It is difficult to break free from old paradigms and look at the world in a new way. This was evident with Biden who clung to the “escalation-avoidance” paradigm in Ukraine long after it became perverse and deadly.
On September 25, 2024, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L), U.S. president Joe Biden(C), and U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer(R) pose in a photo at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, held in New York. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Last month, a Russian rocket blew up an apartment building in Lviv‘s center. I sent a text message to a friend living in Lviv asking if everyone was okay. “Yes, we are lucky,” he said. “Our neighbors, a young mother and her three daughters who live right next door, are dead.”
Then I saw it. Yaroslav Bzylevych, with his face bloodied and cut, watched as his wife and their three daughters’ bodies were pulled out of the rubble. The photo of Bazylevych looking into the coffins at the funeral should be added to the pantheon that includes iconic images of atrocity.
The Kinzhal hypersonic missile that killed the Bazylevychs, and the one that struck the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv two month earlier, were both fired from deep within Russia. The launch sites are known to the Ukrainians. The missile that killed Evgeniya Yaroslav, his wife, and their daughters, was launched by a MiG-31K in Russia’s Tula Oblast.
The aircraft took off at Savasleyka – a military base located about 300 kilometers (186 mi) east of Moscow. It is also about 866 km (538 mi) from the Ukrainian border and 1,386 km (861 mi) from Lviv. A car would take more than 20 hours to travel the distance; a Kinzhal will do it in just seven minutes.
The Americans are not allowing the Ukrainians to use their weapons to destroy the launch sites. They must wait until the missiles arrive. It is absurd and everyone knows it, but it’s not their decision. It is the U.S. Government’s decision, and specifically, that of President Joe Biden, a good man who has the right moral instincts but has been unable see beyond the paradigm “escalation-avoidance” long after it has become perverse.
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