Why was Russia so interested in Europe? Should`t it have payed

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>>2903481
>Should`t it have payed attention to the east where the nations wouldn`t put up a fight
lol

>>2903481
Geopolitics.

Majority of Russian core cities and population lives in more or less modern European part of Russia. If they lose this, they're done as a country. To protect themselves from ever losing it, they have a very basic policy - expand in each direction to get every invader to face thousands of kilometres before he even gets to that core region.

From the east they're covered. From the south - they're mostly covered, especially as Caucasus forms a good natural border nowadays. From the west, they are not.

St. Petersburg, Russia's 2nd biggest city is maybe 150 km away from Estonian border and 200 from Finnish border. For some people that's a lot - but from Russian perspective, it is nothing.

As such, expansion westwards puts the danger away from the ethnic Russian centres.

Second reason is that on the East, there are few harbours they can make use of. Vladivostok is really more than they need. On the west though, they historically needed more non-freezing Baltic ports and a safe passage to Mediterranean together with port there(Tartus says hi) as a mean of power projection.

Third reason is that the communications with the far east are hard. The trans-Siberian railway runs 7 days from Vladivostok to Moscow. Used to be longer in the past. Used to be much, much longer even further in the past when the railway didn't exist. As such the eastward expansion was blocked logistically.

Fourth reason is that aside from what they already have, there's not much prize there. Manchuria has some resources and this is the historical limit of their expansion and plans in the region. What else is there? Koreas? NK is hell and SK was one of the poorest countries in the world until the 70's kicked in. Mongolia? Lol. Inner China? Historically they either weren't able to send troops there or had diplomatic reasons not to. Now they risk a world war by attacking them and economical expansion, lol, it works in the other way round nowadays

>>2903556

Meanwhile westward expansion meant - fertile lands and developed economies being included in their empire.

>>2903481
Germany planned a war against Russia so it is not like they could have ignored it.

>>2903481
They were interested in Asia, hence why they conquered Siberia, central Asia, the Caucasus, etc. Also, look into the Russo-Japanese War.