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Blog, Putin, Russia

The Fog Of War

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As the fog of war sets in, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine how many casualties there are on either side. That said, multiple sources have indicated that the casualties on the Russian side may be much heavier than Putin or his war-planners expected. The Ukrainian military claims to have shot down more than one Russian military transport as rifles are handed out to Ukrainian civilians while others busy themselves making Molotov cocktail explosives in anticipation of the Russian advance on Kyiv.

Polish officials tell the BBC, that some ten-thousand Ukrainians have now crossed over into Poland. Men, age 18 to 60, are staying behind in Ukraine, to support the fight against what some are now calling “Putin’s War.”

For his part, Putin and his FSB, continue a massive war of disinformation, insisting they are attacking Ukraine because it is under “Neo-Nazi” control. The truth, is that the country’s president is Jewish. Observers inside Russia, have indicated that the Putin regime is also failing to tell the Russian people that there have been Russian casualties. Reports indicate that both Facebook and Twitter, have been shut down inside Russia and that, as to be expected, the Putin regime is practicing extreme censorship over Russian media outlets, generally.

There are reports that Russian soldiers sent into the fight were not told they would be going to war against Ukraine.

Resistance, both inside Russia and from without, appears to be growing, with Russians, even when threatened by arrest, continue taking to the streets to protest the war. There are protests in other countries as well, including Georgia, Kazakhstan, across the U.K., and the United States, where New Yorkers have filled Times Square. According to one report, Kazakhstan, refused a request from Putin for troops. At the time of this writing, Ukrainian President Zelensky was still in Kyiv, which was still being controlled by Ukrainians, although Russian missiles have rained down on civilian structures including apartment buildings and schools.

While there seems to be some agreement that the Ukrainians are doing better than many expected, it is also generally believed that they continue to be out-gunned and out-manned, and fighting by themselves as they are, they won’t be able to hold off the Russians forever. One recent video shows unarmed Ukrainians attempting to block Russian tanks with their bodies. Another, shows a Russian tank crushing a car, with its driver at the wheel. Remarkably, the motorist survived.

In a recent statement, Ukrainian President Zelensky said, “We will fight as long as it takes to liberate the country.”

Blog, Putin, Russia

Putin: He Loses Even If He Wins

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Occasionally, I take a look at my website stats to find out who is reading my stuff. I took a look a few minutes ago and saw something interesting. I’m getting hits from Ukraine and Russia. That’s new.

Since the war just broke out and I’ve been writing about it, I must assume that there are those in Ukraine and Russia, from Russia in particular, who are searching for the truth. Okay, here, to the best of my ability, is the truth about what’s happening in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin, is not a legitimate president. He is an absolute dictator who has been elected and then re-elected in phony elections. A former KGB operative who arrests or kills his opposition, be they politicians or journalists. And now, for reasons only Putin knows, he has decided to send his military, the biggest army in Europe, into the Ukraine. Which is no match for the Russian military.

Speculation about why this is happening ranges from Putin wanting this to be his legacy, that he put at least some of the old Soviet Union back together again, on one side, to some wondering if the man has lost his mind,because this war he has unleashed will serve no one, on the other.

There appears to be no up-side to the war for Putin, or for anyone else, which has left many observers scratching their heads in disbelief and wonder. Is Vladimir Putin a rational human being?

Another possibility, some think, is that Putin is so threatened by Democracy, threatened that Ukraine will be a successful Democracy, that he felt it necessary to destroy the country and to slaughter thousands of Ukrainians, to secure his own position as dictator of Russia. In other words, his failures as a leader would be so obvious when compared to the success of Democracy in Ukraine, that his people might rise up and demand Democracy for Russia. That, of course, would be untenable for any number of reasons for Putin, and particularly untenable for a man who sees the dissolution of the old U.S.S.R., as one of the worst things that has ever happened.

If you listen carefully to what he says, Vladimir Putin’s head seems stuck in the past, with Putin seeing himself as something between a new-age Tsar and a 21st. Century Hitler clone, about to send his stormtroopers across the Sudentenland, eventually spreading “shock and awe” throughout Europe. However, who really knows what lurks in the dictator’s brain other than the dictator himself? This man who would be Caesar? And so he has invaded, with no valid reason, without any justification at all, the peaceful nation of Ukraine, which just wanted to be left alone.

For the record, there is no evidence of genocide inside Ukraine and the “uprising” in the “breakaway regions” of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), appears to have been mostly instigated by Putin himself as an excuse to invade. The issues in Donetsk and Luhansk, surely could have been resolved through diplomacy. But Putin, would have none of it. Even after repeated pleas from the west to solve his issues through diplomacy, he wanted to invade.

And now, Ukrainians, are being bombed with Russian bombs while Russian tanks and troops cross over the border to do God knows what, because nothing Putin is doing makes any sense. Except that maybe he wants to put the Soviet Union back together again. But that, is not going to happen. Not when there are so many in NATO and the west, who would rather die on their feet than live on their knees in subjugation to Vladimir Putin.

Could he possibly be delusional? Does a rational man describe a nation led by a Jewish president, as a “junta of Neo-Nazis?”

With Putin controlling nearly all the media inside Russia, without free speech, it’s difficult to know what’s really happening inside the country. And yet, word is leaking out that Russians are protesting the war, and that they are being arrested for it. At the same time, images are coming in of innocent Ukrainian women and children crossing the border into Poland, fleeing for their lives as the Russian war machine threatens to crush all they have. And for what?

The Ukrainians will never agree to be Putin’s personal slaves, and the west is punishing Russia with harsh sanctions, threatening to destroy the Russian economy in the weeks and months to come.

Putin, has no end-game. He loses even if he wins. He may end up occupying Ukraine, a nation filled with angry people who just wanted to be left alone, but the combination of the occupation and sanctions being placed on Russia by the west are sure to place the country in an economic vise while turning it’s dictator into an international pariah.

His losing position was made prophetic with news that one of Russia’s first territorial conquests, was to seize control of the Chernobyl nuclear site. A very real symbol of one of the worst failures of Putin’s much-loved U.S.S.R. Apparently the plant was hit by Russian shelling and is now leaking even more radiation than before.

The sad part in all of this, or one of the sad parts, because there are so many, is that this isn’t the doing of the Russian people – it’s the responsibility of one scared little man by the name of Putin – and along with the Ukrainians, it’s the Russian people who will eventually be made to suffer for his confused and misguided actions.