> Oh wait!
> He's bluffing with separatist regions.
> Oh wait!
> He's bluffing with invading Ukraine.
> Oh wait!
These are all straw men. I don't know any serious analysts who thought he was bluffing in any of those areas, primarily because they all understood the Western response would be muted.
He knows, as the rest of the world does, that launching nuclear war will require an all-out response from Western powers.
Biden was quoted as saying the Russian attack had unfolded "largely as predicted". Pretending the invasion was some sort of great shocker is a rewrite of history.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-02-24/biden-...
For instance, it talks about Putin's willingness to use "battlefield" nukes rather than "strategic" city-destroying nukes – betting that the West would immediately concede any war where a smaller nuke were deployed in the interest of avoiding escalation.