All War is a shadowy Monster – Worse this Ukrainian war is now revealed as the monstrous Hydra of mythology come to life!
The Lernean Hydra was, according to Greek legend is the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, a gigantic water-serpent like monster with nine heads, one of which was immortal. The monster’s haunt was the marshes of Lerna, near Árgos, from which the monster periodically emerged to kill the people and livestock of Lerna. Anyone who attempted to behead the Hydra found that as soon as one head was cut off, two more heads would emerge from the fresh wound.
War is much like that Hydra, except war is real……very, very real. Within a very short time it grows toxic heads spitting venom in all directions. You cut off one 'cost' head and what others grow out instead:-
Think of all the costs of this unlawful, disgusting invasion of the Ukraine: -
HYDRA HEAD ONE - The cost in lives –
- Over 2,656 innocent civilians murdered by the unlawful invaders by bomb, bullet, missile and more recently by starvation and execution. (Estimated figures as parts of the country are impossible to visit due to the ongoing war – one expects the figures are actually much higher).
- Over 3000 Ukrainian military have now been killed in the conflict bravely defending their country.
- Over 15,000 Russian soldiers (maybe 23,000 according to the UN), including a disproportional number of officers, have died in this conflict, many of whom do not wish to even be there.
To put that in proportion: -
That is as many soldiers Russia lost in nine years of the Afghanistan invasion!
That is three times more soldiers killed than were lost in the Chechen war!
HYDRA HEAD TWO - The Cost of the Displaced
ELEVEN MILLION Ukrainians cruelly ousted from their homes since the invasion started.
FIVE AND HALF MILLION OF THE ELEVEN MILLION displaced have fled their Homeland.
To put that in prospective that is 25% and 12.3% respectively of the total Ukrainian population of 43.7 million.
Absolutely appalling in our modern world.
To quote Ahsha Taryam - “The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.”
HYDRA HEAD THREE - The Intangible Cost of Suffering: -
In a long ago war, not a stone’s throw from the Ukrainian border, a great women, Florence Nightingale, declared: - “What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.”
We have no idea of the mental agonies and scars that have been inflicted by the brutish Russian soldiers who are raping mothers in front of their children, executing the elderly, setting fire to male prisoners, stealing food from the starving and inflicting all their other forms of barbarism and torture that is better suited to medieval times than our modern world.
Imagine for a moment the psychological and emotional trauma survivors of this war will endure for the rest of their lives.
I weep for humanity and wonder how we can have fallen so far in so short a time.
There are no winners in a war, just those who lose least.
According to CNN, Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine's prosecutor general, stated on Monday that her office is investigating 5,800 cases of alleged Russian war crimes, with "more and more" proceedings opening every day. Today I see that the names of ten Russian soldiers who have committed war crimes has now been officially named and shamed – check the internet news.
HYDRA HEAD FOUR – The Monetary Cost
This is the least important by any scale compared to human suffering but it is important to mention none-the-less.
President Zelensky of the Ukraine stated on Wednesday that the damage bill from the illegal Russian incursion has so far reached US$600bn. Zelensky said in a video address on “More than 32m square metres of living space, more than 1,500 educational facilities and more than 350 medical facilities have been destroyed or damaged,” he said. “About 2,500km of roads and almost 300 bridges have been ruined or damaged.”
HYDRA HEAD FIVE – The Value Lost
This is unquantifiable but consider the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower regarding modern warfare:-
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
These sentiments make you think of the opportunity cost lost by that moral vacuum, Vladimir Putin – a man who has built giant, penis shaped nuclear rockets (what would Sigmund Freud have thought?) but who has the ethical values of a salt water crocodile.
So from a single Hydra head of war ‘costs’ springs five other heads – and I expect some of you can think of others.
Well, I am just one man but with all your help I am trying to cauterise the fourth head of the hydra.
So far there is a US$600 billion cost of rebuilding the Ukraine infrastructure, plus if we add what countries like Poland are forking out to assist the refugee crisis we must be near US$1,000 billion or what people like to call a trillion dollars.
I am not in government circles but I have added up the oligarch seizures listed by various countries and news agencies in the last sixty days which reach close to US$450 billion.
LET’S SELL THOSE SIEZED OLIGARCH ASSETS TO RAISE THE BILLIONS NEEDED NOW.
Our petition is gaining momentum and even President Biden is now considering liquidating the crim-billionaire oligarchs’ assets. Yet who is the most deserving?
Like Putin’s ballot paper there is only one true candidate – the Ukrainian people.
Simply let’s do something because it is right for once - use the money to support the countries taking in Ukrainian refugees like Poland, give money to the Ukrainians for resettlement if they so wish, put money in a fund to rebuild the Ukraine after the Russians are defeated.
NO PETITION COULD BE SIMPLER REGARDING THIS WAR.
I recently signed a petition regarding Amber Heard that is on Change.org regarding abuse. However Putin is now the world’s greatest abuser. The definition of abuse is: -
“A person who treats another person or animal with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.”
On that basis Putin does not just abuse individuals, he works on a bigger canvas – he abuses nations.
According to the internet over 2 million people signed a petition against Amber Heard for her abusive behaviour so now I am thinking we should get this petition to 2 million people given Putin’s record of global abuse.
I HOPE YOU WILL SUPPORT ME AS YOU HAVE DONE IN THE PAST.
One final thought: -
“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.” – Paul Valery
Massive gratitude to all of you for spreading the message on all of your social media platforms - before, now and ongoing– you are all heroes and heroines!
love to all.
Neil