I said in a comment on Friday that we might have a better idea of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine "by Monday". Well, here we are.

My comments thus far on Ukraine have all had embedded within them the same kernel: the legitimacy of the current Ukraine government. In the end, this is the central question, both ethically and practically. Does the government within Ukraine represent genuine Ukrainian popular sentiment? Is Zelensky a leader that the Ukrainian people look at and say, "Yes. He speaks for me."?

This first five days of war offers us a first pass at that question. I have believed since 2014 that the current Ukrainian government does not represent a genuine representation of the population in Ukraine, rather a construct placed over the top of the people by the puppetmasters in Davos and DC. I have friends from Ukraine - they still have family there now - who support what I say, but there is never unanimous support of any government, so whether my friends represent the mainstream or not, I cannot be sure.

Were my hypothesis correct, then the current government would not have survived this long. I underestimated popular support for the Zelensky government. My expectation was that ordinary Ukrainians (outside of certain hardore units of the military) did not feel sufficient kinship with this government to be willing to put their lives on the line to defend it.

This is the split. All want to defend "Ukraine", but do they believe strongly enough that the current government is actually "Ukraine" so as to be willing to defend it, preventing the Russians from entering and reorganizing "Ukraine" under a different government? I didn't believe Ukrainians were so attached to their current government.

The fact that the Russians have not yet completed their actions means the people of Ukraine are defending the current government more loyally than I thought. I was wrong. I expected the Ukrainian people to quickly abandon a lost cause to which they never felt strong loyalty from the beginning.

Russia may yet take Ukraine, but the level of resistance to their operation tells us they have a problem even if they are successful. A significant portion of the people of Ukraine (enough to maintain their military resistance to this point) are more attached than I knew to the vision presented to them by Davos of a "liberal western democracy". I still think these Ukrainians believing in this vision are fools if they believe Davos wants them to be free to operate independently as "Ukraine" rather than as "Ukrainian cannonfodder of Davos against Russia", but that's my take, and I don't live there. Their country, their choice.

Whoever ends up "in control" is kidding themselves if they think they've gained a durable victory. No matter if Davos/US wins or Russia wins, the winner will put their government on top of a country that remains divided. But the greater burden is on Russia without a doubt. Putin and the Russian security state (he is not operating alone, much as the propaganda likes to oversimplify things) need this victory. If they cannot control Ukraine, they are in big trouble. They will have spent significant Russian blood, treasury, and energy for no gain. The Russian population already is hesitant about what they are doing; if they don't win, their own population will punish them for this.

I'm sorry that the Ukrainian people are (not for the first time in history) simply pawns in a tug of war between two empires to either side of them. The people of Ukraine are not going to come out ahead in this whether Zelensky survives or not.

For anyone from the west caught up in the war fever, don't be a fool. Fighting for the Zelensky government is not fighting for Ukrainian independence. It's fighting for Davos. Please open your eyes to that much at least. It sure as hell isn't worth your idealism of "fighting the man". You are fighting for the bigger "man" (Davos/US) to defeat the smaller "man" (Russia).

That said, it appears the people of Ukraine hate the smaller "man" enough that they are willing to get into bed with Davos so as at the very least to give Russia a nasty bruising. The enemy of their enemy is their friend. That never leads to good places.