Russia has this morning commenced bombardment of strategic military assets in Ukraine, but they are calling it a ‘special operation of surgical attacks.’ Three days ago, Russia all but invaded Ukraine through ‘areas under separatists control’, again they called it ‘peacekeeping.’ How language sanitizes things!

On this Russia vs. Ukraine standoff, don’t lose yourself in the many convoluted details. It was never about NATO, Putin is simply punishing Ukrainians for rejecting his stooges and puppet regimes of old. Putin is weakening Kyiv to spur internal strife that will lead to a coup, call it an assisted coup if you like.

For all the words that are used to explain this, imperialism is the word we’re avoiding to use but defines the situation aptly.

And NATO/The West/Occident – are those friends, the group and allies who will be with you till you really need them, and they’ll blue-tick you or send you one-line encouragement and get busy till the storm is over. They then can reach out to continue with ‘business as usual.’