Putin’s Desperate Hours
Today, after a delay likely related to Russia’s serial battlefield losses in Ukraine, Putin spent some two hours unloading a barrage of lies, grievances, and bizarre historical revisions in his attempt to justify the bloodletting he began a year ago. He also said Russia would suspend participation in a crucial nuclear-arms-control treaty with the United States. What does this all mean?
It means, more than anything, that Putin is desperate. He’s losing in Ukraine, where, according to a British estimate last week, roughly 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded. Even Russia’s tough-guy Wagner mercenaries are getting cut to pieces: The National Security Council official John Kirby said in a briefing Friday that the Wagner Group—many of them convicted criminals—has taken 30,000 casualties, which is about half the entire group’s strength and a huge number even for a contractor force. (Note to Russian jailbirds: Your odds of staying alive are better in prison.)
Putin may be a dictator, but even dictators have to justify losses. The Russian president started his speech by going full Orwell, claiming that the West started the war and that Russia was obliged to take up arms to put a stop to it all. (He might as well have said, “Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania,” and he came close.) He also repeated his accusation that the U.S. and NATO “rapidly deployed their army bases and secret biological laboratories near the borders of our country,” but this section was omitted from the English text published on the official Kremlin website, perhaps because it’s a bonkers charge that has long been debunked. The line, however, doesn’t seem to have been ad-libbed; it’s in the Russian text posted on the Russian president’s official website.
Putin has put himself and his country in a desperate situation, and he has run out of options, including nuclear threats. This is not to say that the risk of nuclear conflict has evaporated. But after a year, it seems that the Russian president’s plan—if it can even be called that—is to consign more of his young men to the Ukrainian abattoir while hoping that the West somehow tires of the whole business. However, Biden’s visit to Kyiv and his pledge of “unwavering and unflagging commitment” had to be a “gut punch” to Putin, dashing any hopes that the Free World will give up on Ukraine.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...rs/673150/
Today, after a delay likely related to Russia’s serial battlefield losses in Ukraine, Putin spent some two hours unloading a barrage of lies, grievances, and bizarre historical revisions in his attempt to justify the bloodletting he began a year ago. He also said Russia would suspend participation in a crucial nuclear-arms-control treaty with the United States. What does this all mean?
It means, more than anything, that Putin is desperate. He’s losing in Ukraine, where, according to a British estimate last week, roughly 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded. Even Russia’s tough-guy Wagner mercenaries are getting cut to pieces: The National Security Council official John Kirby said in a briefing Friday that the Wagner Group—many of them convicted criminals—has taken 30,000 casualties, which is about half the entire group’s strength and a huge number even for a contractor force. (Note to Russian jailbirds: Your odds of staying alive are better in prison.)
Putin may be a dictator, but even dictators have to justify losses. The Russian president started his speech by going full Orwell, claiming that the West started the war and that Russia was obliged to take up arms to put a stop to it all. (He might as well have said, “Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania,” and he came close.) He also repeated his accusation that the U.S. and NATO “rapidly deployed their army bases and secret biological laboratories near the borders of our country,” but this section was omitted from the English text published on the official Kremlin website, perhaps because it’s a bonkers charge that has long been debunked. The line, however, doesn’t seem to have been ad-libbed; it’s in the Russian text posted on the Russian president’s official website.
Putin has put himself and his country in a desperate situation, and he has run out of options, including nuclear threats. This is not to say that the risk of nuclear conflict has evaporated. But after a year, it seems that the Russian president’s plan—if it can even be called that—is to consign more of his young men to the Ukrainian abattoir while hoping that the West somehow tires of the whole business. However, Biden’s visit to Kyiv and his pledge of “unwavering and unflagging commitment” had to be a “gut punch” to Putin, dashing any hopes that the Free World will give up on Ukraine.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...rs/673150/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
