Thread by @WarintheFuture

In the past 24 hours we have seen again the brutality of the Putin regime, and the murderous band of barbarians called the Russian military. The deliberate attack by a Russian precision missile on the Okhmatdyt hospital, despite its horror, is part of a wider Russian campaign to terrorise the people of #Ukraine. 1/10 🧵🇺🇦

2/ This was not the action of a few bad apples. It is the outcome of a systemic, command-led campaign to terrorise and brutalise Ukrainians, just as the Russians did with Syrians and Chechens.

3/ Russian political and military leaders have nurtured a culture of indiscriminate killing in Ukraine and set the conditions for it to flourish. They bear full responsibility for the killings at Okhmatdyt hospital, Bucha and other atrocities across Ukraine in the past two and half years.

4/ The most important priority at the moment is that the West needs to change its ideas about the kind of war it is supporting in Ukraine. Too many nations, with the exception of the Baltics and Poland, act like they are undertaking a large-scale goodwill gesture for a distant, eastern European nation.

5/ While there has been a degree of generosity from many countries, the level of diplomatic, military and financial support is barely meeting the rhetoric of ‘defending Ukraine for as long as it takes.’ That strategy is failing.

6/ Trickle feeding support to Ukraine, as has been the case for the last 28 months, is not stopping the war. Importantly, it is not scaring Putin into stopping his aggression against Ukraine nor deterring his threats against other nations. Indeed, it is having the opposite impact.

7/ Putin sees that he can arbitrarily attack hospitals and shopping centres, torture POWs, rape and loot in occupied territories and conduct sabotage operations throughout Europe, with the West almost doing nothing in response.

8/ If we do not change course, embrace a strategy of defeating Russia in Ukraine and resourcing this effort accordingly, Russia will continue its almost endless stream of atrocities against Ukrainians. And eventually it will turn its eye upon other nations in Europe as well.

9/ There is a strategic imperative & moral obligation to assist #Ukraine to win this war as rapidly as possible. The deliberate Russian attack, using precision missiles against children at the Okhmatdyt hospital, provides us with more evidence for why this is so.

10/ Read my full article (for free) at Futura Doctrina.

(Thanks to @IAPonomarenko & @ZelenskyyUa for the images) mickryan.substack.com/p/the-kyiv-chi…