> What makes you think Putin is any different from the historical trend of Russian politics? <
Good question. I don’t think he’s any different. Putin truly is a war criminal. But he’s constrained by reality. Stalin could, and did, take over Poland and then Germany all the way to the Elbe River. But it’s not 1945 any more. Putin’s army is nothing compared to Stalin’s formidable Red Army.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the US must intervene. If so, not now. And let the EU do all the heavy lifting, as I mentioned in my post #65.
>Putin’s army is nothing compared to Stalin’s formidable Red Army.<
I don’t agree about US intervening physically, but I agree that Putin’s army is not Stalin’s in 1945.
However, Stalin got his army that way in 1945 after a brutal war with Germany to be a kind of ultimate survival of the fittest test.
What I see here is a window of demographics for Russia. They have to advance while they have manpower to do it. The Russian military needed a serious combat theater in order to hammer off all the slag in their war machine. What that military will look like in 5-10 years if the Russian economy strengthens will be terrifying. It might not be as large as Stalin’s but it will be the kind of military which has learned in the school of actual modern combat, against opponents assisted by US intelligence.