The Prince of Darkness Grim

Vladimir Putin's actions bring into stark relief a reality the modern world doesn't want to face

As I write this, Russian forces are grinding their way into Ukraine, destroying a country and a free people in front of our eyes. Vladimir Putin is committing war crimes almost every day and while the Ukrainians, relying on arms and weapons from Europe and neighboring countries, is courageously fighting them off, already many civilians have perished and so many more are fleeing their homeland as refugees.

We watch, our timelines updated with more horrific video than the last. And yet we feel powerless as a madman, a throwback to the brutality of 20th-century dictators, runs roughshod over a people mainly because he thinks he can.

To be surprised by Putin is to not pay attention. So long many diplomats tried to coax or wish cast the Russian president into being a responsible world leader, allowing him to get away with incursions into Crimea, to Georgia, and the systematic eliminating of his political opponents. But Putin is an evil man. Just read, for instance, this thread by S.E. Cupp about Putin’s butchery in Syria:

S.E. Cupp @secupp

THREAD: If you think Putin’s invasion of Ukraine seems so cruel, unnecessary and pointless, let me tell you how Syria started. A few kids in Dara’a sprayed anti-Assad graffiti on a high school wall. 15 kids were arrested, beaten, tortured, had their fingernails ripped out.

Yes, you read that right. Graphiti on a high-school wall, something that would hardly cause a stir in any small town in America and would probably make for half of the plot of a summer movie, was the small motivation needed in Syria for that dictator—helped, financed, and encouraged by Putin—to systemically butcher millions. 500K Syrians dead, including 50 million children and so many millions of refugees. Men, women, and children who have wandered the world looking for a place to lay their heads and so many in graves, simply to satisfy the anger of an evil man.

In the modern world, it’s hard to wrap our heads around such evil. We read about butchery in literature or documentaries, but we’ve convinced ourselves, mainly by looking away, that in 2022 the world is too progressive and sophisticated to experience such primitive behavior.