It was as predictable as seeing reporters standing in the middle of a hurricane, saying nothing more useful than “It is really, really wet out here. And windy too.” Yeah, Sherlock. We get that. It is a hurricane.
Now that we have reached “the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine”, it was inevitable that the media would dispatch its reporters to Kyiv to talk a bunch of empty nonsense that is of no use to anybody. Wouldn’t it be nice if, just once, the media would use such an occasion to actually educate the public? Here’s what they should be talking about.
- This is not the “one-year anniversary”. Russia started this war in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and the occupation of Donbas and other areas in the east. Ukraine has been engaged in a hot war with Russia CONTINUOUSLY since 2014.
- The USA has actively been supporting Ukraine in the resistance to the Russia invasion that ENTIRE TIME. Congress has approved some weapons throughout the 9 years, and the Pentagon has worked closely with Ukraine. We have been allies that entire time. Why? Because Russia invaded the biggest democracy that stands between Russia and the NATO countries.
- These weapons transfers were ongoing throughout Trump’s presidency, and Putin didn’t like it. Trump couldn’t easily stop it because it was approved by Congress.
- This was why Manafort and other agents of Russia were on the ground in Ukraine — to try to undermine Zelenskyy, and Poroshenko before him. Manafort and many others, eventually including Guiliani, were working for Putin -- not for democracy, the good of NATO, or the best interests of the USA.
- On July 25, 2019, a year ahead of the US election, Trump had “the perfect call” with Zelenskyy. For Trump, this was to be a two-fer. He would be doing Putin’s bidding by cutting off military aid to Ukraine and, at the same time, extorting Zelenskyy to fabricate lies about Biden to help Trump win the election.
This is essentially the whole story of the first impeachment, and that is why we had to join the war with Ukraine in a big way. While Trump was President, he could slow down, or stop entirely, the flow of weapons, at the same time Trump undermined the unity of NATO. Acting as Putin’s agent on both of those missions, this allowed Putin to incrementally consume Ukraine with minimal cost and casualties.
Once Trump lost the election, Putin decided he had to turn it into a full-scale ground war — the most ferocious fight, by far, since WWII.
This is the story of the war in Ukraine. Why is it so hard to get the media to actually talk about the key issues? They can blather on endlessly about the pain of the attack and the bravery of the fight, but none of them able to state the most obvious facts that got us to this point.