A 'handful of people'? There's 44 million people in Ukraine. **** em eh.
yes, at the end of the day 44 million is a handfull of people v the entire rest of the west and USA. As much as it might get your panties bunched, the west is currently basically already saying **** em. A lot of you are having difficulty understanding this is nothing to do with morality or what price on life etc. Global politics is not executed on the basis of emotions or heart string tugs or even being effectively emotionally blackmailed on live TV everyday by a country leader that basically wants you to expand the scope of the war by deploying a shed load of NATO air assets into a potential direct confrontational situation with Russian air assets.
The bottom line is that there is a certain cost to global politics and whilst it's a bum deal the cost in this case looks like its going to paid for with Ukrainian lives. That might not sit well with any of us, but that's exactly what is happening. NATO are pumping Ukraine full of military hardware and basically hoping that Russia get ground down slowly, but the cost here is Ukrainian lives as the longer they fight the more intense the Russian raze tactics get.
Best case scenario is that I am completely wrong and NATO get to a point where a line is crossed. But realistically that line is probably something that has little chance of happening i.e Russia directly attacking another NATO member, or the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons a little to close to the border of Ukraine with say Poland that means parts of eastern Poland get fallout. e.g a 100KT tactical ground level detonation in Lviv would see fallout in parts of eastern Poland depending on the direction of the prevailing winds.
Also everyone saying where is he going next. The simple answer is nowhere. Unless Putin literally conscripts the entire fighting capable population of Russia he is not going to even get anywhere near to somewhere like Finland or Sweden or even Poland. He hasn't even got enough troops or good enough logistics to effectively occupy Ukraine even if he does pull of a miracle win that doesn't equate to scorched earth. More to the point he hasn;t even been able to capture and hold a major city (Kharkiv) which is just a stone throw away from his own borders. I think
@MartinPrince said, this is basically about Ukraine and Putins misty eyed dreams of CCCP Mark 2. Putin might be mental but he is not at the levels of insanity yet where he is going to lock horns directly in open war with NATO. Unless he really is about to die and is going to see himself off with a 21 strategical nuke salute.