But they should not act indignant when other countries start playing hardball to protect their security and economic interests like China has been doing for decades.

I don’t see them acting indignant anywhere. In fact, it’s the US that’s acting indignant that countries like Germany are trading with China on its own terms. The context here is that it’s U.S. pressuring Germany to act against its interests.

Alternative view: Russia is sending its sons off to fight a fruitless war.

Russia has captured 20% of the territory of Ukraine so far, and destroyed Europe economically. Doesn’t seem fruitless to me. Here’s what The Economist, a vehemently anti Russian publication, had to say just recently.

Continuing defeats can only be spun as strategic retreats for so long.

I don’t know what these continuing defeats you’re referring to are. Ukrainian counter offensive is dead in the water with Russia starting to take territory back already. Meanwhile, Russia is systematically dismantling Ukrainian power grid as we speak.

Wars are about logistics first and foremost. Russia has a huge industrial base that’s pumping weapons and ammunition that can be delivered to the frontlines by rail, and Ukraine is not able to attack behind Russian lines effectively. Meanwhile, Russia is able to hit anywhere in Ukraine with impunity.

Ukraine no longer has its own military industrial base, Russia destroyed that back in March, and relies solely on western weapons at this point, and only 30% of the weapons actually make it to the front lines. Western stocks are now becoming depleted, and the only country that’s still sending any significant aid is the US. That’s been decreasing with every single package.

Russia’s military industrial capacity is expanding, while Ukraine’s military industrial capacity is gone, and the aid is shrinking. Once republicans take the house and senate in a few days, the aid form US is likely to collapse as well.

Not only that, but Ukraine is collapsing economically as well. Pretty much the only thing keeping its economy at the moment going is US funding all its public sector. I’m not aware of any country that was able to win a war without having a functional economy throughout history. Perhaps you could fill me in on how you expect that to work.

Meanwhile, there are no talks about any kind of coup in Russia that I’m aware of. If you think talks of coup are common in Russia you’re guzzling propaganda. The government has massive support right now.

Europe, meanwhile, has managed to fill its reserves of natural gas again, blunting Russia’s ability to hurt it. That gives Europe more leeway to diversify away from Russian gas and move to other energy sources.

You don’t seem to understand that the reserves aren’t meant to replace pipeline flow. They’re meant to supplement it. Europe is in a dire situation right now with UK recently reporting only having 9 days of gas left. Over 60% of the energy that Europe got from Russia cannot be replaced right now. Any sort of energy diversification will take years.

European countries are now starting to break, as I predicted just yesterday.

The end result of all this will be the destruction of EU and NATO. As European countries run out of resources, they will have no choice but to follow what Hungary and Netherlands are doing. People in Europe are also realizing that US has led them up the garden path the same way they did Ukraine. This is breeding massive resentment against US and NATO as we see with all the protests against NATO in Europe right now. Seems to me that’s very much a desirable outcome for Russia.