Dispatches from Vilnius

Before the Oscars the biggest news was whether Ukrainian Pres. Zelenskyy would be given a prime time segment, not that he really cared what went down in Tinsletown.  Nevertheless, Sean Penn was so adamant about this that he vowed to publicly smelt his Oscars if the Academy didn't honor this request from a large segment of its members.  Leave it to Will Smith to completely overshadow the event with his notorious slap . I can't say Chris Rock didn't have it coming to him.  The guy has made it his schtick to crack jokes at other persons' expense, and obviously his bad joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's bald head didn't sit well with her husband.  However, Will only succeeded in calling more attention to his wife's alopecia than I imagine she wanted, not to mention relegate the historic evening of Oscar winners secondary to his outburst. We tried to watch CODA last night but without subtitles it is impossible to follow.  It was the surprise winner of Best Pictur...

Seems like John Mearsheimer is getting a lot of currency these days.  Articles have appeared in The Economist and New Yorker, in which he updates his earlier thesis  that holds the US responsible for the turmoil in Ukraine.  Mearsheimer, a distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago, has long held a skeptical view of liberal foreign policy, favoring realpolitik instead.  He still views Eastern Europe as part of Russia's sphere of influence and believes the US and EU shouldn't meddle in this region.  He points to the 1995 Balkan Wars as the first flash point, followed by the subsequent expansion of NATO and enlargement of the EU into Eastern Europe in the early 2000s.  Through it all, he believes the US and EU ran roughshod over Russia's interests in the region, but the country was too weak to defend itself.  Then along came Putin to rebuild the great Russian state and once again reclaim its influence in the region by "defending" A...

As a result of following the news late into the evening and getting up early to take the dog out, I tend to nod off in the afternoon as it is hard to keep my eyes open.  It is beautiful today so I will probably walk over to the academic bookstore and see what other little Macmillan Collector's Library books they have.  I was pleased as punch to find a copy of Rime of the Ancient Mariner yesterday, as it was sold out on Amazon.  I saw the Tiger Lillies' unique take on Coleridge's classic poem in Vilnius a few years back.  It's the little things that really give you pleasure. The Ukrainian women had picked through the overwhelming amount of clothes that had been gifted them the past week, and asked us if we would take away some of the boxes.  Daina is now trying to figure out where to unload all these used clothes.  She extended their lease through July, which brought tears to Marina.  It looks like we will get some compensation from the city, so it was ...

As heartwarming as this image is , let's not forget that these two were responsible in whole or part for equally heinous wars in the Balkans and Iraq.  If you listen closely to Putin, he is using much the same language Clinton used to justify NATO involvement in the civil war in Yugoslavia, and Bush used to justify his invasion of Iraq.  Russia always likes to couch its heinous actions on international precedents, even those it opposed. Much like Clinton's justification for NATO air strikes in Serbia to protect Kosovo, Putin believes that he is justified to strike Ukraine to protect what he regards as the autonomous Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which has been the nexus of a civil war for eight years.  In Putin's addled mind, these breakaway republics have just as much legitimacy as the republics that arose in the wake of the Balkan Wars in the 1990s.  He used the same arguments back in 2008 when his government recognized the breakaway Republicans of Abkhazia a...

The bright sunny days belie the war and all the propaganda swirling in the air.  Not immune to it here either.  We took in two Ukrainian women and their children in our old flat.  The previous tenants had moved out in mid-February, and we had just cleaned it for prospective new tenants when the war broke out.  A trickle of refugees soon turned into a flood and so we made the flat available on-line to the state agency looking to house the refugees.  Daina was contacted immediately, and so now we have Olena and Marina and their two daughters and two sons as tenants.  They said they took a Bolt taxi to the food bank, only to be told by the Russian driver that Putin would destroy Ukraine and their husbands would be sent to Siberia.  This was a bit too much to take after all they had been through, so Marina asked Daina if there was anyway to lodge a complaint, which she did.  The city officials said this is sadly not uncommon among taxi drivers. Howeve...

So, Vladimir holds a big pep rally, Donald Trump style.  I'm surprised there weren't "Ukrainians for Putin" placards being waved among the sea of Russian flags.  What is becoming very clear is that Russia and the never-ending Trump campaign operate from the same playbook.  Who wrote it is anyone's guess?  I assume Russia, or at least operatives like Paul Manafort, who play both sides of the coin.   If you remember, Manafort helped engineer Yanukovych's presidential campaign in Ukraine, starting in 2004 and ultimately succeeding in 2010.  One assumes this was all done with Putin's blessing, as Russia badly wanted to end the Orange Revolution once and for all, restoring a Soviet-style government that had been in place before.  Manafort's success was short-lived, as so much anger spilled over from that election that Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, which in turn led to Putin's first incursion into Ukraine that winter, snipping off Crimea and leaving th...

Whenever it is quiet like this, you have to wonder what is going on behind the battle lines.  There have been some odd world leaders trying to convince Putin to pull back, including Cyril Ramaphosa, the President of South Africa, who claims he has been asked to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine, but you are left to wonder by whom?   South Africa was one of many African countries that chose to abstain from the UN vote to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  The Russian Embassy in South Africa in turn thanked the country for its support .  I'm not sure that's exactly what South Africa wanted, but now they are stuck with it. In 2011, South Africa signed onto BRIC , officially making it BRICS, a trading bloc of sorts, whose aim has been to rival that of the US and EU.  It has a combined nominal GDP of $19.6 trillion, most of which belongs to China. Putin realized pretty early on that Russia and its  CIS brethren weren't ever going to be strong e...

Lithuanian PM Šimonytė warned Europeans early in February that the placement of Russian troops in Belarus was " a 1938 moment ," recalling the cusp of Hitler's invasion into Poland in 1939. "Neutrality helps the oppressor and never the victim," she went onto say, but her plea fell on deaf ears.  EU leaders and even US President Joe Biden believed they could still reach out to Putin and get him to pull back forces, essentially a "retreat with dignity." However that was never going to happen, as Putin had been planning this invasion since last summer, the time he first met Biden at the Geneva Summit .  Biden came away from that meeting relatively confident that Putin would play by the "rules of the road," never for one moment guessing what the Russian autocrat had in mind. As I've been telling my American friends, two things tipped Putin over the edge.  In 2018, Kyiv re-established its Orthodox patriarchate , no longer considering itself su...

It may not be zombies, but Putin's forces seem rather mindless, unable to capture the major cities of Ukraine after 13 days of heavy fighting.  Everyone has been speculating what the Z stands for that has been whitewashed on tanks.  It's not the only letter that Russian forces use to tag their armored vehicles, but it is the one that has popped out.  Yesterday, the Russian ministry of defense said Z stands for za pobedy , or "for victory," but they have no Z in their Cyrillic alphabet, nor does Ukraine.  Whatever the case, it has become the symbol of this invasion and is now being worn by gymnasts in international competitions.   I hate the way symbols and letters become appropriated during wars.  The Swastika is a sun symbol in many cultures, and one can find it stitched into many traditional Lithuanian linen patterns.  I remember seeing it a lot when I lived on the Navajo reservation in the summer of 1986.  Yet, once Hitler appropriated it,...

In Emperor Vladimir's latest dictate, Ukraine risks losing statehood if it does not lay down its arms.  Not that he ever believed in it to begin with.  To hear him talk, Ukraine owes its statehood to Lenin .  The language is unbelievable, which is why many observers think there is no turning back for Putin.  The only way he can save face is by taking over the country and absorbing it into the Soviet Union, I mean Russia. For Eastern Europeans, this is nothing new.  Putin has long questioned the statehood of the Baltic countries, also believing these states were gifted by Lenin and Stalin, when they created the soviet republics.  He has a little harder time defending this position, as all three countries were independent between the wars, and the United Nations never recognized the Soviet annexation.  Last year, Vilnius removed a bronze statue of Petras Cvirka, citing his involvement in the Soviet regime, part of its ongoing de-Sovietization of the cit...

Today is St. Casimir's Day , or Kaziukas as we call it in Lithuania.  An open air market stretches through the streets of Old Town, growing longer every year.  Fires burn in cast iron pots, mostly to help keep shoppers warm.  It is usually shoulder to shoulder, which is why we avoided it last year with COVID at its peak, but are half-tempted to look this year.  All though, the daily rate of infection hasn't gone down. 5,400 new cases reported yesterday, including one of our colleagues. Daina's thoughts turn mostly to getting our flight packs in order.  I prepared two backpacks with sleeping bags, first aid kits, and other emergency items.  She's thinking of what else we need and what to wear.  Also busy scanning documents and preparing a jump drive of all our important papers.  The fear is that Russia will try to take the Suwalki gap, as they call the narrow strip of land between Kaliningrad and Belarus.  It's been a concern since at least 2...