Putin’s all angles attack on the western order continues apace.
He clearly orchestrated the refugee crisis at the Poland-Belarus border in an attempt to undermine the EU.
His fingerprints are all over the crisis in Bosnia in which the Bosnian Serbs are sabre rattling.
Germany has held up the Nordstream 2 pipeline for the moment. If it relents it will hand Putin massive extra leverage over both western Europe and Ukraine.
He is sabre rattling in a big way as regards Ukraine.
This is a long article but maps out the possibilities of what he might do.
The question of Kiev looms large. It seems clear Putin wants it as part of Russia due to the sort of batshit blood and soil ideology that megalomaniacal dictators always believe.
My view is Ukraine should be admitted to NATO quicksmart.
Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics as effective cover to invade Crimea.
This February China holds the Winter Olympics. Nationalism ahoy.
The pandemic is raging. These are the times that dictators decide to do bad things.
Putin and Xi are best buds. What are the chances of co-ordinated invasions, Russia invading Ukraine and China invading Taiwan? Plausible enough, you’d think.
The stance of the American right in all this is both hilarious and depressing. They are very performative about their stance on China being a mortal enemy (they’re not necessarily wrong on that).
But they are like schoolgirls at a Take That concert when Putin’s name comes up. Because what Putin has in Russia is what they want for America.
The various cognitive dissonance and shameless dishonesty is both astounding and totally predictable. And it means that should Putin decide to invade Ukraine, the west has a massive fifth columnist inside it.
The west still doesn’t understand what it is dealing with in Putin. He is the greatest threat to Europe since Hitler and by far the greatest threat the post World War II western order has faced.
And he’s winning.
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