I already told you, come find me and say all that to my face. You haven't taken me up on that.

 

Ah. The tough guy routine. The "I don't like what you're saying so let's fight!" Real productive and mature.

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/germany-faces-reckoning-relying-putin-050000464.html

 

I'm sure that's what PUTIN was thinking as well.

 

What are the rules regarding intra-NATO conflict? Perhaps he was thinking to join NATO, and destroy it from the inside? It's clear that Putin had no earnest interest in joining the West. Only to weaken it so that Russia could gather some of its former strength.

Trump was only a facilitator of that agenda.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/...ry?id=65989898

 

You mean by calling out the countries who weren’t doing their token 2%? That had been happening for many admins. The only difference was that he was actually able to get them to budge.

 

Who are you talking about? No, Trump cried on TV as a pretext to withdraw from NATO. And that was definitely on the 2nd term agenda.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...9a0_story.html

 

1. Putin has made his position on Ukraine joining NATO crystal clear for 2 decades. It was a line in the sand and not negotiable.

2. In June of 2021 at a NATO summit in Brussels, Ukraine was loosely assured of the possibility of NATO membership if it met the required criteria.

3. In July of 2021 Putin writes a lengthy essay further cementing his long held position.

4. On November 10, 2021 the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, asserting U.S. support for Ukraine’s right to seek NATO membership.

5. The language in the November agreement was stronger than that of the previous June, making it highly likely that Ukraine would eventually join NATO.

6. Putin considered this the last straw and began military planning for an invasion in the near term.

7. Negotiations went nowhere, so Putin did exactly what he said he would do for 2 decades.

The Biden Administration knew what Putin’s response would be. They chose to take a path that they knew would lead to a guaranteed military conflict. Would Putin have done it eventually anyway? Maybe. However, the Biden Administration chose to give Putin a green light to do it under circumstances that aligned perfectly with what he had long said he would never tolerate.