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Meanwhile, in Kherson
As a break from all the mid-term gloom, a thread on the latest Russian retreat. A trap? A “strategic regrouping,” perhaps, as those invested in Russian success might say.
It’ll be interesting to see how this is digested and excreted by the propaganda talk shows, which have been rather glum of late. They bring on a war correspondent to tell the folks how the valorous troops will soon be capturing more villages, and he says “we’re advancing 3 centimeters a day.” You turn to Solovyev’s daily reenactment of the thoughts of a sullen hungover bear who fell out of a tree last night and totally blames the tree, and you hear A) wistful remarks about how great it would be if the IIRG helped out Russia on the ground, or B) miserable monologues about how Russian culture, the beacon of enlightenment, will be lost if they don’t win, and this means the end of everything good in the world, or C) broadsides against the system that somehow did not produce the Army they thought they had (wreckers, you know, and prolly Jews), or D) criticism of the draftees for not being motivated enough.
If I had to predict, I’d say Solovyev will lay this move at the feet of the elements in the military who have pursued an erroneous strategy to obtain a noble goal – even though he previously said that anyone who attacked Ukraine would be a war criminal, but hey, people can change their minds, especially after a visit from the FSB and a suitcase of Euros. He will never slight Putin, but amplify the stab-in-the-back motif and blame NATO. The latter is interesting, since there seems to be a dichotomy in propaganda messaging: A) Of course we have the ability to defeat NATO, overwhelmingly, we have such marvelous toys and a great army, and B) of course we’re getting pasted in Ukraine, they have NATO on their side.
Published in General
That crossed my mind too. It’s not a wild thought. I don’t think it was an election issue but people have to wonder where the Republican Party stands on this.
Voters would likely have had a much different impression of the Republican party if Trump had given several speeches about “Putin’s unprovoked murderous venture in Ukraine” and if Kevin McCarthy had said that “if the Republicans win the House, Ukraine can be assured that we will not take our foot off of the accelerator when it comes to supplying brave Ukrainian soldiers the weapons they need to defeat the Russian invasion.”
That is the road not traveled.
Putin is a two-bit KGB thug who has realized in his eleventh hour that he has no friends.
Too little too late, Vladimir. Try going out with a little class; not blubbering and squealing like Lavrentiy Beria.
This is going to be a difficult thing to balance. And I don’t envy any American politician.
I want to provide enough support to enable Ukraine to defend itself. But, I don’t want to carry on a hot Cold War with Russia via a surrogate for the next 10 years. We are not only sending Ukraine guns, bombs and bullets. We are expending the most advanced seed corn in our not so deep war stocks.
Russia is a larger, richer nation mostly outside the combat zone. God may not always be on the side with the bigger battalions. Quantity has a quality all its own. There may come a time, regardless of military success, Ukraine begins to run out of soldiers.
This is not to say we shouldn’t have opted to help Ukraine. A great deal depends on a guy once described as being wrong on every major foreign policy problem of the last 50 years.
As Howard Beale said, “Woe is us.”
We don’t know how much latitude Russian commanders have? And how capable Russian commanders are?
The Democrats never paid a price for abandoning South Vietnam. In fact one of the prime movers in the Senate went on to become President.
As much as I want Russia out and the borders restored, even if a peace settlement is reached that allows a few of these mostly ethnically Russian oblasts to leave Ukraine, it won’t be an all bad thing. Putin will claim it’s a great victory, but the price will have been so high that I doubt Russian leadership will want to engage in this kind of thing again. Where if Ukraine had immediately surrendered those territories, Russia would be back for more within a few years or maybe feel emboldened to bite pieces off of some other neighbors. I have to assume that seeing Finland and Sweden join NATO will also temper Russian dreams of expansion.
This is my problem with our involvement in the Ukraine/Russian conflict. I don’t trust my own leaders. Do any of us know that our administration (Biden) didn’t egg this on in the beginning? Was there an ulterior motive? Or was it simply that Putin saw a weak POTUS and decided to pounce? Biden has been so corrupt and so wrong for so long that, as much as I can’t stand the Russian bully behavior, I just can’t get comfortable supporting Ukraine either.
As I see it, supporting Ukraine is a very easy thing to do. The Ukrainians seem to be fighting bravely and doing serious damage to Putin’s military. I think it sends a message to Xi Jinping that invading a country like Taiwan might not be a smart move.
Those elements within the Republican party that have been arguing that the US not aid Ukraine seem to showing how weak the US is.
As Donald Rumsfeld said, “Weakness is provocative.”
Well we did have Ukrainian spies in the national security council more concerned about Ukraine than America. Putin met Biden in person in the summer of 2021 and could see how weak he is. Biden has corrupt connections to Ukraine. Any and all that you asked could be possible.
Biden gave all indications, especially after he came back from his meeting with Putin in July 2021, that he was willing to let Putin have another bite of Ukraine. Ukraine has its own reasons and motivations for acting, and doesn’t seem interested in being anybody’s pawn — whether Russia’s pawn or anybody else’s. Remember that Biden’s first instinct was to offer to fly Zelensky to safety. Zelensky surprised everyone — probably both Putin and Biden — by saying he needed ammo, not a ride. So now, when he says that if the west doesn’t help the Ukrainians will keep fighting until they’re fighting with just sticks and stones, he and the Ukrainians have some credibility that they didn’t have before. In the past it wasn’t quite clear that the Ukrainians were that interested in being Ukrainians rather than Little Russians. Putin’s 2014 invasion did a lot to clarify matters and get a lot of Ukrainians off the fence. Looking back on the history of Ukraine and Russia, I suppose we should have known, but it’s always easier to see in hindsight how things have progressed.
Addendum: Helping Ukraine does not mean we should trust Biden.
I have been a straight ticket Republican voter my entire life, since 1984 when I turned 18 years old and voted for President Reagan’s re-election.
But despite my partisanship bias towards Republicans and against Democrats, if a Democrat politician like Biden pursues a policy that I agree with, I am not going to oppose that policy out of partisan spite.
For example, if Biden were to start advocating the end of race based admissions at America’s universities, medical schools and law schools, I would support that policy because I agree with that policy.
Similarly, when Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican, says something that I disagree with, I can’t lie to myself and convince myself that I agree with MTG when I actually disagree with MTG.
Indeed I agree. But one thing is something we know to be true, and the other thing is something that is so foggy you can’t see 6 inches in front of you.
I am seeing video on social media showing Ukrainian soldiers putting up the Ukrainian blue and yellow flag on buildings, supposedly in Kherson. So, is it too early to say that Ukraine has re-taken Kherson? Or is part of Kherson still being held by the Russians?
I gotta admit….being a southerner and our penchant for romanticizing the fight for a lost cause was partially why I have been firmly in Ukraine’s camp in the fight against Russia’s invasion. Now that they are basically kicking Russia’s backside it’s my 80’s cold war self that is enjoying the crap out of this. :)
Listen man, Biden can’t be both an evil genius and a doddering old geriatric. (my pick is the latter) This is the guy that made the “minor incursion” gaff. The motive was Russia INVADED Ukraine. It was their decision, not ours. Even when Biden wasn’t 1000 years old he was never even clever, let alone a master manipulator.
They are taking their time. If the Russians are gone – fine. If they’re not, they soon will be.
I heard a Times (of London, not that Penny Saver rag in New York) journalist who covers the diplomatic beat opine that the Russians might be luring the Ukrainians into a trap by shelling Kherson when the Ukrainians have reoccupied it. Of course, if the Ukrainians are in range of Russian artillery, then Russian artillery is in range of the Ukrainians.
She should stick to diplomacy.
The “it’s a trap” meme has been going around for the last week or so. It was vague to begin with, but the logistical possibilities for a trap seemed to be diminishing daily. But there were grounds for caution at first. One military analyst from Australia was puzzling over why Russia made such a big public announcement of its retreat. Sometimes armies retreat, but why announce it ahead of time? Some sort of trap was one possibility, but the other was political damage control back home. Or maybe it was some combination of the two. Or maybe it was just to fool the Ukrainians into being overly cautious so they could complete their retreat with minimal losses.
So Ukraine didn’t rush into anything stupidly. It has the advantage of good communication between its unit (much more so than at the beginning of the war) so it can coordinate operations and make adjustments on the fly, while some the Russian units tend to be competing with each other more than against the Ukrainians, and don’t have such good communication and coordination.
But Biden can be a corrupt leader who knows how to exploit any government program for his crime family (not just Hunter), as well as being a doddering old geriatric. He’s spent a whole career facilitating corrupt exploitation of government programs, so even with failing cognitive abilities he could keep doing it out of habit. He hasn’t gotten super rich at it like Putin has, but that’s because his family tends to make a lot of misjudgments in both personal behavior and choice of business partners. That doesn’t keep them from going from one corrupt deal to another.
So I can understand why people worry about Biden taking advantage of any money spent on the the war. And there are European friends of Ukraine who say it’s dangerous to give Ukraine money rather than weapons, because there is still a lot of corruption left over from its connections with Russia. But how this translates in their minds into a reluctance to help Ukraine is a harder thing to explain.
If I remember right (and that’s not a sure thing) the “it’s a trap” meme started a few days before Russia made its public announcement of withdrawal. My guess is that Russian bots started it, but some of the analysts I follow, who have as lot better sources of information than I do, were taking it seriously at first.
Ukraine gains nothing by rushing in, and does so at far less cost in terms of casualties. Russia has been moving experienced units out and replacing them with green conscripts. This preserves some of their strength, but is hell on the conscripts, who are either going to be casualties or POWs fairly soon now.
Cutting off their retreat and taking a lot of prisoners and heavy equipment would be an advantage of rushing in, as would the lower expense of shelling the new Russian positions with cheaper ammo. But Ukrainians have a record of better judgment on these things than I have.
They’ve been withdrawing for weeks now. The equipment won’t be worth capturing.
Sounds like the Russians left behind a helicopter that they had captured from the Ukrainians. Best to look that gift horse in the mouth.
My own personal theory is that the Russians left behind a dirty bomb (thus the speculation earlier). Denies the use of part of the town (though not as big as some folks assume) and might provide a propaganda … well, not a win, exactly. As a matter of fact, it’ll still get stink on the Russians themselves.
Biden does what he is told to do, but it is still called the Biden administration.
Marjorie Taylor Green will not be bringing the potato salad to this year’s Mensa picnic.
You’re probably right. MTG would likely go a bit heavy on the mayo.
Biden personifies the old saw about not attributing to evil what can be explained by incompetence.