How Biden Humiliated Putin
One year after fighting, “Handsome Joe” was honored in Kyiv. This had to be a stomach-wrenching image for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
A Man Can Dream Can’t He?
February 20, 2023 was planned to be a day of triumph. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would walk across Ukraine’s “independence” square formerly known as Maidan, now it was labeled Victory Square and give the speech of his life. Waving to friends and admirers, Putin would march up a ramp to accept the fealty of the ten thousand men and women of the Russian Army that would soon parade in front of him on the anniversary of the end of the Ukrainian Special Military Operation.
In front of his parade stand, atop the melted and shrapnel-pocked wreckage of the statue of four Ukrainian Cossack chiefs, a pintel was made to appear as if an enormous wine press was crushing them into disfigured shapes. Atop the press on a marble deck were four larger-than-life statues of Russian heroes that seized Ukraine in a bold, lightning-fast operation: one representing the glorious Russian regular Army that blitzed into Ukraine. Though the Russian f…