You know, the conquest and enslavement of Ukraine -- with its natural and human resources, its geographic position in Europe, its brains, its access to the sea, and its extraordinarily rich breadbasket -- was in the 18th century one of the key factors that enabled tsarist Moscow to proclaim itself the Russian Empire.
Through control over Ukraine, it achieved unprecedented power and remained, in its various forms, a scourge of Europe right up to very 1991.
Today, looking at these photographs (and this is the Russian oil port of Tuapse burning again tonight) I find myself understanding clearly that the Russian Empire in many ways began with Ukraine, and it is Ukraine that will bury it.
And that will be the ultimate act of historical justice for all the centuries of enslavement, Holodomors, savage bloodshed, and isolation from the civilized world.