As a friend said to me the other day, the world is going to hell in a hand basket . . . and all I can think of are the last-minute details of my move before Departure Day on Tuesday.

But a couple of headlines caught my eye recently. The first article said that both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky had held phone conversations with Donald Trump on July 4th, and that — surprise, surprise! — the stalemate continues. Both sides are sticking to their guns (pun intended) on the major issue of Russia’s demand that Ukraine cede a substantial chunk of its sovereign territory to Russia. Nothing new there.

Sadly, the end of the war is still not in sight . . . unless Putin’s oil crisis finally breaks him. And if things are as bad as recent reports indicate, that is not an impossibility.

The second story, which I had somehow missed earlier, was somewhat less disturbing but — if you can imagine it — even more complicated than the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. The headline read:

“Who’s Shipping Bananas To Russia, And Who’s Shipping Cocaine?” [RFE/RL, by Systema, July 3, 2026.]

Bananas and cocaine? You have to admit, that sounds enticing. And it is — but not only because someone has been smuggling massive quantities of drugs (in the most recent shipment, about 1.5 metric tons of cocaine, with a street value of about $257 million), supposedly under the noses of the authorities. What was most fascinating was the tale of the interwoven relationships among the principals of the shipping company, the vendors of the fruit, the recipients of the shipment, etc.

I couldn’t possibly begin to unravel it here, but it involves, at the very least, a former Russian shipping industry operator from St. Petersburg now based in Cyprus, a port agent in St. Petersburg, shareholders who went to school together, associates of Vladimir Putin (aha!), and ties of several of them to the same residential real estate development near St. Petersburg. And that’s just for starters. They all seem to be involved in a myriad of other businesses, with their paths intersecting numerous times. This little misadventure has more nefarious characters than a Dostoevsky novel.

And this is not some random event; the smuggling has apparently been going on for some time. Yet Putin — unlike Donald Trump — has not seen fit to blow the ships out of the water to prevent the influx of illegal drugs.

It can’t be that he has developed a sudden aversion to killing people. Perhaps the difference is that Trump hasn’t found a way to profit personally from the U.S. drug trade, whereas Putin . . .

Well, that’s all conjecture. So maybe it’s best to simply drop it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to the last of my packing. See you on the far side.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/6/26