I should point out that Georgia is geographically not in Europe but in NATO's foyer right now in terms of membership, though that will likely be dropped now that the government has turned pretty definitively towards Russia.

Montenegro and Macedonia aren't afraid of any threats to their sovereignty (unless it's from Greece in the case of Macedonia, which has to have the silly "North" in its official name for that reason alone). They're just interested in EU benefits and were told to join to show solidarity. Montenegro in particular absolutely loves Russians and treats them far better than it treats tourists from EU countries.

If you believe Montenegro or Macedonia is any way nervous about Russia, I have a bridge over the Dniepr to sell you. It's beyond laughable.

There isn't a lot in English about US covert support for Chechen jihadi terrorists, but there were a lot of documents in the Russian-language internet and other indicia, such as the jihadi site kavkaz.org being hosted in and funded from the US. That changed after 9/11 but not before.

As for whether or not Ukraine was a threat to Russia, it's patently obvious that it was. Even without NATO membership, Russia has found a NATO-armed Ukraine to require it to wage a bloody war of attrition that is in its third year. While I don't think Ukraine has another full year of fighting left in it, it may limp along until October or so before you see a collapse along the lines of the 1918 German collapse.

Imagine now for a moment a Ukrainian army that had 10 more years of NATO training and integration, NATO airbases, anti-air defenses, integrated missile attack and defense systems, state of the art drone warfare and anti-drone systems, all right on the Russian border in perfect tank terrain. You're talking about an army that could easily be 500,000 to 750,000 strong.

But don't take my word for it. Take the words of the leading foreign policy experts who warned that NATO expansion into Ukraine would be seen as an existential threat to Russian policymakers. Get rid of Putin, and Russia would still be in Ukraine (maybe even using tactical nuclear weapons if a less humane leader were running Russia).

The same people who are saying Russia is expansionist and dead set on taking back everything east of the Oder are also privately saying that Russia reacted to NATO expansion and is not planning any wars of expansion farther westwards. US policy makers do not believe Putin will attack the Baltics or Poland.

But hey, let's just manipulate those stupid masses into extending US influence, right? I mean, Ukraine's going to win, aren't they? They just need $x billion more and the miracle will happen. In reality, they need about 30,000,000 more people in their country, 3000 more tanks, 5000 more APCs, about 1000 newest generation fighters and bombers with highly trained pilots, a few tactical nuclear weapons and about 5000 more PATRIOT systems, and then maybe they could retake some of their lost territory before being hit with a massive nuclear strike by Russia.

So what is the real endgame? It increasingly looks like it's just about killing the entire Ukrainian population by wiping out its male population. On the good side, it will end that hick dialect of Russian they call the Ukrainian language, but seriously - Ukraine is likely to lose up to 2,000,000 men. Do the math. Population was realistically only 36 million after subtracting people in the Russian controlled areas, over 6 million fled to Europe, some 2-4 million went East to Russia, and they're at 26-28 million people, of which realistically they only have some 6,000,000 that are men of military age (13-14 million men, but a good 25% are too old to fight and 25% are too young). Of those people they need some to keep what is left of the country running and they've charitably lost 750,000 in the war already. They're losing about 50,000 soldiers a month now and sending people with no training to the front 3-4 days after dragging them off the streets.

The Russian FAB-5000s are blowing the crap out of any concentrations of troops, the Kh-101s are blowing up trains with ammo, the hypersonics are hitting airfields, and Ukraine keeps losing everything the West sends, and will soon run out of people.

But NATO said they weren't going to negotiate, so Putin will go forward until the collapse now. Wonderful strategery there, NATO.