We Know Putin’s Next Move…

As you know by now Ukraine is in the middle of a full-scale invasion by Russia - so here’s what’s happened in the last 48 hours, and what we expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to do next in this deadly and unprovoked assault. Let’s start with the facts: on the morning of February 24th, 2022, Russia launched an offensive attack on Ukraine, starting with ground forces invading major cities like Ukraine’s capital of Kiev, and other populous regions like Odessa, and Donbas, bolstered by missile strikes and shelling throughout the entire country.

Russian troops have already seized control of parts of Ukraine in the last few hours, including the Chernobyl Power Plant as they make their way to Kiev where it is expected they will try to seize the capital. Over 100,000 people within Ukraine have already been displaced according to UN refugee estimates, and the death count is rising so rapidly that we can’t give an accurate estimate.

The US, in response, has announced strict economic sanctions, including limiting Russia from being able to do business in dollars, euros, and other global currencies, and blocking major Russian banks that collectively hold about $1 trillion in assets. Biden has also sent several thousand more US troops into Europe to bolster NATO allies, however he has been very clear about the fact that the US will not engage with Russian troops in Ukraine. 

The situation is unbelievably bad, evolving quickly, and getting worse every hour, but this is only the beginning of a new and massive war, and there is absolutely no doubt this conflict is going to ramp up intensely in the coming days and weeks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has openly shifted his rhetoric from the nonspecific planning stages of the last month, to extremely aggressive nationalist warmongering, false claims of Ukrainian provocation, and outrageous threats spanning from nuclear retaliation to world domination. So what exactly is he going to do next? We don’t have to guess, Putin has made his intentions abundantly clear. First, he is absolutely seeking to invade and annex all of Ukraine.

In his declaration of war, Putin dismissed Ukrainian sovereignty outright as being the product of severing historically Russian land over a century ago. His argument is that Ukraine is rightfully a part of Russia, and was separated arbitrarily by Bolshevik Communists in 1917. This is an absurd historical revisionism that ignores centuries of cultural, political, and ethnic distinctions between the two countries.

Ukraine is not part of Russia, and even during the time of the Soviet Union, they were two separate states, so the argument Putin is making is unequivocally false. But Putin’s rhetoric around the Soviet Union shows that if he succeeds in Ukraine, he’s not going to stop there. For decades, Putin has openly maligned the breakup of the Soviet states, and called for a return to the union, only under his personal dictatorial control.

Putin claims that the independent states that came out of the Soviet Union were politically misled into their independence, which is categorically not true - Ukraine and many other post-Soviet nations held popular votes to establish their independence, and a very very very small percentage of former soviet citizens have ever voted against their own sovereignty.

Much of Putin’s rhetoric also focuses on his open intention to overthrow the government of Ukraine - which he calls a security threat to Russia, and says that the Ukrainian government does not represent it’s people, and therefore has no rights as a sovereign state, while also claiming that the Ukrainian military is enacting a genocide against the Russian people. Again, this is absolutely not true, and there is no evidence to support these claims of genocide or aggression. 

The reality is that Ukraine’s current government was the result of protestors in 2014 overthrowing the pro-Russia government of Viktor Yanukovych in the Euromaidan protest movement. And there is a LOT to talk about when it comes to Ukraine’s past and current government, the situation is deeply nuanced, and has good sides, bad sides, and complicated sides.

But in spite of Ukraine’s struggles in governance - there is no evidence to support Putin’s claims that the government is so broken as to require foreign intervention and a loss of sovereignty. And in fact, this rhetoric almost guarantees that we are heading into a World War scenario, because even though Ukraine is not a NATO member, and therefore the US and its allies have no legal responsibility to fight Russia on their behalf - three other post-Soviet states in Putin’s crosshairs are NATO members: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Should Putin encroach on their borders, Russia will be officially at war with NATO and the US. In short, Putin has laid out his roadmap. He will seek to annex all of Ukraine by invading and controlling its capital cities, which is already underway - then move on to the rest of the weaker former Soviet-states which will likely fall under Russian pressure, while the US and NATO scramble to figure out how to oppose Putin without sending in their own troops to fight Russian forces.

But inevitably, they will have to if Putin invades a NATO post-soviet state, which frankly, he might not just to avoid a direct war with the West. However, the chances of Putin’s land grab being isolated and not sparking massive global conflict that leads to a new World War is getting terrifyingly smaller as we watch Russia’s lightning invasion of Ukraine coupled with Putin’s do-or-die rhetoric that includes historical revision, open threats of nuclear attack, and clear sights on world domination.