The devastation of ties with a global power, the dissolution of Ukraine and very possibly the ruination of Europe’s barely beating economic recovery will be what we live with after this joke of an administration makes its exit in 2016.
Ukraine is more than an economic, political and military mess: It is a major humanitarian tragedy now. As the German CEO wants to know, how can we possibly arm neo-Nazis in Ukraine while right-wing extremists and anti-immigration atavists rise all over Europe. Plus it not Putin that’s killing civilians as the media would like you to believe, its Kiev, shooting missiles on Eastern Ukrainians, backed by Obama!
A standoff between two nuclear powers is where this fool Obama has put us. The very immediate menace is a global economic calamity that could make the 2008 crisis look like a blip on the chart.
The credit-rating agency, downgraded Russia’s status to BBB, putting it a few notches away from junk status. This is hardball, we had better recognize: You cannot shove the world’s No. 8 economy into the gutter and expect it to land there alone.
Obama has drastically overplayed its hand with the Europeans from the first round of sanctions onward. Now those overly courteous Europeans are at last taking the kidskin gloves off. We had hints of this before the holidays, when Matteo Renzi, the Italian premier, said at a European summit in Brussels, “Absolutely no to more sanctions.”
These assertions bring to mind the Sherlock Holmes case of the dog that did not bark where the absence of a piece of evidence leads us to a very different conclusion than the one the U.S. political establishment would like us to believe.
The sorts of weaponry that NATO and the U.S. have charged Russia with providing are virtually impossible to conceal from the air. Snapping high-resolution photos of such war machinery is child’s play for today’s military satellites, and even civilian ones too. If the assertions were true, we should have seen a flood of photographs of Russian heavy equipment every step of the way as it passed into Ukraine.
Then comes H.Res 758 passed on Dec. 4, which, among other charges, accused Russia of having invaded Ukraine again without providing or referring to any sort of evidence photographic or otherwise.
France is backing away from Obama and the US media refuses to report that François Hollande asserts that, no, Moscow has no desire to annex eastern Ukraine, no, there is no need for more sanctions, and yes, sanctions now in place must be lifted if, as Hollande and other European leaders continue to anticipate, what you may read notwithstanding.
analyst at RBS Asia-Pacific, the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Hong Kong outpost, had to say about Ukraine in a recent economic report:
“The country is clinically dead…. There is nothing government or the central bank can do to stop the decline. The population is being pushed further and further into poverty. Food prices are up 25 percent and rent, electricity, gas and water by 34 percent…. This is the picture of a Ukraine that is looking an economic collapse in the eye. But its government is still attempting to channel money into the military to fend off the big bear’s aggression…. The danger for Ukraine is not Russia. It is its own demise….”
Bloomberg published an interesting report earlier this month on Ukraine’s external position. Read it here.
The bizarre part of this story is that there is not any credible analysis or commentary explaining exactly what Obama’s interests are in Ukraine and whats compelling Obama to risk increasing confrontation with Russia.
Russia is rapidly withdrawing from additional dialog with the Obama administration and Europe, while 
This situation remains much more fluid and nuanced than we’re being told by the Western media, with much more to this story than a short column allows, Those interested in delving deeper can read the latest report here.
But in short, the situation is getting more strained, not less, and it has the very real chance of blossoming into something far larger and more deadly than the sparse coverage in the Western press might imply.
If it looks like a war, acts like a war and smells like a war, it may just be a war. Everyone should be very concerned by these events. Lets not forget the USSR was the underdog in WII and Germany much better equipped. Not only did the Soviets chase the Nazi out of Russia, they chases them back to Berlin liberating most of Eastern Europe on the way, a true David vs Goliath story.
