UKRAINE: A DIFFERENT VIEW

JULY 25, 2022

Ukraine is a big country in Eastern Europe, nuzzled up to Russia’s southwestern border. It comprises an area comparable in size to Germany and Poland  combined,  but with a population of only 41 million.  Ukraine is a land of low relief and fertile plains dominated by the drainage basin of Dnieper River which neatly bisects the nation.  Ukraine’s west is much like our own Midwest where agriculture and grain fields dominate. Only small areas of highlands occur in the southwest where  a small sliver of the Carpathian Mountains courses along borderlands with Moldova.  In the east and southeast the nation borders the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. This coastal region is more hilly and is the nation’s industrial heartland.  

It is along this eastern rim, in a region known as the “Donbas” (a contraction of: “Donets Coal Basin”) where coal has long been mined particularly from the Soviet era, and where iron and steel are produced. In this area are many industries which construct machinery and also other diverse industries are located.  Here too are the maritime and found rail transportation hubs.  The Donbas  and the neighboring Luhansk regions are heavily industrialized and are the source of much of the nation’s raw materials and fossil fuels, including coal, petroleum, natural gas and the area has a high potential for production of shale-oil and gas.  These eastern regions also have rich deposits of rare and much sought after minerals such as lithium, titanium, and graphite.  In addition,  extremely valuable deposits of “rare earth minerals” such as cerium, yttrium, lanthanum, and neodymium are also known to have exploitable deposits here.   These latter resources are in great demand for use  in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries, cellphones and similar modern electronic devices.  Furthermore, the seabed of the  Black Sea along the eastern coast is known to have significant reserves of natural gas. 

Without these eastern industrial provinces, Ukraine would become a largely agricultural,  resource-and-industry-poor, landlocked nation.  It is the Donbas and the fossil fuels in the sea bed of the Black Sea that are being fought over in the Ukraine. 

These facts suggest why the USA has up to the present date spent some $60 billion dollars in military-aid for Ukraine. This is an effort to control the outcome of the war and to ultimately control and exploit Ukraine.  And is also the reason why Russia opposes those objectives.  Both nations covet the raw materials and rare earth minerals in Ukraine, and both are motivated to deny access of these valuable resources to the other they see as an economic and political adversary. 

What about the war raging there now for months ?

In the USA, President Biden, the titular “head of the free world”  is a weak, befuddled old man, who hardly remembers where and who he is. His caretaker presidency is now widely considered ended, and even Biden’s progressive supporters are anticipating his departure. 

It was this befuddled old man with a shuffling gate, stenosis of major cerebral arteries, atrial fibrillation, and a fifty year history of poor decision-making who led the supposedly more intelligent, younger and more experienced European leadership to follow his lead as he took them over the cliff of “Russian sanctions” into certain economic ruin. 

The horror of this story is that Biden was in good part actually complicit in the Russian invasion itself. This President was fully appraised months in advance of Putin’s plans and knew of Putin’s objections to the US policy of making neighboring Ukraine a US bastion of western militarism and a NATO member.   Knowing this, instead of active diplomacy, he raised an arthritic, crooked middle digit into Putin’s face, and abandoned any effort at diplomacy and compromise.  He could have prevented this war and the invasion— many claim he encouraged it.   

Then, once Putin invaded— Biden proposed a simpleminded and disastrous strategy for “winning” the Ukraine war that has led the world into economic and political turmoil…and Ukraine into human tragedy, death and massive destruction. 

What were Biden’s  four “pillars” strategy?  1) The assumption that Ukraine could win the war, against a far more powerful Russia; 2) that  sanctions  would weaken Russia and destabilize its leadership; 3) that sanctions would hurt Russia so grievously that it would give up and accept the humiliation of an heavily armed  NATO nation on its doorstep; 4) and that the rest oft the world would accept the sanctions and line up against Russia and support the west.    

None of these assumptions  have played out the way Biden hoped. (See: Reuters July 23, 2022, report on Victor Orban speech on the War in Ukraine) 

It is clear that Ukraine is losing and Russia is winning the conflict. Russia has gobbled up the entire eastern 1/5 of that nation, which includes Ukraine’s industrial heartland.  Russia has control of the coastline of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and the sea lanes and ports of those regions. Russia now has control of the valuable sub-surface oil and gas resources found in the Black Sea marine subsurface and intends to keep them.  

Biden’s  sanctions have hurt, but they have hurt everyone. Europe and the US as well as Russia.  Sanctions are biting much deeper in Europe where the the dependence on Russian energy is greatest and the very real possibility of either complete shut down of gas deliveries or drastic spikes in price coupled with shortages of oil, and diesel fuel, will occur. As for natural gas, its price today (July 25, 2022)is up to 120% of what it was before the war.   Europe is expecting a cold winter, and with it cold homes, tepid bath water, closed manufacturing plants and rolling blackouts due to shortages and high prices of fossil fuels. There is no indication of Putin losing support at home,  in fact according to Bloomberg .com a Russian poll of July 14. 2022 reported Putin’s popularity in Russia at 83%…a far cry from Biden’s 33% approval rate. 

 The rest of the world is not cooperating with the Biden plan of self defeating sanctions.  In fact most of Asia, (except Japan and South Korea), all of South America (even Mexico) and all the nations on the continent of Africa and Middle East have ignored the Biden sanctions against Russia.  India and China, the most populous nations on earth both continue to have robust economic interactions with Russia.  Even Saudi Arabia continues to buy Russian oil…at a discount, then resell it as if it was their own, at a much higher price…making a tidy profit on the deal.  The value of the Russian ruble has hit the highest level in decades in recent months. 

The Biden strategy is a failure that has hurt the west more than its target nation. There is no good reason to continue this war…only more death, more hardship and more economic pain will result.  Then too the danger of military “mission creep” or war escalation occurring as a result of  the west supplying more and more weapons and the Russians responding with more targeted areas is very dangerous.  

With two nuclear armed adversaries fighting a proxy war the world could very easily misstep into a third world war.  Can we be that stupid to fall into a WWIII?