Let’s get this out of the way right up front: Anyone who believes that Russian dictator and former KGB thug Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine if Donald Trump was still president is pathologically delusional. Putin’s “minor incursion,” as Biden called it ahead of Putin’s invasion, is the direct consequence of an inept, non compos mentis commander-in-chief in the White House — who was a moron long before being elected.

Power does not tolerate a vacuum, nor an inept and vacuous appeaser, and consequently, weakness invites aggression.

But hey, at least Biden doesn’t post mean tweets. He leaves that to all his socialist Democrat Party minions.

As our Thomas Gallatin detailed today, Putin codified the first phase in his annexation plans for eastern Ukraine in remarks affirming Russia’s recognition of two Donbas states on the Russia-Ukrainian border. Putin’s declaration that Russia recognizes the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic creates his staging platform to “reunify” the rest of Ukraine. Columns of Russian regulars have entered the region where Putin will set up base operations.

In an ominous but calculated assertion, Putin also made references to Poland and Lithuania, both of which are NATO Article 5 countries and an attack on either would constitute an attack on all of NATO.

Donetsk and Luhansk have been under Russian-backed separatist control since 2014 when Obama and Biden empowered Putin’s “Russian Spring” invasion of Ukraine the fist time, when he seized control of Crimea. How inconsiderate of Putin after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave his foreign minister a “reset button.”

Recall at the time of that invasion, Barack Obama had tapped Biden as the administration’s lead on policy with Ukraine — and protecting Hunter Biden’s corrupt Burisma cash cow – just a reminder that, while we want Ukraine to repel the Russians, the Ukrainian government is corrupt from top to bottom.

Yesterday, there was some hesitation by media outlets to declare that Russia had invaded because Biden’s White House handlers were obfuscating, avoiding using the term “invasion.” According to The Washington Post, “White House Wrestles With What Counts As An ‘Invasion.’”

But by daybreak, unable to alter the narrative from the harsh reality, Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer finally declared: “This is the beginning of an invasion. An invasion is an invasion, and that is what is underway.”

In December, I outlined Putin’s Ukraine invasion strategy and rationale in “Putin the Tyrant v. Biden the Appeaser.” As I noted then (and as a few media outlets are finally mentioning now): “Why does Putin want to retake Ukraine? One reason is the threat that Ukraine could eventually become a NATO country, providing a military staging ground on Russia’s western front. But more to the point would be that on 22 February of 2014, after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians rose up against Putin’s puppet president Victor Yanukovych, occupying Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Yanukovych was forced to flee back to Russia in what was a severe blow to Putin’s power and ego.”

I noted further: “Putin has a long memory, and now at age 69 with some ailments, he would like to see the reunification of Ukraine with Russia as his legacy after the fall of the USSR, and he may take some neighboring states in the process. Note that after Russia, Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, and its easter border is only 500 miles from Moscow.”

I also noted that Russia’s military staging on the border with Ukraine was the largest military movement since since Adolf Hitler swallowed Poland in 1939, and the potential for kinetic conflict with NATO and the U.S. is very real.

Did you note above the date Ukrainians forced Yanukovych to flee the country? It was 22 February. Three weeks after I posted that analysis, on 27 December, Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, in a public address to the Russian Duma (Federal Assembly) declared: “At 4AM on February 22, you will feel our new policy. … It won’t be peaceful. … This will be the year when Russia will finally become a great country again.” And that was precisely when Putin invaded…

Biden had warned Putin of “massive consequences” if there was a “minor incursion.” How did that work out?

As for “massive consequences” to come, Putin will base his response to the hardships caused by the West’s response – piling on layers of additional sanctions and the provision of arms to Ukraine – on the Hitler model: A rallying call for nationalism.

As I wrote in “Brace Yourself America” a month ago, sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken and chief negotiator Wendy Sherman to Europe to work things out with Putin would amount to a replay of Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” appeasement of Hitler. How did that work out?

Once Blinken and Sherman failed, Biden pulled out all the stops and dispatched Kamala Harris to stand guard over the Ukraine border. Apparently, she has been so successful as Biden’s “southern border czar” — ostensibly protecting the nation from now more than two million illegal immigrants she and Biden have enticed across our border — that he believes Harris is uniquely prepared to keep Russians from crossing Ukraine’s border.

Perhaps Biden thought Cackling Kamala could giggle Putin into submission, or use her mantra, “It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day,” to puzzle Putin into retreat.

When she arrived three days ago, she declared that NATO would “uphold international rules and norms.” Now she implies war might break out in Europe: “When America stands for principles … it requires sometimes for us to put ourselves out there in a way that maybe we will incur some costs. In this situation, that may relate to energy costs.” Biden confirmed higher oil prices coming on top of skyrocketing prices already.

Gosh, if only Biden had not killed the Keystone XL pipeline and lifted Trump’s sanctions on Putin’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline construction, his cash cow conduit to Europe, we might still be a net energy producer! In fact, according to National Review analysis: “Throughout 2021, the U.S. has imported 12 million to 26 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products per month from Russia — that same country we keep enacting new sanctions on, in an effort to deter Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions. … Last spring, imports of Russian oil hit the highest level in a decade; in August, Russia became the second-highest exporter of oil to the United States.”

For the moment, Germany has suspended construction of the pipeline and Biden is restoring Trump’s sanctions on its owner.

For the record, apparently CRT indoctrination and “climate change” are not the most pressing Department of Defense priority.

That’s not withstanding, Obama’s former Secretary of State, Biden’s “climate czar” John Kerry, is complaining that the Russia-Ukraine war will distract from the Left’s socialist “climate change” agenda: “[War] could have a profound negative impact on the climate obviously. You have a war and obviously you’re going to have massive emissions… But equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus, you’re going to lose certainly big country attention because they will be diverted and I think it could have a damaging impact. So, you know, I think hopefully President Putin would realize that in the northern part of his country, they used to live on 66% of the nation that was over frozen land.”

So, it’s on. Putin did exactly what he told Biden he was going to do – invade Ukraine. Now that Putin’s “peacekeepers” have crossed the border, Biden’s spinners are working furiously and full time ahead of his State of the Union Address next week to weave some believable deflection of how Biden’s ineptitude invited this invasion.

Biden will implement sanctions, which he will remove when he claims Putin has assured him that he won’t annex the rest of Ukraine and neighboring former Soviet states. But most sanctions have been nothing but speed bumps for Putin. That being said, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is correct when he says: “Enough is enough. [Putin’s] decision should be met with forceful sanctions to destroy the ruble and crush the Russian oil and gas sector.”

Predictably, Biden’s Leftmedia propagandists are insisting now is the time for “unity,” not criticism. You know, the Biden/Harris regime is all about “unity.”

To that end, the most dullard talkinghead comment in the last 24 hours was from former Demo Rep. Harold Ford, who for some unknown reason is a regular guest on Bret Baier’s Fox News panel. Here is Ford’s analysis as Putin was crossing into Ukraine: “Now is not the time to settle political scores. … We have to be united here. … I think the White House and the president’s occupation with dealing with NATO and keeping us resolved and united and strong may be the greatest deterrent. … If you give the White House a grade … you’d have to give them an A.”

How about an A+ for this: As Putin’s invasion was pending last week, the Biden administration was busy issuing military “diversity and inclusion” directives.

Naturally, Biden’s MSM spinners are trying to make the case that Putin’s invasion would have been easier under Trump. Case in point would be this WaPo editorial: “With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where’s Trump when I need him?.” Seriously, some deluded jackass actually penned that pulp fiction. Of course, when you refuse to return your Pulitzer trophies for promoting the fake “Russian collusion” charade, why not!

Meanwhile, the “Michael Avenatti” of the national security arena, former NSC hack Alexander Vindman, who played a role in the deep-state coup to take Trump down, is still popping up as an authority on Ukraine and Russia. He claimed to Rachel Madcow that Putin is really a creation the right: “I think these…right-wing pundits…really frankly have blood on their hands because they’re encouraging and enticing this kind of opportunism from Putin.”

However, as political observer Hugh Hewitt notes: “Legacy media is going to have a very tough time working around the fact that the tyrant Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 but did not do so between 2017 and 2020. Why was Putin deterred in those years but not now or in 2014? Don’t expect a lot of analysis.”

For the record, a year ago just before Trump left office, political analyst Byron York noted a partial list of how Trump kept Putin on his side of the Ukraine border: “1) Bombed Syria, Russia’s main client, and unleashed the U.S. military in Syria, including against Russians; 2) Armed Ukraine; 3) Ended the Iran nuclear deal; 4) Browbeat NATO allies to increase defense spending; 5) Approved $130 billion in new defense spending; 6) Added low-yield nuclear weapons to the U.S. arsenal; 7) Started research and development on a new missile after Russia deployed a missile that did not comply with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty; 8) Shut down Russia’s consulate in San Francisco; and 9) Pumped more U.S. oil and gas, making the U.S. more energy independent. And on top of that, Trump kept earlier sanctions on Russia and added new ones himself.”

At the time, even CNN’s leftist talking-head Fareed Zakaria declared, “The dirty little secret about the Trump administration was that [Trump] was pretty tough on the Russians.”

Meanwhile, as I have noted repeatedly, Russia and China are tag-teaming Biden, who also has family ties to the ChiComs. Biden’s lack of resolve to confront authoritarian tyrants was aptly demonstrated by his surrender and retreat from Afghanistan. Putin is a de facto surrogate of the ChiComs, so while we are now forced to confront Putin on the Eastern Front, watch for Xi Jinping for a move on the Western Front against Taiwan, creating massive national security threats on both fronts.

Finally, who can forget the 2012 presidential debate when Obama ridiculed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for suggesting that Russia was a “geo-political” threat. According to Obama, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Today, the world is a helluva lot more dangerous than it was a year ago, complements of Obama’s understudy. Indeed, as Obama learned in 2014, Russia is a “geo-political” threat.

Fox News footnote: Because some of our fellow conservatives are Tucker Carlson fans, let me offer a reality check: Caveat Emptor. Carlson, whose guest interviews I sometimes find compelling but more often annoying, has adopted a wholly uninformed isolationist view of U.S. national security interests regarding Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. For months, he has been espousing the patently absurd position that the U.S. has no vital interests in the outcome of Putin’s actions. Clearly, Carlson’s grasp on foreign policy and national security interests is dangerously uninformed, as is evident in his rhetoric and the handful of “echo chamber” guests he brings on to parrot his position. He would be of greater service to his audience if he would reserve his hyperbolic protestations for topics he knows best, instead of promoting his foreign policy “expertise,” and a plethora of conspiracy theories and cultish UFO nonsense. Indeed many of Carlson’s sensationalist topics are what I classify as “10% substance and 90% fragrance.”

(Updated)

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776