The first 36 hours of the war

"In the name of God, for our freedom and yours ... "

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Today in the Cosmopolitan Globalist, Joshua Treviño chronicles the first 36 hours of the war.

Less than a day and half, and yet enough time to have written a whole book of epics: The armor clash at Chernihiv. The defense of the Antonov airfield. The last stand at Snake Island. The eerie combat in the Chernobyl dead zone. The woman who told the Russian soldier she met to put seeds in his pockets, so that when he laid down to die, sunflowers would spring from the Ukrainian earth.

If the expectation was that Ukraine would fold on day one, then the expectation is disappointed. Twelve hours ago, as this is written, I was impressed at what looked like a Russian mastery of the American way of war: Blitzkrieg plus precision plus a coordinated rapidity that baffles and overwhelms the foe at first contact. But appearances are just that. The Ukrainians survived the onslaught in remarkably good order, showing themselves no longer the rickety state that was humiliated in 2014-2015. The armed forces did not disintegrate. They cohered, and they resisted. Eight years ago, Ukrainian units simply melted away, dissolving in panic or demoralization. Now, we have a single report of a single Ukrainian fighter jet fleeting to Romania. It is the only one, and its pilot is no doubt shamed, because everyone else is staying, and fighting.

The defenders did not do well everywhere: though the Russian advances upon Mariupol and Kharkiv stalled, the spearhead out of Crimea made tremendous progress. But they did well in one telling respect, in that unlike the events of 2014-2015, there was no uprising or civil unrest among pro-Russian elements anywhere in the country. Ukraine’s ethnic and linguistic Russians are, in the face of a Russian invasion, loyal to Ukraine. This is a sea change. A near-decade of low-level war preceding this invasion has clarified sentiments, and transformed the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 into something its Russian authors never meant for it to be. It is now a true Ukrainian war of independence.

Being that, you therefore know what an occupation will look like. It will be wracked, and bloody, Ukrainian partisans versus Chechen enforcers, and suffused with American arms. …

READ THE REST … In the name of God, for our freedom and yours.

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Alexander S. Vindman @AVindman

Pushkin Square, maybe less than 1000 meters from Red Square and the Kremlin, is the cite of a significant protest. These people know the risks of challenging the regime. They’re on the street in-spite of major personal costs.

Of the protests in Russia, reader Matt Kaufmann writes:

Most North Americans have no clue what real tyranny is like, much less what kind of courage it takes to stand up to it.  I’ve long believed that's why many of them inflate minor impositions into major assaults on “our precious freedoms.”  We’re a bored, affluent people who want to feel like we’re part of some big drama, fighting against dark forces with insidious agendas. Hence, to take a recent example, the street-theater posturing of self-styled “freedom fighters” against “tyranny” in, of all places ... Canada.

Then comes a day like today, when we’re getting a look at the real thing—real tyranny and real bravery in resisting it. Let’s remember what both look like.  These protesters aren’t striking poses for cameras and for their social media.  They know the severe consequences that they’re risking.  And they're doing it anyway.

All honor to them.

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Speaking of which, remember American Greatness? The magazine that took upon itself the burden of trying to construct an intellectual foundation for the Trump movement? Here you go: Joe Biden is worse than Putin.

Why, you might ask, does the author—one Josiah Lippincott—believe this? Apparently, it is because he was banned from Twitter and told he had to be vaccinated to keep his job. What’s his job, one wonders? According to his byline, it’s “Ph.D. student at Hillsdale College.”

I couldn’t resist looking it up: He is a doctoral student, it seems, at their Graduate School of Statesmanship. “Prior to coming to Hillsdale,” the site says, “he served as a congressional page for Devin Nunes.”

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Ukraine has just activated the draft. This father is staying to fight.

Wu-Tang Is For The Children @WUTangKids

Father saying goodbye to his daughter as he puts her on a bus to safety and he stays behind to fight for Ukraine #StandWithUkraine

This is happening in the year 2022 in the heart of Europe, and however much I can honestly say, “I warned you,” I cannot bring myself to believe it.

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Later today, Vivek Kelkar will explain why Europe and the US are so reluctant to ban Russia from SWIFT. Stay tuned.

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