tek-monkey
wanna see my snake?
General consensus in the Baltic States is that Ukraine is just to see how far we push back, but the consensus inside Russia is that the West is trying to split them up and they need to fight back to stop the foreigners from changing their way of life. It's quite scary how easily a population can be persuaded, but I guess he had Brexit and several elections as practice runs.
My wife is Latvian (hence me knowing whats happening on Russian social media), they think if the Ukraine is allowed to be taken then next step will be one of the smaller NATO countries to gauge willing for a real war. Latvia could be conquered in a day, it only has 2m people and half of them are of Russian descent. A lot will depend on China, if they fully distance themselves he'll likely stop at Ukraine for now but if they signal allegiance we're all in deep shit. One thing he won't do is retreat, Ukraine will have a puppet regime at the best and will be fully consumed at worst.
My wife is Latvian (hence me knowing whats happening on Russian social media), they think if the Ukraine is allowed to be taken then next step will be one of the smaller NATO countries to gauge willing for a real war. Latvia could be conquered in a day, it only has 2m people and half of them are of Russian descent. A lot will depend on China, if they fully distance themselves he'll likely stop at Ukraine for now but if they signal allegiance we're all in deep shit. One thing he won't do is retreat, Ukraine will have a puppet regime at the best and will be fully consumed at worst.