[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

Some say Biden's got Putin rattled.

Antony Blinken gave a detailed breakdown of the US's intelligence to the United Nations. These included the misleading troop withdrawals, false pretexts for war and the means of potential attacks - tanks, troops, missiles and cyber attacks. This level of detail was acknowledged by Blinken as necessary in order to overcome the legacy of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq.

By setting out how an invasion might occur this, it makes it harder for Russia to claim an invasion is legitimate if they follow the playbook Blinken describes, which is a small deterrent in itself.

My take on Putin's actions in regard to Ukraine is that he wants to throw western political relations into disarray - which has done (see Germany for details).

Putin knows that NATO will not start a war but he can pretend that NATO at his door threatens Russia - even if it doesn't.

Putin can do all this because he has reorganised his economy not to depend on western business and he can look east and south instead.

Will he attack Ukraine? Who knows. He'll try to destabilise it for sure; the secession provinces in Ukraine's east provide him with false flag opportunities to stir things up. Will he engineer a coup in Kieve? Possibly.

A good performance, I'd say dispassionately.