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I think it's because he's become obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize.

without a reason

Trump wanted to be the guy who Made A Deal with Russia and ended the war. Putin made a big show of the Alaska Summit and then delivered exactly dick-all (which - to be fair - is the smart move when dealing with Trump). At the same time, Starmer's been licking his taint in hopes of winning concessions for the UK tech industry. So now Trump's incredibly sore at being burned by Russian and Starmer-curious.

But this will only last until Ukraine starts "looking like losers" according to his right-wing media friends. I would give it a few more months before he flips back again.

Narcissism/machiavellianism/psychopathy/NIHILISM:

Mass shooters don't care that they're going to die, so long as they butcher as many lives as they can: competitive nihilism.

Negative-sum game ( as opposed to competitive-narcissism, zero-sum game, or win-win-alliance/positive-sum game ).

Some "mass shooters" fire bullets at individual-lives, others fire legislations at entire-populations through legislative-authority.

The scale's different, but the "nobody is going to be alive after me: I'm the greatest & the last word" motivation is the same, between the 2 kinds.

Accelerationism is another variant of the same thing.

It is incompetent to presume that all others in the world are playing zero-sum game, just because moneyarchy pretends that that is the ONLY mode there is: that is just our cultural-brainwashing.

Negative-sum players, like Putin, Netanyahu, Trump, etc, are real, & are committed to making ABSOLUTELY certain that there's nobody significant after them: only butchery & carrion will remain, same as normal individual-scale mass-shooters, just through different means, is all..

( I believe that Hamas's unconscious strategy was to get Netanyahu to genocide the Palestinians, to "martyr" them, so that the total Islamic region would see Israel's psychopathic-sadism, & lose their being deterred by Israel's threat-of-violence, to the point that they simply wouldn't care anymore, how much Israel did, they'd have no choice but to annihilate it.

I believe that not only did Israel take the bait, but their shamelessness in attacking other countries, their impervious narcissism, is enforcing that the inevitable backlash happen.. possibly late this year, now.. .. much quicker than I'd been believing ( I'd thought it would be 3-ish more years, before the backlash annihilated Israel, .. but with Netanyahu willing to strike in any neighbouring-country, .. he moved the script up drastically ).

In the same week, perhaps a month ago, I read an Israeli Jew's article about how approximately 45% of the Palestinians they surveyed, wanted Israeli Jews exterminated.. but of course he never asked about Israeli Jews wanting the extermination of Palestinians..

& IN THE SAME WEEK, I'd come across an article by a Palestinian about how approximately 45% ( -/+2% or 3%, for both articles, btw: it was functionally identical ) of the Israeli Jews they surveyed, wanted Palestinians exterminated, but of course he never asked about his own people wanting the extermination of the Israeli Jews..

IOW, things are progressing from the considered-reasoning side of the spectrum to the only-prejudice-does-any-deciding side of the spectrum, exactly as prejudice wants. )

Putin's got less & less to lose, as he gets older, right?

Taking out more of the world & dying a little early, .. is looking better & better to him?

It was the nonfiction books of CIA-spook "John Braddock", btw, which identified that to understand the context's strategy one HAS TO understand which of the 3 categories-of-game that the players are playing, if you want to dig into that trilogy.

Aweful writing-style ( trance-induction-pushing can go eat rocks, in his books, & in "Ten Types of Human", too ), but important points.

IF you've got a competitive-nihilist running your country, THEN there are inevitable consequences of that.

IF the entire world has been willing to accommodate that competitive-nihilism & competitive-narcissism RULE THE WHOLE DAMN PLANET, then we aren't viable, species-wide, & this century may well be terminal for humankind.

The Great Filter, & no matter how many naive-idiots pretend "we already survived it!", until humankind has become coherent, AND has changed-in-nature to be coherently-proactive ( and that isn't a guaranteed-to-happen change ), then we haven't won yet.

I believe that no more than 1..1.5% of humankind will survive this century, IF humankind wins.

However, if the competitive-nihilists win .. then this world's future is complete silence/extinguishment of humankind.

As a ninja pointed out, in his book "Kenjutsu": all kenjutsu presumes that the opponent will immediately block your strikes, but if they don't care whether they survive, then your strike to get them to divert their strike .. won't divert their strike,

& then you both die.

If they don't care if they die, then all your training-reflexes are now wrong-game instincts.

Humankind's instincts are completely wrong-game, for dealing with the mechanisms & paradigms & people that humankind has allowed to rule the world.

The specific individual-players are not the problem: they are only the symptom.

Humankind allowed the wrong GAMES to rule the world, & is sooo entrenched in the cultural-brainwashing that it'll fight-to-the-death to protect its own anti-survival "function".

Yes, Putin is succeeding.

Not at gaining Russia anything, but at costing everybody-except-Putin as much as he can.

There's a Republican senator that's already put in a bill to get the US out of NATO, & Trump wants NATO gutted, so that's only a matter of time.. & the EU that won't obey Trump is going to be rampaged-on by Putin when Trump's rampaging-on Canada ( which is why he wants Greenland: Alaska, mainland US, Greenland, navy & airforce, & he can destroy Canada's independence MUCH quicker, than if we can still trade with the EU ).

Putin & Trump are both playing negative-sum games, same as mass-shooters are.

They're winning, by their-game's rules..

_ /\ _

As the Ukrainian front is losing ground, more and more of the staging and deployment is occurring in neighboring Poland and Slovakia. Moldova just voted in a pro-EU government, after a hotly contested election in which each party accused the other of taking support from foreign neighbors. If they align with Ukraine, that opens up a new route of supply into the south, where Russians have made the largest gains in territory.

We have already seen Russian surveillance drones passing through EU airspace, with attacks running right up to the western-most border (and dipping over depending on which intelligence service you ask). We've already seen incursions into Russian territory that have implied support from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuiania, with Russian digital offensives retaliating in kind.

Then throw in the wild card of Israel - a country that is taking a lot of political heat from Europe for its genocide in Gaza and the surrounding Arab states - whose PM has long since demonstrated friendly ties with Putin. Not inconceivable that Mossad and the RSB conduct joint operations on a country that has threatened sanctions on Israel over the genocide in Palestine. Hell, the recent sweeping shutdown of airlines across Europe following the condemnation of Israel at the UN is... conspicuous.

You'd think escalating the war would be suicidal for the Russian economy. And you'd think Europe doubling down on Ukraine at this point would be a recipe for more far-right parties winning elections. So they both have strong incentives to de-escalate. Nevertheless, they persist in one of the worst foreign policy follies since WW1. I wouldn't count anything out, at this point.

That may sound cheer worthy, but considering they very obviously can't handle even 1 front, attacking another country would have to be for a different reason, a more problematic reason.

They should try their luck in Afghanistan again.

Is this you, Ken M?

Yeah, I was reading earlier about Russian misinformation networks relating to Moldovan elections. Scary stuff.

Bait and switch? "Hey everyone look over here!"

I have a pet theory that Putin is attempting to get a big reaction from NATO, so that he can then internally use that as an excuse why the war in Ukraine did not end well, and why they had to ultimately concede points they earlier held they wouldn’t in the eventual peace negotiations.

Not winning against Ukraine would be shameful for him, especially after all the messaging done about Ukraine not even being a real country.

Not winning against the entirety of NATO, on the other hand, sounds reasonable and understandable. But just saying that isn’t very persuasive. He needs imagery of destroyed Russian equipment in another NATO country or something concrete like that, to show that NATO truly is involved and waging war against Russia. That’s would also justify the initial reasoning for this misguided excursion — NATO is indeed warring against us, it was all justified! See these images of dead Russians in the Baltic Sea! The flaming Russian jets! See the havoc the big bad NATO wreaks on us poor Russians! We stand no chance, we have to settle for peace, those bullies are too strong now, and they are evil in their ways! In order to survive, we must concede a bit, lest NATO comes and bombs you and your family in the night like the thugs they are! gesturing at the constant dramatized imagery of destroyed Russian equipment in some NATO region

I’m convinced the economy, despite currently running on the war, is finally slowly collapsing to the point of it being visible to the peasants, perhaps showing inconvenient signs of that with the gas shortages across Russia, whatever else they are trying to keep under wraps. I think it’s starting to get embarrassing unless something changes and they can play victim to some bigger baddie yet again terrorizing good pious Russians. Maybe they have determined they can’t keep the effects contained no longer, and the seams will start to burst soon, so they need something that justifies the peace negotiations and conceding some of their strict conditions for the peace. Otherwise the people might just start seeing how fucked they are and rise up.

Not saying this is why... but in theory if he can go through another country to do an end around on Ukraine, he can trade that other country to keep Ukraine. Or even if nato needs to defend itself, it might not spend as much on defending Ukraine. Just guesses though. And they still seem like bad reasons.

Poland is ready for it, so probably not. Putin isn't one to start something with someone he knows can fight back. He wants a punching bag.

If the Russians invade Poland, the Muscovites will end up in a hornet's nest. However, I could see the asswipe, Vlad, making attempt to illegally occupy the Suwalki Gap.