Tuesday 30 May 2023

Russia and the Matter of Reputation.

What I don’t understand about the Ukraine situation is this:

Russia invaded Ukraine, did it not? It wasn’t the other way round. Russia is, therefore, the aggressor, and the whole world knows it because there’s no other rational way of seeing it. In the course of prosecuting the resultant war, Russia has bombed civilian targets on many occasions causing death and serious injury to a good many Ukrainian civilians.

So what happens when a drone appears in the skies over a Russian civilian area, in this case the city of Moscow? Up jump Putin and his band of henchmen in righteous indignation. It’s redolent of the school bully knocking ten bells out of a little guy, and when the little guy hits back the bully bursts into tears and complains: ‘He hit me back. That’s not fair.’

Now, maybe Putin and his henchmen aren’t quite as dumb as they assuredly appear to be. Maybe this all part of the rhetoric designed to convince the really dumb Russians that invading somebody else’s territory and killing their people is all in a good cause and fully justified.

But what about those Russians who aren’t dumb, of which I'm sure there must be plenty? The sort of laughably irrational responses being spewed out by the Russian power base taints the whole country and makes even the smart Russians look pretty stupid. And that isn’t fair, is it?

It makes you wonder whether Mr Putin gives a tuppeny toss about the Russian people. It rather seems that he probably doesn’t.

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