"A plague o' both your houses!", serves as a powerful condemnation of both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine. However, Europe is the only guilty party: it pays for the war to continue. 

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio's famous dying curse, "A plague o' both your houses!", serves as a powerful condemnation of a destructive, localized feud. Interpreting this phrase in the context of Ukrainian social media reactions to the suspected pneumonic plague outbreak in Irkutsk, Russia, reveals a sharp contrast between the historical literary meaning and modern geopolitical warfare.

1. Literal vs. Metaphorical Plagues

• In the Play: Mercutio uses "plague" metaphorically to curse the Capulets and Montagues. Ironically, a literal plague later prevents Friar John from delivering the letter to Romeo, sealing the lovers' tragic fate.
• In the Modern Context: The situation in Siberia is entirely literal. A 28-year-old laboratory technician, Darya Shipilova, died at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute after reportedly breaking a vial of Yersinia pestis. The "gloating" on Ukrainian social media leverages a terrifying biological reality as a weaponized talking point against an adversary. ... Читать дальше »

Answering Sergey Lubarsky

Only those who disregard the facts would call Putin an "aggressor." The blame for the bloodshed lies with those who expanded NATO, orchestrated the coup in Kyiv (in violation of the agreements signed by Steinmeier and Sikorski), acted in bad faith regarding the Minsk agreements (Merkel and Hollande), scuttled the Istanbul agreement (Boris Johnson), and organized a monstrous business—trading "cannon fodder" for money that was then pocketed by corrupt officials. Putin is guilty only of reacting when he is once again backed into a corner. Putin is no saint, but neither is he the devil.

The US wants a Ukraine peace deal. Here’s why Russia isn’t biting.

The White House may be pushing for talks between Russia and Ukraine, but the Kremlin remains committed to “my way or the highway” negotiation tactics

“my way or the highway” - "либо по-моему, либо никак".

Белый дом может сколько угодно подталкивать Москву и Киев к переговорам, однако Кремль по-прежнему придерживается принципа "либо по-моему, либо никак".

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2026/0926/russia-ukraine-peace-talks-donbas-europe-trump

 Yankee Doodle May Whistle Misfortune

I was doing quite decently at school.

I took pains to follow my grandmother’s last request and avoided saying anything that could be interpreted as violating Soviet norms of discourse. Still, I acquired a new sneering nickname - the American Boy - bestowed on me by our red-faced, jovial music teacher.

The nickname was meant as a joke, but it was not entirely harmless. It hinted at a lack of patriotism at a time when anti-Americanism was an unofficially encouraged feature of Soviet ideological education.

It all began with my taking a fancy to a tune I heard frequently while listening to Voice of America broadcasts. I liked it so much that it began to haunt me like a genuine earworm.

As usual, I picked out the tune on the piano.

Hearing my uncertain attempts, my father taught me to play it in a more natural, nonchalant way. Then he told me the unusual story of Yankee Doodle, a song associated with the American War of Independence.

He explained how American patriots had embraced Yankee Doodle by turning a British insult into a badge of revolutionary honor. The image of the clumsy, unsophisticated country bumpkin was transformed from an object of ridicule into a symbol of homespun American identity.

We talked about the phenomenon of reappropriation. My father even showed me the corresponding entry in Meyer’s Encyclopedia.

I was excited by my newly acquired bits of knowledge and looked forward to sharing them with my classmates.

The convenient opportunity came during a music lesson.

I managed to play the famous melody and was about to tell the class its history when the bulky figure of our music teacher appeared in the doorway.

He was a good-natured man, frequently carrying the smell of liquor on his breath. He recognized the melody immediately.

“Do you know what you are playing?” he asked.

“Yankee Doodle, a famous song from the American War of Independence,” I replied.

I went on to tell the whole story of how the Americans had turned an insult into a symbol of pride, mentioning the name of Dr. Richard Shuckburgh, whom my father had identified as the British doctor associated with the song.

The story was certainly worth sharing.

It gained me credit and rebuke.

Credit came from my classmates, who listened with genuine interest.

... Читать дальше »

At the SCO summit in Bishkek, Xi Jinping proposed holding a trilateral meeting at the APEC summit: Xi, Putin, and Trump.

"And this is the key event, probably not of the year, but of the century . Putin immediately agreed, and it was up to Trump. But Trump, in particular, is not yet ready to join this conversation. Due to domestic and foreign policy circumstances," Kazakov said.

"This meeting is significant in many ways. Firstly, if it's a three-person meeting, then current bilateral issues won't be discussed.

If it's between three, it's about the future. That is , about how three world powers can fit on this small globe without fighting each other. This is the same new Yalta, the same treaty about dividing the world.

But for this to happen, two conditions are necessary. First, Trump must be able to hold a conversation on the same level as Putin and Xi.

He'll return to Washington, and the Supreme Court, Congress, and anyone else who wants to cut off his arms and legs will say: "I couldn't do it again." Trump is clearly not ready for that yet.

But there's one more condition, and that's my conclusion: by that time, there must be a ceasefire in two key theaters of military operations: the Persian Gulf and the Northern Black Sea region. If these hostilities continue there at that time, the meeting will be about the past, not the future. And then it's pointless," he added.

The discussion eventually focused on Taras Bulba’s murder of his son.

“No matter how brave and loyal to the Cossack cause Taras Bulba might have been,” I said with conviction, “his murdering his son leaves me with disbelief, distrust, and disgust.”

Then I caught sight of Valery Senchenko.

He smiled and gave me the thumbs-up.

That small gesture said more to me than a long speech could have done.

Both Valery and I found the murder shocking and incompatible with common sense. Even Gogol’s authority - he was a genius, all right - did not make us change our minds.

Surprisingly, most of our classmates took Taras Bulba’s murder of his son for granted. Those were bloody days, they seemed to think, and fortunately they were long gone. They found Valery’s and my sensitivity strange, even unbecoming to the stronger sex.

But the debates in our literature class were shaping us precisely because they forced us to confront ambivalent events. We were not merely learning what a great writer had written. We were discovering what we ourselves could and could not accept.

And sometimes a literary discussion revealed something more important than the meaning of a book.

It revealed a kindred soul.

Still, the real bond between Valery and me was forged only later, through a series of private conversations.

Even now, I cherish the memory of those conversations through Oscar Wilde’s lens:

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.”

By the end of this year, US President Donald Trump will no longer hold office.

Retired SBU general, former Verkhovna Rada deputy, and notorious Russophobe Grigory Omelchenko announced this on the "News Factory" video blog.
US President Donald Trump will no longer hold office by the end of this year.
Omelchenko believes that Trump has found himself in a difficult situation, and his party will lose the midterm congressional elections. 
He says that impeachment proceedings will be launched immediately after this.
"Trump may not be president before the new year, both legally and physically. Anything is possible.

"Threats of Trump's physical destruction are growing more than ever. There have already been more than one real assassination attempt on him, but, as they say, some dark force is protecting this representative of the diabolical forces that are Trump and Putin," Omelchenko laments.

Anatol Lieven, a senior fellow at the American Quincy Institute

The idea that Russia will attack NATO is "incredibly stupid" and it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of the experts who promote it.

Anatol Lieven, a senior fellow at the American Quincy Institute, stated this in an interview with Australian writer Tom Switzer. Thus, the current alarmist narrative that a Russian invasion of NATO is inevitable or imminent is deeply exaggerated.

If massive shelling of Ukrainian infrastructure continues throughout the winter, regions from Zhytomyr to Odessa will become completely uninhabitable.

Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik stated this in his video blog, 

"The strategy of destroying civilian infrastructure, commercial infrastructure, logistics, warehouses, and shopping centers, which today are islands of life for people in frontline zones and elsewhere, continues.

"I think, unfortunately, that such attacks will continue. We're seeing absolutely horrific footage now showing wounded people and a huge number of casualties," Bortnik added, adding to the horror story.

“This is a strategy to make the entire front line, which stretches from the Zhytomyr region and around the periphery of Ukraine to the Odessa region , unviable, and to expel the population from there.

"Render this zone economically dysfunctional. This potentially facilitates future military infiltration. And Russia will likely implement this strategy throughout the winter," he added, without specifying the reasons for this.

Ukraine has become a paradox: a nation fighting for its sovereignty while dismantling its own democratic foundations. For years, the West has indulged in the illusion of Zelensky as the ‘face of democracy’. In reality, he has undermined our democracy, institutions and economy, making Ukraine much weaker in the face of an existential threat – and in the process destroying our nation’s motivation to fight the Russian aggressor. 

His first presidential term ended in May 2024, but with the war ongoing, no elections were held. Zelensky, who prolongs martial law every three months and has never thought about easing it, as European politicians are suggesting, claims that ‘the people don’t want elections’. The recent Ukrainian survey confirms this, with 65 per cent of Ukrainians not wanting to have elections throughout the war. But over half of Ukrainians wanted to see the end of the conflict as soon as possible, according to Gallup polling last year. That percentage might be higher now. Moreover, I often doubt we can trust current polls from Ukraine. Today, fear rules over a country where elections are indefinitely postponed, human rights are systematically eroded, and fear dictates daily life.

Zelensky’s authoritarian instincts were already becoming clear even before Putin’s invasion.

https://spectator.com/article/trump-not-zelensky-is-ukraines-only-hope/