April 25: Russia-Ukraine Endgame

Lester Golden
ILLUMINATION-Curated
2 min readApr 25, 2022

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I’m as old as the Carnation Revolution anniversary partygoers above. What connects me, Ukraine and the image above? I lived in Lisbon from May-August 1974, watching the results of dictatorship demolition unfold. Today I’ll go to the 48th anniversary celebrations in Porto. I’m also an investor in a Ukrainian tech startup, now relocated to Warsaw, with a Ukrainian advisory board member leading the territorial defense of a network of eleven villages 10 km west of Kyiv. History sometimes comes full circle. Here’s how:

Failed colonial wars are dictatorship killers. Think Portugal 1974, Argentina 1982–83, Italy 1943. It’s unrealistic to expect Russia to be an exception to this rule. Here’s one plausible endgame:

A drunken Russian officer misdials the settings on his MLRS, landing a missile on a Polish playground, triggering global outrage and NATO’s Article 5.

New NATO member Finland’s Russian-speaking troops tell Russian border guards and soldiers that NATO offers each of them 10000 euros and a Schengen visa to surrender. They accept.

Finland’s little green men broadcast to St Petersburg that NATO offers it city-state status within the EU — as an independent Baltic Singapore.

The referendum cutting St Petersburg loose from Moscow overwhelmingly passes. Primorsk joins St Petersburg, sealing…

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Lester Golden
ILLUMINATION-Curated

From Latvia & Porto I write to share learning from an academic&business life in 8 languages in 5 countries & seeing fascism die in Portugal&Spain in1974 & 1976.