Russia vs. USA! The world will know where Vladimir Putin's "red lines" are only after they are crossed

What the head of state of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, can put up with today, tomorrow can become a casus belli (a reason for war), warn the editors of the British newspaper The Times.

The pessimists in the US, warning about the risk of a direct military conflict with Russia over Ukraine, are wrong. Despite numerous threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the US has been able to supply Ukraine with weapons, including long-range missiles, without any significant retaliation from Moscow. And although the "hawks” In Washington, there is increasing insistence that the US not allow fears of an unlikely Armageddon to block much-needed defense assistance to Ukraine, but there are dangers in such thinking.

"The first is that the Russian "red lines” – borders, the crossing of which would provoke retaliation against the US or NATO – are perceived as fixed rather than moving. In fact, where they are drawn is up to just one person – the judgment of Vladimir Putin. His assessment of what Russia should tolerate may change depending on his views on the dynamics of the fighting, the West's intentions, the mood in Russia and the likely reaction of the rest of the world, the paper said.

Putin has hesitated to launch a direct attack on the West in response to its military aid to Ukraine. But what he can live with today could become a pretext for war tomorrow, and the world will know where his red lines really are only after they are crossed, The Times writes.

The second problem is that by focusing on Russia's response to each individual step in aid to Ukraine, this approach underestimates the cumulative impact on Putin.

"Russian experts are convinced that the US has lost its fear of nuclear war – a fear that they say was a central factor in stability for most of the Cold War,” the paper wrote, noting that a key question is now being debated among Russia's foreign policy elite: how to restore America's fear of nuclear escalation while simultaneously direct military confrontation is avoided.

However, some advocate the use of tactical nuclear weapons to shock the West, while more moderate experts float the idea of a demonstration test of a nuclear bomb. Others are calling for the downing of a US satellite linked to providing information about strikes on Ukraine, or the downing of a US Global Hawk reconnaissance drone.

Any of these steps could lead to a crisis in relations between Washington and Moscow, as it is widely believed in the Kremlin that if the Russian Federation does not take a firm stand in the near future, the US and its NATO allies will only add more to the arsenal of Ukraine with powerful weapons that would ultimately threaten Moscow's ability to detect and respond to attacks on its nuclear forces, the newspaper explained.