Following Trump’s rather hollow and anti-climatic summit with Putin in Alaska, European leaders upend their summer schedules—including holiday-making—to rush, realising the stakes and how there are moments when history pauses and looks at us dead in the eye and asks do we know what is happening, to Washington to lend moral and materiel support for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, hoping to avoid the previous melt-down in the Oval Office and stop the US administration from further undermining the continent’s security signalled by Trump’s vacillation over the peace process with a ceasefire no longer a prerequisite for negotiations and that a treaty can be struck simply by ceding Russia the Donbass, capitulating to a one-sided deal with Ukraine demilitarised and Russian subject to no further sanctions. This time, appearing in formal apparel, the same conservative reporter who questioned his usual attire of military fatigues complemented the Ukrainian president on his suit, to which Zelenskyy quipped that the journalist was wearing the same outfit as last time. Already, however, Trump is apparently rehashing tired stab-in-the-back conspiracies about a stolen election and mail-in ballot fraud, a sentiment echoed by Putin as well as citing the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical betrayal of all time, on display by foreign minister Lavrov’s CCCP sweatshirt at the prior meeting.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a philosophical cartoon (with synchronoptiรฆ) plus amplified contagion
twelve years ago: landscaping inspirations plus freelance hotels
thirteen years ago: WWII week: Nacht und Nebel plus international traffic signs
fifteen years ago: weather control machines
sixteen years ago: blogging non-sequitirs