As Buck writes, Mr. Putin is running out of assets to wage war. The conventional ones anyway. Emptying the prisons of able-bodied men, buying munitions from Iran and North Korea, oppressing all dissent.

But he could try it. My nephew recently visited Lithuania to visit relatives separated by decades of Soviet rule and lost information. Things tend to get lost when those that remembered are sent to Siberia. He saw the house my grandfather was born in, and raised, until he came to America. My nephew (he is in college) gave us a slide show yesterday. What a beautiful country! But everywhere was the stamp of Soviet occupation. Ugly buildings, beautiful churches that had to be rebuilt after the Russian destroyed them. He didn’t get too deep into the topic, but he knows the population is concerned. The ties between Ukraine and the Baltic states runs deep into the past. They are concerned – afraid even – that what they see happening to Ukraine will eventually happen there if the madman is not stopped.

And he is mad. He hates the West. Despises everything about it. Democracy, our more liberal values, our embracing of diversity. He wants to be like Peter the Great and restore the Russia that was. But as he losses, or is stalled, like the cornered animal, he may well take greater gambits in a sunk cost fallacy.

That’s what worries me.

Or it could just be that NATO powers are exaggerating the threat to get more support for Ukraine and stopping the madness there.

The only solution might have to come from within Russia itself.

On the other hand, if Trump wins I’d say there is a slight chance the Ruskies might move on the Baltic states. Even that is a stretch, and there are NATO nukes positioned in those countries.