Putin says “no one can sit out the coming storm,” but he himself is doing a good job of it. www.rt.com/russia/565476-putin-valdai- club-takeaways/
Putin’s “milestone Valdai speech” is another good speech, correct in its message, and like his others will lead to no action.
Donetsk, a Russian city, has been repeatedly attacked by Ukraine using US/Nato supplied weapons. But until today’s missile strikes on water and electricity in Kiev Putin continued to protect Kiev (and its Western suppliers) from retaliation. Indeed, Putin is still trying to negotiate the war with Zelensky and with Biden and to provide his Nato enemies with oil so they can continue their war against Russia.
Putin is doing more than sitting out the coming storm. He, by his inaction and refusal to use enough force to bring the conflict to an end, is contributing to the severity of the coming storm by accepting mounting provocations that encourage more and more reckless provocations.
As the provocations mount–from the West’s training of Ukrainian soldiers and supplying them with weapons, intelligence, and targeting information, to attack on the Crimea Bridge, to destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, to stationing the US 101 Airborne Division on Ukraine’s border, to redefining US strategic doctrine in order to permit the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear threat as long as it discomforts the US, to placing nuclear weapons in Finland–the provocations of Russia have become increasingly reckless. When will the West cross a Russian red line that Putin cannot ignore? A quick defeat of Ukraine would have prevented these reckless acts and an ever widening war.
No one in Western governments is demanding peace and a diplomatic end to the conflict. So the process proceeds toward Russian surrender or Armageddon.