Beware Russians Bearing Gifts

Боюся греків, навіть ті, що дари приносять.
Боюся росіяни, навіть ті підшипників "подарунки."  yahoo image. 

Somewhere in Virgil's Aeneid, which I read with Mrs. Bullock in my Harley high school Latin class, there's the famous line "timeo danaos et dona ferentes" ("I fear Greeks, even those bearing gifts.").    

It's those Russian convoys bearing supposedly humanitarian aid for eastern Ukraine that took me back there.  I fear Russians bearing gifts to a country they are destroying, oblast by oblast.  I fear Russians who created the need for humanitarian aid, allegedly bringing it into the country they have invaded and refuse to leave.  Putin could stop the need for any aid, but won't. 

I'm following with trepidation the convoy of large white trucks as it rolls past the sunflower fields on its way to Lugansk. It's bypassing the route where it could be inspected. Playing games.  Not a good sign.  Military trucks, and now Russian helicopters loaded with missiles, accompany the convoy.  Cause for more alarm. Reminders of Crimea. 

Ironically, there are almost as many trucks, almost 300, as there were innocent victims of MH-17, and the symbolism is as tragic. 

The MH-17 crime scene still smoulders, the victims' families without closure, without justice.  The killers who shot the plane out of the sky with a Russian BUK missile, who then defiled the site, are still there.  Putin continues to arm and train them.  The Putin proxies continue killing Ukrainians. They are not "separatists;" they are terrorists, a band of vicious thugs beyond the rule of law, beyond human decency, like the ISIL terrorists in Iraq.  

When the people of Troy accepted the Trojan Horse, according to Virgil's story, the Greeks' equivalent of special ops emerged to destroy Troy, and the Greeks took over.  

I pray this doesn't happen in Lugansk and Donetsk.  But not much has changed since then, has it? Same kind of violence, war, mayhem, greed, murder, deceit.
The Trojan Horse--in the name of aid, arms, or jihad--seems a fitting symbol for what's happening in Ukraine, and all over our world today.