UKRAINIAN WITHDRAWAL FROM AVDIIVKA. 

While the Ukrainians have at least temporarily relinquished a town on their Eastern front, Avdiivka; and the Catholic Pope has naively attempted to intervene in the war in Ukraine by calling for a “white flag” peace on the part of the Zelensky regime, the Kremlin continues to menace and make things more complicated and lethal with its brute force armed, wasteful and purposeless bashing at the front and threats of nuclear war if the situation improves at all for Ukraine.  On the terrain right now in Ukraine with slightly higher temperature from February, thawing weather and still cold and muddy, the grotesque and bitter war continues.  The Kremlin, unfortunately, has sought to re – establish its own sovereignty over Ukraine at all costs probably since plans were first formulated in secret during the Yeltsin regime and brought to light in the 2010’s under Putin. 

The sort of Napoleonic strategy the Russian Federation military uses against Ukraine with its massive attacks with bombs and artillery blasting away has laid waste to people and property, a complete waste, on the Russian side and created a hellish war of attrition on the Ukrainian side.  Successful Ukrainian attacks on Russian Black Sea warships, and the reaction to these, are highly symbolic of how puffed up the Russians are about Ukraine.  Russian Federation might have originally been better off trying to purchase or financially control the lion’s share of Ukrainian real estate and infrastructure, though that idea might have been too simple or too long in carrying out for the now greatly militarized Russian state leadership and associated bureaus, organs and their military divisions. 

As a battle site, Avdiivka is vital to the prosecution of the Ukraine war for both sides, and while Ukraine awaits additional supplies and armaments from the Western powers promising these, or at least struggling to, giving up this toehold might be wise.  Ukraine is running short on ammunition and shells and has attempted to recoup or to forestall any small territories lost given its still successful drone attacks and holding the line on the battlefield against Russian forces with what shells there are left for the time being.  Trump has stated that he will not intervene in any war in Ukraine if elected in November 2024, yet in view of the radical pressures and implications of continued attempts at conquest by the Kremlin, including the use of nuclear weapons to wipe out opposition forces should its armies attack further in Ukraine or in other areas of Eastern Europe, this promise could be hollow.  Success in the battle for Ukraine by Kremlin – sponsored military forces means that Russian Federation in its hopes for success in battle also has its sites set on Moldova, Romania, Georgia and the Caucasus again, and possibly Poland and further, the Eastern German provinces of Thuringia and Saxony.  Probably, Putin wants to go as far as he can militarily in order to establish a hegemony for the Russian Federation in appearance as much identical to the soviet union (remember the “evil empire”?) and barring serious opposition and serious and committed hitting back from American, British and European forces, he is just getting started in Ukraine.  The Russian forces in their separatist war started in 2014 in the Russified part of Ukraine and then later efforts to arrogantly blunder their way militarily toward Kyiv, Kremlin officials have had their troops attack Ukraine as presumably full of “nazis”, scum and other buzzwords that lace their media in a related propaganda war.  Then yesterday Pope Francis, to add to the complexity of things, announces that Ukraine should throw in the towel (Dear Pope :  How would you like Russian troops in your Vatican streets, or being required to learn Russian at your age or face extinction?) 

To the current operations politically, public tone and the pursuits civically and militarily of his own very unfortunate country, Mr. Putin has sought to disseminate and to create a contagion of misfortune, grief, sadness, purposeless mortality and futility by first bashing the Ukrainians politically and militarily, and then hopefully everyone else in his near abroad, even in his world neighborhood, in pursuit of a “greater Russia”.  This is supposed to be along the lines of proper governance and modern civic and political values and norms per se, though the Kremlin has taken these principles and has mirrored and corrupted them with a blackened and perfidious, corrupt center that is averse to human life in Europe and its very valuable, diverse and actually very now fitful and contentious road to potentialities that are destroyed by this useless and purposeless conflict.  One also cannot call the Russian leadership sponsoring the war anything like delusional or with any sort of entailing symptoms nor condition of sickness, but the infernal and destructive, deadly war makes people sick.  Vladimir Putin is right in his own ways and in his own mind about crushing freedom and democracy that stand to threaten his own visceral need to control the European continent, though this construct and related ideas have killed innumerable people and deserve time out, and without Putin in the Kremlin life might be better for everyone.  This is a dilemma that must be resolved as Russian Federation needs a properly good leader and while change is needed in Russia in its own governance, no one is prepared, nor does anyone have the power to step up at the present time.  Thus without Putin the political and military situation could worsen – this might be why people, and the Pope, are throwing up their hands.  Indeed, the horrific and destructive war has to stop, and the Russian leadership has to come to grips with its limitations – Putin and his team headed by Shoigu, Naryshkin and Lavrov has to come to this realization, however difficult it might be for them, and that contrary to the Kremlin at the moment, the world is today one of logic and proportion versus step – function despotism.