You may count me as one cheap-seat observer who isn’t totally surprised that Ukraine’s armed forces are repelling the advance of the illegal invaders from Russia.
After all, when the Russians invaded Ukraine six months ago, I noted that the Ukrainians are far from “defenseless.”
However, I am stunned at the level of success that Ukraine has scored. We hear from the battlefield that Russian forces are in full retreat and that Ukraine intends to take back territory captured by the Russians.
Does any or all of this mean that Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin is going to surrender? Hardly. It does open the door, though, for Putin to look for some sort of way to negotiate his way back to the Kremlin and get his forces out of danger.
We had heard from a number of key U.S. military geniuses who said at the outset of war that Russia’s conventional military force was overrated, that Russia was little more than a third-rate conventional military power. The Russians, though, do possess a substantial nuclear arsenal and there have been concerns expressed that Putin could deploy some of it to put down the Ukrainians.
He’s already a war criminal, given the casualties his forces have inflicted on civilians in Ukraine. I am not going to buy into the notion that he is utterly stupid enough to use nukes and prompt a response from Ukraine, which has a hefty nuclear arsenal of its own.
I am astounded, though, to see that U.S. and allied response in the form of military aid is paying huge dividends for the heroic Ukrainians who, after all, are fighting for the survival of their country.