In the USA "laid-back" ways are unacceptable, as well as in other countries where discipline and hard work are given priority. In Canada "laid-back" is the most natural way of treating things around you.

In Russian it is very close to "ПОФИГИЗМ"

Canada offers many privileges to people who live here. Basically, it is the right place for seniors to live in if you look for such benefits as free medical treatment and other social perks. You cannot help appreciating Canadian kind-heartedness, laid-back ways and very peculiar sense of humor that takes you to the Farmstead Boulevard (with no farmstead in view), the Balsdon Hollow (without a hollow nearby), the Seaview Heights (without a sea in the vicinity). A modest village in East Guillimbury, where we live, has a proud name of Queensville. Still, I feel the presence of royalty within my close circle in the personality of Olivia, my beloved granddaughter and the greatest treasure who calls the shots for me now. 

Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki – the irresistible urge to “shuck off your clothes as you dance”? Perhaps a little kilig – the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien – which encapsulates the revitalising effects of taking a walk in the wind?

These words – taken from Bantu, Tagalog, and Dutch – have no direct English equivalent, but they represent very precise emotional experiences that are neglected in our language. And if Tim Lomas at the University of East London has his way, they might soon become much more familiar.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170126-the-untranslatable-emotions-you-never-knew-you-had

The Russo-Ukrainian war seems to offer too general a term for the unfolding tragedy. Neither Putin’s description of it as a “special military operation” (SMO) nor the Western definition of it as an “invasion” provide an accurate picture of the war that can better be framed into the scenario of the leader (Putin) inflicting a ruthless but richly deserved punishment on his beloved but treacherous progeny (Ukraine).

Putin acts just as the Cossack leader Taras Bulba from Gogol’s novel of the same name: Bulba slayed his own son   who, under the spell of infatuation with a Polish lady, turned his sword against his own people. Before shooting his son Taras says,      “ You are my progeny – and I will kill you!” 

Ukraine turned out to be as ungrateful to Russia as Andryi to his Cossack family that raised him. The Bolshevist Russia put Ukraine on the map and the “democratic” Russia foolishly bestowed independence on it on the Ukrainian solemn promise of eternal friendship and neutrality. 

Ukraine’s backstreet affair with the EU and NATO  culminated in an ungodly deal between Ukraine and the West: the Kiev movers and shakers allowed the  West to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia.

The cowardly, ignorant, greedy and corrupt Zelensky was sent by Fate to finish the job of weakening Russia with the help of the sacrificial goat – Ukraine.

Russian victory over Ukraine is clear to every sober-minded person who is familiar with the conflict. However, the red tape will yet take some time before the stage of resurrection, recovery, rebuilding and revival sets in.  

In full accord with Wilson’s famous “14 points” Putin is sure to conclude a deal in such a way, so that the losing side should be provided with the face-saving trade-off:  The West will not any longer have to strain its conscience and its budget over Ukraine; Ukraine will be allowed to have a state, a democratically elected government, free mass media, the rule of law and an opportunity to work for the benefit of its citizens.

Istanbul agreements, concluded between Russia and Ukraine in March of 2023, must be regarded as a realistic basis for the future peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

“Istanbul is Ukraine’s commitment to condemn the Maidan and the ideology of the Maidan. Everything else is a lie and a provocation, or an entourage,” as a popular Ukrainian journalist Mikhail Chaplyga said.

I feel strongly about Lincoln’s wise maxim:

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” 
I do not like either revolutions or revolutionaries who always come up with fancy names to cover up violence, crime and blood-shedding. The successful operation of German secret services, which catapulted Vladimir Lenin to power by means of a Petrograd coup in 1917, went into a history under the Bolshevik title “The Great October Socialist Revolution”. The American-paid and masterminded coup in Kiev toppled in 2014 the constitutionally elected, though corrupt, President Yanukovycg and showcased itself before the world as “The Revolution of Dignity”. Both revolutions are great historical fakes and manipulations.
Yes, change must come with evolution, not revolution. 
 

Hrytsak, Yaroslav. The Forging of a Nation. – NY: PublicAffairs, 2023. – 438 p.

“A new Ukrainian identity has been forged during the years of Ukraine’s independence, one that is not based on language or ethnicity. It is based on political loyalty to Ukraine as an independent state.” [Hrytsak, 2024, 414]

Naturally, identity is based on language or ethnicity.

The autocratic states disregard “natural identity” in favor of identity based on political loyalty. Some Jews who were financially helping the Nazis were safe under the Nazi regime.

“The new political identities have not replaced old ethnic identities: they coexist However, the political identity has been dominant for some time now. Proof can be seen in the fact that the two Ukrainian presidents, who have been elected during the war in Donbas, Petro Poroshenko in 2014 and Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019, won majoritis across the country and not just in the East or the West.”

[Hrytsak, 2024, 414]

Hrytsak, Yaroslav. The Forging of a Nation. – NY: PublicAffairs, 2023. – 438 p.

Speaking about the heritage of the first President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, Yaroslav Trofimov praises Kravchuk’s achievement:

“Kravchuk was a controversial figure, blamed by many for maintaining Ukraine in a post-Soviet limbo and preventing reforms. Yet at a time when Ukraine’s statehood was fragile and perhaps seen as artificial and transitory by many in Russian-speaking cities like Kharkiv and Odesa, he had laid the foundation of the nation’s long-term survival. He ensured that the new multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Ukrainian state would be as inclusive as possible.

At independence in 1991, Ukraine – unlike Estonia or Latvia – granted citizenship to all its residents. It eliminated the Soviet era ethnicity clause from identity documents. Under that Soviet concept of nationality, someone like Zelensky, because of his Jewish origin, was not considered a Ukrainian at all. Neither were the millions of other Ukrainians of Russian, Tatar, Bulgarian, or Hungarian blood.”
[Trofimov, 2024: 220]

Trofimov exaggerates, of course, both Soviet drawbacks and the achievements of the “independent” Ukraine. Indeed, due to the arrogance and inefficiency of Soviet propaganda, the principles of soft power were rarely practiced in a one-party state that got used to ordering people around rather than persuading them.

However, Ukraine, remains s very diligent pupil to the Soviet foolish, heavy-handed and inefficient ways in the sphere of social equality, mass media, education, criminal justice, law-enforcement and self-determination. (though it is showcased by the West as the country of “vibrant democracy” that is fighting tooth and nail against its Soviet past).

To claim that Kravchuk ensured “the nation’s long-term survival” and “that the new multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Ukrainian state would be as inclusive as possible” – amounts to spitting into the wind, because the opposite is true:

1) Kravchuk wa ... Читать дальше »

November’s US election adds another layer of uncertainty, along with a question mark as to whether the European Union could realistically pick up any slack.

Ноябрьские выборы в США добавляют еще один уровень неопределенности, а также ставят вопросительный знак относительно того, сможет ли Европейский Союз реально принять эстафету.

pick up the slack

To do an extra amount of work that someone else is unable or unwilling to do.

I'm going to need you to pick up the slack around the house when the baby arrives, because I'm going to literally have my hands full.

The fourth member of our team has been totally unreliable, so the rest of us have had to pick up the slack.

Moreover, if Washington were to cut off aid to Islamabad, Beijing has shown that it stands by to pick up the slack.

Более того, когда Вашингтон решил прекратить помощь Исламабаду, Пекин продемонстрировал, что он готов принять эстафету.

I can pick up the slack.

Я и сам могу со всем справиться.

Yet in the face of repeated and public warnings from the Russians, we persist in our folly—in essence, playing chicken with a nuclear armed power over a country of absolutely zero strategic significance to the United States.

https://inosmi.ru/20240608/ssha-269122747.html

Тем не менее, несмотря на неоднократные и публичные предупреждения со стороны русских, мы упорствуем в своей глупости – по сути, валяем дурака с ядерной державой из-за страны, имеющей абсолютно нулевое стратегическое значение для Соединённых Штатов.

The Russian proverb «ласковый теленок двух маток сосет»  has a correspondence in English: You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar: мух проще ловить мёдом, а не уксусом.

The term "Multi-Vector Policy" may be understood as a political equivalent of the proverb.

The Multi-Vector Policy was the foreign policy adopted during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma from 1994 to 2005. It was an effort to preserve Ukraine's neutral status between Russia and the Western world. It was controversial both as a term and as its practical application.

The term must be understood as the policy of deriving benefits by switching sides. The ambivalence of the term makes it a piece of diplomatic camouflanguage – the language that uses polysemantic words, euphemisms, abbreviations and other stylistic devices to make the message ambiguous by obscuring the actual meaning of a statement. It is a euphemism covering up the opportunistic nature of politics based on switching sides whenever it is beneficial for one’s interests.

The Multi-Vector Policy is basically immoral: it is a license to be free from any binding pledges. It is something directly opposite to a well-known marriage rite: I, ____, take you, ____, to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life.