Bulgaria with Noodles

This is the first time that I have written a piece for my blog in a long while, as not much has been happening. As usual, NO ONE has been writing any comments on my blog. It is rather depressing! Has the Bank of England interest rate really gone up to 4%? Will it be going higher? I am very glad that I do not have mortgage in the UK.  I really do not think that the war in Ukraine is going to end next week. However, a rapid collapse of the Russian army really does look like a possible outcome. The deployment of modern tanks could completely change the overall balance of forces on the battlefield. This will probably happen because the Russians have hardly any tanks left, apart from some ones that are really old and outdated. When the war started more than a year ago, Putin thought that he was going to capture Kyiv in a day or two, but it all went horribly wrong. This just shows that predicting the future is a hit-and-miss affair, especially in a war. Part of the problem is that Putin ...

Dear Macolm,                                                It is always interesting to get an email from you, old fellow.    A friend of mine is still teaching, so I am wondering whether he did actually go on strike and stand there on a picket line with a sign, demanding more money? No, probably not.  No, there were no tremors or earthquakes here in Bulgaria, although I believe that some nearby other countries did have some. The situation in eastern Turkey and Syria really is very, very bad.   The war in Ukraine also continues on its bloody course. The UK Ministry of Defence has more or less agreed with the Ukrainian authorities' estimates that more than 800 Russian soldiers are being killed every day. At the moment, it looks unlikely that the West will give the Ukrainians the fighter jets that they are asking for, but then again it was not so long ago that it seemed impossible that western c...

Dear Malcolm, It is by no means certain that I will be going to Ukraine at all. Yes, we are having a fundraiser on 16th, but maybe Martin will not need my driving skills. Perhaps he has already chosen someone else. I do not know. Whatever happens, the van will just be going a short distance into Ukraine, in order to deliver humanitarian supplies (mostly medical things, clothing, soap and so on). Yes, lots of countries are supplying weapons to Ukraine, but that is nothing to do with us. Martin has made this trip several times, so I hope that he will know what he is doing. Much though I love my dear wife, I cannot agree with her and I think that she (and the tightly-controlled Russian media) are wrong. Yes, of course it is true that each side is using the media and that Zelensky is (or was) a professional actor, but the reality is that the Russian forces have invaded Ukraine. It wasn't the other way round or even fifty-fifty. The Russian invasion has done terrible damage to the Ukrai...

War memorial in Simferopol, 2018 According to the legend, Stalin was more than a bit surprised when the USSR was invaded in 1941. For quite some time, Uncle Joe just could not believe that it really was happening. Yes, his intelligence officers tried to warn him that Hitler was going to attack and Stalin dismissed their fears. So it was not quite a case of history repeating itself when Putin's soldiers invaded the Ukraine. As readers of my blog will already know, I saw a lot of good things that have happened since the Russian takeover of the Crimea back in 2014. Way back before we were married, I also had the opportunity to see what things in the Crimea were like when the region was part of the Ukraine and under the authority of the government in Kiev. What a mess!  But whatever good Putin may have done in the past is far outweighed by the disaster that is unfolding in the streets of Kiev, Kharkov and towns and cities all over the Ukraine.   With Albert, my father-inlaw, and Y...

Tovarich Lenin is still around The big news is that it hasn't happened. The Russian military has not launched an all-out invasion of the Ukraine. Mr Putin has said that the Russian forces have already started returning to their bases, but NATO says that they haven't. Hmm. There are supposed to be 100,000 Russian military personnel on the border with Ukraine and Belorussia, so maybe it might take some time for all of them to pack up and go home. When I was in the Crimea in 2018, I definitely had the feeling that most people there felt that Putin is doing a good job. They had a lot of respect for their president and that is not something that most Brits feel about Boris Johnson. I think that Joe Biden is a decent sort of chap, but it seems that most Americans think that he is a disaster and that Donald Trump would do a much better job. In the centre of Simferopol, my dear Irena's hometown and the biggest city in the Crima, you can see these statues. A young and rather sweet-l...