Putin eyes Moldova.  Who cares?

Despite all the elitist diplomatic talk about not escalating the war … bringing Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table … and finding an exit ramp for Putin … the world knows what his intentions are.  The Madman of Moscow wants to reclaim the property of the old Soviet Union … period.  Any negotiated peace would merely mean letting Putin have what he has taken so far and wait for his inevitable next advance.

We know he has plans for the rest of Ukraine – and beyond.  Putin is already talking about tiny Moldova in the same way he talked about Ukraine – and Hitler talked about the Sudetenland and Austria.  They just want to unite their people. Uh-huh.

Moldova is a republic of approximately 2.5 million people nestled between Ukraine and Romania.  It essentially has no military defense – and is not a member of NATO.  Like Ukraine, it has a small separatist movement of Russian-speaking people.  Putin’s plan is to take the southern coast of Ukraine to Odessa.  That means he picks up Moldova like a poker chip on the floor. It is a bonus in Putin’s push against NATO.

No one seems to care much about Moldova.  While Putin sees it as a prize, the western world shows little interest in the future of the tiny nation.  Perhaps if Putin does take Odessa, Moldova is not worth protecting.  After all, what is one very small independent nation being grabbed by Putin compared to nations like Ukraine … Georgia … Chechnya?

If anyone worries, it should be the Romanians.  They currently do not border on Russia at all.  But if Putin takes Ukraine and Moldova, the Romanian/Russian border would be approximately 1200 miles long.  In fact, geographically it starts to look like the Russian/Ukraine border – with Russia forming a semi-circle on the eastern Romanian border. 

 It is only a short distance along the Romanian southern border to Bulgaria.  Taking that strip of land would cut Romania off from the Black Sea.  

Putin will not stop until he is either removed from office, dies, or is killed.  That is obvious to everyone – with the possible exceptions of the appeasement-oriented diplomatic establishment in Washington.  Even as the war in Ukraine is raging, it is important to understand the risk of another western defeat.

So, where is that red line that, if crossed by Putin, the west would rise to the occasion?  And if Putin is winning, a lot of nations will stick with him – such as India and China.  If he starts to lose, a lot of nations will give Putin the cold shoulder.

Stopping Putin where he is is not enough.  He must be defeated and pushed out of Ukraine.  Russia just pays reparations.  The west needs to support the anti-Russian movements in Georgia and Chechnya.  No stolen geography should be surrendered to Putin.  That was the big mistake the west made after World War II – when the Washington elite accepted the Soviet Union as an established fact.  Making the same mistake twice is political and moral malfeasance.

So. There ‘tis.