Ukraine Dispatch 20 | The Invasion Changed Everything ~ Permanently

Ukraine Dispatches

Volume 1 2022

Written over Days 1-53

One

THE INVASION OF UKRAINE BY RUSSIA changes everything. Some say that this equates to 1938. No. Simply put, it equates to 1 September 1 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

We stare World War III in the face.

For those in Ukraine, World War III has already commenced. There is a painful correlation between the slowness of 3 September 3 1939 through to 8 December 1941, and 24 February through to today, 18 March 2022.

Vladimir Putin will not stop at Ukraine.

His sights are firmly fixed on all those Nation States that were formerly caught within the Soviet Bloc, not by choice, but by occupation, coercion and subjugation. His chilling statements on Russian TV on the morning of 17 March and of the evening before, leave us in no doubt.

Peace talks are a sham on Russia’s part, buying time whilst spy-man waits for Spring and warmer weather to unfreeze his rambling columns. Meanwhile, he encircles, bombards cities and levels them to the ground, insists he is not aiming at civilians, and tells his fawning, adulating public at home that his army does not attack civilians.

Russians speaking by phone to relatives and friends in Britain, speak that Putin is a king and a god. They refuse to accept reality. On Day 52, they still insist in this lie.

Russia
It’s 144 million citizens bar those who have
been arrested, convicted and imprisoned for protesting
his special military operation
is the archetypal bull
with a ring through its nose

Two

This insistence upon believing lie to be truth and truth to be lie is the bedrock of Totalitarianism. Russia has proved itself incapable of seeing the reality of freedom and democracy, multi-party nation states with governments and opposition parties, each upholding the Rule of Law.

In Russia there is no rule of law. There is another law. The law of the dictator. And Russian People prefer it that way. The price they pay? The brain drain of all young people, becoming the world’s pariah state, and slithering by its own volition into a massive war that it will simply not win.

The terrifying aspect of this is that, apart from the fifteen or so thousand peaceful protesters in Russia to date, they buy it, in exactly the way that the German civil population bought - hook, line and sinker - Hitler’s similar assurances, and that other ‘king and god’ of theirs, Stalin.

Adolf Hitler ~ Joseph Stalin ~ Vladimir Putin

Three liars,
three mass murderers,
three
very vindictive, cruel and evil
men

Three

When the Soviet Union collapsed, nations within the former soviet bloc were, rightly, free to determine their futures.

They looked westward, the tendency of all peoples living under the yoke of tyranny, the jackboot, and idiotic May Day military parades below the walls of the Kremlin.

The Forbidden Question

Why is it, people whisper,
that westward, they seem
to enjoy a kind of freedom
that we are told we have
but which seems to be
totally different
to the freedom
that we are told
is the blessed and
most heightened
freedom of all?

Do they know something that we don’t?

Putin, if he was allowed free rein, will not rest until he has subjugated all of those nation states. But unlike Ukraine, those nations are within NATO, underpinned by Article Five and which has with impressive haste now adopted its active defence plan. This gives greater autonomy to military commanders in the field. Article Five is simple in its application. An attack upon any one nation state within NATO is an attack upon every nation state within NATO. The outcome for Russia will be calamitous.

Four

When one reads The Allenbrooke War Dairies 1949-1945, Field Marshal Lord Allenbrooke gives us an accurate and detailed picture of the Chiefs of Staff of the Allies, then the Combined Chiefs of Staff (British and USA), then the spectacle of Stalin’s dinners, endless toasts that must outdo the previous toast, every toast laced with vodka. Fortunately, Allenbrooke quickly caught on to the lethal nature of vodka. I mention this because that old mid 20th Century mindset of the Soviet General Staff prevails. Men are cannon fodder.

Putin has got his war. The Russian People, 52 days on, fed constantly a diet of success, and I begin to realise why authors can get away with writing books like Alice in Wonderland.

Will reason prevail?

No.

Will Greater Russia wake up to what is being done in their name before it is too late?

No.

They have no effective opposition. Politicians who opposed are either now in exile, or murdered, or rendered forcibly harmless. Boris Nemtsov was shot four times in the back outside the Kremlin. Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years imprisonment by a sham court set up in the prison in which he was already imprisoned.

When men and women are killed in battle, so far as possible, their remains are returned under a flag-draped coffin, and they are buried with full military honours. This is small consolation for the grieving and bereft families, but people understand the gesture and receive a measure of comfort.

Putin?

The man has Crematoria following his soldiers into battle. That is their potential ignominious end. As a retired officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, I can think of nothing more repugnant. That is the value that Vladimir Putin attaches to the lives of soldiers he throws into battle. Only a mind devoid of soul could do such a thing. These mobile Crematoria have another function. As they retreat, they dig up their atrocities and cremate. Destroy all evidence.

From Day One, Thursday 24 February 2022, we have been dealing with the same mindset that motored the minds of the mobile Einsatzgruppen in Poland and on the Steppes of Russia 21 months later.

The People of Ukraine will prevail.

18 April 2022
All Rights Reserved

© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022

Kremlin image is by courtesy of Unpslash (unsplash-image-_LrwMuJNTIA)