There is a dangerous crack in the logic of the war

The West is trapped in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t paradox in Ukraine

Kersh bridge in flames after bomb.

The strike by Ukraine on the Kersh bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula has exposed the Ukraine to a brutal missile counterattack by Russia that killed at least 14 civilians and wounded 97 others.  Ukraine’s defense ministry announced this morning that it had shot down 41 of the Russian cruise missiles as they crossed Ukrainian airspace.  Moldova’s foreign minister announced that Russian cruise missiles had crossed its borders on their way to Ukraine and summoned the Russian ambassador to explain why Moldova’s airspace had been violated.

Yesterday Russian President Vladimir Putin said the missile strikes were in response to the attack on the Kersh bridge and called it “an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure.”  This, despite the fact that the Kersh bridge is used by the Russian military as one of the main resupply routes to its forces in eastern and southern Ukraine, which have been in sovereign Ukrainian territory since February 24 of this year carrying out numerous brutal murders of civilians and shelling that has nearly leveled Ukrainian cities that have no military infrastructure at all.

Putin’s statement about Ukrainian “terrorism” is unbelievable and entirely believable at once.  It’s the kind of outrageous lie that we have come to expect from the Russian dictator.  He has provided so many reasons for his “special military operation” in Ukraine, they are hard to keep track of:  defending Russia from the “Nazi regime” running Ukraine; hitting back against Ukraine’s “murders” of Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine; defending Russian “honor;” claiming that Ukraine has never been a state separate from Russia and that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” 

It is obvious on its face that Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February was an unprovoked act of aggression by Russia of a kind that hasn’t happened in Europe since the beginning of World War II.  So, there is no logic to Putin’s claims about why he ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine and destroy its critical infrastructure, cities, and kill civilians.  Ukraine’s response, to defend itself by fighting Russian invaders and last week by planting a bomb that seriously crippled the Kersh bridge, is entirely logical.  Ukraine is and has been a sovereign nation with the exception of the period of time it was coerced into being part of the Soviet Union’s empire.

And yet there is a split-seam in the West’s logic regarding the war in Ukraine.