Stop the War

So, three months have passed and the brutal war is still grinding on. The Ukrainians have been extraordinary in holding off the Russians and really have surprised me at how well they have done. Of course, I’m no military expert but in the early days, I was under the impression that everybody expected Russia to roll over Ukraine, just like they did with Crimea. But no, three months later, the Ukrainians are putting up a good fight and in some respects, regaining some of their lands.

An amazing and wonderful development!

But Mariupol has fallen and the Donbas are still undergoing the constant shelling. I had hoped that Ukraine somehow figure out how to save Mariupol but alas, that is not to be.

How long will this war last? I haven’t heard of a speculated timeline yet other than that this war could grind on for years.

I wish Putin would figure out how to gracefully wrap up the war – like now – and peddle a lie to his people that his objectives have been met. His people will believe anything he says. He is going to have to figure out how to account for the dead Russians coming home or maybe they will just be noted as missing. He has to account for them though. He has to come up with a good and credible sounding story. It’s too bad he didn’t end the war earlier when it turned out that the invasion was not working – now he has to come up with some viable stories to explain to his people about why there are so many dead or missing Russians and why his de-Nazification objective doesn’t appear to have been carried out. The longer the war lasts, the harder it will be to come up with some good stories.

Because it is looking like he is not going to win this war.

In my last post on this war topic, I mentioned that I was seeing news about Putin looking ill but I thought that the “illness” might actually be due to severe stress on him. The war didn’t end in three days as he had planned, and the prolongation of the war is putting his power and maybe even his life at risk. So, yes, he might have some fidgety feet, he might look greyed out, his face might look swollen. If you were under that kind of stress, wouldn’t you look the worse for the wear?

I still see occasional news about his supposed illness and those news creep closer and closer to mainstream news. Those news are tantalizing but could also be scary because if he is truly ill with cancer, then there is no telling what he may do if he feels there is no hope of recovering the war.

But his “illness” is still speculation because the blue-chip mainstream media have not reported on his health or illness.

Oh, and finally, he made a grave miscalculation on how Sweden and Finland would react to his invasion of Ukraine. The two countries that were neutral during WWII have now asked to join NATO. Up until the night before the invasion, Sweden and Finland (including its citizens) were firmly in the neutral camp but that all changed once Ukraine was invaded and once the Russians proceeded to deploy brutal, inhumane tactics toward regular citizens.