Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, goes Ola Rotimi’s highly comical satire. Were it not so tragic, and were Russia’s blunder into Ukraine to be framed by a playwright, (s)he probably would have written the play, Their Czar Has Gone Mad Again!
Nothing but comical madness could explain this brainless invasion, rationalized by not a few as might is right. Well, might hasn’t exactly worked for Russia and shame-faced President Vladimir Putin here!
On the contrary, greater force, casting Ukraine President Volodymir Zelenskky as some David facing down the Putin Goliath, has cooked Russia a hot, sizzling but humble pie. Putin blundered into a well-laid NATO trap!
But instead of facing up to its shame — that would be politically suicidal though for Putin — Russia has dug in in its infamy, bringing further disgrace to itself.
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Strongman Putin deluded himself he would run over Kyiv in a few days, capture Zelenskky for a shameful parade on the streets of Moscow, and implant a puppet, even more pliant than Belarus, in Ukraine — a fatal dream that has turned quick cold harsh!
First, on April 14, Russia lost Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet and veteran of many Russian naval triumphs. That Moscow sank (Moskva is Russian for Moscow) was earliest signal yet that Putin’s crazed imperialist dreams might just be sinking. But he and his henchmen were slow in thinking, hard of hearing and hazy of sight.
Then, after initial battle victories that saw it grab land and capture Kherson — the lone regional capital it corralled in nine months of a misguided campaign — it has since been suffering near-irreversible reverses. Now, Ukraine has won back Kherson, to Russia’s eternal shame.
But each time Russian troops are legitimately routed on the battle fronts, Russian generals order missiles and bombs be rained on civilian areas, deep behind the front.
Right now, Putin glories in raining such missiles on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, so much so that with the dawn of winter, millions of Ukraine folks would have no heaters to warm up their homes, no basic electricity to light up, no energy to pump pipe-borne water.
It’s the making of Putin’s Russia: a bristling outlaw and terror state, ready to go to any savage length to glory in its unfettered outlawry.
But in there, Putin himself is trapped as a hermit in Russia; and pariah outside its shores. What a classic primer in self-ruin and woe to country!