Soon it will be four years. An unspeakable slaughter with horrifying numbers—300,000 Russian soldiers killed and perhaps 100,000 Ukrainians. Cities pulverized. The time of the bloodlands returned, with Vladimir Putin taking up the double legacy of Stalin and Hitler.
And all this for what? A village taken here, one retaken there. A motorized unit arriving to plant a flag on a church steeple and take a photo—then bolting immediately. Months of monstrous fighting in Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar (two battles I covered) and in Andriivka to capture tiny towns of which nothing remains but piles of rubble.
From the comments …
Doesn’t BHL understand that allowing Ukraine to hold on but not to win is precisely the West’s objective in the war?
And it is no scandal at all, but rather simple self-defense — letting the Ukrainians do our fighting for us. Eventually, Russia was going to attack the West, anyway. Now it will hesitate to do so, given its depleted military, political, economic and diplomatic standing.
