They dress like students, or dress like housewives, or in a suit and a tie. Life during wartime in Ukraine — the kind of conflict that Europe thought it would never see in the 21st century — is less than a week old, and producing some shocking images that practically no one expected. Certainly not the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who almost surely thought that a westward-looking democracy sated by McDonald's and KFC would instantly melt under the shock and awe of his powerful armed forces. Instead, a generation raised in relative comfort and prosperity is making the same existential choice their grandparents made during World War II.
Freedom is worth fighting for. And dying for, if necessary.
And so the grim carnage in Eastern Europe has been interrupted by heroic scenes of resistance. We've seen the stylish 20-something Kyiv couple of Yarina Arieva and Svyatoslav Fursinb — who moved up their wedding and took a honeymoon photo toting the rifles each had been issued to defend their home city from Russian invaders. And the videos of architects and accountants and teachers forming armed patrols, or mixing deadly Molotov cocktails — to toss at armored vehicles in an attack — with the techniques they learned on YouTube.
