\u201cPutin always escalated when he felt he was in trouble \u2026 the most natural escalation is the provocation,\u201d said Kasparov, a former world chess champion who is now one of the Kremlin\u2019s most prominent exiled critics. <\/p>\n
Kasparov said he expects such a move could involve an incursion into a country on NATO\u2019s eastern flank, such as Latvia or Estonia, intended to test whether other members of the alliance \u2014 and particularly the United States \u2014 would respond.<\/p>\n
He pointed to recently proposed legal changes by the Russian government making it easier to mobilize troops by eliminating the medical examination previously required to draft soldiers as one indication that Moscow is preparing for further conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a single sign in Russian propaganda machine, in Russian government actions, in Putin\u2019s speeches,\u201d that the Kremlin is preparing for peace, he said, adding that all the signs point in one direction only: \u201cWar, war, war, war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kasparov dismissed the argument that Russia lacks the resources to open another front. Moscow would not need to launch a full-scale invasion to undermine NATO\u2019s credibility, he said, but could instead seize a small border town \u2014 potentially one with a Russian-speaking population \u2014 and wait to see how the alliance reacted.<\/p>\n
If the U.S. then failed to help defend the country under attack, Kasparov said, Putin would have achieved his objective: \u201cNATO is no longer there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPutin always escalated when he felt he was in trouble \u2026 the most natural escalation is the provocation,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":936111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[25819,113,90,54728,56350,377193,472,269,56353,13660,8955,1802,50,2855,257,126,4995,273,67,32329,274,131,103],"class_list":["post-936110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-borders","tag-conflict","tag-elections","tag-energy-infrastructure","tag-estonia","tag-garry-kasparov","tag-history","tag-kremlin","tag-latvia","tag-logistics","tag-mark-rutte","tag-military","tag-news","tag-platforms","tag-russia","tag-sanctions","tag-security","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-visas","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116922876454328162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}