Skip to main content

The Long War

By


It looks like Ukraine will finally get its jet fighters.  Zelenskiy reached agreements with Denmark and the Netherlands for a small fleet of F-16s, pending approval from the US.  Ukraine could get up to 61 of these combat aircraft over the next two years.  Of course they won't all come at once but it should help ease the situation along the vast border that has been created at the Dnipro river.

Ukraine has been unable to move deep into Russian-held territory due to mine fields.  For a country that was supposedly liberating Ukraine, Russia sure has an odd way of showing it.  They've planted hundreds of thousands of these mines throughout the country.  They seem to be the most advanced weapons Russia has, as Kinzhals continue to be shot down regularly, the great "hypersonic missiles" Russian leaders said would drive a dagger through Ukraine's heart.  This has become a war of attrition and Russia plans to use everything at its disposal to hang onto its newly acquired territories, hoping that world leaders will grow weary and force Ukraine to the negotiating table.

Russia didn't even show up for the peace talks in Jeddah.  They claim they weren't invited.  Not that it would have accomplished anything because Russia has reneged on all its agreements dating back to Minsk in the wake of their annexation of Crimea.  The only hope is that Saudi Arabia or Turkey or China can put some pressure on Russia to ease up but that's not likely either because the Kremlin thinks it is winning and so continues to press not only in Ukraine but now has allowed its renegade Wagner forces to spread themselves out in Belarus with the intention of causing unease along NATO borders.  However, it seems these forces aren't getting paid enough to cover their expenses and many of these Russian mercenaries are leaving Belarus.

I really don't know what the Kremlin has in mind here anyway.  If Wagner forces were to attack any part of the border along the Suwalki Gap, they would trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty and it would be much more than a few F-16s that would begin to rain down on Russian forces.  Maybe Putin wants an all out war given that's what he's been telling his people is already happening.  How else to justify his numerous defeats in Ukraine?

The propaganda efforts continue on numerous levels.  One of the most absurd is an American Scott Bennett who has become the darling of Iranian media by promoting the idea that the US created the latest strain of coronavirus in Ukrainian biolabs.  He even goes so far as to make a link to Hunter Biden and by relationship his father Joe.  It's garbage he picked up from Russian and Chinese propaganda sites and is now pitching on X and other social media sites for all to see.  He even believes this virus was specifically engineered to target Slavic DNA.  But aren't Ukrainians Slavic?

Meanwhile, the strain of a long war is starting to show in Russia's beleaguered economy.  The ruble tanked and the Kremlin had to play with the stock market to help bolster it in recent weeks.  This from a country that wants to promote a new currency to rival the dollar as to make oil exports more competitive.  Not that this would matter either as Europe has cut back dramatically on Russian oil and gas imports, leaving the Kremlin to find other buyers as it has oversaturated friendly Asian markets.

Russia is more isolated than ever but still makes a big show of being a player on the international stage by hosting an African Summit.  Most African leaders chose not to attend, sending surrogates in their place.  What African countries wanted most was a free flow of grain products but that isn't coming.  Putin just used this as a photo opportunity, standing next to the shortest African leader, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt.  However, Vlad did manage to stir up some unrest in Niger, where the military staged a coup with the help of his Wagner buddies telling locals what a friend they have in Russia.

It's interesting to see Russia essentially resort to guerilla tactics to hold onto its "land bridge" to Crimea.  Not the best sign for a country that views itself as a military superpower.  The F-16s will help Ukraine traverse the mine fields assuming they get them sooner rather than later.  From what I heard last night on the news, Denmark and the Netherlands plan to deliver the fighter jets in waves stretching all the way to 2025.  So, it looks both sides have to dig in for a long war, which is what everyone feared would happen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more