European Union – Page 3

Push Russia Out of Ukraine

Photo by Kostiantyn Stupak on Pexels.com

This is the time to push Russia back and out of Ukraine.
Out of the Eastern section and out of Crimea as well.
This is the time to push Russia back to behind its borders.
Putin is losing the war.
Desperate, he’s now bent on targeting all of Ukraine’s infrastructure, bombing dams and power plants. If his missiles were to hit a nuclear power plant, that alone would create a radioactive disaster with regional and global consequences.
So this is the time to get those longer range missiles into action so Ukrainians can hit Russia’s supply lines and cripple their ground offensive.
The momentum is with Ukraine as winter approaches.
More people within Russia are speaking out against the war.
The EU has wisely shut down the issuing of visas to Russian citizens.
Russia’s shutdown of gas supplies to the EU in the hope of splintering the alliance is not having the expected effect. The EU has organized so they are creating efficiencies and helping each other if necessary.
China knows well that Putin is on the defensive and will voice support for him but they will not support a losing effort.
We in the West, meanwhile, must stay focused.
Zelensky is right. Russia can be beat and should be beat.
And what a difference that is from just before the invasion 7 months ago in February, when the world was filled with uncertainty about the outcome. Back then Putin looked like the grand strategist, the great master of geopolitics.
Today he’s reduced to the size of a retreating petty tyrant who’s responsible for massacring tens of thousands of Ukrainians and willing to kill even more if he gets the chance.
Putin has called prison inmates to fight in the war with the promise that, if they fight for 6 months, their sentences will be forgiven. He’s called in mercenaries, i.e. the Wagner Group (Russians), already on the ground. He’s flying drones sent from Iran, a theocratic dictatorship rife with corruption, which is more than eager to attack anything western.
What is remarkable in the face of all this chaos, is the power of the West to unite and focus on the task at hand.
A new balance of power is thus being created by the war. Not only is Russia being exposed as a deeply flawed nation, filled with shortcomings, but China, too, has lost standing in the world with their support of Russia’s losing cause.
Joe Biden, our president, and most of the leaders of the EU and England (former prime minister Boris Johnson) deserve great credit for their commitment to building an alliance. Hungary has remained pro Russian and Turkey has not joined in the sanctions against Putin. The Turks prefer to play both sides.
Now the West is close to a substantial victory. Putin will make threats to use his nuclear weapons but we should not be intimidated and stand firm. Russia must leave all of Ukraine.
Ukraine remains the unquestionable hero, the catalyst of this important realignment of forces, during which, Volodymyr Zelensky, their president, has kept his focus and determination.
Let’s give them the weapons they need and finish the job.

Oscarvaldes.medium.com

Meanwhile, in Syria, the dictator Assad, long reliant on Putin to repress his opposition, must be wondering if he shouldn’t start pivoting to China. Offer them land for a military base, for instance, in exchange for assistance quieting the rebels. ‘And it would be good practice, for when they decide to trample on Taiwan,’ says Assad to himself.

The West to Putin

Photo by u0410u043bu0435u043au0441u0430u043du0434u0440 u0411u043eu0439u043au043e on Pexels.com

The recent advances by the Ukrainian army have shown that they can push back your soldiers.
Push them back all the way to behind your borders, handing you a defeat that you will not be able to explain to your people.
Ukraine is now committed to driving all Russians out from the eastern section which you illegally appropriated some years before and from Crimea also.
Quite different than what you expected, isn’t it, when you made a great show of surrounding the north and eastern section of Ukraine in the weeks and months prior to the invasion this last February.
Now Ukraine needs longer range weaponry, so it can bring this war to an end.
They have shown far more courage than your troops have. Far more commitment than you ever imagined.
There is presently division in the West as to how to proceed. A side arguing that such longer range weaponry would be very dangerous since it could make possible attacks within Russia, even near Moscow. The other side countering that there are ways to manage such risks and so bring this war to an end more quickly.
You have responded by saying that such longer range weapons would make the West a co combatant, implying that you would make the West a direct target.
President Biden has said that the West will put no troops on the ground in Ukraine and he’s sticking to it. That is what would make us a co combatant, not giving Ukraine the weapons they need to stop the loss of life.
It is you who is the single culprit of this tragedy.
You who started decimating the Ukrainian people and their cities, men, women, children, schools, theatres, hospitals, places of industry and so on. You who chose a path from which there is no way back.
You have no right to tell us what to give or not give to Ukraine when not doing so is to prolong their agony and suffering.
You have lost this war.
There is no way for you to reclaim your prior standing, when you could meet with world leaders, even as you had allied yourself with ruthless dictators like Assad in Syria and the oppressive governing elite in Iran, shamelessly trampling on their people in the name of God.
Mr Putin, you are done as a world leader. You will govern Russia for as long as they allow you to do so, but the likelihood is that they will tire of you and remove you from office.
But back to the use of longer range weapons. The West should give Ukraine everything they need to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible. Everything short of nuclear weapons.
The end is in sight.
Your depravity has caught up with you.
You will be welcome nowhere in the West.
We will not forget.
Still, if you have any decency left in you, there is a way out.
Commit suicide.
That way you will open the door for Russians to begin to emerge from their long sleep, and to start to reengineer their country so it can become the strong and prosperous nation it has the potential to become.
Russia cannot be Russia with you onboard. You just killed too many people.
Suicide is an honorable option.

Oscarvaldes.medium.com

Biden Talks to Putin

They meet secretly, using a special CIA managed Zoom pathway. Biden is in the Oval office with only Harris, Blinken and Sullivan present.
Putin is on the large screen.
Biden has made it a point to speak to him on the anniversary of the bombings in 2001.

Biden – You will not have Ukraine. Our alliance will do whatever is needed to block you from having Ukraine. You may end up keeping some of the territory and even some of the newly conquered, but you will not have Ukraine.
Putin (smiling) – We’ll see.
Biden – Second, you’ve succeeded in uniting the West, succeeded in helping us begin to put together a new energy grid that excludes you. Permanently. And you’ll have to invent all the replacement parts that the sanctions we’ve imposed forbid you to have.
Putin (smugly) – We can do it.
Biden – Turkey and China can help you in the meantime. But it won’t last forever.
Putin (laughs) – Erdogan will outfox you anytime. He’s a master.
Biden – Third, please listen carefully… the West will make Ukraine a star nation.

Putin turns serious.

Biden – We will invest in them so they will shine and be the envy of the world. I understand they have a history of corruption, but a nation who has fought as valiantly as they have will be able to correct their mistakes. We will help them.
We in the West will invest in Ukraine so that the nations in your sphere of influence, who now demean themselves by kneeling before you will have a clear example to follow.
We in the West believe that all those nations oppressed by you, have the will to rise and oppose you, risking their lives.
Putin – You know nothing about how effective my controls are.
Biden – One day soon, Belarus, will overthrow Lukashenko… and they will find their courage and fight to be like their Ukrainian neighbors.
Putin – You live in a dream world, Biden, you probably won’t even win both chambers in congress this Fall, and I will do everything possible to persuade the millions and millions of gullible Americans into thinking Trump is the greatest leader your land has ever seen.
Biden – Try at your own peril.
Putin – Oh, we will, I assure you.
Biden – As a catholic, I believe in redemption… in the capacity to restore ourselves. You have done great harm to humanity… and yet… you could still work to atone for your behavior.
Putin – Let me see, you’d want for me to surrender?
Biden – Better than that… guide your people to freedom.
Putin (laughing loudly) – You’re mad.
Biden – You’ve lost your way… you’re responsible for the killing of thousands and thousands of Ukrainians and Russians… and for what? To restore a Soviet Union that was already crumbling from internal decay?
Mikhail Gorbachev saw it clearly back in 1985… and came up with perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (opening)… you should now pick up where he left off.
People everywhere yearn from freedom… no political system that seeks to curtail it will last… and that means China, too.
Putin – You’re a fool.
Biden – Perhaps but I’m a free man and you’re not… and neither is Xi Jinping. Human beings with cruel instincts are not free, but prisoners of their demons. You’re no different than the leaders of Iran, enslaving people in the name of God.
Putin – Russians adore me… they will do whatever I ask them… they will endure whatever hardships they must.
Biden – I won’t keep you longer. Maybe I’m wrong and you’re beyond redemption. To end, I will repeat my central point. We will not surrender Ukraine.
And we will make it the envy of the world.
All Russians, and the peoples from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, all will yearn to be Ukrainians, free human beings, not the slaves of other men.
Putin – My people will conquer all of Ukraine. Even if I have to use nuclear weapons.
Biden – Threaten as you wish… but don’t forget… we’re free men… and free men don’t surrender.

Oscarvaldes.medium.com

Push to Defeat Russia

This is the time.
I don’t think Putin would survive a defeat in Ukraine.
Russia is a demoralized nation for when they compare themselves with the rest of the world they have to wonder, ‘how come we’re not among the leading countries?’
‘How come people don’t want to come visit us?’
‘Why doesn’t anyone want to immigrate to Russia?’
‘What is missing?’
‘How come, by contrast, people are risking their lives to immigrate to America?’
‘If we can make sophisticated nuclear weapons, make vaccines, be one of the architects of the international space station, how come we make headlines only when we’re killing our neighbors? Or when we support brutal regimes like the Myanmar dictator?’
What is missing is political development.
Putin has been allowed to arrest the political maturation of Russia.
And he has done so by severely restricting the freedom of its citizens.
By sheer brutality he has held back the historical advancement of his brothers and sisters.
He’s got them hypnotized with the idea of a new Soviet Union, reclaiming a glory that was based on repression and cruelty.
But it’s all wishful thinking. There’s no turning back.
Next door, in Europe, a grand experiment in social understanding is taking place in the form of the European Union. Something similar could be happening in Russia. Instead, its citizens have opted to let one man, only one man, decide the fate of 125 million people.
It is sheer madness.
The courage of Ukrainians in fighting for their land has presented the world with a unique opportunity.
Support Ukraine with all the weapons they need and Russia can be pushed back entirely out of Ukraine. Even out of Crimea which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
A Russian defeat in Ukraine would stimulate the progressive section in the country that has not been fooled by Putin’s grandiosity.
It should be clear that China has nothing to offer in terms of political development. Their people are also in chains, in their case to a Communist party that presents itself as the celestially ordained class of people with the wisdom to dictate to the rest of the nation on how things should be done. The price? Surrender your freedom. Surrender your ability to think. We, in the party, will do the thinking for you. In other words, the Chinese model offers nothing new, but more of the same the Russians have endured for years and years.
The Western alliance should be more decisive in supporting Ukraine.
A defeated Putin will spark a movement to depose him and the likelihood is that such movement will be more pro West than pro China.
The consequences of such shift would be enormous for the prosperity of the word.
A pro western shift in Russia would likely stimulate a pro western movement in China. And the world could see the beginning of a new era, not one driven by conflict but by cooperation.
Imagine for a moment, the clout that Russia, the West and China would have working together to assist development in Africa or any impoverished region in the world?
Instead of arguing over differences that are mostly their leaders’ personal preferences.
Cult of personality is one of the most destructive forces in our world today.
There is a nefarious cult of personality today in Russia, in the person of Putin, in China, in the person of Xi Jinping, in America in the person of Donald Trump.
Cults of personality emerge in nations where the majority or a significant portion of the population ceases to think their own thoughts.
The revolt against such tendency is essential to the freedom of mankind.
Russians don’t need Putin, like Chinese don’t need Xi Jinping, like Americans don’t need Donald Trump. Nor their clones in the making.
Human beings should not surrender under any circumstances. Each life should be a life long struggle to assert who we are, to express each person’s uniqueness.

Oscarvaldes.medium.com, anchor.fm, apple and google podcasts.