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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.
Can anyone steel man Biden's actions here?
The war is coming to a close. Trump's win gives him the political capital to go to the negotiating table and bring this ugly chapter of European history to a close. It will probably result in Russia gaining some of the Russian speaking territories of Ukraine. There's not much we can do about that unless we want to spend a few hundred thousand more lives.
Ideally, Biden would make peace now. It's his last chance to do something good for the world. A Nobel Peace Prize would put a positive sheen on an otherwise terrible Presidency. Failing that, the focus should be on strengthening the Ukrainian front lines. Lines of control tend to ossify into political boundaries.
This pointless escalation does nothing to help Ukraine achieve victory. You're right that Russia is not about to start nuking cities. But there are lots of things that they can do to be annoying, such as restricting exports of key materials, cutting underseas cables, or even blowing up GPS satellites.
Is Biden hoping to bait Putin into an escalation that Trump can't ignore, thereby preventing him from ending the war. If so, this seems evil, there's no other way to put it. The Biden admin and the Cheneys deserve each other.
This would be a huge Russian victory. I don't think it would be remotely hard for them to make nice with Germany if the EU broke from the States, particularly since that plausibly means the end of NATO, no more US troops in Europe, no more US nuclear umbrella, no more US replacement for cheap Russian gas...
England would stick with the US and FVEYS would become the new NATO. The rest of Western Europe, led by Germany, would count the beans and bullets and make nice with Russia. (France and some of the former SSRs might have different ideas).
In the scenario we are looking at (where NATO breaks up because Trump offers parts of eastern Europe to Russia as a sphere of influence), this is a tough call. Trump and Russia are extremely unpopular in the UK - we just had a general election where the Trumpy party got 14% of the popular vote and 5/650 seats. And that was with the other three medium/large parties proudly supporting Ukraine and Farage shutting up because he knew that even among his target vote being pro-Russia was a loser. Starmer, essentially everyone in his government, and the civilian Establishment/Deep State would all want to choose Europe over a post-NATO MAGA US, and would by default have public support to do this. (There is, unsurprisingly, an even broader consensus that being forced to choose is a disaster and that we should hedge in so far as it is possible).
Under normal circumstances, if Starmer tried to do this he would be foiled by the UK national security Deep State, who are integrated with their US counterparts through arrangements like FVEYS in a way which would be ultra-painful to unwind.* But Trump is appointing a DNI who is sympathetic to Russia with a mandate to purge the US national security Deep State of the kind of people who make FVEYS work. So the UK Deep State has the choice of "Do we stick with our friends and risk being shafted they get purged and Tulsi sends all our secrets to Moscow, or do we throw our hat in with the dastardly Frogs who are at least sane?" And that is a sufficiently close call that "the elected politicians we nominally work for favour Europe" could be a deciding factor.
* Left-wing lore in the UK is that the military has coup plots in place in case a Labour government tries to break the alliance with the US. It isn't clear how plausible this is because the anti-American wing of Labour has never been within sniffing distance of power. Corbyn came closest during the 2017-9 hung Parliament, but part of the reason why Johnson was able to run rings round his opponents was that the Remainer establishment were more committed to preventing a Corbyn government than they were to preventing Brexit - including 20+ members of the Remainer establishment who were Labour MPs.
This is mostly a nitpick in the context of the rest of your post but a third party getting 14% of the vote in the UK is a pretty big deal.
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