Przemyśl, and a reminder of Putin's presence

The second leg of the road trip, from Białowieża to Przemyśl, was a stark reminder of the evil that lurks beyond Poland's eastern borders. I got the impression that things had greatly changed around the Polish-Belarusian border since my bicycle journeys to these parts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The clampdown is in place. Traffic is light. Quiet stretches of river border are monitored by banks of cameras mounted on high masts. No-entry signs proliferate on forest roads that lead to newly fortified border. Military and border-guard vehicles are much in evidence. This is not an area one wants to hang about in.

South of Włodawa, however, the Polish-Belarusian border gives way to the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the atmosphere of quiet threat subsides. The front line between democracy and dictatorship now lies over 1,100km (800 miles) further east, where each day Ukrainian soldiers face down Putin's army that threatens us all. 

Simon Davies is a Liverpudlian business owner who decided after Russia began its full-scale invasion to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. We met him as he was on his way to make what would be his 13th delivery. With a Transit van and trailer packed with clothing, food and medical supplies, Simon parked up for the night to stay at the same hotel that we were in. We chatted a long time over beers. Today, he crossed over the border into Ukraine. 

Listening to his stories filled me with amazement at how much change for good a single-minded person acting consistently can make. One snapshot. In the van was a large bundle of drill-bits used for brain surgery. These are made of titanium and diamond, and cost £1,200 a pop. The surgeon who donated them to Simon said that with proper sterilisation they can be used indefinitely; the NHS, however, mandates that they be single-use. For emergency front-line surgery, such niceties can be overlooked.

Simon's Facebook page says he made it OK to Orikhiv after unexpected hassle at the border. Orikhiv is in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, on the southern front. According to The Economist, (10 March 2024) "Orikhiv is a ghost town. Every single building has been damaged or destroyed. Soldiers say there may be 1,000 civilians left out of a pre-invasion population of almost 14,000. There is no gas, electricity or mains water. Air-launched glide bombs have left huge craters in the streets or collapsed whole sections of blocks of flats. In the street in front of a bombed-out pharmacy, orange crocuses are making a defiant appearance." Most of Orkhiv's residents are too old or poor to leave. For them, a delivery of humanitarian aid such as that which Simon has brought all the way over from Liverpool makes a vast difference.

If you'd like to contribute to Simon's superhuman efforts to bring aid to people whose lives have been blighted by Putin's aggression, here's the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukrainian-aid-delivery.

This time two years ago:
The four-day working week

This time four years ago:
First half 2021 health

This time six years ago:
Classic Volgas, Ealing and Ursynów

This time seven years ago:
Memory and Me

This time nine years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time ten years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

This time 12 years ago:
Serious cycling

This time 14 years ago:
Outlets for creativity

This time 15 years ago:
The day I stopped commuting to work by car

This time 17 years ago:
Look up at the Towers of London

This time 18 years ago:
Wild deer in the Las Kabacki forest

Mutineers' march on Moscow - a turning point

Saturday saw me glued to Twitter. At times like this, following hundreds of accounts that track the Russo-Ukrainian war in detail, is by far and away the best method of staying up to date in a fast-changing situation. On Friday night, when much of Russia is incapacitated to one degree or another by alcohol, Prigozhin's mercenaries struck north towards Rostov-on-Don, leaving their prepared positions. On Saturday morning, they were in the city, the key logistics and command centre for the Russian invasion force. The military HQ was surrounded. By Saturday evening it was all over - Prigozhin had folded; a deal had been brokered by Lukashenka. The Wagner mercenaries who want to continue fighting Ukraine can do so under regular Russian army command; those that don't can seek sanctuary in Belarus.

The day's unfolding events were amazing to witness online; history in the making has never been so present. Knowing too that it was one bunch of evil murderers against another bunch of evil murderers, shooting down Russian high-value aviation assets, made the whole thing more interesting. Each Russian soldier less, mercenary or regular, was one less to hold back the Ukrainian counteroffensive. 

Prigozhin's stated aim was the removal of Russia's defence minister Shoigu and head of the armed forces, Gerasimov. His gripe was not, he suggested, with Putin, but with the corrupt incompetents that had led to Russia's battlefield humiliations. The build-up to the Wagner mutiny was ongoing for some weeks, with Prigozhin videoing his rants targeted at Shoigu and Gerasimov, who he claimed were depriving Wagner troops of ammunition on purpose. Some commentators have suggested that Prigozhin was actually getting the ammunition, but stockpiling it for a coup attempt.

Another interesting take was that Ukrainian intelligence had penetrated Prigozhin's inner circle, persuading him that Moscow was ripe for the taking, and that while Wagner were on their way, the rug was pulled out from under Prigozhin's feet, the supporters he was assured were waiting for him were fictional, and he was forced to parlay. And in doing so, by negotiating with Prigozhin, Putin was shown to the world to be weak. No longer a force to be reckoned with.

A historical parallel; a riposte to all those sceptics across the West who say the Ukrainian counteroffensive isn't delivering results... The D-Day landings happened on 6 June 1944; the Ukrainian counteroffensive is said to have begun on 5 June 2023, so we have a similar starting date. The Allied armies faced fierce German resistance, in and around Caen and Falaise. The breakthrough and the north-eastward dash that culminated in the liberation of Paris, didn't ultimately happen until 21 August 1944. By then, the Allies lost nearly 50,000 soldiers killed, lost over 4,100 tanks and over 4,000 aircraft. Despite having a numerical superiority over the Germans of nearly 3:1. 

But then the Waffen-SS hadn't left its defensive positions in Normandy to march on Berlin in protest at its treatment by the German High Command. Nor had the Waffen-SS been ordered by Hitler to disband and transfer all its tanks and heavy equipment to the Wehrmacht. 

As with the Allies in 1944, Good is on the side of Ukraine; the Russians are the evil party. Good will triumph.

This time four years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador
[as if to prove the point, I'm wearing the same pair of shoes right now!]

This time six years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time seven years ago:
Zamość - the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time eight years ago:
Voting closes in citizens' participatory budget 

This time nine years ago:
Beginning of the end of PO [Civic Platform]

This time ten years ago:
Where's the beef? Fillet steak in Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia spruced up for the football, W-wa Stadion reopened

This time 13 years ago:
Literature and biology

This time 15 years ago:
Old Nysa van spotted in Grabów

This time 16 years ago:
The oats in the neighbouring field rise high

The Ego and Evil: Lent 2022: Day Five

How does the spiritually inclined person cope with a manifestation of evil like Putin? The very existence of an individual who can unleash mass-murder upon a nation, who orders the bombardment of residential districts, must raise theological questions.

Personally, I don't believe in Satan or the Devil - an equal and opposite 'anti-God'. Neither do I believe in a God who is omniscient or omnipotent. In the fullness of time, I believe, God will become omniscient and omnipotent, but that is the ultimate destination of the Universe, when God is in All, All is in God, and total awareness triumphs. God tends towards Good, God's Universe, a work in progress.

In the meanwhile, as the Universe is unfolding, we totter along on the edge of Chaos, on the edge of Misfortune. Yet unlike an earth tremor or volcano, a plague or some other natural disaster, Putin has agency. He has choice. He could have carried on running Russia as a miserable captured state, his oligarchs plundering the nation as they had done for years. But the model was running out of steam; he felt his personal obsession with rebuilding the Soviet Empire needed speeding up. He gave the order to invade Ukraine feeling that his armed forces were invincible and that Ukrainian people would willingly return to Mother Russia's bosom. He was wrong on both counts. Now, like Hitler ordering scorched earth, Putin is lashing out at civilians on a massive scale.

How can one take measure of such evil and fit it in one's worldview? I have spent the vast part of my life in the belief that history was on an upward trajectory, towards justice, away from depraved barbarity.

Is evil merely absence of good, or something else? 

The Ego unchallenged, any top dog in a hierarchy, surrounded by sycophants, unrestrained by any moral compass, any sense of 'win-win' -  is likely to behave like Putin. History has seen many thousand Putins - deranged megalomaniacs, and yet to date; apart from Stalin and Kim Jong-Un, none had nuclear weapons. Many died at the hands of their own people - Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, President Samuel Doe of Liberia. Mad and evil though they were, they had not the power to threaten Europe or America. But at the sick heart of each, it was the ego that prevailed over consciousness; it was all about 'me'. Unrestrained egos - the source of all human evil.

Good has had a habit of triumphing over evil - albeit with a huge and tragic cost in human lives before being overcome. I do believe in the power of prayer for a overall positive outcome; sincere, focused prayer - that good should overcome the misfortune of Putin's evil life, and quickly.

This time last year:

Possibilianism

This time two years ago:
To Dudeists and those who have built their own religions

This time three years ago:
Lent 2019 - Looking for the Wonder of It All

This time four years ago:
That was the winter that was

This time five years ago:
Self-discipline, habits and Growth

This time eight years ago:
Putin - tactical genius, strategic failure

This time nine years ago:
Socialist Realist architecture in late winter sun

This time 11 years ago:
The Cripple and the Storyteller - part II

This time 12 years ago:
The station with no name

This time 13 years ago:
Lenten thoughts on motoring

This time 14 years ago:
Flowers, spring - already

Traitors and useful idiots

The sight of apartment blocks, schools, hospitals and administrative buildings being hit by Russian rockets, bombs and shells has revealed to the world the truth about Putin. It is a truth that those living in his immediate neighbourhood have known for a long time. He is the manifestation of evil in human form; a Hitler, a Stalin, a Pol Pot. An inhuman madman for whom massive loss of innocent life has no meaning. Protests around the world, but particularly across Europe, show that Russia has lost any residual soft power it might have enjoyed. And yet, and yet...

Unrestrained by the intellectual straightjacket of Marxism-Leninism, Putin's propaganda war aimed at the West this past decade has been infinitely more successful than the USSR's. Back then, the useful idiots were exclusively the far left. I remember at the time of Martial Law in Poland, an organisation in the UK called the Spartacist League was actually protesting against the Solidarity trade union movement, on the basis that "an imperfect workers' state is better than no workers' state". Nutters. The British Communists were partially funded through the bulk purchase by the Soviet Union of the Morning Star, the newspaper aligned with the Communist Party of Britain. The paper, then and now is so ideologically turgid that its readership is insignificant. 

The Morning Star website today leads not with the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians but with global climate change. All the British far left can do is numbly repeat the mantra "NATO and the EU should not have been encroaching on Russia".  And funnily enough, this is also the mantra of the British far right. 

The far left are the useful idiots - so hidebound in their anti-imperialist ideology that they fail to see Putin as the arch-imperialist. This is because Putin says he is against NATO, as are they - because they see NATO through an ideological prism, and not as a bulwark protecting Central and Eastern Europe from the return of the Russian imperial boot. Putin doesn't need to pay them to parrot his propaganda - they just do so.

Now look at this semi-literate tweet from George Galloway. Paid Kremlin assets or useful idiot? He names names. Nigel Farage, Christopher Hitchens, Tucker Carlson and Rod Liddle - which of these have taken Putin's shilling, and which simply believe the Kremlin's narrative?

Venal politicians, easily bought by smooth-talking Russians in the West are as culpable as hidebound ideologists. Britain's shabby response to sanctioning Russian oligarch and their assets in the UK suggests fear and shame regarding the ease with which their donations filled party coffers. And their resulting hesitancy to take a firmer stance on Putin's malevolence.

The links between Russia and the Brexit campaign were clear to see to all those who wanted to see, and all those who understood Russia. Putin needed to fragment the West, splinter its institutions. Those who bought into the lie that the EU was 'antidemocratic' need to ask themselves how democratic it is to have one man with a nuclear trigger holding our planet to ransom. Many who voted for Brexit were swayed by arguments coming from Putin's troll farms, polluting Britain's social media, or from figures directly financed by Moscow [when this is all over, I hope the Kremlin's archives will be opened so we can see proof of which figures].

Putin's courting of the West's far right and far left (the latter being cheaper to buy) had been successful for the past 22 years. But now that he has revealed his true nature in a way that's impossible to cover up with lies about 'Ukrainian fascists', 'genocide in Donbas', 'NATO provoked the bear' or 'Eastern Europeans have no right to self-determination', he has cut off that support. It will be interesting to see how the presidential campaigns of Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orban go.

When this is all over, the bought-up politicians and the useful idiots will be called to account. When this is all over, the far left and far right will not have an easy time. And that will be good for us all. In the meantime, let us pray in a focused, metaphysical way, to the Good God for a swift end to the spilling of innocent blood in Ukraine.

Lent starts tomorrow, I shall be blogging about the spiritual and metaphysical; for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, follow me on Twitter (Michael Dembinski@policies4poland).

This time last year:
Chance and luck - can you will the outcome?

This time two years ago:
Define your Deity

This time four years ago:
The Mysteries of Quantum Physics

This time fiver years ago:
Lent starts tomorrow

This time six years ago:
Coincidence and survival

This time nine years ago
The Book of Revelations

This time ten years ago:
Strong late-winter sunshine

This time 11 years ago:
Best pics from February 2011

This time 12 years ago:
Kensington

This time 14 years ago:
End of the line

February made me shiver

After three glorious days, the clouds have rushed in from the west, driven by strong winds. Four days without rain - then buckets start to fall, horizontally. Looking out of the bathroom window, I see the netting on the neighbours' new fence ripped off and a fire hose laid out across and land to pump surface water off the sodden land, which is trying to grow a crop. Brief excursions yesterday and on Tuesday, but today only a few metres across the garden to the compost bin. 

I feel as though venturing out further would be risky for my immune system; it's a definite low. An early night last night, followed by a massive ten and half hours of sleep (22:00 to 08:30) has kept at bay whatever I feel was creeping up on me; another such night is in order. And it's hard to motivate myself to exercise.

Koleje Mazowiecki is sending messages several times a day informing me about difficulties on the Warsaw-Radom line. I feel sorry for commuters waiting on rain-lashed platforms staring in their apps at icons of trains halted indefinitely at some remote halt between Warka and Dobieszyn.

Meanwhile, I am feeling jittery as a result of the situation going on in Putin's head. A thug, a bully, an evil, soul-less animal, threatening millions of people with death. Things could kick off at any moment, and if they don't, it's still going to be on absolute knife's edge until Putin's last dying breath. He'll be ratcheting up the tension whenever he wants to - marching his troops up to the borders, keeping them there, making noises to unsettle and dismay peaceful populations. The sight of American and British military aircraft in the skies of Central and Eastern Europe, flying in military supplies, keeping watch on the Russian military build up gives me a certain degree of reassurance - much more that the waffle from German or French diplomatic missions to the Kremlin. As V. I. Lenin said: "If you push in the bayonet and feel mush - keep pushing. But if you push in the bayonet and feel steel - stop." Making concessions to a psychopath makes no sense. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, cooperating with an opponent who hurts you makes no sense - you respond with force. Putin knows this and is pushing the West to effect a split in the alliance.

Gas is his weapon; Gazprom 'a gas company with tanks.' My gas bill: end of 2021, price per kilowatt-hour: 1.01zł. Early 2022, price per kilowatt-hour: 2.01zł. Next gas bill likely to be in the order of 3,600zł (around £670). More reasons to be cheerful.

The Polish government is still behaving in an irrational way. Polski Ład (the Polish deal) - the government's flagship tax reform programme - has gone awry, it is deeply unpopular even with the electorate it is trying to buy. The government is also winding up the European Commission on rule of law. Poland could end up being many billions of euro out of pocket if the government doesn't back down.

Spring is still a long way off. Another six weeks until April comes; assuming it's a nice one (latest snow-on-ground from my 25 years' experience in Warsaw was 4 May back in 2011). The days are getting longer; the sun goes down an hour and half later than the year's earliest sunset. Gone is the snow cover, the ice on the ponds - winters are getting milder and milder. Winds are getting stronger, winter storms more frequent. And yet people don't seem to see it and aren't changing their ways; driving their idle arses a few miles in their SUVs to their offices in town. To paraphrase the Dead Kennedys, it's not so much 'Give me convenience or give me death', it's 'Give me convenience or kill off the entire planet and everyone on it'. 

Covid is still here - the new cases are on their way down from the peak of the fifth wave (the fifth! I predicted a mere three waves when the pandemic began); deaths, however, refuse to follow. Poland is still seeing around 250 people a day dying from the disease.

Lent is around the corner - starting on Ash Wednesday, 3 March. I look forward to this time of cleansing and spiritual introspection; I just hope it will not be marred by a bloody war, an invasion of a peaceful country neighbouring Poland. Or by Covid. Or by the stupid Polish government telling Brussels to shove all its money destined for infrastructure and green transformation.

Reasons to be cheerful? Not many right now.

This time last year:
Starting my 30th Lent

This time two years ago:
Grey February dusk; buzzing Warsaw

This time three years ago:
Skierniewice-Łuków line modernisation announced

This four years ago:
Entropy and anti-entropy in a constant-ruled universe

This five three years ago:
Truth, spin, bullshit and lies

This time six year:
How much spirituality do we need?

This time nine years ago:
The Chosen Ones

This time ten years ago:
Fixies in the snow

This time 13 years ago:
Just the ticket

Teetering on the Edge of Chaos - my 3,000th blog post

Lent 2020 - Day 18

Blogger informs me that this is the 3,000th post on the W-wa Jeziorki blog. Just under 13 years have passed since I published my first-ever post on 1 April 2007. It has grown significantly since then - back in the days before microblogging in the form of Facebook and Twitter really took off, my blog served to carry short daily snippets accompanied by a single photo. Since then, long-form essays (written and photographic) have come to dominate my blog's content.

Looking back over the years, I can see how my writing, my photography - and my thinking has developed. Although my first Lent during which I denied myself alcohol for the duration was in 1992, my early blogged Lents also focused on self-denial rather than on spiritual contemplations. These came later; in 2013 I began more serious Lenten coverage with the Tischner-Żakowski dialogue about faith as a starting point. But every now and then, some random thought, often striking me while out walking. One post that's worth looking at again is this one, from May 2009, Balancing on the Edge of Chaos. My thinking has become more refined, more nuanced over the years, but one thing remains important - the danger of complacency.

The current global Covid-19 pandemic offers us all an excellent example of how easily a relatively stable Western world (Brexit, Trump and Putin excepted) can tumble into chaos.

How do we react?

The outcomes are binary: either you get infected, or you don't. If you do, either you get it seriously, or it passes mildly. If you do get it seriously, either you die or you recover.

Can prayer help? Social distancing - avoiding close contact (less than two metres) with other humans, regular washing of hands with soapy water, and not touching your face. That can help. But there is happenstance. Regular flu is harder to catch (it has lower basic reproduction number than Covid-19) but I caught a bad dose two years ago [How I caught it and how it affected me, see here and here.] I caught it because I was off guard, collecting a handful of viruses from a infected person travelling on the same bus, grabbing the same handrail and then rubbing my eye with the same hand. It took me two whole weeks to fully recover.

But can prayer help?

Define 'prayer'. I'd argue that two elements are crucial. Firstly - not being complacent. [Complacency - a missing word in Polish.] Being on guard, being acutely aware of the dangers and acting accordingly. Nothing metaphysical there. Secondly, gratitude that you are currently well, untouched by the virus. Are the grateful less liable to infection? Yes - but only if you weave gratitude into the constant fight against complacency; train yourself to be observant, grateful and aware. Simply not wanting to get ill can help if that triggers good behaviours. And if you believe in the power of belief.

Am I healthy because I’m happy? Or am I happy because I am healthy? Is my positive approach to life a result of the fact that I’m happy and healthy – or does the fact that I’m happy and healthy stem from my positive approach to life? Those who like to think of themselves as rationalists would stick to the first answer. Yet many of us would instinctively say “well, there’s something to be said for the second”. Indeed, but is there a deeper, scientifically determinable mechanism at work? Am I really able to think myself into a state of healthiness and happiness? Does being positive in life boost the immune system? Research into the placebo effect (and its evil twin, the nocebo effect) suggests that this may indeed be the case. Again, let’s take the question a stage further. Belief in the power of belief. If you don’t believe that a positive outlook can improve your health or slow down disease – then the likelihood is it won’t. If you do believe in belief, then the likelihood is - it will.

And there's the role of luck. Can you steer it? Can you will yourself lucky?

If you are experiencing a run of good luck, be aware of it, be thankful for it, be appreciative of it - and don't count on good luck to cover up your complacency. As the Rabbi says - if today you're having a shitty day, remember, tomorrow will be better. And if today you're having a great day, remember - tomorrow could be shit.

Will I make it home before the heavens open?

My father got the balance right - acceptance and fortitude. He knew there was nothing he could do to stave off the advancing years, but he kept on going; he didn't buckle or weaken. Right to the end, aged 96.

This time two years ago:
Span goes over Karczunkowska viaduct

This time seven years ago:
Goodness gracious!

This time eight years ago:

Muddy feet, Warsaw 'pavements'

This time nine years ago:
Cycling and recycling

This time ten years ago:
Winter clings on to the forest

This time 11 years ago:
Toyota launches the iQ

This time 12 years ago:
Old school Łódź

The world didn't end on 21 December 2012. But did it start to end then?

Just over six years and one week ago, on 21 December 2012, the world was going to end, according to those who believed in a apocalyptic interpretation of the Mayan Long Count calendar. As it moved from the 13th into the 14th b'ak'tun - a change that happens every 5,126 years - expectations of cataclysmic or transformative events were raised.

Of course the world's sophisticates poo-pooed such primitive nonsense. Nothing happened of note happened that day.

And yet, and yet... Life is cyclical in nature, there are indeed many long waves - economic, political, historical; what goes round is said to come around. It could well be that 21 December 2012 marked an inflection point, a tipping point, anacyclosis, in the historical era that we are currently living through.

I'd posit that the world as we knew it ended on or about 21 December 2012. We stepped into a new world in 2013, and it's not been as nice.

With each passing year, 2012 looks like a golden time, marvellous, happy and peaceful for much of the world - certainly in Poland and in the UK. The word 'Brexit' had only just been coined (a portmanteau word copying the word 'Grexit' - Greece's putative departure from the eurozone). The first use of the word Grexit occurred in February 2012, 'Brexit' was coined in May 2012, to be used, at that time, almost exclusively by political pundits. And one year earlier, Trump announced that he would not be running in the 2012 presidential race. Meanwhile in Russia, Putin eased himself back into a warm seat at the Kremlin, following an election tainted by accusations of vote rigging and by widespread street protests.

In the heavens above us, the Curiosity lander began sending us amazing pictures from Mars, as it continues to do (latest uploads last week). On earth, the Higgs boson is found, as predicted, by scientists using CERN's Large Hadron Collider; another subatomic particle that pieces together to form the Standard Model framework.

Meanwhile, the summer of 2012 was one of joyous sporting events - the London Olympics, preceded by the Euro2012 held jointly by Poland and Ukraine. In the UK, the opening and closing ceremonies brought a nation together so brilliantly that few could have predicted how much social hostility has been brought about by Brexit, the consequence of a referendum that few today can deny was influenced to a significant degree by Russia. And in America, Barack Obama was on course to be reelected; a good man (though perhaps one who dangerously underestimated the Russian threat), a thoroughly decent human being.

Today the Western world is far, far messier than it was on 21 December 2012. Brexit is impending, and seemingly there's no way out. Either the economic disaster of a no-deal hard Brexit, or Theresa May's negotiated withdrawal that robs the UK of its say within the world's wealthiest trading bloc while still following EU rules and contributing to its budget, or scuppering the whole bent enterprise, which will annoy a significant minority. In the US, the Democrats take over the House of Representatives, while Special Counselor Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election grinds on.

It may well be that by early 2021, Trump will no longer be in the White House. And if it can be proved quickly that Russia swung the November 2016 election - it will then be up to a UK government to prove that similar mechanisms were at play in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. No government has any mandate to deliver the result of a referendum blemished by the wide-scale interference of an unfriendly foreign power.

I keep my fingers crossed; up till the end of 2012, I have only witnessed life getting better, year on year; the fall of the Berlin Wall; Poland's spectacular economic rise; the continued new benefits brought to us by technology; and as I have written, I am the first generation of Dembinskis not to be caught up in a war for over 100 years - how long can the good times last?

Not just Europe is under threat as never before since WW2; in China, a one-party state has been taken over by one man. If he chooses to take the world's most populous nation down a bellicose route, there will be no one to stop him.

War and inequality are part of the human condition. Wars in the traditional sense of mass mobilisations of men to go and shoot at one another seem to have subsided - no two nuclear powers have yet gone to all-out war. However, Russia, China, Iran are now effectively fighting the West with unconventional means, using the very tools the West has provided them with - technology. Social media, computer hacking, data analysis, off-shore banking, are all in everyday use against us, against our societies, driving wedges into differences among Western people, making us doubt and disbelieve, making us lose trust in ourselves, our leaders and our political systems.

Putin - the master of judo - is playing against opponents many times his weight and size by exploiting their weaknesses - and those weaknesses are not military by nature. But Putin can only play as hard as his budget allows. The Russian economy is desperately dependent on high raw-material prices. Cheap oil hits his military muscle. Unable to expand through innovation or consumer spending, Russia's GDP is unlikely to grow at more than a 1.5% to 2% crawl in 2019.

Watch Belarus. Watch Putin trying to strong-arm Lukashenka into ceding Belarus to Russia in some kind of fictional closer political union that will be tantamount to Anschluss. This will give Putin a direct land-bridge to Kaliningrad, allowing him to conduct more mischief against Poland and its Baltic neighbours. In particular, be mindful of Moscow's pernicious propaganda - 'useful idiots' are cheap to buy and easy to manipulate.

Putin is a loyal scholar of Lenin, who said: "When you push in the bayonet and feel mush, keep pushing. When you come across steel, withdraw." In 2019, the West must show more resolve, in particular around economic sanctions targeting oligarchs and Putin's cronies, hitting their Western bank accounts.

Are we in the early days of a 'bad' long cycle, coming after a quarter-century-long 'good' long cycle? Will 2019 see the ebbing of a bad tide? It is what I wish for all of us. I fear things will get worse.

This time three years ago:
Hybrid driving - the verdict
[Sadly, my hopes expressed here of being able to hire an electric car to do London-Derby "in a few years' time" have come to nought...]

This time five years ago:
Pitshanger Lane in the sun

This time nine years ago:
Miserable, grey, wet London

This time ten years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time 11 years ago:
Heathrow to Okęcie

Big bit of history repeating. Or is it?

For Vladimir Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th Century. Putin's long game is to rebuild Soviet power as Russian power, ensuring that the mistakes of the Soviet leadership are not repeated. He looks carefully at what worked and what didn't; what tools from the USSR's armoury were effective in the furtherance of Soviet power, and which of its activities turned out to be counterproductive.

Putin understands that Stalin-style mass oppression doesn't work. Why execute and incarcerate millions, if selective intimidation of a small, dissenting minority will do the trick more effectively? Why make enemies of the pliant masses when they can be held in thrall with cheap vodka and dumb-ass TV leavened with noxious propaganda and outright lies?

Putin's greatest fear is the regime-changing crowd, which he witnessed in East Germany in 1989, which he saw in Georgia's Rose Revolution in 2003 and Ukraine's Orange Revolution of 2005. Currently, a wave of under-reported strikes are occurring across Russia, led by public-sector workers who've not been paid, and by factory workers whose factories have been shut down due to a shortage of orders. These are happening in provincial cities and do not concern Putin. These protests will never threaten his position. Massive demonstrations, hundreds of thousands of people strong, in the centre of Moscow, however, will. So Putin's focus is to ensure they will never happen. Intimidation is the principal tool to keep the dissident activists away from Moscow's streets. And by claiming that dissidents are mentally ill, the Putin regime is harking back to tried-and-tested Soviet techniques.

Above all, Putin understands that power is not to be shared or given away. This was the key mistake of the last tsar and the last secretary-general of the Communist Party of the USSR. Power must remain concentrated in one strong pair of hands.

Keeping Soviet citizens cooped up in their town of residence, and ultimately, inside the barbed-wire confines of the Bolshaya Zona, the wider USSR outside of the Gulag, was also a mistake, Putin realises. Let those who can afford foreign travel do so. If they don't like Russia, let them leave. For good. Simple. The reason that the USSR didn't allow ordinary Soviet citizens to travel abroad was a) because  it was feared that if they could, they'd all pack up and go, and b) because they'd see that the dream of the wonderful life afforded to them by the USSR was one big lie. Putin has no problem with dissidents leaving. His people know where they've migrated to, should they ever get too uppity. And in terms of b), Putin's propaganda strategy turns to old Soviet model on its head.

Rather than saying that everything in Russia's rosy (thanks to the internet, everyone can see its shortcomings), Putin is saying that the West is rotten, morally damaged and evil. He is saying that Russia is suffering because of the West's insatiable desire to conquer Russia - rather than point to its feeble, venal institutions, its monoculture economy or its underinvested infrastructure. And mixing this propaganda message about Fascists in Kiev backed by the US and EU into a blend of reality TV and raunchy entertainment shows, the bulk of the nation has evidently swallowing the lie.

Gorbachev's clamp-down on alcoholism didn't work. So let the masses drown their sorrows in subsidised vodka. OK, Russia has the lowest male life expectancy outside of sub-Saharan Africa? Better an inebriated nation than a nation of people soberly demanding their rights to a better life. In February, Putin lowered the minimum price of vodka.

Incidentally, obituaries noting the recent death of Singapore's founding statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, suggest that his achievements in propelling the city state to world-class prosperity are prompting authoritarian leaders the world over to say - 'this model works'. But for Mr Putin to make the comparison between himself and Lee Kuan Yew would be entirely fallacious. The reason that Singapore works is because it has a strong public administration (well-paid and incorruptible); because it is one of the very best places in the world to run a business (entrepreneurs know they will never be shaken down by venal bureaucrats or by the local mafia); and because it has rock-solid property rights. While Lee Kuan Yew tolerated opposition politicians about as much as Putin does, Singapore's leader understood that private-sector business must be allowed to flourish unhindered and that the public administration must be efficient and trustworthy.

In Putin's Russia, home-grown private business was never allowed to get off the ground and establish a solid bedrock for economic growth, akin to Germany's Mittelstand. And the public administration - from traffic cops to buildings inspectors, from customs officials to hospital bosses, live from the baksheesh they collect, passing on up a given percentage up the ladder, which reaches right up to the top. This system worked in Ukraine until the people there got totally sick and tired of it, and overthrew it. Putin fears the same may happen in Russia (albeit the system in Ukraine was more blatant, less sophisticated).

It is only a robust and thriving private sector, based on an unshakable faith in the Rule of Law and property rights, that will ever get Russia's economy into a healthy state. That takes, as we have seen in Poland and across the other post-2004 EU member states, a minimum of 20 years. But only if the institutions function properly and the rule of law is observed.

The Soviet Union's planned economy was a mistake that Putin wants to avoid. But his tendencies to micro-manage keep pulling him back from a liberalising direction. A centrally planned economy based on slave or semi-slave labour can just about keep its head above water in a world dominated by heavy industry. But in today's globalised, knowledge-based economy, central planning is as useful as the Holy Inquisition. The Kremlin cannot centrally decree a Russian Apple, Microsoft or Google. You can force an informatyk to write you 1,000 lines of code a day, but you can do nothing to ensure that it's good code.

Since the debacle over the Bekaa valley in 1982, the largest air battle ever fought by jet aircraft, the Israeli Air Force, with its US-built F-15s and F-16s, shot down between 82 and 86 Syrian Air Force Soviet-built MiG-21s and MiG-23s for the loss of four of Israeli jets. This was a wake-up call to the Soviet Politburo - while the Soviet fighters had faster climb rates and were more manoeuvrable, as well as being cheaper and easier to maintain in the field, their avionics, weapons guidance systems and radars - dependent on computer hardware and software - were clearly inferior.

This realisation - that future wars would be won by the country with the superior information technology - led to glasnost, perestroika and ultimately the downfall of the Soviet Union. The big question is - has Putin taken this lesson on board? As a Chekist, he understands the concept of the hybrid war and the role of maskirovka. Lie, disinform, deceive, camouflage, distort. This works well against a weak and poorly-trained army and a gullible public opinion at home and in the West. But in the event of Putin's bayonet striking steel, would he back down?

The firmer the West is with Putin, the less likely he is to keep pushing. The West won the Cold War because it was prepared to stand up to the relentless bullying of the USSR throughout the decisive decade of the 1980s.The question is - what lessons from that period has Putin learnt, and what lessons have the peoples, and the leaders of the West learnt?

This time two years ago:
Sunshine, snow, April

This time four years ago:
In vino veritas

This time five years ago:
Are we getting more intelligent?

This time six years ago:
Lenten recipe No. 6

This time seven years ago:
Coal trains, Konstancin-Jeziorna

This time eight years ago:
Jeziorki from the air

Putin will not heal Russia's tortured soul

The tougher Putin plays with the West, the higher his popularity ratings soar. Why should ordinary Russians consider sacrificing their future prosperity in exchange for some intangible feelings of national greatness?

Is it that Russia desperately needs to believe in itself, beset as it is by so many intrinsic problems such as systematised corruption, substance abuse, demographic implosion, low life-expectancy, crumbling infrastructure, or a suicide rate among its young two-and-half times the global average? Is it that ordinary Russians can see so many of their educated countrymen emigrating for good? And so many of their wealthy countrymen investing their wealth, pilfered at home, in property on the Cote d'Azure, Cyprus or London?

Russia is a nation tortured by its history. From the Mongol invasion, Ivan the Terrible, the Times of Troubles, the Black Hundreds, the Okhrana, Lenin, Stalin - Russians have been brutally held down by aggressive forces for centuries. This is a nation whose soul was shaped by serfdom, Siberian exile, by the Gulags, by prison gang hierarchies. And today, Russia's intelligentsia is, to quote author Victor Erofeyev, marginalised, brushed out of the way, made to feel an alien, enemy element.

It's worth noting that when serfdom was abolished in 1861, 38% of Russia's population belonged to their landowner. By comparison, at its high-point just before the Civil War, 14% of the population of the USA were slaves. And it was Russians who enslaved one another, rather than people of another race, captured on another continent. Russia plundered itself the way other countries plundered their overseas empires. Communism then came along, played to the masses, promised them paradise on earth as the inhuman system decimated Russia's intelligentsia and crushed any tradition of independent thought.

After the collapse of communism, rather than embrace tolerance, good-will and openness, Russia carried on along the same trajectory as before. Communism's fall led not to the rise of an open, tolerant civil society, but to that of a plundering oligopoly, a kleptocracy of ex-KGB spooks well-versed in the techniques of deception; hungry for wealth as well as power. And the wealth was converted to power, the power back to wealth and so on.

Their Russia remains a deeply suspicious, untrusting nation. Much of the distrust that ordinary Russians bear towards the West stems from the propaganda they've been fed for the past 96 years. Propaganda bought by oligarchs' billions from pliant media owners.

Rule of law, balance of powers, respect for private property, distinction between private and public property, distinction between power and wealth, tolerance, fair play - the founding stones of Anglo-Saxon polity - are all nebulous concepts in the Russian mind. The Anglo-Saxon model is also based on the devolution of power from the individual to the committee, and the notion of checks and balances. And as such it is more accountable, more transparent, more civilised.

At the turn of the century, when I worked in a multinational publishing corporation, I met the country manager of its Russian operation, who happened also to be professor of printing at a Moscow university. With access to the its presses, paper and ink, he quickly came to dominate a lucrative publishing niche, classified advertising, before selling his business to foreign capital. Speaking to him after many fine French wines, I found myself staring into the dark, dark soul of a man who clearly believed in a hundred and one cranky conspiracy theories; a man who had total disregard for his fellow man, and thought everything meaningless because the world was going to end in seven years time in a cosmic cataclysm and everyone would die.

So how should the West see Russia? How should the West respond to Putin?

The solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma offers a powerful algorithm that sets out how we ought to behave toward our fellow man (or indeed nation) for the optimal outcome.

If our fellow man gets along with us just fine, we should never do anything against him. Co-existing with him in honest cooperation, we will both flourish. Yet what happens when he turns nasty on us? The answer is to punish him - instantly and robustly - and to continue to do so until the moment he asks for mercy, and decides to return to a policy of cooperation. And then cooperate with him, continuing to do so - unless there's a further transgression.

The Prisoner's Dilemma has been played out millions of times in computer simulations, using two responses to 'cooperate' and 'defect'. Carry on cooperating in face of defection? Or retaliate? Which strategy is most effective in this game? The scenario that consistently proves to be most beneficial in the long term is to cooperate with the other fellow until he defects, then defect back on him until he relents, then switch back to 'cooperate' mode.

Quoting from the Wikipedia article linked above, these are the conditions necessary for the strategy to be successful:

Nice
The most important condition is that the strategy must be 'nice', that is, it will not defect before its opponent does... A purely selfish strategy will not 'cheat' on its opponent, for purely self-interested reasons first.

Retaliating
However [...] the successful strategy must not be blindly optimistic. It must retaliate. An example of a non-retaliating strategy is Always Cooperate. This is a very bad choice, as 'nasty' strategies will ruthlessly exploit such players*.

Forgiving
Successful strategies must also be forgiving. Though players will retaliate, they will once again fall back to cooperating if the opponent does not continue to defect. This stops long runs of revenge and counter-revenge, maximising points. 

Non-envious
The last quality is being non-envious, that is not striving to score more than the opponent.

This strategy worked well for the Western Allies at the end of WWII; West Germany and Japan were created out of two nations that were crushed decidedly; they demonstrated genuine contrition and became close partners of the Western Allies. Note the 'non-envious' quality; within four decades of the ending of the war, Germany and Japan were economically more successful than America or Britain.

The end of the Cold War was rather like the end of WWI. The loser failed to show contrition for its past behaviour (be it invading Belgium or enslaving Central and Eastern Europe). Feeling itself unjustly punished, indeed persecuted, out of a sense of injustice visited upon it, the former loser rebuilt itself as the world's major trouble-maker.

What will heal eventually Russia's tortured soul is a genuine civil society; but this will only emerge after the majority of Russians have successfully built up and passed on wealth to at least two generations of their children, who will then have a stake in preserving it from upheavals - wars or revolutions. Charitable organisations, cultural activities, a vibrant, tolerant, free media; but above all an end to a paranoid vision in which the world's largest nation in terms of landmass feels that it is about to get invaded again and therefore has to compensate be seizing more land.

Russia is not about to get invaded. (At least from the west.) 

NATO leaders realise (even intuitively, if they are unfamiliar with the Prisoner's Dilemma) that 'Nice', 'Forgiving' and 'Non-envious' are the right strategies to deploy towards a peaceful Russia. They should also realise that 'Retaliating' is always the right strategy to deploy towards a belligerent, threatening, bullying Russia.

And Russia, like the educationally challenged classroom bully that, not knowing what to do to find popularity, instead seeks to instill fear into its neighbours, mistaking that with 'respect'.

* Non-retaliating strategies are a bad choice as 'nasty' strategies will ruthlessly exploit those who use them. A lesson for the EU and Barack Obama - being soft on Putin is mathematically, logically, strategically, doomed to failure.

This time last year:
A post from Opole

This time two years ago:
Raise a glass to Powiśle

This time four years ago:
Mud, rain and local elections (Mrs G-W gets a thumbs down)

This time six years ago:
There must be a better way (commuting woes, again)

Putin: tactical genius, strategic failure

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Putler?

The west is disarray, uncertain as to how to respond to the Kremlin's carefully planned aggression aimed at breaking up Ukraine. It looks increasingly likely that Putin may win Crimea, maybe other bits of eastern Ukraine. But so what? He's played out his last good cards, he has precious little in reserve. At its heart, his long-term game plan lacks any goal other than maintain Russian (read post-Soviet, read Putin+pals) power for as long as possible. Why? For power's sake, not for sake of the prosperity and well-being of ordinary Russians or their neighbours.

Russia is a hollow giant. Other than raw materials it has little to sell to the West in terms of things or ideas. It is imploding demographically, it is faced with tumult from its Muslim republics, it is collapsing in terms of infrastructure. Its biggest long-term threat is not from the West, but from China, which is eyeing the resource-rich lands across the Amur. China's population density is 141 people per square kilometre, Russia's is but eight. China needs lebensraum and raw materials; will Russia be ready, willing or able to defend Siberia, several time zones away from the Kremlin?

With the West less dependent on Russian energy (shale gas, LPG, renewables, investment in energy saving), the Kremlin will have less of a throttle-hold over its western neighbours.

An economy based on the extraction of raw materials is unsustainable in the long term. Where's the innovation? What happened to Medvedev's 'silicon city'? You can't create successful innovative clusters by diktat. Putin's dream of a Eurasian Union to rival the EU is another sham; a cosy bunch of dictators denying civil liberties to their own peoples is hardly a vision of lofty ideals to rival that of Schumann and Monnet.

Putin has shown his true face to the world, to those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The massive slump in his trustworthiness as perceived by the West will hit the Russian economy hard in the long term. It will further hit Western firms' willingness to invest in Russia. It has hit the rouble, it has hit the Moscow stock markets. And Russia's crude disinformation services, be they Russia Today TV channel or the army of online commentators posting bogus comments on English-language news media have been exposed and held up to ridicule; doubts have evaporated. The work of the 40-rouble army will no doubt be seen again on the forums, message boards and comments sections of British media in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum and indeed an eventual referendum on the quitting the EU (so-called 'Brexit'). Watch out for bogus Scots Nats and Ukippers; they write in increasingly good English and also amplify extremist voices.

For young Ukrainians, continuation of the Soviet Union under a different name means an end to any dreams of a decent life for themselves at home. It means more of the same; victory of might-is-right over decency and fairness. A Ukraine that's still a puppet of the Kremlin is one that needs to be kept corrupt, with feeble institutions and controlled media. It cannot be another way.

It is in particular the young Ukrainians that are hungry for change; they look over the border at their counterparts in Warsaw, Budapest or Bratislava and see a model of how they'd like to see themselves. The generation that was born in an independent Ukraine rather than the USSR has an entirely different outlook than the children of the war veterans that parade around in their bemedalled Red Army uniforms. And in between, a generation of 30- and 40-year-olds who've seen the last two decades of their lives stolen by venal politicians.

The true Putin has come out of the shadows, not the genial host of the Sochi Olympics or the conciliatory statesman at Westerplatte in September 2009 but a darker figure, bereft of any redeeming features.

Whatever the outcome - and I hope it is a peaceful one maintaining Ukraine's integrity - young people in Russia will look at what happened in Kiev's Maidan from November to February and consider how long they will put up with the way things are.

A final point to consider: if Russia is indeed so great, with such a great future - why are its wealthy elites getting their money and their children out of the country? Russia is like a colonial empire in reverse - ransacking its own natural resources and taking the cash to foreign capitals. Putin's elite live the life of colonial masters - abroad. See this article about Yanukovych's stash.

This time two years ago:
Socialist Realist architecture in late winter sun

This time three years ago:
The Cripple and the Storyteller - part II

This time four years ago:
The station with no name
[update: W-wa Dawidy station got its sign last autumn]

This time five years ago:
Lenten thoughts on motoring

This time six years ago:
Flowers, spring - already

Dzienniki kołymskie by Jacek Hugo-Bader

Sometimes you finish a book and you're thankful it's out of the way. It bored you, it frustrated you (whatever the reason - style, vocabulary, tone), it was over-long, it was self-indulgent... But today I got to the end of Dzienniki kołymskie ('Kołyma Diaries') by Jacek Hugo-Bader and felt a sense of loss. Indeed, the past few days, aware the last page of the book was approaching, like the last day of a wonderful holiday, I felt sad each time I picked it up, knowing my enjoyment of it was coming to an end.

The book, a Christmas present from Moni, has been my travelling companion on my commutes to and from work for the past six weeks. It is the key to understanding the soul of Russia.

Many years ago, my friend Andrzej Poloczek visited Moscow, then still the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Standing in Red Square, he thought to himself that he was indeed in the heart of darkness. Having read Dzienniki kołymskie, I can say that Russia's heart of darkness lies 6,000 miles/10,000km further east - a frozen Golgotha - a land where, for the duration of Stalin's dark reign, humanity ceased to exist. The Gulag system, where the slave labour of Soviet Union's political prisoners, made to work for handfuls of dark bread excavating gold, diamonds, uranium and other precious metals, is where today's Russia is from.

That brutal and unthinking system, that boot stamping down on the face, with its prison hierarchy of vory and blatniy, where the strong exploit the weak to survive, is mirrored in Putin's Russia. Today's Russians, and the peoples of Siberia who are still subjects of Moscow, are the product of those decades of terror.

Jacek Hugo-Bader is the true heir to Ryszard Kapuściński in the journalistic sub-genre of reportage. This is his third book about Russia (the second one, Biała gorączka, I reviewed here). Hugo-Bader is above all a fearless writer, someone willing to put themself into harm's way to get an insightful story for his readers. His stories in Gazeta Wyborcza had always impressed me with the direct questions he'd ask difficult people; here is a man putting his life on the line to tell us the truth.

And the truth about Kolyma is not easy to digest. An inhospitable land, closed off from the Eurasian continent for much of the year; a land rich in natural resources - gold, diamonds, oil, caviar. A land far from the rule of law - if there be any rule of law than the fiat of whatever ruthless, face-stamping megalomaniac is in the Kremlin. Kolyma is a land to which unusual people flee their past; a land from which usual people escape.

Hugo-Bader hitch-hikes over 2,000 kilometres from Magadan, the capital of Kolyma, to Yakutsk, just as merciless winter falls. Travelling by way of Debin, Susuman, Ust-nera and Chadyga, he encounters a memorable procession of characters. Much drinking goes on. Thirty-six days on the road with 19 massive vodka-drinking sessions along the way, without which the window to the Russian soul would have remain tightly shuttered. Each one offers us plentiful insight; on the extraction and trade in gold, that drives the economy of the Russian Far East. On the plight of the Yakut and other native peoples, without a head for alcohol, who are being exterminated slowly by vodka (a main theme in Biała gorączka). On the bottomless corruption, the stupid, venal, primitive, brutal local oligarchs (wealthy beyond comprehension, yet lacking the nous to move to somewhere civilised). And at the heart of it, Stalin's Gulag system that gave this part of the world its infrastructure, its first settlements - penal colonies that would become today's sad, depopulated towns.

I tracked Hugo-Bader's voyage on Google Earth, studying carefully the satellite imagery of Kolyma, the photos on Panoramio, reading the Wikipedia articles about the settlements along the way from Magadan to Yakutsk. Well worth doing. To get an idea of the insane geography of the place; where temperatures can oscillate between -60C and +30C; where permafrost means that normal sanitation is impossible; where people's fatalism is so deeply rooted that there's no future for most of them.

If you live in Kolyma, 'the continent' is the outside world, the normal world - is difficult to reach. Yakutsk, a city of over a quarter of a million people, lacks a bridge between the two banks of the River Lena, and taking a heavy goods vehicle across on a ferry costs €4,000.

There are so many fascinating snippets of knowledge in this book. Twice, Hugo-Bader's interviewees mention the ONTOTs - a chain of Stalin-era tanks buried hull-down into the hillsides overlooking the Amur River and the border with China with just the turrets showing. Red Army soldiers were supposed to man these outposts until death - there was no way out, should the Chinese invade. Then the are the shatun - the man-eating bears that are a constant threat to humans towards the end of hungry winters. The devil-may-care attitude of the paputchniki (truck drivers) of the Trakt Kolymski - that partially-asphalted, slender thread that links Kolyma to the outside world, built by the zeks of the Gulag system. Seldom sober, the paputchniki are friendly, human - but liable to tell the tallest tales, from the very depths of their souls - or somebody else's soul.

Hugo-Bader rarely had to wait long for his next lift. At truck-stops, where drivers would pop in to the store for a couple of half-litre bottles of vodka, he'd catch a ride a dozen, a hundred, a few hundred kilometres further on up the road. Once only he had to pay for his travel - 500 roubles, 50 zlotys, £10, to join five other men on a suicidal journey across the Aldan in a tiny motor-boat, dodging massive ice-floes in a swiftly-moving and broad river.

The people he'd meet - Yezhov's daughter; faith-healers and shamans, gold-diggers, blind-drunk surgeons, nomads, hermits - out here, no one is normal.

The landscape is littered with ghost-towns, where the lights went out after the last of the gold or coal was excavated, where the people left as soon as they could. What will happen to Kolyma? My guess is that Kolyma - and much of the Russian Far East - will become Chinese by the end of this century. The Chinese will buy it or conquer it by force; Moscow has neither the will nor the wherewithal to maintain  this resource-rich but depopulated piece of real estate (see this post).

I hope that Dzienniki kołymskie will make their way into English; this is one of the most significant books about the world we live in I've read in a long while.

This time last year:
Russia-Poland in Warsaw: the worst day of Euro 2012

This time two years ago:
Thirty-one and sixty-three - a short story

This time four years ago:
Warsaw rail circumnavigation

This time five years ago:
Classic Polish vehicles

This time six years ago:
South Warsaw sunsets