So did putin make the right decision in invading ukraine now, when i say the right decision, i don't mean morally, i mean from a utilitarian perspective. Was this the right decision for him and his country? Now? Let's answer this with real simple analysis: without any emotions and, of course, as always, don't click, nothing, don't smash, nothing don't buy nothing. This video is not edited. There's no b-roll you're.

Just me talking so basically check this out. So, in order for us to answer this question, we have to understand what is his motivation. What are the goals that putin is trying to achieve with this invasion, and i think he really has four goals and i'm going to basically cite them based on the importance from the least important to the most important okay, so his least important is basically turning on Water back to crimea, because a lot of you guys don't realize that, but ukraine pretty much shut down the water to crimea after the 2014 separatist regions of lugansk and danisk. It created this some sort of a quasi-autonomies in russia to crimea, so ukraine shot down the water flow yeah.

Okay, so that's that's one of his goals, i'm sure it's very low, probably the fourth important one and the third important one on the level we're rising. A little bit here is basically uh stopping the military tensions in the donbass area. The donbass area is where ukraine meets the separatist, so-called republics of the nets and lugansk uh ever since 2014, even though they were completely separate. There's a lot of military tension on their borders, they're shelling they're, shooting, there's unrest, so he wanted.

You know basically for it to stop and just ukrainians to be chill with. You know the fact that they lost a bunch of the land. The second most important is getting rid of zelinski. Getting rid of zelinski is really important.

The zelinski government in ukraine is everything. Putin does not want it's a pro-western government he's egging to join nato eu. His is everything that putin doesn't want. The russian people to see on their backyard a western liberal country, part of europe, part of nato.

Essentially, it's a really bad vibe for putin, plus he was about to put nato in his backyard, which is something putin doesn't want, and that brings us to point number one, the most important one he wants to make sure ukraine never ever ever joins nato. He wants to have belarus and ukraine not natoed, basically not to have nato overlooking him from his own backyard. So the question is: could he have achieved those four goals without invading ukraine? Now i would make the argument that for the past eight years evan since he's been supporting these separatists over the lugansk and danisk and with crimea and all tensions, he was guessing. You know he was getting what he wanted.

He was creating a lot of divide between europe and the us and consequently, between nato itself. Its own allies were fighting and bickering between each other, because you have to understand a few things. Nato is basically the us and the eu, mainly in germany, france and the uk. Now they have opposing interests, that's something you need to understand the us.

They don't give a about putin's energy. They have a lot more interest in getting geopolitical clout over there in that region, while germany and the entire eu really cares about putin's energy and his gas. In fact, germany is dependent 60 on russian gas, so they need his gas and they didn't want one. You know to go against putin, or at least did not want to go against putin and that's why the us was fighting with the eu all the time as long as this mess in ukraine kept on going on, so he was getting what he wanted.

He wasn't hurting the russian economy whatsoever because the europeans would not touch him. He was getting the us to fight against the eu. Nato was getting basically torn apart at the seams, like an old cushion and basically he was getting what he wanted. That's the crazy part, and the thing is that as crazy as it may sound, even when he started the invasion, the europeans said as long as the invasion just stops with lugansk and donetsk and he doesn't go into mainland russia.

Sorry, mainland ukraine. Beyond those points, we will not view it as invasion because his de facto already holds these places, so they were basically telling hey putin. If we just take luganski, denis we're not going to do nothing to your economy, nothing to you. Everything will be fine, and yet he still went four balls in into this, basically going all in now.

Instead of keeping this mess going on and wicking in nato and - and you know creating a divide between the us and the eu, he basically, i think, broke the rules and invading ukraine changed all of that that full-scale invasion - i i don't know where it's coming from - Maybe it's impatience, maybe something else that i don't understand, but it completely ruined this delicate balance that he had this full-scale invasion. You know don't get you know. I love the ukrainians. I love the way they fight they're, tough people, some of the toughest mother lovers on the face of the earth they're brutal.

I love ukrainians but they're going to lose this war, so the russian win is not in question here. The reason is because russia just has too many bodies, they have too much soldiers. The size difference is just ginormous, it's just it can't be done, for ukraine doesn't have the manpower, even with all the equipment and all the support. They can definitely create a massive pain for russia and and make it hard for russia and they're not going to go without a fight, but russia's win on this is guaranteed.

Unfortunately, i hope i'm mistaken, but it seems so. But the question is at what economic cost, because i think putin miscalculated the how much the war is going to cost them economically and because um with full-scale economic sanctions from u.s and eu, which is, i don't think he expected the eu to join in this. He knew the us would sanction him, but he didn't think the eu and germany mainly will do it um. What i think he's getting here he's winning in ukraine, but at what cost? It's like saying.

Well, uh, the doctor is coming out to the family and saying hey dear family. The operation was really successful, but unfortunately the patient has died. This is pretty much what we're having here and i i don't think he knew about how bad it's gon na get um. He knew the u.s would go after his war chest and that's why what he did over the past few years is actually prepped for this he's a smart dude.

So basically what he did. He completely went all in on gold, so out of the 640 billion dollars of his war, chest, which is a massive amount, 130 million is 130 billion, is in gold and that that's going to serve him a little bit. But the problem is that the rest of it is basically euros or dollars. In fact, his entire export was shifted.

He used to sell to the entire world and get dollars in return. 95 of russia's exports was in dollars. He shifted it to euro like less than ten percent of russia's exporting dollars, because he made a bet that the europeans would not sanction him and he didn't expect how germany would lead europe against against russia despite the gas despite the energy needs, despite basically a completely Horrific results for germany, he didn't expect he. I think he miscalculated the barrage of this global sanctions on him.

Basically, countries like germany, who he never thought, would do it. In fact, germany went even one step forward and said: hey um, you know what we're also going to militarize the out of ourselves: we're gon na put a hundred extra billion dollars in military this year and another two percent of gdp for the next few years. We're gon na arm ourselves to the teeth, because we're scared of you. I don't think you expected them to do it.

It's germany, they're the most. You know post world war ii, the most pacifistic country on earth we got. I don't think he expected switzerland to come out condemn him. Switzerland didn't even get involved in world war ii.

Countries like sweden and denmark. The most exciting thing that happened. It's within denmark is a cat stuck on the tree, sending weaponry to ukraine supporting ukraine. I mean i don't think he knew how much europe would be on board with his economy up and look at what's going on with this economy, it's in shambles, real inflation is anywhere between 30 and 70 within just two or three days of these sanctions.

We have people in russia reporting, there's no credit cards. No apple pay atms only gives you about 50 60 per day to withdraw most of them, don't even work. You can't do nothing without cash. The stock market in russia has been closed for the past two days.

Nobody knows for how long, because it's literally going to collapse, foreigners can't take out cash. I mean it's pretty much back all you know soviet days, where uh they basically had to protect the ruble and with these new sanctions, the central bank of russia doesn't really have any way to protect the ruble of local economy and local currency. So now they just raised interest to 20, so it's it's a whole, so he doesn't have access to most of his war chest and the war is costing me costing him like 20 billion dollars per day. So it's a huge problem.

The thing is like it's, a very strange concept for people to understand, but putin doesn't want to conquer ukraine the way we conquer when we go to war in the middle east right he doesn't want to level ukraine and just take it. The only thing he wants is just no nato and a different puppet government that he can control. That's it so for that to happen, he doesn't, he doesn't have the luxury to destroy infrastructure, to damage the military severely hurt civilians because he doesn't want to stay there. He wants to come in, replace this legacy.

Government get out and just let it be he doesn't want to own ukraine. Ukraine is a it's a huge country, 30 40 million people. It's insane, you have to feed them. You have to keep the lights open, he doesn't want ukraine, he just wants a different government and no nato so for that he has to conquer ukraine somehow without ruining infrastructure without hurting civilians and without you know, shattering its military and that's going to take a long Time to do it's the surgical, whatever they're doing there and obviously people will die and it will be horrific, but i'm saying he doesn't have like he has a clear sky he's the only one who has jet fighters over there.

He can. You know he can bombard the living hell out of ukraine. He's not doing this for a purpose. That kind of warfare is going to take time and every day is 20 billion that he doesn't have to pay.

His own closest circle of people lost hundreds of billions in the stock market. It's only going to get worse now. He doesn't really have now good choices. That's the problem where i think he's really got screwed um, because the ukrainian government still stands and zielinski didn't run away, so every day is adding to the pressure.

Obviously, we also feel the pressure, because crude oil is going over a hundred dollars a better real soon. We're already like a hundred dollars per barrel, scratching a hundred so we're really also in a bad spot, but not as bad as him like his country, is falling apart. Economically, i mean that is so. He has only one choice here.

Apart from you know, backing down from ukraine, which is going to be not such a good choice for him is basically go and replace the eu with china say: hey, listen instead of the eu you buy this for me, buy for me, coal, oil, wheat, commodities, i'll Be your warehouse buy everything you need for me and i'll also buy technology, electronics, everything i'm buying from the eu from you guys, and we can be best friends forever bff the problem with that that um, i think it's gon na be very challenging because, first of All china and russia don't have the infrastructure as far as gas pipelines oil pipelines to do this in the same scale. He was doing it in europe. It's going to take years to build. Also, i think a lot of chinese companies on the commercial side are going to have he's already active.

Nobody wants to do business with him right now, he's scary. I mean what chinese company is looking forward to getting sanctioned in the us or in europe. Now that it's europe and the us chinese companies are now going to say: well, i don't know if we want to do business with them. I mean we're going to lose all our business in in u.s and the eu, so he's gon na have sanctioned fears with chinese companies having you know, second thoughts about working with him, but even assuming he gets it done assuming he.

He solves these problems and he gets china as an alternative. Now he basically became lukashenko because lukashenko basically is owned by putin and for all this purposes, belarus is not a real country. It's just part of russia, because putin owns lukashenko. If he goes to china and he says: hey i'm depending on you, a hundred percent to buy and sell everything from you, he becomes the lukashenko to china.

They hold them by the balls they own him. He becomes a vasal of of china, so there's not really a lot of good options for him. The best hope for for putin is to get rid of zelinski's government as fast as possible, which he seems to have trouble doing without leveling kiev, so um he's in a deep spot right now the bottom line here he miscalculated germany's reaction, that's where he got it Wrong, he knew about the u.s, he knew about nato, but he didn't realize how much of a galvanizing result his action will have. In germany, germany literally said: hey we're no longer the biggest in europe and we're going to go crazy.

We're going to we're going to hurt our own economy and our own infrastructure energy, because what you're doing is wrong and i haven't seen a lot of politicians do something like that ever and if you're from germany - and you should be proud of your government right now - There's no two ways about it. I mean germany for the win, i mean if germany keeps dragging on and not limiting swift and all that stuff and basically just drags on this whole putin kind of double dance. None of this bothers putin. Germany is the key to this thing and the way they reacted basically um it changed the game, so that was his biggest mistake.

So the bottom line is no, he didn't make the right decision and the question is: where is this headed? Let's wait and see, and it's going to be very interesting next few days, let's see.