Ukraine
March 15, 2022 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to know what information to trust about the situation in the Ukrainian war. A few days ago the Financial Times, which isn’t perfect (what media outlet is these days?) but fairly sober about its news reporting standards, ran a long story outlining what it saw as the significant failures of the Russian invasion: In the first phase of its offensive, the Kremlin’s military story is one of
»
March 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Joe Biden made international news today when he definitively ruled out use of American forces in Ukraine on the ground that such action would bring about “World War III.” “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III,”
»
March 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration called on the talents of Vice President Kamala Harris to work their wonders in the Ukraine crisis. What were the parties responsible for her mission to Poland President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw yesterday “thinking”? I’ll have to circle back to you on that. Harris responded with a bout of fake laughter when asked about Ukrainian refugees (video below). The New York Post quotes the comment of Iulia
»
March 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The world was startled and impressed two weeks ago when Germany announced in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that it would increase its defense spending substantially, keep some coal-fired power plants running that would otherwise have been replaced with Russian natural gas, and rethink its plan to shut down its remaining nuclear power plants. Well, they’ve done their rethinking on nuclear power, and decided—”Never mind: we’re going
»
March 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I have a five year old granddaughter who knows, as far as I can tell, one joke: Why don’t you ask Elsa to hold a balloon? I don’t know, why? Because she’ll let it go. I am anything but a sentimentalist, so maybe that’s why this video of a little Ukrainian girl singing “Let It Go” in a bomb shelter got to me: Little girl singing "Let it go" in
»
March 5, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Conservatives are currently under attack on two contradictory grounds: 1) they are pro-Vladimir Putin, and 2) they are warmongers trying to embroil the U.S. in a war against Putin. Of course, it is possible that there are some conservatives in each of these alleged camps. Still, it is odd to be attacked from two utterly antithetical directions at once. I know hundreds of conservatives, and not one of them, to
»
March 4, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Let’s start with a bold proposition: if the American right had had the same attitude toward our foreign policy establishment back around 1963 that it has today, we might never have allowed the Vietnam War to have become a decade-long quagmire. This is the way to understand criticisms emanating from some precincts on the right, such as Tucker Carlson, about the Ukraine crisis, which have in turn generated demagogic attacks
»
March 4, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a press conference under dire circumstances yesterday speaking in Russian, Ukrainian, and English. He fielded questions for 55 minutes. I would like to post the whole thing for your information, but have only been able to find clips such as the 90-second highlight reel below. As the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance Zelensky is the man of the hour. He harks back to
»
March 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Russians reportedly have launched multiple assassination attempts against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. So far none has succeeded. This account is from the London Times: President Zelensky has survived at least three assassination attempts in the past week, The Times has learnt. Two different outfits have been sent to kill the Ukrainian president — mercenaries of the Kremlin-backed Wagner group and Chechen special forces. Both have been thwarted by anti-war
»
March 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The “fog of war” is even foggier in the age of 24/7 news and social media, so it is impossible to know what the hell is happening on the ground in the Ukraine, let alone in Moscow. High time, then, to check in with Col. Austin Bay, author of Cocktails From Hell and other books, Creators Syndicate columnist, and contributor to StrategyPage. I was delighted to discover that we’re both
»
March 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Vice President Kamala Harris explained the Russia-Ukraine conflict “in layman’s terms for people who don’t understand what’s going on and how can this directly affect the people of the United States” during a segment on 93.9 WKYS’s The Morning Hustle yesterday (video below, whole thing here). WKSY holds itself out as “DC’s Source For What’s Hot In The Hip Hop Community With The Best Radio, Local News, Events And Insider
»
March 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden gave his long-awaited [?] State of the Union address last night. The White House has posted the text here. A few observations. • The spectacle of Biden speaking in front of Vice President Harris and Speaker Pelosi was chilling. We are not a serious country. • How silly and small did they look by contrast with President Zelensky and every Ukrainian official we have heard from over the
»
February 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Victor Davis Hanson’s American Greatness column today is “The crowded road to Kyiv.” It is long, historically informed, and necessary reading in its entirety. As always, he draws back to provide perspective. He writes with some indignation in the penultimate section of the column designated “Leftwing mania” as follows: On cue, an embarrassed Left now offers some surreal takes on why Putin went into Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014
»
February 27, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Solid news from Ukraine is sparse, and some of what we think we know will turn out to be wrong. But one thing is certain: the Russians have not yet been able to take Kiev. This has to be a major setback for Putin’s regime. The Ukrainians don’t have to win, they just have to keep fighting. And they seem to be all in. The Klitschko brothers, both former heavyweight
»
February 27, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Vladimir Putin and others insist on our understanding the rape of Ukraine in a certain context. The context consists of components including the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, and Putin’s high anxiety. If anyone has supplied the context from Ukraine’s perspective, I missed it. I doubt that it’s ancient history in Ukraine. Ukraine’s subjugation by the the Soviet Union was an unhappy experience.
»
February 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The left is agitating about how Tucker Carlson and some other conservatives are making equivocal if not pro-Putin pronouncements, and I’ll look into and analyze this in a separate post tomorrow. For now, it suffices to point out that the left is once again playing a great game of misdirection or projection. Just as the Soviet Union encouraged—and clandestinely funded—the so-called “peace movement” in Europe back in the 1970s and
»
February 26, 2022 — John Hinderaker
This is one of the more striking poll results I have seen in a long time: A new Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)-Harris Poll survey released Friday found that 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president. When looking strictly at the answers of Democrats and Republicans, 85 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats answered this
»
