Here we are, starting the third week of Russia’s unprovoked invasion into Ukraine, and nothing so far has really surprised me.
As I have written previously, Putin waited too long, lost his edge of surprise, lost his bullshit excuses to Biden, and waited for the thaw to start. Which means he got bogged down almost immediately, and has made little progress anywhere but in the south since.
Actually, there are 3 things so far that have surprised me, but none of them in a negative way. First, the vaunted Russian military is pathetic. Their command-control structure is almost non existent, and for good reason. They committed the cardinal sin, they lied to their own troops. Reporting shows that the vast majority of Russian conscripts still thought they were engaged in military exercises when they crossed the border. Their first clue was when Ukrainian troops started firing live rounds at them. They failed to negate the Ukrainian air defenses in the first 48 hours, and they failed to properly protect their own supply trains. As a result, Russian soldiers are getting killed with Russian ammo fired by Ukrainian troops.
The second thing is the incredibly courage and tenacity of the Ukrainian troops, and the civilian army springing up around them. But they had help. If Putin had gone in on schedule, this would probably be a very different war. Putin’s 15 day delay as a sop to China allowed the US and NATO 15 more days to supply the Ukrainians with the kind of surface to air and ground to ground missiles that knocked Russian fighters out of the sky, and stalled advance convoys by taking out the lead vehicles in the lines. And the longer they stay stalled, the longer the US and NATO can continue to resupply the Ukrainians with replacements.
Third, but by no means last, is the incredible global response that Biden has been able to engineer. Biden did a masterful job in bringing NATO back together from the grave that Trump had shoved them in, and their unity is striking. But it isn’t just NATO, Countries across the globe, with no relationship to NATO have joined in the sanctions against Putin and Russia to show their support for Ukraine. That support has made it possible for the US, UK, and EU sanctions to start having a serious effect on the general Russian public months before any could be expected, making Putin’s risk of an uprising from his civilian flank more serious.
But now things get much more dangerous for Biden and NATO. Because Putin and Russia are escalating their bombardment, with catastrophic consequences to the Ukrainian people. You’ll notice that the UN is staying well clear of this pissing contest, no offer of a negotiated cease fire, with UN troops on the ground to enforce it, such as back in Kosovo. To the rest of the world, this is a fight between Russia and the Ukraine, with NATO and the US siding with Ukraine. And they want Russia out!
Look, these countries have put skin in the game, their sanctions are going to have an economic impact on their own country. They want Russia out of Ukraine. They don’t want to turn on their televisions and see images of bombed out children’s and maternity hospitals. As Russian atrocities escalate, so will international diplomatic pressure against the US and NATO to step up and do something to make it stop. And that is the grist for another article coming soon.
Victor Frankl survived the death camps & became a famous psychiatrist. In Man’s Search For Meaning, he reiterated the famous line that someone with a reason ‘why’ can endure almost any ‘how’. The Ukrainians have ample reasons why everytime they place a child’s body in the mass graves they are using so animals can’t get to the bodies. The Russians, not only don’t have a reason why, they were lied to by their commanders, who were probably also lied to. What he observed in the death camps isn’t from cushy academia, but from the hell of the Holocaust. It’s as true as it gets.
“You’ll notice that the UN is staying well clear of this pissing contest, no offer of a negotiated cease fire, with UN troops on the ground to enforce it, such as back in Kosovo.”
Murf, as long as Russia’s a participant in the war and has a permanent-member veto in the Security Council, the UN can do absolutely nothing. To the best of my memory, this is the first time since the Suez Crisis in 1956 (which actually predates my existence on this earth, thankyouverymuch) that a Permanent Member of the Security Council has been engaged in an unprovoked war against a weaker country (and, no, Nasser’s nationalizing the Suez Canal was not cause for Britain and France to attack Egypt in conjunction with Israel). And the only reason Britain and France finally withdrew was that Eisenhower was PISSED over their action (he’d warned Britain against an invasion of Egypt and threatened to cripple the British economy by selling off the US government’s pound sterling bonds).
The UN hadn’t even really set up any kind of peacekeeping force before this; Suez was the first crisis in the post-war era that showed the limitations of the Security Council when some of the permanent members were participating in a war against another UN member. If Nasser’s nationalizing the Canal had involved any British or French nationals being killed or put in harm’s way, the British and French response would’ve likely been seen as having merit. But, any such deaths only came as a result of the British and French attacks.