Should the US Start Sending Ukraine Suicide Vests?

The western MSM has found a new genre of TV news report. They will go to Ukraine and find some unlikely candidate who has signed up for the Territorial Defense Forces, preferably a middle-aged woman, and film her training, and have an interview with her where she explains how resolute she is in defending against the Russians. Or they might go there and film civilians being trained by the Territorial Defense with wooden cut-out “guns”.

The message is always the same. The Ukrainians have the will to fight, they just need a lot more weapons, so please send more Javelins and Stingers to “increase the cost for Russia”.

The “cost”. This is the mantra. The Western media is always saying that weapons shipments would increase the cost for the Russians, it never says they would actually make the Ukrainians win. The Ukrainians would still lose badly, but hey, at least more Russian blood might be spilled.

Left unsaid is that taking on a tank battalion with a Javelin is a suicide mission, so more Ukrainian blood would be spilled as well.

But since the West is so unperturbed about arming Ukrainians for suicide missions and egging them on to undertake them, I propose the West starts sending other suicide equipment as well, such as explosive vests and up-armored suicide car bombs. 

Hey, if you want to “increase the price for Russia” with Ukrainian suicide missions you might give them the full range of suicide weaponry. You wouldn’t want to be holding out on enthusiastic pro-American freedom fighters, would you?

I suspect that if war is escalated far fewer Ukrainians will be signing up for near-certain death than the West is hoping for. Over the weekend there was a “Unity March” in Kharkov decorated by UPA flags supposed to show iron anti-Russian resolve of the city and under 4 thousand showed up in a city of 1.4 million.

When it’s not fantasizing about suicide Javelin missions the West is busy predicting and daydreaming about a Ukrainian “insurgency”. It’s pretty interesting to see Westerners who didn’t have insurgencies worth a damn even when they were occupied by Nazis predict Ukrainians would stage one just because the Russians toppled Zelensky and installed Madvedchuk. Is this really such a big difference somebody would be willing to risk death over?

Do these people not realize the awful and terrible cost of guerrilla primarily to the guerrillas and the community they draw from? Or are Ukrainian losses simply no skin off of their back? Why is the West so hopeful that Ukrainians are anti-Russian kamikaze all too happy to get themselves decimated in grotesquely lopsided battles?

And why in the world would Ukrainians who are the world champions in political protest ever need to conduct insurgencies against what is their Siamese twin? This isn’t Afghanistan, if Ukrainian nationalism has the kind of overwhelming support it claims it does, it would be a trifle to organize gigantic rallies, general strikes, and civil disobedience, after which the Russians will leave (but with a treaty that Kiev may not join anti-Russian alliances, etc). Why the bloodlust?  

No protracted “insurgency” is necessary when you have peoples who are this close and who speak the same language. The Russians simply aren’t distant enough from the Ukrainians that they could justify to themselves a protracted occupation against overwhelming local opposition. (But if this opposition really would be overwhelming is another matter.)

Left unsaid is that while weapon shipments can’t change the outcome, they are an irritant to Moscow and make a Russian escalation more likely. So you’re not increasing the chances the Ukrainians will win, but you are increasing the chances they will have to fight (and lose). All the while congratulating yourself on “helping” Ukrainians, and basking in the glory that an eastern country is even fighting a war (that you set up for her) to be able to one day join NATO and integrate with the West. Truly selfless and classy.