Vladimir Putin has seriously miscalculated. Alone and isolated, increasingly believing his own propaganda, and with visions of grandeur dancing in his fevered dreams, he imagined a quick strike, a blitzkrieg in the best Nazi tradition, in which he would make short work of the local authority and quickly digest Ukraine. He bit off more than he can swallow. Putin will choke on Ukraine.
Nationalism is mostly a product of foreign invasion and oppression. It was Napoleon's armies marching across Europe that gave birth to Germany. It was the German armies marching across Europe that gave birth to the collapse of the old royal regimes, replacing them with bona fide nations. It was war that gave birth to numerous national movements throughout the world from Indochina to the America's. Where national consciousness is only emerging, one thing is certain: armed conflict will intensify nationalism. By waging war against Ukraine, Putin has transformed his nemesis Zelenskyy from celebrity to hero, from a television personality to a Winston Churchill. In the process his actions serve to forge a nation in the fires of conflict.
He misjudged the reaction of the west as well, with the NATO alliance reacting swiftly as one, uniting in days in response to a clear and present danger. Germany has reversed 70 years of national policy by contributing arms to a conflict, reversing in days its reluctance to increase military spending and, in effect, re-arm. Poland is sending jet aircraft and other arms to Ukraine. Germany is sending hundred of old soviet era anti-aircraft shoulder mounted missiles left over when it was reunified with East Germany. France, Britain, Sweden, Denmark are sending, as of this writing, small arms and other weapons. Spain, responding to Zelenskyy's call for nations to send volunteers in order to form 'volunteer brigades', as was done in the Spanish Civil War, has responded accordingly. Turkey has closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles to the Russian navy, has sent drones and fighter planes. Azerbaijan has likewise sent drones and other military equipment to Ukraine.
Vlad, with the aid of his American Lackey, has spent years trying to divide the west, fostering dissension within member countries using cyberspace and anti-social media, funding nascent fascist organizations throughout Europe and the ReSCUMlickan Party in the United States, and working to elevate the political scum in this country so as to wreak havoc upon our international alliances. It almost worked.
But he miscalculated.
He failed to take the measure of the man. Having a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out understanding of politics outside his immediate domain, he mistook Biden for Bush and Obama. Biden has spent nearly 50 years on the national stage. He knows wherein lies the levers of power. He was chairman of the foreign relations committee while in the United States Senate. He was 8 years Vice-president of the United States. He has been recieving top-level military and intelligence briefings for years. He has been on the world stage, meeting national leaders as well as their opposition for decades. And, when Obama equivocated it was usually when he didn't listen to old Joe.
The ugliness of Russian behavior has served to quickly solidify the western alliance, and old Joe knows how to go about setting concrete. Putin should have invaded when his useful idiot was in the White House.
The whole world is watching.
In this day and age, with cell phones equipped the cameras, photos and videos become immediately viral on the internet. The young especially know how to use the technology, they grew up with it. The Russian assault on the television tower in Kiev will not keep the atrocities being committed hidden from the world, nor from the Russian people. Censoring Russian media will not keep the truth from being told, just as the outrages in this country perpetrated by our treasonous ex-'president ii**” cannot be swept under the rug, nor conveniently or quickly forgotten. Putin will savage his own people at his peril. Greater leadership than he have fallen to an outraged citizenry, just ask Louis XVI, or the Romanov's.
So onerous have the Russians become that the United Nations general assembly voted 141-5 with 35 abstentions condemning Putin and his regime for the outrages being committed against Ukraine. The United States and the several members of European alliances are in a race with each other to see who can confiscate the most wealth stolen by the Russian Kleptocracy and spirited out of the country. Money skimmed from monopolies stolen from the people, invested in yachts, luxury apartments, estates, and foreign currencies, bank accounts and investments. Within the last 24 hours France and Germany have seized two mega yachts owned by Putin's kleptocrats: one valued at about 600 million dollars, another over a billion dollars.
Multi-national corporations are canceling contracts, automakers are pulling up stakes in Russia, as are Shell Oil and British Petroleum. Russian Banks have been cut off from the international banking system and Wall Street rating services like Moody's have declared Russian Bonds 'junk'. The Russian banks have been closed all week, the Russian Ruble is now worth less than a penny in U.S. currency, and the prime interest rate in the Russian Federation now approaches 20 per cent.
In case you haven't noticed, Vlad, the world is pissed.
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