Posted on 05/30/2022 11:51:54 PM PDT by Enterprise
It was supposed to be a clear-cut, unambiguous invasion. Vladimir Putin’s much larger, richer, and more bellicose Russia staged a shock-and-awe attack on a much smaller, poorer Ukraine. He intended to decapitate the government in Kyiv. Then he would annex the eastern half of the country, and quickly consolidate his easy wins in preparation to ratchet up pressure to force western Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
The rest is history. The Russian military proved ill-equipped and ill-supplied. It was poorly led, with a high percentage of low-morale, conscript troops. Russia had no viable strategic plan to capture, much less hold, the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine was Russia’s version of our Kabul—but tens of thousands of deaths added to the equation.
Russian strategists naïvely believed NATO would become paralyzed in mutual recriminations and fear and follow the usual German prompt of appeasement. In fact, NATO united precisely because of the dire worries over further Russian aggression, as the alliance pressured Germany to back off from its self-interested Russian romance.
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
I still think that this support for Ukraine by NATO is motivated by the untold billions of dollars that a corrupt Ukraine can provide NATO and US politicians more so than any concern for the people of Ukraine.
Exactly, only a complete imbecile would think Russia even wants to occupy all of Ukraine, let alone more of Europe.
That might be true. Doesn’t mean Russian imperialism isn’t the enabler though.
You can’t create a proxy war without a plausible enemy.
Russia’s elites have been talking about restoring the Imperial Rus for twenty years and has been run as the personal piggy bank of a mostly ex-KGB gangster oligarchy for thirty years. The Enemy doesn’t get more plausible than that.
Putin has sidelined anybody looking at a more modern, westernised style of government - that includes Mikhail Khodorkhovsky who first articulated the enormous opportunities of opening Russia up to western standards of business accounting, formal education and training, and embracing the internet.
On the flip side Russian propaganda acts as if European / American values and Nazism are all the same thing, so no matter how the EU or America does business with Russia it’ll always be painted internally as dealing with Nazis.
Support for Ukraine by NATO (in Europe) is based on one far more compelling thing than making money from arms sales while simultaneously whining about the money being spent. That’s an American obsession.
The NATO countries in this side of the Atlantic have to actually live next door to Russia, and we all hear its incessant butt-hurt over losing the Soviet Empire every damned day. Have been for 20 years.
We backed off on Chechnya. And Georgia. And Ukraine in 2014.
Nothing we’ve done to appease Putin has talked him out of his mission to restore the Imperial Rus by conquest.
And he’s running out of non NATO countries to annex. Sooner or later, he’ll call our bluff on Article 5 by invading a Baltic state and sending proxies into Moldova and Poland.
Either we (Europe, not America) just wake up to that being the reality, and spend billions now, and take the pain of sanctions, or we kick the can further down the road.
The longer we dither, the more it’ll cost us overall to bring an end to this Russian conquest fantasy.
And don’t think America isn’t affected if it reverts to sitting it out in world wars for 2-3 years. If the bombs start hitting the USA after years of sitting this conflict out, it’ll be at the behest of a nuclear capable superpower - China and/or a revitalised Russia.
The more Russia succeds, the bigger the prizes start to look for China. If Russia wins, China will make a fortune arming Rusdia. If Russia tests the resolve of the West to repel its pathetic army and wins, China knows it won’t be stopped if it invades another country.
More mindreading.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine never had a plausible cause nor reason to occur.
I generally agree with VDH at least when it comes to current events, history since 1930 and before 1830. He’s all wet on this one though. I don’t think Russia ever intended to take Kiev (they really though they’d take a city of 2.5 million with 40,000 troops? I see no evidence that they ever desired to take all of Ukraine....western Ukraine where the Russians are hated would be a nightmare to hold. It would require most of their army to do it leaving them largely defenseless elsewhere. There’s certainly no evidence Russia had the capacity or desire to try take all of Europe.
Oh, and he apparently still hasn’t gotten the memo that fantasies about the Ukes winning are just that. They are losing. Even the lying corporate media can’t hide that anymore.
Don’t forget the propaganda from both sides completely preventing any truth from rearing it’s ugly head.
I remember all the handwringing before invading Kuwait. And the thing was over in 100 or so hours.
It is not mind reading when the Russians themselves are saying it openly.
Hanson doesn’t speak to the economics of the situation, which will be the deciding factor in the coming months as the world starts freezing their asses off and hunger gnaws at their gut 24/7.
I’m usually a fan of VDH but this is the worst article from him I have ever read.
There are a whole bunch of absurd misstatements — about the independence of Ukraine, really?!? This paragraph was so disconnected from reality it made me gasp.
About Ukraine being a wholly foreign country, as if Russia is fighting on purely unrelated and unfamiliar ground.
What about the history of the east of the country being a part of Russia for centuries, the same ground they are fighting on right now? He mentions only Crimea along these lines.
What about the big part of the citizens where Russia is fighting are ethnic Russians. And that they faced gross oppression, with the banning of their political parties, TV stations, and newspapers. Their kids can’t even learn in Russian in universities and schools. Even now exclusively Russian speakers face gross discrimination in Western Ukraine, being refused humanitarian aid (I saw videos today proving it).
NO mention that Ukraine intentionally sent atrocity loving extremists to ethnically cleanse and torture them under Poroshenko. Then they “disbanded” these war crime units only to place them in top positions in their regular military. As a person who went to Ukraine every year, this is the biggest disconnect I have with freeper views — people who claim these extremists don’t exist or are exaggerated. They are celebrated, trained, indoctrinated by this government, and pushed right in the face of ethnic Russians for years.
Zelensky was elected under a promise to negotiate with Russia and end the conflict. But he promptly went back on it and continued the bombing East Ukraine, refusing to accept autonomy under Minsk.
NO mention that Zelensky hinted about persuing getting nuclear weapons only a couple days before the conflict escalated with a Russian invasion. NO mention promises not to expand NATO. NO mention that Kissenger said long ago that if Ukraine isn’t neutral then it will be ruined.
He also grossly misrepresents the nature of “sanctions”. They were not as slow moving as he says.
The initial attempt was to instantly topple the Russian government, create hyper-inflation and a total shutdown of their economy. It was an extremely fast moving and coordinated effort to ruin Russia.
That was the intention behind seizing 300 billion dollars from their foreign exchange accounts, and making foreign exchange in dollars and Euros impossible.
The idea was to create extreme and sudden instability in Russia and effect regime change. Somehow VDH doesn’t even convey the nature of this plan at all. If it had worked as planned it would have been as extreme as a nuclear bomb. And was Russia expected to just take it and not respond?
Somehow VDH just doesn’t properly address this. The aforementioned plan was an attempt to utterly kill and weaken Russia forever.
I’m not sure what is coming but the west seems to think they can plot to “permanently weaken” Russia and scheme for regime change and they expect Russia to just take it without doing anything back.
VDH says about a military attempt to topple Russia — “Such an escalation is certainly on strategical and moral grounds justified against an aggressor who sought to ruin a modern country and to lay it waste.”
Well, the west has now attempted to ruin a modern country and lay it to waste. Over a country that wasn’t part of NATO or the EU.
So what is Russia not justified in doing to us by VDH’s logic here?
Meanwhile, millions are going to starve and become refugees due to sanctions on Russian delivery of grain and fertilizer. Does that fit anywhere in the moral calculations here?
In Central Europe, the motivations for supporting Ukraine are
1. The Poles, Romanians, Baltics, Czechia etc know about Russian atrocities.
2. They also have a real fear that if Ukraine collapse, they would be best on the crosshairs.
Putin since 2001 has lamented the fall of the USSR and has looked to bring it back, first in Georgia in 2008, then Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and then the next step was exactly as the article describes, an aim go grab all lands east of the Dniesper and make the rest into a vassal state that would be assimilated in a few years.
They got Crimea with less soldiers.
The Russians believed their own propaganda and thought they would be welcomed as liberators. hence the small number of troops.
Once again, somebody started a vast project with half-vast ideas.
Hubris and overconfidence work, however indirectly, on the side of good. Even though there is little good so far in the events occurring in Ukraine, this has left the Russian Federation in a much weakened state, reeling and suffering severe internal collapse from economic pressures, both from the war effort and international pressure.
Putin has two choices - suffer the effects of a Pyrrhic victory, or withdraw ignominiously. Not much of an up side for Russians either way.
Well, I don’t have USA MSM. The media in Poland was more circumspect.
Ukraine has won by staying independent.
As yo the situation in the Donbas m it is still open. Even if Putin takes over territory there is no guarantee he can keep control of a bellicose population.
Feb 24th I believed Ukraine would fold in days. It didn’t.
3xmonths later, it’s still alive. That’s a victory
” about the independence of Ukraine, really?!? This paragraph was so disconnected from reality it made me gasp.”
Your Kremlin history books are in error.
Kievan Rus had multiple daughters. Three survived to today. Muscowy, Ukraine and Bialorus.
You conflate Muscowy with all eastern Slavs. It isn’t.
Muscowy since Alexander Nevsky, was a tax collector for the Mongol Khagans. Later they took over the Golden horde and then the Chagatai Khanates before reaching Mongolian urus itself.
Muscowy is a daughter of both Rus and the Mongol khaganate, with more emphasis on it being a khaganate
“What about the history of the east of the country being a part of Russia for centuries”
That’s false.
The east of the country from 1250 to 1750 was part of the Golden Horde. From 1920 to now it was part of various independent and semi independent Ukrainian political entities.
So are you saying that present day “Russia”, ie Muscowy, is a successor and continuation of the Mongol golden horde?
“citizens where Russia is fighting are ethnic Russians.”
AMD the ones fighting Putin’s army the strongest are Russian speakers.
Heck, even Zelensky is a native Russian speaker.
Thanks to Putin, the eastern Ukrainians are no longer ambivalent about Ukraine and Russia, but are firmly Ukrainian.
Thanks to Putin
I am FAR more concerned about our current own government GANGSTERS and their MIC Oligarchy than I am about Russia, frankly.
“Their kids can’t even learn in Russian in universities and schools. “
The official language in Ukraine is... Ukrainian.
You can set up an international school with the medium of Instructions as English or french or Russian.
But public schools are in Ukrainian.
You support public schools in the USA having Spanish or German or Mandaras medium of Instructions?
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