Two Weeks In: Thoughts on a Brutal War
March 9 The war has been going on for two weeks now. There's still a lot of fog around certain individual situations.
But there's no fog about what's happening overall. This is a brutal war. Russian forces are the treacherous aggressor here.
Maybe many people in Russia don't have easy ways to understand what's really happening — but that's not an excuse. Some still think this is some kind of "liberation," or that civilian targets aren't being hit — or not on purpose. Or that it's Ukrainian soldiers blowing up their own buildings and killing their own civilians.
Of course, in war anything can happen, but even if — if — all of it somehow were "friendly fire," even in that case the responsibility would still rest on the side that started this phase of the conflict.
But this isn't "friendly fire." This is just war, where most of the shooting lands exactly where it's aimed.
No geopolitical goals, no stated reasons for "increasing Russia's security from NATO," can even remotely justify what's happening.
Whether this is Russians being deluded, a string of miscalculations, or just unrestrained, cold brutality — it doesn't matter. The result is horrific, and the world will not forgive Russia, or its citizens, for this.