DE SANTIS - LEFT
Anonymous comments -
Ron DeSantis calls war in Ukraine a ‘territorial dispute’“[Describing the war as] a ‘territorial dispute,’ Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suggested he would leave Ukraine to fend for itself if he was elected president next year.
“‘The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,’ DeSantis said in response to a ‘Ukraine questionnaire’ from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson …
“To be sure, much of the GOP continues to support military aid to Ukraine … [It’s] possible DeSantis’ [foreign policy approach] will turn off some more hawkish Republicans …
“But with the two top GOP contenders casting doubt on support for Ukraine … things certainly seem to be trending in [the direction of a more isolationist view] …”
https://www.vanityfair.com/
"The war is not going well for anyone except for the people making money off of it."
ReplyDelete- Rolo Slavskiy
Rolo Slavskiy is a writer not sympathetic to Western-NATO-Ukraine, but also pessimistic about Russia.
Slavskiy sees Russia and China as both having oligarchies loyal to the international commerce system, above any interests in their own peoples ... as is true for many nations in the West.
Russian oligarchs are profiting from sending raw materials to the West, via Ukraine, and still do so, he says. They are blocking the tools to win the war ... as is also being done by the NATO side.
"The most realistic scenario going forward is that both NATO and the Kremlin continue to commit enough resources to keep the war going, but try their best to draw it out into a frozen quagmire", says Slavskiy.
https://roloslavskiy.substack.com/p/should-russia-surrender-already
The larger 'Russian federation' is fragile. E.g., Chechens increasingly see their chance to revolt anew, in revenge for their maybe 100,000 killed by Russia in the 1990s Chechen wars.
Some say Putin is coming to realise he has become a 'sacrificial goat', and risks a fate like Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi or Milosevic.
Perhaps in response to this vulnerability, Putin is personally sponsoring rapid growth of the Wagner private contractor army, the most effective force in the Ukraine conflict. Wagner recruiting centres are suddenly open across Russia.
Wagner's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, makes very rebellious statements against the Russian establishment. He is a national hero to Russians, recently filmed speaking only a few hundred metres away from Ukraine battle lines.
Prigozhin is the warlord who may be key to a 'new Russia', perhaps smaller, but still maybe including Russian areas of what was Ukraine. Article on the increasingly powerful Prigozhin, from another pro-Russian but pessimist blogger, Alec Clark:
https://alec-clark.livejournal.com/20792.html