PUTIN IN A PICKLE

While the media is focussed on Ferguson and has Hamas and IS as “fillers”, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is quietly continuing his “thing” in Ukraine. Jay H. Ell is really uncertain what Vlad’s “thing” is but he feels it is to restore Russia and thereby his good self to it’s old glory. Jay H. Ell is confident that he cannot really succeed as he has blogged recently, “Putin The Last Russian Tzar, “Putin Pulls Out The Old USSR Playbook” and “Putin - Fools Russian Where Angels….”. In short he is an anachronistic, imperialistic, totalitarian, blustering, narcissistic, swaggering bully - the anti hero who is so charismatic you cannot but fail to take notice of him and his actions. 

Someone should tell him the Soviet Union really did lose out and the Yeltsin/Gorbachev period was not a blip on the world screen. What happened in the early nineties really did herald the unraveling of the old  USSR empire and even worse most of the Comrade States upped and left or wanted to leave for the other side. The unkindest cut of all was that neighbor Ukraine wanted out as well.

The most intolerable circumstance for Vlad has to be that no-one is taking any notice of him at all at the moment. Jay H. Ell can reliably infer that, presently, his media ratings suck. But cheer up Vlad because Jay H. Ell feels that you are newsworthy and that you are, in this unfair media world, being wrongly ignored. You are causing unnecessary havoc in Ukraine, you are about to bring avoidable financial hardship on the Russians and you are a brat on the world scene where you do have disproportionate influence as you are still a permanent vetoing member of the UN Security Council. But the hard truth is that you are now a regional power not a superpower just like that nerd Obama called it. 

However, Vlad have no fear you are still a somebody from a country that once was a Superpower so the media will be back when they run out of their current crises or if you and your East Ukrainian terrorists shoot down another Malaysian commercial plane. In fact the Ukrainians have captured  ten Russian paratroopers in the Donetsk area and the Russians have moved in with troops and artillery in what National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, believes might be a counteroffensive. So if Vlad, who by some like Pat Buchanan is considered a political genius, goes for it hammer and tongs in Ukraine, and what with Michael Brown’s funeral bringing closure to Ferguson and  a ceasefire in Gaza, the boys and girls from the media might just be ready to put Putin back in prime time.

PUTIN’S PICKLE

Jay H. Ell  postulates that Putin is not nearly as sure of himself and what to do next as he leads us all to suppose. He has to be balancing the impact sanctions have already had on the Russian economy and what newer ones may herald, especially as the latest sanctions are more broad sweeping and have the EU fully behind them.  As Jay H. Ell has reported Russia’s economy is in a parlous state with foreign capital hemorrhaging, including some belonging to Putin’s plutocrat friends. The Russian interest rate and inflation are up so why all this bravado? One fact is for certain till he finds a suitable way out he will proceed with his childish Imperialistic games and grandstand to his still adoring electorate.

WHERE THE DISPUTE IS AT NOW

After a lull period Putin suddenly decided, in late August, that he needed to become “humanitarian" and invade East Ukraine at the same time. Two hundred trucks with supposed aid for the beleaguered pro Russian East Ukrainian dissidents had artillery added to them. This latter fact was confirmed by NATO.The trucks were supposed to be escorted by the Red Cross but the latter refused as, according to the Wall Street Journal, they did not want to be caught in the crossfire. So the Russian trucks just proceeded illegally into Ukraine. 

This “invasion” has been accompanied by another amassing of 18,000 Russian troops on the border and more trucks with munitions. In fact Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has accused Russia of sending troops across the border to start a second front. Poroshenko who is due to meet Putin with EU representatives in a few days has expressed “extraordinary concern”. According to Business International the Ukrainian military have reported that a group of Russian soldiers, disguised as “separatists” have invaded the South East Ukraine. This is the area, named Donbass, where the Russian speaking Ukrainians have already declared independence from Ukraine. The Ukrainian military have claimed to have repulsed the “Russian” attack. NATO has reported that the Russians have been firing into Ukraine from without and within its actual borders.

Needless to say the Russians deny all of this. 

THE RUSSIAN PLAYBOOK FROM NOW ON

The well worn USSR playbook demands that there will be an encounter, such as the one that has just occurred in Donetsk, where the Russian supported Ukrainians cannot “defend” themselves against “overwhelming" Ukrainian forces and they will be “rescued” from the “aggressors” by the Russians who then stay to keep the peace. And/or the Russians halt the war when the pro Russians are losing and then demand a ceasefire and self determination for the Eastern Ukrainians etc etc. The amazing part of persisting with this charade is that who the hell, at this stage of the game, believes a word of it. Apparently there are enough Russians who do.

Now where Putin is correct nobody is going to send troops in but the pressure to arm the Ukrainians will grow. They let Putin take Crimea realizing that it would be a whopping debt to the Russian treasury. However, Obama has more financial levers that have to start meaningfully impinge on the Russian electorate. Putin has to know that Russia’s internal plight might eventually turn the xenophobic cheers into jeers and tears. Putin is trying to balance his aggression in the hope that Ukraine and the West will give him some bone that he can declare victory on. His pathetic response to ban Western food imports will hardly improve his status in Russia. Also, the longer this lasts the bigger the mess and the harder it is for Putin to back down. The shelves in the supermarkets are beginning to empty in Russia. Interestingly enough cheese is one of the first shortages noticed, The spineless Swiss Government are looking for ways to increase the amount of cheese they can supply to Russia.

In all of this the Ukrainian army are acquitting themselves extremely well. They have retaken towns, laid siege and certainly stopped the Russian separatists march. Obama has to face a realistic choice as to whether to arm Ukraine or not. It would make sense to but would up the anti and inflame the paranoid Putin. Obama’s style is the least military intervention possible. Many a foe has taken that for weakness but he has a steely resolve and he will continue putting the screws on Putin economically.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

At the end of the day this all boils down to Putin’s ego. He has started a dangerous game of chicken. A game that realistically he cannot win. He is irrelevant to world issues at the moment. If he hadn’t chosen to play for such high stakes perhaps he could have acted as a senior statesman in a chaotic planet. The rest of the world has no desire to fight with Russia and in fact have a stake in its stability. There are enough problems without him going off on a neo colonial tangent. 

The more one sees of the world and the tragedies unfolding the more it becomes evident how important leadership is and how much of the destiny of mankind is in the hands of so few. What is also so sad is, that in order to have a country’s injustice exposed there as to be enough interest to the viewership of a fraction of the world’s population that has the disposable income to purchase the “better soap”. Russia still hasn’t reached the neglect that Darfur is condemned to endure because there is still leverage in recreating it as a bogeyman that can arise from the ashes. They have after all just had the winter Olympics and will have the World Soccer Cup in 2018 so they are long way from nonentity status. 

The big question is when do the Russians realize that their new Tzar he is not only not wearing a shirt he has no clothes on at all. According to an insightful piece in the “New Republican” if Putin goes all that will happen is that another Putin/Dictator/Tzar will be put in, (pardon the pun), his place. Putin, like all the all leaders of Russia before him, regardless of the totalitarians they replaced in the  promise of  “democracy” had obliterated their opposition and became Putins themselves. If this is true Russia is condemned to an ongoing cycle of xenophobic totalitarian rulers. 

Jay H. Ell simply refuses to believe that there isn’t some leader that will break the centuries old dictatorial reign of Russia. Surely a country that has produced Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzyhenitsyn Chekov, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky - Korsakov to name a few can find a head honcho that isn’t a totalitarian fascist.