Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "Putin's Strategy Backfired: NATO's New Plan" video.
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I don't think it was that, it's mostly that he miscalculated the western response to the war in Ukraine and expected it to be a lot weaker than it was, he also miscalculated the resistance from the people of Ukraine, a massive oversight considering that Ukraine was preparing for this for years with western help.
The irony is, the ones that have benefitted the most from this are the EU and NATO, we are seeing a lot more unity in both organizations and more countries wanting to join them both, longer term, Ukraine and some eastern European countries could benefit from this with a faster road map into the EU and NATO than would otherwise be possible, especially as the EU and even NATO wasn't too keen on bringing in any new members any time soon, that door is opening up for both the EU and NATO, which is the last thing Putin wanted.
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I don't see how this can be seen as good for Putin in any sense of the word, NATO boosting its capacity a lot of the eastern flank is a direct result of Putin's aggression in Ukraine, the end result is a weaker economy and more isolation for Russia, at least longer terms as the sanctions start to really bite, which we should remember, can take 2 to 3 years for the real damage to kick in.
If I was Russian or an outsider looking at this, Putin is directly to blame for NATO ramping things up, which isn't a good thing for Russia overall because now the western countries have all the excuses they need to beef up military capacity on the Russian boarder, something I doubt Putin or the Russian people wanted, in other words, it backed fire on Putin.
As for Putin trying to say NATO is an aggressive alliance by doing what it's doing now is a weak argument when Russia attacks Ukraine, NATO is just responding in kind to Russian aggression, in other words, the real blame is on Putin himself and he can spin it however he wants to the Russian people, the reality is, NATO is ramping things up because of Putin invading another country, that's the reality of the situation.
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True, Putin doesn't really care about the Russian people, he cares about his position of power and his inner circle, just like any dictator, which are more than happy to throw their own people under the bus if it means staying in power or extending it, it's going to take some time for the Russian people to wake up to that reality and when they do, it's likely going to hit hard because sanctions usually only bite hard about 2 or 3 years in and by then, most of Europe will stop buying Russian oil and gas or at least reduced it a lot.
Once that happens, the west is going to focus on China and India, with the intention of isolating Russia and there are many ways the west can go about that, after all, Russia isn't that important to China or India and both countries can't afford to get on the wrong side of the west when it comes to the economy.
Who knows, maybe the western countries will put sanctions on both China and India as a percentage of how much oil and gas they buy from Russia, basically cancelling out the benefits, should be quite easy to do and that would encourage a lot of manufacturing and services out of China and India, other countries would be more than delighted to take that business away from them.
I suspect the west is waiting for the European countries to diversify away from Russian oil and gas before they pull that trigger but there's no way the west is going to put up with China and India benefitting from buying cheap oil and gas from Russia whiles people are dying in Ukraine.
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