Vlad Putin and a Series of Small Mistakes

 I was the victim of a series of small mistakes.

Kurt Vonnegut in the novel, "Sirens of Titan"

Yes, sometimes our blunders are major.  At others they are small and the shit piles up ever so slowly, but before you know it you're chest deep in a huge pile of dung. Just ask our pal, Vladimir Putin. 

It appears Mr. Putin's long term plan, which began years, if not decades ago, was to recover all the territory of the old Soviet empire which had been lost when Russian style communism collapsed. The idea seemed like a good one at first. He had successfully circumvented presidential succession laws, then amended them to make sure he was a defacto president for life. He had previously subdued Chechnya, Later he kicked Georgia's ass and as any thoroughly modern conqueror does he made sure the government there has been run by Georgians who are utterly loyal to him.

He had a problem though and its name was and is NATO. The three Baltic states, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia had joined the alliance and Ukraine was begging to get in. Then along came Donald Trump, who for the four years of his presidency did everything he could to weaken the alliance. Trump didn't destroy NATO, but by the time he was out of office it seemed like the organization had been reduced to a discordant bunch of finger pointers who were more concerned with their self interests rather than what Russia was doing.

At least that's what Putin's foreign intelligence agency was telling him.

And silly Vlad, he believed them.

That same agency was also convinced an invasion of Ukraine would be met with light resistance and quick surrender. In fact when Putin pulled the trigger, one exiled oligarch said the President of the Russian Federation was shocked and enraged his troops weren't met by civilians giving them flowers.

The whole notion NATO was a bunch of quarrelsome weenies also went out the window when the entire organization came down hard with sanctions and began to reinforce those three Baltic counties while promising to defend every inch of NATO soil. 

To add insult to injury instead of shying away from NATO both Sweden and Finland have begun making noises about joining the alliance. So much so former Finnish Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb, who vainly advocated for the move while he was in office, was quoted as saying, "Putin has only himself to thank. You know. I should probably be grateful to Putin." 

In response the Russians threatened to install nuclear weapons on their northwestern border--probably because that's all they have left. Let's face it no one is worried about their conventional forces any more. Given what has happened in northern Ukraine their ground troops seem closer to a rogue biker gang than an army.

To make things worse this morning the Russian Black Sea flagship, Moskva was, depending on the source, struck by Ukrainian missiles, or had a large accidental fire which caused explosions. In other words, either the Ukrainians pulled off a successful attack, or the pride of the Russian Navy is manned by a bunch of incompetent boobs. Neither option can be considered a great morale booster.

Reports are as many as 100 officials of the Russian foreign intelligence agency have been sacked by Comrade Putin, some of them even placed under house arrest. All of them have presumably landed in the stew for making a series of mistakes.

Well, you have to blame someone for this mess don't you? And as we've seen, Vladimir Putin is just too big to make any mistakes. He made sure of that years ago.

sic vita est

4-14-22