If Russia is "withdrawing" troops then that confirms they'd built up troops in the first place. Not some training exercise, which of course anyone with half a brain knew was a typical Russian propaganda lie from the beginning.
And if they really do end up withdrawing troops and de-escalating the unstable situation that THEY created in the first place, that's a good thing. Makes me wonder what concessions have been made to Putin. Perhaps he HAS received his assurances that Ukraine will never be part of NATO, which would be fine with me.
I mean, if they are conducting military exercises (which they had been doing) and never invade- even though the US propaganda machine have continued to scream for
months on end that Russia invasion is imminent- any day now....trust us- and so far they've been dead wrong for
months- then I don't see what the major deal is. Gathering troops and running exercises does not = invasion. I'd say it'd have been pretty smart posturing by Putin and him f**king with Ukraine to get some concessions from the US - if it works. I don't think it's completely fair to say that the unstable situation was created solely by Russia. It does take two to tango. The US most definitely has some blame in this entire fiasco.
If Russia says they are in the beginning stages of withdrawing troops- then I'm inclined to believe them. I really don't see how saying you're withdrawing troops- then proceeding to invade would help their cause any. If they pulled that sneaky shit it'd just give the US even more ammo in going after them in retaliation. I just don't see how it'd benefit them- if anything it'd hurt them.
At the end of the day, Putin is a business man. Dude is said to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. No one has any idea how much he's really worth. War with Ukraine and pissing off the west would interfere with his business. Europe buys his gas like they are crackhead Americans buying the brand new iPhones every time a new one comes out. As much as 40% of Europe's nat gas supply comes from Russia. That NordStream2 pipeline will allow Putin to sell Europe even
more energy and save him
billions of dollars a year in transit fees he currently pays Ukraine for sending gas through Ukrainian territory. NordStream2 completely bypasses Ukrainian territory. No need to pay them billions in transit fees every year with that new pipeline. Guaranteed to be no Nord2 pipeline selling gas any time soon if they invade.
I'd say the US is most definitely
pissed off that Europe is buying energy from Russia and isn't buying that energy from US based multi-nationals - Trump
openly droned on about this. Can't say I disagree with him there- US largely pays for their defense with NATO- least they could do is buy sh*t from us. And there can be no doubt a piss-ant, corrupt, poor 3rd rate shithole like Ukraine- a country that has a GDP of about $150 billion a year- roughly the same as the US state of Arkansas (one of the poor states in 'Merica) is flaming pissed off that they would be on the verge of losing the few billion dollars a year they get from Russia in the transit fees they currently get. It's a poor corrupt shithole- one of the most corrupt countries there is- and the poorest country in Europe- and they'd be on the verge of losing around 1.33 to 2% of their annual GDP just by Russia bypassing them and not paying those transit fees.
