By Tessa Lena

I am about to post a very interesting conversation with Riley Waggaman on “COVID Russia” (will send in a second) but before I do that, I want to emit a scream and talk about the war.

Several things to say.

One, this situation is terrible.

Two, I am pretty sure that, unlike the people on the ground who are mostly sincere on every side, Putin is a typical cynical president who is using this whole “anti-Nazi” rhetoric to enrich himself and his family, play with food and oil prices, and “build back better.” And so are the Western leaders who are hypocritically shaking their fists at him. All cynical maniacs!

(Here is a very moving and non-partisan article by Riley about the cynical rhetoric and the poor life standards of the Nazi-defeating World War II veterans in my old homeland, which is a personal topic to me because I remember how at one point, after the collapse of the USSR, when the new cultural values rolled in, it became common for teens to laugh at war veterans and their medals, which was frankly disgusting. And so those old funny veterans, with their medals, in need of love and respect, were just booted off the stage like empty shells of human beings. Completely despicable. And yes, I hear that Putin uses them as props nowadays (while letting them rot in poverty and forcing the vax on them, whether they want it or not). All of it is despicable!!!)

Three, anyone who claims to understand exactly what’s going on on the ground in Ukraine, among common people, in terms of obvious good guys and obvious bad guys, is oversimplifying things, in my opinion. There are people whose entire focus is on what horrible things Russia did to Ukrainians, and there are people whose entire focus is on what Ukraine did to Russians. There are men, young and old, who are now willing to give their lives defending their motherland from “Russian murderers,” and there are men, young and old, who now are willing to defend their motherland from “Ukrainian Nazis.” Both are sincere and very understandably uninterested in nuance and complexities.

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