Thank you, for making a reasonable, thoughtful post.
Here’s my take. The clear effort is to divide the EU and US over the Ukraine. That’s the point of making the tape public. She now has to give the pro forma apologies that neither she nor anyone really cares about, and from the Russkie perspective hopefully it drives one more wedge into a crack somewhere. Probably won’t, but feh, who knows.
Thing is, if they’re pulling these kind of public stunts (and that’s all it is really), then they are pretty concerned about the Ukraine and the direction things are heading. They’ve had some pretty dramatic reversals in the last month, so are feeling the pressure to do anything they can to keep the Ukraine from falling farther under the influence of the EU versus Moscow.
“Fuck the EU!” I tend to agree with those who have pointed out that seems to be the feelings of a not-insignificant part of the population of the EU itself anyway, so pretty much the only people who’d be expected to act butthurt would be those with jobs involving EU leadership.
The USA cares about its interests above anybody else’s? Ya think?
… but I will agree also with those who wonder what person working in this field still believes the content of this sort of communications is either materially or morally secure. Besides, you do not have to say “Fuck the EU”, you can say: “The EU? Let’s not waste our time trying to go along with them” and it’s the same meaning, less crass but still very blunt.