Seems that Putin is hell bent on calling Biden’s bluff. The saber rattling he’s engaging in regarding Ukraine has ramped up in recent days and weeks.

Why would he be doing this in the face of additional sanctions?

Right now, the greatest danger the world faces from such a leader comes from Russian president Vladimir Putin. The 69-year-old Putin has long been seen as a man so insecure about his fading virility that he has engineered sometimes comical macho displays from ill-considered shots of him riding horseback shirtless through the Russian countryside to hockey games in which his side always wins thanks to a tsunami of goal-scoring by a Gretzky-like Vlad.

In some ways the most poignant of all of Putin’s efforts to turn back the clock would be his vain attempts to restore Russia’s place in the world to a status akin to that of the Soviet Union in which he was raised and for which he worked as KGB officer from 1975 until 1991, when he resigned following a coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin has called the collapse of the USSR and its empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Putin has ALWAYS been ticked off that the Soviet Union collapsed. Many of his moves since then have been attempts at bringing the old-time USSR back online. Putin is and always has been about power. He couldn’t make those moves during the Trump Administration, but he’s been making all sorts of moves since early 2021. Why? Because Biden is an addled toothless buffoon. 

Furthermore, he saw how the Biden Administration turned the Afghanistan withdrawal into a complete disaster and is taking his cues from that. 

Now there’s evidence Putin has moved operatives into Ukraine.

Just from that alone, it’s obvious that, as talks broke down between Russia, the U.S., and NATO – Putin was playing dangerous games behind the scenes. And, if he gets caught, he shrugs his shoulders and keeps going. 

Angela Stent, director emerita of Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, likewise told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” that the threat of sanctions hasn’t put Russia off.

That’s in spite of the proposed punitive measures being “pretty comprehensive,” she said, affecting technology exports and banks’ access to the international financial system.

“Those have all been explicitly now talked about in the U.S,” she said. “That doesn’t seem to have deterred Russia at all.”

No, it certainly hasn’t deterred Putin from continuing his saber rattling against Ukraine. Furthermore, NATO countries are enjoying doing business with Russia on multiple levels, which lends to his belief that they’ll stand back and do nothing while he continues to advance. 

It ALSO doesn’t help matters when Congress sends a signal to Putin that he can go full-steam ahead on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. How? By using that horrific Jim Crow era filibuster! 

This really epitomizes the Democrat Party’s hypocrisy:

While Schumer and the Democrats race to eliminate the filibuster so they can ram through their partisan electoral power grab, they used those same filibuster margins to protect Russia from sanctions.https://t.co/FZ52tOLseq

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 14, 2022

Seriously, you can’t make this up. The same week Biden delivers a factless, angry, dishonest rant in Georgia to announce his flip-flop on the filibuster, Democrats effectively filibustered sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. pic.twitter.com/1uU1dQ2lV6

— NCGOP (@NCGOP) January 14, 2022

Given the Democrats TOTALLY played into Putin’s hands, do you THINK the threat of additional sanctions will stop his saber rattling at Ukraine? Not. One. Bit. 

As diplomats were holding negotiations over the Ukraine crisis this week, Russia began moving tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, rocket launchers and other military equipment westward from their bases in its Far East, according to U.S. officials and social-media reports.

While the equipment is still in transit, officials and analysts are debating whether it represents the next phase in the Kremlin’s buildup that has already placed more than 100,000 troops near its country’s border with Ukraine.

Putin, unless the Biden Administration grows even a smidgen of a spine, will continue moving forward into Ukraine. He regards the Biden Administration and the media as a bunch of blithering doddering fools. And you know what? I don’t blame him. 

He’ll make more moves into Ukraine, and all Grandpa Joe will do is scream into another camera and make more shit up. 

Feature Photo Credit: Putin, flag, Russia via Pixabay, cropped and modified