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Syed Firdaus Ashraf marches through time to trace the bitter history between Russia and its West European neighbours.
If you are wondering why Russia is so wary of Ukraine getting closer to Western European nations, there is bitter history behind it.
For the last 400 years, Russia has been trying to preserve its sovereignty and defend its borders against the European imperial powers.
Russia sees the European nations as a threat to its existence as Napoleon's France, Hitler's Germany and even Sweden have tried to invade Russia at various points in time.
The first major attack against Russia was from tiny Poland.
Known as the Polish-Russian war, it began in 1609.
When Russia formed a military alliance with Sweden, the king of Poland, Sigismund III Vasa, declared war on Russia.
Poland aimed to make territorial gains and weaken Russia, which had become an ally of Sweden that Poland considered a threat.
Sigismund's invasion was successful and he managed to capture Moscow.
This was soon followed by the Ingrain war between former allies Sweden and Russia, which lasted for seven years from 1610-1617.
Ingria refers to the area between the Gulf of Finland, the Neva River and Lake Ladoga.
It was at this time that Sweden planned to put its duke on the Russian throne.
Later a peace treaty was signed between the two countries, ending the feud.
Ninety years later, in 1709, Sweden once again rose against Russia.
This time because of the ambitious tsar of Russia, Peter I, who wanted to regain Ingria from Sweden.
The Battle of Poltava was fought in July 1709 in which Swedish King Charles XII's army was defeated by Peter I.
It was after this war that Ingria was named St Petersburg.
In 1807 Great Britain that attacked the Russian empire as it had signed the Treaty of Tilsit with the French to end mutual hostilities.
The Treaty of Tilsit was very unpopular among Russians but Tsar Alexander I of Russia had no option but to give in as he feared a French invasion under Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon's idea was to cut off market access for his arch enemy England as he wanted to restrict their goods from being sold in Russia and make them economically submissive to France.
However, Tsar Alexander I had to open up his markets to British goods as France did little to help Russia in its time of dire need.
This angered Napoleon who invaded Russia and captured Moscow in 1812.
In 1853, European powers England, France and even the Ottoman empire formed an alliance to take on Russia in what is known as the Crimean War.
The war broke out because Russia demanded to exercise protection over the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman empire.
Russia suffered a major defeat in the Crimean war and the Treaty of Paris was signed.
The treaty was a humiliation for Russia as it had to not only guarantee the territorial integrity of the Ottoman empire (now known as Turkiye) but also grant shipping rights over the Danube river to all the 10 nations it passed through.
The last major invasion which Russia witnessed was when Adolf Hitler's Nazi army invaded the country in June 1941, in what came to be known as Operation Barbarossa.
Hitler's decision to invade Russia (known then as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was a disaster, and the German army was routed.
The battle for Stalingrad was the turning point of World War II for the Allied powers on the Eastern front. Hitler's army never recovered after that defeat in which 250,000 German soldiers lost their lives.
The prime objective of NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that came into being after the Second World War was to contain the former Soviet Union's expansionism.
Given this bitter history with Europe over centuries, no wonder Russia doesn't take kindly to Ukraine, which it considers a vassal State, getting closer to its adversaries from the past.