THE YARD PUNK'S DELUSION

On Friday, September 30, Vladimir Putin announced his annexation of four provinces of Ukraine. The fact he does not fully control any of the four provinces - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson - and that a vote at gunpoint is not a legitimate vote to join Russia, assuming such was actually legal in any way under international law, and that all four are sites of mass murder and mass kidnapping/deportation since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, didn’t matter.

With this statement, the Yard Punk declared a new war, not merely a war on Ukraine.

The Yard Punk’s war is a war on the particular idea of world order and international law upheld by most nations in the rest of the world, not just by Europeans and North Americans, an idea of world order that forms the basis of the United Nations itself. A core principle of this world order is that larger countries have no right to grab parts of smaller countries, that mass slaughter of whole populations is a crime against humanity, that borders cannot be changed through violence or by a dictator’s whim. Nothing about this act has any legitimacy, and that is also part of the point. In the world of the Yard Punk, there is no such thing as legitimacy. Only brutality matters.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world allowed the Yard Punk to challenge this idea in 2014, when he annexed Crimea. He held a sham referendum, and was able to use the result to convince many outsiders that it had some validity. Some sanctions followed, but the rest of the world largely gave him a pass. Commerce and diplomacy with Russia continued.

This time there is no pretense that the farcical votes have any validity; no one, anywhere, believes they do. Even China and India, his two major international supporters, did not accept this as any kind of legitimate act.

However, even as Putin was speaking in Moscow, the Ukrainians announced that they were surrounding and cutting off a large group of Russian soldiers in Lyman, a strategically significant city in Donetsk province. That was followed by the news early today that Russia has retreated from Lyman, which leaves its troops in eastern Ukraine in an increasingly perilous position.

Now that Ukrainian forces have retaken the city, they will have a solid foothold on the northeastern side of the river that they can use to advance further east, applying pressure on the Russian front lines that formed following their recent defeats around Kharkiv.

All this mocks Putin’s announcement, demonstrating that he can’t hold what he has just annexed. The question now is how long the Russian people and, most importantly, the members of the power elite, put up with the Yard Punk’s recklessness.

Polling suggests support for the war has fallen sharply. The latest shows that the 48% of Russians wanting the war to continue in August has fallen now to only 29%. Another 15% are lukewarm and 48% want peace. Putin’s position offers no way to fight or negotiate a way to victory. More men have so far have fled the country than joined the army.

Putin’s rant was meant to make the world quail in fear of nuclear war. In reality, Putin is likely more terrified than anyone right now: He’s a Russian dictator losing a war of aggression, and he knows how those things end in Russia.

Putin has now said he is at war with all of the international order built after World War II, with the support and involvement of Russia. He demands to be allowed to brutalize whomever he chooses and seize whatever he wants.

Putin has boxed himself in with these moves. Before it was possible to imagine, if always unlikely, that there could be some diplomatic means to bring the bloodshed to an end.

Now, the only way to end this is to end Putin.

The West didn’t stand down in the face of the Soviet system this Yard Punk gangster wants to revive, and we should not stand down now. Ukraine has every right to recover its own territory and free its people. If Putin’s position is that this is cause for an even wider and more reckless conflict, then it is his choice, not ours.

The war is now destined to carry on to its own bitter end. It also means that even should the fighting end it is not clear how issues such as war crimes and reparations will be handled.

Biden’s main response, as he dismissed the legitimacy of Putin’s move, will affect the course of the war. The passage by Congress in the Continuing Resolution of the next $12 billion assistance package to Ukraine, along with the announcement the U.S. is imposing more sanctions on Russia and members of the elite responsible for the prosecution of this war, demonstrates the U.S. commitment to leading the international alliance to support Ukraine.

For the Yard Punk, backing down would be an acknowledgment that the United States defeated Russia without losing a single soldier. Losing a major war will cost him his legacy, his power, and likely his life.

The war is not existential for Russia, but it is for Putin: He wins or dies.

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