Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Second rate reporter says what?

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Russian Affairs Open Thread: Nobody Loves A Flailing Dictator

Russian Affairs Open Thread: Nobody Loves A Flailing Dictator

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“I Wouldn’t Fire My Food Taster” - STOCKPILE

(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)

 

From the Washington Post, “Putin appeared paralyzed and unable to act in first hours of rebellion” [unpaywalled gift link]:

When Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, launched his attempted mutiny on the morning of June 24, Vladimir Putin was paralyzed and unable to act decisively, according to Ukrainian and other security officials in Europe. No orders were issued for most of the day, the officials said.

The Russian president had been warned by the Russian security services at least two or three days ahead of time that Prigozhin was preparing a possible rebellion, according to intelligence assessments shared with The Washington Post. Steps were taken to boost security at several strategic facilities, including the Kremlin, where staffing in the presidential guard was increased and more weapons were handed out, but otherwise no actions were taken, these officials said.

“Putin had time to take the decision to liquidate [the rebellion] and arrest the organizers” said one of the European security officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. “Then when it began to happen, there was paralysis on all levels. … There was absolute dismay and confusion. For a long time, they did not know how to react.”

This account of the standoff, corroborated by officials in Western governments, provides the most detailed look at the paralysis and disarray inside the Kremlin during the first hours of the severest challenge to Putin’s 23-year presidency. It is consistent with public comments by CIA Director William J. Burns last week that for much of the 36 hours of the mutiny Russian security services, the military and decision-makers “appeared to be adrift.”

It also appears to expose Putin’s fear of directly countering a renegade warlord who’d developed support within Russia’s security establishment over a decade. Prigozhin had become an integral part of the Kremlin global operations by running troll farms disseminating disinformation in the United States and paramilitary operations in the Middle East and Africa, before officially taking a vanguard position in Russia’s war against Ukraine…

The longtime symbiosis of the two men, who first met in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, has exposed the weaknesses of Putin’s crony system of management, where rival clans are pitted against each other, and which has been stretched to a breaking point by the war….

Many on the local level could not believe the Wagner rebellion could be happening without some degree of agreement with the Kremlin, the security officials said — despite Putin’s emergency televised address to the nation on the morning of the mutiny in which he vowed tough action to stop the rebels, and despite a warrant issued for Prigozhin’s arrest for “incitement to insurrection” on the eve of his march to Moscow.

“The local authorities did not receive any commands from the leadership,” said a senior Ukrainian security official. “From our point of view this is the biggest sign of the unhealthy situation inside Russia. The authoritarian system is formed in such a way that without a very clear command from the leadership, people don’t do anything. When the leadership is in turmoil and disarray, it is the same situation at the local level and even worse.”…

One senior NATO official said some senior figures in Moscow appeared ready to rally behind Prigozhin had he succeeded in achieving his demands. “There seem to have been important people in the power structures … who seem to have even been sort of waiting for this, as if his attempt had been more successful, they would also” have joined the plot, this official said.

Prigozhin’s increasingly vitriolic tirades blaming corruption and mismanagement by the Russian military command for battlefield setbacks and high casualties in the war against Ukraine had resonated with many sectors of Russian society. Many in the rank and file of the Russian army also wanted Prigozhin to succeed in forcing change at the top of the Russian military, believing that then “it would become easier for them to fight,” this official said…

The lack of direction from the Kremlin during the crisis has left Putin significantly weakened, according to his critics. “Putin showed himself to be a person who is not able to make serious, important and quick decisions in critical situations. He just hid,” said Gennady Gudkov, a former colonel in the Russian security services who is now an opposition politician in exile. “This was not understood by most of the Russian population. But it was very well understood by Putin’s elite. He is no longer the guarantor of their security and the preservation of the system.”

“Russia is a country of mafia rules. And Putin made an unforgivable mistake,” said a senior Moscow financier with ties to the Russian intelligence services. “He lost his reputation as the toughest man in town.”…

Russian expat Julia Ioffe, for Puck, on Prigozhin — and Putin — at the Aspen Security Forum:

The other man who haunted the Forum this year was Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin. On the eve of the conference, MI6 head Richard Moore told an audience in Prague that Prigozhin’s mutiny exposed “deep fractures” in the Russian elite. “I don’t think it needs all the resources of MI6 to conclude that there are deep fractures within the Russian elite around Putin,” he said. “If you have an invading army coming up the road at you, that indicates there has been a falling out.”

This provided the perfect opening question for the generalists interviewing the principals, who all led with the same vague, open-ended question about the deep fractures before settling for vague answers: Putin is obviously weaker, Prigozhin said out loud that the war was based on a false premise, and his mutiny showed, in the words of C.I.A. Director Burns, “does the emperor have no clothes or… why is he taking so long to get dressed?’”

Burns, a career diplomat, is skilled at saying nothing while talking plenty. But he was once ambassador to Russia and is one of the foremost experts on the place, and just hearing his insights on Putin and what he thinks is happening inside Russia was fascinating. As Prigozhin marched on Moscow, Burns said, the security services seemed “adrift,” while the elites wondered if Putin was no longer the arbiter—or their protector from each other. As for why Prigozhin is still alive and getting meetings in Moscow, Burns said, “Putin hates, in my experience anyway, the image that he’s overreacting to things.” Putin, Burns said, “is trying to buy time as he considers what to do with Wagner and Prigozhin himself.”

While he does that, he “is trying to settle things as much as he can” and that he’s going to “separate Prigozhin from what’s of value in Wagner.” Prigozhin has been to Belarus in the meantime, Burns continued, but, as he told the forum, “I’m not sure he has any plans to retire in the suburbs of Minsk.” Burns also had a warning: “Putin is someone who generally thinks that revenge is a dish best served cold, so he’s going to try to settle the situation to the extent he can. But, again, in my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback… so if I were Prigozhin, I wouldn’t fire my food taster.” …

I later caught Burns as he stood in the shade and asked him why he thought Prigozhin choked and turned back. “Some of his men started getting cold feet,” he explained. “This wasn’t what they had signed up for.” Prigozhin, Burns had said in his panel, was “making it up as he went along” on June 24. But, as he told me, he only had 5,000 men marching toward Moscow, not nearly enough to take a city with mined bridges and armed with Putin’s praetorian guard.

Did he see Putin as a procrastinator, who just needs to get through one more week, one more month, one more year, I asked? Burns agreed with that characterization: “He will dither and stall as long as possible,” he said, hoping for something to come along and save him. “He’s not a master strategist,” Burns added as a nervous press officer started creeping closer. “But he’s lost some of his tactical finesse.”

Of course, predictably, Putin has his defenders, even here in America…

Reader Interactions

129Comments

  6. 6.

    Jay

    Logo
    Anton Gerashchenko
    @Gerashchenko_en
    8h
    A video appeared that sheds more light on the scandal with the disqualification of Ukrainian fencer Olga Kharlan last week. The video provides evidence of Russian pressure on the decision to disqualify Ms Kharlan.

    The decision to disqualify Olga was made after Aleksei Tikhomirov, the coach of Russian fencer Anna Simonova, passed his phone to Dieter Lammer, Head of the Technical Directorate of World Championships, for negotiations.

    After a conversation with an unknown person, Dieter Lammer decided to disqualify Olga Kharlan for refusing to shake hands with a Russian competitor.

    1. Olga Harlan finished the fight, did not shake hands with the Russian woman and put out her sabre for a sabre kick (which was officially allowed during the pandemic and was cancelled the day before the fight, without informing federations and website).

    2. Anna Smirnova refused this greeting. The referee awarded the win to Kharlan and allowed her to leave the track.
    However, the Russian delegation made a fuss and Smirnova refused to leave the track.

    3. Dieter Lammer appeared, to whom Aleksei Tikhomirov, the “neutral” coach of the Russian athlete, gave his phone. Lammer talked to someone on the phone and gave it back to Tikhomirov (Smirnova’s coach), left and made the decision on disqualification.

    However, such a decision is supposed to be taken collegially by the Technical Directorate. Apparently, Lammer did not waste time discussing it with his colleagues.

    The head of the International Fencing Federation used to be the notorious Alisher Usmanov, a Russian oligarch close to Putin, who is under sanctions, for 14 years from 2008 to 2022.

    It’s quite possible that the decision to disqualify Olga Kharlan was not accidental.

    All international federations would benefit from reviewing their ranks from any possible Russian influence. Russia has invested into international sports for decades, and has a strong lobby in many types of sports

    https://nitter.net/Gerashchenko_en/status/1686005098424541184#m

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    My sympathies for Putin, Comer, and the PAB can be found between the usual words in the dictionary.  Suffer, fascist assholes.  Suffer.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: Use the source, Luke!

    er, Zhena!

    [span style=”font-size: 72px”]🇺🇦[/span]

    IOW, tell it to use a giant (72 pixel) font and you get a giant 72 pixel flag.

    :-)

    (Thanks for the pointer, Baud!)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    Sister Golden Bear

    And the X at Twitter’s SF headquarters is gone.

    At 9 a.m., SFGATE saw two workers in lifts detangling wires from the structure’s metal frame and pulling away its light-up panels. By noon, the large black X had vanished from the rooftop. The sign was up for less than three days, but that was plenty long enough for Musk to get up a viral video — and for X (formerly Twitter) representatives to twice deny a city inspector access to the Mid-Market rooftop.

  14. 14.

    Jeffro

    I’m really, really looking forward to the day when trumpov is in jail or pushing up daisies, Putin is in jail or pushing up daisies, and Russia is out of Ukraine.

    Also too, looking forward to history’s judging of the GOP enabling of the corrupt insurrectionist

    ETA: Comer can also have a stroke or something.  They all can.  I’m so sick of this shit.

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    And the Space Force will not be moving to Alabama. It is remaining in Colorado, where it belongs.

    I never actually thought it would be going to Alabama, once Trump lost.

  19. 19.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: I understand.  :-)

    Basically, one has to do some typing in the “Text” tab of the editor.  Maybe Baud has something set up to do cut-and-paste.

    (It would be really easy to abuse – I don’t know if the FWYP editor is smart enough to strip abusive stuff out.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    You typed it in the Visual tab.  Use the text Tab.

    ETA: the coding is wrong.  What Scott wrote won’t work.

    Eta2: Scott explained it below.

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    (test…

    𝕏

    /test)

    FYWP seems to be stripping stuff out, or I didn’t grab enough of the original HTML.  Yay!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    Copy and paste the text in the box in the Text Tab.

    <span style=”font-size: 72px;”>🇺🇦</span>

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: The only reason the Space Command was going to Huntsville was that Richard Shelby was Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He retired, and now Huntsville will have to make do with all the other programs Shelby steered there.

    Huntsville is now Alabama’s biggest city. They ought to put up a statue like the one of Vulcan above Birmingham. But instead of the Roman god of hearth and forge, brandishing a freshly hammered spear, Huntsville’s would show Shelby with a coal scoop full of cash.

  55. 55.

    HumboldtBlue

    Does anyone else hear that deafening silence from right-wing media after Hunter’s former business partner, who has already has been convicted, and who lost his appeal and will now go to prison, testified before that bullshit committee today?

    That means, like everything else these yahoos have tried, he told the truth and completely fucked up whatever ratfucking operation they had planned.

  56. 56.

    Alison Rose

    @Baud: I don’t know!!! I went to edit the comment to add a woohoo, and it went back to small. I put the code back into the text box and when I went to visual, it was big, but when I clicked update comment, it went back to small!

  57. 57.

    Another Scott

    @Alison Rose: Returning to the editor after using the fancy stuff strips the fancy stuff out.  (E.g. colored text goes away if you edit it.)

    FYWP loves messing with us.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    That’s the thing about emojis. They don’t appear identically across systems.

    I’d estimate somewhere around 75% of the ones people use inside comments here appear as amorphous colored blobs on my screen.

    @Another Scott

    Thank you.

  61. 61.

    Alison Rose

    Anyway, whatever. In related-to-the-post news, Newsweek just published a fucking op-ed from TIFG under the headline: The Real Victim of the Russiagate Hoax Wasn’t Me. It Was the American People.

    Go absolutely fuck yourselves, Newsweek.

  63. 63.

    Carlo Graziani

    Sorry to interrupt the fun HTML tutorial with some on-topic commentary…

    (1) War on the Rocks had an excellent essay by Anatoli Pinsky a few days ago, interpreting Prigozhin’s Excellent Adventure as an exemplar of the centuries-old Russian tradition of delivering a petition to the Tsar, a tradition with examples persisting into the Soviet era. It’s a rich and rewarding read, and makes more sense to me than any other interpretation of that clown caravan that I’ve read.

    (2) Putin’s paralysis at the onset of the affair, and the consequent paralysis of the entire apparat is very reminiscent of Stalin’s shocked withdrawal from decisionmaking at the sudden German onslaught in June 1941. Stalin was the beneficiary of excellent intelligence to the effect that Hitler was determined to invade Russia, and mulishly ignored all of it, convincing himself that the reports were provocations because he was certain that the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact would hold. He disappeared for many days, as leaderless, hapless Russian military formations were encircled and destroyed by the Wehrmacht, only emerging eventually to come to grips with the situation.

    The analogy is suggestive. Putin also had excellent intelligence on Prigozhin’s intentions, certainly enough to nip things in the bud by having him arrested. But he was certain that the intelligence was wrong, possibly comprised of provocations by Prigozhin’s many rivals and enemies. And when his preconceptions were shattered by Prigozhin’s move, he was shocked into paralysis, leaving the entire government, military, and security apparatus unable to respond effectively.

    Putin has often spoken positively of Stalin, as a strong Russian leader, and I’m sure has on occasion fantasized of channeling Stalin. And ironically, he finally has

    P.S.: If you keep trying to screw around with how WP renders this page, one of youse is going to make the whole thing illegible. Again.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Took me forever to figure out one in particular which a frequent commenter often uses was supposed to be applauding hands as it looks like a coconut on this set-up.
    ;)

  68. 68.

    Bill Arnold

    @Yutsano:

    Fuck Bibi. That is all.​

    That the press, any press, continues to defer to the Israeli ruling coalition’s propagandists and call it an “overhaul” is infuriating. It is a major weakening of the Israeli Supreme Court, and a grab at the last remaining non-Knesset political power center in Israel. (To be fair, some press pieces uses “weakening” in the article bodies, at least, though not in the headlines.)
    The two major meanings that come to American minds (verb form):
    Meaning of overhaul in English
    – to repair an engine, machine, etc. so that every part of it works as it should
    – to completely change a system so that it works more effectively

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    @Alison Rose:

    Newsweek is not your father’s (or grandfather’s) Newsweek. It has gone through some sketchy ownership changes and is not the reliable source it once was.

  71. 71.

    HumboldtBlue

    @rikyrah: ​

    I wanna go to Gran Camp! Can you imagine the snacks!

    @Steeplejack:

    Wasn’t Newsweek bought out by the Moonies? It hasn’t been a real news source since that purchase.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    @Carlo Graziani:

    If you keep trying to screw around with how WP renders this page, one of youse is going to make the whole thing illegible. Again.

    True. Do we really need a lesson in HTML hijinks on a blog where a significant number of people can’t execute a basic URL link without blowing something up?

  80. 80.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    Newsweek is not your father’s (or grandfather’s) Newsweek. It has gone through some sketchy ownership changes and is not the reliable source it once was.

    Newsweek still exists? I haven’t even thought about it in decades.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    @Bracjiator

    IIRC the name and masthead was sold several years ago to some entity of questionable bona fides for the fire sale price of $1.

  87. 87.

    mrmoshpotato

    “He lost his reputation as the toughest man in town.”…

    WEAK.  SAD.  POOP.  (h/t Wonkette)

  90. 90.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @HumboldtBlue: Me and my wife absolutely loved it, so we are probably good in that respect.  But NGL, I’m definitely silently judging some of my friends who didn’t care for it or only thought it was okay.  Not that I won’t be friends with them anymore, but I will definitely remember it the next time they tell me some movie is great or terrible, I’ll be mentally saying “yeah but they didn’t even love Barbie…”

    We do have one friend who is a white, cis, gay man who collects Barbies and is like obsessed with them.  He still hasn’t seen it and isn’t sure if he will because his neighbor didn’t like it, which is bizarre to me.  He’s always been a bit of a low-key misogynist so perhaps that has something to do with it.

  91. 91.

    zhena gogolia

    @HumboldtBlue: That’s so interesting. (I’m not reading the whole thing because I don’t need any more spoilers — I haven’t seen it yet and might wait for streaming because I just can’t get organized to get to a theater.)

  96. 96.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax: Art Fleming!

    I love how the cigarettes are “served” along with the food, like you’re going to eat them.

  99. 99.

    Geminid

    @Carlo Graziani: British writers Anthony Read and David Fisher cover those events well in The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact 1939-1941 (1989). They actually begin in 1938, with Chamberlin’s Munich agreement, and it is the best history I’ve seen on Soviet-German relations during the period leading up to operation Barbarossa (and the weeks immediately after). The intricate dance between Hitler and Stalin that resulted in the Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty is described in fascinating detail

    This book ranks among the top five histories I’ve ever read and I recommend it highly.

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: the Fro kids have been absolutely FLOORED in the past whenever me or the Mrs have mentioned how people used to smoke on airplanes, in cars, or in restaurants’ “smoking sections”.

    Somewhat related: relatively new driver Fro Jr is still marveling that I used to drive a stick shift, smoke, and drain a Big Gulp all while fiddling with a radio (or cassette player!)

    Multi-tasking Gen X style   =)

  107. 107.

    Betty Cracker

    I made fettuccine Alfredo for dinner, which I only do every other year because it’s 24K calories of artery-clogging fat-and-cream goodness per serving. But I felt I deserve it since I’ve had to give up cocktails temporarily due to antibiotics for the dog bite.

    We watched “Asteroid City” last night (it’s finally for sale via streaming — I saw it at the theater but hubby had not). Now I’m obsessed with the idea of the martini vending machine. I wonder if there are real ones? 🤔

    Russian Affairs Open Thread: Nobody Loves A Flailing Dictator

  109. 109.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: My J and her sister took an Aeroflot flight to Ireland (cheap!!) in the late ’90s.

    “Excuse me, stewardess, we’re supposed to be in the non-smoking section.”

    “Yes, that’s right, your two seats are the non-smoking section.”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  110. 110.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    At one point a group of us sharing digs out in the countryside has access to one of those juice bubbler machines and tried pouring a bottle of bourbon (may have been two) in, then adding a copious amount of water.

    Kept the drink cold, only drawback was that over the course of a few days what came out of the dispenser was for all intents and purposes carbonated.

    Now I’m obsessed with the idea of the martini vending machine.

    Well, one could always go with cans.
    ;)

  111. 111.

    Ken

    @Maxim: I hope Gram has superhuman stamina.

    She does. Anthropologists have identified that as one of the tricks that our near-human ancestors developed. Humans live well past child-bearing age, unlike most species, and it’s thought the evolutionary benefit is that they take care of the young and similar tasks, freeing the younger adults to do other things.

  112. 112.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Jeffro: ​ 

    I learned to drive as a teen with a stick and have driven many in my time behind the wheel, but after using my buddy’ pickup for the last week, a manual, I know that when I buy a new car here in the next few weeks it won’t be a stick.

    Elsewhere:

    J-L Cauvin does Ron DeSantis.

  114. 114.

    Ken

    @UncleEbeneezer: We do have one friend who is a white, cis, gay man who collects Barbies and is like obsessed with them.  He still hasn’t seen it and isn’t sure if he will because his neighbor didn’t like it, which is bizarre to me.

    This is, probably unfairly, ringing some alarm bells with me, in terms of what he imagines when he looks over his collection. It’s sort of like the way I can’t read “The Princess and the Pea” any more, since (IIRC) Terry Pratchett asked in passing, Why would a prince want a woman who could be bruised so easily?

  115. 115.

    geg6

    Wanted a vegetarian meal tonight and made a pasta dish with a simple, quick sauce of multi-colored cherry tomatoes I got at a farm market, sweet onion, garlic and fresh basil ribbons.  Threw all that in some olive oil and added some sugar, dried thyme, salt and pepper.  After I threw the pasta in the pan of sauce (with a little pasta water), I stirred in some grated Parm.  Damn, but it was good.  The tomatoes were just delicious and super sweet.  Served it with some focaccia topped with Asiago and asparagus I also got at the farm.  Super satisfying, especially because it was spur of the moment.  Highly recommend!

  119. 119.

    Tony G

    It should not be forgotten that the Wagner thugs destroyed several Russian Army helicopters, killing about a dozen Russian soldiers — after which Putin let the Wagner leaders get away without consequences.  The fact that there has (so far) been no backlash in Russia about this just shows how broken that society is.

  121. 121.

    Tony G

    @UncleEbeneezer: For what it’s worth — I thought that “Barbie” was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.  I expected it to be stupid but funny — sort of like “Airplane”.  Instead I thought that it was stupid and pretentious, with almost no laughs.  “To each his own.”

  123. 123.

    Another Scott

    @Tony G: Interesting.

    I wasn’t expecting it to be funny.  I thought it was great and I went in having no expectations (other than expecting a good film).

    Humor expectations can really color my reactions to a performance, so I can see why it apparently affected yours.  (My humor senses are a bit twisted at times.)

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    Geminid

    @Miss Bianca: Well, if you don’t have enough I can also recommend Clausen, Pearl Harbor: Final Verdict and Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses Grant.

  125. 125.

    Tony G

    @Another Scott: Well, OK.  The whole premise seemed so silly that I expected it to be a funny parody (maybe like “Blazing Saddles”).  Oh well, my companion and I added to the profits of Mattel by sitting through it, so we fulfilled our duty!

  128. 128.

    Carlo Graziani

    @geg6: That’s cognate to a classic Italian pasta sauce from Naples: “Pommarola”.

    First you make a soffritto of olive oil and chopped onion, carrots, celery, and (last, for a minute or less) garlic, in a large wide pan. Then you take a 28 oz can of peeled tomatoes, smushed in a mixing bowl with a potato masher, and toss them in the pan. Salt and pepper to taste, and cook off the water from the tomatoes. If you want to intensify the tomato flavor, add tomato paste.

    [Ingredient quantities are vague here, I know. It works by intuition, but it’s hard to get a bad result.]

    Once the sauce is cooked down, pureè it in a food processor, or with an immersion blender (the latter splatters, so if your sink is wide enough to accomodate the pan, do it there). If you’ve made a big vat of sauce by scaling up all the ingredients, using 2 or 3 cans of peeled tomatoes and increased the other vegetables to match, good for you! Transfer most of it to ziploc quart freezer bags, 2 cups per, and freeze it for future mid-week meals!.

    Use about 2 cups of the pureè per pound of pasta (any shape is good, but shells and penne cup the sauce nicely). Add some chopped fresh basil if you have some, and grated parmesan (if you can grate it yourself from a good-quality slice, that’s better—Costco’s Reggiano is very good). You can add a bunch to the pasta directly, and/or serve a bowl of cheese at the table so diners can adjust their own. A splash of good-quality dressing-grade olive oil will certainly put a nice finish on the serving bowl.

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