The news from Kiev is, of course, dreadful. Eleven dead. A historic cathedral aflame.
The usual chorus of condemnation from Whitehall, complete with the obligatory invocation of 'war crimes'. We are meant to be horrified, and we are. But let us not pretend this is some rupture in the smooth march of history.
This is the pattern. This is the grim choreography of imperial decline, of a great power thrashing in its death throes. Russia, like Rome before it, is not merely attacking a neighbour; it is immolating the very symbols of a shared cultural inheritance.
The cathedral, so rich in history, becomes kindling for a propaganda war the Kremlin is losing but cannot abandon. The UK's condemnation is correct, of course. But it is also impotent.
We rail against the barbarism while our own civilisation simmers with internal decay, forgetting that the barbarians are not just at the gates. They are inside the gates, and they have set the cathedral alight. The tragedy is not that this happened.
It is that we are surprised it did.
