Yeah, I know? It’s a 7-minute Medium essay on the West’s role in the conflict, Peter.

And by “Ukrainians” I assume you only mean the ones that align with your worldview and not the millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. It’s a divided nation.

If you read the piece, I lay out how the West knew it was coming and evidence shows America wanted it to happen because ‘Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability.’ Then Clinton says this is the ‘Afghanistan model’ like the 80s, US generals and politicians all call it a proxy war, Lindsay Graham says he likes ‘the structure of this war’ and ‘as long as we send them weapons they’ll fight to the last man’ and the West scuttled the tentative agreement the two sides had in April and are actively blocking further negotiations. And any talk of peace gets shouted down. Pretty sure Ukrainians don’t want to die as a pawn in American geopolitical games, but apparently, many keyboard warriors can be convinced otherwise.

As for the Putin piece, if only it were that simple. Too many Western “experts, analysts, and polymaths” fall for the infantilized narrative of goodies and baddies and ‘the evil man’ theories, somehow ignorant that Russia/China/whatever geopolitical baddie has its own history, complex political forces, military, military-industrial complex, geopolitical aims, and most importantly security concerns. Threaten the security and you’ll get a reaction. Shocking, no?

Putin could and probably would be replaced by some more hardline.

Thanks for the read and the words.

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