As Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine grows ever more horrific, he’s increasingly desperate to hide the truth from his own citizens. He’s bound to fail — and to grow ever weaker in the failing.
Russia’s pet parliament on Friday passed a law threatening 15 years in prison for those who report truths Putin doesn’t want anyone to hear. In response, major networks are cutting back their reporting from Russia.
But in this age, he can’t shut down the flow of information to Russia, even if he has stopped access to Facebook and Twitter. The nation with some of the world’s best hackers has far too many citizens who can end-run his censorship.
So Russians will hear the verdict of the likes of Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square: “In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing. This is not just a military operation but a war which sows death, destruction and misery.”
And they’ll see video like the women and children fleeing bombing in Irpin and all the photos of civilian corpses in the street.
People fleeing the city of Irpin, Ukraine during an attack on March 6, 2022. Photo by Selcuk Samiloglu / dia images via Getty ImagesThey’ll know Putin’s claim that he’s not warring on civilians is just a sick lie.
Nor can he shut off the flow of images from Ukraine: World media still operate there, and will surely heed Olena Zelenska’s plea that they expose the “terrible truth: Russian invaders are killing Ukrainian children.”
Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals keep the Internet going in Ukraine, too. Musk is right towarn that Russia will seek to target users in zones it controls, but Putin’s forces are already badly stretched — and Ukrainians will find ways to turn such targeting into a trap.
Ukrainian soldiers helping people cross a destroyed bridge as they flee Irpin on March 5, 2022. Mykhaylo Palinchak/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press WirePutin’s first moves already (at last) woke up Western governments to his true nature, and continued coverage of his atrocities already has Americans supporting a no-fly zone and other ways of helping out, even if US elected officials are still cowed by the autocrat’s threats of nuclear war.
It’s far too soon to say that the conquest of Ukraine will fail utterly; at a minimum, Putin will snuff out thousands more innocent lives.
Yet wading ever deeper in blood doesn’t change the simple fact that he’s behind the curve on every front except martyring the helpless.
No one can yet know exactly what those defeats will add up to, but one way or another they bring his own doom ever closer.
