Ukraine Became A Lesson That The West Failed To Learn.

Remember how, before the invasion of Ukraine began, Moscow concentrated troops and equipment on the border, in Belarus and Crimea. Most observers, including myself, saw this as a show of force but did not expect Putin to invade. We were wrong.

Putin's show-and-tell gestures are always an inevitable harbinger of clear and decisive intentions. He demonstrated this to the West in Ukraine. But if it weren't for the second-rate nature and shortcomings of the Russian army and its incompetent leadership, Ukraine would have been in Moscow's pocket long ago.

Recently, Putin has become more aggressive in testing Western defences, sending planes or drones into NATO airspace in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Romania. All of these countries, except for the last one, border Russia or its enclave, the Kaliningrad Oblast region. This is no coincidence. It is a signal of what Putin is really up to: he is fixated on bringing the Baltic states back into Russia's orbit, and these incursions serve to test NATO's readiness to counter this goal. Russia is also assessing the strength and resolve of the pre-positioned troops in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and not just out of intellectual curiosity. No, sir, Putin wants to launch a blitzkrieg against the Baltic states, catching NATO off guard. Both Putin and Medvedev have calculated that NATO will not have the stomach to launch a full-scale offensive on its eastern flank against Russia in defence of the Baltic states. They also believe they have Trump in their pocket: in a word, kompromat.

I would say that in the Russian mind, the return of the Baltic states to Russia's embrace is seen as a strategic inevitability. The question is not whether it will happen, but when. NATO, at least publicly, does not understand this. 

Remember that in centuries past, France made a serious mistake by letting go of its few acres of snow in North America. Putin is counting on this kind of thinking in the alliance. He's come to the conclusion that when the critical moment arrives in Eastern Europe, NATO will not have the backbone to fight. This is a rather risky gamble on his part. Obviously, to be continued.