I think UK and US protection makes this announcement less risky. But not risk-free. Putin has lost face and that's one thing he really doesn't like.
But of course, he's a nitwit who doesn't seem to have much understanding of how other people think and how they respond.
The strategy of bullying your neighbours, then invading them on a false pretext, then killing their most vulnerable people using long range artillery, raping their women and stealing their possessions, plus pretending this war isn't actually a war, turns out to have negative consequences. Who'd've thunk?
He had the neutrality on nearly every side that he claims to have wanted. He threw it away by invading Ukraine, thereby revealing he's an imperiallist tyrant, not a peace-maker. Not that we didn't know this. Because the way he's been behaving for the last decade, it's all rather obvious.
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