National Review
On the menu today: two bits of really bad news and then some serious hope. The evidence is piling up that Vladimir Putin really does intend to invade Ukraine later this winter. Meanwhile, at home, President Biden offers utterly lame excuses that no one could have possibly foreseen surging demands for Covid-19 tests this winter. But over at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, scientists think they’ve developed the variant-killer, the One Vaccine to Defeat Them All.
Is Vladimir Putin Bending His Knees?
I don’t want to serve up a heaping portion of ominous news right before the holidays, but this thread from Dmitri Alperovitch, the Russian-born U.S. computer executive and co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, lays out a thoroughly unnerving case that Vladimir Putin is going to invade Ukraine later this winter.
Could all of this be a feint?
If you’re lucky enough to meet my father, there’s a roughly 50-50 chance that at some point he will tell you a story from his Navy days about serving on the staff of Admiral Thomas Moorer. There is also a good chance that he will tell the story about getting some update about hostile-foreign-troop movements, and Moorer asking my dad if he thought it was really a preparation for an invasion. Dad, being of a much lower rank and not knowing one way or another, hedged his answers. Moorer pointed out that, “They’re not bending their knees. When you go to shoot a basketball, what’s the first thing you do? You bend your knees. These guys aren’t bending their knees” — meaning, setting up supply lines and moving material into place — “so this is another training exercise.” And it turned out, it was…
