A few random meetings with a US military officer and a couple of Ukrainian refugees from their country's civil war offer insight into what's happening in Ukraine, writes TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff, just back from a reporting trip to Finland's arctic region.

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By Dave Lindorff

On a trip to Europe for a two-week stay in Finland, my wife and I at one point found ourselves seated next to a congenial 30-something guy, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt. He said he was US Army major.

Initially, our conversation revolved around his little kids, and his complaint about how often he was sent out on "short assignments" in Europe far away from home. He also mentioned being somewhat hard of hearing after having been sent out on 250 missions in Iraq as a soldier in the cavalry, where he had been the gunner on a stryker armored vehicle. (He explained that he couldn't wear ear protectors despite the constant loud roar of the heavy vehicle's engine, "because you have to hear when you're taking fire, and also to be able to communicate with the other guys inside the vehicle.")

He was voluble, but discrete when it came to his current Army role, saying only that he had been reassigned from cavalry to "international relations," which he later explained meant "handling relations" between US military forces and various countries' militaries in the "European Theater." He said he had become particularly busy since the beginning of the "Ukraine crisis," but wouldn't go into detail about what he was busy doing.

One could make an educated guess. Looking at the bulging muscles on this guy's arms, shoulders and chest, it seemed clear that this was not a guy who just who sat at conferences and talked across tables discussing protocol. More likely, he was Special Forces in some training capacity.

In any event, his regular travels, which he said had him flying back and forth from the US to assignments in Europe almost every other week, make suggest that the US has ramped up in its military activities in Europe.

Later, in Finland, I made a road trip from the southern city of Kuopio to northern Lapland above the Arctic Circle, to report on arctic climate change. Just before reaching the Arctic Circle on my first evening on the road, I came on two young people, a man and a woman, who were hitchhiking. Being a long-time hitchhiker myself, and deeply in karmic debt as a driver, I immediately pulled over and invited them to hop in...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromising four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2434

Authors Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Authors Bio:

Dave Lindorff, winner of a 2019 "Izzy" Award for Outstanding Independent Journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).