Fr dear Fr: Is there any more sad a sight than the photo in today’s London Times of 3rd March 22, sipping tea here, of a captured Russian soldier-boy, being given a mobile phone by his captrix Ukrainian girl soldier and being invited to call his long-suffering mother at home in Russia, sad? Sadder still? Yet all somehow heart-warming, n’est-ce pas, as Rafe Hubris says it out?

Indeedy do. Bro Lorenzo of New Zealand, a philosopher of some note and a young politician of incredible subtle ability, like the young NZ female prime minister, mentions that “It is nice to be warlike, but it is more warlike to be nice,” in one of his well-polished epigrams from down under where the grass is greener and the mountains a whiter shade of pale, just to echo that iconic song from the Seventies. Indeedy, his chief philosophy led disciple among the romans in Rome, Bro Patroclus of the Far Distant Isles, used to say about war scenes like the above that “Humanity’s best gift to humanity, is humanity itself.” A very heart-warming scene despite the sadness and pathos of it all, so nice to see a young Ukra girl soldier phoning the boy’s mother at home in holy mother Russia, and his mother was so happy and so delirious with joy that he was safe and sound and largely uninjured in a terrible terrible war between brothers and neighbours, recalling that scene from Jerusalem in 820 AUC of that other war between brothers, the Arabs and their Jewish brother semites. A very nice vignette of humanity in the middle of a lightning-like Israeli style Blitzkrieg of the Russians behind the enemy lines facing them in the Donbass, as the Russians quickly cut off the supplies and the retreat of the murdering Azov legions in those regions, in their lightning advance in from Bellarus, right in behind the supply lines of the Azov neonazis. Amazing idea, but then the Russians have been studying the Israeli tactics during the Yom Kippur War of 1967 and the other wars of the Israeli snatch doctrine methods. But all wars are costly and some more costly than others, than this Lightning Campaign to cut off the Ukrainian armies shelling the old boys and old girls of the Separatist Republics for 9 years. So there we are, cut off, wrong-footed, side-stepped, and outflanked by a cleverer Israeli guided war machine. The Israelis have been over there in Moscow of late - they would have given the Russians some useful military advice, when addressing the historic crimes of the neo-nazi legions of those regions. Sad business, but a lovely enduringly humane photo which many people even in the peace-loving west will probably treasure, and hold up to their suffering hearts. Lovely scene. The girlies on the Ukrainians side looking so well, and the Russian boys grateful for a cup of tea and a wedge of bread.