They were wrong. The boomerang of war always returns to the exact spot of its launching.

They've convinced themselves that their lives would go on as usual, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening; that this war would engulf parts of the Russian territory, that it would never interfere directly with their lives.

but with time, the Russian society as a whole, most Russians seem to have been able to "normalize" it, by pretending it had nothing to do with them and their lives -- that it was taking place somewhere far away, in a whole other geographic space and moral dimension.

The majority of Russian people had no interest in seeing this war started, much less prosecuted for years on end and at a staggeringly enormous cost in human lives, and many millions of them were vehemently against it;

Tens of thousands Ukrainian people killed -- women, children, the elderly. Whole cities destroyed. Countless war crimes committed -- all due to the malevolent will of one uncommonly vicious human insect in the Kremlin.

But he is Trump's incitatus -- one of the four of them, to date -- that horse Emperor Caligula planned to make a consul to humiliate the Roman senators. Besides, in Trump's view, if a man has not been credibly accused of being a rapist or pedophile, he has no business being a member of his cabinet.

Musk is a big fan and frequent phone caller to Putin, who -- in case Musk may have forgotten -- has been adjudicated as a war criminal by the ICC. It is small wonder Musk is repeating Putin's talking points. But what a shameful and remarkably dangerous character.