Here are some of the 300,000 Ukrainians trapped in basements in Mariupol.
They cannot leave because Putin’s military has surrounded the city and is indiscriminately shelling from land and sea, progressively destroying the city. They have no electricity, no heat, and food and water for maybe five days. If they go out on the street, they will be killed by Putin’s boys.
You can see Mariupol on the top right and Odesa, another port, on the left. In the center is Crimea, now joined to Russia (on the right) by a very long, newly-built bridge at Ketch.
Our free world has layered heavy sanctions on Putin’s Russia. Will they work? The best piece I’ve read with an answer is from Thomas Friedman in today’s New York Times. He knows more than I do. Here’s his piece in full:
Putin Has No Good Way Out, and That Really Scares Me
He’s not a man to admit defeat, so he could just keep doubling down.
If you’re hoping that the instability that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has wreaked on global markets and geopolitics has peaked, your hope is in vain. We haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until Putin fully grasps that his only choices left in Ukraine are how to lose — early and small and a little humiliated or late and big and deeply humiliated.
I can’t even wrap my mind around what kind of financial and political shocks will radiate from Russia — this country that is the world’s third-largest oil producer and possesses some 6,000 nuclear warheads — when it loses a war of choice that was spearheaded by one man, who can never afford to admit defeat.
Why not? Because Putin surely knows that “the Russian national tradition is unforgiving of military setbacks,” observed Leon Aron, a Russia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, who is writing a book about Putin’s road to Ukraine.
“Virtually every major defeat has resulted in radical change,” added Aron, writing in The Washington Post. “The Crimean War (1853-1856) precipitated Emperor Alexander II’s liberal revolution from above. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) brought about the First Russian Revolution. The catastrophe of World War I resulted in Emperor Nicholas II’s abdication and the Bolshevik Revolution. And the war in Afghanistan became a key factor in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.” Also, retreating from Cuba contributed significantly to Nikita Khrushchev’s removal two years later.
In the coming weeks it will become more and more obvious that our biggest problem with Putin in Ukraine is that he will refuse to lose early and small, and the only other outcome is that he will lose big and late. But because this is solely his war and he cannot admit defeat, he could keep doubling down in Ukraine until … until he contemplates using a nuclear weapon.
Why do I say that defeat in Ukraine is Putin’s only option, that only the timing and size are in question? Because the easy, low-cost invasion he envisioned and the welcome party from Ukrainians he imagined were total fantasies — and everything flows from that.
Putin completely underestimated Ukraine’s will to be independent and become part of the West. He completely underestimated the will of many Ukrainians to fight, even if it meant dying, for those two goals. He completely overestimated his own armed forces. He completely underestimated President Biden’s ability to galvanize a global economic and military coalition to enable Ukrainians to stand and fight and to devastate Russia at home — the most effective U.S. coalition-building effort since George H.W. Bush made Saddam Hussein pay for his folly of seizing Kuwait. And he completely underestimated the ability of companies and individuals all over the world to participate in, and amplify, economic sanctions on Russia — far beyond anything governments initiated or mandated.
When you get that many things wrong as a leader, your best option is to lose early and small. In Putin’s case that would mean withdrawing his forces from Ukraine immediately; offering a face-saving lie to justify his “special military operation,” like claiming it successfully protected Russians living in Ukraine; and promising to help Russians’ brethren rebuild. But the inescapable humiliation would surely be intolerable for this man obsessed with restoring the dignity and unity of what he sees as the Russian motherland.
Incidentally, the way things are going on the ground in Ukraine right now, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Putin could actually lose early and big. I would not bet on it, but with every passing day that more and more Russian soldiers are killed in Ukraine, who knows what happens to the fighting spirit of the conscripts in the Russian Army being asked to fight a deadly urban war against fellow Slavs for a cause that was never really explained to them.
Given the resistance of Ukrainians everywhere to the Russian occupation, for Putin to “win” militarily on the ground his army will need to subdue every major city in Ukraine. That includes the capital, Kyiv — after probably weeks of urban warfare and massive civilian casualties. In short, it can be done only by Putin and his generals perpetrating war crimes not seen in Europe since Hitler. It will make Putin’s Russia a permanent international pariah.
Moreover, how would Putin maintain control of another country — Ukraine — that has roughly one-third the population of Russia, with many residents hostile to Moscow? He would probably need to maintain every one of the 150,000-plus soldiers he has deployed there — if not more — forever.
There is simply no pathway that I see for Putin to win in Ukraine in any sustainable way because it simply is not the country he thought it was — a country just waiting for a quick decapitation of its “Nazi” leadership so that it could gently fall back into the bosom of Mother Russia.
So either he cuts his losses now and eats crow — and hopefully for him escapes enough sanctions to revive the Russian economy and hold onto power — or faces a forever war against Ukraine and much of the world, which will slowly sap Russia’s strength and collapse its infrastructure.
As he seems hellbent on the latter, I am terrified. Because there is only one thing worse than a strong Russia under Putin — and that’s a weak, humiliated, disorderly Russia that could fracture or be in a prolonged internal leadership turmoil, with different factions wrestling for power and with all of those nuclear warheads, cybercriminals and oil and gas wells lying around.
Putin’s Russia is not too big to fail. It is, however, too big to fail in a way that won’t shake the whole rest of the world.
Friedman’s piece is here.
What can we do to help the Ukrainians?
Send money to one or both of these:
+ The World Central Kitchen. Click here.
+ The International Rescue Committee. Click here.
So far, readers of my blog have contributed over $50,000. Please send more. Over two million-plus Ukrainians have now escaped. More are coming. Your help in feeding them and providing medical supplies is really needed. I wish I were younger. I’d be there helping serve meals.
For now, my begging will have to suffice. Please send them money today. I still can’t stop crying.
The stockmarket remains irrational
It’s up big-time today. That gives you a good opportunity to dump stocks you feel uncomfortable with, since the trend is clearly down.
Here’s Nasdaq over the last month, including today’s early bounce. (the other indices — Dow and S&P have followed the same path.)
I am impressed with the new Apple iPhone SE. You can buy it for as little as $429. You get all the technology, including IOS 15, the same I have on my pricey iPhone 13. Get an SE for your kids. They deserve it.
Our ENB continues to climb. Yet even today, it still yields 6.2%.
I continue to like Tesla. At these prices it is attractive. More people will buy Teslas as the price of gas skyrockets.
To choose stocks, you need to ask: How will they be affected by this year’s economic slowdown.
No matter how small Russia’s economy is, there’ll be a bite in sales and earnings growth this year.
Fact is none of this stockpicking is easy. One thought some wise people had: buy Exxon Mobil because the price of gas and oil is going through the roof. Good idea… until you see what happened recently. Here’s the last month:
If you’re confused about your stocks and where your wealth is going, don’t log into your online broker.
Ignorance can be bliss. Hug the kids. Go for a walk. Play an hour of tennis.
But only after sending some money to Ukraine to the MCK and IRC. See above.
Two reasons to be Alive
The first is grandson Peter proving he doesn’t have his grandfather’s nose (i.e. mine):
This is Eleanor showing Peter how to do a selfie (as if he needed lessons).
Those grandchildren are in Oregon. I’m in Columbia County, NY, where I get to enjoy sunsets like this one earlier this week. thanks Mark Johnson for the photo.
It’s snowing this morning. Better it snows here than in Ukraine. I wish.
See you tomorrow. — Harry Newton
