Simply waiting for Putin to disappear

The news about Lukashenko's illness will briefly overshadow the steady trickle of information about Russian President Vladimir Putin's many possible diseases, diagnoses, and forecasts of an imminent demise.

Since the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, one possible endgame scenario the world followed was simply waiting for the Russian dictator to die. Add to that, the uncertain fate of the not-too-healthy Belarusian leader would round out the plot quite nicely.

Ukrainians more than anyone want it all to end tomorrow.

And yet, these are the dreams of those Russians and Belarusians who are very unhappy with the war and socio-economic situation in their countries, convinced that the dictator's death would change everything. One mortal man as the singular embodiment of evil. If he disappears, peace will reign and the nation shall prosper. That is the dream.

Ukrainians don't have such dreams. We know that the war will not end with Putin's death.

The concentric circles of Russian business and military elites are supporting and driving this war.

Fantasies of a quick end

Contrary to all logic, even the deplorable state of the Russian economy and isolation from the rest of the world is a convenient environment for their continued existence. Outside this system they are nothing, the end of the war for them is like the end of the corrupt Russia in which they know how to live and rule.

So to bide one’s time and count on the death of a dictator is merely an attempt to detach ourselves from our immediate present and turn over our collective future to the whim of fate. To hope that the tyrants will somehow vanish on their own is just another way to allow them to continue to exist and rule.

In Ukraine, we have the learned this lesson the hard way. Not only more recently from Russia's attempts to seize our land, but also from rotating czars and Soviet politburo chiefs through the decades and centuries past. It is the system, in the end, not the beating heart of any one man that must stop.

I understand the temptation to fantasize about a quick and bloodless end to the war. Ukrainians more than anyone want it all to end tomorrow. But we will not be spending today waiting for Putin or any other tyrant to die. It’s a fool’s pastime. Our life is in our own hands, and our future will be made by our actions not our hopes. Or to put it more plainly, citing the refrain of a famous Ukrainian song: "With the help of the AFU"! The Armed Forces of Ukraine…