Cogitation in the Time of War #8 - A meme, a summary and a personal thought

The image above is a new Russian meme, apparently doing the rounds in Moscow. Part of the photo widely shared all over the world, with Puting meeting his top 2 generals (Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff) but them sitting opposite ends of the (extremely) long table

This is a translation of the text (since I don't know Russian nor cyrillic) to English:

- "You are sitting closer to him. Hit [the fuck out of] him with something."

- "Hit him with what, from 20 meters?"

But day #8 of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine is gone and I'm just sharing some thoughts before going to bed.

The situation seemed to stabilise in the last days somehow. The advance into Kyiv is sill going but the situation is fluid so not even sure if the Russians are closer to encircle it or not. But they definitely continue to make progress in the South of Ukraine. After reading a Twitter thread about military vehicles maintenance and in the particular the tires, the different terrain might explain this difference: moving is swifter in the dry South and in the muddy North the improperly maintained vehicles get bogged down when leaving the roads.

So the Russians don't seem to be nearer to Kyiv but have captured Kherson, surrounded Mariupol and intensified the pressure on Sumy and Kharkiv (among other smaller cities/towns).

The Russian Air Force has intensified operations and more modern aircraft are being used. But the Ukrainian Air Force is still conduction operations itself and has reported shooting down enemy aircraft.

The worse development has been the increase of widespread artillery strikes, including cruise missiles, on the cities listed above as well as Kyiv. This is of course causing more civilian casualties.

On top of the that they are targeting more infrastructure with the goal to reduce communication for the Ukrainians. That seems to be working, with the besieged cities losing power and also internet access and that is one of the reasons why the flux of information coming from those has reduced compared to previous days.

The final consideration is a personal one and not related directly to the war.

For sure the last 2 years of a pandemic, that caused so many changes to so many people, has messed with us alI, mentally. I personally lost it 2 times, even though I was already facing mental issues from the previous year (my regular depressive episodes notwithstanding). But seeing how some people reacted during the pandemic and continue to react during 2022, and to this war specifically, I can only conclude that many people completely got their brain fried! People have really gone crazy! For fuck's sake...