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The Great Betrayal
All the wonderful words about how we should not get involved with Russian imperial ambitions of seeking a European piece. Yet we are willing to sell other nations into Russian slavery, something that a former US President did at Yalta. A former President who was not much more than the current President when it comes to mental health.
As inconvenient as the suffering of Ukrainians might be to our own way of life and the lofty rhetoric from the Founders who could never imagine that there might come a day when hypersonic missiles would negate the five or more days that it would take for sailing vessels to appear off the American coast is rather odd.
Perhaps we should remind Putin that we are trying to do him a favor. That favor would be we are trying to keep him away from the Polish border. Poland is more than capable and has a good reason to kill Russians. If Putin thinks that killing Ukrainians is a rough business, he has no clue that Poland will be where the new Czar’s dreams will die.
Never forget.
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Published in History
“… the extent of the natural gas deposits is unsure & most of the discovery post dates the 1st Russian invasion. Putin clearly is not clairvoyant so that was not near his primary motivation. …”
Nope. No clairvoyance was needed whatsoever. Behold this piece from early … 2014:
“Ukraine came close to inking a deal with a consortium of international oil companies that would have led to an initial $735 million investment to drill two offshore wells. The consortium led by ExxonMobil – with stakes held by Shell, Romania’s OMV Petrom, and Ukraine’s Nadra Ukrainy – had been particularly interested in the Skifska field in the Black Sea, which holds an estimated 200 to 250 billion cubic meters of natural gas.”
Link:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Russia-Eyes-Crimeas-Oil-and-Gas-Reserves.html
A pittance compared to what Russia already had:
s 1,688 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves
not enough to justify going to war for- Putin’s goals are much more than some gas- he wanted to reaquire the Soviet empire, split NATO & dominate Western Europe.
Nearly all of those reserves are in far away northern Siberia, buried under permafrost. Crimean nat gas (and, let’s not forget, oil) is much easier. Added strategic bonus (for Russia), and probably even more important: Ukraine no longer has them.
At this moment, but stay tuned….
There is a difference between what Putin cannot do and what he believes he can do. I don’t think the Russian military is capable of taking on Poland. Polish troops and pilots have better training, and better weapons.
I suspect that the Russian tip of the spear in Ukraine has been blunted. The original 100,000 Russian troops that began the February invasion of Ukraine are exhausted and in disarray. It suggests to me their losses have cratered morale. It indicates a high loss rate, probably thousands of experienced full time Russian military soldiers have been lost in Ukraine.
The mobilization of so-called Russian reservists will be ineffective. Russian reservists have had one to two years of military service but no follow up reserve training. For example, American reservists have monthly training and summer training, Russian conscripts do not. They will become cannon fodder.
Kiev could not be taken and now Russia is losing ground in the north and east in the new four so called annexed provinces.
Things may change but once again it all depends upon what Putin thinks he can do, not what he cannot do. Putin has no military background and has never been in combat.
You’ve heard of the Six Day War?
The Poles would shave a day and a half off of that.
Same is true of the President of Poland. Does that mean that he, too, would have trouble distinguishing between the two in the event of having to lead his country’s defense against the imagined Putin invasion?
PS:
Same, btw, is true of the heads of government in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Norway, and … Ukraine. Not to mention the US, UK, Germany, France. Not a military rank among them. Quite a few law degrees, though, like Putin.
Quite a different situation between an autocratic government and a democracy in terms of communication between civilian and military arms of the government. Victor Davis Hanson is very good in describing the importance difference it makes to be truly accountable and required to justify your operations (what he calls the facing the civil audit). Autocrats like Putin do not tolerate questioning of their methods or goals nor encourage such ideas down the chain of command. Democratically elected governments typically both face & allow such events. They are much more likely to consider other options rather than just their initial plan.