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The West — politicians, pundits, and media — are mainly talking about Russia’s war on Ukraine in zero-sum terms. Either Russia will win, or Ukraine will win. If Russia loses the war it will be driven out of Ukraine. But we need to start thinking about what happens if Russia…

Lucy Mitchell, 89, of Fairdale, Kentucky, died on February 15, 2022. Although I never met Lucy, I knew her so well through one very memorable cake. I always loved to bake. But I didn’t take baking seriously until I noticed an article about the Favorite Cake amateur baking contest at…

The colours blue and yellow will never be the same again. Today I innocently posted a photo of some daffodils against a blue sky, thinking my social feed could do with a break from war posts. It immediately got liked by someone who viewed it as a pro-Ukraine gesture. Vladimir…

Why Putin is lying to everyone and everyone is lying to Putin — what we can learn from the Mitrokhin Archive It looks clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine based on very poor intelligence about the situation in Ukraine, and equally poor reports about the quality of his…

Today my friend in Kyiv, a mother who had just been separated from her children as they were evacuated out of the city, wrote on Twitter, ‘second time in 3 months I had to hand over my baby girl, not knowing if I will ever see her again. This is…

Here is what I read over the last week, and some of the better memes I saw. It is surprising how fast we adapt. I have written about this a lot, woven into other narratives. Just like Covid became normal, it feels hard to remember back to a time before…

It looks likely that Putin’s massive miscalculation over Ukraine will begin the end of his rule over Russia. All dictators end this way. He lives a paranoid, isolated life surrounded only by a very small band of sycophants. …

It’s March 19th 2023. Former Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, has arrived in the Hague. As seems to be inevitable with International Criminal Court, his trial is set to last years. In Russia, Alexei Navalny’s new government has begun what they are calling the ‘cleanup’ — trying to wrest back the…

I will be developing a series of pieces where I share some of what I’ve read over the last weeks that help explain what’s going on around us. Follow me here or on Substack to get these sent to your inbox. In any major crisis, every media organisation out there…