Cool it, wise men. Advise to Zelensky

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The television pundits don't want it to be over. Inspiring fear sells a lot of soap. But this war is going nowhere.

The wise men of the West are bristling with suggestions as to what to do now. My advice to Ukraine would be generally, cool it. The Russian people's heart is not in this. We should not provoke them further when they are falling of their own weight.  No no-fly zones. No military action from the West.

I do not fear for Kyiv.  The Russians have not been able to take Kharkiv, a smaller city only 5 miles from the Russian border. They have done considerable damage, but they have not significantly reduced the Ukrainian ability to fight back and have not whatsoever reduced their morale.

The same is true of Mariupol, Berdyansk and other cities. It will be a Ukrainian victory, certainly much aided by ammunition and other soft support from the West. Ukraine is not in immediate danger of falling. We of the west should not give Russia excuses to escalate through the use of thermobaric or nuclear weapons.

Ukrainians just destroyed an 800 vehicle convoy in Mikolaev, just up from the river crossing at Kherson where there has been such fierce fighting over that bridge from Crimea. 

That awesome 40 mile long convoy sitting 20 miles to Kyiv's northwest has been there now for three days. It is pretty clear they are not moving. I wrote a couple of days ago that from my memory, the road that they needed to traverse could be blocked by simply blowing it up, blowing the bridges, mining the roads and so on. The Russians may have concluded that that is the case.

Or, cooler heads may have decided that they have no death wish and simply decided to wait it out, expending their fuel and food and waiting for an opportune moment to surrender. I would be pretty confident that Ukrainian psyops is communicating with them through loudspeakers, leaflet drops, radio and other channels. Morale cannot be very high after days of just sitting.

Those 200, or was it 400, helicopters sitting in southern Belarus showed up on video yesterday over the Kyiv Sea, with one of them being shot down. I don't know where they are, but they are certainly not to be seen in our skies. They may have also had second thoughts about flying into the teeth of Stinger and Javelin missiles.

I took the girls for a walk this morning and the city is eerily quiet. The stores are closed, no traffic on the street.

Zelensky asked for admission to the European Union. I am sure that they will agree in a hurry. I hope Zelensky is wise enough to set parameters around this. It would be beneficial for Ukraine's industry to be able to trade tariff free.  Ukraine does not need all of the noisome EU regulations. It certainly does not need Ursula von den Leyden telling it to accept refugees and asylum seekers. Ukraine needs to align itself quickly with the Visegrad four (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) to resist the imposition of unwelcome change on a traditional society. Ukraine doesn't want Pussy Riot any more than Russia did.

NATO is a dead letter at this point. The sole purpose of those trillions of dollars spent was defense against Russia. Russia has spent itself. Committed hari kari.  When the world comes to its senses, there will be a vast number of surplus shoulder stars and eagles on the secondhand market. This would be a great time to short warmonger stocks such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen and the like. The vast bogeyman that justified their huge budgets has been defeated by a bunch of angry commoners with Kalashnikovs and Molotov cocktails. And, of course, a generous dollop of Western weapons and ammunition, no doubt offered on terms that somehow enriched Western bankers.

Truckers personify the average man in the West, and they have had it up to their eyeballs with BS from the powers that be. The common man who jumped through an incredible series of stupid hoops on account of this Covid nonsense. They have lost their jobs and businesses. I do not think they will forget the likes of Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones saying that it was probably not a good idea to totally ignore Russia's concerns with regard to NATO, border provocations, woke culture and the like.

We should not let the people whose intransigence led to this catastrophe dictate the terms of resolving it. Let Russia retain a bit of dignity after they get rid of Putin. Do not impose the New World order on us here in Ukraine. We don't want it, and we are in the process of demonstrating right now that we will strongly reject that which we don't want.

That's the view from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong in their opinions, the good looking women usually respect their men as the head of the household and don't argue too much, and mom and dad serve as pretty good models for the rising generation.

Graham