Read for yourself: this one is kind of funny, but this one just goes all hysterical – the bits about ‘it could be’ (after accusations of sloppy research) and having a ‘serious mind’ are a gas.
I could say something about Syktyvkar and Kagarlitsky, but I won’t. Igor has the details.
School being out, there are games, tourniquets on sale, panhandling kids, the obligatory post-deadline booze-up, awkward conversation, white wine and (because everyone has to eat sooner or later) grilled meat.
Team USA officials might be anonymous, but the grill belongs to Izi, the hockey expert for The Washington Post plugging Christopher’s memoir, The War Came to Us.
Tea leaves about the end of the war in Ukraine don’t interest me. Neither does fried meat. At first, I thought the Izi shrine on Pushkinska was a joke. Alas, no. A sign of the times.
But back to the war.
Today’s actions around Robotyne are likely the start of any “main thrust” Ukrainian forces might be launching, if the US officials are correct, rather than the sum of such a thrust. — Institute for the Study of War (July 26, 2023)
I suppose it all depends what, exactly, the ISW’s war analysts mean by thrust. So, I checked on their website, where I bumped into Nataliya’s latest op-ed. It’s footnoted 15 times to various ISW reports, which are chock full of thrusting.
Yeech!
This reminded me again of Fred and friends and their loopy counterfactual from December 2021.
I stopped reading after the first key assessment:
Putin is and remains a rational actor who is not less well-grounded in reality than most world leaders. ...He will not intentionally take actions likely to risk the survival of the Russian state or his own rule… No “bounded rationality” is necessary to explain Putin’s decisions or actions.