POLITICS
My Sister-in-Law Is Trying To Flee Ukraine Right Now. I’m Heart-sick for Her, and Furious At Putin
Right this minute, my 47-year-old sister-in-law, Nataliia, and her two daughters are driving gridlocked and pot-holed Ukrainian roads, trying to reach one of Ukraine’s borders. Like tens of thousands of others fleeing Vladimir Putin’s invasion, they haven’t slept in days.
Politics isn’t my thing — I write humour — but there’s nothing funny about the chaos and misery that Putin has unleashed in Ukraine. When I think of Nat’s plight, and the plight of millions of other Ukrainians who are, at this moment, hiding out from the Russian army’s attacks in subway stations or cold basements, I feel heart-sick and helpless.
I also feel white-hot fury at Vladimir Putin for inflicting this horror on peace-loving people in his effort to somehow restore the old Soviet Union. I’m furious, too, at the harm his misinformation campaign has inflicted on ordinary Russians who deserve to know the truth.
Apparently, some young Russian soldiers captured by the Ukrainian army were found to be simply bewildered. They’d believed, from propaganda on state-sponsored TV, that Ukrainians would welcome them as “liberators” from their supposedly “drug-abusing, Nazi government.” This misinformation fuelled support for an…
