Sometimes I Am In Awe

As bad as the world is these days, there are people in it that prevent us from complete despair. Maina Ovsyannikova is one such person. You will recall she risked the almost certain wrath of Vladimir Putin by holding up a sign on the Russian state broadcaster decrying the war in Ukraine. 

Although thus far Ovsyannikova has only received a fine, I have every expectation that in a country that threatens to send its citizens away for long periods of time for merely protesting the war in the streets, she will face much harsher punishment when the publicity around her brave deed dies down.  

“The war was the point of no return, when it was simply impossible to stay silent,” says Marina Ovsyannikova, after she protested Russia’s war in Ukraine live on Russian state TV. “I was afraid until the last minute that I won’t be able to do it.”

The Next Time We Complain About High Gas Prices

While I have no doubt that a great deal of oil-company profiteering is taking place these days, we really do need to put our complaints into perspective:

Heartbreaking photo by

@lynseyaddario @nytimes

all the world should see. 'Ukrainian soldiers trying to save the father of a family of four — the only one at that moment who still had a pulse — moments after being hit by a mortar while trying to flee Irpin'

Where The Truth Lies

Yesterday, a friend forwarded to me a video that is shocking in content, showing a tank running over and crushing a car. There was no accompanying information, so I did a search and found out that it is authentic. Fortunately and incredibly, it appears that the driver of the vehicle survived, as the video indicates. The event took place in Kyiv.

My immediate conclusion upon seeing this was it was a Russian armoured vehicle. The truth, however, is somewhat cloudy, as revealed by Snopes.

Although some of the videos that spread on social media early in the invasion were not real, this one has been vetted as authentic based on multiple sources who witnessed the incident. We do not have the name of the victim, and therefore don’t know how badly that person was injured.

France24 analyzed the videos taken of the incident and concluded that the tank appeared to be Ukrainian, although and [sic] cause of the collision was unclear. Ukrainian government officials accused Russian saboteurs of taking Ukrainian military gear and posing as Ukrainians. French TV news station TF1 Info hypothesized that the driver was Ukrainian and that the collision was an accident caused by the fighting.

None of this, of course, minimizes the horrific invasion and war currently going on in Ukraine. It does, however, serve as a reminder that in the fog of war, facts and critical thinking are more important than ever.