Transnistria

 According to Radio 4 this morning, Poland is preparing for "up to a million" refugees from Ukraine. I don't know where they get these numbers (plucked from the air I imagine to be honest) but the issue seems real enough.

A long time ago, maybe as early as 1984, I was working with a young Australian guy called Geoff Cooper for Wimpey in Flyover  House. He was taking a break from seeing the world but would still disappear for long weekends Once he went to Poland and told me he had seen the preparations for a parade celebrating the "friendship" of the Poles and the Soviet Union. A street was lined with crossed flags symbolising the relationship, but before the event could start the Polish kids had run up and down the road plucking out the Soviet flags and throwing them away. An image that has stayed with me ever since.

In other developments, Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is an unrecognised breakaway state located in the narrow strip of land between the river Dniester and the Moldovan–Ukrainian border that is internationally recognised as part of Moldova. There are Russian troops stationed there. I had never heard of it before reports (yet to be confirmed I believe) of forces landing in Odessa.