Putin got a summit with Biden to discuss Putin's threat to invade Ukraine. Are the Russians really enjoying their global notoriety?
The Russians just don't get it:
Russia was, in the eyes of most in Moscow, ignored on foreign policy matters throughout the 1990s. It was a great power in name only. Once Russia’s leadership paid back the country’s debts and reduced the state’s dependence on external finance, it began to restore the country’s global position.
If Russia was being ignored, doesn't that undermine the idea that NATO has been plotting against Russia?
And doesn't anybody in Russia consider that the restoration of the country's "global position" was the result of Russian aggression and bizarrely hostile rhetoric that forced NATO countries to look at Russia with new alarm?
The ultimate humiliation is that no matter what Russia does, China is the West's "Big Bad" rather than Russia. Russia is a regional power in the west--albeit with short-term military advantages--with continents-spanning defense needs.
Even apart from the risk of appeasing China, Russia's pointless hostility to NATO is not cost-free. I don't think Russia is necessarily done splintering:
Is a third collapse of the Russian empire possible? Could Russia's insane focus on grabbing scraps of the Soviet Union blind them to a looming third collapse among the Russian portions of the empire?
Russia is the sick, angry man of Europe and they have no idea of their peril from within as they search for non-existent NATO plots against them.
We may see just how small Russia can get under Putin. It's not just me, although the timing hasn't been predicted.
UPDATE: I guess we're supposed to negotiate how we give in to Putin?
Whether the talks can head off further conflict in Ukraine will probably come down to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to accept alternate security concessions from the West in lieu of the guarantees he has sought on halting NATO’s eastward growth.
So the West should back down in the face of Russia's illegal aggression against Ukraine? Maybe the talks should convince Russia to stop being an aggressive and self-destructive a-hole.
Russia is too weak to wage a hard war in Ukraine for long if the West provides supplies and assistance to Ukraine.
