Ever since Putin took power he has been trying to control Ukraine, he wants all the former Soviet republics to be his puppets, and for a long time the tactic was to install pro-Moscow leaders in Kyiv.
My only hope here is that, similar to how US foreign policy constantly creates slow-motion disasters that come back to bite us, Putin’s plans for Ukraine may not go how he wants. Sanctions and a long insurgency will hurt him. Death, suffering and destruction, and for what.
From the BBC liveblog:
It’s clear that Russian paratroops have been in control of the Antonov airbase, around 15-20 miles outside Kyiv, since early this morning.
CNN has been reporting live from the scene, with paratroops clearly visible on the perimeter.
The Ukrainian national guard says it has launched a counter offensive. As Western intelligence officials predicted, this attack has progressed quickly, perhaps more quickly even than they expected.
Russian armoured columns have made rapid progress, south from the border with Belarus and north from the Crimean peninsula. What will the Russians do next?
Having established an operating base, the paratroops could now wait for the advancing Russian armour or use it to launch strikes into Kyiv. Either scenario could unfold soon.
Anticipating international condemnation and countermeasures, Putin issued a stark warning to other countries not to meddle, saying, “whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.”
and, less recently
Fixed that for “truthiness”…
So much of what the Biden administration warned us about played out like they said, and I still have this sense of shock.
Re:Attacking a NATO ally. He knows if he does that, they are all bound by a treaty to respond. And since the Ukraine isn’t in NATO, they can just sit on their hands and not get directly involved. So if they just keep it focused, they may not have any direct Western actions.
From what I understand, even though Ukraine has more troops than Russia, they have less heavy equipment and less training. The tactic they were thought to employ was mild defense, melt away, and then regroup for nontraditional counter offenses.
If it gets bad enough that Ukraine will definitely fall, NATO COULD manufacture a false flag operation where say troops on the Polish border took artillery or mortar fire. That is essentially what Russia did in Eastern Ukraine. Even if it was just misled and air strikes. But I don’t know if NATO wants to actually escalate things.
Anti-war demonstration in Saint Petersburg.
Those are brave people.
An interesting development:
I hope there are more conscientious troops like this in the Russian army.
I don’t know what the actual rules of engagement are, but they SHOULD engage, IMHO. This is the equivalent of watching people drown.
KyivPost?
That’s nice to see, but the source also has me searching for my handy grain of salt.
4400 US dead. Please don’t forget the many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.
i wasn’t forgetting about them, merely trying to point out that the costs of war to the u.s didn’t end in 2003.
“Stop making me hit you” – every bully ever.
