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Escalation

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Russian Fuel Dump at Belgorod in Flames

The war in Ukraine just escalated. Two Ukrainian helicopter gunships flew 25 miles (40 km) into Russia and blew up a Russian fuel dump. It was yet another embarrassing moment for the Russian military, which neither detected nor prevented the incursion.

I only hope that none of the helicopters were of American manufacture, which would give Putin the opportunity he needed to say that the Ukrainians were just acting as a proxy for NATO. Of course, he could say that even if the helicopter attack had never happened. It’s one of those irksome imponderables involving the thinking processes of Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky keeps saying that, if peace negotiations with Russia do not take place, it will be the beginning of World War Three. It is a sobering thought: If that happens, millions will die, myself included. I happen to live in one of the prime nuclear target areas, namely, Los Angeles.

Pundits keep referring to the search for an “offramp” from the war. Given Putin’s stubbornness and bloody-mindedness, I cannot see how the war would end. Or rather, all the options I see are rather grim.

They Were Expendable

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Photo Taken by New York Times Photographer Tyler Hicks

If you were to fight in one of America’s wars and happened to die, your next of kin would be informed; and your body would be flown back to the U.S. for burial. Apparently, if you are one of the 15,000 Russian dead in Ukraine, the existence of your body is an embarrassment to Vladimir Putin, who would just as soon say to the parents and family that their Ivan or Dmitri is “missing” and leave it at that.

That way Russians who believe the lies that Putin is slinging would not be surprised at the large number of dead bodies filling trucks and trains heading to cities and towns across the Motherland. The Russian dead serve only to make Putin look as bad as he really is.

Now imagine how that makes the Russian troops invading Ukraine feel. They know it’s a war. They know that Putin is lying through his teeth. The morale of the Russian Army must be at low ebb, such that I would not be surprised there isn’t some sort of mutiny like the one that occurred on the front lines during World War One while the Russian Revolution of 1917 was taking place.

Yes, I know that Putin is evil. But to that I will also add that he is stupid and is likely to be overthrown.

By the way, the Ukrainians are collecting bodies of the Russian dead and using facial recognition software to identify them and notify the families themselves. I saw this news item on BBC’s website today. Oh oh.

To Whom Is Putin Answerable?

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Did you ever wonder what happened to the old Soviet KGP? Apparently, it went the way of the Cheka, the NKVD, the OGPU, and the MGB. It just changed its name to the FSB (ФСБ in Cyrillic) or Federal Security Service and it continues its usual depredations on the Russian people.

Do you remember what happened to Nikita Khrushchev after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962? He was sent to do gardening in the Ukraine and replaced by Brezhnev and Kosygin. I do believe that Vladimir Putin is risking the same sort of coup by the FSB and other Russian state security services—all because he squandered Russian resources in a madcap attempt to take over Ukraine.

Putin comes from the Russian state security services. He was a top officer in the KGB and spent time heading up security in East Germany. So he knows that the main threat to his rule over Russia is not the voters, not the oligarchs, not even the military, but actually the Federal Security Service (or Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации) and its allied agencies. They made Putin, and they can just as easily unmake him.

Consider the following actions which make Russia look bad in the eyes of the world, and particularly in the eyes of the FSB:

  • Putin assumed the invasion would be met by welcoming Ukrainians bearing candy and flowers, and not stinger missiles and Molotov Cocktails.
  • After three weeks, the ground invasion has stalled.
  • Some 5,000 Russian soldiers are dead—twice the number of American deaths in 20 years fighting in Afghanistan.
  • The Russians are unable to supply their advance units with gasoline, food, trucks, tanks, or ammunition.
  • Putin has reportedly asked China for help in quelling the Ukrainians.
  • There are rumors of Putin employing mercenaries from Syria and elsewhere to shore up the depleted ground forces.

In the end, Ukraine may fall to the Russians, but only at an exorbitant cost.

Putin: Required Background Reading

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If you really want to understand what Vladimir Putin is doing to Ukraine, you should read about what he did in Chechnya shortly after he attained power. Anna Politkovskaya was a brilliant Russian journalist who was unafraid of speaking truth to power. She wrote a number of criticisms of Putin that were so to the point that he had her murdered in front of her apartment in 2006.

Oh, there was a murder trial, to be sure. And Putin, in true Caligula fashion, tsk-tsked at the crime. (You can read his lying words here in a post I wrote eight years ago.) Several people were sentenced, but they were no doubt thugs who had outlived their usefulness to the Motherland and were disposed of to protect the presidente.

Anyhow, this is the book I recommend you read. It is called A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. I doubt that it is still in print, but you can likely find it in a good library or order it on the Internet from a used book site like Abebooks.Com or Addall.Com. What Putin is doing to Ukraine now is what he did to Chechnya in the First and Second Chechen Wars.

If you are hoping that the bloodletting will end soon, don’t bet on it. When things don’t go his way, Mr. Vladimir thinks nothing of widespread rapine and destruction and certainly doesn’t care what YOU may think.

I was thinking of adding a picture of Putin, but you surely know by now what that ugly mother looks like. I would rather honor Anna Politkovskaya because she was brilliant, brave, and fearless. Not to mention beautiful.

Flying Mercator

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Patrick Smith’s Ask the Pilot blog raises some interesting issues regarding the effects of the war in Ukraine on global aviation:

THE RUSSIAN invasion of Ukraine is impacting commercial aviation on multiple fronts — as wars tend to do. It remains to be seen how long the effects last, or how deeply they’ll be felt. Will NATO countries join the fight? Will tourists shy away from European destinations in general? Even in a best case scenario, this is the last thing the airline industry needs, just as the coronavirus pandemic appears to be winding down.

For starters, Russia has closed off its airspace to foreign carriers. The big issue here isn’t so much the cancellation of flights to and from Russian cities, but rather those routes overflying Russian territory, especially the country’s northern areas, including Siberia. Russia is a gigantic piece of land, and hundreds of long-haul flights overfly these regions weekly on routes connecting Europe and North America with Asia.

This might not make sense if you’re looking at a flat map or atlas; you need a globe to better visualize it. The shortest distance from the U.S. to India, for example, goes more or less due north, up over Siberia and down through the very heart of Russia. A flight from the U.K., France or Germany headed to Japan, China or Korea, similarly relies on Russian airspace.

United Airlines has suspended its flights to Delhi, but on the whole it’s the Asian and European airlines who are feeling the pain. Most flights between the U.S. and Pacific Rim cities can be re-routed without much trouble. This isn’t so for flights between Asia and Europe. Alternate routings are possible — down through the Gulf, across India and such — but they’re substantially longer, in some cases requiring a stopover. Not only does this increase fuel costs, it wreaks havoc with logistics, crew staffing and scheduling. Longer travel times mean that passengers can no longer make onward connections, and so on. It’s a very expensive problem, with disruptions rippling through an airline’s operation.

It seems that airlines will be reduced to plotting flights using Mercator projection maps, being deprived of the right to fly over Russian airspace. That means longer, more roundabout flights and greater expense of fuel. Read Patrick’s full post for more info.

Of Sunflowers and Patriotism

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I feel humbled by the patriotism of the Ukrainian people in the face of a Russian invasion. This came home to me when I saw a viral video on YouTube of a Russian grandmother in a knit hat confronting a Russian soldier. She offers him a handful of sunflower seeds to stuff in his pockets, so that when he is felled by Ukrainian bullets, from his body will spring sunflowers, which are the national flowers of the Ukraine.

The video is not of particularly good quality, but it makes its point clearly:

Several years ago, Martine and I went to a Ukrainian church festival at the Cathedral of Saint Vladimir in East Hollywood. We were the only non-Ukrainians there, but we were made to feel welcome. Songs were sung and patriotic poems were recited. We didn’t understand a word of them, but we were impressed by the people in attendance—and the food that was served.

I hope that somehow the Ukraine comes out of this mess in one piece, and that Vladimir Putin is punished for his cruelty. Ours is not a world where justice normally prevails, but, if anyone does, the Ukrainian people deserve a break for display unity and goodness in an otherwise damaged world.

Putin Screws the Pooch

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I cannot help but think that Vladimir Putin has made a serious misstep in his assumptions regarding Ukraine’s willingness to abide by his thuggish behavior. The Russians made the same assumptions that Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney made when we invaded Iraq in 2003: We were not in fact welcomed with flowers and candy, and, moreover, we are still there.

Ukraine has been an independent republic for some 33 years, and their independence as an idea has taken root among the Ukrainian people. Also, I don’t think the Russian army will be 100% behind committing atrocities against fellow Slavs who are also Orthodox Christians.

My guess is that Putin has also underestimated the will of the United States in opposing him after dealing with the likes of Donald J. Trump for four years. Biden may not be a genius, but compared to the Lardfather, he has a four-digit IQ.

Meanwhile, Back in the Ukraine

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Battle on January 10, 2014 at Kiev’s “Euromaidan”

Battle on January 10, 2014 at Kiev’s “Euromaidan”

The one Ukrainian author I have read is Andrey Kurkov, a Russian who lives in Kiev and considers himself Ukrainian. He is best known for three mystery novels, the first two of which feature a penguin named Mischa: Death and the Penguin, Penguin Lost, and The Case of the General’s Thumb.

During the 2013-2014 revolution that sent President Viktor Yanukovych to Russia requesting asylum from Putin, Kurkov kept a diary of daily events in Kiev, the Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine. It was published in 2014 as Ukrainian Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev. His mystery novels have a wry sense of humor which also carries over to this diary:

Posters and signs have been put up all over the country with images showing that all Ukrainians, after the signature of the Association Agreement with the EU, will become homosexuals. Even in the metro, each time you take an escalator, you have to pass dozens of these posters. In Kiev, he propaganda campaign is considered laughable, but I am afraid that in the east and in the provinces, people will naively believe that universal conversion to homosexuality is the condition imposed by Europe on Ukraine for the signature of the treaty. (November 28, 2013)

And: “Yesterday, Parliament announced an open forum day. Everyone was given the chance to speak. Or, in other words, no one listened.” (February 5, 2014)

Ukrainian Author Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov

Ukrainian Author Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov

Since it declared its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukraine has had a succession of governments that could only be described as a combination of thuggery and rapine—in fact, pretty much the sort of governing we could expect from a Donald J. Trump. You can see in Kurkov’s penguin mysteries the dysfunctionality of Ukrainian politics at work. Now, in the diaries, we see Kurkov losing sleep whether he would be dragged out of his flat by security forces, tortured, and killed.

Fortunately for us, he wasn’t. I look forward for his other works to be translated from Russian to English.

 

What’s Happening in Ukraine?

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April 2015 Status Map

April 2015 Status Map from New York Review of Books

Americans are confused about the struggle between Russia and the Ukraine. Generally, we think of plucky little Ukraine holding Big Bad Putin at bay. Anyhow, that’s how Europe and the U.S. prefer to see it.

In reality, both Ukraine and Russia are the bad guys, or, as Jorge Luis Borges said about the Falklands conflict between Britain and Argentina, “it’s like two bald men fighting over a comb.” We know Vladimir Putin is a not nice guy who wants to undo Mikhail Gorbachev’s dissolution of the USSR back in1989-1990, which was not a popular move to the man in the street in Moscow or Petersburg. But then, the new government of Ukraine was essentially composed of industrial magnates and common thugs. (But then, so is Russia.)

Ukraine has already lost Crimea, which was a Russian-speaking area. (Not that Russian and Ukrainian are that far removed from one another, but, hey, we’re talking pretexts here!) Let’s compare the above map with a linguistic map of Ukraine ca. 2001:

Is It About Language?

So Is It About Language?

It’s pretty clear that, aside from Crimea, the main Russian-speaking areas are in the Lugansk and Donetsk Oblasts (provinces) of Ukraine, only part of which the freedom-loving thugs of the Russian stripe have conquered after all this time. That’s not a very impressive performance, considering that Russian Spetsnas (спецназ) special forces are mingled with the rebel freedom fighters, and they have access to the latest Russian military technology.

Both sides have been fighting to what looks like a draw. If Putin wins, he’ll get the the two Russian-speaking oblasts to add to the Crimea. Although the eastern rebels have “On to Kiev!” slogans written on their tanks, neither Europe nor the U.S. want to see Ukraine snuffed out. And Germany’s Angela Merkel has hinted that she doesn’t want to see Mariupol in the Donetsk Oblast occupied. (Putin has shelled Mariupol, but has not tried to take it over.)

If Ukraine’s Poroshenko (or whichever magnate replaces him) wins, Russia will just take their winnings and go away. Of course, since Russia supplies Ukraine with natural gas for heating, they also hope not to be frozen out during a bad winter.

I don’t even know how I would want the conflict to end. Perhaps Putin and Poroshenko could fight it out in their underwear, with the loser getting a painful “Dutch rub.”

A Plague on Both Your Houses!

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Who Was That Masked Man?

Who Was That Masked Man?

There are so many world conflicts today in which my natural response is negative toward all sides. The Ukraine conflict is one such example. One could be for either of two kleptocracies: Both Russia and Ukraine will do nothing in particular to improve the lives of their adherents. Because the people who live there know this, I have a suspicion that the reason so many of the combatants are masked is that, most likely, the civilian protesters are supported by Russian spetznaz special forces troops who don’t want to break their cover. And why shouldn’t Ukraine do the same? They probably do.

I am in a quandary because I like both the Russian and Ukrainian people. Their governments just happen to suck. My main reason for liking Russia, other than their great literature, is that Pussy Riot performer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (shown below) is, to my mind, is one of the most beautiful brunettes who have ever lived. (Neither Nadezhda nor I think particularly much of Vladimir Putin.)

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Seriously, though, I think Russia is more in the wrong on this issue than Ukraine. Probably the best thing would be for both sides to come to some agreement without getting the whole world’s panties in a bunch.