Look beyond the shelling in Ukraine to the broader strategic and economic perspective. It seems it’s not a matter of if but when Russians push through to the primary commercial port of Odessa, a geographic gateway. 

Odessa is the commercial capital. It’s the most economically vibrant city in Ukraine. It sits near the mouth of the Dneistr River, which is kind of the Ukrainian equivalent of the Mississippi. And as such, it is Ukraine’s single largest wheat loading facility. In fact, it’s arguably the largest one by volume in the world. Pretty much all of the agricultural exports that come out of Ukraine, go through Odessa. 

So if it is subjected to the same level of destruction that the Russians are visiting on every other Russian population center that they visit, that is the end of Ukraine’s participation in large scale agriculture, period. The Ukrainians are not gonna be able to plant this year because the Russians are systematically destroying every town they come across. It’ll just be impossible for the farmers to do what they need to do. 

Now that’s important enough as it is from an economic point of view and for what it means for global food supplies, but it’s actually part of the Russian strategic goal here. Not necessarily to move, remove Ukraine from the equation in agricultural markets, but instead to push further to the west. You see the Russians aren’t doing this ’cause Putin is power-mad. They’re doing this because they’re trying to secure the gateway geographies that give access to the Russian portions of the European plane. 

There are nine of them, but two of them are adjacent to Ukraine. The one in question, when it comes to Odessa, is further to the west and southwest. It’s called the Bessarabian Gap. And it is the direction that the Turks have used to invade Russia on multiple occasions through the two countries’ histories.

So when the war comes to Odessa, I expect that Russian troops that are stationed in Moldova, in a separatist enclave called Transdniestria, are going to join in that assault. And then you will have Russian troops going all the way from the Russian western frontier through Ukraine into Moldova proper. And I do not expect them to stop.