Dear Gentle Readers,
stop me, if you've heard this one before...
in 2014, Putin used a corrupt real estate developer to stage a fake election, by using armed men to storm the Crimean rada, for the purpose to make himself President, and then to do Russia's bidding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Crimean_Parliamentthis article unfortunately, does a really poor job of explaining what happened, but gives you the basic idea
he tried similar things in Donestsk and Odesa, but these failed, so escalation was called for
but these military escalations failed as well, so even MORE escalation was called for
which brings us to Feb 24, 2022...
when a full scale "special military operation" against Ukraine was launched
now that seems to be failing as well, so it can mean only ONE THING
that EVEN MORE (sigh...) escalation will be called for!
Gosh!! how will Putin escalate?
if you look at how castles were besieged in olden times, there were two primary methods
you either use catapults or cannons to break the walls, OR, you surround the castle and starve 'em out
Putin is now in a much better position to starve Ukraine than before.
he'll first starve Ukraine's energy production
He already controls the Donbas coal fields, and reduced gas and oil flows to Ukraine, and any time he wants he can shutdown Zaporizhzhia's 6 nuclear reactors and hydroelectric power
and then work on shutting down remaining power plants and destroy transportation infrastructure and farmers will not have fuel for tractors, so crops will neither be sown nor reaped
then with Ukraine literally at its darkest hour, one of Russia's "observers" in Kyiv will pinpoint Zelensky and the Ukrainian general staff, and launch a barrage of Iskanders to eliminate them
Putin will have already made moves to promote "certain" Ukrainians to be the new Ukrainian leadership who will surrender to Russia, out of "humanitarian concerns".
What if this effort fails like all the others?
Well, he'll have to escalate once more!!!
Putin's last choice, is to use WMDs in Ukraine, what will the West do? Put sanctions on babooshka samichkee sellers, since everybody else will already be sanctioned, and the west has signaled it doesn't want to be involved in a military escalation
The nuclear option, isn't gonna be the classic Hiroshima kinda attack. It'll be a high altitude nuclear burst, that has been precisely calculated to leave no radiation on the ground, no blast or fire damage. It will however create a huge EMP effect that will fry every piece of Western military equipment, and not harm Russia or other nearby nations
this will leave the Ukrainians at the complete mercy of Russia's reserves which we're gonna hear about a few weeks from now
and if that fails as well...