Had to go to NY to have winter

We had a little snow today. 

Work was fine. The new glasses help. I’m glad I’m working here, it is like a practice run for South Africa, by which I mean, “oh yeah, remember to bring that and that and that.”

Samuel gets turkey and potato. We can’t get his prescription food until the day before we leave so there isn’t a point. He is enjoying the turkey. 

The Institute for the Study of War says that Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin has pushed it too far and his “star has begun to set.” He promised to capture Bakhmut and he hasn’t. 

The air campaign against Ukraine accomplished nothing but making civilians suffer, cementing Western opposition and determination, and expending most of Russia’s remaining precision missiles. 

In Moscow there is an impromptu memorial to victims of Russia’s missile attack on Dnipro. Muscovites braved the threat of arrest to lay flowers and children’s toys at it. It is set up at a statue to Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for protesting the war since February. 

Putin has put an air defense system near his house. Nervous? 

There is a small but increasingly vocal group of soldiers’ mothers and wives campaigning for missing or captured draftees.