Ready for war?

I wonder how big Vladimir Putin’s willy is. My initial feeling was that it is probably pretty small. He looks like the kind of man who would have a small one. He certainly acts like the kind of man who has a small one, what with all his macho posturing and artillery waving. He looks like he’s trying to prove a point. He looks like he’s trying to compensate for a deficiency in the y-front department by doing tough, manly things like building up tank divisions on borders and sending men he has never met out to fight, kill and die for him. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s got a whopper. A whopper of a chopper. A great big lamb cannon dangling between his legs. A fanny rat of epic proportions. And knowing what he’s packing down there he gets up every morning and just can’t resist swinging it around a bit, albeit via the phallic metaphor of a big, hard and very explosive cruise missile. But then again perhaps he’s just an average kind of guy. Perhaps his manhood is in perfect proportion to the rest of his body. Perhaps his tackle has got nothing to do with the status of the most powerful man in and around Russia, a man who dictates over the biggest country in the world. A man who, some suggest, is comfortably the richest in the world. Perhaps, with the biggest country in the world to flap about he doesn’t need anything more than a run of the mill, you know, average sized, sort of a todger. And perhaps I’m overthinking it. Perhaps I should just get to the point.

We all know that this Ukraine crisis is a crisis, but I wonder just how much of a crisis. Is it a crisis like the Suez crisis, or a crisis like the toilet roll crisis back in 2020? What a funny little word ‘crisis’ is. If we look at it with the cold eyes of a nation that doesn’t have Russia as a direct neighbour, we could almost be forgiven for not really caring. But care we must; even Boris seems to care, but that’s only because he’s so desperate for any kind of distraction. The best-case scenario for many would be for Russia to back off and for everyone to live happily ever after. But the worst-case scenario is World War III, which as worst-case scenarios go could be described as a bit of a bore. So, what is it that Russia wants exactly? Well, I can’t go into detail but underneath all the diplomatic horseshit lies the stark reality that Russia just wants to have Ukraine back. Oh, and the rest of Eastern Europe. The diplomatic Russia might stomp around in a suit, looking serious and grey, saying it wants freedom for pro-Russian Ukrainians and something about being in NATO, or not being in NATO (I’ve lost track), but you can be sure that the Russia in winter camouflage wants to shoot lots of people and blow lots of things up and just grab as much as it can, hold it close and never let it go again. Put simply, however big Vladimir Putin’s willy may be, he still wants a bigger one.

No-one should be surprised by any of this. Russia has always been a tricky customer. After all, it is the kind of country that celebrates having once had a man named Ivan The Terrible as a ruler. It is the kind of country that drinks vodka made chiefly from industrial disinfectant. It’s the kind of country where people actually choose to live in Siberia. And it’s the kind of country that knows it will never, ever lose a war. Sure, it may not necessarily win one either, but you tell me who on earth is going to make them surrender. It goes back a long way. Famously, only two idiots have been arrogant enough to think they could subdue the great bear: Napoleon and Hitler (both of whom may also have been blessed with questionable endowments). Napoleon was an idiot because he thought he could take Russia without mechanised transport, and Hitler was an idiot because he thought he was less of an idiot than Napoleon, had vast amounts of mechanised transport at his disposal…………and still fucked it up. The results amounted to a spectacular brace of hubris masterclasses and certainly served as a warning to anyone else: just don’t bother, Russia is very, very big, very, very empty and you’d be fighting Russians, who are by and large very, very much harder than your average western hemisphere liberal. You should always be careful to show Russia an awful lot of respect; even if you don’t mean it.

So, since World War II most sensible people have kept away. Indeed, quite a few of the smaller wars fought by the west since then have been conducted largely so that they wouldn’t have to engage Russia directly in some form or other. Biden and Johnson and their fat European friends have pledged to send in some forces as a deterrent, as well as make lofty threats of sanctions; threats that you can’t imagine Putin will really care all that much about. He is well into a ten day military exercise with his good friends, the Belarusians, and if they go well he will have wound up his enemies so tight that something will have to give – and one senses the Russians could play these games all day long. They say that it will all die down with the help of diplomatic talks but surely our part can’t be to just send Liz Truss out there; you’d be better off sending Joan Collins. And as for Joe Biden, well what exactly is he going to do? There are thought to be 100,000 Russian troops hanging like granite jawed vultures over Ukrainian shoulders right now: can America afford to match that? I doubt it. I suppose he could decide not to invite Putin to his birthday party as punishment, but he must surely realise that if or when Vlad does give the go ahead to invade a hell of a lot of damage will be done long before a single American troop gets to crap themselves on the front line. Even then, you can throw an awful lot at the Russians, and they will take it. They soaked up about as much as a nation can during Operation Barbarossa back in 1941: they got absolutely hammered to start with but they just kept coming back; coming in waves, at any cost, until the Motherland stretched all the way to Berlin. And they have never forgotten that – they were led then by a man with an iron purpose and a casual disregard for humanity, and they are led by another today. I wonder how big Stalin’s willy was. Doesn’t much matter: they say it’s not so much the size but how you use it. These are troubling times, better watch out. Just in case. Better be ready for war.

G B Hewitt. 13.02.2022