3-3-25

The world has Ukraine on the brain right now…..and not without good

reason….so, I looked back in the Rightside archives to see what I had been saying

this time 3 years ago……back in February 2022…..with Russian invading

Ukraine……set aside how you feel about Zelensky, or even Putin for that

matter….and really, set aside how you feel about Trump…..sit back and look

objectively at where we are today…..in the war that was said to be only capable of

lasting 1-2 weeks we are at 3 years and one month…..and I’m going to say up front

…..here me on this….it is possible to be opposed to Zelensky in his role as

President of Ukraine and still want Russian to lose…..those two things are not

mutually exclusive….it is possible to, and makes good sense actually, to be

opposed to what we have seen in recent times with Zelensky’s leadership in

Ukraine and still also want Putin to be dealt with harshly…..but more than

anything there needs to be a push for peace….the economies, the securities, the

well-being, of Europe is of a direct vital national interest to the United States and

don’t think for a second that its not….. we need them to get their collective act

together.

Over the next few minutes I’m going to lay it out for you….how did we go from

being opposed to Russia invading Ukraine……to having the President of Ukraine

asked to leave the White House…..it’s really a question of leadership…..let’s be

honest, Zelensky screwed this up royally…..he has failed to grasp that 2025 is not

2022…..times change, sentiments change, economics change, and presidents

change……in many ways, the world has changed a great deal in three years…..

Having said that, let’s think about where we have been…..in 2014 the

Obama/Biden Administration stood idly by without saying a word when Putin’s

Russian annexed the Crimean peninsula….when that happened Ukraine lost 2.4

million of its citizens and one of the strongest Black Sea ports in the City of

Sevastopol…..But Putin wanted more, and many believe (and I agree) that if

Trump had not been elected in 2016 Putin may well have moved on the rest of

Ukraine much earlier…..but he didn’t….he knew that Trump was not Obama or

Clinton…..but then he got Joe Biden and the most feckless toothless foreign policy

in the history of the United States…..so toward the end of Biden’s first year he

launched into eastern Ukraine…..but let’s not forget a few things in the process…..

In February 2022 Russian forces launched a 3-pronged attack with tens of

thousands of ground forces that were preceded by hundreds of cruise missile

strikes, airstrikes, and attack helicopter runs…….but reports surfaced immediately

that the Ukrainian forces – who have always been vastly outnumbered and

outgunned – fought back and have made sure that a Russian invasion on their

sovereign soil would not go down without some Russian blood being shed in the

process…..as of March 2025 estimates are that nearly half a million casualties have

been inflicted on both sides but the overwhelming majority of them have been

Russians with nearly 300,000 dead and wounded…..

Even still it appears that Russian forces have been able to steadily advance across

Ukraine ……taking out key command and control nodes…….destroying

Ukrainian military bases……razing cities, especially in the eastern Donbass

region…….cyber attacks in Ukraine for disrupted Ukrainian banking,

communications, and government offices…… this is a war of numbers and Russia

has the bigger numbers and can outlive the battlefield attrition…..LTG Keith

Kellogg, who is now an envoy for the Trump administration, said in 2022 that

Putin appears to be somewhat unhinged……and that we should know that he

(Putin) has openly threatened the United States, NATO and our allies around the

world that ….in his words….. General Kellogg believes that was a couched threat

of the use of tactical nuclear weapons…..not the nation killing kind….but certainly

the kind that can destroy whole installations, and units, and infrastructure…….

There are things that could have been done and I’ll rehash them for just a minute to

give perspective……first and foremost I will reiterate that despite my personal

background as a warfighter I do not want to see US Troops on Ukrainian

soil……but what has been forgotten in the several years since it started is that

initially Putin went so far as to say that not only did he question the validity of

Ukraine’s statehood but that he also questioned certain sections of

Poland…..Poland is a NATO ally…..that cannot be allowed to happen…..NATO

needs to remain intact and strong…….that’s one…. Sanctions…..I agree with

sanctions…..but they cannot be escalating and threatening only…..Biden should

have unequivocally dropped the sanctions hammer when he had the chance……

Remember if you will, that when Biden heard that Putin was posturing for an

invasion of Ukraine his response was that it depended whether or not it was a large

invasion or a small one……what?! Who says that?.....not the leader of the free

world…But something else the Biden Administration refused to do was to rescind

Biden’s executive orders that curtailed our own domestic energy

production…….we should have allowed the oil and gas industry to fully

rekindle…. get the west away from any dependency on Russian oil or imports of

any type….we can control our own energy destiny and Russian should not be the

ones dictating world commodity prices……and Russia’s war machine is fueled in

large part by its own energy production and export….

What Biden DID do was write checks…..Here in 2025 the United States has

entered into in an era of big government accountability and the advent of DOGE

….we are relishing the idea of finding and cutting wasteful spending…..but that

public sentiment for DOGE politics is built on the haphazard and mindless way

that the Biden administration spent Trillions of dollars wantonly….and one of

those egregious line items in the Biden Profit and Loss statement as Ukraine….not

because we shouldn’t have helped….but because Biden had no plan…..where in

the history of the world has there ever been a time when the checkbook was laid

open with no understanding or expectation of accountability……what was the

plan? There was no plan!.....all we ever heard from the Biden camp was “we’re in

it for as long as it takes”……the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars

and we can’t say where or how…..to be sure, I believe that much of it is traceable,

and many American companies benefited…..but the real point is that the war had

no endstate, no milestones, no phase lines…..all it had was an unsustainable an

unrealistic expense line in the US economy which had America taxpayer paying

out over 25% more than all of Europe combined……

And now here we are ……no one likes Russia, and we are all getting tired of

Zelensky…..not a good combination….. Zelensky failed to read the room on this

one……he is the elected leader of a sovereign nation and I respect that…..but for

being in his position he failed to recognize that the mood has changed dramatically

in the US…..leadership has changed…..public sentiment has changed…..and

therefore his position has changed……He came to the White House and we are

learning now that he had options but chose not to take them…..one month before

the blow up in the Oval Office Secretary Rubio told investigative journalist

Catherine Herridge that Zelensky was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with

and kept saying one thing in negotiations and then doing another when he left the

room…..rumors abound right now that Zelensky may be taking advice from former

Obama an Biden advisors Susan Rice and Alexander Vindman…..if that is true

then he is extremely naïve….why would anyone take advice from the people who

are known to be openly diametrically opposed to Trump, from whom Zelensky is

trying to negotiate things he wants?...... Zelensky hosed himself and his people by

playing games with this issue and then trying to school President Trump and Vice

President Vance in the Oval Office…..it was an ill fated move and it remains to be

seen whether the deal is now defunct…..a deal , by the way, that would have meant

hundreds of billions of dollars to the Ukraine economy for rebuilding and restoring

the ravages of war……Zelensky should have looked at Israeli Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu ……Netanyahu was constantly being misled, and mistreated,

by the Biden administration,……but he also knew not to air the dirty laundry in the

eyes of the world….by trying to puff up to Trump in the Oval Zelensky lost

everything in the eyes of the world…..Netanyahu? he kept his professionalism

intact and did fine…… I have no sympathy for Zelensky as a leader……but I have

immense sympathy for the Ukrainian people…..they have been bludgeoned and

beaten in all of this…..whole sections of Ukraine are devastated…..their economy

has taken major hits…..but I will also say, that in the face of the so-called great

Russian Bear Ukrainian soldiers have been putting the wood to the big scary

neighbor to the east……but their leadership needs to change……their politics need

to change…..

So where do we go from here?.....what’s next in this storyline…..I will tell you that

I am of the firm belief that the war in Ukraine is still one of the biggest stories of

the decade…..it is the largest force-on-force continuous conventional warfare since

World War II…..and the ramifications of what happens now, and what happens

next, are immense……we have to be keenly aware of the potential for a

broadening of the conflict….a flashpoint that could suck the US in……

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!