Did Putin finally overplay his hand with Ukraine?

Did Russian President Vladimir Putin finally exaggerated his hand by challenging NATO? Some signs arise that the US and Europe may be ready to implement the kind of pressure to convince him, but that his own interests will end the war in Ukraine.

The first indicator is that Donald Trump identified the terms he said he would increase sanctions in Moscow after a disturbing arrest demonstration last week by Russia’s drone to Poland. Secondly, the European Commission seems to support Russia’s plan to fully use – about $ 330 billion – worth about $ 330 billion.

Trump said in a letter he wrote to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and published Hakikat Social on Sunday, and said that all NATO states should first end Russian oil consumption and then to approve China and India to deterrence their biggest purchases until the war ended.
It is difficult to know whether Trump is real or whether the bar is so high, just looking for another way to avoid responsibility for the act of Ukraine. On Sunday, the post of Sunday was less read less than a complaint against the Allies, like a threat to Moscow. Putin, as usual, did not mention.

Nevertheless, this is considered as progress. Trump now sets clear terms to press Moscow on the negotiation table, and the Allies can meet them. The European Union has already reduced its confidence in Russian crude oil since the beginning of the war in 2022, but it had to carving for Hungary and Slovakia – both of them were ruled by Trump allies, both bat for the Kremlin. The two countries are tragicomically Druzhba or friendship, the navel by the pipeline to Russian crude oil materials.

Trump is right that oil sanctions are not working and that there is a safety vulnerability that should be exploited better. Even in peace, oil income paid 30% to 50% of the state budget. Eliminate most or all of this income, and Putin will be much more difficult for Putin to continue his war without implementing much more serious financial costs. As Putin again imitated the economy to serve war efforts, the deteriorations began to accumulate and made it more vulnerable to oppression. Banks were overloaded with most unidentified bad debts to ensure that weapons production continued. Craig Kennedy, a former US banker focusing on Russian energy, has been following for a while, 42% to 54% of Russian defense expenditures were without budget, and that the corporate debt was 71 or 446 billion in the first three years of the full sales war, because a loan was united as a labor force. He fled the front or escaped, at the same time increased inflation and forced Russia’s alert central bank to raise the basic interest rate up to 21%. Even if the government’s budget deficit expands, this growth is damping.

At the same time, the long -range drone and missile campaign against Ukraine’s storage tanks and refineries received a variable bite from Russian oil production. The US-Europe’s effort to reduce Russian oil export revenue and Europe’s politically appropriate way to finance Ukraine’s defense of Ukraine for the next few years, this can go a long way to change Putin’s calculations.

However, all this continues to be hypothetical. Trump has not yet followed any of his threats to force Russia. And Europe’s 100% tariffs for exports from China and India are easier than Trump found. Likewise, the EU continues to conflict on seizing and seizing Russian beings protected by the sovereign immunity. This is especially true for Belgium, which hosts most of frozen funds.

He reports that the European Commission finally decided to touch them. The selected proposal is an offer that I introduced in July because of the potential to circulate some prickly legal questions surrounding any explicit seizure of protected dominant assets. The plan would turn the money into loans and would be paid back to Russia, which would continue to pay the compensation of a commission appointed by the United Nations inevitably in the coming years.

The concern does not emerge as a part of a consistent, determined strategy to stop Putin in Eastern Ukraine, but it is more temporary and therefore weak. Because if Putin is to be persuaded, he has to believe that Europe and the United States “as long as he receives kiev of Europe and the United States have been demird.

Trump Democlad. It deprived the replacement of the central leaders who understand the reality of the Russian threat, because it is changed by the most right populists who dreamed of Putin in a single conflict with liberalism, which is really concerned about Putin and is subject to political restrictions. These populists not only include Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Robert Fico from Slovakia, but also the national assembly in France, the British reform party and the alternative Fur Deutschland leaders.

Putin is right that the clock is marking in Ukraine. He may also point to him, but only Trump and Europe finally decide to do so.