World

CNN and Fox were fine, but you had to tune in to the British news channels to get the full weight of the Queen's death on Thursday. Every anchor, every reporter, spoke in a voice burdened by grief. So it was easy to forgive one Sky News commentator when she said, "At a time when it's all about having a brand, the Queen stood in defiance of that trend." In fact, it's hard to think of anyone who had a more cultivated brand than Elizabeth II. Her every public appearance, every utterance, every twitch was carefully calibrated toward the image of a stately monarch. Yet you can also understand what the Sky commentator meant.

I write as an American patriot who is also a confirmed Anglophile. So when I got the sad news this morning that the Queen’s health had taken so dangerous a turn that the palace had summoned her family to Balmoral, I steeled myself for bad news. Alas, the bad news has now been confirmed. Queen Elizabeth II has died. It says a lot that when I say “the Queen” even American readers know I can mean only one person. The ninety-six-year-old had just celebrated her platinum anniversary this summer — seventy years on the throne, the longest of any English monarch. Elizabeth was far and away the most admired head of state in the world. Her good sense, her generosity of spirit, her thoughtful but active reticence have made her one of the most successful monarchs in history.

Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine has moved into a new phase, a very encouraging one for Ukraine and its western allies. In Phase 1, Russia tried — and failed — to seize the capital city of Kyiv with a blitzkrieg assault. The idea was to decapitate the Zelensky government quickly and install a puppet regime, subservient to Moscow. After that failed, Russia focused on taking the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and forming a “land bridge” to Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014. Russia has had some success in this Phase 2 of the war, at very high cost, but movement along that front has now stalled.

Russia has invaded Ukraine, and the images are all over the news. CNN has gone to round-the-clock coverage of bombs falling near Kyiv, refugees pouring into Hungary, Putin’s war machine rolling down a misty highway. We’re outraged by this, roused to action, as we righteously hang a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag off the porch and learn to spell the names of places like Kherson and Mariupol. The West, listless and fractured, seems suddenly united again as opposition to Russian imperialism grows and... ...and it’s summer. The weather is warm and a gentle breeze is tinkling through the chimes. The kids are off from school, horsing around the kitchen, and the lawn isn’t going to mow itself.

The strategic Ukrainian port city of Mykoliav, that has been under constant Russian bombardment since the onset of war, was locked down for an entire weekend in early August as troops searched for Russian collaborators that had been calling in locations of Ukrainian troops and ammunition. The government arrested scores of traitors during their house-to-house search. Meanwhile in the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky has also been sounding the alarm over Russian collaborators after firing both his prosecutor-general and head of the intelligence agency for treason. The former spy chief was a close childhood friend of the president. There are allegations that the entire intelligence agency is riddled with spies, with many defecting to Russia in the early days of the invasion.

As the war in Ukraine approaches its six-month anniversary this coming Wednesday, the fighting shows no sign of stopping. Peace talks are a figment of the imagination, as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky remain just as committed to achieving their objectives today as they were when the war first broke out. The Russians continue to pound residential areas with artillery in the Donbas, hoping to slowly capture more territory after months of slow, high-cost maneuvering in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, are settling on a new strategy in the south, harassing Russian supply lines deep into Russian-occupied territory.

The saying goes that there is nothing that celebrities can’t make about themselves. As it turns out, that includes a war in Ukraine caused by an invasion of Russia that's already seen thousands of casualties. It's almost as though there are two wars happening at once: one on social media, where guerrilla clips from the front lines show bodies, shelling, and damage to homes, and one playing out in the pages of Vogue magazine. This week, it was revealed that Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain had visited with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The photo was posted to his official Telegram account and was taken from his presidential palace. There were also several shots of Chastain seated at a table with Zelensky having a discussion of some sort.

“In Europe people wear breathable clothes made out of natural materials, in the USA people wear plastic.” “In Europe people sleep indoors, not in tents on the street like Los Angeles.” “Unfortunately people have a lot of reactions to gluten in the US and zero issues in Europe” “How can you avoid looking like an American tourist in France?” Scroll through your news feed and you’ll witness a lot of Americans, usually those who pride themselves on their progressive views, indiscriminately romanticizing “Europe.” In the wake of the endless Covid restrictions and after Roe v. Wade was overturned, there’s been endless social media chatter about how to move from the US to Europe.