2 minutes of your time: Why the war pigs are losing

here is a long excerpt from

bad cattitude

’s column. a link to the full piece is below. two things: i’ve added emphasis with bold...extra emphasis with bolded italics. and, since this fierce feline doesn’t use caps, i’ll follow suit!

KEEP IN MIND, the war didn’t start 3 years ago. It began in earnest in 2014. Guess who lit the match. We did!

from 1917 to 1991, it (Ukraine) was a part of the soviet union and was governed from moscow.

anyone who can read a map can see why the soviets/russia viewed this territory as integral to their own borders and safety for not only is it rich farmland and rich in minerals, but (at least eastern ukraine down through the crimea) stabs into russia and controls both the black and azov seas.

if you draw a line just slightly east of kiev and odessa, this is plain to see and the ukranian border is a scant 500 miles from moscow, a veritable stone’s throw by russian standards and a march many from napoleon to hitler have tried mostly losing to “distance and russian winter” (but that was back when belarus and ukraine were russia). russia has long relied upon “defense in depth” and 1000 mile marches with little cover as a cornerstone of defensive posture.

this is part of what made stalin so keen to grab eastern europe post WW2 pushing all the way to austria and into germany. the ruskies wanted the front lines drawn far, far away in someone else’s lands and that is where they put their walls and NATO put their tanks and missiles.

then came the heady days of perestroika, the wall fell, and change was in the air. the soviet union collapsed, eastern europe left its mandated orbit, the eastern bloc was done, and lots of new nations formed or reformed.

russia had very little power at this time.

in 1991, hastened by the failed coup in moscow, the ukrainians held a referendum, 92% voted for independence, and and on december 26th, the USSR officially dissolved and ukriane was internationally recognized.

so let’s keep that in mind. this country is only 34 years old.

like many newly minted states, ukraine had a fair few problems, this one more than most. it was an insanely corrupt place initially run by former communist strongmen turned nationalists and finally given free hands to steal and plunder. it also had some severe ethnic divisions (more on this later).

under president kravchuk (1991–1994), hyperinflation peaked at 10,155% in 1993, devastating the economy and creating fertile ground for corruption. they played the same scuzzy privatization games as elsewhere and rapidly built a hyper rich, hyper corrupt, hyper violent oligarchy. kuchma made this far worse ruling for the decade up to 2005. prime minister lazarenko fled with $100’s of millions. the whole place was a thieves forest and went full, unapologetic kleptocracy under yanu. ukraine consistently ranked among the top few most corrupt countries on earth.

this mostly suited russia who did not seem to care who stole what from whom and had a their own propensity to oligarch and seemly did not begrudge others their own so long as they remained a non-threatening buffer zone.

when yanu fell in 2014, things changed and the geopolitical calculus shifted.

yanu fell to what many (especially russia) have called a coup. i think they are basically correct. the so called “revolution of diginity” has all the greasy fingerprints of a CIA op with asst sec state victoria nuland and CIA director brennan pulling strings and “never met a bad neocon idea we didn’t like” john mcain, and chris murphy jumping in on site to say “we’re with you” to the “protesters” that sure looked a lot like the garden variety USAID funhouse gang. they brought in then VP biden to “glue it” per a famously intercepted and leaked call.

we did it. because we meddle. like “blow up the norstream to meddle” kind of meddling. it’s the US IC signature move and all scuzz was there. 2014 was the pivot. the US helped overthrow the government and put in “yats” as PM because he was “the guy.” speaking of “guys” 2014 is also when young crack enthusiast hunter biden joined the burisima board.

it’s also when russia invaded crimea. the US knew or should have known they were going to provoke this. sevastopol is a major port, home to russia’s black sea fleet and pivotal to security and shipping. the black sea is not a place russia wants NATO or NATO puppets. crimea was also 58% russian by ethnicity and more than a few there were glad to see them after 25 years of ukrainin mess. this was a neighborhood of frying pans and fires.

looked at from russia’s perspective, this coup was extremely aggressive on the part of the US. this would be like russia staging a coup in a newly independent louisianna, jutting into the american flank and controlling key shipping lanes.

they had already seen 1500 miles of defense in depth gone in eastern europe and the baltics joining NATO. one can see how they felt pressed.

then came the biden presidency, blinken, and a whole host of badly calibrated adventurists is the white house.

was an obvious, known, and knowable red line that half the experts in the US state department and even president puddinhead himself knew to be an intolerable provocation.

it’s honestly still not clear to me what they were trying to do. putin made it VERY clear that ukraine joining NATO was a hard red line, a line not to be even approached, much less crossed. yet the US was suddenly making it a priority. why? it made no sense. what US interest would be served by setting off a flashpoint like that? what security or economic interests were served?

unless we were trying to start a war, we did not need it.

a truly cynical cat might posit something like this:

but i suspect it may have just been pig ignorance and arrogance at the US state department et al, thinking they were making a power move or that “luring russia into such a war would degrade them and weaken them economically.”

keep i mind a lot of the cheny clan neocons were involved and that kind of warmongering and profiteering is just their bag.

it’s certainly taken a toll on russia’s military, but the rest has been price supports. even post the US blowing up nordtream (and yeah, we did it guys. it’s not exactly subtle) they have just been using shipping cut outs to mark their gas way up and sell to europe who keeps shutting off nuclear reactors and doubling the price of energy until whole industries collapse. they have been raking in money and tightening ties with china.

we like to call them the bad guy (and have a long history and some great 80’s movies) but the simple fact, though many won’t want to hear it, is that the US has been the predominant provocateur here. we have been twisting the bear’s tail and daring it to do something. and it did.

NATO was created to threaten and contain russia. this would have been like warsaw pact troops in new orleans.

imagine the US reaction to that. (certain events in cuba come to mind)

you stage a coup in a state poking into my heartland then seek to militarize it into your “anti-me” alliance, i’d get aggressive too, especially if part of your play was “gato is too weak or scared to stop it.” then i have to.

we backed russia into this and pushed them past plausible endurance.

so everyone got set off.

so we get two years of grinding groundwar, piles of aid, who knows how much stolen money, new chateaus in france for zelensky and his droogs (nazis not excepted), misappropriated weapons sold wholesale to drug cartels, and who knows what dirty money being kicked back to whom. everything about funneling a half a trillion unaccountable dollars into the most corrupt crime state on earth stinks. no one sane does this and they certainly don’t do it by waging endless propaganda wars on their own citizens to jingle up some jingo fever.

gatopal™ carson nails it here: this is straight orwell.

and it’s getting seriously ugly because people are seriously fooled and have no idea that their “war dwarf” good guy is actually a criminal clown in a bad sweater and nothing brings out the “i bought my kid’s che gueverra t-shirt at baby gap” crowd like alleged freedom fighters whose reality is something vicious and corrupt.

every. single. time.

zero discernment.

as those who never have to fight shrill for those who do to be cast yet again into pointless meatgrinders in service of nation scale theft and corruption. the amounts of money stolen in this “wag the dog” war is likely somewhere around the GDP of greece. (yes, really) the whole thing seems like a made for TV event.

insane in the ukraine