Last night, Vladimir Putin effectively declared War on Ukraine, and the Russian military is currently attacking Ukrainian cities across the second-largest country in Europe. All I can think of is the dirt.

Of all the commentary that is circling today, I wish there were more that focused on the tragedy of an entire generation of young Ukrainians–and Russians!–who, rather than training or doing part-time things with less existential weight, less capacity for moral depravity and less opportunity to create long-lasting psychological damage, are now engaged in War. Young men with so much in common, separated largely just due to the goddamned chance of the location of their very birth, are invariably destined for mortal combat. In the fight over the very dirt, they will kill each other by artillery, airstrike, shell, bullet, bayonet, or other means.

I am heartened to see brave Russian people taking to the streets to demand a reckoning for the attack of their neighbors. The courage that takes is impressive and I honestly wish I could tell each of those arrested in Russia how much it makes me respect the Russian people that they have the courage to do that. But as an ex-Infantryman, who himself sat and stood in a lot of (peacetime) dirt, contemplating the ask that could come at any moment, I am nothing but remorseful that there are kids now in Ukraine, as old as I was then, who are tasked facing this unnecessary War.