Toomas Karmo: Nähtavalt Eredaimate Tähtede Astrofüüsiline Ülevaade, 2022 / Astrophysical Overview of the Visually Brightest Stars, 2022

Kuvatõmmis minu Debian GNU/Linuxi arvutilt. Ühes brauseri aknas eredaimate tähetede essee oma 2022.a. versioonis, nagu seda saab lugeda RASC serverist, teises brauseri aknas minu 2019-01-19 blogspot essee varema versiooni teemal, kusjuures ka mõned fotod talvisest Tartu observatooriumi pimedataeva linnakust, mõni sada meetrit minu töötoast. Xterm akendes jooksevad vaated 2022.a. versiooni tugimärkmetesse. Nagu alati blogspotis, saab pilti suurendada klõpsuga esimesele (vasakpoolsele) hiirenupule. - Screenshot from my Debian GNU/Linux computer. In one browser window is my brightest-stars essay in its 2022 version, as avilable from the RASC server, and in the other browser window my 2019-01-19 blogspot essay on the topic of an earlier version.This is accompanied by some photos of the Tartu Obsrvatory dark-sky campus, a few hundred metres from my workroom. In the xterm windows are views into the 2022 version working notes. As always in blogspot, the image can be enlarged by clicking on the first (the leftrmost) mouse button. 

Kvaliteedihinnang: - Quality assessment:

Selle viiepallilise skaala kohaselt, mis kehtib praegu Eestis, ja kindlasti ka naaberriikides, ja on tuttav kadunud, mitte tagantjärele leinatud, NSVL-i akadeemilise elu vaatlejatele (siin rakendades neid kergeid, lõtvu, kriteeriume, mida Kmo rakendab oma nõgises fantaseeritud "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimelises sangarliku raadio instituudis" ja oma nõgises fantaseeritud "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevki nimelises sotsialistliku matemaatika instituudis" - kus, fantaasias ette kujutatud kaksikinstituutide lõdva ja vähenõudliku hindamisreeglite kohaselt 1/5 on "eepiline läbikukkukmine", 2/5 "läbikukkumine, mis pole nii katastrofaalne, et eepilusust saavutada", 3/5 on "kehvavõitu läbipääsemine", 4/5 on "hea" ja 5/5 on "eeskujulik": 2/5. Põhjendus: Teema ei võimaldanud sügavat käsitlemist. -  On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his  grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 2/5. Justification: The chosen theme did not provide opportunities for depth.  


Variandikroonika: - Revision history:

Kõik kalendripäevad-kellaajad variandikroonikas on ära toodud UTC-s. UTC, ehk "Maailmakell", on vana GMT-i, ehk "Greenwich Mean Time"-i, täpsustus. Tarvitusel on ISO ettekirjutatud YYYYMMDDThhmmZ ajastembi formaat (kusjuures YYYY on UTC aasta, MM UTC kuu, DD UTC kuupäev, hh UTC tunniarv, mm UTC minutiarv). UTC praegu jookseb Toronto tsiviilkellast 4 tundi ette, Tallinna tsiviilkellast 3 tundi taga. - All times in these blog "revision histories" are stated in UTC (Universal Coordinated Time/ Temps Universel Coordoné,  a precisification of the old GMT, or "Greenwich Mean Time"), in the ISO-prescribed YYYYMMDDThhmmZ timestamping format. UTC currently leads Toronto civil time by 4 hours and currently lags Tallinn civil time by 3 hours.

• 20220409T084200Z/versioon 1.0.0 : Kmo koostas algversioonii, jättes endale õiguse teha timmimisi, kui siin mitte dokumenteeritud versioonid 1.0.1,1.0.2, ... , järgmise 96 tunni ookul. - Kmo produced a base version, reserving the right to make small adjustments, as here-undocumented versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... , over the coming 96 hours. 

Uueaasta päeval 2018.a., minu viimase Kanadas elamise aasta alguses, ma postitasin oma peamisele blogiruumile, kui http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/2018/01/toomas-karmo-visually-brightest-stars.html, esssee pealkirjaga "The Visually Brightest Stars (Fresh RASC Publishing Initiatives)". Siin "RASC" on Kanada amatööastronoomide selts, ametlikult "Royal Astronomical Society of Canada". Mainitud 2018.a. "Publishing Initiatives", ehk "kirjanduslikud algatused", hõlmasid RASC-i vaatleja käsiraamatu seni laiemat raamatuturule pakkumist, nüüd kahes paralleelses variandis. 2018. aastast saadik oli üks variant suunatud Kanada, teine aga USA lugejaskonnale. Selle juures oli ka minu visuaalselt eredaimate tähtede astrofüüsilise ülevaate esimene koostamine RASC-i serveril, kui PDF-väljaanne kättesaadav ülemaailmsele lugejaskonnale (nii RASC-i liikmetele kui ka laiemale avalikkusele, kasvõi Eestis). Sama teema on käsitletud siin ka kuupäeval 2019-01-19, kui https://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/2019/01/.  - On New Year's Day in 2018, at the start of my final year of residence in Canada, I posted to my principal blogging space, as http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/2018/01/toomas-karmo-visually-brightest-stars.html, an essay under the title "The Visually Brightest Stars (Fresh RASC Publishing Initiatives)". Here "RASC" is Canada's association for amateur astronomers, formally the "Royal Astronomical Society of Canada". These 2018 "Publishing Initiatives" included a widened offering of the RASC observer's handbook to the book market, now in two parallel variants. From 2018 onward, one variant was directed to  Canadian, the other to USA readers. Along with this was my own first compilation of a brightest-stars astrophysical overview on the RASC server, as a PDF accessible world-wide (both to RASC members and to the general public, Estonia included). The same theme is discussed here also under the date 2019-01-19, as  https://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/2019/01/.

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Praegu juhiksin tähelepanu ülevaate värskeima, ehk 2022.a., versiooni ilmumisele RASC-i serveril, ikka kui PDF kättesaadav igas riigis. Ülevaade on aastast aastasse kasvanud. Praegune, ehk 2022.a., versioon hõlmab 106 lehekülge. Sissejuhatavas essees, 2022.a. umbes 26 lehekülje ulatuses, pannakse erilist rõhku spektraalsele (Morgan-Keenan ehk "MK") klassifitseerimisele, tähtede evolutsioonile MK kontekstis, Be-fenomenile (kus noorevõitu, kuum, kiiresti pöörlev täht heidab välja ekvatoriaalselt ümbritseva, nii fotomeetriliselt kui spektroskoopiliselt tajutava, hiigelketta) ja (esimest korda 2022.a.) binaarsete süsteemide iseärasustele. - I would now direct attention to the publication of the most recent, i.e. the 2022, version on the RASC server, still as a PDF accessible from all countries. The overview has grown from year to year. The current (2022) version comprises 106 pages. In the prefatory essay, in 2022 running to about 26 pages, special emphasis is placed on spectral (Morgan-Keenan, or "MK") classification, on stellar evolution in the MK context, on the Be phenomenon (where a youngish, hot, rapidly spinning star ejects a huge surrounding equatorial disk, observable both in photometry and in spectroscopy) and (for the first time in 2022) the properties of binaries. 

Eesseele juurdekuuluvas tabelis, kus on käsitletud  umbes 320 eri visuaalselt ereda tähe astrofüüsilisi omadusi, ma juhiksin hetkel erilist tähelepanu delta Sco umbes leheküljepikkusele kirjeldusele. Binaarne süsteem delta Sco, viimastel aastakümnetel hakanud ootamatult esitlema Be-fenomeni tunnuseid, läbib oma periastroni 2022.a. maikuus. Sealjuures on spektroskoopia ja fotomeetria soovitavad, ka amatööride tasemel, nii enne kui ka mitu kuud pärast periastroni. - In the table accompanying the essay, which examines the astrophysical propertiesof about 320 visually bright stars, I would at the moment direct particular attention to the discussion (about a page in length) of delta Sco. The binary system delta Sco, which in recent decades has unexpectedly begun to present the Be phenomenology, is passing through periastron in May of 2022. Spectroscopic and photometric observations are desirable, including observations at an amateur standard, both before the periastron and for many months after it. 

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PDF-i kätteleidmiseks võib (a) külastada koduleht https://www.rasc.ca/, siis (b) "Publications" menüüst valida "Observer's Handbook", siis (c) antud "Publications" lehekülje vasemal asuvast menüüst valida "Supplemenents" ja siis lõpuks (d) antud "Supplements" leheküljelt klõpsutada hüperlingile "Brightest Star supplemental essay as on p. 275 of OH 2022". Ma pakuksin aga siinsamas ka otsese ajutise lingi, mis vist töötab kuni praegusi versiooni väljavahetamiseni, kunagi 2023.a. esimestel kuudel:  https://www.rasc.ca/sites/default/files/Brightest_Stars_OH2022a.pdf . - To access the PDF, one may proceed as follows: (a) visit the homepage https://www.rasc.ca/; then (b) from the "Publications" menu, select "Observer's Handbook"; then (c) from the menu near the left edge of the "Publications" page, select "Supplements"; and finally (d) from the "Supplements" page, click on the hyperlink "Brightest Star supplemental essay as on p. 275 of OH 2022". I would also here offer a direct temporary link, liable to remain live until the updating of the current version, at some point in the first months of 2023: 
https://www.rasc.ca/sites/default/files/Brightest_Stars_OH2022a.pdf .

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Selgeid taevaid kõigile!  - Clear skies to all! 

==PRAEGUSE BLOGSPOTI POSTITUSE LÕPP / 

END OF CURRENT BLOGSPOT POSTING==

Toomas Karmo: Open Letter to Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, and to His Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk

Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 2/5. Justification: it is arguable that I knew enough to treat my subject adequately within the limited scope I set myself, an d yet the scope was VERY limited. (Sorry, although I did at first try to award myself 3/5, the Institutes insisted on going down to 2/5. Even the grubby hinterland has its standards.) 

Revision history:

UTC=20220403T1645000Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . . 

War is liable to bring out the worst in everyone, not only in the people we oppose but within our own ranks. We recall, for instance, the problematic course of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the 1939-1945 war. Their fight - conducted with an entire nation, arguably much of an entire continent, under existential threat - fell safely with in the scope of Catholic "Justified War" theory. By the time the war was in its later phases, however, the RAF was carpet-bombing German civilians. The RAF became (to take one example from several possible) complicit in the July 1943 Hamburg firestorm. From that firestorm, German civilians in basements sheltered in vain. Winds in the streets attained speeds estimated at around 65 m/s or 70 m/s, in other words approximating the worst of all recorded hurricanes. So intense was the heat that even asphalt burst into flame. In some instances, the number of casualties in basements had to be estimated roughly, from the quantity of human ash. 

I could reinforce this lesson in human wartime depravity by first documenting the high moral tone of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, then citing those American war crimes, with still more civilian victims than in Hamburg, which were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

And I recall from my Estonian-exile childhood, in Canada, an album (I saw it in the Reader's Digest Condensed Books version) entitled German Faces. There were photo portraits of brave, civically minded 1945-era Germans. There were photo portraits of opportunistic 1945-era Germans working the black market; of complacent 1945-era Germans (fortunate in never being bombed), cold toward their own internal refugees; of embittered Germans; and of at least one youthful fanatical German, praising the songs he had been accustomed to singing under the now-extinguished Reich.

I was much taken at the time, and I still recall with anguish, the portrait photo of a mother and child, some quite tiny "Gerhard" or "Heinz". The mother explained to the author how things had gone for her with the Red Army. Since I do not have text and photo in front of me here in Estonia, I can now only paraphrase. What I read back then, roughly six decades ago, ran something like this: "So they did it, in the snow. I don't know how I kept track, but I did keep track: twenty-two times. One of them was different from the others, shy. The others said, 'Go on, do it, do it.' He did not want to, but eventually he did it too. I like to think that he is the father of little Heinz, here."

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Now we have Monsieur le Président Vladimir Vladimirovich inflicting spiritual harm, committing an assault, on Syrian men. Details can be had from various sources, for instance from 

• https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-60931180
• https://www.reuters.com/world/some-syrian-veterans-ready-ukraine-fight-commanders-say-2022-03-20/
• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/18/syrians-join-russian-ranks-in-ukraine-as-putin-calls-in-assads-debt

The current Russian President's deal is this: You, a Syrian, can fight in Ukraine; we will pay you many times more than you could hope to earn in Syria; and in the event of your death, your family members back home will receive a monetary death benefit.

I need not dwell on the morality of dangling such an obscene temptation before traumatized men with starving families. You, Your Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, will agree with me that your President errs in proffering such a temptation. You will agree with me, as a trained theologian from my own UK university and sharing my own Faith, that the judgement of history may prove heavier on your current President than on those poor Syrians who in their weakness may soon be taking his bait. I beg of you in Christ, as I renew my efforts to get letters to you, that you discuss the theology with him directly, or alternatively with him through your Patriarch, pressing me also into back-channel service in any way you can devise.  

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War (to reiterate) is liable to bring out the worst in everyone, from the brutalized rank-and-file of the 1940s Red Army right up to the 1940s RAF élite. What, now, would be an appropriate response from Kyiv to the emerging Syria problem? How can the Ukrainian side, at least, avoid sinking into Mr Putin's theological morass?

If Syrian mercenaries should come, Kyiv must avoid the temptation to a reciprocal brutality. "They are combat-hardened soldiers" - it might be pleaded in extenuation - "accustomed to inflicting cruelty, and moreover fighting over here from commercial motives; let our lads give them what they deserve." Very well then: let those Syrians be as hardened as we may choose to imagine; let them share even in the brutality of 1945 Red Army personnel in Berlin: brutality must on no account be reciprocated with brutality. 

Some skilled people within the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine may now be able to reach out in Arabic and English to these incoming wretches, in terms that they will understand, despite their limited access to information, and moreover in terms that do not ask the emotionally impossible of them. Let there be no preaching. Let us reserve our homilies for Monsieur le Président Putin, via (so I hope and pray, admittedly still here groping in darkness) His Eminence my so-far-silent Oxford confrère the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk. For the mercenaries, let Kyiv make merely an offer, of the simplest kind, by way of a counter-offer to the offer that brought them into Ukraine: If in a spirit of adroit cooperation you let yourself be "captured" by "unexpectedly materializing Ukrainian forces", then we for our part will provide you employment in some steady and physically safe capacity in the west of Ukraine, far from the killing fields. In legal documentation, you will be a prisoner of war. In physical reality, on the other hand, you will be a manual worker. Paying due regard to your de facto status of worker, we will pay you ten percent more than  Moscow would have paid you to fight in the far east of Ukraine. Additionally, mindful of your sad reasons for having attempted to fight, we will facilitate the remitting of your pay (should you desire this) to your impoverished family back home in Syria. 

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Servant of God Екатерина Фёдоровна де Гук-Дохерти, урождённая Колышкина, witness to the spiritual mission of Russia in the family of nations, intercede for us now.  
 

====END OF BLOGSPOT POSTING====

 

 

 

Toomas Karmo: Immediate Monastic Reclusion Advisable: An Open Letter to President V.V. Putin and His Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk

Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 3/5. Justification: it is arguable that I knew enough to treat my subject adequately within the limited scope I set myself.  

Revision history:

UTC=20220327T1644000Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . . 

I write herewith, in the format of an Open Letter, both to Monsieur le Président Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and to a putatively solid professional theologian, Hilarion Alfeyev, Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk (in previous secular life Dr Grigoriy Valerievich Alfeyev). 

I turn to the titular Metropolitan as a person from my own University, although not from my own College (St John's in my case, Pembroke in his), and not quite of my own generation (we have an age difference of just over 13 years, and consistently with this he and I finished our doctoral work at university in 1995 and 1979 respectively), and not of comparable standing canonically (he, a person of high authority in the Moscow Patriarchy, and I an obscure layman under the Holy See, unconnected to any national government). Although one does not normally work the academic "Old Boy Network", working this network does become advisable in the current diplomatic emergency.  

I now solemnly ask of the Metropolitan, and I ask it in the name of Christ, daring in that Name even to bind, to the extent that a layman can in conscience bind: Your Eminence, do not leave this letter unacknowledged; have someone in your team (optimally you yourself; otherwise, some other official) acknowledge receipt, somehow, in terms that I can make publicly known, through such means

as my toomaskarmo.blogspot.com. 

Your Eminence, you may initially ask to what extent a layman can presume to bind. In answer to this I note that if I were to seek the Sacrament of Penance from you, you could not in conscience turn me away, and that here I approach you in an analogously grave pastoral context.  

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Appealing, then, to what I consider an unassailable pastoral-theology position as supplicant, I proceed boldly. 

Your Eminence, what may I respectfully and humbly I ask from you, having now gained the ear which you are in correct pastoral theology obliged to turn to me? I ask, once again in the name of Christ, that having in the first instance caused receipt of my letter to be acknowledged, you as a next step cause this Open Letter to be seen by appropriate persons, in such a way that its content becomes known over the coming hours to Monsieur le Président V.V. Putin. One possible intermediary in your work might be your canonical superior Patriarch Kirill, who I believe has in at any rate peacetime been in a position to communicate directly and personally with the President. But perhaps other possibilities exist for you also.  

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Monsieur le Président, events have evolved in ways worse than those rationally conceivable when I composed my Open Letter to you on 2022-01-24. I could not resort to deliberately inaccurate language in writing to you in Open Letter format at toomaskarmo.blogspot.com on 2022-01-24. I said, in due honesty back then, that I did not think you would be so ill-advised as to launch a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Still less can I resort to deliberate inaccuracy in writing to you now, on the one hand (as before, on 2022-01-24) through open publication at toomaskarmo.blogspot.com and on the other hand now through the private intermediation of His Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk.  

Without being exhaustive, and in particular without venturing into the details of alleged war crimes (although I do note in passing the current forensic salience of the Донецкий академический областной драматический театр in Mariupol), I set down three key points. From these you can construct the rest, as a paleontologist might reconstruct his entire dinosaur from jawbone, vertebra, and femur:

• Your communications are in disarray. I have seen an image of absurdly primitive Red Army radio gear, allegedly deployed in Ukraine, in the form of a cheap, perhaps two-band, VHF portable, lacking encryption. This is the type of gear that might have been sold 30 years ago by Radioworld in Toronto to some frugal youngster who had just passed his Industry Canada "Basic" amateur-radio exam. And in my Internet headphones, I hear what purports to be the recording of a Red Army voice conversation regarding a search for avenues of retreat. Consistently with that primitive VHF walkie-talkie image, I note that both sides in what I hear are transmitting en clair, contrary to elementary military communications discipline. 
• Your fuel and food are in disarray. Monsieur le Président, you can find, as I have, Internet material alleging the deliberate spillage of fuel by Red Army personnel, desperate for their own safety, seeking to halt an advance, or again YouTube ciné material showing Red Army personnel looting the shelves of a small grocery shop, or again an Internet still photo showing package documentation for a Red Army Meal-Ready-to-Eat ("MRE"). According to the photo, 2015 was the year of expiration. 
• Portions of your troops are already in open rebellion. Monsieur le Président, I would draw your attention to Ukrainian television-interview footage of penitent Russian soldiers, begging forgiveness as they recall their participation in what I myself would characterize as a fratricidal mission. Again, I would respectfully draw your attention to the Daily Mail allegation (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10652501/Russian-commander-deliberately-run-tank-soldiers-DIED.html) that Colonel Yuri Medvedev, from the 37th Motor Rifle Brigade, died from a vehicle attack mounted by his own men. 

Monsieur le Président, if this situation is allowed to continue, you face something more radical than the already-commenced destruction of your economy. You face something more radical than the already-commenced ruin of Russia's standing within the United Nations. You face, if not today then in 2023 or 2024 or 2025 or so, the situation V.I. Ulyanov (operationally "V.I.Lenin") faced after 1917 - the descent, namely,  of Russia from mere disorder into civil war.

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In my "Open Letter" of 2022-01-24, I noted to you that politics is the art of the possible and the second-best. Today I address you not in terms of Realpolitik, but in ethical and theological terms, with the duly skilled assistance of His Eminence the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk. Your life has not been fully safe for years. Now, however, every day and hour counts. To extract good from your disintegrating situation now, you must use what time remains to make yourself the instrument, however weak and damaged, of God. Your position has deteriorated to a point requiring your monastic reclusion not in the near-term future, but today. 

Let others grab the levers of government, perhaps initially under your own guidance from behind monastery gates. How much power is left to you now? Surely there is some residual power, which you can exercise even from religious reclusion, should you succeed - as I conjecture you can succeed - in arranging robust, persistent, encrypted Internet communications for yourself. You retain that power through a sheer volume of administrative knowledge, amassed over two or three or four decades. Your residual power can be used to guide some events for some modest span of time, as you steer your successors away from the 2023 or 2024 or 2025 precipice of Russian civil war. 

In the monastery, you will be what you cannot hope to be outside it, namely a living refutation of the Marxist-Leninist conception of historical developments as determined and inevitable. On that dark conception, individuals are depicted as the hapless captives of overwhelming, ultimately politico-economic, "dialectical" materialist forces. You are  Christian, and His Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk is a Christian, and I am a Christian; I know in the light of Easter that this dark conception is mistaken, and so does His Eminence, and so do you. 

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Having disclaimed the intention to write in Realpolitische terms, I nevertheless do append a single Realpolitische point. With every passing hour, not only the safety of Russia at large, but your own personal safety in your alleged three principal bunkers-of-refuge, with their allegedly identical television broadcasting studios, becomes progressively less assured. From a monastery, you will be placing some physical distance between yourself and at least some of those whom I presume to be now seeking your liquidation. This is particularly the case if, working the back-channels of Holy See diplomacy, you succeed in securing refuge in some monastery outside Russia,  perhaps under the canonical jurisdiction of Rome rather than of Patriarch Kirill. 

Suppose, to take an extreme example, that you were to obtain refuge not even at some monastic foundation in Estonia or Sweden or Switzerland or the like (helpful though that would already be), but in Vatican City itself. You would in that case have abundant specialist personnel, in the form of the trained and prayerful Cohors Pedestris Helvetiorum a Sacra Custodia Pontificis, to protect you from plutonium tea, from Новичок, from treacherous doctors, and from other such hazards.  

Admittedly, if you were to take refuge in some foreign monastery or other, you might eventually - depending, perhaps, on your concrete choice of host nation - face extradition either to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or to some ad hoc war-crimes tribunal. Here, again, however, things are not quite black for you. God is merciful. Upon successful extradition from your selected monastery into civil custody, for instance at The Hague, your level of personal protection would not decline. On the contrary, it would rise still farther. No ICC panel, not even any ad hoc tribunal in the style of 1946 Nürnberg, could want its proceedings perturbed by the ill health of the individual under trial. 

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How now to proceed? 

Monsieur le Président, you may find it helpful to meet your Metropolitan quietly, perhaps even with me present. Should I seem to your staff to be a potentially helpful facilitator - I stress that although you and I are culturally somewhat distanced, His Eminence the Metropolitan and I would meet as academic peers, both of us of course communicating in impeccable English from backgrounds of humanistic erudition, and with his Eminence additionally helping the three of us overcome the hurdle which is my scanty Russian - do please have your people make rapid contact with me. 

Setting personal caution aside, I respectfully suggest, Monsieur le Président, that when your people communicate, under duly convincing authentication (three-minute personal interview in your Tallinn Embassy, with your Head of Mission, with my camera running?) the wish to conduct a one-hour three-way meeting, I will boldly strive to overrule the conceivable objections of my Foreign Ministry, will cross from Estonia into Russia at some such convenient point as Koidula or Narva with my Estonian passport (being an excellent hiker, I can easily walk the final few kilometres on foot), and will pay my own economy-class fare from your frontier to Moscow by suitable buses or trains. I would seek the operational assistance of your team only in the matter of securing simple, low-cost, no-frills accommodation for one or two or so nights in Moscow, optimally in some monastery. 

E-mail obviously works (Toomas[dot]Karmo[at]gmail[dot]com). But so also does voice telephone and basic SMS text message (in both cases, as three-seven-two five-eight-six-four-six-five-four-zero). 

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Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, pray for us; Saint Franz Jägerstätter, pray for us; Servant of God Екатерина Фёдоровна де Гук-Дохерти, урождённая Колышкина, witness to the spiritual mission of Russia in the family of nations, intercede for us now. 

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Toomas Karmo: Short Open Letter to Russian Diplomats and Russian BGP-Router Administrators

 Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 3/5. Justification: I knew just barely enough to treat my subject adequately within the limited scope I set myself.  

Revision history:

UTC=20220320T172025Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . . 

In a time of crisis, we must all do what we are able to do, without harbouring illusions regarding our spiritual and intellectual capabilities. Not everyone is cut out to be a hero. God has granted heroism to some, for instance to Jan Palach (1948-1969) in Soviet-occupied Prague and to Sophie Scholl (1921-1943) under the Reich. Both paid the ultimate price for their convictions - Jan Palach through the morally defective means of public suicide, Sophie Scholl through the time-honoured, morally impeccable, means of martyrdom. Most of us are, in contrast, mediocre. 

I would apply this sobering assessment not only to myself, or again to the municipal politicians I dealt with in Canada when helping in vain from 2007 through 2018 (in those years, so many of us strove in vain for the correct conservation of the David Dunlap Observatory woodland), but even to that figure of current public ridicule which is President Vladimir "Special Military Operation" Vladimirovich Putin. 

Former KGB sleeper agent Jack Barsky (1949-; born Albrecht Dittrich; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky) was able to observe a young Mr Putin working in Dresden, I believe with Mr Putin then holding the KGB middle-management rank of pod-polkovnik. Jack Barsky has made it clear that in at any rate his own personal assessment Mr Putin is no genius, but on the contrary is a person who rose in the Cold War intelligence community to a respectably modest rank fitting his respectably modest abilities. 

That assessment is to my mind consistent with Mr Putin's long 2021 essay on the imagined unity of Russia and Ukraine. On reading this all the way through a little rapidly, one has much the same impression as one gains from dipping into Mein Kampf. The impression in both cases is that any B.A. student attaining  Lower Second-Class Honours, and with enough time on his hands, could, if sufficiently nutty, achieve the same literary result. Mr Boris Johnson, himself no Palach or Scholl, summed up the position deftly, a few days ago, at some podium microphone: that long 2021 essay is "Nostradamus meeting the Russian Wikipedia". 

"Kuda sam Tsar eedyot pyeschkom", people say when going to the lavatory: "where the Tsar himself proceeds on foot". Here, then, is a Tsar who rides no horse when in the loo, a Tsar who uses lavatory paper like the rest of us.   

****

The Tsar's long-term spiritual welfare I have discussed already at http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/, in an Open Letter to him dated 2022-01-24. I arguably ought soon to discuss it again, if briefly. I wrote that 2022-01-24 letter exactly one month before the Tsar's fatal 2022-02-24 Polenfeldzug. Back then, late in January, it still seemed that the Tsar had enough intellectual and executive ability to refrain from an outright invasion of Ukraine. I thought back then that his downfall and personal disaster impended not immediately but in the medium term. My essential 2022-01-24 points to him still hold, even though he has with his own late-February irrationality now arguably undermined his personal security even in the short term. Who, among even the best analytical minds at FSB, SVR, MI6, and the CIA, can now tell what happens with him over the coming twenty-four months, or even over the coming three?  

The concern of this present essay is not the now-perhaps-doomed Tsar but middle-management persons under him, notably in two crucial cohorts, each comprising perhaps just a few hundred highly educated persons - on the one hand his diplomats, in his embassies and consulates around the globe, and on the other hand the people within Russia who administer a particular component in his nation-wide Internet infrastructure, his ensemble of BGP-conversant routers.  

These two classes of mission-critical officer, having been vetted prior to appointment, are unlikely to include many Jan Palachs or Sophie Scholls. Although we may hope on the one hand for diplomats defecting noisily and nobly at the United Nations and on the other hand for BGP-monitoring router administrators silently leaking root passwords to GCHQ and NSA (traditional papermail, I would suggest, is a refreshingly "retro" alternative to that modern classic which is the VPN), we must not set our hopes high. Politics is in all jurisdictions the art of the possible, the art of the second-best. 

So, Dear Reader, suppose you are a diplomat or a BGP-trained router sysadmin, skilled on the one hand in your foreign languages and on the other hand in such router adjuncts as Astra Linux shell-script programming, but lacking the inner strength of a Jan Palach or a Sophie Scholl. What to do? 

Two ideas come to mind. Firstly, you can do your work not as well as before. You are perhaps in a position to plead to your superior, truthfully if vaguely, something regarding your "private emotional difficulties in the current evolving public situation", as you miss the occasional deadline and allow your diplomatic sitrep cables or the police-and-military end of your Russian BGP communications to degrade a bit. 

Secondly, you can, without attempting outright sabotage, signal quietly and truthfully that your loyalty to Vladimir "Special Military Operation" Vladimirovitch is now conditional, is now becoming a bit shaky. For juridical safety, that signal might be best conveyed not by words but by your facial expression and tone of voice. Words can be used against you in court if the Tsar somehow manages to stay in power, raised eyebrows and an ironic tone of voice not so much. To your superior, your truthful signal, however exactly you may opt to communicate it, means that you cannot now be relied on to execute silly instructions over the coming weeks. You might execute them, and then again you might not: it will all depend, from hour to hour, on the level of silliness being demanded. When this signal game is played skillfully enough, military planning gets undermined. (For what Kremlin politician can plan in confidence, if he is uncertain whom his Paris and London and Vienna and Berlin attachés might be meeting when venturing from one to another convenient First Class compartment on the train? Or what general or police supremo can plan in confidence, when he can no longer predict what his geographically dispersed lieutenants will do, as the networking among his LANs and WANs slowly degrades?) With the progressive undermining,  the current "Special Military Operation" is made progressively more difficult, and lives get saved. 

****

I compose this unavoidably troubling letter as a private Estonia-resident Estonian national lacking significant current contacts at any level of government, beyond the merely municipal, in any country. I do ask that readers try to forward the letter to senior levels within the Kremlin government and the Moscow Patriarchy. I will myself quietly bring it to the attention of the Catholic Church. If anyone feels I have overstepped moral boundaries, straying from a sincerely intended corrective messaging into outright sin, I do ask them to contact me. In the particular case of the Moscow Patriarchy, I would envisage publishing their conceivable theological rebuke, and analyzing it, here on this blog. A lack of communication from the Patriarchy to me this spring is to be construed not as an indication of their political agreement, but nevertheless as an indication that they harbour no significant theological concern with my own chosen political stance. 

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Toomas Karmo: Methods for Accessing Content of BBC-or-Similar from within Russia

Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 2/5. Justification: I worked in a public emergency on a task of limited scope, from a position of limited knowledge.  

Revision history:

UTC=20220308T065415Z/version 3.0.0Ö Kmo added information on a BBC TikTok presence and on BBC re-broadcasting through participants in the European Broadcasting Union. He raised his quality assessment for this blog posting from 1 to 2. 

UTC=20220305T153340Z/version 2.0.0: Kmo added information on BBC shortwave radio English-language broadcasts. 

UTC=20220305T085830/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version, regarding BBC Web content, as simply a bare-bones advisory. 

0. Background

Much Western news content is now banned in Russia. The BBC now offers advice, however, on the accessing of its content from within Russia. 

1. Accessing BBC content in a Web browser

On 2022-03-04, the BBC press office gave advice on using a Web browser. 

Here is their 2022-03-04 advice in English: 

Here is their 2022-03-04 advice in Russian: 

Here is their 2022-03-04 advice in Ukrainian: 

The live-stream written-word reporting at the BBC tries to cover developments in such terse terms that readers do not suffer information overload. In the same Web-page display as it uses for its live stream, the BBC provides point-form summaries for readers who have time only to absorb the essentials. In addition to live-stream reporting, the BBC has longer articles, on Web pages separate from the live feed. 

On 2022-03-07, the BBC live Web news feed stated that it would now "be increasing access to its reporting by launching TikTok accounts dedicated to videos of the war in Ukraine in both English and Russian."

2. Listening to BBC on Traditional (Non-Internet) Radio

On 2022-03-05, the BBC live Web news feed indicated that shortwave broadcasting, in English, is now available for 4 hours each day, in transmissions which can be received in Ukraine and in parts of Russia. 

Arrangements are as follows:

• 14:00 UTC to 16:00 UTC: 15.735 MHz (in the 19-metre shortwave broadcast band)
• 20:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC:  5.875 MHz (in the 49-metre shortwave broadcast band) 

On 2022-03-07, the BBC live Web news feed stated that the BBC would now "be making a daily half-hour news bulletin available free-of-charge to other broadcasters who are members of the European Broadcasting Union."

I supplement the BBC information with a couple of my own remarks. 

UTC, or "Universal Coordinated Time!", lags EET, or Eastern European Standard Time, by 2 hours. UTC lags MST, or Moscow Standard Time, by 3 hours. EET is as at 2022-03-05 the normal civil time of Kyiv. MST is as at 2022-03-05 the de facto normal civil time of Donbas. 

The performance of a cheap shortwave receiver can be improved by attaching a long wire (the longer the better) to its telescoping antenna rod, and if possible leading at least a part of this wire outdoors. As a protection against both lightning and certain types of electronic warfare (the "electromagnetic pulse bomb", or EMP), the wire should be disconnected from the antenna rod when not in use. Additionally, a receiver can be protected against EMP by being enclosed in a metal box or wire-mesh cage when not in use. 

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Toomas Karmo: Open Letter to Platoon Commanders in the Russian Red Army Force Invading Ukraine

  Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 2/5. Justification: I worked in a public emergency on a task of limited scope, from a position of limited knowledge.  

Revision history:

UTC=20220228T955755Z/version 2.1.0: Kmo adjusted transparency-driven disclosure of personal contact particulars, paying closer attention to need for balancing transparency with security. Kmo then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 72 hours, as versions 2.1.1, 2.1.2, ... . . 

UTC=20220227T213003Z/version 2.0.0: Kmo took a firmer line, considering participation in the invasion unambiguously immoral. (In version 1.0.0, he had unwisely suggested that in some limited sense it might be moral to adhere to a solemn oath of military loyalty, taken in good faith at some past time. This is "Wehrmacht Honour", to be dismissed in the Ukraine of 2022 as it was dismissed at the Nürnberg trials in 1946.)  Kmo then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 72 hours, as versions 2.0.1, 2.0.2, ... . . 

UTC=20220227T203610Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 72 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . . 

I write in the interest of civic and military honour, as a private Estonian citizen and as a private Catholic Christian loyal to the Holy See. I assume personal responsibility for what I write, having consulted beforehand with nobody. Having, on the other hand, written my thoughts out, I am ready to take any necessary advice, correction, or rebuke from authorities in my Church and in my government, and additionally from within my circle of friends and colleagues. 

For the convenience of all parties, and in the interest of transparency, I display my contact particulars at the end of this letter. 

I respectfully request that sympathetic persons, for instance in Ukraine and Russia, repeatedly translate this letter into good Russian and repeatedly distribute it, both via social media (such as ВКонтакте) and as printed sheets, indicating that their particular translation is not my own, and retaining my own contact particulars, and if choosing to make any change in content (in substance) adding an appropriate entry to the revision log in the document header. In legal terms, this work is intended as a publication under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 

****

What is an honourable course of action for those Red Army platoon commanders invading Ukraine who now consider their platoon to have been recruited into an unjust cause by Kremlin politicians? Of the various good options which exist for such a hypothetical platoon commander, not all are equally good. 

Some will argue that good in a weak sense is the option of remaining true to one's military oath. On this dark so-to-speak 1939-through-1945 "Wehrmacht honour" conception, one continues to fight with due diligence on the Kremlin side, as one promised when the oath was administered. For my part, however, I respectfully dissent from this assessment, holding with the 1946 Nürnberg tribunal (in which Russian judges participated) that unjust orders cannot be obeyed. 

In my own private view (I repeat my willingness to take rebuke from my government, from my Church, and from my friends and acquaintances), it is necessary to consider the military oath no longer binding. Many will agree with my anti-military assessment at least when pondering the case of such platoon commanders as joined the Ukraine invasion without initially grasping its immorality. Without myself being a soldier, I would conjecture that some aspects of military morality become clear to junior officers only in the field, at the hour when civilian anguish is first encountered. 

And in my own private view military disengagement is still more glaringly necessary for those platoon commanders who, on taking their oath months or years ago, either did not foresee being some day sent to invade the brother nation which is Ukraine or who are commanding men who did not foresee this contingency when they for their part took the oath. Officers are responsible for the moral welfare of their subordinates.  

****

How should these disengaging platoon commanders proceed? Here are various good options, some better than others. 

Good, but in a limited way, is the option of quietly undermining the work of one's higher command, in some way that does not directly endanger any other personnel in the Red Army. It would be reckless to commit an act of outright sabotage, such as planting an improvised explosive device in the path of one's advancing comrades. A descent into recklessness can be avoided, however, by executing orders less than perfectly. A lieutenant or captain radios to the platoon, for instance, the order that forty fuel containers are to be made ready for an incoming Red Army convoy. Let the fuel be of proper quality, then, prepared just as the lieutenant or captain expects. Let there simply be not quite enough of it. In place of the required forty containers, let there be just thirty, or just twenty. Or let the containers be just partly filled, with spills allowed to occur at the spigot. 

Still better is a plan of surrender, provided one can secure the free and informed consent of one's men before acting. Suppose the platoon agrees, after some minutes of discussion, that the Russian invasion is a fratricidal injustice, bringing on the one hand suffering to Ukraine, and on the other hand dishonour to the Red Army. Now one is ready, as an officer, to surrender, with the informed cooperation of one's men. Here again two options exist - both of them good, and yet one better than the other. 

The less good option is to seek out some opportunity of surrendering to a numerically superior force, by deliberately leading the platoon into contact with some larger Ukrainian unit. 

The better option is to seek out some opportunity to surrender to a numerically inferior force, as when some nine-man Russian platoon turns itself over to a two-man Ukrainian patrol. 

Surrender to a numerically superior force can take on the morally ambiguous aspect of self-preservation. Surrender to a numerically inferior force, on the other hand, takes on the aspect of a moral declaration. Such a surrender indicates to all observers, through the language of military action, a loyalty to principles and to Russia's true long-term national interest. 

[Author contact particulars: Toomas Karmo; Toomas.Karmo@gmail.com; http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/; telephone 372-5864-6540; papermail Observatooriumi Street, Tõravere hamlet, Nõo Rural Municipality, Tartumaa County, Estonia 61602.]

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Toomas Karmo: Open Letter to Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Urging Red Army Refugee Arrangements

 Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 3/5. Justification: I knew enough to treat my subject adequately within the limited scope I set myself.  

Revision history:

UTC=20220219T124753Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 72 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . . 

I write this open letter to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as a publication on my server space http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/. I hope to convey either its text or a notification of it, via private e-mail, over the coming days or weeks to whatever parties may from time to time appear appropriate - at any rate to the Russian Embassy in Tallinn and to some Ukrainian diplomatic authorities. 

I write as a concerned private Roman Catholic layman, and as an Estonian national. I lack significant contacts, whether formal or informal, with the government of any country. 

****

As Catholics, we are aware that "our Final Examination will be on the topic of love." We are also aware that love involves following Gaudium et Spes and Fr Pedro Arrupe, S.J., in embracing "the preferential option for the poor". Finally, we recall in this context Pope John Paul II's 1991 admonition that poverty "is not limited to material poverty, but encompasses cultural and spiritual poverty as well." 

****

This winter, Russia's Red Army emerges as a new cohort of the poor. Here we find persons of limited cultural exposure and of correspondingly limited vision. I would presume these individuals are still more crushed than the US Army deserters with whom I used to chat at Catholic Worker in Toronto. At Catholic Worker, a couple of US Army personnel explained to me that in their home towns, far from the centres of American wealth and prestige, adolescents finishing high school had faced a stark, a merely binary, choice. They could work at some low-wage unskilled job, for instance as short-order cooks in a roadside hamburger restaurant. Alternatively (the one alternative), they could join the military. The military offered them their sole realistic path to a dignified adult life, dangling as it did the inviting prospect of a duly funded post-secondary education. 

The available choices cannot be much better in Russia. Now we have not only the Dostoyevskian spectacle of an Army of the Disadvantaged - a kind of Army of the Бурлаки - conceivably marching on Kyiv, but the spectacle of an Army facing military and diplomatic adversity. 

The adversity may take a while to eventuate. At first, there might be something that can be presented to Russian television audiences, far to the east of Ukraine, as a victory: air superiority quickly seized and tenaciously maintained, some Ukrainian territory gained, perhaps even a Kyiv government overthrown. But in the longer term? Things did not go well for the USSR in post-1981 Poland. Neither did things go well for the USA in post-2003 Iraq. Why should things, at any rate in the longer term, say in the five-year or ten-year term, be expected to go well for this particular Army?

****

In the face of the bleak probabilities, a means of honourable and dignified escape must now be constructed. What is needed is a clear, institutionally defined, path, free of moral ambiguity, through which a Red Army soldier can upon attaining moral clarity leave his unit and find temporary political refuge within the EU. I consequently imagine a political-refugee Non-Governmental Organizaation, "PQR", being created, at the Ukrainian grassroots level, with support from governments in Ukraine, in the EU, and in NATO. Imagine now the path of the Red Army recruit "Sergei Petrovitch", as he realizes that he has been recruited out of his isolated and impoverished community (perhaps many hundreds of kilometers east of Moscow and Sankt Peterburg, where life gets rough) into an unjust cause. Here is how the people at PQR support Sergei Petrovich, as he works to avoid moral complicity:

• In the general confusion befogging (to take a hypothetical military example) some contested countryside some tens of kilometres northwest of Kyiv, near the Belarus frontier, Sergei Petrovich detaches himself from his unit. (Perhaps he is in a three-man patrol detail, and his two sympathetic comrades allow the detail to split up "just for half an hour", kinda-sorta knowing what is about to happen with Sergei, and willing to run their own entailed personal risks at debriefing tomorrow morning: we may well assume depression and loose discipline through much of the Red Army, once the initial weeks of euphoria are over.) 
• Sergei Petrovich proceeds to some ordinary Ukrainian farmhouse, taking his chances as he knocks at the door. The safety catch on his firearm is clearly and demonstratively engaged. He explains to the frightened people - at first he has to shout this, since they scarcely dare open up - that he has his safety catch on, that he will toss his firearm down with its catch still on, and that he needs the help of PQR in leaving the Red Army. Eventually, people in the farmhouse understand, recalling what they already know of PQR from the media. Having accordingly let him in, they manage to find him a civilian jacket and civilian trousers, both of them a more or less reasonable fit. Helpfully, several weeks ago they did take the precaution of stocking multiple printed-out copies of a map disseminated over the Internet by PQR, detailing the location of their own oblast's network of PQR "Transit Houses". 
• PQR now makes his way under cover of night, retaining his military compass and his electric torch, but now minus his uniform and his firearm, to the nearest Transit House. In operational terms, this is no very hard task: PQR has to cover just 30 km on foot, on rather level ground, and the map makes clear how he can proceed across fields and along farm fencing. 
• Seven hours later, with Sergei Petrovich in the local Transit House, PQR begins the process of documenting him as a political refugee, temporarily liable to political prosecution and therefore temporarily unable to return to Russia. 
• PQR next conveys Sergei Petrovich to the Ukrainian defence forces, some safe distance outside currently contested territory. 
• In a courteous but firm debriefing, the Ukrainian forces record Sergei Petrovich's military particulars (rank, serial number, areas of special technical competence, ... ). 
• The forces and PQR jointly arrange for Sergei Petrovich's speedy transfer westward, out of Ukraine, to some appropriate reception camp run by PQR and the EU. In this PQR-with-EU camp, Sergei Petrovich receives a detailed security screening from the host-nation authorities, as with Displaced Persons in the aftermath of the 1939-1945 war. With the lengthy security procedures complete, Sergei Petrovich's details are conveyed to the UNHCR database. Additionally, particulars of his family back home in Russia are entered into a database of potentially vulnerable persons, as PQR in the EU liaises with Amnesty International in London. 
• Months or years later, once a peace treaty ends the Ukraine conflict, Sergei Petrovich is assisted by his host EU country in returning home to Russia.
• Sergei Petrovich's conscience is now clear. He knows that despite having entered the Red Army without due consideration, he providentially found himself, once in the operational combat field, at a duly considered decision point. He knows that at that instant he did take the morally correct decision, correctly serving Russia's longest-term national interests. 

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