- The Ukrainian military urgently needs long-range air defenses and longer-range artillery. It does not have them.
- [Zelensky] said he wanted the war over before Russia could rebuild its forces, and that each additional day of war meant more death and destruction. Above all, he said, not only Ukraine is at stake, but the security and values ??of the West.
- “History teaches that prolonged conflicts bleed both sides, but dictatorships have an advantage over democracies. They are not accountable to their societies and can pay the price of blood, even with opposition from their citizens…. Does the transatlantic free world still want to occupy a position of leadership? Do we still believe in the universality of values ??such as freedom and the right of national self-determination?” — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Politico, June 27, 2022.
- The almost total destruction of entire cities… has no precedent in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Neither do the horrific war crimes committed in Bucha and other towns on the outskirts of Kyiv and Kharkiv. Nearly two million Ukrainians have been deported and sent to Russia, with some in detention camps in Siberia…. The invasion of Ukraine without a declaration of war is itself a war crime.
- The Baltic states, Finland, Sweden and Poland have every reason to feel threatened: if Putin is not defeated, he will not stop at Ukraine.
- Russia, in 1994, signed the Budapest Memorandum, committing itself to respect the borders of Ukraine. Twenty years later, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and created secessionist militia in the Donbass. In 2022, Putin showed that the Budapest Memorandum had absolutely no meaning for him.
- Putin is leading a campaign of annihilating Ukraine’s infrastructure and industrial base. He appears to want Ukraine to become a ruined, non-viable country, virtually impossible to rebuild because the costs would be too high. The more time passes, the higher the costs.
- To achieve his ends, Putin is apparently perfectly willing to hold hundreds of millions of innocent people hostage, and even sentence them to death by starvation. Meanwhile, his propaganda services cynically claim to the countries concerned that the risk of famine results from the Western sanctions against Russia.
- Failing to give Ukraine every means to win… or letting a stalemate set in — or even worse — rewarding Russian aggression by ceding Ukraine’s Donbass and declaring that Russia had “won”, would effectively be announcing to China and all the enemies of the Western world that the power of the West and its ability to command respect belong in the past. Such an outcome would also be telling them that the rules of international law established after the Second World War, and the values ??that the Western world claims to embody, are now rules and values ??that the West is incapable of defending.
- A war only ends when there is a winner and a loser. In the present situation, Putin is the ruthless aggressor who tramples all the rules and values of the West. He must be defeated. If he is not, the consequences will not be limited to Ukraine. They will be devastating.
- The Russian military is not invincible. On the contrary, it has shown itself to be extremely deficient and vulnerable. It is the army of a weak state: Russia’s GDP is lower than that of Italy. The Russian army can be crushed and the murderous destruction inflicted on Ukraine can end. What is missing is the clear and concrete will from the West. The United States must lead.
- In Madrid, Biden said, “We are going to stick with Ukraine, and all of the alliance is going to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes to, in fact, make sure that they are not defeated”. He did not say what he should have said, had he wanted to show some strength: Ukraine must win. If it receives the required armaments, Ukraine will win.
- Only an American president has the political and military means to show strength in a credible way. It is tragic that the United States has a weak president just when the future of the world is threatened by so many predatory regimes — all doubtless aware of the small but irresistible window they have at this time.
- “We must aid Ukraine, for to do so in part is our first duty to America and to Americans…. By supporting Ukraine, we prevent larger European conflict. A war that would almost certainly involve America’s military because we have a deep commitment to the NATO treaty and Article Five therein.” — Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
- “Putin will not stop, unless he is stopped… if the West is aware of what is at stake and sees this war as its own, then this price is not too high. After all, Ukrainians are paying a much higher price. Ukrainians have no choice, since they are defending their country. But the West has no choice either—it is about its future as a community, driven by values ??and the ability to project these values ??globally.” — Iryna Solonenko, Senior Fellow at the Zentrum Liberale Moderne (LibMod), Berlin, Internationale Politik Quarterly, April 13, 2022.
May 9, Moscow. The annual military Victory Day Parade was held in Red Square, but with fewer soldiers and military vehicles than in other years. The parade had been cut by 35%. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s short, sober speech tried to justify the war of aggression he had launched against Ukraine on February 24.
Putin seemed on the verge of defeat. A month earlier, in an apparent debacle, the Russian Army had hastily left the Kyiv area. Countless Russian soldiers had been wounded and killed; the loss of military equipment was unimaginable. A report from the UK Ministry of Defence on May 15 said that Russia had lost a third of its combat forces and much of its heavy equipment.
On May 14, Russian troops withdrew from ??Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city; they had been pushed back by Ukrainian forces to the Russian border. Russia’s only “victory” was the total destruction of the city of Mariupol, by the Sea of ??Azov. Communications intercepted by American intelligence services showed that the Russian military had a low morale and that cases of insubordination, mutiny, and refusal to obey orders had multiplied. Russian generals had been killed at the front.
Russian forces then began concentrating their efforts on the Donbass and has been waging a war of attrition ever since. Much of Russia’s modern military equipment has been destroyed; its older equipment dates from the 1960s, but Putin has lots of bombs. Russia has now been bombing Ukrainian positions for weeks. It advances just a little but destroys everything in its path. It has razed not only much of Mariupol, but also Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
The Ukrainian Army courageously resists, but does not have enough heavy weapons to end the destruction, stop Russia’s offensive or carry out an effective counter-offensive.
Putin seems to be counting on time; he seems betting that the Western world will lose interest in Ukraine and turn to other matters.
@ Mark G
I commend your methodically written and well researched comment. I can’t argue with your facts, but I might draw some different conclusions.
I think the reason for this war was, first and foremost, the existential threat to Russia, posed by the US, EU, and NATO. Soon after the CIA-sponsored Maidan Revolution in 2014, the west started preparing for war against Russia by arming and training Ukrainian forces. In the meantime Ukraine continued oppressing its Russian minority in the east, and scuttled the two Minsk agreements, which might have defused the situation. Fast forward to the Biden administration’s recent statements that the US’ goals are to weaken Russia to a point where it is no longer a world player, and to bring about the downfall of President Vladimir Putin. They even admitted that they would use a proxy war in Ukraine to attain those goals. The US and its allies, also imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia, in an effort to crash the Russian economy. The intent has always been to bring Russia to her knees. Lastly, NATO made it clear that it intended to admit Ukraine into the alliance. That was the last straw for Russia.
While conquering the Donbas might be a desirable prize of war for Russia, both economically and demographically, I do not think that Russia intended to, or even needed to, initiate an empire-building war. This war was primarily to answer the existential challenge laid down by the west. The west for its part, vastly under-estimated Russia’s strengths, militarily and economically, while greatly over-estimating its own. Things haven’t quite turned out the way they planned. That often happens with excessive pride.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT
IN 10 POINTS
by MarkG
March 4, 2022
(Written 5 months ago, still valid today!)
(1) The Russian nation has it roots in the late 9th century Kievan Rus state established around Kiev by inflowing Varangian Norsemen (“Vikings), mostly from Sweden, that united the region’s Slavic tribes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians
(2) A distinct Ukrainian identity emerged under the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate state that was established by Bogdan Khmelnitsky in 1648 and existed in Central Ukraine under Russian suzerainty until destroyed in 1775 as a result of a military campaign by Empress Catherine the Great:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Cossacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Khmelnytsky
(3) At the end of WWII, the Soviets regained Western Ukraine (Galicia and Volhynia), which had been annexed earlier from Poland as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, and transferred it to the USSR member state of Ukraine. Much of the local Polish population segment was expelled to Poland, while Ukrainian settlers from the East were added to the area’s existing Ukrainian population:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_annexation_of_Eastern_Galicia_and_Volhynia
(4) Today, in language, culture, and identity, Western and Central Ukraine are more Ukrainian than Russian, while Eastern and Southern Ukraine are more Russian than Ukrainian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ethnolingusitic_map_of_ukraine.png
(5) Russia’s current leadership under Putin believes that, at a minimum, without bringing back its ethnic kin in Eastern and Southern Ukraine to the Russian fold, Russia doesn’t have a sustainable future either economically (remaining mostly an economically unstable fossil fuel exporter similar to Gulf sheikdoms) or demographically (faced with falling Russian population vs rising Muslim population) as a world power in parity with the US and China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Russia
(6) Accordingly, Russia’s leadership views the geostrategic necessity of the “return” of Eastern and Southern Ukraine as an “existential” goal that cannot be compromised.
(7) Unlike post-WWII Western powers that prefer diplomacy and conciliation, since the USSR onward, the Russian goal in military conflicts has always been victory even at the cost of physically destroying the opposing country.
(8) Accordingly, a Western response to Russia’s aggression that is based on further arming Ukraine is the wrong solution, since it would only extend the conflict and lead to more bloodshed and detruction without changing the end-game of Russian military victory:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/02/27/macgregor_us_should_stop_shipping_weapons_and_stop_encouraging_ukrainians_to_die_in_a_hopeless_endeavor.html
(9) In fact, in such an extended conflict, Russia could end up invading and controlling ALL of Ukraine, instead of just the Eastern and Southern regions that it seems to currently target due to ethnic and strategic objectives.
(10) PARTITION — THE ONLY REALISTIC SOLUTION: Accordingly, at this juncture, the only realistic solution appears to be a diplomatic compromise, whereby today’s Ukraine would be partitioned into two: Most of Eastern and Southern Ukraine would join the Russian Federation as member states; while Central and Western Ukraine would continue as the independent — albeit “Finlandized” — Ukrainian state. Realisticly speaking, any other tack, including further arming Ukraine, is likely to lead to the total disappearence of Ukraine as an independent state, as well as causing widespread loss of life and physical destruction.
@Raphael
Yes, I accept your statement as fairly made. I do, however, think that it does fairly speak to the sentiments made by @Shmuel HaLevi, quite closely in fact.
For myself, I have been quite clear of my own recognition that Russia had every right to act as the US stood to act against Cuba, and actually did act to support their own strategic interests multiple times throughout the Western Hemisphere, with regards to nations that were in no way had a contiguous border with the America. Overall, I think that Richards makes the case rather well, but I do agree with the points of disagreement with which you have raised concern.
@ peloni1986
In “Needless Death and Misery”, James Richards says,
“It’s not that I’m pro-Russian — I’m not. I’m pro-truth. And I don’t defend the Russian invasion in any way (although I do understand it)”.
It was a good article, but pandering statements like this compromise the message. When one knows the facts of this conflict, it is only right to take Russia’s side. They are defending their sovereignty, and by going to war now, they may be saving the world from a larger more catastrophic conflict in the future.
Another reason to be pro-Russian, and especially pro-Putin, is the stance he has taken against wokeism and against globalism. This should make Putin a hero, not a pariah.
Yes, war is hell, but in this case it’s not Russia’s fault. The killing and destruction could stop today if Zelensky would sue for peace. Otherwise, Russia must continue to do what is necessary to insure its own safety and security. To say that one is not pro-Russian, is to take the other side. There is no middle ground except to not care at all.
Ukraine is just a sideline,
The real battle has already been won by the Russians who are in the process of creating a new global financial system.
A new system backed by commodities & led by gold
Russia is
Destroying the bankers in London & Brussels who up till now have been in control of the World’s Financial system by default with a fiat Paper monetary system while being sustained by the Dollar.The Russians,for their own reasons,are helping America which as Colonel House wrote in 1919
“America is now a British financial colony”
Shmuel HaLevi I felt like you about Ukraine until I saw dead children. I befriend a plumber with your name. He is from NM and very religious.
Ukrainians do not even deserve a country. For many reasons. Right now they are paying for their forefathers deeds. They did not need the Germans to massacre us through the centuries. What the West is doing with this pouring oil on the fire thing, is a self defeating warmongering.
A braindead propaganda hit.
Defending democracies against dictatorship?
A bunch of crap! Russia is substantially more democratic than Ukraine. There is much more freedom of speech and political freedom in Russia. Ukraine is fascist country where people expressing diverging opinion are reported by their neighbors to their security forces or worse to the Ukrainian fascist militias. If they are lucky they just get beaten up, if they are not so lucky they disappear and are never found again.
Ukraine a democracy??? All 7 opposition parties are banned.
All critical media both conventional and web-based are banned. A blogger who expressed a diverging opinion sentenced to 15 years in jail.
The Pollack minister talks about people’s right to national self-determination; well people of Crimea voted to separate from Ukraine and join Russia. Why should they not have the right to self-determination?
People of Donbass are also overwhelmingly against being a part of Ukraine, they’ll have a chance to express their will and exercise national self-determination in the soon to be held plebiscite. Likewise people of the Khersonsk oblast and south Zaporohzie oblast. So what is the Pollack talking about?
And then the bullshit about Russia’s almost total destruction of entire cities. BS, Mariupol was destroyed by Urkonazis, not by Russians.
The conquering armies have no reason to destroy the city, it is always the retreating armies that do that, and people of Mariupol confirm that.
The horrific war crimes committed in Bucha,
Yea right that’s a bunch of bull there. Shameless Ukrainian propaganda lie. There was no documentation for any horrific crimes committed by Russians.
“and other towns on the outskirts of Kyiv and Kharkiv”
Yea, really? Which ones?
“Nearly two million Ukrainians have been deported and sent to Russia, with some in detention camps in Siberia”
When? In 1920s or 1930?
Certainly not now?
Now on the country 2.5 million ukrainians escaped to Russia from the Ukrainian nazis. Not deported, they chose.
Basically a braindead article.
@Shmuel HaLevi
Needless Death and Misery
You will find this article explains in detail everything you mention. Definitely worth a read.
I know the author personally. He is a very important conservative thinker whoi lives in France. He came to visit me in Jerusalem
I posted this article because I want to present a contrary opinion to what I habitually post.
Shmuel please write to me. I don’t have your email.
tbelman3@gmail.com
I am not particularly fond of Ukraine, a country that joined the Nazi monster and that is still heavily tainted by Nazi ideology based groups.
Russia, in turn, is crushing a whole population and infrastructure, not just the bad substrates.
Regrettably, more weapons given to Zelensky will be in vain. A negotiated end to the mayhem is a must.
Who is this fool?
Defeat Russia? Really? It’s already over. Russia has won in so many ways. Mr. Milliere is sadly deluded, clutching at the last shredded remains of the Liberal World which has been hounding Russia since the Great War. If annyone is responsible for the utter destruction of Ukraine its the West in its vaunted hubris – NATO, the CIA, MI6 and a host of oligarchs, Western and Eastern are all playing a very cynical game which they know they are losing. This is a war that need not have happened were it not for the greed of the elites. If Mr. Milliere gets his wish it will be total chaos and destruction in Western Europe this winter. It will not be a pretty site. And the West will still lose.