A Mad Man's War in Sunflower Fields

Defiling the crime scene.

Putin taking a bite out of Ukraine, and more and more.
AP image from Crimea. 

So Putin's war in eastern Ukraine escalates.  The pro-Russian terrorists continue to wreck havoc on the land.  They treat the MH-17 crime scene with a disrespect that shocks the world. Where there was once understanding, there is hate. Where there were homes and communities, there is ruble. Where there were fields of sunflowers, there is ruin.  Where there was life, death.

It will get worse in eastern Ukraine before it gets better, because president Petro Poroshenko realizes that the terrorists, armed to the teeth with heavy weapons of war supplied by Russia, will not let go, will not leave without a fight.

The pro-Russian separatists are not a country. They are not a legal entity at all. They are a band of heavily armed mercenaries and terrorists.  They are outside the Rule of Law.  They will not negotiate, they will not leave.  They will continue to fight as long as they get support from Russia--arms, missles, tanks and, yes, soldiers and special ops.  Putin can stop it, but won't.  How can the Poroshenko government sit back and do nothing?

It's an outrageous scenario on the face of it: Pro-Russian mercenaries, Putin proxies, on Ukrainian soil, invading, violating and occupying a foreign country, as if they have every right to be there.  Shooting down a passenger plane, defiling a crime scene, preventing investigators from going there, as if they have every right not only to loot and raid the site they created, but to hold it hostage.  A band of thugs denouncing Kyiv for defending its territorial borders, accusing the US and EU of "blackmail" for issuing economic sanctions.

The sunflowers weep.   Golden domes cry out to heaven. Soldiers, young men, die. Ordinary citizens hunker down in fear, their homes and their hearts broken.  "Eastern Ukraine is now a living hell," my friend Tonya just emailed me from Starobelsk. "A living hell."