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All Is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front
As we focus on our own problems in the United States, the Russian war against Ukraine continues. There is also a cold war between a Russian proxy, Belarus, against Poland and Lithuania that involves immigration.
Belarus invites Middle East immigrants to come to Belarus. Belarus then deposits these immigrants on the Polish and Lithuanian borders and tries to force them to cross into Poland and Lithuania. The goal is to destabilize two NATO nations.
Ukraine is not a NATO nation but the United States is selling Ukraine Javelin anti-tank missiles to defend against Russian tanks in the Donbass region of Ukraine. They are also purchasing drones from Turkey, and Turkey plans to allow Ukraine to produce the Bayraktar T2B in Ukraine.
From Radio Free Europe:
Ukrainian government forces have used a Turkish-supplied armed drone for the first time against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, in a development condemned by the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian military posted a video on Facebook on October 26 that it said showed a Bayraktar T2B destroying a Russian-made howitzer in a separatist-controlled area.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces said the advanced drone was used “for the first time” to suppress artillery fire that killed a Ukrainian soldier and wounded another. After the strike, the shelling of Ukrainian positions stopped.
“The unmanned aerial vehicle did not cross the line of contact and destroyed with a guided bomb one artillery piece with a crew of Russian occupation forces,” the military said in a statement.
Turkey has sold Ukraine Bayraktar drones and Kyiv plans to buy dozens more to deploy to eastern Ukraine, where Russia has backed separatist forces in a seven-year war that has killed more than 13,200 people since April 2014.
In September, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country plans to build a factory to produce the drones in cooperation with the Turkish drone maker, Baykar.
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Published in Military
I think Putin believes the benefits of conflict between Turkey and the rest of NATO are worth a few casualties among Russian and its allied troops in Syria and Ukraine.
It will be particularly significant when this gets the US to withdraw nuclear bombs from Turkey.
He knows we have a dud in the WH – don’t think he doesn’t have big plans to re-make the Russian empire. I agree with the chess game – the pieces are being set up.
Yeah. Keeping people IN totally different from keeping people OUT in the Democrat world.
I meant the one in San Fran, so maybe I should have said “wall” rather than “fence” but oh well.
I don’t think that we’re going to fight for Ukraine. I don’t think that anybody is going to fight for Ukraine. That’s been clear since 2014. This doesn’t particularly bother me, as I don’t think that we have any vital interest in Ukraine.
My own conclusion is that the only thing really keeping Putin from rolling into Kiev is Putin. I do think that he’s too smart for that. Occupations are expensive and messy, as the Russians learned in Afghanistan, and we just learned again.
I’ve found John Mearsheimer to be convincing on this point. Mearsheimer’s analysis is that Putin doesn’t want Ukraine. He wants a buffer zone. We were foolish enough to ignore Russia’s need for a buffer zone, and tried to push NATO right up to the Russian border, even supporting a coup in 2014 against an elected Ukrainian government friendly to Russia. This prompted Putin to take Crimea (which he did want, now has, and is not going to give back).
I don’t think that Putin is trying to conquer Ukraine. He’d just rather wreck it than allow NATO to have yet another outpost on Russia’s border.
The way to solve the problem, I think, is to bury the hatchet with Russia, try to get a deal that won’t be too bad for the Ukrainians, and set up a path to getting Russia’s help against the real threat in China.
I agree, Putin has what he wants with the warm water port on the Black Sea. We will make a lot of noise verbally, that’s about it.
When I was first learning about Russian TV on the Internet, back around 2005, I was struck by how obsessed Russian TV news was with Ukraine. It paid quite a bit of attention to the U.S., too, but it was nothing compared to its obsession with Ukraine. It’s not just a neighbor to serve as a buffer zone. There are other countries that serve that purpose, but they don’t get the kind of attention that Ukraine gets.
Ukraine has been called the Heart of Russia by Russian’s. However Ukrainians have never been called the Heart of Russia. Ukrainians have been starved to death by Stalin, and Ukrainian professors, priests, and professionals were shot, or disappeared into labor camps, never to be seen again.
Perhaps Ukrainian’s Estonians, Latvian’s, Lithuanian’s, Pole’s, Hungarians, Czech’s, Slovak’s, and Romanian’s have no desire to live under the benevolent government of a former KGB agent.
Then again Russian’s for a European Piece is much different than Russian’s for a European Peace. What does Russia have that its’ neighbor’s don’t have? A good neighbor.
Jerry – Russia wants Ukraine and everything else……..
All they have to do is take it. Far as I am concerned they can have Europe
That statement says very little regarding the prospects for actions.