“We have to have to convince ourselves that it’s never too late. At any stage, you can stand up and fight and do something. We can still stand with the Ukrainian people. You can always save what can still be saved. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”-Michael MacKay, excerpt from my Byline Times report, Putin’s War of Annihilation - A Decrepit Empire’s Last Stand, February 24, 2022
Everything that has happened in Ukraine in the past eight years has foreshadowed the attacks on the West. As I wrote yesterday in Once Upon a Time in the West - Brexit and Trump Were Russian Attacks, a quick study of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and you find all the same bad actors here in America, and many in the UK.
On the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine I reached out to my friend, Michael MacKay, a brilliant Canadian academic who taught in Ukraine and who has been documenting Putin’s aggression daily since 2014. I didn’t know what else I could do to be helpful other than the one thing I knew how to do - report.
For the print version of this story, please go here.
As a Bette Dangerous community member wrote, “Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, that can hear the invitation of Truth…”
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For the music of cellist Patrick Dexter featured in this podcast, please go here:
(Follow Patrick Dexter on Twitter @patrickdextervc and if you can, support his music here: patrickdexter.com; new album out today.)
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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you, as well, to those who support my work with coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. My reflection, Confessions of a ‘Fox Blonde’ was recently published in Byline Supplement. In a review of my latest ebook, the erotic novella Fox Undercover, author Greg Olear called it “The Big Sleep 2.0” except with “not so much sleep happening.”
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
Save the date - the next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Feb. 26, 4 pm, and will feature filmmaker Jen Senko of “The Brainwashing of My Dad.”
(Image above: Banksy mural on a shelled building in Ukraine's liberated town of Borodyanka.)
Bette Dangerous Podcast Ep11 - Dispatches from Ukraine - A Year In Reporting