Escapes
This week I am (belatedly) thinking about escapism, while trying to remain clear-eyed about what is happening around us.
Last Friday, I spent five hours in hospital with V as she checked in for chemo and was evaluated by a pulmonologist. It seems apparent to me, although I am not a medical professional, that things are deteriorating quickly. My expectations of state healthcare in Austria are fairly realistic, I thought, but even I was surprised by the series of doctors all seeing the patient and the diagnosis for the first time, asking the same questions over and over and over again. The elephant in the room is danced around, you have to shout loud and clear about symptoms to be heard, and relief is offered only when stamped and approved by someone via fax. I wish I was making this up. I left only taking a few lessons with me: comforting, patient-focused healthcare requires a nest egg wherever you live, and when life presents you with opportunities to experience joy, grab them while you can.
It was with that mindset that I found myself on a beach in Croatia this weekend, the theory being one night is better than zero nights. My layman observations about travel in Europe this summer are that it will not be as hectic as the past few years have been. Here in Vienna, I already feel like there are fewer tourists, which is a direct result of the oh-so-smart-businesspeople running the Vienna airport, who refused to reduce landing fees for low costers Wizz Air and RyanAir, and as a result, the airlines simply left Vienna and cancelled most of their routes, respectively. So Vienna feels significantly less busy on the ground this time of year, which is not the greatest move for a country already worried about its GDP but no one asked me for my opinion. I don’t think anyone is really thinking about GDP. I feel like things will run on inertia until one day they simply implode.
Croatia was cheaper than last year (hotel) and the restaurants, already very exhorbitant in their pricing last year, didn’t dare raise prices again. The city felt more empty than it should be at this time of year, with nearly perfect weather, although the sea is still cool. When Arsenal lost the Champions League final on Saturday night, everything went quiet for a few minutes. Far more Brits than French fans on the move seeking sun this time of year.
I was on the beach next to a group of men who had flown all the way from Canada to watch the final in Budapest only to find out they had bought fake tickets. I didn’t feel sorry for them because they were an unlikable bunch, alternatiing from English (no accent) to Russian (trapped in 1990s immigrant tones with lots of swearing), and discussing if they might get the young escorts they had brought with them for the weekend to agree on a discount for the day of rest they decided they needed before making proper use of them the next day. The young girls appeared the next day on the beach and they were beautiful, but short. I realized immediately how their lives took different turns based on this factor alone. In all likelihood, they were Ukrainian. Don’t ask me how I know. It was all pretty upsetting to witness. I don’t know why, business as old as time, making a decent rate…but something in the physics of it was off. One man said rather sadly that he appreciated when the girls make an extra effort, and he defined this as holding his hand in public.
I wondered when everything went wrong, when this became the new normal.
I spent much of my beach time inhaling this book which is a page-turner. I could not put it down. I made a special effort before I read it to avoid reading all reviews, and I recommend you do the same. The premise is a “trad wife influencer” gets transported back to a ranch of the kind she lives on, only in the 19th century. I don’t want to say more than that but I will say the author is super smart in both her sarcastic observations of our modern lives and the character types she dotted the story with, and in her weaving of a plot. I really enjoyed it, although that doesn’t feel like entirely the right word.
Horrific news from Ukraine overnight. Russia had warned it was about to slam Ukraine with a new wave of attacks, even making a melodramatic statement a few days ago that foreign diplomats should leave the Ukrainian capital. It carried through on its “promise”, and the civilian death toll appears to be high, and growing. The images are horrible. Will it all ever end? How much longer are ordinary Ukrainians expected to keep living like this?
Ukraine has been striking deeper inside Russia lately, but it is targeting fuel infrastructure, while Russia simply targets Ukrainian civilians. There is a huge difference.
The intensity of the attacks I think reflects a lack of options from Russia’s side. There has been increasing speculaton regarding Russia’s ability to continue waging war, Putin’s position, and the state of the Russian economy.
Russia Finance Officials Tell Putin War Spending Is Unaffordable
Putin is also currently hosting the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which at this point has become a domestic event.
Several prominent members of the Russian elite have attempted to warn Putin about the economic consequences of the war in the past, while Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s point man in contacts with President Donald Trump’s administration, has been touting the potential economic benefits of a peace deal.
But a senior Russian banker, who also declined to be identified, told Reuters that Putin had already lost a good opportunity last year to strike a deal, and that the economy is now showing signs of instability.
Will those signs of instability result in any real political change within Russia, something which has been elusive basically since 2000? Your guess is as good as mine. I think I agree with much of what Mikhail Khodorkovsky wrote in his Substack a few days ago, and I especially like his conclusion.
A closed system carries the cause of its own collapse inside itself, and Putin’s is no exception to that rule. The mistake is to think we have much say over the timing — we do not. The regime will go when it goes.
The only thing my (rusty) knowledge of Russian history assures me of is the timing and means will be unpredictable. I have also seen some in the west call for a breakup of Russia which to me sounds as comical as calling for a breakup of the United States (although to be fair, some states, like California and Texas, could certainly be major countries in their own right). So my only advice is to take with a grain of salt any commentary from anyone claiming to know what is happening inside Russia right now, or to have any insights into Putin’s health or state of mind.
Inside Putin’s $26 Billion Quest for Longevity
This is behind a WSJ paywall, but the subheadline alone “From mini-pigs and organ printing to cryotherapy and genetics, Russia’s president has turned antiaging research into a Kremlin priority” says a lot about what is really on the minds of those still trying to bomb Ukraine into submission.
So Washington has wrestling on the lawn of the White House next to a golden ballroom construction site, and Moscow has an entire industry of how to let a dictator live forever. Which is fairly on brand if you think about Lenin’s tomb, which someone at the time must have thought was very futuristic.
Some days, most days actually, I wish we could blink and wake-up. That there would be something more impactful to talk about other than the Space-X IPO. That ordinary people could feel like they are having an impact, rather than everything slipping through their fingers, that no matter how hard they work, it isn’t enough. The only people who seem to be doing well these day, in financial terms, are those playing the market, and those who have a craft so good with their hands that it cannot easily be replicated by AI or a robot.
Speaking of craft, I read this conversation with Rob Lee a few days ago, highlighted by the Economist defense editor, Shawshank Joshi, about the realities of warfare on the front lines in Ukraine. For someone like me, who objectively had no idea how things are now, it was eye-opening and frankly, sounds absolutely horrific.
The burden of this war is very narrowly focused. All Ukrainians feel it, but in particular the infantrymen. Rotations are very difficult now because of the kill zone, but also manpower challenges. Right now infantry, some brigades I’ve met with, say infantry is spending a minimum of three months at the zero line with no rotation. But there are many cases of six months and nine months. There are a couple of cases of guys who are over a year on position and just doing no rotation.
What it’s like is — usually if you’re infantry, you’re underground, either in a hole dug in a tree line somewhere or in the basement of a building. You’re not going outside very much because of the drone threat. Some of these guys, their eyes have to recover because they haven’t seen sunlight that much for six months or a year. There’s very little physical exercise you can do because you’re in a very small confined space. Almost all resupply is done by drone — these big vampire drones drop almost all the food, ammunition, water, whatever else you need.
It’s very difficult to do casualty evacuation. To zero line, in many places you can only do it by ground drone. You can’t even bring up vehicles. Basically you either have to walk out yourself or you have a UGV come get you. And in many cases that’s not possible. To walk to position and back, in some cases you have to walk 25 kilometers. I talked to an infantryman from the 9th Air Brigade a couple of weeks ago, and on his way out he had to walk 18 kilometers. Of course you’re walking along the most concealed and covered route. It might take days or a week or so, because you walk when there’s bad weather, when the drone threat is reduced.
You read all this and think all these drones, and rockets, and generators, and gadgets and AI, and are we really making the world of the future a more pleasant place to live in for humanity? Was there no other way? It all almost makes me want to become a feminist.
I think I’ll stop there because I would love to share something uplifting but I am grasping for straws at the moment. The only advice I have is take that trip, spend that day on the beach, go for that meal, because we all have one thing in common, and that is that none of us knows precisely what tomorrow will bring.