Given I lived in Russia and Ukraine from late '94 to early 2000 I've been asked by many friends what I think of the situation. With friends I can only answer the question after sharing how I feel about the situation... and that's heartbroken, sad, angry, disgusted, hopeful, scared as f@?k, exhausted, inspired... and the degree of my feelings is certainly a mere fraction of what all Ukrainians must be feeling right now. This became all the more real when participating in Sunday's Stand with Ukraine rally in San Francisco. This moved my perception of the situation from digital screens where fact is a simple swipe from fiction to the reality that's only found when with others physically. Seeing and hearing the tears, the anguish, the anger of those with loved ones fighting or in the crossfire, of those who grew up there... it was heartbreaking. To see the hugs and love and commitment to one another... it was inspiring. To say my heart goes out to them seems grossly inadequate. Yes, I'm donating. Yes, I'm staying attentive. I'm writing now to implore you to do the same.

I'm also writing to answer that first question: "What do you think...?" I may share more on this later as my thoughts matter little in the grand scheme of things. For now I'll say that my thinking (unfortunately) aligns with those of Fiona Hill, Former Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the United States National Security Council. She expresses her views clearly in today’s Politico article, an excerpt of which is below. Also below is the link to the full article. Given all this, please stay involved. Please continue to support Ukrainians, the Ukrainian resistance, and ALL those seeking safety from the fighting.

Maura Reynolds (Politico): The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III."

Fiona Hill: "We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.

All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.

But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years."

https://www.politico.com/.../world-war-iii-already-there...

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