Analysis in Haaretz seems spot on to me. Excepts from the last paragraphs:
Quote:
The endgame is the elusive concept everyone in the West is trying to decipher. In this case, Putin’s actions are dictated by narrowed options and rolling events rather than a coherent, phased grand plan. His grand motivation, however, is something different and should be studied seriously.
...
He’s thus motivated by a deep sense of history and his place in it. That’s why calling him “irrational” is a mistake of judging him by the wrong set of values and wrongly assuming he operated according to “Western” considerations of cost effectiveness.
...
Putin is intent on taking all of Ukraine, “denazifying” and “demilitarizing” it
...
With the heavy sanctions expected to have substantial impact on Russia’s economy in the coming days, along with Putin’s intransigence and increasingly brutal modus operandi, it seems the only viable option to end the war and avert disaster is a coup in Moscow.
|
In other words, Linsday Graham is sort of right, though probably without benefit of any deep thought, and as a leading US Senator, he is only messing stuff up by saying so out loud in order to posture as a tough guy.