First, the belligerents:
–Russia: Led by Vlad Putin, a man whose rise to power was aided by the very weak post-cold war government that was allowing the usual suspects to loot the place. He is a giant on the world stage due to the fact that his competition consists of a collection of tyrannical, corrupt, debaucherous criminals that democracies are prone to select for. Although he has a modest fan club in some circles, he has been a petty man who engages in weird assassination attempts against those who have slighted him while violently making sure no one is messing around in his “sandbox”. Perhaps his most well known trick was supposedly getting Trump elected through the use of one Facebook ad. It must have been pretty good, though I’ve never seen it myself.
–GAE (Global American Empire): Led by a country whose elite prides itself on being the moral authority of the planet even though the nation over which they rule has become home to gulags, show trials, and a slow-motion genocide (picking up pace though) being waged by the rulers against the hated heritage population. For their most recent circus act, they paid to develop a biological agent that was released and then ran rampant around the planet. In quite the coincidence, they had also developed a snake-oil cure that turned out to be worse than the disease. It largely worked out though as the people most impacted were those that they hated anyway, and much profits were had. All of this was lied about of course.
2004 – Ukrainian pro-GAE presidential contender Viktor Yushchenko is supposedly poisoned, leading to an election being manhandled by the Ukrainian courts to GAE’s favor. I say “supposedly” since this article puts a different spin on the original narrative., It’s hard to feel sorry for Vlad being framed for such a crime, if that even was the case, since he had already made “assassination by falling piano” one of his MOs. It is also a reflection of the modern history of Ukraine since the borders gifted to it by the Soviets meant the population was half-ish Russian and half-ish Ukrainian with all the stability that can be had from such an arrangement. All arguments then turn into running hegemon battles in a hall of mirrors.
2013-2014 – The Euromaidan protests that resulted in the ousting of a pro-Russian/pro-regional government in favor of a GAE oriented government. Vlad, smelling a rat (I’ve never seen anyone make the case that Euromaidan was anything other than a CIA op), made moves with his little green men to secure Russian assets and territory before GAE could get their hands on it. This led to a de facto secession of Ukrainian territory that was mostly (sometimes entirely) occupied by Russian people. For what can only be a wide variety of reasons (ancient grudges held by the usual suspects, cold warriors who never learned a new trick, grifters who had gotten used to Ukraine being their playground, democracy zealots*, and probably many more) this not-partition got under the skin of GAE elites and it led to an eight year period of simmering violence.
2021-2022 – GAE begins seriously considering giving significant military aide to Ukraine if not outright asking it to join NATO, an organization that should have folded back in the Bush 1 years. The promise of that sweet GAE loot was too much for the GAE installed Jewish president and Jewish prime minister so they begin amping up the tension in the border regions, some of which are controlled by Ukrainian militias that are only tenuously attached to the central government. Vlad, again properly smelling a rat, mobilizes his border forces. Things appear to calm down, but then for a variety of not-very-good reasons the dubious militias begin shelling Russian areas to draw the Russians back in. Vlad says “eight years of this crap is enough” and invades the country. The Ukrainian president pre-films himself tending to defenses at the capital before fleeing and handing out rifles to old women so that they can fight in his stead.
Sure much of the last part is somewhat speculation, but lets review the options open to the Ukrainian people since independence from the Soviets:
- Retrench into an Ethnic state with defensible territory and adopt a Israeli strategy where everyone is a soldier. Due to the location they would always be at the whims of some empire of perverts or aspiring Tsar so the goal would be to make the place as expensive as possible to get involved in.
- Align with the local hegemon. This is basically Canada in a nutshell. Yeah being an atrium for Russia is no one’s ideal, especially since that time when they tried to kill everyone there, but they are right there, in the country. It’s not like the Russians are going to let the security for their largest naval base be set by a hostile power.
- Align with a distant empire who’s main drivers are promoting degeneracy and third-world crime. The same empire whose bungling got Georgia permanently half-overrun by the Russian army.
The list isn’t complete, but it doesn’t matter how many are added as #3 will always be at the bottom. It makes the least sense, but that’s what the leaders of Ukraine went with. This is because, in the end, they were foreigners installed by a foreign power. Which brings me back to here:
The dog, is not very nice, but will just mind his own business when not being bothered. The rat is definitely not nice and has been actively trying to genocide animals like the cat for at least the past 80 years. The cat, well, the cat doesn’t actually deserve any of this.
*Democracy, as they say, is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Sheep outnumber the wolves? No problem, just import wolves until the sheep voting problem goes away.
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