“The times of peace are over, the post-war era is over. We live in new times - in the pre-war era; for some of our brothers, this is no longer even the pre-war era, but the period of full-scale war in its most cruel version,” Tusk said.
I wonder what everyone’s thoughts are on this. Personally I think Russia is spent and would need at least 5 years to train new troops, build new tanks, etc to the point of waging an effective war at any scale, let alone against NATO. Could easily be 10 with continued sanctions. By that time Putin could easily be dead and I see nothing structural that could lead to the next Russian President wanting to wage a war. Just have to wait out Putin with sanctions.
Putin’s waiting for the US Supreme Court to make good on what he paid for— finish reinstalling Trump so he can carry out his vision
Exactly this. The 4 Biden years were an unforeseen fluke that threw a bit of a wrench in the gears. But make no mistake, the goals remain unaltered.
Europe’s main worry is that the USA pulls out of NATO. Without the USA, NATO becomes a lot weaker and may have issues projecting power on Europe’s frontier for an extended period of time.
And as we’ve seen with Ukraine, Putin seems to have a decently firm grasp of Russia.
I always find this odd that people think that European Nato is weak and couldn’t take on Russia, especially when one of the poorest countries in Europe (Ukraine) fought them into a stalemate.
It doesn’t matter if Europe only NATO is weak or not. It would look weak. For better or worse the US is at least half it not more of NATO’s effective force. The loss would embolden Russia and friends.
Ukraine has also had significant support from NATO, both in materiel and in intelligence. A lot of that support came from the USA and a lot of the means to refill strategic reserves are mainly American owned and run.
A European only NATO has diminished command and control capabilities and defense industry.
Poland would know.
I don’t think NATO members were ever at risk, especially now we know how ineffective the Russian military is in modern warfare
I think Putin wants the Baltics and hopes the other countries won’t go to war over them.
Yep they are exactly where he is going to start. It fixes the pesky problem of the Kaliningrad Oblast and improves Russian cold weather port access.
Worthless ports as not a single ship bound to russia will ever get through the Danish straits again if they invade the baltics.
So? As if that stopped Putin in the black sea
They saw in 2014 that the international community will just ignore a fucking invasion if they simply remove the insignia from their uniforms and pretend Russia has nothing to do with it. Phew, thank God this invasion happening in plain view is just some big misunderstanding and we don’t actually have to go help our ally defend themselves from unprovoked expansionist agression
Talk about conflict avoiding behavior.
Why stop at the Baltics?
