Nope, I’m not rewriting history years later. I said the same at the time. Putin sent in enough troops to rattle Zelensky into making a peace deal, and it nearly worked. No one who knows anything about real war would imagine the numbers were sufficient to conquer and occupy Ukraine.
Maybe “most everyone assumed Ukraine was going to disappear from the list of nations, and quickly” but not I. I didn’t buy the spin coming out Washington. I’ve seen that schtick before. Oh horrors! The eeevilll Russians are going to gobble up Ukraine! Oh wait, oh wow, the plucky Ukrainians are saving the day! Ghost of Kiev! Snake Island! Same old playbook they always use. Good grief, Charlie Brown. At least they didn’t repeat the babies being tossed out of incubators (Kuwait) or the stupid Viagra rape (Libya) nonsense.
I recognized immediately how the supposed offer from Washington to evacuate Zelensky from Kiev answered by his declaring “I need ammunition, not a ride” as reported in the news was likely cooked up in one of Ukraine’s American PR/lobbying firms. Finally, WaPo did a bit of “innoculation” or “damage control” or whatever you want to call it (after all, the smell of a PR man was strong):
Yes, it’s how we do things. Kuwait had Hill & Knowlton (who cooked up the incubator babies); Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Kosovo’s KLA had Ruder Finn (who cooked up all kinds of stuff) — and remember how the first thing Hillary wanted the Libyan “rebels” to do with the funds she gave them was to hire a Washington PR/lobbying firm? Ukraine has a whole stable of PR/lobbying firms, including good old Hill & Knowlton. They spend millions on them, but get billions back from our pockets.
Anyway, in all fairness, I might well have fallen for it if I had not seen up close and personal how we do this stuff in our previous foreign adventures. I can’t fault you for believing it. And you will go on believing it. I used to believe this stuff. Then I saw for myself how we did this stuff in foreign lands. What has been seen cannot be unseen. We have different life experiences, and cannot agree on this. Time will tell how it all turns out.
You didn’t say that here, but you have been seeing things in that meeting that aren’t there, for years.