When Wars Merge

Putin had an alternative plan for victory in Ukraine that involved taking Odessa. That was based on a couple of conversations earlier that day, asserting that he would commence doing so in summer.

The Kremlin must have been listening because the wily bastard began his campaign the moment our closing theme-tune signed off.

As I removed my headphones, there was a thundrous explosion to my left, followed by another to my right, and then another straight ahead. So that's north, south, east.

Previous drone assaults had been comparatively non-thundrous: a competent woodwind section on Serenade Radio could see off their rending of the night air.

We then had a ninety-second "bombing pause for Ramadan" (or whatever they're calling it now) and a blast from the west completed the set. Due to adjustments in medication timing necessary to get through the show, I am always completely exhausted by the end and usually just fall asleep where I'm sitting. But, because the drones and missiles were making my hotel room shake, I forced myself to my feet and staggered to the window. A building just a block away was in flames. As I was taking in the sight, the one directly across the street was hit.

Shahed drone. Iranian.

As I said, I'm totally wiped out after the show, particularly when we're doing it that late at night. But, naïve as I am, it still amazes me that, after running a four-year proxy war against the Kremlin, the highly-self-decorated four-star wankers at the Pentagon were still surprised when the self-same drones falling outside my window all night long managed to disable, entirely, thirteen US bases in the Gulf in the first days of the new war.

Oh, to be sure, people say, well, these drones don't seem to kill all that many people. No, but they do the job. The drone strikes on America's Gulf bases rendered them unusable, and their occupants were hastily evacuated to many of Dubai's fine seven-star hotels. Secreting your soldiery among the civilian population is a war crime expressly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, as eventually even the four-star wankers realised. So the American servicemen were relocated to European bases or Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Question: Can your troops actually fight a Middle East war from the British Indian Ocean Territory? Hint: The clue is in the name.

So I just stood there, fairly mesmerised by the fireworks all around. It's not that I'm suicidal or anything. Quite the opposite: my sole remaining goal in life is to live long enough to see off the fraudulent, jury-deceiving Michael E Mann at the US Supreme Court. So, in advance of that aim and ever since the inconvenience of my penthouse suite in Lviv, I generally request, upon check-in at a high-rise structure, a lower floor. Yet, upon arrival in Odessa, I had been given Room 907 and, after a moment's consideration, figured I'd stick with it: it's a handsome city, and it would be nice to wake each morning to a view of the Black Sea.

Nevertheless, at the midnight hour it seemed Room 907 wasn't such a bargain after all. For the first time, I decided to go to the bomb shelter on the inevitable Floor Minus One. I called reception hoping that, as in Lviv, some local lovelies would come and "retrieve" me. At that point the lights went out, and answer came there none. I fumbled around for my cane, to no avail, and then set off, somewhat unsteadily, for the elevator. Which, of course, wasn't working. So I began to descend the darkened stairs and, somewhere between the eighth and seventh, fell badly. I lay there winded for about twenty minutes as, under continuous Russian barrage, the stairwell wobbled like an eight-story blancmange.

Then I crawled back up to the ninth floor, found my way back to my room, and settled down on the non-window side of the bed - because we all know Iranian weaponry is so crap that a luxuriously upholstered mattress is capable of repulsing their drones. I think Senator Lindsey Graham or General Jack Keane told me that.

Sometime after dawn, the bombardment ceased, and I moved to a low-rise hotel.

On my morning stroll, I passed two droned hotels that had previously been highish-rise. My breakfast waitress remarked that the Primorskyi district had been worst hit. "Where's that?" I asked.

"Here," she said. And we both laughed.

On my post-prandial walk, I saw a destroyed kindergarten, a ruined apartment house, and a devastated Jewish school. I wasn't aware they still had Jewish schools in Odessa. But they now have two fewer than they did on Wednesday afternoon. Which seems statistically improbable to me. Unless the targeting has been outsourced to woke AI. On the other hand, as someone said to me today, "We wouldn't want Odessa to become as dangerous as London."

So the two no-longer-quite-so-superpowers of the Cold War are both fighting proxy wars: Since Lindsey Graham backdoored his way into the "Maidan Revolution" in 2012, America has been using Ukraine to get at the Russians. And yet America is now totally stunned that Russia is happy to use Iran to get at the Americans: witness Putin giving the Iranian foreign minister, on this week's visit to Moscow, the King Charles treatment. Meanwhile, China sits off to one side, staying focused on its overriding goal of ensuring the end of what it regards as an aberrent half-millennium of Euro-American domination.

The two wars are meeting in fairly obvious ways and bigging up their proxies: Iranian drones are falling on Europe, and the famously No-Cards Zelenskyyy is off touring Araby selling Ukrainian drone-interceptors to the Gulf monarchies. As the proxy wars merge, they also become rather less proxy, which does not strike me as a very promising development. Having been dismissed as all outta cards, Zelenskyyyy is going somewhat rogue, striking key Russian energy infrastructure that Washington wants to keep open and flowing in order to hold oil below a hundred bucks a barrel.

As I write, it's $112. Meanwhile, the Chinese have invented a battery that runs for sixteen years. That's longer than anything remotely recognisable as "western civilisation" has to run, so the good news for England, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, etc is that this will be a one-time purchase. The price of fertiliser has "mysteriously" doubled since the February 28th "decapitation", and some fertiliser honcho is now warning that that will mean ten billion fewer meals every week. So it's like the entire planet is on Ozempic, but with all the moolah going to Big Fert rather than Big Pharm.

It's a big, complicated, messy world, and we try to stay abreast of it. But I see I am being rebuked in the comments for having nothing further to say about the Saturday-night excitement at the Washington Hilton. Well, that's because I said it all one-and-a-half sod-bollocking years ago:

Mark's international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If you haven't read the book during its first seventeen years, well, you're missing a treat. It's still in print in hardback and paperback. (Buy it at a 77% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 47% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

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Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. Among his books is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 49% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 67% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)