Thank you so much for this diary.  I appreciate frequent reality checks from this part of the world.

Feeling pretty out of the loop.  Belarus will be absorbed into the RF?  Not surprising, but I didn't know it was such a done deal.

I dated a man from Belarus years ago, and I was always trying to be sensitive to the fact that he was of Belarus and not Russian descent.  To which he always replied that it was all the same to him.  I thought he was just being polite.  Guess not.

Too bad about The Ukraine, though.  Here's a place that truly does have a national identity and yet is destined to be a Russian "zone of its strategic interests" for eternity...

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire