General

Is There a Peace Deal Putin and Zelensky Can Accept?

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If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?… Where would that leave the West?

In an interview with Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman for decades, made a startling offer. Moscow could end the Ukraine war immediately, said Peskov, if four conditions were met.

Ukraine should cease all military action, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, accept the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist enclaves, and enact a constitutional commitment to “neutrality,” which would prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO.

Were this to be done, said Peskov, the war “will stop in a moment.”

As this would restore the situation in Ukraine to the “status quo ante” that existed before Putin ordered the invasion, Peskov’s offer seemed not to be believable.

Yet, according to The New York Times, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “seemed surprisingly open to the idea.”

Zelensky “said he had ‘cooled down’ on joining NATO, saying it was clear the western alliance ‘is not prepared to accept Ukraine.’”

As for Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, said Zelensky, “We can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on.”

Monday, Ukraine and Russia held a fourth session of peace talks, and expressions of optimism were heard from both sides.

Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak volunteered that Russia is beginning to talk constructively. “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”

Yet, Russia’s strategic goals, manifest in its unfolding military action, seem to go far beyond the moderate demands of Peskov.

Three weeks into this war, what do Russia’s goals appear to be?

First, besiege and bring down the Kyiv government of Zelensky and replace it with a Russian client regime.

Second, divide Ukraine along the lines of the Dnieper River, which bisects the country north to south, and create an East Ukraine as a pro-Russian state.

Third, seize and occupy the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, turn it into a Russian lake, and capture all of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast from the Donbas to Mariupol, Crimea, Kherson, Odessa and Transnistria, the last a slice of seceded Moldovan land Moscow now controls.

This would leave a landlocked rump state of west Ukraine, which would be a buffer between NATO nations Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — and Russia-backed East Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Russia’s realization of these goals would be tantamount to victory in Putin’s war:

“A Ukraine divided in two, with Russia in control of the east, and a rump, Western Ukraine cut off from the coast might look like a victory to Mr. Putin — especially if sanctions are removed in some cease-fire agreement.”

With this kind of peace in hand, Putin could then warn the NATO nations that if they attacked East Ukraine directly, or indirectly by arming insurgents, they would face “consequences you have never seen.”

As no NATO nation risked war to save Georgia from Russia in 2008, or to save Ukraine from the Crimean and Donbas amputations of 2014, it is not likely NATO would risk war with Russia, and a potential third world war, if Russia declared a truce once it got full control of eastern Ukraine.

Where would that leave the West?

The Americans and British would likely treat Putin as a pariah and never meet with him again. But would President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany cut off all communication with Russia, when they have been making daily phone calls to Putin and regular visits to Moscow, even as Putin’s war of aggression was raging?

If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?

If Kyiv falls to a Russian strategy of encirclement and strangulation, capitulation and conquest, how long would it be before EU nations seek an end to Russia’s isolation and a new era of detente?

Or would the continued existence of a regime headed by Putin mean permanent hostility?

Three years after Nikita Khrushchev sent Soviet tanks into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Soviet premier was riding up Pennsylvania Avenue in an open convertible with Dwight Eisenhower to spend the night at Blair House before a 12-day tour as the guest of the president of the United States.

As of now, the winner of this Russia-Ukraine war appears to be China.

Given the severity of U.S. sanctions and the ostracism of Russia from the West, China is the only partner nation and economy to which Moscow can turn to recoup its losses.

If this war continues to unfold in a manner that is slow, painful and ugly, China and Russia are likely to establish far better relations with each other than either has with the United States.

But how is China, which is engaged in cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority of 10 million, a racial and ethnic persecution featuring reeducation camps, rapes, forced abortions and sterilizations, a morally superior regime to Putin’s?

How Solid Are US War Guarantees?

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In World War II, we Americans did not go to war with Germany for Great Britain, when it declared war on Hitler’s Germany and then was defeated in France. We went to war with Germany only when Hitler declared war on us, four days after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

When several NATO nations revealed that they had dozens of Russian-made MiG-29s, the idea arose to fly them to Ukraine and turn them over to Ukrainian pilots familiar with the MiGs.

America would provide F-16s to replace the MiGs.

Poland had an even better idea. Warsaw would fly its 27 MiG fighter jets to the U.S. Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. The planes would be turned over to the Americans there, repainted and flown to Ukraine.

How to get the MiGs to Ukraine’s pilots would be left to the Americans.

Now, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that a NATO “no-fly zone” over Ukraine would be an act of war, and NATO intervention could escalate to nuclear war, Warsaw’s proposal raised instant American alarms.

The Poles seemed, in the old cliche, to be putting the monkey on our back, having the Americans take the primary risk of defying a specific warning of Putin.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby splashed cold water all over the Poles’ idea:

The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.

According to The Washington Post, CIA Director William Burns was at the same time warning the House intelligence committee that Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling is of concern, because of Moscow’s military doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” during a regional conflict.

Russia, said Burns, will use tactical nuclear strikes “in extremis” if its forces fail to pacify Ukraine and the U.S. and NATO join the war.

Yet, the Poles’ MiG plan, now dead, is revealing for what it says about us.

First, while we support Kyiv in its just war, there are limits to that support. We are not going to risk war with Russia for the independence or territorial integrity, or even the continued existence, of Ukraine.

Second, as we are unwilling to send MiGs to Ukraine to stop the Russian bombing, lest that involve us in a war with Russia, what is there of sufficient value to us in Eastern Europe that we would actually declare war on Russia, a war that could horribly damage or destroy us both?

When the Russians hit a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky castigated the U.S. and NATO: “How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now!”

“Stop the killings!” Zelensky thundered: “You have power, but you seem to be losing humanity.”

Zelensky’s message to the U.S. and NATO, almost daily now, is: “Don’t be cowards. Man up. Do your duty. Close the skies over Ukraine, or send us the planes to do it ourselves.”

The U.S.-NATO reply: “We’re with you up to a point. But we are not risking our own security and survival, in what is not our war, for yours.”

Putin’s ambition, his goal, his dream, appear transparent — to bring home to the bosom of Mother Russia the diaspora Russians left behind in the lost 14 republics when the USSR splintered and came apart.

Those housing significant Russian minorities are Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Baltic republics of Latvia and Estonia.

Query: Would we really go to war with Russia if Russia invaded our NATO ally Estonia to bring home Russian peoples left behind at the end of the Cold War?

If Russia seeks to create a land corridor through Lithuania and Poland to its separated province of Kaliningrad on the Baltic, would we declare war on a nuclear-armed Russia to prevent it?

The Biden administration, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the lead, has said again and again these last two weeks that the U.S. will defend “every inch” of NATO territory.

Will we? What are we really willing to die for, and what should we be willing to fight for? For that means putting at risk the lives of millions of our people and the ruin of our country.

In World War II, we Americans did not go to war with Germany for Great Britain, when it declared war on Hitler’s Germany and then was defeated in France. We went to war with Germany only when Hitler declared war on us, four days after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

America’s media are full of reports of the new “unity” in NATO.

But one of the matters about which the Allies seem to be most united is that the Russia-Ukraine war is not ours to fight and we should prevent its spread to any of the 30 NATO nations.

On national media, one also hears enthusiasm for bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO.

But Finland is the size of Germany and has an 833-mile border with Russia, which would be NATO’s largest. Is it really credible that the U.S. would declare war or go to war with Russia to secure Finland’s border?

Do These Black Lives Matter to L.A.’s Idiot D.A.

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Do These Black Lives Matter to L.A.’s Idiot D.A.?

Hey, whatever happened to that story about Sandra Shells? She was the 70-year-old nurse killed by one of Los Angeles’ many “unhoused” individuals (drug-addicted psychopaths) while she waited for a bus at 5:15 in the morning in January, on her way to her job at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

A homeless guy, Kerry Bell, walked up to Shells and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground and fracturing her skull. She died of her injuries three days later.

Her life mattered more even than, say, George Floyd’s — and I can prove it.

1) Shells was a hardworking nurse, remembered as “kind, compassionate and giving” and a favorite of patients.

2) There is no evidence that she’d ever committed a home invasion robbery on a woman in Texas, pistol-whipped the woman and put a gun to her abdomen.

3) She was not a meth addict.

4) She did not have a long rap sheet, including selling cocaine, selling crack and theft.

5) She was merely standing at a bus stop — not, for example, resisting arrest after passing a counterfeit bill and having the police called on her.

But no one even knows her name, much less runs around erecting sacramental altars to her. To the contrary, news about this vicious assault on a kindly nurse was purged from all media outlets approximately 10 minutes after it happened. The police haven’t even released her assailant’s mug shot. Only after extensive searching online can you find the arrest report for Bell. “Race: B.”

It doesn’t matter to me, but it does to some of you, so I’ll mention that the victim’s race was also “B.”

If you can’t remember Shells’ name, then please remember this name: George Gascon, the district attorney entirely responsible for the explosion of murders, stabbings and smash-and-grab robberies in Los Angeles. So many, in fact, that the sickening murder of an elderly nurse isn’t considered especially newsworthy.

There’s an effort underway to recall Gascon — a George Soros-sponsored D.A. Coincidentally, there’s also an effort to recall San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, another George Soros-sponsored D.A. “George Soros-sponsored D.A.” is shorthand for “This man will empty the prisons of berserk savages to prey on you and your loved ones.”

Which happens to be the official policy of the Democratic Party. Pay no attention to the windbaggery of President Biden’s recent Oh My God, Midterms Are Coming speech — I mean, State of the Union address — where he said, “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police!” Has he met his vice president? Kamala Harris endorsed Gascon.

Gascon’s response to the bloodbath he’s unleashed on the City of Angels is to announce: “In many ways, we cannot prosecute our way out of social inequalities, income inequalities, the unhoused, the desperation that we have.”

What does the “in many ways” do in that sentence? I know English isn’t Gascon’s first language, but I can’t make heads or tails of the “in many ways.”

Nor, come to think of it, the rest of the sentence. Is it a prosecutor’s job to reduce “social” and “income” inequalities? How about inequalities in work ethic, mathematical skills, good looks, athletic ability, comedic talent and empathetic understanding?

While it’s nice that the Los Angeles D.A. has made the amazing discovery that people are different, if he thinks it’s his duty to make all people the same, he may have misunderstood the job description of a D.A.

As for Gascon’s apparent goal of eliminating “the desperation that we have,” the main cause of “desperation” among Los Angelinos right now is George Gascon. If he really wants to do something about “the desperation,” he should resign.

Gascon is either very, very stupid or thinks the public is stupid, and his incomprehensible verbiage will persuade them that the last thing he should be doing is prosecuting criminals.

How’s this for desperation? The fabulously wealthy Clarence and Jacqueline Avant, a legendary music producer and his ex-model wife, felt they had to hire a private security guard for their $7 million Beverly Hills home. Late last year, they’d also voted with their neighbors to hire guards to patrol their pricey Trousdale Estates neighborhood.

Days before the neighborhood patrol began, Aariel Maynor, a felon on parole despite a long list of priors (assault, robbery and grand theft) snuck past the Avants’ private guard at the front door, smashed a sliding glass door in the back, and burst in on the very much awake Mrs. Avant, a night owl, as her husband slept in their bedroom.

Maynor promptly blew her away with an AR-15 rifle. Hearing the gunfire, the private guard rushed in and Maynor shot at him, too, missing. He fled, but was captured about an hour later, after accidentally shooting himself in the foot while burglarizing a house seven miles away.

Mrs. Avant’s life mattered — even more than some other celebrated lives you may have heard of.

My proof:

1) She was the “pillar of that family,” as a friend put it.

2) She was a generous donor to local causes, such as the Neighbors of Watts and the South Central Community Child Care Center.

3) She was not a meth addict or violent ex-con who’d put a gun to a woman’s stomach, or passed a counterfeit bill in Minneapolis, then resisted arrest.

4) For my liberal readers: Mrs. Avant was an African-American.

But far from a national rending of garments, as we saw in tribute to Saint George, the response to Mrs. Avant’s murder was this: The D.A. promptly sent out a fundraising letter, making a heartfelt plea on behalf of armed criminals like the sociopath who killed her.

Gascon’s letter urged the passage of a law that would end sentence enhancements for crimes committed with a firearm. Such “sentence enhancements,” Gascon claimed, “have never been shown to reduce the rate of crime, and excessive sentence enhancements can actually drive up re-offense.”

Really? Can I see the study? Pro-crime zealots just make this crap up. Studies show that imprisoning criminals actually INCREASES crime.

It’s bad enough to have dangerous psychos out on the street, threatening our lives because there’s something wrong with their brains. The least we can expect is that they aren’t D.A.s.

COPYRIGHT 2022 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Is a Russia-NATO Clash Over Ukraine Ahead?

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Ukraine’s independence is not vital to the United States. While a desirable goal, it is not worth our fighting a war with Russia to preserve…. Indeed, had we given Putin assurances that NATO was closed to Kyiv, we might have prevented what has happened, because that was the first and most insistent of Putin’s demands.

When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians.

Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe.

While the Hungarians were heroic and inspirational, Hungary was neither a member of NATO nor a vital U.S. interest. Moreover, it was on the Soviet side of the Yalta line dividing Europe, and agreed to by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at Yalta in 1945.

For similar reasons today, President Joe Biden has refused to send U.S. troops, ships or planes to attack Russian forces invading Ukraine.

Though a nation of 44 million and almost as large as Texas, Ukraine is neither a vital U.S. interest nor a member of NATO.

However, were Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Estonia, whose population is 3% of Ukraine’s, America would be obligated to go to war with Russia.

Does this disparity make strategic sense?

Should not America have the same freedom of action to decide whether to fight for Estonia as we do to decide whether to fight for Ukraine? After all, Ukraine is far larger and more populous and strategic.

In 1948, President Harry Truman refused to use force to break Stalin’s Berlin Blockade. In 1956, Eisenhower refused to intervene to save Hungary. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy refused to use force to stop the building of the Berlin Wall.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson refused to intervene when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the pro-democracy “Prague Spring.”

Yet, today, America’s leaders do not have the same freedom not to act as did Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. We are obligated to act. Why?

Because, since the end of the Cold War, we have expanded the membership of NATO, and there are now 28 nations of Europe we are obligated to defend if they are attacked.

Ukraine is not one of them, but five of them that border Russia or Ukraine — Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia and Estonia — are currently providing Stinger or Javelin missiles to Ukraine to destroy Russian tanks, down Russian aircraft, and kill Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

If Putin retaliated against any of these countries for these arms transfers that are killing Russian soldiers, the U.S. would be obligated, under Article 5 of NATO, to fight Russia on behalf of these NATO nations.

Article 5 automatically conscripts the United States into a war with Russia, if Moscow retaliates against a NATO nation providing weapons to kill Russian soldiers.

Why have we willingly tied our own hands in this manner?

During 40 years of Cold War, America remained secure while East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were all under Moscow’s control.

These nations are all free today as a result of the West’s victory in the Cold War. But why do all these nations have war guarantees from the United States when none of them, as the Cold War demonstrated, is a vital interest of the USA?

Why, after the Cold War ended in 1991, did we agree to fight a war with Russia, including a nuclear war, on their behalf when 40 years of Cold War demonstrated they were not essential to our security?

Today, by our refusal to intervene militarily in Ukraine, to slow or halt this Russian invasion, we are sending a message to the world.

That message?

Ukraine’s independence is not vital to the United States. While a desirable goal, it is not worth our fighting a war with Russia to preserve.

Moreover, the independence of Ukraine is not worth the risk of using U.S. planes to establish a no-fly zone for Russian planes in the skies over Ukraine.

Indeed, had we given Putin assurances that NATO was closed to Kyiv, we might have prevented what has happened, because that was the first and most insistent of Putin’s demands.

The heroic rhetoric we are hearing from our political and media leaders aside, the real message sent to Ukraine by our own and NATO’s actions and inaction is this:

We will send you weapons, but we are not sending our troops, and we are not going to fight your war for you, or beside you, unless and until we decide that it is in our vital interest to do so.

Fortunately, we had not brought Ukraine into NATO, nor given Kyiv a war guarantee that obligated us to risk everything for a nation deemed not vital to us.

Those who prevented the U.S. from realizing former President George W. Bush’s ambition to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO may have saved us from a war with Russia in which both of us could have suffered horribly.

Whether we go to war for a nation that was formerly part of the Soviet bloc should be a matter for decision by the Americans of that day and time — not mandated, not dictated by our signature on a 73-year-old treaty, devised for another era and another world.

If Only Putin Had Invaded Mexico…

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IF ONLY PUTIN HAD INVADED MEXICO …

As World War III looms in Europe, we must put narrow partisan differences aside and tap the brain power of the greatest minds among us. It is time for the Biden White House to call upon … Jared!

Speaking of the best and the brightest, our foreign policy mandarins must have felt like it was Christmas Day when a senile dementia patient became president. Finally! No meddling politicians to get in the way of our beautifully designed plans worked out at the Council on Foreign Relations. Although Joseph R. Biden is technically, in a strictly legal sense, “president,” it’s progressives running his domestic policy, and think-tank geniuses running his foreign policy.

Things are going great!

Let’s review the consistent position on Russia from our ruling class, informed by the whiz kids of international affairs.

OBAMA ERA 2009:

Throughout President Obama’s “reset” of the relationship with Russia — which had “deteriorated alarmingly” under President Bush, according to The New York Times — foreign policy experts were thrilled to have an American leader finally acknowledging the end of the Cold War.

A Times article cheerfully reported that “Mr. Obama has resolved not to let the ghosts of the 20th century get in the way of his goals in the 21st.” The paper editorialized, “We are relieved that Washington and Moscow are talking about cooperation.”

In a May 20, 2009, column titled “Cold War Leftovers,” Stephen Sestanovich expressed delight that “the cold war really is over.” More than two years later, on Oct. 28, 2011, British historian Geoffrey Wheatcroft informed Times readers: “Putin’s Russia, though obnoxious enough, scarcely represents a strategic threat.”

Evincing our shared humanity, the Russkies loved Obama. “After relations with the United States curdled in the final years of President George W. Bush’s tenure,” the Times cooed, “many people [in Russia] were relieved by Mr. Obama’s election.” Indeed, “Russia’s leaders … could not say enough good things about President Obama.” Sting was right: The Russians DO love their children, too!

Obama didn’t sanction Russia for placing spies on U.S. soil, and barely did for annexing Crimea. Peace reigned.

ROMNEY ERA 2012:

When Mitt Romney came along and described Russia as our “No. 1 geopolitical foe” in 2012, the world laughed itself silly.

Ridiculing Romney in an editorial titled “The Never-Ending Cold War,” the Times said his remark revealed “either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics.”

The BBC cited “experts” who said Romney’s statements on Russia reflected “his lack of experience in foreign policy.”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell proved Romney was wrong with a video clip of Andrea Mitchell stating: “Russia is not the greatest foreign policy challenge.” Enough said!

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow couldn’t contain her hilarity over the Republican National Convention’s offering “an extra bonus of threatening Russia.”

In a debate, Obama responded to Romney, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” To hoots of laughter at the Democratic National Convention, he accused Romney of being “stuck in a Cold War mind warp.” Then-Sen. John Kerry joked, “Folks, Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from Alaska. Mitt Romney talks like he’s only seen Russia by watching ‘Rocky IV.’”

TRUMP ERA, 2016:

Trump ran on having better relations with Russia, and he questioned the wisdom of letting every country in Europe into NATO — whereupon Russia became the most psychotically evil country in the world.

Nearly all the other Republican candidates jumped on Trump, sneering, “that’s not how the real world works” (Jeb!), calling Putin a “gangster” (Sen. Marco Rubio) and vowing to “start rebuilding the Sixth Fleet right under [Putin’s] nose, rebuilding the … missile defense program in Poland right under his nose … conduct very aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states … and I might also put in a few more thousand troops into Germany” (Carly Fiorina).

Clearly, Republican primary voters thus had a choice of two very divergent views of Russia. They picked the guy who wanted to have a better relationship with Russia.

Then Trump beat Hillary, and Democrats announced that he’d stolen the election by colluding with Russia, the most evil country on Earth. (This was absolutely NOT an insane conspiracy theory supported by zero evidence.)

To our great misfortune, instead of doing what he’d run on, Trump decided the sole focus of his administration would be proving that he was not too friendly to Russia! Voters never got the thawed relationship with Russia they’d voted for. (Or the wall, now that I think about it.)

RIDDLE: WHAT’S EASIER TO ROLL THAN AN EASTER EGG?
Donald Trump.

The smoking gun of Trump’s collusion with Russia was supposedly Trump’s platform committee rejecting a delegate’s proposed amendment to sell “lethal weapons” to Ukraine.

You know who else didn’t want to sell lethal weapons to Ukraine? Obama. German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Graham Allison of Harvard, national defense expert. As Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute, explained to The New York Times in 2015, sending lethal weapons to Ukraine would make the U.S. “a belligerent party in a proxy war with Russia, the only country on Earth that can destroy the United States. That’s why this is a big deal.” This was “the view of many experts,” the Times added.

You’ll never guess what happened next. Before the end of his first year in office, Trump approved the sale of … lethal weapons to Ukraine! Conservatives were thrilled! See? Trump isn’t controlled by Putin! What do you say now, Resistance? (They said: Trump still stole the election by colluding with Russia.)

BIDEN ERA, 2022:

The Cold War is back! You might say liberals are “stuck in a Cold War mind warp.” They talk like they’ve “only seen Russia by watching ‘Rocky IV.’”

Joy-Ann Reid, Feb. 27, 2022: “Republicans … who came into the party through Reagan … which was highly adversarial toward the Soviet Union, why do they love Russia so much, … why do they love the Kremlin and Putin so much?”

Hey, Joy-Ann! The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back!

Unlike the experts and journalists whose deep study has led them to a sophisticated take on Russia (that flips back and forth with the politics of the moment), my position on Russia has been as unchanged as the Rock of Gibraltar, at least since the end of the Cold War. Coincidentally, it is exactly the same as my position on Taiwan, Haiti, Uganda and North Korea.

It is this: Tens of millions of illegals are pouring across our border and must be stopped.

COPYRIGHT 2022 ANN COULTER

Tweets on Ukraine

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Is Putin Considering Using Nukes on NATO?

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What Putin is suggesting is that in the last analysis, if military defeat beckons for Russia, and his own dispossession of power and political if not actual death are to follow, he may use the ultimate weapon in Russia’s arsenal to prevent it. What should U.S. policy be?

From his principal avenues of attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin began this war with three strategic goals.

Send an army south from Belarus to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and replace the government. Send forces into northeast Ukraine to capture its second largest city, Kharkiv, with 1.4 million people.

Third, extend the Donetsk enclave westward to establish a land bridge to Crimea and give Russia full control of the Sea of Azov and most of the Ukrainian coast along the Black Sea.

This last objective is almost achieved. Yet, as of Monday evening, five days into the war, neither Kyiv nor Kharkiv had fallen, though Russia had committed most of the troops it had assembled for the invasion.

Putin needs to get this war over with, for time is not on his side or Russia’s side.

In a week, he has become a universally condemned and isolated figure, and his country has been made the target of sanctions by almost the entire West. He is being depicted as an aggressor, even a war criminal, who is brutalizing a smaller neighbor, which, in its fierce and brave resistance, has taken on the aspect of a heroic nation.

The world is rallying to Ukraine.

In the UN Security Council, which Russia chairs, only Russia voted to veto a resolution denouncing it for aggression. India, China and the United Arab Emirates abstained.

As for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his defiance of demands for surrender is being portrayed as Churchillian.

Moreover, serious military aid to Ukraine will soon begin.

Europeans and Americans have promised more Javelin missiles to destroy Russian tanks and armor, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles of the type that took a heavy toll of Russian helicopters in the Afghan war of the 1980s.

NATO is uniting. Germany has voted to raise its defense budget and send its own anti-tank weapons and Stingers to Ukraine.

Economic sanctions imposed on Russia have crashed the ruble, caused a collapse of the stock market and severely restricted Moscow’s capacity to manage its debt.

Russian army units in Ukraine may be sufficient to occupy Kharkiv and Kyiv, but that army is insufficient to control and run a country the size of Texas with a population of 44 million people.

The Russians would have to find thousands of collaborators to help run the country. Where would Putin find them among a people that so widely detests him today?

The longer this war goes on, the greater the certainty that it bleeds the invading army to levels intolerable to Mother Russia, which is what eventually happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

If this war does not end soon, Putin is likely to lose it and fail in his goal of pulling Ukraine out of the Western camp and back into the orbit of Mother Russia.

Eventual defeat is becoming visible, and Putin probably cannot politically survive such a defeat.

As his motivation is to hold power and use it to carve a niche in history alongside the greatest Russian rulers of the past who enlarged the nation or empire, Putin is probably not going to accept defeat and go quietly.

Nor was it a sign of resignation that Putin, on Sunday, ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to high alert because, “Top officials in leading NATO countries have allowed themselves to make aggressive comments about our country.”

This is not the first time Putin has introduced the idea of using a nuclear weapon. On Feb. 19, days before the invasion began, Putin ordered drills of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles, bombers and warships.

In his speech announcing the military operation in Ukraine, Putin warned that countries that interfere with Russia’s actions will face “consequences you have never seen.”

Would Putin exercise what has been called the “Samson Option” – pulling down the pillars of the temple and taking your enemies with you?

What Putin is suggesting is that in the last analysis, if military defeat beckons for Russia, and his own dispossession of power and political if not actual death are to follow, he may use the ultimate weapon in Russia’s arsenal to prevent it.

What should U.S. policy be?

Avoid a widening of the war by preventing any escalation to nuclear weapons. Secure the independence of Ukraine. Effect the removal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

If this requires that Ukraine give up any ambition to become a NATO nation, Putin’s declared purpose in launching the war, so be it. We might have avoided this war had we done so before it was begun.

This is not where we appear to be headed.

Finland, and Sweden, it is now being said, should be invited into NATO. Were that to happen, the U.S. would be obligated to help defend the 830-mile Finnish border with Russia.

This would be an act of hubris of the kind that has led to great wars.