Good Morning,
You can read a lot of Russian think tank comments, and political views, and expert opinion on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, so when I write today I want to bring you a different perspective.
Here it is - As a TV Correspondent who travelled Russia for 12 years, I saw a few things most never do. A former Soviet Communist Country laid out across 11 time zones, with secret cities, some of which were only identified by numbers not names.
They produced massive amounts of biological and chemical weapons, and nuclear components, and conventional arms of all kinds. Soviet Russia didn’t really have a military industrial complex, the whole thing was a military industrial complex.
Under Stalin and his successors, Russia and the entire Soviet Union prepared for a world war against America and the West, that would involve a nuclear exchange, followed on by biological weapons that would be carpet bombed over the west, to kill off remaining livestock supplies and agriculture.
Mass amounts of anthrax, would eliminate the remaining populations that hadn’t been killed in nuclear strikes aimed at cities like London and New New York and L.A.
In one ‘factory’ that was 7 stories high and the size of two football fields, I saw anthrax vats brewed like beer stocks, that were then blown through under ground pipes to be loaded into the warheads of SS18 Satan missiles to be reined down on American cities.
A lot of that “evil empire” (A term aptly coined Ronald Reagan term for the Soviet Union) stuff crumbled or was replaced after the fall of the Soviet Union. A lot of it, but not all of it.
Russia contains vast amounts of military assembly line capability, juiced now by the crazy Kremlin paranoid inner circle, to reassemble the Russian imperial power base.
President Putin has compared himself to Peter The Great stating “Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,” “On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it… He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was.” And Putin has said of Ukraine “Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well.”
My point is Putin seemed to wake from some weird cloistered pandemic dream to envisage a long term war to restore the Russian Empire.
As I was asked when the war started in February 2022, how many months would it last? I responded it would go on for years in my view, and that Putin wouldn’t quit no matter the cost to Russia. (Likely because a loss would mean Putin’s removal from power)
I hate being right, but if Peter the Great fought the Great Northern War for 21 years, Putin and his circle of deluded forced followers, will think they can do that same, at least until Putin dies, which could be years also.
This all brings us to the U.S. Ukraine arms funding finally passed, despite months of delay. 60 billion dollars will buy a lot of artillery shells for Ukraine, and air defence systems it so badly needs.
The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), compared the funding vote to pre World War II. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain tried to appease dictator Adolf Hitler in 1938 by agreeing to Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland vs Winston Churchill, who later took on the challenge of fighting World War II.
“Our adversaries are watching us here today, and history will judge us on our actions here today,” McCaul said. “So as we deliberate on this vote, you have to ask yourself: Am I Chamberlain or am I Churchill?”
I think the U.S. funding (which is expected to pass a Senate vote Tuesday) will certainly enable Ukraine to fight on, and Russia’s attempt to conquer a nation that was granted it’s independence in 1991, and even surrendered nuclear weapons to be free, will stumble and possibly fail.
But Putin will just keep on coming at Ukraine, and that should be clear to us all.
Ukraine needs to use part of this defence boost to properly dig in for a long term war, and that means reinforcing and constructing better lines of defence as the Russian’s have done in occupied eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine needs to bring on line it’s own assembly lines of defensive weapons, because the next vote for funding may take place under a different U.S. Administration and a Trump Presidency could bring more not less dangers for Kyiv.
Europe already clearly understands American is not a full dependable partner in the fight against Russia, and has tried to step in and fill some of the gaps. But more needs to be done, in the way of weapons production from the U.K. to France, to Germany etc.
Ukraine has an new lease on life in 2024, but that we shouldn’t think the war front will suddenly move in dramatic ways, or that the Russian illegal and bloody offensive will suddenly collapse. We can hope, but chances are the Russian lines will hold and even expand.
Is this really a fight for Europe, or is Russia just trying to restore some border cushion between itself and NATO?
***I think regardless of your view, Russia needs to understand Ukraine and the west will also now ‘keep on coming too’. ***
Now, Ukraine won’t be dragged to a negotiating table to surrender, although a kind of Korean armistice might be in Ukraine’s long term interest, if the game is to wait out Putin and hope for a sober regime change in Moscow.
In the coming months, the big bangs of incoming artillery from Russian guns along Ukrainian front lines, should be better balanced with outgoing Ukrainian shelling which could come to include the U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS to give better range.
Ukraine will get F-16’s in the second quarter of 2024, and new anti air defence systems are also in the cards.
But as I said at the outset, the evil empire has a big assembly line, that has expanded and been upgraded by Putin’s crazy inner circle, set on waging an endless campaign in Ukraine and likely beyond to the Baltics, and Poland and further if allowed.
Ukraine won’t get a war breather, but at least this American package buys an awful lot of bullets to fight on. And I think we are all somehow relieved Russia won’t easily march to victory, and my just be staring down the long road of defeat.