Of course someone returning to Kiev is a person returning to a country at war, a city bombarded at times by long range potentially lethal and almost always destructive weapons that mangle hard earned material development. There are still stores, electricity, groceries, entertainment, warm showers, internet, cell phones and some social civilities.

War is the total insanity of killing and being killed in primitive conditions, the grinding absence of any civility even in the boring pauses between absolute adrenaline fueled random chaos of the smell of friends, enemies and “collateral” human body parts and guts torn into shreds perhaps gathered into a plastic bag, perhaps laying twisted grotesquely and exposed with no decency of humanity left. The Ukrainian and Russian armies are at war knowing use of a cell phone is like a smoke round for a forward observers fire control. We, on the other hand, are on the Internet chatting on a social media platform. Americans treat the horror and misery in Ukraine like voting for a favorite singer on “Star Search”. Regardless of whatever Ukrainian corruptions have occurred in the past 3 decades, regardless of any NATO expansion insults … Vladimir Putin has initiated an action that has an insanity, horror and tragedy that represents the human capacity to revert to absence of the humanity of reason and regard for life … and into the absolute indescribable brutality and insanity of kill or be killed. War.