| Climate change is a manmade disaster caused by mankind as a whole, but history remembers disasters of dramatic proportions caused by a single man. We are currently paying the price of at least two such disasters. Captain Edward Smith’s crashing of the Titanic is a classic example of a man-made disaster—or blunder. It is believed that the ship sank because the officers on duty did not have the key to the ship’s binoculars, which was in the captain’s pocket. Russia’s emperor Alexandr II’s decision to sell Alaska to the United States (for $7.2 million) led to regrets as gold mines and oil fields were soon discovered under the melting ice (not to mention that it gave the US a direct maritime border with Russia, with two mainlands less than three miles apart). We can also speculate what would have happened if Hitler had not attacked the Soviet Union, his ally at the time, in June 1941 and had instead concentrated on invading further Western Europe, including the British Isles. The attack on the USSR was probably his biggest mistake. Happily enough, Nazism was defeated four long years later. Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-size invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 is probably his biggest mistake, as the consequences of this man-made disaster could go very far – and not in his favour. A Russian woman recently had the courage to go on social media and list the consequences of “Volodya’s” big mistake. It deserves to be carried almost in full here: | 