The first casualty when war comes is truth. Attributed to California isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson (and others, starting with Aeschylus in about 450BC.

Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100), Statement by Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption

Putin’s reaction to shame has become my greatest obsession & fuel for deep instinctive fears. I know, deep in my bones, that humiliating a powerful man is the worst possible result. The energy 4 revenge will be potent & vast. I’m scared. & I hate that I know this. But it’s real. A Tweet by Julia Sweeney @JIsbackintown fading into oblivion with acceptance Los Angeles, CA

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic Attributed to Stalin.

Yeah, it is true. We are now in another devastating European war. It makes one want to ask, What is it with these White Europeans? Are they just the most violent people on the planet? It’s pretty hard not to come to that conclusion, about two/thirds of mass shootings in the US are by White men of European heritage, after all. On the other hand, maybe it is just because White men have access to the best weapons, we’ve been fighting wars ever since we all lived in Africa, since we were hunter-gathers and this is just another chapter. And I want to quickly point out that it is not everybody, that it is always only one man, but I think that one man is a distillation of the crowd. This time it’s Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin who is the angel of destruction.

There is no good news really but, if there were, it would be that Ukraine is rewriting the book on how to wage a 21st-century propaganda war. They are brilliant. On the propaganda front, at least, Ukraine seems to be doing everything right. They are constantly showing stories of Ukrainians fighting back and winning despite the odds, starting with the nine guys who gave their life protecting Snake Island and the pilot who shot down six Russian jets.

The propaganda on President Volodymyr Zelensky is especially good with pictures and videos of him defending the country from the trenches versus pictures of Putin sitting at the end of the longest table on earth with three minions, nervously huddled at the other end. In a video, in response to the US offer to evacuate him, Zelenskyy says “I Need Ammunition, Not A Ride”. Whenever damage is shown, it is damage to Ukrainian civilian facilities or Russian military assets (to use the current jargon). Still, as good as their propaganda is, it probably will not be enough to save the country. We all hope Ukraine wins this war and even though it is unlikely without NATO air support, it might be possible if Ukraine gets enough high-tech weapons. Especially if the war drags on and turns into a guerilla war which, undoubtedly and unfortunately, will result in even more people dying.

Russia is bogged down in the north and that has been encouraging if you’re rooting for Ukraine like I am. But Russia can still throw a lot more into their attack and they can’t all be as unprepared as the first wave, seemingly, was. They have oodles and oodles of room to escalate and nastiate the war. The Russians can bring in more men and material and direct more firepower to attack civilian targets. Right now, the Ukrainians feel like they are winning but Putin has shown himself to be a dreadful enemy who is capable of pursuing a burnt earth strategy similar to the campaign Russia waged in Chechnya. But that will take time, time that Joe Biden is counting on to make his sanctions effective.

When I listened to President Biden’s State of the Union speech, I was very impressed. I completely agreed with heavy sanctions and supplying weapons to the Ukrainians as a way to fight Putin. Establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine seemed too provocative but I’ve changed my mind after reading a Tweet Thread from Garry Kasparov, former Russian – and now a citizen of Croatia (go Croatia) – and, as he says, 13th World Chess Champion. Kasparov thinks that Putin won’t stop attacking people and taking territory until he is stopped. In that regard, he is like Hitler or, to use an example with less political valence, Alexander the Great.

I think Kasparov is right in that assessment and I expect that President Biden does also and, I should add, that is a position that seems to be catching on. What doesn’t seem to be catching on is the logical conclusion, at some point, Putin has to be stopped and it will continue to get harder.

Putin’s war on Ukraine has entered its next phase, one of destruction and slaughter of civilians. It is also a part of Putin’s World War, a war on the civilized world of international law, democracy, and any threat to his power, which he declared long ago. The free world’s denial of this war and decades of appeasement allowed Putin to threaten and conquer abroad while turning Russia into a police state. The price to stop him has gone up every time he has advanced unchallenged. Ukrainians are paying that price in blood.

If Putin is not stopped now, not prevented from destroying Ukraine and committing genocide against its people, there will be a next time and it will be in NATO, with an unprecedented nuclear threat. Do not let Putin escalate again in a time and place of his choosing.

Lindsey Graham Tweeted Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this end is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service, and every liberal Blogger and Tweeter I read went ballistic, shouting out that he was not only wrong but criminally wrong. But they are wrong, not criminally wrong, but wrong. The best way out of this would be to kill Putin or exile him at, say, to the Medvezhyi Islands, and somehow move Russia back into the democracy camp. But that would be very hard to do, I imagine Putin is the most protected human in the world. Still, I guess, we can hope.

Here are a couple of two contrasting propaganda pieces that should help us hope.