No more fun

Ukrainian soldiers in Irpin with family killed by Russian mortar fire.

Have you noticed that what this flaming asshole in Russia is doing is changing the way we live our lives?  It isn’t as much fun to be alive right now.  You can’t read the news or watch it on TV without being flooded with images and stories of the horrors being perpetrated by the Russian army in Ukraine.  There are tragic images every day of whole neighborhoods obliterated in Kyiv and Kharkiv and Kherson and Mariupol.  But it’s more than apartment buildings with their fronts blasted off and streets covered with the burned-out husks of cars and debris.  Everyone is anxious and on edge.

This morning the New York Times website had a photo of a family killed on a street in Irpin, outside of Kyiv, by Russian mortar fire. This didn’t happen because a Russian missile went off course and hit nearby. It happened because Russian soldiers fired a mortar into a civilian area on purpose.  Mortars, which fire small warheads, are typically used as an anti-personnel weapon against infantry soldiers on foot in relatively close contact with an enemy.  Mortars do not fire a warhead capable of damaging military fortifications.  They are used to kill people, in this case, a civilian family attempting to evacuate Irpin because the town is under Russian bombardment by more powerful artillery and missiles. 

Today Putin announced that any country imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine would be “participating in the armed conflict,” and yesterday he called Western sanctions “an act of war.”  Both statements clearly threaten Russian retaliation.  With more than 50 percent of his army committed to his attack on Ukraine, Putin does not have the military strength necessary to retaliate against NATO or the U.S. using conventional forces and using his air force in an attack on greater Europe is out of the question.  His planes wouldn’t last 10 minutes against NATO anti-aircraft defenses and allied fighters.  Putin’s statements therefore have to be considered as threatening to use his nuclear arsenal, bringing us to the brink of a nuclear war. 

Putin’s attack on Ukraine raises the question of which country he might attack next.  Finland for the first time is talking about joining NATO so they would come under the umbrella of Article 5, which states that any attack on a NATO nation is an attack on them all and commits NATO to respond to any such attack in a wholesale manner.  If Putin were to attack the Baltic states or Poland, he would be at war with NATO and the U.S.  With the problems he is having in Ukraine, I think he understands that his military isn’t capable of taking on the NATO armies.  He is blackmailing the world with his nuclear weapons, but just as importantly, he is blackmailing his own military and political establishment by making them afraid he’ll pull the nuclear trigger and all of them will be dead.  That’s the way he’s staying in power right now.  The Russian generals and political establishment know if they try to overthrow him, he will declare that the attempt is being stage-managed by the U.S. and NATO, and he’ll launch a nuclear strike.  If that happens, the U.S. and NATO will turn Moscow into a parking lot and everyone will die.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be in Russia right now?  Putin is bringing back Stalinism in full flower.  His citizens are already locked within the borders of Russia, prevented from flying to Western nations by travel bans on flights from Russia.  There are reports that thousands of Russians are crossing into Finland by train and car trying to escape the repression at home.  Putin is already limiting the amount of real currency (dollars and Euros) they can take with them, and it’s only a matter of time before he shuts down travel by Russians into Finland altogether. 

Putin is cutting off sources of information, banning the last independent television station and newspaper, arresting those who oppose him.  Thousands have already been arrested at demonstrations in Moscow, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he didn’t have construction crews out in the middle of Russia building the camps he will turn into a new gulag.

The whole world is having to deal with the actions of this inhuman maniac, most especially Ukraine, which Putin is rapidly transforming into a European Aleppo or Grozny.  Russians are having to deal with the effects of Western sanctions on their daily lives.  The question on everyone’s minds seems to be how much longer this madness can go on, and how much worse can it get.

We’re stuck trying to make sense of a madman.  It’s a fool’s bargain…for everyone, the Russian people included.