US badgers Russia (and the Ukraine)

“Everything is new that’s well-forgotten,” goes an old Russian proverb.

Seeking to vindicate that folk wisdom, the Russians seem to have forgotten something they’ve always known: winters bring much snow and ice. These then melt in spring and, if the water isn’t properly contained, rivers and reservoirs may overflow.

This past winter put an extra emphasis on this concept by bringing in unusually large amounts of snow and ice. When they turned to water torrents this month, the jerry-built dams protecting the cities of Orsk and Orenburg burst, turning their streets into rivers.

While the two cities argue which should be twinned with Venice and which with Amsterdam, and concerned citizens in possession of rowing boats busily loot the abandoned houses, the government asks the lapidary Russian question: “Who’s to blame?” Bringing to bear on the task the forensic insights for which the Russians are so famous, they’ve identified the culprits: badgers.

Apparently, those evil rodents set out to harm Russian cities by burrowing holes in the dams, making them less structurally sound and causing billions’ worth of damage. That gave rise to the next lapidary question, this one of older provenance: “Cui bono?”

Given the current geopolitical situation, the question answered itself: American wirepullers of the Judaeo-Banderite Ukie Nazis. That hypothesis, nay certainty, has been widely mooted at the highest levels of the Russian government, both executive and legislative.

The answer was so self-evident that no specifics were deemed necessary. That’s a shame because the grateful public is hankering after a detailed description of the secret farms training rodent saboteurs. Yet even in the absence of such details, the dastardly nature of American imperialism is there for all to see.

The pernicious, power-hungry Yanks, explain the Russian authorities, will stop at nothing to create a unipolar world – whereas the Russians are making huge headway in their efforts to build a bipolar one, complete with every delusion known to psychiatry.

It has to be said that, other than training and deploying those attack badgers, the US has been doing little to help the Ukraine for six months at least. The Russians are currently enjoying a ten-fold superiority in artillery ordnance, which explains their microscopic but steady advances around Avdeyevka.

The Ukrainians ought to have a talk with the Hungarians, Vietnamese, Afghanis and other American allies initially supported and then abandoned to their fate. The US has form in that sort of thing, and I for one am surprised her support for the Ukraine lasted as long as it did.

Europe, in particular Germany, is doing its best, but it simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to keep the Ukrainian army properly supplied. Meanwhile, in a touching show of bipartisan accord, the US is reneging on her oft-stated commitment to stopping Russia’s aggression.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is doing his level best to keep any aid bill off the agenda. Since the Ukraine and Israel are lumped together in the proposed aid package, the congressional Republicans receive support from the Democrats whose heightened moral sense balks at sending arms to those genocidal Israelis.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden and his merry men are holding back several billion in funds already earmarked and approved by Congress. One gets the impression, and I hope it’s a false one, that the US is ready to sell the Ukraine down the Dnieper.

Anything else risks that much dreaded escalation, goes the rationale. (In fact, such cowardice in the face of evil aggression doesn’t so much prevent as guarantee escalation. Study history, ladies and gentlemen.)

Now that I’m in a folklore mood, though America is reluctant to pay the piper, she still insists on calling the tune. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin showed how when speaking to the Senate Armed Service Committee the other day.

Here the double entendre in the title above is finally revealed. For Mr Austin shamelessly badgered the Ukraine, trying to dictate how she should deploy her dwindling resources.

Rapidly running out of expensive high-tech weaponry, the Ukrainians are increasingly relying on drone attacks aimed at downgrading Russia’s strategic potential. Specifically, they’ve targeted oil refineries, some of them deep in Russian territory.

The attacks have been spectacularly successful, mainly because the Russian air defences are concentrated on the front, with nothing left over to protect the oil facilities. As a result, Ukrainian drones have by some reports destroyed up to 15 per cent of Russia’s oil-refining capability, and they are only getting started.

That was Mr Austin’s beef. Teaching the Ukrainian grandmother how to suck eggs, he explained to the Ukraine how she should fight this war. Strategically, hectored Mr Austin, the Ukraine should focus on hitting tactical and operational targets directly influencing the conflict.

In other words, the Ukrainians should concentrate their meagre resources on targets best protected by Russian air defences. Even a rank amateur like me smells a rat, or a badger if you’d rather. One could be excused for thinking that Mr Austin’s badgering makes no sense.

If that’s what you think, allow me to offer a slight correction. His hectoring makes no military sense, but plenty of the party-political kind. You see, any significant damage to the Russian oil industry will cause a global increase in oil prices. That means it’ll cost Americans more to fill up their cars as they drive to polling stations in November.

First things first. Let’s do all we can to get Mr Austin’s boss re-elected – and never mind Ukrainians being murdered en masse and their cities razed to the ground. The boldfaced cynicism of Mr Austin’s badgering is most refreshing.

I have an idea. If the US administration wants the Ukrainians to hit more tactical and operational targets on the frontline, it should give them the tools to do that job. Then it will gain the right to issue requests – not demands! – on how the Ukrainians should go about the task of defeating the fascist aggression threatening Europe and potentially the whole world.

As things stand now, we can only hope that the US doesn’t send Patriot systems to the Russians, to protect their oil facilities. God forbid US voters will have to pay a few cents more for a gallon of petrol so close to the elections.