It is understandable that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking the West for all the help they can deliver. It is the primary responsibility of a nation’s leader to protect the citizens of his nation. But by the same accounting, it is the primary responsibility of U.S. President Joe Biden to protect the citizens of his country.
It is partly for that reason that the Biden administration has, from the beginning, formulated its goal in Ukraine as protecting its territory and sovereignty while avoiding direct conflict with Russia that could lead to a larger Russia-NATO war.
But, from a Russian perspective, the recent incursion into Kursk inside Russia’s borders with Western tanks, American mobile Patriot missile batteries and U.S. provided HIMARS rocket launchers looks a lot like a NATO attack on Russia using Ukrainian troops.
Assuaging that perspective is not helped by the lack of condemnation of the invasion from the United States, the absence of any visible attempt to rein it in, the assessment that Ukraine’s invasion into Russian territory with Western weapons does not cross any U.S. red lines and the now evident American cooperation with the provision of “satellite imagery and other information about the Kursk region” to help the Ukrainian invading force “to better track Russian reinforcements that might attack them or cut off their eventual withdrawal back to Ukraine.”
The American stance on the Ukrainian invasion puts Biden’s primary responsibility at risk. And it puts that responsibility on a slippery slope to even greater risk.
Hellbound and Down 