How Ukraine Was Betrayed in Budapest - WSJ - "As the people of Ukraine steel themselves for a Russian attack, it’s worth recalling how the U.S. persuaded the country to give up its nuclear weapons. The event was the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which the U.S., Great Britain and Russia offered security assurances to the nation that had won independence when the Soviet Union dissolved. That was the halcyon post-Cold War era when history had supposedly ended. Some 1,800 nuclear weapons were on Ukrainian territory, including short-range tactical weapons and air-launched cruise missiles. The U.S. wanted fewer countries to have fewer nukes, and U.S. credibility was at its peak. The memo begins with the U.S., U.K. and Russia noting that Ukraine had committed “to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time.” Then the three countries “confirm” a half-dozen commitments to Ukraine. The most important was to “reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” They also pledged to “refrain from economic coercion” against Ukraine and to “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine” in the event of an “act of aggression” against the country. Ukraine had returned all of the nuclear weapons to Russia by 1996. Vladimir Putin made the Budapest Memorandum a dead letter with his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. But the betrayal of Budapest isn’t forgotten in Kyiv, as President Volodymyr Zelensky noted bitterly... Budapest shows again the folly of trusting parchment promises in a world where autocrats think might makes right. More damaging is the message that nations give up their nuclear arsenals at their peril. That’s the lesson North Korea has learned, and Iran is following the same playbook as it connives to build the bomb even as it promises not to do so. The inability of the U.S. to enforce its Budapest commitments will also echo in allied capitals that rely on America’s military assurances. Don’t be surprised if Japan or South Korea seek their own nuclear deterrent. If Americans want to know why they should care about Ukraine, nuclear proliferation is one reason. Betrayal has consequences, as the world seems destined to learn again the hard way."
To Russia shills, the only "promise" (which wasn't a promise) that matters is the US "promise" not to expand NATO, which predated the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Apparently NATO needs to be held to things said during discussions in 1989 and 1990 with the USSR (that no longer exists) that were never agreed upon, but Russia doesn't need to be held to an agreement that it signed in 1994
The same people who dismiss Western "psy ops" are just victims of Russian "psy ops". Ironic
Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No” - "[Putin] claims that NATO took advantage of Russian weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union to enlarge to its east, in violation of promises allegedly made to Moscow by Western leaders. But no such promises were made—a point now confirmed by someone who was definitely in a position to know: Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union."
Clearly Gorbachev is a victim of Western psy ops
NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive
A Russia shill presented this as evidence that the West promised Russia that NATO would not expand, but even if we ignore what Gorbachev said, and we also pretend for the sake of simplicity that the USSR and Russia are one and the same, this is just taking ideas floated during discussions as promises and assurances that Soviet interests would be respected as saying NATO would not expand
I am ignoring the parts for which sources (and indeed the exact words used) are not provided (so I cannot investigate the claims)
Another Russia shill first claimed that declassified security documents showed that Russia had been promised that NATO would not expand, then when I extensively pointed out how the documents said no such thing, said that the declassified security documents I had analysed were lying, then claimed that other documents said this (while repeatedly refusing to point to these documents) and finally concluded by once again claiming that declassified security documents showed that Russia had been promised that NATO would not expand. This was a most impressive example of doublethink
U.S. Embassy Bonn Confidential Cable to Secretary of State on the speech of the German Foreign Minister: Genscher Outlines His Vision of a New European Architecture. | National Security Archive - "West German foreign minister’s Tutzing formula in his speech of January 31, 1990, widely reported in the media in Europe, Washington, and Moscow, explicitly addressed the possibility of NATO expansion, as well as Central and Eastern European membership in NATO – and denied that possibility, as part of his olive garland towards Moscow. This U.S. Embassy Bonn cable reporting back to Washington details both of Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s proposals – that NATO would not expand to the east, and that the former territory of the GDR in a unified Germany would be treated differently from other NATO territory"
This was Genscher’s proposal. Not a promise to the USSR. The very fact that he said that NATO "should" rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’ should tell you that NATO had not done that
Mr. Hurd to Sir C. Mallaby (Bonn). Telegraphic N. 85: Secretary of State’s Call on Herr Genscher: German Unification. | National Security Archive - "The British memorandum specifically quotes Genscher as saying “that when he talked about not wanting to extend NATO that applied to other states beside the GDR. The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.”
Again, this was a suggestion of Genscher. The fact that (as in the index page summarising all the documents) his suggesting this to the British is supposed to be a promise to the Soviets is... peculiar logic
Record of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow. (Excerpts) | National Security Archive - "Baker assures Gorbachev that “neither the president nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understand the importance for the USSR and Europe of guarantees that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”"
Apparently something said during discussions is the same as a formal promise, even if Baker found out that this was not what he was supposed to say and it was not in the final agreement.
Russia’s belief in Nato ‘betrayal’ – and why it matters today - "Were these promises ever written down in a treaty? No, largely because Bush felt Baker and Kohl had gone too far, or in Baker’s words he had “got a little forward on his skis”. The final agreement signed by Russia and the west in September 1990 applied only to Germany. It allowed foreign-stationed Nato troops to cross the old cold war line marked by East Germany at the discretion of the German government. The agreement was contained in a signed addendum. Nato’s commitment to protect, enshrined in article 5, had for the first time moved east into former Russian-held territory."
To Russia shills, where it suits their needs, informal discussions override formal treaties
Memorandum of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl | National Security Archive - "Kohl early in the conversation assures Gorbachev, “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity."
This was Kohl's thoughts, not a formal promise. Indeed, later on in the document Kohl says "we have to come to some sort of agreement. The U.S. should not be on the sidelines in this matter" and Gorbachev replies "after the elections, representatives of the two German states and four powers could meet and talk, in order to add validity to the process while not including others in the conversation yet". In other words Kohl and Gorbachev said that they were just chatting and there was no formal agreement
Memorandum of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl | National Security Archive - "Kohl early in the conversation assures Gorbachev, “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity."
Again, this was not a promise to Gorbachev. And If you read the full paragraph in the memo, it says "It would be better to have Germany within the Alliance... NATO provided a good anchor and framework for a united Germany". So there was already a kind of NATO expansion into East Germany (one proposal had been that a united Germany be in neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact).
Sir R. Braithwaite (Moscow). Telegraphic N. 667: “Secretary of State’s Meeting with President Gorbachev.” | National Security Archive - "Hurd cautions Gorbachev that their positions are not 100% in agreement, but that the British “recognized the importance of doing nothing to prejudice Soviet interests and dignity.”"
Once again, this was not a promise to Gorbachev. I've no idea how this can be interpreted by Russian shills as saying NATO would not/should not be expanded. Indeed, one might note that as early as June 1990 (one month after this memo had been published) NATO's Turnberry was sent and it was described as "the first step in the evolution of [modern] NATO-Russia relations", i.e. NATO was fulfilling the commitment to respect Russian interests
Record of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow. | National Security Archive - "today we are interested in building a stable Europe, and doing it together with you"
Again, this was not a promise to Gorbachev, but it was not saying NATO would not/should not be expanded.
Record of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and Francois Mitterrand (excerpts). | National Security Archive - "He speaks about the danger of isolating the Soviet Union in the new Europe and the need to “create security conditions for you, as well as European security as a whole"
Letter from Francois Mitterrand to George Bush | National Security Archive - "we would certainly not refuse to detail the guarantees that he would have a right to expect for his country’s security"
Again, not a promise to Gorbachev and not saying NATO would not/should not be expanded.
Record of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush. White House, Washington D.C. | National Security Archive - "The U.S. president says, “Believe me, we are not pushing Germany towards unification, and it is not us who determines the pace of this process. And of course, we have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion"
This is not saying NATO would not/should not be expanded. Even if you want to interpret this as a promise of some sort, one needs to explain how NATO took actions directed at the USSR to back up one's claims of broken promises.
Letter from Mr. Powell (N. 10) to Mr. Wall: Thatcher-Gorbachev memorandum of conversation. | National Security Archive - "we must find ways to give the Soviet Union confidence that its security would be assured"
This is not saying NATO would not/should not be expanded.
Record of Conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl, Moscow (Excerpts). | National Security Archive - "Talking about the future of Europe, Kohl alludes to NATO transformation: “We know what awaits NATO in the future, and I think you are now in the know as well.”"
This is about the NATO London Declaration", which does not say that "NATO will not expand". It says NATO will be purely defensive, cooperate with all the countries of Europe etc
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush | National Security Archive - "So what we tried to do was to take account of your concerns expressed to me and others, and we did it in the following ways: by our joint declaration on non-aggression; in our invitation to you to come to NATO; in our agreement to open NATO to regular diplomatic contact with your government and those of the Eastern European countries; and our offer on assurances on the future size of the armed forces of a united Germany – an issue I know you discussed with Helmut Kohl. We also fundamentally changed our military approach on conventional and nuclear forces. We conveyed the idea of an expanded, stronger CSCE with new institutions in which the USSR can share and be part of the new Europe"
This is not saying NATO would not/should not be expanded.
Memorandum to Boris Yeltsin from Russian Supreme Soviet delegation to NATO HQs | National Security Archive - "Now in mid-1991, Woerner responds to the Russians by stating that he personally and the NATO Council are both against expansion—“13 out of 16 NATO members share this point of view”—and that he will speak against Poland’s and Romania’s membership in NATO to those countries’ leaders as he has already done with leaders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia"
This was not a promise that NATO would not/should not be expanded. It was stating the current view of most of NATO This was in 1991. Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia only joined NATO in 1999, and Romania in 2004. Note that the view on NATO expansion was in the context of "democratic changes in Russia". And why did the ex-Warsaw Pact countries want to join NATO in 1999? Precisely because of Russian aggression (Georgia, Abkhazia etc)
Inside the Complicated Relationship Between Russia and NATO - "in 1990, as the Cold War drew to a close, President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed the Soviet Union join NATO. At the time, Gorbachev was negotiating German reunification with the then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. “You say that NATO is not directed against us,” he said, referring to the rival Warsaw Pact, an alliance between the Soviet Union and Communist countries in Eastern Europe, “that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities. Therefore, we propose to join NATO.” Baker reportedly dismissed the proposal as a “dream” but it has been floated several times since... In 1991 Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russian state, wrote to NATO, reiterating Gorbachev’s proposal. He echoed calls made by former Warsaw Pact countries like Hungary to join the Western alliance, and called NATO membership a “long-term political aim” of Russia... Russian President Vladimir Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in a 2017 interview that he discussed the option with Clinton during the American president’s visit to Moscow in 2000. And when then-Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with Putin in the early 2000s, he says he got the impression Russia was pro-Western and open to joining the transatlantic alliance."
Since Russia shills like to take everything Western figures said during discussions with the USSR as promises to Russia, this is proof that Russia promised multiple times to join NATO and that Russian shills are being hypocritical in criticising NATO expansion as justification for Russia invading Ukraine.
NATO - Official text: Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris, France, 27-May.-1997
Weird how in 1997 NATO and Russia signed a declaration which explicitly said that it did not restrict either party's rights, i.e. there was no promise that Russia could "veto" NATO expansion. Indeed, there was an explicit bit talking about "nuclear weapons on the territory of new members". Since the last country to join NATO at that point had been Spain in 1982, 15 years prior, this was clearly signalling that there was at the very least a distinct possibility that NATO would soon be expanding
‘Europe is sidelined’: Russia meets US in Geneva and Nato in Brussels - "Amid this diplomatic whirl, Europe’s biggest diplomatic club has been absent. The EU has no formal role in the talks, although its officials are drawing up possible sanctions to levy against Russia if the Kremlin decides to invade Ukraine. The EU’s exclusion from talks on war and peace in its own backyard hurts. “Between Putin and Biden, Europe is sidelined,” ran a Le Monde headline last week."
The Reason Putin Would Risk War - The Atlantic - "many of his tactics—the use of sham Russian-backed “separatists” to carry out his war in eastern Ukraine, the creation of a puppet government in Crimea—are old KGB tactics, familiar from the Soviet past. Fake political groupings played a role in the KGB’s domination of Central Europe after World War II; sham separatists played a role in the Bolshevik conquest of Ukraine itself in 1918. Putin’s attachment to the old U.S.S.R. matters in another way as well. Although he is sometimes incorrectly described as a Russian nationalist, he is in fact an imperial nostalgist. The Soviet Union was a Russian-speaking empire, and he seems, at times, to dream of re-creating a smaller Russian-speaking empire within the old Soviet Union’s borders... Putin... was posted to the KGB office in Dresden, East Germany, where he endured the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a personal tragedy. As the world’s television screens blared out the news of the Cold War’s end, Putin and his KGB comrades in the doomed Soviet satellite state were frantically burning all of their files, making calls to Moscow that were never returned, fearing for their lives and their careers. For KGB operatives, this was not a time of rejoicing, but rather a lesson about the nature of street movements and the power of rhetoric: democratic rhetoric, antiauthoritarian rhetoric, anti-totalitarian rhetoric. Putin, like his role model Yuri Andropov, who was the Soviet ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 revolution there, concluded from that period that spontaneity is dangerous. Protest is dangerous. Talk of democracy and political change is dangerous. To keep them from spreading, Russia’s rulers must maintain careful control over the life of the nation. Markets cannot be genuinely open; elections cannot be unpredictable; dissent must be carefully “managed” through legal pressure, public propaganda, and, if necessary, targeted violence. But although Putin missed the euphoria of the ’80s, he certainly took full part in the orgy of greed that gripped Russia in the ’90s... He knows... that one day, prodemocracy activists of the kind he saw in Dresden might come for him too... Putin’s subsequent invasion of Crimea punished Ukrainians for trying to escape from the kleptocratic system that he wanted them to live in—and it showed Putin’s own subjects that they too would pay a high cost for democratic revolution. The invasion also violated both written and unwritten rules and treaties in Europe, demonstrating Putin’s scorn for the Western status quo. Following that “success,” Putin launched a much broader attack: a series of attempted coups d’état in Odessa, Kharkiv, and several other cities with a Russian-speaking majority. This time, the strategy failed, not least because Putin profoundly misunderstood Ukraine, imagining that Russian-speaking Ukrainians would share his Soviet imperial nostalgia. They did not. Only in Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine where Putin was able to move in troops and heavy equipment from across the border, did a local coup succeed. But even there he did not create an attractive “alternative” Ukraine. Instead, the Donbas—the coal-mining region that surrounds Donetsk—remains a zone of chaos and lawlessness... He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail."
Quote by Thomas Friedman - "No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's"
62 percent of voters say Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president: poll
Disclose.tv on Twitter - "JUST IN - Biden admin presented China with intelligence on Russia's troop buildup in hopes Xi would step in. Chinese officials rebuffed the U.S. and apparently shared the information with Moscow."
Joe Biden on Twitter - "Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him."
Michael Knowles on Twitter - Stephen King: "Mr. Putin has made a serious miscalculation. He forgot he's no longer dealing with Trump."
"This did not age well."
Catturd ™ on Twitter - "Putin invaded Crimea under Obama. Putin invaded nothing under Trump. Putin invaded Ukraine under Biden. Those are the facts. Putin strikes when he smells U.S. weakness."
Putin wouldn't be invading if Trump were still in the White House - "President Trump was derided by his political opponents as an isolationist, soft on strongmen autocrats like Vladimir Putin. The Left painted him as a populist who undermined America’s alliances while turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by dictator regimes. Having met the former President several times in the White House, and having closely observed and interacted with the foreign policy workings of his administration, I saw a very different picture. I witnessed first hand a presidency that was deeply committed to strengthening America’s leadership in the world, believed closely in working with America’s allies, and actually put the fear of God into America’s enemies... Putin has clearly read Biden like an open book, predicting correctly that the former Senator from Delaware would not threaten any kind of US military action, would be slow to arm the Ukrainians, and would spend a great deal of energy coordinating with the appeasement minded European Union, with Germany and France at the helm. The Trump administration was far tougher on Putin’s Russia than the Biden team. They fought an aggressive campaign against the hugely controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, implemented the toughest sanctions against Moscow since the end of the Cold War, and applied tremendous pressure on Germany to toughen its stance toward Russia. At the same time, the Trump White House made increasing defence spending among NATO allies a top foreign policy priority, resulting in nearly all NATO partners stepping up to the plate and pledging significant increased spending commitments. NATO was in a far stronger position at the end of the Trump Presidency than it was under Barack Obama. It is no coincidence that the Russian invasion of Crimea happened under Obama’s watch, and the reinvasion of Ukraine is happening right now under his Democratic successor Joe Biden. Both presidencies are weak-kneed foreign policy disasters. The Russians know this, the Chinese know this, and so does practically every US adversary from Tehran to Damascus to Kabul. The reality is that America's enemies don't fear Biden, and believe he does not have the stomach for the fight. In Trump they faced a President who they deemed to be dangerous and often hard to read. This is why the next three years are so incredibly dangerous. The enemies of the free world see this period as a window of opportunity within which to undermine and erode American leadership before the possible return of a much more hardline Republican administration. Putin is acting now because Biden is toothless, Socialist led Germany is energy dependent on Russia, Emmanuel Macron is busily dividing the NATO alliance with his delusional calls for a European Union Army, and the European Union is deeply split and unlikely to impose crippling sanctions. Russia and China will take full advantage of this unprecedented situation, and could even open a war on two fronts if Beijing's Communist rulers move against Taiwan during the remainder of the Biden presidency."
Imperialist Putin has wrongfooted the West - "The Kremlin had denied warnings from US and UK intelligence agencies that an attack was imminent. Vladimir Putin has developed a habit of hiding his true intentions behind a cloak of deception... Russia is, as Boris Johnson said today, a pariah state. It is a kleptocracy in which dissent is ruthlessly quashed and there is little evidence that the Russian people are enthusiastically supportive of the Kremlin’s actions. This was Putin’s decision. He sought to justify it on spurious grounds, ranging from bizarre historical revisionism to the myth that Russia is supposedly being encircled by hostile states. The truth is rather simpler: Putin’s Russia is an imperialist aggressor bent on the domination of weaker states. This has been obvious for some time, given the Kremlin’s previous interventions in Georgia and Crimea. But the lead-up to the invasion showed the West at its most supine. It was only this week that Germany agreed to pause the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, when Berlin’s allies had been warning for years that it was a threat to European security. Emmanuel Macron sought to appease the Kremlin in last-ditch talks that only served to expose divisions within the Nato alliance. Following the debacle of America’s exit from Afghanistan, President Biden has been pitifully weak. It is unknowable whether Putin would have attempted this enterprise while Donald Trump was in the White House, yet the absence of American leadership in recent months has been striking. Like Britain, the US provided weapons to Ukraine in order to deter an invasion. It was nowhere near enough. A man supposedly elected to restore America’s standing in the world has instead stood by as a dictator has sought to crush a democracy. The West has been in denial about the threat that Putin poses. Who can now credibly argue that he isn’t serious when he intimates that he has ambitions over other former components of the Soviet Union, or other lands once part of the Russian Empire? Would Russia risk an attack on a member of Nato such as Estonia? If so, would the alliance come to that member’s aid? It is terrifying that the answers to these questions are not immediately obvious."
The same people who were insisting that it was disinformation to say that Putin was going to invade are now claiming that Ukraine deserved it and it was right that Russia invaded
CBS News on Twitter - "The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis."
Weird how all those pre-dated Ukraine
James Iacovone on Twitter - "JUST IN 🚨 Russia House restaurant and dining lounge vandalized in Washington DC."
"Are we gonna see a #StopRussianHate hashtag now or nawh?"
Liberals don't care about white people
Russia blocks website about captured and killed RF soldiers - "Ukrainian Internal Affairs website, "Search for Kin" (200rf.com) with data on captured and killed servicemen from the Russian Federation has been blocked on the territory of Russian."
Facebook - "People who thought the Russian disinformation campaign was about Trump were far too shortsighted. There isn't evidence it was decisive in getting Trump elected. Russian propaganda on social media was a much bigger long game leading to this moment right here - where people in the west would be so nihilistic and distrustful of their own institutions that when Putin decided to redraw the borders of Europe, nobody would rise to stop him. I see people literally repeating Kremlin propaganda here 24/7, oblivious of where they got it. Convinced that Ukraine - a country where 74% of the people elected a Jewish president - is filled with Nazis (Putin calls his invasion a 'de-Nazification' campaign). Furthermore, this idea that the people of the Donbas region *want* to join Russia is also false... The idea that NATO 'promised' to stop admitting new members is false (it was floated as an idea in a negotiation with Gorbechov and then never formally agreed to). Most importantly, the idea that NATO is a security threat - an organization that has never initiated aggressive action in Eastern Europe - is beyond false. People wonder why Europe saw such a long period of peace, and this is exactly because of institutions like NATO. Putin has been incredibly successful in planting the meme that NATO is obsolete or even harmful to western countries, and has done everything possible to make it cool and trendy to want to dissolve or withdraw from these institutions. It isn't an accident that RT would host useful idiots from all sides of the aisle on this issue, including Jeremy Corbyn, Jill Stein, and more"
Oil tops $105/bbl after Russia attacks Ukraine
Damn Russia giving central banks an excuse to print money and drive inflation higher!
Meme - Bina shah@ @BinaShah: "The Islamophobia in the reporting on the war in invasion is so blatant. "Bloodthirsty Chechen special forces" (OM) going over and shouting "Allah hu Akbar" (BBC guest) before killing Europeans. Photos of scary dark men with long black beards. La plus ca change..."
German army chief 'fed up' with neglect of country's military - "The chief of the German army vented his frustration over what he sees as the long-running neglect of military readiness in his country in an unusual public rant a few hours after Russia invaded Ukraine, adding that the army was in bad shape. Russian forces invaded Ukraine by land, air and sea on Thursday, confirming the worst fears of the West with the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two."
Putin’s miscalculation - "Putin, a one-time KGB operative who in 2004 said “there is no such thing as a former KGB man,” has made clear that he lives in a world of the past. The world that existed before the end of the Cold War, a world in which the territories of the former Soviet Union, potentially even the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, are run out of Moscow. A world he is trying to rebuild today. But the USSR is not Russia, and when you live in the past, you lose touch with the present. Putin has lost touch with ordinary Russians, despite exercising immense control over what they watch, listen to and read. But to an even greater degree, Putin has lost touch with what Ukrainians think. It’s the classic mistake of every tyrant: Surround yourself only with sycophants, suck-ups and yes-men, and you never get a reality check in your echo chamber. Eliminate dissenting politicians, and you assume that means you’ve eliminated dissent. The decisive moment that sealed Ukraine’s fate may well have been the U.S.-led withdrawal from Afghanistan — a country closely watched by the Kremlin, given its key role in the downfall of the USSR, after the Soviets attempted to invade in 1979, and spent almost a decade fighting a losing battle. When the West left Afghanistan last year, the speed and success of the Taliban takeover of the country would have delighted Putin. The capitulation of the U.S., the impotence of Europe, and the relative ease with which the militants took control of the Afghan capital within days of the Western retreat made Ukraine seem a tantalizing prospect. Perhaps Putin thought he’d roll into Kyiv the way the Taliban rolled into Kabul, meeting scant resistance from Ukrainians. He seems to have expected to be welcomed in by Russian-speaking Ukrainians as nostalgic for the Soviet heydays as he is. It seems Putin expected Ukrainians to lay down their arms, and for their pro-Western and NATO President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to flee, making space for one of Moscow’s allies. The Kremlin could roll its tanks back to Russia, taking a sizeable chunk of Ukraine with them, and Putin could declare his bogus “peacekeeping” mission over after a few days. He would take some limited casualties, some painful but not devastating sanctions, and then it would be back to business as usual. And perhaps if Putin had tried this maneuver during the Ukrainian presidencies of his ally Viktor Yanukovych, or of “chocolate king” billionaire Petro Poroshenko, he might have been able to roll into Kyiv the way the Taliban took Kabul last year. But Putin underestimated Ukraine. The country’s troops have resisted hard and have largely held their cities against a Russian attempt at blitzkrieg. Kyiv claims that its experienced, motivated soldiers have killed thousands of Russians, downed enemy planes and destroyed hundreds of armored vehicles and tanks. Putin also underestimated Zelenskiy. A former comedian and actor with humble roots, Zelenskiy entered politics in 2019 on an anti-corruption campaign, after playing a history teacher elected as president on an anti-corruption platform in the sitcom “Servant of the People.” Zelenskiy certainly isn’t perfect, but he’s also not cut from the same fabric of oligarchs who made billions in shady business enterprises. His ascent to the presidency seems to have genuinely been driven by a desire to make things better. Ukraine now has a leader it can believe in, who is vowing to fight on against a military superpower. He’s a democratically elected president who wasn’t a cynical appointee of some other country, who wasn’t someone seeking the presidency to enrich themselves. Unlike Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani and his government, Zelenskiy didn’t get on the first plane out of Kyiv, despite the clear danger to his life. When Putin talks about decapitating Ukraine’s government, he is not speaking metaphorically. As Zelenskiy himself said in a video posted to social media, the president is Putin’s No. 1 target, and his family the No. 2. Zelenskiy has stayed in Kyiv, rebuffing reported offers of safety in France and in the U.S... Putin expected Afghanistan in 2021. But he got Afghanistan in 1979... Harsh Western sanctions are targeting Putin and all his oligarch buddies, who were content to keep him in power while it filled their coffers, but who now stand to lose billions."
