> Former US Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn, who also served as the 24th national security advisor under the first Trump administration, noted that the Russian bombers could have been parked in the open due to nuclear treaty obligations.

> “FYI, those bombers that were hit HAVE to be out in full view due to nuclear treaty obligations. Zelenskyy took advantage of that,” General Flynn noted on X.

> His post generated heated discussions on social media about whether Russian obligations under a bilateral treaty with the US might have helped Ukraine in targeting the Russian strategic bombers.

From the State Department: https://www.state.gov/new-start-treaty

> The treaty permits the use of national technical means of verification (e.g. satellites) in a manner consistent with international law, and contains explicit provisions that prohibit interference with NTM and the use of concealment measures that may impede monitoring by NTM.

Consider that strategic nuclear weapons are useless for offensive tactics; they only function as a deterrent. Yet Putin's is still practicing Cold War diplomacy, like nukes are an ace in the hole. By hitting those bombers, the old diplomatic hole card of nuclear primacy is revealed as a strategic deuce. Saavy.

Putin's long game is played out. His solitary, isolated posture as a lone but rational actor only works against him from here on out.

If Russian is in fact democratic in the sense of representation with any care for what its people think, any attempt to re-visit Stalin era mobilization and national sacrifice for the sake of eastern Ukraine is absurd, while if Putin tyrannically commits the people of Russia to the cause, the fragile artifice of Russian state progress in governance and human rights collapses to dust like the leadership of Gaza.

Becoming irrational serves no purpose, because Russian taking on the world at scale is like as if Italy decided to be a world belligerent. Ridiculous, with no upside.

It would be a funny turn if, in the long run, western Russia cedes to Ukraine after all those tribes that sought peace and prosperity in the arms of the ghost of the Supreme Soviet wake up to Putin's belligerence headed in the completely opposite direction to their security towards some weird Soviet state appropriation of U.S. 1950s Ozzie & Harriet purity values.