I had plans at the beginning of this summer to do much more.
It has been a long summer, though in the UK it was difficult to know when it started and where it ended.
I had plans to write a lot here over the (supposedly) warm season, about developments in the information war on Ukraine (I’ll leave the military commentary to specialists), as well as my views on sentiments within Ukraine.
In the end, my time was taken up with work, other writing, reading Telegram, and trips to Ukraine that take more out of you than I would expect (selfishly).
On that, I wanted to write more here about the journey in and out of Ukraine, how that has changed, and the stops along the way. Travelling in any circumstances can be tiring, but I have no idea how Ukrainians who have to make regular trips in and out of the country cope. The trains in and out of Ukraine are filled with young women and children; testimony to how many women have had to take on extreme responsibility during the war on their country, as well as to their resilience and patience.
And how do those young Ukrainians cope? My younger Ukrainian relatives and friends remark - they have had to grow up fast - that their childhoods have been stolen from them. That has been a major aim of the russians, not just to steal land and homes and cultures, but to steal childhoods and futures. Time is such a massive component of russian cultural and political thought, and it seems inevitable that they would try to impose russian time on other countries, especially Ukraine.
Now that the summer is over, I shall try to write here more regularly, even if the updates are short.
I have specific themes into which I wish to delve. I want to write more concretely about time and tiredness, and how this impacts on russian messaging and Ukrainian receptions of that.
I think russian temporal messianism feeds into much about how they use Telegram (this is the first Telegram war) as a distinct social media platform, and the specific Telegram architecture, as well as its content, warrants much more thought.
I also want to write more about social receptions of social media, and how we can use anecdotal evidence to build up better understanding of how societies work.
Crucially, I want to write more about the Temporarily Occupied Territories (TOTs), life there, and the support they need to be liberated. I have discerned increasing discussions about the possibility of a land-for-peace deal. To my mind, the arguments surrounding this supposed deal are skewed, failing to account for the people in - and from - the TOTs, their views, their culture, and their future. Any abstraction of their real lives (we talk about Temporarily Occupied Territories, but not about Temporarily Enslaved People) endangers damning potentially millions of people to russian brutality.
Please do comment on this Substack and share as widely as possible. I have received kind offers of financial subscription, but I intend to keep this free and publicly accessible. Do please consider any donations to Ukrainian causes which need support - I shall post shortly some recommended organisations that do need help to save lives. Thank you, and glory to Ukraine.