In Russia food prices are skyrocketing, the ruble is crashing, and the global oil prices need to rise about 33% just for their government to make ends meet. The Russian government is calmly telling the people to relax and not hoard foreign currency. The Russian people in turn are freaking out and hoarding foreign currency.

It doesn’t help for Putin to tell his loyal serfs not to worry, when everything he is doing is leading to a wider scale war that may spell the end of Russia as we know it.

According to Ukrainian sources, 32 tanks, 16 howitzers and 30 trucks hauling ammunition and fighters crossed into the Luhansk region from Russia.

Putin is trying to reconstruct an all-powerful Russian empire that never existed except in his fantasies. Both the Tsarist Empire and the USSR fell apart like shanties of rotten cardboard. The same is likely to happen to Putin’s tattered “empire” of fairy dust.

The main question is how much of the rest of the world will Putin take with him when he disappears in a toxic cloud?

Poland has responded to the ceasefire in Ukrine by realigning its entire force structure east, to fight the Russians in case of invasion. Both Sweden and Finland are examining ways to deepen cooperation with NATO, and Moldova is edging towards changing its traditionally neutralist stance.

In one form or another, these states are preparing for war. Eventually, one or many – but most likely the Poles – are going to push back against Russian aggression in Ukraine, either with “volunteers” or overtly with some sort of joint units. And then there will be a crisis, because some NATO states will be in a war and others will back them up.

China is watching the expanding Russian war in Eastern Europe very closely. China is not at all worried. For this conflict, they can only smile. No matter how it plays out China will benefit.