At the fancy Selpo in the basement of Mandarin Plaza I was calculating the rough total of my cart and wondering should I have taken more Spraga Kumbucha bottles when I noticed the guy in line ahead of me was a dead ringer for the late Jon Polito, working this sort of Jon-Polito-in-repose groove with slacks and loafers and not a thing between him and that v-neck athleisure top but a couple tasteful gold chains nestling in chest hair.
He’s was popular, this dude: twice people called out Pryvit! from across the aisles and he turned and smiled, waggling glittering sausage fingers. Obviously an arms trader.
Rocking back and forth on the heels of my sandals I started to register that this popular, bald and round man with a pencil moustache had a cart filled with at least one of every single cheese item in the store and nothing else, except for a bottle of Pinot Grigrio.
A great deal of imagery began to run through my head and suddenly I made a very visible show of having forgotten something and navigated my cart into the booze aisle and took several deep breaths.
American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south. At The New York Times, these strategists don’t have names, so we can ignore them.
Felicia, The Financial Times’ US foreign affairs and defense correspondent, has the gall to cite Sam Charap after her nut graph.
Over at The Washington Post, Ishaan concludes:
Stefan has returned from vacation and resumed war-adjacent content milling on Substack, as have Phillips O’Brien, Professor John and docherocket Seymour.
Russian-language commentary abounds on Telegram.
Today, it is precisely Ukraine’s focus on continuing the war until victory over Russia that prevents this entire militant universe from “collapsing” into the “black hole” of the new Cold War, to which the other two peaks of the “military triangle” – Russia and the United States – are gradually leaning. Russia may agree to a ceasefire, but after a respite will most likely seek to disrupt it. In the long run, Russia has no chance of ending the second Cold War differently than the first. For the United States, this is more of a strategic than a tactical move. They are not the first to play the long game. — Practicing philosopher Vladimir Pastukhov
Vladimir transmogrifies Berlin Wall era Iron Curtain stuff to banks of the Dnipro River — the Cold War 2.0 divide.
You are probably wondering about the thousands of documented demented acts of ecocide, geronticide, linguicide, urbicide and genocide committed by Russia over the past decade. These cases will be studied, verified, authenticated, used in ICC proceedings and placed in an public electronic public archive to help future generations to continue villifying those responsible for the bloody mess.
In other news, Americans, get out of Minsk. You are not welcome in Moscow or here in Kyiv, either. Maybe leave Europe altogether. .
Today is Independence Day eve. Tomorrow is Ukraine’s 32nd birthday. No parades are planned. The weather has been glorious, sunny, but not too hot.
