If there's one thing this country reigns supreme at, it's pubs.
London particularly captures the heart with its alehouses and taverns.
Visually, this one is quite probably my favourite.
My goshness. ๐ค
Whitechapel
@London_W4 managed to find a red leather chesterfield in an Aussie pub for you. Comfy but didnโt match my chestnut RMโs. ๐ Apols for lousy phone photo.
@HannahIamthest1 Very good.. just got a very hearty laugh around the campfire amongst old friends and married mates. 337 items was wholeheartedly agreed on! ๐๐
BOCHKOV: "WHAT DID ZELENSKYY REALLY WANT TO TELL PUTIN?
Zelenskyy wrote Putin an open letter. Formally, it was a proposal to resume negotiations. In reality, it was a political epitaph that simply hasn't been signed yet.
The letter is remarkable. Not because it contains anything new, but because, for the first time, the Ukrainian president is speaking to Putin not as a fearsome adversary, but as a man who is already losing and hasn't realized it yet.
Zelenskyy reminds him that Putin has spent half of his twenty-six years in power waging war against Ukraine. Half of his time in office. Half of an era.
And what is the result?
Kyiv still stands. Ukraine still exists. The Russian army is entering its fourth year of assaulting the same tree lines and defensive positions. Drones reach Russian airfields thousands of kilometers away. The economy is suffocating under inflation. China has transformed from a 'junior partner' into a senior overseer.
And Zelenskyy saved the most painful point for last:
Age.
For any dictator, this is a forbidden subject. Especially for someone who spent decades selling himself as an eternal, irreplaceable, almost immortal ruler. But time is the one enemy that cannot be imprisoned, poisoned, or labeled a foreign agent.
So what was Zelenskyy really trying to say?
Something very simple.
Putin still believes he is playing the long game. He thinks he can wait for years. That Ukraine will grow tired, Europe will become divided, America will get distracted, and history itself will hand him victory.
But the letter says the opposite:
'Vladimir Vladimirovich, it is not us who are playing against time. Time is playing against you.'
Every new year of war makes Ukraine more experienced, its weapons more precise, while Russia becomes poorer, weaker, and more dependent.
That is why the proposal for negotiations is not a gesture of desperation.
It is the gesture of someone who believes that the clock is no longer ticking in Kyiv.
It is ticking in the Kremlin.
And that, perhaps, frightened Putin more than any Ukrainian drone ever could."