Certainly a moment to reflect upon
Yes, I do feel sad, regrets, questions. Not alone about myself, my mistakes. More so about these attacks upon my friends. Nadia Savchenko has blended into the woodwork. My social friend, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman was escorted out of the White House today.
Much the same, as a lot of Crimean Tatars, activists and undaunted Patriots of Ukraine were escorted from their homes, and taken to dank and cold Russian prisons. Prior to 2013, maybe 2011 or 2010, I had seen Crimean Tatarski people doing prayers, while I rode trains going to and fro from Crimea, they were well dressed, respectful people. I felt no ill will from them, that I am mostly agnostic person. It was simply another new experience for me as an American, in a Post 9/11 Ukraine. I had simply never witnessed Muslim worship within an environment like a train, in my country (also due to the fact that I never travelled by train except during my childhood in USA) It is perhaps simply, one more example of how this war in Ukraine, is one perception, not a war of genuine or relevant feelings. We are all just people, fellow travelers , artists, craft people, and performers within a diorama that others will witness, judge, prognosticate upon, in some future perspectives , currently in my view very much like the Dystopian fiction from late 1990's by Bruce Sterling, his Distraction Novel There are relevant elements in the story of all the trends, persons vying for power, clinging to power (minus all the complicated European things) Paul Manafort is definitely advising POTUS from prison, more so, in the sense of advising him , how not to do a " Yanukovych" Emoluments can be assuaged within the media , most Americans cannot imagine the sophistication of the Russian/ Ukrainian corruption apparatus.
One ought to read the opening pages of Bruce Sterling's Novel "Distraction" to understand and augment one's actual understanding of the Euro_Maidan event, and not just in Kiev, I witnessed it in Dnipro , other places at the time. It was a hard core, violent and organized event with significant internal and external forces constantly engaging, conflicting and separating. Victor Yanukovych was never shy about raising the specter of "rivers of Blood" being at risk, neither has the POTUS of today. Obama was a more buttoned down president, which is not to say, that I agreed with all or even perhaps most facets and tenets of his administration. Crimea could have become an enormous and costly bloodbath if Ukraine had sent forces there in the initial periods of 2014, they could have well fatally weakened themselves in a period of days, wherein their only real hope for National survival could have been a full US military intervention, and USA going all the way, against A fully operational Nuclear super power, like Russian Federation? Not a wise move in any or most playbooks. And yet Russia still has to toy with the idea of grabbing the land bridge through Mariupol, Berdyansk. Once past the defenses in Mariupol, there would not be any real defenses worthy of consideration if a full scale Russian state sponsored military engagement were to transpire there. People have to realize that Ukraine does not have sufficient air forces to defend itself in a full scale invasion. Deploying what they have available would only lead to the utter destruction of nearly all that they have available to defend their territory.
I had chilled with Tatar people in Crimea before the Russian Putsch, they simply did not sense that their days of freedom were numbered by merely 1 or 2 months. Yet post "annexation" / occupation the Tatar people's of Crimea , their freedoms were taken so abruptly away, their ciivil rights were so abruptly deprived, their voting rights were infringed. This messy occupation was underway, starting when I was actually there on the ground, seeing friends in Crimea in the first weeks of 2014.
President Zelinskiy is a cool guy, I will admit that I faked my inclinations to smoke tobacco while he and I shared some brief thoughts in a stairwell f a nightclub in Central Ukraine, yet what of the team of men (mostly men) in Black Tee-shirts going into the youth Hostel Central Ukraine in the time of late / middle 2013? was he blended into the group ? It is possible, I am confused on dates, faces, yet I am not confused about places and events. One does not forget a group of 20 men going into s small rom dressed in black tee shirts and pants , one does not forget, that there was a location blackout of what it was about, just then.
Just another group conference of KVARTAL 95? ( President Zelinskiy's comedy group ) or something else ? There were strange things going on in 2012/ 2013 in Ukraine. I like the President, he is a good listener, and he can make up something funny and unoffensive, from that listening. It's my burden, his joke that he made about me. And it's okay i guess I can't tell it with enough detail with his basic English, the hand gestures he made to accompany the joke about me, normal stuff. I think that his <wife? > added some punctuation to the joke too. I simply cannot repeat the dialog.
This is possibly a crowing day for the Kremlin. Cock a doodle doo. Well done really, the internal realignment of the USA's White House is mostly consolidated. And none too soon , for as CHina's economy falters, Russian economy falters, now more than ever. It's kind of like a cool, retro , Richard Nixon moment I feel it. And the apparatus in play in Great Britain, is certainly oiling the gears of disequilibrium. II stand with the people that I admire, be they Russian, Ukrainian, French, Italian, Scandinavian , Irish , Finnish, Norwegians, Syrians, Africans, Americans. I love the mad story tellers who have no agenda for war or trouble.
I steel feel incredibly badly, about losing permanently, my friend Sergey Khomenko in the Ukraine International Airlines Flight out of Tehran. He was friendly without that feeling he wanted something, he had everything he needed, like a lot of people in Ukraine, he was honest and wanted to build a good, positive mood, and be helpful in small ways, be a bit of a guide without being too much of a guide. He was there to get you there, not to tell you where to go once you got there. SO I miss him .
I wanted to correct a reference in my previous post about The King of Hearts movie, as a reference to President Zelinskiy. The war within Ukraine is akin to a first World War style conflict. They are not using aircraft. It is trench warfare. see that 1917 did well at the Oscars, I guess that I'll have to see it in the cinema . Being on the back end of a World War 1 style war within Europe, 100 years after the first world War, and really seeing much of the same types of injuries and logistical limitations in play within Ukraine, well I liked Ukraine, for the way it was broken. Yet it's hard to like any part of the situation they were faced with at the onset of this Russian Hybrid war juggernaut in 2014. 2015, 2016
And I have indeed , dug my share of trenches. It is what brought me there and brought me out of there. I kind of really want to go back, washing dishes, digging trenches, all that basic working class stuff that is so cool when trying to re-imagine your personal narrative.
When you have been connected by fate with a lot of crazy, driven film makers, somehow it seems that there is no other choice to continue to work the margins of fate.
I had the chance to meet Alexander Vindman within his element, as well as some other dedicated foreign service persons. The events in Ukraine were an amalgam of external things and internal things. As the President said it "Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to go through some things"
And the writer of this blog is also going through some things. You can view it as a pronouncement, a threat, a reality of living in these times.
I am about to watch a second time, portions of the Norwegian movie epic "Occupied" I see that the actress from Alexei Fedorchenko's sequence in the 4th dimension movie found her place there . These are hard days to be fairly altruistic.
And I honestly think that Ukraine, it's energy reserves, if one attempts to calculate the difficult to reach offshore energy around Crimea and the land reserves, that it is mostly enough for Ukraine and Ukraine alone, it is not enough for export, it will not in my opinion be a productive foreign investment (unless that foreign energy development investor is betting on Ukraine's economy) to mae much of any real money. Burisma Holdings , the Biden's , it is like a mantra to be repeated again and again, the impeachment hearings were incredibly successful in tanking the hopes of the Joe Biden camp. There was, and will not be much money in Burisma, it is another fairy tale of Ukraine. It was solely banking on transshipment deals between Europe and the Caspian basin gas and oil deposits .
And perhaps that, is the real reason Ukraine International Airlines flight out of Tehran was shot down ?
I cannot dig into the weeds of it, I am just saying. If Ukraine, Azerbaijan could derail Iran's Oil supplies and economy via Uzbekiistan, would that not be a massive threat to IRAN, already under a massive economic pressure > .
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