IT Sunday: Putin may be losing the war but beware ‘General Winter’

Welcome to this week’s IT Sunday, our selection of the best Irish Times journalism for subscribers.

This week saw a gathering change in the recent stalemate in Ukraine. A swift counteroffensive has liberated the Kharkiv region and seen Russian-held supply towns of Izyum and Kupiansk retaken by Ukraine.

The advances appear to be a second significant gain for Ukraine, after Russia abandoned attempts to take Kyiv, and suggest that Putin, as Fintan O’Toole notes in his column, appears to be losing his “insane war on Ukraine”. But O’Toole also notes that winter is coming, and Putin is counting on his best ally to regain the initiative. “This is still a long, grinding conflict, and Putin is counting on General Winter again. The difference this time is that the big chill is to do its work very far indeed behind enemy lines, as much in Cork as in Kyiv.”

Jennifer O’Connell is this weekend writing about the world’s strongmen and their “tough-talking hard men peddling a cocktail of nostalgic nationalism, toxic masculinity and appropriated victimhood”. She notes that while it has not been a great week for Putin, or indeed Donald Trump or Brazil’s tough guy president Jair Bolsonaro, the cult of the strongman remains. “It would be foolish to bet that the cult of the strongman is over, or that Ireland is somehow immune. The thing about strongmen is that they have a habit of coming from nowhere.”

David McWilliams, in his latest column, returns to the global asset nature of the property market and the argument made by many that Irish property will not wobble due to the fundamentals, characterised by demand, a rising working population and a dearth of property. “Property is a global asset class and global events can have an outsized impact on the local . . . In the last bust, the retail banks ran out of money first, calling in private sector loans, causing the market to sell off, impacting on the real economy last. This time, the retail banks are not involved as much as private sector money. This is largely made up of leveraged funds that operate like bond market investors, borrowing at low interest rates from investment banks, wealthy private individuals, private equity and other investment funds to buy blocks of flats.”

As the world watched events unfold following the death of Queen Elizabeth II last week, Newton Emerson focused on one particular Royal incident in Northern Ireland. By accident or by design (more likely by design, according to Emerson), King Charles had humiliated DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson during a brief exchange at an event at Hillsborough Castle. The dressing-down made it clear to Emerson that change is coming: “The new political fact immediately established in Northern Ireland is that the monarch has no difficulty with Sinn Féin as the largest party, or with Sinn Féin in general, while being plainly contemptuous of the DUP for disrupting devolution. For Sir Jeffrey, this is an undeniable fiasco.”

Keith Duggan reported from London this week where crowds watched as the city bended to the weight of royal family. “Outside Downing Street, the day staff from the offices around Number 10 nipped through the security gates shortly before 2pm, the desks abandoned and the phones unanswered for the moments when the power streets of the metropolis downed tools and stood to attention. By then, the procession route, mapped and marked by metal railings and a heavy police presence, was lined with the public. The balconies along Whitehall were filled. The public stood on foldaway step ladders, they sat on the high balustrades, they balanced precariously between lampposts and pavement pillars. All for a last look.”

After the Olympics, Irish rower Aifric Keogh didn’t have a straight answer, no matter how the question was put. Tokyo had represented the water’s end in her mind for so long that she struggled to think of it another way. At the far side of the Olympic tunnel was this terminus, and a platform on which to alight. The doors opened. Go. Go? The women’s four had won bronze, the first Irish female crew to reach the podium at the Olympics. Keogh was the oldest athlete in the boat: five years older than Eimear Lambe and Emily Hegarty, four years older than Fiona Murtagh. By the middle of the next racing season she would be 30. She knew what it had taken to get there once: all kinds of everything. “I worried,” she told Denis Walsh, about the possibility of another Olympic cycle, “that I wouldn’t have the fight in me.”

In her advice column, Roe McDermott responds to a woman whose girlfriend stills lives with and shares a bed with, her ex. “We have good sex and communication, but sometimes we fight because of slight incompatibilities. Overall she seems very much in love with me, she cares about me and we have so much fun. . . . I thought, based on what my girlfriend had told me, that her ex had moved out of their flat when they broke up. However, it seems that they still live together and sleep in the same bed.” Read McDermott’s response here.

Trish Murphy advises someone who is turning 30 soon, ‘and I can’t help but think of all the mistakes I’ve made’.” I’ve never had a girlfriend of any sort, which makes me feel like a loser. I didn’t have my first proper job until I was 27. . I just feel like a failure. . . How do I let go of the past and is it too late for me to turn things around? You can read Murphy’s advice here.

Finally, Corinna Hardgrave’s latest adventure sees her review a tiny, two-table Dublin restaurant, which the food critic labels “an absolute joy” to eat in. “There are global influences, in particular Italian, that bring focus to the dishes and a relentless search for the best quality seasonal ingredients cooked with confident restraint,” writes Hardgrave. “But what sets it apart, aside from the incomprehensibly low prices, is the skilled spontaneity and uninhibited love that runs right through its DNA.” More here.

As always, there is much more on irishtimes.com, including the latest rundowns of all the latest movies in our film reviews, and tips for the best restaurants – plus our new takeaway review – in our food section. There are plenty more articles exclusively available for Irish Times subscribers here.

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