Quite a load of blather there...
Not a shred of it useful for anything.
Putin miscalculated... many things. That's no one's fault but his own.
Core among those miscalculations... is that he wagered (and lost his bet) that the "West" would be unable or unwilling... wouldn't have the spine to respond meaningfully... since they hadn't responded meaningfully to any of his prior "incremental" aggression dating back to 2014...
In all that time... no one has been... and no one today is... attacking Russia ?
Whether you like it or not... no one is going to be going along with Russia reimposing "spheres of influence" that have them controlling neighboring states as an layer of insulation protecting Russia from reality.
Russia was recovering well enough from its century of economic insanity... before Putin stepped in a rewrote Russia's future as one looking far more like that of North Korea's "success" than... actual success.
Disliking the choices others are making... to benefit themselves more optimally than you are... rather than submit to you ?
Yeah... cry me a river, ya dumb tyrant...
Why anyone takes the "I'm moving my borders over that way a bit... so that's mine now" schtick seriously... or why anyone thinks anyone should take that seriously... is a bit of a puzzle.
But, the rest ? I'll agree that its stupid as can be to "reinvent" the conflicts that fostered the Cold War now... only in order to win it again as a hot war. Both sides have egregiously mismanaged pretty much everything in the region since 1991. None of that suggests Putin should be given the time of day by anyone now, when he makes ridiculous demands of others outside of Russia's own "actual" borders.
But, as far as the BS in your serial "we should nuke em till they glow" insanity ?
Ridiculous. Weapons have some defined utility, and, as any tool... you might use the tools you have to some advantage when you have the right tool in hand... and expect its planned use to work to deliver some benefit. But, weapons aren't like hammers and screwdrivers... the use of which tends to have no other consequences beyond the direct impacts of their application of some limited force being applied. Using a screwdriver typically tends not to impose any "blowback". You still don't use the tools you have in a deliberate attempt to make your own situation... worse than it was before you attempted to use them ?
Russia's nukes are still a more than sufficient threat to forestall anyone attacking Russia... which no one has shown any real interest in doing anyway...
But, threatening to use them because you don't like how your poorly prepared, poorly planned and poorly executed invasion of a defenseless neighboring country is going ?
Yeah... that's pretty stupid... first as, being downwind, Russia will benefit from using nukes in near neighbor Ukraine... roughly as much as they benefit still, today, from the fallout that spread out from Chernobyl...
So, threaten others farther away... because you can't fight your way out of your own borders when attacking neighbors to "add them to your empire" ? LOL !
Russia will in all probability rapidly cease to exist if Russians are actually stupid enough to cross those lines... and, even the threat might have the opposite impact as intended, of course, by giving people who've been willingly enough ignoring all your prior stupidity in prior aggressive acts... a reason to quit thinking that there's no reason at all for anyone to ever think it might be useful to attack Russia...
Putin still can't nuke his way to a win in Ukraine... and, if he tries that out of desperation... the key result will be the immediate removal of those boundaries that have, thus far, largely prevented anyone having any interest in attacking Russia.
Russians are lousy neighbors. You can't trust them to not be bat shit crazy and suddenly decide your back yard is now theirs "because we think we can take it". And, if they're intent on proving themselves not only unwilling to stay in their own back yard... but stupid enough to start slinging nukes around ?
Putin... that dumb kid who sticks his big mitts in the cookie jar... and then can't get his hand back out.
Smashing the cookie jar... doesn't actually change the rules governing proper cookie distribution ?
There is no obvious path from here that I can see... that results in Russia "improving its position"... by sustaining the fight... or escalating it enough to make people who were happy enough to ignore Russia since 1991... suddenly unwilling to continue ignoring the total shit show happening there now...
But, his most recent blunders clearly do open a couple of very obvious paths that might result in the war he's waging coming back home to Russia in new ways in the near future...
By declaring the parts of Ukraine that are the objects of Russian aggression to be now "part of Russia"... Putin appears he has successfully converted his wrongful attack on a neighbor... into a Russian civil war... |
