Insurgency?

It’s almost two weeks now since Putin launched this brain-damaged regime change war. I’ve tried a couple of times to sit down and write something and put my thoughts in order. But every time, my mind has wandered and my fingers began twitching to flick the screen to the latest on my Telegram and Twitter feeds. Just too many things happening all at once — all of them tangled up together and happening in real time and affecting my own family and friends. Talking about about it has been a bit easier. So I’m glad Evgenia and I have been able to hash some things out…

One thing’s clear. The quick victory that Putin and his generals and advisors envisioned has not materialized. Ukrainians didn’t just surrender at the first sight of Russian armor, nor are they warmly embracing their “liberators” with flowers and bread. And why would they? Who the hell would support someone coming in with tanks and missiles into the heart of your city, killing people and sending hundreds of thousands fleeing? It’s one thing to project influence slowly through soft power and proxies, like America has been doing in Ukraine. It’s another thing to roll in tanks and bomb targets in civilian areas and loudly proclaim that you’re gonna change the government by force, or else everyone’s gonna pay. What the hell did these idiots expect?

From my understanding, it was the Ukrainian military’s bombardment of cities in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 — “bombing our own people to save them” — that turned a lot of people there against the new government in Kiev. That one at least could be a called civil war in which rival outside powers backed different sides. What Russia is doing is a straight up military invasion of their own neighbor.

So the war’s gonna grind on. For how long? Who knows. But the Ukrainian side doesn’t look like it’s ready to fold, and already Russian hits on civilian areas are increasing. So the war is gonna get more brutal and will likely drag on. Even if the Russian government wins, it’ll be saddled with a pissed-off, battered population. There’s gonna be a lot more poverty going around, too. And a lot more anger than ever before, and a sea of weapons. Russia’s gonna have to rule this populace with a heavy hand — a police state that’ll be mirrored in Russia’s own domestic politics, which are already getting more brutal by the day.

So what I’m saying is: even if Putin wins, it’s very likely that Russia’s gonna have to deal with some kind of insurgency. It’s pretty obvious, and I’m not the first person to say it. According to recent reporting by Bezos’ Washington Post, U.S. and European officials are already making plans for it. In fact, I bet those plans have already been there for a long time. After all, making Ukraine the territory where America battles Russia is not a new idea for America’s foreign policy establishment, nor is it particularly secret.