Posted on 02/23/2022 6:37:16 AM PST by Kaslin
Russian tanks and mechanized infantry have invaded Ukraine's Donbas and occupied the so-called secessionist enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin calls his armored forces "peacekeepers," sent to protect ethnic Russians threatened by Ukrainian genocide.
No one sane believes it. Putin leverages the bloody script Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia used in the 1990s to justify invading Bosnia and Croatia, waging a war in Europe that left some 250,000 dead.
In 2008 Putin used his version of the script. He sent special forces and infantry into Georgia, igniting the Russo-Georgian War. He claimed breakaway enclaves South Ossetia and Abkhaz faced ethnic cleansing.
The Bush administration airlifted a Georgian infantry brigade from Iraq to Tbilisi. The American reaction curbed the Kremlin's aggression and led to a ceasefire. Putin, however, kept soldiers in the enclaves.
In 2014 Putin's script included new lines. Early 2014: Russian agitators orchestrated incidents to "prove" the propaganda that violent "Ukrainian fascists" threatened Russians living in Crimea. February 2014: Putin launched a quick invasion of Crimea, using Russian special operations forces in unmarked green uniforms. Russia was recovering lost territory and protecting Russian ethnics!
March 2014: Putin annexed Crimea. For the first time since WWII, military aggression in Europe by a major European power led to annexation and territorial expansion. Moreover, Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, a multilateral diplomatic agreement guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity.
In April 2014 the murderous drama began again. Ethnic Russian agitators in eastern Ukraine demanded political unification with Mother Russia. A suspicious group in Donetsk begged the Kremlin to send "temporary" peacekeeping troops.
And ever since, eastern Ukraine has suffered a slow war of creeping Russian aggression.
This week the war escalated, drastically. On Feb. 21 Putin announced that the two Ukrainian enclaves are independent countries. My bet on his next move: they become Russian territory.
At the strategic level Putin made the war a direct challenge to the NATO alliance. No, Ukraine isn't a NATO nation, but Poland is, and Poland is worried. So are the Baltic states. Putin sees divisions in NATO, and he is exploiting them.
Huge spikes in energy prices -- petro-rubles swelling Putin's military budget -- fueled this week's aggression. High oil prices give the Kremlin money to spend on war.
The single largest error in judgment contributing to the price surge? President Joe Biden's decision to stifle U.S. oil fracking and kill the Keystone pipeline. Biden's "green policies" also undermine U.S. energy independence, and Americans are paying an economic price. We've a bitter example of an incompetent and ignorant White House inflicting major damage to U.S. foreign policy and our own domestic economy.
Now Biden and NATO dither on how to penalize Russia. Germany's Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia is on hold. Putin expected that. Attacking Russian finances will hurt, but Russian troops in Ukraine are now a hard fact on the ground. They have advantageous positions with relatively little bloodshed. Adolf Hitler did the same when his forces re-militarized the Rhineland on March 7, 1936.
What's Putin's strategic goal? We've known for quite some time. Putin is assembling the RUBK -- "Rubik" as in the puzzle Rubik's Cube.
I'll quote from a column I wrote in November 2004. At some point a Russian leader would emerge who would try "to return to super-power status..." and restore key elements of the Soviet Union's empire. This leader would attempt "to link the core empire strength: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (RUBK)...
"Russia, plus Ukraine, plus Belarus, plus Kazakhstan is a geo-strategic formula for a global power re-born."
One last quote: "In 2004, the Kremlin of President Vladimir Putin still sees the economic benefits of a RUBK federation. He also sees it as a way to bring ethnic Russians back inside the borders of Mother Russia."
Putin denies he seeks to recreate the Soviet Union. He lies.
It’s laughable that there’s still people who believe Ukraine is an actual country.
Just like Hitler and Western European powers before WWII.
Indeed.
And yet today the Czech Republic and Slovakia are separate nations as agreed in 1993. Since then they have amicable relations, different languages being among the distinctions. Both were a part of what was once the Austro-Hugarian empire, so borders have changed and changed again, as has governance. And both, though having gone through their "Velvet divorce," cooperate as members of the European Visegrád Group.
I worked a while in Prag, and recommend seeing the city center.
And parts of what is now Ukraine once belonged to Czechoslovakia.
Been to Prague, and to Bratislava, enjoyed both cities.
If Trump was still president none of this would be happening.
Media and democrats go back into closet play stink finger.
You are a lucky character for having seen them. Lovely people, and the beer.....
Estonian is not Finnish but it belongs to the same language family.
Putin's actions are in keeping with a long line of Russian rulers such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. During the Soviet period the question sometimes was posed whether the Kremlin's actions were part of the desire to spread world Communism or just in keeping with traditional Russian expansionism.
It was Khrushchev, not Stalin, who added Crimea to Ukraine.
There is no reason to think that Putin will stop with Ukraine.
Stalin’s policies were more Czar-like than Lenin-like. I think Lenin would have been appalled by Stalin’s Russification policies. Lenin despised all forms of Russian Nationalism.
Re: So, what of Putin?
I do not know enough Russian history to speculate.
I do know that over the last five centuries, Ukraine has had many occupiers.
Turks, Asians, Poles, and, of course, Russians.
Putin is a tough guy. He knows that NATO is not going to risk nuclear war over Ukraine.
Expansion into the Baltic countries, maybe?
The Belarus leadership seems to want union with Russia. I have never understood why that has not happened.
Communists definitely perceive more land and more population as an intrinsic good.
I’ve never been to Prague, but did visit Bratislava when it was still under Communist rule. It seemed pretty drab then—no doubt much better now. I got into a conversation with an Austrian woman who was also there as a tourist—she said it reminded her of the Soviet occupation zone in Vienna (before 1955)—nobody fixed anything.
No, he decided to invade after Biden gave Russia permission.
“Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said Wednesday evening(January 20, 2022). “And it depends on what it does.”
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera,” he continued. “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine.”
Well, Biden got the “minor incursion” he asked of Putin.
See link for quote of Biden speech https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ukraine-president-zelenskyy-pushes-back-biden
Prague is utterly amazing. Bratislava is a beautiful city in its own right. I found going out into the country to some of those little towns felt as if I had gone back in time. Bardio Kupele, Kosice, Levoca....some have been untouched since the Middle Ages. They are living museums. It would be a crying shame if any modern war or conflict affected them in any way.
...in part to Hunter Biden, and those other famous Democrats and an Assistant Democrat or two. The amount of attention paid to Ukrainian "interests" by American politicians with their hands in that cookie jar was problematic enough to warrant lots and lots of "fact-checking" in which clever parsing of words "proved" that "somebody did something somewhere."
I think Brandon’s “minor incursion” was an off teleprompter goof base on his briefing prior to reading his press statement.
It’s late 1930’s Europe all over the world now
Most people visit Bratislava as a day-trip from Vienna, as it’s only an hour away, IIRC Vienna-Bratislava are the two closest capital cities in the world.
Ditto with what was East Germany.
"Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by some necessity of their nature, they rule wherever they can."
I want to go to the High Tatry Region. I hear it’s much prettier and less touristy than the Polish-side.
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