Greetings from Kiev, where the girls are pretty and the stench of corruption is overpowering. The latter is true of Washington, of course, but on the former Zelenskyyyyy definitely has the edge. However, instead of sharing the cosy bunker on "Floor Minus One" with my Lvov lovelies, I am instructed by the unpleasant heavy on reception that, when the air-raid siren sounds, I am to go to the subway station. Extremely unlikely, I would say.
In fact, not merely greetings from Kiev, but greetings from Maidan Square, an undistinguished slab of downtown where the present Russo-American proxy war really began, over twelve years ago now. Victoria Nuland, the Uniparty's She-Wolf of the Donbass, and her equally blood-drenched sidekick Princess Lindsey backdoored their way into a spontaneous uprising against an "anti-EU" president in order to project American "power" up to the borders of Russia itself.
The war's going gangbusters, if not for the menfolk of Ukraine then at least for Lindsey Graham. In 2016 he became the only Disney princess to be inducted into the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise. But that was only at the fifth-class level. So last August he and his bubble wand got upgraded in the order to Yaroslav First Class, up there with Cruella von der Leyen, "President" of Europe, and Mark Rutte, Nato's head honcho. All shall have prizes, except for you poor schmucks doing the dying.
I thought I'd visit Prince Yaroslav's sarcophagus in St Sofia's Cathedral, but was informed that it had been opened and found to contain only a skeleton of an unknown female. The custodian of the no-name's remains told me His Highness's surviving bits from 1054 had gone missing and were presumed to be elsewhere.
"You mean in Russian-held territory?"
"No, no. There is a rumour they are in the United States."
So I take it they're now a novelty knick-knack in a certain South Carolina rumpus room.
Lifting my eyes with regret from the demoiselles all around to the far horizon, I note that this weekend the triumphantly "re-opened" Strait of Hormuz is closed again. So what's new? As Veronica, doyenne of our Kiwi clubbers, observes in our comments section:
It seems that the Strait of Hormuz and the New York Stock Exchange have the same opening hours. Just an odd coincidence I'm sure.
Indeed. For those having difficulty keeping score, per the President of the United States:
You never like to say too early you won. We won. In the first hour it was over.
A week after the first hour:
There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!... IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. 'MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).'
Another month-and-a-half from that first-hour victory, following Iran's re-re-re-closure of the strait:
US President Donald Trump has reacted to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by saying "Iran can't blackmail us".
He says that American talks with Iran are going well...
Hmm. Just like David Merrick's all-black production of Hello, Dolly!, the President is ready to move on and re-cast the bit parts with excitedly rhythmic Cubans, but the crazy Iranian bastards are in no hurry to get off the stage:
Really would prefer a new dawn in America first. One that won't be repealed five seconds after Democrats regain power. https://t.co/lajUVMfJ2Q
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) April 18, 2026
Oh, lighten up. It's not as if the President is posting songs about facing the final curtain. Oh, wait...
Dafuq is going on? Should I be in a bunker or something?pic.twitter.com/ypX60w793k
— Pope Respecter (@poperespecter1) April 19, 2026
Only the other day, I said I would rather be droned, as in Ukraine, than be stabbed, shot or raped by the predators of the west. I hope I didn't give anyone ideas. I arrived in Kiev as an (as far as I can tell) unprecedented mass-shooting got underway. Six are dead and fourteen injured after a man opened fire at the most vulnerable targets in a supermarket about five miles from where I sit. The public prosecutor (not the one Joe Biden got fired) says the perp used an automatic weapon, which is highly unusual. He is a fifty-eight year-old man from Moscow who had been living in Donetsk: the Ukrainian authorities hand out the relevant info in a more timely manner than His Majesty's constabularies in either Britain or Canada. Is he just the proverbial "lone wolf" who, like the excitable Mohammedan lads, decided to self-activate? Or is it something more?
Which brings us to this week's episode in my ongoing audio adaptation of the aforementioned America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. Washington is currently giving its strategic competitors a real-time lesson in the limits of power. Yes, unlike the Iranians and Russians, the Pentagon has the most expensive toys, but, like Lindsey Graham's bubble wand, toys are what they are. Underneath the fireworks, history is on the march:
Consider the name given to the current conflict: A 'war on terror'. Wait a minute, aren't wars usually waged against named enemies? Yes, but, to the progressive mind, the very concept of 'the enemy' is obsolescent: There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated. In part, it's societal forgetfulness. In an electronic age, a present-tense culture, we assume that social progress is like technological progress: it can't be reversed. Just as you can't disinvent the internal combustion engine, so you can't disinvent women's rights. Just as the horse and buggy yielded to the steam train and the Ford Model T and the passenger jet so the advanced social democratic society will march onward to state daycare and thirty-hour work weeks and gay marriage and ever greater ethnic diversity – and nothing can turn it back, certainly not a lot of seventh century weirdbeards. Many of us figure the Islamist plan to re-establish the Caliphate is the equivalent of that moment in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie when Plankton roars, 'I'm going to rule the world!' Towering over him, Spongebob says, 'Good luck with that.'
But you never know: it might be that we're the plankton.
And so here we are pleading that the Strait of Hormuz be re-re-re-re-opened...
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Thirty-Three of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
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To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to nearly eighty gripping yarns in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Thirty-Four of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
