Ukrainian thoughts

Professor Peter Eltsov, a Russian-American who grew up in Leningrad, apparently argues in his 2019 book, The Long Telegram 2.0, that sooner or later Russia is likely to break up. 

I'd be delighted and wish Stalin in the Soviet constitution of 1936 had given all the republics in the Russian Federation the right to secede from Russia, as he gave the Union Republics the right to secede from the USSR.

This BBC report finds 39 named members of the 331st Parachute Regiment were killed in Ukraine. "But since none of those fatalities is more recent than the 13 March, it can be supposed that dozens more will emerge in the coming weeks." It is based on research on VK.com. 

I saw on VK.com a 27 year-old Russian woman saying in English that she and her girlfriends in Tallinn celebrated with champagne "our Russian soldiers" raping and killing Ukrainian women and children. 

On Twitter I saw a Ukrainian woman quoting a doctor friend of her husband's who treated girls with anal and vaginal injuries who were ten or younger. 

The Ukrainian woman asks why Western feminists are not protesting.

We didn't go to Georgia's aid when attacked by Putin, though in fact Georgia started that conflict, as an EU report later said. It was a thankfully short war. 

We did go to war with Iraq for Kuwait in 1991 and I still think we were right to do so, though I saw that the 2003 invasion was unjust, illegal and worst of all completely unnecessary. 

I can't help remembering that nobody went to Britain's aid when Argentina took the Falklands.

David Goldman said on Facebook on 29th March:

Negotiated solution to the Ukraine war seems to be on the table in Istanbul. If there's a deal, it will resemble Minsk II, which Russia initially proposed, and the US and UK sandbagged.