mikedilger on Nostr: The West lied to Putin multiple times, and tricked him successfully. As a result, ...

The West lied to Putin multiple times, and tricked him successfully. As a result, they have eroded all trust. Putin cannot trust the West anymore, he has to "guess" what they are planning to do. Enemies can lie, they can act in secret, etc.

The West told Putin that the missile systems moved into Poland and Turkey and elsewhere were for defense of Europe.... . from Iran. Putin doesn't believe it, he thinks these systems would be retooled within hours to launch nukes into Russia. And the time it takes for a missile to get from such a system into Russia determines if Moscow can retaliate or not. If they get into Russia fast enough and in enough quantity they could potentially achieve nuclear supremacy... the ability to take out Russia without Russia being able to strike back.

With Ukraine, that time to impact was greatly shortened.

These are EXTREMELY real security concerns, worth slaughtinering millions of people, because you need to do that to defend against billions of deaths. It was STUPID for NATO to do what they did and continue to do and I still cannot wrap my head around it.