What Happened to the Brotherhood of Ukrainians and Russians?

What Happened to the Brotherhood of Ukrainians and Russians?

                        Robert A. Levine  4-7-22

We see the bestiality of Russian soldiers every day on television as they kill innocent civilians, destroy housing, torture people, loot and rape women. This is not all Putin but must be built into the Russian psyche. These are both conscripts and battle hardened soldiers who perceive the Ukrainians as their mortal enemies, deserving of Russian wrath. How can they so brutalize innocent civilians who in the past were considered the brothers of the Russian nation and whose many citizens speak Russian? All along, Putin has claimed that Ukraine was not a nation but a part of Russia.

Have the Russian soldiers succumbed to the unending lies and propaganda of the Russian state depicting the Ukrainians as Nazis, in spite of the fact their leader Zelinsky is Jewish and was elected by a wide margin as president of Ukraine in a free democracy? Is it revenge for seeing their companions killed by a supposed inferior force and losing battle after battle to the Ukrainian military. What do they gain by destroying cities and homes, killing and torturing citizens and earning undying hatred from the Ukrainians? If the Russians win the war it will never end, as an insurgency will flourish in the soil of hatred that the Russians have fertilized and planted in Ukraine.

The big question now is how can the war end without Putin losing face? Though the Russians have destroyed many cities and villages and killed numerous civilians, they have taken no territory in the center or west of Ukraine. They may be martialing their forces for all out pushes in the east and the south, to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea and build a land bridge between the Donbas region and Crimea. But will they be able to win these battles and if they succeed will they be able to hold the area against Ukrainian onslaughts.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated how disorganized and chaotic the Russian military is when fighting a smaller and supposedly weaker enemy. How would their conventional military stack up against NATO forces without using atomic weapons? Most likely they would soon be routed. It appears that the claws and teeth of the Russian bear are decayed and cannot stand up against a determined adversary. Unfortunately, Russia can always fall back on a threat to use nuclear weapons if their military is unable to obtain its objective. But it is hard to see an end game to their war against Ukraine without a decline in status for Putin and the Russian leadership. And perhaps at some point, the Russian people will see through the fog of lies and propaganda that has been fostered upon them by the Russian state. Will there be a reckoning?

Robert A. Levine

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Putin's Madness

Putin’s Madness

            Robert A. Levine 2-7-22

How does the world deal with a madman who controls one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world and appears to be deranged and blatantly paranoid? Very carefully. But will that be enough. He has no compunctions at killing tens of thousands of people so why not millions? Obsessed with power, he wants to live in the past and reconstitute the Soviet Union and the Soviet Empire. He has said that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century. Now it appears as if he is determined to change the course of history and return the world to where it was fifty years ago. And he won’t listen to reason from other world leaders and possibly to his own advisors. Putin says the Russians and Ukrainians are one nation, which means that he doesn’t care about killing his own people.

Does Putin believe any of the lies he is telling the Russian populace and world leaders about why he is invading Ukraine?  Putin claims that there is no war between Russia and Ukraine but a special military operation. The Russian government has forbidden all the media and the opposition to Putin to label the fighting in Ukraine as a war. He says the Ukrainian government and military are neo-Nazis and are a danger to Russia. Can he really believe that when Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is a Jew? And how can Ukraine be a threat to Russia when the latter has nuclear weapons which Ukraine returned to Russia when the nukes were stationed on Ukrainian soil. Putin also claims that Ukraine has always been a part of Russia and not an independent nation. Russia has four times the population of Ukraine as well, a much larger and stronger military, with the latest weapons and a far superior air force and number of tanks.

Putin says the Russians are not targeting civilians in Ukraine, though they are bombing civilian apartment houses and residences in the large cities and shutting down sources of water and electricity. They’ve also attacked the largest nuclear plant in Europe which could be disastrous if it exploded, with radiation many times that of Chernobyl. Whether Ukraine survives as an independent state or as a Russian vassal, rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure of the country with ravaged buildings and residences will cost hundreds of billions, if not trillions of Euros.

The videos of Putin sitting at one end of a very long table, with advisors, or cabinet members, or visitors at the other end is another manifestation of his paranoia. It may have been valid when Covid 19 was rampant, but is now unnecessary and shows Putin as being isolated from other human contact. Was he afflicted with Covid and did that change his cognitive function and mental acuity? Was it just his prolonged isolation and listening to his own propaganda?  He has placed his nuclear weapons on a higher alert status, threatening their use if any nation interferes in his war with Ukraine. These are not the actions of a rational man.

But the only people who can stop Putin are the Russians themselves, though most of them seem to believe his propaganda regarding the war. The Russian people’s only access to news is through Russian state radio and television, though the young people get some information through the internet which is also inundated with government lies and propaganda. Some brave Russian souls have demonstrated against the war and thousands have been imprisoned because of their opposition.

The world’s economy is being hit hard by Putin’s misadventure. Not only are gas and oil supplies diminished, but important metals for technology like cobalt, titanium, nickel and lithium are all being squeezed. And even worse is the decrease in supplies of grain which usually come from Russia and Ukraine. Wheat, barley and corn are all in short supply with prices rising quickly. This will cause even worse inflation in the developed world and hunger and famine in Third World nations. Putin doesn’t care. He sees himself as returning Russia to its rightful place in the world’s power hierarchy and himself as one in a long line of strong Russian rulers. He wants to restore Russia’s empire and sphere of influence and abolish the rules based relationships between nations that became prevalent after World War II and atomic weapons. Putin may next go after other previous Soviet vassal states. How it will end is uncertain as it is difficult to read the mind of a madman.

www.robertlevinebooks.com

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What Does Putin Want?

What Does Putin Want?                                                                                                                              Robert A.  Levine

The answer seems simple. Putin has said several times that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of the 20^th century. As an old KGB officer, he would like to right what sees as this wrong and reconstitute Russia as a world power in the mold of the Soviet Union. Putin was angry when George H.W Bush said that the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War and was outraged when Obama declared that Russia was just a regional power.

Now Putin is trying to show the world that Russia is still a world power and that the United States and NATO cannot stop him from achieving his goals. He believes that Russia should have a sphere of influence that includes all the nations that surrounds it and that NATO troops should not be stationed in any of those countries, what Putin calls Russia’s ‘near abroad’. He also believes that Ukraine is part of mother Russia and does not want it to become a western democracy right on Russia’s doorstep.

However, while Putin has modernized Russia’s military to put it on a par with the U.S. and China, he does not have the industrial base or the economy to maintain his large army and fight wars. His economy is in the doldrums, the Russian people lacking many modern conveniences. His only exportable products are fossil fuels, oil and gas, which does give him a lever to use against European nations. But with the movement towards renewables, fossil fuels will only be of value to Russia for a few more years, or a decade at most. As energy from renewables goes up, fossil fuel exports will be going down.

Putin has not been preparing Russia for the day when fossil fuels will no longer bring in capital to Russia and will not be helpful as a bargaining point. He needs to diversify Russia’s economy and have high tech products that they can sell to other nations. And he has to stop spending so much of Russia’s funds on his military and subsidize other industries. He also has to tax the oligarchs who support him and distribute some of their wealth to the ordinary Russians. The quality of the average Russians life has to improve or there will be a breaking point in the future. People cannot live on the glory of military victories when they don’t have the conveniences of modern life. Social media and the internet allow them to see what the citizens of western nations have that they lack. And propaganda will just go so far.

Russia is a vast land and aside from fossil fuel, they have many different natural resources that have not yet been fully exploited. There is also plenty of land that can be utilized for agriculture. Putin should stop looking for military victories to sustain him in power and instead look inward to see how he could help Russians improve their quality of life. He should concentrate on new industries and welcome investors from other advanced countries to provide funds for Russia to achieve first world status in other realms besides military power. Of course, he would have to provide guarantees before wary westerners would consider investing. As a narcissistic dictator who does not brook opposition, it is questionable whether Putin would be willing to surrender military parity with the United States and put his money elsewhere in the Russian economy to generate consumer goods and high tech products.

www.robertlevinebooks.com

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