Series that wouldn’t have happened in the Nordics (plot would have no real life basis): - Squid Game: no one gets into such debt for such reasons - White Lotus (1st episode): no small talk with strangers so half of the interactions wouldn’t take place

Much soul searching in Finland

Although the promise of Rafale jets for Ukraine has dominated coverage, Dassault is behind on deliveries to India and Indonesia and no jets will come from the French Air Force.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Dim-Wit Plan #Ukraine

Got to just love the name!

Minna takes apart the Dim-Wit Pact with usual astuteness 👏👇 "The mind-boggling aspect of all this is that the US government keeps throwing such diplomatically unserious drafts at Ukraine & Europe, who then duly have to engage with them in good faith and try to make something reasonable out of it."

The Dim-Wit Plan.

Ms Ålander (@alanderminna.bsky.social) sending another one over the bleachers. Her best timeline (to date) of the 28 ➡️19➡️WTFK peace plan for UA.

Just because Trump and his negotiators can tie a tie (yes, I am making a rash assumption), it doesn't mean that they have a clue how to negotiate an international peace treaty. Yes, Moe, Curly, and Larry are alive and well and living in the White House.

Anecdotally, while I was looking for a source to refer to for this article with the search words ”Russia rejects US peace plan”, I found media articles on that topic from November 2024, February, May, June, September, and October 2025.

From the article: "Now it is time for Europe to take a more proactive stance, stop wasting time jumping through the same hoops with Trump, and start focusing on squeezing Russia until it has to start negotiating seriously."

Again, from the article: "Russia is set to reject the new 19-point cease-fire deal drafted by the US and Ukraine but may use disinformation tactics to keep President Trump engaged in continued talks — suggesting the war will last at least through Christmas, sources told The Post on Tuesday."

The undisputed winners of the “peace deal” collapse? Russians who do not live in Moscow and St. Petersburg and are not elite, since in one of the 28 points was basically the Kremlin saying they were ok if Ukraine would launch missiles towards Russian regions.

Good read from Minna 👇 We're enabling an idiotic senile psychopath, who not only gets stuck in dementia loops sending us down the same dead-end roads every couple of months and never learning - but who surrounds himself with active Kremlin assets. People are dying while we play his pointless games

Good read and excellent use of the “Dim-Wit Plan” , as coined by @chriso-wiki.bsky.social

By @alanderminna.bsky.social: "Now it is time for Europe to take a more proactive stance, stop wasting time jumping through the same hoops with Trump, and start focusing on squeezing Russia until it has to start negotiating seriously." minnalander.substack.com/p/the-rise-a...

altså nå har jeg fulgt med på denne fine gjengen i 13 dager og lurer på om jeg kan betale litt skatt til finland som takk for økt livskvalitet?

Made an effort to establish a timeline of this latest iteration of essentially the same old attempt by the Trump administration to force a peace deal, doomed to fail like the previous three times. The number of plot twists would have been amusing, if it wasn’t so cruel to Ukraine.

It says something about what’s going on in the US that the New York Post, of all media, has the best analysis of the latest peace deal shenanigans

⌛️Deadline approaching in 5 days! Whether you've already applied, are applying now or in a caffeine-powered final push on Sunday at 23:59, we can’t wait to read your file. ☕📄 🔶 #EconJobMarket 👉 econjobmarket.org/positions/12... @julianhi.nz

Better late than never

What Trump has made me realise is how much the post-Cold War relationship hinged on shared values rather than shared interests. Trump is illustrating how, whether on Ukraine and Gaza, our interests diverge and, absent those values, there's not much holding us together.

If I haven’t lost count entirely, this was the fourth time Europe was fooled. So yes it’s about time to finally figure out our own strategy instead of putting all energy into humouring Trump.

Weird thing for the Secretary of the Army to do.

Night in Kyiv

Babes, ballistics missiles keep me up at night, don’t worry

Is Driscoll working with Rubio, or around him? Hard to say.

Media really should stop writing ”secret” when it’s advertised in the FT

Media really should stop writing ”secret plan”, ”secret negotiations”, when it’s advertised in the FT

In honour of its proponents, I suggest that the Dmitriev-Witkoff proposal should henceforth be called the Dim-Wit Plan

#Trump’s problem is that while he may truly want to end this war, and the cost to #Ukraine is probably pretty irrelevant to him, #Russia clearly does not want the war to end.” @alanderminna.bsky.social phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/on-peace-p...

Militæret kommer til at fylde mere i vores liv i de kommende år. "Mange af de unge har den her overvejelse, hvor de sammenligner værnepligten med et højskoleophold på fire måneder. Og så har de svært ved at overskue at bruge næsten et år på værnepligt."

Axios is sayings russians couldn't leak it because its a US plan and russians are saying Ukranians leaked it. So we atleast know, for fact, that its russian plan that russians leaked it

When asked about the perilious state of FCAS vis a vis next gen fighter jet capabilities, Luftwaffe chief Lieutenant General Neumann notes GCAP and F-35 also exist. However "we do not want to rely on F-35 alone.". Make of that what you will. 😉 www.spiegel.de/politik/deut...

Noloa tämä on lähinnä taas kerran USAlle kun ottaa huomioon miten siellä on pakka sekaisin. Nöyristelyllä ja liehittelyllä sai ostettua aikaa, toivottavasti se on Euroopassa käytetty oikein. Tämä on jo neljäs kerta sama haloo, en oikein jaksa enää tätä kauhistelua Euroopassa.

Here's a seven-point peace plan:

Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait. My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.

The plot keeps twisting. After having first said that the plan was Russian, not drafted by the US, Rubio a few hours later said the plan was drafted by the US, not Russia. This promises some interesting negotiations today

I'm looking forward to the part where Ukraine says "no" to surrendering and it turns out Trump doesn't have any cards. Because refusing to sell weapons to your allies at profit just to punish Ukraine for not surrendering isn't a card.

Sellaiset tahvot sorvanneet tätä ettei mikään edes yllätä enää. yle.fi/a/74-20195604

Minna (@alanderminna.bsky.social) sending it straight over the bleachers. In the world of making astute observations, the Finns CAN play a mean baseball - who knew 🤷‍♂️

Gotta love Minna's observations..

If you bought bagged lettuce the day that “peace plan” got leaked, it’s still not expired.

How many Scaramuccis was this peace plan? One?

I had predicted congressmembers would push back hard on this and I'm glad I was right.

My favourite moments of this iteration of the ”US-Russia peace plan” were: 1. Dmitriev leaking it 2. The points admitting that Russia does kidnap Ukrainian children 3. The points including that Ukraine shouldn’t hit Moscow or St Petersburg ”without a cause” (Tbc)

Well there’s certainly no basis for negotiations now. I feel a bit sorry for everyone who has to go to Geneva for nothing. Maybe they can still cancel

The grovelling strategy, while imo justified for the sake of getting Ukraine patriots and the PURL scheme set up, always had an expiration date. Agree that time is up now.

There is a broader future consideration for European leaders here: Do they want a slightly humbled Trump or an empowered POTUS who can bully allies with abandon? Caving & granting Trump a major foreign policy victory at a time where he faces serious political problems at home gives them the latter.