Day 890
Imminent, inevitable, unavoidable
I liked the article below, although Kim did not point out that this is the 11th year of the war, a small 8-year-long detail.
Today, Ukraine is willing to sit down and talk about a truce based on the principles of international law, i.e. the UN Charter and Helsinki 1975 accords, that is, territorial integrity and sovereignty. Russia says it is willing to talk after Ukrainian troops are withdrawn from areas they have invaded, annexed and occupied, about 18% of the country. Chatter about negotiating a ceasefire is a public relations exercise. The leaders of both countries want the rest of the world to take them seriously.
Putin cannot stop the war, because it keeps him in power, and Z cannot stop resisting the invasion for the same reason. We won’t surrender, because that means the end of the country.
Western leaders and their emissaries in Kyiv are reluctant to criticize management of the war effort, in part because they themselves have failed to provide enough arms and ammunition. The public policy of incrementalism — many small changes over time to enact a larger change, offering a middle way between the rational actor model and bounded rationality — just prolongs the misery.
On the war jacket, Russia launched a zillion drones at us last night.
All of them were shot down, we think.
The Munich Security Conference in 2022 took place from February 18 to February 20. Now presumptive presidential candidate Kamala Harris met with Z at the venue.
“Kamala Harris said the attack was unavoidable,” recalls Oleksiy Reznikov, who attended the meeting in his role as Ukraine’s defense minister at the time. “What President Zelensky said to that was: I get it. Our intelligence also sees this information.” But he and Harris could not agree on the appropriate response1.
Before Kamala’s pow wow with Z, the president and his office had for weeks insisted publicly that an all-out invasion was not imminent or inevitable2. No one, including Z, told us Kamala had informed them that it was unavoidable.
Because they thought we would panic.
I enjoyed this chit chat with Volodymyr, who recalls briefly his contribution to the development of the ethical pharmaceutical market in Russia and Central Asia during the early 1990s. Lovastatin and timolol maleate immediately came to mind.
And, finally, this from Z and the French flaks:
Z blames battlefield setbacks on the failure of partners to equip three of 14 new brigades, meat assaults by Russian invaders, bans by partners to fire into Russia and insufficient anti-air defenses (again blames partners).
The Uneasy Alliance Between Kamala Harris and Z (Time, July 31, 2024)
Lost in Translation. Imminent inevitability in Ukraine’s underpants (February 4, 2022)