Maybe I have moved into anger… another day at war
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As I start writing this I don’t have a title yet for today. My in-laws are still alive and so is my friend in Chernikiv... My parents have made a donation for the collection going towards women and children arriving in Lanjaron on Tuesday which I am helping out at, other people are also donating toiletries, colouring books, coloured pens and pencils, books, towels, flip flops for the showers... a local shop offered to be a collection point so people have been texting me that donations are being left there.
My parents are naively optimistic about a peace deal being brokered. Believing that the Russians will actually stick to any agreement is nothing short of delusional. Putin has underestimated the financial backlash from this war he has started. Judging from the state of his military he had actually no idea or no real information from his people about the quality of the equipment and his men’s training. He looks like a dickhead and must be fuming as a result. But this is not a man that was ever happy with being one of the most privileged or powerful this is an angry man who has some fucked up USSR nostalgia.
Just like an abusive bully he demands respect by violence instead of collaboration. His bombing of hospitals, children’s kindergardens, schools and apartment blocks is nothing but criminal. And no, not everything is allowed in war. This deliberate bombing of civilians is not legal, it is a war crime, he is a war criminal together with the generals who pass on the orders and the soldiers who execute them. They are behaving like terrorists.
If we were to measure things by his standards some other dickhead could decide the Russians need to be liberated from him. We instead wait for his own people to be rid of him as they are pressured into it by starving the Rouble and creating food shortages and closing foreign companies.
People should not be pushed further into poverty and yet here we are trying to motivate people to depose their dictator by taking away their bread. Make no mistake it is the poorest people who suffer the most. Refugees from Russia and Belarus are now also a consequence of this war. People who have been known for anti-Putin protests are being arrested, those who can leave are leaving.
So now he will try to save face and Ukraine has to, to a certain extent let him do that because they are outgunned and he doesn’t care if he kills millions of civilians. This is the reality. Anton’s grandma is in an old people’s home in Kyiv most likely wondering why she is back in WWII or worse still Holdomor. His mother terrified of what’s going on, his father and son in law going out on gunned patrols to day and night, his sister tries to keep a semblance of normality with two children… millions of people fleeing and leaving their husbands, fathers and brothers behind and here we are putting in massive amounts of energy into self organisation of humanitarian response.
This isn’t a world I would like to bring children in. Frankly, the sooner I drop dead the better.
