The martyrdom of uncertainty
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for more than 50 days now and the outlook varies depending on who is expressing it. There are too many lethal risks hanging over the European atmosphere to be able to think calmly and even-handedly about the coming events. We are suffering the martyrdom of uncertainty that plagues the consciences of European citizens who are witnessing with great indignation and even greater impotence a shameful and unacceptable spectacle.
Many young people in Spain claim that Europe cannot look the other way in the face of the barbarity being committed by the Russian bombings, ordered by an increasingly over-analysed Vladimir Putin, against the Ukrainian civilian population. When any of these young people are encouraged to take the first step themselves and go to Ukraine to fight the Russian invader, the response is that that is what the army is for.
Nor would their mother be willing to let her Spanish son go to fight in Ukraine with the high likelihood of serious injury or even death. European and American political leaders calculate every step they take with their sanctions against the Putin regime and look after their own interests far above the thousands of people who have been killed, injured or women and children who have had to flee their homes destroyed by Russian bombs and seek refuge elsewhere in Ukraine or in neighbouring countries.
Such current interests may bear some comparison, used these days without qualms, with what happened to the Sudetenland, betrayed by the British premier Neville Chamberlain and the French Edouard Daladier to please Hitler, who shortly afterwards invaded the whole region, demonstrating his true intentions, driven by European weakness. It is not easy to assimilate that in the 21st century bombs are destroying the lives of millions of people in Ukraine and the European reaction is to provide, with restraint and discretion, weapons to resist the waves of Russian units with old armoured vehicles and tanks, a primitive communications system, poorly planned logistics, a vulnerable chain of command and clear evidence of shortages and deterioration of material and troops due to rampant corruption.
More than 50 days later, the uncertainty of what could happen has been escalating and, as the real events unfolded, diminishing in its effects to bring us face to face with the horror of the most cowardly massacres committed in Bucha, Borodianka, Mariupol, Kharkov and many others that are still unknown. The great uncertainty is whether Putin will use tactical, half-kiloton or one-kiloton, limited-range nuclear weapons. Zelenski is desperate for more weapons to hold out so that he can maintain more hope than uncertainty.