Day 22, Phase 2
My Favorite Vegetable is Pelmeni
It’s Day 52 and the future of Europe after the Cold War is still up for grabs1. A quick peek at what Ukraine experts were saying last year about “The Revised Regional Order” now seems, er, irrelevant2.
Next up. A random trip down memory lane, here.
Prescience doesn’t pay, necessarily, and there’s no known method for purging Internet of old baggage.
Which brings me back to Ukraine and Passover3.
One the best ways to get your bearings in Ukraine these days is to keep tabs on Mykola Tyshchenko4. The greasy member of parliament is again in trouble, this time for dining and dashing in Lviv. He symbolizes the importance of worldwide ethno-minimalism — and Skrat, the dance club on Peace Street next to the Evropa Hotel in Rakhiv.
On a more somber note, David and Julian have updated their CIA Warns Putin May Use Nukes story. I don’t have the patience to read it, but I did watch William talk to the kids at Georgia Tech the other day.
If someone wants to kill himself, there’s little you can do to prevent it. An increasing number of western leaders are thinking that if armageddon is indeed inevitable, then why bother delaying it5.
As for Fiona and Robert’s whatever published on April 11, the collection of 7,000 words is conspicuous for what it doesn’t mention.
Where I live now, breathing fresh air means leaving behind a booming metropolis of 3.5 million to negotiate a lonely latticework of poorly-paved roads and dead apple orchards. The Big Sig (February 19, 2022)
The most lurid post-Cold War fantasies about “calibrated coercion” spread on behalf of the Kremlin by government operatives have been rendered irrelevant by a chattering horde of retired American diplomats who speak Russian like three-year olds. Requiem for Ukraine (December 7, 2021)
Franklin Foer over at the The Atlantic is comparing Ukraine with Passover. I think I will be sick. How 50 Days of Ukraine’s War Changed the World (April 15, 2022)
Known in the underworld as Kolya the Pump, Kolya-Obolonsky and Kolya the Pork Chop, Tyshchenko is a brute, for a man almost 50 years old! He is an absolute bull. A Man in Full (September 10, 2021)
Trying to figure out what Putin is planning is no longer very interesting, because he has already “zeroed” himself by signing off on the current mess and hinting that he’s prepared to push the red button if the United States and NATO intervene on Ukraine’s behalf. Day 14. What Will Happen Cannot Be Avoided. (March 9, 2022)