Thursday, March 17, 2022

Still The Worst

IOFFE: I fear that just right now it doesn't yet. I think NATO is still going to stay on the sidelines of this, precisely because they don't want a direct military confrontation with Russia. It's the thing that everybody's been trying assiduously to avoid.

But what happens, for example, if Vladimir Putin uses chemical weapons in Kyiv or in Mariupol. We've seen him and his allies in Syria do the same. They're clearly preparing something, because they've been making a lot of noise at the U.N. and in the media that -- Kremlin-controlled media that the Ukrainians are -- have all these biological, chemical weapons, and that they're going to use them, which seems like fertile ground for a false flag operation.

So, what is NATO going to do if -- you know, it's one thing for sarin gas to be used on people in faraway Syria who are Muslim and who are of a different culture. What is Europe going to do when it's on European soil done to Europeans? Are they going to intervene? Are they going to keep standing back? And if they do intervene, how far are they willing to go? And are they willing to have a direct confrontation with Vladimir Putin, which is what he seems to want.