Ukraine, The Day After

We could gather all Ukrainians and ask them if they’d like to let Russia keep the territory it currently controls for a stable and durable peace. Every Ukrainian could agree. They could communicate to every soldier on the front, come home tomorrow. The war is over.

Yesterday was a sad day for me. Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, gave a speech at the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group. He spoke as if the U.D.C.G. was a U.N. type organization where two countries were at war with each other and what was needed was a “realistic battlefield assessment” and their combined pressure to negotiate an end to the war.

The phrase “Ukrainian Defense” didn’t register in the Secretary’s brain as having anything to do with the group’s meeting. He was like a liquor salesman who had stumbled into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Hegseth talked about the Europeans having to pay their fair share in protecting themselves from aggressors. That Europeans began to do that three years ago doesn’t seem to have reached his in-box.

He talked about U.S. weapons support as an “investment” in securing the front-line as if the U.S. wanted to make it easy for Google to redraw the map as soon as possible.

He is a stupid man with a stupid boss and, to be fair, speaking to a group of near useless blowhards.

What will Ukraine do tomorrow? Will they retreat from the front? Will they accept Russian domination?

We already have the answer.

One can find it by looking back to February 25th, 2022.