Why does Putin act like a jilted boyfriend on the Ukraine issue?

I don’t have the Blogger “movie review” channel that I where I used to show informative videos like this.

Today Johnny Harris has a cogent discussion “The TRAL Reason Putin Is Preparing for War in Ukraine”.  It’s basically that Putin feels jilted.

Yes, indeed, I remember seeing Dr. Zhivago in 1966 (on a bitter cold December night in Kansas City when I was a grad student at KU) and being impressed with the early scene in Ukraine.  Putin claims Russian ethnicity had original roots in Ukraine.  But then (when he annexed Crimea in 2014) there was all this talk of ethnic separatist 'Russians'.  To me it sounds like a contradiction, and Serhii Piokyy talks about it in a Daily Beast article from 2016, updated in 2019, “To justify his meddling in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has claimed Ukrainians as Russian people. Is he right?”

Harris mentions a 'blog post' (very funny) by Putin, Article by Vladimir Putin 'On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians'.   Putin wants to make analogies to Austria/Hungary or to US/Canada.   You can look up an earlier Harris video on why Russia got so god-damned big (which I used to carry on Blogger).

Before moving on, I want to also mention a NYTimes video  Jan. 28 about the preparation of local soldiers, ordinary people, near the city of Mariupol.

A couple of reactions.  To me regional ethnicity means nothing.  I got into a fight with someone on Facebook over my own oxymoronic book title in saying I refuse to have anything to do with tribes, where the poster reacted “horse shit”.  To me, “conservative” or “gay” is a pattern of thought and related behaviors (sometimes), not an intrinsic group identity.  Same here.  The ethnic fights in Bosnia in the early 1990s (while domestically the gays in the military debate pumped up) to me seemed superfluous.  But I don’t bond to people in groups that much.

Another reaction is that the US needs to watch its back on its own security.  If Russia invades Ukraine, China could act on Taiwan (Timcast IRL Jan. 20).

As for the US domestically, besides gas prices and inflation, you see a danger of cybertattacks, when actual danger to power grids (airgaps) is hard to predict or risk-assess.

Another idea to be concerned about is China’s control of the world market on rare earth elements, along with lithium, all important to tech.

But that is spreading new controversies in the US about opening mines on indigenous peoples’ lands (also in Serbia).

News2Share has a video about anti-NATO protests in DC related to Putin’s demands.

Putin's behavior reminds me of Tyler Mowery's recent tweet storms about 'the king and his court' (and the hunger of many people to be led around), and about Max Reisinger’s travels this year (OK, the novel “Gulliver’s Travels“, haha)  during his gap year on his spectacular YouTube channel.  No, I don’t think even Max will try to play peacemaker (eg the 1997 Dreamworks movie “The Peacemaker“) and visit Ukraine or Taiwan, but will find other somewhat less immediately controversial destinations.

I have to link to John Haltiwanger’s photo gallery in Business Insider if shirtless pictures of Vladimir Putin which turn out to be rather embarrassing (i.e., 'thmooth').  Remember Putin is worried about Russia’s low birth rate (and about gay propaganda that would keep it even lower; remember his remarks before Sochie in 2014).

Note Tim Pool's 'literature review' on the the nuclear threat (at least tactical) from Putin after his 'annexation'. The Fortune story is particularly disturbing. The media is overlooking the EMP threat, too.

(Posted: Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 12 noon EST by John W. Boushka)

Posted on January 29, 2022

CategoriesB-international, electric power grid vulnerability, energy renewable fossil nuclear, homeland security, identity politics

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