Tag Archives: Putin

Russia Fires Hypersonic Oreshnik Missiles at Ukraine

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At a time when the Trump administration is making enemies in the EU with talk of a military adventure in Greenland, Putin has unleashed Oreshnik hypersonic intermediate range missiles at Ukrainian civilians. The targeting of civilians is nothing new for the Russians, but the Oreshnik missiles travel at up to Mach 10 (7610 mph) which makes shooting them down problematic. Russia has held back this missile system until now., though in 2024 it apparently had fired a test shot absent explosive warheads. According to Wikipedia the Oreshnik ballistic missile system is still in the experimental stage.

The Russians have gotten quite peevish lately, claiming that Ukraine targeted the sprawling home of Putin. Targeting civilians in Kyiv as well as Lviv in western Ukraine serves the dual purpose of reminding the NATO and the EU of the threat Russia poses to them. Golly. Imagine a warring state trying to decapitate the leader of its opponent. According to reports Russia has been trying to assassinate Zelinski, so a reciprocal decapitation effort should be expected.

While Russia burns through military resources and personnel, and while the Russian economy teeters on the edge of total collapse, the conventional military threat to Europe should weaken more by the day. They are taking roughly 1000 casualties per day while their recruitment effort is falling short of that number. However, the nuclear threat remains. It is an open question as to whether Putin refrains from releasing nuclear weapons as his tenure becomes endangered. The Oreshnik missile is capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads- a fact that is lost on nobody.

It’s not in the nature of Putin or his Kremlin to admit even the slightest amount of damage or discomfort caused by Ukraine. One fine day the west will learn that Putin has disappeared and a successor has surfaced. What will Russia do then? A gesture of humanity, perhaps? That would be out of character. A Russian leader could never admit mistakes or defeat. Krushchev did it, but his tenure was cut short by the politburo with Brezhnev taking his place.

Despite a Public A$$ Kicking, Putin Fights On

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The history of Ukraine’s abuse from Russia is a sad tale of starvation (Holodomor), banishment to the gulags and ethnic cleansing (1947). Newsletters are available from The Kyiv Independent and try to connect the present Putin-Ukraine war with regional history. This is an email publication that originates in Ukraine and is written by Ukrainians. They try to explain “WTF is wrong with Russia.”

One eastern European scholar, Timothy Snyder, has written extensively about Russia and its influence on Ukraine. The Bloodlands is especially enlightening. After much civil conflict with Ukrainians after the Bolshevik revolution, Lenin relented and allowed Ukrainians to have their “own” state with the proviso that the new Ukraine must be part of the newly forming Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR (or CCCP in Cyrillic alphabet).

Ukraine has a bad history with neighboring Russia dating back to near the beginning of the USSR. Putin’s goal is reclaiming the territory of the former USSR. including Ukraine, Because Ukraine has considerable productive farmland and minerals, and because it provides a land barrier to Moscow, Putin very much wants the land back.

Where are the Nazis that Putin claimed to be running Ukraine?

As of this date, Oct. 21, 2025, the Putin-Ukraine war is no longer dominated by Putin’s army on the Ukrainian battlefield. While Ukraine continues to gather sympathies from NATO countries and elsewhere, Putin has turned Russia into an international red-headed stepchild. Sanctioned into bankruptcy and pounded by the Ukrainian military, Putin continues to put on a brave face to the Russian people. The hybrid warfare conducted by Russia continues and is especially problematic for NATO states, USA included.

Even though Putin has won presidential elections in the past, the transfer of power remains very murky to those outside the Kremlin walls. Yes, a new Russian president could conceivably win an election but detaching Putin and the layers upon layers of nervous sycophants as well as his dark income streams will be a problem. It is a stretch to believe that Putin will leave office alive. Maybe they’ll find an apartment for him in Pyong Yang, North Korea?

Adding to the political complexity, there is considerable distrust between the Russian military and the security services, two of which in particular are the FSB and GRU. Some have claimed that the FSB would not allow a military coup owing to past animosity and distrust. Putin’s authoritarian state, while extensive, still is subject to the frigid winds of economics.

Where is Russia Going?

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What is the deal with Russia? Why do the Russian people tolerate the lack of basic freedoms we in the West are accustomed to? Dissatisfaction with their government has been there since the beginning. Hundreds of millions have been deprived of liberty and prosperity following Russian revolution.

The history of early 20th century reveals the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Later, after much blood and treasure was spilled after the revolution and then through the cold war, the Soviet Union collapsed after a brief attempt at openness. Many around the world saw the collapse as a positive thing and a sign of better times ahead, especially for the people of the former USSR. There was hope in the West for a transition to some variety of Russian-tinted democracy and for freedoms heretofore absent for the average citizens of the former USSR.

To Russians in power, the very idea of a democratic republic is alien and inconceivable. There is a baseline level of distrust and fear of the infectiousness of the democratic spirit among Russian/Soviet leadership. Even the population has been convinced that the moral collapse of the West would spread to their homeland without an iron-fisted leader.

For a part of the world that has been strangling under autocratic rule and economic stratification since before the time of the Tsars, there has not been a historical Russian-style power sharing agreement between the monarchy and the nobility or the serfs from which to build upon. After generations of polarization by Soviet propaganda focused on Western hegemony and the moral turpitude of the West, there was no likelihood of building upon a Western style democratic model. The Russian propaganda engine continues to this day as strong as ever but with the help of the internet, artificial intelligence and widespread political indifference or gullibility.

The decade of the 1990’s following the collapse of the former USSR was a time of redistribution of wealth for a lucky few. Large Soviet industrial sectors were absorbed by a few private interests, producing fabulously wealthy oligarchs. This did not go unnoticed by the populace, who simmered in anger over it because they expected a freedom and prosperity dividend from the collapse. Amidst the confusion and dissatisfaction with Russian President Yeltsin, there arose a growing sense that Russia needed a strongman leader. Many even spoke admiringly of Stalin.

The collapse of the USSR left an internal power vacuum that would soon be filled by former Soviet citizens. Boris Yeltsin was elected President of Russia in December 1991 and remained as President until 1999 when his selected successor Prime Minister and former FSB director Vlad Putin took over as acting president. Putin was elected president in May of 2000.

I’ve been trying to understand why present-day Russia seems so … belligerent. My focus to start with is Putin. Rather than being a one-of-a-kind freak of nature, Putin is rather ordinary as a dictator except that his regime has a nuclear triad. Until its invasion of Ukraine, Russia also had the benefit of whatever left-over respect it may have had from its Soviet military reputation. But that has changed dramatically.

Putin has long expressed the view that the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy. He wants to rebuild the stature of Russia into a global superpower. Soviet leaders held the view that in order for Moscow to be safe from attack by the West, the Slavic eastern European countries bordering Western Russia had to be under the wing of the Kremlin. It was this deep boundary in combination with the Russian winter that helped to wear down the invasions of Napolean and Hitler. Both armies were substantially weakened by traversing the extensive farmlands and steppes of Ukraine and Poland. It is difficult to believe that this thinking has changed since the collapse.

When the USSR collapsed it left much more than empty senior positions and titles to fill. The Soviet governing apparatus was abandoned when the Kremlin finally conceded that the USSR was economically unsustainable. Even a culture built upon bribery and corruption needs an all-encompassing structural skeleton to manifest its national identity and sustain an economy, security and a global presence. Even a corrupt government needs some sustainability.

Unfortunately for present day Russia, extensive government bribery and corruption in all sectors was already baked in from Soviet times. On a practical level, getting things done involved bribery. Bribes were expected and paid as a matter of routine in the military and all other areas of government. Today there have been show trials with certain high-level officials being tried, convicted and imprisoned on bribery charges. It gives the population bread and circuses to consume and hopefully optimism for a brighter future.

The USSR and later the Russian Federation did not have the benefit of English common law which evolved from the Magna Carta. Born of earlier conquest by the Rus, the Bolsheviks had nothing to build upon for a more democratic legal system like the American colonists had. Overall, Bolsheviks forcibly switched from monarchy to an autocratic socialist empire. Conquest of the tsarist Russian empire by the Bolsheviks was difficult because there were numerous groups vying for power, leading to the Russian civil war following the 1917 revolution.

Although Putin and the cranky Dimitry Medvedev have done a bit of nuclear saber rattling, the West has been concerned about Russian nukes since their very first test in the late 1940’s, so not much new here. Putin’s stern public warnings about nuclear retaliation were not necessary for the Western experts to be on alert. This apparent “virtue signaling” in the form of a public warning by Putin is just a part of Russia’s overall hybrid warfare approach. They’ll use every word and inflection uttered by Russian and Western media as well as the Kremlin to fortify their propaganda with doubt, suspicion and existential threats. They are also actively injecting propaganda into every media stream in the West they can manage. Putin’s dire public warnings about lowering the threshold for a tactical nuclear release were meant to cause a great clenching of public sphincters with the usual fear and loathing leading to internal political pressure for its enemies.

/*begin anecdote/*

Russia’s triad of Soviet-era nuclear weapons have been aging in storage. Are Russian nuclear bomb designs immune to shelf-life issues? By comparison, American-style nuclear weapons have a relatively short shelf-life because of their boosted triggers. According to one source, the entire US nuclear arsenal of nuclear triggers are boosted. American nuclear trigger designs have a short shelf-life stemming from tritium’s 4500 +/- 8 day half-life or 12.32 years (NIST, 2000). US fission triggers have a hollow core which contains a 1 to 1 deuterium-tritium mixture. This booster gas undergoes fusion during ignition in the center of the core and increases the fission yield by the release of abundant 14 MeV neutrons into the surrounding fissile material. With the use of a booster to breed neutrons, the critical mass of fissile explosive is reduced because more neutrons are dispersed to initiate a runaway fission while under intense compression. The reduced mass of fissile material in a bomb is also resistant to unintended ignition by a nearby source of neutrons, like a nearby nuclear explosion.

Tritium is 3H, with 1 proton and 2 neutrons. It undergoes a beta decay where a neutron decays to a proton and an ejected electron, forming 3Helium with 2 protons and a neutron. So, wouldn’t you know, 3Helium is a poison with a very high neutron capture cross section. An aging booster gas loses its tritium potency as well as gaining an effective neutron poison.

But for this application to work, an ongoing supply of tritium is required. Tritium must be produced in a breeder reactor or accelerator. In addition to its short half-life, tritium decay is problematic to monitor because of its low 5.7 keV average beta radiation energy. Tritium atoms or molecules can be detected and measured by mass spectroscopy, but its beta decay radiation requires special equipment to detect. Tritium emits very low energy, low penetrating beta particles which are limited to 6 mm of travel in air and are blocked by the dead layer of skin cells on the surface of the skin. Getting through the window of a Geiger-Muller tube is a problem. So, measurement of tritium activity requires a liquid scintillation detector or an ionization chamber. A sample of radioactive material is dissolved in a vial of scintillation cocktail and run through a scintillation detector which detects faint flashes of light corresponding particle emissions. Perhaps detectors using scintillation crystals like cesium iodide are available for tritium detection.

/*end anecdote/*

A History of Conflict

The lands of Eurasia have, over time, been overprinted with layers upon of layers of conflict over thousands of years. While it may seem reasonable to assume that the current national borders of Europe have finally overcome the urge for military conquest, this seems over-optimistic. The ease with which Putin dashed in to grab large tracts of Ukraine in 2014 show that land-grab invasions are not just left to the past.

The more you learn about the last 4000 years of history of the lands covering the British Isles to Portugal to Mongolia to north Africa and the Levant, the more apparent it is that battles of conquest and defense have overwhelmingly been the norm.

There have been so many armies who have fought bloody battles and died or prevailed on the Eurasian landscape since before Roman times, it is a wonder that there aren’t still great heaps of bones wrapped in rotted battle gear. As always, much remains below the surface in history.

Putin’s Botched War

The Putin-Ukraine war is a war of conquest begun by a dictator who somehow didn’t understand or foresee the accurate weapons made available to Ukraine by the USA and Europe. He misunderstood the willingness of the West to come to Ukraine’s aid, but also and maybe more importantly, the magnitude of the relative sophistication of Western armaments and war materiel. This was a major blunder. While Russian military intelligence should have kept the Kremlin updated on Western weaponry, Putin should have asked more penetating questions. But perhaps most importantly, he underestimated the combative spirit of the Ukrainians and their president.

How did Russia manage to fall so far behind the West in the art of war? A high reliance was placed on its giant fleet of tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery. Much of this equipment was left over from WWII and the cold war. In contrast to its ground operations, Russia’s use of airpower in the early days of the war was weak and ineffective. Western military strategy has a high reliance on air power.

Russia was completely unprepared for the evolving drone tactics used against them. Drones were able to provide intelligence and pinpoint delivery of relatively small bombs at critical locations on launchers, vehicles, individual soldiers and in trenches. While Russian tanks were covered with reactive armor, the Ukrainian drones could place bombs in weak spots on the vehicles or even drop them through crew hatches to the interior where propellant and warheads could be ignited.

Post-War

To the discredit of both Russia and Ukraine, extensive use of land mines as well as cluster munitions has been made. The immorality of these munitions lies in what happens to the left-over mines and cluster bomblets remaining after the conflict. After the war, the lands are going to be recovered and farmed or rebuilt. Land mines and cluster munitions are well known to remain extremely dangerous for decades. Other conflict zones that have been so mined have left a legacy of death and mutilation for civilians.

At some point, the victor of the Putin-Ukraine war will want to salvage the scrap metal of the many thousands of vehicle carcasses left on the battlefields. One question relates to the explosive reactive armor (ERA) on the exterior of the destroyed tanks. ERA consists of a sandwich of a metal “flyer plate” facing the incoming projectile, a layer of high brisance explosive, and another metal flyer plate facing the tank armor. In order to respond to a high velocity kinetic or shaped charged projectile, a high shock-velocity, highly energetic explosive is needed for fast response to impact by a projectile. The ERA must be insensitive to small arms fire.

A great many videos of the destruction of tanks show that a tank can be destroyed and its crew killed by artillery or drones, but a large fraction of the reactive armor remains. The reactive armor contains enough high explosive to diffuse some of the incoming projectile’s energy release, yet seems to be rather insensitive to the shock of a hit a few feet away. This unexploded reactive armor will need collection and disposal.

Ukrainian farmers will need to level out the thousands of bomb craters in their fields so their equipment can traverse the ground. Obviously, Sappers or bomb disposal crews will need to de-mine the roads and pathways. Extensive trench systems will need to be filled in to recover the croplands. The environmental insult to the bombed-out battlefields is already substantial. The environmental toxicity of explosive residues may need evaluation.

Finally, in victory the brave people of Ukraine face the daunting prospect of rebuilding their homeland. Generations of children have been exposed to serious trauma and violence that no one should have to face. Their childhoods have been stolen from them and their educational prospects badly damaged.

If Russia prevails, the citizens of Ukraine face loss of their national identity and progressive Russification. All of the post-war issues given above will still be present, but the economic and social upheaval resulting from a vengeful Russian takeover will be traumatic. Many Ukrainian fighters and political leaders will no doubt be jailed, sent to gulags or perhaps defenestration.

A Russian victory in Ukraine signals bad times ahead for the rest of eastern Europe and the Baltic states. These countries, Poland in particular, already understand this and are preparing for this eventuality. Putin has previously expressed a kinship with the Slavic peoples of Eurasia and this may be part of his motivation for establishing a Russian empire.

The Fall of the American Empire

As bad luck would have it, this aggressive act of Putin’s Russia coincided with a political catastrophe in the United States. The Republican Party (GOP) in America has adopted the old Tea Party platform including libertarians and ultraconservative evangelical Christians to morph into a party of fanatical fascists, sometimes called Christo-Fascists. This is a reprehensible development that has taken decades to pull off. These Make America Great Again (MAGA) people have decided that American democracy doesn’t work. They favor a weak, authoritarian flavored democracy, similar to what Orban in Hungary has led.

The combination of the election of Donald Trump along with allowance of dark money OK’d by the US Supreme Court, the fanatical support of MAGA voters and a detailed coup strategy penned by the Heritage Foundation and funded by numerous billionaires has turned America around the corner towards an ultra-nationalist dictatorship. Trump ignores the courts, the legal role of the congress, and has lately taken a fancy to sending troops into US cities.

Some knowledgeable scholars have offered that American hegemony, in place since the end of WWII, is all but over. Some estimate that the American empire reached its peak influence perhaps 15 years ago and has been in decline since then but Americans haven’t paid attention. Trump, with his claims on Panama, Canada and Greenland as well as his manic desire to impose tariffs on globally has sent American credibility into the waste bin. The global economic upset caused by Trump has forced former friends to forge new alliances, leaving America behind.

Even if the stars lined up right and Trump and Vance disappeared tomorrow, a return to the previous status quo is unlikely to happen. The rapid trade disengagement by Canada suggests that they have had serious doubts with the USA already and this Trump fiasco was the last straw. There has been grumbling by other nations in the past that the American 4-year presidential cycle leads to excessive and frequent foreign policy changes that cause difficulties for them.  

Trump’s “America First” declaration and radical disengagement with previous foreign policy has left an apparent power vacuum in the world. This has not gone unnoticed by anyone. Of course, the BRICS nations (Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russian Federation, South Africa, and United Arab Emirates) are taking advantage of this sea change and are considering moving from the US dollar as the principal reserve currency. America is willingly abandoning its historical global stabilizing ability in exchange for a more libertarian internal structure.

Amassing Cannon Fodder is an Old Soviet Tactic

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After reading a biography of the Russian Marshal of the Soviet Union, Georgy Zhukov, it becomes apparent that there are parallels between Soviet tactics in WWII and those used in the Putin-Ukraine conflict. Beyond the deployment of similarly vintaged tanks and weaponry, General Zhukov was notorious for committing his forces to battle with little regard for casualties. Similarly, Putin’s military has been characterized by the use of inadequately trained and equipped conscripts. Additionally, it has been reported that Putin’s forces have positioned troops behind the front lines to prevent or even target any deserting or retreating frontline soldiers. Zhukov’s approach often involved rapidly advancing battalions and armor to the front with minimal planning, depending on the attrition of Nazi forces. This tactic was typically executed under Stalin’s direct orders, though sometimes initiated by Zhukov independently.

The conflict between Putin and Ukraine has evolved into a war of attrition. Initially, Putin thought he could swiftly deploy tanks and troops as he did in southern Ukraine in 2014, seizing territory through sheer intimidation. However, he miscalculated the armaments, determination and tenacity of the Ukrainian forces. Since 2014, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have received training from Western nations. By February 2022, they were significantly better prepared and less intimidated by Putin’s military. In conventional warfare, the Russian military turned out to be a paper tiger, at least with its conventional non-nuclear forces, that is. The Putin-Ukraine war is still unfolding but Russia will come out of it severely stunted win or lose and possibly with new leadership. Whatever the outcome, the winner will have a great deal of de-mining to do. The conflict continues to unfold, but regardless of the outcome, Russia is likely to emerge greatly weakened, potentially with a change in leadership.

Putin is a smart guy. Certainly he knows the consequences of releasing as much as a single low yield tactical nuclear weapon, even if it’s limited to a demonstration. Pandora’s box would swing wide open and out would slink an ever-expanding series of repeats of above ground nuclear blasts until a city would be hit. Then all out nuclear war could happen in the old eye-for-an-eye fashion. Dark days would follow indeed.

Putin surely realizes the dangerous situation his county is in with mounting military losses, the brain-drain of skilled workers leaving the country and a crumbling oil and minerals-based economy. Yet he wears the neutral expression of the Sphinx in public because he must. He has painted himself and his nation into a corner. He even resorted to making nice with the plump North Korean dictator which must have been a nauseating demotion for him.

A bit of history

The Magna Carta was an agreement signed in England on June 10th, 1215, at Runnymede along the River Thames. This agreement had the unique provision of the enforcement of limitations on the sovereign. Rather than a simple recitation of grievances by the barons, the Magna Carta contained ‘security clause 61’ which provided for the barons the authority to seize the castles and lands of King John and hold them until such time as he held to his responsibilities as agreed upon in the signed document.

The Magna Carta was not just a contract between wealthy barons and King John, rather it was a step change towards political reform that provided for enforcement on the King. From Wikipedia–

“First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.”

Unfortunately, the distrust between the barons and the Crown, compounded by the annulment from Pope Innocent III, led to its swift failure. Just a few months after the agreement fell apart, the First Baron’s War erupted. However, this was not the final chapter. The document was reissued in successive versions, with the more radical language removed, in 1217, 1225, and finally in 1297, when its remaining elements were incorporated into England’s statute law. It was not unique in its attempt to limit the power of the Crown; similar efforts were seen elsewhere. Over time, the Parliament of England enacted laws that overshadowed the original document, diminishing its significance.

Back to Russia

The point of highlighting the Magna Carta, despite its failure, is that nothing of this type of significance happened in the history of Russia, at least until the Bolshevik Revolution. Perhaps this comparison is too facile, causing real historians to choke on their Starbuck’s latte. But allow me to finish. The Magna Carta was not entirely unique for its era. However, it was notable for including a provision that enforced the good faith by the King. It represented a collective bargaining effort by the 25 barons with King John to alleviate some of the monarchy’s oppression and, in doing so, progress the political atmosphere for a short time with fits and starts. As kings often do, King John protested to the Pope, who then exerted his authority in a manner only a Pope could. The Pope excommunicated the Barons and nullified the agreement, having been persuaded by King John that it undermined the Church’s authority.

Russia seems not to have a tradition of producing successful popular uprisings to the power of the Tsar. of course, the Bolshevik revolution is the shining counterexample. Not in the sense of overthrow so much, but as an enforceable agreement to relieve a measure of oppression by the monarchy at all levels. In contradiction to this sweeping generalization is the case of Tsars Alexander I and II. Alexander I introduced minor social reforms but he was a strict Russian nationalist and Slavophile. Many of the reforms he instituted early in his career were retracted later.

Tsar Alexander II , however, instituted many liberal reforms but is possibly most revered for his Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861. In the US, he is remembered as the Tsar who sold us Alaska. He was a supporter of the Union in the American Civil War and even sent ships to New York Harbor and San Francisco Bay to deter Confederate warships. Eventually he was assassinated in Saint Petersburg on March 13, 1881. The first assassin’s bomb thrown under his armored carriage left him dazed but uninjured. The second assassin’s bomb thrown shortly thereafter delivered the fatal injuries as he stepped out to investigate. The third assassin’s bomb was unused.

Zooming forward to the present, what actions can the Russian populace take regarding Tsar Putin? After centuries of political oppression aided by new thinking, modern technology, and nuclear weapons the current Tsar has built a deep and wide moat around himself and his allies within the Kremlin establishment. Beyond this moat stands a population conditioned to obedience by fear, a legacy of decades of Soviet rule. I believe that national pride will deter them from emulating Western forms of civil society and governance. And why can’t they develop an authentically Russian something-something ‘democracy’, or whatever? Russia has deep foundation of cultural, artistic and scientific achievements to take pride in, despite its history of authoritarian governance. Whatever Russia eventually does, it will be heavily Slavic and Eastern Orthodox.

Russians are just as pleasant and smart as everyone else in the world, obviously. Russian hospitality is first rate as I have personally experienced. They just have the heavy blanket of oppressive leadership over them that continues to drag through the generations. Even if Putin falls out of power, there is a line of replacements cut from the same cloth. Perhaps a leader of a reform movement could rebuild Russia? It could happen but just as likely it could revert into a system that is better at prosecuting a war of aggression and suppression of the population. The replacement of Putin could be good for the world, or it could go sour. The world has to wait it out and see. In the meantime, it is critical to keep Putin out of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states.

The Putin government is like a toxic gas- it will expand into all of the space available. After the decades-long stand down in tension since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the problem of an aggressive Russia arises again. The West must remain the sturdy counter example to the authoritarian culture of Putin’s Russia. We in the USA, especially, need to do a better job as the shining city on the hill. Lately the shine is wearing off.

Russian Death-Tanks

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Numerous YouTube videos depict the widespread destruction of Russian tanks in the invasion of Ukraine, giving the impression that these tanks are more lethal to Russian soldiers than their opponents. Despite being equipped with Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA), their ability to withstand artillery, mines, and drone attacks seems minimal. Moreover, when the armor is breached, the cannon gun propellant tends to ignite violently, causing the warheads to explode and instantly killing the crew. Occasionally, the force of ammunition blasts is so strong that it hurls the turret with gun barrel into the air, a stark illustration of the power of such explosions. Consequently, videos frequently capture Russian tank crews abandoning their crippled vehicles and fleeing for safety. Instead of offering protection, tanks have become conspicuous and cumbersome targets, prone to devastating attacks.

One might question the practical value of reactive armor. The landscapes of eastern Ukraine are strewn with thousands of destroyed Russian tanks, their ERA blocks still intact. Perhaps its practical value lies in bolstering the confidence of tank crews to engage in battle, trusting in the ERA’s protective capabilities. However, it is now challenging to believe that ERA instills a sense of safety in tank crew members. The effectiveness of reactive armor seems negated by potent penetrator warhead countermeasures capable of breaching the ERA. The pertinent question remains: does the ERA diminish the impact of an incoming shell sufficiently to be considered effective?

The conflict between Putin and Ukraine will eventually conclude, and the victors will promptly seek to repurpose the battlefields for peacetime activities. However, they must first contend with numerous challenges, including the presence of unexploded ordnance. Thousands of mines may remain hidden, posing a threat for decades unless they are securely disposed of or neutralized.

The landscape of the battle zones is marred by bomb craters, charred vehicles—many with unexploded ammunition—minefields, unexploded ordnance scattered about, live explosive reactive armor on destroyed armored vehicles, and soil polluted with shrapnel and residues from countless detonated artillery shells.

Numerous cities and villages, particularly those near the Russian border, have been completely obliterated by Putin’s military, resulting in tens of thousands of civilian casualties and leaving most without homes. The remnants of homes, businesses, and infrastructure stand as a testament to the survivors. For them, social and economic frameworks are now just distant memories. Civilization has been set back by at least a generation due to Putin’s distorted ambitions for an imperial legacy. The man is not insane or unintelligent; he is quite astute and fully aware of his actions—he is simply a terrible person. Currently, the US is facing its own challenge with a figure of ill repute seeking control of the government, backed by a significant number of misguided followers.

In the conflict in Ukraine, it’s conceivable that one precisely aimed bullet could have altered the course of events, a notion that has been a sad reality in many wars. This was a concern even during Stalin’s time. Since 2000, Putin and his associates have been systematically constructing the framework for an authoritarian state and military power, positioning him at the apex of power. His ambition is to supplant the hegemony of the US and NATO with the hegemony of Russia.

The conflict has been a catastrophic event for the region’s flora and fauna, significantly hindering the biosphere in numerous areas. Ukraine, until recently, was a significant grain producer and exporter, essential for the sustenance of millions. In the early stages of the conflict, Russia targeted and destroyed much of Ukraine’s grain distribution infrastructure, aiming to debilitate the economy and hasten a surrender. The bombings of civilian residences, hospitals, and other infrastructures will tarnish Putin’s reputation, marking him as a tyrant and a fundamentally flawed individual. Additionally, the reported abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children by Russia for forced assimilation and adoption raises serious legal and humanitarian questions. These actions are meticulously recorded for potential future war crimes proceedings and historical record.

American Isolationism and the World

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The reverberations of Trump’s South Carolina comments on NATO continue. Being a thuggish racketeer himself, he sees something like freeloading or racketeering in the motives of the NATO states. With his disparaging rants about NATO and proposing that the US stands back while Putin pushes west, he emboldens the Kremlin to maintain their aggression in the hope of the US standing down. There should be no mistaking Putin’s motives- he wants to recover the territory once controlled by the Soviet Union. Some suspect that Belarus will be annexed next.

Isolationism has been a Republican reflex since before the formation of NATO. It seems to be a part of the libertarian worldview of the isolated and rugged individualist. Either they do not care about the global balance of power or are ignorant of it. We are seeing a wave of Russian aggression disguised as self-defense or the defense of “ethnic Russians” living across borders. Hitler used this trick to grease the skids for his takeover of the Sudetenland in neighboring Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was partly justified with the lie that Ukraine is infested with Nazis who are threatening Mother Russia. In 2014 Putin had slyly marched into southern Ukraine annexing the Crimean Oblast. Shielded from critics by his extensive blackout of international media, Putin dispatched troops for the “Special Military Operation”.

On September 30, 2022, Putin gave a speech declaring annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. In an angry, ranting speech Putin said “They don’t want us to be free, they want us to be a colony; they don’t want equal partnership, they want to steal from us,”

In Ukraine, Russia has inadvertently revealed itself to the world as a paper tiger. However, they are still in possession of a large stockpile of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons with its own triad of delivery systems. Russia’s policy has always been to use nuclear weapons in the event of the possible downfall of the state. By that they mean the downfall of Putin by outside forces. Russia is not burdened by having a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons like the West.

So what about Putin’s comment that “They don’t want us to be free …”. This is the autocrat who has shut down all independent news reporting within Russia, disconnected internet access to much of the world, normalized defenestration and has criminalized even the smallest whiff of dissent. Like autocrats often do, he accuses others of what he does himself. His rationale is that harsh measures are necessary to resist outside threats. He also claims that the West wants to steal from Russia. When you are an isolated and naturally secretive country, accusations of thievery are a soft sell. Accusations like this are part of the feedback loop of paranoia, hardening resolve to resist by being more secretive and brutal.

Imagine the ridiculous folly of attempting to invade or colonize Russia or take resources from it for any reason. Really, who the hell wants to be in control of Russia other than some Russian? What would a foreign invader of Russia hope to accomplish by taking control of this giant, multiethnic country? Decades of bickering, insurgency and violence? The taiga? It is a stupid plan, yet Putin frightens the population with visions of American attack and along with its sexual perversion.

Putin’s lessons from history come from Soviet times when the KGB watched for spies behind every tree and surveillance of the citizenry was justified for “state security”, a catchall for close control of its citizens. Escape from the USSR was difficult and getting caught could mean long imprisonment in a gulag.

Putin’s protestations are little more than a trademark display of strongman fulminations meant to justify the slaughter of his own military in Ukraine. I’m surprised he doesn’t do it shirtless on horseback to display his lean and mean musculature.

The Russian people deserve much better than a long history and an extended future of oppression. The region has seen immense suffering over the decades from invasion by Hitler, deadly oppression from Stalin and privation and imprisonment by its own leadership. Today, the strong arm of the Kremlin regime reaches deep into their lives, preventing a popular uprising or just expressions of discontent. What Russia lacks is an army of martyrs willing to die for freedom because that is what it would take. Putin keeps them comfortable enough to stay out of politics.

The Golden Calf Plods Forward

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As expected, New Hampshire Republicans rallied for their Golden Calf yesterday. Naturally, media people are using this to boldly predict the future. I’ve had to abandon NPR because they are serving wall-to-wall election coverage as though nothing else has happened. Despite the years of legal actions against the Orange Jesus, his popularity endures and Republican politicians and candidates continue to rally around him, hoping some of magic rubs off on them.

In interviews, Trumpsters confidently say that things were better during his presidency than under Biden’s despite what the numbers say about the economy at present. Even though inflation has dropped from 9.1 % to 3.2 % over the last year according to the AP, many consumers apparently expect prices to come down as well. Are the Trumpsters really upset about the economy or are they just angry that he lost the 2020 election?

“We don’t care about no stinkin’ 91 felony indictments. Yes, he’s committed fraud and sexual assault. But, but, but he is going to drain the swamp and halt immigration!!”

Reducing prices is not something that business people will do to make life easier for people. What industry will be the first to reduce their prices willingly because it is a “nice idea?” Prices are always set to what the customer is willing to pay. A common nightmare of a business person is that they may have left money at the table during a negotiation or a sale. Businesses charge as much as they can all the time. People who leave money at the table are not the people who rise into the thin air of the C-suite of business.

During the pandemic, supply chain interruptions helped trigger inflation. Businesses ratcheted up their prices to grow or maintain their margins. Many businesses had to raise their prices because their costs had risen, but not evenly across the board. Why waste a good opportunity to raise prices if others are doing it? For essentials, consumers soon adapted to it because they had little choice. Strangely, the economy has shown unexpected vigor during this inflationary period. Some products like pickup trucks and real estate, however, are suffering badly.

Along comes the Federal Reserve to slay the dragon of inflation. They pulled their one big tool out of its sheath for staunching inflation- raising interest rates. And so they did with success. The down-side is that it hurts those seeking a mortgage or other loans due to increased interest rates.

Another effect of the pandemic is the continuing trend of employees working from home. According to one source, the 1Q23 vacancy rate for NYC office space was 22.2 %. Remote work activity has caused businesses to reconsider the size of the office space they are leasing. Many are opting not to automatically renew their leases in favor of leveraging better terms or outright downsizing their space requirements. The new workforce shift has had a negative effect on surrounding businesses who rely on the daily flood of office workers to buy lunch and shop. It also has a big effect on the owners of office buildings who likely had business models and loans relying on higher occupancy rates. The knock-on effect is that the banks who made the commercial loans to the office building owners are beginning to see an increase in loan defaults. Commercial borrowers also face significantly higher interest rates than they started out with. News reports are very pessimistic for a reprieve in the near term.

The term that was coined for this is the urban “doom loop.” Reduced office occupancy leads to reduced tax revenue for municipalities who supply services like transit, police and street maintenance. But I don’t want to spoil it- Google “urban doom loop.”

Back to the Golden Calf.

I would offer that there is a portion of the grand American bell curve that probably shouldn’t be left in charge of a vast international economic and nuclear superpower wielding a military machine the likes of which the world has never seen before. Further, I would offer that just possibly many of the followers of #45 are comfortably squatting on that side of the bell curve.

As I see it, the Golden Calf getting back into office will adversely swerve the fate of Europe, the Balkan and the Baltic states into direct conflict with an expanding Russian Empire. Putin is obviously trying to reestablish and reenergize the reach of the former Soviet Union. He has little care for the lives of Russian soldiers as they fight and die on the battlefield, and even less for those who defy his wishes. They are expendable in the grand scheme of a Great Russian Empire of Tsar Putin.

The State of Ukraine traces back to October of 1917 when the Bolsheviks tried to capture Kyiv and failed. By January of 1918 the Ukranian revolutionary parliament declared the formation of Ukrainian People’s Republic. After much conflict, Ukraine was made part of the USSR.

In the 1930’s there was the Holodomor, or the “Great Ukrainian Famine” of 1932-33 with continued mass killing and exile of Ukrainian Kulaks to the east for the rest of the decade. The collectivization forced on Ukraine was brutal. Many thousands of Ukrainians were exiled to the east and disappeared. As Hitler invaded Poland and continued with Operation Barbarossa to Moscow, his plan to exterminate Jews went with him. The wholesale slaughter of Jews in Poland and Ukraine wasn’t limited to the concentration camps. Villages were captured by the Nazis and Jewish citizens were marched by the many tens of thousands into the woods and executed by a bullet to the head, falling into pits where they would be buried. No age or gender was spared. Hitler gave orders to Himmler to carry out the Final Solution in eastern Europe and Russia and he did with a vengeance.

A large scale international concern is with Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine. Russia has a long history of conflict with Ukraine starting after the Bolshevik Revolution. Putin does not recognize their sovereignty and further claims that there is no Ukraine, only Russia. He seeks to establish the boundaries of the former Soviet Union and Ukraine is the first step. To allow Putin to conquer Ukraine will enable him to go after the Baltic states, the Balkans and Poland along with their manpower and resources to fortify the depleted Russian military-industrial complex.

Trump has a record of stating his disinterest in protecting the European Union and remaining in NATO. American retreat from the EU and NATO would only serve to telegraph to Putin that the US will not interfere with further Russian conquests. A massive Russian dictatorship butted up against western Europe will not lead to an enduring peace. A Russian dictatorship the size of the USSR will be no friend of the western powers.

An America that withdraws from international affairs is an America in steep decline. After all that we have accomplished and learned, under Trump and his ilk we will step down from our international platform and slink away into some imaginary Libertarian Southern Baptist utopia with the inmates running the asylum. No thank you.

The election of Trump has a ghastly downside for western civilization that is largely kept quiet by the popular media. In their desire to portray fairness, they tend to avoid topics like this for fear of the accusation of bias..

On the Cusp of a Fateful Choice

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Forward: This essay is directed to my fellow US citizens. The US and its allies are what stand between liberal democracy and rising global authoritarianism. Authoritarian states have proven to be quite resistant to rising democracy. We cannot let it get started without pushback. Just so we are on the same page, here is a description from Wikipedia-

“Liberal democracy or western democracy is the combination of a liberal political philosophy that operates under a representative democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, universal suffrage, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. “

Wikipedia “Liberal Democracy”

The United States is on the cusp of making a fateful choice based on the results of the 2024 national election. While there are numerous issues simmering, I refer to the growing movement among conservatives to back off on military support for Ukraine. This group believes that we’ve spent far too much money on military aid for Ukraine’s defense and that these resources should be directed towards the homeland. The fact is that the US and other NATO countries have indeed sent a very large quantity of armaments and cash to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began.

What might the consequences be if the US and others simply backed away and let the two countries duke it out? In other words, we practice some old fashion isolationism. Here are some thoughts-

  • Putin is a murderous dictator with designs on (re)establishing a more widespread Russian empire. He wants to extinguish what is now Ukraine and meld it into a greater Russia. He believes that Russia is destined become a “great” power again. Suh a dream is not unexpected by a leader, but he began his expansion in 2014 with his quiet annexation of southern Ukraine.
  • Unfortunately, Ukraine is not where it stops. The eastern European and Baltic states are well aware of this threat and the history behind it.
  • The question of Putin’s mental state is of great interest to intelligence communities and to heads of state. Barbara S. Held, clinical psychologist and emeritus psychology professor at Bowdoin College, suggests that on the “sad/mad/bad” scale, Putin shows no signs of being sad or mad. What remains is the matter of bad. Coming away from the Held article, one is left with the sense that Putin’s “problem” isn’t legal insanity or a clinical disorder, but rather he is just a really bad person who makes what he thinks are rational choices and occasionally makes misjudgments.

“By all accounts, he [Putin] misjudged the ease of his mission, and shows no remorse about his massive killing in Ukraine. But poor judgment and moral callousness alone don’t constitute legal insanity or madness in the psychological sense.”

Barbara S. Held, New York Daily News, March 16, 2022.
  • Crucially for Putin’s Kremlin, the state has such pervasive control that citizens are existentially afraid to defy the government. Putin is surrounded by many, many layers of loyalists. Putin’s Kremlin is a black box. Who knows what could happen in a power contest? It’s been said that in Russia, the rule of thumb is that if the people stay out of politics, the government will stay out of their lives.
  • Putin’s Kremlin believes that the mere existence of a successful liberal democracy like the US is an continuous threat to authoritarianism in general and to Putin’s Russia in particular. The Kremlin propaganda organs strenuously broadcast the weak and clumsy machinations in the US on a daily basis. This is very similar to the standard operating procedures of the former Soviet Union.
  • The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believes very much the same thing. Liberal democracy in the world, with the US in particular, is an existential threat to Chinese leadership. The CCP can’t very well allow the public to seek greater freedom of speech lest citizens begin to question CCP authority.
  • An isolationist US is a country that has ceded its global influence to those who mean us harm. As US influence in the world diminishes, China and Russia will gradually move in to take up any slack.

A decision by the US to back-off its aid to Ukraine will create a power vacuum that will be instantly filled by the Putin regime. It will validate the assertions by the Russian and Chinese propaganda organs that the US is morally corrupt and weak and that its hegemony is finally over.

Why is Russia so aggressive? Look the long and complex history of the region and decide for yourself. A place to start might be with the Holodomor.

Post Card From Ukraine

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Warning: Political content below.

I received a post card from Ukraine the other day because of a donation I made. It shows an event they are very proud of- the first attack on the Kerch bridge. I’m sure some Ukrainians feel abandoned by NATO’s refusal to let them join, but there is good reason behind NATO’s answer. Russia’s long-standing morbidly paranoid obsession with NATO and the “morally corrupt” West would only be validated by such a move. It would be destabilizing today and would definitely bring us closer to nuclear conflict. To do so today would immediately step NATO into direct conflict with Russia. Ok. Enough from Captain Obvious.

Source: A post card from Ukraine.

After the Russian revolution of 1918, the Bolsheviks tried to capture and Russify the Ukrainian territory. After several attempts in 1918-1922 they relented and Lenin finally consented to give them independence as a state within the Soviet Union. This was not because Lenin was interested in building a Ukrainian state, but rather it was a desperate move to mollify the Ukrainians while allowing the Bolsheviks to keep control over the territory. Lenin did not set out to create Ukraine.

During the early 1930’s, Stalin’s government was busy collectivizing the agricultural lands of the USSR. Collectivizing Ukrainian farmland meant getting peasants, especially those with greater than 8 acres of land (Kulaks) to turn over their land to the collective. This proved to be so messy that eventually Stalin closed off Ukraine and required internal passports. Thus began a 2-year famine leading to mass starvation. Ukrainian crops and animals were systematically removed by the Soviets in what were sometimes called “red trains.” During this time several million Ukrainians were starved to death, executed or imprisoned in a distant labor camp. This period covering 1932 to 1933 is called the Holodomor, or The Great Famine. You can read all about it on the interwebs.

As directed by Putin, Russia is presently attempting to extinguish Ukrainian culture again. The kidnapping of children and shipping them to be raised in Russian homes as well as other forms of Russification in the occupied territories of Ukraine are underway. For the Ukrainians, the Russian invaders are like the Borg from Star Trek in their needy desire to absorb them into their domain- “Resistance is futile.”

It should be remembered that the Ukrainian experience with Russia has been very bad for a long time.

Authoritarianism isn’t just a problem in some eastern European states. Seeds of it are being spread here in the US by a new brand of neoliberal GOP leaders. Many times they have the words “liberty” or “freedom” in the organizations names. This is a disingenuous and underhanded rhetorical maneuver in the same way that countries that use “Democratic” or “People’s Republic” in their names. Using the words “liberty” or “freedom” implies the sacred and wholesome attributes of Patriotism, motherhood and apple pie. Their utopian vision necessarily leads to the demolition of our present liberal democratic society. Neoliberalism is the road to oligarchy.

“Neoliberalism advocates a deregulated, capitalist, globalist market economy, reifies individual greed, and markets a watered-down version of Austrian economics to left-liberals. This ideology manifests as a hybrid between right-and-left liberalism, where the social ideals of left-liberals (particularly, social equality) is attacked via economics and a worldview which views people as only making choices for themselves.”

Source: Rationalwiki.org.

“Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political philosophy that operates under a representative democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, universal suffrage, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people.” 

Source: Wikipedia.

Obviously, there is overlap between the two definitions above. Both neoliberals and democratic liberals can be unquestionably patriotic. Where they differ is in their respective overall theories of civilization. As a baby boomer, I watched the funeral of JFK, the Viet Nam War, the Chicago riots, the killings at Kent State, the deceitful Nixon years, all of the moon landings, and everything else to the present day. During this time, semiconductors went from discrete devices to integrated circuits and medicine has advanced to applied biochemistry. All of the sciences have taken advantage of improving technology and have advanced at incredible speed and the unit cost of advanced technology continues to drop. Of course there were bad times, but there were a great many good times as well. The overall result was a good standard of living for most people and freedom from most of the dread diseases of the past. Life spans have increased, an explosion of consumer goods & services providing employment and items making our lives more convenient.

According to the Pew Research Center, 44 % of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that the US is giving too much aid to Ukraine. Not only that, but many Republicans are, if not outright admirers of Putin, view him more favorably than Biden, Harris, or Pelosi according to the Economist–YouGov poll of January, 2022. Liz Cheney refers to these people as the “Putin wing of the GOP.” In particular they admire his opposition to NATO, Western liberalism and LGBTQ+ rights. Is this because these Republicans have made a scholarly study of Putin against the backdrop of history and have concluded that he is worthy of their admiration over and above our democratic principles? Or are they parroting some sense of admiration drifting down from the GOP leadership? Decide for yourself.

Fascist, authoritarian leaders throughout history have always drawn the admiration of some fraction of a population. The 20th century alone had many standout examples and the trend continues to this very day. These leaders have convinced millions of people to ignore their own best interests and civil rights to support a cause that may have sounded exciting at a rally but led only to eventual oppression.

The Deep State

It appears that there really is a deep state in the US. It is the dark web of supporters, fund aggregators, lobbyists and fundraisers for the new ultra-conservative Republican party. These people wish to take us in the direction of more authoritarian and White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) governance by gradually normalizing it. It’s like boiling the frog. This is not a Hollywood movie: the good guys could easily lose in the end. Once established, authoritarian regimes tend to last a long time, or at least, to the death of the tyrant. But sometimes the death of the tyrant only leads to continuation by another tyrant.

Trump and his ilk are succeeding in the normalization of regressive policy. Government-hating neoliberals and libertarians like Charles Koch and many others have been funding a movement for the demolition of most of the federal government in favor of a capitalist market-driven neoliberal Shangri-La. Remember when libertarian Grover Norquist said “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub?” Libertarians and neoliberals aren’t anarchists, they just want the people with money and property to have the major input. Naturally, there is sympathy for this from many resource-heavy people.

Power has been defined as the ability to allocate resources. US national and global power is currently guided by taxpayer funded government. Both the private and public sectors add up to American hegemony. American business trends to increasing consolidation and is dominated by companies with the largest share of the resources. The natural end-state is monopoly. Business leaders piously repeat their appreciation of competition when, in reality, they are always trying to defeat the competition for market dominance. They will claim that market dominance is the ultimate result of achieving their fiduciary responsibilities- maximizing profit for the stockholders.

Boiling it down, libertarians and neoliberals want to abolish much of the state and federal government and focus on some kind of self-regulating market-based system. US economists always say that the market provides the most efficient use of capital. A market-based America will inevitably lead to a monopolistic corporate-based America. This is a system of economics, not governance. A plutocracy does not benefit the majority of us.

American corporations are not democratic in nature and make no pretense of it. They are autocracies ultimately answerable to the stockholders through a CEO and board of directors. State and federal government holds them answerable for adherence to the laws of the land. If there are a large number of burdensome regulations applying to the conduct of business, it is because sometime in the past, some individual or company has committed a harmful act leading to regulatory control. Regulations often stem from the dark side of past human behavior.

Back to Ukraine

Circling back, how does this talk of American politics relate to Ukraine? The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Chinese threats over Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region represent a period when major autocracies are pushing their boundaries. Russia is only held back because of NATO and other Western countries. China is held back because of its economic dependence on exports to Western nations who, surprisingly, will band together against them if threatened. I’m sure that they have also noticed that an otherwise simple military action of rolling tanks and troops into a “passive” territory like Ukraine can turn sideways rapidly. If anything, Putin has accomplished the opposite of his strategic goal of splitting up the members of NATO. It is critical now that US politics NOT cause us to abandon world affairs which is where Trump was leading us. The reelection of Trump would be an epic disaster for the free world and democracy.

A United States that tolerates the aggression of Russia or China is a country that cedes its global influence to them. Despite having lots of ugly history and a long list of regrettable decisions, the US remains a place that people want to immigrate to. You don’t hear about boatloads of immigrants attempting to get into Russia. If the US leaves a global leadership vacuum, guess who will jump in to take its place? Another liberal democracy? Seems unlikely.

Americans should remember that in the bathwater of US history there is a baby that needs to be cared for and not thoughtlessly discarded.

The West Cannot Slide Into Isolationism

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Along with the fact that #45 is running for president again is the sickening prospect of two more years of news coverage of his orange face spewing streams of lies, exaggerations and deflections. Broadcasters and news providers in all media can’t resist the bloviating #45 because he attracts admiring eyeballs and those enchanted by the freakish spectacle of human idiocy at its worst.

As bad as the prospect of #45 returning to the White House is the reality check that a large block of the voting public will vote for him again. After 6 years of shameful behavior and nauseating political drama, it is quite clear that most in the MAGA crowd are not put off by his behavior.

A vote for #45 the isolationist is a vote for instability in Europe. Czar Putin will see to it that recovery of former Soviet states will happen. The US cannot be isolationist as Russia executes its land grab. At this period in history, western isolationism by passive acceptance of Russian expansionism is a one-way ticket to Russian authoritarian hegemony. This is an end state that we in the west should be able to agree on.

The world has learned that Russia’s conventional land forces are not so formidable. This is the unexpected downside of the invasion for Putin. However, Russia has always considered that the use of nuclear weapons is part of a continuum rather that preceded by a firebreak as with the west. The Russian talking heads have been keen to remind us of the power of their nuclear triad. Little mention is made of the US nuclear triad that more than matches it. The presence of nuclear sea launched ballistic missile submarines on both sides alone renders a nuclear conflict as suicide for both sides.

Americans should go to YouTube and find translated video of Russian talking heads spewing the most vile hate speech you can imagine at the Ukrainians and western powers. Polish public television TVP is a good place to start. Many Russian talking heads are speaking in favor of an all out war with the west, including nuclear weapons. Many claim that WWIII has already begun. We have been reduced to non-human beasts deserving of painful death for daring to push back Russian efforts to expand their great empire. Some figures claim that the west is after their oil & gas resources.

The reason I suggest viewing this content is to understand the constant high intensity of their internal propaganda. While there is some open criticism of the military, criticism of Putin himself is religiously avoided. Many say that Putin is surrounded by incompetent people. This is the information environment that the Russian people are subject to on a daily basis. It is difficult to believe that Russian citizens will rise up to overthrow the Putin regime through some kind of a democratic effort. More likely someone around Putin will take over with his blessing.

Russian propaganda is not some side specialty that issues from an office somewhere in Moscow. It is built into the whole governing apparatus and supervised by the GRU. Russia is very effective at not only generating fake news, but also mass confusion about what is happening. A Russian propaganda campaign is actually a layer cake of misdirection through a series of changing stories. People become confused about what is happening and are likely to lose focus.

Here is an interesting link to propaganda.