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KURAKHOVE, Ukraine — Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.
The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor.
“We say, ‘Please, don’t let us down in battle,’” said Sgt. Artyom Knignitsky, the mechanic. “‘Bring us in and bring us out.’”
Mr. Axe is a staff writer at Forbes and a nonfiction author, graphic novelist and filmmaker.
“Tens of billions of dollars of weapons have flowed from European and North American countries into Ukraine. Rifles. Bullets. Missiles. Artillery pieces.
At first, those nations insisted that the weapons were “defensive,” designed to help Ukraine fight off a marauding Russian Army that had stormed, unprovoked, across the border.
One year later, as the battered but still potent Russian military prepares for a renewed offensive, the type of weapons heading into Ukraine have changed dramatically. Now, what’s flowing in from the West are armored vehicles, long-range rockets and advanced tanks.
The distinction between offensive and defensive weapons was always a little arbitrary. Now, though, Ukraine will have the ability to play offense and potentially drive Russia out of their country using some of the best weapons in the world. That means the stakes for all sides have increased substantially.”
Mr. Biden is president of the United States.
“The invasion Vladimir Putin thought would last days is now in its fourth month. The Ukrainian people surprised Russia and inspired the world with their sacrifice, grit and battlefield success. The free world and many other nations, led by the United States, rallied to Ukraine’s side with unprecedented military, humanitarian and financial support.
As the war goes on, I want to be clear about the aims of the United States in these efforts.
America’s goal is straightforward: We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.
As President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said, ultimately this war “will only definitively end through diplomacy.” Every negotiation reflects the facts on the ground. We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.
That’s why I’ve decided that we will provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/opinion/germany-russia-ukraine-trade-gas.html
Opinion Columnist
“On April 12, 1861, rebel artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, beginning the U.S. Civil War. The war eventually became a catastrophe for the South, which lost more than a fifth of its young men. But why did the secessionists believe they could pull it off?
One reason was they believed themselves to be in possession of a powerful economic weapon. The economy of Britain, the world’s leading power at the time, was deeply dependent on Southern cotton, and they thought a cutoff of that supply would force Britain to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. Indeed, the Civil War initially created a “cotton famine” that threw thousands of Britons out of work.
In the end, of course, Britain stayed neutral — in part because British workers saw the Civil War as a moral crusade against slavery and rallied to the Union cause despite their suffering.
Why recount this old history? Because it has obvious relevance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seems fairly clear that Vladimir Putin saw the reliance of Europe, and Germany in particular, on Russian natural gas the same way slave owners saw Britain’s reliance on King Cotton: a form of economic dependence that would coerce these nations into enabling his military ambitions.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/world/ukraine-war-children-parents.html
(David Lindsay: I am not active on Instagram, but today I was glad to have an account there.)
“I thought that if my husband and I died, Vira could find who she is,” the mother, Oleksandra Makoviy, recalled.
For Vira, standing in a diaper in their house in Kyiv, the writing on her back was a game. She didn’t know that the bombing had begun.
Ms. Makoviy’s desperate attempt to prepare her daughter for the possibility of being orphaned as the family attempted to escape the Ukrainian capital during the Russian invasion has become a wrenching symbol of the anguish of a nation of parents.
A photo of Vira’s back that Ms. Makoviy shared on Instagram has been seen hundreds of thousands of times, after it was amplified by Ukrainian journalists and government officials. Messages of support poured in from people all over the world — many Ukrainian parents said they had taken similar action, and others turned the image into art honoring the country’s innocent on social media.”
If Putin backs down, maybe thanks to some face-saving diplomatic formula, the Biden administration will deserve full credit for masterly crisis management: whipping into line our European allies, particularly Germany; thwarting Russian covert operations by leaking details to the media; expanding America’s military presence in frontline NATO states; working on ways to supply Europe with liquefied natural gas; refusing to negotiate at Ukraine’s expense; threatening sanctions against Moscow that, for once, have real teeth.”
Stop trying to treat our military presence and our social welfare as mutually exclusive. Tax the rich, and let them pay for our Pax Americana. Their taxes have been cut in half or more in the last half-century. Every time we went to war in history, taxes rose to fund it. Bush Jr. created the exception, and we have never recovered. By all means, let us police the world. But first, let’s police the rich.
“At the end of the Cold War, the third largest nuclear power on earth was not Britain, France or China. It was Ukraine. The Soviet collapse, a slow-motion downfall that culminated in December 1991, resulted in the newly independent Ukraine inheriting roughly 5,000 nuclear arms that Moscow had stationed on its soil. Underground silos on its military bases held long-range missiles that carried up to 10 thermonuclear warheads, each far stronger than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Only Russia and the United States had more weapons.
The removal of this arsenal often gets hailed as a triumph of arms control. Diplomats and peace activists cast Ukraine as a model citizen in a world of would-be nuclear powers.
But history shows the denuclearization to have been a chaotic upheaval that shook with infighting, reversals and discord among the country’s government and military. At the time, both Ukrainian and American experts questioned the wisdom of atomic disarmament. The deadly weapons, some argued, were the only reliable means of deterring Russian aggression.”
“We knew this was coming.
“George, you have to understand that Ukraine is not even a country. Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe and the greater part was given to us.” These were the ominous words of President Vladimir Putin of Russia to President George W. Bush in Bucharest, Romania, at a NATO summit in April 2008.
Mr. Putin was furious: NATO had just announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the alliance. This was a compromise formula to allay concerns of our European allies — an explicit promise to join the bloc, but no specific timeline for membership.
At the time, I was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, part of a team briefing Mr. Bush. We warned him that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action. But ultimately, our warnings weren’t heeded.”
David Lindsay: I am running out of patience with Putin, which is a bad reaction, perhaps. Here are two comments I recommended.
A wonderfully written and thoughtful assessment of the untenable and dangerous situation facing the U.S. and NATO in Eastern Europe. Ms. Hill is to be commended for her years of service and unparalleled expertise in Russian relations. An asset to treasure.
Thank you Dr. Hill for your solidly knowledge-based opinion. You explain vry well how Mr. Putin is masterfully exploiting any fissures in our Western stance against his endless thuggery. What I cannot understand myself is why we expect him to behave the way we want without facing any serious consequences. But, at the same time, I suspect that playing the military game is totally playing into his hands. It’s fairly predictable, and it will provide his regime with an external threat that will be used for all it’s worth internally, to further strengthen the authoritarian grip on Russia’s people. I would prefer “asymmetric warfare”, on the level where Putin himself would be hurt: Go after Russian oligarchs and their ill-gotten fortunes. Seize their vast property in London, New York and other Western havens. Kick their spoilt kids out of American and British universities. Further, stop all business deals with Russian entities and get all Western businesses out of Russia. Seize all Russian assets in Western banks. And yes, it would be hurtful also to us. But not so much as being dragged into military misfortunes on the Eastern front. And, of course, this approach would mean that Germany would have to fire up their nuclear electricity plants again, but so they should anyhow.
“WASHINGTON — He stood on one side of a war-damaged bridge in Ukraine staring across at Russian-backed forces and saw the real-world consequences of President Trump’s efforts to advance a personal agenda. “More Ukrainians,” he said, “would undoubtedly die.”
Recalling that moment during explosive testimony on Tuesday, William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, laid out in visceral terms the stakes of what he saw as an illegitimate scheme to pressure the Kiev government for political help by suspending American security aid.
In by far the most damning account yet to become public in the House impeachment inquiry Mr. Taylor described a president holding up $391 million in assistance for the clear purpose of forcing Ukraine to help incriminate Mr. Trump’s domestic rivals. Mr. Trump’s actions, he testified, undercut American allies desperately fighting off Russia’s attempt to redraw the boundaries of Europe through force.”
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