Stratotanker

Watching Flightradar over eastern Poland, there is a stream of Aeroflot planes avoiding Ukrainian airspace on their way to southern Europe and Africa. Right next to them, there are a number of aerial refuelling aircrafts such as the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker as well as some large NATO reconnaissance aircrafts. Further north, just outside Kaliningrad and the Corinthian Spit (where I went for my ultra-marathon back in October), the Swedish Air Force is busy flying in circles with one of their signal intelligence Gulfstreams. Clearly, the rest of the world is trying to learn as much as they possible can about what is going on in Ukraine.

For all the analyses that are being published, I am missing a serious discussion about our own responsibility for the catastrophe that we are now witnessing. More than anything, I believe that it was our failure to integrate Russia, both economically and politically, following the fall of the Berlin Wall that set up the antagonistic logic that ultimately led to the invasion of Ukraine. By making it clear to Russia that they could never become a NATO member and that their role would always be that of the enemy, the West has direct responsibility for what is unfolding. Just as with Hitler, for every analysis detailing how evil he was, it is far more interesting to ask how such people can become leaders in the first place. If the Putin regime does fall, one can only hope that we finally learn the lesson and realize that the Russian people is not our enemy.