Well, howdy there internet, B B B Bolesboe again. So today we are going to talk about

Finland and Putin and Sweden and Turkey and Russia and that international poker game where everybody's cheating.

We're going to talk about how things have changed, what has changed, how Putin's mindset

is going to probably drive him to do something he doesn't need to do

and what it all means.

So after Putin's ill-advised invasion of Ukraine, things started to shift.

Countries that were traditionally non-aligned, they decided that they wanted to be part of an alliance,

especially if they were close to Russia.

So Finland and Sweden moved to join NATO.

Finland is officially part of NATO now.

Sweden is Turkey and Hungary are throwing up some roadblocks for them. It's

going to take a little bit longer, but realistically they'll probably end up

joining and even in the interim. If something was to happen

Sweden would align with NATO. Now, what does this mean? Immediately Russia's border with NATO

has doubled. Doubled.

This was always a major concern for him

and it was something that he was trying to avoid part of his reasoning.

And this is like one of the few things

that I don't think was just a pretext.

I think that this was actually something

he was concerned about was that he didn't want

NATO countries right up on his border.

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