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Johnson is right, this is a historic moment and our geopolitical earth is shifting. The one super power hegemony days are ending and multi-polarity is being speeded up by this military conflict.

I don’t expect Putin to put the pedal to the medal though. It would be out of character for him and doesn’t appear to be necessary.

Understandably Zelensky is in a panic. Unlike many of his poorly informed supporters on Free Republic, he realizes the gig is almost up. He has run out of weapons, ammunition, fuel, and manpower and every day is just another relentless “turkey shoot” for the poor Ukrainian troops. Nothing on the horizon can change that.

His NATO backers are “ruing the day” they met him...:-) Their economies, remaining armory (and their confidence in being able to stay in power) are plummeting and they are desperately looking for an exit which up to now Zelensky has been unwilling to provide.

The real interesting question here, though, is who says Russia is going to provide one right now even if Zelesky does cave.

Once Zelensky reneged on the preliminary Istanbul agreement and then committed the Bucca false flag Russia changed their initial plans which were to de-militarize; de-nazi; demand autonomy for Donbass and neutrality for Ukraine and then depart.

Russia decided they could never trust Zelensky to uphold any agreement he signed and so they went to Plan B...to stay in Ukraine and incorporate the Russia speaking areas into Russia.

So how far do they want to go? And what arrangements would have to be made as to who controls the rump state that is left?

We live in interesting times.

Lol. Russia couldn’t trust...?

That’s the country that’s invaded and annexed regions from FOUR different countries in the last twenty years, despite binding international agreements of recognition and mutual respect for each others’ sovereignty.

The country that is unilaterally derecognising Lithuania’s 31 year old independence from a USSR that doesn’t even exist anymore.

The country that is now threatening Khazakstan as well.. only because its leader refuses to violate international law by recognising DPR and LPR as independent of Ukraine (in effect sticking rigidly to the established and China/Kremlin approved scripts for Kosovo and Taiwan).

The country that managed to have a near dead old duffer called Zhirinovsky tell the Duma last year to expect something big to happen in Ukraine around dawn on 22nd February 2022, but whose diplomats were still denying it was planning to invade Ukraine right into mid February.

The country that has been conducting cyber warfare against healthcare institutions in the west for over a decade.

The country that used internationally banned weapons in a “special military operation” and has practically levelled two cities and dozens of towns but STILL denies it’s waging a war of aggression.

That country.

The country that materially broke 4 if not 5 of the undertakings in the Budapest Memorandum even before Zelenskyy was elected.

The country that corrupted Yanukovych.

The country that accuses Ukraine of genocide against russians in the Donbss despite the Donbas ombudsman ITSELF telling Russia that the casualty rate plummeted by 95% after Zelenskyy implemented the armistice and ordered Azov to stand down.

Face facts. There is literally nothing Russia has done ever in Putin’s period of office, in relation to its neighbors, that is honest.

For it to complain about the dishonesty of states that are merely responding reasonably to having ALREADY being threatened if not explicitly attacked by a pathologically dishonest, aggressive Russian government, is possibly the most breathtaking example of hypocrisy in the history of geopolitics.

Russia fears an existential threat from Lithuania?!

Really?

The bear is that scared of a mouse. Yeah. If you believe that, I’ve got a garage full of London Bridges to sell you.

Very interesting times…and your comments are also interesting and show actual knowledge and analysis of the situation.

One aspect that nobody mentions is that while our days of super power hegemony are ending, we were definitely very involved in starting this conflict…beginning with putting the wildly unqualified Zelensky in power in the first place and then encouraging and even funding his fantasies. Joe Biden is directly responsible for all this through his son, the fantastically corrupt and amoral Hunter Biden, and their machinations in the Ukraine.

For reasons of their own, they pushed it from a simmering long-term dispute that could have been solved diplomatically if anyone had been willing to negotiate it in good faith (Zelensky clearly has not been acting in good faith), to the edge of WWIII…and at the same time destroyed the credibility of the US.

I think it is foolish super-power hubris, expressed in the unworthy persons of Joe and Hunter Biden, that is ending up by bringing us down as a super-power and putting an end to the unipolar super-power world.

Even our economy is collapsing, and having no economic power is as bad as having no military power. Of course, ironically, the sanctions we have put on Russia have come back to bite us (and the Europeans who followed us), and that’s not helping either.

Obviously, this didn’t happen overnight and the rot was there even before Biden officially became President, but don’t forget that he and Hunter had been involved in the Ukraine for years and seem to have continued acting as a shadow State Department even under Trump.