He’s there for you in the bomb shelter
SEP 07, 2026
There’s lots to like about Mark Hamill. He starred in the greatest film epic of all time. He came back late in his career to reprise the role of his youth, Luke Skywalker, and did so extremely well. As a person, he gracefully transforms the burden of being identified with that role into acts of generosity. He speaks out for what he believes. He helps Ukraine.
Along with Mark, I am an ambassador for something called United 24, which is the Ukrainian presidential platform to raise awareness of Ukraine’s “fight for freedom and the values of the democratic world.” The ambassadors also help to raise funds for defense, humanitarian demining, medical aid, reconstruction, education and science, and sports development. You can contribute to any of those goals here.
Thanks to thousands of donors, Mark and I raised $441,000 to purchase mine-clearing robots two years ago. Many of you took part in that Safe Terrain initiative: thank you! It saved lives and it is saving lives right now. That fundraiser is complete, but there are plenty of other ways to contribute. Right now the great Scott Kelly is fundraising for ambulances. If you want to help keep people safe form the constant Russian drone and rocket attacks, you can do so here. A button for United 24 and buttons for other worthy causes are below.
It’s tiring to have to go to shelters. But underground you have reason to think about Mark and smile. In what might be his most influential role — in any event it has been played billions of times — Mark voices the “all clear” on the app when and air raid alert is over: “May the force be with you.”
In the fifth of year of this horrible war, that still makes me smile — I am reminded of someone who uses what he has to do what he can. And that is a nice example to have in mind when going back up from the shelter and trying to get back to sleep.
The people who are keeping me safe, of course, are the men and women of the Ukrainian armed forces and everyone else in Ukrainian civil society doing their part. But it’s nice to think of an American who is doing the right thing.
There are ways to support Ukraine from abroad: one is to tell elected officials that you care about helping Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s criminal war of aggression, which includes these absurd and murderous nightly missile and drone attacks on civilians. But if you can, a donation to good causes can save lives, help Ukrainians to understand that they are not alone, and remind the rest of us that nightly terrorism is not normal and should not be normalized. Consider doing so (buttons here), and consider sharing this post (button below) with others who might.
© 2026 Timothy Snyder
About Timothy Snyder :
https://timothysnyder.org/bio/
Liev Schreiber: “Lot of people think that I’m involved in Ukraine because I have Ukrainian grandparents, but I’m involved in Ukraine because I’m American, and I think that the cause of democracy is probably clearer here than anywhere else in the world right now, at least to me.”
Phillips P. OBRien
The strategic position of the USA would’ve been immeasurably better if it had not started this ludicrous war with Iran and instead given the Patriot interceptors its wasted to Ukraine, to defend Ukr against Russia.
What the USA has done, insanely, is strengthen China and Russia instead.
Darth Putin KGB
OTD in 1939 USSR sent congratulations to Nazi Germany for their conquest of Warsaw.
4 days later Nazi Germany & USSR exchanged telegrams concerning common arrangements for our joint invasion of Poland.
Topics were state of Polish army & Kremlin told Berlin its plan to attack Poland 09/17/1939 & how propaganda would explain it.
Imagine today Russia being aligned with the German far right..
Marijn Markus
𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, but 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞 alone made russia retreat from Lyman.
🇺🇦 Ukraine liberated more than 200 km²
After 4 months of the Lyman counter-attack, Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps managed to cut the russian salient north of Lyman and liberate more than 200 km²
This is one of the most important victories for Ukraine in 2026, as the loss of these positions will delay any possible russian offensive on northern Donbas.
Russia just withdrew from a significant part of Lyman.
Don’t tell us russia can’t make concessions, lol.
They can and will – but only under force.
In Kharkiv, Kherson, Kupiansk and Kyiv, russia has withdrawn under pressure.
None of this was achieved through negotiation.
Russia only ever responds to force.
Remember that before sending more shady realtors to negotiate “peace”
DER SPIEGEL
The US president has now explicitly thrown his support behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt – a party that German domestic officials have identified as “confirmed right-wing extremist.”
“THEY ARE ON THE RISE, and not going to take it anymore! MGGA!!!” he wrote.
Very statesmanlike.
Taco has the intelligence of a fruit fly.
But he has criminal cunning.
He just promised Americans 5 grand a head if he wins the midterms.
Is that even legal?
Of course, we know his promises are worthless. And he doesn’t care about “legal”.
5 grand a head would be a trillion dollars.
(Anyone still waiting for their “DOGE Dividend Check”? 😂 😂 😂 )
As usual, some experts say it is and some say it’s not. But what do the clowns in Congress or Supreme Court care, regardless of its legality? At any rate, it would add another $1.3 trillion to our already monstrous debt. However, sane people with some intelligence would know that having this treasonous pack of criminals in office again would cost us and the country far more than the measly five grand.
Timothy Snyder on Trump and Biden: “Ukrainians Are Carrying Out NATO’s Entire Mission on Their Own”
In an interview with Katie Couric in mid-August, American historian Timothy Snyder explained why the Trump administration was never able to organize meaningful aid for Ukraine. According to him, for three-quarters of a century, the U.S. based its policy on the assumption that a war with Russia would one day come and that allies would help one another, but when the war actually came, Washington was not mentally prepared for it. Biden, in Snyder’s assessment, provided assistance in the form of funds and sanctions, but not enough, while Trump’s people are not helping at all because the very idea of mutual aid is foreign to them.
Snyder points out that after 9/11, it was the U.S. that invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, and the allies came to America’s aid; however, the current administration cannot bear the thought that anyone might need support and therefore rejects the obligation to support others. As a result, a country that is not part of the alliance is single-handedly doing what NATO was created to do: containing the Russian military, which all members of the alliance were supposed to confront together. Snyder is confident that Russia will ultimately lose the war, but it is Trump who has made it easy for the Kremlin to continue fighting. His conclusion is harsh: by refusing to help, the U.S. did not save money but shifted the West’s collective mission onto the shoulders of Ukrainian soldiers.
Incredible post from Oleksii Fokardi :
Alice Weidel may be the first leader in the world who supports anti-immigrant policies but has an immigrant wife; who is anti-LGBT but is a lesbian herself; who opposes LGBT adoption but has adopted two children; and who is a staunch German nationalist but lives in Switzerland.
When lies take hold of the Kremlin’s power and money.
I think the political phenomenon of the neo-fascist lesbian Alice Weidel is just the beginning of this process. Imagine that in 2027, everyone living in Saxony-Anhalt will receive Russian passports! By the way, many people there still remember Russian from school—it was a required subject in the GDR. Then it’ll be business as usual: the Saxon People’s Republic (SPR) will be established, and calls of “Putin, send in the troops!” will ring out. And Putin, of course, will send them in for Alice.
Oleksii Fokardi :
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov left for Latvia at the start of the war and says that only Putin’s inner circle is to blame for the war.
Kasyanov: The economic situation in Russia is deteriorating with each passing month
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov stated that although the economic situation in Russia is constantly deteriorating—with one in three Russian companies on the brink of bankruptcy—the state’s finances remain stable. At the same time, according to Kasyanov, if the U.S. reinstates oil sanctions against Russia and its oil export revenues drop significantly, problems with public finances will be “just around the corner.”
“If public finances are in poor shape, this situation will compound the economy’s de facto recession. It will be a direct path to crisis.
📍 Therefore, it is essentially up to the Americans—whether to push Russia into a crisis in six months and demand concessions from Putin, or not to do so. They have the power to do this,” Kasyanov believes.
Oleksii Fokardi :
Trump called Canada “a much greater enemy to the U.S. than Putin’s Russia.” In the Kremlin, the KGB agents were popping champagne.
It’s time to say this out loud:
– The U.S. is currently ruled by a dictator who was most likely recruited back in the days of the Soviet Union.
– As it turns out, there is no such thing as an American “system of checks and balances.”
– The trust between Europe, Canada, and the U.S., which has existed since at least 1945, has been buried, if not forever, then for a very long time.
Did something happen to Trump in Moscow in 1987?
Republican political strategist Rick Wilson links Trump’s views on NATO to his first trip to Moscow. According to the co-founder of The Lincoln Project, upon returning from that trip, the future U.S. president immediately bought a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for withdrawal from the Alliance and complaining that Americans were paying too much.
Wilson calls this “Russian propaganda in its purest form” and says that it was at that very moment that something clicked in Trump’s mind. As for the cause—compromising information, corruption, or the promise of business in Russia and a Trump Tower in Moscow—the political strategist does not venture to say.
Wilson’s main conclusion is different: since 1987, Trump has never wavered from this position. According to him, the skepticism toward NATO that now defines White House policy predates Trump’s political career itself.