By their fruits

Ancient Greece had colonies in Ukraine, on the Black Sea coast. Fish was one commodity that was sent back; so was wheat - the deep, productive soils of the country were just as important then as we discovered, when war began, that they still are. I also read it was a source of the rather unspecific "other raw materials". Whatever this means, it probably wasn't the "rare earth elements" that have suddenly become so prominent (in the context of a brutal trench war, I'm grimly tempted to use the word 'salient')

I'm indebted to the newspaper for providing a list of what these 'elements' actually are. On first skim reading, I thought it was a joke: europium; dystopium; gandalfium; praesidium; gondolaium; holmesium and jitterbugium (one of these is real!). The correct names from my second take are scarcely less fantastical, and I've never heard of any of them: 

europium; dysprosium, gandolinium; praseodymium; gadolinium; holmium; ytterbium; also lanthanum; cerium; neodymium; erbium; yttrium. They also have the more familiar titanium, lithium and graphite

Nuclear power, mobile phones, lasers, batteries - all the stuff to get green eyes shining equally bright in the Kremlin, the White House and the Berlaymont. "Run to me, run to me, I'll save you". 'Profiteer' used to be a term of contempt. Truth will out. If you have not already read this humbling testimony about what it's like to be Ukranian in a world where truth is slowly dying, I recommend it

The Cotoneaster too is dying; every spring, I wait until green leaves appear on the branches that have made it through another year, and prune off the ones - always beautiful with lichen - that stay bare and barren. It exposes more of the solid wall I built below, and at least I'm proud of that