Invasion day +54 The Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentiev/ Reuters credited photograph of Putin at a virtual meeting on the Russian economy yesterday says it all. Appearing in today's papers the photo shows a man who, like the Buchan character Graf Otto von Schwabing in the novel Mr Standfast, 'has unleashed all the furies of hell and who has now had the furies of hell unleashed upon him.' We will not show Putin here however graphic the image.
The photo shows the face of a man morally defeated, a man who has lost the last dregs of respect the free world was able to scrape up for him, a man who once had immense power but has nothing left but the force of hell which has eaten into his eyes to leave hollow sockets of nothingness, an echo of the ghost that was to be seen in the walking dead of Assad in Abu Dhabi only a few long weeks ago.
Such is the fate of all dictators. Doomed to the dustpan of history, Putin can only fight stubbornly on, scraping together his equally dead allies in a bitter war of stupidity and blind self -delusion with repeating bloody narratives his own troops must be totally sick of hearing.
This may well be the semi-quiet before the storm, the only hope of preventing a 'Stalingrad slaughter' for everyone involved lies in the possibility that the Russian forces, demoralised and sickened of Putin, will refuse to fight. A slim chance. Many of them will die and they must know it. They have the power to stop the war, stop the horror and save their own lives as well as the thousands of others, mainly civilians, who will be caught up in the mayhem of Armageddon.
Today we publish a letter from Dr Lily Hamourtziadou, in which she encloses an article we commend to our readers, correspondents and supporters as our 'Letter of the Week'. It is an incisive and powerful resume of the appalling nature of war and we post it as a separate blog entry today.
Todays Letters:
From Dr Lily Hamourtziadou, writer, academic and Nobel Peace Prize nominee
Dear Hoggy,
'War...and Peace'
War narratives are about justifications, explanations, accusations.
But what should always be remembered are the names and faces of the innocent. The helpless and the poor, the millions of refugees, the bodies found and picked up from the streets, or buried in mass graves, unidentified, unclaimed.
We are the lucky ones, who witness the horror from afar, our TV screens, our newspapers, our computer monitors. We can watch in shock and awe, as it all unfolds, safe from the missiles, safe from the bombs, the only danger those flashing images in the reports hurting our eyes...
Without knowledge and remembrance of those who died such horrible deaths, how can there be accountability? And without accountability, how can there be lasting peace?
Pease keep up your work, it is so important, the world needs people like you and all your correspondents to keep speaking out.
Kind regards, Dr Lily Hamourtziadou Deputy Course Director and Link Tutor Criminology, Policing & Investigation and Security Studies Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Security Studies, Birmingham City University Dr Hamourtziadou is the author of 'Body Count; the war on terror and civilian deaths in Iraq.'
We will be providing a special insight into Dr Hamourtziadou and her work for a peace in a later post on the site.
Dear Dr Hamourtziadou,
We are very honoured that you have written for this blog providing such a detailed and incisive analysis of the effects of war and its terrible instruments. We commend our readers to view it in the separate 'Letter of the Week' that appears in our second post for today.
And we agree, it is the innocent civilians who always suffer the most. This war must be stopped. All war.
How we have arrived at this third, world affecting, war is hard to believe in the modern era. the barbaric medieval warfare being unleashed is hard to comprehend for rational human beings, conditioned by years of relative peace.
However we can, we have to add our voices to your inspiration and that of so many others who are loud voices on the global stage. You are making a difference, a voice of conscience and sense amongst the maelstrom of war and we can but take your lead and your inspiration and speak out whenever the opportunity arises. And when it does not.
We look forward to hearing more of your work in a future post.
With very best wishes,
Hoggy
Dr Hamourtziadou's article appears as our 'Letter of the Week' in a separate post: please do see it. Hoggy
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