February 8, 2026

Sunday. Left about 10:20. Nikor. Cool, sunny, just some light clouds here and there, light winds out of the southeast. Singel to Koningsweg and Marsdijk. Achterdijk fairly quiet. Werkhoven and Hollendewagenweg. Then, toward the south and the ARK and the river, gray fog from up high all the way to the land. The sun went away just before Dwarsdijk. ARK, from the chilly old brick road, gray and empty. At the river, initially just  300 meters visibility. The river very vague. At Culemborg, the town obscured, but a light gray spot just above, and the sun just visible. Afterwards it cleared more, although it took until the Merwedekanaal for the sun and the sunny skies to return. Lekdijk very quiet. Looking south from the Overeindsebrug, the gray skies and fog below over the water, all backlit, with a semblance of the sun in the middle. Mos and yesterday's paper with Friday's news: a new deadline from the White House for Russia and Ukraine to make peace. (Or else--not much). Also the news that, according to Kyiv, Washington is eager to make business deals with Moscow. So not much has changed, other than the further exhaustion of both sides, but especially Ukraine. They have no cards, their president was told a year ago. It has become clear that Washington is able but unwilling to give them a better hand, while Europe might say it will do more but then rarely does. There is pressure on Moscow through the various oil boycotts and interceptions of shadow fleet ships. Indirectly, there appear to have been some efforts to deny Russia access to Starlink communication satellites. On the whole, it's too little and it might prove to have been too late.  It appears that Moscow's threats, including nuclear threats, do deter Ukraine's Western friends. Moscow does have a lot of ways to make life unpleasant for Europeans, but more anti-missile defense capacity should be a minimum. Better ways for Ukraine to hit Russian oil infrastructure and drone and missile factories really should be tried too. It's not as if the Russian economy is doing so well, far from it. Of course, the question "how does Russia lose" remains very relevant. It's not unreasonable to worry about the things a cornered nuclear power, led by a dictator fearing to have thrown away literally everything, might do. But the lack of commitment by the one power potentially able to change the correlation of forces in the war causes the other key question to remain much more pertinent, namely: how do we keep Ukraine from losing?