I’ll never now traverse the roads of Putin’s tanks

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

On Friday my motorbike fell as I was taking it out of the shed. It’s a big bike, a Honda Deauville 680cc. 

I was lucky that I did not break my leg but am annoyed that I broke the brake lever, the right mirror and did some damage to the wind shield. 

Had it fallen on me, which could easily have happened, and I had broken my leg I wouldn’t be worried about the damage done to the bike.

My dream when I bought the bike was to drive it from Volgograd to Berlin, to travel the route the Red Army took from the city on the river Volga, that was then called Stalingrad, to the German capital.

Having spent many years teaching German I had become fascinated with what happened at Stalingrad and how the Red Army under Georgy Zhukov had outgunned and outmanoeuvred the all-conquering German Army. 

Up to then many believed the German Army was invincible. Stalingrad proved that not to be so and changed the course of the war. After victory on the river Volga the Red Army made its way to Berlin and victory in May 1945.

I wanted to traverse the roads of Marshal General Georgy Zhukov’s army from Stalingrad to Berlin. The war in Chechnya frightened me, indeed, it was becoming noticeable that Vladimir Putin was beginning to undo all the democratisation that had begun to blow through Russia under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. It was Gorbachev who had introduced Perestroika, which means opening up and democratising the dying Soviet system. 

It was a time of extraordinary hope. But within a few years that hope died. Under Boris Yeltsin’s leadership Russia lost its standing in the world and the old hardline Communists felt that Mother Russia was being humiliated and that the West was not helping them in their moment of despair.

A young former KGB operative, who later became head of the FSB, Russian Federal Security Service, rose to the top job, just as Hitler did after the humiliation of Germany after World War I.

Putin promised to make Russia great again.

Right in front of our eyes he is murdering thousands of people and destroying stone-by-stone the infrastructure of a country.

And as his troops fire their missiles from far away, indeed, sometimes within Russia, the marauding infantry kill, maim and rape Ukrainians.

Putin says he wants to denazify Ukraine and he is concerned about Nato getting ever closer to Russia.

Yes, maybe the West could have done things differently but nothing could ever have justified what Putin and his army is now doing in Ukraine.

I presume he knows President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Jew.

It is beyond annoying to see how Kirill the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is sidling up to Putin. He believes this is a holy war fighting the decadence of the West. What outrageous gibberish.

There have been rumours that Pope Francis might visit Ukraine. Wouldn’t that be spectacular.

My dream cycle will not happen. I would never want to traverse the roads Putin's tanks have travelled on their way to Ukraine.