John Coulter: Russian mums hold key to a Putin climbdown over Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Achilles’ heel in his home country is an internal revolution by Russian mums.
A destroyed tank after battles between Ukrainian and Russian forces near Brovary, north of Kyiv. Putin’s ‘blitzkreig’ style invasion is grinding to a haltA destroyed tank after battles between Ukrainian and Russian forces near Brovary, north of Kyiv. Putin’s ‘blitzkreig’ style invasion is grinding to a halt
A destroyed tank after battles between Ukrainian and Russian forces near Brovary, north of Kyiv. Putin’s ‘blitzkreig’ style invasion is grinding to a halt

Mothers who are determined that they will not lose their sons and daughters in a ‘bogged down’ guerrilla warfare in Ukraine in the same way the old Soviet Union got sucked into such a war of attrition against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Putin is so fanatically determined to expand the Russian Empire that he will not be shocked by images of bombed maternity hospitals, millions of fleeing refugees.

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He appears to be quite willing to even use chemical weapons to gain the upper hand militarily in Ukraine, short of using his tactical nuclear weaponry.

The Soviet Union was militarily and politically humiliated by the Taliban in Afghanistan well before the collapse of communism in the same manner that the United States was forced to crawl away from Vietnam in south east Asia in the mid 1970s.

In short, Putin’s ‘blitzkreig’ style invasion of Ukraine is grinding to a halt because of the lack of training of his own troops, and the unexpected heavy resistance by Ukrainian forces.

Just as the Americans underestimated the resistance from communist Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam, allowing the war against the communists to deteriorate into a protracted and costly war of attrition, so too, Putin faces the same military nightmare in Ukraine.

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If the West can increase the supply of weaponry and ‘advisors’ to the Ukrainian forces, while Putin may capture a number of key cities, the price his forces will pay in blood could quite literally see Mother Russia overthrow his reign in his homeland.

It should not be forgotten that it was the mothers of the Soviet personnel dying and being maimed in Afghanistan forced the Soviet Union’s leadership to withdraw totally.

In spite of all his draconian tactics to silence opposition to his Ukrainian ethnic cleansing, Putin realistically cannot jail every mother who has a son or daughter serving with Russian forces in Ukraine.

Indeed, Putin’s only hope to avoid an internal revolution by Russian mothers is to taunt the Americans specifically, rather than Nato as a whole.

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Ironically, the real worry is what US President Joe Biden will do.

Even the dogs in the street know what Putin wants — to rebuild the Russian Empire and be the new Tsar of Eastern Europe.

But Biden — aka ‘Sleepy Joe’ — has political egg all over his face as a result of his own disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, effectively handing that nation back to the Islamic militants of the Taliban.

Ukraine could be Biden’s ticket to vastly improve his ratings in the polls after his Afghanistan ‘retreat’, perceived by many folk across the globe as being a second Vietnam for the United States.

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There are still many veterans in America who remember the scenes of US helicopters evacuating people from the then capital of the old South Vietnam in the mid 1970s, handing that nation over to the communist North Vietnam.

Ukraine is not the pushover campaign of Kuwait or Iraq.

American mums will not want their sons and daughters dying or being wounded in Ukraine, no matter what banner — US or Nato — they fight under.

The horrific imagery of coffins coming back from Vietnam and Afghanistan is still an open wound politically in the United States.

Likewise, the pressure of Russian mums rounding on Putin when Russian sons and daughters return from Ukraine in coffins could be the equally horrific imagery which eventually persuades the Russian President to withdraw his forces.

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In the meantime, with all eyes focused on Ukraine, has anyone heard of a thing called the Northern Ireland Protocol?

It seems to have conveniently slipped off the political radar.

John Coulter is a former journalist with this newspaper

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