From the FB page of Robin Horsfall

Mar 26

The Duellists. Zelensky and Putin.

The 1977 film The Duellists directed by Ridley Scott tells the story of a Napoleonic Officer who hates so much and so intensely that he cannot accept any form of defeat and eventually his pride destroys him.

I have witnessed that attitude from a small number of businessmen I have protected. They cannot and will not accept any form of defeat. In the face of resistance they double down, time and time again. Defeated, they then set out for personal revenge. There is no level to which they will not stoop to achieve their desires. They are hateful, people with no decent core values and yet they occasionally achieve authority because they will not give in. More powerful people often use them as a form of attack dog.

Such people exist in every nation and we don’t have to read far down the front page of any journal to recognise them in many places associated with power..

Vladimir Putin has many of these obsessive characteristics. He has learned to use his authority at every level to isolate, intimidate and humiliate all challengers. Those who rose with him supported him in every deplorable crime he committed.

Putin is a victim of hubris, he is so convinced of his invincibility that the idea of defeat is beyond his comprehension. Had he retreated from Ukraine as soon as his advance on Kyiv was halted he would still be the head of a rich, growing autocracy.

However, no one could defeat the Great Putin, Tsar of the Russ. He doubled down, he lost his army, he doubled down, he lost half a million troops and he is still doubling down. He cannot accept defeat.

The Russian army is becoming weaker by the day, it has lost 3500 tanks in one year. That is more tanks than all the nations of Europe combined. The Russian economy is in free fall. Jan and Feb oil industry figures from official Russian sources show a 46% income drop.

Putin will double down again, he will drag more and more unsuspecting dupes into his ‘meat grinder’ and bury them in the soil of Ukraine because he cannot walk away. Like other tyrants he will continue to destroy his nation until someone in his nation destroys him.

A very famous Austrian from 1945, forced his nation to fight to the death. Millions died as a result of that obsessive inability to accept defeat.

There can be no letting up for Ukraine and the western democracies, Putin will not accept any form of withdrawal and he will sacrifice every Russian to prove that. He gives Ukraine and us no choice but to continue until he is gone, forever.

Slava Ukraini!

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Robin Horsfall