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| Screenshot of a video on BBC |
The way Russia was amassing troops on Ukraine's borders, and warnings by the US that "an attack was a possibility", what we are seeing now was quite a certainty.
There are a couple of questions for which I am yet to get convincing answers.
1) The move to get Ukraine into the NATO has been going on for now close to a decade. Why didn't the NATO admit Ukraine, if they really wanted to? Being a full-fledged NATO member is far different from just being an ally receiving economic and military assistance from the West.
By giving this crystal-clear signal to Russia that Ukraine is their ally, the West was also implicitly telling Russia: "We are at your doorstep."
After all these years, Ukraine has been practically left alone to defend itself. Though of course they are getting support from the West.
2) If you remember, in the days preceding the launch of the Russian attack, while the US and its West European allies were constantly talking about the fears of an "impending Russian invasion", Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself was strangely cool and calm.
In fact, multiple reports from Ukrainian capital Kyiv used to speak of how everything is absolutely normal; and no one believing that a Russian invasion would ever happen.
With all sophisticated intelligence-gathering mechanisms we have today, it's highly unlikely that Zelenskyy didn't know that an invasion would take place. They should have acknowledged that in some form.
That would have given foreigners a real picture of what was unfolding, and they could have left for their home country, or foreign governments could have evacuated their citizens well before things deteriorated to this extent.
Why did Zelenskyy give the impression that nothing untoward was ever going to happen? Was it part of a strategic game plan?
Now with airspace closed, evacuation flights are taking off from neighbouring countries. But not all are close to the borders.
There is a reason I am saying this. Thousands of Indians, mainly medical students, are trapped in underground bunkers in Ukraine. With no basic amenities, and dire shortage of food and water, it's a physical and emotional trauma for them.
Of course a few hundreds have been brought back but thousands are still trapped. One medical student was pleading: "Please get us out of here before we die."
While I type this, we have news that Russian President Vladimir Putin has put his nation's nuclear deterrent on 'special alert'. This is obviously in response to the assistance that the West is giving Ukraine, which seems to be slowing down the Russian progress.
Earlier today, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told Sky News that the conflict would last a number of years.
That means the suffering isn't going to end to anytime soon.
