ANNOTATED WITH IMAGES: Animated Sideline Inserts are Editorial Reactions

Your MesaZona blogger just couldn't resist juxtaposing some selected images as counter-points to assertions and statements published by Simon Tisdall earlier this morning

Timid Biden condemns Ukrainians to an agonizing war without end

(Ukrainian soldiers train on the outskirts of Odesa last week.

Photograph: Max Pshybyshevsky/AP)

 

Simon Tisdale Sun 5 Jun 2022 04.00 EDT

the Guardian |

By failing to act boldly and face down the Russians, NATO ensures this conflict will run and run

It seems odd, to put it mildly, that Joe Biden is happy to supply Ukraine with advanced rockets as long as it does not fire them at Russia. Vladimir Putin can aim missiles at Ukrainians from across the border whenever he wants – but Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s troops can’t shoot back at their tormentors.

 

Strange, too, that the UN is seeking Russia’s agreement for convoys to escort grain from Odesa and other Ukrainian ports. It’s Putin who is preventing 22 million tons of grain reaching the Middle East and Africa, where millions face famine. Don’t ask permission. Send a multinational force to smash his illegal blockade.

The US and UK have made a big fuss in the past about preserving freedom of navigation in international waters, including the Black Sea. Puzzlingly, they in effect ceded these waters on 24 February to Russia, whose navy bombards and besieges Ukraine’s cities and ports at will.

Wise heads point to Turkey’s guardianship of an obscure 1936 convention restricting wartime passage through the Bosphorus. A fig for that! Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should help his western partners. It’s high time Turkey’s ageing bully minded his responsibilities, which include welcoming NATO applicants Finland and Sweden.

NATO's reluctance to seize the initiative, rather than passively reacting to Russian actions, is unfathomable, too. Proposals for a no-fly zone and safe havens in western Ukraine are repeatedly rejected as too risky. So dare to try something else! NATO has the muscle and means. It could do much more to stop the systematic killing of civilians and push Russia back, as previously argued here.

Left to fight alone, Zelenskiy pleads for heavy weapons but his pleas still often go unmet or responses are delayed. “We need to get serious about supplying [Ukraine’s] army so that it can do what the world is asking it to do: fight a world superpower alone on the battlefield,” says US Gen Philip Breedlove, formerly NATO commander in Europe. He’s right.

It’s no good relying on sanctions, as the EU proved again last week. Its decision to let Hungary’s mini-Putin, Viktor Orbán, water down an oil embargo was weird. Yet Germany’s Olaf Scholz and fellow euro-wobblers are content. Duty done on oil, they will now more stubbornly resist what their bankers and businessmen most fear: sanctions on gas.

Hardest of all to understand, perhaps, is why some western governments persist in attempting business as usual with Putin, who they know, for certain, is overseeing atrocities and war crimes. Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron hold regular phone chats with him. It’s said they are realists seeking peace. No. They are dupes, normalizing mass murder.

Sophisticated diplomats explain that it’s necessary to maintain channels of communication. Fearful of a destabilizing Russian meltdown, they want to give Putin a “way out”. But they don’t get it. “Messianic” Putin’s just not listening. . .

[    ] Contradicting recent Pentagon statements, Biden insisted: “We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.” He ignored hawkish UK foreign secretary Liz Truss’s maximalist demand for a full Russian retreat from Crimea and all of Donbas.

Biden’s too-modest war aims are a manifesto for the muddled middle. Where does this leave Ukraine? Still solitary, still lacking essential modern weapons, and still fighting for its life with one hand tied behind its back – by its closest friends. . .

[    ] This weak-kneed approach guarantees only one thing: the war will run and run. Diplomacy is stalled. Sanctions are having limited effect and, in terms of energy prices, are harming Europe more than Russia. Only increased direct and indirect NATO military pressure can shift this dynamic.

Campaigning in 2020, Biden pledged an end to what he called America’s “forever wars”. Now, tremulously pulling their punches, he and other western leaders condemn Ukrainians to exactly that."