Putin is digging a hole for himself, while he is weak and alone today, he is recreating a Cold War mentality among the peoples and politics of NATO, which is already vastly stronger than he is. This will help conservative politicians and strong national defense politics and budgets, and policy arguments in the West.
In America for instance, we will be having a new election fairly soon, and a president that will be able to use all of this against Putin and the American, and Western left.
Remember that the current Russia has less than half the population that the USSR had: 150 million vs 350. There is no way that it has the physical horsepower that it used to have. When leaders start yapping about an imaginary external threat it is ALWAYS to distract the home folks from their local problems. As has been noted Russia is a poorly run gas company trying to be a country and with the price of crude oil down Pootin no doubt feels he has to flex while he still has fuel for his Bears.
Pootin used all the transport he had to screw up Ukraine. He now doesn’t have enough left to get out of his own way. While he has the means to do random damage he ain’t actually going anyplace. Should he actually do anything dramatic and our own Grand Kenyan refused to respond we would have to have our own “depose” party——then respond at the melting point of Moscow.
Times have changed. Whatever country Russia tries to plug into, Russia will be gobbled up there. As for nukes, ha! Russian junk is for range practice.
Mass militarization. At first I thought it might refer to our new “normal” of constant war in numerous countries and working to destabilize other areas.
14 years and counting.
Indeed. The Soviet Bear is still there and Putin is,was,and always will be KGB
Scrap in Russia might be a pretty good business for some in the near future.