Well it didn’t take long for Russia to avenge the bombing of the Kerch Strait road-and-rail bridge on Saturday. Overnight Sunday Russian air strikes hit the city of Zaporizhzhia destroyed houses and high-rise apartments in the southeast Ukrainian city.
A correspondent in Ukraine told me right after the attack on the bridge linking the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula with the mainland that she feared it would escalate into nuclear war and everything around her would be destroyed.
She’s trying to escape into Poland right now. I told her I didn’t think it would go nuclear, but in truth I’m not sure. I actually don’t know what to think, but what do you say to a noncombatant in a war zone?
“Don’t worry but get out of there as soon as you can,” maybe?
That bridge was Putin’s pride and joy and he personally opened it himself in 2018 by driving the first truck to officially cross the 12-mile span.
While the bridge does have considerable strategic importance the bombing is personally a slap in the face for Putin. Now everybody is on edge about how he’s going to react to this insult and fear Zaporizhzhia may only be the beginning.
Little is known for sure right now, but the bomb was delivered by truck in what must have been a suicide mission – and apparently the truck registration was recovered. It appears to be registered to someone living in the Krasnodar region near the Russian side of the bridge.
Which adds to the mystery surrounding the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.
Are these Ukrainian special operations missions? That would make more sense for the bridge bombing. Are there third parties covertly running operations against Russia? Or is there an internal Russian resistance?
And what’s going to happen now? Is Putin going to follow through on his broad hints he’ll use tactical nuclear weapons if he feels that’s the only way to win?
And what would he win? A huge expanse of territory reduced to poverty and ruin even by Russian standards. Territory full of people who hate his guts.
Worse, his army’s supplies are seriously depleted and personnel are demoralized. Even if he takes Ukraine, Russia will be in no shape to take on Poland next, as seems to have been his plan.
And why would he risk escalation to the point of destroying civilization – including Russia? And how seriously should we take that possibility?
Great questions, wish I had some answers. All the experts have had to revise their answers regularly in the face of changing circumstances.
I will venture a guess. Russia is dying. It is currently suffering what appears to be irreversible population decline, the result of moving huge numbers from the rural areas to the cities under Stalin’s forced industrialization.
The territory Russia controls was seriously reduced during the collapse of the Soviet Union when their former satellite states effectively turned their guns around and pointed them toward their former master. Control of all the nine strategic “gates” (natural invasion corridors) into the Russian heartland has slipped out of their control.
Putin’s modern version of pan-Slavicism, the romantic imperialism of a union of all Slavic peoples under Russian domination, is gone along with the Third Reich and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
When such dreams die, megalomaniac leaders often want their country to die gloriously with them, as Hitler and the Japanese warlords tried to accomplish.
They failed, but they didn’t have nukes.
Armageddon around the corner
Well it didn’t take long for Russia to avenge the bombing of the Kerch Strait road-and-rail bridge on Saturday. Overnight Sunday Russian air strikes hit the city of Zaporizhzhia destroyed houses and high-rise apartments in the southeast Ukrainian city.
A correspondent in Ukraine told me right after the attack on the bridge linking the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula with the mainland that she feared it would escalate into nuclear war and everything around her would be destroyed.
She’s trying to escape into Poland right now. I told her I didn’t think it would go nuclear, but in truth I’m not sure. I actually don’t know what to think, but what do you say to a noncombatant in a war zone?
“Don’t worry but get out of there as soon as you can,” maybe?
That bridge was Putin’s pride and joy and he personally opened it himself in 2018 by driving the first truck to officially cross the 12-mile span.
While the bridge does have considerable strategic importance the bombing is personally a slap in the face for Putin. Now everybody is on edge about how he’s going to react to this insult and fear Zaporizhzhia may only be the beginning.
Little is known for sure right now, but the bomb was delivered by truck in what must have been a suicide mission – and apparently the truck registration was recovered. It appears to be registered to someone living in the Krasnodar region near the Russian side of the bridge.
Which adds to the mystery surrounding the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.
Are these Ukrainian special operations missions? That would make more sense for the bridge bombing. Are there third parties covertly running operations against Russia? Or is there an internal Russian resistance?
And what’s going to happen now? Is Putin going to follow through on his broad hints he’ll use tactical nuclear weapons if he feels that’s the only way to win?
And what would he win? A huge expanse of territory reduced to poverty and ruin even by Russian standards. Territory full of people who hate his guts.
Worse, his army’s supplies are seriously depleted and personnel are demoralized. Even if he takes Ukraine, Russia will be in no shape to take on Poland next, as seems to have been his plan.
And why would he risk escalation to the point of destroying civilization – including Russia? And how seriously should we take that possibility?
Great questions, wish I had some answers. All the experts have had to revise their answers regularly in the face of changing circumstances.
I will venture a guess. Russia is dying. It is currently suffering what appears to be irreversible population decline, the result of moving huge numbers from the rural areas to the cities under Stalin’s forced industrialization.
The territory Russia controls was seriously reduced during the collapse of the Soviet Union when their former satellite states effectively turned their guns around and pointed them toward their former master. Control of all the nine strategic “gates” (natural invasion corridors) into the Russian heartland has slipped out of their control.
Putin’s modern version of pan-Slavicism, the romantic imperialism of a union of all Slavic peoples under Russian domination, is gone along with the Third Reich and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
When such dreams die, megalomaniac leaders often want their country to die gloriously with them, as Hitler and the Japanese warlords tried to accomplish.
They failed, but they didn’t have nukes.