Three Years
-
Germany says 10. Poland says 3.
-
Putin does have an expiration date but that date came and went a long time ago. He will be re-anointed as President Autocrat this spring. Presumably for life. I wouldn’t assume that he could not muster populist support to attack NATO members in the near future. His regime is very effective in exercising reflexive control in gaslighting the population to support or, at least, passively comply with state policies and directives.
If there is one lesson of the war in Ukraine that NATO must realise and adapt to is that Russia is prepared to incur what we would consider unacceptable human losses in pursuit of what it considers military and political victory.
-
As one analyst recently put it:
The logic of the Kremlin regime is completely different [than the logic of NATO]. There is no "acceptable" or "unacceptable" price, there is only victory or defeat. The Kremlin has decided that winning the war is the only way for the current regime to retain power, and for the people at the top to stay alive and free. Thus, defeat in the war is a "point of no return" and any price of victory is acceptable.