WWIII Watch: NY Times Says Biden’s Ukraine Trip An “Increasingly Direct Contest With Putin”

Remember the salad days of there being no new wars, no serious conflicts? Other than some slaps at Iran (and taking out a general who kills US military members), Trump was trying to calm things down. His admin did great work in trying to end conflict between Israel and many Middle East nations. He had a plan to get out of Afghanistan, which Biden completely messed up. Now, Biden is trying to pull us into WWIII (non-paywalled version here)

In Biden’s Unannounced Visit to Kyiv, a Preview of an Increasingly Direct Contest With Putin

President Joe Biden’s sudden appearance in Kyiv’s presidential palace Monday morning was intended first as a morale booster for shellshocked Ukrainians in the midst of a bleak winter of power outages and a bitter war of attrition.

But it was also the first of several direct challenges on this trip to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who a year ago this week believed the Ukrainian capital would become Russian-controlled territory again in a matter of days, moving Putin closer to his ambition of restoring the empire of Peter the Great.

Yes, yes, let’s poke the Bear. How far does Biden intend to go?

“Putin’s war of conquest is failing,” Biden declared from the palace, his very presence there, alongside President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meant to symbolize Russia’s failure to take a capital that today remains brimming with life, its restaurants overflowing even as warning sirens blare.

“One year later,” he said, “Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”

The war in Ukraine is about power and the principle of territorial sovereignty, and whether the Western-designed global order that Americans thought would prevail for decades will, in fact, survive new challenges from Moscow and Beijing. But it is increasingly a contest between two aging Cold Warriors, one 70 years old and another who just turned 80, who have been circling each other for years and now are engaged in everything short of direct battle.

Putin took Crimea while Biden was Veep under Obama, and, it was easy, all they saw was some sanctions which did not last, and still have it. He figured Ukraine would be easy. It hasn’t been, but, Russia is still fighting, and Ukraine wouldn’t without money and weapons from the US and EU nations.

Biden was in Kyiv on Monday for less than six hours before the Secret Service whisked him out of the city. (Notably, the White House informed the Kremlin of Biden’s impending visit before the president arrived, not as a diplomatic courtesy but for what Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called “deconfliction purposes” — essentially, to avoid a Russian strike, accidental or otherwise. Sullivan added, “I won’t get into how they responded.”)

It’s not enough that we have to send billions upon billions of tax dollars to Ukraine, but we have to suffer the indignity of staged air raid sires and photo ops to make Biden look tough/cool. https://t.co/WG7BGLhQif

— Anthony Abides (@AnthonyAbides) February 20, 2023

So, totally staged. An attempt to make Biden look tough, as he works slowly towards WWIII.

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