Timeless, the beauty of the hands,
that sculpt
the hands of God.
Hands that God created,
to sculpt his hands.
A hand with chisel,
to create a hand with sword,
A hand with hammer
to sculpt a hand that blesses.

Russia, the land that gave to the world the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky. I remember as a teenager getting myself completely immersed in Russian and Soviet literature, the writers would bring the mysterious, far away, cold, beautiful land right into the doorsteps of my imagination. I can still feel shudders of joy and anticipation remembering the short stories of Chekhov, the depth and intellect of Dostoyevsky, the grandness of Gorky and Tolstoy’s stories. There used to be a few Russian libraries in the nineties Kathmandu, of which I used to be a regular visitor and borrower. From them I learnt to write myself, express my thoughts in a way I never knew existed. It helped create a new me, a mini writer who wanted to publish a collection of his own works, poems and stories and so forth. In high school we used to enthusiastically study Russia’s history, the revolutions, War and Peace, geography. The largest country in the world spanning multiple continents, so many time zones, Siberian forests, the Tundra, Vladivostok – Moscow Trans-Siberian train, the Red Square in Moscow, St Petersburg.

But what has happened recently in Ukraine completely blows my mind, a completely different Russia, bitter, angry, divided, occupier, brute, hopeless, scared, bully, fear mongering and worst, threat to the world. This is far far away from the great minds Russia had and still possess. This is Russia that seems to be hijacked and altered to bring out the worst by a maniac stuck on his own ideological mad house full of fears, suspicions and terror. Yes they do have valid security concerns because of the attitude of the West and expansion of NATO, but why Ukraine? Go hit the West if that is what is your concern and if you have the galls. The price Ukrainians are having to pay for basically just to survive the onslaught of one of the most powerful military turned schoolyard bully and having to die fighting for their freedom with unprovoked attack from the Russians cannot be justified in this century, their hurt will never heal, it will surely sow seeds of contempt for tomorrow.

The situation that brought Russia to this corner of history surely has many contributing factors. But the main architect definitely is their current president, who has stolen the narrative of the Russian history and moulded into his own ideological footprint. Putin seems to be erudite on one version of history where everything revolves around Russia, whether it is good or bad, and sovereignty and safety of others do not matter. He has repeated this with many smaller neighbours around his country, so who will be next if he is not stopped? Russia’s neighbors have valid reason for fear and are scrambling to join NATO, another long lasting threat to the world peace.

Russia of great power, brain power, literature and civilisation seems to have vanished and replaced by a powerful bully. Or has the bully just came to surface? We hope when the war in Ukraine ends eventually, it would be a different nation that would find its virtues and peace.

The overwhelming times we live in right now, with so many things happening on the planet one after another, sometimes too many at once, political, un-necessary wars, natural disasters, COVID, lot of us are losing track, if you care to look, not knowing what is serious and what is just fleeting, what will change the world, whether the new Corona virus variant will kill en mass, Kardashains dramas continuing un-blemished and chewing up a significant portion of the Internet bandwidth worldwide, fear of war in the East. Just as the COVID news were slowly being pushed out of the front pages, Putin finally ended up brutally and fatally invading Ukraine after months denying he intended to do so, for his ideological, historical reasons, for the reinstating of the lost Glory of Russia and possibly slowly reviving the USSR from dead, the smaller country was an existential threat to him.

Flashback about three quarters of a century, Nazi Germany invaded Russia, drawing Stalin’s communist state fully into the second world war. Brave Russians died in millions fighting for their nation. Hitler set out to annihilate communists from the face of the earth, he did not think they were worthwhile humans to have rights to exist. Putin now says Ukraine is not even a proper country and does not have right to exist, many reckon the ironic similarity to the tones of the nazi ‘Fuhrer’ is unavoidable. It is clear Putin’s mind is still stuck in the glory days of the nineties when Russia dominated the Eastern Europe and dictated these countries. What if every country were to use the same logic and want to rewrite the borders and maps, and worse, act on it? Wouldn’t it take us back to the world of perpetual wars of the past?

And unfortunately, it appears that is how every nation in the earth has been created, with the sword and guns, not by peace. That is how the maps of the nations are changed, new ones created and some wiped off the map.

Suddenly in the last three weeks, a great nation that I respected and wanted to visit one day, is reduced to a raging, isolated bully, a threat, yet still feared; rather than a respectable opponent it used to be. It seemed to provide a counter to sometimes arrogant and hegemonial West. But Putin’s, and Russia’s standing now is in tatters, overnight, because of misguided adventures of a deluded man that has ruled Russia pretty much since its ‘independence’ thirty years ago. He was once the enigma for the West, the one that turned heads in the meeting room full of heads of states from the most powerful nations, an ideological scholar and heavyweight who knew his history and how to articulate it to the rest of the world. Russia has turned into a pariah today, with businesses leaving Russia like a sinking ship, ordinary Russians ostracised and targeted all around the world, whole world has turned against them, there seems to be no other way to try to pressurise and stop Putin, barring the military force.

What can we say about Putin now, what a fall from grace, an unimaginable disaster? The world listened to him and respected him, in a special way, in a fearsome, cunning and dangerous but intelligent and civil, charming guy in a way. He showed class, even Tonal Dump (name twisted around to make it more punchy for the 45th president) was his devout fan, still is. Now he is ranked together with the likes of just common dictators not different -in terms of his actions, from Saddam Hussein or Hitler. No matter what the reasons were, the actions do speak volumes, and are the only thing that matter eventually, have been the same.

Ukraine has been lashed out unprovoked, citizens killed, attacked while fleeing, hospitals bombed, for no damn reason other than speculations that it is a potential and present, mortal danger for Russia, a buffer zone from NATO soon to join them and turn into a launchpad against Russia. It is a steadfast belief of Putin and many Russians, and many would agree could have been true, but the world recognizes Ukraine as a free nation. Ukrainians are free people of their own accord, why should they listen to their formal masters or anyone else? It seems Putin has no end game now as his war, or as he likes to put it, military operation, has not gone as planned. So bomb Ukraine to submission? Will any of the Western countries actually come to its defence instead of just making noise from the outside and slapping sanctions after sanctions against Russia? And who is mostly hurting by the sanctions? Ordinary Russians who are largely against this invasion, who are scared to come out and voice as they will be dealt with brutally, though few have risked and done just that. To prevent a so called future danger to Russia, the present of Ukraine is being brutally crushed, and the world has not come to their defence for fear of Putin and his nukes. It is like watching a bully viciously mauling an innocent human being while the rest of the whole world is standing around simply watching.

To be fair on Russia and Putin for their side of the story, many would argue the West did contribute a lot to create a background for all of this, pushing NATO all the way Eastwards up to the former Soviet satellite nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, touching the Russian border. That is one of Putin’s main grievances, and he arguably had the balls to stand up for his beliefs as such and Russia’s national interest and future security. If someone was going circles around Australia with nukes we wouldn’t be just sitting here simply twisting and turning our heads around following the trajectory. But it was probably Russia’s threatening postures that drove these former Soviet states and Eastern Europe to go under the cover of NATO umbrella in the first place.

Also need to remind ourselves of the history repeating itself, this might be a cliche but has occurred in the history many times. As you would notice, the seeds for the second world war, were sown in the First one, with the Armistice with Germany. The excessive humiliation thrusted upon the Kaiser’s kingdom by the victorious allies was what created the back drop for the resentment and anger that ultimately led to creation of the the Third Reich and eventually Hitler, the rest is history. The West is punishing Putin, but the real suffers are ordinary Russians, and they will not easily forget this either as they are suffering greatly too. Someone truly said, if you fail to learn from your past, you will repeat your mistakes.