From the NY Times, Thomas Friedman: It's Now Putin's Plan B vs. Biden's and Zelensky's Plan A.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

After a confusing month, it is now clear what strategies are playing out in Ukraine: We’re watching Vladimir Putin’s plan B versus Joe Biden’s and Volodymyr Zelensky’s plans A. Let us hope that Biden and Zelensky triumph, because Putin’s potential plan C is really scary — and I don’t even want to write what I fear would be his plan D.

I have no secret source in the Kremlin on this, only the experience of having watched Putin operate in the Middle East over many years. As such, it seems obvious to me that Putin, having realized that his plan A has failed — his expectation that the Russian Army would march into Ukraine, decapitate its “Nazi” leadership and then just wait as the whole country fell peacefully into Russia’s arms — has shifted to his plan B.

Plan B is that the Russian Army deliberately fires upon Ukrainian civilians, apartment blocks, hospitals, businesses and even bomb shelters — all of which has happened in the past few weeks — for the purpose of encouraging Ukrainians to flee their homes, creating a massive refugee crisis inside Ukraine and, even more important, a massive refugee crisis inside nearby NATO nations.

Putin, I suspect, is thinking that if he cannot occupy and hold all of Ukraine by military means and simply impose his peace terms, the next best thing would be to drive five or 10 million Ukrainian refugees, particularly women, children and the elderly, into Poland, Hungary and Western Europe — with the purpose of creating such intense social and economic burdens that these NATO states will eventually pressure Zelensky to agree to whatever terms Putin is demanding to stop the war.

The rest at the link:https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/opinion/putin-zelensky-ukraine.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20220321&instance_id=56271&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=80294139&segment_id=86086&user_id=e6d99470f2be9f1757ca234d98420b03

[SleeplessinSoCal]

1. We have think tanks by the dozens for political reasons.

We do not seem to be able to think our way around a mass murderous, politically vindictive, sadistic madman in the 21st century's Disinformation Age.

[in2herbs]

2. Doesn't Putin have a $5B estate in Spain or Italy ??? Wherever it is iit's not Russia so

why hasn't this asset been seized? Either bomb it or house it with Ukranian refugees.