The past has invaded the present. Russia’s military aggression has burst over Ukraine like a storm cloud gathered from a different, darker time. It is raining terror and destruction on a country that has seen tank columns like the one Vladimir Putin has ordered to Kyiv before, but not in the last seven decades.
The Kremlin claims to be landing surgical strikes. The reality for civilians on the ground is butchery. Until this happened, the western imagination struggled to process the idea that Putin would go through with it. His cynical disregard for human life was never doubted, but his callousness was thought to include rational self-interest. Compassion was not going to stop the Russian president unleashing hell, but maybe some other calculation would impose restraint – the prospect of economic ruin, or of losing the support of ordinary Russians who have no boiling grievance against Ukrainians.
