Putin’s Holocaust

By Howard Bloom

Is Vladimir Putin using a policy of what US and NATO officials call “slow annihilation”[i] on the Ukraine? And if he is, why is he doing it? Why are Putin’s troops performing what even Putin-lover Donald Trump calls a holocaust?[ii]

Vladimir Putin’s first week of war in the Ukraine did not go well. Putin took only one Ukrainian city: the southern city of Kherson. When Putin first invaded, he apparently intended to take Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, in 24 hours. Eight days later, Kiev was still stubbornly resisting Vladimir Putin’s army.

To solve this problem, Putin sent a 40-mile-long convoy of military trucks, artillery, vacuum bombs, rocket launchers, and tanks to Kiev. An overwhelming force. But that convoy was bogged down for days, making no progress.

Then Putin apparently became frustrated. If Ukrainians would not come out on the streets and welcome his troops with flowers, he was determined to smash their cities to bits. So increasingly, Russia has been attacking civic buildings, apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals[iii] driving over 1.5 million women and children to flee to neighboring countries in just the first seven days of the invasion.

Meanwhile, the economic sanctions that we and our allies had imposed were taking their toll. The ruble plunged. A year ago a ruble was worth 20 cents. Today a ruble is worth less than a penny. On February 26th, Russians waited for hours at ATM machines to yank out their savings. Those were early signs of an economic crash. And reportedly over 8,000 people were arrested in just eight days[iv] for demonstrating against Putin’s war in over 35 Russian cities.

Anti-war demonstrations also flourished on Twitter and Telegram. One Russian online petition to stop the war got more than a million signatures in just its first few days.

Meanwhile 145 members of the UN General Assembly voted to demand that Russia stop the war.[v] Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, called for the end of the violence. Topping all off, a Russian businessman offered a bounty of a million dollars to any Russian military officer who does…