Strike on Chernihiv: is it a prelude to a second front?

Three Russian cruise missiles penetrated Ukraine’s depleted air defences and struck the heart of the northern city of Chernihiv yesterday morning. They killed 17 people, destroyed a hotel, damaged a hospital and left dozens wounded. The numbing persistence of Russia’s onslaught against its neighbour and the fact of two other catastrophic wars elsewhere may contrive to keep Chernihiv off most front pages, but it remains astonishing and shameful that the Kremlin is doing this three and a half decades after the start of perestroika. Astonishing, because even Khrushchev didn’t resort to missiles when sending tanks into Budapest. Shameful, because the missiles could have been intercepted had Europe and the US Congress stopped dithering over the supply of anti-missile missiles. Chernihiv is only 80 kilometres from Ukraine’s northern border with Russia, which may be softening it up as a prelude to opening a second front. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s pro-Putin prime minister, has blood on his hands. So do Marjorie Taylor Greene and her fellow ultras, maddened by their blinkers on the Hill.