I'm in Romania and many comments under my recent videos have been asking me will Putin stop with
an invasion of Ukraine if he wins militarily in Ukraine or will he keep going into other countries
in Europe or maybe somewhere else in the world so I want to just address that let's go through
some of the countries first of all here in the center of Bucharest I don't think they need to be
too concerned this is way way down Putin's menu of countries to invade after Ukraine but let's
start with the most likely that is neighboring Moldova where people in general the majority speak
Romanian although it has a big Russian-speaking population now that is particularly vulnerable for
several reasons let's start with the government the current government in Chisinau is pro-EU
they actually earlier this week applied for EU candidacy by the way I'm making
this video on day 10 of the Russian invasion which is my watch is the 5th of March 2022 so
they want to join the EU now they didn't say they want to join NATO but for intense purposes
it doesn't really matter they're definitely trying to leave Russia's orbit already there are Russian
troops in the country in the breakaway region of Transnistria which is a tiny sliver of territory
that borders with Ukraine and there are Russian peacekeepers there we don't know exactly how many
Russian soldiers are actually there but there's a lot and probably Transnistrian troops as well would
assist in any Russian attempt to control other parts so the first scenario is that Russia just
if they managed to take the south of Ukraine that then that would create a contiguous territory with
Transnistria and they would just also nab Transnistria where probably local people
are definitely the local authorities would even be in favor of that would they stop in Transnistria
though? The Moldovan military is particularly weak now I'm not a military expert but
they couldn't defeat the Transnistrians back in the 90s who had help from the Russian forces and
they don't seem to have much of a military definitely compared to the Ukrainians they don't
and they haven't been armed by the west because it hasn't been you know in play or a big deal
up until now that might change of course so that makes it probably the most tempting for him
to go and try and nab it wouldn't be so difficult he could probably overrun it in a few days the
rest of the country so also the Transnistrians forced may assist on innovation of southern Ukraine like
Odesa because well Belarusian president Lukashenka in his wisdom had on TV a map where he showed
a line coming out but that was pretty obvious anyways that that was you know part of the plan
which wasn't implemented from the very beginning to attack Odesa which is interesting I mean they
went on I guess four flanks but they didn't make the fifth out of Transnistria as yet on top of
that another area of Moldova called Gagauzia where the people are Gagauz it's a Turkic ethnicity and
those people tend to be more pro-Russian than the rest of the Moldovan population and there's even
a clause in the Moldovan constitution that if Moldova were to unify with Romania then they would
get a referendum to secede and actually leave you know the new Romania that would include Moldova so
probably there Russia would have some local support yeah the central government wants to
join the EU so I guess if they didn't change that policy then that would be definitely a risk
that Russia would go for Moldova after Ukraine now other places that are on the menu the shopping
list those would be Georgia because you have the two separatist republics of South Ossetia where
Russia intervened in 2008 and Abkhazia so there are already Russian forces there so I guess they could
Russia recognizes their independence so I guess they could annex those I'm not really sure what
the what the strategic benefit would be to annexing those two areas but they could I guess and just
formally take them going into the rest of Georgia I think they'd meet a lot of resistance but Georgia
also applied for EU candidacy status last week so you know if the government in Tbilisi
didn't change its policy then maybe there would be risk of an invasion there obviously Russia
borders it so they already beat the Georgians in a war back in 2008 where they didn't have to even
send that many troops the Russians I don't know if the Georgia military has
improved dramatically but there hasn't been the same coverage of investment
into their military so would be a risk but probably a lot less than Moldova for sure
now other places that are at risk would be let me think where to start well we have
the Baltic States and I guess we gotta talk about the Suwalki Gap which goes out from Belarus to
it goes from Belarus to Kaliningrad that's a small piece of territory between you know the
on the border between Lithuania and Poland that separates them so they could be joined up in a
contiguous territory if Russia would have seized that now the big issue of course when we start
talking about the Baltics or Poland is they are in NATO so any attack in those countries would
invoke they could invoke article 5 at the NATO treaty which means that basically the other
member states like the US and UK would be obliged to intervene and actually militarily attack any
Russian forces that were there we basically have World War 3 potentially so I don't think
that's very likely but they could seize Gotland island which is part of Sweden in the Baltics
and Sweden is not a NATO member now it is part of the EU and the other EU members are
supposed to come to their defense spot would France and Germany intervene militarily to
kick the Russians out of Gotland I don't know and the US would not be actually obliged so that's a
possibility and from there then they could launch some attacks on the Baltic States like Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania that were part of the Soviet Union and now become independent
those three states are part of NATO so again article five but for example if Russia were to
use the little green men like in Crimea just these guys show up with guns declaring some people's
republic in Lithuania or Latvia or Estonia where there are concentrations of ethnic Russians or
Russian speakers then it might be you know they have plausible deniability although everyone
would know that they are Russian troops so that is a possibility but I think there's huge risk in
that that those countries would activate article 5 and then you'd have the US involved so I don't
think that's very likely other countries that need to be concerned are Kazakhstan
now Russia actually intervened when there was some civil disturbances in Kazakhstan I guess
about a month ago at this stage maybe a bit more than a month ago and the current leader Tokayev has
consolidated his power with the help of Russia so I don't think they have particularly bad relations
at the moment but the north of Kazakhstan has a lot of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians
used to have a lot of ethnic Germans before as well and there's a lot of resources there so
that is a possibility but if they have good relations with Kazakhstan or the leadership in
Kazakhstan that's unlikely to happen it's a bit like Belarus from that point of view so here we
left we have Finland which is not a member of NATO which is threatening to join NATO same with
Sweden or considering it now because they feel threatened by Russia's new invasion of Ukraine
that they feel well we need basically to have that security umbrella from the US because
just being a member of the EU like Finland is means that you're basically going to be dependent
on defending yourself in conjunction maybe France and Germany been the big states that might help
you but again you know I made my first video on this conflict in December in Kharkiv
and I told the story about how I met the former Estonian president Lennart Meri back in Washington DC
it was like in 2003/2004 and he told me that one of the reasons that he had led Estonia to join
NATO was because he didn't believe that if Russia invaded Estonia that the French and Germans
would come to protect them so definitely there's a concern about that long-standing and Finland has a
very long border with Russia they fought wars with the Soviet Union and Russia it was part of the
Russian empire for a while it wasn't very heavily Russified but with the Winter War they lost some
territory to the Soviet Union and there are the current borders basically today the the were those
that agreement after the Winter War but they did put up violent resistance to the Soviet's invasion
at the time and I guess they have that fighting spirit along their eastern border but they will
be concerned but again they'd probably just look at joining NATO if there really was a big risk of a
Russian invasion on Finland so if I've covered everywhere this stage that's probably at risk
yeah I've covered everywhere that was on my list about where I mean obviously if they were to plow
their way through those countries and Russia would just look at the next target but it's taking them
so long we're already on day 10 of the invasion of Ukraine the new invasion Ukraine by Russia and
things are in spite of what president Putin tried to say last night they are not going to plan
and there's a lot of local resistance and I have no idea how they plan to occupy a country as big
as Ukraine with a population that is definitely not welcoming them with flowers it's taking so
much materiel and potentially more soldiers they nearly have their 200,000 soldiers that were on
the border already in Ukraine I have no idea other than maybe making a beeline for Moldova afterwards
how they can go anywhere else it just seems like this has been a very expensive and
costly endeavor invading Ukraine in the first place that probably all those other countries bar
Moldova can probably sleep soundly when they go to sleep tonight I guess everybody in those countries
should definitely be grateful for the bravery and resilience of the Ukrainian military so far
we have no idea how things are going to end in the conflict but definitely 10 days
was a lot longer than most military analysts from the West that I saw
before the invasion thought they would last for a lot of them thought about three days
and Kyiv would fall but we're on day 10 and that's no doesn't look likely now in the immediate
looking forward immediately now right not today or tomorrow I can't really look further than that so
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