His adjutants are making noises about a strategic partnership with Cuba, including putting troops and even missiles there, in Venezuela or Nicaragua.

 

Vladimir Putin’s placement of more than 100,000 troops and heavy armaments on Ukraine’s southern, eastern and northeastern borders is now being supplemented with Russian forces in ally Belarus, on Ukraine’s northwestern flank and close to its capital, Kyiv. After weeks of unsuccessful diplomacy, the Kremlin’s increasingly ominous behavior has now stirred the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to begin defensive military preparations. Some NATO allies are sending defensive weapons to Ukraine (which is not a NATO member) while NATO is planning to move more troops and equipment to Eastern European member states. Putin is continuing to up the ante with Russian naval exercises slated worldwide, including in the Baltic, Mediterranean and even off the coast of Ireland. His adjutants are making noises about a strategic partnership with Cuba, including putting troops and even missiles there, in Venezuela or Nicaragua. Putin has demanded simultaneously with his aggressive military moves that NATO roll back forces from member states—nations formerly contained within the USSR. It seems however that he’s about to achieve the opposite: U.S. President Joe Biden is contemplating sending thousands of American GIs to Eastern Europe. And for the first time since the Cold War, a U.S. carrier battle group is heading to sea under NATO command. —David E. Rovella