Millions of Ukrainian citizens fled the Russian invasion of February 2022, and were welcomed into Poland with open arms. The same thing is happening with many Ukrainian businesses, which are seeking a safer base of production for doing business with new European clients.
Meanwhile back in Ukraine, more than 50 nations have committed to bolstering Ukrainian defenses against the invasion of brutal foreign forces from the east. One of those countries is the United States, which is sending yet more HIMARS advanced artillery rockets to Ukraine. This medium range rocket system has already proven itself by demolishing much of Russia’s logistical stockpiles for the war.
Ukraine was known as the weapons brain trust of the former USSR. When Ukraine voted overwhelmingly to leave the Soviet Union, much of the best of Soviet weapons design, development, and manufacturing was split off from Russia and utilized by many foreign nations — including China — as a means of obtaining top level Russian weapons designs.
The Russian defense industry is still hurting from the loss of Ukrainian defense engineering and manufacturing from more than 30 years ago. This remains particularly true in the production of high quality turbine engines for ships, planes, and helicopters, where Russia still lags. This is probably due to Russia’s failure in producing new generations of qualified engineers capable of providing precision engineering and precision manufacturing services to the massive nation that is bleeding manpower at an alarming speed.
As Ukrainian weapons expertise relocates to Poland, we will see an interesting amalgam of Polish energy and enterprise with Ukrainian technical expertise. Putin will regret to his dying day his rash decision to invade Ukraine without justification. All of Russia’s enemies have been rejuvenated as a result of Putin’s miscalculation.
Inside Russia-occupied Ukraine, insurgency forces are building their skills, cohesion, and planning/execution.
Russian troops have to worry about roadside bombs or anti-vehicle mines as well as sniper fire and assassination via pistol or a bomb planted in a vehicle…. The Ukrainians depict the Russian occupiers as worse than the German Nazis of World War II infamy. This is particularly embarrassing for the Russians because the official Russian government justification for the invasion is to liberate Ukrainians from neo-Nazi Ukrainians led by president Zelensky, who is Jewish. This tragicomedy was understood by many in Russia early on and led to a largely unarmed, but often violent, resistance movement inside Russia and Belarus.
Russia denies the extent of the resistance in Kherson, calling armed partisans local bandits and gangsters. Video proof gets out of Kherson and Russian troops stationed in Kherson complain to friends and family back home. This intensifies resistance to the war inside Russia, where the government is waging its own Information War to generate support for the war or at least discredit the critics. It was the growing inability to suppress accurate news that played a role in causing the Soviet Union to dissolve in 1991. The former KGB officers who brought back so many aspects of Soviet rule during the last two decades are having a hard time dealing with media and image control. It’s the 1980s all over again but worse. This is a reminder that the Information War is not a state monopoly and often a multi-sided conflict.
Behind the Lines of the Oppressors
Ukraine will never give up. Will Putin fight to the last Russian soldier? And what would a Russian victory look like?
The terrorist war that Russia is waging against peaceful neighbor Ukraine, is just getting started. Meanwhile Russia’s best people are leaving Russia, and no replacements for them are being born. Russia cannot defend its current borders in the midst of its demographic collapse. The last thing the country needs is another “Peter the Great” who aims to further expand Russia’s borders.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. Russia’s shrinking population guarantees near-to-medium future incursions by neighboring populations in a grand multinational seizure of Russia’s natural resource wealth. Nuclear weapons will be no defense, because these future incursions will be in a form that Putin’s successors will be helpless to stop, especially with nukes. To a hammer, everything else looks like a nail. To a mad nuclear armed dictator, everyone else looks like a suitable target for nuclear weapons. Unfortunately for that doomed madman, he is entirely wrong and time will demonstrate his error sometime after he is gone.
The emergence of a Polish-Ukrainian commonwealth along with strong allies such as the Scandinavian and Baltic nations, will reverberate through Europe’s future.
More: Here is a proposal by the UK for the formation of a commonwealth that would include Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. Ideally, Belarus would formally break away from Russian control and join such a commonwealth — after ditching Lukashenko.
al fin next level 