But Was Putin Really Duped?

I am talking about Ray McGovern on Judge today when they discuss the issue of Minsk Agreements, or rather lies of Western leeaders behind those agreements. 

I think, the whole premise is wrong. There is no doubt that Putin "milked" the issue of treachery by the West to the full extent, as any shrewd statesman would do, but I doubt, even against the background of Putin's admission, that he was duped. The reason being of Russia getting ready for clash with NATO as there is no tomorrow since 2014. Nation which is "duped" and still "trusts" Western "partners" doesn't undergo a de facto revolutionary re-industrialization within 8 years and doesn't launch real revolution in military affair. 

We should not mistake tactical foreign policy adjustments for fundamentally correct strategy which from the inception saw the clash with NATO as inevitability. The best proof of it is the December 2021 Ultimatum to the combined West. It is one thing to make a speech in Munich in 2007 talking about general vision, totally another--to issue specific demands in 2021, including the ones which are deliberately formulated as to be unacceptable for NATO. That's a huge difference. Including in the levels of power of Russia in 2007, 2014 and 2023--they are dramatically different with Russia of 2023 fully returning to herself the status of global power. 

Is Ray correct that when Russia takes all of the left bank of Dnieper she will be ready to talk? Certainly possible, but a lot will also depend on how Russia reshuffles her exports and how the Eurasian economic integration proceeds. In this case Mikhail Mishustin's official visit to China and his meeting tomorrow with Comrade Xi are very important in this respect. Now per those "hypersonic missiles" that NATO still doesn't have. Russians, as facts have it, put themselves again in a deliberately "worst" position and developed everything from the assumption that at some point of time NATO will have those hypersonic gliding vehicles. So, what do you do then? Well, you develop the Air Defense capable of intercepting those. And this is what Russia was doing since mid-2000s. Judging by what is coming (rumored) in this AD, or rather air and space defense field, we are looking at a complete remake of world order which even our wildest imagination cannot perceive.