A classical music good friend of mine held a workshop final August in Europe, and did a collection of movies posted on social media surrounding his travels. The movies are a strolling travelogue of a metropolis with cobblestone streets, and the standard central European gaggle of scooters, trolley, taxis, and pedestrians.
These movies, at the moment, have a wistful high quality, as a result of my good friend had taken a visit to Lviv, Ukraine. The video footage is a time capsule of a vibrant metropolis with espresso retailers, tradition, leisure, and historical past.
The previous few days have been filled with uncertainty and, frankly, terror for Ukrainians as they’ve confronted an onslaight of arms from neighboring Russia. Lviv has change into a serious way-station for about 200,000 residents as they’ve made their approach west to evacuate to components past.
Now, there have been loads of political, financial, and army countermeasures delivered to bear on the Russian regime. It’s, nonetheless, instructive to notice one statistical development that has evinced itself over the previous couple of weeks.
Russia has now change into the world epicenter for COVID-19, in response to many world knowledge aggregation websites. Some 350,000 folks have died through the pandemic, and whereas many nations have flattened the curve, the identical can’t be mentioned for Russia. Greater than 700 folks a day are shedding their lives in Russia, a quantity which has gone up previously month.
Evaluate that to the US, which has seen its dying numbers taking place during the last month, a lot in order that the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention yesterday issued new suggestions concerning the necessity for carrying masks in lots of indoor eventualities.
What’s happening right here? I feel the Putin administration has used this incursion into Ukraine as a distraction to take consideration off home affairs. It’s, frankly, an immensely silly threat due to the flagrancy of the aggression. It’s even prompted Germany to roll again its self-imposed ban on arms gross sales to ship anti-tank and Stinger missiles to Ukraine.
I simply hope that the approaching struggle in Ukraine doesn’t outcome within the type of destruction that has marked the current army adventures in Iraq and Syria. There are too many lovely cities like Lviv in hurt’s approach.
