On this anniversary of the first year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of the historic miscalculations of this century's first quarter was Putin's misreading of the degree of Ukrainian resistance and the West's resolve to stop him. His spies and his advisors forgot why Ukraine turned West in the first place. It was the spirit of Maidan, which Ukrainians call the Revolution of Dignity, a street revolt that began in November 2013 when their President Viktor Yanukovych refused to join the EU and instead announced his intentions to strengthen ties with Russia. Between February 18-20, 2014. Ukrainians rose up, demonstrating in large numbers in Kyiv's Maidan Square. (Sidebar: Yanukovich had been elected to office with the assistance of an American political consultant, Paul Manafort, later the campaign manager of Donald Trump, who pardoned Manafort's criminal conviction in the US). Yanukovich attempted to quell the demonstrators with tanks and sniper bullets. Over a hundred demonstrators were killed. So inflamed were the demonstrators, on February 21, Yanukovich fled to Moscow, where he resides now awaiting Putin to restore him to power. In his wake, the Maidan demonstrators found evidence of his extravagant living and his corruption. They reacted for the next 8 years by beginning to strengthen the westward ties to the West and to pressure their government to weed out corruption. In the meantime, Russia annexed Crimea with barely a slap on the hands from most of the West. In March 2014, in the Donbas area, elements secretly supported by Russia began to fight to join Russia, a conflict that continued into the invasion by Russia in February 2022. Between Maidan and before Russia's invasion,the US had done more than reacted with sanctions against Russian oligarchs who were friends of Putin. The US sent Javelin anti-tank weapons and retrained the Ukrainian army, reforming it to the western model of greater independence of master sergeants to execute tactics without awaiting some general's approval. That top-down was the Russian style of military organization. This US aid effort began in the Obama administration. To Trump's credit, it continued, though Trump was impeached when he implied in an infamous phone call to Zelensky that an increased supply of Javelins was a condition for the Ukraine president to find dirt on Hunter Biden. Trump was not found guilty in the Senate on a close vote, and the Javelins were still delivered. The retraining gifted the Ukrainian army with a form of guerilla warfare that destroyed the strung-out Russian supply lines and forward attackers, which were exposed like sitting ducks, thinking they would be parading in Kyiv in a few days. This military aid and training proved to be a critical element that led to Ukraine's ability to stop and roll back the Russian attempt to march into Kyiv to set up their puppet regime. The Ukrainians had had eight years to test the flavor of Western economies and democracy. The majority favored continuing that path to the West despite the very close cultural ties dating for centuries with Russia. The rest is history as their TV actor turned president, Volodymyr Zelensky, refused to flee to the West with western offers of evacuation. Instead, he ignited a country to resist with: " Don't send me transportation; send me weapons". As Biden put it so well in Poland in an address February 21, 2023,after his return from Kyiv: " If Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the war. If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, it would be the end of Ukraine".
Biden also knows that it is not just we should admire Ukrainians for valuing democracy, the spirit of Maidan, and the valiant defense of the homeland from Russian brutality. It is also in America's national interest. To say Russia is weakened (thanks to Biden's efforts to rally NATO and supply Ukraine with aid and weapons), so we can reduce aid to Ukraine, as DeSantis and others are foolishly advocating, is naive and a danger to USA's national security interests.At this time, the fighting is at a stalemate and neither side, Russia or Ukraine, is ready to negotiate an end. It is in the US interests to keep a military conflict from spreading to the rest of Europe and Formosa by teaching Russia a lesson now and eventually involving us more directly is widespread war in a nuclear age. It is a stitch in time to save nine.
The Maidan spirit is also erupting elsewhere. Pro Russian actions in Georgia sparked massive street demonstrations. https://www.newsweek.com/pro-russia-power-grab-georgia-thwarted-massive-street-protests-1787791?utm_source=push_notification&utm_source=pushnami&utm_medium=Push_Notifications&utm_campaign=fullauto&utm=1678961580051
The following is also repeated in a stand alone blog posting of 3/5/2023. Those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it. Here is a lesson within my lifetime: In March 1938 Hitler completed joining Austria with Germany, Next on Hitler's list was Czechlovakia's Sudentenland and a few other smaller areas Chamberlain declared "peace in our time" as he made the deal with Hitler (he failed to read Mein Kampf) re: Czechoslovakia. Within a year, Hitler had completed his takeover or placed Nazi Hungarians in charge of all of Czechoslovakia and marched into Poland. World War II had begun.. Those who think Putin who has declared his intent to reassemble Russian influence in the USSR years over eastern Europe or that Chi in China is calculating US resolve to protect Taiwan from their publicly stated goals are kidding, do not be a fool or a historical ignoramus.
It can be argued that the West's failure to object strongly enough to Putin's advancement and war in Georgia and his takeover of Crimea sent the message that his takeover of Ukraine would be met with the same slap on the hands. This defacto appeasement by weak response did not prevent Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but only greenlighted him. Vladimir Putin’s Russia: Trying to Rebuild the Soviet Era? (thecollector.com)
What Putin did not know was time had not dampened the spirit of Maidan, the uprising the Ukrainians called the war of dignity. Those Ukrainians who had even leaned toward Russia consolidated their support in defense of their country once Russia's brutality in its invasion in 2022 was revealed. What once was a 50-50 split became 80-20% in favor of continued resistance even though it was a David v Goliath chance they could succeed. Putin's timing was terrible: he had waited until after Donald Trump was defeated and Joe Biden became president. Biden's 60 years of foreign policy experience, much during the Cold War, no doubt contributed to his understanding of another holdover from the Cold War and ex-KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, who wanted to reassemble the Russian sphere of influence at the height of the old USSR's power. Putin had publicly stated his desire to take back into the Russian fold their former Eastern European satellites. Putin's banner was not the old Marxist communism but Russian nationalism and pride of former glory. The result was the same kind of imperialism. Biden looked into Putin's eyes and was not taken for a fool. His years of personal connections with western European leaders led to his ability and desire to reinvigorate the unity of the NATO alliance, which Trump had attempted to weaken successively by ending the pledge of mutual defense.
How did we get here? Was Putin irrational? No. He saw the USSR'S former satellites from the Baltics to the Balkans that bordered Russia joining NATO, and he feared Ukraine would join someday. The time was ripe to take back Ukraine. He also saw NATO in disarray, divided and weakened by Donald Trump's demanding members pay more for their defense and advocating the end of the key purpose of NATO, mutual defense. He thought he could keep the European members of NATO dependent on Russian natural gas and therefore their dependence would keep them from protesting his invasion. Ukraine's president was just a TV comedian, a weak leader in a divided country. His intelligence services reported that many Ukrainians were still loyal to their Russian cultural ties. The only fly in the ointment was that Trump was not re-elected and an elderly old Cold Warrier, Joe Biden, was in the White House with very low approval ratings and past his prime as a leader. The only tool in the US toolbox was sanctions and Putin calculated he could forge ways around sanctions . Russia had plenty of oil money in the bank and untapped foreign customers to make up the difference.
Putin was wrong in every respect except sanctions, which have not yet made a dent in Russia's living standard and he forged new oil markets and tapped weapons suppliers from Iran and now China. Europe was able to wean itself from Russian gas and find other energy sources. Putin so far has maintained the support of the Russian people who are happy with their living standard, and in fact increased their support of the Ukrainian invasion, even in spite of their young men being used as cannon fodder.
What is driving Putin? While we cannot get in his head, we can take his public words seriously. In Putin's eyes, Ukraine historically was not a sovereign country. It owed its independence from Russia to the end of World War II boundaries. Even the West had miscalculated the intensity of resistance and forecasted the fall of Kyiv in a few days. Only the US intelligence agencies had predicted the threat of an imminent Russian invasion was no bluff and warned even the disbelieving President Zelensky. Neither Ukraine nor NATO had even dreamed of or threatened a military attack on Russia, and nothing was even remotely threatened, much less imminent. However, Russia claims Ukraine provoked the war and started it. If so, the reasons have nothing to do with a military attack on Russia but Ukraine's long-standing refusal to be the first victim of Putin's imperialism and his conceived weakness of the Western alliance to stop it.
Above all, Putin did not foresee Biden's ability to rejuvenate NATO. Donald Trump was responsible for Putin's belief that NATO was broken. The only time NATO's mutual defense clause had been invoked was 9/11. NATO's purpose was to deter any Russian expansion and time showed that role had been proved. Trump had seen Russia as no longer a threat. He saw Russia as a business opportunity before he became president. Before and during his candidacy, he had attempted to develop Trump Towers Moscow. Trump openly admired Putin as a strong leader and even announced in Helsinki he trusted Russian intelligence operators more than he did the USA. A Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller had established credible evidence that Russian special operations had helped Trump get elected.
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Notes:The dates and details from Maidan are factual. As a person with close ties to Eastern Europe myself as a student in pre-wall Berlin in 1958-1959 and married to an immigrant from Yugoslavia for over 52 years, I have closely followed the events in Ukraine during and post-Maidan.
I believe a Russian victory in Ukraine would also destabilize all of Eastern Europe since Putin would be emboldened to think he could march into USSR'S former satellites who had joined NATO and could succeed. The NATO alliance would be tested in the blood of so many, including our friends, relatives by marriage and blood, and eventually Americans. My columns on the conflict in Ukraine have often been published in the local press and/or posted on the blog. I still referred to dates and memory refreshing in various sources, including Wikipedia as well as past postings and many sources.
Those on the ground also feel threatened by Russian expansionism. The Polish Prime Minister said that Russia was also beginning attempts to subvert Moldova and Romania's governments' resolve to resist Russia. Poland feels the most threatened. Romania and Poland are members of NATO, but Russia would try to keep them from invoking the mutual defense clause by subverting those countries from within. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on “Face the Nation” | full interview - YouTube
War in Donbas (2014–2022) - Wikipedia
Revolution of Dignity - Wikipedia
Ukraine–United States relations - Wikipedia
My posts on this blog regarding Ukraine are so numerous, dating back to 2014 to the present, and part of other titled posts, that I am not listing them. The best way to resurrect them is to search Ukraine using the blog keyword search tools.
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