The city of Mariupol is heavily contested.
(Photo: AP)
The unimaginable war enters its fourth week – and the imagination is lacking for a scenario in which Vladimir Putin could look like a winner. Even military superiority does not change that. The ever-growing hope of a negotiated solution does not change that.
The list of setbacks for Putin is long: Russia’s feared armed forces are disgraced. Even a Vladimir Putin will at some point have to give an account to his people for the thousands of people who died, often young people, for a cruel war that violates international law and the meaning of which is not revealed to anyone.
The increasingly intolerable repression in Russia itself is driving the cultural and scientific intelligentsia abroad. They are fleeing politics of Orwellian proportions. The “Ministry of Truth” removes the “war” from public discourse by decree. Violators face a 15-year prison sentence. And all those people who do not want to or cannot flee are threatened with impoverishment due to sanctions and isolation.
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