The latest expansion of NATO was barely a year ago (with Sweden joining).
Russian authoritarianism may be secure, but the current regime's power is not (not to mention their leaders' paranoia).
Their ambition is the control of continental Europe. It might sound crazy, but if you listen to people like Dugin, it is very clear. And it's not that unrealistic in the longer run, considering everything you listed in your post.
The onslaught on Europe will continue - first (already happening) on its unity through the financing and propaganda support of the right-wing populist candidates who don't know (or simply don't care) better and then, once every (relatively) little country in Europe is on their own, on their sovereignty through military threat and/or invasion.
I will also leave this here as I think it is pertinent to the discussion:
Don’t be afraid of scarecrows. He is a powerless freak far away from the decision makers, not Rasputin. Says a lot, but doesn’t really matter. It is much more interesting what people in security council say and who gets the contracts. There’s zero indication of expansion but a lot of messages about not messing with “legitimate interests”. They protect what they think is theirs.
The ambition of the control over continental Europe exists only in imagination of people with no understanding of Russian internal politics. They need absence of threat and parking lot for the money, so they will play the game of influence, but war? Nonsense.
> It is much more interesting what people in security council say
People in the security council were cowering with fear on 22-02-22 afraid to say the unthinkable and Putin openly gloating while forcing them to say it.
Dugin is a freak alright, but he has the ear of (and is privy to) the paranoid decision makers there; he was talking about the impending war long before anyone else.
> They need absence of threat and parking lot for the money
It will be much easier to park their money in any one of the small rich countries (e.g. Switzerland) once those are not encumbered by the KYC and AML rules imposed by the globalist word order. Same with their luxury properties and kids in private schools.
They don't need to invade every country to control the continent. Look at Finland prior to the collapse of the USSR - while staying mostly independent they still had to run their leadership choices by the Kremlin and did not even think about joining military alliances to avoid confrontation.
> so they will play the game of influence, but war?
Right, they played the game of influence with Ukraine until they lost all influence and and saw an opportunity for military success. On the other hand, they are not invading Georgia or Belarus because the governments are in their pocket and their security apparatuses are basically departments within FSB. For the same reason they won't be invading Hungary or Slovakia any time soon. But the Baltic countries? I'm not so sure.
>People in the security council were cowering with fear on 22-02-22 afraid to
say the unthinkable and Putin openly gloating while forcing them to say it.
I think you are making up some stuff here. First of all, the war was declared on 24.02.2022, two days later, and that matter was not discussed on Security Council on 22.02. Watch the video, it's available on YouTube. On 22.02 they discussed the recognition of independence of Donesk and Luhansk People Republics and the only person who was seemingly uncomfortable was the director of foreign intelligence service. He may have known about what's going to happen, but it was just him. Maybe he has also known that his intel is either bad or was ignored in the decision-making process and the war is going to be something different than planned: he is certainly not the guy who would feel so bad because of a military operation. As a matter of fact, he may be the only guy in Security Council who whould be sympathetic to Dugin.
>It will be much easier to park their money in any one of the small rich countries (e.g. Switzerland). Same with their luxury properties and kids in private schools.
"Parking money" is not locking them in a vault. It's investing. There's a reason why Russian oligarchs prefer London and were trying to buy European assets. Small countries cannot absorb capital on that scale. If Russia controls the continent, why only small countries? If Russia does not, KYC rules etc apply to Switzerland too - they cannot resist the pressure.
>They don't need to invade every country to control the continent. Look at Finland prior to the collapse of the USSR
What a giant leap. I'm not sure this fiction is interesting to discuss. Russia is not USSR, EU is not Finland (which by the way is part of EU and NATO now and does not look at Russia when making foreign policy decisions for at least 40 years).
>For the same reason they won't be invading Hungary or Slovakia any time soon
If Hungarian or Slovakian opposition will win on next election they won't invade too. It's not the reason they don't do it. Just look at the map.
Russian authoritarianism may be secure, but the current regime's power is not (not to mention their leaders' paranoia).
Their ambition is the control of continental Europe. It might sound crazy, but if you listen to people like Dugin, it is very clear. And it's not that unrealistic in the longer run, considering everything you listed in your post.
The onslaught on Europe will continue - first (already happening) on its unity through the financing and propaganda support of the right-wing populist candidates who don't know (or simply don't care) better and then, once every (relatively) little country in Europe is on their own, on their sovereignty through military threat and/or invasion.
I will also leave this here as I think it is pertinent to the discussion:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258664_Putin's_R...