This invasion has been weighing on me. I keep having flashbacks to my time in Bosnia when we went in early to stop that genocide. I see all the faces of those who were brutalized, the mass graves; I heard the land mines going off all the time as some poor farmer or his animals stepped on them when trying to plow fields (I was part of an aircrew that crashed landed a UH-60 in a minefield; that puckers the sphincter) . I talked with a woman who pointed at the bus driver, saying he raped her as a guard when she was a prisoner only months earlier, but there was no justice to be found. I saw a woman trying to cook a meal over a small fire in her home. A home that was missing half of its walls and most of its roof. This was in winter by the way.
So while I know people are enthused about the Russian missteps and lack of progress, and it gives hope, I also know what's coming when Russia launches all of its troops, and not just a light invasion with inexperienced conscripts.
My heart breaks. I am so sorry for not only the people of Ukraine, but the Russian soldier and their family who is caught up in this and don't want to be there as well.
My experience with war, is that no one wins. And the brutality and suffering doesn't end when the bullets stop, but lasts for years later. I really hope, with all my heart, that the pressure not just from the rest of the world, but from his own oligarchs and military leaders push back hard enough to knock some sort of sense into Putin.