Ukraine: Latest
The russian mindset; is the West ready? An antidote to war trauma
European allies have already paid for the Patriot interceptor missiles, but Washington has yet to approve their delivery as Ukraine is hit repeatedly from russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, and more Ukrainians are massacred.
At this stage it does not matter who is in power in Washington: those interceptor missiles have been paid for: Release them. What Trump and Hegseth are doing by blocking delivery is nearly as bad as what Putin is doing by bombing the Ukrainian cities.
The death toll from Russia’s 2 November bomb strike on a school in Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia region, has risen to 53, the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration said. The search is in its fifth day. When russia hits targets in Ukraine, this is what they are looking for every time.
🎬 Send the interceptors
🎬 Close the skies
🎬 Bring medics in to conduct training
Opinions
I have a great problem with “opinions.” That “I have the right to my opinion” kind. What an absurdity. I have heard them all. “They” should stop fighting being a predominant one. Yeah right. “NATO shouldn’t have expanded.” They weren’t. In fact they went out of the way to show they were not. Instead of bemoaning the joining to NATO of central and eastern European states, russia might have formed some kind of friendship with their ex-allies.
Of course russia could not. They had absolutely nothing to offer in the 1990s and early 2000s — and still do not. A clever leader in Moscow would have relaxed control over republics within the russian federation, and then offered similar terms in an internal market similar to the European Union.
During the first heady years of freedom from the Soviet Union, republics like Tatarstan were putting plans together to switch from Cyrillic to Latin script and establishing diplomatic representation abroad. The constitution of the Chuvash republic stipulated it was an independent republic. Akha republic (Yakutia) elected a republic that was seeking better terms with Moscow, and Kalmykia, the only Buddhist republic in Europe, on the shores of the Caspian Sea was chatting a more autonomous course that saw visits by the Dalai Lama.
Putin put an abrupt stop to that, upon his arrival to power. From now on, he declared, he was appointing the heads of republics in russia. They were no longer to be elected by the given republic’s population, and we're only allowed to use the title of “Head,” and nothing else.
Most republics then continued a policy of “russification,” importing russians into the republics to “dilute” the local minority, seeking ultimately to make them a minority within their own republic.
That is harder to do in some republics than others. Chechnya is an example, whereafter two particularly murderous wars Putin relies on his henchman Karimov to lat down the law, in an arrangement where the russian dictator still calls the shots when he feels like it. A latest incident is Karimov’s son and heir apparent suffering a bizarre bear fatal car accident: the message that the Kremlin chooses the next leader was understood.
The dream is not for the russian federation to fall apart — won’t happen; but for a leader who lets each republic and oblast select their own governor, president or sultan or whatever title they assign. This goes very much for republics outside what is a legal border, something Russia does not seem to understand these days.
The Soviet Union was formed — and run through extreme brutality. In 1917 both Ukraine and Kazakhstan were desperately trying to freeze themselves from the yoke of russian imperialism — for Ukraine this was the 2nd empire they were desperate to free themselves from, the first being the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1940 it was the turn of the Baltic States to try to claim or reclaim independence. Moscow used the same tricks then: rounding huge numbers of civilians and carting them off to Siberia.
They did it to the Chechens — removing the whole population, the Crimean Tatars, the Kalmyks and other minorities, and just about wiping Circassians out of existence. Russia has been a brutal empire ever since its early days as Moscovia, when it collected taxes for the Mongols.
This idea of Putin’s, that somehow Ukraine belongs to russia is so absurd it is not even worth discussing. In fact it is an argument only the Kremlin dictator himself dares elaborate on, lecturing constantly on history in monotonous inaccuracy, this hoodlum tsar who has never even studied history, say nothing of teaching it.
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But his henchmen do not even try to talk about such nonsense, and instead try to create soundbites about “Nazis" or “NATO enlargement” or other such nonsense.
The West
The West needs to learn from Ukraine much faster. Simply buying drones for existing tank units is not enough. We need to fundamentally rethink our military structures because many traditional Western weapons systems would no longer survive on the Ukrainian battlefield. And we need to do this immediately. —ex-CIA Director David Patraeus.
I cannot claim to know the exact state of affairs of each NATO military, but I can say what military sources are telling me by phone contacts: there is serious concern. Drone warfare constantly changes the game. It is not clear where new warriors who will use drones will be located in the oncoming years, for example, but one can assume it will be far from a “front line,” even those part of defensive interceptor teams. It certainly is not clear if they will be kitted up in uniform and helmet in many of these locations.
It is not feasible to suppose there will be any decisive victories in clashes between NATO and russia. Even swarms of drones will have a limited impact, assuming NATO forces will not be gathering many troops in one place — and they had better not.
Much focus will be on the huge amount of cyber-warfare to deal with, as well as extensive sabotage. NATO will not have anything in place to deal with this, and indeed it will be up to individual governments.
The internet going down for a few days can be envisaged, and many cables on sea beds cut. The Baltic Sea is currently a hive of activity, with russian vessels manoeuvring in the area & to the Atlantic, monitored as possible by NATO ships.
Putin is risk-averse and a coward in the same mold as Donald Trump, but he also has an inflated sense of what the russian army is capable of doing, a total disregard for losses taken, and a gigantic chip on his shoulder that needs a team of psychologists to remove. He is unable to comprehend* what a terrible war he has started or find a face-saving way out of it, and on the contrary, has pretty much forever changed his society and relations with the world. (*= I am not sure what word used there, to describe the russian dictator. He is of course not up interested in trying to understand anything at all, and thinks in a completely different mindset).
Overnight, russia attacked Ukraine with 317 drones. Air defense neutralized 271 UAVs (unmanned air vehicles), 81 of them jet-powered. At the same time, the russians struck 31 locations, with debris falling in nine others.
In the Poltava region, near Kharkiv at least seven people were injured, including a teenager severely. Russia attacked a residential area in Kremenchuk and a private enterprise in the district and fires broke out at several locations.
In the Kharkiv region itself, in Izium, six people were injured, including two children. About 10 houses were damaged or destroyed. A guided aerial bomb also destroyed the administrative building of a non-operational enterprise.
In Dnipropetrovsk russia attacked five districts of the region nearly 20 times. In Dnipro itself a factory was damaged; in Kamianske and the Hrechanopody community infrastructure was destroyed and in the Samar district a service station.
The Cherkasy and Khmelnytskyi regions were also hit. No injuries were reported. In Cherkasy, houses, an enterprise, and critical infrastructure were damaged, and in Khmelnytskyi residential buildings were targeted.
Recently Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha expressed solidarity with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, after russian hackers leaked his personal and family data onto the dark web over Italy’s support for Kyiv. Sybiha offered Ukraine’s operational expertise in countering cyber threats, and supported Tajani’s call to address digital intimidation at the upcoming G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris. Expect much more of this before an oncoming attack by russia.
An antidote ~ forestbathing
The war in Ukraine is not going away for a while. It has marked many in ways that we might not be able to change back, so it is all the more important to reach into therapy to help maintain a balance.
From the confines of four walls, I might not be able to philosophise, or even to waste precious minutes quibbling about whether or not mild philosophy is as important as my 30-minute lunch. Enough mayonnaise may give me the illusion that my short lunch break nourished me. When I walk in my forest there are no illusions. Benefits are real.
We can often be separated into two groups, generally:— those motivated intrinsically, and those motivated extrinsically. In a forest, both are interlinked and blurred. Grandiose thoughts come with grandiose trees, and ideas develop, too, when undisturbed by the frantic, murderous war. Take a proper walk in the woods, long enough to let the trauma fade into the background, far from where you stand among trees.
What if we sought and received values from a forest? Here today, gone tomorrow is not true where pine cones lie on the generous earth. You may pick your own path, and reap the benefits of doing so. It is useful to revisit nature at its best to remind ourselves of this. We need to be able to meditate in the surroundings of our natural world and move among it. We need the balance.
The forest is important for taking us away from what is right and wrong, to a different kind of world and concept. We already know what is black and white. What we need is something a little less shallow. Improve your sense of balance by focusing one’s senses on the forest. Balance mentally, yes, definitely, but balance physically, too: The act of skipping from stone to stone, ducking under branches or merely walking over uneven ground is keeping your sense of balance and awareness alive. And if we are talking about senses — nutrients come not just from the mouth to the stomach, but also through the nose to lungs, and ultimately mind. We may all enjoy perfume straight from the source.
