310 - The Death Throes of a Free Ukraine

Putin's Approach

            "At last," Putin chortled to me, "I've got that little pipsqueak Zelensky cornered." Confidently and confidentially, Putin confided in me that Trump's election and President Biden's reluctance to arm Kyiv fully and then to let Ukraine use American-supplied long-range artillery and aircraft against his missile launching facilities and ammunition dumps was giving him renewed confidence of total victory. Now that he "had Trump," he said, he might not even need the weird North Koreans.

            Publicly, Putin already declared that the West's post-Cold War monopoly on power and influence had "irrevocably disappeared." He also saluted Trump personally and publicly, welcoming Trump's desire to "restore good relations with the Russian Federation."  Putin also added code words: appreciating Trump's wish to "help resolve the Ukrainian crisis."  "Perfect," Putin whispered to me. "Resolve," he murmured, "means capitulation. I'll soon be in Kyiv to fondle the keys of that ridiculous little satellite. Just as Stalin took what he wanted, so will I."  After all, he glared in my direction, "Ukraine belongs in my growing empire."  "Trump," he intimated, "will make that possible after he and I have a few words.  He owes me lots, and the time has come for a real pay back."

            Putin didn't think that the Biden administration could do enough before Jan. 20, 2025 to transfer big artillery and plenty of shells to Zelensky. Nor did he think that the current administration in Washington had the kinds of courage to forestall what he was going to connive with Trump. Smirking, he told me with a straight face that his nuclear bluffing had worked, and would continue to cow Biden and that collection, he said, of juvenile warriors working for Biden. He refused to say whether he had had plans to employ a few tactical nuclear arms in Ukraine. Nor would he describe how many were really ready for action given the decayed state of Russia's military and its armaments. Nor would he tell me whether, given Trump's election, he needed to continue over the winter to pummel Ukraine's cities and civilians with Iranian drone strikes and glide bombs. Both were causing the kinds of damage he welcomed, however.

            "We have won," the Russian ideologist Alexander Dugin declared.  He is very close to Putin. "The world will be never ever like before. Globalists have lost their final combat," he crowed on X.  A key Russian parliamentarian said much the same: Trump's triumph is "a blow to the left-liberal forces that dominate" the "so-called" free world.  Trump, both of those thought leaders and very conservative Russian Orthodox billionaire Konstantin Malodfeyev asserted, would be willing to split the world, giving Russia what it wanted in Europe, Central Asia, and Africa. Leonard Slutsky, head of the Russian Duma's foreign affairs committee, further expected that a Republican Congress, united with Trump, would send no more American cash to prop up Zelensky's "neo-Nazi regime."  Ukraine would collapse, "in a matter of months, if not days."

            Putin smiled mischievously when I quoted what his acolytes had said. "Those were sensible sayings," he told me, but to realize them he had to wait until Trump was in office.  He would not say what he and Trump had planned during their quiet conversations over the last four years, even two days ago. Yet, he raised his eyebrows and crinkled his eyes in pleasure and gave me a tight smile.

            But, "what if lame-duck Biden did in fact send the kinds of long-range weapons that Ukraine desperately needs to battle your people in the Donbas and Koreans in Kursk?" I persisted.  "What then?"

            "Trump will stop the Biden people from being foolish," Putin replied confidently. Furthermore, he told me, moving sufficiently powerful war materiel to Ukraine now would be logistically complicated.  "And I would play my nuclear card, again," he said intimidatingly.

            Then, because we were obviously having such a good and productive conversation, and because I had kindly refrained from reminding him how short in stature he was compared to Trump, he slyly admitted that if Ukraine had ever received flyable F-16s in number, or more Patriot missile batteries for Ukraine's air defense system, his military assault would have faltered, "We overwhelm the Ukrainians with convicts and other human fodder," he indicated, "but without the Koreans we will soon run out of soldiers."  Additionally, "our air power is far less strong and ready than everyone believes. If Biden sends aircraft quickly, we would be in big trouble."

            "So," said I, "Trump's election was a godsend for your agenda -- your imperial re-conquest of eastern Europe?"  "Certainly," Putin replied. "I am a big man, a Russian potentate like Stalin, and not a wuss like Yeltsin and Gorbachev!" 

            "Don't forget," he glanced upward, "Trump owes me big time and together we will create a new world order, with me on top."