The PAC-Perspective by Ted Flint
For the virtue signalers on the Left who proudly fly their “We Stand with Ukraine” flags on their front lawns and warn of Putin swallowing up Europe to restore the Soviet Empire, I think a brief history is in order. First, a military conquest of Europe would be impossible. Russia’s economy, about the size of Italy’s, could never sustain such an ambitious undertaking. Russia and Ukraine share a history that goes back a millennium, during most of that time Ukraine did not exist as a sovereign nation.
The two countries have a complicated relationship made even more so since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This war is not about Russia acquiring additional territory, it’s about security. For more than two decades Putin has made it clear that Ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO. Russia has been invaded through Ukraine three times, most recently by Hitler, who exterminated nearly 15 percent of the Russian people. Putin has vowed to never again let that happen.
Shortly after the Berlin Wall was toppled, Mikael Gorbachev removed 450,000 Russian troops from East Germany in a good faith effort to unify Germany under NATO, on the condition that NATO would not move east. James Baker, then Secretary of State, famously declared: “We will not move NATO one inch to the east.” Since then, NATO has added 15 countries and has expanded 1,000 miles east to Russia’s border.
In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Five years later, the Baltic States were added to the Alliance. But the U.S. Government keeps pushing the package. In 2008, Putin made it unequivocally clear that Ukraine and Georgia would not be included in that security arrangement. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and Ossetia to drive home that point.
Fast forward to 2014, the US. Government engineered a coup to overthrow the duly elected government of Viktor Yanukovych, who wanted Ukraine to remain neutral. USAID, a front for the CIA, fomented a revolution that eventually ushered in a government handpicked by our State Department. One of the new government’s first orders of business was to attack the peoples of Donbass and Luhansk. It became a civil war that would claim the lives of 14,000 ethnic Russians. Putin protested the killing of ethnic speaking Russians in that conflict and pushed for adoption of the Minsk Accords. Germany, France, Britain, and Russia signed, the U.S. did not.
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and actor who ran on a platform promising peace and vowing to sign the Minsk Accords, was elected. He has since suspended elections in his country and has drained the U.S. Treasury of tens of billions of dollars. He is no hero.
As this column goes to press, the Kremlin is awaiting details from Washington about a proposal for a 30-day cease fire. Moscow says any agreement would have to address Russia’s concerns.
Putin’s invasion may have been unwarranted and unfair in some people’s view, but it was not unexpected. This entire conflict and the death and destruction it's wrought could have been avoided if America, which is the driving force behind NATO, would just stay out of the internal affairs of other nations. Putin is doing what any real leader would do: he is putting Russia First.
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