History has a cruel sense of irony. For weeks we have debated the moral equivalences of this war, the nuances of NATO expansion, the semantics of genocide. And then, in a single night, a 17th-century Ukrainian Baroque cathedral is set ablaze by Russian air strikes.
Eleven dead. Ash and ember where prayer once rose. This is not an escalation.
This is a revelation. It reveals what some of us have been saying for months: Putin’s war is not about security or Donbas autonomy. It is a war against the very idea of Ukrainian civilisation.
The bombing of a cathedral is medieval. It reminds me of the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, when crusaders defiled Hagia Sophia. Or the Nazi destruction of Warsaw’s Royal Castle.
Such acts are not tactical. They are symbolic. They aim to erase a people’s memory, to burn their soul.
And watching Western pundits still hedging their bets, still calling for ‘de-escalation’, I am reminded of another historical parallel: the appeasement of the 1930s. Back then, intellectuals argued that Hitler was merely reacting to Versailles. Today, they argue that Putin is reacting to NATO.
But a cathedral in flames is not a reaction. It is a statement. And the civilised world must answer: will we let the Dark Age descend, or will we remember what it means to defend a civilisation?
