The U.S. has over 1,000,000 citizens of Ukrainian descent and over 18,000 living refugees. Ukraine itself has an ongoing, sometimes violent, aggression from Russia, who claims it is part of Russia. Is it David vs Goliath? Time will tell. Now Russia has a black eye from a very smart maneuver on Ukraine’s part. Brad Johnson tells the story.
Founder of Americans for Intelligence Reform, a non-profit organization, Brad retired after 25 years as a Senior Operative with the CIA. His multiple stations included areas fighting terrorism, and those succumbing to lawlessness, human rights violations, and communism. At AIR we publish what you need to hear that our media censors. Support independent news outlets by sharing and following.
Basically buffer states.
WWII started out as border disputes and then Hitler decided the Western European Nations wouldn’t fight and invaded Poland. Then Chamberlain was the weak leader of the dominate nation, now Biden is the weak leader of the dominate nation and everyone si saying/thinking that Biden won’t fight. I don’t think Putin will make the first move in WWIII but Xi Jingping is in charge of a nation with a crumbling economy who has had to sell some of the Chinese Strategic Oil Reserve. He may be desperate enough to try a foreign adventure hoping to seize enough resources to buy some time .
Richard makes a good point – Putin is unlikely to start WWIII (for example, by directly attacking Poland).
He definitely likes to instigate fear though.
Some experts point out that, in this context the current sensational coverage in Europe of Zapad exercises actually benefits him and is likely an overblown fearmongering.
However, as Mr Johnson hinted in the previous podcasts, Putin likely acts covertly and indirectly.
He is likely using Lukashenka as an instrument, for example in the recent and ongoing border crisis,
which caused Poland to declare a state of emergency.
It would not be surprising, if he is actually the one supporting the Ukrainian UPA supporters,
what impacts Polish-Ukrainian relations.
By acting indirectly in this way Putin then can appear as a reasonable, indipensable mediator / liberator.