After having watched Putin play the west like a violin, I have to admire the cunning, cheating, crook and KGB thug. If the Three Stooges did diplomacy, they would reflect what Obama, Kerry and Biden have done. NATO and the West just don’t get Putin. They don’t understand his motives, his passions, and especially his deep Russian patriotism and nationalism. The whole point of Putin’s actions was to neuter the cynical, imperialist eastward movement of NATO after 1991. The Russians understood they had a deal. The deal was Germany would leave NATO. The deal was NATO would not absorb Poland, The Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. The deal was NATO wouldn’t try to annex the Ukraine, Georgia and make a play deep into central Russia. NATO did all that, and what is happening in the Ukraine is Putin’s response.
For all intents and purposes, the Ukraine of late February no longer exists. There is a map on Zerohedge.com that shows the “New Russia” Putin has mentioned several times. It extends from the current eastern border of the Ukraine all the way to Moldavia. Moldavia borders Romania. Putin can never be seen as timid.
Putin has now created a ring of captured cities that give him a beachhead well inside the Ukrainian border. He has poured proxy troops, well armed, well trained, and well led proxy troops, to defend them. Anybody notice how fast anti armor and anti air missiles showed up within a day of the Odessa slaughter? The Odessa slaughter is a defining event. It now means the Ukraine has gone from civil unrest, to civil war, and finally, to the precursor stages of ethnic cleansing and genocide. When you see comments from the Kiev government calling for all ethnic Russians to be nuked, well this is what I am talking about.
I had thought Putin would wait for the May 11th independence vote and then move in under cover of official request. He is not going to do that, or so he says. He may feel that he has sufficient military forces to prevent a general massacre of ethnic Russians anywhere in the Ukraine. He also may be waiting for the Kiev government to collapse. This is not a bad bet.
My view is Putin has clearly won his “New Russia.” However Kiev frames it, they have been defeated. The Ukrainian military will eventually retreat west to the Dniepper River with their tails between their lags. The so called “anti terror campaigns” are a military farce. Ukraine lost nearly 10 per cent of their HIND helicopters in less than 48 hours to “militia” with anti aircraft missiles. They were not militia. They were Russian special forces troops. They have been augmented by thousands of independent proxy troops. Now that we are in the ethnic cleansing and multigenerational blood feud phase, many “lone wolves” saw the Odessa massacre and decided to go to the Ukraine and start killing. The entire situation is now completely out of control. This may be what Putin is sensing and showing some caution.
At any rate, we have now stumbled into a first rate regional crisis with lethal potential for serious escalation. We may rest assured that the Three Stooges don’t have a clue what to do. This is what happens when you let Wall Street, IMF bankers, and chickenhawk Neo Cons make foreign policy. The Kiev government really is full of fascists.
Doomer Doug has no optimism that the firestorm can be avoided here. There is too much hatred now, as well as way too many troop deployments. Sending in the US Army to Poland is guaranteed to annoy the Russians. The Russians are big on buffer zones. The reason they have reacted so wildly to the NATO eastward expansion is it puts NATO troops directly on Russian borders, from The Baltic States to central Asia. Gee, now why would that insolent imperialist, globalist policy annoy a newly resurgent Russia. This is not your knocked flat on its butt Russia. Putin is not the drunk Yeltsin. He is not the scheming Gorbachev. The Russians are talking about putting Gorbachev on trial and executing him for treason, by the way. The Russians just announced a major modernization and upgrade effort for their Black Sea Fleet.Yep, Putin ain’t taking fecal material from ANYBODY FOR ANY REASON.
Yep, our brainless, gutless, Nobel Peace Prize winning shoot drones at anything that moves Obama has dumped us in the compost pile indeed. Actually, Putin and Obama resembles Hitler and Chamberlain at Munich. Obama is so outclassed that you almost feel sorry for Obama after Putin runs him through the vege-e-matic! <G> On the other hand this is Obama we are talking about. If there has ever been a more self indulgent, ignorant, arrogant and downright churlish child President I personally can’t think of one. Obama will be the doom of us all. Still, an American political system that will likely produce Hellary Clinton and Jeb Bush as the 2016 Presidential candidates deserves to be exterminated completely. Putin is more than willing to do that.