Putin’s Challenge To Western Democracy – Defend Yourself

St Sophia Cathedral Kiev

People in the United States, some of them foreign policy “experts,” were surprised, surprised when the Ukrainian military was able to hold off a Putin invasion of the country for weeks on end. Ukrainians in Connecticut were not surprised. Neither will they be surprised at the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian resistance.

Nor will US intelligence services or politicians in the United States sympathetic to Ukraine, the Alamo of Europe, be surprised. There have been no surprises, and there should in the near future be no surprises.

Putin’s 40 mile Russian convoy is approaching Kiev. The Russian military already is in possession of the largest nuclear plant in the world a few miles from Kiev, having bombed it first. Not to worry, it appears no one in NATO, putatively a defense corridor against Russian aggression, will be harmed by Chernobyl ll.

Putin is using cluster bombs, outlawed by virtually all western human rights organizations years ago, to terrorize the civilian population of Ukraine which – no big surprise – will over the course of the coming days be efficiently and effectively bombed into submission. What we are witnessing on a global scale is a new “trail of tears,” and an Alamo defense by Ukrainians. The Alamo, it should be recalled, surrounded by Santa Anna’s superior army, was also given up as lost by the intelligence services of Davy Crockett’s day.

So, what’s next for Ukraine? There is not a single general in the Pentagon who does not know that the spoils of war will go to Putin.

Ukraine has been abducted, and the United States has already more or less written off the corpses and captives as NATO’s collateral damage. Moldova, which managed to struggle free of Stalin’s chains, is likely next on Putin’s check off list. Moldova, like Ukraine, is not affiliated with NATO, nor is Finland. And when it too falls, one may expect lots of bedroom slipper analysis (see Camus on Hungary here) and tears flowing like rivers from the reddened eyes of politicians in the US Congress empathetic to Ukraine.

Theologians sometimes speak of “cheap grace.” These are cheap tears.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose courage under fire has been widely praised by President Joe Biden and the entire Connecticut US Congressional Delegation, has repeatedly said he needed armor piercing weapons to stop the 40 mile convoy of Russian tanks and missile launchers methodically preparing to overrun Kiev, not American boots on the ground or – Heaven forefend! – an effective boots on the ground resistance from cowed NATO countries.

The United States, still cursed by former President Barack Obama’s “lead from behind” foreign policy timidity, has followed – sort of – Great Britain’s lead in supplying Ukraine with minimal defensive munitions necessary to prevent Ukraine from toppling back into a post-Soviet Union architecture that Putin wishes to reconstruct among Baltic States he falsely supposes threaten Russia’s sovereignty.

Apparently NATO is to be a new “red line” Putin and his 40 mile long military convoy will not be permitted to cross with impunity; that is, without an effective military response. In bygone days, the US southern border used to be a red line that border-jumpers were not permitted to cross with impunity. No more. The red lines laid down by US presidents in the postmodern period have tended to be drawn with disappearing ink and resolve.  

The copious US Congressional tears and nods of “solidarity” with Ukraine are little more than political bitcoins to purchase votes. There has been no shortage of empathy for Ukraine issuing from Connecticut’s US Congressional Delegation.

One thinks of US Senator Dick Blumenthal, whose veins are filled with tears rather than blood. Blumenthal, who has long accustomed himself to bleed tears from every political stump in Connecticut at the slightest provocation, has yet to explain to Connecticut Ukrainians he has visited in churches why US Intelligence services (see “US delays real-time intel to Ukraine, officials say”) have been reluctant to share with Ukraine leaders information in their possession that would aid the country’s military in its defense of a civilian population against which Putin, not beloved of Democrats, has declared total war.

The news item cited above appeared on Saturday, March 5^th in the Hartford Courant, a paper Blumenthal’s staff frequently consults.  Blumenthal, accustomed to ventilating his domestic and foreign policy views wherever and whenever he wishes, is on the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Though Zelenskyy has several times vividly portrayed Ukraine’s vulnerability to Russian assaults operating in airspace that remains open in the midst of pulverizing bomb and missile strikes, his multiple requests to close off the airspace have been turned aside by the United States and all NATO countries on the grounds that acceding to the request would require the destruction of Russian aircraft violating closed air space. And this, it has been whispered by Russian invaders, could theoretically precipitate a declared war with nuclear tipped Russia.

If Putin is successful in occupying Ukraine, he will have achieved a tactical and strategic victory that will move the border of Russia west so that it will impinge on all the Baltic States, as well as Poland and Finland, NATO countries that had wrested their freedom from Russian domination when Eastern Bloc nations had cast off their chains by 1989. Putin’s nuclear blackmail would then apply not just to Ukraine but to all nations, NATO or not, facing a future 40 mile, menacing Russian caravan.  

The nuclear blackmail that has intimidated Western free states from supplying intelligence and war material necessary for the survival of an independent Ukraine is a constant of Putin’s terrorist policy. Putin has no intention of disarming Russia of nuclear weapons any time soon. He now says that even sanctions are a declaration of war. The weapons remaining a live option, the threat will remain a live option, however many civilians Putin chooses to murder in Ukraine -- or in any other country he wishes to incorporate into his new visionary map of Europe.

Ukraine having been effectively imprisoned behind a refabricated iron curtain, what will Blumenthal say to the congregants of Ukrainian churches in Connecticut with whom he has expressed “solidarity”? How solid is a solidarity that stands aside, watching in horror the methodical destruction of an independent democracy, twisting its fingers while bravely inveighing against “Son Of Stalin” Putin, bleeding tears, and  churning with useless chatter, while Putin reassembles a new Eastern Bloc corridor of states subservient to terrorist Russia?