Will's Good Idea for the Week of 6/25/23

Day one of the girl's dance recital was perfectly lovely. Mrs. Stroock, who does back stage mom duty, was exhausted. Our job was to sit in the audience and record the girl's dances and send them to their granny. Mission accomplished. Now day two. We'll be sitting in the seats today thinking about The Red Dawn Thingy. We should name it, no?

We received the following message from the Kremlin yesterday, 'Come back. All is forgiven.'

Well, that was weird. We admit we didn't have mercenary warlord announces coup only to reach the gates of Moscow, pack it in, and flee to Belarus on our Russian history bingo card. What happened? We don't know. What's going to happen? We don't know. Here's what we wrote yesterday, 'What's going to happen? We've no idea. Prigozhen either has things totally squared away or is totally nuts.' Were we Prigozhen, we'd stay away from balconies, elevator shafts, etc. 

Here's what Ed Morrisey at Hot Air wrote about the coup yesterday, 'Is the Ukrainian War over?' Morrisey asked in the headline. 'However, the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group and their strategic execution have made it impossible for Russia to maintain its occupation, let alone win a war.' Do read the rest of the post. It's embarrassing and cringey, right up till one gets to this part, 'Update: Prigozhin lost his nerve, it seems, if one takes this at face value...' Indeed, indeed.  Morrisey, whom we've been reading for 20 years (this summer!) when he was Captains Quarters, should know better. 

Our guess is that Prigozhen thought Russian troops would join him on the road to Moscow and when that didn't happen... That's only a guess. There's still a lot of talk about Putin being 'wounded' and 'weakened', and this being the beginning of the end. But predictions of imminent doom are coming from the same people who 24 hours ago were assuring us that Putin was finished and Ukraine was on the cusp of victory. How's the Counteroffensive© going? Right now, we're hearing rumors that Wagner is going to attack Kiev from Belarus. Why not?

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 6/25/23. As noted previously, World War 1990: Norway is going splendidly. We need to write the breaking of the Froy Defence Line. We need to write the blockbuster airborne assault on Tromso by General Lebed's106th Guards VDV. After that we'll write the NATO counterattack. That's it, that's the novel. Oh, and then we'll do an afterword chapter that describes the destruction of the Kirov and Minsk battlegroups alluded to waaaay back in World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm. In that way, Norway differentiates a bit from other novels in the series. We like that.