On the night of July 16-17, 1918 — some eight months after the Bolshevik Revolution — Russia’s 300-year-old Romanov Dynasty met its ignominious demise in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
The Family of Tsar Nicholas II
Already having been forced by the Revolution to abdicate, Tsar Nicholas II was sent into exile with his family, where they were held captive by members of Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party. On the night of July 16-17, they were taken to the basement of the large house on the bizarre pretext of having their photographs taken. But the “shots” in store for them were not pictures; they were bullets. Nicholas, the Tsarina Aleksandra, their son and four daughters, and their few loyal servants were simply mowed down — without trial, without explanation, without any opportunity to defend themselves.
The full history of events leading up to that horrific night and the seven decades of communism that followed is well documented, and makes fascinating reading for even the most stubborn non-students of history. The three centuries of the Romanovs’ reign were filled with more murders, uprisings, palace coups, underhanded double-dealing, extravagance, jealousy, hatred, and lust than an entire library of graphic novels could ever conjure.
And it all came to a screeching halt in a hail of gunfire, in a dingy basement, in the middle of the night.
End of a Dynasty
But I am not here today to offer a lengthy history lesson. Rather, I see this anniversary as a cautionary tale, reminding autocratic rulers everywhere of how tyrants eventually meet their ends — not always by violent death, but at the very least in disgrace.
Ordinarily, I find much to inspire me in the writings and musings of the former First Lady. But I have to take exception to this one:
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)
I suppose that’s possible for one who was blessed with great intellect, great wealth, and great position in life — as Eleanor Roosevelt certainly was.
And at one time, to a lesser degree, I recall feeling somewhat the same way. Every day held new promise, nothing was impossible, and the world was my proverbial oyster.
But for most of us, as we grow older, those challenges just look exhausting. Speaking for myself, while the spirit is still up for a bit of adventure, the body just prefers to be left alone. And even the mind — while I continue to work hard at not slipping into senility — needs more rest than it used to.
So I pay homage to Mrs. Roosevelt; she has my admiration for many reasons, not the least of which was her undaunted energy. But there is no way I can summon up that same daily renewal of strength.
She was indeed a better woman than I.
Just sayin’ . . .
Brendochka 7/16/26
P.S. I hope she won’t mind if I edit her sentence. It should read: “With the new day come new strength and new thoughts.” Plural: strength andthoughts.
They’ve apparently been safely back on the farm in Nizhny Novgorod for a while now, though it still isn’t clear exactly when their stay in Crimea actually took place. It appears to have been at least a month ago; and you’ll recall that there was a considerable delay in posting their videos, for reasons that were never clearly explained.
Now, the videos keep coming, one after another. I’ve just viewed #8, having skipped the visit to a tomato farm, because I was much more interested in their day of rest and relaxation in Russian-occupied Sevastopol, Crimea.
By the Sea
Starting Their Walk
In Town
Yes, they finally identified their location, and it’s a surprise: a famous resort city directly on the Black Sea shore . . . and the target of missile and drone attacks by Ukraine since the latter part of 2022.
While Ukraine has been careful to aim its attacks at Russian military installations, oil refineries, tankers, and other war-related facilities, Crimea is still technically a war zone; and in war, anything can happen. The U.S. Department of State lists the entire Crimean Peninsula as a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” zone. And in addition to the obvious dangers, there are the inconveniences of fuel shortages, intermittent power outages, and the like.
I’ve not been privileged to visit Crimea; but I have been to Sochi, a similar Black Sea resort on the Russian side. And those Black Sea resorts in the summertime are always packed with Russians on holiday, as well as visitors from many lands. But as I viewed Arend Feenstra’s pictures taken in Sevastopol and at an earllier resort stop, something seemed off. It took a while to register, but I finally realized what it was:
I did not see any crowds.
Some Sort of Museum
A Commercial Area
None of that seems to have fazed the Feenstra clan, though, as they enjoyed the natural beauty of the region . . . always carefully avoiding any mention of the war taking place not far from them, as though it didn’t exist.
Of course, with Ukraine’s drones reaching Moscow and beyond, there are no guarantees of safety back in Nizhny Novgorod, either. I guess it’s all part of the price they’re paying for the privilege of living in the ultra-conservative, large-family-obsessed, woke-free workers’ paradise.
The Feenstras’ priorities are obviously different from mine. But to my mind, that’s much too high a price to pay.
For four and a half years, Russia has been battering Ukraine’s civilian population with missiles and drones in a no-holds-barred war of attrition — killing babies, women, and old folks; destroying homes, shops, schools, hospitals and transportation hubs; kidnapping children and re-homing them in Russian territory; and burning wheat fields in order to systematically starve the Ukrainian people.
And now, when Ukraine launches a successful drone attack on Russian tankers in the Sea of Azov — ships operating in violation of existing international sanctions — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given us one of his best straight-faced stand-up routines:
“What the Ukrainian regime is doing goes beyond even piracy. Pirates, at least, plunder and keep the spoils for themselves. But here, it benefits neither them nor anyone else — the goal is simply to cause damage and intimidate. It is terrorism, pure and simple.” [Reuters, July 14, 2026.]
Sergey Lavrov
Methinks someone needs to educate that man about people who live in glass houses . . .
Even in Shakespeare’s time, it seemed that bad luck, tragedies and misfortunes were often piled one on top of the other:
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”
– William Shakespeare, “Hamlet,” Act IV, Scene 5
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
So if you’ve been thinking that the seemingly endless deluge of bad juju our world has been experiencing is unusual, it’s probably not true. But it sure can feel that way sometimes.
I, for one, am ready for a miracle.
Hmm . . . I wonder what the Bard had to say about miracles . . .
Between 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in what was known as the Holodomor, or the Ukrainian famine. It was not caused by drought, floods, or crop infestation. It was manmade, most likely resulting from the disastrous effects of forced collectivization by the Soviet government.
It is still being debated whether that famine — which affected other parts of the Soviet Union as well — was intentionally created by Josef Stalin as a means of controlling the peasantry. But it quickly became obvious that, at the very least, its advent was used by him to press the people of Ukraine into submission, and to quash their nationalist sentiments and resistance to Soviet policies.
Yes, even then — nearly a century ago — Ukraine was fighting for its historic sovereignty. And the Soviet government was using the most lethal weapons at its disposal to prevent their success.
Fast forward to 2026. Josef Stalin is long dead . . . as is the political entity formerly known as the USSR, now broken apart into 15 independent nations, the largest and most powerful of which is the Russian Federation. But Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has not given up its lust for control of the country known as the “breadbasket of Europe.”
Now four and a half years into its war of attrition against the sovereign nation of Ukraine, Russia is growing desperate. The “special military operation” that was to have lasted no more than a few weeks has dragged on. Rather than frightening the Ukrainian people into submission, the invasion of 2022 only strengthened their resolve, and brought the allied nations of Europe, the United States, Canada and others to their defense.
Coalition of the Willing
Even 21st-century technology hasn’t won the day for Putin’s armies; on the contrary, Ukraine has become the world’s leader in the newest military innovation: drone warfare. And in his desperation, Putin — who has been viciously and illegally targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure throughout the war — has now resorted to the cruelest, most inhumane tactic in his arsenal: starvation of the civilian population. But not by the slow method of poor crop management employed by Stalin.
In the face of Ukraine’s unexpected push-back, Russia is once again — using modern methods of attaining maximum kill in minimum time — attacking agricultural lands with incendiary bombs, burning thousands of hectares of wheat and other crops in a matter of mere hours.
Viktor Hordiyenko,, a farmer in Ukraine’s Kherson region whose father was killed last year in a Russian drone strike, this year has lost his crops to Russian attacks:
“A hundred a day. This is not an exaggeration. A hundred drones a day. Shelling every day. They’re hunting us. They burnt 2,000 hectares of my wheat in a single night. Winter wheat, all the crops you see, have been scorched.” [Yevhenia Nazarova, RFE/RL, July 11, 2026.]
Kherson, Ukraine – July 2026
He added that the number of attacks has tripled recently — at harvest time — since just a few months ago.
Oleksandr Tolonnikov, deputy head of Kherson’s regional military administration, told RFE/RL that:
“The security situation in the Kherson region continues to deteriorate. Russia is not reducing the intensity of strikes, but, on the contrary, is systematically increasing terror against civilian residents.” [Id.]
The obvious goal: Starvation, leading to submission.
And the human and economic toll will likely stretch beyond Ukraine’s borders. It is one of Europe’s largest suppliers of wheat; a reduction in exports would affect, not only Ukraine’s economy, but those of other countries as well. The tentacles of Vladimir Putin’s immoral and blatantly illegal actions will reach far and wide.
But has he considered the possibility that his recent escalations might turn around and bite him in the ass? His war has already cost him dearly, both economically and in terms of his popularity . . . possibly even threatening his hold on power. Will this latest obscene cruelty be the final straw?
His ingrained autocratic nature will never allow him to concede. But autocrats have historically become the instruments of their own downfalls by reaching too far. They don’t have to call it quits; the people eventually do it for them.
Two more innocent civilians have been murdered in cold blood by agents of the misnamed Department of Homeland Security. If you think ICE is not out of control, and that we are not headed down the path to total fascism, please take this simple test:
You tell me which of the two groups below are the ICE agents and which are the Russian Wagner Group of mercenaries.
Now ask yourself:
“What in the name of all that’s holy has this country come to?”
When an American government-sanctioned paramilitary group is virtually indistinguishable from a Russian band of marauding mercenaries, we are in deep shit, people.
Just sayin’ . . .
Brendochka 7/14/26
FYI, the Wagner Group are in the top photo. And if those ICE goons don’t scare the bejeezus out of you, nothing will.
We humans wonder why, after centuries of trying to create a system of government that actually works for everyone, our efforts continue to be stymied.
It turns out that the answer is really quite simple: We are trying to achieve the impossible.
According to American historian Henry Brooks Adams, a descendant of two U.S. presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams:
“Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.”
– Henry Brooks Adams, “The Education of Henry Adams”
Henry Brooks Adams (1838 – 1918)
No wonder we’re in such a mess. Instead of working with Nature — as some indigenous peoples have been trying to teach us — we’ve been attempting to outsmart her. And any idiot knows you can’t do that.
Mysterious deaths and disappearances are nothing unusual in Russia. A journalist (Anna Politkovskaya) who reported on the war in Chechnya is shot and killed in the hallway of her apartment building; an opposition leader (Boris Nemtsov) is shot and killed on his way home from dinner, just yards from Red Square and the Kremlin; a famed dissident (Alexei Navalny) is poisoned but survives, then is arrested and dies mysteriously in prison; a high-ranking military officer opposed to the war in Ukraine is killed by a car bomb; a close associate of Vladimir Putin who dared criticize the military (Yevgeny Prigozhin) is blown out of the sky when his private plane explodes; a startling number of officials and other VIPs “fall” out of windows to their deaths.
In Moscow, it’s just business as usual.
Those things don’t happen here in the United States. The current administration has somewhat less drastic — though still vicious and unethical — means of dealing with adversaries: some are fired from their jobs for specious reasons, or no reason at all; others are sued for ludicrous sums of money; still others have their reputations besmirched. The lucky ones are just called “moron,” “scum,” “loser,” or “piggy.”
But when two mysterious events take place in rapid succession, involving two senior and very powerful members of the U.S. Senate, the mind of an old Russia hand such as myself naturally turns to the most ominous, albeit unlikely, scenarios. It is easy to imagine what events such as these would have meant had they occurred in Moscow . . . and to be thankful that we still don’t do things that way.
Just think about it.
First was 84-year-old Mitch McConnell, seven-term Senator from Kentucky and a fierce ally of Donald Trump. He has had numerous health problems over the years, so it wasn’t surprising to learn that he was once again hospitalized on June 14th. The public was advised that he had been injured in a fall. But when the details of his condition are kept secret, he is not seen or heard from for a month, and a still photo is finally released that can only be described as a hybrid of scenes from “Dave” and “Weekend At Bernie’s” . . . well, one has to wonder why.
McConnell’s survival is of extreme importance to Trump and the entire Republican Party because of the order of succession in Kentucky. His party cannot risk his Senate seat going to anyone other than a Trump loyalist in a special election.
So is McConnell being kept technically alive, perhaps on life support, for the requisite amount of time? Or is he . . . ?
Well, that doesn’t even bear contemplating.
*. *. *
Even more shocking, because it was totally unexpected, was the sudden death this weekend of another Trump loyalist, 71-year old Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. His death came just a day after a very successful meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he assured Zelensky of America’s continuing support . . . despite Trump’s recent cooling attitude toward the provision of additional help for the war-torn ally.
In Kyiv – July 10, 2026
Reports are that Graham suffered a sudden cardiovascular event resulting from an apparently unsuspected, silently progressive condition. And there is no reason at this time to question that diagnosis.
But if we were in Moscow, and Graham were a member of Putin’s inner circle of siloviki (strongmen, or people of influence), our first reactions might have been entirely different.
All of which makes me very grateful that, despite the distressing devolution of the Trump administration into blatant authoritarianism, we haven’t yet sunk quite that low.
I have long believed that no one can match, much less surpass, the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosophers . . . except, perhaps, the ancient Chinese philosophers.
Possibly the best known of these was Lao Tzu (alternatively spelled Laozi), revered as the author of the Tao Te Ching, one of the foundational texts of Taoism.
Being on something of a journey myself at the present time, I decided to see what he had to say about the directions we take in life, and I was immediately reminded of these famous words:
Lao Tzu
Well, having already taken that first step, I dug a little further into Lao Tzu’s writings and was delighted to find this bit of irony:
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
Looking in Another Direction
How delightful it is to know that even the ancients could be possessed of both wisdom and a sense of humor.
And what excellent advice for some of today’s world leaders and their slavish followers . . . if only they had the intelligence and the will to listen.
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