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COLUMN: Putin's ongoing delusions of grandeur as Ukrainian invasion marks one year anniversary

Putin asked for it when he sent Russian soldiers across the border of another nation thinking it would be a cakewalk, only, to his dismay, to find his own army has been stacking itself up in the charnel house.
opinion

Earlier this week marked one year since Ukraine has been under invasion from Russia. 

Not only have the Ukrainian people literally been fighting for their lives with civilian casualties mounting from Russia’s completely illegal targeting of non-military targets such as schools, public markets, and apartment high-rises, they had to listen to Russian president Vladimir Putin say in his public remarks on the anniversary of the beginning of the war that Ukraine, somehow, started it.

This is somewhat akin to an abuser blaming his or her victim for the damage sustained because the abuse dished out hurt their own fists in the process. I guess Putin is upset the Ukrainians didn’t roll over like good little puppies and let Russian soldiers just waltz in without any casualties.

Putin asked for it when he sent Russian soldiers across the border of another nation thinking it would be a cakewalk, only, to his dismay, to find his own army has been stacking itself up in the charnel house. The slaughter of Russian youth continues on the battlefields of Ukraine and Putin’s words must ring hollow to all the mothers and fathers who have seen their sons go off to war to come back as shells of humans or in body bags. 

The Russian elite, however, safe from the immediate consequences of their decisions hundreds of miles away in Moscow or St. Petersburg, continue to nibble their caviar and lament that they can’t buy those American brand-name products they love so much in Russia anymore. To these people, the war is a distant dream, a sound only vaguely heard as they fear more the soldiers much nearer them under Putin’s direct command should they put a toe out of line. You wonder if the FSB, Russian intelligence, has a going rate for oligarchs “accidentally” falling down 30-storey staircases these days.

Putin’s words also ring hollow to the mothers and fathers of Ukraine, whose children continue to lose their lives in Putin’s illegal war, both in combat and outside of it. Each night, elders, children, and families cower in fear as Russian drone and missile strikes rain down indiscriminate dismemberment and death. 

Is there a reckoning? Will there ever be one? War by its very nature is inhumane, barbaric and indiscriminate. As the old Russian proverb states, “Bare derutsya — u kholopov chuby treschat.”  Translation: “When powerful people are quarrelling, it's the commoners that suffer.”

More people die accidentally as collateral damage in a war zone than have ever died by direct violence. Which makes it paramount that world leaders only unleash those dogs of war as a last resort – not for one man’s hubris, delusions of grandeur, or vanity.  

All Hail Vladimir The Great, or maybe The Terrible. Russia’s history is full of both the great and the terrible.


Tim Kalinowski

About the Author: Tim Kalinowski

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