How to break an arm
Do-it-yourself Google searches
In the depths of the Vietnam War quagmire, the president of the United States at the time, a Texan named Lyndon Johnson, once complained about all the news overwhelming him: “I feel like a jackass caught in a Texas hailstorm. I can’t run. I can’t hide. And I can’t make it stop.”
We wonder if Vladimir Putin feels the same way today.
His completely elective invasion of Ukraine—aka Putin’s War—has him in a bind. He has implied (or the West has inferred) that he could use nuclear weapons. The West has warned against, as you can imagine.
Surely Vlad the Impaler didn’t think he’d ever have to use nuclear weapons—or threaten to use them—to conquer Ukraine. Yet here he is.
And here his country is. As we read dispatches from the front:
■ After Comrade Putin announced last week the “partial mobilization” of the population to fight Ukraine, Newsweek reported that “how to break an arm at home” exploded with Google’s users in Russia.
That’s one way to get out of military service.
■ Another way is to not be available for that service. Western media says Russian men are fleeing the country, going to Europe (if they can get there) or the Middle East (if they can afford it).
This newspaper’s wire services reported that “large numbers of Russians rushed to book one-way tickets out of the country while they still could” after President Putin announced the mobilization.
“Flights filled up quickly and the prices of tickets for remaining connections skyrocketed, apparently driven by fears that Russia’s borders could soon close or that Putin could later announce a broader call-up that might send many Russian men of fighting age to the war’s front lines.”
The price for airplane tickets from Moscow to Istanbul or Dubai climbed over $9,000 on Wednesday.
For a one-way trip. ■ According to CNN, the government in Moscow says the punishment for refusing the draft is 15 years in prison.
You know what else gets you 15 years in prison in Russia? Protesting the war in Ukraine.
But that’s what thousands of Russians did last week after Mr. Putin’s call-up. They took to the streets in many Russian cities, defied the law and police batons, and cursed the little KGB man in office.
Those watching, and counting, say thousands were rounded up at these protests. While fathers and sons were rushing to the borders to get out of the country, mothers were being arrested at protests. And talking to the worldwide media as well.
One must wonder what the regime at the Kremlin thinks about that news.
■ Bloomberg reports that authorities in Russia had come in the middle of the night to some homes, rounding up conscripts.
“They took my 40-year-old son at night,” somebody named Antonina told the service, without giving her last name. “Everyone who was taken in our village was over 40, not a single young one. They’ll grab anyone. There’s total panic and confusion.”
If the Red Army is rounding up middle-aged men as conscripts, then Mr. Putin’s troubles are deeper than maybe even he suspects.
■ And if at first war doesn’t succeed, try, try again with a sham election.
The Russians have decided to hold “voter referendums” in several eastern regions of Ukraine, and actually hold partial control in more than one of them. The Russians are asking their friends in the invaded country to approve referendums to join Russia, according to the BBC. But the voting infrastructure hasn’t been set up yet—imagine if the governor of this state suddenly called an election with no time to print ballots or arrange the voting sites—but don’t worry. The Russian government will take care of everything.
Reports say the vote will happen door-to-door. Authorities will go to each house and hand out paper ballots to residents.
Why, of course. Who needs secret ballots when the occupying powers in each city can more efficiently get the right result? Just sign here, and vote yes. You have a nice house here, it would be a shame if anything should happen to it.
Of course, everybody expects the referendums to be overwhelmingly in favor of the Russians. Remember how Saddam Hussein used to get 99 percent of the vote every election? Which made some of us wonder how crazy-brave that 1 percent must’ve been.
Democracy is hard and messy, at least Western democracy. The Russians have found a way to make it easy and clean.
It reminds us of the old story of the new communist student who tried to convince his capitalist friend in the West that the communist peoples in Asia and parts of Europe enjoyed real freedom.
“After all,” he explained, “how free can your elections be if the wrong side wins?”