(October 8, 2022 at 8:22 pm)Belacqua Wrote: It's appropriate that the bridge attack would be used in memes. And that Ukraine would troll about it on the Internet. That was its purpose.
The bridge is open again for traffic both ways. The attack didn't accomplish any military or strategic goal -- no supply lines were cut. Like so many things in this war, it was done as a media event. A big explosion looks like a win, and we know that people forget things almost immediately, so it doesn't matter if there are long-term consequences or not.
One thing it has accomplished: the very civilized people who oppose Russian barbarism are applauding and joking about suicide bombs that kills civilians. That's who we are now.
In other news (that won't get reported in Anglophone media): tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Paris today demanding that France get out of NATO, which is increasingly seen by Europeans as a force for oppression.
The bridge was a symbol of Russian occupation. The bridge was inaugurated by Putin himself in May 2018. There is even a propaganda video showing the Mr. crossing this bridge in 2018 behind the wheels of a truck while smiling and making some comments to the “reporter” next to him.
And we should forget that this happened right after they (most probably) torpedoed the Gasprom II pipeline in the Baltic Sea.
I’m not applauding anything. But as I am following the news I feel sorrier for the Russian people than the Ukrainian People.
Now there are authoritarian Regimes in the world. Like China or like the Soviet Union in the post. There are also insane regimes like North Korea or the Taliban. And there is another category of regimes than I can compare to the last days of the Fascist regimes of Europe toward the end of WWII. These regimes have no directions, no plans and as a result no scruple and no principle of any kind. As a result, they are more dangerous to their own people than to foreign countries.
And as a note: I don’t know how this is going to end. But after it ends I think Russia must be pressured to give up most if not all its nuclear arsenal.
