Main takeaway from that barnburner of a speech is that Russia now has given itself a pretext to respond to "attacks" on DNR and LNR with no need to conceal its direct military involvement. thread 1/x
Putin not only recognized the DNR/LNR, he also signed "friendship and cooperation" treaties with them, essentially security guarantees. 2/x
whereas before this, Russia didn't have a justification for overt military intervention even under its own laws, now it will. This is an important element of the narrative that was missing. 3/x
clearly the legal niceties wouldn't have stopped Russia, but they always need some way of portraying their actions as something other than aggression. As Peskov put it yesterday, Russia has never attacked anyone ever, or something like that. 4/x
Buckle up, in other words. bad things ahead. END
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
