Ditto with Putin (and Trump would have done less or nothing had he won a second term).

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I'm not totally sure that Putin would have invaded Ukraine if someone else had been President from 2017 to 2021. If ANYONE else had been President between 2017 and 2021, they would not have publicly extorted Ukraine's President by soliciting dirt on political opponents in exchange for weapons Congress had already authorized for delivery and were not the US President's to use as a bargaining chip for his own INDIVIDUAL political gain.

Russia had already been causing trouble in the far east portion of Ukraine but seeing Trump's cynical attempt to extort Zelenskyy likely accelerated Putin's thinking that he might get away with a grab of the rest of the country with a bit of 2020s style "blitzkrieg" (using broken down 1960s vintage tanks...) that would simply shock Ukraine into surrendering.

With that thought already percolating in his head from 2019 and 2020, Putin then saw the US government paralyzed by the failed coup attempt on January 6, efforts to impeach Trump BEFORE he left office and a successful effort to impeach Trump AFTER he left office. At that point, Putin likely assumed America would be distracted indefinitely with domestic political squabbles triggered predominately by MAGA advocates who already expressed SUPPORT for Putin's totalitarian style and pandemic response efforts which were also proving politically divisive. Mobilization for the February 2022 invastion of Ukraine began in earnest in March of 2021. I don't think that's any coincidence.


WTH