New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman just visited Kiev. Last week, he produced a long write-up of his various thoughts and observations about the trip. Ukraine is “scrappy.” There’s an iPhone app for air raid alerts. Various anonymous Ukrainians told Friedman they were afraid that “Putin’s pal Trump” would be president again.

If you can suppress your irritation at Friedman’s particular journalistic voice — he writes that “Ukraine is, like Israel, a real ‘startup nation’” — parts of his report are genuinely moving. There are moments where he manages to capture some small piece of the horror that the war has brought to Ukrainian civilians as well as all the soldiers fed into the meat grinder on both sides.

At one point, he describes passing by an “exhibition of destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers” and he manages to evince some human sympathy for the conscripts who died “terrible death[s]” inside those vehicles. He even drops a few hints that a negotiated settlement might be necessary to stop the bloodshed.