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Everyone tired of RU/UA war? Well, Biden okayed long-range missile strikes against Russian territory as most of you know. Russia's response? After Putin threatening nuclear war in the event of this happening for months, Lavrov (the FM) came out today by going out of his way saying Russia doesn't want nuclear war.
What can we learn from this?
Don't set ridiculous red lines that are easily broken.
Don't threaten a massive response if you were never serious. You will lose face.
What's bizarre to me is that Russia is clearly winning the war, so this type of rhetorical hysteria was an unforced error by Putin. It should also be noted that the recent decision by Biden is a naked attempt to bind the hands of Trump, in order to make it harder to de-escalate once he enters the WH.
This also creates a bizarre internal dynamic within Russia as I'm already seeing Russians on social media saying that Putin is once again displaying weakness. This is of course nonsense (Putin's threats could never be realised), but it nevertheless allows for a narrative to set in that will make any negotiation harder for the Russian side as a popular understanding of Putin as a softie will slowly calcify. Any concession will be ferociously contested as proof of Putin once again going soft.
Also a big hint that the super-mega-hypersonic cruise missiles aren't actually in any state to be used as an actual threat. Correct escalation would have been blowing up the Ukrainian Congress building and saying "stop that", but obviously Russia can't.
The precedent against assassinating foreign heads of state is strong for a reason. It isn’t that hard for a competent government with a reasonable amount of funds (in the low tens of millions, ie. nothing for almost any state) to have someone killed. Therefore it’s not in anyone’s interest to engage in that kind of action.
Russia has made multiple assassination attempts against Zelensky.
Putin’s control over various factions, especially early in the war with separatist militias, wagner and others in the fray, was tenuous. I question to what extent he authorized most of these attempts (and not because I ascribe to him any particular morality).
None of these factions had credible means to kill Zelensky. Doing it up close is an extremely hard suicidal special-forces operation.
Doing it by Iskander is plausible, but there's little evidence Iskander units take orders from anywhere else but Kremlin.
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