Russian troops moving toward Crimea
A link to a dashcam video of Russian military vehicles, posted yesterday on the internet. It only takes a few seconds to load it and see what is happening.
The poster of the video says it was taken on March 7 (yesterday) on a highway near the city of Krasnodar, to the east of Crimea.
It shows Russian troops moving toward Crimea from the area of Krasnodar.
Like so much on the internet, a word of caution: it is not certain who made this video, for what purpose, or even if it really was made yesterday, or rather at some other time.
That said, it may be worth the 20 or 30 seconds of watching to get an idea of what may be happening on the borders of Ukraine.
It suggests that the crisis is still just beginning.
Three more articles
Three other articles may be helpful to understand what is happening in Ukraine.
The first is again by Pat Buchanan, an American Catholic writer who once ran for president. Buchanan criticizes recent US presidents for “shoving NATO into Moscow’s face.”
The second is by Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, and offers several proposals for a compromise solution.
The third is by Prof. John Schindler, a former official in the National Security Agency (NSA) and argues that “this game is real and the stakes are high.”
None of these authors represent fully my own position, but it is useful to read them to understand how leading American thinkers and strategists are viewing this crisis.
I note that on February 25 Sergey Stepashin (Vladimir Putin’s predecessor as the Prime Minister of Russia in the late 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, now the Chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, which supports the presence of Christians in the Middle East), met with Pope Francis in the Vatican on February 27. (This meeting was noted in the media, but not very much, just a line or two here and there.)
“We discussed the support of Christians in the Middle East, the need for equal activity of all confessions in Ukraine over the situation there, and the support of Christian family values,” Stepashin said afterwards.
He said Pope Francis asked him to express his thanks to Putin for his peacekeeping activity in the Middle East.
This is a clear “back channel” of communication between Putin and Francis.
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