It is a ploy to see how others would react. It has worked well. However, now is not the time. If there was ever a time it would be during or immediately after US elections.
Word coming from the streets seems to be that Russia might be agreeing to go back to the negotiating table. Stay tuned!!!
Russia needs to solve Ukraine problem. They will have to invade, maybe not now, maybe not full scale invasion. But they have to Currently it's worse than Israel Palestine. And Israel invaded how many times? So invasion will definetly happens But with only one caveat currently west destroys Ukraine itself by hysteria surrounding possible invasion so maybe invasion won't be needed after all
Biden (Obama et al) wants to sanction Russia into the arms of China. Europe would have to pay double for energy. Putin is baiting the disturbed minds of wanna be totalitarians.
You know, in all this time, since 2014, I never once thought about what the "Ukraine problem" actually was. So what is the "Ukraine problem", and why does Russia have to solve it?
In simple terms the sole existance of current Ukraine is to be "anti Russia' and it's used by West to create a center of permanent instability and weaken Russian as much as possible So it's probably reached the point that Russia won't tolerate it no matter of consequences and it's better for the USA to back off and allow Russia friednly Ukraine unless they want to risk nuclear war
How would an anti-Russian Ukraine weaken Russia? If Russia invades Ukraine, won't that "weaken" Russia through all the sanctions the Russians will suffer? This particular geo-political game makes no sense in my mind. The China-Taiwan issues makes more sense, because China is just a big bully and wants control over more of it's own little world, because the CCP has a small penis.
Russia does not need to invade, they just keep instilling undercover pro Russia people in the government and corrupt the elections there
Maybe you should listen Putin starting from his 2007 Munich speech to understand Russian conserns and understand why current situation with Ukraine is not negotiable for Russia