"24 Things That I Think That I Think
About How The War In Ukraine Is Going"
by Michael Snyder
"What we are watching happen in Ukraine should deeply sadden all of us, because it didn’t have to happen. It should have been so easy for global leaders to sit down and come up with a plan that would have satisfied everybody, but it is too late for that at this point. Now that Ukraine has been invaded, there is no turning back. The world will never be the same after this, and everybody around the planet should be crying out for peace. Because now that World War 3 has begun, all of us are in danger. If nuclear missiles start flying back and forth, hundreds of millions of people will end up dead.
I have been voraciously following coverage of the war in Ukraine, and both sides are definitely trying to make themselves look as good as possible. As a result, social media and major news outlets are being flooded with photos and videos that are supposedly from the war. In some cases they are accurate, but in other cases they are not. In fact, some of the most viral material has already been proven to be completely fake, and you need to be careful because in many instances viral videos are actually being used to raise money for fake charities.
With so much fraudulent propaganda being pumped out, it can be difficult to separate truth from fiction. With that being said, the following are 24 things that I think that I think about how the war in Ukraine is going…
#1 Russia has captured more territory every single day of the war so far. Everyone pretty much agrees on that. But everyone also pretty much agrees that the Russians are moving much slower than Vladimir Putin would like.
#2 I think that Putin believed that taking Ukraine would be a fairly easy task. Unfortunately for him, that has proven not to be true.
#3 If Putin knew how difficult the war would be, I don’t think that he would have been so eager to pull the trigger.
#4 But Putin can’t turn back now, because that would represent an absolutely humiliating defeat and it would mean accepting Ukraine as a member of NATO and having NATO missiles on Ukrainian soil from this point forward.
#5 Initially, the Russians were trying to conduct the war in a way that minimized civilian casualties, because they wanted to try to win over the hearts and minds of Ukrainian citizens. Needless to say, that isn’t going to happen.
#6 Many of the major cities in Ukraine have either been totally encircled or are in the process of being totally encircled. Even without using nuclear weapons, the Russians could completely flatten every one of those cities using conventional weapons. But the Russians don’t want to kill millions of civilians, and so they will essentially be laying siege to these areas until they eventually fall.
#7 As the war goes on, I think that Ukrainian forces will be squeezed into tighter and tighter pockets that are completely cut off from one another. In many cases, Ukrainian forces will find themselves totally surrounded in core urban areas. If they do not surrender, the Russians will just keep hammering them day after day with targeted strikes.
#8 It appears that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is either extremely courageous or he is flat out lying to us. If he is still in Ukraine, and that is a big if, then I have to applaud his courage and bravery. So many others would have fled in the face of a Russian invasion, but if he has chosen to stay and fight then his people are right to regard him as a hero. But if he has already left Ukraine and is just acting as if he has stayed behind to fight, then that is the opposite of courage.
#9 It is odd that the Russians haven’t been able to find Zelensky yet, because they have definitely been hunting for him.
#10 Zelensky is trying really hard to drag western powers into the war. He is begging Joe Biden to establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, but Biden understands that this would mean direct military conflict with the Russians.
#11 The EU has announced that they will be providing fighter jets to Ukraine. This is an extremely dangerous thing to do, because Putin has warned that those that provide military equipment to Ukraine will be targeted.
#12 I don’t know why the EU believes that fighter jets will make much of a difference, because most of the military airfields under Ukraine’s control have already been destroyed.
#13 The entire world was shocked when Putin put his strategic nuclear forces on alert over the weekend. Putin definitely escalated things dramatically by making this move, but hopefully it will get people to understand that we really could end up with a nuclear war at the end of all this.
#14 Now that western powers have weaponized SWIFT, I think that there will be a mass exodus to China’s version. Most people have not even heard of CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) until now, but this crisis is going to make it a lot more prominent.
#15 I would love it if the “peace talks” between Russia and Ukraine brought an end to the shooting. Unfortunately, to me it appears that Ukraine is simply using those talks as a stalling tactic. Zelensky still seems to think that western powers can be dragged into the conflict, and so he is trying to buy as much time as possible.
#16 When Zelensky signed an application for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union on Monday, that was another clear sign that he has no intention of turning Ukraine into a “neutral country” like the Russians are demanding.
#17 If Zelensky cannot get anyone to come help Ukraine, he will lose this war.
#18 But even if Russia wins the battle for Ukraine, it will be considered a pariah state from now on, and being cut off from the west will be very painful.
#19 I think that Richard Moore, the chief of MI6, certainly revealed a lot when he tweeted this… “With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT+ rights. So let’s resume our series of tweets to mark #LGBTHM2022.”
#20 One member of the Ukrainian Parliament has her own spin on what this war is really all about, and it is definitely raising a lot of eyebrows.
#21 I think that this war is going to make the global energy crisis much worse.
#22 I think that this war is going to make the global food crisis much worse.
#23 I think that the things that western powers are doing to punish Russia will really hurt the Russians.
#24 But I also think that the Russians have more than 1,000 different ways of hurting us without even using nukes.
Even if a ceasefire in Ukraine is announced tomorrow, the U.S. and Russia will be bitter enemies from this point forward because of everything that has transpired. There will never be peace between our two nations again, and that makes me very sad. I don’t consider the Russian people to be my enemies, and I know that most of them do not consider the American people to be their enemies. But our two governments absolutely hate one another, and now we have stumbled into a war that almost all of us did not want.
If our leaders continue to behave irrationally, will we eventually see nuclear weapons get used? Vladimir Putin essentially threatened to use them when he put his nuclear forces on alert over the weekend. And day after day, U.S. and EU officials just continue to escalate matters.
What we really need right now are leaders with cool heads that are determined to find a way out of this mess. Because if a way out cannot be found, the consequences will be unimaginable for all of us."
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