Vladimir Putin is on a crusade to rebuild the former Soviet Union. In a sense, Putin believes that the old regime is still intact, and the downfall of Communism was merely a hiccup. (Like most dictators, he is delusional about his empire.)
He’s described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “disintegration of historical Russia” and considers Ukraine’s leaders as running an “anti-Russian project”. He has said that Ukraine and Russia are one country.
It’s important to understand Putin’s psyche, to recognize his true motives. Putin is a narcissistic sociopathic megalomaniac. He has poisoned political enemies with toxic nerve gas. He used his own daughter as a guinea pig for the Russian Covid vaccine. He dissolved the Russian parliament and altered the constitution, so that he could be a lifelong dictator.
Putin is obsessed with, well…Putin. He craves the approval of his citizens, taking photo ops of himself shirtless on horseback and flying a hang glider.
It’s hard to comprehend, yet many Russian citizens worship him, and soak up his bogus vicious propaganda against the United States.
(To listen to Yaakov M’s full analysis about the Ukraine crisis, click here.)
What is Putin’s official diplomatic premise for invading Ukraine?
Often when a crazy dictator does something bad, the reason he gives is NOT his true motivation. This situation is no exception.
Like many aggressive dictators, Putin claims that he is acting in self-defense. Ukraine has been propped up militarily by NATO and the U.S., under the Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations. Ukraine has become “too friendly” with NATO for Putin’s taste.
Putin’s logic is that if Russia decided to build up an arsenal of troops and weapons at the Mexican or Canadian border with the US, we would not sit idly by. He believes that he has the same right to protect his territory.
In addition, he says that Ukrainian citizens in the east are cultural Russians, and as such, those territories rightfully belong to him.
Putin has also demanded a guarantee that Ukraine will never become part of NATO–but of course he is not going to get such an assurance, and he knows it.
Last year President Putin wrote a long piece describing Russians and Ukrainians as “one nation”. His strategy all along has been to position Russia as a victim, and claim that he is entitled to annex Ukraine in order to secure the Russians from the imperialist western countries.
Why is this happening now?
A strong case can be made that Putin is taking advantage of a lack of leadership in the White House.
Unlike President Trump who effectively canceled the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and thus crushed Putin’s hope of becoming the number-one energy supplier in Europe, President Biden removed sanctions and allowed the pipeline to be completed (while hurting energy suppliers in the US). This gave Putin immense leverage over Germany and the rest of the EU, and will likely pump billions of dollars a month into Russia’s pockets.
For months, Putin has been amassing about 150,000 troops on the Ukraine border, plus a massive amount of tanks and weapons. Yet the Biden administration has refused to impose sanctions. In a bizarre statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that there will be no sanctions “until the bombs are being dropped” on Ukraine. Jen Psaki argued that if we impose sanctions before an invasion takes place, that will somehow take away our leverage.
(Evidently Psaki does not understand the concept of sanctions. By freezing assets, you cripple the Russians economically, and then you only unfreeze the assets if they agree to withdraw. The leverage does not “expire”, it gets stronger. If President Regan had used the Biden approach on the Soviets, we would all be speaking Russian right now.)
In addition, Biden announced during a press conference that he would not retaliate against Putin, even if there was a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. Even if he misspoke, the message was loud and clear, and consistent with the passive foreign policy approach that Biden has taken on every issue.
Biden gave Russia added leverage by announcing that he would not send troops into Ukraine, presumably under any circumstances. Even if that is sound policy, the President should know better than to give away our secrets, which only empowers Putin and weakens our position. We should leave him guessing about our strategy.
All this has given Putin a golden opportunity. The Western World, led by Biden, has sent a clear message that Putin can pretty much do what he wants, and likely face minimal consequences, other than a possible token round of sanctions.
Whatever Putin’s end game is, he is going to push as hard as he can and squeeze as much as possible, knowing that our current administration is no match for him.
ReplyDeleteThe uncomfortable facts are, that the demented Alzheimer diseased TREASONOUS America hating DemonRat (sewer rat) sitting in the White House together with the Marxist DemonRat party, is a thousand times more of a danger to the U.S and western civilization than Putin will ever be.
What Putin is doing,we might not agree with it, but at least we can understand why he is doing it.
Ukraine for the last hundreds of years has been on and off part of Russia.
Remember Khrushchev the PM of Russia he was an Ukranian.
When the Soviet union collapsed and Ukraine declared itself a sovereign nation,Russia asked for guarantees that it will not join NATO and consequently have enemy military bases and rockets right on it's border.
The west refused to comply, and UkrainE kept insisting that it wants to join NATO.
Let's imagine for a moment,that the state of New Jersey declares it's independence from the U.S and joins in a military alliance with Russia or China and we have Russian or Chinese military bases and rockets in N.J. Would the U.S passively just accept it ,of course not.
But what is NOT understandable, is what this filthy treasonous DemonRat bastard is doing to his own country.
This traitor in chief, refuses to defend his own country as it’s being invaded by millions of illegal criminals.
.
This traitor in chief, handed over Afghanistan and 80 billion dollars worth of arms to Americas bitter enemy the Taliban.
.
This traitor in chief is ready to make a deal with the murderous Iranian Mullah’s whereby they will be able to become a nuclear power within 5 years.
This traitor in chief,was the only one in Obama’s cabinet to vote against
killing that monster Bin Ladin.
Now you tell me, who is a bigger danger to the U.S is it Putin or this rat bastard
There are two things Americans don't get about Europeans
ReplyDelete1) national pride - for Americans it's baseball and the battle of Midway. For Europeans it's a 1000 years or more of ongoing history that changed the world. Russian are a proud people (when all you have to eat are boiled cabbage and potatoes you have to be proud or you're die of grief). The loss of their empire when the USSR fell is a wound in their bellies. So of course Putin, as a proud Russian and an even stronger demagogue, is obsessed with bringing the wayward republics home.
2) Ukraine is an especially easy target because until 1990 there was never an independent republic of Ukraine. It had been part of Russia and, before that, Poland. In a thousand years of history, 32 years is nothing. There are dozens of European countries that disappeared from history over the centuries that lasted longer thah that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/23/russia-deploys-mobile-crematorium-follow-troops-battle/
ReplyDelete