...and read what we want between selected lines (Axl Rose, "Don't Damn me").
Many captions can be written for the image above and the previous is just one of them.
How things can evolve at a blink of an eye though is mind blowing. Ukraine's president would never imagine by any stretch of his (much needed as an artist) imagination during his days as an actor that sometimes later he'd be looking Putin in the eye defending his country at all costs and talking to the European Parliament wearing a T-shirt while his people fight for their freedom till their last breath and (almost) the rest of the world is painted in Blue and Yellow.
Impressive how "do or die" situations polarise things and change people. Zelensky became a tiger. Even indifferent officials in EU now look so different after the war begun. Olaf Scholz was much closer to a random accountant from Munich and now he funds his defence with 100 billion euros at a historic speech in Bundenstag. Speaking of Germany by the way, in only a few days from laughably sending a bunch of helmets to Ukraine they now send weapons marking the death of Merkelism. Long overdue the latter.
Intense situations push people closer to their extremes, for better or worse. It's kinda like good guys become better and bad ones even worse. In a much lighter example than this war's gloom, I recall how I observed people's behaviour the first time I moved to a beautiful seaside place years ago. Initially it felt to me like the "good" guys became more humble and the "bad" ones even more arrogant. Later I crossed checked that the former took this nature's beauty as a priceless gift while the latter thought it is a well deserved result of their "success".
(By the way, speaking of "success" let's allow Iggy do the talking:)
So, in a similar way one can see the same divisions today in front of the current war in Ukraine. From one hand the vast generosity of people around the world and on the other hand... well, that's hard to comment sometimes. For example, a couple of days ago I posted at a hospitality exchange platform to express my solidarity to Kiev and that I wish I had more space to offer but I'm hosting a Ukrainian family next days so this is not possible till they leave. Next day a guy from Morocco answers the thread to announce that he can host 2 females at his place (yes, in Morocco). I mean...There's a limit on how good people can be but no limit on how bad they can act. Similar to wisdom and stupidity.
The keys to end this massacre with the least blood shed possible are in the hands of the Russian people. There's more Russians against this than we may think. The thousands of protesters arrested already speak for itself. Russians who don't dare to protest against their regime yet must understand that in times like these fear of being jailed makes not much sense. You are already jailed if you can't express your disagreement with a slaughter. And your life under the sanctions applied will no longer be worth living. Needless to comment that in the worst case scenario of nukes launched (I want to believe there'll be one sane Russian to prevent this in case) there's not much life left anyway. Everyone should do anything possible to convince these people to flood the Russian streets. Putin can't arrest them all anyway. Encourage them to be part of the bright pages in history and build the foundations of their democratic future. I must admit that the vast majority of Russians I know feel the same.
On the bright side I am sure that the latest hardship will make so many people much wiser adapting a much more efficient architecture of thinking. I'm just not sure at which cost this will happen - I can only be sure (like most of us) that Ukrainians already pay an unthinkably high one.
Good luck Ukraine!