The men were smashing windows and aiming their weapons through them. The driver had opened the door and was shouting for the women and children to get out and run and hide. But Ilina realized in some vague way that he never managed to actually say the word "hide." He really said, "Women and children, get out, get out, get out! Run and..." The clerk's wife thought it was odd that he had stopped in the middle of a sentence, and even stranger that she herself knew the word, heard the word "hide" in her head when the driver stopped talking.
Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.
diplomacy shivers tension force military peace-on-earth fears learning-from-mistakes military-quote russia political-commentary super-powers army error errors lessons-learned repeat-mistakes wars ukraine defence conflict-resolution peace-quote peacemaker warfare forces international-relations conflicts lessons-learned-in-life poor-leadership nuclear-threat nuclear-weapons armies aggression lessons-of-life cold-war soviet-union armageddon repeating-the-past live-and-learn struggles-quotes power-struggles fear-quote fear-of-unknown soviet-occupation stalemate treaty moscow history-repeating-itself political-quandary political-quotes politics-observation regression fears-and-doubts sphere-of-influence nuclear-power forces-of-darkness red-army checks-and-balances military-history military-theory weapons-of-mass-destruction geopolitics crimea historical-perspective troops nato soviet-russia caucasus conflict-management international-community checkmate power-struggle nuclear-proliferation eastern-europe inexorably defences regressing escalation sliding end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it poor-judgement lack-of-judgement warmonger spine-chilling destruction-of-us caucasus-region impasse international-relationships russian-federation cool-response eastern-european geopolitical-forces geopolitical-tension mexican-standoff moscow-rules one-upmanship quandary repeated-mistake rules-of-engagement sabre-rattling shiver-quote standoff