A regular commenter recently observed in comments:

So it has gone from the
“Russians bombed their own pipeline” to
“who knows who actually did it” to
“perhaps some Ukrainians did it with no link to Ukrainian government and with no foreknowledge to the American government” to
“the Ukrainian military did it without President Zelensky being involved and the American intelligence knew and told the Germans”.

How long before it is
“the Ukrainian military did it with the assistance of another NATO nation (Poland) and the CIA but the White House wasn’t looped in” to
“the Ukrainian military did it with the assistance of NATO (Poland and US) through the CIA and the White House was looped in but the President was not” to
“the Ukrainian military did it with the assistance of NATO (Poland and US) through the CIA and the White House, the President was looped in but he doesn’t recall because of his age and signs of dementia”

Maybe it’s just me but I think we may be seeing that same evolution again with respect to the explosion at the Khakhovka Dam but at a greatly accelerated pace. The Western media have pretty much decided that the Russians blew up the dam. The Russians deny involvement. Meanwhile, at Asia Times Stephen Bryen sees it somewhat differently:

For the Russians to have blown up the Kakhovka dam they would have needed to move tons of explosives using boats or underwater equipment, put explosives on the dam facing the reservoir and set off a massive explosion. From the video posted by the Ukrainian government, it looks like the explosions happened below the waterline.

concluding:

It will take time to get a full accounting if we ever get one. We still don’t have one for the Nord Stream pipeline or for Crimea’s Kerch Strait Bridge.

If the idea behind this was to cause a major nuclear accident that could be blamed on the Russians, it is an outrageous act that threatens Ukraine and Europe, maybe the world.

If it was Ukraine that did it, did they act on their own or did they get permission from outside? If it was Russia, then someone had better come up with arguments supporting that proposition.

Read the whole thing. It has some other interesting tidbits. He makes a pretty credible case that the Ukrainian military did it.

I think this is the “fog of war”, the uncertainty of war described by von Clausewitz. It’s even foggier than usual because there are so many participants:

the Russian military
the Wagner Group
pro-Russian militias and partisans
the Ukrainian military
pro-Ukrainian militias and partisans
the intelligence organizations of NATO members
the actual military of NATO members

and the communications between groups on the same side and their respective political leaderships doesn’t seem to be particularly good.

In an op-ed in the New York Times Jaroslav Kuisz and Karolina Wigura pain a picture of a decreasingly liberal Poland. Here’s the kernel:

The government, led by the hard-right Law and Justice party since 2015, has taken over key state institutions such as the public media, curtailed the independence of the judiciary and instituted draconian abortion laws. To neutralize opponents, almost all political tricks are allowed: wiretapping, denigration and even outright lies. With crucial parliamentary elections coming this autumn, the electoral process has been tinkered with to favor the incumbents and a new bill passed that could remove opponents from political life on the pretext of acting under Russian influence. In its bid to secure a third term, the Law and Justice party is leaving nothing to chance.

The party’s success has been built on targeted social transfers, genuflection to the country’s Catholic identity and avowed nationalism. But it also owes a lot to skillfully played campaigns of collective fear and demonization. For much of the party’s eight years in office, migrants, women and sexual minorities have been the chief targets. The government also regularly attacks the opposition, often in luridly conspiratorial terms. Its ministers and supporters suggest, for example, that the leader of the opposition and a former prime minister, Donald Tusk, plotted the plane crash that killed the Polish president in 2010. However outlandish, such conspiracy theories play into — and amplify — a pervasive fear that things are changing rapidly for the worse.

I presume that some would describe our relationship with Poland with an old proverb: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I would use another: he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.

For a long time our policy with regards to Eastern Europe has been largely formed by Poles, Ukrainians, and nostalgia. IMO it’s long past time to reconsider. By “reconsider” I don’t mean “abandon”. I mean come to an understanding better founded in facts.

I frequently agree with Walter Russell Mead’s assessments. Not this time. His latest Wall Street Journal column bears the title “What if Putin Loses His War in Ukraine?”.

Let’s pause right there. It is not merely Putin who is at war with Ukraine. If Vladimir Putin were to vanish from the face of the earth, in all likelihood whoever replaced him would not only continue to prosecute the war, they’d be more likely to deploy the Russian military directly or to use nuclear weapons.

Then there’s this paragraph:

A Ukrainian victory—which we can describe as an end to the conflict that leaves Ukraine with all or most of its original territory, independent of Moscow and aligned with the West—would be a geopolitical earthquake. The Russia that Europe has known and feared since the 18th century, an immense and looming presence relentlessly bent on expanding westward, will be gone. The consequences would reshape the politics of Europe and the Middle East and define a new era in U.S.-China competition.

If Dr. Mead has evidence of Russian westward expansionism since the 18th century, he should produce it. Not Soviet expansionism. I concur that the Soviet Union was expansionist.

France invaded Russia in 1812. Britain invaded Russia in 1807 and 1919. Poland invaded Russia in 1919. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, inflicting more casualties than were suffered by any other country during World War II. Even the U. S. invaded Russia in the 20th century. These repeated invasions are exactly why Russia wants a buffer area against possible invasion. Most important in that is Crimea.

Or this:

A Russian defeat would basically strengthen America’s hand globally, but there would be complications. On the plus side, with Russian expansionism firmly checked, the task of maintaining the status quo in Europe would require less U.S. investment. American and Western prestige would be significantly enhanced by victory and would be gravely impaired if Russia wins. As I noted last week, a victorious Ukraine would join Poland, the Baltic states and the Scandinavian countries in a pro-defense bloc of European countries who understand the value of the American alliance.

I don’t believe that’s what would happen. I believe that Poland and Ukraine would continue to do what they’ve been doing for the last 30 years: try to enlist the U. S. to further their national interests for them. I suspect the Baltic countries would be encouraged to de-Russianize their own territory. I have no idea what Sweden or Finland would do. BTW don’t expect Poland and Ukraine to play nicely together. There’s already friction between the two countries, see here.

I received notification of this story when I was chasing something else. At the Washington Post Shane Harris and Souad Mekhennet are reporting that we have known that the Ukrainians were responsible for sabotaging the Nordstream pipeline since before it happened:

Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

The European intelligence reporting was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. The Washington Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.

There’s a lot to decompress in that story if true:

• The Ukrainians sabotaged the pipeline.
• A “European intelligence agency”, presumably the Poles or the Swedes, knew about it well in advance
• They notified our intelligence agency
• Either the president knew about it and lied about it OR he didn’t know (my suspicion)
• The whole thing was published online by Jack Teixeira

I wouldn’t fault the Ukrainians for going after the pipeline—it was a legitimate target. However, if our intelligence agency did not inform the president they did wrong. The president needs to know about this stuff. Either ignorance or lying about it reduces his credibility. That’s the reason I think he had not been informed.

The sabotage hasn’t hurt the Russians much—they just found different customers. It DID hurt the Germans—it forced their hand which was, presumably, the objective.

I wanted to bring Samuel Charap’s article in Foreign Affairs about concluding the war in Ukraine to your attention. Here’s its conclusion:

An endgame premised on an armistice would leave Ukraine—at least temporarily—without all its territory. But the country would have the opportunity to recover economically, and the death and destruction would end. It would remain locked in a conflict with Russia over the areas occupied by Moscow, but that conflict would play out in the political, cultural, and economic domains, where, with Western support, Ukraine would have advantages. The successful reunification of Germany, in 1990, another country divided by terms of peace, demonstrates that focusing on nonmilitary elements of the contestation can produce results. Meanwhile, a Russian-Ukrainian armistice would also not end the West’s confrontation with Russia, but the risks of a direct military clash would decrease dramatically, and the global consequences of the war would be mitigated.

Many commentators will continue to insist that this war must be decided only on the battlefield. But that view discounts how the war’s structural realities are unlikely to change even if the frontline shifts, an outcome that itself is far from guaranteed. The United States and its allies should be capable of helping Ukraine simultaneously on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Now is the time to start.

I suspect that some readers will side with the “many commentators” above. Has any country ever given another country such a blank check?

Mr. Charap neglects to mention that there are reasons not to trust Ukraine unreservedly. There have been reports that weapons sent to Ukraine have made their way to Africa and even to Mexico. Others deny these reports with equal vehemence. There have also been complaints about Ukrainian corruption made by U. S. companies. The best retorts to these seem to be that it’s better than it used to be.

The editors of the Washington Post have noticed that Germany isn’t exactly living up to the commitments it made in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

As Russian soldiers massed on Ukraine’s borders shortly before Vladimir Putin launched his ruinous war last year, Germany answered Kyiv’s pleas for military aid by offering to send 5,000 helmets, a gesture Ukrainian officials widely derided. “What kind of support will Germany send next?” asked Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. “Pillows?”

A month later, after tens of thousands of Russian troops invaded Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told his stunned compatriots that Berlin’s decades-long thinking about national security, defense and foreign policy had to be reassessed. The country, he said, needed to support Ukraine and also to embark on a “major national undertaking” to rebuild its military. Keeping “warmongers like Putin in check,” he said, “requires strength of our own.”

Since that speech, Germany has become a major supporter of the Ukrainian military. It recently announced a $2.9 billion arms package: Instead of helmets, it is now sending advanced air-defense systems, top-shelf battle tanks, howitzers, drones and large quantities of artillery ammunition. After the United States, it is one of Ukraine’s biggest weapons providers.

Yet Mr. Scholz has failed to deliver on the other piece of the equation — the buildup of Germany’s own defenses. As the war in Ukraine settles into a bloody stalemate, the urgency he described has evaporated.

A $109 billion special fund to rebuild Germany’s anemic armed forces over the next few years remains largely untapped. Mr. Scholz backed off his initial pledge to pump additional tens of billions of dollars into annual defense spending to meet a NATO spending target Berlin has long endorsed — and long ignored.

Actually, they’re sugar-coating the situation. According to the Kiel Center’s Ukraine Support Tracker Germany’s overall, humanitarian, and military support for Ukraine are all lagging, most of all when taken as a percent of GDP.

This raises two questions. First, why? And, second, do we really want Germany to build up its military capabilities? The answer to the first question is obvious: domestic politics. I think it’s pretty obvious that the Germans are trying to have their cake and eat it, too.

The second is more complicated. IMO it’s obvious that the longtime U. S. strategy of weak allies has failed. Having devoted the last 70 years to convincing the countries of Europe that they don’t need to spend much on defense but can rely on us, convincing them otherwise is going to take some time. And it can’t be done at all unless they’re willing to bear some pain.

The Chicago City Council has appropriate $51 million to pay for feeding and housing the migrants who arrive in Chicago on a daily basis. At ABC 7 Chicago Diane Pathieu, Sarah Schulte, and Eric Horng report:

CHICAGO (WLS) — As debates rage over how to care for migrants arriving in Chicago from Texas, the City Council met Wednesday to consider how to pay for it.

Not everyone is on board with $51 million in financial aid for migrants in Chicago, which is meant to help provide housing.

Many residents voiced their concerns before and during Wednesday’s council meeting.

However, the funding initiative passed with a 34-13 vote.

Before that, CPD had to escort people out of the meeting several times, as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson asked for a two-minute breather.

“I want to make sure we are conducting the business of the people,” Johnson said.

More than 10,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Chicago since last August. Hundreds are still sleeping on floors in various police departments.

This proposed funding is only expected to last through June.

Aldermen were split on which way to vote, with some saying that money should go to underfunded neighborhoods and others saying this is a sanctuary city that must help those seeking asylum.

$51 million is more than the State of Illinois has appropriated for migrants. It is remarkable that the City of Chicago should be expected to pay the full tab for all of those migrants and $51 million will only pay for a couple of months.

Sad as it is to say neither the city nor the state have any responsibility to house or feed these migrants. The federal government, however, does (at least according to the UNHCR).

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, formerly Ukrainian Minister of Defense, in a piece at Foreign Affairs wants Ukraine to be admitted to NATO immediately:

Contrary to a popular misconception, NATO’s treaty does not require that members send troops to defend a NATO state that has been attacked. And the idea that Putin would meaningfully escalate because Ukraine joined the alliance reflects a misunderstanding of recent history. European states spent years ignoring Ukraine’s NATO application precisely to avoid antagonizing Moscow—and to precisely zero effect.

It is time, then, to let Ukraine join—not sooner or later, but now. By entering the alliance, the country will secure its future as part of the West, and it can be sure the United States and Europe will continue to help it fight against Moscow. Europe, too, will reap security benefits by allowing Ukraine to join the alliance. It is now apparent that the continent is not ready to defend itself and that its politicians have largely overestimated its security. Indeed, Europe will never be secure from Russia until it can militarily stop Moscow’s attacks. And no state is more qualified to do so than Ukraine.

With its massive support for Ukraine during the past 15 months, the alliance has in essence already paid all the costs of admitting Ukraine. By allowing the country to join now, NATO could begin reaping the benefits. Ukraine is the continent’s best hope for reestablishing peace and the rule of law across NATO’s eastern flanks. It should be welcomed and embraced.

while at 19FortyFive Daniel Davis advises that armed neutrality for Ukraine is a better solution:

Relations between Ukraine and Russia have been fraught with historic antagonisms which have been on display since 1991. The reason the country exploded into a civil war in 2014 was because of antagonisms between the eastern and western citizens of the country, many of which had been boiling in the background for centuries.

Eight years of war between 2014 and 2022 did not solve the problems, and events since will ensure the hatred between the two will endure for a generation or more into the future. It would be the height of folly to extend a security guarantee to a country that will continue to have an antagonistic relationship with its nuclear-armed neighbor for the foreseeable future. Rather than tie the future security of the entire NATO alliance to hoping a volatile relationship between two bitter rivals doesn’t again break into open conflict, the U.S. should pursue viable options that have a chance of preserving European and American national security long term.

Frankly stated, there is no guarantee that once this conflict has ended, by whatever means, war between Russia and Ukraine will not again break out. Given that this will remain an ever-present potential, it is crucial that the United States and Europe ensure that our territory remains free of war and Russia remains deterred from putting our security at risk. The first path to giving Kyiv its best chance to avoid future war is to support armed neutrality.

I think that NATO membership for Ukraine only makes sense if you believe that Russia can be deterred from pursuing its own national interest or that Ukraine can be so deterred.

Since I don’t think that either of those is true, I think that Mr. Davis’s is the better advice. Furthermore, it has long been NATO’s policy to avoid admitting new members with ongoing internal ethnic conflicts or disputed borders. Admitting Ukraine would mean discarding both of those factors.

That’s a picture of our dinner last night.

Broiled salmon
Farro and cannellini beans
Green salad

The salmon isn’t quite picture perfect. I cut a single filet in half after broiling, splitting it between us. It didn’t cut very neatly.