By David Glenn Cox
French President Macron told a private group, French troops will be on the ground in Odessa before the end of the year. Vladimir Putin announces yet again, he has placed battlefield nuclear weapons in Belarus. All roads lead to Rome. French Troops would almost certainly be followed by NATO Troops. If Putin uses a battlefield nuke, he can count on NATO troops landing before the end of the week.
The free Russia legion has made several incursions into Russia and other than police and border guards with pistols, have met with little or no resistance. No air attacks and no military attacks. The problem with the Free Russia Legion is numbers. Obviously, this is a group fully funded and supported by Ukraine. And it makes for great headlines, invading Mother Russia.
But we have no numbers of soldiers. How many soldiers? 500 or a thousand? Three tanks, some trucks, and a few armored personnel carriers? There are only two reasons for Putin not to respond. Either he’s played out with his hands full. Or the Free Russian Legion is just a minor pain in the neck during major war problems.
The Ukrainians have been practicing asymmetrical war. Ukraine did not have a Black Sea Fleet. Now Russia doesn’t have much of a Black Sea Fleet either. Ukraine doesn’t have multiple oil refineries, but Russia does or did. Multiple attacks on multiple refineries have reduced Russian oil production by 12%. Oddly, these refineries seem to have little or no protection from the drones. Where will this situation be in a month?
In the Kremlin, heads are rolling as the senior Admiral of the Russian Navy steps down immediately before his arrest. Why isn’t Putin sending fighter jets? Could it be because Ukraine has moved missile batteries closer to the Russian border? The Ukrainians knocked down twelve fighter jets in as many days. “Doah!”
The Russian Air force is a spent, losing two 500 million dollars A-50 battlefield control aircraft leaving only three in the fleet, including the already plane stripped for parts. If you have a thousand planes in your air force maybe 500 are available on any given day. After two years of war and western sanctions, the Russians would be lucky to field 150 airworthy craft.
Seizing Crimea was the key to controlling the Black Sea and now the Russian Navy has been forced to leave Crimea, because it’s no longer safe. A few hundred million dollars here and a few hundred million dollars there and before you know it, it runs into real money. A third to half of the air force is grounded, and half the Black Sea fleet is sunk. Putin is talking about tactical nukes because???
History will remember this war as the war where the mouse ate the cat. This was going to be all over in three days. Russian losses in men and equipment are staggering. The US lost 50,000 men in ten years in Vietnam, and the Russians have lost four times that many men in two years. All the good tanks and equipment are long gone, and the Russians are now rehabbing Korean War vintage tanks to compete with Abrams and Leopards.
For Putin there is no backing down as any sign of weakness points to his last day in office. No way for Putin to stay in power after losing a war. Nobody likes a weak strongman. The end of another Russian leader’s dream of a new Russian empire. Left with nothing but the sting of defeat and ashes in their mouths. It will take Russia twenty-five years to get back to where they were economically on the day before Putin attacked Ukraine.
The fear of a destabilized Russia is as dangerous as Russia in Ukraine. Yes Virginia, there are worse leaders in the world than Vladimir Putin!
But would Putin use tactical nukes and prove me wrong? Or is it all the same old bluff again? Knowing what we know about Russian maintenance practices. How certain are we that the nuke would actually go off or just fizzle like a North Korean science project. We don’t want to find out and a battlefield nuke is the last card in the deck to be played.
By Putin moving his nukes to Belarus he places them closer to the German and Polish frontier. Putin is threatening the west, as well as his brothers in Ukraine. But they are just little tactical nukes. A little something to blow a hole in a stagnant front about a mile wide. It’s questionable at this point if Russia could even take advantage of such a hole. Bomb Kyiv perhaps? To what end? Suicide?
The first European Capital nuked will lead immediately to the second European Capital being nuked. That second capital starts with an M and ends in a fireball. During the Wagner Group’s wild ride towards Moscow, Putin jumped in his airplane and flew the coup. What does that tell us about Vladimir Putin? If you said, pulled the “Chicken Switch” ten points.
Putin cares more that he survives than Russia survives. Any nuclear play would make him world criminal # 1 and he would have no place to hide.
The real question is how long, how long will the world let this wound fester. It’s been two years without a decision. Russia left languid and undefeated will only bring worse tidings in the future. It is about the future of Russia as much as the future of Ukraine. It’s about the future of Europe and the wellbeing of the world.
Does the world leave Putin in power after he threatens to nuke the west because he can’t get his way in Ukraine? Or is nuclear terrorism, not the fault line anymore?
“Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.” ― Sun Tzu
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