Bread line, Luhansk. Photo New York Times. "But to people standing in the bread and water lines that snake through the streets, life here is tough but far from catastrophic. In the predawn, the city comes alive with pedestrians carrying plastic water bottles, headed for the working fountains and grocery stores, on the assumption that fewer shells land early in the morning. One grocery had noodles, gum, sugar, eggs and vodka." ( NYT 14 August 2014) New York Times reporter Andrew Kramer seems surprised at the patience in Eastern Ukraine. One woman he interviewed commented: "I have everything I need but peace." Russians, and Ukrainians, are good at standing in line. Their patience is epic, legendary really. Some of the people standing in these lines were small children during World War II and lived through the Soviet experiment and its post-Soviet variant. They have come to understand better than most that the forces in the world are greater than the indi...
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