Sorry in advance for the length, no simple way to describe it.
There are real problems with former east Bloc countries and threats of ME refugees being released into the EU through their borders. It's off the front burner momentarily because of the cold weather, but will return when the weather warms. Western Europe is relatively mild on the plains, so February and on will have 40 & 50 degrees days.
Problem is the EU rules say those refugees need to be handled by the first member country they enter.. Add to that, the EU dictating to those countries what their policies for migrants should be, and what their "fair share" of refugees should be if distributed equally EU wide. Further, EU has been tossing around sovereignty claims over individual country's constitutions.
Germany is causing problems, IMO, because they're pro-migrant. That's like, as an example, Kansas saying they're pro-migrant, come on up, while letting border states deal with the influx. So you have German NGOs organizing migrant ships into Italy and Greece, and those countries are having to quarter them. Migrants are now being flown into Minsk, and brought to the Polish border. Don't know who's organizing the flights.
Germany will also have their hand on the Russia to EU natgas spigot with NS II.
Nutshell, then, is that the Russians have the EU by the short hairs, and with that, NATO. Former East Bloc get missile silos, which make them a Russian target, but no promise of a unified NATO response in case of a Russian effort to remove the silos. They're basically a Western Europe buffer zone, with a, now, very iffy reliance on US help if the SHTF. There is no credible NATO threat without the US.
Brandon is considered unreliable, and the new German government is questionable in respect to handling the Russian issue objectively, IMO. The FM is a Green, and looks, to me, like she's an AOC, NZ's Ardern type. Ran on standing up to Putin as only a woman can, or some such horseshit. She was in Moscow to see Lavrov on Tuesday past. No reports of that meeting came out, AFAIK. Wednesday Spiegel drops a report that she's being looked into by the State of Berlin's Attorney for embezzling Covid funds. Then you have the Navy Commander being forced to resign for comments about the need to respect Putin. In short, good chance, from the East Bloc's perspective, that the new German government will fuck things up.
TL;DR; Putin is going to split the EU and NATO. No better opportunity with peripheral issues (energy/migrants) that are pissing the former East Bloc off. Brandon has to talk shit and threaten, like he always does. Don't think the US peeps will back him, though. That might be why the Russians are bashing Brandon's crew in the press. Russian Kayleigh and Lavrov can shitpost with the best of them.
My 2 cents, for what it's worth.