Putin is using second rate troops in Ukraine. He's trying to create the illusion of weakness to draw NATO into a fight at which time he'll deploy his more elite units and exploit NATO's overconfidence.
NATO will not be drawn in the war with Russia. Europe is too dependent on Russian energy, and it will take at least a decade, of not more before they're able to potentially replace the energy they're getting from Russia.
Also this...
Ukraine is the one who's losing, and Biden is facilitating that. I wonder what Putin has on Biden? Maybe that $3.5 million his son Hunter got from the former Mayor of Moscow? You know Joe got his 10%, if not more.
Hey Russia, if you're listening: Go right ahead and spill the beans on this idiot President. The media will thank you for it.
Although I don't agree that Ukraine is losing, as is expected to lose some territory at the start of the war, they have the support from EU, that barely allows them to breathe.
As JGalt pointed out, Biden gave Russia everything they wanted. The moment he got into office, he cancelled Keystone XL, and made every possible obstacle for big oil he could come up with. Since then gas prices were on the rise, and inflation as well. We have inflation above 5% every month since last May, and since last December above 7.5% even without Russian invasion of Ukraine. Biden removed Russian sanctions, and approved Nordstream 2. He gave Putin OK to invade with his "if he do just a little"... he did nothing to prevent it, to slow it down, or to take a charge. The EU couldn't wait for him and took the charge, first with sanctions, than with stopping SWIFT, blocking Nordstream 2, and Biden was following with at least five days late, when he didn't have any choice but to do so.
In my opinion, none of these sanctions really hurts Putin. They do, but not as we say they do. Putin already switched his payments to Chinese UnionPay, he offered India oil and gas commodities at discounted prices, and they're taking it. He has half of the world still doing business with him, and the only industry that he does not have to replace is semiconductors, but China does. I also heard he might be getting back on gold standard, and that's where he can actually screw us. But that's another story, maybe for later.
Back to Germany... and EU who brought this on themselves. If you're willing to read, here is what I posted about week ago.
With an economy smaller than that of Texas, and average life expectancy ten years less than rest of Europe, how does he manage to launch unprovoked full scale attack on another country, how is he able to pull this off? Here is how... the first answer is mathematical, and second purely (ideo)logical. He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants Ukraine to be free. Putin is willing to risk tremendous loss of life and resources to get what he wants. There are serious limits to how much the US and Europe are willing to do militarily and Putin knows it. Missing from that explanation thought is a story about material reality and basic economics.
Europe and US failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine because the West is lost in soft renewable energy delusions, whilst Putin was grounded in hard physical reality of nuclear energy, oil, and natural gas. And now, Ukrainians are paying for our wishful thinking. The reason Europe doesn't have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian aggression and in fact prevented the US from getting allies to do more, is that Europe desperately needs Russian oil and gas. How is it possible that European countries, Germany in particular, allow themselves to become as dependent on authoritarian country over the thirty years since the cold war ended? Well, these countries are in the grips of delusional leftist ideology that makes them incapable to understand the hard realities of energy production. Green ideology insist that we don't need nuclear, and we don't need fracking, it insist that it's just matter of will and money to switch to all renewables, it insists that we need to de-growth the economies, and that we are facing looming human extinction because of the climate change.
Two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe,
first is that Europe produces 3.6 million barrel of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, but uses 560 billion cubic meters a year. Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year, and produces half of that. At the same time, Putin knows that Russia produces 11 million barrels of oil per day, but only uses 3.4 million barrels. Russia produces over 700 billion cubic meters of gas a year but only uses around 400 billion. Russia mines 800 million tons of coal each year, but uses 300 million tons. That's how Russia ends up supplying about 20% of Europe's oil, 45% of its gas and 20% of its coal. The math is simple, a child could do it, but none of the leaders on the West do. Even if Europe cut all supplies from Russia, Putin already have buyers for it.
Than there is John Kerry, the guy who will only marry you if you are a widow with shitload of money, and he is the US "climate envoy". This guy is such a pseudointellectual, it's mind boggling. He perfectly captured myopia of the view that West holds, when he said two days before the war that "the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have profound effect... profound negative impact on the climate". WTF?
It's the West that focused on healing of the planet, soft energy renewables, and moving away from natural gas, and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain stranglehold over Europe's energy supply. As the West fell into hypnotic trans about healing relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshipping Greta Turnberg, Putin made his moves. Whilst the expanded nuclear energy from Russia was kicking ass, Europe was shutting down their power plants and importing more and more gas. Western governments were spending their time and money obsessing over carbon footprints, (the term that was created by the advertising agency working for BP), they spend thousands of hours for climate anxiety therapy in order to ban plastic straws, whilst Putin expanded his oil and gas production and doubled his nuclear energy production to allow more exports of his other energy sources. Europe shut down their nuclear plants, closed their own gas fields and refused to develop advance methods of fracking.
The numbers tell the story the best, in 2016, only 30% of gas used by Europe came from Russia, in 2018 it jumped to 40%, by early 2020 it was 44% and by early 2021 it was 48%. Love him or hate him, Trump defied diplomatic protocols and called out Germany publicly in 2018 for its dependence on Moscow. He said that Germany is captive to Russia and he was right. He also called out Germany for not fulfilling their NATO obligations. At the time Angela Markel (former commie, by the way) was widely praised for her environmental conciseness, and just as socialist being wrong in just about everything, it turned out they didn't disappointed this time. She was saying that "Germany can make their own policies and decisions in regards energy" and the result is the worst energy crisis since 70's. These policies are driving price of all electricity and gasoline high around the world, and it's crisis fundamentally because of inadequate supply. The scarcity is entirely manufactured. The Europeans, led by figures like teenage idiot, who got rich of it, and green party leaders, supported by American idiots like John Kerry, believed that "heathy relationship with mother nature" requires to make energy scarce, but by turning completely to renewables, we are maybe saving a planet a little (which is questionable, given amount of energy needed to produce renewables), but we're completely destroying Ukraine by giving it to Russia. In service to green ideology, we made the perfect the enemy of the good, and the enemy of the people of Ukraine, and next potential victim country. And while Germans turned off three of the last six of their nuclear power plants, France's Macron right after his visit to Moscow announced that France will build 14 more reactors. He knew something that others didn't. It's worth to mention, since France is not ally that could be trusted, that back in nineties, during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, unlike majority of the EU and NATO countries, France along with Greece sided with Putin in their support of Serbia.
