Where this perspective comes from
I write this site from a particular place in time.
I was born in the late 1970s, which means I grew up at the edge of one world and stepped into another. I remember the atmosphere around Chernobyl, not just as a headline but as something that quietly shaped how people thought about risk, trust, and truth. Not long after came the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and massacre — a moment that made it clear, even from a distance, how differently power can respond to demands for change.
Then came the fall of the Soviet Union, something that, at the time, felt like history speeding up.
Since then, the pattern has repeated. The shock of September 11. The long, complicated aftermath. And eventually, the return of great-power tension that many assumed was over.
These are not abstract events to me. They are part of the mental map I use to understand what is happening now.
One memory stands out more than most. As a child, three Ukrainian children lived with our family for a time as part of a recovery program after Chernobyl. It was a small, human connection to a place that, for many, existed only as a distant headline. That experience stayed with me.
Years later, when the war in Ukraine began in 2014 — and especially after it escalated in 2022 — it did not feel distant. It felt personal. My sympathy for Ukraine is not hidden, and it is not new.
This site is not written from nowhere. It is written from that background: a mix of lived experience, long observation, and an attempt to make sense of a world that keeps repeating familiar patterns in new forms.
I try to be fair. I try to be precise. But I do not pretend to be without perspective.
If anything, this project is an effort to take that perspective — and make it transparent, structured, and useful to others.