With another week having passed Putin is nowhere nearer to having a trophy to display at his May 9 Victory Parade. In frustration his rhetoric has ratcheted up more than a couple of notches with repeated threats of nuclear escalation. Concomitantly NATO, the EU and the rest have increased their support for Ukraine to the extent that Zelensky has dropped, “It’s not enough” on every occasion that he has to thank a nation for their assistance.
The major change in Biden’s approach is that he no longer cares whether he is crossing any red lines Putin may have. This new attitude, to the extent that not only is he not holding back every time Putin mumbles about nuclear options, he hits back by scolding him for “irresponsible”oratory. The Russian Foreign Ministry has attempted to put an end to this dangerous hyperbole by announcing that talk of nuclear war must be kept to a minimum. But it still persists. As heavy weapons are added to the supply of sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine, Russia struggles to replenish the microchips for its own modern arsenal.
Well what has exactly occurred this week in support of Ukraine, at the battlefront, the diplomatic world and what has been the Russian response? The latter still hold one key card - the European dependence on their energy and the cash this brings in. They also had going into this invasion purportedly the second strongest army in the world.
THE BATTLE FRONT
Putin having given up on tacking on the whole of Ukraine to the motherland has concentrated a massive force in the South and the East where he already has two areas which are controlled by Russian separatists. For the moment these are disconnected from Crimea which he also seized in 2014. Ostensibly the East is where Putin really should have been greeted as a liberator as it is almost a hundred percent Russian speaking. According to UK intelligence his army, which is made up of conscripts, mercenaries as well as regular troops has made “slow but uneven progress”. They are being held back by fierce Ukrainian defense,There are of course sporadic missiles and bombings all over the Ukraine occasionally hitting a military target but mostly residential areas. The most infamous of these being nearby the meeting place of the Secretary General of UNO who was holding a meeting with the Ukrainians. A fact that Zelensky is repeatedly arguing is an insult to the world body.
A key city which could provide Russia with an albeit narrow link to Crimea is Mariupol. The importance of the latter cannot be overestimated and the fighting has been intense there for over two months. Putin has proclaimed victory but in the next sentence demands that the Ukrainians surrender. There are about a thousand troops and a similar number of citizens holed up in a massive steel foundry with underground tunnels which Stalin conveniently built decades ago. Putin has refused to allow the citizens and wounded soldiers safe passage and that savagery has become a metaphor for the unashamed brutality that the Russian soldiers have demonstrated. There has to be some hope that a corridor will be established for the wounded and the citizens. Putin has agreed, to the UNO Secretary, “in principle” to their evacuation. A few hundred have since left under the aegis of UNO but the process has been inexplicably halted.
Demonstrative of the status of the Russian offensive is what is happening in Donesk which was annexed by Putin in 2014. Men up to the age of sixty five are hiding because they don’t want to be conscripted!. Kershon is the one city in the South East that the invaders have captured. There have been almost daily protests by the locals. When Putin announced a phony referendum for the inhabitants to decide whether they wanted to be a "separatist state" there was a mass exodus of men. The latter knew that the moment that the ’independence” was declared then they would be conscripted to the Russian army. Another flop has been the ineffective impact of the much vaunted Russian cybersecurity operation. In fact they have been on the receiving end of attacks as the world of hackers have in concert reportedly wreaked havoc in various areas of Russian infrastructure.
As the war continues in the East the Russian losses are again proportionately far higher than the Ukrainians. According to UK intelligence the Ukrainians still control the sky. Zelensky claims to have deactivated a thousand Russian tanks. If that is correct that staggering number represents half the Russian inventory and the ground war hasn’t begun in earnest in the East.The Ukrainian cavalry in the form of heavy artillery is well on its way. Already a few of the Howitzers have written three more Russian military targets within the motherland. The Russians will have to outperform their previous efforts in the North to attain their objectives.
DIPLOMATIC FRONT - A PARADIGM SHIFT - UKRAINE CAN WIN
This is where the Russians have received their greatest setbacks. Besides the fact that the European Union have all but ensured Ukraine membership the nation has received humanitarian, logistic, security, financial and weapon support from scores of countries. Visits from the UNO Secretary General, neighboring Baltic countries, Boris Johnson of the UK and the Secretaries of Defense, (Austin) and State, (Blinken) of the United States have all turned out to be more than photo ops. Nancy Pelosi too paid a surprise visit reassuring that America will be there till the end. The most consequential encounter has to have been from the US Secretaries of Defense and State that was followed up by a meeting of forty nations on an American Airbase in Germany to coordinate the assistance to be provided to the beleaguered country. The group chaired by Secretary Austin was entitled the Ukraine Defense Consultative Group
Secretary Austin in his opening address maintained that, “We start from a position of moral clarity. Russia is waging a war of choice to indulge the ambitions of one man. Ukraine is fighting a war of necessity to defend its democracy, its sovereignty and its citizens, But the stakes stretch beyond Ukraine - and even beyond Europe….”. Secretaries Blinken and Austin had made the USA position clear in a press conference preceding the meeting that the US wanted to see Russia’s military capabilities weakened, At that meeting six billion dollars were pledged in support.
The United Kingdom, who from the get - go have been providing offensive weaponry, through their Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has made clear provisions for a peace talk. She added that Ukraine must get back the 2014 regions that Russia seized and there needs to be reparations. Finally she declared that there had to be no doubt that Putin had lost and that his militarily had been weakened.
Biden also has made it quite clear that the paradigm had shifted from not risking escalation, to Russia must be stopped - “Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,… We can’t let this happen….”. Biden never one not to put his money where his mouth is pledged to ask Congress for another thirty three billion dollars of aid in addition to the sixteen billion already allocated.
So the tanks and heavy armor are rolling in from all and sundry including Germany which had been ambivalent due its dependence on Russian energy, However many countries pledged to wean themselves from the addiction while Poland and Bulgaria there and then stopped purchases. To add insult to injury NATO is set to add Finland and Sweden and the EU has invited Ukraine to join. The sanctions are biting to the extent that Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov have said they have to be removed in any peace deal.
In spite of reality staring Putin in the face he carries on in his own world unable or unwilling to change his narrative.
THE RUSSIAN RESPONSE - NARRATIVE IS UNCHANGED AND THE ANTE IS UPPED
As recently as April 26, Putin implied that there could be a nuclear response to any country interfering in Ukraine “… they should know the response to those strikes would be lightning fast….We have all the tools for this - ones that no one can brag about and we won’t brag. We will use them if needed. And I want everyone to know this”. Minister Lavrov followed this threat by declaring that NATO by delivering Western weaponry to Ukraine are “in essence engaged with war against Russia and Moscow regards these weapons as legitimate targets”.
Lavrov warned that there remains a real danger of a third world war. (Biden is no longer the one terrified of such an outcome). Lavrov said peace talks with Ukraine will continue and sanctions have to be removed. He castigated Zelensky's approach accusing of him pretending to negotiate and labelling him a good actor. Zelensky incidentally has maintained that sanctions will not be part of his dealings with the Russians. Germany backed him up opining that they will remain in place till Russian troops have retreated from Ukraine.
Perhaps the most outrageous chutzpah of the Russian establishment this week came from Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova who claimed that that Russia would respond harshly to strikes on Russian territory. "Such criminal activity cannot go unanswered. I would hope Kyviv and Western capitals take seriously...that further provocation will necessarily lead to a harsh response from Russia. We do not recommend further testing our patience. Russia is determined to set goals of the special military operation". The United Kingdom has been specifically targeted for proportional retaliation.
WHAT NEXT?
Putin has to say something dramatic on May 9 at his Victory Parade in Moscow. He could argue that they have flattened Mariupol. He could announce the Russian Democratic Republic of Kershon. However if matters proceed as they have the situation can only get worse. The world is ready to take him on. The ;latest announcement from Putin's Foreign Ministry seems to rule out nuclear weaponry and chemical weapons will just increase the boohaai and pressure. The sanctions are increasing and Russia is on its way back to the dark ages. There is no foreign investment and with Putin around it is not going to happen, The Western companies are gone, most forever. The Russians can rely on energy for only so long....
Putin;s big problem is body bags. Estimates of Russians dead are up to forty thousand, They can keep the numbers under wraps for so long and no longer. There is already in the Russian social media hell letting loose about what happened to the crew of the battleship Moskva. Apparently the Ministry of Defense claimed one dead Marien and twenty seven missing. The father of the deceased went ballistic and said he had been given the run around by the authorities and questioned their transparency. The ship had four hundred sailors and a photo of the survivors only showed a hundred.
Incidentally the Ukrainians claimed (May 2) that another two Russian warships had been downed by drones.
Currently the atrocities are being documented. This stain can only be removed by regime change and reparations.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
But at the end of the day Putin is not going to give in easily and the prognostications are that this will last for months. There is still going to be rubble, needless deaths, sickening brutality and atrocities before this is over. However world involvement means that there is not going to be a stalemate. One or other side has to win. Putin has pushed his psychopathic behavior once too often and the stars are aligned against him. He has Biden instead of Trump and Zelensky instead of Yanukovych. The most humongous irony is that in the fight agains the "Neo Nazis a number of holocaust survivors have been killed, eighty have been evacuated and the holocaust memorial bombed. And Lavrov's revisionist genetics haven't helped either.
Someone should let the GOP legislators know that the democracy that they support in Ukraine is philosophically the same as the one they are systematically obliterating for power.
It is not surprising in this partisan milieu that all Russians dead or alive are being blamed for this atrocity. From Medvedev to Tchaikovsky from the activists to the everyday citizen they are being lumped together with the thugs. This approach is hardly helpful and is insulting particularly to those who have sacrificed so much to oppose the Stalin of the current era,
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