Vladimir Putin Is the World’s Most Dangerous Fool

NYT OPINION: Vladimir Putin Is the World’s Most Dangerous Fool
By Thomas L. Friedman
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 9, 2023 at 03:00AM

He will do anything to justify the terrible losses he has piled up in the name of a country where defeated leaders don’t retire peacefully.

I have not written much about the war in Ukraine lately because so little has changed strategically since the first few months of this conflict, when three overarching facts pretty much drove everything — and still do. Fact No. 1: As I wrote at the outset, when a war of this magnitude begins, the key question you ask yourself as a foreign affairs columnist is very simple: Where should I be? Should I be in Kyiv, the Donbas, Crimea, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Brussels or Washington? And from the start of this war, there has been only one place to be to understand its timing and direction — and that’s in Vladimir Putin’s head. Unfortunately, Putin doesn’t grant visas to his brain. That’s a real problem because this war emerged entirely from there — with, we now know, almost no input from his cabinet or military commanders — and certainly with no mass urging from the Russian people. So Russia will be stopped in Ukraine, whether it’s winning or losing, only when Putin decides to stop. Which leads to fact No. 2: Putin never had a Plan B. It’s now obvious that he thought he was going to waltz into Kyiv, seize it in a week, install a lackey as president, tuck Ukraine into his pocket and put to an end any further European Union, NATO or Western cultural expansion toward Russia. He would then cast his shadow across all of Europe.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/09/opinion/putin-ukraine-war.html

Single Ukrainian soldier bravely fights off Russian attack on trench , MOMENT single Ukrainian soldier bravely fights off Russian attack on trench in the Luhansk region.