Russia in Ukraine
All of the West’s emotional reaction and energy
these days is aimed at Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, a sovereign
country, and the atrocities reportedly committed in Ukraine by the Russians. The most recent atrocity: A Russian missile
attack that killed at least 52 people at a train station packed with women,
children and the elderly fleeing the threat of a Russian offensive in the east.
I am as outraged by the Russian actions in Ukraine
as anyone, probably more so, since Southeastern Poland and Eastern Ukraine are
ancestral areas. I do not know anyone
there, but I’m sure that I have many nieces and nephews and extended family living
in that area. In fact, I just recently established
contact with a young woman with my same last name who lives in Kyiv.
Having said all of that, I like to stay balanced
and go back to causes. Why did Putin
attack Ukraine? The immediate popular answer
is that he saw a weak, doddering, ineffective Joe Biden and his incompetent
puppeteers, and saw his chance to aggrandize territory that he felt was part of
the Russian Empire.
To support Putin’s thinking, historically, the
Kievan Rus was ancestral for 400 years to Ukraine, Belarus and Western Russia. Also, Ukraine was a founding communist
republic of the Soviet Union. So, there was
plenty of history to support Putin’s belief that Ukraine, particularly the
eastern part, should be part of greater Russia.
That may have been Putin’s contention, but not the
Ukrainians’, who value their Cossack descended independence, and do not
consider themselves Russian, Cyrillic script and language similarities
notwithstanding. They no doubt also
remember Stalin’s Holodomor, the forced starvation of upwards of 5 million of
their progenitors in 1932-33.
The history showing Ukraine as close to Russia fit
into Putin’s Machiavellian KGB fueled plans quite nicely. He would just blitzkrieg across the frozen
and mainly flat country with his modernized Russian military, and make short
work of the Ukrainians, whom he considered nearly Russians. Just like he did with the Georgians in 2008. Maybe Putin should have taken a lesson from
the Chechen wars of the 1990’s when the Chechens fought Russia for three years
in two wars.
The Ukrainians had something to say about Putin
quickly conquering their country. The
Ukrainians, whose heritage derives from historic fighters like Scythians,
Mongols and Cossacks. had been strengthening their military and their defenses
ever since Putin first seized the Crimean Peninsula and parts of the Donbas
region in 2014.
The Ukrainians had plenty of their own defensive
hardware, and the NATO countries, particularly Germany, sent them additional
effective defensive weapons. The U.S.
lagged behind, but authorized over $1 billion in military aid, dragging their
feet all the while, and shaking in fear at Putin’s nukes. It’s a sad pass when socialist, “woke” Europe
and Germany lead the way against Putin’s aggression, and the U.S. lags behind,
mired in “wokeness” and incompetence.
Rather than a quick conquest, Putin got his ass
handed to him by the Ukrainians, led by their charismatic young leader, Volodymyr
Zelenskyy, who has become a hero to the western world.
Ukrainian citizens were handed out firearms to
fight in the streets. Ukrainian SAMs
shot down Russian aircraft. Armed drones
and Javelin short range missiles knocked out Russian tanks. Young conscripts in the Russian military
defected when they learned that they were fighting “nearly Russian”
Ukrainians. Spring mud engulfed Russian vehicles. The Russians made some gains in the east and
south of the country, but they failed to take Kyiv and retreated to Belarus and
the east.
Published Russian atrocities, and Zelenskyy’s
pleas for heavy equipment to fight the Russians continue to activate the EU,
and more slowly, the U.S., to provide Ukraine with very effective S-300 SAMs, armor, and other modern anti-air
and anti-tank weapons. In light of the
highly visible predations by the Russians, there is even talk again of sending Ukraine
Mig-29’s from ex-Soviet satellite countries.
Putin’s current objective seems to be to split off
and absorb the chunks of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea that he has occupied into
Russia, in a negotiated peace settlement, and to ensure that the rest of
Ukraine never joins NATO. On this latter
point, since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland, with an 830 mile border with
Russia, is considering joining NATO, negating whatever happens on the original
250 mile Russian/Ukrainian border.
Russian and Ukrainian history, a weak and
incompetent American administration, Putin’s ruthless KGB background and some
incredibly faulty military advice, informed Putin’s original decision to try to
absorb all of Ukraine in one fell swoop.
Since that failed, he will most likely try to cut off Ukraine from the southern seas
by holding on to occupied territory in the east and south as part of any cease
fire.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, want the
Russians entirely out of Ukraine proper, including Donbas and Crimea. Given
enough military hardware, it seems the Ukrainians are capable of driving the
Russians out. It seems that it’s going
to be a long war. Let’s hope that the “wokesters”
in Washington stop being intimidated by Putin’s nuclear posturing, and give the
Ukrainians the heavy weapons and aircraft they need to beat the Russians.
Ray Gruszecki
April 10, 2022
