The overnight deal that last week brought a "cease fire" to Ukraine was always tinged with peril. As we wrote at the time, it was easy for Putin to sign the deal knowing he could re-assume his aggressive behavior whenever he felt like it, since there's clearly nothing the West is going to do to stop him.
So it turned out the cease fire lasted less than a week. The Russians are on the march again, with Ukraine forced to surrender territory while Barack Obama continues to dither on the question of whether he will ever supply arms to the resistance:
Even before negotiators left the room in Minsk last week, Russian troops and their rebel frontmen accelerated their assault on the rail town of Debaltseve. Mr. Poroshenko protested but the rebels claimed the town wasn’t part of the agreement. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat willy-nilly through a bloody gantlet with an unknown number killed or captured.
“Obviously it’s bad to lose,” chirped Mr. Putin about the retreat, during a visit to his autocratic ally in Hungary. “But life is life and it still goes on.” Unless you were a Ukrainian killed during the non-cease-fire.
The result is that Mr. Putin has again expanded the Russian rump state of Novorossiya inside Ukraine. He may now decide to consolidate those gains and sit tight—for a while. But that’s what the West’s Russia-appeasement lobby predicted a year ago after Mr. Putin grabbed Crimea.
Then he moved on Luhansk and Donetsk. After a previous cease-fire in September, his troops and proxies advanced along the Sea of Azov coast toward Mariupol. Sooner rather than later the shelling of that key port city will begin again. Meanwhile, the Pentagon says Russian troops and weapons continue to flow into Ukraine.
But Mr. Hollande is undaunted in his devotion to the illusory cease-fire. “The four leaders agreed to rigorously implement the entirety of the package of measures” agreed to in Minsk, said the office of the French President on Thursday after a conference call with leaders from Ukraine, Russia and Germany. “Violations of the cease-fire observed in recent days were condemned.” Note the passive tense, which fits the passive policy.
As for the U.S., Secretary of State John Kerry called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday and pressed him “to stop Russian and separatist attacks on Ukrainian positions in Debaltseve and other violations of the cease-fire,” as spokesman Jen Psaki put it. She added that “we don’t consider it [the cease-fire] is dead,” so the Ukrainians have that going for them.
So this is what the U.S. is reduced to? Kerry calls Lavrov and informs him, hey, you're violating this well and good cease-fire! You'd better stop that! The cease-fire is not dead!
No, but the people hit by the fire launched by those who don't give a rip about the "cease-fire" are dead. Like Putin says, hey, life is life. Sucks to lose but whaddayagonnado?
Get used to it, America. Actually you should be by now, ever since you elected a guy who always makes sure he wins, but doesn't really care too much how the rest of the country or its allies do.
Now do you understand why Benjamin Netanyahu is so up in arms about the pending deal between the U.S. and Iran? This is how the Obama Administration operates. Sign a deal with a completely untrustworthy party. Sit back and see the deal violated. Hey! What are you doing? We had a deal!
Suckers. Them for making such stupid deals. You for electing them in the first place.
I don't see what chance Ukraine has at this point. They're not going to get any help from Obama, and Putin clearly doesn't fear consequences of doing anything whatsoever. What a mess.
