Day 1071
Cruelty in war is not a sin
Team USA is, er, mum. Z says Donald hasn’t cut off military assistance, yet, and he thanks “god” for this. As for the $500 million in 2025 planned USAID assistance…
“I know there are some restrictions, we need to look at it in detail. Restrictions for 90 days for humanitarian programs,” the president said. “I don't know about it, I don't see this money.”
UPDATE:
Z has no clue about the suspended programs, so he has asked for a report about them, saying government will rescue the ones which help children and veterans.
The president in his daily pep talk did not mention:
The plight of about 300,000 Ukrainian refugees in the United States aren’t on the cue cards, yet, either, and no, Z probably won’t come to the defense of Denmark, which opposes the hostile takeover of Greenland.
Lyubarsky’s interview with Roman Chervinsky.
I have written a lot about what Roman talks about, much of it years before Russia invaded Ukraine by land, sea and air.
The 82-minute interview reminds me of Valentyn Taras (and his son) and Vasyl Bykaŭ, two modern Belarusan writers and the last Eastern European literary dissidents, my mentors during the 1990s in Minsk. Both writers were adept at articulating the human condition during war. They specialized in combat immunity.
Herе’s Valentyn talking about partisan warfare.
Vasyl, on the other hand, was a Red Army foot soldier. He wrote about the surreal experience fighting in the middle of Ukraine (not far away from Z’s hometown Krivyi Rih).
Layers of years and events in Minsk long ago eroded away in my feverish mind, but some unforgettable conversations with Taras and Bykaŭ from time to time rise up very vividly. They are the foundation of the edifice my fate has been built on. I know all too well that I can't forget them, and the observations can't be drowned in Mukuzani.
(Here I deliberately avoid saying anything about Belarus, on the occasion of Sasha’s umpteenth power grap there. Too depressing).
Anyway, Roman’s interivew reminded me one of Bykaŭ’s well-known novels, Мёртвым не баліць (The Dead Feel no Pain), which is about how members of the secret police transformed themselves into heroes after the war.
Harbaciuk is the anti-hero in the novel. He believes in a clear division of labor during war: someone has to run forward to attack, someone has to fire the artillery, fly the planes… And it’s his job to sit at a desk in the rear during the whole war and hand down prison sentences.
Harbaciuk is today’s stereotypical State Bureau of Investigation agent.
Suspicion of dereliction of duty can be far more dangerous than real threats coming from the enemy. Some commanders who don’t fully understand what is happening on the battlefield try to say nothing until they have to, hoping that the commander of the unit next to them will make a report first…
It's 2025 and Ukraine’s top brass isn’t the same as it was three years ago.