By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I get the feeling that Vladimir Putin finds himself quietly confessing this mantra a lot lately in his private moments away from whatever the fuck passes for a politburo in plutocratic Russia. On long car rides home to his dacha after another carefully choreographed rally in front of working-class Russians paid to pretend he’s cool for an hour. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Staring at his lifeless dead fish eyes in the mirror in a vodka fog after another restless nights sleep. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I’m the cool Voz, he tells himself, the one who swooped in shirtless on a gallant steed to save the Third Rome from another American Century of humanitarian imperialism and shock capitalist Disneyfication. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It wasn’t supposed to be this way!

Well, how the fuck did you think it would be, Voz? After two months of denazifying Kiev by giving NATO’s Nazis a run for their money, shelling the Orthodox Christ out of more Russian speakers in 7 weeks than Azov did in 7 years, the only thing Putin has to show for his crimes are skyrocketing sales for Raytheon and a readymade PR campaign for NATO that Madeline Albright would have joyfully clubbed half a million Iraqi babies for, Satan rest her soul. Now Putin is left with no other choice but to retreat to the only battlefield he can win back in the Donbas, largely because the middle-aged communist tire salesmen of Donetsk have already won it for him.

There is a reason why even NATO-hating anti-American zealots like me apposed this Fitzcarraldo-esque quest from the drop and it isn’t just my monastic opposition to any kind of initiatory violence. It’s because it’s fucking stupid. It should have been obvious to anyone with their head separated from their lower intestines that this is exactly what America wanted. Why else would they dump so much treasure into a money pit like Ukraine and give a bunch of swastika festooned antisemites rocket launchers that they’ll probably aim at El Al the week after Mariupol stops burning? Love? No, because it’s a trap you moron. They already tried this successfully on your precious Soviet Union in Afghanistan back in the eighties and now that America’s own rusted hulk of an empire is hitting the skids they settled on a Hollywood-style reboot, and you fucking fell for it. Ukraine was never going to be a real member of NATO but now Sweden and Finland will be and in here lies a tragedy stacked on top of a tragedy al a mode.

After decades of resisting Washington’s rapacious advances and drunken pick-up lines, Scandinavia looks ready to sell out their neutrality to NATO before the summer thaw hits the taiga. Both Sweden and Finland’s prime ministers have issued a joint statement on their intentions to officially court the Alliance and polls show a thin majority of both of their citizens supporting the controversial move for the first time in recorded history. That’s another 830 miles for NATO to play nuclear peek-a-boo with on a border close enough to hit the roof of Putin’s dacha with a goddamn reindeer turd. But this isn’t just a tragedy for Russia or for the hoodwinked neighbors they savaged in vain. This is a tragedy of massive proportions for Scandinavia, especially Sweden, who has steadfastly avoided lynching themselves with a single military alliance for more than 200 years. The last time they even so much as loaned a motherfucker a Mossberg was when they aided Finland in fighting off Stalin back in 1940.

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