Skip to main content

Vladimir, STOP!

By


Those were the words of Donald Trump after Vladimir Putin launched one of the worst air raids on Kyiv since the start of the war.  This after Russia supposedly made a number of "concessions" including not taking Ukraine as a whole.  This was Putin's objective from the start of the war. Remember that 60-kilometer long convoy closing in on Kyiv back in March, 2022, only to watch it get picked apart by drones, with the husks of the tanks carried away by Ukrainian tractors.  

This war has been a terrible failure for Putin as he has been unable to secure his gains and has lost well over 100,000 soldiers in the process.  Overall Russian casualties are nearly 1 million.  It has been a huge embarrassment for his country to take a beating like this.  After all, Russia was supposed to be second only to the United States as a military power.  But, Putin is not one to back down and will continue his attacks, hoping that Ukraine will eventually be forced to submit with its major source of military funding no longer available.

Three years into the war, Ukraine produces 40% of its military equipment.  The US supplies about 30 percent and the rest comes from a variety of sources, mostly European countries.  Kyiv also signed an agreement with Japan to provide sophisticated satellite coverage that would supplant Starlink, which the US currently supplies. European countries have also said they would boost military aid to Ukraine should the US pull out.  It seems Ukraine could sustain this war indefinitely with or without US support.

Vladimir Putin desperately wants a peace agreement that would allow him to cleave off Eastern Ukraine, entrench his military along the border, and essentially create a Kaliningrad on the Black Sea.  In this way he could control the flow of goods in and out of this large interior sea.  This not only affects Ukraine but Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia as well.  It would be a big coup for him and the Trump administration seems willing to comply.

Of course Vlad would want all of Ukraine, as he has never recognized it as a country independent from Russia, but rather as a semi-autonomous oblast that is currently a bit unruly.  Since he regards Ukrainians as fellow Russian Slavs, he can't raze Ukraine to the ground like he did Chechnya.  Instead, he picks at its cities hoping to break their will.  He has only strengthened Ukrainian resolve, with Zelensky continuing to enjoy high approval marks despite what Russian propaganda channels provided to Trump.

To this point, the Trump administration has relied almost exclusively on Russian propaganda outlets, which are filtered through Truth Social and other conservative American media outlets, for its assessment of the situation.  It has virtually ignored any news to the contrary.  This was why Trump claimed Zelensky had only 4 percent approval. Donald had picked this nugget up from an anonymous poll on Telegram that had probably been posted on Truth Social, his favorite media outlet.

The strain of these "negotiations" was made visible when Marco Rubio barked back at reporters on the tarmac that the US would "move on" if Russia and Ukraine didn't show more progress in the peace talks.  Marco pulled out of the talks in London, leaving former Gen. Kellogg high and dry as he tried to carry on efforts between the UK and Ukraine.  Marco obviously got scolded for these comments back in Washington, as he sang a very different tune in the White House yesterday.  The reality is that we are nowhere near the "finish line." Unless the US starts taking Ukrainian concerns into account it can forget ever reaching an agreement on a ceasefire, much less end to the war.  How is it in Kyiv's interests to have virtually no security guarantees even if it were to cede Crimea and the land bridge created by Russian forces to the Kremlin?

This is where the negotiations break down.  The Trump administration is offering virtually nothing to Ukraine.  Donald claims that the mere presence of American companies mining rare earth minerals and rebuilding the energy infrastructure in Ukraine would be enough to deter Russia from further encroaching on Ukraine.  Apparently, the White House agreed to some "pact" with the Kremlin to split resources between them.  This is what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to shove down Pres. Zelensky's throat when they first met in Kyiv in February.  Zelensky politely said no and was roundly chastised by Trump and Vance at a White House meeting later that month.  As far as Trump is concerned, this is a real estate transaction, and he doesn't understand why it is taking so long.

He thought he had Vladimir under control, after all the terms of the agreement were so favorable to him, but here was Vlad bombing Kyiv yet again for no apparent reason, as if rubbing Donald's nose in the ground.  This isn't about Ukraine.  It's about Donald's own legitimacy.  If he can't swing a deal he looks weak, and Vladimir made him look weak. Very weak indeed, if the best Donald can utter out of his butthole mouth is "Vladimir, STOP!"  At least he didn't say please.

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