It’s been a long time since I posted.  I was waiting, hoping that I could include Vladimir Putin’s obituary in my next post, but… well, Mikhail Gorbachev has died, Queen Elizabeth and died, but Vlad the Invader is still with us.

He has received a bloody nose, however, and there are reportedly murmurs within Russia that it’s time for him to go.  Unfortunately the complaint is not that he has invaded a peaceful neighbour and visited destruction and death upon its people, and in the process forced his troops to commit atricities and war crimes that will stain the name of Russia for generations.  The complaint is that he is not winning!

I still hold to my belief that a comfortable majority of Russians do not support Putin’s war but fear to speak out; or support the war only because they believe the absurd lies they have been told: Ukraine is run by Nazis, Russian-speakers are being oppressed, NATO plans to invade Russia through Ukraine…

Putin’s people seem nonplussed by the humiliating failure of their army.  They overlook the simple fact that Ukrainians are fighting to defend their land, their homes and their very existence as a nation.  The Russians are fighting to gratify the ego of a deranged kleptocrat who dreams of reassembling an obsolete empire.

I assume that Putin will now resort to wholesale missile strikes against the cities, towns and villages that he has failed to subdue.  Then, at last, the Western allies will lift the ban on directing the weapons they have supplied to Ukraine against targets beyond Ukraine’s own borders.  Logically and morally there is no reason why the Ukrainian army should not destroy any site, any airfield, any vessel from which Russian missiles have been launched; and any transport infrastructure that is used to bring troops and materiel to the theatre of war.  US intelligence can surely provide very precise coordinates.