Bribery and corruption by outsiders playing one group against others = divide and conquer is normal.
Unfortunately, there are normally enough willing to take the loot so even if 80% of local yokels are moral, ethical, tolerant, well-meankng, good people, the 5%, 10% or even 20% will take the loot and side with Evil. If they don't get a piece of the action, somebody else will.
With Victoria handing out $billions and Hunter grabbing umpty $,millions on behalf of The Big Guy, there wasn't much choice for Russia = surrender all that's demanded, such as hand Sevastopol over to NATO along with all of Crimea and accept everything else such as a million rockets and tanks arrayed all along the border from Murmansk to the landlocked southern border.
I'm not the slightest surprised that Russia decided to stop NATO/USA at the Dnipro river.
Since Russia has had success they might go right across Ukraine, understandably. And if Serbia gets smashed, they might do more.
But Putin seems much more reasonable than I am, so maybe he'll stop sooner. I think I would already have done demonstration atomic bombs where Americans and Boris Johnson could experience what smallish ones are like. Such as10km high at night ... a giant firework display. I guess that would be just a few kiloton rather than megaton.
Make Armageddon understandable before it becomes real. I'm sure most people think Russians will just accept being conquered. I doubt that.
Mqurice
PS... I'm surprised Russia has been as successful as they have. I thought it was an April Glaspie trap as for Saddam in Kuwait = entice them in, then have a huge turkey shoot using all mod cons superwhizbang weaponry. Russia has not won so the giga$bucks are flooding around to many pockets = keeping the cash flow gushing is probably the main requirement. |
