Re:Vladimir Putin, in speech, hints at further territorial e...
by dragonwriter on Friday June 10, 2022 @02:18PM
(#31697599)
> With Sweden and Finland on the path to join NATO, where would Russia even expand?
It clearly intends to connect at least enclaves in Moldova to the swath of southern Ukraine it seeks to take (having likely abandoned any near term prospect of displacing the Ukrainian regime generally), probably also at least parts of Georgia.
It may also seek to bring other CSTO members into the Russia/Belarus “Union State” and make that Union State into a tighter confederation. (And possibly not just by diplomacy; invasion of insufficiently cooperative clients is something that the USSR—hardly uniquely among major powers—did quite a lot of, and a Russian leader who openly sees the USSR as a prior incarnation of Russia whose empire was squandered and improperly dismantled might well turn to the same tactics to restore it.)
Beyond that, unless it can somehow neutralize NATO or is willing to go directly to war with it, Russia seems pretty constrained.
It clearly intends to connect at least enclaves in Moldova to the swath of southern Ukraine it seeks to take (having likely abandoned any near term prospect of displacing the Ukrainian regime generally), probably also at least parts of Georgia.
It may also seek to bring other CSTO members into the Russia/Belarus “Union State” and make that Union State into a tighter confederation. (And possibly not just by diplomacy; invasion of insufficiently cooperative clients is something that the USSR—hardly uniquely among major powers—did quite a lot of, and a Russian leader who openly sees the USSR as a prior incarnation of Russia whose empire was squandered and improperly dismantled might well turn to the same tactics to restore it.)
Beyond that, unless it can somehow neutralize NATO or is willing to go directly to war with it, Russia seems pretty constrained.