The world is appalled by Putin’s atrocities and increasingly unhinged talk

The world is filled with moral ambiguities, as we all eventually learn after passing through the more idealistic phases of adolescence.

But right now, on the largest scale in eight decades, we really are enmeshed in a battle of good versus evil.

The atrocities that Vladimir Putin’s military machine is inflicting on its neighbor are almost unthinkable, and yet seem to escalate each day. Whatever legitimate security concerns the Russian autocrat had over Ukraine have been totally eclipsed by his determination to indiscriminately slaughter civilians.

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On the other side, Volodymr Zelenskyy is being hailed as a Churchillian figure as he addresses one national parliament after another, pleading for military aid to help him stop the carnage in a war he did nothing to provoke.

Isolated and paranoid

Putin is not only increasingly isolated and paranoid, he is engaging in crazy talk. He says the West seeks "the destruction of Russia," that the country will "spit out" those he calls "scum," "bastards and traitors" as opposed to "true patriots," and that this is a "necessary self-purification."

If this sounds like the mass murderer who once wanted to create a master race – and I don’t use the comparison lightly – that’s by design. How appalling that Putin fabricates the notion of neo-Nazis in the government of Ukraine’s first Jewish president, and now sounds like a Third Reich tyrant.

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When President Biden belatedly branded Putin a "war criminal," he wasn’t exaggerating. These crimes have become so pathetically commonplace that one fades into the next.

The shelling of apartment buildings, from a man who mouths reassurances that he isn’t targeting civilians, is awful. But there’s more.

The bombing of a maternity and children’s hospital – then insisting the victims, like a pregnant woman who died, are "crisis actors" – is appalling. But there’s more.

Dropping a giant explosive on a theater where children are being sheltered is unconscionable. But there’s more.

Taking hundreds of doctors and patients hostage at a Mariupol hospital is a travesty. So is killing 10 people waiting on a bread line. So is abducting mayors with bags thrown over their heads. And so is repeatedly promising safe passage to some of the more than 3 million refugees, and then shelling the escape routes.

How Russia works

And just as sickening are Russian forces killing three journalists – Fox’s Pierre Zakrzewski and Sasha Kuvshynova, Time’s Brent Renaud – and wounding two others – Juan Arredondo and Fox’s Benjamin Hall -- in a matter of days.

If you think this doesn’t happen without marching orders from the top, you don’t know how Russia works.

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In not a single instance has the Kremlin claimed a mistake or issued an apology. Zelenskyy says Russia is operating as a terror state, and he is right.

What Putin is obviously trying to do is break the will of the Ukrainians, and that has been a spectacular failure. So have his military forces, which the Pentagon estimates have suffered 7,000 casualties, including three generals. That's more than America lost in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in an emotion appeal to the Russian people, said his father was a Nazi sergeant who believed Hitler’s lies, was injured at Leningrad and always had to live with his wars and his guilt. 

"I don’t want you to be broken like my father," the former California governor said.

But for Putin, obsessed with recreating the old Soviet empire, any rational plea falls on deaf ears.

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Putin can never truly win this war, and he is being annihilated in the information war, his constant cruelty turning the world against Russia. Evil, it turns out, is impossible to defend when phones and cameras record every depraved act.