Ukraine seems to have lost confidence in NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in Donbass. In exchange, Putin agreed to meet… in Moscow. Then he declared his “training exercise” over and ordered the Russian units massed at the border to withdraw. This is a huge embarrassment for both the Biden administration and NATO. Here’s my explanation for what happened.
“If we are talking about the development of bilateral relations, then please, we will receive the President of Ukraine in Moscow at any time convenient for him,” Putin said.
That’s a polite way of saying Biden got rolled up like a rug, and everyone knows it. Bear in mind that the ordered withdrawal of Russian forces is only partial and even that will take days to complete. He can easily send them back to the border if someone on the other side of the table doesn’t cooperate. See a few of his comments in a speech he made today.
This confrontation developed quickly and I had difficulty keeping up. I mostly typed this article last night. Then today I learned of Zelensky’s apparent capitulation and the scheduled withdrawal of Russian troops. Everything I said seems to add up. Decide for yourself!
In my initial post about NATO’s escalating confrontation with Russia, I predicted that Putin would do whatever he wanted, and Biden would let him. It’s a bit too early to say with certainty yet, but my forecast appears to be right.
Let’s quickly review what’s happened so far.
Biden has been relentlessly poking the bear, and Putin is obviously tired of it and is pushing back. I’m no psychic, but I say with reasonable certainty that Putin can’t afford to look weak. It’s insane to push him into a corner where he has no choice but to be aggressive. Polls suggest that the Russian public would oppose a costly and drawn-out war with Ukrainian nationalists, but if we poke them in the eye enough times that’s a different matter entirely.
Mutual expulsion and recall of diplomats across the playing field suggest that Russia has given up trying to reason with the U.S. and NATO. Biden can make weepy announcements calling for reconciliation all he wants, but I think we’re already past the point of no return in that regard. I’m not entirely sure why the globalists so brazenly destroyed our diplomatic options with the “Red Menace,” but that ship might have already left port. In fact, the ship has literally left port. Russia has moved its entire Caspian fleet down to the Black Sea.
To make matters more troubling, Putin has declared no-fly zones. This one is actually a bit ironic, because one of our warhawk leaders arrogantly tweeted that we establish no-fly zones. The shoe seems to be on the other foot now.
Biden’s early actions suggest that this might have all started as a bluff. He declared a “national emergency” and slammed Russia with harsh sanctions under absurd pretenses. The mainstream media parroted obviously false liberal talking points that Russia “meddled” in the American presidential election. Incidentally, that’s a rich thing for Democrats to accuse Russia of.
Unfortunately for Western liberals, Putin called their bluff and NATO ended up on a bridge too far. To make this predicament even more embarrassing, it was a wobbly Jenga tower of their own making. Russia has demonstrated they’re willing to bite the bullet and suffer the pain of harsh sanctions. Interestingly, there is a lot of evidence that they’ll actually come out stronger from cutting off all dependency on the West.
That realization was probably a little obvious in hindsight, but by the time the Biden administration caught on it was already too late. Pulling back then would have caused them to lose face, and there is almost nothing on earth a liberal imperialist hates more than losing face. NATO leaders dragged our nations onward with a sanctions strategy that clearly wasn’t going to work.
Globalist politicians in the U.S.A. and our Western European allies are so full of imperial hubris they’re demanding that everyone else in NATO follow them lockstep. One of the most egregious examples of this is the Czechs’ expulsion of Russian diplomats. Predictably, Russia swiftly retaliated against the much weaker state. Irritating Russia enough to bring down economic punishment is going to cost the Czechs dearly, which shows how much pressure they were under. NATO must have made it clear “you’re either with us or against us.”
Wealthy developed nations like France and Germany might be able to play this childish realpolitik game indefinitely, but the same can’t be said for Czechoslovakia. As insane as it is to risk World War III, it’s arguably even more insane to drag along weak partners who will cave under pressure unless we prop them up. Diverting resources to (further) subsidize smaller states defeats whatever purpose there was to include them in the first place.
Note: as I was wrapping this article up, I learned that Slovakia has followed suit and expelled Russian diplomats as well.
One of the most serious squeaky wheels in the NATO war machine in the Ukraine situation is Ukraine itself. Zelensky is looking around at the 100 thousand Russian soldiers assembling on his borders and has not been shy in expressing how unhappy he is about it.
The globalists were too proud to bow out of this game early and now they’re really stuck. Russia has directly challenged NATO supremacy. If they back down now they might as well write off Ukraine as a lost cause. If Putin can roll his tanks into Kiev without NATO opposition, there will be no reason for him not to. Zelensky will be out of options. Unable to count on the West to back him up, he’ll have to capitulate and strike a deal with Russia, however humiliating and disastrous it might and probably will be.
Why does Zelenksy constantly demand to be allowed into NATO? The odds of that happening aren’t quite zero, but they’re so close to zero they might as well be. That said, now that Biden has left him outside in the cold, Zelensky has every justification to negotiate with the opposition. With the information available, there is of course no way for me to say whether he made this decision himself or NATO told him to. I’m guessing the former. This fiasco was incompetently managed from beginning to end.
A few days ago a possible motive emerged for why the Biden administration blundered into this situation so arrogantly. Russia announced the capture of two alleged conspirators plotting a coup against Alexander Lukashenko’s government in Belarus (Note: more arrests have been made since then). That might be nonsense someone in the FSB made up, but if it’s true that would explain a lot of things.
Lukashenko’s administration is weak and plagued by corruption. The attempted color revolution failed, but Belarus is by no means in the clear. If the Belorussian government collapses like Ukraine’s did in 2014, that would leave Russia in a serious predicament and potentially cripple their ability to intervene in the Ukrainian border crisis, at least temporarily.
NATO might be telling the truth (for once) and had nothing to do with the assassination plot against Lukashenko. Nonetheless, the coup’s failure is bad news for imperialist ambitions. To repeat what I said in the article above:
“While significant in itself, assassinating Lukashenko correlates with the standoff simmering in Ukraine. The Black Sea Fleet currently maintains total superiority and could effortlessly sink the entire Ukrainian navy within minutes of hostilities breaking out. Russia has combined arms units assembled in Crimea, along the Eastern border of Ukraine, and in Belarus, creating a three-sided “cauldron” that could potentially end a shooting war almost before it started.”
Belarus is stable for now and leaves Ukraine trapped in a cauldron that might snap shut at any moment. The chances of NATO swooping in to the rescue are at best uncertain.
That’s a lot of problems on the globalists’ plate and I have not even begun to fight! It’s an election year in quite a few places, most notably Russia. Putin’s party, United Russia (a thinly veiled bit of nostalgia, yes?), has an overwhelming majority, in no small part thanks to the Ukrainian color revolution. Nothing forces people to put aside their difference quite like an external threat.
It’s likely that an objective of the current anti-Russia saber rattling was an effort to make Putin look weak, crashing his popularity rating and costing United Russia seats this September. It’s too early to say, but Washington and NATO have screwed this up so spectacularly they might have achieved the exact opposite of what they meant to.
In 2019, the Foreign Policy Review Institute triumphantly declared “United Russia is dead.” Oh boy, that headline did not age well.
Russia isn’t the only world power facing elections in the near future. Germany’s federal election is coming up at the same time and France’s status quo is running into rough terrain. Marine Le Pen is no longer a fringe candidate and is now a serious contender for 2022.
In conclusion, I don’t have a conclusion yet. Yesterday I was wondering if this pot was about to boil over into open warfare. I just could not imagine that the Biden administration would so aggressively initiate a confrontation they were unwilling and unable to follow through on. And yet that’s exactly what they seem to have done!
What are some of the terms Putin will want? I have no idea, but here are some possible guesses.
Ian Kummer
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