The Peanut Gallery: Ukraine Stoically Acknowledges Two Years of Defiance
February 24, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Today we’re celebrating a grim anniversary.
Please remember that I know nothing.
Ukrainians are weary and worried that American military assistance will cease, but they continue to fight with determination, ingenuity, and skill. Ukraine’s air defenders are dropping Russian planes from the sky while Ukrainian drone- and missile operators sink Russian ships.[5] And Ukrainian soldiers are fighting for their positions against Russian “meat assaults” using drones in novel ways as well as the artillery, tanks, and traditional weapons of war available to them.
The Ukrainian Air Force will receive its first F-16s in the coming months, and Ukraine’s European allies are racing to make good deficiencies in other war materiel.[6] American military assistance remains essential—only the United States has the resources to give Ukraine right now what Ukraine most needs.[7] If the United States, in the end, withholds that aid, then the situation can become very grave indeed.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-24-2024
Happy two-year anniversary, everybody! I don’t know if it’s right to cheer or cry, probably both at the same time because War is weird. Y’all remember the fields of abandoned tanks in those early days? Scattered like little armored presents across the Ukrainian countryside, fuel pawned for vodka. Even the grunts' thought Putin was bluffing.
He wasn’t, though. And so here we are.
War is a cyclical story about the death of pageantry. We set out with such noble ideals, only to watch as Lancelot debases himself as a brigand; the Red Baron falls to a drone; and a culture sink into a self-imposed dystopia.
Russians (..) are not the Red Army hordes wrapped in the triumphant banners of World War II victories that Putin and his propagandists pretend them to be.
The Kremlin needs to tap into this because it’s the foundation of their national identity. Run up to any Russian and scream, “What’s your thoughts on the Soviet Union?!” and you’ll likely get your assed kicked. Approach them politely, however, and speak in a calm and sane volume and they’ll probably shrug and gesture vaguely at the depression cubes the USSR shat out by the dozen. Then shrug again. It’s about then that you’ll likely realize they don’t speak English.
Putin, though, speaks Russian, and he knows everyone has a grandparent who fought in the Great Patriotic War. Everyone heard stories. And now we’re watching as Putin tarnish that proud lineage with his war of imperial aggression.
As that facade fades, as videos of Russians hanging their own surfaces, as they steal children and threaten thermonuclear war, I think we’re all getting a real good look at the world Putin presents. And you know what? I think what he’s offering is dogshit, and it don’t think people are buying anymore. At least speaking from here in the States, Trump looks to be going down in flames.
In New York, former President Donald Trump's bills are racking up. The judgment in his civil fraud trial was officially entered with the court today — $454,156,783.05 for him alone, plus Trump is now accruing over $100,000 of post-judgment interest each day.
This is on top of the recent $83.3 million verdict against him in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.
That boy’s going to have to liquidate his holdings. He broke. You know that little Monopoly guy with his pockets out and they’re empty? That’s Trump right now. There isn’t a bank ON EARTH stupid enough to loan that fool half a billion dollars.
My point is that people like Trump seem strong, they seem unstoppable because...well, they’ve never been stopped before. Trump has delayed, bribed, or forestalled every consequence in his life, and Putin is a man so steeped in his delusions that he is mentally incapable of admitting fault. Tyrants are always more brittle than they appear.
By killing Navalny Putin is going through a similar spiral as Trump. He is eliminating even the pretext of legitimacy in next month’s elections. Between the war, between the crackdowns and revolts, and the disqualification of candidates, even the blindest babushka in Siberia can see this election is a sham. Before it was a performative piece, one with ragged costumes and a half-drunk cast, but still technically a play. Now it’s just a bald man in a nuclear suicide vest reading numbly from a script.
War is the death of pageantry. It’s the slow stripping away of obfuscating symbols, a collective refocusing on universal truths: Putin is a murderer, Trump is a fraud, and Ukraine will win.
Russian authorities continue to illegally deport Ukrainian civilians, including children, to Russia under the guise of rehabilitation programs. The Russian “We Help Ours” organization stated on February 22 that Russian authorities deported a group of 20 Ukrainian children and their mothers from occupied Luhansk Oblast to a sanatorium in Moscow Oblast.[79]
The Russian army’s discipline is deteriorating. Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this war to an end.
‘Q’ for the Community:
This war started two years ago. What’s your memory of February 2022?
Join the conversation of on /r/TheNuttySpectacle!