Quote:
Originally Posted by elphenor
arming a country but not officially being part of a war is the "I'm not touching you" loophole
seems kinda silly, so Putin/Russia probably calculated that it won't make a difference, yeah?
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What won't make a difference? Us proving weapons or us "not being involved?"
I mean pretending you're not doing something when you are is how Russia gets most of what it wants, and Iran to a large degree. The reason for it is to hold up appearances and let other countries pretend there's no crisis.
But again, Putin never thought it would take this long to overthrown Ukraine. This reads like a major miscalculation on any number of fronts.
- The people of Russia are pissed
- International banks are freezing out Russian money
- Ukraine is fighting back a lot harder than they expected
- NATO unified a lot more vocally than anyone expected
The problem is NATO is an unwilling coalition. We tried to cancel NATO in 1991/1992 but since only the UK and the US were interested in stopping Russian expansion, and Europe wasn't, it remains in place.
That said, iirc NATO effed up by telling Ukraine to disarm its nukes.