Indus Valley Times

LONDON (AP) Oct. 2 : There are moments in history that appear as critical to the world as they are terrifying.

Just this century: the 9/11 attacks in 2001; the U.S. “shock-and-awe″ war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq two years later; the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 killed millions and upended life; and most recently the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, bringing ruinous war back to Europe.

Friday seemed one of those watershed moments as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to illegally annex a large swath of eastern and southern Ukraine, like it did with Crimea in 2014.

Coming seven months into the conflict and with near daily nuclear threats by backs-to-the wall Kremlin leaders, Putin chilllingly vowed to protect the newly annexed regions by “all available means.” Almost immediately, Ukraine’s president countered by applying to join the NATO military alliance, setting Russia up to face off against the West.

Any thought that this kind of harrowing brinkmanship had ended with the 1980s when the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and then U.S. President Ronald Reagan eased the Cold War and the specter of nuclear Armageddon, is now gone.

Even with the horror of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned on humanity’s collective consciousness, the world finds itself once again contemplating the possible use of nuclear weapons.