Liberation Without Victory

Good article SSG Carlos Madden Unfortunately I agree with Zelensky that Putin is not going to stop at Eastern Ukraine. He will use that as staging area for a further push on UKraine and possibly Moldova.

This situation could have been turned on its head right from the beginning if NATO, U.S. had taken a firm stand. When Putin first put out his demands of Ukraine never being admitted to NATO, at that time NATO/U.S. should have replied:
Ok, Ukraine will not be part of NATO and remain neutral on the CONDITIONS you (Putin/Russia) stay out of Ukraine. You, your allies stop supporting any acts of aggression against the government of Ukraine. If you (Putin/Russia/Allies) step into Ukraine, at that time Ukraine will automatically become a member and we will stomp the dog sh!t out of you. This would have back Putin in the corner. If he accepted the deal, the all was well. If he didn't then we'd know, and NATO would have had the legal reason to act.
Putin is the school yard bully and should have been treated as such. He only respects force, I have seen this type before in the Balkans. Remember when the Danes under U.N. fired up the Serbs without asking permission from NY HQ to fire. After that the Serbs left the Nordic BDE alone. Putin is the same. He knew with Biden in office nothing would be done, why do you think he waited until now. Putin is still dictating the situation. The longer it goes on the worse it gets and harder it is to get the upper hand.
But hey, what do I know, I'm just a retired SGM shoeing horses now.

@SSG Carlos Madden
"Kyiv is halfway normal now. Burnt-out Russian tanks have been removed from the roads leading into the city, traffic lights work, the subway runs, oranges are available for purchase. A cheerful balalaika orchestra was performing for returning refugees at the main rail station earlier this week, on the day we arrived to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

The normality is deceiving. Although the Russians botched their opening campaign, they continue to bombard the capital and are now gathering in the east for a renewed attack on Ukraine. Zelensky has to prepare his country, and the world, for battles that could be deadlier than anything seen so far. The general in charge of the defense of Kyiv, Alexander Gruzevich, told us during a tour of the ravaged northwestern suburbs that he expects the Russians to try to return to the capital using intensified “scorched earth” tactics along the way: total destruction by ground artillery and air strikes, followed by the arrival of troops.

When we met Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday night, he told us the same thing: The optimism that many Americans and Europeans—and even some Ukrainians—are currently expressing is unjustified. If the Russians are not expelled from Ukraine’s eastern provinces, Zelensky said, “they can return to the center of Ukraine and even to Kyiv. It is possible. Now is not yet the time of victory.” Ukraine can win—and by “win,” he means continue to exist as a sovereign, if permanently besieged, state—only if its allies in Washington and across Europe move with alacrity to sufficiently arm the country. “We have a very small window of opportunity,” he said.

It was late in the evening when we met Zelensky at his compound. The surrounding streets were barricaded and empty, the building itself almost entirely blacked out. Soldiers with flashlights led us through a maze of sandbagged corridors to a harshly lit, windowless room adorned only with Ukrainian flags. There was no formal protocol, no long wait, and we were not told to sit at the far end of an elongated table. Zelensky, the comedian who has become a global icon of freedom and bravery, entered the room without fanfare.

“Hi!” he said, brightly, and then proceeded to complain about his back. (“I have a back, and that’s why I have some problems, but it’s okay!”) He thanked us for not filming the interview: Even though he’s been a professional television performer for all of his adult life, it’s a relief to occasionally go unfilmed.

On or off camera, Zelensky conducts himself with a deliberate lack of pretense. In a part of the world where leadership usually implies stiff posture and a pompous manner—and where signaling military authority requires, at a minimum, highly visible epaulets—he instead evokes sympathy and feelings of trust precisely because he sounds, in the words of a Ukrainian acquaintance, “like one of us.” He is a kind of anti-Putin: Rather than telegraphing a cold-eyed, murderous superiority, he wants people to understand him as an Everyman, a middle-aged dad with a bad back.

We started the interview by reminding Zelensky, the Jewish president of a mostly Orthodox Christian and Catholic country, that his words were going to appear on Good Friday on the Western calendar and just before the first seder of Passover, a holiday that marks the liberation of an enslaved nation from an evil dictator."...