Corrupt Russian thug and autocrat Vladimir Putin has been meddling in neighboring Ukraine's affairs for years. When his virtual puppet Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was removed from office in 2014 by a popular uprising, Putin sent his troops into Crimea to annex it. He's subsequently supported pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine (the Donbass) with men and material to undermine the pro-Western Ukrainian government. For the past year, he's been amassing Russian forces on the border of Ukraine, and making extreme nationalistic statements about Ukraine being part of Russia, despite the Ukrainian people's aversion to him and Russia.
Yesterday, Putin laid out a set of "demands" that on their face would, if accepted, create a Russian "sphere of influence" for much of eastern Europe, as well as former Soviet republics in Central Asia, by halting all NATO military activities even when supporting anti-terrorist activities. According to this report from the New York Times:
"Russia demanded on Friday that the United States and its allies halt all military activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in a sweeping proposal that would establish a Cold War-like security arrangement, posing a challenge to diplomatic efforts to defuse Russia’s growing military threat to Ukraine.
The Russian proposal — immediately dismissed by NATO officials — came in the form of a draft treaty suggesting NATO should offer written guarantees that it would not expand farther east toward Russia and halt all military activities in the former Soviet republics, a vast swath of now-independent states extending from Eastern Europe to Central Asia." (our emphasis)
Putin clearly sees these demands as a bargaining chip to use in defusing the situation with Ukraine, and even as a pretext for an invasion if the U.S. and its NATO allies don't negotiate with him. In a strategy reminiscent of Hitler's "negotiating" with England over Czechoslovakia prior to World War II, Putin's aim is a "Greater Russia," with a footprint similar to the Soviet Union's, a state that he bitterly regrets collapsing, even to this day in expressing his vision of Russia.
His manipulation of and dominance over malignant loser and sedition leader Donald Trump over the course of four years gave the cocky Putin the sense that Russia was ascendant over the U.S., despite its shaky economy and widespread domestic opposition to his regime. He knows new leadership in Washington, D.C. and new resolve in NATO may give him the narrowest window in which to negotiate and threaten. Time will tell, and it won't be long in coming.
(photo: Evan Siegfried)
