Hell in Ukraine.

 Hell in Ukraine

We are now almost conditioned to the images, sights and sounds from Ukraine. A country that just wanted to be left alone in peace has been viciously and unforgivably attacked, murdered and blown apart at the seams. It is now in a state of complete devastation, grief, loss, death and utter disarray. Ukraine, a country that cherished its independence from the rest of Russia and its neighbours, is now suffering the penalty for its fundamental right to exist, its proud identity, its sovereignty as a country, its freedom to live together, its fondly protected ideals and ideologies but, above all, its safety and security. 

Yesterday saw the ultimate abomination in just over 17 or 18 days of conflict in Ukraine. A maternity ward in Mariupot hospital was bombed and demolished by a Russian killing machine that had nothing else on its mind but death and destruction. That they succeeded in carrying out their merciless act of heinous savagery and evil on a poor, unsuspecting emergency service beggars belief. We've now seen the horrific images and it hardly seems possible that one nation could behave in so repellent and repulsive a fashion and then just casually move on to their next target.

At the moment the whole of Ukraine is so anguished, severely troubled and broken that it may take years before the country can ever get back on its feet. The country is now trapped in such a tortured state that the rest of the world can only look on in stunned amazement and shock. Hundreds and thousands of families have been forced to leave their homes in a mass exodus and comparisons to the Second World War could quite easily be made. 

Vladimir Putin, quite the most violent and abhorrent human being of all time, is now the Russian tin pot dictator who now seems to be taking a sadistic pleasure in the misfortune and agony of others. Way back when, the likes of Lenin and Stalin would quite happily have embraced the mentality of a man so deranged and disturbed that you can barely bring yourself to mention his name in any context. 

But how did we ever get to this point? How on earth has a grim faced Russian president risen to such political prominence while every global government allows Putin to just wreak havoc? We must have thought we'd seen the back of this horrendous genocide at the end of the Cold War or the Bosnia and Kosovo conflagration at the beginning of the 1990s. Then, men and women were callously starved to death, humiliated in detention camps and then brutally beaten for no other reason that their history, culture and heritage didn't meet with the approval of those who hated them.

Russia does love a battle or war doesn't it? It certainly delights in revolutions and grave moments of crisis. Communism may now be just a dirty word to some but historians tell us that Russia simply adores its military hardware, the rumbling tanks and the marching soldiers in Moscow's Red Square. Ever since the likes of Estonia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania went their own way, Russia has been like a bear with a sore head, quite literally. Putin now stomps around his grand palace like a spoilt child who just wants his way all the time. He is a vile, inhumane barbarian who simply wants to take out his frustration on anybody who gets in his way. 

And still they leave in their droves. Millions have now been cruelly driven from their homes, estranged and displaced by a heartless tyranny. Here is a despicable man who should have been either locked up years ago or just killed in cold blood without any hesitation whatsoever. Russia has now been ostracised by most of the Western world and the current sanctions which are now hampering everything Russia tries to do, are now biting with a vengeance. 

We are now several weeks into a war that seems to be deteriorating by the day, week and month. At some point you suspect decisive action will be taken sooner rather than later. But the very infrastructure of Ukrainian society is being torn to shreds in a way that none of us could have possibly imagined. Across Ukraine's towns, villages and cities, the air of desperation, helplessness and despair can be seen on every law abiding Ukranian face. 

Vast numbers of mothers with babies and children are crammed onto packed trains while fathers, uncles and cousins can only look on as helpless by standers. They surge towards train carriages bulging with terrified men and women who scream, cry, sob uncontrollably and wail. They are trains headed to who knows where and there is a sense at the moment that Ukraine has now lost all control. We must hope that things will gradually improve in the goodness of time but a cold pessimism sends a shiver down your spine.

Some of us have observed more recent wars with the same degree of disbelief and incredulity. The wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and any country that just doesn't get on with each other, are now embedded in our consciousness. In Syria we witnessed piles of rubble and masonry that used to be schools, shops, cafes, restaurants and residential buildings. We saw wounded men and children with bloodied bandages dug out of the ground, weeping poignantly, some dead, some alive and some sickened beyond belief at what was happening to them.

We've seen charred ruins, twisted metal girders, smashed glass from once secured windows that used to be homes. We've seen hundreds of paramedics climbing through the wreckage, dust flying around them, ambulances screaming and improvised hospitals in small corners of a road or street. It has been indigestible, disgusting and disgraceful. But the horrors of Mariupot will linger in the memory for many months and years to come. They are the images that can never be erased from the human memory because they are not the ones any human would ever have thought conceivable.

Of course there has been outright condemnation and nothing but seething contempt for the dastardly deeds of one man who now thinks that World War Three sounds his only plausible alternative. But the trouble is that maybe Putin has underestimated the intelligence of the rest of the world in as much that a vast majority won't allow the Russian bully to do as he wishes. Ukraine has already established an admirable defensive fortress and the defiance has obviously come as a surprise to Putin and his cronies.

For the rest of Europe and the world these are troubling and worrying times but when hasn't this always been the case? Naturally we look after our families and friends because we simply have to. But for all the oil and gas reserves that Putin believes Ukraine is simply keeping to themselves, some of us know that there is a hidden agenda there. Putin just wants to flatten and burn Ukraine and its inhabitants to the ground. He wants to eliminate the perceived enemy in his sights. But the rest of the world will not have it. We will say once and for all. Enough is enough Mr Putin. Lay down your arms and stop immediately. You will be sentenced to life or a fate worse than death. Now.