I suspect that the status quo works in Russia's advantage at the moment. The west is lagging behind industrially, and as long as there isn't a direct threat from Russia, it's politically impossible to start creating a war time economy. End result is that the west is becoming increasingly more depleted militarily while Russian military strength grows. The risk of attacking assets in NATO territory would be that it could be used as a justification to ramp up military production in the west.
And of course, Russia is winning on the economic front as well. There's now a whole alternative economy in place that's outside western control. Europe lost a huge amount of trade, access to food, fertilizer, and cheap energy. Meanwhile, Russia was able to reroute their trade to friendly countries. In effect, Europe is the entity that's actually being sanctioned right now, and they're doing it willingly to themselves to boot.
Russia also chose to largely ignore the media game. They don't really care what people in the west think, and people in the west seeing Russia as being weak ends up playing into Russia's favor because it makes it harder for western leadership to convince people that there is an urgent threat. The west is trying to sell contradictory messages right now. On the one hand they paint Russia as weak and incompetent, and on the other they say that Russia will invade Europe. The more Russia plays along with the incompetence narrative the less seriously people take the second.
Given all that, my expectation is that Russia will likely opt out for hunting f16s in the air over Ukraine, which I'm sure they're very much capable of doing. They might end up having to deal with a few long range missiles getting through, but that's obviously not going to change anything strategically. Russia will shrug that off and just keep doing what they're doing.
I suspect that the status quo works in Russia's advantage at the moment. The west is lagging behind industrially, and as long as there isn't a direct threat from Russia, it's politically impossible to start creating a war time economy. End result is that the west is becoming increasingly more depleted militarily while Russian military strength grows. The risk of attacking assets in NATO territory would be that it could be used as a justification to ramp up military production in the west.
And of course, Russia is winning on the economic front as well. There's now a whole alternative economy in place that's outside western control. Europe lost a huge amount of trade, access to food, fertilizer, and cheap energy. Meanwhile, Russia was able to reroute their trade to friendly countries. In effect, Europe is the entity that's actually being sanctioned right now, and they're doing it willingly to themselves to boot.
Russia also chose to largely ignore the media game. They don't really care what people in the west think, and people in the west seeing Russia as being weak ends up playing into Russia's favor because it makes it harder for western leadership to convince people that there is an urgent threat. The west is trying to sell contradictory messages right now. On the one hand they paint Russia as weak and incompetent, and on the other they say that Russia will invade Europe. The more Russia plays along with the incompetence narrative the less seriously people take the second.
Given all that, my expectation is that Russia will likely opt out for hunting f16s in the air over Ukraine, which I'm sure they're very much capable of doing. They might end up having to deal with a few long range missiles getting through, but that's obviously not going to change anything strategically. Russia will shrug that off and just keep doing what they're doing.