If you know anyone in Ukraine tell them to get out before they are left like people in Afghanistan.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/us/politics/russia-ukraine-kyiv-embassy.html

If you know anyone in Ukraine tell them to get out before they are left like people in Afghanistan. If Russia is thinning out their embassy in Ukraine isn’t that a huge statement to the world? On 01/26 the U.S. began to withdraw people from our embassy in Ukraine and put 8,500 troops on high alert.

No one fears or respects the U.S. as they did under Trump. The world is laughing at us. If this in fact some sort of feint or propaganda, why would Russia spend the resources and funds to move this many troops? How could they afford this? Could it be the world is again in need of their energy supply and they are becoming rich again? Putin is not dumb of course he knew we would see this. Our allies Ukraine and Taiwan are being targeted by hostile foreign regimes and our weak federal government sits on their hands. Our weak federal government continues to underestimate these foreign regimes. It’s never been more apparent that the world needs a strong America, which starts with a strong commander and chief.

Even our pathetic and weak commander and chief should be encouraged to listen to the officials in Kyiv and their fears of an attack. Putin did something similar in 2014 under the Obama – Biden administration and took Crimea, more than 13,000 people died then. Funny how Putin took a break from hostile acts for almost four years.

Direct Quote

Russia Thins Out Its Embassy in Ukraine, a Possible Clue to Putin’s Next Move

American and Ukrainian officials watched from afar as Russia began emptying out its embassy in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

On Jan. 5, 18 people — mostly the children and wives of Russian diplomats — boarded buses and embarked on a 15-hour drive home to Moscow, according to a senior Ukrainian security official.

Diplomats at two other Russian consulates have been told to prepare to leave Ukraine, the security official said

Thinning out the Russian Embassy may be part propaganda, part preparation for a looming conflict or part feint, Ukrainian and U.S. officials say. It could be all three.

In recent days, the slow departures — which the Russians most likely knew that the Americans and the Ukrainians would see — have become part of the puzzle of what happens next.

Enormous train convoys loaded with tanks, missiles and troops continue to push west through Russia, apparently heading for the Ukrainian border. Aleksandr G. Lukashenko , the authoritarian leader of Belarus, announced on Monday that Russian forces and equipment had begun arriving in his country for a joint military exercise that would be held in two places: on Belarus’s western edge, near Poland and Lithuania, two NATO countries; and along the Ukrainian border, which could prove another pathway for invasion.

“We’ll be fully surrounded by equal forces,” the senior Ukrainian security official said.

In Washington, U.S. officials say they still assess that Mr. Putin has not yet made a decision to invade. They describe him as more a tactician than a grandstrategist, and they believe that he is constantly weighing a host of different factors. Among them is how well he could weather the threatened sanctions onhis banks and industry, and whether his demands that Ukraine stop veering toward NATO — and that NATO stop spreading toward Russia — are receiving enough attention.

It is possible they were trying to bolster the case that the United States and its Western allies should take seriously their demands that Ukraine can never join NATO, and that troops, nuclear weapons and other heavy weaponry must be removed from former Warsaw Pact states, like Poland, that were once allied with the Soviet Union.

It could also be that the Russians were trying to indicate that an attack was brewing, though there were no other signals. In fact, the buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border is not increasing at a rate that Pentagon officials expected a month ago.

The latest U.S. estimates are that about 60 battalion tactical groups, known as B.T.G.s and each with an average of 800 soldiers, are now in place at the border with Ukraine. Combined with other local forces, the Russians have about 77,000 troops at the border, with more on the way. Others put the figure atcloser to 100,000 — much depends on how different forces are counted — but that is well short of the Pentagon’s estimate more than a month ago that the total number could rise to 175,000.

U.S. and European intelligence and military officials say Mr. Putin may be waiting for the ground to freeze, making it easier to get heavy equipment over theborder. Or he may be building up slowly, for diplomatic advantage, as he awaits a written reply from the Biden administration and NATO to his demands that they roll back NATO’s military posture to what it was 15 years ago — much farther from Russia’s borders.

While U.S. officials still believe Mr. Putin is undecided about his next move, officials in Kyiv are assessing what an attack may look like, if it happens. It coul dcome in the form of a full-on invasion, the Ukrainian security official said.

combined with military escalation in Ukraine’s east, where Russian-backed separatist forces remain deeply entrenched.

“Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, and the actions that they are planning today, represent the most serious assault on the post-World War II order in our lifetime,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, said at a news conference in Kyiv.

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and instigated a violent separatist uprising that effectively cleaved away two Ukrainian provinces. More than 13,000 people were killed in the fighting.

At the news conference, Mr. Murphy said he hoped legislation that outlines punishing sanctions against Russia’s leadership, including Mr. Putin, would reach President Biden’s desk before any Russian action and possibly help deter it. In a meeting with the senators late Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine urged them to impose sanctions quickly “to counter the aggression” from Russia.

The senators’ pledges to defend democracy and vanquish tyranny seemed a throwback to the Cold War. Indeed, observers have argued that Mr. Putin’s threats against Ukraine are rooted in a desire to reconstitute a Moscow-led Eastern bloc reminiscent of Soviet times.

Similarly, Mr. Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader who is close to Mr. Putin, made his own argument that the Russians were responding to the Americans.

It is possibly in that spirit that Russian troops will begin military exercises in Belarus next month. Security officials fear that the exercises could become apre text for long-term deployment of Russian forces in the former Soviet republic, which shares a lengthy western border with the European Union and NATO.

Mr. Lukashenko has pledged to follow Mr. Putin’s lead on any action in Ukraine.

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