C
Putin thinks if he can grab back some of the old Soviet Union’s now lost 100 million people and 30% of its territory, then his Russia would again become a superpower — especially given the natural wealth of his former Soviet republics.
of whom he thinks can box, judo kick, fish, shoot, or ride bare-chested at his level. So, to the degree Putin be-
lieves in a cost-to-benefit analy- sis that any envisioned inva- sion will prove profitable, he will invade anywhere he feels the odds favor his agenda. And when he does not — if
F
CIVILIANS UNDER FIRE
A: Russian rockets rain down on Kyiv on Day 4 of the Russian assault, targeting the city’s TV tower and Holocaust memorial.
B: A woman reacts to the sound of shell explosions in a bomb shelter in the separatist-controlled Donetsk region.
C: The body of a woman, killed during shelling, lies under debris of a damaged house in Donetsk.
D: Russian agent is escorted by Ukrainian troops.
E: Residents carrying water walk past the bodies of Russian soldiers on the outskirts of Irpin, in northern Ukraine.
F: A refugee boy cries at a railway station after arriving in Hungary to escape the Russian bombardment.
Soviet republics. He knows that the longer
some of these republics are Westernized and become accul- turated to the passions of popu- lar culture, the more difficult it will be to coerce them into be- coming Russian subordinates. So Putin feels a sense of ur-
gency that in the past was not always his conniving trade- mark — but now perhaps ac- centuated by his age or health. He feels we are decadent,
soft, pampered — to the point of not replying to his provoca- tions. So, he presses. In his Stalinesque mind,
we purportedly do not deserve the power and influence we supposedly inherited at his expense, while his Russia, he boasts, is tough, religious, and deserves far more from the modern age than its current di- minished status. Like Stalin, he has devel-
oped a visceral dislike of ser- monizing Western elites, none
America or NATO offers a de- terrent, if oil is plentiful and cheap, and if Western leaders are sober and strong rather than loud and weak — he will not so gamble. It’s really that simple. Feed
Putin a hand, and he will gob- ble a torso.
WILL UKRAINE SURVIVE? In theory, Ukraine should not last, given the numerical odds against it. Still, the Russians may, we
hope, have a hard time of it — if for no other reason than the country is larger than Iraq in both size and population. It has lots of supply conduits across the borders with four NATO countries that can finally begin pouring in weaponry. An in- vader that cannot stop resupply from third-party neighbors can rarely subdue its target. So if in a week Putin can-
not shock and awe the elite or decapitate the government, he will have a hard time subduing the population. Time is not on his side. Sanctions are worth-
less in the short term but even- tually they can bite. His tripartite semi-circular
attack on Ukraine is uncannily similar to Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland from East Prussia, Germany, and the dismem- bered Czechoslovakia. But even Hitler, who was
helped later by the invasion of the Soviet Union from the east, lost 50,000 dead and wounded from a poorly equipped Polish army.
FOSSIL FUELS Gas and oil, and thus who tried to curtail both, explain a lot of the current mess. The nihilist President Joe Biden’s decision voluntarily to cancel new pipe- lines, federal leases, ANWAR, and leverage loss of bank fi- nancing for fracking, and to give up well over 2 million bar- rels of daily production will be seen not just as an economic disaster. It was a strategic catas- trophe. When Europe, or indeed
the West, is dependent on Rus- sian goodwill to drive and keep warm, it can never be free. End- ing American energy indepen- dence is not just an AOC obses- sion. Russian hackers in January
targeted our Colonial Pipeline, shutting down in a day over 1 million barrels of transported oil. The more we discount the strategic consequences of hav-
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