Vladimir Putin has officially declared war on Ukraine

They didn’t exactly fight on their own, though. Lots and lots of allied servicemen fled their countries and fought on from British soil. The entire Norwegian merchant fleet sailed in convoys, mostly in the Atlantic, during the war, and ten percent of our sailors were killed.

And maybe (or not) I should add that also during WW2, small countries were left to fight alone against a larger, better trained and better equipped enemy, because larger nations found it in their best interest to withdraw their forces, even when the enemy was retreating. Smaller countries are always being played by the bigger ones….

For some important information regarding this invasion into The Ukraine, please see my post on the Holodome, the greatest man-made hunger genocide that happened in The Ukraine in the early 1930's.

Bad news if this is verified. We have a colleague there who is trying to get out.

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a decree on the general mobilization of the population in the wake of Russia's invasion.

Conscripts and reservists will be called up over the next 90 days to "ensure the defense of the state, maintaining combat and mobilization readiness," an entry on the Ukrainian presidency's website said.

"We have been left alone to defend our state," Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation after midnight.

"Who is ready to fight alongside us? I don't see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid," he added.

The Ukrainian leader vowed to continue fighting, saying that "a new iron curtain" was falling between Russia and the West.

Ukraine's border guard said that males aged 18-60 are not allowed to leave the country in a statement posted on its Facebook account.

The restriction will last for the duration of the period of martial law in Ukraine."

www.dw.com/en/just-in-council-of-europe-suspends-russias-membership-amid-ukraine-invasion/a-60908297

I saw that speech on the news. Just awful.

It is. I can't imagine how he and the people of Ukraine must be feeling.

In total agreement with you.  Hopefully we ALL can join together to learn more about the situation and pray and give thought to those in harms way.

Clinton was right about EVERYTHING.

From a 2019 speech at UM

"And what he has done is to set up a very difficult problem for whoever is in leadership positions in Ukraine.

Because with his domination of Eastern Ukraine and the presence of Russian troops and the constant arming of Ukrainian civilians who are sympathetic to Russia, if Ukraine doesn't have friends who can try to help deter further Russian aggression, they are in a quandary.

Do they place their hopes in Europe and the United States, or do they surrender to the inevitability that Russia could seize them any time they wanted to and nobody would come to their rescue?

So the whole Ukrainian scandal in the midst of the impeachment inquiry in and of itself is troubling because of what it shows about abuse of power and the use of threats and extortion by the President of the United States withholding military aid that they so desperately need to defend themselves, so it is a scandal.

It is an absolute appropriate scandal, and it should have triggered the impeachment inquiry, but let's not lose sight of the larger issue that you raise, Mike.

The current President of Ukraine, who has no political experience.

He was a TV star ‑‑ sounds familiar.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

He is in a bind.

He has got the American President threatening him.

He has got the Russian President threatening him.

He is just trying to figure out how to be a President, and from everything we know about him, you know, he wanted to bring, you know, energy and modernism to his presidency, and what is happening now is he has accepted an agreement that there will be elections in Ukraine, in Eastern Ukraine, which remember the Russians dominate.

The Russian media dominates.

There will be elections for the people of that part of Ukraine to decide whether they want to break away and join Russia like Crimea or stay in Ukraine.

He probably felt like he had no choice.

The Russians are breathing down his necks, and there is evidence that Russian troops are moving to the border again in pretty large numbers.

And then one thing that hasn't gotten a lot of attention that I just want to mention is that there is a treaty that we have been a member of.

In fact, we were the architecture of that goes back many decades called Open Skies.

And it permits satellites and other surveillance mechanisms to see what is happening on the ground around the world.

And just out of the blue, the Trump administration announced they were going to pull us out of the Open Skies Treaty.

And if I were guessing, one of the consequences of that is we will not necessarily be able to discover all the troop movements that Russia is engaged in on the brink of forcing their will on Ukraine.

So Ukraine deserves a lot more help and a lot more attention than we are currently giving it except in the kind of, you know, scandal mode.

It is a real country with real people who thought they were going to get a real chance to have a better future, and now they are caught between our political games here in the United States and Russian aggression."

fordschool.umich.edu/video/2019/hillary-clinton-reflections-foreign-policy-defense-diplomacy-and-development

Most of the male Ukrainians that have been interviewed by television reporters that have aired over here don't actually want to get out. Many of them have stated that they have either escorted their wives/children/ older family members further east, presumably so they are nearer the Polish border if needed. They've all stated that they are returning to their home towns and staying in case they are needed. This was before things escalated yesterday.

Is your colleaque an Ukrainian?

Very fair indeed. I love my country, but I won’t pretend that it hasn’t bigfooted other countries in the name of national interest. All countries who gain any power do. It’s human.

As for this, I think that the west collectively underestimated Putin for years. This is a new side of him. I give the Biden admin and Europe high marks for standing together. It’s remarkable to think that Putin might have been the saving grace of NATO.

Maybe?  He also might have just opened the door for Russia, not imposed sanctions, not sent troops and not supported NATO.  Either way, it would have been a complete disaster and he probably would have escalated the situation to WWW III.

NPR is reporting it, too.  I can’t link it directly, but it’s the 6th story down, just below the Formula 1 story.

www.npr.org/live-updates/russia-invades-ukraine-news-friday

He is. W/a baby son.

Can you please provide the link to this so I can share via email?

You have to go to Twitter to copy the link. Click on his name/picture at the top, which takes you to his page. Scroll down his page until you find this video. At the bottom of his video, there should be a little upward arrow on the right. Click on that and choose “copy.”