This is a picture of a cat and a boy in front of his completely destroyed home in Ukraine. It’s on Twitter. It is a tweet by the exiled Russian businessman, Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky. I’m told that in 2003 he was assessed to be the wealthiest man in Russia with a fortune of about $15 billion and ranked sixteenth in the Forbes list of billionaires. He is very critical, as he should be, of the Russian leadership led by Vladimir Putin. He makes it clear that as far as he’s concerned “Vladimir Putin launched an aggressive invasion of Ukraine. The whole world looks upon this as a war crime committed by the entire Russian nation”.
War crimes – who pays the bills?
I would completely agree and, as he states, I’m sure that the majority of observers of the war also agree. It has left Ukraine substantially destroyed with many thousands of civilians killed in shelling and bombing and we don’t know how many deliberately murdered by retreating Russian troops in war crimes. Is Russia going to pay to rebuild Ukraine? If not, who is? And compensate thousands of Ukrainians?
Volodymyr Zelensky believes that there has been upwards of 20,000 war crimes in various forms against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. In this devastating but somehow charming photograph of a boy and his cat we see hope. We see something good set against a background of horror.
The photograph
Khodorkovsky’s tweet states:
“Childhood happiness is when you find your beloved cat alive in the ruins of the house you used to live in….”
The boy looks genuinely pleased and relaxed; accepting the destruction of the life he knew. We are told that he had just found his cat in the rubble of his home. He appears that he had just picked him up because the cat is not in a settled position in his arms. However, I don’t know the full history behind this picture. My guess is that the family left their home during the intense shelling and returned later to check out their home which was comprehensively destroyed and found their cat. Many left their pets behind and many evacuated Ukraine with their pets in their arms.
Somebody on Twitter said that the cat is a Siberian purebred cat but we don’t know that. What they are saying is that the cat looks like a Siberian purebred cat but it is more likely that this cat is a random-bred cat albeit a very attractive one. If someone can correct me, please do.
The picture has touched the hearts of many people because it has attracted over 80,000 likes and 9,000 retweets.
Support for Ukraine
I hope that the West in supplying arms to Ukraine to help them in the defence of their country can keep it up. It’s important that the West does not lose momentum in supporting Ukraine. The EU has not done enough although by their standards they’ve done well in supporting Ukraine. Germany has prevaricated, indicative of a failure in leadership in my view. And the current president of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, seems to be trying to appease Putin in being obstructive in the applications of Finland and Sweden to join NATO. Is something happening behind-the-scenes here in which Erdogan is supporting Putin? It looks that way to me. The reason that he gives for not agreeing to the applications is ridiculous; terrorist cells in Sweden? Sounds made up to me.
Below are some more articles on the Ukraine war in the context of cats.
Siberian purebred cat comes in many colors and some look like long hair Siamese. But most look like a small version of the Main Coon and nearly all have the M on their foreheads. But more than likely it’s mix breed but it’s pretty and it survived and the boy is happy.
Thanks Tamara.