Ukraine is grateful to President Biden for his unwavering support for Ukraine's fight for freedom, which, along with strong bipartisan support in the United States, has been and continues to be critical. Many strong decisions have been made in recent years and they will be remembered as bold steps taken by President Biden in response to challenging times.
And we respect today's tough but strong decision. We will always be thankful for President Biden's leadership. He supported our country during the most dramatic moment in history, assisted us in preventing Putin from occupying our country, and has continued to support us throughout this terrible war.
The current situation in Ukraine and all of Europe is no less challenging, and we sincerely hope that America's continued strong leadership will prevent Russian evil from succeeding or making its aggression pay off. - Z
The bold steps include repeated in-depth warnings to Z and his top managers that Team Russia was planning to invade Ukraine and decapitate the capital. These warnings, alas, were largely ignored or lost in translation1.
I let down my hair the other day and remarked that the cold war (1947-1991) wasn’t all that bad. Of course, it wasn’t a perfect power-balancing arrangement, but it did result in some of the longest-living generations in the history of mankind! The motto today is “shoot first and grab what you can.”
Battlefield picture c/o Vasyl Pekhno.
Putin’s bet in our casino of death™ is for the croupier responsible for the Ukraine table — whose job is to collect intelligence and dole out military support, give advice, etc — to become distracted, maybe fall asleep2.
Went for a walk in Spivoche Pole over the weekend. The kestrels there are fearless.
Lost in Translation. Imminent inevitability in Ukraine’s underpants (February 4, 2022)
Casino Moscow. A tale of greed and adventure on capitalism’s wild frontier (Matthew Brzezinsky, Touchtone 2002, 321 pages)