Ukraine has morphed – unexpectedly – from the Washington perspective from an ‘useful distraction’ to becoming Biden’s dilemma.
“What will we do if the West does not listen to reason?”, noted Sergei Lavrov. “Well, the President of Russia has already said ‘what’ [it will do]”. “If our attempts to come to terms on mutually acceptable principles of ensuring security in Europe fail to produce the desired result, we will take response measures. Asked directly what these measures might be, he [Putin] said: they could come in all shapes and sizes”. Russia had previously announced that absent a satisfactory western response, then Russia would lay aside the language of diplomacy – and resort to unspecified “military-technical” measures – incrementally ratchetting pain on NATO and the U.S.
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