Russia is the country built on tensions and contradictions. East and West, mystical and scientific, kind and cruel, nihilistic and spiritual, empire and strong national core.

Kiev’s war aims have won easy US support in part because maximalism has long been a feature of American foreign policy

Reading and rereading the US President Joe Biden’s statement last Monday on Ukraine Independence Day, one is reminded of English poet John Keats’ immortal line, ‘Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter.’ Three things are striking.

One Day I Put on A Green T-shirt, look at the mirror, and –Wow–I see Zelensky on the other end. I didn’t fully wake up, and looked pretty angry and disheveled. In any case, inspired by my looks, I wrote a satire about war-mongers in Washington and Kiev and how they benefit from wars, the satire which was liked by more that 750 of my friends, and reposted more that hundred times.

A group of former senior US officials thinks Putin will attack NATO next, but that scenario is highly unlikely.

The fact that the escalation of the Ukraine conflict is happening not only at the direct instigation of the United States and other NATO allies but also with direct encouragement from Washington, is now openly expressed by many politicians and observers.

A couple of weeks before Vladimir Putin announced his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, he met in the Kremlin with Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz. At their joint press conference following the meeting, Putin mentioned in passing that Ukraine is controlled today by neo-Nazis. This remark was famously ridiculed by Scholz as “laughable,” thereby earning for him the Kremlin’s utter contempt.

As the war in Ukraine passes the half year mark lots of media produce their conclusions about the beginning of the war. But when looked at in detail these are most superficial write ups of what people assume Russia’s plans at the start of the war were and how those assumed plans fit with the presumed reality.

In military terms, the crude, locally assembled drone dropping a country-made bomb or two on unguarded sites in Crimea are at best pin pricks in the big picture of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. But it can be profoundly consequential in certain other ways.

Washington must come to terms with its role in provoking and now prolonging the war.