As the Russians retreat from the Ukrainian towns that they briefly occupied, they are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. Why has this glorious army, that has turned out to be somewhat less functional than that of Afghanistan, turned into a brigade of looters and petty thieves?
Well, it seems like the Russian Communist dream of the happy, healthy proletariat is about as real as Putin’s view of the war or Trump’s of the last election.
Upon arriving in Ukraine, the Russian army discovered a nation of comfortable, middle-class burgers living on a scale long promised but never delivered to the Russian people by their leaders. This may have come as a surprise to the Russian troops but not to anyone who has observed the progress of Communism since its inception in 1917.
One of Putin’s mistakes in waging this war was to not realize that he would be exposing his troops on a large scale to the far superior lifestyle in non-communist Ukraine.
It has always been my opinion that the fall of the Soviet Union was due to Television and the ability of the medium to show the accumulation of the Soviet satellites how much better life was in the democratic countries surrounding them.
I worked in West Berlin in 1981 and as part of our job, a small group of filmmakers and myself were given permission to scout locations in East Berlin. The contrasts between the East and West Berlin living styles were incomparable. Consider dropping a Bronx HPD tenement in NYC next to a luxury apartment building at say, 72nd and Park and then comparing the living conditions.
So the Russian army having fallen on this lovely country is doing what beggars have traditionally done in like circumstances. They are looting and trashing everything in sight. ********
The world has been newly revolted by the reports of Russian soldiers raping women and killing civilians as they grind their way through various Ukrainian towns and villages. This revulsion undoubtedly comes from the fact that people expect there to be civilized rules by which we fight war. They have even gone so far as to write these rules down and used them to prosecute the monsters that commit atrocities during wartime. If you really think about it, it’s a pretty ludicrous concept. War itself is an atrocity. The idea that we will kill people to acquire land is no longer a civilized or a viable concept.
Sure there was a time in history when the acquisition of land brought power, glory and rewards, but that is long gone. Winning a war and occupying the country you have defeated is now the way to lose the peace. The Russians proved it in Afghanistan. We were too stupid and greedy to believe what we saw and so we proved it all over again. Now the Russians want to prove it once again in Ukraine. So a misguided leader has turned his peasant troops loose in a nation that was supposed to love them and welcome them with open arms but is instead killing them in amazing numbers. So what happens? The ignorant Russian kid, who comes from nothing, finds himself in a rather well off country where some local just shot his buddy in the eye. What does he do to quell his rage? He shoots the guy who shot his buddy and rapes his daughter. Uncivilized? Of course but it’s the nature of war. It’s how war has always been fought except for a brief historical period in Europe where manners and honor managed to temporarily wriggle into the equation and which we are always trying to emulate. Forget it! It was a mistake. It won’t happen again. Human beings are vicious pigs and nothing is going to change that. It’s why we fight wars instead of negotiating our differences. It’s why this war can only end in the utter destruction of Ukraine and the deaths of millions of people.
Vladimir Putin, the man whose war this is, has decided that the acquisition of Ukraine is more important than the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of a nation. And because he was able to come to that conclusion, he will also be able to choose to use a nuclear weapon to try to win this war even after he has lost it.
Yes, it’s a horrifying thought, but to men like Putin the only thing worth considering is their own desires. His desire was to bring back the mess that was the Soviet Union. It’s unclear why he was so ill informed about he condition of his miserable army, the Ukraine’s strength of character or the fact that he was about to repeat the mistake that was made in Afghanistan. But he definitely was and so we find the world in this unenviable position.
Putin can’t surrender. I mean, after all, he’s still winning. But, considering his pathetic military, there’s nothing that Zelenskyy or the world leaders will give him that won’t leave him looking like a fool. More important, there’s nothing that they can promise him that they have any desire to deliver on. No matter what they promise they will have to kill him. He knows that, so he can’t surrender no matter how things go against him. That leaves only one way out. That means that unless there is a coterie of Russian military and intelligence officers strong enough to take on the boss and beat him, we are looking at a nuclear explosion somewhere in Europe in the near future.
The nuclear threat has managed to work for around 85 years now and it’s almost a miracle that it has. It has worked best for small nations that would be helpless before aggression without it. The basic premise is, “Invade my shores and I’ll drop a nuke on your capital.”
It has only worked because no one has had the stones to actually use one.
We did our best to destroy the usefulness of the threat during the Bush administration when George Bush, always trying to prove he was the dumbest man ever allowed to leave Texas, had Kaddafi killed after he gave up the bomb.
Putin shaking his 4000 bombs at us is a whole different matter. All he has to do is launch one of those 4000 and the world is over. Just one goes up and we launch everything we’ve got that points to Russia and the planet goes up in flames.
I am one of those glass half full people who believes the planet is worth saving so I am looking for our government to start organizing Russian officials who feel the same way and engaging them in some smooth talk that ends in Putin ingesting some of his own poison. If we can accomplish that, a deal can always be worked out that keeps everyone left from doing anything rash..