Mere moments after Russia’s Vladimir Putin went on TV to announce his “special military operation” to “de-Nazify” a democracy of 44 million people who happen to have elected a Jewish president, his forces attacked by land, sea and air. And the madness went on from there.
Deaths quickly ran to the dozens, and far more by the time you read this. Horrifically, Putin sent mobile crematoriums in with the forces whose mission he claims is to “demilitarize” Ukraine. Does he mean to hide his own casualties, or the number of innocents his forces slaughter?
As missiles fell all over the country and shells exploded in a dozen-plus cities, thousands of innocent civilians fled on foot. Traffic out of major cities stretched for miles. Ukrainians lined up to get ATM cash and buy supplies — and to take up arms in defense of their freedom.
Bizarrely, Russian troops happily let CNN film their assault to seize an airport on the outskirts of Kyiv. (So that’s who trusts “the most trusted name in news”!) Later in the day, Putin’s forces took control of Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster caused by the dysfunction of the old Soviet Union, the demise of which Putin considers one of history’s great tragedies.
Meanwhile, Western leaders variously denounced Putin’s utterly unprovoked war of conquest and announced sanctions — but not of Russia’s energy sector.
And Alfons Mais, the head of Germany’s army, took to LinkedIn of all places to declare, “The Bundeswehr, the army that I am privileged to lead, is more or less empty-handed.” He mourned, “We all saw it coming and we were not able to get through with our arguments, to draw the conclusions from the Crimean annexation and implement them.”
That’s eight years wasted since Putin showed his hand in Crimea, years in which Germany with eyes wide open grew more dependent on Russian oil and gas.
Now, as Ukrainian official Mykhailo Podolyak, put it: “Russia is not only attacking Ukraine, but the rules of normal life in the modern world.”
And this is just the beginning. More than a century after Europe descended into the carnage of the First World War, the lights of peace and progress are going out again.
