Treadmill Tuesday

Instead of a “semla”, I decided to torture myself for one hour on the treadmill. While I was running, the sky cleared up, leaving behind the most beautiful winter day. Though bitterly cold, life still goes on somehow, at least here, far from the frontlines of Ukraine. It is strange how normalized the war has become in the year that has passed. I can still remember the acute anxiety that I felt when skiing around Nydalasjön at night or walking next to the port in Gothenburg whereas now, listening to Putin threating anew to end the world, just makes me tired.

Still, the risks are no less real than they were a year ago, and Joe Biden’s courageous decision to take the train to Kyiv is indeed impressive. Interestingly enough, Russia was given advance notice of Biden’s trip, and apparently it realized that it would be in its own self-interest not to intervene, which after all is an encouraging sign as it shows that some measure of rationality still prevails even in Putin's alternative universe of self-pity.