Antwerpen

After a short break, our group headed to Antwerp for an afternoon visit. The bus found a parking space in a deserted hall along the Scheldt River.

Red Baron felt as if he were at the Hamburg Landungsbrücken, though the Antwerp pier had no visitors or large ships. In the background on the right, you see the castle, Het Steen.

The Margraviate of Antwerp, established around 974, was a border march between the Holy Roman Empire and, on the opposite bank of the Scheldt, the County of Flanders, subject to the French king as its feudal lord.

Around 1200, Het Steen (the stone) was part of the city's fortifications, protecting access to the city from the western Scheldt. Most of the castle was demolished in the 19th century. Only the gatehouse remained of a larger castle complex belonging to the Dukes of Brabant. It is thus considered the oldest surviving building in the city of Antwerp.

Heading toward the Grote Markt, we passed the Vleeshuis (meat house) built by the butchers' guild in the late Gothic style around 1500. The red-and-white masonry was deliberately made to resemble speklagen ("bacon layers"). The towers, stepped gable, and the enormous hall were designed to give the rich butchers' guild an imposing presence in the city.

Then we walked through narrow alleys lined with brick buildings.

The richly decorated guild halls on the Grote Markt bear witness to the city's former wealth.

A building with the inscription Bonaparte caught Red Baron's attention. In 1800, Antwerp belonged to France. Napoleon first visited Antwerp in 1803 and called the city "a pistol aimed at the heart of England." He loaded the pistol with two harbor basins, the Bonaparte and Willem docks, which were and still are the core of the modern port. 

Antwerp became one of the Empire's most important naval ports and shipbuilding centers, where warships were built to support the Continental Blockade Napoleon announced in Berlin after his victory over Prussia. Cut off from global trade, the city is booming thanks to the arms industry.

And yet, the golden eagle on Antwerp's Renaissance city hall built in 1561-1565 is not l'Aigle Imperial, but the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire. It faces toward Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), the center of the HRE.

The Brabo Fountain (Brabofontein), right in the middle of the Grote Markt in front of Antwerp City Hall, and the severed hand hold the key to explaining the name Antwerpen.

According to legend, a giant named Druon Antigoon lived on the Scheldt. He controlled shipping and demanded a high toll from every ship. Anyone who could not or would not pay had to suffer a cruel punishment: Antigoon would cut off their hand and throw it into the Scheldt.

When the Roman soldier Silvius Brabo passed by, he defeated and killed the giant, cut off Antigoon's hand, and threw it into the Scheldt. The figure at the top of the fountain depicts this moment when Brabo threw the hand. This throwing (werfen in German) gave rise to the popular explanation of the city's name: hand werpen → Antwerpen.

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The legend of the hand lives on to this day: Antwerp's famous Antwerpse Handjes - a pastry or praline shaped like a hand - draw inspiration from this very legend.

The Antwerp Coat of Arms shows a castle or fortified gate (Het Steen) in the center and two hands traditionally associated with the Brabo legend. In fact, the Brabo-Antigoon drama features two hands: the giant's hand and the hand Brabo severed.

For the city, the hand is a heraldic symbol, part of the founding legend, and a play on words with Antwerp's name.

On our way to the cathedral, we passed the restaurant Het Elfde Gebot (The Eleventh Commandment) that reads: "Thou shalt drink your beer with respect." Onze Lieve Vrouwe welcomes the guests. The interior of this old residential building resembles a church or an antique museum more than an ordinary pub. Walls, ceilings, and open spaces are densely packed with historic wooden and plaster statues of saints, angels, Mary, and Jesus. Old pulpits, stained-glass windows, crucifixes, and altar fragments complete the decoration.

And there it was: the Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedraal in all its splendor.

The richly decorated main entrance was locked, so we entered through a side entrance and were confronted with a paygate: Adults €12. Red Baron qualified for the 60+ at €10. Even that seemed too much for a quick glance, with the rest of the group impatiently waiting outside in the warm September sun.

A screen displaying changing images of the cathedral's interior enticed those standing in front of it to visit.

Suddenly, the statue of De Buildrager (The Dockworker), bearing the inscription Arbeid Vrijheid (Labor Freedom), confronted us Germans with our past. Initially a symbol of the working class becoming conscious of itself, it also came to stand for regained freedom after WWII. The statue became the memorial for the dockers who kept working under the German V-bomb terror.

When we discovered these Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) in Antwerp's Jewish quarter during an evening walk, our consciences were deeply troubled.

**

PISA

My late wife and her Golf

In Germany, golf isn't as popular a sport as it is in English-speaking countries. That's why Germans rather associate golf with the once-successful VW model series. Consequently, in my country, Generation X (1965–1980) is also known as the Golf Generation.

On our honeymoon at the Adria in Primosten, Yugoslavia, in 1965

Red Baron is of an earlier origin and belongs to the Beetle Generation, even though he is classified internationally as part of the Silent Generation (1928–1945).

But I digress. My point is that I no longer associate Pisa with the Leaning Tower, but rather with the "leaning" state of school education in Germany.

In fact, PISA stands for "Program for International Student Assessment." It is an international study conducted by the OECD that has been regularly assessing, since 2000, how well 15-year-old students can apply basic knowledge and skills.

The focus of the study is on:
📖 Reading literacy
➗ Mathematics
🔬 Science

So, PISA doesn't measure memorized school knowledge but rather whether young people can apply what they have learned to practical and new situations.

In Germany, "PISA shock" refers to the major public debate that followed the first PISA study in 2000, when German students performed surprisingly poorly in the international comparison.

Can German students still fall deeper?

Since then, some progress has been made, until the recent PISA study revealed alarming findings again.

OECD average: 469 All, 482 Science, 461 Reading, and 463 Mathematics

In the rankings, Far Eastern countries lead the way, and in Europe, Estonia - the country with the best IT infrastructure - tops the list.

Germany ranks 25th, right at the average performance level. Immediately, spin doctors rush to emphasize that our students are, after all, above the average of all OECD countries in every category.

It is cold comfort that European countries like Denmark and France fared even worse.

The U.S., ranked 16th, is in the red zone in math - one point behind Germany - but is only marginally worse than the average.

The decline in student performance is global. On average across the OECD, scores have fallen by 22 points in mathematics since 2015 and by 28 points in reading. Reading is more demanding than watching memes on the Internet.

The measured declines are equivalent to a lag of more than one school year. Currently, 20 percent of students in the OECD region are considered low achievers in all three assessment areas and lack the basic skills needed for success in further education, professional life, and everyday life. 

In Germany, one in three adolescents does not meet the minimum proficiency level in math and reading. These students struggle to understand everyday texts or solve simple math problems. Since 2015, the proportion of low-performing students has risen by 17 percentage points in math, by 15 in reading, and by 10 in the sciences. About one-fifth of young people lack sufficient basic skills in all three areas.

At the other end of the spectrum, the proportion of students with particularly high proficiency in the sciences has decreased slightly since 2015, from 11 to 9 percent. In math and reading, it has declined more sharply, from 13 to 8 percent and from 12 to 7 percent, respectively. The correlation between skills and socioeconomic status is now at its highest level since the PISA studies began. Only 2 percent of students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families achieve high proficiency levels.

In Germany, all efforts to close the gap between a family's socioeconomic status and children's educational success failed. Instead, the achievement gap in Science between the top and bottom 25 percent of the socioeconomic distribution even widened between 2015 and 2025, while it narrowed on average across the OECD. The family home plays an important role in children's learning. The educated middle class highly values a good education for their children.

I have a nightmare.

In ten years, today's Chinese students - who are well-educated in STEM subjects - will be celebrating their first research findings, while their long-time studying German counterparts will be - à la recherche du temps perdu - starting their 15th semester in the social sciences. If, contrary to expectations, they managed to complete their studies, they'll flood the job market in search of a "suitable" occupation and ultimately end up, utterly frustrated, as taxi drivers.

All that's left for Red Baron to do is lament, along with Adenauer:

The famous sentence "My God, what will become of Germany?" fell, although not quite, on September 28, 1954, on the first day of the Nine-Power Conference in London. Adenauer was at Claridge's Hotel in London, where he spoke in German with Luxembourg's Foreign Minister, Joseph Bech, and Belgium's Foreign Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak.

In August 1954, the French National Assembly had rejected the European Defense Community Treaty. This jeopardized Adenauer's plan to integrate the Federal Republic into a European defense structure rather than build an independent German army, which he feared.

At the time, Adenauer served as chancellor and foreign minister in a dual role. So he said to his Belgian and Luxembourgian colleagues, "I am firmly convinced that a German national army will become a great danger to Germany and Europe - once I am no longer here, I do not know what will become of Germany if we do not succeed in creating Europe in time."

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Belgian Gems

... Belgische Juwelen was the name of a bus trip to Flanders. Unfortunately, the ratio was two days on the bus and two days of sightseeing.

Gaius Julius Caesar taught us: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt ... and Red Baron adds: Belgium too consists of three parts - Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels Region.

Caesar continues in lingua Anglica: Of all these tribes, the Belgae are the strongest, because they are very far removed from the culture and civilization of the Roman province; merchants rarely visit them and do not bring goods that might soften their spirits; and they are neighbors of the Germans, who live across the Rhine, with whom they are constantly at war.

This might have been true 50 before Christ, but in the Middle Ages Flanders, together with Northern Italy, was one of the richest regions in Europe. The cloth trade, in particular, made cities like Antwerpen and Gent wealthy.

©landgeist.com

To soften their spirits, the Belgians brew beer in 395 breweries and drink 87 liters per year per capita, but in Europe their consumption is clearly beaten by the Czechs with 135 liters.

©Der Spiegl

The other famous Belgian "softening" product is no longer cloth but chocolate. In Brussels, every second shop sells chocolate to tourists, but when it comes to consumption, the Swiss, with 10.5 kg per year, are the frontrunners and the Belgians are way behind.

And finally, the only time we're "at war" these days is with the Belgian voetbalelftal- the Red Devils wearing red jerseys - in soccer.

What splendor!

We arrived in Antwerp after a ten-hour bus ride, had time to visit the famous central station just opposite our hotel, and later had dinner at one of the downtown restaurants called brasseries.

Why is the flag at the top La tricolore?

The following morning, we visited Brussels, and our first stop - where else - was the Atomium, combining the words atom and aluminum, the metal with which the spheres were initially covered. Since its inauguration at the World's Fair EXPO 58, the spheres of the Brussels landmark have become unsightly from corrosion and have been coated with stainless steel.

A close-up taken through the window of our passing bus

The nine spheres represent one elementary cell of an iron crystal, enlarged 165 billion times. Eight iron atoms are at the corners of a cube, and one is in the center.

Staying on the grounds of the Brussels World's Fairs, we drove toward the Palais 5 of EXPO 1935. Built in the Art Deco style, it has a stepped, almost pyramid-like silhouette and an austere, monumental facade. Verdigris-colored bronze statues top the vertical pillars.

In the background, the Palais de Justice dome rises.

As we entered Brussels's Manhattan district, the bus had to stop at a traffic light. We got a glimpse of a triangular steel form from which an arc has been removed and displaced. The black satin-painted object stands in the center of a shallow reflecting basin. The artist, Maria Wierusz-Kowalski, created the sculpture in 1997 and called it Esprit ouvert - Perspectives et Réflexions.

To the right, you enter the "bilingual" Galerie des Princes / Prinsen Galerij.

Eventually, we stepped off the bus and walked through the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert. This shopping mall was modeled after Milan's famous shopping gallery, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

We passed the chocolaterie, Neuhaus. Jean Neuhaus, a Swiss immigrant, founded his company in 1857 in Brussels and opened the first chocolate store in the Galeries Royales. In 1912, his grandson, Jean Neuhaus II, invented the chocolate praline, a decadent chocolate cream ganache center inside a chocolate shell. 

On our way to the other landmark every visitor must see, we noted La Friterie. Looking inside made our mouths water. 

Eventually, we reached another Brussels landmark: the Manneken Pis. His origin is rooted in a legend. In the 14th century, foreign troops besieged Brussels. When the city stubbornly held ground, the attackers secretly placed explosive charges at the city walls. A little boy named Julianske, observing the preparations, urinated on the burning fuse and thus saved the city.

The earliest mention of Manneken Pis in a document dates to the mid-15th century. At that time, the pissing boy wasn't a tourist attraction, as Jacobus Harrewijn's 1697 gravure shows.

The water jet must have been stronger back then (©Jijuc/Wikipedia)

The Fontaine de Manneken-Pis was part of Brussels' water supply!

In 1695, during the Nine Years' War, Louis XIV's troops bombarded Brussels, heavily damaging the city's water supply. For some time the Manneken could not deliver his water. When the pipes were repaired, the little pisser was triumphantly returned to its pedestal. Above his head, the grateful citizens placed the text of Psalm 27:5-6: In petra exaltavit me, et nunc exaltavi caput meum super inimicos meos (He hath set me high upon a rock (pedestal). And now he hath lifted up my head above my enemies.)

On our way back, we passed La Frieterie again, and this time we stopped and stepped in. Without exaggeration, I had the most expensive, but best, French fries of my life. How do the Belgians make them ...

Seen in Gent

I asked ChatGPT, and here is the answer:

1. The potato
They traditionally use floury, high-starch potatoes, such as Bintje. The high starch and relatively low moisture are important for the fluffy interior.
2. Cut thick
Belgian frites are generally cut considerably thicker than fast-food fries - roughly 10- 13 mm. This gives enough potato inside to remain soft and creamy.
3. First frying - relatively cool
The raw fries are fried at around 140-160°C for several minutes. They cook through without becoming brown. The inside becomes soft and fluffy while the outside develops the beginnings of a crust.
4. Resting
This is an important part. The fries are taken out and allowed to drain and cool for a while.
5. Second frying - very hot
Just before serving, they go back into the fat at about 175-190°C. The remaining surface moisture rapidly turns into steam, producing a dry, crisp exterior.

Spectacular Gustav Klimt for sale.

Little of the traditional Belgian broderie remains. I didn't ask for the price.

Then our guide led us to Brussels' Grand-Place, devastated by the French bombardment in 1695 but, like the Manneken Pis, it rose from its ashes. The place is surrounded by the Hôtel de Ville, guildhouses, and La Maison du Roi. Many buildings around the Grote Markt were rebuilt and date to the late 17th century.

The Stadhuis, from the 15th century and built in Brabant Gothic, has a 96-meter-high tower crowned by a statue of the Archangel Michael. It largely survived the 1695 bombardment. But our guide didn't rant at the French but at the Spaniards.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Flanders, along with Brussels, was part of the Spanish Netherlands. La Maison du Roi, the Broodhuis, bears witness to this. Originally, bakers sold their bread there. The Dukes of Brabant kept the original name when they converted the house into an administrative building. Later, the building became the Habsburg governor's residence. 

Karl Marx, expelled from Paris, arrived in the Belgian capital in February 1845, and Friedrich Engels joined him that spring. La Maison du Cygne was a meeting place for the Democratic Association of Brussels where the pair often gathered. Marx was active in the group and gave lectures. 

In the aftermath of the February 1848 revolution in France, Belgian authorities moved against foreign radicals. Marx was arrested, expelled in March, and returned to Paris.

Horses pollute; electric vehicles don't.

Another historic building on the Grand-Place is La Maison du Pigeon. After Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'état in 1851, in which he established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Victor Hugo, a staunch Republican, openly declared Napoléon III a traitor to France. Hugo fled to Brussels in December and stayed in the house decorated with a pigeon until the Belgian authorities pushed him out in 1852. He moved on to the Channel Islands, first to Jersey, from which he was expelled, then to Guernsey, where he stayed until 1870.

Stay tuned for more Flanders.

**

Kaub: - 2

©Wikipedia/Marion Halft

Today, the water level gauge in Kaub couldn't handle a negative value. At - 2 cm, the navigation channel on the Rhine River is a mere 111 cm deep.

The classic water level gauge jutted out as a “writing above the water” (©SWR)

After standing at four centimeters last Friday, the gauge level had already dropped to minus one centimeter by Saturday afternoon. This is a dramatic change from the gauge level of 24 cm I reported on August 5.

©SWR

At this new historic low, the Kaub Rhine ferry service, already suspended for ten days earlier this summer, once again came to a standstill, since it requires a minimum gauge level of 15 centimeters to operate regularly.

It is unclear when service can resume; substantial rainfall is not in sight. Today in Freiburg, it was 30 °C, with rain showers expected and a temperature drop announced for the coming Thursday.

Construction materials must be expensively transported by rail or road (©SWR)

Economists at the German Economic Institute estimate the overall economic damage from logistical shifts, production cutbacks, and lost cargo during the months-long low-water period is already at 18 billion euros.

According to experts, it all began with the extremely dry and hot summer of 2018. Some shipping companies never recovered after the resulting extreme drought. It was a wake-up call, but as usual, nobody listened.

The water problem starts in the Alps, where winters bring little snowfall. Also, higher temperatures mean less snow remains on the ground in the low mountain ranges. Normally, this snowpack acts as a temporary reservoir: it melts slowly over weeks, and the water seeps continuously into the ground, replenishing groundwater and flowing into rivers. Everywhere snow is missing as a silent water reservoir.

A worldwide challenge. The same story at Park City Mountain Resort (©WaPo)

The Rhine River has another water source: melting glaciers in the Alps. Enno Nilson of the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) says, “For now, glacial melt is still masking the effects of low water levels: During hot spells, up to one-fifth of the Rhine’s water comes from the glaciers, while normally, it’s only a small single-digit percentage.”

But we all know that this buffer is disappearing along with the glaciers. Climate change thus only temporarily offsets a problem that it causes elsewhere. This does not bode well for navigation on the Rhine River. Climate models show that in the second half of the century, low-water periods are likely to become even longer and more pronounced. With every additional year of drought, transport on Germany’s waterways becomes more uncertain and more expensive.

The mighty Colorado River suffers from lack of water too (©WaPo)

Authorities and companies are working to adapt shipping to low water levels. Low-water vessels are one way to adapt, and on the Middle Rhine, the federal government plans to ease the Kaub bottlenecks by dredging the riverbed and deepening the navigation channel. But that won’t make much difference if there is even less water to begin with.

October, often praised as the "golden month," is known for its low rainfall. Therefore, it is likely that the water level at Kaub will drop even further. 

Will the Rhine River eventually dwindle to a trickle or even dry up completely, and will weeping help?

Oh, tears are salt water.

**

A Rainbow With No Ends

On the bus ride back from my trip to Flanders (blogs to follow), I photographed a strange phenomenon that resembled a rainbow with no ends. 

I took the photo on the Autobahn A5 near Bühl on September 23, at 18h30. The low evening sun illuminated a small cirrus cloud and created this rare (?) spectacle. That's a case for ChatGPT.

Do you know anything more about this weather phenomenon?

This is a cloud iridescence in cirrus, caused by diffraction of low evening sunlight by tiny ice particles. With the Sun only about 8° above the horizon, sunlight came through the atmosphere at a very shallow angle, illuminating the thin high cloud from the side.

It is a relatively uncommon sight in ordinary mid-latitude cirrus. A published long-term study found that vivid iridescence in mid-latitude cirrus is quite rare because the very small ice particles needed for it do not persist for long.

And there is also a nice coincidence: September 23, 2026 was the autumnal equinox (at 02:05 CEST). So you photographed this essentially on the day when the Sun crossed the celestial equator.

You always get a bonus with ChatGPT.

Iridescent clouds in Liebenwalde on April 10, 2020

The phenomenon that sunlight is not refracted by water drops causing a rainbow, but diffracted by ice particles, was photographed by ©Andreas Möller, too.

And remember the spectacular pink in Freiburg's sky on December 9 last year.

**

AI Dooming and More

Today Red Baron read an article in the NZZ titled “Untergangspropheten, Skeptiker und Utopisten: Diese drei Lager streiten um die KI-Zukunft (Doomsday Prophets, Skeptics, and Utopians: These Three Camps Are Debating the Future of AI).”

Here is my annotated and augmented summary:

©NZZ

There is a growing chorus of voices claiming that AI will destroy humanity. This assumption is based on incidents in which AI “autonomously” infiltrated computer systems and altered them.

Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher at Anthropic, resigned from his position criticizing both Anthropic and OpenAI for "gambling with our lives"

When Jacob proclaimed his Badspel, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper looked worried, well Anderson always looks worried.

As the discussions turn toward doomsday scenarios, Jason Abaluck, economics professor at Yale University,  posted:

Jason is mostly afraid of RSI, the Recursive Self-Improvement, of one AI system dominating not only all the others but the world?

One of the best-known doomers is AI developer Geoffrey Hinton, who asserts, “The only thing that can force these companies to do more safety research is legislation.”

“Never has a less intelligent thing controlled a more intelligent thing. Developing a powerful AI is like getting a tiger cub. If you can’t be very sure that it won’t try to kill you once it grows up, you should be worried.”

Dario Amodei left OpenAI after sharply criticizing the irresponsibility behind developing the ChatGPT agent. He founded Anthropic and he now drives the development of the Claude agent. He is a doomer, yet he sees both the dangers and the potential of AI. Amodei advocates for slowing down AI research to buy time for more safety reviews.

 

Elon Musk who had been sounding the alarm on AI for a long time admitted recently in an interview with The Economist, “I don’t see any way to really stop this incredible surge in AI and robots.”

Then Elon went on to explain his shift from an AI doomer to an AI advocate, saying that within the framework of techno-libertarianism, he arrived at the ”philosophical” conclusion that “even if there were a stop button, we probably shouldn’t press it, because the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for everyone.”

“Future humans will no longer have to work. Their lives will be funded by an ‘unconditional basic income.’”

Doyan Marc Andreessen, co-author of the first web browser Mosaic, is even more optimistic than Musk. In his essay “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” he writes: “We believe that artificial intelligence is our alchemy, our philosopher’s stone — we are literally making sand think.”

As a result of the “Law of Accelerating Return,” according to which technological progress generally reinforces itself, “more and more becomes possible with less and less. Prices fall, purchasing power is unleashed, and demand for new goods and services rises.” This results in exponential growth. Andreessen’s view is in line with the radical current of techno-libertarianism known as “e/acc,” or effective accelerationism.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, sounds far more utopian in his essay “The Intelligence Age.” He is convinced that AI can tackle climate change, explore the entire field of physics, and establish a space colony.

After all, Sam, too, believes in exponential growth according to Moore’s Law: “Semiconductors roughly double their performance every two years while prices remain constant. Computers and smartphones get better with every new model, and their processors take up less space, while the price of a new device stays roughly the same*.
*Roughly the same? The iPhone 18 Pro Max is 150 euros more expensive than last year’s model.

He concludes his remarks, “A defining feature of the Age of Intelligence will be massive prosperity.”

Alongside the doomers and utopians, Gary Marcus, professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University, considers the current discourse to be exaggerated: “The idea that AI will wipe us all out in five years is completely absurd.”

Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, wrote in Wired magazine: “The industry has become a collection of cults and die-hard believers. Like a preacher proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh.”

How true.

AI researcher Melanie Mitchell demonstrated that the AI agents developed by OpenAI and Anthropic do not exhibit malicious behavior by chance, but rather as a result of their training. These AI companies didn't lose control of their systems; they trained them incorrectly. Subsequently, they failed to monitor their inherently risky systems properly. 

Is her finding any consolation and shouldn’t we steer the discourse around AI away from the hype and back toward the real problems of AI?

©AP

AI systems not only consume a lot of energy but cooling water, too. Even worse is what we are currently witnessing with horror: AI built into weapons is automating the war in Ukraine.

This has mutated into a war of attrition, although unlike in World War I, the dwindling numbers of soldiers on both sides are not keeping each other in check with heavy artillery fire.

Like in 1917, there is calm on the front lines: “All Quiet on the Eastern Front”. Now, AI-controlled drones are bringing death and destruction deep into the enemy’s rear, and the ones who suffer are the civilian population, women, and children.

And with this, war criminal Putin is conducting sham negotiations for a temporary ceasefire, leading the world by the nose, and holding it hostage. Even India’s Prime Minister Modi, who greatly benefits from Russian oil at a low price, is pushing for serious negotiations.

Sorry for the digression. I just had to get that off my chest.
**