This Week in Regional Absurdity: Exit Strategies and Cattle Tragedy

But apparently, all it takes is one difficult quarter and some creative naming of external threats to suddenly discover emergency powers you've had all along. It's like finding out your extremely rule-oriented friend will absolutely speed if they're late enough to brunch.

The phrase "Trump's irresponsible war" is doing Olympic-level heavy lifting here. Is it a trade war? A rhetorical war? A war on shared transatlantic understanding of what words mean? The beauty of the phrasing is its studied vagueness—specific enough to sound serious, vague enough to cover whatever economic turbulence shows up next quarter.

I'm not saying the German government is wrong to consider emergency measures during actual emergencies. I'm saying the speed with which constitutional principles become flexible when budgets get tight would impress a yoga instructor.

**4. Ukraine Pivots to Arms Export While Still Importing Sympathy**

President Zelenskyy opened the door this week to Ukrainian arms exports during wartime, announcing new rules that will let domestic firms sell "surplus, war-tested arms abroad."

Read that phrase again: "war-tested arms." That's marketing genius. Other countries have to run simulations and field trials. Ukraine can literally slap a "Combat Proven – Eastern Front 2024" sticker on every Javelin knockoff and charge a premium.

The new rules supposedly ensure domestic forces get priority and sensitive technology stays protected, which is reassuring until you remember that export controls and wartime accounting have historically mixed about as well as vodka and heavy machinery operation.

I'm trying to imagine the pitch meeting. "Gentlemen, we're currently fighting an existential war for survival, requesting billions in international aid, and dealing with ongoing reconstruction needs. Clearly, this is the perfect time to enter the competitive global arms market." Someone in that room nodded and said yes.

To be fair, if anyone has surplus war-tested inventory right now, it's Ukraine. And if you're going to fight a grinding conflict, you might as well monetize the product development. It's entrepreneurship meets necessity meets the kind of dark humor that emerges after enough months under air raid sirens.

**5. The Veterinarian Who Knew Too Much About Cattle**

Finally, because this week needed one more inexplicable tragedy with undertones of a le Carré novel: Sergei Tur, who headed Novosibirsk's regional veterinary agency department for animal disease control, was found dead.

Tur was reportedly responsible for organizing quarantines and culls following a major outbreak. For those keeping score at home, that's "senior veterinary official involved in controversial mass animal killing turns up dead" territory.

I'm not saying anything suspicious happened. I'm saying that when regional officials responsible for unpopular agricultural decisions start dying unexpectedly, it's either the world's darkest comedy of errors or someone really, really cared about those cattle.

The official line will likely be personal tragedy, exhaustion, or any of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. But somewhere in Novosibirsk, there's a farmer looking at his remaining herd and wondering if he should have filled out those quarantine forms differently.

It's a grim footnote to a grim story, the kind of thing that doesn't make international headlines but probably should, if only because it reminds us that regional officials enforcing unpopular policies don't always get the backup they need—or the security details they deserve.

**The Week Ahead: Probably More Exits**

If this week taught us anything, it's that 2026 is the year of the strategic withdrawal. Countries are leaving oil cartels, rebels are evicting military contractors, and constitutional debt limits are discovering they had escape clauses all along.

Meanwhile, in London, Keir Starmer is apparently ending his first parliamentary session with a "stack of unfinished business," which is British for "I showed up, I tried, and everything's still kind of a mess." At least he's honest about it.

So what have we learned? Organizations only matter until someone actually wants to leave them. Security partnerships are only as good as their last successful operation. And constitutional principles are absolute right up until they become inconvenient.

Same time next week, assuming nobody else important dies under mysterious circumstances involving livestock.