FROM OUR LINGUISTICS DESK

THE AWFUL SENSE that Western countries are losing patience with the Ukrainian struggle is beginning to permeate Kyiv, as YouTube videos of the American withdrawals from Saigon and Kabul and Baghdad and Mogadishu and Phnom Penh and Tripoli become very popular clickbait for nervous citizens of the benighted eastern European country.

“They promised they would stick with us,” says USA, who changed his name by deed poll in honor of his country’s benefactors. “They won’t, they can’t leave us in the lurch. We’re white, for God’s sake, we’re Christian. Do you know how many thousands are dead already? I have lost my left hand. Are they now going to amputate my country’s right hand?”

“I don’t know what the Ukrainian for up the garden path is,” says former international volunteer Joe, who returned from Ukraine this month after being wounded near Bakhmut, but I do know that the one I took was laced with nothing but Russian land mines. Took my leg off. Glory to Ukraine.”