Whether or not Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ends soon, what is certain to continue is his abiding hatred and mistrust of the United States and other Western powers, which he believes left him no choice but to launch an unprovoked war.
“Western values” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and everything else one has never found in Russia.
TC, your post is a good explanation of why Russia is how it is. Thank you 😊
Ihor Kalynets, 83, spent a lifetime resisting Soviet domination. Now, he says, he’s not going anywhere.
Ihor Kalynets knows something of life under Russia’s thumb.
Having spent nine years in the Soviet Gulag, including hard labor cutting stone, he secretly wrote on cigarette papers what are regarded as some of his best verses. They were crumpled into tiny balls and smuggled out of prison.
For 30 years of his professional life — during Soviet times — he was only able to publish abroad, infuriating the authorities, or through samizdat, the underground self-publishing network.
Today he lives on a leafy street in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine inundated with Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion of their country. His daughter and son-in-law live up the street, and he has opened his art-filled home to a family of refugees.
War is raging to the east and around the capital of Kyiv, but he insists he has no intention of joining the exodus of people fleeing to neighboring Poland and other European countries.
“I will stay in Ukraine,” he said, looking around his living room, where he sleeps on a cot, surrounded by his books and paintings, his old-fashioned radio close at hand. “The Russians will not come here,” he said, adding that western Ukrainians would put up a determined defense of their region.
More than habit, or age, what keeps Mr. Kalynets in Lviv is his entire life history, which has been one of resistance driven by a deeply rooted connection to his homeland and Ukrainian culture.
“I did not grow up as a pioneer or a komsomolets,” he said, referring to the Communist youth groups that schooled generations of Soviet youths. “I was bred in a Ukrainian family in the national spirit.”
Mr. Kalynets has seen the full arc of his country’s history, from before and during Soviet rule, to independence, and now to its present struggle.
Born in 1939, in Khodoriv, a town not far from Lviv, when western Ukraine was still part of Poland, he grew up in the tumult of World War II that ravaged the region and changed state borders. Lviv was occupied by Nazi Germany and then seized by the Soviet Army.
As a teenager he saw at close hand the resistance against the Soviet state that lasted well into the 1950s. Ukrainian nationalists, led by Stepan Bandera, had first opposed Polish rule, then joined forces with the Nazis and later British intelligence to fight against Soviet rule in their home territory.
“I was brought up in this milieu,” he said, and its imprint remains with him. “I think of the cruelty of the Muscovites and how the Ukrainian patriots were basically destroyed,” he said.
The early experience led to a lifetime of opposition to Soviet rule and stretches to Russia’s latest war, which President Vladimir V. Putin has termed an operation to de-Nazify and “liberate” Ukraine. “I knew who our so-called liberators were,” he said.
As a student he moved to Lviv and studied at the Language and Literature Faculty of Lviv University, graduating in 1961. He married another poet, Iryna Stasiv, and the two became well-known participants in the burst of cultural activity that emerged in the 1960s after the end of Stalinist repression.
“We were mostly interested in the political conditions in Ukraine,” he said. “We were not expecting to gain liberation and we understood it would be a long time to gain independence. There was only a handful of us, but we believed something should change.”
He wrote a first collection of poems, “Excursions,” but it never saw the light of day. The entire print run was confiscated, according to an account of his life by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Some of the poems appeared in journals and newspapers, and in 1966 a collection, “Kupala’s Fire,” was published in Kyiv, but also swiftly proscribed.
A modernist poet — he developed his style from the avant-garde poets of the 1920s — he focused often on the richness of Ukrainian culture, celebrating literary figures and ancient customs, while offering a lament for the loss and destruction of that culture under Soviet rule. He wrote odes to a country water well, stained-glass windows and happiness, “written in sand with a finger.”
His poetry was criticized by the Soviet authorities, who demanded a more uplifting propagandistic tone of work. He was excluded from the Union of Writers.
Repression returned. As friends and acquaintances were arrested, and he and his wife organized human rights protests and appeals for their release, they came under the surveillance of the state security service, the K.G.B.
In 1971, his wife was arrested and charged with anti-Soviet agitation. Six months later, Mr. Kalynets was arrested, too. He served six years in a labor camp in Perm in the Ural Mountains, followed by three years of internal exile in Chita, in Siberia, where he was reunited with his wife.
“That’s how it went,” he said with a slight shrug. “A person can stand anything, but we had a certain idea that held us up.”
In a series of letters that he wrote to his nephews from prison, he composed a surreal children’s story called “Mr. Nobody,” about a boy who lost his sleeve and found it inhabited by a voice.
In the labor camp, he wrote some of his most beautiful poetry, said Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko, a Ukrainian filmmaker and music producer, who made a documentary about Mr. Kalynets.
“He used to be a prince back in the day,” he said. In an era of Soviet realism, his poetry touched on the eternal. “His poetry has something royal about it; the way he wrote, the subject matter too. He wrote about nothing special, but about everything at the same time.”
Mr. Kalynets came back to Lviv in 1981 but ceased writing poetry and turned instead to children’s literature, to some extent to avoid further trouble, he said.
In 1987, with the opening up of press freedoms, or glasnost, under President Mikhail Gorbachev, he became an editor of one of the first uncensored periodicals.
After the fall of communism, he and his wife became involved in politics, known for their support for the Republican Party, the first political party in Ukraine to challenge the Communist Party’s dominance, and for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a 1,000-year-old church that follows the Byzantine Rite. The church is followed by the majority of people in western Ukraine, but was banned under the Soviet Union.
Mr. Kalynets remained a poet at heart, reciting his poems at political gatherings, and finally publishing his poetry for the first time in Ukraine. In 1992, he was awarded the Shevchenko Prize, Ukraine’s most prestigious literary award.
But he remains outspoken about politics. Ukraine has not achieved true independence from Moscow in the 30 years since it declared independence, he said. “It was oriented toward Moscow, it was absolutely Russified.”
“So we had to struggle to have that type of Ukraine that would hold up to the ideals of the cultural leaders of the previous generations,” he said. “And that’s how an independent Ukraine slowly emerged, bit by bit.”
Russia, in his view, had for centuries taken Ukrainian history and culture as its own, and then was left naked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “The powerful and glorious Russia is a country without history, and that is what alarms Putin the most,” he said. “To be without its history was not prestigious. That’s where the war comes from.”
He said he was not surprised to see Ukrainians rallying together when attacked by Russia, but did not put it down to Mr. Zelensky’s leadership. “It is just that Ukrainians suddenly became conscious and understood who they are.”
“It is quite simple,” he explained. “It is the consciousness of a subjugated nation, that wants to have its own country, and not to be the manure that fertilizes Russia.”
Agree with you Allen. As a Swede though I still have the defeat at Poltava in mind (yes,centuries ago), and am weary of being overconfident about the West. As long as Trump is not even near prison, things might still go Putins way.
Putin wants to destroy Ukraine from the face of the earth. He wants to do what even Stalin could not. Destroy her people, her culture, and her language completely. Erase them as though they never existed. He will replace them with non Russians who have no connection to its history.
Allen, Moral depravity -- looking at evil doesn't fade, never forgotten and repeated over and over again. We know and we see the faces of determination, caring, pain, vacancy, crying and silence. We aren't doing enough.
You are here and among us. Seeing you, Allen, and communicating is what people are doing all over. We are strengthening and supporting one another. We look for cracks of light and hope and peace.
The time for moral judgment and facing down evil... We know...
Do you expect to leave for Canada on Wednesday? We are tracking you with love.
The following is a portion of an assessment of the war printed in WAPO this morning.
'...in a widely shared article this week, a retired U.S. general and a European military academic argue that the Russian force is close to reaching what military strategists call the “culminating point” of its offensive, meaning that it will have reached the limits of its capacity to wage the war it set out to prosecute.'
“The Russian war of conquest in Ukraine is now entering a critical phase; a race to reach the culminating point of Russia’s offensive capacity and Ukraine’s defensive capacity” wrote retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French, who chairs the Alphen Group think tank in the Netherlands. They advocate a sustained effort by the United States and its allies to provide military supplies to Ukraine in hopes that Ukrainian forces can take advantage of this “window of opportunity” to win concessions at the negotiating table.'
“I believe that Russia does not have the time, manpower or ammunition to sustain what they are doing now,” Hodges, who is now with the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, said in an interview. The assessment assumes, he says, that the West continues to step up military support for Ukraine, thereby enabling Ukrainian forces to sustain the tempo of their resistance.'
'The Russian military still has overwhelming superiority in terms of numbers and equipment compared with the smaller and more lightly armed Ukrainian military. Russia could yet turn the fight around if it is able to replenish its manpower and supplies, cautioned Lindley-French.'
“It would be a big mistake to think that Russia cannot sustain this war,” he said. “They can’t now, but they could fix it” by adjusting tactics and bringing in reinforcements.'
'Pro-Russian service members drive an armored vehicle through the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 19. (Reuters)
'However, he added, “Unless the Russians can really improve their game and start rotating [troop] formations into the front line, this particular force is facing a problem.”
'U.S. officials decline to make public predictions about the course of the war but say there are clear indications that the Russians are struggling to sustain the existing forces they have and are scrambling to find reinforcements and resolve their logistical difficulties.'
'Appeals to China for military assistance, a so far fruitless attempt to recruit Syrians and talk of bringing in reinforcements from other parts of Russia and the breakaway territory of South Ossetia in Georgia have not yet produced evidence that fresh troops are on the way, the officials say.'
'More than 3 million people have been forced to flee Ukraine; more than half are children. Their parents are trying to explain the war to them. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
“Just that they’re talking about resupply and re-sourcing tells you they are beginning to get concerned about longevity here,” said a senior U.S. Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects.'
“It’s quite extraordinary, three weeks in, that they are still having these same logistical and sustainment issues, and that they are considering additional ways to overcome these shortages from outside Ukraine,” the official added.'
'The war in Ukraine isn’t working out the way Russia intended'
'The Russian troops that initially surged into Ukraine from at least four directions had expected to be welcomed as liberators and came unprepared for a long fight, officials and experts say. Instead, the Russians encountered fierce resistance, and now they are strung out along multiple fronts, bogged down in manpower-intensive sieges and without preplanned supply lines to sustain a protracted war, the officials and experts say.'
'The current map of the battlefield points to the scale of the difficulties, Lee said.'
'It was clear from the way Russian forces moved in the first hours of the war, he said, that their key objectives were to take Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, link up the occupied Donbas region with the port city of Odessa along Ukraine’s southern coast, and — most crucially — capture the capital, Kyiv, with a lightning push from the north.'
'More than three weeks on, Russian troops still haven’t achieved any of these goals.'
'A road leading up to the Odessa National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa, Ukraine, is fortified with sandbags and barricades. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
They have failed to fully encircle the northeastern city of Kharkiv, even though it lies just a few miles from the Russian border. Their push to take the port city of Odessa has been halted by fierce Ukrainian resistance at the gates of Mykolaiv. Their effort to link the Russian-annexed territory of Crimea has become ensnared by the grinding and increasingly bloody siege at Mariupol.'
'The Russians have been making gains in the east, in the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk, which Russia recognized as independent republics on the eve of the war and which have been partially occupied by Russian-backed forces since 2014. But those advances fall far short of the initial ambitious goal of the invasion.'
'The Russians’ hopes of encircling Kyiv, let alone capturing it, are starting to recede, Lee said. Russian forces remain stuck about 15 miles outside the city, and though U.S. officials say Russia is moving rear forces toward the front in anticipation of a renewed push on the capital, the front line hasn’t shifted'.
'Meanwhile, Russians are dying at a rate that is increasingly unsustainable, Lee said. Although Russia still has vast reserves of manpower, it has already committed the bulk of its combat-ready forces, and they are the ones that are almost certainly bearing the brunt of the casualties, he said.'
'There are no confirmed casualty figures, and Russia has not updated the figure of 498 dead that it announced a week into the war. But of the Russian army’s 168 battalion tactical groups, 120 are already fighting on the ground, making up about 100,000 soldiers out of the total 190,000 sent into Ukraine. That means Russia has already committed 75 percent of its combat-ready force, U.S. officials say.'
'Western intelligence estimates say it is likely that at least 7,000 Russians have been killed and as many as 20,000 injured, and assuming that the combat forces are bearing the brunt of the casualties, that could mean up to a third of the main combat force is now out of action, Lee said.'
“That’s a huge loss, and you can’t readily replace that,” he said. Russia can bring in new conscripts or call up more reservists, but that will dilute the capabilities of the overall force, “and that is not in Russia’s interest,” he said.'
'Ukrainian forces have been taking casualties, too, though how many isn’t publicly known because they also have not released any numbers. The longer the war drags on, the more perilous their position will become, too, and the greater the chance Russia will overcome its initial mistakes, said Jack Watling of the London-based Royal United Services Institute.'
'But, he noted, the Ukrainian forces appear to remain highly motivated, while there are clear signs that morale continues to diminish among the Russian troops, he said. Russian forces continue to surrender, abandon their vehicles and show few signs of initiative in the areas they do control, signs “that this is not a force that is well motivated,” he said.'
'As Russia’s offensive capabilities slow, the risk is high that civilian casualties will mount. Stalemate is likely to become “very violent and bloody,” the ISW assessment said, because Russian troops are more likely to rely on the bombardment of cities to apply pressure.'
'There are signs that Russia is running out of precision missiles, U.S. officials say, which means Russian forces will also increasingly resort to the use of so-called dumb bombs indiscriminately dropped on civilian areas in an effort to cow them into submission.'
'Ukraine is unlikely to have the capacity to push Russia out of the territory it has taken so far, officials and analysts say. But the Russians’ current difficulties open up the possibility that the Ukrainians could at least fight them to a standstill, thereby exerting pressure on Russia to accept a negotiated solution.'
'Mixed signals from Ukraine’s president and his aides leave West confused about his endgame'
'The main question now has shifted from how long it would take the Russians to conquer Ukraine to “can Ukraine fight Russia to a stalemate?” said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They’re doing pretty well at the moment.”
“The next two weeks are going to be pretty decisive,” Watling said. The war won’t be over in two weeks, he predicted, and all the signals from Moscow suggest the Russians are more likely to double down than climb down, making the war more deadly for Ukrainians even as it moves at a slower pace.'
“The odds are stacked heavily in the Russians’ favor. This is their war to lose. The reason they are not achieving their objective is largely about their own incompetence, their lack of coordination,” he said.
“What this really comes down to is whether the Russians are going to get their act together.” (WashingtonPost)
Looks like Belarus will enter the war down the west side. The people and the military do not want to fight. Under those circumstances their army should go over to the Ukrainian side. Or they will be destroyed. Ukraine will show them no mercy
I hope this opens; it was gifted. The article is by Thomas Friedman. He posits Putin's options and the West's position. Let me know if it doesn't open as I can copy it to you.
"Surkov predicted that Russia would exist in geopolitical solitude for at least the next hundred years."
I am tempted to suggest that Tucker Carlson and the other Putin apologists who are living in this country might pack up and move to the land of the exiled. We won't miss them and apparently, they are considered "heroes" to Putin and his sycophants. Murdoch could take over their state TV and continue doing exactly what he is doing right now. And TFG might find a safer haven than his soon-to-be-drowned estate on the Florida coast.
Thank you so much for this essay— you filled in so many of my Russian history gaps. I love the spirit of the Ukrainian people. I don’t think Putin’s aggression ends well for anyone. Your point about the despot not having people who will challenge or accurately inform is enlightening as well. I’m afraid of how this ends though because I don’t think Putin has any tolerance for defeat.
Thank you for this history lesson. I had a conversation about Ukraine today with a friend in her 40s who moved to the US from the Czech Republic 15 years ago. Fascinating. She hates Putin, and lived under Soviet rule for the first 16 years of her life, until the Velvet Revolution happened. She said that as a 6 yr old, kids were taught to fire weapons. She's not positive about Ukraine, saying the country is totally corrupt, and that all Putin wants is the uranium deposits in Ukraine. But she understands how the corruption came to be, admires the peoples' spirit & courage. She also said that she's a conservative in voting, but thinks that Biden and team have been brilliant in how they've handle this situation. Her concern is that Putin is so awful, that unless he wins something, he will go with a nuclear attack on the west coast (where we live). She's making contingency plans.
This post is one of the most concise descriptions of Russian policy/policies that I’ve read. “For 500 years, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by ambitions
that exceeded the country's
capabilities” is the most succinct description I’ve read. Thank you.
Wow. What an essay. I love you, TC, and the brilliant and fascinating historians in my brain. I always feel better about everything I post after some ‘splaining that tells me exactly why I’m posted it. My intuition gets ahead of my logic sometimes but I trust my spirit. This forum is such a guidepost for me.
'This is a special installment of our newsletter as we come to you with an urgent message. We don't usually send this kind of e-mail to this entire distribution list but this is an urgent situation, and we need all of the support we can get from our network to stop the horror in Mariupol. We, and the upwards of 1,000 people still stuck in the rubble in Mariupol, are all counting on you. We can save them. Help get us more airpower and air support.'
Dear Razom Community,
'By latest reports, over 1000 people are still stranded under the rubble of the Drama Theater of Mariupol right now. We ask you to be their voice. Please call for international leaders to give Ukraine air power and air support to protect the sky so that rescuers can dig out the survivors and save these lives.'
'Please help get this message out by sharing on your social media.'
'Right now all of us together have an opportunity to make a difference for Ukraine simply by using our voice. Mariupol is a city that has been encircled by russian forces for the past two weeks sustaining some of the most brutal shelling, bombing, and urban warfare out of any city in Ukraine since the start of the war. Reports indicate that dozens of bombs are being dropped on the city per day. On Wednesday, March 16th, russian forces struck the theater, even though the word “children” was written in large white letters on the ground at either end of the building to indicate it was used to shelter innocent civilians.'
'Don’t look away from this attack on civilians - raise your voice and stand with Ukraine. Make a post on your twitter, instagram, and facebook now. Here’s an example:'
'Hey experts & policy makers do your job! Ukraine needs air support & air power. Don’t take your eyes off of Mariupol and the 1000+ women and children stuck under the rubble of a theater there for 3 days @JoeBiden @JensStoltenberg @EmmanuelMacron @BorisJohnson @Bundeskanzler @USDoDGov get to work!'
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“Western values” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and everything else one has never found in Russia.
TC, your post is a good explanation of why Russia is how it is. Thank you 😊
For you Allen, subscribers and TC
from: The New York Times
Ihor Kalynets, 83, spent a lifetime resisting Soviet domination. Now, he says, he’s not going anywhere.
Ihor Kalynets knows something of life under Russia’s thumb.
Having spent nine years in the Soviet Gulag, including hard labor cutting stone, he secretly wrote on cigarette papers what are regarded as some of his best verses. They were crumpled into tiny balls and smuggled out of prison.
For 30 years of his professional life — during Soviet times — he was only able to publish abroad, infuriating the authorities, or through samizdat, the underground self-publishing network.
Today he lives on a leafy street in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine inundated with Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion of their country. His daughter and son-in-law live up the street, and he has opened his art-filled home to a family of refugees.
War is raging to the east and around the capital of Kyiv, but he insists he has no intention of joining the exodus of people fleeing to neighboring Poland and other European countries.
“I will stay in Ukraine,” he said, looking around his living room, where he sleeps on a cot, surrounded by his books and paintings, his old-fashioned radio close at hand. “The Russians will not come here,” he said, adding that western Ukrainians would put up a determined defense of their region.
More than habit, or age, what keeps Mr. Kalynets in Lviv is his entire life history, which has been one of resistance driven by a deeply rooted connection to his homeland and Ukrainian culture.
“I did not grow up as a pioneer or a komsomolets,” he said, referring to the Communist youth groups that schooled generations of Soviet youths. “I was bred in a Ukrainian family in the national spirit.”
Mr. Kalynets has seen the full arc of his country’s history, from before and during Soviet rule, to independence, and now to its present struggle.
Born in 1939, in Khodoriv, a town not far from Lviv, when western Ukraine was still part of Poland, he grew up in the tumult of World War II that ravaged the region and changed state borders. Lviv was occupied by Nazi Germany and then seized by the Soviet Army.
As a teenager he saw at close hand the resistance against the Soviet state that lasted well into the 1950s. Ukrainian nationalists, led by Stepan Bandera, had first opposed Polish rule, then joined forces with the Nazis and later British intelligence to fight against Soviet rule in their home territory.
“I was brought up in this milieu,” he said, and its imprint remains with him. “I think of the cruelty of the Muscovites and how the Ukrainian patriots were basically destroyed,” he said.
The early experience led to a lifetime of opposition to Soviet rule and stretches to Russia’s latest war, which President Vladimir V. Putin has termed an operation to de-Nazify and “liberate” Ukraine. “I knew who our so-called liberators were,” he said.
As a student he moved to Lviv and studied at the Language and Literature Faculty of Lviv University, graduating in 1961. He married another poet, Iryna Stasiv, and the two became well-known participants in the burst of cultural activity that emerged in the 1960s after the end of Stalinist repression.
“We were mostly interested in the political conditions in Ukraine,” he said. “We were not expecting to gain liberation and we understood it would be a long time to gain independence. There was only a handful of us, but we believed something should change.”
He wrote a first collection of poems, “Excursions,” but it never saw the light of day. The entire print run was confiscated, according to an account of his life by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Some of the poems appeared in journals and newspapers, and in 1966 a collection, “Kupala’s Fire,” was published in Kyiv, but also swiftly proscribed.
A modernist poet — he developed his style from the avant-garde poets of the 1920s — he focused often on the richness of Ukrainian culture, celebrating literary figures and ancient customs, while offering a lament for the loss and destruction of that culture under Soviet rule. He wrote odes to a country water well, stained-glass windows and happiness, “written in sand with a finger.”
His poetry was criticized by the Soviet authorities, who demanded a more uplifting propagandistic tone of work. He was excluded from the Union of Writers.
Repression returned. As friends and acquaintances were arrested, and he and his wife organized human rights protests and appeals for their release, they came under the surveillance of the state security service, the K.G.B.
In 1971, his wife was arrested and charged with anti-Soviet agitation. Six months later, Mr. Kalynets was arrested, too. He served six years in a labor camp in Perm in the Ural Mountains, followed by three years of internal exile in Chita, in Siberia, where he was reunited with his wife.
“That’s how it went,” he said with a slight shrug. “A person can stand anything, but we had a certain idea that held us up.”
In a series of letters that he wrote to his nephews from prison, he composed a surreal children’s story called “Mr. Nobody,” about a boy who lost his sleeve and found it inhabited by a voice.
In the labor camp, he wrote some of his most beautiful poetry, said Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko, a Ukrainian filmmaker and music producer, who made a documentary about Mr. Kalynets.
“He used to be a prince back in the day,” he said. In an era of Soviet realism, his poetry touched on the eternal. “His poetry has something royal about it; the way he wrote, the subject matter too. He wrote about nothing special, but about everything at the same time.”
Mr. Kalynets came back to Lviv in 1981 but ceased writing poetry and turned instead to children’s literature, to some extent to avoid further trouble, he said.
In 1987, with the opening up of press freedoms, or glasnost, under President Mikhail Gorbachev, he became an editor of one of the first uncensored periodicals.
After the fall of communism, he and his wife became involved in politics, known for their support for the Republican Party, the first political party in Ukraine to challenge the Communist Party’s dominance, and for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a 1,000-year-old church that follows the Byzantine Rite. The church is followed by the majority of people in western Ukraine, but was banned under the Soviet Union.
Mr. Kalynets remained a poet at heart, reciting his poems at political gatherings, and finally publishing his poetry for the first time in Ukraine. In 1992, he was awarded the Shevchenko Prize, Ukraine’s most prestigious literary award.
But he remains outspoken about politics. Ukraine has not achieved true independence from Moscow in the 30 years since it declared independence, he said. “It was oriented toward Moscow, it was absolutely Russified.”
“So we had to struggle to have that type of Ukraine that would hold up to the ideals of the cultural leaders of the previous generations,” he said. “And that’s how an independent Ukraine slowly emerged, bit by bit.”
Russia, in his view, had for centuries taken Ukrainian history and culture as its own, and then was left naked with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “The powerful and glorious Russia is a country without history, and that is what alarms Putin the most,” he said. “To be without its history was not prestigious. That’s where the war comes from.”
He said he was not surprised to see Ukrainians rallying together when attacked by Russia, but did not put it down to Mr. Zelensky’s leadership. “It is just that Ukrainians suddenly became conscious and understood who they are.”
“It is quite simple,” he explained. “It is the consciousness of a subjugated nation, that wants to have its own country, and not to be the manure that fertilizes Russia.”
Gratitude to you, Dear Fern, for this wonderful story. In the darkest days, courage and clarity of vision offer to light the path forward.
I’ve been absent in the conversation due to love arriving most unexpectedly in my life.
I’m ever in thanks for your generosity of spirit and most excellent research.
Just when you think it's all over, it's just beginning again.
😔
You brought happiness, Kim, a rare feeling this days. LOVE, oh yes! Wonderful! My friend is surrounded by love. 🎹🎷🎺🥁 🌞
That was most excellent Fern, thank you 🙏
Good morning, Dick. 🌿🌍💓🆘🟦🟨 🕊️ Thank you.
I think we probably have about 147 people in Congress who need to be reminded of what "Western values" mean.
Probably closer to 415 if you include the Senate.
Agree with you Allen. As a Swede though I still have the defeat at Poltava in mind (yes,centuries ago), and am weary of being overconfident about the West. As long as Trump is not even near prison, things might still go Putins way.
It ain't over until the fat lady sings
You're no lady!!
Allen, I got your signal. We'd love some words from you and Tanya. Heart full. F.
Putin wants to destroy Ukraine from the face of the earth. He wants to do what even Stalin could not. Destroy her people, her culture, and her language completely. Erase them as though they never existed. He will replace them with non Russians who have no connection to its history.
Allen, Moral depravity -- looking at evil doesn't fade, never forgotten and repeated over and over again. We know and we see the faces of determination, caring, pain, vacancy, crying and silence. We aren't doing enough.
You are here and among us. Seeing you, Allen, and communicating is what people are doing all over. We are strengthening and supporting one another. We look for cracks of light and hope and peace.
The time for moral judgment and facing down evil... We know...
Do you expect to leave for Canada on Wednesday? We are tracking you with love.
We hope to. Thanks
The following is a portion of an assessment of the war printed in WAPO this morning.
'...in a widely shared article this week, a retired U.S. general and a European military academic argue that the Russian force is close to reaching what military strategists call the “culminating point” of its offensive, meaning that it will have reached the limits of its capacity to wage the war it set out to prosecute.'
“The Russian war of conquest in Ukraine is now entering a critical phase; a race to reach the culminating point of Russia’s offensive capacity and Ukraine’s defensive capacity” wrote retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French, who chairs the Alphen Group think tank in the Netherlands. They advocate a sustained effort by the United States and its allies to provide military supplies to Ukraine in hopes that Ukrainian forces can take advantage of this “window of opportunity” to win concessions at the negotiating table.'
“I believe that Russia does not have the time, manpower or ammunition to sustain what they are doing now,” Hodges, who is now with the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, said in an interview. The assessment assumes, he says, that the West continues to step up military support for Ukraine, thereby enabling Ukrainian forces to sustain the tempo of their resistance.'
'The Russian military still has overwhelming superiority in terms of numbers and equipment compared with the smaller and more lightly armed Ukrainian military. Russia could yet turn the fight around if it is able to replenish its manpower and supplies, cautioned Lindley-French.'
“It would be a big mistake to think that Russia cannot sustain this war,” he said. “They can’t now, but they could fix it” by adjusting tactics and bringing in reinforcements.'
'Pro-Russian service members drive an armored vehicle through the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 19. (Reuters)
'However, he added, “Unless the Russians can really improve their game and start rotating [troop] formations into the front line, this particular force is facing a problem.”
'U.S. officials decline to make public predictions about the course of the war but say there are clear indications that the Russians are struggling to sustain the existing forces they have and are scrambling to find reinforcements and resolve their logistical difficulties.'
'Appeals to China for military assistance, a so far fruitless attempt to recruit Syrians and talk of bringing in reinforcements from other parts of Russia and the breakaway territory of South Ossetia in Georgia have not yet produced evidence that fresh troops are on the way, the officials say.'
'More than 3 million people have been forced to flee Ukraine; more than half are children. Their parents are trying to explain the war to them. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
“Just that they’re talking about resupply and re-sourcing tells you they are beginning to get concerned about longevity here,” said a senior U.S. Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects.'
“It’s quite extraordinary, three weeks in, that they are still having these same logistical and sustainment issues, and that they are considering additional ways to overcome these shortages from outside Ukraine,” the official added.'
'The war in Ukraine isn’t working out the way Russia intended'
'The Russian troops that initially surged into Ukraine from at least four directions had expected to be welcomed as liberators and came unprepared for a long fight, officials and experts say. Instead, the Russians encountered fierce resistance, and now they are strung out along multiple fronts, bogged down in manpower-intensive sieges and without preplanned supply lines to sustain a protracted war, the officials and experts say.'
'The current map of the battlefield points to the scale of the difficulties, Lee said.'
'It was clear from the way Russian forces moved in the first hours of the war, he said, that their key objectives were to take Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, link up the occupied Donbas region with the port city of Odessa along Ukraine’s southern coast, and — most crucially — capture the capital, Kyiv, with a lightning push from the north.'
'More than three weeks on, Russian troops still haven’t achieved any of these goals.'
'A road leading up to the Odessa National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa, Ukraine, is fortified with sandbags and barricades. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
They have failed to fully encircle the northeastern city of Kharkiv, even though it lies just a few miles from the Russian border. Their push to take the port city of Odessa has been halted by fierce Ukrainian resistance at the gates of Mykolaiv. Their effort to link the Russian-annexed territory of Crimea has become ensnared by the grinding and increasingly bloody siege at Mariupol.'
'The Russians have been making gains in the east, in the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk, which Russia recognized as independent republics on the eve of the war and which have been partially occupied by Russian-backed forces since 2014. But those advances fall far short of the initial ambitious goal of the invasion.'
'The Russians’ hopes of encircling Kyiv, let alone capturing it, are starting to recede, Lee said. Russian forces remain stuck about 15 miles outside the city, and though U.S. officials say Russia is moving rear forces toward the front in anticipation of a renewed push on the capital, the front line hasn’t shifted'.
'Meanwhile, Russians are dying at a rate that is increasingly unsustainable, Lee said. Although Russia still has vast reserves of manpower, it has already committed the bulk of its combat-ready forces, and they are the ones that are almost certainly bearing the brunt of the casualties, he said.'
'There are no confirmed casualty figures, and Russia has not updated the figure of 498 dead that it announced a week into the war. But of the Russian army’s 168 battalion tactical groups, 120 are already fighting on the ground, making up about 100,000 soldiers out of the total 190,000 sent into Ukraine. That means Russia has already committed 75 percent of its combat-ready force, U.S. officials say.'
'Western intelligence estimates say it is likely that at least 7,000 Russians have been killed and as many as 20,000 injured, and assuming that the combat forces are bearing the brunt of the casualties, that could mean up to a third of the main combat force is now out of action, Lee said.'
“That’s a huge loss, and you can’t readily replace that,” he said. Russia can bring in new conscripts or call up more reservists, but that will dilute the capabilities of the overall force, “and that is not in Russia’s interest,” he said.'
'Ukrainian forces have been taking casualties, too, though how many isn’t publicly known because they also have not released any numbers. The longer the war drags on, the more perilous their position will become, too, and the greater the chance Russia will overcome its initial mistakes, said Jack Watling of the London-based Royal United Services Institute.'
'But, he noted, the Ukrainian forces appear to remain highly motivated, while there are clear signs that morale continues to diminish among the Russian troops, he said. Russian forces continue to surrender, abandon their vehicles and show few signs of initiative in the areas they do control, signs “that this is not a force that is well motivated,” he said.'
'As Russia’s offensive capabilities slow, the risk is high that civilian casualties will mount. Stalemate is likely to become “very violent and bloody,” the ISW assessment said, because Russian troops are more likely to rely on the bombardment of cities to apply pressure.'
'There are signs that Russia is running out of precision missiles, U.S. officials say, which means Russian forces will also increasingly resort to the use of so-called dumb bombs indiscriminately dropped on civilian areas in an effort to cow them into submission.'
'Ukraine is unlikely to have the capacity to push Russia out of the territory it has taken so far, officials and analysts say. But the Russians’ current difficulties open up the possibility that the Ukrainians could at least fight them to a standstill, thereby exerting pressure on Russia to accept a negotiated solution.'
'Mixed signals from Ukraine’s president and his aides leave West confused about his endgame'
'The main question now has shifted from how long it would take the Russians to conquer Ukraine to “can Ukraine fight Russia to a stalemate?” said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They’re doing pretty well at the moment.”
“The next two weeks are going to be pretty decisive,” Watling said. The war won’t be over in two weeks, he predicted, and all the signals from Moscow suggest the Russians are more likely to double down than climb down, making the war more deadly for Ukrainians even as it moves at a slower pace.'
“The odds are stacked heavily in the Russians’ favor. This is their war to lose. The reason they are not achieving their objective is largely about their own incompetence, their lack of coordination,” he said.
“What this really comes down to is whether the Russians are going to get their act together.” (WashingtonPost)
Looks like Belarus will enter the war down the west side. The people and the military do not want to fight. Under those circumstances their army should go over to the Ukrainian side. Or they will be destroyed. Ukraine will show them no mercy
ось тобі
I hope this opens; it was gifted. The article is by Thomas Friedman. He posits Putin's options and the West's position. Let me know if it doesn't open as I can copy it to you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/opinion/putin-zelensky-ukraine.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DODmwaiOMNAo6B_EGKfbd_Zt12zTmfSdlaM65qWf9ox-5ZMgptVwys6NOiqagyHh8U-8i1T39kmNXER6w5-jvnKTjjJL90zeTj-hiMb2D1XPTd2WlydAlgvcdhIVD5jSdcwK2SFvVnmYUrhYdXDZtwQjsGYyOPrqOoX004YIPaG0mavgomWOhZWiXRn8qc6t8AcwZQCVHGTxBv8Dp2qYMcaJ5MYvGJf1N3c9H-gL4RFmVuMI-iYpYxTIHXnL5q2qXfRuhcoQRzhF7efcDdTNOADQ&smid=url-share
"Surkov predicted that Russia would exist in geopolitical solitude for at least the next hundred years."
I am tempted to suggest that Tucker Carlson and the other Putin apologists who are living in this country might pack up and move to the land of the exiled. We won't miss them and apparently, they are considered "heroes" to Putin and his sycophants. Murdoch could take over their state TV and continue doing exactly what he is doing right now. And TFG might find a safer haven than his soon-to-be-drowned estate on the Florida coast.
Murdoch’s network was praised by Russian officials. How does that sit with the infidels?
Thank you so much for this essay— you filled in so many of my Russian history gaps. I love the spirit of the Ukrainian people. I don’t think Putin’s aggression ends well for anyone. Your point about the despot not having people who will challenge or accurately inform is enlightening as well. I’m afraid of how this ends though because I don’t think Putin has any tolerance for defeat.
Thank you for this history lesson. I had a conversation about Ukraine today with a friend in her 40s who moved to the US from the Czech Republic 15 years ago. Fascinating. She hates Putin, and lived under Soviet rule for the first 16 years of her life, until the Velvet Revolution happened. She said that as a 6 yr old, kids were taught to fire weapons. She's not positive about Ukraine, saying the country is totally corrupt, and that all Putin wants is the uranium deposits in Ukraine. But she understands how the corruption came to be, admires the peoples' spirit & courage. She also said that she's a conservative in voting, but thinks that Biden and team have been brilliant in how they've handle this situation. Her concern is that Putin is so awful, that unless he wins something, he will go with a nuclear attack on the west coast (where we live). She's making contingency plans.
Deep gratitude to you, TC, for this rich essay. It appears that the world is in for a bunch of hurt…compounded by China’s actions around Taiwan.
This post is one of the most concise descriptions of Russian policy/policies that I’ve read. “For 500 years, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by ambitions
that exceeded the country's
capabilities” is the most succinct description I’ve read. Thank you.
Wow. What an essay. I love you, TC, and the brilliant and fascinating historians in my brain. I always feel better about everything I post after some ‘splaining that tells me exactly why I’m posted it. My intuition gets ahead of my logic sometimes but I trust my spirit. This forum is such a guidepost for me.
United!
Putin The Terrible
Vladolf Putler.
SO unexpected. At 68, I thought I was done. What an astounding surprise. How wondrous ❣️
Good for you, enjoy it with abandon, you guys are blessed 👏🏻👏🏻🙏
Gratitude
Your Sunday surprise. It was a gift to me from Steve Abbott, and he knows that I'm passing it on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0Gz_6Nwxo
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