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For those who feel wounded by my use of the term “Putinista” or my derision, please be advised that life is not black and white, and is certainly not well-ordered into good guys and bad guys, whose identities are easily discernable. So, speaking of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was not due to any of the “reasons” provided in your narrow-minded narrative. If it was because Ukraine wanted to join NATO, and NATO indicated it might entertain that possibility, which might become a reality in ten or twenty years, then why hasn’t Putin invaded Finland (beyond the eastern portion that Russia has occupied since the 1940s). If it’s because he believed that the West wants to carve up his country for its mineral wealth, that was not only possible, but extremely doable in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. But the West instead tried to help the moribund former super power, unsuccessfully.

Putin should be given kudos, for when he relieved Yeltsin of his responsibilities, which he was not up to, due to incompetence and drunkenness, he managed to right the Russian ship of state for a long time. But that was then. This is now. And Putin has become more and more overbearing and dictatorial over the two decades of his rule. In February of 2021, he attacked Ukraine, not V. Zelensky, because he thought it was easy and he felt he could. So did the West. He had this giant, well-equipped military, which everyone thought would make short work of Ukraine, whose President he took for a lightweight, and so did the West. When instead Zelensky did his impression of Churchill, and the Ukrainians rallied and fought back courageously and with ingenuity and determination, The West was embarrassed into helping Ukraine. Sh!t happens sometimes.

A word about the Eastern provinces. Ukrainians are married to Russians everywhere in Ukraine, going back generations. Russian is spoken interchangeably with Ukrainian in many places, including VZ’s home town. VZ himself is a native-speaker of Russian, toured Russia with his comedy troupe, and recorded Sluga Narodu (Servant of the People) mostly in Russian. There is a dense Russian-speaking population in these Eastern provinces. Unfortunately, in part due to Putin’s instigations, and also due to friction between the native-speakers of both languages in that region, civil war erupted and Putin stoked it for eight years, shortly after successfully instigating the “secession” of Crimea, and bragging about how he managed to engineer a fake secession movement to bring that about. Rather than negotiate in good faith a peace in the Eastern provinces with Ukraine’s new President, he chose to invade.

A word about Crimea. It was once part of the Greek empire (pagan), once part of the Khazar empire (Jewish), once part of the Czarist empire (Orthodox), once part of the Soviet Union (communist). It’s contiguous to Ukraine, has been part of Ukraine before, lately was part of Russia, and is now contested territory between Russia and Ukraine. Really, it’s never been Russian, but after Stalin forcibly relocated the Tartars and their families, he made it into a playground for Soviet citizens in between ten-year sentences to hard labor. Over time, the Tartars came back. They are back. The Russian fleet is gone from Sebastopol, and life goes on.

The war in Ukraine is neither being won nor lost at the moment, which itself is a triumph. Russia expected an easy cakewalk, and they instead are stuck fighting a weaker but more determined opponent in the Ukrainian people almost two years in.

Recently, our country was invaded by crazed savages. We are in the process of ending said crazed savages’ reign of terror over the Gazans. We’re winning. They have us outgunned in the UN, but not on the ground. We’re a tiny country, but we know how to fight. Almost two years ago, Ukraine, a big country, was attacked by its giant neighbor. Unsurpringly, Russia is not a pushover. Surprisingly, neither is Ukraine, though the surprise has not aged well.

I’m no neo-con or globalist, but as a citizen of a tiny country that just got invaded, I am rooting for the invaded country over the invading country. I am also rooting for America to beat back its invaders and restore sovereignty over its borders. I’m also an American and plan to vote for Trump via absentee ballot.

But for G-d’s sake, get an attention span. Land wars take blood, sweat, tears and time, and they’re about the people who are being hurt by it on both sides, not their Presidents. The American Civil War took four years. WW I took four years. WW II took about six. And so on and so forth. Israel managed to win a multi-front war in six days. That’s the exception that proves the rule. Ukraine will take time, and mountains of bodies and ruined cities and land. No way out except through.