John J. Mearsheimer

And the problem that Putin faces is that there has long been widespread criticism inside Russia that he has not waged the war against Ukraine vigorously enough.

The fact is that Putin and the Russian military, of course, have gone to great lengths to minimize the number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed.

It's very important to understand, you'd never know this from reading the mainstream media in the West.

No, because he's Hitler.

Yes.

That the Russians have actually not waged a serious punishment campaign against the civilian population inside of Ukraine, with the possible exception of destroying the electrical grid.

But even there, the end result was that not many civilians were killed.

But what's happening here is that pressure is beginning to build on Putin to up the ante, to escalate because of these attacks on Russian infrastructure and on the Russian civilian population.

And the pressure is really building.

And you see this in the writings of Sergei Karaganov, who is the principal proponent of the view that I just described.

Sergei Karaganov says that when he first proposed this view, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, this is back in February of 2022, most people viewed him as an outlier.

They didn't take his argument seriously.

He says now that...

The overwhelming majority of people that he talks to inside the Russian elite and even inside the broader population agree with his view that it's time for the Russians to take the gloves off and to begin to attack into Eastern Europe with conventional weapons to start with, of course.

But then if that doesn't work, use nuclear weapons.

It's time to send a clear message to the West that their attacks on the Russian homeland, their attacks deep into Russia, have to stop.

Well, the Karaganov argument, which I think is correct, is that the Russians believe that they don't think that this is a red line.

People in the West, especially in Europe, think they can continue to up the ante and increase the number of attacks and the quality of the attacks or the lethality of the attacks.

But to achieve what end?

Well, there's a belief that this will bring Putin to the negotiating table and that Ukraine will be able to get a favorable deal.