By fumbling and bumbling and hesitating and stalling and arguing and fiddling and politicking and treating the world like everything was peachy-keen, Europe and the U.S. and the rest of NATO missed its chance to include Ukraine in the alliance, and now they are all alone against the 3rd or 4th biggest military in the world.
Russia has seized all airports in Ukraine, civilian and military, cutting off the air-bridge by which the West could have supplied the Ukraine military with more weapons, ammunition, helmets, combat vests, etc etc. What they’ve got right now is what they have. If and when they shoot off all their Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, that’s it.
Ukraine is now in the same place Afghanistan was when Russia invaded in 1979. Any and all military resupplies the Ukrainian military or resistance receives will have to be smuggled in across borders to the West. Whether Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia will allow this remains to be seen. I’m sure they are calculating that if they allow their countries as refuges for the Ukrainian resistance, it will piss Putin off, and they will be next.
The worst situation we could have imagined is here. Ukraine is fighting Russia all by itself. Putin is holding the Ukraine hostage and blackmailing the West with his statement that “interference” by outsiders will “lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.”
Tracy is correct. He’s Hitler with nuclear weapons and right now he can do whatever he wants.
If Biden and the West don’t shut down all landings by Russian aircraft, commercial passenger flights, cargo, and otherwise, it will be the biggest mistake they make. If Russia wants to seize and hold all Ukraine’s airports, make them the only airports where their planes can land, other than Belarus perhaps.
Lock Russia within its borders. Do not allow movement of people, goods, services, money, or anything else from Russia to the rest of the world. Let the Russian people sit there and stew. Let’s see how long they continue to support Putin.
That is exactly what we should do!! Squeeze the life out of Putin and his allies. Since he is so emboldened to do it to the Ukrainian people, maybe the Russians will finally see through his madness. Tracy is absolutely right.
All the nations didn’t want to be involved either because it was easier to believe in the fairytale that Putin was just bluster than to commit. Biden finally got us out of Afghanistan and it wasn’t to universal praise. What frightens me is our former leader’s praise of Putin and morons like Tucker Carlson praising Putin we know that there’s a very very frightening connection in this country between many in the GOP and Putin and Russia and am I alone and being really frightened of what’s coming? Cause nobody’s pushing back against that very hard. We’re really even wanting to talk about it. Keep up the good work I’m following your dispatches