AND A MADMAN

Day 4 of 21 Days to a Writing Habit

There has never been a shortage of madmen in the world who have climbed (often over dead bodies) to the top of their country’s power rankings. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadafi, Pol Pot, are merely ones at the top of the charts.

But, over the last four days, the highest-ranking madman in the history of madmen has unleashed a massive military action in Europe the likes that have not been seen since Adolf Hitler in 1938/39.

Even with the most telegraphed military invasion in history, Russia’s Vladimir Putin launched a three-front war against Ukraine. Under the auspices of a training exercise, a force of up to 200,000 uniformed soldiers, sailors and airmen had built up to the north in Belarus, east in Russia and south in Crimea and the Black Sea.

Yet the world was asleep at the switch to prepare for the inevitable. NATO failed to beef up its eastern flank in a defensive posture, though four NATO countries border western Ukraine.

As far back as 2008, Putin began signalling Ukraine's return to the Russian sphere, a la Soviet Union days. He has stated that Ukraine is not a country, that they share a historical ‘unity. His position on then Ukraine can even be found on the Kremlin website. Add in the 2014 annexation of Ukrainian Crimea and the overt support of separatist elements in the Eastern Ukraine oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk and you have all the ingredients for an invasion recipe.

By February 2022 all the ingredients had been mixed and all that was left was for the recipe to be put in the oven to bake. That happened on 24 February when Russian airstrikes targeted military installations in Ukraine, armoured elements crossed over from Belarus and naval elements attacked from the Black Sea.

One should never be caught off guard by the actions of a madman. But caught off guard Western democracies seemed to be. What was not caught off guard was the Ukrainian defence forces. Many expected that within three to four days at the most, Ukraine would be occupied, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toppled and the Russian Empire would have crossed another country off of its hit list.

Today the Russian ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is entering its fifth day and Russian military forces have failed to achieve any significant objectives. Kyiv remains in Ukrainian possession as does the vast majority of the country. Russian military losses are reported to be heavy.

Putin’s biggest planning failure was to accurately account for the courageous will of Ukrainians to take up arms and defend their homeland. President Zelenskyy and his people have not only withstood the might of Russian military power but have rallied the world to respond with the most severe economic sanctions against Russia that any country has ever faced and caused NATO to activate its Response Force for the first time ever.

But now the madman has been backed into a corner and this is when madmen are their most dangerous.

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