I see what you're saying here. And part of me thinks that Putin has waited for a weak President like Biden to take power, although I think they have been preparing for this before he was elected. But again, I don't think that Putin cares about saving face. It was always going to be a disaster entering this war with huge Russian losses in terms of economics and body count. Right now the former doesn't look as bad since they are waging an energy war on the world and western governments make it worse by continued sanctions. So I don't see him stopping this even if Trump is re-elected.
Folks won't like this, and I'm sure I'll be labeled a Russian shill for this, but the economist in me thinks that the US can't keep supporting Ukraine in terms of money forever. We are literally going to be printing dollars for this for years to come. If we actually have a dollar crisis at some point, in the face of rampant inflation due to scarcity (aluminum prices are going to the moon very soon because of the Russian ban), the situation will be dire. The dollar has been surging and so have commodity prices, so just wait until the dollar falls and everything priced in dollars skyrockets even more.
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*Printing
CPI news today, up 8.2% year over year way above expectations despite rate hikes.