(2) Agreed. Keep an eye on Russian currency markets come Monday. Between removal from SWIFT and freezing central Russian bank assets, significantly painful sanctions are ramping up. The conflict has only been ongoing for 4 days.
(3) Agreed. It's ridiculous.
"Putin again is much too smart to do that... what Putin is doing is he's basically in the process of wrecking Ukraine and he's telling the West in very simple terms you have two choices: you either back off and we go back to the status quo ante before February 22 2014 where Ukraine is a buffer state or you continue to play these games where you try and take Ukraine and make it a Western bastion on their doorstep in which case we'll wreck the country."
23 min mark: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=1388
Either the Russian's gets the regime change they want or they will continue to wreck Ukraine. They have no desire to own the country.
I'm glad previous adminstrations didn't put stock in his ideology.
(2) The sanctions have tons of carveouts and are still toothless. We need more.
(3) Russia /has/ been sewing divisions in the West. Politics are extremely polarized in the US in part do to Russian troll farms. Have you seen this nonsense? https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1497613102765907968