

He said, addressing Russian leaders: “Don’t you have enough land? Eleven time zones and still not enough? Take care of better governing what is within your borders according to international law.”
I understand the sentiment, but I don’t like the pointless polemic. I mean, he’s the foreign minister, he very well knows that this stopped being a landgrab the moment the war wasn’t over within a week…
A hot potatoe that an autocratic regime living on borrowed time has to keep juggling out of self-preservation.
You’re styling it as “blow to pride”, but I’m quite certain that if that catastrophic drain on Russian resources and lives just… ended tomorrow without any tangible strategic gains (like a sustained destabilization of NATO) then people would literally start dying. Not the poor expendable footsoldiers, but people in charge. Can’t have that, so gotta keep expending that infantry.