Such malice and brutality against innocents rendered the individual utterly meaningless in what for the Soviets was the essentialist struggle between nations and ethnic groups: something that has defined Russian actions through much of history and is a tradition that Putin is heir to. Likewise, wanton destruction and abject cruelty, the bedfellows of indiscipline, combined with bad morale and an historical legacy of seeing flesh-and-blood individuals as mere abstractions that could be wiped off a blackboard, were distinct features of the Russian military in Ukraine, where, as in Stalin’s day,
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