BBC's Russian Editor, Steve Rosenberg, quoting a retired Colonel on Russian state sponsored TV:
Referring to Ukrainian soldiers, he (the colonel) noted: "The desire to defend their motherland very much exists. Ultimate victory on the battlefield is determined by the high morale of (the Ukrainian) troops who are spilling blood for the ideas they are ready to fight for." In saying "the desire to defend their motherland very much exists", he is saying something quite extraordinary, that their cause is real, not whipped up, therefore their desire is pure.
In this quote is a key to why I think wars are fought at all. Men lay their lives on the line to defend the motherland, that is, the land of their birth and the land of their mothers And they are willing to spill blood (their own and others') for ideas or a noble cause.
Likewise the Russians are also willing to spill their own blood and others' for an idea or worthy cause. In their case that idea is that the Ukrainian's are fascists (or Nazi sympathizers). But what if that idea winds up being bogus, like the American idea that the Vietcong were all amoral, godless (and even worse) non-white (!) (and therefore less than human) Communists who were a threat to the American motherland and the noble cause of democracy. That idea did not hold up. In fact, to the American public, increasingly, it was looking more and more like the United States was forfeiting its humanity, committing terrible atrocities, just like the Russians are doing now.
So, what exactly are the Russians fighting to defend their motherland from? (It kind of looks to me like they are fighting their own shadow, or is it Putin's shadow?)
The war the Russians are fighting is on two fronts: The colonel outlines these very clearly. He acknowledges on state TV, that they are losing the war of ideas on the home front. When the idea that motivated the invasion or "operation" is lost, the war in Ukraine will end. It has to. "The biggest problem with [Russia's] military and political situation," the colonel continued, "is that we are in total political isolation and the whole world is against us . . . there is a coalition of 42 countries (against us)." The implication is that the rest of the world doesn't buy into the idea that Ukrainians are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. (I would wager the colonel doesn't buy it either.)
Poof! Where is the motivation to spill Ukrainian blood and against what are we (Russians) defending the motherland? This is the question that is written all over the colonels face.
This retired colonel may have stuck his neck out too far, but I predict that this is a sign that Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine is unraveling.
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.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61484222
(Article changed on May 17, 2022 at 7:24 PM EDT)
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