On February 25, 2022
© By John Arkelian
On February 24, 2022, the unthinkable happened: Vladimir Putin launched a full-
Ukraine peace — Illustration © 2022 by Linda Arkelian
scale invasion of Ukraine by land, air, and sea…. Europe is at war — and not just any war, but a war of premeditated aggression. T he Prime Minister of Lithuania, Ingrida Simonyte, captured the grave magnitude of the situation: “Putin just put Kafka and Orwell to shame: [There are] no limits to [the] dictator’s imagination, no lows too low, no lies too blatant, no red lines too red to cross. What we witnessed… might seem surreal for [the] democratic world. But the way we respond will define us for generations to come.” Surreal is the word for it. With the appalling exception of the savage internecine conflict in the disintegrating Yugoslavia of the 1990’s, we all thought we were done forever with wars of aggression in Europe. And yet, for months, thanks to one ruthless autocrat, we have lived with the looming specter of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, only to see those worst fears realized.
For an analysis of Putin’s autocratic regime, his war of aggression against Ukraine, and what we should be doing about it, see: “The Shirtless Czar Who Became a Naked Aggressor and Cowed the West” at: https://artsforum.ca/ideas/the-wide-world