From the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian security operatives used the term “wet job” to describe a bloodletting in which political foes – real and imagined – were liquidated by professional assassins and secretly buried. From Lenin’s Cheka to Stalin’s KGB, executioners used the nackenschuss, a pistol shot at the base of the skull from close range. In contrast, Vladimir Putin’s wet job in the northern suburbs of Kyiv is a grisly spectacle for all to see. In its hasty retreat, his inept army is using street executions to butcher civilians who pose no threat to Russia and to demoralize the population. But there is no sign that Ukrainian will is breaking; like other Eastern Europeans, Ukrainians understand Russian barbarity all too well.
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