Ukraine

Poorest country in Europe, but has oil resources, exploited by Joe Biden crime family and target of Putin. Poorest country in Europe, but has oil resources, exploited by Joe Biden crime family and target of Putin. ℹ️ Info           ~ Aristotle Sabouni Created: 2022-10-17

🗒️ Note:

I do not like the game of playing pawns for our own agendas. Sometimes both sides can be wrong/bad. I don't think Ukraine should have been invaded. I don't think the U.S. should have meddled. I'm generally more sympathetic to the pro-West Ukrainians than the Pro-Russian ones. But this is an internal conflict that doesn't need us playing hero. If you are going to get involved in a fight, it helps if you know which side is the right one. And with both sides being corrupt, and a long muddled family feud, the outsider is just an enemy to one side or the other. If there is a "worst possible choice", I have full faith that Biden will choose that path.

Ukraine war is not "simple".

1. Putin is wrong to invade. (This is not apologism).
2. But he did telegraph and give us (the west/Ukraine/etc) opportunities to avoid the conflict.
3. Ukraine is the poorest and one of the most corrupt and complex places in Europe (because of that corruption).
4. There's a lot of history, intermingling, shifting alliances -- and at the heart is about who will control the Black Sea.

- Excellent Read from Hillsdale.

• History of Crimea, Ukraine, and the Black Sea

1. Ukraine and Russia are blurrier than the west wants, because they never disentangled completely, especially in Crimea (and the South).
2. They share a language: over 85% of Urkanians in the disputed areas (East/South) speak Russian, far more than are fluent in Ukrainian.
3. There's been shifting power, and Russia has controlled Crimea since the 1700's.
4. It's their only warm water fleet base, and is key to controlling the Black Sea.
5. Nikita Khrushchev did sign back control of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, but they controlled Ukraine at the time.
6. In 1991 93% of Crimeans voted for autonomy from Ukraine
7. In 1994 were granted dual citizenship (Russia and Ukraine).

Ukraine and the area are divided, the U.S. meddling didn't help.

1. There was a pro-western and pro-eastern factions in Urkaine and the U.S. was flirting heavily with the pro-western side, and that was alienating the pro-eastern side, and tearing the nation apart.
2. 2004 Bush intervened in a crooked election, helping to cause the frictions of the, "Orange Revolution" (This of course makes Obama's whines about Russia influencing our elections, look more hypocritical).
3. 2013 UKR-west negotiated a free trade deal with the European Union and cut out Russia. Then Russia responded with a sweeter deal (including $15B for Crimean bases, etc), the UKR President (Yanukovich) signed the Russian deal.
4. 2014 The U.S. backed protests/violence against the Russian Deal (U.S. had given $5B to get influence elections there), and this lead to a lot of escalating violence between the factions.
5. Eventually, this violence/unrest lead to the overthrow of the corrupt (but legitimately elected) Yanukovich administration.
6. The U.S. and EU was funding Urkainian military, and converting it to the 3rd largest (250K men) in the area (behind Russia and Turkey), with some of the most advanced weapons and training.

NOTE: While the U.S. was meddling, there's also no doubt that Russia was meddling and aggitating even more. They were funding the pro-East factions, and they fight a lot dirtier. This was the meddling Russians versus the meddling Americans. With the Russians having much deeper ties and domain knowledge. So both sides point at the other and say, "They did it first". Also, Ukraine is not innocent. Without the U.S./Russia, the Ukrainians would have still been fighting with each other -- because they have the same conflicts that other countries do, just with the catalysts of poverty and corruption making them worse. So a progressive/western faction, and traditionalist/eastern faction, pro/anti corruption factions, pro/anti capitalist/socialist factions and so on. They were fighting with themselves on the best way forward, either way. So this is NOT the imperialist Americans versus the innocent Russians, or poor pawns the Ukrainians. This is Ukrainians fighting themselves with Russians sponsoring their interests, Americans sponsoring their own. Corrupt opportunists taking advantage of the chaos like various Oligarchs and Crime Families from Russia and the Biden/Clintons (as well as Europe and neighboring countries). Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

• Why would Putin do this?

1. Putin invaded Ukraine after the U.S. rejected his demand for a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO.
2. This wasn't new either. Zbigniew Brzezinski (Secretary of State for Carter) wrote, “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
3. George Kennan (one of the architects of NATO) warned the Clinton Administration that American plans to push NATO borders “smack up to those of Russia” was the “greatest mistake of the entire post–Cold War era.”
4. Bush pushing to add Georgia and Ukraine into NATO further aggravated the situation.
5. Giving up Crimea and Ukraine means Russia becomes the second most powerful Asian country, instead of a Eurasian bridge.
6. Then Russia "took over" Crimea under Obama, in a bloodless coup, that actually stabilized the status quo (Russia's influence over the Black Sea and that region). Obama looked the other way, and Trump didn't destabilize the region by doing anything.
7. On 2021.11.10 Wrong Way Biden's Sec State (Antony Blinken), signed a “strategic partnership” with Ukraine. It not only committed the U.S. to Ukraine’s full integration into NATO, but also stressed Ukraine’s claim to Crimea.
8. Like it or not, this is the U.S.'s proxy war (at least as far as Russia is concerned). With the U.S. providing UKR communications (Starlink), provided targeting information for drone strikes, HIMARS rocket artilery, and having helped with a lot of their training and modernization.

How does it end?

1. There's no easy wins here.
2. If the U.S./Urkaine completely kicks out Russia from Urkaine (including Crimea) -- then the East/Southern parts of Ukraine are NOT happy (as they do want closer alliances with Russia). And so there's perpetual unrest. And we destabilized the area. And Russia is imbittered and fighting to get their territory gained through conquest and corruption back.
3. Giving up the Donbas and Crimea to Russia seems like a Russian victory -- but really it enables the status quo. Though the west has been mislead. And the UKR-West faction is unhappy, and with the sponsorship of western agitators (like the Biden admin) will continue violence and destabilization.
4. The American public doesn't really care. Certainly not enough to know what's going on.
   1. A few rubes will follow what they're told and put Ukrainian flags on their Facebook Pages to show unity with a country they know nothing about. But polls on the 2022 election show that this doesn't make their top 10.
   2. We follow the war more as a spectator sport, and are rooting for Democracy (assuming that means the Russians lose). But Democracy isn't always good, and I'm not sure we're on the right side of it.
   3. Local Democracy would mean that Crimea and much of the Donbas actually does go to Russia. Even if that divides Urkaine. (While their elections are a sham, they're probably not wrong that the majority of that region is more aligned with Russia than with the west and Ukrainians that want to be part of Europe).
   4. I don't want to hand Russia/tyranny a win. I don't want to divide Ukraine. I don't know that a Militarized Ukraine and broken Russia makes the world a better/safer place.
5. The Biden admin is innept as usual. They see this as an opportunity to "export democracy" to a region where America has subverted it.
6. The White House public response to the invasion was a commitment to those affected, "especially vulnerable populations such as women, children, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons, and persons with disabilities". WTF? While Privately, they are giddy at spending Americans money and power to fuck with and tear apart a region that isn't really any of our business. No matter how many Ukranians and Russians we have to sacrifice to do it.
7. The goal here for Biden/Democrats and the Establishmnent (Deep State) is to continue the forever Wars, by convincing the gullible that: (a) this is our fight (b) that Putin losing is a win for Democracy (when a majority of the region Russia controls, really wants to be part of Russia) (c) that we should shift our focus from the middle east to Eastern Europe.

NOTE: I do think Putin cheats in their elections -- so the margin for support of Russia might not be 97% or anything like they claim -- but it is likely above 50%, if for no other reason than they drove the anti-Russians out of the area. We can debate whether that's cheating -- but the Curley Effect happens in the U.S. all the time, with California or New York, etc., driving out all the rational people that oppose Democrat policies, thus solidifying their power. This moral problem never seems to concern the left/Democrats when they do it. It's only a problem when someone they don't like is doing it.

• Tucker-Putin Interview - The leftist media was outraged that Tucker Carlson Interviewed Vladamir Putin, during the Russo-Ukranian war. But in the real world, this is called Journalism. Then they were hypocritically outraged because Tucker was far more aggressive than they were on Zelensky. The outrage is just that they don't control the narrative.
• Ukrainian Invasion - During the 2012 Debates, Romney was mocked for warning Obama/Clinton that Russia was a threat to Ukraine. They let Putin have Crimea. Under Trump (and his willingness to kill Russians in Syria, and give Ukrainians weapons), Russia cooled down. It was warned if Biden was elected Russia woud invade completely. The left ignored, and then was shocked that the right was correct all along. Just like with everything else in recorded history. Who knew?

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