XHABIR DERALLA
Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has started a full invasion from land and sea on peaceful, independent and sovereign Ukraine. For Putin, it’s not enough that since 2014 he has occupied more than seven percent of the territory of the Ukraine state, so he has decided to restore the “imperial splendor” of Russia with military destruction of the entire country. Ukraine has responded to the aggression and has already started with defense. But this is not (just) a military aggression of Russia against Ukraine.
Putin is in war with the present and future of the world. A war of Russia’s Stalinist past with the modern democratic world. A war in which Putin with his military and propaganda machinery is trying to return the world to the days of the beginning of World War II.
The first and biggest victim of Putin’s war are the Ukrainian civilians, who from the early morning hours are hearing the warning sirens sounding. Already in the first hours of the war there is much destruction and human casualties.
Among the victims, for a long time, for years, are also the facts and the truth. From the first hours of the war, the propaganda has gained in intensity multiple times. The cyber war has ignited in parallel to the destruction on the front lines. Websites of Ukrainian institutions and the media are crashing; cyber-attacks are noted all over the world.
It’s a matter of days, if not even hours, when the consequences of the hybrid war will be felt in every home on the European continent and in the rest of the world. It will be a way for Putin to convince the world in his “truth”.
Putin, that cold despot, deprived of moral, with tactics from the time of the Soviet Stalinism, only perfected, has trampled all agreements and international law. And now it’s obvious even for the naivest that he had been only mocking the diplomacy and dialogue suggested to him by the West.
Putin has finally entered the last phase of realizing his dream – restoring the Soviet Union, the way he has imagined it, sitting on the throne of the usurped supreme power in Russia more than two decades ago.
Yes, Putin conducted full aggression against Ukraine, but also against the world and modern democratic values. This should have been expected from him, although the world, especially Europe, seem surprised.
In his dark and incoherent speeches in the past several days, Putin is accusing peaceful and independent Ukraine of Nazism. The truth is that the aggression against Ukraine is carried out in the same manner as the war in Poland, 1939, when the country was divided by the Nazi regime from the West and the Stalinist one from the East.
Putin is accusing Ukraine of genocide. The truth is that the regime that he is dreaming of returning carried out genocide by starvation of Ukraine, Holodomor, in 1932-1933, when 3.9 million people died of starvation. And now he is carrying out military aggression with unseen artillery in the past 80 years in the world, which has no other sense and intention except to cause unimaginable destruction, suffering and death. Genocide.
This is the last, bloodiest stage of the bizarre path of the Russian dictator and aggressor. Like with any autocrat, Putin is stuck in the labyrinth of his own tragic nonsense. Tragic for Ukraine, tragic for Russia, tragic for the world.
Most probably, history will note that with this aggression, Putin helped Europe wake up, at least for a moment, from its long nap. For years, Europe and the West (maybe pretending not to see) have been a polygon for the interference of Putin’s clique in their internal affairs, in the economy, politics, election processes, media, culture and inter-community relations.
Europe needs to learn that just because it doesn’t want something to happen, it doesn’t mean that it won’t happen.
Will Europe and the world learn something form their own mistakes and remain focused, united and decisive or will they shut their eyes tightly and allow Putin to turn the wheel of history for almost a century? It’s impossible to give an answer to this question on the first day of the attack, but it’s good to raise it.
The future is uncertain, while the past has returned on the doorstep of our homes. The death counter is turning faster and faster.
Translation: N. Cvetkovska
