For the press, red lines are something to scare people with or something to be made fun of when they’re apparently crossed without an obvious effect. IMO they’r

For the press, red lines are something to scare people with or something to be made fun of when they’re apparently crossed without an obvious effect. IMO they’re more like if X then Y, where Y could be a very fuzzy thing. One Y was cancelling the grain deal. Another is hitting energy infra (thermal power plants recently). Another could be precision strikes on particular targets, hitting NATO personnel in Ukraine, etc. So there’s this tit for tat happening, not a dramatic “we’ll nuke you alll”, no matter what Medvedev says. —- It’s not entirely correct that strikes within Russia are forbidden. Officially sure, but the intelligence for those strikes in Crimea and Russia must be coming from the NATO AWACS and other assets and are happening with UK and French weapons. Without those two elements Ukraine would be completely blind and unable to do any deep strikes (except drones). Could we have done more? Certainly. But Russia has WMDs, is unpredictable and too big to (let) fail, so there’s this dance happening where in NATO we want to hurt Russia, but not too bad. I still don’t think it’s possible to say what would have happened had NATO intervened more forcefully. The discussions between Macron and Scholz where one wants to send troops and the other fears WW3 indicates to me that there is no clarity within NATO either. There’s also all sorts of backroom negotiation happening between Russia, Ukraine the US and others. The current situation is bad all around. China and Russia deepening their partnership, Ukraine falling apart, Russian army reconstituted, bigger than before the invasion and pissed off with the EU and US. I honestly don’t understand what you think would help Ukraine win at this point. Massive amounts of artillery, combined with planes they’ll learn very fast to fly (unlikely) and deep strike capabilities… would IMO keep them in the game, but not help them win. They’re running out of men and their economy is running on fumes (EU and US money). Thanks likewise for the discussion :)