Ukraine Dispatch 36 | HOW STRANGE! ~ Sunday 20 November 2022

Ukraine Dispatches

Volume 1 2022

I

DAY 270
Part I

How strange, that that man in the Kremlin, on Day One, believed that he would have occupied Kyiv by Day Three, ousted the Ukrainian Government, and executed President Zelensky and his cabinet.

How strange, that it is now on the cusp of August and approaching Autumn (Fall) and we see a counter-offensive by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against the occupying Russian power, coming into play.

How strange, that this brainwashed occupying power sees only a ‘special military operation’ against an independent sovereign nation and people, reflecting its equally brainwashed 146 million citizens back in Russia, excepting, of course, the several thousand Russian citizens who DO understand freedom and democracy and have been placed behind bars on closed-door trials, without defence counsel, without even the right to speak, and on charges that violate International Law and the Rule of Law.

How strange, that this Russian occupying power used the totally false premise of resurgent Nazism, and then from Day One ~ 24 February 2022, has used, with vigour, the exact same terror tactics that Nazi Germany used, not only in Russia and Ukraine in 1941 but throughout all of its occupied territories, including Germany.

How strange, that this lumbering monolith has proved itself to be that which we have long suspected, exactly that. Lumbering, monolithic, ancient, and decrepit, but with an aspect of cruelty and vindictiveness that equals that of the Holocaust.

How strange, that between 2000 – 2022, genuine freedom and democracy were systematically assaulted, bludgeoned, and removed in Russia.

How strange, that 146 million Russians preferred to look the other way because that is their nature, to be led like bulls with rings through their noses.

How strange, to go through life like a bull with a ring through its nose.

Part II

It is interesting to read of the events of 1940, in particular, that horrid Third Reich rag Völkischer Beobachter, reporting gleefully to equally ring-nosed German readers of the apparent state of social collapse in London, the British Capital, the very hub of what was then the Fifth British Empire.

But unbeknownst to them, things were not going exactly according to the stated plans of that grotesquely-sized Hermann Göering.

Neither did they portend to the German People that that which they were eagerly affirming in 1940, would strike back with such ferocity, such conviction, and such determination that would lay waste to every city and town in Nazi Germany over the next five and a half years.

The plight of the People of Berlin in 1945, the women and girls especially, as the Soviet Armies advanced to occupy their capital, even now chills me to the bone.

And what have we seen in Bucha? Russian Forces behaving exactly the same towards Ukrainian Women and Children in 2022.

“The RAF is down to its last 100 fighters.” “The RAF is down to its last 50 fighters”, headline tumbling over headline, so declared that Nazi high command gleefully on, of all days, 15 September 1940. Oddly, their pilots were returning, and those who did return had a very different view of a rag-tag air force.

In truth, we had 800, and 200 held in reserve. Why?

Because of meticulous planning, and attention to detail, the immediate switch from peacetime production to wartime production, and production enabled a reluctant British People to wage total war with vigour.

The German People liked the notion of waging total war. At least they thought they did.

That is what they had done in Poland and then eight months later against the Low Countries in Western Europe. So confident in their waging of total war, their industrial output was still way below that which would be required to wage total war against an enemy who refused to give in.

They had not bargained for the ferocity

of an Island People.

Being islanders, we find the switch much easier to make. And that is still the case. We are proud nations within these islands. But put a great cause before the People, and the Nation, and suddenly we act as one. We are family. When we fight, we fight not only to wage war but to utterly crush that nation that dared to think it could take our lands for itself.

And this same spirit is alive, a thousand-fold, in

Ukraine today.

Part III

I thought of this when we watched that 40-mile-long column of tanks edges menacingly towards Kyiv. A month later, we, over here in Britain, couldn’t quite work out why it seemed to be static.

We knew something else, too.

We felt it within the tissue and fibre of our bones, our very being.

That Ukraine was not only withstanding the brutality of constant missile and air strikes and artillery barrages, they were also withstanding occupation and subjugation.

We understood, too, just as the British did in 1940, that Ukraine had dared to go onto the offensive.

Simply put, none of that had been within the reckoning of the “Kremlin Man” or his hot-potch of past their sell-by-date generals.

You cannot hope to fight and win with a conscript army riddled with corruption, a cadre of NCOs that behave more like petty gangsters, and a general staff weighed down by endless rows of medals, age against them like oil leakage over their befuddled minds, against professional armed forces.

Yes, as we see, the fighting is bloody, ruthless, chilling and exacting a death toll for both sides that leaves the onlooker silent.

Part IV

How odd it must be for the Russian People to work out exactly what is going on in the wider world, when their own world has become dystopian, chaotic, totalitarian, and confined to state-controlled TV.

They will not have seen the EUFA Final between Germany and England at Wembley and refereed by Ukraine.

Now that is the world we live in, this is the world we have, and that Russia could have been part of, and most gladly so.

Instead, 146 million ringed bulls have played their own game, going round in ever-decreasing circles by a jaded aged man in the Kremlin, they have looked menacingly across the plains of Russia to Ukraine and eyed up the world’s grain supply:

We want that for ourselves!

Dream on in your own dystopian nightmare.

You’ve been sold the lie, you’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker. You have become the world’s pariah state. To misquote President Nelson Mandela but use his very accurate phrase when he addressed his own people and warned them:

“Never, I repeat, Never allow yourselves again to become the skunk of the world.”

Part V

And what about China? I like to think that they are more sensible, rational people. That they have the ability to reason and engage. The Russian People have never possessed the ability to reason and engage. They understand only one human characteristic. Brute force.

History is littered with conquests, and envious men and women looking over the horizon at rich and free societies … we want that for ourselves.

That is and always was Russia’s plan for Ukraine.

That is and always was China’s plan for Hong Kong.

That is and always was China’s plan for Taiwan.

Never, I repeat, never, have those two countries for whom I once had respect, had the welfare of their citizens in mind.

Part VI

It is imperative that we try to understand what the entire country of Ukraine is now dealing with. The mind is a curious thing, especially when it comes to downplaying something. Media language reports of attacks on infrastructure. It conveniently removes the civilian aspect of the equation from the overall calculation and result.

We know now, of course, that between February-May 2022 the Russian destruction of the port city of Mariupol is upwards of 25,000 - 30,000 civilian deaths. That is just one city. Russia is now attacking the whole of Ukraine. As I write, the missile barrage right across Ukraine is killing many people and taking out vital infrastructure.

Russia is attempting to bomb Ukraine into submission using Second World War tactics. Hitler tried to do the same with the United Kingdom and between 1939-1945 killed 70,000 civilians in these Islands. This gives a good backdrop to all of the news reports reaching us from Ukraine.

20 November 2022
All Rights Reserved

© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Originally written on
Day 158, Sunday 31 July 2022,
this has been updated to
Day 270, Sunday 20 November 2022