Russia is injecting troops and full compliments of armor, artillery and other ground support into the Crimean Peninsula with full air support wings sitting just over the border in Russia. The nascent government in the Ukraine has called up the entirety of their reserves and are pleading that those who signed treaties with the Ukraine and Russia throughout the 1990s and guaranteed Ukrainian independence to now honor their commitment. The main guarantors were the United Kingdom and the United States, neither of which are currently in any position or have the ready capability of honoring that commitment. Still, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are both making desperate statements which Russian President Putin will disregard as he knows from the past lack of fortitude and actions in backing his words by President Obama after Benghazi and throughout the chemical weapons use fiasco in Syria that the United States has as its Commander in Chief a spineless squirrelly indolent childlike leader who only knows how to give a great speech and even then only if the teleprompter provides the words. Putin is likely enjoying a hearty laugh as he watches President Obama attempting to sound threatening and earnest as he bellows threats in a futile attempt to stay the Russian military from rolling over the Ukraine submitting it once again to Moscow’s will. Putin is acting with a lack of concern or regard for the sputtering of both Obama and Kerry taking advantage of that more flexibility that Medvedev relayed as the promise from the American President.
Putin knows full well that he has a green light to do as he pleases with the Ukraine completely sure that the Western powers have no taste for a military action any more today than they had when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier signed away Czechoslovakia to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938 as they also were not prepared for a war or preventing German aggressions. Now we have Great Britain and the United States along with the rest of the Western powers making vacant threats sounded with trembling voices that betray their hope against hope that their bluffs will not be called. President Obama does not even realize that he resembles a small child standing in the kiddie pool while drawing lines in the water and screaming threats at the bigger kids swimming in the main pool. Putin realizes he is looking at what resembles a clown more than a leader of a nation which still has the abilities and potential of a world leading power if only those in the seats of power had any real convictions. Putin has won and the Ukraine is standing alone and that will prove to be a sad affair.
Putin said he would agree to a proposal from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to set up a contact group on Ukraine. Angela Merkel made this proposal in a telephone conversation Sunday evening. She has also been quoted as having “accused the Russian president of violating international law with the unacceptable Russian intervention in Crimea.” The reality is that President Putin is simply taking advantage of the situation and weakness in the Ukraine after months of unrest and years of misrule that weakened the Ukraine making it a prime target for the next step in the reassembling of the old Soviet empire. This was part of the reasoning behind the Russian military action against their former state of Georgia where the Russians took control over the two northern provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Now the Russians have taken at a minimum the entirety of the Crimean Peninsula and stands poised to take control of at least the eastern Russian speaking lands of the Ukraine. The new government in the Ukraine has bravely, even if foolishly, they will not stand for the Russian invasion of their nation. Expect Russia to claim that they are simply working to reestablish the rightfully elected leader, President Viktor Yushchenko, back into power and assist in subduing the illegally imposed government. Anybody believing such complete deceptive dishonesty will also believe that the Russian aid to Syria is simply to support the duly elected leader Bashir al-Assad. Granted any comparison of Bashir al-Assad and Viktor Yushchenko is a long stretch but the use of supporting such oppressive leadership by Russia in order to sustain their puppet governments is exactly the same. We are watching the rebirth of the Russian empire, either the Czarist Empire or, more accurately, the Soviet Empire. The big question is, where will Putin turn his attentions next and how far will Putin go to reestablish the Warsaw Pact and reestablish Russian hegemony over the entirety of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Will the world once again sit still while Putin and Russia swallow nation after nation subjugating hundreds of millions of people and only stand in defiance when Russia invades Poland? We have seen this situation once before in recent history and it inevitably led to the greatest carnage and sacrifice of blood, treasure and civility in all of human history. Will the world stand to stop Putin and end his designs to reestablish a Russian European and Asian Empire early when it might not be as costly or will the world once again wait until the possibility that all efforts will fail as the allied efforts almost failed to stop the spread of Nazi Germany and Empire of Japan in World War II. How many will be sacrificed in the coming war, be it over a hungry Russia swallowing her neighbors or an atomic weapons armed Iran spreading its tentacles wrapping up all of the Middle East oilfields and spreading terrorist attacks worldwide.
Beyond the Cusp 