Pay attention or get your ass kicked. From Tarik Cyril Amar at swentr.site:
The latest scuffle over provocations which tested Moscow’s red lines shows that simply brushing off the Kremlin won’t work anymore
© Sputnik / Sergey Guneyev
We have been through an intense, if muffled crisis in the ongoing political-military confrontation between Russia and the West by way of Ukraine. The essence of this crisis is simple: Kiev and its Western supporters have lost the initiative in the Ukraine proxy war and may be on the verge of defeat, as high Western officials increasingly admit.
In response to this self-inflicted quandary, several important Western players have threatened further escalation. Most prominently, Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron publicly encouraged Kiev to use British Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron continued to threaten a direct – not covert, as at present – intervention by French, that is, NATO, troops (In addition, an intriguing and much-discussed article reported that a deployment of 1,500 troops from France’s Foreign Legion had already begun. While its sources were hard to assess, its claims appeared too plausible for easy dismissal.)
Moscow, in return, issued a set of stark warnings, laying down – or highlighting – red lines. It announced drills with tactical nuclear weapons. Belarus did the same; in Minsk’s case, the weapons in question are, of course, also Russian. In addition, the British and French ambassadors received extremely straight talk about the risks their respective governments were running.
