Kendall Stanley: A leader and a loser

As I write this, Ukrainians are still effectively battling against Russian forces that have surrounded the capitol of Kyiv and other large cities. The world watches and applauds.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been a comedian before his election to Ukraine’s top leadership post but no one is laughing now as he has shown what true leadership is as his country fights to repel Russian troops.

President Biden has worked hard to bring together allies to impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs and banks squeezing the Russian economy. The U.S. has also sent hundreds of millions worth of armaments to the besieged Ukraine.

And then there was this, as reported last week:

“Trump has long spoken admiringly of Putin, and, this past week, he complimented the Russian leader during a conservative talk radio interview, saying it was “smart” to send “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the Ukraine border.

“This is genius,” Trump said in that interview. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. … He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re going to go out and we’re going to go in and we’re going to help keep peace.’ You’ve got to say that’s pretty savvy.”

“Trump defended labeling Putin as “smart” during his Saturday night speech.

“The problem is not that Putin is smart — which, of course he’s smart — but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb,” Trump said to applause. “Dumb. So dumb.”

Yup, that was the former guy applauding the actions of a dictator and a thug, an enemy of the United States, as Russia was invading a country we call our ally. He walked it back a little calling the invasion appalling, but that was long after a great shoutout to Putin.

And he wasn’t the only one. Tucker Carlson was offering his wonderment of why Americans didn’t like Putin — to the point his comments were aired on Russian TV!

Is there no one out there who is willing to file charges of treason against these idiots? Do they really think that a “very smart” Putin wouldn’t start World War III to bring back the Russian empire?

While most of the world decries Russia’s incursion, our former president thinks it’s a brilliant move by his old buddy Vlad. His sycophants in the Republican Party suggest the same, trying to stay in his good graces.

How did we ever reach the point where our politicians said anything positive about Russian expansion efforts?

As of Wednesday when I wrote this, Russian forces had not moved into Kyiv but had been moving along the edges of the city meeting with fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces. President Biden in his State of the Union speech Tuesday called for a united resistance to defend the international order endangered by Russian aggression and warned the oligarchs who bolster Mr. Putin’s regime that he would seize their luxury yachts and private jets.

“Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the very foundations of the free world, thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways,” Biden said. “But he badly miscalculated. He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead, he met with a wall of strength he never anticipated or imagined. He met the Ukrainian people.”

Putin has portrayed his incursion as a minor policing operation in eastern Ukraine, but unlike his takeover of Crimea several years ago, he will have a tough time keeping the Russian people from seeing the dead Russian soldiers and smoldering tanks and personnel carriers that are scattered around the countryside from the fierce fighting. He managed to hide the deaths of the Crimea takeover but that’s not the case here.

And he is starting to pick up some blowback from his billionaire friends who find their assets frozen around the world and their inability to fly or use their superyachts.

There are still some moves the Biden administration can use to put more pressure on Putin, letting him know that while U.S. troops won’t be on the ground in Ukraine, we continue to have other means of battling his excursion into what is an independent country.

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In a move that would not have occurred during the Trump administration, Biden has been very effective in working with our European allies, something that Trump rejected, even considering at one point pulling out of NATO.

Not only are our allies assisting in the enforcement and use of sanctions, many have also offered up weapons and ammunition.

This may be one time that Putin reached too far.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: A leader and a loser