The Blood Red Badge of Nihilism

Every day now, you can tune in to an X/Twitter channel that will allow you to witness the destruction of Russians in the fields of Ukraine, unexpurgated.  Of course, if the drone that does them in is a kamikaze, the video will end with impact.  More often, though, the same drone that dropped a bomb on them will record the aftermath.  Sometimes the killing seems clean and antiseptic; the "200" cooperate by lying face down as they bleed out.  Sometimes bodies come apart in the explosion; more often they are shredded by little bomblets designed for just such anti-personnel work.

More often as well now, a wounded Russian will abandon all hope of medical assistance or retreat, and end it all himself by blowing his brains out.  (We think of the expression -- "to blow one's brains out" -- as metaphorical, like "to work one's ass off" in the factory, but when you put a Kalashnikov under your chin and fire a round, the damage done is not metaphorical.)

«Петя!  Сколько раз мы тебе говорили, што спрашивать Дядю Ваню о СМО запрещено?»

"Petey!  How many times have we told you not to ask Uncle Vanya about the Special Military Operation?"