[Jim Noble]

And why would he do that? Why not simply play the long game

I SAID, IF he wants the demise of NATO to be explicit. I don't know that he wants that, he may find it useful to do as you suggest.

The big deal, the only deal that really matters, is with Germany. We do not know what the Germans are thinking, and we don't know what Putin has said to their (ex-GDR) chancellor.

[semantic]

The demise of Ukraine was also explicit - just like Serbia, Iraq, Libya, etc, before it.

However, each respective state was terminated via a different process. If Russia decided to do a reverse Ukraine on NATO, do you think anyone would not understand the *explicit* nature of the intrigue?

Seems like your comment was directed to the folks in the cheap seats ie the ones who need a lot of flash/boom in order to get the message. Trust me, with stakes this high, no one plotting the moves is confused as to what's actually transpiring.