Sending two Russian warships and a flotilla of 15 smaller vessels to through the Bosphorus Strait to the Black Sea, 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin called 78-year-old President Joe Biden’s bluff. Biden said April 9 that he was sending two U.S. warships to the Black Sea as a show of support to 43-year-old Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky who’s complained about a Russian troop build up near the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Zelensky asked the U.S. and NATO for help, fearing that Putin plans to annex more territory after he invaded Crimea March 1, 2014. Biden told Zelensky in a phone call April 2 that he had his “unwavering support” trying to defend Ukraine at what looks like another possible Russian land grab. Zelensky has asked for U.S. and NATO backing to stop what looks like an inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine’s eastern provinces.
Biden abruptly called off deployment of U.S. warships to the Black Sean April 14, signaling to Zelensky that the U.S. isn’t serious about defending Ukraine, especially fighting Ukraine’s battles with Russia. Zelensky has all but begged Biden and NATO for military assistance, putting the U.S. in harm’s way. If Zelensky thinks about it, it’s been seven years since Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula, during that time no offer to join NATO from Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg’s the first to talk about Russia’s military build up along the ”line of contact” in the Donbass region but has made no offer to Zelensky for NATO membership. Zelensky kept speaking out loud that NATO was going to perform joint military exercises with Ukraine at some murky point in the future. All his NATO chatter prompted Putin to send warships into the Black Sea to convey a loud message.
Biden’s decision to cancel an U.S. deployment to the Black Sea lets Zelensky know that when Biden says “he’s got his back,” it’s all talk. Biden found out the hard way what happens when he attacks Putin in public. Telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos March 16 that Putin was a “soulless killer” deeply hurt U.S.-Russian relations. While it was all fun-and-games for Stephanopoulos, the cognitively challenged Biden took the bait and made a mess of U.S.-Russian relations. It didn’t help things that Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken demanded that Putin release 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny from prison. Biden and Blinker know that Navalny runs a clandestine organization designed to topple Putin’s government. Biden was so flummoxed he called for a summit with Putin Aril 13, knowing that the two leaders have nothing to say to each other.
Sending two warships and 13 smaller vessels to the Black Sea lets Biden know not to mess around in Putin’s backyard. Putin’s Ropucha-class warships are capable of offloading troops, tanks and other heavy military equipment, signaling that he means business to Zelensky, Biden and Stoltenberg. Zelensky knows now that the U.S. and NATO aren’t getting into a shooting war in Ukraine because he can’t get along with his Russian neighbor. Whatever the politics in Ukraine, Zelensky has a lot of fence-mending to do in the Donbass or Donetsk region where Russian-speaking residents want no part of the pro-Western Kiev government. If Putin annexed the Donbass region, the lion’s share of the population would be thrilled to be back in Mother Russia. Zelensky can’t figure out that every time he begs the U.S. or NATO for military help, it alienates the Kremlin, showing no sympathy for Kiev.
Biden and Blinken are guilty of violating the basic foreign policy concept of linkage, where U.S. foreign policy makes alliances with adversaries in order to achieve important foreign policy objectives. Calling Putin a “soulless killer” sinks to the lowest level of diplomacy imaginable, now reaping consequences to U.S. national security. Watching Biden stand down in his order to send U.S. warships to the Black Sea, shows the same degree of weakness Putin say in 2014 when he invaded Crimea, with the U.S., NATO and EU jumping up-and-down but doing nothing. Zelensky must go back to the drawing board and find a path to avoid conflict with the Kremlin. Russia’s FSB [formerly KGB] security service detained Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Sosoniuk in St. Petersburg, letting Zelensky know that things could get a lot worse if he continue to push things to the brink.
Biden’s Putin-bashing must stop immediately before he pushes things to an incident that won’t be resolved easily by the U.N. or any other world body. While it was smart to call off U.S. naval deployment to the Black Sea, it also sends the wrong message to Putin, one of weakness. Biden and Blinken have gone too far publicly backing Russian dissident Alex Navalny, now deteriorating quickly in due to his hunger strike in Russian custody. If Navalny dies in prison, it won’t spark, as the West thinks, a revolution to topple Putin’s government. More Russian citizens taking orders from Navalny’s clandestine organization will get arrested, just like the last time they staged nationwide demonstrations. Zelensky’s only hope out of the current debacle is to let go of U.S. and NATO backing. Getting along with Putin requires Zelensky to stop begging the U.S. and NATO to rescue him.
