Standing Up to Putin Is the Way Out of Ukraine
I can’t believe I have to say this. Anybody who thinks the President of the United States has much of anything to do with gas prices is just plain stupid. Vladimir Putin will likely be sending his thanks for the Republican politicians who are distracting attention away from the onset of World War Three.
Big oil companies, flush with price gouging influenced windfall profits, are having it both ways. As Judd Legum notes today, the American Petroleum Institute has gone all in with a pr campaign saying the invasion of Ukraine is President Biden’s fault because he dared to consider taxes on the industry and advocate for a clean energy future.
API presents itself and the fossil fuel corporations it represents as the solution to Russian aggression. But American oil and gas companies have spent years partnering with Russia, bolstering Putin's regime with a critical source of cash and influence. API, meanwhile, has consistently, and often successfully, sought to block or weakened sanctions proposed in response to Russian aggression.
This is a matter of patriotism, not partisan politics. The price we’re going to be asked to pay is nothing compared to what 44 million Ukrainians are already doing.
The situation isn’t reversible. Declaring a ceasefire in Ukraine won’t end it. The only way out is up, and by that I mean a united world must avail itself of the opportunity to rid itself of pestilence; to choose light over darkness, freedom over autocracy.
Pay close attention to what's going on and you’ll understand. Years of official and unofficial (even though it’s the same source) stenography have left much of the media in a bad place when it comes to reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Today, I’ll bring you up to speed on some news deemed inconsequential based on reporting from Ukraine. Not everything is vetted the way I’d like it to be, but these stories do seem to fit into a larger context. Read on and you’ll feel smarter.
Many Western analysts have been surprised at just how good the Ukrainians are at the misinformation game. It’s been focused on undermining the morale of Russian troops, and most likely is jam packed with tales of mass desertions and sabotage. Confessions of persons purported to be Russian soldiers who have surrendered have flooded social media.
The Ukrainians have the advantage of having a leader whose media smarts have made mass subterfuge aimed at other countries unnecessary. Volodymyr Zelenskyy simply calls/zooms people directly to tell the Ukrainian story. It’s authentic, it’s got an air of drama, and –most importantly for Americans– a big dash of White Knight syndrome.
The Russians, on the other hand, have tried to sell a narrative to the Western powers that’s largely failed. They’ve dug deep into their arsenal of would-be justifications this week by saying they have intelligence about Ukraine building a dirty nuclear weapon. Last week they were trying to sell the west a story about a Nazified Ukrainian resistance headed by a Jew.
Analysts like Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman do attempt to inject some historical (western) context in TV coverage, but they are more than counterbalanced by retired military officers who weren’t good enough to make the jump to the private sector, and idiot legislators talking out their asses.
Here’s a military “has been”.
What’s going on in Ukraine isn’t a horse race; there is now no finish line for any of the combatants–everybody loses this round. This isn’t going to be quick.
Vladimir Putin and his inner circle really thought they could neutralize Ukraine in less than a week (cleanup would take another few days) and in doing so induce acquiescence to their might through Eastern Europe. NATO would be in shambles, thanks to disunity introduced by the Former Guy. And the politically polarized North American powers would be unable to meaningfully intervene.
Sidebar: I, for one, don’t believe for an instant that, in a country (Canada) with very high vaccination levels, a “mass movement” of truckers would suddenly pop up out of nowhere.
Things haven’t worked out as expected for the Russians. The intelligence used to make advance decisions about their immediate foe was flawed. Somehow they thought logistics for multipronged attack on a geographically large nation wouldn’t be a problem. Equipment was substandard, as well as morale for their troops.
Years of everybody at every level telling their superiors what they wanted to hear while stealing hand over fist led to an invasion force easily thwarted by a motivated population.
What’s even worse is that the Russians have been unable to find a stooge willing to head whatever government they hoped to install. Viktor Medvedchuk, the pro-Russian People's Deputy of Ukraine, the former Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine from pre-2014,Yuriy Anatoliyovych Boyko, Eastern Ukraine’s seperatist leader Oleg Anatolyevich Tsaryov, and even Former President of Ukraine during the pro-Russia era,Viktor Yanukovych have all reportedly distanced themselves from offers of post-invasion leadership.
The U.S. strategy of sharing (somewhat sanitized) intelligence on the Russians with anybody who’d listen worked to set the stage for the most unity seen among Western leaders since WWII. Rather than having to fight to get increasing stages of sanctions implemented, President Biden has been urging restraint as logistics get worked out.
One thing that won’t happen is the establishment of a no-fly zone in Ukraine’s airspace. Such a step would place U.S. or NATO forces in the position of engaging directly with Russian airpower. That’s a horrible idea, because once it starts, who is going to keep Russian planes out of NATO airspace? If you’re going to take on Russia’s military directly, you’d better be prepared for a no limit conflict.
Saddle up Sen. Ted Cruz in a jet to be the first to cross the border and then we can have that discussion.
The largely untold story at this point has been the U.S/European military response. One of the largest airlifts in history happened over the past couple of weeks.
From the New York Times:
In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other major cities. So far, Russian forces have been so preoccupied in other parts of the country that they have not targeted the arms supply lines, but few think that can last..
…To understand the warp-speed nature of the arms transfers underway now, consider this: A $60 million arms package to Ukraine that the U.S. announced last August was not completed until November, the Pentagon said.
But when the president approved $350 million in military aid on Feb. 26 — nearly six times larger — 70 percent of it was delivered in five days. The speed was considered essential, officials said, because the equipment — including anti-tank weapons — had to make it through western Ukraine before Russian air and ground forces started attacking the shipments. As Russia takes more territory inside the country, it is expected to become more and more difficult to distribute weapons to Ukrainian troops.
Within 48 hours of Mr. Biden approving the transfer of weapons from U.S. military stockpiles on Feb. 26, the first shipments, largely from Germany, were arriving at airfields near Ukraine’s border, officials said.
What is also in the works is additional airpower is being supplied to the Ukrainians, thanks to a three-way deal with Poland. (What we’re telling Taiwan, which was supposed to get some the F-16s headed to Poland, is another story)
The Russians have few battlefield options at this point. Bombing the hell out civilian areas is already in progress. Their perilous long term financial position (June is about as far as they can fake it) threatens to take the country back to the 1990s, complete with food shortages and fiefdoms of oligarchs competing for the crumbs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Russians are now trying to recruit Syrians to join their cause, hoping their experience in urban warfare will turn the tide in Kyiv. On the other side, CNN reports that more than 16,000 foreign fighters from around the world are already in Ukraine to fight for Zelenskyy.
Occupying a country the size of France will take a minimum of half a million troops just for maintaining some sort of peace. And, as the Russians have already discovered, the nightmare of logistics comes at a huge cost.
One battle that nobody thinks has started yet will be major cyber operations. The Russians have yet to show their hand, and some counterintelligence officials say we “would be well advised to expect the unexpected, a shock on the order of Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor or Al-Qaeda’s audacious 9/11 plot.”
The U.S. has moved its cyber operations center out of Kyiv to another country. While there have been defensive efforts against Russian military intelligence actions, it’s likely that both sides are waiting for the other to show the aces up their sleeve.
The possibility of a localized nuclear strike in Ukraine exists, but it won’t be done for any military objective. Scaring everyone else would be the goal, making a horrified world consider negotiations, lest the next bomb get dropped.
Such an act won’t get Putin what he really wants, which is credit for bringing the Russian empire back into glory. If he drops the bomb, he loses.
The greatest “lesson” to be learned from the Ukrainian invasion is when people stand up against Putin, who has consistently calculated that they won’t, he has no plan B. Now is the time to do the right thing, which is to put the Russian “Z” symbol into the trash heap of history next to the swastika.
David French summarizes the situation well in his essay, On The Enduring Power of Malevolent Leaders:
In more peaceful times, the “fight” between freedom and power is limited to words, to books and essays and debates. But now that fight rages on the battlefield in Ukraine. One the one side is the Russian Napoleon, seeking to build his empire, a man who has bonded to his people by appealing to their pride, imbuing them (for a time) with terrible purpose.
He casts a vision of a new Russian empire, a vision “to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory,” bonded by religion, victorious in war, and demands to know, “What greater thing is there?”
“To be free,” respond the people of Ukraine. And so they take their place on the line, fighting the ancient battle against the ancient foe, the leader who unleashes the darkness in the hearts of men.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com