Tonight starts the Purim holiday: religious Jews observe a daytime fast today.
(a) “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” (Mark Twain). Mark Felton looks here at the 1956 Hungarian uprising and Russia’s crushing of it as a form of “foreshadowing” [as fiction writers call this] of what’s happening now. (Full disclosure: one of our neighbors in Europe came there as a Hungarian refugee, and I’ve been to Budapest for work a number of times.)
There are definitely some interesting parallels. Notably: Hungary shared borders with both the USSR (in fact, specifically with the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic member state) and with Austria, which was not a member of NATO but definitely in the Western bloc.
Hungarians were sick and tired of the Stalinist regime of Matyas Rakosi (leaks of Khrushchev’s secret speech at the XX CPSU congress, where he denounced Stalin’s crimes, may have precipitated Rakosi’s fall) overthrew him and appointed the moderate Imre Nagy as PM. Nagy took non-Communists into his government, announced liberalizing reforms and multiparty election, and announced the intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, appealing to the UN and the West to recognize Hungary’s neutral status (mind you, not as a member of the “Non-Aligned Bloc” of Yugoslavia et al.)
Khrushchev apparently was hesitant to intervene at first. Then, egged on by his Chinese frenemy Mao Zedong, and with Western attention focused on the Suez Canal Crisis (or what in Israel we know as Mivtza Kadesh/Operation Kadesh), he went ahead anyway, and Soviet troops crushed the uprising in bloody street fighting in Budapest. Nagy was lured into arrest under false pretenses, tortured, and shot; after a bloody repression campaign, Janos Kadar was installed as the new head honcho: after a period of repression, he instituted a liberalized form of so-called “Goulash Communism“.
(b) Being faced with expulsion from the Council of Europe, Russia left of its own accord just hours before the vote to expel.
(c) As I reported yesterday, the Polish PM and his Czech and Slovenian (not Slovak) colleagues have traveled to Kiev by train. According to Der Spiegel, Poland demands a NATO humanitarian mission with self-defense protection.
In contrast (or not?) German PM Olaf Scholz rules out direct NATO military intervention, citing consensus with Biden (read: with his handlers), France’s Macron, and other colleagues. In this context, establishing and enforcing a “no-fly zone” would definitely be such a direct intervention. (I personally think discreetly sending more hitech man-portable surface-to-air missiles such as the Stinger would be more cost-effective and less likely to cause escalation.)
(d) So it looks like the (anti)Democratic party has found its message. Just childish and pathetic. They have literally nothing that hasn’t turned to gavno under their Mierdas Touch FICUS and Klueless Kackler, so they have to make it all about Putin and painting their political opponents as his allies. Judging by their actions (and of their woke pet gendarmes) in the past several years , they are in no position at all to question anyone’s patriotism or accuse anyone of treason. Es ist zum Kotzen/it’s to make one vomit.
(e) Speaking of FICUS: G-d help us all.
Post to be updated as more news comes in. Stay tuned.
ADDENDUM 1: According to the Daily Telegraph liveblog, Zelensky is saying that current peace talks with Russia are “more realistic”, but more progress is needed. (It seems that NATO membership is not going to happen anyway, which primarily leaves disputes about Crimea and the ‘independent’ republics.)
ADDENDUM 2: So maybe all those lefties looking for “Putin stooges” on the right ought to have a good long look at the Green [Hell] Movement: Joel Kotkin on how the “net zero” “green energy” agenda empowers Putin (and other fossil fuel exporters). I like clean water and air as well as anyone (you could call me a “conservationist”) and am all for further R&D into cleaner technologies, but I have suspected since I was a child that “environmentalism”s real agenda is anti-capitalist, anti-progress, and ultimately anti-humanist — and that they will accept any ally, no matter how foul and/or benighted, in pursuit of their dystopia. They want to be kings of the dung heap rather than “middle” of a prosperous society. There, I said it.
ADDENDUM 2.5: The Architects of Our Present Disaster. And of course, from last December, Insty’s own The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
ADDENDUM 3: Zelensky’s address to US Congress
ADDENDUM 4: Is there one person who whispered this misbegotten idea into Putin’s ear? At UnHerd, Marlène Laruelle gives an overview of thinkers (other than Aleksandr Dugin, whom she covered earlier) that influenced Putin’s geopolitical vision, and cannot really point to any one of them, more to a general “Great Russian” matrix.
I do note that Putin is on record as saying that the collapse of the USSR was the single greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the history of his country. And in fact, the “last straw” for the USSR had been that the Ukrainian SSR declared itself independent as “Ukraine” at a session of the UN. (For all the claim that Ukraine was a ‘made-up country’, it and Belarus, as the Byelorussian Socialist Soviet Republic, had been among the founding member states of the UN! When it came to getting Stalin [y”sh] two extra votes in the UN, ‘made-up’ didn’t matter. Putain de politique politicienne…)
Spin, strangeness, and charm 
This tweet seems relevant – https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1503893989971443715
I assume that the Hungarian experience was one of the events that encouraged Put(a)in. There are some very key differences in terms of how the countries have fought back, specifically that the Russian army is failing to get into Kyiv whereas the Soviet one had no problems taking Budapest
“No fly zone” yet many reports that Russian jets not flying due to losses and due to RU friend or foe codes captured by UA forces.
H. R. McMaster is in fact saying that a conventional “no-fly zone” may well be obsolete and that additional ground-to-air defense would be more effective AND avoid placing NATO troops in harm’s way.