The concept was very clearly to slowly push Putin red line, let him walk it back a little, rince and repeat. Because like it or not, Putin has nuclear weapons and that’s enough of a threat to not take the risk of skipping steps up the escalation ladder.

I mean it took 4 or 5 laps between him asking and the team getting around to do something. So yeah he lost the tire advantage by that point and the entire thing became rather useless.