Mar 4
Leave Ukraine Alone, Putin — Your Fight Is With America
Don’t inflict this nightmare on Ukraine when you can achieve something far more lasting for Russia.
So — I’m a Slava Ukraini! kind of guy. My American cousin married a woman from Ukraine and their family was forced to flee Kyiv to escape your assault.
In grad school I worked closely with students from Ukraine. Your foolish war of choice puts them and their families at risk.
So for me, Putin, this war of yours is quite personal.
But unlike most Russiaphobic American bigots like Anne Applebaum, Fred Kagan, and the rest of the cowardly commentators in the so-called “West” desperate to see Ukrainians die killing Russians, I know your true mind.
I have long studied the ways of power, how it really works, as a system. I know how people like you think and have been better at predicting your moves than all but the few real military professionals who speak anonymously to the media.
Unlike American academics who are brand-building and getting rich off pretending they care about Ukraine, all I’m after is your ignominious defeat and Russia’s separation into autonomous statelets.
That’s how precious mother Russia ends, you know — as it began. A set of independent city states looking to their pagan heritage, not the imperialist Christianity you adore because it gives Russian a reason to own territory along the Pacific.
Don’t worry, though, because America won’t long outlive Russia. It’s set to divide too, the contradictions papered over by the postwar peace now rising to consume the nation.
Just like Russia, America is white on the surface, but diverse under the hood. Neither has any reason to be unified anymore — except, of course, to maintain the power of people like you.
Putin, you talk a big game about Ukraine being Russian, but let’s cut to the chase of what this war is really all about.
NATO. Which is, at its core, nothing more than obsolete puppet of dying America despite its wealthy investors’ proclamations.
Your forces are escalating in Ukraine and destroying the country because you want a buffer against NATO. You want to be absolutely sure in a future moment of weakness Russia is never again humiliated like it was in the 1990s.
The simple fact you listened to optimistic intelligence and pursued a quick regime change attack instead of a more patient destruction of Ukraine’s military over time is a function of your desire to get at the heart of NATO.
You screwed up, because had you continued to divide NATO by limiting your escalation against Ukraine to the east, you’d likely be in a much better position now.
Deep down, you know that NATO is as weak now as it will ever be. You’ve seen how amid all the happy talk about backing Ukraine America has surrendered to your nuclear blackmail.
NATO dreams now of making Ukraine the next Afghanistan, of an insurgency and economic devastation leading to your inevitable fall.
Your own misstep with a wide invasion made that possible. But there is still a way out of this, one that spares Europe a vicious forever war fought on the steppes of Ukraine.
Cut to the damn chase, Putin, and go hard against your true rival, America.
Truth is, the USA is hanging by a thread and its leaders know it. Biden and Johnson are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of distracting their restive, angry populations with a long foreign war that won’t require Americans or Britons to bleed.
You can, of course, continue this brutal dance and fight a proxy war in Ukraine until the country is a smoking ruin. That will breed instability on your doorstep and eventually blow back on Russia.
The effort to quickly depose Zelensky has failed, and even if Kyiv falls after a siege much of Ukraine will resist for a long, long time. The west of Ukraine will become bastion against your forces.
But you can evade this endgame. You can inflict a defeat on America so permanent it will go down like the USSR. It’s already primed for it, the Red-Blue divide is almost as powerful as the one you’ve created between Russians and Ukrainians.
Sure, you’ve poked at America’s divisions on Facebook and Meta, made sure to make Trump feel like you’re his bosom buddy because that fool can be flattered into believing anything. And in 2025 he is set to return, or drag the country into a political nightmare when he refuses to concede and/or steals the election.
America, as you well know, Vladimir, is hardly a democracy. It is called one by academics, but in truth American Presidents are elected by something called the Electoral College, not the people, and their House Representatives control gerrymandered, non-competitive districts.
We Americans know this well. It’s why the vast majority of us distrust the federal government.
This lack of meaningful democracy coupled to our leaders’ insistence that democracy is reducible to a set of legal procedures has primed America for division. That’s the reason America is in such a rotten place, not Russian disinformation.
And you, Putin, can surely see in Joe Biden’s refusal to defend democracy in Ukraine with American or NATO forces his deep and abiding cowardice. You are certainly aware that with few nudges in the right direction America will tear itself apart.
That basic contradiction between what America’s leaders say about the country and the truth of it has primed America for a hard fall. And if America collapsed, NATO is gone soon after.
That leaves Russia with a united European Union to deal with — but you don’t fear the EU, do you Vlad?
That will be your undoing in the long run — but for now, let’s focus on how you can trade taking Ukrainian lives for bleeding America.
You already know that nuclear threats will force America to run away. So, logically, you should make more.
You should push America to the absolute limit. Make yourself Biden’s equal on the world stage by making America put its money where its mouth is.
China, your new good buddy, won’t mind at all if you take the USA down a peg. America’s refusal to actually protect Ukraine bodes poorly for Taiwan, which is vulnerable to China simply parking a fleet around it while the U.S. Navy hides its carrier battle groups out of anti-ship ballistic missile range.
There’s only one way this confrontation between NATO and Russia ends, Vlad — you know it and I know it.
At some point, you will feel compelled to call NATO’s bluff. You’ll do something in one of the Baltic States that could trigger Article 5, and watch as the US does everything it can to avoid a way, even selling the Baltics’ sovereignty.
Why? Because what if NATO does declare war? Will America go nuclear first? Will Biden commit American troops to die on Russia’s border?
The doubt in your mind is set to be lethal for America’s pathetic obsession with deterrence.
America and NATO failed to deter you from attacking Ukraine. Will they risk a nuclear confrontation if you foment a coup in Vilnius? Push a tank division from Belarus to Kaliningrad?
Just take a look at some of the popular writers on this site and how they talk about Russia.
Americans are trying to pretend they’re personally fighting a mythic World War III when their inept President has adamantly promised no boots on the ground, not even a no-fly zone.
You’ve already proven to the world Americans are all talk — and this creates the space you need to prove American power is a bluff. If Americans want a world war, why not give it to them?
If this is a third world war, America has already lost. The vast majority of Americans have no military experience and don’t want any. Veterans in America are props wheeled out by politicians at events then promptly forgotten.
The average American actually does think veterans are suckers — Trump was excoriated for saying it out loud but it’s the simple truth. You don’t see the best and brightest going to school in hopes of becoming military officers or — gasp — enlisting like I did after graduating from Berkeley.
Biden constantly plays stolen valor with his dead son’s legacy, but he never went near military service himself.
Take it from me — Americans see military affairs the same way they do garbage collection. They’ll take their social cues, stand up, and salute the flag when ordered to, sure — but well-to-do suburban American mommas don’t let their precious snowflakes play with guns if they can avoid it.
Violence, in the mentality of the left-leaning American, is something only the bad people do. Which is of course why Americans allow themselves to be terrified by anyone who dares to threaten it.
Truth be told, the only reason you aren’t going after America directly, dear Putin, is that having America around is what keeps you in power these days.
If it weren’t for your ability to play on Russians’ justified angst at how their country was treated after the Cold War, one of your own people would shoot you dead.
But for the rest of the planet, America and Russia are the twin pillars of evil in this world. It is only fitting that they should fight each other directly.
Don’t put Ukrainians in the middle of this fight. They don’t deserve what you’re doing to them.
Americans, on the other hand do.
Leave Ukraine alone, Putin. Negotiate a ceasefire, accept control of Donbas and the Azov coast and Ukraine staying out of NATO. Kyiv will join the EU, which will build a military to protect its borders as NATO falls apart.
But that’s alright for Russia. The EU will never pose a threat of invasion like NATO technically could, though we both know it never will.
At the same time, pivot to confront America directly. Surely you scent this country’s weakness. Don’t waste Russian blood in Ukraine.
I hear, Vladimir, that you are isolated and perhaps going a little mad. If so, then this is no different than the situation facing Joe Biden, who also fears Covid exposure despite pretending he doesn’t for the cameras.
The two of you deserve each other. So why don’t you fight directly, instead of using puppets to shadow box for you?
Leave Ukraine alone. Your fight is with America.
And that, as opposed to an occupation of a neighbor whose people do not want to be part of Russia, is a fight you can actually win.
Ukraine is a nation of warriors. America trains its people to be cowards so they won’t stand up to an elitist government that abuses them.
I think we both know which one will break first.
Be warned, though. Because once the West Coast is free of the wreck of America, we’re coming for you.
