The West is Weak and Putin knows it.

Vladimir Putin chose a certain time to launch his deliberated full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and there's a reason why it's now.

By: Mo Gerstley

Russia has invaded Ukraine and its ongoing war with the neighboring 31-year-old country is garnering international condemnation. Amid constant rocket fire, appalling air raids, and on-ground gunfire, citizens in Ukraine are prepping for what is quickly becoming a deathly conflict, leading many in the US and abroad to inquire as to why Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade right now. In a newly published opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, the writer says President Biden is a "weak and risk-averse president," something Russia detects and utilized to its advantage. President Putin is mired in a Soviet Russia mindset. After all, the 69-year-old Russian premier is a former member of the KGB and served as a prominent intelligence officer in the USSR. In his brief 46 years in civic service, he has seen the fall of the Soviet Union, and with it, Russia's loss of Armenia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Putin was loyal to the USSR, and it's certainly frustrating to him, to see it all lost in such a short period of time, and that's why, since becoming Russia's President in 2000 and later in 2012 after a four-year break in which 56-year-old, Dmitry Medvedev took over, he has attempted to annex and invade some of those nations. 

In 2014, Russia had annexed Crimea in a widely criticized move by Vladimir Putin to reestablish their military presence on the peninsula and leveraged "nuclear threats to solidify the new status quo on the ground," as the Wikimedia foundation put it. It was not the first time Putin seized territory once retained by the USSR, and it wouldn't be the last. It was nearly inevitable that the most populated country on the previous list of the lost territory of the USSR, Ukraine, would be the next target for Putin, it was only a madder of time. Over 43.9 million people live in Ukraine, making the 31-year-old nation, the most populated region lost when the USSR fell in 1991. Conclusively, there is no doubt to the reasoning for Vladimir Putin's prudent desires to attain Ukraine, but he knew he couldn't just take it. Ukraine is a large ally of the west, allowing for them to be defended by Poland, Germany, France, and the US. America has remained a close ally of Ukraine, with the US supplying over 200 million dollars to Ukraine, every year, consistently since 2005. Russia knows this and has thus been cautious about aggression to their western neighbor. However, when a weak leadership in the US shows, Russia pounced on the opportunity that arose.

Joe Biden failed miserably in his administration's attempt to mitigate the public-image damage done, by his ineffectual withdrawal from Afghanistan in August of 2021, and the world noticed. The world noticed how easily an undermanned, internationally recognized terrorist organization took a country America had been battling in, for two decades, in just 7 days. Russia along with the rest of the world saw it as weak and understood that this new American leadership does not value real warfare for the betterment of global interests, rather the Biden-Harris Administration values weak responses in the pursuit of flashy headlines. Aware of this, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the attack on Ukraine, he had wanted to perpetrate for years, when America wouldn't hold the international role it had, for decades. Since World War II, America has acted as the global peacemaker, and central stabilizer of conflicts abroad between all nations, but Russia understood, following President Bidens reckless Afghan withdrawal, that the US no longer wants to act in that way, and so they invaded Ukraine, but Russia's not the only one that sees this, and that's the most significant development from this ongoing war. 

Late last Thursday, two Chinese fighter jets entered Taiwan's airspace in a move that quickly escalated tensions between the two East Asian nations. Now, emboldened by the lack of real responses to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, sources say that China intends to invade Taiwan, for "just as Russia says it has cultural and ancestral claims to Ukraine, so too does China have a right to Taiwan," and this certainly won't be the last nation to join in on the series of invasions of smaller neighboring countries due to the weak foreign policy implemented by President Biden. What we are witnessing is the fall of the west. Rather than imposing preemptive sanctions, providing military aid, and negotiating treaties, President Biden has curtailed US fossil-fuel production, forcing us to rely on Russia for energy and gas, imposed sanctions after Putin already invaded, and avoided diplomatic treaties, essentially destroying America's voice on the international stage. So, the west is more than weak, and more than just Putin knows it. The whole world knows it, and we're about to lose everything because of it.