900 Days of Russia’s full-scale War – The siege of Leningrad recalled
Incredible to believe that today is 900 days since Russia launched its barbaric full-scale war against Ukraine. And more than 10 years since it annexed Crimea, seized part of the Donbas and began a simmering war in Eastern Ukraine. So, let’s try and put this into some sort of perspective. If we look for a modern example of a devastatingly brutal siege lasting as long as this, then the case of what Leningrad endured when it was encircled by Axis forces in World War II springs to mind. Dubbed the 900-Day Siege, in fact it lasted for 867 days, from September 1941 to January 1944, and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
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Russia’s present-day protracted siege of Ukraine, with frontline cities such as Kharkiv, under constant attack, will also go down in history as one of the most gruesome episodes in modern history. Only this time, the former victims – the Russians – will be equated with the Nazi invaders who also believed that they were somehow superior and above the law and the norms of democratic civilization.
Russia’s one-sided view of history and morality.
Russians have never been allowed to forget about the terrible sacrifices and suffering that they and other nations of the Russian empire, then existing in the form of the Soviet Union, had to endure after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941. Of course, the ideas of heroism and guilt promoted by Moscow have been very exclusionary and self-serving. Russia has always depicted itself as the primary victim and victor of the World War II. It has not been convenient acknowledge openly that the World War began not in the summer of 1941, but in September 1939 when Nazi Germany and its Soviet ally attacked and dismembered Poland. Did the Russians at that time (or even since) express any sympathy for the victims of the Nazis as they swept into, bombed, destroyed and terrorized, much of western Europe?
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Today, as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are making a daring foray into Russia itself, in the Kursk region, bewildered and outraged Russian citizens are to be seen on social media cursing those who “have brought war to Russia,” and implicitly criticizing the Putin regime for having allowed this to happen. No word about why they have gone into Ukraine sowing death and destruction, and why their sons and husbands are ending up as cannon fodder.
Blustering Lukashenka needs to be put in his place
Among those showing obvious signs of nervousness from the fact that “mighty” Russia has been taken aback by the audacity of the AFU in taking the fight into Russia proper is Putin’s vassal in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenka. The babbling dictator has ordered his tanks to the border with Ukraine in the south after claiming that Ukrainian drones have been shot down over his territory. What does he expect from the Ukrainians after ceding his country to Moscow as a staging area for Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine? It’s good to see the exiled leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (@Tsihanouskaya) write today on her X site:
“Lukashenka once again shows he’s Putin’s puppet — trying to distract 🇺🇦 forces with troop movements & fake drone stories. It's just another provocation. He can't be trusted & doesn't represent our people.”
She urges her compatriots: “Belarusians stand against this war & the army won't fight Ukrainians.”
Time for President Zelensky to finally embrace her, withdraw his diplomatic representative from Minsk, and tell the Belarusian people – “Ukraine is with you in our common fight for freedom against despotism and Russian imperialism.”
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