24 Comments

4 am. I am more pessimistic today than I have ever been. My dark humour says I will drink my two bottles of expensive whisky rather than leave them for those Russian Philistines.

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Allen, Where are you located in Ukraine? Please let us know how you and your family are doing. I will be thinking of you.

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We are about 130 km west of Dnipro city and 400 km se of Kyiv. Zhovti Vody. We tell people we have a plan just in case. We don't tell them that it is simply We are not leaving. Thank you for thinking of us. Much appreciated.

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Thank you, Allen. I'll get the map out tomorrow. I wish we could do more than sit and watch. To your fortitude and good care.

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Stay safe.

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Salud, Allen. I’m toasting you and thinking of you and yours today. Brave heart.

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And Allen, please keep us informed as frequently as you can from the Ukraine.

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OKI. I'll comment on TC's posts.

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I would have much preferred that abbreviations were spelled out in the body of the piece rather than looking them up. I like to know the names of government agencies mentioned and their function. Looking at a map also helps me know where areas are that are referred to. I don't expect subscribers to look here if they are curious, but I posted the information, just in case.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) is a federal executive body with the authority to implement government policy in the national security of the Russian Federation, counterterrorism, the protection and defence of the state border of the Russian Federation, the protection of internal sea waters, the territorial sea,

DPR in Ukraine

Donetsk People's Republic, Unrecognized quasi-state

LPR,The Luhansk People's Republic, in Ukraine

LPR or LNR (alternate spellings) is a landlocked quasi-state

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The Russian FSB is the current version of the old KGB of Cold War days.

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I am very appreciative of you for taking the time to translate these acronyms for us. As I gain more birthdays, I loose more of my patience.

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👍🏼

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Thank You Fern!

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Great to 'see' you, MaryPat.

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Thanks so much, Fern!

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Good to 'see' you Rowshan. Salud.

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Salad, Fern! Always great to see you, too!

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Thank you, Rowshan.

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Fascinating, yet petrifying clarifications -- but it's good to know that US intelligence is highly efficient.

"The next 24 to 48 hours will determine whether this becomes the full-scale, mass-casualty war the Biden administration has been warning about, or a more limited military action. Both will be horrible."

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Thank you, TC.

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You wrote: "Right now, anyone who claims what is happening is “none of our business” is as Pro-Putin as Charles Lindbergh was Pro-Hitler..."

I don't know the language or the law regarding news media, and I understand that Fox is not really a "news" network, but surely there's some prohibition of such an entity using our airwaves to promote the agenda and propaganda of an enemy nation.

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TC, you are such an accomplished sleuth, thinker, writer, activist, human. I appreciate every sentence of this essay. Helps to balance the sheer emotionality of thinking of the current plight of a sovereign nation and its people under attack with reporting clear, rational sequence of fact. And keeps us readers focused where we can be focused. As one commentator on another Substack column said, all of it “makes one’s hair hurt”.

I feel the threat and violence of war permeating cracks again with darkness that light has just chased out. I know the answer to this but ask anyway, how did democracy and freedom get so damn hard to protect? We are all in this together. There is enough to go around. Please, it must be so in our universal mind.

Thank you, TC.

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"Right now, anyone who claims what is happening is “none of our business” is as Pro-Putin as Charles Lindbergh was Pro-Hitler with the America First Committee in and the CPUSA was in denouncing the West following the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939-41." Probably not on both counts but I doubt anybody will put up as much funds on the house line as I have. See you on the other side.

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