Night’s Gaze, 2023 - oil on wooden panel. — Annie Stegg Gerard (American, b.1982)

1900s polishes you off nicely

1910s: nobbles spiffingly

1920s: mm nice whoopee

1930s: finishes you clean-like

1940s: suckles your willy with dignity and valour

1950s tugs you off like a cool cat

1960s: blasts you far out (the tip of your penis)

1970s: funks you real mellow like

1980s: slobs you in a bitchin style

1990s: eats your shorts

2000s: like, sucks ur d man

2010s: sucking mindfully and with swag ..

Senior US government officials knew as far back as 2008 that the possibility of adding Ukraine to NATO was seen as a serious “military threat” by Russia, one that crosses Moscow’s security “redlines” and could force it to intervene.

Yet Western leaders continued insisting that Ukraine would join the US-led military alliance, right up until Russia did indeed intervene in February 2022.

At the annual NATO summit back in 2008, the George W. Bush administration publicly called for adding Russia’s neighbors Ukraine and Georgia to the military alliance. NATO’s secretary-general declared that the two countries would eventually become members.

But privately, US diplomats knew that this move would be seen as an existential threat by Moscow, and could provoke Russian military intervention in Ukraine.