Without the threat of nuclear weapons, NATO could be doing a lot more to help Ukraine against Putin's terrorism

 

Earlier this summer, The Atlantic opined that Vladimir Putin’s activities in Ukraine had “advanced” to the level of terrorism, as if he hadn’t already moved beyond that into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his army on his orders. But it can be argued that his acts of terrorism began the hour he launched the invasion into Ukraine, and he has been aided by another country well-versed in terrorism—Iran, who Ukraine has done nothing to harm, yet to spite the West has sold thousands of drones like this to Russia…

 

…which are difficult to track and defend against, and have been used against civilian as well as military targets. Let’s not beat around the bush here: Russia has been engaging in  terror bombing of civilian targets from the beginning; it is just a matter of degree, some days worse than others, in the hope that Ukrainian’s will themselves demand their government cease fighting. That this hasn’t happened is in large measure due to the fact that Putin’s actions have only aroused outrage against him and Russia. Putin’s charge that Ukrainian forces damaged the bridges linking the Crimea (which was Ukrainian territory) to Russia was a “terrorist” act is simply not comparable to the horrors that Putin has been inflicting on Ukrainian civilians since February because of the incompetence of his military.

Given that Russia has been accused of sabotaging its own gas pipelines, who knows if the Crimean bridge attacks were a false flag operation as an excuse to engage in its latest bombing campaign. The new Russian overall commander, Sergei Surovikin, is an air force general who is best known for his terror bombing of Syrian civilians. This man has no competence in directing troops on the ground; he was picked by a desperate Putin who knows he can’t win the chess game, so he takes a sledge hammer to the board so he doesn’t “lose,” or at least insure the other player doesn't "win"; the apparent ferocity of these latest attacks should be seen as a desperate act of a desperate man, being carried out by a general who his own colleagues admit is a psychotic who has no respect for human life, and seemingly enjoys killing—thus his “nickname,” General Armageddon.

So what is to be done about this, if missiles are being fired from inside Russia? The problem for Ukraine is that they cannot just target missile sites in Russia, and the U.S. and Europe fears that to do so would “widen” the war even further than it has been. Although in the opinion of some military experts, the Russians are only depleting their remaining stock of long-range missiles in this current revenge attack, and Putin and Surovikin’s bluster won’t have much of an impact on the ground war, that does not take away from the fact that their actions are acts of terrorism against civilians in a war that had no justification. since Ukraine never posed a threat to Russian security save in the paranoid minds of its leaders who always looking for an excuse to re-absorb the country anyways.

NATO defense ministers are discussing what to do now, but again what they can do is limited so long as the West is unwilling to provide support that will stop missile attacks before they leave the ground. The Ukrainian leadership has been seeking long-range air defense systems, but the West fears their use inside Russia itself and how this might escalate the conflict, possibly attacks against the Baltic States if not tactical nuclear weapons. Especially against the Iranian drones, it is near impossible to intercept a significant number of these missiles once they are already well on their way to their targets.  The U.S. is promising to send the more advanced Switchblade 600 drones for ground targets, but these do little against cruise, missile and drone attacks. Ukraine is now urging shipments of the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS)…

 

…which is an advanced air defense system that should render Russian attacks less potent in their intent, given that the Russians are believed to be running out of missiles.

Still, all this handwringing by NATO indicates that if the terrorist Putin and his “General Armageddon” didn’t have a nuclear arsenal to play with, NATO could already be doing a lot more to defend Ukraine from this latest round of terrorist attacks on civilian targets; after all, NATO countries combined have far greater manpower and material than the Russians do, which is why they are able to supply Ukraine with weapons without going bankrupt. That message obviously hasn’t gotten through to Putin’s head.