Light-hearted headline, depressing story
By 
Remember when Vladimir the Invader promised not to call up reservists to take part in his attack on a sovereign nation?
Surprise, he lied! So in response to his decision to call up 300,00 reservists, nearly 200,000 men bade their families farewell, give him the finger and made for the nearest exit.
To escape fighting in Ukraine, the 42-year-old Russian construction worker flew through two countries in four days, spending so much on tickets, so quickly, he lost track of it all. Finally, he ended up in Turkey, where it was safe. As he stopped to breathe Tuesday, on plastic seats in the airport arrival hall, he conceded he had no idea where to go next.
This moment, like one of nearly 200,000 other moments (so far), brought to you by one violent asshole’s inability to deal with his MPB. Or whatever set him off. It’s hard to be certain because he’s a lying brute and such creatures rarely take time to examine, much less clearly explain their motives.
Another problem being, brutes don’t plan so good. Their specialty is reacting. See want take. See hate/fear attack.
See military get lightly trampled underfoot by a country that was supposed to roll over and play dead because he wanted it too, rage, fling more people at the conflict.
Even if it means the second wave will have to walk to the fight because the trampling has also been hard on the materiel.
Meanwhile, people who are capable of thinking beyond the next impulse decided they’d rather not get caught up in some asshole’s poor impulse control and murder people, get trampled underfoot, or both.
A 32-year-old man who arrived in Istanbul on Tuesday said he left behind his wife and 1-year-old son. “Of course it was a very difficult decision,” said the man, an ethnic Ukrainian who said he was born and has lived his entire life in Russia.
The government, he said, was enlisting men “en masse.” Neighbors and friends had been called up. “I had no choice. I can’t go to war and kill people in Ukraine. And if I stayed, there was no other option.” He and his wife decided he should leave on the day Putin announced the mobilization.
The entire article is heartbreaking vignettes of men who dropped what they were doing, grabbed what they could and raced out of their country. And often, the families and friends they left behind. Because their country is in the grip of a thug.
I’m sure members of the European Dictators Fan Club and the Exalted Brotherhood of Mr. Putin, Whom I Do Not Supporters have long-winded and not at all shrill explanations about why spurring thousands of citizens to bolt out of the country is another genius stroke of strategy. But that’s just a reminder that lackeys should be mocked or ignored.
Humans, as a species, are not in the habit of dropping what they’re doing and fleeing their homes with whatever they can carry. People fleeing their homes is a universal sign that the direction they’re hurrying away from is ground zero for very bad things. And a leader who, by their direct actions, causes people to flee their homes has not just miscalculated and not just made a strategic error, that leader has fucked up in a ways that can’t be unfucked with shirtless equestrian pictures.
Meanwhile, stupid attacks on the neighbors won’t perpetuate themselves.
People who post off-topic comments want to be Putin’s little steppe pony.
