My Take | Mr Putin, please give peace a chance

Thanks to social media and advanced global communications, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be like no other in history. Any war crimes and wanton killings will be much harder to hide; perhaps their visual evidence captured will be preserved on the internet for as long as civilisation endures.

It’s been often observed that the United States lost its genocidal war in Vietnam because of uncontrolled media access showing nightly horrific pictures back home. The Russian war today will be much worse from the invader’s perspective, because now, everyone has a mobile phone with built-in features for taking high-resolution photos and videos. Today, everyone is a reporter, photographer and videographer.

However, what has been heartbreaking for me to see so far is not any horrific images but video clips of three Ukrainians – each representative of their country in their own ways – that have gone viral on the internet. Each shows the world not only the plight of the Ukrainians but their bravery, courage and defiance.

We see President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly walking in the centre of the capital, and rallying his people. In his past life, Zelensky was just some Jewish kid and comic actor. Yesterday, he was even a bit of a bumbling politician. Today, he is the resolute leader of a nation fighting for its survival.

We see an unnamed Ukrainian woman cleaning up debris in her mother’s flat after their building was bombed – all the while singing the Ukrainian national anthem, until she broke down in tears, but not before quietly saying, “Long live Ukraine”.