Tag Archives: Russia

International news

No word games, Vlad

Vladimir Putin is playing word games with the rest of the world about what is transpiring in Ukraine. Putin calls the Russian military move on the sovereign nation a “military action.” Umm, no, Vlad. It is nothing less than an invasion.

One country’s military machine is moving against another one. The intent is to bring the population of the attacked nation under control of the attackers.

NBC News reports: “Putin is going to seize the entire country,” retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey told NBC News. “This is an air, ground, sea military campaign” and the goal is seizing all of Ukraine “to the Polish border.”

Putin is fabricating a scenario he said justifies the Russian invasion. He is lying through his teeth about Ukraine posing some sort of military threat to its gigantic neighboring nation. If there ever was a David vs. Goliath battle occurring, this one is it.

Ukraine isn’t totally defenseless, to be sure. However, for the Russian dictator to suggest that Ukraine presents a serious threat to Russia is reprehensible on its face.

He appears to U.S. and allied intelligence officials set to seek a “regime change” in Ukraine. Putin wants a puppet government in Kyiv. There are fears being expressed that Putin might want to capture or even execute Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That’s the act of a “military action?” Hardly. It is the act of a dictator who leads an invading nation that seeks to overthrow a duly seated sovereign head of state.

The blathering of a tinhorn strongman cannot be allowed to stand.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

War is pure hell

If only there were enough people alive today who remember the horrifying cost of a global land war, which has broken out once again in eastern Europe. Those who might have been alive as children the last time total war broke out in Europe might be able to recall the horror of it all.

It was more than 80 years ago when Europe became engulfed in war. Virtually the entire continent was involved and the death count was incalculable.

Now, what does this mean to Russians and Ukrainians? It means that because of Vladimir Putin’s political ambition the two countries are likely to revisit the horror of that terrible long-ago era.

I should point out that Putin is too young to remember what his own country suffered when it fought against the invaders who sought to conquer what was known then as the Soviet Union. Perhaps it is possible he might have thought differently about seeking to re-take Ukraine had he any real-time knowledge of what his parents and grandparents endured during that global conflict.

U.S. Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman told us that “War is hell.” Indeed, there is nothing that compares to hell, but war comes as close as anything we humans can experience in our worldly lives.

We are watching a new war break out. Those who have experienced war up close are shuddering at the thought of Russians and Ukrainians fighting each other.

If only there were enough human beings alive today who remember the destruction that all-out war produces … then, we might have people in power who simply refuse to take us down that dangerous road to ruin.

If only …

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Words of wisdom

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was a smart man, to be sure.

The man aka Mark Twain once wrote this:

“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out … and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. … And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ — with his mouth.”

I wanted to share these words as the world recoils at the thought of war in Europe. The conflict is unfolding at this moment and I am left to wonder: What in the name of human decency can ever justify what is occurring?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, local news, national news, political news

Rookie pol makes ass of himself

Ronny Jackson is new to this game of politics, but barely a year into his gig as a member of Congress he has established himself as a darling of the far-right wing of the Republican Party, which makes his comments about the Russia-Ukraine war worthy of a brief retort from your friendly blogger.

Jackson, who represents the 13th Congressional District of the Texas Panhandle, said this via Twitter about the invasion that began just a few hours ago:

WHERE IS JOE BIDEN!? Is he even AWAKE right now!? The absence of leadership from this White House is SICKENING! This war should’ve NEVER happened!

Hmm. Wow! There you have the ramblings of a former Navy flag officer, a former physician and a carpetbagger who moved to Amarillo specifically to run for political office. He detests President Biden, who I actually wonder if he gives a crap about what this neophyte politician says about him. Joe Biden has many bigger and more important issues to concern himself.

However, Jackson does have a following — I presume. He did get elected to Congress after trumpeting his close ties to The Donald. Furthermore, the ex-doc keeps offering peanut-gallery diagnoses challenging Joe Biden’s mental acuity. Now, when the president of the United States is trying to rally the nation to his resistance to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by the tyrant who runs Russia, Ronny Jackson provides this kind of brainless rebuke of the commander in chief.

I hope my friends in the Texas Panhandle are proud of themselves for sending this nitwit to Congress.

If I could ask Jackson any question at this moment, it would be: How would you have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, International news

Will sanctions hurt Putin?

Jimmy Carter usually opposes U.S. imposition of sanctions on other nations, believing that such action hurts innocent citizens of the countries we intend to punish. With all due respect to the former president, I am going to wish that sanctions we deliver to Russia when that nation goes to war with Ukraine deliver maximum pain to the country, but more importantly to its leader.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin today announced he recognizes two Ukrainian provinces as being “independent.” The decision prompted President Biden to levy limited sanctions involving those breakaway provinces. There will be more — much more — to come the moment Putin orders the tanks and troops to march in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Biden is caught in a bit of a bind. There can be no way on Earth he can send U.S. troops into battle with the Russians, even though he has dispatched several thousand American forces to eastern Europe. The only option we have is to levy severe and punishing sanctions on Russia, which Biden pledges to do.

What do those sanctions look like? I suppose it would involve freezing of Russian assets in banks around the world, presuming President Biden has enlisted the support of our worldwide allies. They should involve the freezing of Putin’s personal assets. There well could be suspension of oil and natural gas shipments to western Europe from Russia, which would take a huge bite out of Russia’s third-world economy. There needs to be a suspension of technology exports to Russia from this country and from the European Union.

Will any of this dissuade Putin from carrying out his ambition to bring Ukraine back under Russian control? Probably not. He just needs to pay dearly for his adventurism.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Russians have pals … on the right!

OK, let me see if I have this correct. The Republican Party that once vilified Russians as being part of an Evil Empire, whose president once muttered into an open mic that he would launch missiles at the Soviet Union in “five minutes,” and who kept their grip on power by refusing to give the enemy any quarter is now in bed with the latest Russian dictator.

GOP members of Congress along with their friends in the right-wing media are criticizing President Biden’s actions against the Russians, contending that Ukraine is the real villain in the growing crisis in Europe.

Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 are spinning in their graves at this moment.

We are hearing next to nothing from the right-wingers among us criticizing the actions of Vladimir Putin, who is threatening all-out war against Ukraine. The nut jobs on the right instead are criticizing the Democratic U.S. president for, um, threatening to levy stiff, punishing sanctions on Russians if they launch an invasion of Ukraine.

Those of us who remember the Cold War also remember a time when GOP politicians took great pride in standing firm against tyrants such as those who ruled the Soviet Union, which later returned to just being ol’ Russia after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Yes, some of expressed hope then that Russia would follow the model set by the United States and many nations in western Europe. Alas, it didn’t happen. We are dealing now with yet another strongman in the form of Putin, who has declared that the fall of the USSR was his country’s darkest historic moment.

What in the world am I missing here?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin = madness

(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Vladimir Putin is insane. That’s the only “diagnosis” I can offer while watching the Russian strongman flirt with going to war with another sovereign nation for reasons I cannot begin to understand.

As I write these words, Putin’s armed forces are staging and preparing — we are led to believe — to invade Ukraine. Putin wants some sort of assurance that Ukraine will never be allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a pact of nations formed to deter the former Soviet Union from going to war with the rest of Europe.

The Soviet Union no longer exists. The Russian Federation took its place and now Putin is rattling his sabers and seeking to conquer Ukraine, which used to be a “republic” as part of the old USSR.

One thing has changed, and it’s a big one. Ukraine is now a sovereign nation. Just like Russia. Just like all the former Soviet republics. Russia surrendered control over those nations in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. I am having difficulty understanding what is going through Putin’s sinister mind.

How in the name of international law can this lunatic justify invading Ukraine? How can Putin explain to Russians that they’re going to pay for the strongman’s desire to re-take control of a nation that now has its own president and its own economy?

Yes, the Russians are going to suffer grievously if Putin sends in the tanks and the troops. President Biden vows swift and destructive sanctions if the Russians invade Ukraine. So, there’s that. Also, Ukraine is not defenseless. Ukrainian armed forces are prepared to inflict horrible damage on the invading forces; get ready to welcome the caskets home, Vlad Putin.

Oh, and then there is the fallout that the nations of the world will shower all over Russia if it inflicts serious damage to Ukraine’s civilian population.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about any of it?

The Russian goon is out of his mind.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

International news

Mitt was right about Russia

My sense of fair play compels me to offer an apology to 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who once made a declaration that drew scorn from those of us who opposed his election to the presidency.

Romney, now the junior U.S. senator from Utah, declared during that campaign that Russia posed “the greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States. Do you recall the howls of derision from Democrats and others on the left? Why, how could Romney be so, um, naive? So out of touch? So, so … wrong?

Greater threats seemed at the time to lie in places like the Middle East, among terrorist groups intent on destroying “the Great Satan.” So, we laughed off Mitt Romney’s absurd notion about Russia.

Now, though, he seems prescient. Russia has emerged as a profound threat to the entire world. Certainly to neighboring countries, such as, oh, Ukraine and Belarus. And Georgia. And the Baltic States.

The Russians are engaging in cyber warfare against the rest of the world. They interfered in our 2016 presidential election, sought to do it again in 2020. They might try yet again in 2024.

Donald Trump, the president who received help from the Russians in ’16, stood next to Russian killer Vladimir Putin and endorsed his denial that the Russian interfered in our election. He and Putin became BFFs. Putin played Trump like a fiddle.

Mitt was right about Russia. I won’t cry myself to sleep over being wrong in 2012. I just want to acknowledge that Romney told us the truth when he ran for POTUS but a lot of us weren’t yet ready to hear it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Stand-down possible?

The more I think about a notion I floated the other day about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the less goofy it is sounding to me as I roll it around my noggin.

I tossed the idea out there that President Biden might be inflating the imminent danger of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as a way to boost his sagging public opinion poll numbers. In other words, the door to a diplomatic solution might be closer than we are being led to believe it is.

Now we’re getting reports from Paris, Moscow, Kyiv and Washington that diplomatic pressure is mounting against Russian strongman/goon Vladimir Putin. The pressure is reiterating a message President Biden delivered to him during their hour-long phone conversation over this past weekend, that any attack by Russian armed forces against Ukraine would bring swift and destructive economic actions against the Russians.

Putin just might be listening to what he’s being told and — this is still a stretch, I know — might be willing to flinch at the thought of subjecting his people to untold economic suffering.

Putin is a former spy. He also is now a politician. Putin must know that a politician cannot subject his constituents to avoidable misery.

We have plenty of diplomatic leverage we can use against the Russian thug.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Is war coming … really?

You might think I am nuttier than a Payday bar for what I am about to say, but I don’t care. I’m just thinking out loud about what might be occurring behind closed doors in the White House and the Kremlin.

My thought is this: Is it possible that President Biden is overstating the threat of war between Russia and Ukraine to purchase some more negotiating time with Vladimir Putin? Furthermore, would an agreement that Putin’s armed forces are “standing down” give the president a serious public-relations bump at a time when he needs it?

We all know that politicians try to play every angle at their disposal. I don’t doubt for a second that Joe Biden is capable of playing such an angle for his benefit.

I also believe the president when his White House flack machine tells us the crux of what he told Putin in that hour-long phone call on Saturday, that the United States is prepared to inflict immediate and lasting economic harm to Russia if Putin sends in the troops to invade Ukraine. I also have difficulty accepting that Vladimir Putin is willing to accept that damage as the price of a battlefield conquest.

OK, call me nuts. I’m a big boy and I can take it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com