Who may want President Zelenskyy dead?

 I have not thought much of writing so many chapters on this Russia-Ukraine war. This is in fact my fourth entry on this event for this blog. If I am to include the entries from my other blog, it may  accumulate up to 6 entries. Anyway, this is only my own opinion and really you should not take it too seriously.

This is an interesting chapter, because recently the west have taken into consideration of succession in the Ukraine government if Zelenskyy is to be killed. There have been 3 separate attempts to have him assassinated, this include one foiled attempt by the Chechen special forces. He managed to escape all 3 attempts without losing a single strain of hair on his body.

This made me think, " who may want to kill Zelenskyy?"

To answer this question, we have to know what benefits and harms his death will bring and to whom.

To me the last person who wants Zelenskyy dead is Putin. If he wants him dead, it would probably  be at the start of the war  before Zelenskyy turned the heroic president, uniting the people of Ukraine. If he was killed then, we would have seen the immediate break up of Ukraine and Russia would have easily taken over the country.

Putin did not stop the Chechen special force in their attempt to kill Zelenskyy, it would have been Chechnya and not Russia to be blamed for the assassination.

What happen if Zelenskyy is to be killed now? While devastated, Ukrainian will be fully united and with more determination to not only drive Russian out, they may even further their advances to initiate attack to Russia and its allies such as Belarus and Chechnya, they will be unstoppable. Russia will be dragged into a long period of conflict as a result.

Zelenskyy presence also allows a more directional peace negotiation and should there be a chance of Zelenskyy's softening his position and agree to a certain terms "demanded" by Putin, Putin can end his campaign and appear victorious to Russia, thereby maintaining his grip on Russia. 

Another reason for Putin wanting Zelenskyy alive is to legitimize his invasion. If Zelenskky is to be captured alive, he would be put on trial and convicted, thereby coming to a full circle in justifying Putin's invasion, that Zelenskyy is with Nazi mindset ( whatever it means).

Putin needs Zelenskyy alive at all cost.

If it is not Putin, then who else? Would it be the European union?

They were reluctant to help at the start of the war, even to the extend that they asked Ukrainians to accept their fate. When they saw that not only Ukrainians not only able to defend themselves against the mighty Russia and managed to cause harm to much extend, they rallied behind Zelenskyy and pushes him closer into the conflict while they sat and watched on the sideline, such fair weathered friends.

Time and again, they were humiliated by Zelenskyy after his country survived through the ordeal. The longer he lives the more he makes them looking impotence and weak. 

As much as they dislike him, it is not sufficient for them to have him killed, as far as they are concern, one more day  he lives, one more day that Russia is getting weaker.

If there is not enough  hatred from European Union to have him dead, who  might want him dead? 

What benefits will his  death brings?

As mentioned earlier, citizens of Ukraine rise up against Russia, prolonging the war,  the world continues to sanction Russia and its allies while its economy collapse. Not only that it may result in  civil war and break up of the Russian Federation, turning into warring states. This will result in cheap export of oil and natural gas  for feudal lords to finance their power struggle, cheap oil and natural gas, unlimited supply.

The collapse of Russia is good for business.

US was very vocal about Russia as a threat to the free world since Biden turned president, it has sent out warning to the world of an impending invasion of Russia. after the conflict began, US was quick to prepare a budget in billions to support Ukraine for its struggle. 

It has also been rumored that US have been supporting Ukraine through training of its troops and supply of weapons. They have been supplying Ukraine with intelligence for them to be effective in causing destruction to the Russian troops. 

While Zelenskyy has won the heart of his people, leading relatively successful war against Russia, he is not really someone who obey orders, especially that of the US. He has refused US proposal to have him removed from Kyiv ( a good decision ).

At the moment, it is helping Ukraine to prepare for a government in exile in case Kjiv fall to the hand of the Russian. Should the set up completes,  US can place anyone as the face of Ukrainian government in exile, a dead Zelenskyy has  more benefit than a live one.

If I am Zelenskyy, I will be vary of anyone close to me who is also close to US. It is not only the Russian spies that I need to worry about.

The act of cowardice in the west, history repeats itself

Trouble began to stir in Czechoslovakia during 1938 with a group of German separatists instigating forming an alliance with Germany. The 2 countries with strong military presence at the time, England and France were reluctant to stand their ground in support of a unified Czechoslovakia, leading to the splitting of the country into 3 separate entities, a part of it merged into Germany, the other Hungary and Poland. 

 It was only when Germany under the leadership of Hitler invaded Poland that both England and France have decided to take action, by then, Germany was ready and the 2 ally countries were no match to the mighty German war machine. Eventually Germany managed to conquer the whole Europe except for England due to the natural barrier of the English Channel. 

 Fast forward to now, it is Ukraine that is under attack from Russia, and it is being cut apart bits by bits as we speak. Yet we are seeing the same behavior happening again with the Europeans watching while sitting on the fence. 

 At the beginning of second world war, most countries were still recovering from the devastation of the first world war, they have valid reason for not involving themselves for fear of weakening of their only military forces. What reason are they having now? 

 They simply claim that Ukraine is not part of Nato and there is no charter in Nato that they must support a certain country in war, even when it is of the weaker side. However, they are all willing to provide Ukraine with weapons while Ukraine has to fight this war on its own. In fact they have never expected Ukraine to last so long considering Russia is the opponent. But what is the true reason for them to sit there and let Russia swallow Ukraine? I believe it is the act of cowardice. 

 They are in fear that should they be involve, they will drag themselves into an unnecessary warfare with Russia and their military strength will be compromised. They in fact willing to sacrifice Ukraine hoping that Ukraine in its resilient will at least weaken the Russian military so that they won't have strength to further their campaign west-ward. 

 The most laughable one is the United State of America, insisting that they will not send their troops for the war. They are the furthest from Russia with natural barrier, they are sure that as long as there is the natural barrier of both Pacific and Atlantic ocean, they are safe. They are the main conspirator leading to the Russia-Ukraine war, with constant bombardment of propaganda of the evil Russia. Even during the presidency of Trump, the intelligence agencies have never stopped propagating the "fact" that Russia is evil. 

Yet now they are sitting furthest on the sideline, sending weapons for others to fight and die for them.  

So what if they are wrong, what if the war get out of hand and Russia release the mother load of Nuclear weapons? Or they instead under estimate the military might of Russia ( considering that I still do not believe Russian troops are so weak )? 

There might come one day European Union and Nato regret their decision to let Ukraine die while they anticipate the benefits it derives. All the East European countries formerly belong to the Soviet Union, they really need to reconsider as it seems like Putin is thinking of Making Russia Great Again, and first line of business is to retake what Russia has lost. 

 Should Ukraine survive through this ordeal, my advice to them is to trust no one and strengthen their own capability to defend themselves, because of all the people they are the only one they can trust. To be neutral in its stand, it has to have a strong military as a deterent to possible threat.

Why the continual bombardment while having the peace talk?

Since the war started, Ukraine and Russia have gone through 2 rounds of negotiation, and I believe that the third round was done during the weekend. 

 Under normal circumstances, both sides requires a cease fire before talk can begin as a sign of good gesture. In the Ukraine-Russia talk however, the war rages on and even intensified in many cities after the talk, the only agreement made in the peace talk, the humanitarian path for civilians , was immediately violated by Russia. 

 Further more, Russian troops bombarded the largest nuclear plant in Ukraine, risking a potential radiation contamination of the region. 

Putin at the same time warning all other countries from involving themselves with the war, his air force violating the airspace of both Sweden and Japan. 

 If Russia is doing well in this invasion, does it need to branch out unnecessarily to instigate others? 

 If Russia already have the upper hand in the war, it would have ceased fire while the talk was on going, because it is not in a hurry to ask for peace. Putin would not be warning other countries from intervening and threaten to pull them into the conflict if he is confident of the situation. 

 I believe Putin under estimated his opponent, he expected the war to last only a few days and his opponent, being a "clown president" would have cowardly run into the safety of USA while he easily scoop Ukraine up. 

It never crosses his mind that this "clown president" managed to unit the country to fight the invasion and united the European Union to provide weapon support, strengthening Ukrainian's defense. He under estimated Ukrainian resilient against falling back into Soviet rule, so even when their country is weak and poor, they refuse to bow to the mighty Russia. 

 The Russian troop is ill prepared, they have not anticipated a prolong warfare and failed to ready sufficient resources. The financial sanction from the world also making it difficult for Russia support its troop with replenishment, considering the size of the troop that need to be fed. 

 What amazes me however is the shortage of fuel, considering Russia to be an oil producing country. Shouldn't this be one resource that Russia is not lacking, unless of course they do not have the refinery know how? 

What happen if Russia loses this war? 

 Dictatorship suppresses people's will by force, up-rising are normally dealt with using violence and brutality. This happens when the dictator maintain the support of his army and his support. Robert Mugabe is one such person. 

 What if a huge loss resulted in his army couple with the financial difficulty to the people as a result of this war? 

Nothing will happen, a weaker Putin will still be ruling Russia as long as people still have fear of further losses. There is however a threshold to this and if breached, making it no better between submitting and rebelling, over throwing the regime may be a reality. 

 Putin is fear of what will happen to him if Russia loses the war. The continuous escalation of attacks on Ukraine is a clear sign that he has no leverage so far to demand Ukraine to agree to some of his terms, let alone Ukraine's surrender. He wants very much at least some of his objectives to be met so that he can claim victory to his own people, so that even when the military strength of Russia is seen weaker in the future, he is still a strong and successful ruler of Russia in the eyes of his people. 

 The escalation of violence in Ukraine is in fact trying to apply pressure to Zelenskyy to bow to him, at least partially so to give him reason to retreat gloriously. He is  worried that the west will join in the war physically, this will cause the war to drag on and the longer it drags the more unfavorable to Putin's position in the country. 

 At this moment, the one person who wishes the war to be over the soonest is Putin, and he needs to be seen victorious.

The strange decision of Putin

I have not been writing on this blog for quite a while as was focusing my entry on my other blog. But my thoughts on the war cloud my mind for analysis of the market. 

As a result, I need to separate my thoughts, and this blog will help me to do so. Strategic management is one of my favorite subject, While my earlier course did not bring me deep into strategic management, I nevertheless attracted the subject, my lecturer's praise of the Sun Zi Art Of War at the time led me to going deeper into this ancient book on strategy. 

 While it is labelled as the "Art of war", most of the topics involves situational management. Many companies more or less adopted some philosophy of this book but failed to have thorough understanding leading to the failure of the companies themselves. 

 In the first topic of the book for instance, it mentioned the path as the first of the 5 element, this is equivalent to the mission statement of a company. What most companies fail to understand is what they are required to do with the path. The book stated that "the path, requires the agreement from the people, and people are willing to live and die with it". Many companies set their mission statement but instead of following it whole heartedly, only used it to show off to others. As such the companies lack clarity of its direction and employees most of the time have the mission on their mouth and not in their heart, they follow their own interest and place company's interest as secondary, leading to companies' failure. 

The topic of the day is strange decision of Putin, then why I started of with mission statement? I mentioned in the other blog of mine my discussion with my friend, I continued to claim that there is no justification for Putin to attack Ukraine. It is not that I condemn Putin for starting a war which many think is an evil event. big countries start war with smaller countries all the time, USA for instance started at least 2 during my lifetime, Iraq and Afghanistan. Do they have justification for doing so?

 Compare to Russia, USA and its ally UK at least put much effort to "justify" their stand and make it seemingly a plausible reason to attack Iraq, everyone however knows it is about oil. They are "justified" with attack on Afghanistan due to 911. 

 Putin on the other hand has really little justification, by claiming that his purpose is to topple a Nazi regime, which is the government of Ukraine. He really spent very little effort justifying his stand, it is in fact very weak and even his own citizens do not believe leading to strong opposition from many of Russia's cities, very rare sight of a dictator country. 

The question is: why does Putin wants to attack Ukraine at this point of time? Is it due to the threat of Nato shift eastward threatening the sovereignty of Russia? 

 It does not seem so to me. I would certainly not fear of the western Nato considering the strong reputation of my army, if I am Putin of course. 

 Putin in my opinion is calculative and highly strategic, he maintain a low profile all the time to avoid the world's radar. He is very diplomatic and has throughout the years built up good relationship with many countries, therefore it is very unlike him that he would suddenly decide to invade another country. 

I feel that it is more of constant push of western propaganda labelling Russia as an evil entity that finally making Putin loses his cool, and his original intention was to use Ukraine to teach the west a lesson, " I have a strong army, I can do whatever I want and you won't dare to stop me". 

 Considering that Biden is a weak president while European union in a state of dis-unity, plus the president of Ukraine with little support from the people, it would be a quick and easy battle. He in fact despises the Ukrainian president as Zelenskyy was a standup comedian and an comedy actor before becoming the president of Ukraine. 

 I believe that after being a dictator for so many years, he under-estimated his opponent as well as the state of unity in his country and the true strength of his army. 

As a dictator, he is very isolated, and those around him will not dare to say anything that he does not like to hear. Many of the videos about his meeting with his generals and advisors are seen with a great physical distance set between him and them, and most of the time, he is the one giving instruction while those in the meeting listen. 

At this point of time, the disguise of being a humane invasion is removed, Ukrainians are being bombarded daily indiscriminaently. 

Yet, it seems that not only Russia is failing in its objective, it has sunk deep into a much longer term warfare. At this point of time, the one person who wishes the war ends soon is actually Putin himself.