Putin has destroyed Russia for future generation

Today my friend in Kyiv, a mother who had just been separated from her children as they were evacuated out of the city, wrote on Twitter,

‘second time in 3 months I had to hand over my baby girl, not knowing if I will ever see her again. This is a pain only a mother can know. It’s more painful than all of war put together. The hatred in me grows every day.’

This brought home to me what Putin has now done, irreversibly, to Russia and to all Russians. Germans have spent the last 80 years apologising for what their predecessors did. Putin is cursing Russians with that same burden.

I grew up around that hatred. My grandmother’s whole extended family were killed in German concentration camps. My father was evacuated to America and didn’t really know his father until he was seven. My grandfather liberated Belsen concentration camp, and never really recovered from what he saw. That deep hatred lasts for generations, not years. It becomes embedded in the collective identity and culture.

Putin is lost in his own false propaganda and twisted version of history. He does not really live in the 21st Century so he didn’t realise Ukraine has been open to…