Relatives of Russians Serving in Ukraine Want Them Home but Don’t Care if Others are Sent to Fight

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 7 – Thirty relatives of Russians serving in Ukraine held a meeting in Moscow to demand that these soldiers be returned home, but other Russians note that these demonstrators did not demand an end to the war and are clearly prepared to have Moscow send other Russians to fight there. That is, they say, “what Putin’s Russia is all about.”

            This anecdote is indeed particularly instructive about why Russians behave the way they do with respect not only to Putin’s war in Ukraine but much else besides. It is one of several instructive observations in the latest collection provided by Moscow journalist Tatyana Pusharyova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/47122/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Russian workers lay asphalt even in the snow and then jackhammer it open to lay pipes, and they plant tries in the coldest weather because what is important is not that the work be done so that it leads to the intended end but that it be completed according to plan.

·       Putin pardoned a sadist who tortured his girlfriend for three hours before killing her but is ready to imprison an anti-war activist for eight years because of his ideas. What will not be surprising is if the anti-war activist is now handed over to the pardoned sadist to be tortured as well.

·       Those intellectuals who oppose Putin’s war shouldn’t be executed, at least not immediately. Instead, they should be confined to updated sharashkas so that their minds can be exploited by the state. Only after they’ve given everything they can should they be shot.

·       If the West had earlier followed the Kremlin’s logic that providing weapons to Ukraine “incited conflict,” it would not have had the right to help the USSR during World War II because that led to an incitement of conflict

·       The Russian government now promises to move more than half of all Russians into new housing within the next seven years. Apparently, new prisons will allow it to succeed.

·       Putin has told military commanders that no one will come home from the special military operation in Ukraine until it is over. What he didn’t say but what Russians understand is that he has no plans to end that war. It is Russia’s “Great Shock Road,” and it is a one-way street.