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• I agree, Kris. In a kind of operational stratego game, it is a smart move from a Russian perspective, because it shortens the defense line. It reminds me quite strongly of the First World War in 1914 in our Westhoek: flooding is used as a mechanism to geographically stabilize a front line. The Russians use nature as a natural defensive barrier, to ...
• On the NATO side, important strategic assets have recently been deployed in the wider region. A state-of-the-art American aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, patrols the North Sea with other NATO ships. The Americans parked B1 bombers in the United Kingdom.
• NATO is therefore also doing everything it can to ensure that the conflict is confined to Ukrainian territory and that the possible Russian options to escalate into NATO territory are limited as much as possible. US President Biden said it literally: 'Defend every inch of NATO territory.' NATO is therefore working very intensively on this. At the u...
• During the Cold War, Europe was also the primary theater of global competition in which the US was fully engaged. The US now faces two potential opponents: China as well as Russia. If a conflict occurs in East Asia around Taiwan or elsewhere in the Pacific region, a significant portion of US military bandwidth will be sucked to the other side of th...
• I do think that the Ukrainian strategy is therefore one of corrosion: eroding the Russian political will to continue with this.

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