Originally Posted by
meleagertoo
Meanwhile China is watching this with mountng glee.
NATO is raidly expending its weapons stocks in Ukraine, in some cases towards a hazardous level and the war is nowhere near yet done. If Putain makes his next logical move up the Suwalki gap that'll empty NATO stocks altogether. Even if not NATO's stocks will take half a decade or more to replenish.
And there will be nothing left in the box to prevent China from just walking into Taiwan.
Except...
Suspect the glee is muted, given the gap in Russian military performance vs expectations.
Presumably the Chinese are doing a serious reappraisal of what it might take to 'just walk into Taiwan', as you so cheerfully put it.
More broadly, apart from his braggadocio at the start of this war, Putin has been very careful to stick to bite sized pieces, for instance not even attempting to support Syria against Israeli air raids.
So the idea of trying to attack the Suwalki gap seems very far fetched, directly attack NATO members for what? The rail connection through Lithuania is largely unimpeded and there are daily ferries to the rest of Russia..