Fall of the Tricolor, Rise of the Trident

Baalbek went dark. Hero Col. Mamchur gave a final speech to his troops, and allowed the Russian invaders to seize the base without bloodshed. It takes the most supreme courage for a career soldier to put down the gun. But it was the right thing to do. Not a single person deserves to die for Putinism's sordid and verminous land grab. (At another base, one soldier did die: an ethnic Russian who was loyal to Ukraine was shot in the heart by one of Putinism's snipers. What a perfect metaphor for the despicable amorality, thuggery, and gangsterism of the whole operation.)

Farewell, Russian democracy. We will not see you again for a generation or more.

Farewell, Russian developmental state. The seeds sown by Medvedev's presidency, few as they were, will now wither quietly in the darkness.

The first Russian Empire lasted three hundred years.

The second, lightly Sovietized version of this empire lasted seventy years.

The current and final one -- Russia's energy-rent empire -- will have a far briefer lifespan.

Oh, the cruel paradoxes of 21st century dialectics.

Putinism, seemingly the big winner, is in reality a massive loser. It will learn all the wrong lessons from its reckless grab and seemingly easy victory, which will incur immense current and future financial, cultural, political and economic costs, and will compound its already severe economic troubles with even more idiotic and reckless gambles, which will cement Russia's subaltern geopolitical status for decades to come.

Ukraine, seemingly the big loser, wins. It wins because it has learned the power of dignity, of restraint, and most of all, of nonviolent civility. It will now flourish, having finally freed itself from its autocratic past. How ironic that the same lands once scourged by Slavic famine and tyranny are now the heartlands of Slavic renewal and democracy.

I said just a couple weeks ago that Digital Ukraine was going to surprise the world. They already have -- but there's so much more to come. They will do more than just surprise the world. They are going to change the world. And some day, nobody can know just when, that change will come to Russia, too.