"Kremlin myth-making regarding war: Moscow’s wars are just, defensive, triumphant, and preventive."
Carnegie Moscow Center
It's the go-to story for Russia. They are surrounded and besieged by armies from the West. Their lives are at risk.
Russian history is marked by devastating invasions. In the 13th century the Golden Hoard of Mongolian horse archers was stopped at the gates of Vienna. On their way they conquered the Kievan Rus people, sacked nearly every city, and initiated 300 years of rule. Then Napoleon. Then Hitler. American schoolchildren understand that American soldiers won World War II, with some uncertain help from our allies. Americans suffered 418,000 total deaths in that war. Russians know a different story. Russians lost over 24 million lives. National WW2 Museum.
Putin tells Russians that Ukraine is a puppet of the West. Ukraine isn't being invaded. It is being released from Western control. Russia's peril will persist. There are NATO forces in the Baltic states, in Poland, in Turkey. The wars of liberation in Georgia and Crimea that reduced their encirclement were quick and easy and a source of pride for Russians. The Russian public was not inconvenienced. Half of Russians blame the USA and NATO for the war in Ukraine. Another 16% blame Ukraine. Four percent blame Russia.
Comments by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson got significant publicity in Russia. They validated the narrative of Russia under threat. Trump called Putin "pretty smart" and described Russia's operation as if it were a crafty and wildly successful real estate acquisition:
He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” he said, “taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.
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| Carlson |
"They're promoting war, not to maintain the democracy that is Ukraine. Ukraine is not a democracy. It has never been a democracy in its history and it's not now. It is a client state of the Biden administration."
The Trump-Carlson position is not aging well. Ukraine looks like a victim. It is another iteration of the brutal reality expressed by Athenians to the leaders of Melos. "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer as they must." Russia has the vastly superior army and they also have nuclear missiles. They can conquer Ukraine and the West dare not stop them.
Republicans who would normally jump on the Trump bandwagon are holding back. Carlson is backpedaling. On Thursday's show Carlson said “I don’t think anybody approves of what Putin did yesterday. I certainly don’t." Americans are coming to a consensus that Putin is a villain with a voracious appetite for expansion. Americans are reminding themselves now that Putin has nuclear weapons. We can strike indirect blows with sanctions, but what if that doesn't work? He is proving himself "unreasonable." What if he isn't playing careful chess and doesn't care that NATO's rooks and bishops overpower his. There is no stopping a voracious nuclear power.
After taking control of Ukraine, what if he says to the U.S. and NATO that Estonia has always been Russian and Estonians want to be Russian and that Estonia is a client state of the West and he won't stand for it. What if he says that if the West wants its 100 largest cities and every one of its capitals obliterated that is up to us, but his tanks are moving in. What if he says his goal is world peace made by restoring justice and self-determination to Estonia?
What if this isn't chess after all? It is war. As Russians will hear it from state-controlled media, this is a defensive war to protect the lives of Russians.
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For understanding the United States' dilemma regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and President Biden's dilemma, it might help to brush up on the 1956 Hungarian revolt. Some say that the Cold War became a stalemate after the Soviet Union took over Hungary in 1956. What is clear about the 1956 Hungarian crisis is that the United States did not stand in the Soviet Union's way.
Mutually Assured Destruction: MAD. It sounds like Putin may be mad. Thank God Biden isn’t as crazy as his predecessor.
“Moscow’s wars are just, defensive, triumphant and preventive.” That sounds a lot like our own myth-making propaganda during such stupid military misadventures as Vietnam and Iraq. The first casualty of war is truth. Then come all the civilians.
Compared to Ukraine’s, Russia’s military is overwhelming. Providing the Ukrainians arms may increase the body count but would do nothing to stop Russian forces. For those who might want to do something more for the Ukrainian people than fantasize about kicking Russian butt, this NPR article has a list of organizations worth supporting:
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/25/1082992947/ukraine-support-help
The only one who approves of what Putin is doing is Donald Trump. He thinks it’s savvy and genius. Of course if he were president Russia wouldn’t be doing this, but I’m confused by his logic.
The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, devastated to lose their sons in a pointless war, convinced Gorbachev to withdraw the USSR from Afghanistan.
Now the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers is sounding the alarm that Russian soldiers have been beaten and coerced into participating in the invasion of Ukraine. Some Russian soldiers have abandoned their tanks and gear in Ukraine and fled; there is video of the Ukrainians confiscating the abandoned equipment.
Russians are risking arrest and imprisonment by going into the streets in Moscow and elsewhere to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Let us hope that the Russian protests against the invasion of Ukraine are more effective than the millions of Americans who went to the streets to protest the US war on Iraq.
Former SOS Pompeo also has had kind words for Russia.
And in Russia, I hear they're playing Carlson to show the invasion is justified.
Putin is smart at least to the extent that he counts on the sheer ineffectuality of feckless husk Joe Biden. Squinting at the bromides on his teleprompter--yes, Putin quails at the Judgment of History as told by the West!--Biden now claims with a straight, albeit vacant face, contradicting what his own Veep said in Munich a week ago, that his vaunted sanctions were not really meant to nor ever expected to deter a Putin invasion in the first place.
Biden laughably claims credit for predicting essentially the failure of his own policy. Moreover, even now he still balks at making Russia a banking system and energy-sales pariah, the only sanctions that ever had a chance to succeed in the first place. He urges waiting--for a "month or so"!--for his mid-range measures to have an impact, as if that will somehow turn back the clock. The American president is a passively dangerous poltroon.
As Mr. Dudgeon demonstrates, Putin has Republicans so dazed and confused they can’t decide who is more to blame for Russia invading Ukraine – Putin or Biden (hint: it's the guy who ordered it). Their party leader praises Putin as a genius while the party rails against Biden because…well, that’s what they do. They make it sound as if they’re all for even stronger sanctions than Biden is imposing, but Wait until they find out it’s going to raise gas prices – then comes the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.
It looks like patriots fighting for their country and their freedom have more fighting spirit than conscripts drafted by an authoritarian tyrant. Afghanistan led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine may be the graveyard of Putin’s corrupt regime. I hope we do everything we can to help make that happen.
Razom nas bahato!
Two days in, the Russian offensive appeared to be stymied by stiffer-than-expected resistance from highly motivated Ukrainian armed forces.
Despite an overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment, the Russian advance lost some of its momentum Friday and the quick victory Russian President Vladimir Putin was counting on is no longer assured, a senior United States defense official told NBC News.
"We do assess that there is greater resistance by the Ukrainians than the Russians expected," the official said. “They are fighting for their country.”
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There is a Russian in our midst! I for one for will never think of ratting him out to the modern Democrats’ version of HUAC, however.
SWIFT…not so fast. Exchange the money and kill some Uranians, no problem. It’s all global money, muthaf@###&ka. Stay back.
Turn your head to the stock exchange board and deal out the cards. Boom, boom, baby. 7 come 11.
Ukraine has soldiers at their own borders, preventing Ukrainian men aged 18-60 from fleeing the war, telling them to stay and fight for their country.
Essentially every adult male on the ground in Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian, is a conscripted soldier, locked in a cage, forced to fight to the death.
Poor men forced to fight for the whimsy of rich oligarchs and dictators.
None of them deserve to die.
It's beyond time for Russia to be cut off from SWIFT. It's the only economic weapon we have that will truly inflict meaningful pain on a scale that might change Putin's mind. We should have already done this. While I don't usually agree with much of (anything?) Low Dudgeon has to say, I do agree that President Biden has been behind the 8 ball in responding to this crisis. Again the SWIFT thing, Biden should be making it abundantly clear right now to Putin that that hammer will fall pronto if he doesn't stop this madness. I hope it's happening behind the scenes.
I fear that President Biden, and nearly everyone else as well is underestimating the danger posed by the scenario in which Putin is successful in his conquest and regime change. He will continue prodding at his Baltic republic neighbors who he wants to bring back under the sway of his imagined reconstituted Russian Empire, emboldened by his success. China will likely look at a Putin success and be emboldened to try something similar with Taiwan.
I'm not advocating we should directly fight Russia, but we sure as hell should be stepping up our support for the Ukrainians desperately and heroically fighting for their country right now both in terms of supplies and weapons, and EVERY economic tool we have to punish Putin and make him give up.
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