Summary of the Week 9, April 21 – April 27, 2022
TURNING HEAVEN AND EARTH FOR UKRAINE VICTORY – psychological definite shift in the Mean War
The Mean War against Ukraine continues for 9 weeks by now. It will not be finished tomorrow. As we can see, the world community needed two months to recover from an initial shock and to start not only to express solidarity with attacked Ukraine, but to think – and most importantly, to act properly to help and to assist the the brave and resilient country attacked by the moral Neanderthals although I didn’t mean to upset the Neanderthals.
We know that military assistance comes and reaches Ukraine. The only thing is that it comes too late. And in the war , especially in the Mean War, there is no such thing as belated military assistance.
We also know that Ukraine gets many other possible kinds of help: financial, logistical, intelligence, humanitarian, possible help in reconstructing the destroyed country. It is all deadly important. But Ukrainian sky is understood to be left a prey to the unqualified savage army of thugs.
Still, the most important thing has happened during the ninth week of the Mean War. The process which has started on February 24th, 2022, from its total disbelief and all kind of arguments justifying not that whole-hearted help to Ukraine, through the horrors of Bucha, Borodjanka, Mariupol and so many other places, has transformed into firm commitment by the world not only to sympathise with Ukraine, but to stand next to it. This is a fundamental, qualified shift. A principal shift in the commitment to help Ukraine to prevail.
In the phrasing of the US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin ‘to turn earth and heaven’ to help Ukraine to win its battle, the joint decision of the collective West has crystallised. Moreover, the US Defence Secretary has made this crystal clear statement not just anywhere but at the largest US base in Europe in Ramstein, Germany. That base and its military personnel had a long and productive experience during the decades that they had been posted there, so far from their home, and so stunningly necessary in the third decade of the XXI century. I have many friends connected with the US base in Ramstein and I know that well-preserved tradition well enough. I know that once these kinds of people and institutions are committed, they are committed. There are no ifs left in such a context.
Ukraine paid a very high price to be understood in the way it is understood now, and to be consciously defended by the united community of the world’s countries. Unnecessary high price, in my opinion. Unpardonably high price, with insuperable damage on so many levels. But Ukraine also was able, as amazingly as it is, to teach us all to be brave, articulated, moral and resilient. It was a much needed lesson. I hope it will be taken by all parties thoroughly.
Day 63: April 27, 2022, Wednesday
‘A REGULAR THIRD WORLD WAR’ – STATEMENTS OF THE RUSSIAN MILITARY VETERANS
So, a serious event had happened in the Russian parliament recently, a special meeting of the Duma ( Military) Veterans Affairs Committee. The Committee is chaired by MP Mironov, the head of the party called Fair Russia. Mironov himself never fails to remind the public that he was a paratrooper in his past. Recently, this Russian MP has gathered some attention by his inflamed public instigation to kill the president of Ukraine. “He did deserve it. He deserved it in full. It serves him right!” – a senior Russian MP was exlaming and repeating, repeating and exclaiming publicly in Moscow recently. Well, we got it: a senior Russian MP, the leader of the parliamentary party, was publicly instigating the assasination of the president of a sovereign state.
As this was not confronted, the former paratrooper who is seemingly more militant decades after his regular army service, was emboldened to get into the Russian domestic contest of warmongers which is rather crowded.
During his Military Veterans Affairs Committee recent show in Duma, the people present there, some who should be there to follow the mainstream of Russian politics, you see, were quite impressed, as I am hearing, first-hand. “There was a super ultra militant hysteria there for several hours, conducted at full speed” – those observers mentioned.
Just some of the pearls from that Duma Committee official meeting: “ There is a regular war ( which is going on in Ukraine), the Third World war” – said one official, on the record. “ It is a historical battle of the XXI century’ – said another. “ If there is a war, we should carry it all out” – said the third.
Everyone who was speaking at the meeting was calling for far more radical military measures against Ukraine. The Committee also officially reprimanded Russia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Lavrov who repeated, due to his role and script for it, that their country ‘does not seek the change of the government in Ukraine’ . “What on earth are we not seeking the change of the government there? What else are we seeking then?” – a former MP who is still a member of the Committee was exclaiming.
The Committee has demanded, also on the record, that Russia’s schools and universities would be running special programs for establishing ‘the correct understanding about purposes and tasks of the war among our children and youth. This is absolutely important’.
Nobody from the present, several tens of adult men, did not call the Mean War as ‘ a special operation’. They all are former or current officers, for them to call it ‘a special operation’ and to use any kind of euphemisms is an insult.
Those warmongers from and in Duma really demand more blood and destruction. Yet more blood and destruction. They are very agitated. They see by whatever professional eye that has left among them that their army is losing big and that it is utterly incompetent. They are registering a professional disaster, ever subconsciously so. But their reaction to what is going on with their army acting in a way of useless barbarians is quite telling. They want it to be improved to the last Ukrainian. And to the annihilation of the Ukrainian cities, towns and villages.
The hate behind this low militant idiocy is stunning. Even people who are living in Russia and who are professionally observing this one and the other similar official committees and bodies there are stunned. “What on the earth are they hoping for?Are they adequate? How does it possible for the professional military to be so wall-stupid?” – the person who was present during that telling Committee meeting at the Duma was exclaiming. “In the end of that mad-house show, where everyone tried hard to be more militant than Shoigu & Co, I felt that I needed to see a psychiatrist, to check if everything is OK with me, and if I did not hallucinate all that afternoon at that Duma audience room”. – “But those one in that hall, they did not feel as if they were in urgent need of medical help although they definitely are in danger. They and the world where they can reach’, – I said to my friend. – ‘No, – he said – they are completely occupied by running the regular Third World War. They were waiting for that for so long”.
Day 62: April 26, 2022, Tuesday
CHERNOBYL ANNIVERSARY in 2022
April 26th is the date which is known to the world as the date of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. As it was not enough, 36 year after that nightmare-like day, Russian geniuses were very close to organising there a terrible repetition from the day one and thereafter of the Mean War 2022. As if it was not enough to cross the path, in the tanks, through the forbidden zone around the deactivated Chernobyl nuclear station thus rising to the air an enormous cloud of what is known as ‘a rusty dust’, deadly, lethal dust which was left as the result of the catastrophe, to cut the way to the station, according to the genius plans of the genius tactics planned the operation in the Russian army. As if it was not enough to get people on the ground of the Rusty Forest, a no-go 5 kilometre zone on the station perimeter, so dangerous that it will stay in its status for eternity. As if it was not enough to command the thousands of ‘the liberators’ dispatched in that way on the ground to cave in trenches just inside the Rusty Forest. Whom they were supposed to defend themselves from? – I still wonder all the time. As if it was not enough to seize entire active Ukrainian personnel at the station, killing five people there and keeping hostages for three and half weeks the rest of them depriving people who were providing the security of the station – and the bloody captors, as it goes – from food, drink, bathing, and any normal sanitary condition, not mention such luxury as sleep.
As if it was not enough to make and leave behind a repulsive mess made by stupid barbarians in the station’s premises – just check some of it on the pictures in my poster. As if it was not enough to loot the computers from the Chernobyl centre, and anything lootable from there. As if it was not enough also to loot , for souvenirs, many bottles with samples of highly radioactive liquids from the station. I wonder who would be honoured by receiving such great souvenirs from ‘the liberating operation’, or would it stay in the possession of the marauders, effectively killing them all? As if it was not enough to destroy, on purpose, as orangutans on megatons of steroids, the priceless and crucially important archive of the Chernobyl centre, with unique documentation collected and kept there during the last 40plus years.
When those vertically-oriented orangutans retreated, solely because hundreds of them started to suffer from acute syndromes of the radioactive disease and had had to be rushed to the nearby hospitals in Belarus for some kind of treatment, Ukrainian authorities and locals who were able to visit what has been left from the neatly maintained previously Cherobyl centre, were stupefied to find such a pogrom both inside and outside it. The same stupefied was Dr Marco Grossi, the Director General of the IAEA who had to visit the Chernobyl twice by now, with his second visit was around the date which we all do remember so very painfully. Now, after that savage pogrom, the Ukrainian Chernobyl Centre urgently needs a large amount of equipment, in order to stabilise the station and its premises and maintain it safe. The orangutans who were enjoying themselves at the Rusty Forest and in the no-go zone would die within a calendar year. This is strictly medical projections. There are hundreds of them.
Typically , not a word is muttered about Chernobyl in Russia after the truth about their just unbelievable stupid criminal activity there was told to the world after their jackal-like retreat from there. And how boasting they were on ‘taking Chernobyl under our control’ on the first day of their Mean War. Taking control for what? – one wonders. For distributing the souvenirs with lethal liquids among the orangutans without explaining to them that it is not vodka? Amazing army, indeed. A gang.
Day 61: April 25, 2022, Monday
UKRAINIAN MELODY BY POLISH ORCHESTRAS FOR THE WORLD
On April 11, 2022, two weeks ago, there was a wonderful event in our virtual global space. Thirty eight Polish orchestras, conducted by the top conductors from Poland, Ukraine and many other countries, performed one piece of music in a special action of solidarity with Ukraine, on the initiative of the Society of Polish Philharmonics. The piece they played was Melody by Myroslav Skoryk, a very well-known Ukrainian maetre of music who died in 2020. You are welcome to see and hear this touching and masterly performance here.
Anyone who is versed in music is aware of the long-standing fact of an exceptional quality of Polish musicians, due to the long tradition and refined way of understanding and performing of music. The brilliant performance of Skorik’s Melody is one more beautiful justification of the thesis.
But there is so much more in that story and its meaning. Myroslav Skoryk was well-known in the USSR, which had treated his family harshly. That cultured family belonged to the Ukrainian Polish intelligentsia with backgrounds in Europe. The composer’s parents, father the professor of history and mother the professor of chemistry were both brilliant graduates of the University of Vienna. His great-aunt was nobody else than famous opera global super-star Salome Solomyia Krushelnitsky.
Poor Solomyia who literally did save Madama Butterfly for Puccini and posterity, with the composer always remembering it with trepidation and love ( Solomyia sang the Butterfly part for the second time and in a new edition in June 1904 at the Teatro Grande in Brescia, four months after the fiasco of the opera at its premiere at La Scala in February 1904), who sang under the button of Toscanini, and together with Caruso, Shaljapin, Ruffo, after the death of her Italian husband, the mayor of Viareggio, decided to return briefly to her house in Lviv, then in Poland. That brief return turned to be eternal, as the year of those events was 1939 and the month was August.
A world star was confined in a few rooms in her house which was occupied in turns by Soviet and German troops, had no possibility to move anywhere from Lviv either during, or after the WWII, and left strayed and penniless there giving private lessons to earn some miserable living. She was repeatedly refused to be given Soviet citizenship thus denying her the possibility to work or pension. But she was promptly extorted by the Soviet authorities to give away her villa in Viareggio, and her entire property in Italy.
When a poor lady of an advanced age agreed to do that under heavy pressure in early 1950s, Solomiya was provided the Soviet passport to travel to Italy and to handle the business via Soviet representatives. Being thoroughly robbed, a legendary singer was allowed to work at the Lviv Conservatory as a teacher. She was bestowed a professor title one month before her death in 1952 at the age of 70. Among a very few possessions that Salome Krushelnitsky managed to keep, there was her photograph with a signature from her good friend and colleague, they were travelling the world and performing at the stage together, maestro Giacomo Puccini: “To the most beautiful and best Buttefly ever’.
There is no wonder that a quarter of a century after Solomyia’s death, her grand-nephew Myroslav has authored a ballet called The Return of Butterfly about the astounding life of his great aunt. The ballet which was written back in 1978 is in the repertoire of the Lviv Opera today. It is beloved by the public.
Myroslav Skorik and his immediate family were the same trapped in Lviv as his famous aunt. The composer was a year old at the time. He was born the same year as my uncle. A couple of years after the end of WWII, in 1947, Skoriks family was deported to Siberia for about a decade. They were allowed to return in 1955, so the future big composer did not have a chance to meet his aunt in person, but the family in which such a star was the centre of its general and cultural life did educate Myroslav about her and her friends and colleagues’ life and input in world culture.
The process of return of the exiled families of ‘enemies of the Soviet people’ from Siberia and Kazakhstan in the 1950s and 1960s is a separate and special saga. Many of them actually did not, many did so partially. We know is first-hand in detail, as my husband’s family was exiled to Kazakhstan from yet ‘better’ place, the Gulag Valley of Death in the Russian Far East, following the arrest of his father, regarded by the NKVD ‘the enemy of the people’ whose guilt was simply belonging to ‘the wrong’ family of the similar to the Skoryks culture intelligentsia from Poltava, of a Jewish origin as it goes in my husband family’s case, and with the same Polish multiply cultural connections which were the tissue of life in Poltava historically, as it was in Lviv.
Myroslav Skorik has become well-known pianist, composer and conductor, and is regarded as the one of the strongest proponents of the famous and special indeed Lviv Musical School. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a famous composer emigrated to Australia and got an Australian citizenship, but the same as his famous great-aunt did a half of century ago, he also returned back home soon. Skoryk was the leader of the Union of the composers of Ukraine and the artistic director of the Kyiv Opera in the mid-2020s, until a few years before his passing.
His Melody played with such soul and beauty by so many Polish musicians all over Poland in their solidarity action two weeks ago, is regarded by the Ukrainians as one of their most essential melodies. No wonder why. Among the international conductors who led their corresponding orchestras in that beautiful action of solidarity in the midst of the Mean War, there was naturally the conductor from Ukraine, who is shown in the end of the video. It is a telling performance. But most importantly, the essence of that great solidarity gesture is a joint emotional expression of the best which is there in the souls of those people who are not indifferent to the torments of the others, the victims of the ongoing Mean War.
I am very grateful to the straight-back Polish musicians and their international colleagues for such a Melody. For such a memory. For such in-tuning of their and our hearts at the moment when words do not work at all.
Day 60: April 24, 2022, Sunday
The TWO MONTHS OF THE MEAN WAR : GRIM BALANCE
It is a beautiful spring sunny day today. There in Ukraine. And there in Russia. It is also an Orthodox Easter which is celebrated in both countries, the aggressor one and the attacked one.
The Russian Orthodox Church has a lead today in their national celebrations, from the huge cathedral in Moscow to small ones in small cities. Their TV is all-religious today, non-stop. The degree of official state hypocrisy there is beyond imagination. Their current church leadership is just another top functioners. They are unable to be and to do otherwise. The schism between the Russian Orthodox Church leadership, their nomenclature, and many people in Russia who are believers and are against this cursed Mean War, is giant. I cannot tell how many years should pass for this schism to disappear.
So many Christian people in Russia are grieving today, on the day which generally is their most bright holiday of hope. So many people there are saying, writing and repeating: “Jesus resurrected not here and not for us this year”. So many people are publicly deciphering Russian XB abbreviation on all their Easter cakes and many other decorations in an anti-war way. Normally, that XB means ‘Christos Voskres, Jesus Resurrected’, this year it means, for many people there, ‘ Chvatit Voiny, Enough of War’.
Many people decided not to go to their churches, but to stay at home, to meditate, not celebrate, alone and with one’s own family and close friends, to escape those impossibly false ceremonies at the Russian Orthodox Church officialdom. It seems to be the most dramatic, most sober, most sad Easter in Russia for many people there with conscience for the past 30 years, for the time of one generation.
Having said all that, I have also to say that although there are many of those people with conscience in Russia today, many of those who are categorically against the Mean War, who are suffering, who are living in deep personal crisis, with great compassion towards the Ukrainian people, the victims of the Mean War, with burning shame for their country and its leadership who has entered into this mad adventure, and outright military crime, still, my friends, and their friends are in a stunning minority in that big country.
With confusion and terror, they are saying about those thousands filing cafes all over Russian streets, those smiling, celebrating, drinking, eating, enjoying themselves and all around. Those are people of all ages, one should not be mistaken to think that it is only elderly generation who fell victim to the unprecedented Russian propaganda and support the Mean War sincerely.
As one of the respondents of the fresh social study conducted by two Moscow-based sociologists in three cities of Russia said to them: “of course, I am against the war. Who is for the war, actually? What are you talking about? But where do you see the war, actually? We are conducting the special operation, as we are explained very well daily, and this is not a war. Of course, I am against the war”. Of course, he is.
This unbelievable laziness of mind, this amazing inability to think independently, this mass instinct of power does not matter how it is used. These behavioural treads demonstrated by the majority of the Russian people during the last two months, in their blind support of the Mean War, does not matter active or passive, are extremely disappointing phenomena. Many of them, especially in the sphere of culture, are worried that they would be ‘cancelled’ internationally solely because of the fact of their national belonging. They might be because the decision-making about exclusion of Russian and Belarussian cultural and sport participants at the international events would not be able to make distinctions.
This is naturally a grim perspective, and it is quite upsetting for those people in Russia who are against the war, but still might become the victims of the international boycott to their country-aggressor.
But in my view, much more deep and serious scars of rejection and desolation could mark those people from Russia who are laughing in their cafes today, ignoring the photos from Ukraine which each of them can easily access but does not bother to do so. This kind of indifference, arrogant, purposeful indifference, this kind of ready acceptance of utter lies, and this stunning absence of compassion among such a big segment of 145-million society is the most warning mark of the Mean War.
Perhaps, that man in the Kremlin who has decided to go on for the Mean War, did it to a serious degree with his knowledge, understanding, or feeling of this quantity of support that he, his views, his position, his methods would enjoy in the country where his club of friends has ruled over the last 20 years. He is, or perhaps, was pragmatic enough to act ruthlessly but more or less within the margin of what was acceptable to the prevailing amount of the people in his country.
The fact that the horrific unjustified war, with crimes committed daily against the territory and the people with whom a huge amount of Russian citizens do have family relations, not to speak about friendly and collegial ones, is supported, accepted, and does not , actually, much bother prevailing number of population, screams out. It gives its leaders a carte-blanche for ceremonial Easter rituals, with enormous pomposity, and the similarly enormous hypocrisy, not only by some individuals who behave in churches as on the Mausoleum roof, because they simply do not know a difference, but most importantly, but that extremely false church leadership who shamelessly serves the regime to its best.
As the Mean War ran for two months now, 60 days and nights of horror and annihilation, it can be seen, felt and understood that it is not only Moskva the flagship did sink in Russia. It is the Russian society’s common conscience that sank. This is self-inflicted trauma. And self-inflicted traumas of the sort are treated the most slowly. If ever.
Day 59: April 23, 2022, Saturday
ORTHODOX EASTER: RUSSIAN GREETINGS FOR ODESSA
We knew that Russia’s commander-in-chief and his military would avenge the sinking of their Moskva flagship. There were various ideas among the experts regarding the possible targets. Experts are aware of strategic and tactical flaws in the present Russian warfare, flaws so stunning that the size of their army does not decisively matter, actually, so much below any level of quality it is. Still, experts were expecting significant military targets in Ukraine to be chosen by the aggressors to strike their revenge for their flagship sanken in the Black Sea. Military is a key-word here.
But in the morning of the Quiet Saturday as a day before Easter is known in the Orthodoxy, Odessa was attacked by seven Russian missiles which most likely were fired from their submarines in the Black Sea there. Two of the missiles were intercepted by the Ukrainian air defence forces. The rest five attacked the residential areas of Odessa wounding 18 people and killing eight people, including three generations in one family, all women, grandmother who was just over 40, her daughter, 20-something young mother, and her just three-months old baby Kira.
Three-months-old baby girl. Three generations in one family, in one hit. On the Quiet Saturday on which, according to the Orthodox customs, one should not even get slightly irritated, not to speak on anything else.
Many people lost their words by these barbarian actions of those who started and still conduct the Mean War, for two months by now. But I think that we should not retreat to that mode. We should name the things by their names. We should demand accountability for committed crimes. The Mean War should not be allowed to happen. Not in the first place, not after two months of barbarian savage attacks.
Those who assume the right to kill innocent people should be stopped immediately and treated for who they are, military criminals. They did show to the world, not just to Ukraine, what their religion is. They did it on the most sacred time in the Orthodox calendar – but what do they care? Anyone who might suppose that spiritual values of humanity means anything to the Kremlin bosses and their military, is not on this planet.
Once, in my book “Ten Commandments in the USSR”, the book which researches and explains the Soviet mentality and how it has been formed, I wrote: “Those who are apologetic for the Soviet regime, are either idiots, or scoundrels”. Either one did not give a damn on the value of a human life to praise the USSR, or one was a total jerk unable to comprehend the reality in which 250 million people lived as in the prison ( minus nomenclature and the KGB and around).
Today, I would say that anyone who finds any apology for the butchers from the Kremlin is not an idiot any longer. The openness and real-time availability of information deprive potential idiots from that escape of an absence of the information.
Today, those who tolerate the actions of the Russian military and those who direct it, are either patented cowards or simply despicable creatures. Would it be a chain of German former chancellors, third-class plebeian French and Italian politicians, trembling power figures in Austria, nasty mental machos of the both sexes in Hungary or Serbia, greedy German, French or Italian industrialists, or pathetic as ever Western commies intellectuals of all kinds and sorts. We should not be interested in their motives, there are usually just two: money or compromenational material against them in Russian possession.
Orthodox Easter Quiet Saturday Russian bombing in Odessa just did show once again, graphically, tragically, who they are: jackals. Stupid, lazy, uneducated, unable, lying, brainless, soulless primitive criminals.
Day 58: April 22, 2022, Friday
RETURN OF UKRAINIAN REFUGEES: UNPRECEDENTED PHENOMENA
When I heard it for the first time, I thought that there is a separate case. It was in the midst of the frantic evacuation of the Ukrainian civilians from their homes, a hectic flee, with all kinds of emotions involved. My friend told me that in the middle of an uneasy journey in the car towards Poland, some of her distant relatives decided to return to their homes. ‘How come? Why?” – I asked. We all knew that the situation was precarious there. – “Well, they just want to return to their home. They do not want to go to the unknown”, – my friend told me. Those several women did return to their homes from the middle of the way of their small group of a few cars. They were using auto-stop to get back.
But day after another, I was and still am learning that Ukrainian people are returning to their homes en masse. I have noticed that many of them, in Poland, Germany or France, did not like to register as refugees. “We want to work, we do not want to be refugees” – they have told one friend who helps them in Berlin, and to the other one who does the same in Paris. They also believe that to be ‘a refugee’ is somewhat shameful, degrading them in those societies where they had to flee from their homes and their work.
As the Mean War continues, more and more refugees from Ukraine moved back to their homes. That steady process was unfolding to the degree when the number of the people returning to Ukraine has become larger than the number of those who are leaving the country. It happened a couple of days ago. This is an unprecedented phenomenon. It does tell a lot about the Ukrainian people, their attitude to their life, to their country, and to their way of thinking and living.
It was overseen, in my view, with not enough attention and understanding given to this important feature of the Mean War.
The refusal of a large number of the people who had to flee their homes to become refugees, and to keep that status, their willingness and intention to work in the new countries and circumstances speaks powerfully about dignity and self-respect. The return of hundreds of thousands of the people from Ukraine back to their homes in the midst of the war tells about their caring about their country and their belonging to it.
This is a luxury for a huge amount of the inhabitants of Russia. Since Karamzin and Pushkin, since Gogol, Chekhov, Saltykov-Schedrin and Turgenev, we know from generation to generation , once and again, how a huge bulk of Russians dislike their motherland. They always wanted to study abroad, to work abroad, to travel abroad, to buy abroad, to live abroad. There always was and still is that powerful disbalance in their own society and in their own lives, for very many of them, between sharp dislike and criticism of practically everything ‘here at home’ and over-rosy perception of so many ever-attractive features for them ‘there abroad’.
As one of the current descriptions goes: “ The true Russian patriot today has his children living and studying abroad, his apartment in London or Berlin, his summer house in Spain or Italy, and his working position here in Russia’.
It always was like that for very many people in Russia, and I do not believe that this feature would change in the foreseeable future.
But I still am thinking about so many Ukrainian people who are returning back to their country, their cities, their homes, under the Russian bombs, despite the war. And I am proud that I was born in Ukraine. I really am.
Day 57: April 21, 2022, Thursday
EASTER TRUCE UNFULFILLED
A few days before an Orthodox Easter on the coming Sunday April 24th, 2022, Antonio Gutteres, the UN Secretary the General, extended an appropriate gesture, both political and human-wise. He addressed the presidents of Ukraine and Russia with a suggestion to introduce an Eastern truce, at least for a several days period. Ukraine agreed momentarily. Russia did not. Telling, but not surprising for a bit. It would be surprising if they would agree, and yet more, if they would keep the promise.
As far as I can see, nobody in Ukraine was holding breath in this expectation. They know their neighbour much better than well-disposed top officials from Portugal, New York and many other civilised places.
They know the real attitude of the Russian leadership towards matters spiritual which, in fact, is an obscure illiteracy. They also know what those mediocres with nukes at the top of the power pyramid in Russia are fascinated with, apart from gas & oil prices and logistics. That Russia’s bosses’ true fascination goes undeservingly for militant quazi-myths, a surrogate anti-science rubbish which is extremely attractive for the circle on the top of the Russian power today.
So, no, unlike Mr Gutterres, Ukrainian people did not expect a miracle of an Eastern truce from their neighbour who is determined to destroy the entire country. So determined are they that they did not even bother to pretend or to impose, even temporarily, a kind of normal human behaviour in the society celebrating Easter.
But still, the UN Secretary General decided to visit both Ukraine and Russia in his forthcoming trip in an effort to establish the conditions for the direct peace negotiations between the aggressor and victim presidents under the UN patronage and in the Turkey premises. That ‘s all fine. Every sincere effort is worth it. But for all wrong reasons – and all wrong messages -Antonio Gutteres decided to visit Russia first. This is just flat wrong. The right diplomacy with this kind of tyrants is true, as medical, as it gets. Otherwise, they will continue to behave in their boorish mode of an outcast. But what is more serious and what really matters, they will continue to destroy.