World
How Vladimir Putin Keeps Everyone On Their Toes
Jan
First American News LLC, Raleigh, NC: As the Ukraine crisis deepens, three Bloomberg Opinion columnists unpack the Russian president’s motivations. The standoff between Russia and the West is growing ever more fraught, with knuckles whitening on both sides amid the buildup of troops and weapons along Ukraine’s eastern borders.
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The questions the Biden administration and European leaders are grappling with are: What does Russian President Vladimir Putin want, and what will he do if he doesn’t get it? In a Twitter Spaces discussion, Bobby Ghosh put those and other questions to Bloomberg Opinion columnists Clara Ferreira Marques and Andreas Kluth. This is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Ghosh: I’ll start with a brief overview of the United States. The Biden administration is signaling it might send more American troops into Europe, to enlarge the existing U.S. presence and add to the NATO Response Force. This is intended to deter any further Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Biden seems to believe Putin will make a further incursion there — in his press conference last week, he used the phrase “minor incursion.” (He has since tried to walk back that comment.) He sees that Europe is divided on how to deal with this crisis. The White House has expressed frustration about European allies’ indecision over confronting Putin. Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal.
