Russian Ukraine invasion is Europe’s 9-11

Editor’s Introduction: Ray Kreig, right, an Alaskan prominent in that state’s conservative circles and also the older brother of the undersigned editor of the Justice Integrity Project, seeks in this guest essay to persuade readers in the column below to support strongly Ukraine’s defensive war against Russian invaders.  Must Read Alaska and Alaska Watchman, two conservative Alaska-based publications, first published the column. The author, a consulting engineer and civic activist, was in the Soviet Union during the Soviet coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev in August, 1991.

An appendix includes recent news excerpted as part of a daily feature on the Justice Integrity Project’s news section.  Shown below at left is one of the world’s iconic recent images, which portrays the reaction of Ukraine’s president to suggestions from afar last February that he should flee the Russian invasion to try to establish a government-in-exile. This editor plans to meet with several Ukrainian officials visiting the United States this coming week to discuss the current situation there and efforts to rally further U.S. support for Ukraine.

– Andrew Kreig / Justice Integrity Project Editor

Russian Ukraine invasion is Europe’s 9-11

Conservatives must not excuse what Putin has unleashed on Ukraine

By Ray Kreig

Recently propagated by Republican members of the Alaska Legislature are two narratives about which they should know better:

• First, that George Soros (Open Society Foundations) helped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy become president of Ukraine through massive propaganda campaign and he now backs the puppet regime he installed.

• Second, that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy [shown below at left] is tied to Klaus Schwab (World Economic Forum), Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and other global elites.

According to the theory, the enemy (Russian President Vladimir Putin) of my enemy (Soros) is my friend. Therefore, apparently, there should be a hesitation to support Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s resistance of the Russian invasion at this pivotal point in history.

Conservatives are justified for crucifying President Joe Biden for his weakness inviting the invasion itself while he continues to pander to green energy as prices skyrocket. Outrage is also warranted as Biden demands defense of Ukraine’s borders while he opens our own to massive illegal immigration. His son Hunter Biden’s sleaze with his suspicious Ukrainian gas company Burisma “no-show job” also is a justifiable cause for outrage.

But in pounding away on these points, things go off the rails when the rhetoric turns to, “There is no U.S. interest in Ukraine,” “Ukraine is a corrupt, undemocratic failed state,” concepts espoused by Fox News and Tucker Carlson. 

That is wrong. The U.S. has an essential national interest in a Russia that stands down from authoritarianism, becomes a functioning democracy and reduced military threat.  We would save trillions of dollars and live in a better world. The future of Ukraine is critical to that much larger objective.

Some opine that the West, and America in particular, is responsible for this invasion because the continued expansion of the NATO military alliance eastward to Russia’s borders threatens Russian national security.  Is Ukraine then doomed to remain in a Russian sphere of influence as some sort of vassal state to Moscow, notwithstanding the desires of Ukrainians themselves to look to the West, the EU for their integration into a free market and democracy?  It’s completely understandable that, feeling threatened by Russia, Ukraine would want to be a part of the NATO defense alliance.

Yes, Russia and Putin have been consistent for over two decades in saying NATO and Ukraine pose an unacceptable threat to Russia and regional security. They use the missiles in Cuba analogy. Maybe the West did push NATO too hard and too far East to the borders of Russia, but these expansions were popular and were wanted by the people in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.  

Maybe this invasion was avoidable with better, more adroit diplomacy that sought to probe the limits of Russia’s security concerns while not conceding our own principles. Maybe Russia President Putin and his proud countryman in mourning for the loss of the Soviet Empire should not have been insulted and embarrassed by a triumphant West after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

By no means does any of this excuse what Putin has unleashed. Thousands of innocent people have perished.  All thinking and feeling people around the world are shocked and disgusted by the devastation and carnage being unleashed on that poor country. The sight of rows of apartment buildings, cars, factories, hospitals, schools, bridges, and public buildings being rocketed and bombed is disgusting and unacceptable for all civilized people. 

Continued below

 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv this spring. “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times).

NATO On Russia’s Borders

Regarding NATO on Russia’s borders: Just as frightening to Putin and Russia’s Kremlin powerful elite is the tug and attraction of the West for Ukraine’s 50 million people.

Since the shock of losing Crimea and the Donbas to Russian occupation in 2014, Ukraine has been decisively turning away from Russia. Culturally both the Ukrainian speaking areas in Western Ukraine and the Russian speaking areas in Eastern Ukraine are reorienting from Moscow to the West — the European Union, the United Kingdom, and America. Russian speaking Ukrainians are so disgusted with Putin that they are even making the choice to reduce speaking their native language (as illustrated below) and switching to Ukrainian.

Russia feels the pain of losing its totalitarian empire and witnessing the success of its former vassals in building democratic and free societies. Putin sees the existential threat building in a thriving Ukraine — the size of Texas with 50 million people — that is increasingly bonded with the West. He will lose all 144 million people in the Russian Federation as they become aware of how much better off Ukrainians are becoming. There are close and intimate ties between Ukrainians across Russia, from St. Petersburg to Magadan; these include family, friends, and business partners. It will not be possible to keep Ukrainian successes from them, so Putin instead is destroying Ukraine and slaughtering thousands.

As for President Zelenskyy being elected in 2019 with help from George Soros, left, that election is generally considered to have been a free and fair election. Soros’ help may or may not have been significant. Even if it was, everything is changed after the living hell of the Russian invasion. 

Zelenskyy has rallied his people to fight tyranny to the death like no one since Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle in the darkest days of World War II.

After the Russians are defeated, Zelenskyy can be expected to pivot away from any Soros and global elite forces that are incompatible with values now etched into the souls of Ukrainians.

Example: Ukraine’s Parliament granted its citizens the right to bear arms—hours before Putin’s invasion. By now, we are seeing that their citizens slinging Kalashnikovs and AR-15’s are on their way to victory assisting the Ukrainian defense forces. Those citizens are not going to give these guns up and this is a lesson to the world. The Second Amendment means weapons like these. Soros and the one-worlders are not going to make any headway against this. Certainly not with President Zelenskyy.

As for strange bedfellows in war: Remember that in World War II, the West had to ally with mass murderer Joseph Stalin, right, in order to defeat the common enemy, Hitler. Right here in Alaska, 8,000 U.S. planes were turned over to Soviet pilots who flew them on across Siberia as part of Lend-Lease Program. You do what you have to — to survive and win — and then later oppose your allies, if necessary, after the common foe is defeated.

Ukrainians are fighting the greatest battle for liberty the world has seen this century – maybe since World War II. Remember these names:  Irpin, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol, Hostomel, Kherson, Melitopol.

The courage of the Ukrainians (citizens and military) already has ensured that they will go down in history as famous battles for liberty — battles such as Normandy, Iwo Jima, the Alamo, and Yorktown. Ukraine is the front line of freedom in the world today.

We may not be in a “World War” yet.  For now, it is one big bully invading a smaller neighbor. However, if Putin is allowed to take independent Ukraine after the abomination and war crimes he has vested on the world, an emboldened China can be expected to invade Taiwan. Then you do have an axis of Russia, China (and others) against the free world — World War III. 

Finally, Ukrainian heroism and Russian miscalculations appear likely to result in failure of Putin’s reckless invasion and the end of his rule.  

The media will then help Biden and the Democrats claim credit for defeating Vladimir Putin.

Conservatives who are soft on Zelenskyy and Putin need to get smart, pay attention, and grab this liberty narrative away from the Democrats.  At least make sure you are on the stage and not a useful idiot for this new Hitler — Putin. Don’t be on the wrong side of history — it will give President Biden and the Democrats cover to evade their responsibility for the disasters they have brought down on America, Alaska, and the world.

Ray Kreig, right, is an Anchorage civil engineer and is the former president of Chugach Electric, the state’s largest utility company, serving the Anchorage region.  His Russian experience includes extensive Siberian terrain assessment, pipeline routing, and infrastructure evaluation.  Kreig was in the capital of Anadyr, Chukotka Province (adjoining Alaska, west of Nome), during the August, 1991 Soviet coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev. He helped the deputy mayor with non-combat tasks opposing the coup. In 1994, Kreig briefed then-Vice President Al Gore at the White House on the Russian Komi Oil Spill and was appointed to be his representative for the on-site United Nations field investigation mission there.

Contact the editor Andrew Kreig

  Justice Integrity Project Ukraine News Briefs

By calling up a reported 300,000 conscripts and reservists to fight, President Vladimir Putin of Russia acknowledged the growing resistance of a unified Ukraine in a televised address on Sept. 21, 2022 (Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov via New York Times).

Dec. 4

Washington Post, After Kherson, Ukraine’s military ponders new push south and east, Samantha Schmidt and Serhii Korolchuk, Dec. 4, 2022 (print ed.). A logical step for Ukraine would be to press south through the Zaporizhzhia region and sever the “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea.

The path to a Ukrainian victory — or at least the most obvious path — will probably cut south, through the muddy and flat fields of the Zaporizhzhia region.

Following Russia’s retreat from the city of Kherson — the only regional capital captured by Moscow since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion — Ukrainian forces have limited options for their next big push to continue recapturing occupied territory and, ultimately, to expel the invaders.

Much attention is now shifting here, to the southern front line less than 100 miles north of the Azov Sea, where Ukrainians are eager to sever the “land bridge” connecting mainland Russia to Crimea, which Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2014. Kyiv is also intent on liberating cities such as Melitopol and Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located.

New York Times, In Forests Full of Mines, Ukrainians Find Mushrooms and Resilience, Maria Varenikova, Photographs by Brendan Hoffman, Dec. 4, 2022. These misty and damp parts of the country have long beckoned to mushroom hunters, but now peril, too, lies beneath the surface.

Weighing the risk of mines and the allure of their quarry, thousands of Ukrainians in the first mushroom season since the Russian invasion hunted for mushrooms.

Now, they are in the post-picking phase of the season, tallying their spoils and setting out to preserve them for the hard winter ahead. The risk may seem extreme for what was so long seen as a pastoral pastime, but Ukrainian mushroom hunters view it differently. They are passionate about their tranquil walks in the forest, and see in them a sign of Ukraine’s resilience and a way to preserve ordinary life during wartime.

New York Times, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the $60-a-barrel price cap set on Russian oil was too high, Matt Stevens, Dec. 4, 2022 (print ed.). Ukraine’s president criticized the $60-a-barrel limit set by the Group of 7 nations, suggesting that the architects of the plan were “trying to avoid big decisions.”

Update from Ukraine, Analysis: The are signs of the upcoming Big Ulrainian Counterattack towards Crimea, Denys Davydov, Dec. 4, 2022 (13:31 min. video report).

New York Times, He Returned a Dazed Soldier to the Russians. Ukraine Calls It Treason, Jeffrey Gettleman, Photographs by Finbarr O’Reilly, Dec. 4, 2022 (print ed.). No one knew what to do with a lost Russian pilot. The case has revealed the blurred line between pragmatism in a war zone and collaboration with the enemy.

A team of guards had encountered someone stumbling toward a checkpoint in a strange green uniform, slathered in mud, looking shellshocked. He wasn’t a looter. He was a lost Russian pilot.

It was a highly unusual prisoner of war situation — a band of civilians capturing an enemy officer in a city that the enemy controls. They couldn’t hand him over to Ukrainian forces — there were no Ukrainian forces in the city at that time. And there was no Red Cross. And the Russians were everywhere.

Dec. 3

Washington Post, Russia and Ukraine are fighting the first full-scale drone war, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Mary Ilyushina and Kostiantyn Khudov, Dec. 3, 2022 (print ed.). The fight set off by a land grab befitting an 18th-century emperor has transformed into a digital-age competition for technological superiority in the skies.

A war that began with Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine’s borders, World War I-style trenches carved into the earth and Soviet-made artillery pounding the landscape now has a more modern dimension: soldiers observing the battlefield on a small satellite-linked monitor while their palm-size drone hovers out of sight.

Washington Post, Western allies move to cap the price of Russian oil at $60 a barrel, Emily Rauhala, Catherine Belton, Karen DeYoung and Beatriz Ríos, Dec. 3, 2022 (print ed.). After months of lobbying by the United States and days of fraught negotiations, Ukraine’s allies are closer to implementing a plan to cap the price of Russian oil starting next week, but European ambassadors on Friday proposed a cap so close to current prices that it is not clear if it will hit the Kremlin’s war chest.

At meetings in Brussels, diplomats agreed to $60 per barrel as an upper limit, with regular reviews to make sure the ceiling stays at least 5 percent below average market prices for Russian oil. If the Group of Seven nations and Australia agree, the cap would be implemented starting Monday, the day the European Union’s embargo on Russian seaborne crude goes into force.

The idea of the cap, pitched hard by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, right, is to limit how much Russia can make on the oil it diverts elsewhere in the world without creating a massive disruption in global supply. Participating countries would ban the provision of maritime services — such as finance and insurance — for shippers transporting Russian oil that do not comply with the cap.

Washington Post, Germany’s Scholz speaks with Putin; Ukrainian embassies in Europe mailed bloody animal eyes; Up to 13,000 Ukrainian troops killed, aide says; Biden outlines conditions for Putin meeting, Andrew Jeong, Ben Brasch, Adela Suliman and Claire Parker, Dec. 3, 2022 (print ed.).

The Kremlin responded to President Biden’s comment that he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin if Moscow was willing to end the invasion, saying that Russia would not give up the Ukrainian territory it has declared to be Russian land. “The special military operation is continuing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday.

Peskov, right, added that while Putin remains open to negotiations, the United States’ refusal to recognize territories annexed by Russia “complicates the search for the ground for mutual discussion.”

Putin told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a phone call Friday that “Western states, including Germany” were to blame for Kyiv’s refusal to negotiate with Russia, charging that they are “pumping up the Kyiv regime with weapons and training the Ukrainian military,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call. At a meeting Thursday in Washington, Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron affirmed their support for Ukraine and rejected Russia’s illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory.

Dec. 1

President Biden told reporters he hosted President Emmanuel Macron of France for his first state dinner as president on Dec. 1 “because he’s my friend.” (New York Times Photo by Doug Mills).

New York Times, Biden Says He Is Willing to Talk to Putin About Ukraine, With Conditions, Roger Cohen and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Dec. 1, 2022. During a state visit by President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Biden said he would talk to President Vladimir Putin if he showed he would end the war.

Standing beside the French leader who has championed the need for dialogue with Moscow, President Biden said he would talk to President Vladimir V. Putin, but only in consultation with NATO allies and only if the Russian leader indicated he was “looking for a way to end the war.”

Mr. Biden’s public expression of conditioned willingness to reach out to Mr. Putin gratified French officials and provided unexpected support for President Emmanuel Macron’s outreach. Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Putin had shown no interest yet in ending his invasion, but said that if that changed, “I’ll be happy to sit down with Putin to see what he has in mind.”

Evidently determined to present a united front during a White House news conference that at times resembled a love fest, Mr. Macron said that France would increase its military support for Ukraine and “will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.”

In effect, the two leaders met each other halfway, with Mr. Biden showing more openness to a negotiated settlement and Mr. Macron more unequivocal support for the Ukrainian cause. If partially choreographed, the meeting of minds appeared to exceed expectations on both sides.

New York Times, Lavrov says Ukraine’s energy system is a legitimate target, Ivan Nechepurenko, Dec. 1, 2022. Russia’s foreign minister defended the strikes on Ukraine’s energy system. The U.N. has said they could amount to war crimes.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, right, on Thursday defended Moscow’s mass missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, calling it a legitimate military target, despite warnings by the United Nations that the strikes could amount to war crimes.

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Mr. Lavrov (shown at right in a file photo) said that the repeated strikes against Ukraine’s infrastructure — which have knocked out electricity and water for millions of people as winter looms — were justified because Russia is hitting targets that are used to replenish Ukrainian forces with weapons provided by Western nations.

New York Times, Ukraine Live Updates: U.N. Asks for Record Amount of Aid to Deal With Growing Disasters and War, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 1, 2022. The appeal is aimed at tackling what the U.N. called “the largest global food crisis in modern history,” fueled in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The United Nations launched a record-breaking appeal to international donors on Thursday asking for $51.5 billion to tackle spiraling levels of desperation, fueled in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

New York Times, President Zelensky of Ukraine rebukes Elon Musk’s peace proposal, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Dec. 1, 2022 (print ed.). Speaking at the DealBook summit, the Ukrainian leader (shown above in a file photo) said the billionaire would do well to fully understand the situation before making pronouncements about it.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Wednesday invited Elon Musk to visit Ukraine to see the damage done to the country by Russian forces, saying that such a visit could help the billionaire understand the situation before making pronouncements about it. He also said he didn’t think there was any immediate threat that Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, would use nuclear weapons as the war enters a new phase of winter combat.

Mr. Zelensky’s comments, made via video link to The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, were an implicit rebuke of Mr. Musk, the entrepreneur who last month proposed a peace plan for Ukraine that included ceding territory to Russia.

Nov. 30

New York Times, Russian Retreat Reveals Signs of an Atrocity in a Ukrainian Village, Jeffrey Gettleman, Photographs by Finbarr O’Reilly, Nov. 30, 2022 (print ed.). In the southern Kherson region, the pattern seen in eastern Ukraine is repeating: Russia’s withdrawal yields evidence of possible war crimes.

First came small pieces of bone. Then a pair of arms tied at the wrists with rope.

And then the shovel unearthed a skull with a bullet hole, mouth cracked open, teeth covered in thick, black mud.

Even though scenes like this have been repeated across Ukraine wherever the Russians have retreated, the clump of villagers and police officers seemed stunned on Monday as they stood at the lip of a common grave in Pravdyne, a village near the city of Kherson.

A cold rain pelted their backs but they didn’t move as the grave was exhumed. None of the villagers even knew the last names of the six men who had been killed, execution-style, and then buried here, but that didn’t matter. “They were Ukrainians,” said Kostiantyn Podoliak, a prosecutor who had come to investigate.

And now their remains lay in a shallow grave because of it.

Kherson and the surrounding villages in southern Ukraine were liberated after eight brutal months of occupation, when the embattled Russian forces abruptly pulled out more than two weeks ago. Residents streamed into the streets, waving flags, hugging soldiers and clinking glasses of cognac.

But as days pass, that elation has given way to mounting evidence of atrocities, and the sobering reality of battered, barely livable communities from which most civilians fled months ago and may not return anytime soon. On their way out, the Russians blew up power stations, taking down electricity, running water, heat and phone service and casting residents back more than a century.

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/1965-russian-ukraine-invasion-is-europe-s-9-11