yogthos

Exactly, Russia understands the reason for the provocations perfectly well and there's no reason for Russia to react to these provocations. And completely agree that Russia has lots of options for asymmetric response.

It's not out of realm of possibility, and it would be a serious provocation of that's the case. That said, this obviously doesn't change anything strategically, and I expect Russia will likely just ignore this. It's pretty clear that Russia has been dictating the pace of the war for a while now, and the fact that they haven't escalated yet indicates that they're content with the current state of things.

I imagine that Russia would prefer avoiding a direct conflict with NATO, and the war with the west is relegated to economic and geopolitical spheres instead. However, if Estonia is responsible for the strike that would indicate that at least some western countries are trying to provoke further escalation.

I fully expect that all Europe will be deep in recession by the end of the year.

Yeah, the fact that US decided to dismantle all the treaties with Russia is very concerning. In fact, this is one of the main causes for the war in Ukraine since Russia was very concerned about NATO being able to put nukes in Ukraine that could reach Moscow under 10 minutes. The danger of a nuclear holocaust has never been higher than it is now. There is an absolutely insane administration running the US and there's a communication breakdown the like of which we haven't seen even during the height of the cold war. A catastrophic miscalculation by either side is a very real possibility.

The Sarmat missile was being developed for a while now, and this is when they were scheduled to be deployed. Their deployment isn't a reaction to anything immediate happening with the war in Ukraine or the conflict between the west and Russia. The tweet appears to make it look like this is Russia is escalating in the context of the current proxy war.

Worth noting that this was a planned deployment and not in response to anything currently happening.

That's actually lower than I would've expected to be honest. After 2 years of propaganda I kind of expected all of NATO to be like Poland. Also views on Zelensky being mixed is interesting given that he's been the poster boy for the war. I read this as NATO having a bit of a crisis to be honest because the economic troubles are just starting. Once the recession hits full force, a lot more people are going to start rethinking things.

China was focusing on dual circulation for a while now because they realized that their dependence on the west for exports is a risk. I'm sure they learned a lot from Russia's experience with the sanctions as well. Projects such as BRI and BRICS are another factor, we're now seeing an economy that's entirely independent of the west develop around China. It's also very difficult for the west to interfere with this economy because US is getting steadily pushed out of Eurasia. For example, there's now a trading route going from China to Iran through Russia and Syria.

And of course, China will always be in a position to retaliate against US with its own sanctions because US is heavily dependent on goods produced in China. We already saw an example of this with Gallium and Germanium exports. US isn't able to sanction China without massive economic blowback to itself.

that is unfortunate, but the quote works well on its own

good point

indeed