Home Front

Apparently, all is not completely well on the Western Front. Or Southwestern Front. Okay, the line between Russian-occupied Crimea and Ukraine. Not that that region had been particularly tranquil over the past few months, but tensions have begun to spread back up into Mother Russia. The "Mother" reference is accurate, since it is the parents who are making things difficult. Mothers and fathers who have sent their children off to fight a war to annex portions of what was formerly the Soviet Union are less and less enchanted with that opportunity. Giving up their sons and daughters is not what they had in mind when they waved farewell to them on the way to rolling over the defenses of their neighbor to the south. 

This comes as a great surprise to Russian President Vlad "The Inhaler" Putin. He has denied Russian troops are in Ukraine. He said the handful of soldiers captured by Kiev authorities had wandered into the ex-Soviet country by accident. Contrast this with the reports from Ukraine's defense minister, Oleksandr Danylyuk, who said on Facebook this week that two thousand Russian troops had been killed in Ukraine. That's a pretty devastating way to find out that you had made a wrong turn at Sevastopol. It's also pretty telling that these pronouncements are being made on Facebook. Of course, social media isn't quite as prevalent under Putin's rule. Most Russians are still unaware that Russian troops are fighting in the fellow Slavic country Or they prefer to look the other way. "I have not heard anything about any war," said Olga Burtseva, a mother of three. "No one crossed the borders, and I believe no one has declared war."
Odd then, that  a group calling themselves "Cargo-200 from Ukraine to Russia" has sprung up on, you guessed it, Facebook. The group's name is a reference to the Russian military term for body bags. Or maybe it is in reference to the 2007 thriller of the same name. Probably not. It's probably the stink of history about to repeat itself, but who knows? Maybe Facebook can stop this one before it becomes another Afghanistan. Or Yugoslavia. Or...