https://twitter.com/peregreine/status/1502610896765476866
By the time it began, early on a gloomy grey morning on February 24th, the onslaught against Ukraine ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, had acquired a sickening inevitability. Yet nothing about this war was inevitable. It is a conflict entirely of his own making. In the fighting and the misery that is to come, much Ukrainian and Russian blood will be spilled. Every drop of it will be splattered on Mr Putin’s hands.
For months, while Mr Putin had remained in seclusion, amassing roughly 190,000 Russian troops on the borders with Ukraine, the question had been: what does this man want? Now that it is clear he craves war, the question is: where will he stop?
To hear Mr Putin on the eve of the invasion, he would like the world to believe that he will stop at nothing. In his battle speech, recorded on February 21st and released as he unleashed the first volleys of cruise missiles against his fellow Slavs, Russia’s president railed against “the empire of lies” that is the West. Crowing over his nuclear arsenal, he pointedly threatened to “crush” any country that stood in his way.