Putin His Money Where His Mouth Is

 We're on step closer to a global war because of this nut.

Vladimir Putin declared the Russia recognizes Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics and sent Russian troops into the two Ukrainian provinces to protect them from . . . Ukraine.  He has also  authorized a military operation in Ukraine, insisting that Donetskian and Luhanskian territorial claims extend into areas of Ukraine that would justify Russian expansion into the country.

Oh yeah, there's more.  Putin says that there is no real Ukrainian state or nationality - it was a fiction created by Lenin at the dawn of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, even though evidence of a Ukrainian nation goes back centuries, and the current lands within Ukrainian borders have historically been dominated by the Ukrainian people - a claim once disputed by Adolf Hitler, who insisted that the Germanic people originated in that area and so Ukraine was historically part of Germany.  Now Putin is saying that Ukrainians are in fact Russians.  The incoherence of this belief is best explained in this article.

President Biden has imposed severe sanctions on Russian oligarchs, while Germany has suspended the Russo-German gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea.  And now that it appears a war has in fact begun - explosions have been reported in Kiev  . . . Western leaders, including Biden, are now asking us to prepare for austerity . . . and Russian cyberattacks.  

At this point, it doesn't seem to matter when the pandemic will end.

The 2020s are shaping up to be the worst decade of human history.