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I’ll go even further: the closer the Kremlin’s economic and military capacity to continue the war gets to a critical breaking point, the “tougher and tougher” its “demands” will become -- even though the reality on the battlefield gives it absolutely no reason to puff out its chest and thump it triumphantly. You would think that, by year X of the war, its forces were no longer spending months banging their heads against a wall for the ruins of Ukrainian villages, but had at least staged a triumphant landing in Reykjavík and launched a tank offensive toward the English Channel. Their exhausted economy will be crumbling before their eyes, just as it did in 1991, unable to bear the crushing burden of the war. Yet they will keep rolling their eyes menacingly, making grandiose threats, shaking their fists and demanding Alaska as a condition for “addressing the root causes of the conflict.” That is their logic. That is what they do. It is the tactic of a cornered rat: using intimidation to make you surrender without thinking precisely where they themselves have proved powerless. They know perfectly well what works well and that, year after year, the West stubbornly refuses to shake off its deeply-ingrained, paralyzing fear of the Kremlin’s bluster.