It has been over two years and seven months since the Russian military crossed the border into Ukraine. This war rages on while many people have forgotten it.
Russia is fighting a losing war
There is only ONE man on the entire planet who can end this conflict TODAY, and no it is not anybody from NATO, or Ukraine for that matter. We all know who that person is, and this person obviously prefers extending this conflict indefinitely rather than accepting that Ukraine did not want to become part of Russia. If the Ukrainian people were seeking to be part of Russia, this conflict would have ended a long time ago.
Author Note: I started writing this article on day 943. As I was getting ready to post it, I learned about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from Ukraine coming to visit the USA. Which included events to speak to Vice President Harris, and former President Trump. So, I added an additional section to this article at the end, because everything remains relevant, however this additional data will add important context to the overall article. Thank you for reading through the end!
Until very recently it was essentially illegal to call this war anything other than a “special military operation” if you happened to live inside Russia. In fact, a lot of people were prosecuted for calling this conflict a “war” – but fast forward more than two years, and several mobilizations and draftees later – many of whom have died just mere hours of stepping into Ukraine; then predictively the narrative has changed a lot in Russia… as many of us who have been following this quagmire from the beginning were expecting these events from happening.
Whatever your feelings are about this war one thing is obvious, Ukraine is determined to defeat Russia. And the fact is that Ukrainians have been not only extremely resilient but have demonstrated to the rest of the world how the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian people is something that Russia has not been able to match. Why? Because Ukraine is defending their lives, livelihoods, and country. Conversely there is no shortage of Russians who are vehemently opposed to this war, but they are also very aware of the punishment for public dissent.
There is also a much deeper layer many people don’t seem to realize. Ukraine is not only fighting for Ukraine; they are holding the line for Europe and by extension the world! Yes, they are fighting even for any person who cannot point where Ukraine is located on a map. Why am I saying this? Glad you asked… if the conflict spills outside Russia and Ukraine there is a high risk that World War III could start.
Sadly, a lot of people don’t understand this important factor. And to reiterate, a lot of people who are asserting that this war is not important to the larger geopolitical stability, might (likely) not be able to point on a map where the Ukraine is located, or their exulted strategic value that transcends a lot more than geography alone. The repercussions if Ukraine was to fall are mind-bending. Yes, I am being redundant because people tend to miss this point.
I’ve been writing this Ukraine & Russia conflict series for a while, with my last related article when the conflict reached its second-year anniversary. In order to better understand what I’ll be speaking about on this article; it is a good idea to check the entire series to avoid missing any important context. Here are the links to the entire series:
Ukraine & Russia Conflict… 2 years later
Ukraine & Russia Conflict… over 485 days later
Ukraine & Russia Conflict… a year later
Ukraine & Russia Conflict… 334 days later
Ukraine & Russia conflict… 302 days later
Ukraine shifting from defense to strike
Yes, for a few months, Ukraine started conducting precision strikes inside Russian territory. These strikes have been thus far strategically placed to minimize casualties and force Russia to acknowledge that they cannot longer pretend of having the upper hand on this war. They don’t, and if you’ve read my previous articles, I’ve mentioned that Russia has already lost this war, even if they “win.” In case you’ve missed the previous articles, please let me reiterate as of why (then read them all, because the new cycle has already forgotten these facts).
If Russia “wins” – meaning that for some reason Ukraine would lose the will to fight (which two years and seven months later demonstrates very obviously that it won’t happen), Russia still loses. Why? Well, many reasons – let me just point a few. First because the Russian economy has been battered so badly that it will take several generations to break even on the extreme taxing to the country, and I am not only talking about money, I am also talking about lives. And by lives, I don’t mean only the lives that were lost, but the lives who fled Russia, and are fearful to ever return while the incumbent regime remains in power.
But it also means that if Russia would “take over” Ukraine, then Russia will also have to spend billions, if not trillions of dollars to fix everything they broke. We are talking about rebuilding entire cities, infrastructure, the massive displacement of entire families, the copious amounts of farmland that is contaminated with all the ordinance that was dropped on those lands. Which means that these agricultural lands are no longer good for growing food.
In case you were not aware, Ukraine was considered the “breadbasket” of the world. And many developing nations depended on these staple exports that originated on these otherwise fertile lands that are now destroyed for the rest of our collective natural lives. Think about that for a second, about how many lives inside and outside the Ukraine have suffered, are suffering right now, and will continue to suffer for many years in the future because of this senseless war.
So, all this destruction and potential of follow-on conflict postwar will take Russia many generations to fix and pay for.
But, if Russia “loses” – then Russian taxpayers will still have to fix everything the Russian military broke and destroyed during this war they started. Except, that this time Russia won’t have the luxury of setting their own timeline to compensate for all the damage that was done under their banner.
Therefore, the Russian regime have been desperate to find a third alternative – blame somebody else. And they have been trying to bring that plan into fruition even before the conflict started, but they were never able to prop this propaganda enough – at least many people saw right through it (not as many as we hoped though – there is no shortage of shortsighted politicians and other influencers with a prominent platform in the USA and abroad who repeat Russian’s state-sponsored anti-Ukraine motivations verbatim).
We’ll discuss a few examples about the lengths they went to try to convince the world that the Russian regime was the “righteous” part of the war. And I have to reiterate that Russian People, and the Russian Regime are not synonymous. There is no shortage of Russian expats who are very much opposed to the incumbent regime… as well as many inside Russia who are very careful about what they say, because there is no shortage of examples of people being prosecuted or worse for dissenting with the regime’s official narrative.
But understanding this, it was logical that the next step for Ukraine was to start conducting strike campaigns inside Russian territory. If you read my last article when Ukraine was enduring their second year of this new occupation on the Donbas area, with Russia conducting attacks well further inland into Ukraine – for more than two years Ukraine was defending against Russian military and mercenary attacks inside Ukraine – their (Ukrainians) country. For all that time ZERO bullets, let alone artillery, or any other military action took place crossing the border into Russia. That changed a few months ago.
As I said before, Ukraine has conducted several strikes successfully inside Russian territory, and out to sea. Ukraine does not have a Navy, yet they have been able to sink several Russian warships and downed a lot of sophisticated military planes bearing the Russian insignia. This has to be demoralizing to a lot of Russians, but you might not be surprised to learn that the Russian official media does not provide everyday Russians the full context of the situation in the front lines. In fact, Russia has gone through great lengths to outlaw western platforms, such as YouTube in their territory – as a way to prevent anti-war messages from reaching everyday Russians.
This should not be surprising, but yes, there is a growing number of Russian content creators turned activists who have fled the country in order to try to get the story out. However, much like you see in the USA several stubborn individuals who will believe only whomever they have given their entire devotion – no matter what they do – it was expected that we would see something similar in Russia. Yes, that means that some people won’t open their minds or eyes to see a reality that conflicts with their perception of the world, even if their perception is largely skewed.
There is a reason why a lot of Russians, especially if they are a bit older – are much easier to manipulate by propaganda. They lived under the Soviet Union, and they very well knew how to “look away” or be punished if they spoke out of turn. Even if they saw that as normal, but remember the Soviet Union started more than a century ago, even though it fell in the 90’s – the cultural indoctrination will last forever on those generations. Remember, for many people the Soviet Union authoritarian lifestyle is all they ever knew and when the Capitalist model was ill-implemented in the post-Soviet vacuum, then of course a lot of people who were unable to adapt grew even more resentment against the “decadent” West.
And when the Ukrainian strikes started to occur into Russia, this took many Russians by surprise, because the official narrative was stating they were winning and that the “sophisticated Russian military forces” were shielding the Russian territory from any Ukrainian weapons. Well, it is obvious that the state-sponsored media for Russia was less than accurate about it, as strikes continue to occur in Russia essentially every other day. And yes, these strikes have reached Moscow. Mainly via drones.
I have to emphasize that I am personally against any violence against other human beings – regardless of nationality. If I could wave a magic wand and make this conflict end right now, I would do so. But as I mentioned before, there is only one person on this entire planet who can end this conflict, but he refuses to do so, and is using every tactic available in order to justify this horrific conflict
Let’s explore some recent history
Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula in the first months of 2014 – more than 10 years ago. Sadly, this was a largely unopposed invasion, and many ethnic Russians living in Ukraine even opened their arms to this “liberating force.” Russia rolled out with a bunch of military equipment and men dressed in what seemed like military uniforms but bearing no insignia. Russia denied that they were going to roll into Crimea, or that the military was involved… yet, of course Russia has been controlling this area ever since.
Now, this is something you might have not heard everywhere… but this is from the mouths of people who were first happy that Russia was about to take over Crimea. Many of these who “welcomed” Russia in 2014 were unhappy with Ukraine at the time, asserting that having Russia taking over was perceived as though their lives, livelihood, stability, business, etc. you know, everything was going to be better. Well, they realized that the grass was not at all greener if Russia got to control the area – and now they are of course regretting their choice, but it is too late, because Russia does not welcome dissenting voices in any territory they control.
The world did not do much for Ukraine for that campaign, and the Russian regime of course thought that something similar would happen in the Donbas area, since there were also a lot of ethnic Russians in that region – much like it was the case in Crimea. But like I said before, the Russian incumbent president is largely surrounded by “yes men and women” – hence it was expected that they would just tell him what he wanted to hear. And what he wanted to hear was likely that it would be an easy repeat of the Crimea take over, and that that Russia would be embraced. That obviously did not happen, and close to three years later, it remains a warzone.
Russia, like a bad relationship – just cannot understand that Ukrainians do not want to be “united” in that matter. As in having a foreign power occupy their land. Putin has publicly said that if Ukraine – a sovereign country, joins NATO, that he (with the Russian military) would start attacking NATO because he (Putin) sees that as a provocation. And no, Ukraine is not a NATO ally, and although they tried to become a NATO ally, NATO did not accept them into the alliance. Ukraine, aside from getting some support from NATO to defend themselves, is largely on their own when it comes to fighting Russia.
Which is interesting on how history turned out, because although NATO did not border Russia with Ukraine, it actually now has a much larger border as formerly neutral Finland became a NATO ally – and they are much-much closer to Moscow – that is a huge miscalculation by Putin and his staff. And of course, we also have Sweeden as a new NATO ally. So, understand this… Russia tried to prevent ONE country from joining NATO because they are right next door to them, and now there are TWO countries added to the alliance.
Russia has also been largely on their own with this fight – although a few acolyte regimes with tendencies to authoritarian power have been advocating against Ukraine. The USA and the allies have been providing military equipment and funding for Ukraine to defend themselves – that is not the same as NATO defending Ukraine. But we also have to understand (I reiterate) that if Ukraine falls, then Europe will be the next area of conflict. The best thing we can do is realize that it is in the best interest for Ukraine, the west and everyday Russians if Ukraine attains victory in this conflict.
Russia is going through great lengths to skew the narrative portraying Ukraine as an enemy force in the world stage. Most people realize that is not a valid argument, and that a narrative that asserts Ukraine as an aggressor is misleading at best, and extremely nefariously cynical at that. Let’s not forget that it was NOT the Ukrainian military who crossed the border into Russia on February 24, 2022. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost because of this war. And again, only ONE person has the power to stop this war today… and that is the person who started this conflict.
But in recent history you would have learned that Russian money was paying millions of dollars to influencers in the USA and abroad. Mainly right-wing personalities with a large clout. I’ve written an article about that a few days ago about unwitting insider threats. And of course, these are related because these figures spewed a lot of anti-Ukraine propaganda verbatim akin to what is on the Russian state-sponsored media talking points. And although these Americans who are now under the microscope denied any knowledge about it, they are mostly still perpetuating the same Russian regime talking points. Coincidence?
If I was a betting man, I would not be banking on this being a coincidence. In fact, either these people who were repeating Russian talking points are extremely dumb to believe those talking points or are too dumb to realize that they were just useful fools to propagate a skewed narrative to all their loyal followers and audiences. It should be a rule of thumb to understand that if a talking head is repeating VERBATIM the same talking points from an outlet such as RT or TASS, then it is very likely they are concurring with Russia’s state-sponsored rhetoric. That means that they either concur with it or are too dumb to realize they are repeating points that are convenient to the Kremlin but are largely debunked by outlets around the world. And yes, I am being redundant, because people tend to miss that point.
This begs the question, is the Information Operations (IO) campaign from Russia adding a lot of other prominent figures to their payroll either directly or indirectly? They were literally paying millions of dollars to these influencers, what makes you think that they’re not adding money to political campaigns even by proxy, or buying airtime, and access in other television channels. Let’s understand that there are many ways that influence can be bought and sold – and Russians are not dumb, they know how to play the game. They have definitely failed in Ukraine, but they are not a one-trick pony.
This past week, incumbent President Joe Biden spoke to the United Nations Assembly, and he said what I’ve been saying for years now… Russia has lost this war. They are fighting a losing war, and it is time for them to end this senseless violence. However, this does not mean that Russia will become an open nation. Putin got reelected in March 2024 (no surprise there, all his serious opposition was incarcerated or otherwise killed, for example Alexei Navalny).
Which means that Putin will likely remain in power until at least six more years. Oh, and unsurprisingly, he signed something that would allow him to do two of those terms – so that’s 12 more years of Putin! Or best-case scenario 2030, or 2036 as “worst case scenario” – but by that time he could very well sign another law to extend his time in power. It would be naïve to think otherwise, that is what he has been doing to remain in power since essentially 2000. Or the entire lifetime of a huge percentage of the Russian population.
Which also bring us to the US election. There are a lot of indicators that Russia is working on interfering with this election like they did on our previous elections. Yes, that was proven… this “Russia-Russia-Russia” that Trump’s claims to be a hoax is because it is convenient for Putin if Trump re-enters the White House. This current administration has not been convenient at all for Putin, which is another reason why a lot of geopolitical instability was thrown against the current US administration.
And it is startling to hear from Trump and his Vice President hopeful, J. D. Vance that they would end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia by siding with Russia and having Ukraine lose all the territory that was central to this conflict. There is a lot more to say about how the situation between Ukraine and the presidential election affect us all… and I intent to talk more about it on its own article. And I have been in a way on my previous articles, but the topic is very abstract and dynamic that it would be a logical fallacy to try to tie to only ONE or a handful of geopolitical arguments. As I said before, the complexity of this issue is mind-bending.
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What’s next?
Sadly, as I predicted before this will remain a protracted conflict. I hate that although unspeakable atrocities happen daily in Ukraine, with people being killed in sadistic ways every hour of the day – this conflict is nowhere near in the horizon. And my fear is that the US Election might be used as a catalyst to make this quagmire even more precarious. What does that mean? It means that if Kamala Harris becomes POTUS #47, Putin is likely to turn up the heat to test her in ways that give me nightmares even thinking about it.
In fact, I will be writing about that on my Patreon page. The reason is because this would be a discussion for more mature audiences, and these posts on the forum you’re reading this article are meant to be open for any reader. On Patreon there are age restrictions, and because of the nature of what we’ll talk about it is better for that audience.
The point is that the world is a lot more complex than the simple black and white understanding of this conflict, the election, or even the way Russia is expanding their influence in any way they find feasible – like buying airtime and the mouths of influencers and other figures to repeat their talking points verbatim. A lot more people are well aware of Russian propaganda, but that does not mean that they understand the full scope, nor the ramifications from their rhetoric.
For Ukraine it means that they are likely on their own. I foresee Ukraine adding a higher value of well-planned strikes, but this will also wake up some “misguided patriotism” by many Russians who were until now against the war, but now the situation is literally hitting them home.
There will be an uptick of “Z” propaganda in Russia. For anybody who does not understand the “Z” symbol is painted by Russians as their “support for the war” – and there are very robust propaganda campaigns to support that effort. Even going as far as having some extremely cheesy commercials that are calling men “gay” if they don’t join the fight. Yes, literally – that is happening. They want them to enlist and go to the front lines and saying that “real men” do that – which is also another way to exploit toxic masculinity – with very similar “macho” rhetoric that a lot of incels gravitate towards also in the West.
And I will end this point by saying again that the only people who can really change the governing power in Russia are Russians themselves – while the rest of the world have to watch. Yet, the Russian regime is holding the entire planet hostage under their decision to remain in Ukraine. And the only person who can unilaterally end this war is the head of state in Russia – but he refuses to do so, and it is very likely that will remain to be the case. Meanwhile, all that the rest of the world can do is encourage Ukraine to keep holding the line.
Like it or not, understand it or not – the fate of the entire world is on the fatigued yet extremely resilient hands of the Ukrainians who have been defending their homeland for almost three years. Their lives changed overnight, and until the day before the invasion, many Ukrainians, Europeans, and people around the world thought that it was preposterous to even think that Russia would roll with military force to start this conflict. Well, it is 948 days since the conflict started – at the time I’m writing this article.
If you take anything from this article, I hope it is that what Ukraine is going through today and have endured for almost three years could be a reality for any of us tomorrow. Our understanding of facts and the world – especially outside our small bubbles of interest affects us in more ways than we can count. For the USA means voting – but voting means that you understand what you’re voting for when you are selecting names on a ballot – don’t do it just for party lines – do it based on understanding the impact of making the wrong choice.
Zelenskyy meetings with Harris and Trump
This past week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to the USA and spoke with both US presidential candidates. The contrast between this conversation was extremely stark and telling. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, reiterates everything I’ve written on this article, and my previous articles about this conflict between Russian and Ukraine – and the larger geopolitical situation. Let’s summarize, but you’re welcome to search for the full conversations, they are available on video.
Kamala Harris. As expected, her speech was of support to Ukraine, and it was nice to hear from her voice what I’ve been saying all along on this series. For example, that only ONE person can stop this conflict right now, but he is refusing to do so. She called out Putin by name as that person who can stop this bloodshed, and as the perpetrator who started it all. Harris went on to say – I’ll paraphrase - that a win for Ukraine is a win for freedom around the world. It is expected that a Harris Presidency would be supportive of restoring peace, without giving up Ukrainian territory to Russia.
Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, very different take. While Zelenskyy was literally standing next to him, Trump complimented Putin. He also been avoiding answering directly if he would be willing to have Russia keep the territory they invaded in Ukraine. His VP-nominee J. D. Vance seems to be perfectly OK with Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. There were also zero talks about any punitive measures against the Putin regime for starting the conflict. However, Trump did take the opportunity to say that his phone call with Zelenskyy that led to his first impeachment was a “perfect phone call” – yeah. So, if you were expecting to hear anything coherent from Trump’s word salads, then you might have not been paying much pragmatic attention to him in the last several years.
The takeaway is that like it or not, the Ukraine and Russian conflict is very much intertwined to our upcoming US election. It is very obvious – because the Russian regime had made it very public that they favor Trump on office – that despite the likely trolling “endorsement” of Kamala Harris. It surely triggered Trump, because Trump even complained about it during a rally saying he was “offended.”
We have to remember that Putin is indeed a very shrewd person, and if he takes certain actions, there is a lot more than what meets the eye. One indicator is that he (Putin) seems Trump as weak, and even threw a jab saying that Trump imposed the most sanction to Russia. It might not surprise you to hear that circa that time Trump publicly stated that he would remove sanctions from Russia related to Ukraine. Think about it for a second.
Yes, Russia has lost already this war, even if they “win” – but that does not mean that there is only one country losing on this war. Ukraine’s win still also lost a lot because of all the destruction and demonization they have suffered with the IO campaign against them. But there are a lot of other nations that can lose because of it. I’ve mentioned it during my previous articles and that remains true today. The conflict between Ukraine and Russia remains the most significant geopolitical event in our current history. That is why we need to pay attention, even if the news cycle and influencers are chasing the next click-bait story. HLC