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The filibuster bothers him so much that he still loses sleep over it. He woke up at 3 a.m. on the day last week that Democrats narrowly failed to install a talking filibuster for elections legislation, going over whether there was some way to sway Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to weaken the 60-vote threshold.Calling it Operation: Last Hope, he privately lobbied Manchin on the floor just before the vote.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) walks to the chamber after a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington on Nov. 2, 2021.|AP

In the end, Manchin and Sinema sided against Merkley and with the filibuster. Yet unlike his longtime liberal ally Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who hasencouragedpotential primary challengers to the two centrists, the soft-spoken former statehouse speaker is still courting the hold-outs, no matter the Sisyphean appearance of the task ahead.

I have absolutely no interest in that conversation, Merkley said of trying to find more liberal candidates to run against Manchin and Sinema. I want to come back and have conversations with our colleagues to find a path forward.

Its rare that a devastating loss on the Senate floor is a zenith. But for Merkley, the 48-52 failure on a drizzly Wednesday night amounts to a high point in his 13-year career. Theres no one else in the Capitol as focused on changing the way the Senate operates than Merkley, nor more directly tied to a series of rules changes the chamber has undergone over the past decade.

Merkley and former Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) led the Obama-era charge to scrap the 60-vote threshold on most nominees, helping the then-president overcome GOP opposition to fill out the courts and his Cabinet. Four years later, in 2017, Merkleylaunched a filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch despite Senate Minority Leader MitchMcConnells blockade of Obamas high court nominee Merrick Garland.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) speaks during a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on Capitol Hill on Sept. 24, 2020 in Washington, D.C.|Getty Images

McConnell then promptly changed the rules and eventually confirmed three Supreme Court nominees with simple majorities.

Yet as Merkley sees it, McConnell is unlikely to bend the rules further because his current situation empowerment to block much of Democrats agenda with 41 votes but confirm Supreme Court justices with a simple majority is essentially heads I win, tails you lose for Republicans.

I would be very surprised to see him actually change a situation thats working very well for him, Merkley said of McConnell.

Meanwhile, ever since McConnell eliminated the filibuster for high court nominees, Merkleys worked toward the moment his own partycould go around the opposition leader.

He must be being fed intravenously. Because hes just living on peanut sandwiches and working around the clock, said Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. He laid the foundation on the talking filibuster.

Merkley mulled running for president in 2020 but saw few avenues to distinguish himself in that muddled field. What he saw instead was a wide-open lane to be the Democrats filibuster specialist. In dense, technical presentations to his colleagues, the lanky Oregonian tries to explain whats wrong with the Senate as he hacks through byzantine procedure.

But unlike some progressives, he doesnt support getting rid of the filibuster altogether, reasoning its worth providing protections for the minority party to extend debate. That has helped Merkley make inroads sinceMarch, whenhe started interviewing every single Democratic caucus member on the topic.

Merkley reported back to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he sensed an opportunity on the talking filibuster. Put simply, the reform that Merkley envisions would allow the party in power to eventually pass legislation by a simple majority, only after the minority had exhausted itself on debate. Merkley says this reform would still require bipartisan negotiations, because floor fights over controversial votes could tie up the Senate floor for weeks or months. His view resonated in the caucus, and the talking filibuster gained support as a less drastic option.

Under Merkleys vision of the Senate, it will take so long for majority parties to overcome the talking filibuster on contentious legislation that votes on major party-line legislation will be relatively rare. Merkley estimates that GOP senators could use 450 hours of debate time on sweeping reforms like the elections bill: Thatd be longer than the civilrights debate.

The rest of the time, he sees lonely members blocking a majority vote and then quickly backing down on less major pieces of legislation. These days, a single member of the Senate can demand a 60-vote threshold vote on most bills with just a call to the cloakroom.

He has compelling evidence that use of the current no-effort filibuster spiraled out of control over the past 20 years, but its not an easy sell: One Democratic senator described Merkleys presentation as dry and overly technical. Months ago, Merkley offered to give President Joe Biden his slide presentation but they didnt take me up on that, he said.

He instead educated Bidens chief of staff; ultimately, the president sided with Merkley and endorsed a talking filibuster.

When the vote came down, 47 of Merkley's colleagues sided withhim as well. That included his Washington roommate and longtime filibuster defender Chris Coons (D-Del.), who observed that by virtue of living under the same roof during session weeks hes had dozens of conversations with Merkley about the filibuster.

Sen. Merkley is a warm, engaging, thoughtful person. And a great landlord, Coons said.

Coons was among those who endorsed only the narrowest filibuster change, applying it only to the specific voting and elections bill that came before the Senate this month.

Nonetheless, both parties now have Merkleys proposal asa template to run with the next time they get stymied on a keylegislative goal.

McConnell and most Republicans say they wont do it, as Merkley predicts, but having 48 Democrats on record for an end-around the 60-vote requirement will change the playing field going forward.

It sets a precedent, said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of GOP leadership. I would just remind them that they are the ones that are doing this and that anything goes in the future.

What Ernst sees as a portend, Merkley views as good news. The idea that the minority party can dictate the direction of the Senate is an absolute violation of the philosophy of representative government, he said.

There are now 48 senators deeply convinced that the Senate is broken, he added. It's essential that we fix this. And so, I'm convinced we will.

Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

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Meet the mild-mannered progressive who's breaking the filibuster - POLITICO - POLITICO

This article is part ofTPM Cafe, TPMs home for opinion and news analysis.

If you search for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Google, youll find an overwhelming majority of search results are for the Civil Rights Division. Thats unsurprising the average person is typically more aware of the Civil Rights Divisions work. And it makes sense: As the crown jewel of the DOJ, the division performs the crucial work of enforcing the laws that prohibit discrimination.

But progressives and activists should be tuned into both the work of the Civil Rights Division and the Civil Division, the latter of which has just as much potential to align with progressive priorities, like holding corporations accountable. Civil enforcement actions play a significant role in the DOJs larger corporate enforcement efforts. Progressives have justifiably pushed for a civil rights-minded attorney general, an empowered Civil Rights Division, and a whole-of-government approach to civil rights. The sweeping litigation responsibilities of the Civil Division often slip under the radar but theyre just as relevant to the public interest.

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Case in point: two recent lawsuits against Texas. While the Civil Rights Division is handling the lawsuit against Texas for its discriminatory electoral maps, the Civil Division is handling the lawsuit against Texas for its novel abortion ban.

People consistently overlook the breadth of law and policy that the DOJ touches, and the Civil Divisions lack of visibility is a pertinent example. Among the DOJs eight litigating divisions, Civil is the largest, with over 1,000 attorneys working in six different arenas.

Civil Division attorneys represent the United States and federal government departments, agencies, and employees in both civil and criminal court cases. Civil and criminal attorneys are mandated to collaborate with each other, and often undertake parallel actions to hold corporations accountable (or not) on both civil and criminal charges. As civil cases have more discovery tools than criminal cases, and parallel suits have become the norm, the expansive toolkit for civil investigations has ramifications for a vast swath of cases.

The Civil Division takes on many of the longest, most significant and most complex cases that the government sees. It handles the cases which are so massive and span so many years that they would overwhelm the resources and infrastructure of any individual field office. It is also charged with ensuring that the federal government speaks with one voice in its view of the law, preserving the intent of Congress, and advancing the credibility of the government before the courts.

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The way that Civil Division attorneys choose to represent the governments voice and stance before the courts helps define an administration. They consult and advise other DOJ divisions and the more than 200 federal agencies they represent, from the Department of Education to the Federal Trade Commission.

Lawsuits always proliferate with the transition of power between political parties. In the year since Biden replaced Trump, hundreds of court cases have sought to challenge Trump-era policies and their repeal, as well as new Biden policies. The Civil Division is often in the thick of these lawsuits, arguing the governments side. But how theyll argue isnt set in stone. Attorneys within the Civil Division are the ones that build and argue the cases. These attorneys are an under-scrutinized mouthpiece for the administration, and how they articulate the positions of the country, the government and its agencies has lasting impact.

The DOJ was criticized in June as Civil Division attorneys continued to defend Trump against a woman who accused him of raping her, raising the question of how far the DOJ has emerged from the long shadow of its Trump-era malfunction. But even as Attorney General Merrick Garland stresses the DOJs independence from the White House, the DOJs actions are connected to the administrations larger agenda. For example, attorneys from the Civil Division and the Office of the Solicitor General wrestled this summer with whether it should be the position of the Biden administration that Guantnamo detainees have due process rights. Eventually, they took no position, which is itself a position.

The political leanings and industry ties of DOJ officials also deserve scrutiny. The Revolving Door Project has previously criticized Civil Division head Brian Boyntons connections to predatory for-profit colleges, and Civils Federal Programs Branch head Brian Netters record defending corporate wrongdoing. As a basic principle, those in charge of enforcing corporate accountability should not have spent their careers shielding corporations from being held accountable.

It is worth looking more closely at the Civil Divisions internal structure to get a sense of its considerable responsibilities. Civil Division attorneys work across six branches: Federal Programs, the Appellate Staff, Commercial Litigation, the Office of Immigration Litigation, Consumer Protection, and Torts. Each of these branches covers significant ground.

The 120 attorneys of the Federal Programs Branch represent federal agencies in high-profile litigation. They personally handle serious or novel cases in which federal programs are challenged as unconstitutional or unlawful, with potentially far-reaching implications. These attorneys work across twelve different litigation areas, including housing, agriculture, energy, labor, transportation, and veteran affairs. They are currently arguing on the United States behalf that Texas novel abortion ban is unconstitutional. Theyre also representing several government agencies, including ICE, the DHS and FBI, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU to oppose the government concealing its surveillance of peoples online speech.

Since the Appellate Staff work on cases sent to courts of appeals, these are often hotly contested and consequential cases. Appellate Staff attorneys also work with the Office of the Solicitor General to draft papers for filing in the Supreme Court on the United States behalf. Appellate Staff attorneys, along with the Solicitor General and head of Civil, defended a doctrine before the Supreme Court this spring that shields the U.S. from liability for sexual assualt in the military. This surprising case saw DOJ lawyers and eight Supreme Court Justices side with the defense, while Clarence Thomas was the sole dissenter on the side of the assaulted West Point student and the ACLU.

The Commercial Litigation Branch is Civils largest branch, with 250 attorneys. It brings claims on the United States behalf, and defends claims against the US. . Commercial Litigation Branch attorneys worked on the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma and the Sackler familys case, which finally resulted in a controversial $8 billion dollar settlement last fall a vast sum that still pales in comparison to the multi-trillion dollar cost of the opioid epidemic. After the settlement was widely criticized for granting the Sackler family immunity from future opioid lawsuits, Purdue Pharma pressured the DOJ not to appeal the deal. Another branch of the DOJ, the U.S. Trustee program, or the governments bankruptcy watchdog, did appeal. The case is ongoing, and illustrates the DOJs say in whether the government holds corporations and individuals accountable for making illegal profits at the publics expense.

Attorneys with the Office of Immigration Litigation represent the government and relevant agencies in immigration matters, from prosecuting denaturalization cases to defending the decisions reached by the nations immigration courts. Immigration courts arent actually courts within the judicial branch; they are housed within the DOJs Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), and the judges are attorneys appointed by the Attorney General. Reform advocates have been pushing for immigration courts to become real, independent courts for years. Anyone with interest in immigration reform should be scrutinizing EOIR and how the Office of Immigration Litigation defends EOIRs actions.

Civils up-and-coming Consumer Protection Branch, which has tripled in size since 2017, plays a large role in combating pandemic-related fraud. Current cases include fighting fraudulent COVID-19 treatments, and suing Walmart for its role in the opioid crisis.

And finally, Civils largely unpoliticized Torts branch handles claims related to injury and damage to government property. It endured rare scrutiny this year when Torts attorneys intervened on Trumps behalf in the aforementioned case against a woman accusing him of rape, a move which some have tied to a network of former Kirkland & Ellis lawyers appointed to key Civil Division positions during Trumps administration. Torts attorneys were also involved in the liability trial against BP for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, leading to a record $20 billion dollar settlement. (In that case, Kirkland & Ellis lawyers defended BP.) And Torts attorneys defended the governments actions when victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were exposed to formaldehyde in the Emergency Housing Units FEMA provided to them.

What should be clear from this diverse smattering of cases is that the Civil Division has a hand in some of the most consequential litigation in which the government is involved. More broadly, the Department of Justice should be seen and scrutinized as a powerful arm of the executive branch. Litigation won (and lost) by DOJ attorneys sets legal precedent which defines and outlasts administrations. Even when the DOJ isnt being contorted and manipulated by a corrupt executive like Trump, it has a say in thousands of matters of public interest each year. Progressives and the public alike should look to the DOJ to understand how the Biden administration will interpret and enforce the law, and for the benefit of whom.

Hannah Story Brown is a writer and researcher at the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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DOJ Civil: Progressives Should Pay Attention To The Actions Of This Powerful Litigating Division - TPM

Fourth quarter 2021 earnings at Progressive Corp. fell 43% compared with the same time period a year ago to $962.3 million.

The results were despite the personal and commercial property insurer posting an increase of 13% in net premiums written during the last three months of 2021. Progressive said its fourth quarter combined ratio jumped over 6 points to 94.7 compared with the prior year fourth quarter.

Net income for the full year was about $3.35 billion, a 41% drop from about $5.7 billion in 2020, while net premiums written increased 14%. The companys overall combined ratio for 2021 was 95.3 88.9 from its commercial lines business and 115.3 from personal lines.

For the month of December, net income was down 44% to $393.3 million. While the December combined ratio for Progressives commercial lines was a profitable 85.1, its combined ratio for the property business was 112.8, which included 38.2 points from catastrophe losses due to U.S. storms and tornadoes, and wildfires in Colorado.

The insurer plans to release January results on Feb. 16 and has scheduled an earnings call with analysts for Match 1.

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Progressive Q4, Full Year Net Income Drop Over 40% - Insurance Journal

PARIS In 2019, Emmanuel Macron invited President Vladimir V. Putin to the French summer presidential residence at Brganon, declared the need for the reinvention of an architecture of security between the European Union and Russia, and later pronounced that NATO had undergone a brain death.

The French leader enjoys provocation. He detests intellectual laziness. But even by his standards, the apparent dismissal of the Western alliance and tilt toward Moscow were startling. Poland, among other European states with experience of life in the Soviet imperium, expressed alarm.

Now a crisis provoked by Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border has at once galvanized a supposedly moribund NATO against a Russian threat the alliances original mission and, for Mr. Macron, demonstrated the need for his own intense brand of 21st-century Russian engagement.

Dialogue with Russia is not a gamble, it is an approach that responds to a necessity, a senior official in the presidency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with French government practice, said Friday after Mr. Macron and Mr. Putin spoke by phone for more than an hour.

Later in the day, Mr. Macron spoke to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a move that placed the French leader precisely where he seeks to be ahead of an April presidential election: at the fulcrum of crisis diplomacy on Europes future.

Mr. Macron is walking a fine line. He wants to show that Europe has a core role to play in defusing the crisis, demonstrate his own European leadership to his voters, ensure that Germany and several skeptical European states back his ambitious strategic vision, and avoid giving the United States cause to doubt his commitment to NATO.

He wants to carve out a special role for himself and Europe, in NATO but at its edge, said Nicole Bacharan, a researcher at Sciences Po in Paris. The case for modernizing the European security arrangements in place since 1991 is compelling. But doing it with 130,000 Russian troops at the Ukrainian border is impossible.

Until now, Mr. Macron appears to have held the party line. Cooperation with the United States has been intense, and welcome. The president, one senior diplomat said, was involved in the drafting of the firm American response to Russian demands that the West cut its military presence in Eastern Europe and guarantee that Ukraine never join NATO a response judged inadequate in the Kremlin. Mr. Macron has made clear to Mr. Putin that, as a sovereign state, Ukraine has an inalienable right to make its own choices about its strategic direction.

Still, the itch in Mr. Macron to shape from the crisis some realignment of European security that takes greater account of Russian concerns is palpable.

The French official spoke of the necessity for a new security order in Europe, provoked in part by the decomposition of the old one.

He suggested that various American decisions had caused a strategic disorder, noting that there had been doubt at a certain moment about the quality of Article 5 the pivotal part of the NATO treaty that says an attack on any one member state will be considered an attack against them all.

This was a clear allusion to former President Donald J. Trumps dismissive view of NATO, a stance that the Biden administration has taken pains to rectify. For France, however, and to some degree Germany, the lesson has been that, come what may, Europe must stand on its own two feet because its trans-Atlantic partner could go on walkabout again, perhaps as early as 2024.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Macron have one thing in common: They both believe that the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe needs refashioning.

The Russian leader wants to undo the consequences of the Soviet collapse, which he has called the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century; push NATO back out of formerly Soviet-controlled countries to its posture before enlargement; and enshrine the idea of a Russian sphere of influence that limits the independence of a country like Ukraine.

What Mr. Macron wants is less clear, but it includes the development of a strong European defense capacity and a new stability order that involves Russia. As the French president said of this innovative arrangement in a speech before the European Parliament this month: We need to build it between Europeans, then share it with our allies in the NATO framework. And then, we need to propose it to Russia for negotiation.

The idea of Europe negotiating its strategic posture with Mr. Putin who has threatened a neighboring country, part of whose territory he has already annexed, without any apparent Western provocation makes European nations closer than France to the Russian border uneasy.

When Mr. Macron visited Poland in early 2020 after the scathing comment about NATO and the blandishments to Mr. Putin he was assailed at a dinner for Polish intellectuals and artists.

Dont you know who you are dealing with? demanded Adam Michnik, a prominent writer and historian imprisoned several times by the former Communist regime, according to a person present. Putins a brigand!

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

To which Mr. Macron responded that he knew very well whom he was dealing with, but given the American pivot to Asia it was in Europes interest to develop a dialogue with Russia and avoid a strengthened Russian-Chinese partnership. The Poles were unimpressed.

Mr. Macrons approach to Mr. Putin is consistent with his relations with other strongmen. He has engaged with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia men whose views of human rights and liberal democracy are far removed from his own in the belief that he can bring them around.

Up to now, the results have appeared paltry, as they were when he tried to forge a bond with Mr. Trump that proved short-lived.

The French presidents own views on the critical importance of the rule of law and respect for human rights have been a constant of his politics. His strong condemnation of the treatment of Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian dissident, irked Mr. Putin. He has made it clear that the annexation of Crimea will never be accepted by France. Engagement has not meant abandonment of principle, even if its endpoint is unclear.

Mr. Macron has also maneuvered effectively to use the Normandy Format, a grouping of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia, to bolster the cease-fire agreement the countries brokered in eastern Ukraine in 2015. This diplomatic format has the added attraction for him of showcasing Europeans trying to solve European problems. The French goal in the crisis is clear: de-escalation, a word often repeated.

If the president can be seen to have played a central role in achieving that, he will bolster his position in the election, where he currently leads in polls. The downside risk of his Russian gambit was put this way by Michel Duclos, a diplomat, in a recent book on France in the world: The more it appears that Mr. Macron gains no substantial results through dialogue, the more that dialogue cuts into his political capital in the United States and in anti-Russian European countries.

Nonetheless, Mr. Macron seems certain to persist. He is convinced that Europe must be remade to take account of a changed world. A degree of mutual fascination appears to bind him and Mr. Putin.

The senior French official observed that the Russian president had told Mr. Macron that he was the only person with whom he could have such profound discussions and that he was committed to the dialogue.

That will be music to the French presidents ears.

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How France's Macron Is Approaching the Ukraine Situation - The New York Times

For much of his 22 years in high office, Vladimir V. Putin has worked to carefully balance Russias position in Europe. He ingratiated himself with some capitals as he bullied others, and sought economic integration as he lambasted European values.

Even after Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 sent relations plunging, and Moscow harried some European countries with mass-scale disinformation and near-miss military fly-bys, it reached out to others if not exactly winning them over, then at least keeping diplomacy open.

But, with this winters crisis over Ukraine, Mr. Putin is overtly embracing something he had long avoided: hostility with Europe as a whole.

The more that Europe meets Moscows threats with eastward military reinforcements and pledges of economic punishments, papering over its otherwise deep internal disagreements, the more that Mr. Putin escalates right back. And rather than emphasizing diplomacy across European capitals, he has largely gone over them to Washington.

The shift reflects Moscows perception of European governments as American puppets to be shunted aside, as well as its assertion of itself as a great power standing astride Europe rather than an unusually powerful neighbor. It also shows Russias ambition to no longer simply manage but outright remake the European security order.

But in seeking to domineer Europe, even if only over the question of relations to Ukraine, Theres a risk of pushing Europe together, of amplifying more hawkish voices and capitals, said Emma Ashford, who studies European security issues at The Atlantic Council research group.

And theres the risk of pulling America back in, even as its trying to push America out of Europe, Ms. Ashford added of Moscows approach.

Mr. Putin has not given up on Europe completely. He did have a call with Emmanuel Macron, Frances president, on Friday. And he may still pull back from the crisis in time to recover European relations, or seek to do so once the dust settles.

But, if he persists, analysts warn that his approach could leave Europe more militarized and more divided, though with a Moscow-allied East far smaller and weaker than that in the Cold War.

The Kremlin has repeatedly signaled that, while its concerns with Ukraine may have brought it to this point, it seeks something broader: a return to days when Europes security order was not negotiated across dozens of capitals but decided between two great powers.

As in the late 1960s, direct interaction between Moscow and Washington could give a political framework to a future dtente, Vladimir Frolov, a Russian political analyst, wrote of Moscows ambitions.

This is not entirely a matter of hubris or great power ambition. It also reflects a growing belief in Moscow that this arrangement is, in effect, already so.

After Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, which Western governments punished with economic sanctions, the crisis was meant to be resolved with negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, Paris and Berlin.

Though Washington applied pressure, it urged that the matter be settled among Europeans, hoping for a stable balance on the continent.

But while the letter of the so-called Minsk agreements nominally satisfied Russian demands, the Kremlin came away believing that Ukraine had reneged.

The conclusion in Moscow, by 2019 or so, Ms. Ashford said, was that European states are either unwilling or unable, probably unable, to compel Kyiv to follow through.

This also reinforced long-held views in Moscow that Germanys economic might or Frances diplomatic capital were in a world shaped by hard military power.

Theyre insignificant, theyre irrelevant, so theres this framing in Moscow that we have to talk to the U.S. because theyre the only ones that really matter, Ms. Ashford added.

Military power among the member states of the European Union, which has tried to assert itself as Moscows interlocutor on Ukraine, has substantially declined relative to both the United States and Russia in recent years. This was exacerbated by the departure of Britain.

At the same time, sharp divisions within Europe over how to deal with Russia have left the continent struggling for a coherent approach. The departure of Angela Merkel, Germanys longtime leader, and Mr. Macrons failed bids at unofficial European leadership have left Europe often adrift between an American-led status quo.

Outside of Paris and Brussels, everyone is pretty desperate for U.S. leadership on this crisis, Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told a Brookings Institution conference this week.

All of this means that Russia is somewhat verified in its view that Europe is a U.S. puppet and doesnt really need to be engaged separately, he added.

Though Mr. Putins exact plan for Ukraine remains, by seeming design, a mystery, he has emphasized that his agenda extends to Europe as a whole.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

In past crises over Ukraine, Russias aim has focused narrowly on that country, largely toward a goal of keeping it from aligning with the West. It sought to avoid triggering too much European opposition, and even tried to win European help in protecting its interests in Ukraine.

Now, perhaps as a result of its Ukraine-focused coercion having failed to achieve its objectives, Moscow is demanding an overhaul to the security architecture of Europe itself, by ending or even rolling back NATOs eastward expansion.

Such a change, however it came about, would mean altering the rules that have governed the continent since the Cold Wars end. And it would mean formalizing a line between West and East, with Moscow granted dominance in the latter.

Rather than seeking to manage the post-Cold War order in Europe, in other words, Moscow wants to overturn it. And that has meant attempting to coerce not just Ukraine, but Europe as a whole, making a standoff with the continent not only tolerable but also a means to an end.

The most militarily powerful state on the continent does not see itself as a stakeholder in Europes security architecture, Michael Kofman, a Russia scholar at C.N.A., a research center, wrote in an essay this week for the site War on the Rocks.

Rather, as a result of Moscow rattling that infrastructure or even seeking to pull it down, Mr. Kofman added, European security remains much more unsettled than it appears.

Mr. Putins willingness to accept broad hostilities with Europe could strengthen his hand in Ukraine, by demonstrating that he is willing to risk even the continents collective wrath to pursue his interests there.

But regardless of what happens in Ukraine itself, entrenching a hostile relationship between Russia and Europe sets them down a path that carries uncertainty and risk for them both.

Cycles of sanctions, diplomatic expulsions, and various forms of retaliation, Mr. Kofman wrote, can easily take on a logic of their own, escalating in ways that hurt both sides. Both Russia and Europe are economically vulnerable to one another and already face unstable domestic politics.

Relations between Moscow and European capitals have rarely been warm. But they have, for the most part, plodded along, overseeing, among many other shared concerns, a Russia-to-Europe energy trade on which virtually the entire continent relies.

There is also a risk for the United States: being pulled deeper into a part of the world it had hoped to de-emphasize so it might focus instead on Asia.

Shorter-term, a divided Europe would seem to risk exactly what Moscow has long sought to avoid: more American power in Europes east, and greater European unity, however grudging, against Russia.

The approach that the Kremlin is taking toward Europe right now, on the surface, to me at least, seems quite shortsighted, Ms. Ashford said.

The most concerning possibility, some analysts say, is not that Mr. Putin is bluffing or that he does not see these downsides though either could be true but rather that this is a choice, of dividing Europe against him for the sake of his interests in Ukraine, that he is making willingly.

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Putin Has Long Tried to Balance Europe. Now Hes Working to Reset It. - The New York Times