What a short, brief headline for what I, along with many others, would describe as a seismic shift in the world's military configuration.

Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it would have been almost unthinkable that Sweden and Finland would want to join NATO.

Putin and his acolytes must be looking at all of this in utter disbelief.

"Recent opinion polls have shown as many as 68% of Finns are in favour of joining the alliance, more than double the figure before the invasion, with only 12% against. Polling in Sweden suggests a slim majority of Swedes also back membership."

One thing that's probably safe to conclude is that Putin doesn't actually care about what nato does or who joins it because that's a very predictable outcome of invading another non-nato country. Sure he'll say stuff about nato, but he's habitually lying like about invading ukraine. If anything it seems he wants other countries to join for his own reasons.

It does seem pretty clear that at this point Putin would prefer trying to grab a chunk of Ukraine over trying to keep NATO from expanding elsewhere.

This pretty much proves that either:

A) Putin actually isn't concerned about NATO offense (because they would never offensively threaten Russian territory)

or

B) Putin is a miscalculating idiot

Putin propaganda consumers seem unable to square these conflicting realities.

The US will be rubbing its hands with glee. They must have thought all their Christmases had come at once, when Russia invaded Ukraine

* Russia ostracised by Europe

* More US arms sales to Europe

* More US gas sales to Europe

* More European acolytes to join their US-led military bloc

The only difficult part must be keeping a straight face while pretending to be outraged by it all.

Don'tcha just love it when a plan comes together!

I guess Putin got payed a lot of money to start this war.

Of course not. But if you think the US wasn't up to its usual 'poking the wasp's nest' tricks behind the scenes then you're incredibly naive.

The US will be the big winner from this crisis. Russia is fucked, Ukraine is fucked. The UK and Europe fucked themselves to please their American masters [as usual!]. The US profits from increased gas sales, increased arms sales, increased membership of NATO. And all safely managed from the inviolate comfort of an ocean away.