Fire the An-Nex Time

   

“We will not stand by as Putin fraudulently attempts to annex parts of Ukraine… The Treasury Department and US government are taking sweeping action today to further weaken Russia’s already degraded military-industrial complex and undermine its ability to wage its illegal war.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, September 30th, announcing new sanctions from Putin’s annexation of occupied Ukraine

A set of banners near Moscow’s Red Square declares: “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson — Russia!” Based on Putin’s dramatically illegal “referendum” and treaties signed by puppet governing officials, those four regions illustrated above are about to be part of Mother Russia… at least according to the official Russian party line. They make a nice addition to that peninsula below them, Ukraine’s Crimea, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. In Putin’s mind, once that latest annexation is formalized, any attack by Ukraine against these four new regions would be viewed as a direct attack on Russia herself.

Why does that matter? Because Putin has declared that such an attack would not be treated as Ukraine’s attempting to recapture her own territory. Immediately before the annexation, Putin said he was "not bluffing" after he warned that Moscow would use "all weapons systems available" to defend Russian territory. Including those four regions. Presumably including tactical nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As he announced the annexation to his people, he repeated his nuclear weapons threats.

As mysterious explosions have blasted holes in the main natural gas pipeline between Russia and Europe, producing massive leaks of super-greenhouse-gas, methane, the blame game has begun. NATO is virtually certain that these pipeline breaks are products of Russian sabotage… showing Europe how much they depend on Russia for the natural gas that many nations need to weather an expected cold winter. Because those explosions occurred in the Baltic between Denmark and Sweden, which countries are totally controlled by the United States according to official Russian media, Russia has cast the blame back onto the United States.

Meanwhile, at least 200,000 Russians have fled their country in response to the call-up of those with military experience… and anyone else that Moscow wants to send a message about (like poor Ukrainian men caught in occupied territories and now forced to join the Russian army). As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called an emergency meeting Friday [9/30] of his National Security and Defense Council, capitalizing on rising antiwar sentiment in Russia, he “issued a video directed at the country’s ethnic minorities, especially those in Dagestan, one of the poorer regions in the North Caucasus area.

“‘You do not have to die in Ukraine,’ he said, wearing a black hoodie that read in English, ‘I’m Ukrainian,’ and standing in front of a plaque in Kyiv memorializing what he called a Dagestani hero. He called on the ethnic minorities to resist Putin’s military call-up.” Los Angeles Times, September 30th.

These conscripts, currently numbering 300,000, are being sent to the front with little or no training, under equipped with supply lines stretched and military hardware vastly impaired. They know they are just cannon fodder about to engage a clearly superior Ukraine military. When body bags filled with their remains are returned to Russia, will that make a difference to a brutal dictator acting like a cornered tiger? Does it hurt that before the territories could be annexed, Ukraine routed Russian forces in one about-to-be-annexed province?

The latest U.S. sanctions include new, specific high-level Russians. “[The Department of the] Treasury will sanction Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of Russia’s Central Bank. The highly regarded banker has worked to limit the damage to Russia’s economy in recent months even after she reportedly tried to quit soon after the invasion of Russia, only to be told no by Putin.

“According to the Treasury Department, Nabiullina is a former adviser to Putin and will now be personally subject to an array of sanctions. Her bank, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, had already been sanctioned… Olga Skorobogatova, the deputy governor of the bank, and Aleksandr Novak, a Russian Deputy Prime Minister, are also being added to the sanctions list…

“Treasury is [also] announcing sanctions against 14 new individuals ‘in Russia’s military-industrial complex’ including two international suppliers and other immediate family members of top Russians. Sanctions are also coming for 109 additional members of Russia’s Duma and 169 members of Russia’s Federation Council, the upper chamber of its parliament.” Yahoo!News, September 30th. Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Unfortunately, that is not particularly likely, but if NATO holds together through the coming winter, if Putin’s battlefield losses continue to disappoint, there may be a move to “remove” Mr. Putin… or that tiger just might loose a nuclear strike against Ukraine or….

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the volatile and unpredictable environment, I can only hope that America learn the risks of egotistical autocracy, of eroding our own democratic institutions to feed manipulative conspiracy theorists, and vote accordingly.