It was another bad week for Ukraine and the Western nations seeking to aid it in its fight against the nearly two-year war of conquest Vladimir Putin is waging against it.
Biden needs to compromise on border security to get the financial and military aid we need to send to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington to try to break the deadlock between President Biden and Republicans in the House and Senate who want to block more aid to Ukraine. Zelensky went home almost empty-handed, having received only another $200 million in U.S. military supplies that Biden agreed to send. He apparently can send “drawdowns” in U.S. military supplies without congressional approval. He did so, again, draining our own arsenals of munitions we would need for any fights, such as Taiwan, in which we could soon be engaged. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Foreseeable Consequences)
None of Biden’s actions will break the stalemate that the Russian war on Ukraine has devolved to.
Biden is entirely responsible for the congressional blockage. He wants another $60 billion for Ukraine, but Ukraine can probably do with less. All Biden needs to do is agree to the enactment of real border security measures demanded by the Republicans. That is, to him, out of the question.
Some Republicans have said that the money could better be spent here, which begs the question of Biden’s priorities. We can and must help Ukraine, but Biden is spending too much on too many other things, such as “climate change” that will only damage our economy. Spending cuts must be made but House Republicans cannot bring them about by themselves.
It’s never been clear why so many Republicans are opposed to aid for Ukraine. Have too many Republicans given in to the isolationist strain in U.S. politics? Or do they want Putin to win his war?
The European Union also denied more Ukraine financial aid. The EU, on the objections of Hungary, blocked a €50 billion package for Ukraine despite its earlier promises.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally among the EU nations, not only blocked the aid package but also promised to block Ukraine’s application for EU membership. Orban is the only EU leader to have met with Putin this year.
Orban and Zelensky have a personal animosity to each other. We can only guess at the reason for it. Orban has been quoted by Russian state television as saying, “Hungary never wanted to confront Russia. Hungary always has been eager to expand contacts.” He has apparently forgotten Hungary’s decades of slavery under the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Putin gave some of his reasons for the war in Ukraine, answering questions in his annual marathon press conference in which all Russians and international press are supposedly able to ask questions.
Putin said, “There will be peace when we achieve our goals. As for the goals, they are unchanged.” He defined those goals as the “denazification, demilitarization of Ukraine, and its neutral status.”
Putin said in 2005 that, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. For the Russian people, it became a real drama. Tens of millions of our citizens and countrymen found themselves outside Russian territory. The epidemic of disintegration also spread to Russia itself.”
Since then, Putin has been trying to revive the old Soviet empire. To understand him, it is necessary to understand the mind of Alexander Dugin, Putin’s primary ideological influence. Dugin, who is still alive and probably speaking with Putin, wrote his seminal book, Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997. It is not an understatement to say that Dugin’s book is a template for Putin’s thinking.
In Foundations, Dugin wrote of a “New Empire” dominated by “Eurasians,” i.e., Russians.
Dugin wrote, “The New Empire, the construction of which would be a global response, is the planetary civilizational mission of the Russian people … This New Empire, the Eurasian Empire, will have completely differentiated structures within which consisting of separate parts of varying degrees of interdependence and integration.” He wrote that the New Empire will not be the Russian empire or the Soviet empire but something greater. (READ MORE: Ukraine Is Stalemated Again)
According to Dugin, “Greater Russia, for example, can be considered like a separate people or even ‘country’ within the framework of the Russian Empire together with Ukrainians, Belorussians, (sic) possibly the Serbs, and so on.’” Dugin, who can be accurately characterized as neo-fascist and anti-Semitic, believes in the Slavic peoples’ superiority.
But despite U.S. and other nations’ sanctions, the Russian economy shows no signs of slowing down.
On Ukraine he wrote in Foundations that, “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness … Its certain territorial ambitions represent an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.”
In other words, Ukraine is the foundation stone of any new Russian empire and without it, Putin may as well not bother with the rest. Hence, Putin’s intense desire to conquer Ukraine.
In his Thursday remarks, Putin said that Russia had over six hundred thousand troops fighting in Ukraine. That’s probably an exaggeration. He added that it meant a further mobilization of troops would be unnecessary, in a sop to Russians who are fleeing the country to avoid conscription.
According to a Wall Street Journal report 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the invasion began in 2022, which amounts to about 87 percent of the pre-invasion Russian force. Ukrainian casualties, according to U.S. estimates, are about seventy thousand killed. That number is dwarfed by the number of civilians killed in Ukraine which is over 130,000.
Putin has shifted the Russian economy to a wartime status, lessening the production of civilian goods. But despite U.S. and other nations’ sanctions, the Russian economy shows no signs of slowing down.
Ukraine’s economy has slowed greatly. Russia is concentrating its missile and drone attacks on civilian populations and industrial facilities. Ukraine’s population, at about 37 million, is not comparable to Russia’s more than 147 million. That means Putin can continue to feed troops into his war of attrition. Ukraine cannot. (READ MORE: Wars Raise Two More Critical Issues)
Putin won’t end his war on Ukraine. Even if there is a U.S. and EU-forced cease fire, Putin is sure to use it to rearm and re-equip his forces. We cannot leave Ukraine to Putin’s conquest.
Biden needs to compromise on border security to get the financial and military aid we need to send to Ukraine. Unless he does, Putin will win.