The Tragedy of Mariupol

As a result of yesterday’s bombing of the residential areas of Mariupol, 30 people have died and over 100 were wounded. Just imagine the horror these Ukrainians experienced. They are sitting at home, enjoying their weekend, playing with their kids, doing the dishes, chatting on the phone, reading blogs online, and all of a sudden there are explosions everywhere, their houses are being shelled, buildings catch fire, there is death and destruction everywhere.

There is absolutely no reason for this to be happening. Russians decided that it would be a good idea to bomb these peaceful residential areas, so they went and bombed them. And then left. Of course, there is no reason to hope that they will not do the same thing tomorrow or the day after. And there are other cities close to Ukraine’s border with Russia. They can be bombed, too.

Obama, Beiden and Merkel have all made statements about the bombing of Mariupol and promised more sanctions. Because the previous sanctions have worked so well, obviously. The tragedy of the situation is that there isn’t anything anybody could do to stop Russians and prevent another Mariupol, another Volnovakha (a site of a recent terror attack against peaceful Ukrainian civilians), another Donetsk, another Slovyansk, etc. from happening. As I’ve been saying this entire time, what Russians are doing is not reactive. The West keeps imposing impotent sanctions because there is nothing else anybody can think of. 

Have you heard, by the way, that, for the first time since 1990, Russians have refused American help in guarding and keeping safe Russia’s nuclear arsenal? Americans have been paying enormous sums (about $2 billion up to now + $100 million scheduled to be paid this year) to Russia each year to ensure that Russia’s nuclear arsenal didn’t end up being sold piecemeal on the black market. This was an extremely successful effort at collaboration between the US and Russia. And now it’s over.

In view of the crisis, Russia has no money to invest in this program. Yet it refuses to go ahead with a system that’s been working beautifully for 25 years. Because pretending that Russia is the US’s equal on the world arena is more valuable than keeping nukes safe.