It's a good time to (re)watch Seven Days in May at its 60, sure, but I think the danger was greater when Russians ceded Kherson and Burns undertook a personal visit to Ankara for a chat with Russian foreign intelligence director, Naryshkin. Yesterweek, a simple call on the carpet for British and French diplomats in Moscow resulted in cancellation of looming attack on the Crimea Bridge. Yet another difference lies, of course, in Gaza: during the first 1.5 years since the Russian invasion US foreign policy special ops weren’t stretched so thin as they are now, because of what looks like the strongest internal anti-war protests in your history — that is, during time when the US boots on the ground aren’t directly involved (so I don’t recall protests against invasion to Vietnam). Hence, Putin is obviously relaxed, and the ongoing raid into Kharkov region appears to me the mere countermove against “TikTok-oriented” attacks from the Ukrainian side in March, though at the same time it is clearly debalancing the whole internal arc of the front.

See also a fruitful discussion of the matter with Alexander Gabuev, the director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin (in Russian, but Google translation should suffice). And, as usual, a couple of insights could be drawn from interviews of Kremlin resident wormtongue MAD proponent member of the Trilateral Commission, Karaganov.