Clarissa's Blog

I take my baptismal name after the saint who’s commemorated with this statue in Kiev:

I’m glad she’s protected.

The mistake people make in Wordle is that when they have a word that differs from a bunch of others in a single letter, they waste their 5 guesses on going through all of these possible words.

For instance, you have _ aste. It’s a mistake to go “waste, haste, paste, baste, etc ” because you’ll run out of guesses soon enough. If the “aste” part has already been guessed, what’s the point of repeating it? Instead, use a word that has all or most of the possible letters (e.g. whoop). The second and the third guesses should never contain any of the letters you already guessed. If you already know them, what’s the point of repeating them?

My kid has exceptional sociability skills that she did not learn from anybody in this family. For instance, when she wants to share something that happened at school, she leads with, “Mommy, what was your favorite thing you did at work today?”

And after I answer, she says, “thank you for telling me! Would you like to hear my favorite thing I did at school today?”

I, my husband, sister, friends, etc all go to find solace, calmness and strength in the public appearances and social media of Ukrainians who are in the war zone right now. It’s kind of embarrassing. N was getting really depressed but then I caught him huddled in a corner, listening to a Zelensky speech. After that, he rallied.

I don’t even know how to describe it to people who don’t speak Ukrainian. Remember the COVID drama of spring-summer of 2020? Remember what the MSM were like? Now imagine the polar opposite of that.

Klara told me that every morning at school they pray for Ukraine and asked whether it’s helping. I said it’s definitely helping. Ukrainian soldiers report that they feel the presence of divine power that’s on their side and ask everybody to keep praying. I’m not inventing this for my kid’s benefit. They do say it.

This is my university in Kharkiv:

I mean this was my university. It’s been destroyed by the Russians.

More views:

In 2014, Russians thought that conquering the completely Russian-speaking Kharkiv would be a breeze. There was no Ukrainian army, the city is 20 minutes from the Russian border, it seemed like an easy win.

Back then, Russia was afraid to bomb and send troops openly because Russians thought that the public opinion in the West wouldn’t tolerate an open slaughter of civilians in Europe (ha ha, right?). The troops Russians sent in 2014 were instructed to pretend they were participating in training maneuvers and got lost. When they came to Kharkiv, regular citizens, civilians banded together and repulsed the Russian assault on Kharkiv. The main confrontation happened right in front of the university that you see in the pictures.

The very first air strike that Russians delivered on Kharkiv in February of 2022 was on the exact spot where Russian invaders were repulsed in 2014.

Ukrainian people are undefeated as always. After the initial shock, they regrouped and have now resumed the spring semester classes. Online, of course.

People are joking, “it’s all good, at least now our professors will have to learn a few new teaching methods.” And, “how come I’m getting a semester off because I joined the army? I’m sitting in the bushes, waiting to shoot at a Russian tank. Those bastards are so slow, I could get in 20-30 algebra equations and a 100 pages on the history of ancient Rome between the shots.”

I hope that together with the fashion for Ukrainian flags and portraits of Zelensky we adopt a fashion for resilience. It wouldn’t hurt at all if mental issues and extreme fragility were no longer a badge of honor.

Well, since gas prices are record low, the world is at peace, and there’s no inflation or other serious problems, we can clown around with this type of inane posing. Oh, wait.

These people are so getting clobbered in November.

I’m so busy that yesterday during the Zoom panel where I was one of the speakers I graded papers while other panelists spoke. It also helped me not to get too annoyed when they said unnecessary things.

One speaker, for instance, thought that our panel on Ukraine was a great moment for him to air his grievances against Trump. He literally mentioned Trump more times than he did Ukraine. I didn’t have time for Trump obsessions before and I definitely have none now.

Please mark your calendars for the online Ukrainian event where I’ll be speaking about the history of Ukraine. It will be on YouTube live, so nobody will see you.

It will take place on April 6 at 5 pm US Central Time. A link is forthcoming.

The first post-Soviet Russian attempt to breach the territorial integrity of sovereign Ukraine and annex Ukrainian territories happened in 2003 (not a typo), which was not even a decade after the signing of the Budapest Agreements. It also happened before the famous eastward expansion of the NATO.

In 2003, the Ukrainian president was on a state visit to Latin America, which is very far away. Russians used that moment to proceed with a far-reaching and long-existing plan to move towards annexing the Crimea. The first step in the plan was the Tuzla Island. It’s a tiny strip of land between mainland Russian and the Crimea. While the Ukrainian president was in a different hemisphere, Russians (who, once again, only a few years ago recognized and guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity) decided that Tuzla was Russian land and started building a dirt road towards it. Which makes it extremely easy to then build a stretch of road to the Crimea.

The Ukrainian President immediately returned and pushed back. Russians had to wait until 2015 to build their dirt road and until 2018 to annex Tuzla.

There is no evidence to support the idea that Russia at any time was going to keep its promise to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. Or Belarusian sovereignty. Russia did everything to compromise Belarusian nation-building in the 1990s (and, of course, since then). This was also before the NATO eastward expansion.