The Biden administration is trying to put China into a corner over the Russia-Ukraine war.  It spread the rumor that Putin has asked China to provide military aide to Russia.  Biden supposedly warned that there will be consequences if China helps Russia.  China has denied that Russia asked for help and that China has not agree to give such help.  

The idea that Russia needs military help from China is not credible.  The U.S. makes 36% of arms in the world.  Russia is second with 21%.  China is around 5th with about 5%.  So for Russia, which is a big arms selling nation, to bow its head in shame to ask China for arms is ridiculous.  China has been saying that it is staying out of the fight.  The only shipments which China has made are for food, medical supplies and other aids to Ukraine.  The Ukraine government has said that China has been helpful in trying to get Putin to the table.  China is actually Ukraine's top trading partner.  But that seems to be glossed over by the Western media.  

People assume that China is on Russia's side, given Putin visited with Xi during the Olympics and they announced their friendship.  But while China wants Russia on its side in balancing power against the U.S., it does not want to see an example of a country taking over territory of another.  Territory integrity is important to China since Western countries want to break Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan from China.  

China also does not war and sanctions to cripple the economy of the world which has helped China grow into an economic power.  The West demands that China join the sanction of Russia.  But why would China do that?  It does not believe that sanctions work and that even the West is taking its own economic well being into account in applying sanctions.  The West has kicked most Russian banks out of SWIFT but kept the banks that control oil trade in.  It has stopped short of banning all Russian energy products.  So why should China risk into own economic well being to help the West?  Only the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia, South Korea and Japan are sanctioning Russia.  All of Latin America, most of Asia, including India, and all of Africa are not participating.  So 80% of the world population is not involve in sanctioning Russia.  Yet, only China is being singled out.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is asking Iran and Venezuela to increase oil production.  It is saying that sanctions against these countries will be lifted if they cooperate.  I don't know if they will take the bait but China is likely do what is to its best interest.  China does not want sanctions against it.  But sanctions may come in the future no matter what China does.  At least that is what a lot of Chinese believe.  I think they don't like Putin's aggressiveness.  But they don't see why they have to fall in line with the West.  As one Chinese pundit said: "They are asking us to help them fight against their enemies today so that they will be able to fight us later."  I think that is very grim.

 This is the 5th installment of the Russian Ukraine War.  I must say that after writing all these installments that I have not come up with the exact reason why Putin attack at this time.  Perhaps there are multiple factors.  The Time magazine article imply that the arrest of Putin's friend Medvedchuk may be the spark that started the war.  Maybe, but obviously there were many steps that led to the invasion.  So we look at some of these steps.

Georgia may have been a model of what could have happened to Ukraine.  As we talked about previously, Georgia and Ukraine were both going to be the next countries to join NATO.  But in 2008, Russia beat up Georgia and basically took over separatists regions of that country.  No talk of Georgia joining NATO after that.  So perhaps the West and Ukraine could have learned that lesson and just let Ukraine be neutral and avoid a similar or worse fate than Georgia.

But there didn't happen.  We left off with Russia annexing Crimea in 2014.  Russia also helped a separatist movement in the Donbas region of Ukraine.  Basically a civil war broke out in 2014.  It has never ended.  Couple of times there were cease fire but fighting resumed or never stop despite the agreements.  Ukraine refused to concede the separatist region and kept attacking periodically.  But it was not able to make any progress.  Putin, occupied with troubles at home and waging a war in Syria, did not help the separatists advance either.  So it was pretty much a stalemate until 2021.  

As mentioned Medvedchuk was arrested in 2021.  Also Ukraine started using Turkish made drones to attack the separatists.  These drones have been quite effective, even against Russian forces in the war today.  NATO was also more aggressive, flying near the Russian border.  Also Ukraine had since the Russian annexation of Ukraine, have shut off water from the North Crimean Canal which had supplied 90% of fresh water to Crimea in the past.  So the agriculture of Crimea suffered greatly and the Russians have been having more and more trouble trying to supply Crimea with fresh water.  In fact, one of the first things the Russians did after the invasion was blew up the dam that blocked the water going to Crimea.  So all these may have been factors that made Putin believe it was time to invade.

I also think that with the U.S. leaving Afghanistan in such a disgraceful manner gave Putin the idea that the U.S. cannot organize NATO in a  cohesive response.  Or he may have thought that Biden, having been humiliated with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, will want to show that he is tougher than Trump on Russia.  So maybe it was now or it will be too late once Biden gets things organized.  

So Putin tried to test Biden by asking that NATO put it in writing that Ukraine will never be part of NATO.  Biden, on the other hand, could not be looked upon as weak after Afghanistan, refused.  So both sides are pinned to a corner and the Ukrainians are going to be the big losers of this big power politics.

 This is the fourth installment of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Having annexed Crimea and backed the separatist movements in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, it seemed like Putin had stopped NATO from taking in Ukraine as a member.  While there were scrimmages in the following years, things seem to somewhat stabilize.  So what made Putin decide to invade?  There are views that he got bad intelligence reports and that made him believe that he can easily win.  There are views that he got bad advice from his inner circle.  But Putin is not Bush.  He is way too savvy to be led down the path by the Russian equivalents of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Neocons.  An interesting point was brought up in Time magazine Feb.14-21 issue.  This was something new I read and had not come across before.  So I will give a summary of this article.

The article talks about Viktor Medvedchuk, an Ukrainian oligarch and politician.  Medvedchuk and Putin are close friends.  Putin is the god-father of Medvedchuk's daughter.  According to Time, Medvedchuk's party is the biggest opposition force in the parliament of Ukraine.  He is the leading voice for Russian interests in Ukraine.  This is important since after the annexation of Crimea and taking over of the Donbas region, there are less and less pro-Russian people voted into the Kyiv government.  So short of going to war, the best way for Putin to influence Ukraine was through Medvedchuk and his party.

The U.S. was well aware of pro Russia oligarchs in Ukraine.  Many of them were sanctioned by Obama in 2014, and Medvedchuk was on the top of list of those sanctioned.   Nevertheless by 2018 these oligarchs had formed an alliance called Opposition Platform-For Life and Medvedchuk was the party chairman.  These oligarchs owned three television network in Ukraine.  They made life miserable for Zelensky's government, especially hammering its response to COVID.

So in February of 2021, shortly after Biden had taken office, Zelensky's government took the opposition television networks off air.  This was with the blessing of the Biden administration.  Shortly after that, Ukraine announced that it had seized the assets of Medvedchuk's family, including a pipeline that brings Russian oil to Europe.  In May, Medvedchuk was charged with treason and placed under house arrest.  Recently, the U.S. accused him of plotting to stage a coup, similar to what the Russians had accused the U.S. of doing back in 2014.

Putin responded by sending 3,000 troops to the Ukraine border right after Ukraine took his friend's assets.  That was the first of many moves that eventually led to over 100,000 troops to the border and then the invasion.  I don't know if Putin started the process of war because of what he felt as injustice to his friend.  But I do think that having his one big influencer in Ukraine silenced, he probably thought  that there was no path to keep Ukraine out of NATO short of war.  

 This is the third installment of what led to the invasion of Russia into Ukraine.  We left off with the intention of NATO admitting Ukraine and Georgia into their fold at the Summit in 2008.  At that Summit, the Bush administration wanted Ukraine and Georgia to be admitted over the protest of Putin.  But France and Germany were against the admission because they fear it will cause Russia to be aggressive.  So NATO decided to tabled the admission until December of that year.  

Georgia, believing that it has the support of the U.S., felt that NATO admission was only delayed but was inevitable.  Georgia had trouble in two of its regions:  Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Now that Georgia thinks that NATO will admit it, it felt it can be more aggressive toward the Russian separatists movements in these two regions.  The Russians, on the other hand, wanted to show Georgia its displeasure of Georgia wanting to join NATO.  It encouraged the separatists movement in these two regions.  There were parallel joint military exercises at the same time.  One was Georgia and the U.S. and one was Russia and the separatists.  I don't know if Georgia attacked the separatists first or vice versa.  But Russia sent in "peacekeeping forces" (sound familiar today?).   Eventually, Russia recognized the separatists region as independent countries (also sound familiar today).  So a war broke out.  It is considered to be the first European war of the 21st century.

By this time Putin was not president any more due to term limits.  While he still pull the strings, he let Medvedev run the show.  Medvedev had no intention of occupying Georgia and so after pushing out the Georgian forces from the separatists regions, he accepted a cease fire.  As it is today, NATO and the U.S. wanted no part of actually fighting Russia and so the war ended.  While the majority of the world recognize the two regions as parts of Georgia, the reality is that both are run by Russians or people of Russian descent.  So you can say that Russia won.  Also given what happened in Georgia, there was no consideration of Ukraine joining NATO for several years after that.

Fast forward to 2010.  Viktor Yanukovych was elected as president of Ukraine.  While he was elected by winning the eastern part of the country where there were lots of people of Russian descent, he was considered a moderate candidate.  He called for neutrality for Ukraine.  He promised to work with both the European Union and Russia.  That was seen as reasonable.  But the country was not doing great economically and there were corruption charges against him.

Then in 2013 the European Union offered Ukraine membership.  Russia responded by offering loan to Ukraine.  Yanukovych decided against the EU offer.  This led to protests from those who wanted to be part of the European Union and NATO.  The protests turned violent.  There are some evidence that the West supported the protesters with money and strategy.  Yanukovych claimed that his life was being threatened.  There was proceeding for impeachment against him.  At this point Yanukovych fled to Crimea and eventually Russia.

So Russia then claim that Western interference with Ukraine is a threat against Crimea and Russia.  Crimea had been part of the Russian Empire starting 1783.  But in 1954, the USSR transferred Crimea to the jurisdiction of Ukraine in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's union with Russia.  So to Putin, it was quite reasonable to take back Crimea since the coup means Ukraine will likely end up in EU and NATO.  Also the Sevastopol Naval Base in Crimea on the Black Sea is very important to Russia.  So there was no way that Putin will allow that to become a NATO base.   With a Russian majority in Crimea, it was not difficult for Putin to send in troops and annexed Crimea.

 This is the second installment of the Ukraine crisis and how we got to this tragedy.  We left off with the breakup of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and there was nothing Russia could do about it.  By the time Putin was in his first term as president of Russia, only Georgia and Ukraine were not part of NATO.  Putin was very popular during his first two terms from 2000 to 2008.  He talked about reforms, getting rid of corruption, making law and order a priority.  That is not too different from politicians anywhere.  He did hint at regaining the old glory of the Soviet Union, at least no more NATO advances.  He was tough on the Chechnya rebels.  But luck was also on his side.  While Russia's GDP plummeted after the breakup of the USSR, oil prices skyrocketed during Putin's first two terms.  While the average Russians felt that changing to capitalism made things worse, now they felt having a strongman like Putin is why things are better.

Putin took advantage of the situation.  He jailed some oligarchs and took away their wealth.  He told the people that changing to the West system was terrible, that it was all these capitalists who were stealing from Russia.  Of course, he let those oligarchs who are on his side to keep and continue to make money.  It was not difficult to make a case of the West trying to kick Russia when it is down.  NATO is a military alliance.  What is the purpose of adding countries like Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states to their membership?  These countries don't provide much military might to NATO.  There are no Asian, African or American countries who threaten Europe.  So it was easy to reason that the whole purpose of adding these countries is to threaten Russia or at least embarrass it by surrounding it.  This was an easy sell to the Russian people.  And with the economy improving due to oil sales, Putin's approval rating was sky high.

It could be argue that ambition of Putin to get Russia back to the glory days of the USSR will eventually  lead to war sometime down the line.  But the actions of NATO certainly did not help and some would argue that it led to what is happening today.  In a NATO summit in 2008, NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually be admitted into NATO.  That would be a line in the sand for Putin.  There was no way that he could have kept his strongman image and let NATO admit those two, particularly Ukraine.  

It is easy to paint Putin as evil and Russia is bad.  But things are never black and white like that.  Russians are no different than any other people.   They want a better life for their family.  They have pride in their nation.  So if anyone can show that others are humiliating or threatening them and at the same time provide them with a better standard of living, they are going to follow that person.  The West was kicking Russia when it was down but at the same time craved the oil that Russia can provide cheaply.  So it can be said that the West actually help the rise of Putin to the detriment of the world.

So what happens to Georgia and Ukraine was fairly predictable, given what happened in that NATO summit and the ambition of Putin.  Next will go over what happened after that summit and eventually the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014.