Photo: Ali Atmaca/Getty Images< /p>
Still, the Biden administration is brilliantly trolling the Kremlin. The Kremlin is like: “Let's attack! Let's hit it! Yield to us if you don't want war.”
Biden administration: “They're going to attack now! But we stand firm! Here are our proposals, if you want — accept, if you want — no!”
And what should the Kremlin do now? Of course, accept.
Throughout its life, the USSR was preparing for war, but for the United States, this was not the most important thing. The USSR produced tanks and guns, rockets and bombs, and shouted that the imperialists were about to attack. And the United States, of course, also produced everything, but first of all, they developed the economy. And, in the end, when the size of both economies became incomparable (the Soviet one overstrained itself in armaments), Ronald Reagan announced Star Wars.
And then the USSR went bankrupt. It turned out that the Soviet industry, dried up by the defense industry, could not compete with the United States when they turned on the afterburner.
In the story of the war with Ukraine, we are seeing something similar, but only in terms of PR.
For half a century now, all outcast countries have been asserting themselves at the expense of the United States. It's accepted.
Iran, Sudan and Venezuela are burning American flags, their propagandists are shouting: «We'll hit you!», while the United States turns its head away with Olympian calm. And all the cries do not reach the top of Capitol Hill. There, serious politicians are busy with the only thing that worries them, namely, elections. Therefore, barking at the Capitol is easy and convenient. Like a paper tiger.
After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Kremlin apparently decided not to miss the moment. He began to transfer troops to Ukraine, whipping up military hysteria and trumping his own unpredictability. Kremlin propagandists told how nuclear ashes would remain from Florida, patriotic TV moguls predicted victory in 48 hours.
In fact, it was very hard to imagine the Kremlin openly moving tanks into Ukraine, preceded by what unnamed White House sources now claim, this “terrible bloody campaign” with “two days of aerial bombardment.” In order to doubt this, one did not have to be a military specialist who could count battalion tactical groups.
It's just not the Kremlin's manner.
He prefers to fight in such a way that he can blame everything on volunteers, «miners and tractor drivers.» Prefers to strike stealthily, before the West comes to its senses and develops a unanimous opinion: the annexation of Crimea and the Russian-Georgian war happened exactly when they were not expected.
Prefers to fight in such a way that any victory (for example, the capture of Palmyra) could be shown on TV, and any defeat (for example, the death of the same Russian mercenaries from American air strikes near Deir az-Zor or from Turkish Bayraktars in Syria and Libya) could be passed over in complete silence.
< p>And the tank columns thrown to storm Kiev cannot be passed over in silence and cannot be attributed to tractor drivers.