Ukraine Dispatch 6 | Day 9 ~ When History Repeats Itself and the Blind Lead the Blind (Revised Edition)

Ukraine Dispatches

Volume 1 2022

Chapter One

I

NOW in Day Nine of this War, right-minded people are aware of the stakes at play and the likely future of Europe.

Western capitals are well aware that logic, reason, common sense and truth ~ the constituent elements of Reality ~ have long abandoned the mind of Putin in the same way as they were never present in Adolf Hitler.

There prevails a new reality in Europe.

Over the last week, I have been using free view in order to see what other 24-hour news channels are reporting and how they align with, for example, BBC News 24.

It also enables me to gain perspectives around the world. We are free to do this. The Russian People are forbidden to do this. Russian People cannot neatly sidestep the issue when their country is, one day, called to account, and their current Kremlin leaders stand in the dock before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

II

Millions of Russians rely upon state TV for their news. Understandable. Nevertheless, the Russian People cannot claim we didn’t know, when the crimes being committed in their name this very day, this very hour, are brought home to them in the cold light of day and in, by then, a re-established Russian free press and the return of all the outlawed television and radio programmes that have disappeared off the air this week, the last two, yesterday morning, Thursday 3 March 2022.

All Russian People must be answerable for permitting their ‘democracy’ to descend into an oppressive and frightening autocracy, a return to the values and 24-7 suspicions that characterised the lives of everyone in the former Soviet Union. In short, an Orwellian totalitarian state.

When the last Russian Radio station closed down yesterday, a BBC correspondent received this chilling one-liner from the station’s founder …:

Russia has gone. Today, it is now the USSR.

That should cause millions to sit up and think about what this means for the free world.

III

In China, their news channel refuses to refer to the war in Ukraine, shows minimal military damage, and emphasises the ongoing ceasefire talks.

Just as we put a slant on the frisbee we throw to our kids, so, too, does China slant the minds of the Chinese People. For them, the Ukraine War can be summed up as:

·      A difference of opinion between Ukraine and Russia

·      Minimal military activity

·      Russia is conducting a strategic operation

·      Both Ukraine and Russia are emphasising the importance of the talks

There is no coverage of the massive artillery barrages that take out entire areas and sections of the civilian population.

In Russia, people turn a blind eye to the arrest and imprisonment of peaceful protesters. The Russian People turn a blind eye to laws that will result in anyone broadcasting what is really happening, being charged, swiftly put on trial, and sentenced to 15 years with no right of appeal.

Here is the stench of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that killed millions between 1946 and it imploded on 26 December 1991. It brought misery to the lives of millions more.

Here is that destructive, corrosive nation that subjugated Czechoslovakia, forcing it to become a communist state and ruthlessly crushing the Prague Spring. Russians have a way of dealing with opposition. They fear freedom for themselves, and they fear freedom being sought by others. They are, to use the phrase by President Nelson Mandela, today’s skunk of the world.

Chapter two

Dread

I

There are many forms of dread.

·      seeing cities being bombarded

·      civilian populations killed en masse even as the cameras roll

·      of the million – and rising – refugees at the border crossings

·      seeing children and wondering what is happening to the orphanages and the children’s hospitals

·      the air raid siren, so well-known by the world’s greatest generation, many of whom still live.

There is the absolute dread and terror of watching Putin, a man from whom humanity long, long ago ran fleeing in the opposite direction, unseen by his bewitched and enslaved general population …

II

A man who talks of not being able to see the Russian and Ukraine Peoples as anything other than one people. Then the pause. Then the cold, calculated and deliberate edict … referring to all those Ukrainians who have allowed themselves to be ‘brainwashed by the Nazis’, and by the ‘Nazi Jewish President’!

If this were written in a novel the book would never sell. It would be too ridiculous for words.

Then the dread of what the Ukrainian People will be subjected to if Putin is not defeated. The ‘brainwashed’ will be exterminated. Extermination is in the eyes and facial features of Putin in the same way as we still see it etched into the eyes and facial features of Adolf Hitler. We know that Putin has Killing Lists, and we know he has saboteurs already embedded in Ukraine. We know that the Ukraine Armed Forces are finding them.

Chapter Three

A Matter of Time

I

It is only a matter of time before there is a clash between Russia and NATO.

In 1940, we knew it was only a matter of time before Nazi Germany sank U.S. Ships and then pleaded ignorance and, wait for it, sorrow … we thought it was a British naval cruiser … we thought it was a British cargo ship …and so on, and so on.

It is only a matter of time before NATO will have to enforce a No-Fly Zone. The British Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, himself a former soldier, has made the position soberly clear. At this point, the whole of Europe would be embroiled in war. Suddenly, Russia would be at war with every NATO country.

That means, bluntly, world war.

It is only a matter of time before Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. There is no logic or reasoning in the man. His entourage have neither the courage nor ability to withstand him, in the same way, that no one, in the Berlin Bunker even in the last four months of World War II had the courage or wherewithal to simply put a bullet in Hitler’s head. They could have done it, but they didn’t! Why? Because the fanatics still insisted he was their ‘messiah’, and that this messianic fanatic would deliver them victory and peace on their terms.

Hitler was ‘messianic’. Putin is ‘messianic’. In both ages, the people willingly opine this view.

There is, though, a faint glimmer. One has only to see the mindsets of those who form Putin’s inner circle. Shifting eyes that cannot escape the telling lens. They are not men to be looked up to. They equate to Hitler’s gang.

III

A week is a very long time in war. Wartime is totally different to that with which we usually move through the day.

Ten days ago we would not have considered that a matter could be nuclear.

Nine days ago we were warned by Putin in his clumsy rhetoric that he would use nuclear weapons if anyone so much as dared to ‘interfere’. He sounds like he’s had a few lessons from Trump. Or maybe Trump had a few lessons from him.

Seven days ago he placed his country on nuclear alert, and the warning was clear. In his broken mind, a tactical nuclear weapon is a means of ‘de-escalating’ a situation. That has long been the cornerstone of Russian/Soviet thinking.

We have already seen the use of vacuum bombs and cluster bombs, both outlawed by the international community. The next step is barrel bombs which he used constantly in Syria. He laid waste to Grozny and Chechnya.

Vladimir Putin is a man who has no comprehension of the value of human life. Why? Human life is meaningless to him.

IV

If Intelligence confirms that he is about to use a tactical nuclear weapon, there should be an instant response. And I’m not talking about having talks.

4 March 2022
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© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022