Tag: TrumpRussia 2.0

Of NATO, Ukraine & Putin’s Metrics For Invasion


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One theory floating around Twitter is Putin is about to engage in a massive, risky war against Ukraine because he wants to stop the country from joining NATO.

I struggle to imagine this being true, for a lot of reasons.

The biggest is — if all Putin wants to do is ensure that Ukraine doesn’t join NATO, all he has to do is a modest smash-and-grab operation connecting Donbass to Odessa. Have enough of a lingering “frozen conflict” endgame to it that NATO just doesn’t want to risk letting Ukraine join.

And all of the other metrics presented to me can be swatted away. Putin is old, they say. And I say, so what. Putin is an autocrat and all autocrats think they’re going to live forever. The list goes on.

You can’t escape some cold hard facts. It’s sexy to think of a big war between Ukraine and Russia, but you can’t escape how small Russia’s economy is. You can’t escape the stress such a huge, potentially long-term, war against Ukraine that has a fair sized population would have on Russia’s economy and overall stability.

The point is — what metrics is Putin using that would cause him to believe a general war against Ukraine would be a good idea? What the hell is he thinking? Because it would make a lot more sense if this was all just a very expensive bit of saber rattling meant to get a face-to-face sit down IRL with Biden.

And he can do that because he’s an autocrat. So, for the time being, that’s what I think is happening. When something changes, I’ll revise my assessment.

TrumpRussia 2.0


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is really bonkers. But it’s entertaining to mull this possibility, so here we go. We all know how much Trump loves to suck Putin’s cock, so it would make a lot of sense if those two guys continue to chat like school girls. And we know that Trump never met a quid pro quo that he didn’t like.

So, what if Putin told Trump — hey, it’s not the House flipping you have to slow walk January 6th things in the courts to, it’s a point this December.

Trump wouldn’t know when, exactly, but he would know that the eyes of the world would turn rather abruptly to Ukraine soon. So much so, that we would wake up in six months and look at each other, shocked that Congress’ January 6th investigation has mysteriously faded into nothingness.

Now, obviously, this kooky idea falls part after this because the Republican Party could very well collapse into two waring camps if Putin misjudges the willingness of Ukrainians to fight for their nation. The longer the war lasts, the more Putin-loving Trump will begin to tear away from the rest of the Republican Party.

But Trump, obviously, doesn’t have the mental ability to do that second and third level political thinking — he’s more of a grunt kind of guy –so, it’s possible this informal quid pro quo might happen.

Or not. I have no proof and it sounds kind of bonkers even to me.

I note that The Washington Post is reporting that evidence suggests that Russia may attack Ukraine early next year with 175,000 troops.

So, if there is any discussion between TrumpWorld and Putin that would mean the there are any number of other, less nefarious explanations for why they’re slow walking everything — that’s just Trump people do. The whole Russia thing could very well be happening totally independent of what’s going on in the States with Trump and January 6th.

But the war starts early, like, say between now and Dec. 16, then, that would be really spook, because December 16th is the date TrumpWorld lawyer Jeff Clark pushed his Congressional testimony to.