How the good Russians took Kiev

Zhytomyr - Kiev route. The first time I went to Kiev last summer, I thought my car was broken. There was a very strange sound. I also thought that there might be some strange asphalt here. Later, I was told that, yes, it was asphalt, because heavy military equipment was driving here. Then, at the beginning of 2022, when the Russians tried to surround Kiev. Hundreds of square metres of strange asphalt, which also extend through Khostomel, Buch, Irpen.
This week I am back in Kiev, and a lot of the action is in the direction of Zhytomyr. We stop for lunch at a café. My Ukrainian passenger, who is a regular visitor to this eatery, tells me that this place was also under occupation, and that the Russian occupiers had set up a hospital here. When the area was liberated, the first thing that had to be done was to take out the mountain of rubbish and clean everything up. It was cleaned up, cleaned out, rebuilt.
I am not an observant person, but the infrastructure is simply bully-ridden. It has been more than two years. Some of the buildings have been repaired, some are new, and some will never be rebuilt. And that is a dozen or so kilometres from the capital.
It feels like someone was demolishing with gusto, and only to demolish. There is no other explanation. Many of us have probably heard the story of how, unable to break into a petrol station, the parasites simply drove a tank into it.
The common-sense desire to destroy. Mark. To leave your mark. Sometimes we want to call such creatures animals or beasts. But animals mark their territory without being humble. And the aim here is to leave a mark. To trample, to destroy, to burn. What do you need a dikynė for, occupier? Just for human suffering?
And this is just about buildings. And people? Killed, injured, kidnapped, raped? Who is responsible for that? Who did this? The good Russians or the bad Russians?
Today is the Day of Mourning and Hope in Lithuania. “Veža”. In 1941, the Enkavedists began mass arrests of Lithuanians. Over more than a decade, about 132,000 people were deported from Lithuania, about 28,000 of them died. Children, women, men, old people. Our parents and ancestors, our people.
And the beast with bloody jaws does not stop. Today, it is walking through Ukraine with muddy boots. And tortures its people. How many dead, wounded, kidnapped, captured, missing... How many children are left without parents, how many families are waiting in limbo for their loved ones and hoping, hoping, hoping...
How to stop the beast?
“The beast is too big, I can't...”
May. Or rather, we can. And there must be a critical mass of us.
Our weapon against the beast today is aid to Ukraine.
Help, help, act.
Let's not let history repeat itself.