August 7, 2026

 Friday. Left 10:03. Blacksmith. Overcast, with many shades and shapes of gray. Here and there a sliver of blue, and toward the end even a minute of light rain. Light winds out of the southwest. Berenkuil, KNMI, toward Zeist. Bisschopsweg toward Bunnik, then left, toward Tiendweg and Bunsinglaan. Right at the Driebergen train station, toward Odijk, then left: a quiet Rijnseweg all the way to Sterkenburg. Zuwe to Watertorenweg and Tuurdijk (the lone tree). The fields a mixture of yellow and brown. One or two growers busy spraying, which is still allowed. 't Goy, past Houten, and toward Schalkwijk. Tetwijksepad and the towers of Culemborg; Achterdijk and the view of Schalkwijk's V-shape. Lekdijk and bypass to Beatrixsluis and Sluispad. Jutphaas and Merwedekanaal back into the city and Møs. Still only AD, which covered the armed drone next to a Ukrainian transport plane at Leipzig the other day. We, here in Western Europe, may not consider ourselves at war with Moscow, but Moscow sees it differently. The paper was quiet on the fact that Ukraine has run out of defenses against Russian ballistic missiles. That's an eerie and ominous quiet before the storm. After all, for the Kremlin, its war against Ukraine has always been about submission. From its perspective, this has to be the moment to escalate in order to force Kyiv to its knees. It may not be possible to achieve a break-through at the front, and Russia itself is surely taking a beating from Ukraine's drone offensive. But how long will Ukraine be able to take a sustained Russian missile barrage on its civilian and military infrastructure? The way we've gotten to know the Russian president, he must be issuing orders for his military to find out, and soon. Apparently, there's little to nothing Kyiv's friends and partners in the West are able to do to help on this particular, potentially life-or-death, issue.