New @Maxar satellite images from the past 48 hours continue to show heightened military activity in Belarus, Crimea, and western Russia. Pics below are from Feb. 15 and show a new pontoon bridge over the Prypyat River in Belarus. pic.twitter.com/8GCvBMtG4y
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 16, 2022
‘Pulling back’
There are a lot of things that Putin could do to F-up the Ukraine that the US, the EU and NATO couldn’t do anything about.
The Minsk Protocols signed by Russia, Germany and France in 2014/2015 was blown up by Zelensky in early 2021 because he refused to talk to the leadership in Donetsk and Luhansk as the Protocols call for.
Putin could immediately declare both Donetsk and Luhansk sovereign states and petition the UN to recognize their sovereignty.
The Republican and Democratic Establishment has now joined forces in going after the Left, the anti-war movement, right-wing Nationalists and Isolationists because these groups are criticizing Biden’s faux-Ukraine crisis.
Putin has already accomplished two things.
First, he’s made it very clear just how corrupt Zelensky, and Ukraine are. Which is the very reason that Ukraine is a long, long way away from meeting the standards that it takes to become a NATO member.
Second, he’s made the US and the Western nations look belligerent and silly.
Especially the Fascist autocrats running Poland, Poland where all of our troops are, and Hungary.
Blinken, Sullivan, Kirby, and all the old Cold Warriors that surround them need to banished, and a new foreign policy team with a very different world view needs to take their place.
Had the US and the rest of the world heeded Jimmy Carter’s advice in the 1970’s and moved away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources then maybe the world would be using 75% less oil today?
Ukraine has lots of oil and gas. It ranks 2nd in European gas reserves.
Most of that oil and gas is located to the east of Kiev and in Crimea.
Republican and Democratic Cold Warriors are demanding that Putin “back down.”
That presumably means that what these warmongers want is for Putin to immediately turn-tail and run away from the Ukrainian border with his 150,000-person military in tow.
If that were to happen who would take the credit?
If Putin invades Ukraine who will say “I told you so?”
At this point in this manufactured crisis revolving around who will control Ukraine’s oil, Putin and Biden both need to save face.
The only way for that to happen is if Biden and Putin sit down and avoid a war that will kill tens of thousands of innocent people and collapse the world’s economy.