Originally Posted by
tdracer
What scares me is that Putin could be getting to the point that he doesn't care about retaliation. Hitler like, if he thinks he's going down, taking the rest of the world with him may actually be appealing.
It may be that Putin is not the only one with misapprehensions regarding the Ukraine situation.
A rather different perspective is in some of the financial websites, such as this one here:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022...ng-russia.html
The short form here is that the West has shot itself in the foot with the various embargoes. These have had very limited near term effect on Russia, which received all time record energy export revenues in April ,but are hugely damaging to the global.economy. The victims will blame the West for imposing these sanctions.
The other element is that warts and all, Russia is gradually absorbing eastern Ukraine, the source of the conflict, installing civil administrations and offering expedited Russian citizenship.
Changing those facts on the ground will be problematical for the Ukraine, even with an influx of NATO gear.
Kissinger at Davos stated his view that the Ukraine will not be able to emerge unscathed from this war. He is admittedly old, but his judgement still seems sound.