Syria Is Another Black Eye For Putin Bogged Down In Ukraine
Russophobes are getting a lot of wins over Russophiles lately
[Part 2… Here’s part 1… of spitballing some reactions to the decade of news we’ve seen in the last couple weeks, so let me know in the comments if you think any of my assessments are off, or if you have any predictions about what might happen next!]
Russia is fleeing the Mediterranean.
Russia saying goodbye to its warm water port at Tartus in Syria is welcome news for critics of Russia’s geopolitical meddling. It’s not the biggest military setback in terms of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, considering Turkey has already been denying Russia’s navy passage through the Bosphorus Strait and the Russians have been somewhat loitering in the eastern Mediterranean, but it’s an embarrassing political setback for Putin after years of propping up blood-thirsty Bashar al-Assad and spending billions of dollars leveling Syrian cities for him.
The loss of Russia’s accompanying airport, bases, and logistics hub will also make Russia’s mercenary adventurism in Africa much more difficult and expensive. There are several African conflicts Putin is currently exploiting and inflaming, and waning Russian resources and attention could force future Russian withdrawals.
Say what you will about America getting bruised by our messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, but Russia has two black eyes from its “special military operation” bogging down in eastern Ukraine and now getting evicted from Syria.
The periphery of Eastern Europe is trying to throw out their Russian stooges.
Romania, Moldova, and Georgia are all protesting hard against the pro-Russian elements of their government and society. Now is a great time given that Russia is a bit distracted degrading its military trying to conquer an unpacifiable Ukrainian people enthusiastic for independent nationhood forged in battle against their centuries-long Russian oppressors.
This is why the arguments claiming the US is the real villain of the Ukraine War are so stupid: none of the countries Russia is currently trying to subjugate want to live under Putin’s totalitarianism. The people of these smaller, Europeanizing countries are rebelling against Russia at every opportunity, even when Russian agitators, troops, or puppets commit violence. Meanwhile, seemingly all Ukrainians — from professors to ballet dancers to record-breaking women recruitment — have surprised and inspired the free world with their resolve to preserve Ukrainian democracy and self-sovereignty against the psychotic Slavic superpower.
American meddling is not why the world has seen such a master class in patriotic independence by Ukrainian badasses punching back at the sociopathic bully who won’t stop picking on everyone in Eastern Europe until someone by force makes him stop.
The chance of a Russian military collapse is higher than many people expect.
Maybe it’s not incredibly high, but it’s also not zero. Russia is back estimated to be losing 1,500 to 2,000 soldiers a day in a soulless meat grinder led by psycho Russian officers forcing undertrained and undersupplied recruits disproportionately from the chronically discriminated against Russian hinterlands to suicidally advance for mere meters of territory in ruined, unwelcoming Ukrainian lands.
Russia is struggling to keep up this war of attrition, and its Soviet military stockpile has been decimated. Thousands of trucks, tanks, artillery, planes, and helicopters have been lost, and an already demographically spiraling Russian populace poorer per capita than most Europeans has suffered estimates of 700,000+ young men being killed or maimed.
Wagner mercenary mob boss Yevgeny Prigozhin proved there are very few obstacles between the Russian frontline in Ukraine and Moscow, and maybe if the Russian military’s callous disregard for the lives of Russian soldiers continues to plummet morale, another mutiny might take off with Russian soldiers refusing suicide charges and turning their guns instead on their officers and blood-thirsty government.
I’m not aware of any Russian officials who have the power and a personality like Prigozhin to actually foment a credible coup attempt, and the Russian military is so autocratically centralized and beholden to Putin personally that rolling the dice on a new de facto czar would risk closing the goldmine of kleptocracy, as well as likely result in an epic power struggle that could kill or imprison many Russian elites if Putin is deposed.
However, coups are highly unlikely events until they aren’t, and, even if a coup isn’t successful in legitimately overthrowing the Russian power centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, it could upend the stalemate in Eastern Ukraine with thousands of non-ethnically Russian soldiers deciding that their real enemy isn’t Ukraine but the Putin regime, and necessitating Russian troops leave Luhansk and Donetsk to go pacify mutinous brigades going AWOL around Kursk and Belgorod.
What a wild moment in geopolitics for America’s most unstable and least intellectually curious president to take over.
It’s wild how Donald Trump is about to take over and potentially give Vladimir Putin a bunch of lifelines just as Putin’s late-life existential crisis delusions of grandeur joining the pantheon of expansionary Russian czars is stumbling on seemingly every front simultaneously.
Trump could give up on Ukraine, tell the Baltic States they’re on their own and the US won’t honor NATO’s Article 5 mutual protection oath, further withdraw the US from the Middle East, stop taking calls from Georgia, Romania, Moldova and Poland, and further cede influence in Africa to Putin.
January of 2025 is such an inflection point right now where the US could continue racking up national security wins on the global stage following an extremely ambitious and robust Biden foreign policy keeping cohesive US relationships that collectively box in Russia and China… or Trump could suddenly turn America radically isolationist, destroy our hegemonic alliances, and let our Western allies be slowly divided and conquered by unopposed Chinese and Russian bellicosity.
Trump might quickly try to force a deal between Ukraine and Russia that may be inevitable anyway.
Trump apparently wants to lobby for himself to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize by ending the Ukraine War, though it remains to be seen how overtly pro-Putin his negotiations will be.
Trump has met with President Zelenskyy since the election and played nice, and an armistice along the current frontlines wouldn’t be the worst outcome for Ukraine… It could get a lot worse real fast if Putin nuked Kiev or the Ukrainian trenches. Or, less disrupting, China and Iran and North Korea could decide to go all-in with Russia and send military advisers, soldiers, and a flood of weapons and vehicles to overwhelm the Ukrainian defenses and score a victory for totalitarians over Western democracies.
The territory Ukraine would have to cede is basically destroyed and useless now anyway, and Ukraine could let Russians worry about cleaning up all the mines, destroyed military equipment, Russian corpses, etc. all over the land.
Ironically, once the fighting stops, Ukraine will be further along on the path Putin was afraid of at the beginning of the conflict maintaining independence and democracy, and shifting toward a Western-facing economy that will grow from massive EU loans and trade.
Meanwhile, the average Russian citizen will continue to live at a developing-country standard of living falling further behind other Eastern European nations like Poland and the Baltic States who are not led by psycho dictators, and enviously watch as Ukraine grows and patriotically flourishes proving that life for Slavs is better without Putin or Russian neo-imperialism.
It’ll be a lasting irony that Putin claimed Ukraine wasn’t a real country as a justification to invade, and then forged a courageous and unmistakable national identity for Ukrainians in opposition to his belligerence. 🥃
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