Are You Ready and Willing to Die for Ukraine?

The situation in Ukraine appears to be spiraling out of control.

Russian separatists in the Donbas have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2013.

Last week, the four Donbas regions, where most people identify as ethnic Russians, voted overwhelming to rejoin Russia. The West denounced the election as a “sham”.

Russia quickly absorbed the Donbas and declared that it would use the full force of its military, including tactical nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory.

Ukraine launched an offensive which reclaimed the city of Lyman.

Russia is amassing 300,000 additional troops to defend the Donbas.

Yesterday, General Petraeus stated that the U.S. would likely respond to Russia using tactical nuclear weapons by taking out the Russian military in Ukraine and sinking the Russian navy in the Black Sea.

Both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which were built to supply Europe with natural gas from Russia, have been sabotaged under the Baltic Sea. In February, President Biden threatened to destroy the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine. But NATO is claiming that Russia did it, even though no one has a plausible explanation of why they would destroy their own pipelines.

Prior to the sabotage, growing protests in Germany demanded that the government stop supporting Ukraine so Russia would start delivering natural gas again.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rushed to sign a petition to join NATO.

The U.S. is sending Ukraine another $12 billion in aid.

This week, Elon Musk proposed a reasonable peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany responded to the proposal by telling Musk to “fuck off”.

President Trump also offered to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. But the Biden Administration is unlikely to enlist his services.

New York City’s emergency management office recently produced a public service announcement on how to survive a nuclear attack.

Busses in New Jersey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have been spotted with signs about what to do in a radiation emergency.

Russian and Chinese Warships were seen off the Alaskan coast.

Yesterday, North Korea decided to get in on the action by launching a ballistic missile toward Japan.

In 1962, America almost went to nuclear war with the Soviet Union, because the Soviets stationed nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles off the Florida coast. The actions of the Soviet Union rightfully alarmed America.

Russia is every bit as alarmed by NATO inching closer to its border with the absorption of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, which used to be Soviet allies.

Russia has always been paranoid about its borders, having suffered through hundreds of years of invasions by the Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians, Napoleon, and Hitler.

In fact, the Russian state was originally founded in what is now Kiev, Ukraine but was pushed north to Moscow by various invaders.

During the 1990’s, the U.S. had every opportunity to cement Russia into the West after the Cold War ended.

But U.S. leadership kept treating Russia as an enemy.

Part of the reason was that NATO was created to defend Europe against the Soviet Union. How could NATO’s continued existence be justified if Russia was integrated into the West?

Ending the Cold War meant ending money, power, and prestige for a lot of people. That was just too painful to take. So, the West continued to treat Russia as an adversary to keep the status quo intact.

Today, we may be closer to a nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It’s time to ask ourselves if we are ready and willing to die for Ukraine.

Are you?