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Comment by stogot | Hacker News Reader

So much of this war backfired for Putin. Expanded the NATO border across Russia’s northern border, ended electric revenue in the Baltics, ended NordStream, ended gas supply across Ukraine, dependence on China & India for oil markets (Xi gets to dictate terms now), destruction of entire military equipment and mothballed reserves, and the embarrassment of relying on DPRK for manpower, exit of Western businesses, frozen and sold assets stored in western banks

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this one's a triple whammy, putin now has:

    1. no ability to sell electricity to baltics
    2. no ability to disrupt baltic grid
    3. managed to island russian enclave of koingsberg, giving control of its energy supply to the baltics (they could now cut off its gas)

so much winning

Note this disconnection was planned after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.

This assumes Putin cares about all that. Political scientists who study authoritarian regimes are pretty sure the only thing Putin cares about is keeping power. For that, poor population alienated from the world is exactly what is needed.

With the ascension of Trump to power, NATO might be irrelevant.

I disagree with the theory but even if, It won’t be irrelevant, and can/will continue without US if needed. Either way, Russia is too weak to invade another sovereign nation for the next four years

you mean America strategically did all that and then some…? :)

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