My heart is with the people of Ukraine

The flag of Ukraine (top half blue, bottom half yellow-gold)
Wikipedia: Ukraine⩘ 
Mastodon: #StandWithUkraine⩘ 

"We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this."
– Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy
in a Feb 25, 2022 video address to the Ukrainian people
in response to false reports that he had fled the country.

Introduction, Mar 20, 2022

As I read and view the news about Russia's brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine⩘  each day, my heart breaks over and over: cataclysmic destruction⩘ ; frightened civilians running for their lives; a destroyed maternity hospital; dazed and bloody civilians; long trenches being filled with corpses; destroyed residential neighborhoods; a lifeless hand sticking out from the rubble of a bombed civilian building; cold, hungry civilians trapped by indiscriminate, seemingly intentional shelling of evacuation corridors; and the callous face of Vladimir Putin as he spews his vile lies⩘ .

In a Letters from an American post on Mar 10, 2022⩘ , Professor Heather Cox Richardson provides valuable context, talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 29th Fireside Chat, which he gave on June 5, 1944, the day before D-Day. In it, he talked about the fall of Mussolini's Rome and how "the ideology of fascism, which maintained that a few men should rule over the majority of the population, was hollow."

She then talks about what the invasion is revealing about Putin's autocracy:

   The last few weeks have demonstrated the same advantage of democracy over authoritarianism that FDR saw in the fall of Rome. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was supposed to demonstrate the efficient juggernaut of authoritarianism. But Putin's lightning attack on a neighboring state did not go as planned. Ukrainians have insisted on their right to self-determination, demonstrating the power of democracy with their lives.
   At the same time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shown the weakness of modern authoritarianism. Putin expected to overrun a democratic neighbor quickly, but his failure to do so has revealed that his army's perceived power was FDR's "tinsel at the top": lots of bells and whistles but outdated food, a lack of support vehicles, conscripted and confused soldiers, and compromised communications. The corruption inherent in a one-party state of loyalists, unafflicted by oversight, has hollowed out the Russian military, making it unable to feed or supply its troops.

Letters from an American⩘  by Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Mar 10, 2022.

Whatever the outcome, Putin has been exposed for the immoral thug he is, and his military has been exposed for its corrupt, incompetent, and uncivilized behavior. That countries like China⩘  and India⩘  have so far failed to clearly condemn Putin's behavior says more about them than him.

My heart is with the Ukrainian people.

Good sources of coverage:


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Ongoing reflections:
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Ongoing reflections – 2024/25

I read about Ukraine nearly every day. This is a running list of articles, images, and videos that have most strongly caught my attention. Most recent posts are first.

Note: The first count of days I'm displaying is based on the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that was launched on Feb 24, 2022. However, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine actually began about eight years (2,926 days) earlier on Feb 20, 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and shortly after with the initiation of fighting in several of the eastern oblasts, battles that already had cost thousands of lives and immense destruction.


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Ongoing reflections:
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