Day 29
Photo: Woman with a gas-proof pram. England 1938. c/o Old Pictures Arkadiy has posted a 17-minute video full of life-saving advice to Belarusian soldiers...
Day 28
Nathan’s map *** The two pink blobs to the West and East of Kyiv interest me the most. Fred’s map. *** Jerome’s map. Steel hedgehogs galore Biden and...
Day 27
#Чорнобаївка c/o Vasyl Mamelin *** As on Day 1, on the Ukrainian jacket, it’s all in your face, famous tongues just a-snakin’ away, badass chains nestled in...
Day 26
Illustration c/o Andriy Bartashev *** During a Sunday appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said U.S. President Joe...
Day 25
Mark Solonin chats up a *specialist* in Ukraine’s special forces describes ongoing mop-up ops around Kyiv, about how soldiers, volunteers and vets are...
Day 24
Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map is a crowdsourced effort by CIR As Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth week, orienting yourself from Kyiv has...
Day 23
I was reminded of St. Patrick’s Day minutes before falling to sleep. That’s a good sign, because I’m not a fan. The holiday got me wondering this morning how...
Day 22
Still shaken from the sacking of Hoholiv due east of frontline Kyiv, our battle-weary war NBC chief foreign correspondent, doing his usual shabby Clarissa...
Day 21
There is nothing glorious about war. Whatever we write about it or think about it belies the unspeakable tragedy of it. Rory always comes to mind when war...
Day 20
An emergency service worker in Kyiv’s Obolon district holds a turtle named Torpedo, who was rescued after an early Monday morning missile attack. (Photo c/o...
Day 19
Starting off the day with random thoughts: Putin’s deification proceeds way beyond Hitlerism, Stalinism. One can resist only in terms of the identity that is...
Day 18
Map c/o Critical Threats Russia has lost the war, and the map above is misleading. The same goes for dozens of forecasts and studies published by Institute...
Day 17
Photo c/o Historic Photographs. A German officer and an NCO wearing portable sound locating apparatae to detect enemy aircraft (this was a type of early...
Day 16
Illustration by Michelle and Nicole Feldman *** There’s a superabundance of documentary material on every aspect of what has brought Russia to “point zero”...
Day 15
Illustration by Mykhailo Aleksandrov *** I have never been to Mariupol and have no desire to go there. A friend of mine from Dnipro has a brother there, who...
Day 14
Illustration c/o Clodia Barvinskaya Over the last two weeks, Russia’s “further military invasion” has followed the script of the latest post-apocalyptic...
Day 13
The Dragon, by Evgeny Schwartz. The puppet theatre in Magnitogorsk staged the play in 1979. The same Viktor Shraiman (from Kharkiv) presented The Very Same...
Day 12
The seam on the left heel side of my right shoe fell apart a couple of weeks ago. Ordinarily, I would have chucked out the pair and bought new shoes. But...
Day 11
It goes like this: Putin's main mistake was that he was sure Ukrainians would not fight.Ukraine’s main mistake was thinking the West would fight. The West’s...
Day 10
Testing out flight helmets, c/o Old Photos of the World Lots of nerdy military updates w/ maps about the mess on Substack. Here’s one, if you’re interested....
Day 9
Photo c/o Dmytro Kuleba, c/o Reuters... Borodyanka, sometimes spelled Borodianka, is an urban-type settlement in Kyiv region and the administrative center of...
Day 8
Russia’s new flag in a couple of months At around 01.40 this morning, I awoke to the sound of very loud explosions (at least four) and flashes of light ....
Day 7
So, that pink blob pouring down from southern Belarus towards Kyiv should be our main concern, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The New York...
End of Hostilities?
There has been some chatter, mostly in Russian billionaire circles, about different people volunteering to help broker a peace agreement between Russia and...
Day 6
Evening rush hour on Volodymyrska Street on February 28, 2022 Rather as one keeps tonguing a sore tooth to see if it still hurts, I took a boo at how the...
Day 5
Photo: A mother and her son push a baby carriage loaded down with fresh water jugs down an empty street in the center of Kyiv shortly after a weekend curfew...
Day 4
Illustration c/o Novaya Gazeta It’s almost 04:00 and I’m awake, sort of. I wedged a piece of salo between my gum and sore tooth last night, and it worked....
Day 3
It’s about 4:00 a.m. in Kyiv. The latest news is fighting in and around Vasylkiv Airbase, about 40 kilometers southeast of capital. Ukraine’s military says...
Day 2 (update)
Walk to work was uneventful. Air-raid sirens and lots of gun-toting civvies in the center of town. Hanna sez it’s Battle for Kyiv Day. She just posted a vid...
Day 2
It’s was a quiet night in Kyiv, until around 4:30 when I heard the sound of a jet, that is, one (1) jet, flying overhead. That was followed 30 seconds later...
Day 1
Photo: My Facebook chit chat before leaving work on February 23, 2022 News galore this morning on Putin’s not-so-secret sneak attack, but nary a mention of...
A Separate Reality
After the previous episode of the tragicomedy, many fans were impressed by Tiger Team’s multi-faceted intelligence-sourced universe of invasion plans,...
In Principle, If
Perhaps you share my reaction to in principle, if summits: as soon as I hear about one, a filmy layer of distrust and seething hatred gets in the way, and I...
Air Drums Over Kyiv
Video: courtesy of FoxNews Have you smacked a Ukraine expert today? I listened to the president’s scream for attention in Munich amid all this death and...
On the Roasting of Chicken
Photo c/o abdymok What happened: There was a cat door. Some time ago Ukraine managed to destroy this cat door in an attempt, one imagines, to get through it....
WTF?
The following is the On Ukraine part of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s wacko letter to the United States and NATO. The collection of words is an excellent...
The Big Sig
Photo c/o abdymok Where I lived before, finding one’s bearings was simple: to the West was The Zone (well, a place populated by civies, a bunch of countries,...
To Kill a Dragon
A quick xlation of practicing philosopher Volodymyr Pastukhov’s take on the Russia-Ukraine war drama appearing on February 14, 2022, courtesy of Echo Moscow....
'It's Your Duty, My Beauty'
During the last several months I’ve read many probabilistic analyses of the possibility that Russia intends to further invade Ukraine. Their authors conclude...
Lost in Translation
Imminent and inevitable are synonyms, with a difference. An event that is “imminent” is about to happen, occur or take place very soon, especially an event...
On the Edge of Inanity
President Volodymyr Zelensky. Photo c/o President’s Office The disclosure on January 28, 2022 about blood supplies by U.S. officials, speaking on condition...
Putin's 'Psychic Attack'
On January 26, 2021, Ex-MSD lawyer turned London-based lecturer Vladimir Pastukhov makes a couple of interesting points about the Ukraine-Russia mess in his...
Russia's Sick Logic
Ex-MSD lawyer and London-based political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov thinks it’s entirely possible that Russia has been orchestrating a months-long...
Attack of the Vengeful Hairdresser
Imagine, for a moment, the future of English-language news about Ukraine. You're minding your own business and browsing the web, checking social media, or...
Big Day Wednesday
Tony’s schedule in Kyiv on Wednesday: 10.45 - U.S. Embassy pow wow w/ staff 12:30 - Chit chat w/ Ze 14:00 - Chit chat w/ FM15:30 - Press conference w/ FM...
Please, Like Me
This is kind of funny. Bohdan Nahayalo, a harmless, affable bumpkin known for a near-creepy obsession with himself (teehee, those were the days at United...
Stay Out of Doorways!
I practically never look at the greasy rag anymore, only nipping in now and again to see what press release Padraig has lightly edited, or to chuckle at...
Axis of Weasels
Must be horrible, being Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev, the weasel who last week demonstrated his allegiance to Moscow’s Collective Security Treaty...
Wolf Update
Trackers with heat-vision goggles showed up this morning around 5.00 a.m. to look for the female wolf running around Kyiv National Botanical Garden. They...
Weightless Self-promotion
Photo courtesy of Iuliia Mendel It’s churlish to dwell on all that can go wrong with the professional journalist. True, some aren’t completely annoying to be...