Pretty much all you need to know is that you don’t sue for peace when you’re winning. You do it when you’re getting your ass kicked and you want to slither out of trouble without having to sign an unconditional surrender. Kind of like the Russian position took today in its talks with Ukraine in Turkey.
Thanks so much for your clarifying blasts in a confusing time. I wonder if I'd enjoy them as much if the home team wasn't kicking the visitors' asses. In any case I appreciate the daily updates, and that you're watching all the coverage I don't have time to. Hey free readers of the LTN: Pay this man! He's doing great work!
Who will pay for rebuilding Ukraine? Who will be held accountable for the death of thousands of Russian soldiers? Who will be prosecuted for killing hundreds in theaters, churches, hospitals? Will Russia stage a victory parade in Donetsk? Will Putin send hundreds of reporters to the GULAG because they tried to tell the truth? Will there be a huge parade through Red Square with thousands of dancing girls? Should the West allow Putin to declare victory and go home, it will be such grotesque denial. Any peace deal has to include a provision that if Russia starts another war in Ukraine NATO will intervene. Putin must be held to account, otherwise he can snicker at the tragedy and pretend he taught the Ukraine Nazis a lesson.
I've seen lines in a number of articles about this that oligarch money is being directed to Ukraine and frozen Russian money. It will be interesting to see what those steps are.
"Jesus, when are these Russia experts or Putin watchers going to realize that the Big Man in Moscow is a carbon copy of his pal Trump: a rampaging narcissist who only cares about how strong he looks. "
I'm in awe of Zelensky and the Ukrainian freedom fighters. It's certainly far from over, but it's so great to see the underdogs take it to the forces of darkness.
I liked that line too, but IMO Trump is the carbon copy. Putin's a lot smarter, or at least cannier. (I'm old enough to have dealt with real carbon copies. Unlike photocopies, they could always be distinguished from the original, and when you got down to the third, fourth, or fifth carbon, the deterioration was obvious.)
They're two peas in a pod. And yes, trump is the lesser pea.
I remember carbon copies. Also remember mimeograph copies - we called them dittoes. When we were schoolkids, we loved the smell of fresh dittoes. I'm sure there was some toxic chemical in there...
Lol, that takes me back. When I was in junior high, a couple of teachers were *sure* we were sniffing dittos. Which we were, but it was because of the smell, not to get high. I remember dittos as always printed in purple, whereas mimeographed copies were in black ink. I had some experience making mimeos as a college antiwar activist -- women typed and ran the machines while the men got up on podiums and bloviated -- but dittos might have been passé by then (ca. 1969/70).
Excellent writing, as usual. But that last line. Good God. My heart dropped when I thought of all the mothers of all those soldiers and how this son of a dog just used them as kindling. And yes, I mourn the Ukrainians as well, especially the civilians. But that last line. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
The problem with Crimea is that it IS mainly inhabited by ethnic Russians who did by and large support being annexed by Russia -- again. It's underreported that Crimea was only gifted from the Russian SFR to the Ukrainian SFR by Kruschev in 1954, as a sop. That under the Soviet Union meant very little, practically, in terms of administration or law. What Russia did by occupying and annexing it in 2014 was more a case of taking back what had been given a few generations before, out of a legitimate fear that Moscow was going to lose its important Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol to a NATO-aligned Ukraine. And that was unallowable to Putin. You might call that more an "indian giver" situation than an invasion, and yes, I know that old childhood, playground term is dated and probably wholly out of bounds today.
The only thing left is to pick up their dead.... The Russians may not even do that. Bringing the bodies back means funerals and it's pretty tough to keep a funeral secret when the grieving family begins spreading the world. I'll bet a lot of those dead Russians get listed as MIA or -- to save money on MIA pensions -- deserters. That way there are no images and videos of funerals. And beware what they do to the Russians who surrendered to or were captured by the Ukrainians. They've got grim futures if they are repatriated.
We've all seen Putin's cruelty applies to his own people as well. It was true that one of the first things on the field was a crematorium on wheels and that's so that the Russians back home don't get a glimpse of tons of body bags coming home. Also, because of sanctions, Russia can't get chips that go in their tanks so their tank factory has been shut down as well, not that that's a great loss since the Ukrainians know exactly what to do to and with those. Putin must be trying on that rolling in your grave ahead of time because he's locked up some of the FSB looking for the people who told him Ukrainians would welcome them with open arms and it would all be over in a couple of days. Just as a grimly amusing side note, it's said that Putin is a great fan of Botox and those shipments aren't getting into Russia as well. Tee hee.
You cannot trust anything Russia says. Those on MSM hold tight that Zelensky and Putin will meet to negotiate. Don’t make me laugh! That will never ever happen and only because Zelensky is Jewish. This is what this particular war is about. Ukraine freely voted for Zelensky and he’s doing a bang-up job. Putin can’t stand it. His demented mind has him in a tailspin where he doesn’t care who gets killed or maimed, even his own soldiers. Grab his ass and don’t let go!!
Putin/Russia is acting as Russia without Putin has generally acted: to maintain its buffer zone against "the West." Given what happened with Napoleon and then Hitler, its fears are not unreasonable. Post-Soviet Russia has put considerable effort into keeping those former Soviet republics in line. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is consistent with that. So the case that the invasion is mainly about Zelensky's being Jewish seems a little shaky to me. (I'm also wondering why early on Putin used "denazification" as an excuse for invading Ukraine. It seems a stretch to me, but I don't know how his mind works.)
Give it a rest no one in the west is or was going to attack Russia. It has nothing to do with Zelinskis religion but that he was elected freely and Ukraine was reforming. A prosperous and free Ukraine was the threat to Russia, neither France Germany or Sweden have any appetite to invade Russia, it is just Russian bullshit. Russia is in more danger of losing territory to China than to Europe. Ukraine in the EU not nato is the Putin fear.
It’s not shaky, Susanne. My parents were both Holocaust victims so I have some first-hand knowledge. My father was born in a village in Poland which is now part of the Ukraine. My mom was born in Berlin. Her parents were gassed in 1942. My dad’s family owned oil wells which were stolen by the Poles, the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and Russia. Putin is Hitler and Stalin reincarnated. He cares nothing for his own people much less for Ukrainians who had the audacity to elect Zelensky, an actor, a comedian, a lawyer, a Jew. This is exactly how his mind works. He even poisons those around him as he trusts no one.
I mention Stalin because he literally let his people starve to death. The evils of MAN.
Stalin didn’t let people starve to death it was a deliberate policy to destroy Ukrainian nationalism. He seized their food and sold it to Hitlers Germany in exchange for machine tools. Hitler got to be a hero feeding his people but those machine tools doomed nazi Germany. That part wasn’t planned by Stalin.
Why don’t you read what I wrote instead of what you imagine I wrote. First read you saying Stalin allowed people to starve while I said it was deliberate and you start to attack my understanding of history using anecdotes. Please Reconsider.
Marlene, you've just shown how shaky your assertion is. You have firsthand knowledge of Russian anti-Semitism, but you don't know what's going on in Putin's head. I suggest that his actions can't be removed from Russian national interests over the decades -- to maintain a buffer against the West. Are you suggesting that they can, that it's all about Putin as an individual?
The buffer is to keep Russians from being bitter at their poverty. A prosperous Ukraine would doom corrupt old Russia. American slavers were freed before Russian peasants were.
still too easy, i don't see putin as someone who gives up. the guy has some practice in the subject of retreat but as the saying goes: the wolf's head bites even after it is cut off.
After watching the recent events in Ukraine it seems that military tanks, armored cars, supply trucks and even heavy machine gun mounted Toyota pickups and low flying and slow aircraft are obsolete. If any grunt hiding behind a tree can take one of these out of the action with one trigger pull of a relatively inexpensive rocket powered gizmo then they are all out of date and useless. So what’s next?
If there’s no motorized advancement or retreat everything will be very slow or stagnant. Maybe trenches? That’s how we got tanks 100 years ago and tanks are out now so it might work. Horses and lances? Been there, done that. Doesn’t work against AK47s. Or stand shoulder to shoulder and march across the field? Again AK47s. Or maybe just stand back 20 miles and blow the crap out of everything over there. But those people over there are probably going to do the same thing. And there will always be somebody left to shoot you if you try to walk over there later. So, just blow it all up and go home? Why are we here in the first place? I say just go back to shouting insults across the canyon. Nobody gets hurt and everybody feels better.
I should think that some enterprising thinkers in militaries all over the world are going to want to experiment with new tactical battlefield groups that are lighter, faster, more flexible, and self-contained to a degree. And not tied to vehicles or roads to the same degree as now -- perhaps a "light infantry" or "mountain infantry" concept. You'd have these flooding a battlefield like rivers, probing and moving and looking for opportunities to flank or surround or bypass enemy strongpoints and not get bogged down in static positions. Sort of guerilla tactics to soften up an enemy position before the heavy units moved in to roll over a weakened front.
I can see a trend toward foot infantry again, operating in small, loose formations, taking their own tactical initiative, carrying new weapons that give them the ability -- as we've seen -- to take out slow, blind enemy vehicles while using cover and maneuver to avoid aerial attacks or artillery barrage. Motorized formations would not be the spearheads, they'd sort of take the old cavalry role of pursuit of a broken enemy, or perhaps launching shattering assaults across a narrow front as a spearhead against shaky troops.
These tugs back and forth are as old as Alexander the Great, if not earlier.
BUT. Isn't Putin going to carve up more of the country? he has destroyed so much, how is Ukraine going to function? Will he really give up or just wait a few more years - like he did after Crimea?
jeez, Lucian...you nailed it from the beginning, unlike the myriad "experts" and "foreign policy pundits" who spend altogether too much time hedging their bets.
Trump thinks Putin has nothing better to do than dig up dirt on Hunter Biden while he is, as you point out, getting his ass royally kicked. They are both out of touch, of course, but, unfortunately, one is still a dictator while the other is still a wannabe. But, then again, how many holes in one does Putin have?
Within the past month or two I related the story of one of my undergraduate college professors, William H. Vatcher, who was present at the Panmunjom peace negotiations between the summer of 1951, and July and August 1953. I believe that I also mentioned that I had spoken with Professor Vatcher during office hours this semester I took a course from him. We discussed his book, and even though I was ambivalent about the quality of the book he wrote, he at least had the knowledge that one of his students read the book and cared enough about the subject matter to interview him about what he wrote. What comes through in Bill Vatcher's book is the way that representatives of North Korea's Kim Il Sung, the communist leader of North Korea, strove mightily to win at the conference table where they could not win on the battlefield. By the summer of 1952, General Matthew Ridgway's Eighth Army was winning the ground war in Korea, albeit with heavy casualties; South Korea's capital city of Seoul had been liberated, and the cease-fire line had been pushed north of the 38th parallel, the putative dividing line between North and South Korea. What followed were 24 months of incessant haggling, name-calling, posturing, denying, accusing, as each side tried to wear the other down with verbal broadsides. On the battlefront, both sides dug in for the long haul, moving in heavy artillery, field fortifications, and all of the implements of warfare where both sides battle it out and get nowhere. The mountainous terrain, bleak, and devoid of foliage, made surprise attacks impossible to mask. Hilltop fortifications with nicknames like Old Baldy, and the Punch Bowl; and of course, the iconic Pork Chop Hill, were the scenes of horrific battles where advancing American soldiers were suffering terrible casualties on the scale that Marine Corps infantrymen experienced a decade earlier attacking Japanese island fortifications on Tarawa, Palau, and of course, Iwo Jima.
American airpower controlled the skies over the disputed territory, conducting precision airstrikes against enemy troop concentrations, supply depots, and especially against railroad communication lines. American matériel advantages were offset by the frustration of having to negotiate with communist counterparts who had no interest in moving things along to come to some sort of cease-fire agreement. I fully expect that we will see all of this and more if Vladimir Putin's representatives show up at the bargaining table. What this does, however, is give NATO the opportunity to give Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenski's ragtag army everything it needs to conduct defensive operations against Putin's exhausted and demoralized army. Under the circumstances, the Ukrainians will be doing both the fighting and the talking.
In Korea, the ROK army was essentially on a par with the Army that the United States tried to create in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, the latter two of which turned out to be complete failures. Ukrainians are not going to fail, because this is not a case of urban soldiery fighting rural agrarian peasants, as was the case I mentioned above. The Ukrainian Army has been blooded in its earlier skirmishing with Putin's Ukrainian surrogates and their Russian 'advisors'. It is they, not NATO, and not the UN, will be telling Putin's thugs to either go home or die in Ukraine. We need to make that happen.
The best thing that can happen is that no American faces show up at all at the truce negotiations. We're too invested in a quick deal and wanting to go home. Zelenski and his team of Ukrainian nationalists will be bargaining for themselves and their own countrymen. That's enough to keep the negotiations going for several more years. Our interests lie in protecting NATO's Eastern European members from being invaded by Russia, under Putin or any future successor to him. Zelenski's Ukraine is NATO's proxy for hitting Putin where it hurts him the most at this moment in history. A deal that maximizes Ukraine's territorial security has spillover benefits to NATO. Taking down this bully benefits everybody; but looking out for NATO's short term interests alone is self-defeating. At this moment in time we are all Ukrainians, each in our own way. Latvia's interest in being free of Russian domination are no more different than those of Estonia and Lithuania and Ukraine. None can feel secure against Russia unless all are secure, each in it's own way.
It was quite the opposite at Panmunjom, where the interests of the South Korean government were decidedly secondary to America's need to end the hostilities as quickly as possible. We forget that South Korea's president, Syngman Rhee refused to sign the armistice agreement that formally ended the fighting, if not the war itself. We also tend to forget that American laxity and mismanagement of the prisoner of war camps on Koje-do island were a major source of embarrassment to the United States Army and to the United Nations, where hard-core communist cadres sought to terrorize Chinese and North Korean soldiers, the majority of whom did not want to return home at the end of the war.
Someone in a hurry, and with a personal agenda, does not make for a good negotiator. Such a negotiator has one foot that never enters the room when the negotiation begins, and never enters the room while the principals battle it out over the bargaining table. It means being all in to forge a deal that all of the parties can take to the bank, not some face saving gesture that won't last beyond tomorrow morning.
Putin needs to know that this is Zelenski's deal to make, top to bottom, start to finish. The man is certainly up to the task, and no one from the State Department dressed in pinstripes will be sitting there pushing his own country's portfolio of issues. We, as Americans, have enough on our plate as it is; and if we're not willing to shoulder the burden of driving the Russians out of Ukraine, we ought to have damn little to say about what the peace agreement will look like at the end of the day. Our job is to make sure that NATO is all on the same page, and that there will be no backsliding.
The lesson is clear. This is not going to be a checkbox exercise; and it may go on for several years. Our job is to prevent Vladimir Putin from using the time interval to his strategic. advantage. Putin needs to be the one with his back against the wall. It's America's job to make sure that Putin gets as little wiggle room as humanly possible.
That the end of this particular war is almost over, is obvious. I would certainly not want to be any kind of general or commander in the Russian Army and have to report why the country lost this 'easy-peasy run in and take over' war in less time than it took them to get out of Afghanistan.
I read reports where a Russian Oligarch and 2 Ukrainian peacekeepers were sickened by suspected poisoning during a meeting:
"Following a meeting in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv earlier this month, Abramovich and the two senior members of the Ukrainian peacekeeping team, including Crimean Tatar lawmaker Rustem Umerov and a second unnamed individual, began experiencing symptoms that included red eyes, constant and painful tearing, and peeling skin on their faces and hands, The Wall Street Journal reported. "'
I guess there are some very unhappy hardliners in Moscow who would like to keep the reports of losses to a minimum, and to stop all that nasty talk about a truce to a minimum.
PS-I found an article that the Ukraine has warned their negotiators to not eat, drink or touch anything as they head into Instabul for negotiations with the Russians:
"LONDON — Ukraine warned its negotiators not to eat, drink or even touch anything as they headed into talks with Russia in Istanbul on Tuesday, following allegations that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and others may have been poisoned during previous talks."
This is one time where the Russian penchant for poisoning their enemies is definitely being a problem to be taken seriously. The KGB has a big thing on for poison.
Thanks so much for your clarifying blasts in a confusing time. I wonder if I'd enjoy them as much if the home team wasn't kicking the visitors' asses. In any case I appreciate the daily updates, and that you're watching all the coverage I don't have time to. Hey free readers of the LTN: Pay this man! He's doing great work!
Give gift subscriptions to friends and relatives!!
Who will pay for rebuilding Ukraine? Who will be held accountable for the death of thousands of Russian soldiers? Who will be prosecuted for killing hundreds in theaters, churches, hospitals? Will Russia stage a victory parade in Donetsk? Will Putin send hundreds of reporters to the GULAG because they tried to tell the truth? Will there be a huge parade through Red Square with thousands of dancing girls? Should the West allow Putin to declare victory and go home, it will be such grotesque denial. Any peace deal has to include a provision that if Russia starts another war in Ukraine NATO will intervene. Putin must be held to account, otherwise he can snicker at the tragedy and pretend he taught the Ukraine Nazis a lesson.
I've seen lines in a number of articles about this that oligarch money is being directed to Ukraine and frozen Russian money. It will be interesting to see what those steps are.
Expropriate the oligarchs money
Love this:
"Jesus, when are these Russia experts or Putin watchers going to realize that the Big Man in Moscow is a carbon copy of his pal Trump: a rampaging narcissist who only cares about how strong he looks. "
I'm in awe of Zelensky and the Ukrainian freedom fighters. It's certainly far from over, but it's so great to see the underdogs take it to the forces of darkness.
I liked that line too, but IMO Trump is the carbon copy. Putin's a lot smarter, or at least cannier. (I'm old enough to have dealt with real carbon copies. Unlike photocopies, they could always be distinguished from the original, and when you got down to the third, fourth, or fifth carbon, the deterioration was obvious.)
They're two peas in a pod. And yes, trump is the lesser pea.
I remember carbon copies. Also remember mimeograph copies - we called them dittoes. When we were schoolkids, we loved the smell of fresh dittoes. I'm sure there was some toxic chemical in there...
Lol, that takes me back. When I was in junior high, a couple of teachers were *sure* we were sniffing dittos. Which we were, but it was because of the smell, not to get high. I remember dittos as always printed in purple, whereas mimeographed copies were in black ink. I had some experience making mimeos as a college antiwar activist -- women typed and ran the machines while the men got up on podiums and bloviated -- but dittos might have been passé by then (ca. 1969/70).
Excellent writing, as usual. But that last line. Good God. My heart dropped when I thought of all the mothers of all those soldiers and how this son of a dog just used them as kindling. And yes, I mourn the Ukrainians as well, especially the civilians. But that last line. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
Wonderful column. Is there a chance of Crimea being returned to Ukraine?
I get tired of wingnuts going on about Obama losing Crimea and it seems fitting if it was returned during Biden’s presidency.
The problem with Crimea is that it IS mainly inhabited by ethnic Russians who did by and large support being annexed by Russia -- again. It's underreported that Crimea was only gifted from the Russian SFR to the Ukrainian SFR by Kruschev in 1954, as a sop. That under the Soviet Union meant very little, practically, in terms of administration or law. What Russia did by occupying and annexing it in 2014 was more a case of taking back what had been given a few generations before, out of a legitimate fear that Moscow was going to lose its important Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol to a NATO-aligned Ukraine. And that was unallowable to Putin. You might call that more an "indian giver" situation than an invasion, and yes, I know that old childhood, playground term is dated and probably wholly out of bounds today.
Indian giver who murders children?Indian giver is inappropriate as the Indians have taken nothing back.
Nice!
The only thing left is to pick up their dead.... The Russians may not even do that. Bringing the bodies back means funerals and it's pretty tough to keep a funeral secret when the grieving family begins spreading the world. I'll bet a lot of those dead Russians get listed as MIA or -- to save money on MIA pensions -- deserters. That way there are no images and videos of funerals. And beware what they do to the Russians who surrendered to or were captured by the Ukrainians. They've got grim futures if they are repatriated.
We've all seen Putin's cruelty applies to his own people as well. It was true that one of the first things on the field was a crematorium on wheels and that's so that the Russians back home don't get a glimpse of tons of body bags coming home. Also, because of sanctions, Russia can't get chips that go in their tanks so their tank factory has been shut down as well, not that that's a great loss since the Ukrainians know exactly what to do to and with those. Putin must be trying on that rolling in your grave ahead of time because he's locked up some of the FSB looking for the people who told him Ukrainians would welcome them with open arms and it would all be over in a couple of days. Just as a grimly amusing side note, it's said that Putin is a great fan of Botox and those shipments aren't getting into Russia as well. Tee hee.
You cannot trust anything Russia says. Those on MSM hold tight that Zelensky and Putin will meet to negotiate. Don’t make me laugh! That will never ever happen and only because Zelensky is Jewish. This is what this particular war is about. Ukraine freely voted for Zelensky and he’s doing a bang-up job. Putin can’t stand it. His demented mind has him in a tailspin where he doesn’t care who gets killed or maimed, even his own soldiers. Grab his ass and don’t let go!!
It’s time for the Qaddafi and
Ceaușescu treatment.
I prefer th Romanov solution.
Putin/Russia is acting as Russia without Putin has generally acted: to maintain its buffer zone against "the West." Given what happened with Napoleon and then Hitler, its fears are not unreasonable. Post-Soviet Russia has put considerable effort into keeping those former Soviet republics in line. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is consistent with that. So the case that the invasion is mainly about Zelensky's being Jewish seems a little shaky to me. (I'm also wondering why early on Putin used "denazification" as an excuse for invading Ukraine. It seems a stretch to me, but I don't know how his mind works.)
Give it a rest no one in the west is or was going to attack Russia. It has nothing to do with Zelinskis religion but that he was elected freely and Ukraine was reforming. A prosperous and free Ukraine was the threat to Russia, neither France Germany or Sweden have any appetite to invade Russia, it is just Russian bullshit. Russia is in more danger of losing territory to China than to Europe. Ukraine in the EU not nato is the Putin fear.
It’s not shaky, Susanne. My parents were both Holocaust victims so I have some first-hand knowledge. My father was born in a village in Poland which is now part of the Ukraine. My mom was born in Berlin. Her parents were gassed in 1942. My dad’s family owned oil wells which were stolen by the Poles, the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, and Russia. Putin is Hitler and Stalin reincarnated. He cares nothing for his own people much less for Ukrainians who had the audacity to elect Zelensky, an actor, a comedian, a lawyer, a Jew. This is exactly how his mind works. He even poisons those around him as he trusts no one.
I mention Stalin because he literally let his people starve to death. The evils of MAN.
Stalin didn’t let people starve to death it was a deliberate policy to destroy Ukrainian nationalism. He seized their food and sold it to Hitlers Germany in exchange for machine tools. Hitler got to be a hero feeding his people but those machine tools doomed nazi Germany. That part wasn’t planned by Stalin.
I don’t know where you are getting your information from but read this: https://www.history.com/.amp/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
Also, my parents were Holocaust victims. My father was born in a village which is now in Ukraine. I do think I know ehat i am talking about.
Why don’t you read what I wrote instead of what you imagine I wrote. First read you saying Stalin allowed people to starve while I said it was deliberate and you start to attack my understanding of history using anecdotes. Please Reconsider.
Marlene, you've just shown how shaky your assertion is. You have firsthand knowledge of Russian anti-Semitism, but you don't know what's going on in Putin's head. I suggest that his actions can't be removed from Russian national interests over the decades -- to maintain a buffer against the West. Are you suggesting that they can, that it's all about Putin as an individual?
The buffer is to keep Russians from being bitter at their poverty. A prosperous Ukraine would doom corrupt old Russia. American slavers were freed before Russian peasants were.
still too easy, i don't see putin as someone who gives up. the guy has some practice in the subject of retreat but as the saying goes: the wolf's head bites even after it is cut off.
Sure glad I subscribed, Lucian. I want to search for those Russian press avail guys’ clip now just to admire their slumped shoulders.
After watching the recent events in Ukraine it seems that military tanks, armored cars, supply trucks and even heavy machine gun mounted Toyota pickups and low flying and slow aircraft are obsolete. If any grunt hiding behind a tree can take one of these out of the action with one trigger pull of a relatively inexpensive rocket powered gizmo then they are all out of date and useless. So what’s next?
If there’s no motorized advancement or retreat everything will be very slow or stagnant. Maybe trenches? That’s how we got tanks 100 years ago and tanks are out now so it might work. Horses and lances? Been there, done that. Doesn’t work against AK47s. Or stand shoulder to shoulder and march across the field? Again AK47s. Or maybe just stand back 20 miles and blow the crap out of everything over there. But those people over there are probably going to do the same thing. And there will always be somebody left to shoot you if you try to walk over there later. So, just blow it all up and go home? Why are we here in the first place? I say just go back to shouting insults across the canyon. Nobody gets hurt and everybody feels better.
Shouting insults across the canyon--what comes to my mind? "I fart in your general direction" Sorry, couldn't help myself.....
Over a lot of years I've seen the phrase, "fighting the last war," concerning ordnance and weaponry and whatnot. This sure looks like that now.
I should think that some enterprising thinkers in militaries all over the world are going to want to experiment with new tactical battlefield groups that are lighter, faster, more flexible, and self-contained to a degree. And not tied to vehicles or roads to the same degree as now -- perhaps a "light infantry" or "mountain infantry" concept. You'd have these flooding a battlefield like rivers, probing and moving and looking for opportunities to flank or surround or bypass enemy strongpoints and not get bogged down in static positions. Sort of guerilla tactics to soften up an enemy position before the heavy units moved in to roll over a weakened front.
I can see a trend toward foot infantry again, operating in small, loose formations, taking their own tactical initiative, carrying new weapons that give them the ability -- as we've seen -- to take out slow, blind enemy vehicles while using cover and maneuver to avoid aerial attacks or artillery barrage. Motorized formations would not be the spearheads, they'd sort of take the old cavalry role of pursuit of a broken enemy, or perhaps launching shattering assaults across a narrow front as a spearhead against shaky troops.
These tugs back and forth are as old as Alexander the Great, if not earlier.
BUT. Isn't Putin going to carve up more of the country? he has destroyed so much, how is Ukraine going to function? Will he really give up or just wait a few more years - like he did after Crimea?
It's a war. First you win, then you fix the damage done by the bad guys.
And hopefully you use the bad guys money to do it.
And if there's any fairness, with the bad guys' money.
jeez, Lucian...you nailed it from the beginning, unlike the myriad "experts" and "foreign policy pundits" who spend altogether too much time hedging their bets.
They all speak like they’re immature and poorly informed. It’s disappointing, really.
Trump thinks Putin has nothing better to do than dig up dirt on Hunter Biden while he is, as you point out, getting his ass royally kicked. They are both out of touch, of course, but, unfortunately, one is still a dictator while the other is still a wannabe. But, then again, how many holes in one does Putin have?
I have 4...witnessed.
Within the past month or two I related the story of one of my undergraduate college professors, William H. Vatcher, who was present at the Panmunjom peace negotiations between the summer of 1951, and July and August 1953. I believe that I also mentioned that I had spoken with Professor Vatcher during office hours this semester I took a course from him. We discussed his book, and even though I was ambivalent about the quality of the book he wrote, he at least had the knowledge that one of his students read the book and cared enough about the subject matter to interview him about what he wrote. What comes through in Bill Vatcher's book is the way that representatives of North Korea's Kim Il Sung, the communist leader of North Korea, strove mightily to win at the conference table where they could not win on the battlefield. By the summer of 1952, General Matthew Ridgway's Eighth Army was winning the ground war in Korea, albeit with heavy casualties; South Korea's capital city of Seoul had been liberated, and the cease-fire line had been pushed north of the 38th parallel, the putative dividing line between North and South Korea. What followed were 24 months of incessant haggling, name-calling, posturing, denying, accusing, as each side tried to wear the other down with verbal broadsides. On the battlefront, both sides dug in for the long haul, moving in heavy artillery, field fortifications, and all of the implements of warfare where both sides battle it out and get nowhere. The mountainous terrain, bleak, and devoid of foliage, made surprise attacks impossible to mask. Hilltop fortifications with nicknames like Old Baldy, and the Punch Bowl; and of course, the iconic Pork Chop Hill, were the scenes of horrific battles where advancing American soldiers were suffering terrible casualties on the scale that Marine Corps infantrymen experienced a decade earlier attacking Japanese island fortifications on Tarawa, Palau, and of course, Iwo Jima.
American airpower controlled the skies over the disputed territory, conducting precision airstrikes against enemy troop concentrations, supply depots, and especially against railroad communication lines. American matériel advantages were offset by the frustration of having to negotiate with communist counterparts who had no interest in moving things along to come to some sort of cease-fire agreement. I fully expect that we will see all of this and more if Vladimir Putin's representatives show up at the bargaining table. What this does, however, is give NATO the opportunity to give Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenski's ragtag army everything it needs to conduct defensive operations against Putin's exhausted and demoralized army. Under the circumstances, the Ukrainians will be doing both the fighting and the talking.
In Korea, the ROK army was essentially on a par with the Army that the United States tried to create in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, the latter two of which turned out to be complete failures. Ukrainians are not going to fail, because this is not a case of urban soldiery fighting rural agrarian peasants, as was the case I mentioned above. The Ukrainian Army has been blooded in its earlier skirmishing with Putin's Ukrainian surrogates and their Russian 'advisors'. It is they, not NATO, and not the UN, will be telling Putin's thugs to either go home or die in Ukraine. We need to make that happen.
The best thing that can happen is that no American faces show up at all at the truce negotiations. We're too invested in a quick deal and wanting to go home. Zelenski and his team of Ukrainian nationalists will be bargaining for themselves and their own countrymen. That's enough to keep the negotiations going for several more years. Our interests lie in protecting NATO's Eastern European members from being invaded by Russia, under Putin or any future successor to him. Zelenski's Ukraine is NATO's proxy for hitting Putin where it hurts him the most at this moment in history. A deal that maximizes Ukraine's territorial security has spillover benefits to NATO. Taking down this bully benefits everybody; but looking out for NATO's short term interests alone is self-defeating. At this moment in time we are all Ukrainians, each in our own way. Latvia's interest in being free of Russian domination are no more different than those of Estonia and Lithuania and Ukraine. None can feel secure against Russia unless all are secure, each in it's own way.
It was quite the opposite at Panmunjom, where the interests of the South Korean government were decidedly secondary to America's need to end the hostilities as quickly as possible. We forget that South Korea's president, Syngman Rhee refused to sign the armistice agreement that formally ended the fighting, if not the war itself. We also tend to forget that American laxity and mismanagement of the prisoner of war camps on Koje-do island were a major source of embarrassment to the United States Army and to the United Nations, where hard-core communist cadres sought to terrorize Chinese and North Korean soldiers, the majority of whom did not want to return home at the end of the war.
Someone in a hurry, and with a personal agenda, does not make for a good negotiator. Such a negotiator has one foot that never enters the room when the negotiation begins, and never enters the room while the principals battle it out over the bargaining table. It means being all in to forge a deal that all of the parties can take to the bank, not some face saving gesture that won't last beyond tomorrow morning.
Putin needs to know that this is Zelenski's deal to make, top to bottom, start to finish. The man is certainly up to the task, and no one from the State Department dressed in pinstripes will be sitting there pushing his own country's portfolio of issues. We, as Americans, have enough on our plate as it is; and if we're not willing to shoulder the burden of driving the Russians out of Ukraine, we ought to have damn little to say about what the peace agreement will look like at the end of the day. Our job is to make sure that NATO is all on the same page, and that there will be no backsliding.
The lesson is clear. This is not going to be a checkbox exercise; and it may go on for several years. Our job is to prevent Vladimir Putin from using the time interval to his strategic. advantage. Putin needs to be the one with his back against the wall. It's America's job to make sure that Putin gets as little wiggle room as humanly possible.
That the end of this particular war is almost over, is obvious. I would certainly not want to be any kind of general or commander in the Russian Army and have to report why the country lost this 'easy-peasy run in and take over' war in less time than it took them to get out of Afghanistan.
I read reports where a Russian Oligarch and 2 Ukrainian peacekeepers were sickened by suspected poisoning during a meeting:
"Following a meeting in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv earlier this month, Abramovich and the two senior members of the Ukrainian peacekeeping team, including Crimean Tatar lawmaker Rustem Umerov and a second unnamed individual, began experiencing symptoms that included red eyes, constant and painful tearing, and peeling skin on their faces and hands, The Wall Street Journal reported. "'
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-oligarch-roman-abramovich-ukraine-peacekeepers-suspected-poisoning (sorry it's Fox News. I can't find references to it in other media.)
I guess there are some very unhappy hardliners in Moscow who would like to keep the reports of losses to a minimum, and to stop all that nasty talk about a truce to a minimum.
PS-I found an article that the Ukraine has warned their negotiators to not eat, drink or touch anything as they head into Instabul for negotiations with the Russians:
"LONDON — Ukraine warned its negotiators not to eat, drink or even touch anything as they headed into talks with Russia in Istanbul on Tuesday, following allegations that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and others may have been poisoned during previous talks."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/29/roman-abramovich-poison-turkey-talks-ukraine-russia/
This is one time where the Russian penchant for poisoning their enemies is definitely being a problem to be taken seriously. The KGB has a big thing on for poison.
It goes along with bombing civilian targets and tanks shooting at private cars. He’s a poor loser. Know anyone else who fits that description? 🤬
Thanks, as always, for putting these and other events into a perspective that helps us all to better understand.