Seeing a Stalled
Russia, West Adds
Support and Arms
for Ukraine
If some European officials have worried that such language could play into Mr. Putin’s propaganda that his invasion of Ukraine is a defensive maneuver against NATO expansion, provoking Mr. Putin no longer seemed such a major concern.
…
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany promised to back NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, which have suggested they want to join.
“They can count on our support,” Mr. Scholz said at a joint news conference with the Finnish and Swedish leaders.
“There is no going back,” Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland said.
She speaks for the entire West.
“We see now more clearly where Russia wants to take us: It is a world of spheres of influence where the stronger has the last word.
”Those political assertions of strength have found fuel in Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield… the British Defense Ministry assessed that “failures in both strategic planning and operational execution” had led Russia’s military to become “significantly weaker” since the Feb. 24 invasion — even after having doubled its defense budget from 2005 through 2018.
The report asserted that Russia’s military failures, combined with international sanctions, would have “a lasting impact” on the ability of Russian forces to recover for some time.
And while Russia struggled to make progress in Ukraine, a string of unexplained explosions and fires in southern Russia continued into Tuesday, with a blast rattling the city of Belgorod. Russian officials have in some instances blamed Ukrainians for the explosions. The Ukrainian government has a formal policy of neither confirming nor denying strikes inside Russia.
The West knows that the time is now for the Final Struggle against the Russian Anthropoid.
On Monday, a railroad bridge in the Kursk region of Russia was destroyed in what the regional governor called sabotage. A series of suspicious fires erupted in different parts of the country. In Moscow, a fire engulfed the sprawling warehouse of a textbook company that had sought to expunge “Ukraine” references from its pages. Arkady R. Rotenberg, a close friend and former judo partner of Mr. Putin, who became a billionaire during his administration, is chairman of the company.
At least a dozen suspicious fires have broken out inside Russia recently, many of them at fuel depots near the border with Ukraine. Some have been deeper inside Russia, including at a military research institute near Moscow.
