This will be on History tests, eventually -- presuming there's anyone around and current events don't eventually poke a hole in history big enough to throw a Dark Ages through.
The Republican-aligned punditry are still talking about what a great fellow Mr. Putin is, as mechanized armor clanks in and the missiles fly. Meanwhile, no few of the socially-conservative, limited-democracy, ex-Warsaw Pact nations so admired by the talking-head Right are turning to NATO and the EU, away from Gospodin Putin's smothering Russia. Viktor Orban's for Ukraine sovereignty (wasn't it just last month he was cuddling up to dear old Rodina's muscle-boy for reactors and heating gas?). Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have triggered the NATO bat-signal -- okay, "urgent Article 4 consultations" -- over the Russian invasion. Suddenly, those (well-armed) "decadent Western nations" of the EU and North America are looking a lot better to them than borscht and culture-war orthodoxy.
It will be interesting to see how that plays out domestically. Especially along the Trumpian MAGA axis. (Though watching the traditionally antiwar Left generate spin will be another fine show for one of the smaller rings in the media's Big Top. It's all clowns, jackasses and elephants these days.)
On the world stage? My bet is that Mr. Putin still thinks he can have a nice, neat, well-contained war, pick up as much of Ukraine as he cares to and break the remainder to saddle without the free world doing anything worse to him than weak economic sanctions and strongly-worded objections. Is he right? I don't know. These things have a way of getting out of hand, one way or another.
Europe was due for another war. I wish they weren't.
The reports from Ukraine (via BBC) didn't allow for much restful sleeping last night. (Small potatoes in comparison to the real travails of the Ukrainian people!) It seems like one puppet government is coming up, sad to think.
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