Out of everything

The Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine appears to be losing momentum. Their massive losses require reorganization, and decimated units are now merged on the fly to remain capable of combat. This situation is a commander's nightmare, and it is a desperate tactic.

The Russian invaders of Ukraine are out of reserves and out of supplies. They are mostly out of modern weapons and are now reduced to fighting with out of date Soviet era equipment, while Ukraine is getting significant help with more recent weapons systems being sent from abroad. The Russian troops are out of their depth, out of their wits, out of breath, out of options, and out of hope to turn this in their favor. They are running out of gas, both figuratively and literally.

Putin, meanwhile, appears to be not only out of ideas, but literally out of his mind. He is refusing to face reality, and it might not be a facade any longer. If he keeps sending his troops to slaughter against the unrelenting and highly motivated Ukrainian defence, he might soon be out of an army.

It is a horrible thing to say, but if Russia depletes its army on the battlefield to the point where it no longer is a force to be reckoned with, it might be for the best. Russia must be forced to stop its expansive aggression, and if they don't have an army to send, they can't invade their neighbors and meddle in conflicts abroad.

There will come a day when Russia is finally out of Ukraine, and it just might come sooner than we expect.

 

Culture Cancel

It's clear that Putin is determined not only to wipe out Ukraine from the map as a nation, but also to destroy Ukrainian traditions and culture. Ukraine is being painted as a country of Nazis and traitors to their heritage. Russian invaders leave the conquered territory in ruins. The Ukraine civilian population is being murdered and displaced, and occupied territories are being forcibly "russified". However, these actions are more likely to wipe out Russian culture.

Russia is now shunned by most of the world, and their reputation will not recover for a generation. Their lies will soon crumble, and their crimes will be exposed and punished. No other countries will want to take an interest in Russian culture, and there will be a stigma inside Russia for many years to come for taking pride in anything that is uniquely Russian. A generation of people growing up will want to distance themselves from the atrocities that are being committed by the current leadership, and as people shed off the bad things, a lot of the good things will be lost as well.

In his attempt to cancel Ukraine, Putin is actually cancelling Russia.

Scorched Earth

A famous Russian tactic in war is "scorched earth", where the battleground is razed as they move past. This prevents the opponent from using the territory for shelter and resupply, and it is a tactic that proved successful for the Russian army both against Napoleon and Hitler.

Unfortunately for the Russian troops, Putin seems to have it all ass-backwards. The tactic is supposed to be employed during retreat, not when you advance. In the attack in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces are shelling the ground with artillery before their advance, which leaves them nothing but rubble to plant their flag on. This is devastating for them. Even though they are slowly gaining ground, it comes at a great cost, and it is a burden for them to move forward through crumbling ruins on destroyed roads. The Ukrainians, on their side, can retreat while staying in shelter in friendly territory. Of course, bombardment and constant fire causes heavy losses on the Ukrainian side, but the Russian losses are massive, reportedly several times larger, and their progress is slow.

Russia has entered a nightmare of their own making: a war of attrition where they are sending their troops to die by the hundreds or thousands for taking a worthless patch of dirt that used to have a village on it. Their resources were dwindling already, and now they are rapidly running out of cannon fodder. Ukraine has millions of brave people who are prepared to fight to defend their sovereignty, while Russia has less than 50,000 soldiers left, most of whom are exhausted, badly trained and unmotivated. This war might come to an end because Russia runs out of soldiers, and from the look of it, that moment might not be very far off.

Tipping the Scales

"Your governor is stupid."
"Meh."
"He is evil."
"Don't care."
"He is taking bribes, and his donors are shady."
"All politicians are crooked."
"His party is a bunch of racist scum, with no other goal than to stay in power and dismantle American democracy."
"So?"
"His utter ineptness at governing makes his petty fight with Disney cost the state a billion dollars, and the tax payers will foot the bill."
"Wait, he's costing me money? Maybe I should vote for the other guy."

THAT is what is tipping the scales? Seriously?

Insecurity council

Russia's permanent membership of the UN security council, being one of the members with veto power over all decisions, is an affront to everything that the UN is supposed to be. Russia was given the seat that was previously held by the Soviet Union. This was a decision made on unclear grounds, and it needs to be reconsidered.

After Russia has repeatedly used their veto power to block any resolution condemning their invasion of Ukraine, they went completely over the top yesterday, when they sent several cruise missiles to hit Kyiv while the UN Secretary General, Antonio Gutierres, was visiting the city to meet with president Zelenskyy.

Let this sink in for a moment. A member of the UN security council is now not only involved in an aggression against a friendly neighboring country, but they literally dropped bombs that could have killed the Secretary General of the UN. The security council would be well advised to dissolve and have the UN form a new council for the same purpose, but this time without Russia. They have no place among civilised nations, and they have no business deciding anything concerning international security.

"The first item on our agenda is to strongly condemn Russia for its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. What say you?"

"Russia says no."

"Duly noted. No action. Next item: investigate numerous credible allegations of systematic war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. What say you?"

"Russia says no."

"Check. Item three, condemn Russia for sending special forces to attempt an overthrow of the democratically elected leadership of Ukraine by assassination of president Zelenskyy in the initial hours of the attack. What..."

"Russia says no."

"Got it. And finally, a joint motion from all but one of our permanent members to expel Russia from their privileged seat on this council, the reason being blatant abuse of their veto power to get away with murder. Wh..."

"Russia says no."

"All right, that concludes today's agenda. Good meeting, everyone."

Absurd. But, sadly, completely true.

(Illegible signature)

The text in the headline refers to a piece of "evidence" collected and flaunted by the FSB in a video today, where they claim to have arrested a group of assassins plotting to murder a Russian news anchor.

The video is very poorly made and contains lots of indications that it's a staged propaganda piece rather than actual footage from the arrest, but to some extent that can be explained by this being a reenactment. I can certainly understand it if they want to provide live action for the news channels even though no camera was present during the actual raid. However, there are things that point to this entire story being fake. In a short video clip, we get to see a hand-written dedication in a book, purportedly a copy of "Mein Kampf", although the title of the book is never shown in the video. 

Phonetically, the Cyrillic text at the bottom, "подпись неразборчива" reads "podpis' nerazborchiva", and it means -- this is hilarious -- "illegible signature" (literally "signature is illegible"). Yes. This actually happened. And it was published by Russian state television, not by some hoax parody site trying to discredit FSB. They did that all by themselves. From the look of it, someone was instructed to fabricate evidence by writing a dedication in a book and sign it with an illegible signature, supposedly by being handed a script that said "(illegible signature)" at the end, but they ended up copying the script exactly as it was written.

Now, this might be "malicious compliance" from some rogue FSB agent to sabotage the story by feigning incompetence, but the level of ineptitude in the Russian government has been running rampant lately, with Putin firing tons of people seemingly at random and purely out of paranoia. In any case, this book dedication is a piece of exquisite unintended comedy in the midst of a horrendous tragedy.

Because Cyrillic handwriting has notably and awkwardly different character shapes from printed Cyrillic text, and Google Translate is useless if you can't even transcribe the letters, the full text of the dedication reads:

Timokha,
Thank you for your unrelenting support in the most difficult times.
Fight (lit. "beat", "hit") to live. Live to fight.
Signature illegible
NS/WP crew Moscow (last part written in English, for some reason)

Below is the original Russian, but transcribed from the cursive Cyrillic writing. I show it in both regular and italic, because the italic lower case characters look more like the cursive writing:

(Edit: I can't get the italic text to safely render in a serif typeface with actual italics using the "mobile" style. Sometimes you get the fake slanted letters of Arial and its ilks, and they don't look any different from the upright versions.)

Тимохе
Спасидо за неоженимуро поддержку в самые тяжелые зоды.
Чбивай, итобы жить.
Жити, итобы чбивать.
Подпись Неразборчива 

Тимохе
Спасидо за неоженимуро поддержку в самые тяжелые зоды.
Чбивай, итобы жить.
Жити, итобы чбивать.
Подпись Неразборчива

Prediction

Here's a guess based on the latest reports: Putin will huff and puff and threaten with a nuclear attack to "stop Ukraine's genocide on Russians", the few countries that are still undecided will turn against him, he will fold and withdraw from Ukraine, spin it as him "taking responsibility to avoid a third world war despite all the Western provocations", hold a bleak celebrational parade on May 9, and then forever disappear from the political scene.

Vladimir Putin is clearly ill. Even the official footage from his latest staged appearances, despite heavy editing, clearly shows him suffering from tics, tremor and tardive dyskinesia. These are not merely signs of stress, but definitely signs of physical neurological disorder, be it due to an advancing case of something like Parkinson's, or a secondary effect of medication against something else.

More than one hundred thousand people died, and Russia lost all hope of becoming a trusted international partner for trade and treaties for a long time ahead, just to prop up the last remnants of a sick and fading man's inflated ego.

Genocide

There is no longer any doubt that what the Russian attackers are doing in Ukraine amounts to genocide. Civilians are "filtered", sorted on weak grounds and classified as friend or foe to the invaders. Being on the side of their own country gets them summarily executed and buried in mass graves. Of those that manage to avoid execution, many are abducted, taken to remote locations in Russia and not heard from again, implying that they are either incarcerated or killed. This is a deliberate attempt at erasing the national identity of Ukraine by means of mass murder -- by definition, genocide.

Russia must not be allowed to gain any territory from this war. They deserve to instead have rather a lot taken away from them. A country that commits such unbelievable acts of terror and war crimes should not be allowed to have an army.

Gulag Revisited

Ukraine official sources now claim that around 500,000 Ukrainian nationals have been forcibly displaced to Russia, among them over 100,000 children. The destination for these abductions are, purportedly, northern Russia and the Sakhalin island, and the detainees are being given papers that prevent them from leaving Russia for the next two years.

This is nothing short of kidnapping, and it might be a lot worse than that. Parallels to Soviet prison labor camps and Chinese reeducation camps are painfully easy to draw.

Even though Ukraine is at war and naturally chooses to present information that is beneficial for receiving help from other countries, there is no obvious reason for them to inflate these numbers, or make up a story like this one. Ukraine is, contrary to Russia, an open society with a free press, and foreign observers are free to roam the country as they please. Thus, any "Big Lies", like the ones being spouted daily by Russia, would soon be exposed and generate a lot of pushback. The alternative, that this is essentially a true story, is almost too ugly to fathom, but it seems very likely.

Russia needs to go. Twice over in the past century they have failed to build a society that has any chance of existing peacefully alongside other countries, and instead chosen a path of totalitarian rule and expansionistic imperialism, asserting dominance over their neighbors through invasion and intimidation. Russia is a threat to peace, to democracy, to decency and honesty, to diversity, tolerance and freedom, and to virtually everything else that is good in the world.

It deserves repeating: Russia needs to go. They have lost their right to govern themselves as an independent country, and need to be put under some kind of supervision from the international community. Until they can demonstrate at least a basic respect of human rights and international law, they are a danger to us all.

Into Darkness

The 64th mechanised brigade of the Russian army was posted in Bucha during the Russian occupation of the region northwest of Kyiv. Soldiers from that unit were directly responsible for murder and rape of civilians. Several hundred bodies have been found in the wake of the withdrawal of the Russian forces, and the world is aghast.

What is Vladimir Putin's response to this? He gives them all a medal and names them "Watchers of the Nation", praising their "courage, vigilance and endurance". This is sickening. Nothing can redeem this monster of a man, and soon the entire country is beyond redemption.

The Face of Lies

To us watching from the outside, it's clear that the performances from official Russian spokespeople are rapidly becoming more terse and strictly scripted, and the people talking often come across as uneasy. The Russian propaganda machine has been lying to people for ages, but the lies seem to be getting too big and too ugly for comfort for the propaganda workers. They did not sign up to hide war crimes against Ukrainian civilians, many of which are Russian-speaking and used to have strong pro-Russian opinions.

Russia is starting to look eerily like North Korea: a country cut off from the international arena, living in its own bubble of badly crafted lies, with a population that is being kept in the dark and punished for even trying to learn the truth, much less spread it to others.

The difference between Russia and North Korea is that the Russian population is generally well educated, and has seen enough of the world around them to know that what is now happening is a throwback to the totalitarian rule of the Soviet era. When asked, not everyone in Russia is opposed to returning to the Soviet days, but they will soon find out that their rosy view of that dark time in history is a false one, a product of selective memory and propaganda.

It is far from over yet, but Vladimir Putin is finished.

Moscow Obliterated

Yes, clickbait headline, sorry. The city of Moscow has not been attacked. However, the missile cruiser "Moskva", or "MOCKBA" in Cyrillic, named after the Russian capital as it is actually called in Russian, has been sunk. "Moskva" was the capital ship of the Russian navy in the Black Sea region, and its loss is a major setback for Russia. This is also a major symbolic achievement for Ukraine in their retaliations against Russia's unprovoked attack and invasion that started on February 24.

The official Russian propaganda machine is not denying that "Moskva" has sunk, but they are hilariously not admitting that the cause is a missile attack. Instead, they are claiming a "fire that caused an ammunition explosion" and that "the cause of the fire is being investigated". Well, duh. A good lead for those investigations would be to consider the Ukrainian naval target missile of the Neptune type that struck the ship right as the fire started.

The lies from the Russian propaganda machine are not even making them look good. If a capital ship was sunk by a fire that broke out by accident and caused a major detonation in ammunition storage, it would be a sign of gross incompetence from Russia. They were clearly scrambling for an approach that would avoid admitting success for an attack by Ukraine, and in that process they decided to figuratively admit to shooting themselves in the foot.

The "Moskva" was a Soviet era vessel, but it had been recently modernised and returned to active service only last year. It served as the command center for Russia's Black Sea navy, and its anti-aircraft and anti-missile weaponry was providing air defense for the rest of their naval forces. The fact that it failed to defend itself against a small scale air attack from a few missiles is remarkable, not to say astounding, and paints a clear picture of Russia continuing to underestimate the capabilites and the resolve to fight of the Ukrainian army, be it out of arrogance, ineptitude or bad management, and take a bad beating for it.

The war in Ukraine is horrible, and the aggressor is very far from defeated, but I can't help but smile right now.

Re: Problems

Russian armed forces are trying to REorganise, REbuild and REdeploy in eastern Ukraine. However, REports tell a story of an army in complete disarray, with problems in three essential areas: REcruitment, REplenishing and REtention. Nobody wants to join the army to fight Putin's insane war. There are no REplacements or REpairs available for lost or damaged equipment. REsupply chains are strained, insufficient, even depleted. REserves for troops are nonexistent. Professional soldiers who REalise what they are ordered to do tend their REsignations and wish to REturn home. REcruits who are forced to fight in Ukraine show REmorse and REact with REpulsion when REality hits them: they are REpeating history in a very ugly manner, working for the side that is REviled globally.

On top of this, Ukraine is now REsponding with REtaliations of REnewed intensity.

This war is REally not going well for Putin, and there will be a REckoning.

(Yes, I'm sick of all this. What is there to say? Bad is bad, good is good. Go good. Boo bad.)

And then what?

Russia has been forced to a radical change of plans in Ukraine. Now that they failed to take Kiev and overthrow the legally elected government, their battered forces are being reorganised and redeployed to the eastern part of Ukraine, in an attempt to take the Donbass region, which was partly occupied by Russian separatists after Russia's "annexion" (theft) of Crimea in 2014.

However, even in that supposedly Russian-friendly part of the country, the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian population are putting up a fight. It's not a given that Putin will succeed in reaching even this smaller goal.

Just as a thought experiment, let's assume that Russia is successful and manages to take Donbass, and possibly a small land strip along the coast to get their supposedly much coveted land bridge to Crimea. Then what?

Russian forces have committed horrendous war crimes in all the regions they have "liberated", and Putin's goal is very openly to erase any remnants of Ukrainian culture wherever he plants his flag. As a result, his forces ravage the land wherever they go, burning and demolishing entire cities, murdering civilians, plundering and raping, and the result is obvious: Russia is now a deeply hated country that will never be forgiven for the cruelties committed in the territory of a friendly, democratic neighboring country.

What is Putin's plan for the future? From the look of it, it's possible that he has no plan. Rumors are circulating that he is terminally ill and just wants to have a victory parade on the anniversary of the end of World War II before he dies. These are just rumors, but it would explain a lot.

An entire country is burning because of the delusions of one sick, old man. Putin has stopped trying to look respectable to the rest of the world, and he will now be remembered as a blood-thirsty dictator.

When this war is over, the international community needs to take away Russia's right to have an army, and make them pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine. Putin is no better than Hitler, and he has taken his country with him into the abyss. Russia is not going to be treated as a normal country for a very long time to come.

What Goes Around

It is ironic that a large portion of the weapons that are now being sent to help Ukraine defend itself are old Soviet era equipment that was left in the various satellite states when the Soviet Union collapsed. Czechia has already sent some T-72 tanks, and Poland has announced that they have hundreds of those that are in good condition but not in active service.

These are old weapons, but they are of the same type that the Ukrainian army already has, meaning that they can be deployed very quickly. Russian troops have access to more modern tanks, but many were lost in their failed battle to take Kyiv. The reserves are older systems, mainly variants of the T-72. Some of those are in fact older than the ones that are now sent to Ukraine, because at the fall of the Soviet Union, their most modern tanks were deployed in countries close to the Iron Curtain rather than in Russia proper.

Thus, the Soviet aggression in placing armed forces in forward positions in countries that used to be under their control now comes back to bite Vladimir Putin when he tries to return to the old times of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe. Time has passed Russia by, and there is no longer any way back.

Thankfully.

Vladimir Potemkin

Grigory Potemkin, lover of late 18th century Russian Empress Ekaterina II ("Katarina" in normalised euro-spell, and "Catherine" in anglo-speak) has a place in history for his action to hide the misery in rural Russia from the Empress on a journey to Crimea, by erecting empty façades of a seemingly prosperous village along her path, disassembling it and then erecting it again at another location further along their route. The act of painting a false and pretty picture to hide some ugly fact, or to create a false impression of something that doesn't exist, is now referred to as "erecting a Potemkin village" or "painting a Potemkin façade".

We see this tactic being used by Vladimir Putin in at least three ways right now. First, he pretends his army is strong and well equipped, and that his murderous "special operation" in Ukraine is going entirely according to plan. Obviously, none of this is true.

Second, he is claiming that the Russian economy is standing strong on its own, unfazed by the sanctions from practically every other country except China. This is clearly false. In actuality, the Russian economy is bleeding out, and the country is precariously close to defaulting on its foreign debt.

Third, and most shamefully, the Russian leadership is telling easily disproven bald-faced lies about their actions in Ukraine, claiming that they are not attacking civilian targets, that life proceeds as normal in the territories they have "liberated", and that Ukraine is faking the massive evidence of atrocious war crimes committed by Russian troops, or even that Russia is being blamed for acts of terror that Ukraine is somehow supposed to have committed against their own population.

Not even Potemkin himself tried to take his stunt this far, and we can safely assume that he did a better job with fabricating his lies. Why? Because doing worse would be impossible.

The propaganda coming from the Kremlin is demonstrably and obviously false, a complete fabrication, seemingly put together without even the slightest effort at making it believable. Vladimir Putin is desperate as his Potemkin village is now being viewed close up by the entire world. It wasn't well enough made to fool anyone even from far away, and the façades are largely not even there -- he just says they are, and expects people to take his word for it rather than believe their own eyes.

If it weren't so utterly horrible, it would be laughable. In any case, it's pathetic.

Outspent Again

The Soviet Union lost the Cold War and collapsed from within largely because they could not afford to keep up with the huge military spendings of USA and the collective Western forces.

In Ukraine, we are seeing the same pattern. Russia stands more or less alone, while most of the world stands with Ukraine. The Russian army was in a sorry state of neglect, corruption and disrepair before the attack on Ukraine, and over the course of a drawn-out conflict, something that Russia clearly did not expect, we have seen a gradual depletion of modern weapons like cruise missiles and smart bombs, causing an increased reliance on older, less effective weapons such as rocket artillery. On top of that, the Ukrainian resistance has caused substantial losses not only to Russian troops, but also to Russian equipment. Hundreds of Russian tanks have been destroyed, captured or abandoned by their crew after they simply broke down.

While Russia now has to resort to deep dives into their stockpiles of old and outdated equipment, some of which is not even in serviceable condition, Ukraine receives a substantial supply of modern weaponry from their allies in the EU and US. As the horrendous war crimes committed by Russia come into light, the support for Ukraine is increasing, and what few friends Russia had at the start of their failing campaign are withdrawing their support, even coming out against them.

Russia is now deploying desillusioned and weary troops using what basically constitutes Cold War era equipment against a modern, well equipped and highly motivated Ukrainian army. The war will not be an easy win for Ukraine, and it will be ugly, but Russia is losing.

Human Kind, and Others

A common observation among authors, philosophers, psychologists and thinking people in general is that human beings are a mix of good and bad. This is true in terms of proportions of the population, but also on the individual level: almost every person has in them the inherent ability to do good, but also to do bad. With a silly pun, "human kind" is a collection of people who are generally human, and kind, with the inhuman acts and evil deeds being the exception rather that the rule, usually by a comfortably and reassuringly wide margin.

Circumstances and upbringing contribute greatly to what actions each individual chooses to perform, and people who commit evil deeds might under different conditions have been productive and peaceful members of society. Likewise, kind and compassionate people might under very different circumstances have become callous and taken to inflict pain and suffering on others. Our constant struggle with this duality has been the subject of most religions and life philosophies. Both as a species and as individuals, we are not likely to altogether shake off our bad traits any time soon. In fact, it can be argued that the struggle between good and bad, between human and inhuman, between kind and cruel, is something that fundentally defines us and cannot be taken away.

However, there are limits to what we can tolerate. Some people commit acts so atrocious, so alien to the rest of us, that we must denounce them as thoroughly and irredeemably evil. There is no good side to these people that could possibly make up for their unspeakable crimes. It takes only one of these people to destroy the life of countless others, and therefore we must not allow them to even be in the minority. They must be stopped and taken out of the large and complicated equation that is human society. Their continued existence among us does nothing but harm, and they are never going to change in a manner that can make up for their catastrophic failures to behave as humans.

I am not speaking only of dictators like Vladimir Putin, who are directly responsible for the death of thousands and the suffering of millions. Seeing the ugly aftermath of the Russian troops withdrawing from "liberated" parts of northern Ukraine, I am also speaking of men who are so thoroughly confused that they assert sexual dominance under threat of death to their victims, or even murder them after they have forced themselves on them. Men who rape, and especially men who rape systematically under the pretense of fighting a righteous war against imaginary threats, do not deserve to be part of the human race. So-called soldiers who rape children have forfeited their right to live. Men who take and even actively seek such opportunities, who can somehow maintain an erection under such sick circumstances, and in some unspeakably perverted manner enjoy the act, have nothing inside them that is of any use to others. They deserve death, plain and simple. I do not call for their suffering, or seek retribution in any other way than that we just rid ourselves of them. While it can be argued that we should treat them humanely, because that is who we are, I beg to differ. There is a limit, and crossing the line to commit such unspeakably evil acts as rape against other humans, even against children, means that there is something fundamentally wrong deep inside the perpetrator. There is nothing that could redeem a person who crossed that line. They are no longer human, and there is no way to make them right again. They might not have been beyond saving before they chose to give in to their dark side, but once they consciously turned away from the light, they forfeited their right to be judged as humans. They are animals, beasts, monsters, the stuff of our worst nighmares, and they simply have no place among us -- among the overwhelmingly human, kind, human kind.

I am literally prepared to die for other people's right to exist, but rapists of children are not people.

No Way Back

The lies from Kremlin spokespeople are now preposterously obvious. When Russian forces withdraw from occupied territory, horrendous war crimes are being revealed. Russian soldiers have committed murder, rape and kidnapping, they have pillaged and destroyed the villages and towns they were supposed to "liberate", and the shocking images that we see, with corpses of civilians littering the streets of ruined cities, hundreds of innocent non-combatants in shallow mass graves, and the nightmare stories from survivors, are impossible to forget.

Russia is no longer a nation worthy of any respect. Russia is no longer a nation that deserves a place in the international community. They can no longer be trusted with a military. The world will remember, and there is no way for Russia to save face. A government that sanctions war crimes of this magnitude, and tries to pretend they never happened even in the face of indisputable evidence, is thoroughly and irredeemably evil, and needs not only be removed from power, but prevented from having any kind of further interaction with humanity. A lot of change and a lot of time will be required before Russia can once again be treated as equals in the international arena.

Russia is now sullied, shamed, outcast, a nation I will henceforth despise and mistrust for its inability to rein in a madman with delusions of restoring a former glory of the Soviet era which is nothing but a mirage, a falsehood based on revisionist views that have no connection to reality. The blame rests not only with Vladimir Putin, but with his entire chain of command, and to a considerable extent with a large part of the Russian people, who have been wilfully deluded into believing his lies.

We will not forget.