The situation between Russia and Ukraine had been tense for a while now, but we didn’t really think that all the muscular posturing of Vladimir Putin would result in out and out war. Turns out we were wrong and Russia has actually gone ahead and invaded another sovereign country. There has been bombing, shelling, people have died, civilians are fleeing or taking shelter in bunkers in Ukraine. Ukraine is appealing to the world for help but no one seems to know quite how to respond to the bellicose, invading Russian.
There have been horrifying images of dead soldiers, aerial bombing, people fleeing, video appeals of help from civilians including Indian nationals stranded in Ukraine. This is probably the closest Europe has been to a World War since 1945
As with every such conflict, the decision makers wage war for personal ambition, ideological purposes or just sheer hubris and innocent citizens pay the price.
World War III is here.
Across Russia, citizens are protesting against their leader's decision to invade another country. Cracking down on its own citizens, the state apparatus has put hundreds of protesting Russians in jail.
The common folk of the Putin’s Russia have been pulled willy-nilly into a war they didn’t ask for.
There have been a lot of loud and belligerent warnings sounded by the Americans, but little else so far.
Now is the time, America. Why hesitate now when you didn’t in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places? Is democracy not in danger now, or is there not sufficient profit in this rescue mission?
NATO and other agencies that are supposed to prevent the escalation of hostilities, seem to be caught with their pants down.
There has been a wonton attack on a sovereign nation but democracies and the organisations supposed to be protecting world peace are doing nothing to prevent it.
Blockades and sanctions are hardly going to work against a man as ruthless and megalomaniacal as Putin; who controls Russia and its mineral and other resources.
Interestingly, it is not a repressive dictatorship like Kim Jong Un but a leader who claims to have been ‘democratically elected', Vladimir Putin who declared war.
…Economies pay the price. Stock markets are a good indicator of market sentiment.
Shock waves are felt everywhere. We are a globalised world today and the economies of different nations are connected in direct and direct ways. What happens in Ukraine affects us in India as well.
Democracy is a sham in Russia and people are holding Putin responsible for the conflict and the impacts of it that the world is seeing right now.
The world pays for those decisions – with their fortunes and their lives.
There is always the fear that other nondemocratic expansionist nations could be encouraged to see the current situation.
#WWIII memes are trending – if we think this doesn’t concern us, we are wrong. So wrong.
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