DV Journal

Russian President Vladimir Putin is savagely in the midst of a full-scale, unprovoked attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine, and now is the time to consider how to make him pay a severe price for his crimes.

The focus is squarely on Putin. Now that we are no longer wasting words and time on timid, so-called deterrence we must ultimately seek regime change. He has to go.

Our actions now must so thoroughly complicate Putin’s and Russia’s existence that they cause Russian citizens to act. Despite his tight grip on power, the Russian people have access to information and they almost certainly are not buying his almost crazed rationale for the invasion. Some are already taking to the streets.

Many Russians have family relations and friends in Ukraine. They understand Ukraine represented no threat to Mother Russia. There is no great cause to support.  This is strictly a Putin affair.

Some Ukrainians, like former heavyweight world boxing champions Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko (Vitali is currently mayor of Kyiv) are from a Ukrainian father, who was a colonel in the Soviet Army, and a Russian mother. Both men and their fellow countryman and current heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, are in Ukraine to fight against the Russian army.  It is likely they are not exceptions — many will fight.

Economic actions have been taken and they are continuing to expand.

The U.S., European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada have acted with exceptional fortitude by expelling selected Russian banks from SWIFT, according to CNN. Whatever pain it causes the U.S. will be mitigated by a weaker, less aggressive Russia.

Removing Russia entirely from SWIFT would cripple Russian financial transactions worldwide. The country cannot afford the blow. Its economy ranks outside the top 10 by GDP and is dwarfed by that of the U.S.

The list of painful measures must expand quickly beyond removal from SWIFT. Additional measures could also include: ban Russian ships from international ports; send 90 percent of diplomats home from as many nations as President Joe Biden can influence; ban Russia from international sports (some of which is happening now); discontinue landing rights to Aeroflot; go after the property and bank accounts of Russian oligarchs; ban rail service from and to Russia; ban named individuals from international travel; issue sanctions on any nation that tries to get around the sanctions.

The U.S. can also refuse Russian oil. So can Western Europe.

All measures must have an adverse effect on Putin himself. He makes all the decisions. He is the one.

The Russian people will have to decide whether they want to send their sons to die in a country where the citizens are not real enemies. Russians likely already know that Ukraine has never posed a threat to their country and never will.

They also have to choose whether punishing economic hardships are worth the suffering. Russian citizens gain almost nothing in having a hostile slave state south of their border and may endure years of sabotage and guerilla activities that could become a festering wound.

Our actions supporting Ukraine must also continue as the war continues. We can provide massive amounts of ammunition and logistical resupply surreptitiously. Most immediately, we can provide medical support by allowing the evacuation of casualties to nearby NATO nations.

The international community’s actions must include all NATO nations.

Putin has evolved from a simple KGB thug into a full-fledged war criminal. This conflict will one day end, but Putin’s days as a pariah are forever. He needs to be indicted and brought before an international court.

His directives have resulted in the illegal killing of innocent civilians by engaging in an aggressive war—men were hanged for equivalent charges at Nuremberg.

Sanctions cannot simply end when Putin has fully consolidated his hold on power in Ukraine. They have to be biting and painful for enough time to be seen as punitive and ultimately change Russia’s behavior. There may be some residual deterrence for the next Russian despot who wants to relive the glory of the days of the Soviet empire.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody and unhinged campaign to topple a democratic nation once subjugated by the former Soviet Union has resurrected the threat of global conflict from its deep, dark Cold War-era grave.

It’s easy to paint the invasion of Ukraine as the delusions of a narcissistic despot desperate to cement his legacy as the man who muscled Russia’s way back to the top of the world superpower list. In doing so, we ignore the uncomfortable truth: Putin spent years bolstering Russia’s economy with oil and gas exports, knowing full well the West’s race to renewables left them vulnerable and dependent.

As a natural consequence, any imposed sanctions meant to cripple Russia’s energy sector will reverberate across the globe, cutting countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the deepest.

This is what I, and many others, mean when we say energy independence is a matter of national security. And this is why short-sighted climate policies – like forcing Pennsylvania into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and cancelling natural gas infrastructure, the Keystone XL pipeline chief among them – are so very dangerous. People across the world, not just in Ukraine, will die from the leverage Russia holds over global energy exports.

How much control does Russia have, exactly? The EU is the largest importer of natural gas in the world and 53 percent of their supply came from Russia in 2020 alone. In the United States, about 11 percent of our crude oil imports came from Russia last year – a smaller, albeit significant chunk that will cause financial pain stateside as the war against Ukraine escalates.

Some analysts believe crude oil prices may reach $150 per barrel this summer, up from roughly $50 just two years ago when American energy policy prioritized independence.

President Trump, love him or hate him, cautioned western Europe about the risks of relying on Russian natural gas. Germany ignored those warnings and closed much of its nuclear and coal generation facilities in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately, Germany now finds itself in a very serious dilemma of failing to recognize the importance of natural gas in its decisions.

Germany isn’t alone in its shortsightedness. Democratic leaders in western nations, acting on behalf of wealthy green energy donors, fail to see the big picture time and time again. It doesn’t matter how many countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement if all of them also allow China to ramp up its emissions over the next decade.

Pollution knows no borders. Renewable energy accounts for less than one third of global energy supply and remains notoriously unreliable. That’s why, in addition to fueling the EU, Russia made a lucrative deal to supply China with 100 million tons of coal.

We can attack Putin’s assets and Russia’s banks all we want, but so long as he’s cornered a sector of the energy market, his imperialist ambitions will not subside.

But all is not lost. The United States can change course. We can ramp up energy production with the same urgency we experienced when manufacturers pivoted to make masks and ventilators at the onset of the pandemic. We can ease Biden-era policies meant to restrict oil and gas production and exports. We can greenlight Keystone and other pipelines. And we can unleash our plentiful gas supply right here in Pennsylvania to help with that mammoth effort.

Pennsylvania, according to the Energy Information Administration, remains number two in natural gas production nationwide and became the largest supplier of electricity in the United States in 2020. In Pennsylvania alone, more than half of households use natural gas to stay warm. Our 49 underground storage sites also remain key to meeting regional demand in winter.

That’s why Gov. Tom Wolf must abandon policies meant to hamstring the industry, like his devotion to RGGI or his alignment with New York on halting infrastructure that could supply New England with cleaner, cheaper Pennsylvania natural gas instead of – you guessed it – Russia’s inferior product.

But Wolf isn’t the only one standing in the way. Our country still bans liquified natural gas (LNG) cargo ships from delivering between domestic ports unless registered in the United States. Of the more than 400 existing LNG carriers, none fly the U.S. flag.

This law, known as the Jones Act, was enacted in 1920 and leaves us entirely dependent on foreign transports to deliver LNG when pipelines aren’t feasible. The same law prevented production facilities in the southern U.S. from delivering to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017.

Think of how much the world has changed in a century, let alone from just a year or two ago. Where is the logic in buying from a hostile nation instead of adopting policies that make it easier to use what we produce ourselves? Is there any recognition of the common good – or are we just nuts?

Russia has now weaponized its natural gas supply and soon it will squeeze ancillary industries like fertilizer manufacturing and ultimately, food production. If you control the food supply, you control the people. It’s a brutal tactic Russian dictators of decades past know all too well.

Our elected officials must set aside their allegiance to green energy lobbyists and turn up gas production so that we can crush Putin’s war machine without setting a single foot on foreign soil. As a nation that prides itself on its staunch defense of liberty, we must not undermine Ukraine’s fight for freedom by bankrolling their aggressor. And natural gas is the most valuable commodity Russia has – for now.

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The descent of eastern Europe into war is like an excruciating movie in which you have to fear the worst.

You can’t believe that Russia’s Vladimir Putin would have marshaled all those forces within shooting distance of Ukraine without planning to use them. You know you have to accept the tragic news that people will be killing one another across a corner of the region that few of us could have spotted on a map until all TV networks began showing us where the Russians would strike.

Putin and his ministers and assorted flunkeys presented one distortion after another in what was described as a press conference in which they mouthed every rationale imaginable for going to war. The only relief came in the prospect of more dialogue as enunciated by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while Putin looked on silently like a master approving the carefully rehearsed words of his loyal servants.

It would be difficult to sort out all the nonsense they were talking about, but what sticks are repeated claims that the Ukraine forces, with the blessing of the 30 NATO nations led by the U.S., have been opening artillery and rifle fire across the line in the southeastern  Donbass region. The fact that this region was part of Ukraine until a few years ago is irrelevant. Now the Russians are saying it’s divided between two “people’s republics,” Donetsk and Luhansk, which should even be recognized as independent countries.

Putin gives the appearance of a beast of prey sizing up his next dinner before pouncing. It’s hard to know why he wants to conquer a nation where millions died under the control of the former Soviet Union in the 1930s, but obviously plain and simple nationalism underlies the whole crisis.

In that sense, Putin bears comparison to Xi Jinping in China and Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Xi’s burning ambition is to recover Taiwan, the island province that remained independent after the victory of Mao Zedong’s Red Army in 1949. Kim Jong-un, of course, would like to atone for the failure of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, to take over the south in the Korean War by uniting the Korean peninsula under his rule.

Both Xi and Kim would appear to have enough common sense not to risk wars in which millions would die. Xi cannot be sure the Americans and probably the Japanese would not rush to Taiwan’s defense, repelling his forces in the Formosa or Taiwan Straits, and Kim has to worry about the Americans, again with the backing of Japan, turning back invasion of the south. Better to test-fire missiles and fabricate nuclear devices, Kim seems to believe, than to take chances on a war in which his regime might not survive.

You have to hope Putin would also have that much common sense. The ultimate consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a European or even another world war. The war might not reach those proportions right away, but expansion of the conflict would be likely when considering Russian ambitions.

It’s not just that the Russians piled up every pretext they could think of to cross the line into Ukraine. Bearing in mind that revenge and a return to the greatness of the Soviet Union in its finest hours would be a prime motive, Putin soon would want to recover other former satellites. They already have Belarus under dictator Alexander Lukashenko in their orbit, so much so that Russian troops have been training there above Ukraine’s northern frontier.

The Russians want more. How about Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania? They’re ripe for the taking, on the Baltic, exposed to Russia with no other neighboring power to guarantee safety and permanent independence. Lithuania does share a brief common border with Poland, but Poland was divided between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union before those two evil tyrants went to war with one another in mid-1941. Poland, after the German surrender four years later, fell under Soviet rule.

We should look at the expansion of the Soviet Union to encompass eastern Europe, and much of Central Asia too, in terms of Russian nationalism rather than communism. Putin, by gnawing away at Ukraine, sees himself avenging the wrong of the breakup of the Soviet empire. Similarly, Kim Jong-un, as he threatens his enemies with nukes and missiles, dreams of some day leading a united Korea, avenging 35 years of Japanese colonial rule and the division of Korea by the U.S. and USSR after the Japanese surrender.

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