It’s Not a War; It’s a Special Military Operation

 

Russians lined up to withdraw cash at a Moscow bank

“Instead of flowers, bullets are waiting for you”

“How can you look in the eyes of your children?”

“Russian soldier, go f— yourself.”

Quotes from Ukrainian citizens brave enough to confront Russia soldiers

UN General Assembly vote to condemn Russian Invasion: 141 out of 193

It’s Not a War; It’s a Special Military Operation

“Daniel Hoffman — for years, one of the CIA’s top experts on Russia — said the Russian president is ‘not the Vladimir Putin I was tracking back in the day at the CIA. He’s a different guy.’ He says that Putin has dug himself into such a deep hole with the Ukraine invasion that he now no longer believes he has any choice but to level the country… ‘I think Ukraine’s darkest days are ahead of them, tragically,’ Hoffman said. ‘So, Vladimir Putin, he’s going to burn down Ukraine’s house.’” YahooNews.com, March 2nd. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told the world at a news conference that the special military operation “will continue ... until the set goals are achieved.”

“A condemn ns Russian troops advanced toward Kyiv, Ukraine… the city’s government issued a peculiar warning to its residents. On its official website and Twitter account, the city called on residents of high-rise buildings to ‘urgently check the roofs’ for suspicious signs or markings—the kind of visual cues that could be seen as targets.” Nate Berg for FastCompany.com (March 2nd). Red luminescent paint, probably administered by the cadre of Russian agents known to have infiltrated the capital city. Fear abounds as the city slowly loses access to fuel and food. Mass starvation looms.

Even as Putin’s initial foray stalled, military experts believe that Putin will keep adding as much military force as he needs to crush Ukraine, leaving behind his hand-picked administration with a massive occupying Russian force to annihilate Ukrainian resistance. There are more than a few who also believe that the Ukrainian people, who truly despise Russia, face a very long, dark period of brutality, arrests, torture and confiscation from the Russian regime. Perhaps for a decade or more. Moscow will attempt to redesign Ukraine to become an obedient and subservient part of “Mother Russia.” But Putin has long since lost the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people, and hopefully, the NATO allies will find a way to provide the weapons necessary for a sustained and withering Ukrainian resistance.

Meanwhile in Russia, the propaganda machine has been relentless, with enough Russians believing that their country was forced into this conflict (officially called a “special military operation” and not a “war”), that nasty NATO Western Nations provoked the Russian invasion and are the sole source of all the economic damage that has redefined daily life for so many. To make sure Russians have no proof of the losses from the attack, the attacking military is said to cremate its dead in Ukraine so as not to send body bags home. To continue to hold power, Putin is hell-bent on convincing his people that they must prepare to sacrifice to save the nation. 

Russian state-controlled media (which literally means all media) has not carried any stories of the “fierce Ukrainian resistance to a Russian military presence that Putin maintains is a natural consequence of two ‘brotherly’ countries being one and inseparable… ‘I think that so far, it’s been possible for the Kremlin to keep a very considerable degree of control over the media space, partly due to independent media outlets being closed or under tough pressure,’ said Nikolai Petrov, a senior research fellow at the British think tank Chatham House. ‘Look how it’s presented — there is a kind of silence.’… He and other analysts point out that even among Russians who have misgivings about this war, there is widespread acceptance of Putin’s insistence that the conflict was whipped up by the West.” Katya Korobtsova and Laura King, writing for the March 2nd Los Angeles Times. Still antiwar protests have not ended.

Every early in the sanctions, the very small Russian economy is already sputtering and collapsing. “While no meaningful comparison can be drawn between the desperate wartime reality that Ukrainians now face and the reverberations being felt in Russia, the country’s abrupt transformation into an international pariah has already wrought changes that might have seemed unimaginable even a week ago. 

“The Russian ruble has tumbled to record lows. Long lines form at banks and ATMs. Aspirations to live, study or work abroad are suddenly imperiled. Stock trading has been suspended. International flights are almost impossible to come by. Retail clerks are rushing to replace price tags on imported goods. Parents of military-age sons are shaken and scared.” Los Angeles Times. Moscow residents need cash even to ride the subway; their Apple and Google pay cards don’t work. Credit card and financial institutions are shutting Russia off; big oil companies, like Chevon and BP, are also divesting themselves of Russian holdings. 

Meanwhile, it seems obvious that Russian forces have been ordered to break the will of the Ukrainian people. Residential areas, even schools and hospitals, are feeling the power of hundreds of missiles, artillery shells and bombs. According to the March 2nd The Conversation, “Russian forces in Ukraine may have used thermobaric weapons and cluster bombs, according to reports from the Ukraine government and human rights groups.

“If true, this represents an escalation in brutality that should alarm us all. While cluster munitions are banned by international convention, thermobaric munitions – also known as fuel-air explosive devices, or ‘vacuum bombs’ – are not explicitly prohibited for use against military targets… These devastating devices, which create an oxygen-eating fireball followed by a deadly shockwave, are far more powerful than most other conventional weapons.”

To look good to the rest of the world, Russia is suggesting a Kyiv return to the Belarus border for further discussions, which generated nothing for Ukraine in the first round. All as a remotely accessed bank CCTV camera picked up Russian soldiers looting safe deposit boxes in a conquered Ukraine city (posted on Twitter)… others have looted cash registers in grocery stores. Over a million refugees have crossed into neighboring nations, mostly Poland. The bodies of dead children, the decimation of clearly residential buildings and the explosions all over Ukrainian cities remind us of a brutality that Europe has not experienced since Hitler’s invasion and occupation in WWII. Want to help Ukraine? Stop looking to blame our government for high prices at the pump. Cheap compared to what Ukrainians have to bear.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as horrible as this death and destruction might be, war criminal Vladimir Putin – Trump’s “shrewd” “genius” – has just begun to kill and destroy.