's against his life goals.