Almost exactly eight years ago, my op-ed on Putin was titled ”Stop this man.” Putin was not stopped and, as I’ve often said of dictators, they do not stop until they are stopped.
Garry Kasparov @ NY Daily News
And we have seen that up close here in the person of Donald Trump.
We are now one month into his all-out war on Ukraine, an invasion and bombardment of a sovereign European nation of 44 million people.
Now that’s probably closer to 40 million, as millions of refugees, mostly women and children, try to escape the destruction of their homes and lives.
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The smoking ruins and fleeing civilians are reminiscent of Putin’s other wars in Syria and Chechnya. Murdering thousands of innocents and bombing schools and hospitals with modern weapons is not “indiscriminate,” by the way. It’s an intentional strategy designed to demoralize and terrify the target population into capitulating.
Putin’s initial goal was to take Kyiv quickly, behead its leadership — perhaps literally — and install a puppet regime as he did in occupied Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Based on initial responses, it seems that the U.S. and other powers were equally confident that this would happen in a matter of days. Instead of preparing Ukraine for the invasion with weapons and sanctions, they prepared for negotiations and a quick return to their comfort zone of useless diplomacy.
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Putin’s instincts about Western spinelessness were once again accurate. Following his old formula, previously employed in Eastern Ukraine as well as in the Republic of Georgia and Syria, he would use force to gain territory and concessions and the West would rush to accommodate him with diplomacy.
Sure. Just let Trump have his little fit after losing the election. He'll then settle down and go away.
Someone forgot to tell the Ukrainians. As the Russian joke going around puts it, “We are now one month into the two-day operation to capture Kyiv.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to flee, reportedly responding to American offers to evacuate him with, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”
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The media documented the unfolding horror in real time, with no doubt who the villain was. The exception being Tucker Carlson and some of his Fox News colleagues, who are so adept at parroting Kremlin propaganda that they should be paid in crackers.
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The Ukrainian military has fought well and hard, with the passion of a people defending their country. Meanwhile, Russia’s forces have proven inept and uncoordinated, rotted through with corruption. Russian soldiers’ morale is as low as the morals of their leader.
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Despite its surprising resilience, Ukraine is still badly overmatched. Putin has been building up his war machine for a decade, investing the hundreds of billions in profits from the Russian oil and gas the free world lined up to buy despite his crimes. (And many are still buying it, by the way.) Unable to defeat the Ukrainian military, Putin has continued with his usual modus operandi of turning on easier targets: civilians and infrastructure.
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Sanctions will slowly eat away at Putin’s ability to fund his war and at Russians’ support of it, but thousands more Ukrainians will die without more immediate protection. Lack of food and electricity is affecting more major population centers by the day, a situation that will grow worse regardless of the short-term military balance.
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It would repeat the mistakes of 2014 to allow Russia to continue to occupy an inch of Ukrainian territory, to let Putin claim victory and transition back to holding fake negotiations in nice hotels while he rearms and reloads to prepare for his next assault.
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Zelensky is pleading with NATO and its member nations for more direct assistance, including a no-fly zone over the country. They have refused because such a step could lead to the direct engagement of Russian forces — as if NATO was created to issue memos instead of fighting to defend democracy.
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As for escalation, Putin will do that anyway and it’s more likely the more confident he is the West will not intervene. Dictators like Putin don’t require provocation to escalate.
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Putin has survived this long because he keeps raising the stakes and his opponents keep offering him lifelines. It’s time to pull up the rope. It’s time to live up to the ideals Ukrainians are dying for.
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Putin is capable of anything, but he and his commanders are not suicidal. He blusters about nuclear weapons because he knows the effect it has. We must be resolute and do everything possible for Ukraine to achieve victory. If you’re so afraid of what a dictator will do if he loses that you’re helping him win, you should reevaluate your strategy and your character.
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