And the Ukrainians are in no mood to talk about this criminal land grab.
So, for here on out, the choices are these:
- Fight until Russia is pushed back out of Ukrainian territory;
- Fight until the Russians get tired of dying en masse for the glory of Putin, do something about him, and negotiate and end to this war; or
- Surrender to Russia (and wait for them to try again to conquer all of Ukraine).
Another thought: If the Russians regard the occupied lands as being part of Russia, then that may remove any reluctance to strike targets inside of the borders of what is internationally recognized as Russian territory. On the other hand, doing that may persuade the Russian people that Putler has a point.
How weak does China want Russia? How weak do the Russians want to be?
ReplyDeleteThen there's Crimea, which Russia would like to think is theirs, absolutely, their warm water port and vacation playground....but doesn't exactly have absolute claim to it. Catherine the Great grabbed it from the Ottomans in 1783. Russia lost its naval presence there after the Crimean War...but on and off has been grabbing it back and losing it. When Ukraine was part of the USSR, it didn't matter; it the southernmost part of Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteTwo big issues of this war are:
1) the competition for primacy in the Slavic Orthodox Church in Ukraine (where it had its origin) and Moscow/Russia which eventually became the secular power center. This struggle is something of one for the soul of Russia.
2) Crimea, the possession of which is an opiate-like addiction: For Russia to have any sense of power and power projection, it is insensate about having Crimea.
If Russia had quit when it had Crimea and some of the eastern edges of Ukraine as a corridor of access, Ukraine would have lived with that. Now Ukraine has taken enough crap, enough bestial aggression from Russia that it has got to want to drive the Russians in Crimea into the sea.
Russia has always had autocratic rule...until it implodes...and a different autocracy takes its place. Putin thought to have a short victorious war to bolster the prestige and power of an decaying Russia..now he is skating on the edge of a new implosion.
What he said. This is a refresher
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDN-DtJMs4Y
Many thanks Jon....that's an excellent precis
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many years his burning oilfields ~ willfully venting methane ~ takes off what we have left before we choke on our own farts?
ReplyDeleteTen Bears, probably shortened it up quite a bit.
ReplyDeletePutin, like Hitler before him, is a wrecker. If he can't get his way, he'll pull Russia, and maybe the world, down around him.
Per Inside Climate News ~ A ... release of an estimated 300,000 metric tons of methane gas.
ReplyDeleteResearchers say that amounts to the largest-ever release of the potent greenhouse gas during a single event, with an impact similar to the annual (yearly) emissions of 1 million cars. Because methane is 81 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet over a 20-year period, the rupture of the Nord Stream pipelines could be considered a climate disaster in its own right.
Deserves the same end as Saddam ...