On: Ukraine's attack on Saint Petersburg 'brings war back to Russia'

Oh, for the love of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf - here we are, watching the whole ghastly symphony of escalation replay itself like a scratched record, the needle jumping from one atrocity to the next with the mechanical precision of a Soviet-era tractor. Ukraine, in a move that makes chess look like checkers played by drunken babushkas, has lobbed a little “fair response” right into the heart of Saint Petersburg, that once-elegant city where Pushkin strolled and Dostoevsky brooded, now reduced to a stage set for some absurdist tragedy where the director keeps changing the script mid-scene. Zelensky, bless his telegenic soul, delivers this “fairness” with the gravitas of a man who’s just balanced his checkbook and found it in the black - never mind that fairness, like a good soufflé, requires more than one ingredient, and the ones missing here are restraint, diplomacy, and, frankly, a map that doesn’t look like it was drawn by a sleepwalking cartographer.

The Russians, of course, will now respond in kind, because that’s the script: tit for tat, but with the gloves off and the brass knuckles on, and before you can say “Chekhov’s gun,” we’ll be treated to another round of “escalation with quiet confidence,” a phrase that sounds like it was coined by a committee of actuaries who moonlight as undertakers. The whole affair has the rhythm of a bad polka - two steps forward, one step back, and a misstep that sends everyone tumbling into the orchestra pit. I can just see it now: the diplomats in their starched collars, the generals with their chests bristling with medals like overripe pomegranates, all dancing on the edge of a crater that used to be a bakery or a kindergarten or, God help us, a hospital.

And what’s the point? To prove that war is hell? We already knew that. To show that violence begets violence? A revelation so profound it could only come from a think tank funded by defense contractors. No, the real tragedy is that this is all so predictable, like a bad sequel where the hero keeps making the same mistakes but with more explosions. The only thing missing is the popcorn, and even that would be in poor taste.