This is basically an open thread on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I’ve been to Ukraine, met a clutch of its early 2000s political and student leaders, a couple of writers, sat at a board table in Crimea and eye-balled the deputy governor as he refused to answer my question about mistreatment of the returning Tatars (Stalin expelled them en masse and the returning few post-1989 suffer terrible discrimination). So many of us are just nauseous this morning, worried for people we know and horrified by what it means for Ukraine and all of Europe (and Taiwan, and and and). All I will say is you’re lucky if you don’t live in a country whose ruling party has been bought and paid for by dirty Russian money. And we’re all lucky now, who aren’t sitting on a blocked road, fleeing, or clutching our children in a metro station underground, or wondering what good a rifle is against a motorway full of tanks.