Recently the news broke that legal proceedings against Trump have been concluded. Director of communications for Trump's transition team called it a significant victory for the rule of law.

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but this has nothing to do with law and justice. It's just the end of yet another show in the D.C. circus.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/11/26/why-is-us-prosecutor-jack-smith-dropping-charges-against-trump

Leaving aside who is right/ wrong in a given conflict, all assertions that the bad guys are doing this or that because it's in their blood or genetic – this is nazi ideology! The truth is our genetics and blood are all the same – we are all equally human, disposed to sin! Hatred or even distrust for a certain ethnic group as a whole, puts you very close ideologically to being in the same camp as Hitler and Goebbels. This is not what the world needs.

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Unwelcome Savior part 1
Today let me introduce to you one of the volunteers that I met along my journey who probably was not purely civilian. He had his mission, I had mine, but we just so happened to meet.

At first he seemed a bit suspicious of me, asking to see my passport, and wanting to know if I had informed the US consulate about my residence near Ugledar.

He even insisted on seeing where I lived. He walked behind me as I led him back to my house giving me the feeling that I was being hunted. Maybe I was actually sensing HIS fear. Perhaps he thought I had set an ambush for him.

Before he left, I seemed to have gained his trust. He even hinted that if I was to come close to being captured by Russians, that American special forces would come to save me. I could tell it was going to take a miracle for me to be liberated given this guy's apparent determination to "save" me from my friends.

To be continued...

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Unwelcome Savior part 2
On that volunteer's second visit to see me, he introduced me to an elderly couple who lived relatively close to me. He needed me as an interpreter to communicate with them. He had brought medical help for this couple and some other neighbors. That was in the fall of 2023.

In the beginning of 2024 that volunteer began regularly putting pressure on me to leave. My excuse for staying was that I didn't want to leave while that elderly couple, our mutual friends were still in danger. My other justification for staying was that I had lost my passport not long after he had examined it in summer of 2023.

I was almost convinced that I had dropped it somewhere, and that some local had picked it up, planning to use it to prove to Russian troops that I am an American spy. "If only they knew", I thought to myself.

This volunteer did everything he could to frighten me into leaving. One time he seemed to accept that I was going to stay, but demanded that I send him my parents' contact information and address. Why? "So that he could ship my body back to them".

That got me thinking, I should be wearing something to identify myself too. I recycled a Ukrainian's dog tag, punching my own info into it. There were days and weeks when I wore it everywhere, even to bed.

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Unwelcome Savior part 4
Of course not! How could I go into hiding while my neighbors still needed help evacuating? This made a ready excuse for not evacuating myself, but when Russian troops advanced even closer, I knew no excuse would satisfy my unwelcome savior.

I told him that I was leaving and sent him this photo as proof. Over the next week or two I was supposedly hiking with my goats out of Donbass.

I actually just moved myself and all my animals to a different farm nearby. I'm not 100% sure that he believed me, but if he did send a team to extract me, I wasn't "home". I can only imagine what he thought when he saw my press conference in Moscow!

A large part of my decision to move to another farm was that I ran out of hay for my goats, and I needed a different barn to rescue some cows. That's a wild story that deserves to be told too!

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Save the bovines part 1

In September 2024 another wave of locals fled. On one hand I was glad to see them leave. At least they would be in relative safety. On the other hand, saying goodbye was painful. My secret hope was that we would all get to see the Ukrainian military driven out, and then celebrate liberation together.

Seeing my neighbors, the dairy farmers leave was one such blow. They had seemed so brave and resolved not to abandon their cows. Alas, their nerves finally gave way and one morning they had suddenly disappeared. They had packed up what they could in one small car and fled.

They had let their cows loose, but hadn't taken time to lead them down to the river. That would have been alright on a regular year, but this year it hadn't rained practically all spring and summer. There wasn't any standing water anywhere. I helped another neighbor to drive one of the abandoned cows home. The other three cows would have to fend for themselves somehow. I wanted to take them home, but I didn't have any more room in my barns, or anything to feed them!

My main focus was on saving people. How could I let some cows distract me from that mission. But then an Idea came to me that would turn this dilemma into a blessing. I had a friend who was constantly putting himself in grave danger while drunk. How to distract him from his alcohol habit? What better than this sweet, intelligent heifer that was in need of a new home?!

The next morning I tied the heifer to my rototiller and off we went. When we sputtered to a stop, my friends looked at me as if I was crazy. Really they were right, drones were already actively attacking cars and soldiers, and artillery was making movement over open ground very risky. I had just made a very easy target out of myself for about 15 minutes walking through the most dangerous part of town. Still I hadn't really been worried because I knew that I was doing something that I wouldn't regret no matter the outcome. My adventures with trying to save cows had just barely begun...

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Save the bovines part 2

I found my friend, the alcoholic, more or less sober, but the devil had come to visit him. That is to say, another local alcoholic had come to share his bottle of vodka. Long story short, I beat up the unwelcome guest and threw him out. I apologized to him later and he forgave me though.

My friend was grateful for the heifer, but insisted that I keep her. But where? It just so happened that his neighbors had just evacuated a day or two earlier, leaving behind a barn big enough to house up to ten cows, and enough hay to feed them for at least a month or two!

That same day I led another cow up the hill to this farm. Her heifer-calf stayed behind though, preferring to stay with her older sister who couldn't walk because of a wounded leg. As I led the mother cow, drones would hover above me, but probably thanks to the cow, they decided not to attack me.

To be continued...

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Save the bovines part 3

Now that I had two cows in the barn, I needed to tend to them twice a day, especially since one would need milking. The heifer-calf could help me with that, so I resolved that come nightfall, I have to try to catch her.

On the third or fourth try she stepped in my lasso. As soon as she felt it get tight, she bolted; all three to four-hundred pounds of her. It's no small miracle that I wasn't seriously injured trying to get her ropped to a nearby tree. It probably helped that there was hardly any moonlight that night. Not helping were the large six-rotor bomber drones that would cruise out to and back from the frontline a few times per hour.

I settled down to sleep with the wounded heifer since I didn't want to risk any more sneaking around the village that night. Relaxing was about to get deleted from the agenda though.

My big pillow decided to stand up, as if to protect me. I'm not sure if I had made her uncomfortable or if one of the six-rotor bombers had spooked her. Either way, I would soon be glad that she stood up!

To be continued...

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Save the bovines part 4

A distant "knock, knock, knock, knock ...." sent me scrambling under the heifer. The GRAD rockets began to whistle and make impact in the part of the village where I lived, about 500m away. They came in two waves, every explosion lighting up most of the night sky. Shrapnel started to fall all around us. The fragments wouldn't have been enough to kill or seriously injure, but you wouldn't want to get hit in the head with one either.

When finally dawn did come, I went for my rototiller and trailer to haul the heifer-calf back home. I would keep the three girls for a month before running out of feed. I had to let them go, but by this time rain had begun to fall. The puddles were full, grass was still green, and many neighbors had left piles of hay outside.

I would go back to visit the wounded heifer a few times to dress her wound, give her water and feed her. Eventually I let her go too. I hope she survived.

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Good evening! Tomorrow(Dec. 18th) I'll be on Russian TV again, on channel 1 for the program «Anti-fake» at 13:30 Moscow time, 5:30 for the east coast. https://www.1tv.ru/shows/antifeyk?ysclid=m4te5x6r3275147593