For Putin, it's decision time

Vladimir Putin who seems to be in his element these days, throwing the gauntlet down to the US, playing the energy game with Germany and the rest of Europe and plotting to emasculate the Nato alliance. I think he's enjoying himself. In his latest foray against the western world he has hinted that if Nato fails or refuses to agree to the demands he has made about troops and armour being pulled back from Russia's borders in eastern Europe he will consult his generals and come up with some military responses, presumbaly in addition to invading Ukraine. As a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB Putin knows all about threats and lies and deception and guile. All these attributes come naturally to him and he is using all of them to scare the US and the rest of Nato. Over the weekend the Russian news agency Interfax put out a report saying that 10,000 Russian troops had been withdrawn from the Ukraine border and it was picked up by Reuters. But we've seen this sort of ploy in the past. Far from it being the first sign of Putin backing down and reducing the size of the putative invasion force it was actually nothing of the sort. It was far more likely that one of his combat units was just being rotated or, even more likely, it wasn't true at all and was just a story put out by the Kremlin to cause confusion. Putin is not in a mood to back down. He wants Nato to back down. I think we will see a lot of this sort of game-playing over the next few weeks and the West better watch out. For Putin it's decision time. He wants Ukraine under his wing one way or the other and we probably have less than a month before he acts. Biden and co will have to keep their eye on the ball like never before.