pcr on the putin and ukraine, current events;

The Ever Widening War

Paul Craig Roberts

Zero Hedge, normally a reliable site, reports that the US Department of Defense and the NATO Secretary General claim that 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean soldiers have joined Russian forces in Kursk to help drive out the Ukrainian incursion.  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pentagon-warns-no-limits-ukraine-support-if-north-korea-joins-war 

The Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, says that if these North Koreans do for Russia what French troops and NATO personnel are doing for Ukraine, the US will remove its ban on NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine.  

As Putin has said, this would mean the US/NATO are at war with Russia, which, Putin has implied, means a nuclear response from Russia. Why Putin is OK with drones fired deep into Russia but not missiles is unclear.

What do we make of this report?  It strikes me as nonsensical and contrary to Putin’s abhorrence  of expanding the conflict.  It also strikes me as nonsensical that Russia cannot expel  Ukrainians from Kursk without North Korean reinforcements. 

There are two possible real explanations.  One is that Washington’s military/security complex wants to carry the war further into Russia, confident from Putin’s past non-response that Putin will do nothing about it, and the alleged Korean troops are an excuse.  The neoconservatives believe that Putin is nothing but hot air and that they can destabilize his regime by sending in missiles to kill Russians and destroy infrastructure all over Russia.  That Putin has been unwilling to use the available force that he has to end a conflict with a third world military with zero military technology of its own after three years suggests to the neoconservatives that Putin is so averse to war that he simply will not fight anything other than a limited military operation.  ........more.....