3 March
Into the Valley of Death rode the six billion.
No matter how much of a jack-shit dictator, murdering, Mafiya-linked, corrupt piece of scum Vladimir Putin is, you have to respect his smarts.
Using the old bait & switch technique, he's managed to re-annexe the Crimean Peninsula without a single shot being fired.
And I don't believe there will be - as long a she stops at Crimea, which he seems comfortable enough doing. Clearly, starting a break-out attack from the peninsula would require vastly more firepower than he has deployed thus far. Ukraine has a large army, and a very large population, the vast majority of whom want no part of Russian rule.
Russia is not at all popular with ethnic Ukrainians, mostly thanks to hundreds of years of persecution by Russia, culminating in the attempted total repression of the Ukraine language and culture under the hammer & sickle of USSR.
If Ukraine gets invaded, Poland and Germany would do more than sit up and take notes, as they're doing now with Crimea.
Putin knows that no way will anyone attempt to intervene in Crimea. Any attempted re-taking of it would require a massive attack on a highly defensible piece of dirt. This is what the brave 600 of the Light Brigade found when they rode in the Valley of Death 160 years ago. Accordingly, I see no way Ukraine will invite Russia to attack the rest of the country by trying.
The rest of Europe obviously realises that now Russia considers Crimea back in the fold, an attack would invite a nuclear response, escalating quickly into a full-scale nuclear war. I'm sure Merkel, Cameron & Hollande recognise that Putin is crazy and macho enough to actually push the button if attacked, and they have no desire to see Europe turned into wasteland for the next million years thanks to some piddling peninsula in Ukraine.
So, what does it mean, if the planet isn't riding into the Valley of Death just yet?
I would guess a new period of Cold War, where the west/NATO draw a line at the border of Crimea and Ukraine and station large numbers of troops close by. Russia's response will be the stacking of nuclear-capable surface and submarine craft at Sevastopol, in Crimea itself, and there will be a standoff for the next several years.
Interesting times!
Copyright © Alan Charman