Ukraine : “Why worry?”

Last week, within a few days before the weekend, Russia’s military launched more than five hundred missile and drone strikes against embattled Urkaine and another 80 strikes of the same type in just one day last weekend. A good number of these were intercepted by Ukraine and nonetheless, people in Ukraine continue to die and to be wounded and injured by the Russian airstrikes, now from Tupolev and other bombers, supposedly targeting infrastructure and related facilities necessary to keep Ukraine going in the war. The terror of it is the Russian strikes in their planning and execution are intended in fact to wear down, to disintegrate the resolve of the Ukrainians in fighting for their homeland and their freedom as threatened by the February 2022 invasion and subsequent occupation of their territory. In hindsight, many have offered now that N.A.T.O. under the circumstances in 2014 needed to intervene in the disastrous insurrection that engulfed Ukraine’s defenses and that was induced by Russia — this is hindsight and at the time things seemed to be in a way in the realm of possibility to resolve themselves. That they did in the shoring up of the Russian military presence in Eastern Ukraine laying the groudwork for a subsequent invasion.

While the Russian military has many modes of fighting the Ukrainians on their own territory — not on their own terms but on Ukrainian territory — air forces, army, Wagner Group, and other among special forces, the same might not heavily believe in but have had to base their invasion and much of the conflict on the use of tanks and motorized and mobile armor. In the bitter cold of winter in Ukraine, with the ground frozen like stone, essentially, it is easy for the Russian tanks to operate and to aggressively take on the Ukrainians to the extent Ukrainian artillery and Ukrainian tanks themselves have their backs against the wall. The Russians have apparently not done very well with this as the Ukrainians refuse to yield or give way in any fashion, and as a result Russia’s military instead of attempting to take territory on balance has resorted to cruise missiles, other missiles, mortars, and other air ordnance in destroying property and Ukrainian real estate, factories and facilities to the extent it can in terrorizing as well the home population at or near industrial and commercial centers and so on. This targeting of innocents with cruise missiles and the like de - legitimizes the claims that Russia has in its justification for invasion and the ongoing conflict : At the start, really, tanks rolled in and took territory as intended — territory that was occupied by “fascists”, etc., and then the going got rough so Russian forces became more destructive from the air; an axiom they now operate under that is an easy way to let mobile artillery stand by while Russia destroys, essentially, Eastern Ukraine that is an industrial and commercial crown jewel (from the air — an expensive way to go about it.)

To the extent Western help is accorded Ukraine, the Russian military engages in adaptive tactics that are terrorizing and again overly destructive to the Ukrainian establishment and patrimony, and to property. People are driven out of their homes in the dead of winter now and have makeshift lives closer to danger than ever before — and the destruction is pointless. Help from N.A.T.O. - based military resources and from Western countries has prolonged the war, but has held the Russian military back from possibly additional territorial adventurism in the Balkans, Moldova for example, and Romania; and even as well in Northern Europe given the priority allocation of military resources to Ukraine.

The terror to the Ukrainian population, now with millions and millions of refugees, and the destruction of land and other property in Eastern Ukraine at least have changed the face of Eastern Europe for the rest of the lives of everyone living on earth — people should take an avid interest in helping Ukraine to defend its territory including Crimea given the perfidious and gangster tactics of the Russian military and the character of the desired annexation of Ukraine by the Russian Federation that is of worse character and annihilation than the forced territorial annexations of the nazis starting with the invasion of Poland starting in early September 1939. Every citizen of every country to cover the way in Ukraine by its media has an obligation to first forestall the military advances of the Russian military and then to make a contribution to strengthen Ukrainian defenses to have the Russians stop firing their weapons and missiles, and then to turn and go back.

See here for a good article on this topic published last week : ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-…