Russia: international moves, West responses, Putin's revenge & future...Ukraine 12

Hanna Liubakova @HannaLiubakova | 6:47 AM · Jan 4, 2023:
Journalist from Minsk, Belarus. Non-resident fellow @AtlanticCouncil . Media trainer. Formerly @RFERL, @Belsat_TV. 2019 @worldpressinst
fellow.

#Belarus The announcement at the Barysau bus station:
“All male citizens from 18 to 60 years old must come to an enlistment office or village executive committee to clarify their data.”

What on earth is that?

0:26 ( https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1610603871113469953 )

Putin have been "requesting" military support from Lukashenko for much of this war. Perhps Lukashenko has finally given up and is preparing to mobilize or it could be more smoke and mirrors.

Yet another performance of Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells). This time a flash mob by Veryovka Ukrainian Folk Company in a Kyiv shopping mall (27 Dec 2022):

3:37 ( https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1274113896782265 )

(((Tendar))) @Tendar | 8:17 AM · Jan 7, 2023:
Tyrants are my enemies | Si vis pacem para bellum |🇩🇪| Das Böse triumphiert allein dadurch, dass gute Menschen nichts unternehmen | Military and War News

If you are wondering how Russian "advance" In Bakhmut, Soledar or elsewhere then check this out. I have seen pictures like this several times.

This is not sustainable, no matter if those are regulars, mobilized, mercenaries or convicts. This is the recipe of doom.
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Necro Mancer @666_mancer | 8:00 AM · Jan 7, 2023:
Протеррористически настроенный пользователь (с) Цензор.НЕТ Собираю инфу о передвижениях, базах, 200х членах РОА. В личку

Бахмутское направление, наши дни: это пиздец, конечно
https://t.me/yigal_levin/38452?comment=786950
#роа #Вагнер #потерьнет #RussianUkrainianWar

Translated from Russian by google:
Bakhmut direction, our days: this is fucked up, of course
https://t.me/yigal_levin/38452?comment=786950
#роа #Вагнер #потерьнет #RussianUkrainianWar

Aerial photo bodies in field, Russians? Bakhmut ( https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1611709440352215042 )
https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1611709440352215042/photo/1
https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1611709440352215042/photo/2
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David Frum @davidfrum | 7:00 AM · Jan 8, 2023:
Independent pollster Levada: 70% of Russians support Putin’s war, a majority still say the war is going well, only about 10% express any sympathy for Ukrainians as people.

(S+) Russland und der Meinungsforscher Lew Gudkow: »Die Russen haben kaum Mitgefühl mit den...
Lew Gudkow untersucht mit seinem unabhängigen Meinungsforschungsinstitut, wie die Russen ticken. Hier spricht er über fehlende Moral in seiner Heimat, die Opfermentalität und die Furcht vor dem...
https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/russland-und-der-meinungsforscher-lew-gudkow-die-...

We Americans and Europeans once again find ourselves caught up in a surrogate war The 101st Airborne Div combat brigades are poised in Poland as well as the 2nd Armored Cav Reg on the border with Ukraine, no telling how many special forces are operating with Ukrainian units. Leaders both east and west remain stubbornly engaged in the ancient exercise of international politics reduced to its grossest terms-the maintenance of the status quo through constant interplay between the threat and the use of raw power....AMDG....

The feminist community emerging from the war in Ukraine (Al Jazeera)

Inside a shelter dubbed ‘FemApartment’, residents support one another as they help others affected by the Ukraine war...

Никола Миковић / Nikola Mikovic @nikola_mikovic | 12:04 PM · Jan 11, 2023:
Analyst/journalist/columnist. Focus: #Russia, #Belarus, #Ukraine, #Energy, among other topics...

In late September, outside Kyiv City Hall, there was a giant mock-up of a postage stamp depicting the destruction of the Crimean Bridge. On October 8, the bridge was heavily damaged. Now there is a stamp depicting the destruction of the Kremlin. A word to the wise is enough.

Photos
https://twitter.com/nikola_mikovic/status/1613220317832351765/photo/1
https://twitter.com/nikola_mikovic/status/1613220317832351765/photo/2
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Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 1:46 PM · Jan 13, 2023:
DPhil/PhD Intl Relations @UniofOxford, Assoc Fellow @RUSI_org, Bylines @ForeignPolicy, WaPo etc 3 forthcoming books HurstPublishers

BREAKING: Ukraine has completed testing of a long-range strike drone
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A Russian missile destroyed a multi-story residential building in Dnipro, says Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelensky’s office.
Dnipro Mayor Boris Filatov is with rescue workers at the scene. Could be many casualties.

Photos via Tymoshenko and Dnipro Telegram channels
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1614269481957707777/photo/1
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1614269481957707777/photo/2
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1614269481957707777/photo/3

- Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM | 9:33 AM · Jan 14, 2023
Ukraine correspondent FT. 13 years in Ukraine covering Eastern Europe.

>7 margd: contd.

Sudden Surge In Russian Navy Ships And Submarines In Black Sea
H I Sutton | 11 Jan 2023

Ukrainian forces will be monitoring a sudden movement of Russian warships and submarines out of their base of Novorossiysk. The naval base, near the Kerch Bridge, is further from Ukrainian controlled coast than the famous base at Sevastopol. Yet the unusual movement may be important...

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/01/sudden-surge-in-russian-navy-ships-...
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{US} Sea Sparrow RIM-7 Surface-To-Air Missiles Are Headed To Ukraine
Thomas Newdick, Tyler Rogoway | Jan 6, 2023

The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow will be paired with Soviet-era Buk launchers and radar systems in a bizarre but potentially much needed mash-up.

...Primarily born as a fast-reaction point-defense system that has grown into an intermediate-range weapon for warships, the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow is able to intercept aircraft or cruise missiles. It can also engage surface targets under certain circumstances. In particular, it was tailored to defeat pop-up anti-ship missiles, which can appear with very little notice, and which move fast and low over the water...

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/sea-sparrow-rim-7-surface-to-air-missiles-...
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Russian Tu-22 fired an anti-ship missile at a residential building
Boyko Nikolov | Jan 14, 2023

KYIV, UKRAINE — A new Russian missile attack was carried out on January 14 over several cities in Ukraine. In the attack, Russia used missiles from the S-300/S-400 systems, Kalibr cruise missiles, Kh-101/Kh-555 missiles, Kh-22 air-based cruise missiles and Kh-59 missiles. 25 missiles were shot down. This is claimed by the Twitter account of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

...At the same time, the Twitter profile of the Livemap site ( https://twitter.com/MrClarkyofAxel/status/1614322764193603584 also used previously on shopping mall? ), which reports live on what is happening in the conflict zones around the world, claims in its Twitter account that the destroyed building in Dnipro was hit by an anti-ship missile Kh-22.

BulgarianMilitary.com cannot confirm whether the Kh-22 missile hit a building intentionally or as a result of an error...

But there is another possibility. The Russian military knows better than we do how this type of missile is used and under what conditions. The explanation is that the Russian pilot knew that such a missile would hit “some” building in the Dnieper and fired it. I.e. firing it may have been the result of an order rather than a mistake.

The Kh-22 missile is a Soviet Cold War-era anti-ship missile. It was developed in the 1960s. It is still in service with the Russian Federation. According to a preliminary estimate, one such missile costs about 1 million USD.

The missile has a wingspan of 300 cm and is powered by a single R-201 Liquid-fuel rocket. The maximum operational range of the missile is 600 km. It is launched from Tu-22M, Tu-22K, and Tu-95K22 bombers. The rocket flies up to 27 km high. Its maximum speed is Mach 4.6.

The missile warhead can be different. Most commonly, however, Russia puts 1,000 kg 2,205 lb of RDX or 350–1,000 kt {1.5–4.2 PJ} thermonuclear weapon....

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/01/14/russian-tu-22-fired-an-anti-ship-missil...
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The U.K. pledges tanks to Ukraine as Russian missiles target multiple cities
AP | January 14, 20231:18 PM ET
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/14/1149246993/uk-tanks-ukraine-russia-kyiv
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The UK says sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine is a potential 'game changer' in the war. This is how they could impact the conflict.
Alia Shoaib | Jan 14, 2023

The UK confirmed it will send a small number of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine.
The powerful tank would easily outmatch any Russian battle tanks, an expert told Insider.
However, the bigger impact could be setting an example for other Western countries to send tanks...

https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-challenger-2-tanks-ukraine-conflict-2023-1

"Any wish to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world" - Russian patriarch Kirill in his sermon said there would be no world without Russia and called Putin "our Orthodox president"

1:58 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1616185071815245866 )

-Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 4:25 PM · Jan 19, 2023
Ukrainian patriot. Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Founder of the Institute of the Future. Official enemy of Russian propaganda

Ukraine war: Serbia uproar over Wagner mercenaries recruiting for Russia (BBC)

A Russian news video claiming to show Serbian "volunteers" training to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine has prompted outrage in Serbia, exposing its complex relationship with Moscow. Russia's Wagner mercenary group made the Serbian-language videos to encourage recruitment for the war. Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic, reacted angrily on national TV. "Why do you, from Wagner, call anyone from Serbia when you know that it is against our regulations?" he said. Critics frequently accuse Serbia of prioritising its long-standing friendship with Russia over its ambition to join the EU. But what has emerged in recent days in Belgrade shows that the picture is not so black and white. Hinting at less-than-rosy relations with Moscow, President Vucic said that not only was Serbia "neutral" regarding the war in Ukraine, but that he had not spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin for "many months". It is illegal for Serbians to take part in conflicts abroad...

(((Tendar))) @Tendar | 8:34 AM · Jan 19, 2023:
8:34 AM · Jan 19, 2023
Tyrants are my enemies | Si vis pacem para bellum |🇩🇪🇪🇺| Das Böse triumphiert allein dadurch, dass gute Menschen nichts unternehmen | Military and War News

More Russian troops (640th or 641st battalions) are saying that they have been trained to be artillery men but instead were assigned to infantry units.

That means, either the Russian army is running out of artillery (including ammo) or they are running out of infantry, or both.

(((Tendar))) @Tendar7:18 AM · Jan 20, 2023:
Another absolutely insane Russian banzai attack. This time not around Bakhmut but somewhere in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in the south. Russian troops without any armor support running in totally open field. For Ukrainian infantry and snipers just target practice.

Aerial photos
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1616409933192249344/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1616409933192249344/photo/2
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ETA: Echoes of Kirill as Russia sends men into the meat grinder, unprepared, unled, unprotected--despicable.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:57 AM · Jan 20, 2023:

"There is no death, there is only the road to immortality!" - Solovyev preaches to Russian soldiers.
Shouldn't he lead them into battle then?

0:14 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1616359294538072069 )

How Ukraine Can Score Another Win at the UN (International Crisis Group)

The UN General Assembly has been a notable barometer of international opinion about Russia’s war in Ukraine since it began. With the one-year marker approaching, Kyiv can secure a diplomatic victory in New York with a resolution that affirms principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity...

Germany is not only not providing its Leopard tanks to Ukraine, it is not allowing others to do so. Apparently, Germany (and US) have provided tanks to less worthy countries (IMO), such as Saudi Arabia. (I'll post list if I come across it again.) Surprised also to read somewhere that Germany sells more arms than either US and Russia.

Anders Åslund @anders_aslund | 5:23 PM · Jan 20, 2023:
Economist & author. Russia, Ukraine & Eastern Europe...latest book: "Russia's Crony Capitalism"

Today was a disastrous day for German foreign policy. Germany became a major blockage for Ukrainian victory over Russia by refusing to allow anybody to deliver their Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. This may become a black mark for Germany for a long time if not swiftly reversed.
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Alexander Clarkson @APHClarkson | 3:33 PM · Jan 18, 2023:
Lecturer for German and European Studies at King's College London.

The Polish move to acquire K2s from South Korea is designed to create a whole production chain in Poland and several other EU states that would eventually produce a tank for the European market that is cheaper and can be manufactured faster than Rheinmetall's Panther project

The German Government is ready to send the tanks if there is consensus...

Szabolcs Panyi @panyiszabolcs | 6:07 AM · Jan 20, 2023:
🇭🇺 investigative journo @direkt36 | @VSquare_Project | 🇪🇺@EuroPressPrize finalist 2018, 2021
https://twitter.com/panyiszabolcs/status/1616392078421794816

1/ More than 170 Hungarian generals and senior military officers have been forced into early retirement in recent days by Hungary's MoD, led by Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky. He is a former business partner of Transmashholding, a Russian state-owned company.
https://telex.hu/belfold/2023/01/20/honvedelmi-miniszterium-miniszter-katona-hon... ...

2/ A new government decree has allowed the Minister of Defense to unilaterally terminate the service of soldiers who have reached the age of 45 and have at least 25 years of actual service, with two months' notice.
https://telex.hu/belfold/2023/01/17/honvedelmi-miniszter-katonak-egyoldalu-szolg...

3/ According to @Telexhu , the minister "dismissed members of the Defence Staff en masse. (...) One source said (...) that at least a hundred colonels, generals had been given unilateral dismissals, while another said that 157 (...) with immediate effect."
https://telex.hu/belfold/2023/01/20/honvedelmi-miniszterium-miniszter-katona-hon...

4/ According to opposition MP Ágnes Vadai, "this means there is a de-NATOisation going on in the Hungarian Defence Forces at the moment", as "the 45-year-old officers and generals are soldiers with international experience, who speak languages and have been socialised in NATO".
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MadMax 🇫🇮🇪🇺 @MadMaxFin
NATO better start thinking about whether or not to share intelligence with Hungary anymore. They will just forward it to their masters in the Kremlin. Hungary should be suspended from NATO decision making as well. They are on the Russian side.

>13 margd:

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 11:01 AM · Jan 20, 2023:
DPhil/PhD Intl Relations @UniofOxford . Assoc Fellow @RUSI_org . Bylines @ForeignPolicy, WaPo etc 3 forthcoming books

BREAKING: Germany announces a 1 billion euro military aid package for Ukraine
Ukraine will get 7 Gepard anti-aircraft guns, IRIS-Ts and Patriots, as well as training assistance from Germany
Crucially, however, Germany has hedged again on a final decision about providing Leopard tanks to Ukraine

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 11:05 AM · Jan 20, 2023:

BREAKING: The Netherlands says it is open to supplying Ukraine with F-16 jets

The Netherlands is currently phasing out its F-16s for 52 F-35As. This air force modernization provides opportunities for Ukraine, as the US has rhetorically at least loosened countervailing pressure on NATO allies supplying jets to Ukraine

Netherlands open to supplying F-16 fighters to Ukraine if requested
Clement Charpentreau | 2023-01-20
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/netherlands-open-to-supplying-f-16-fighters-t...
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DON @DON__WYOMING
Pointless gesture, and they know it. The leading problem with giving Ukraine F-16s is training. Need experienced maintainers, and thousands of pieces of unique equipment, to fly an F-16.

Illini @IlliniProgrammr
For one, F16s have a hydrazine electrical supply backup system. Which is a huge PITA for anyone who is going to own and maintain these things without the resources of a Western nation-state.
F15s or F5s might be a different story.

Michael MacKay @mhmck | 1:26 PM · Jan 19, 2023:
Ph.D. from the LSE ... veteran of Ukraine democratic and civil society renaissance ... election observer ... chronicler of Muscovy's war ... from Upper Canada {e.g., Ontario}

Abandoning the sinking ship.
President Vučić of Serbia and the Iranian foreign ministry declared they do not recognize the annexation of parts of Ukraine by Russia.
Serbia and Iran have been friendly – if not allied – with the Russian terrorist state. Not so much, now.

>13 margd:

Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel | 5:32 PM · Jan 20, 2023
Former Spokesperson to President @ZelenskyyUa. Author: The Fight of Our Lives... @PostOpinions contributor... proud Ukrainian

BREAKING!
Ukraine has agreed with Germany to train our tank crews on German Leopard 2 tanks, although no decision has been made on whether to provide them, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.

>11 margd: contd.

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 8:10 PM · Jan 20, 2023:

German intelligence shows that Ukraine could be losing triple digit numbers of soldiers per day in Bakhmut

This is not necessarily higher than Russian casualties, which are also steep, but plays into Yevgeny Prigozhin's strategy of creating a meatgrinder in Bakhmut

Where are all the anti war protesters today, where is the outrage at the warmongers in the US, Tanks are now the ticket item the UPS driver is demanding, patriot missles, combat US assualt troops and amour ed cavalry units poised on the polish border, who is training these neo-nazi and other para military units how to operate these sophisticated weapons. The Military Industrial Complex is drueling with the cost of this proxy war and the loss of Equipment in Afghanistan, while communist China waits to make its move, will Taiwan get the support that this dictator gets in Ukraine?....JMJ....

Neo-nazi... Dictator...

Putin's henchmen are worried that the "boy that cried wolf" routine is no longer taken seriously by their targeted audience the US leadership. Russia's top host on the state run tv and the Russian Patriarch Krill took turns yesterday reiterating that Russia's defeat would mean the end of the world, "first of all, our main enemy is the US (not Ukraine) "what does the US react to, two things: The threat of physical annihilation or the liquidation of tens of thousands of US troops" (thousands of whom are within easy tact nuke range right now). Meanwhile the other thug involved in this proxy war is addressing the EWF forum in Switzerland to solidify his legitimacy with his puppet masters.Actually telling them and the world that Putin is dead 300,000 artillery shells are being sent today from US arsenals to prop this guy up, Abram Tanks are next, who trains these paramilitary guys in the use of these sophisticated wepons. Where is the antiwar left, I don't see or hear you so you must support bringing us to the brink of Nuclear War or are to involved in reviving the mask mandate and banning gas grills....JMJ....

>22 brone: Where is the antiwar left

Well, not "the left", but here is the "anti-war" Catholic Church:

"We cannot resign ourselves to the fact that the war in Ukraine will continue for a long time and, even if at the moment there seems to be no basis for any negotiations, we must keep alive the ideal of peace and the idea that this war will end, even if it will not be the end imagined by President Zelensky or President Putin. We want a just peace, but a peace must come, and to do this, if necessary, we must also begin to 'think the unthinkable'"... The Holy See's diplomacy, according to Professor Alberto Melloni, the UNESCO Chair on Religious Pluralism and Peace, has the advantage, compared to other actors, of being able to operate without material considerations. For his part, Archbishop Gallagher noted that the Holy See's diplomatic efforts have the added value of "mercy," the only thing capable of breaking the chains of hatred and revenge. In this sense, he said, the Holy See works to bridge differences, always having the human person as the ultimate beneficiary...

(Archbishop Gallagher on Ukraine: We must aim for ideal of peace)

But what is this "anti-war left", a term you tend use dismissively? It is not a monolithic bloc nor is it the exclusive domain of "the left", nor do all those who oppose a particular war do so for the same reasons, nor do they necessarily oppose all wars. The Vietnam war which was widely opposed in the USA and elsewhere was seen by many as a violent continuation of the French colonial dispensation in that country, where the USA was the aggressor. But plenty of rich kids from right wing backgrounds refused to serve in it for personal, not political, reasons. World War II, on the other hand, was widely supported in the USA because Japan was seen as the aggressor. Korea and the first Iraq war were fought with UN approval, again because in each case it seemed there was an aggressor who violated international law by invading another sovereign state. This is why so many states across the world sympathise with Ukraine's situation, as it is very clear that Russia's invasion is in breach of international law. It's also why so many recent wars (US invasions of Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq-Iran war, Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory, the Ethiopian-Eritrean war, etc) were widely opposed.

You are an avid defender of the right to bear arms, and have often said elsewhere on LT that if your home were invaded, you would use your firearms to protect yourself and your family. Many would argue that this is the situation in which Ukraine finds itself in, having been illegally invaded and now simply defending itself with no expansionist ambitions beyond its own borders.

My own view is that violence is never a satisfactory response to violence, and simply breeds more violence, death and destruction, as can currently be seen as the Ukraine conflict descends into a war of attrition, a "meat grinder" as many have put it. Eventually they will have to talk peace, as Archbishop Gallagher says. But I recognise the complexity of the situation, and I respect the difficult decisions that many nations and individuals are having to make.

Your comments on the military-industrial complex are of course true, but it has to be said that the right wing, far more so than the left, is complicit in this particular dynamic. Note also that it is a right wing government in UK which is providing a great deal of military and other support to Ukraine.

Edited to add: I'm currently researching my next book, the biography of a Ugandan church leader who was involved in efforts to resolve the Lord's Resistance Army conflict in northern Uganda, and I came across a quote from religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II who visited the region in 1993 when that war was only seven years old: "Let us seek what unites us, not what divides us. Let us seek a better way of ending this conflict than the military option"! Sadly that call from Christian, Muslim and traditional African religious leaders was not heeded and it was another thirteen years before that war finally ended through a mix of various nonviolent factors, not through military victory. Let's hope and pray that it doesn't take as long as that for sanity to prevail in both Russia and Ukraine.

Brave anti-war "leftists":

Hundreds of Moscovites keep bringing flowers to the spontaneous memorial to civilian victims of the Russian missile strike on Dnipro on Jan 14.
Flowers are regularly removed, and more and more people get arrested or detained by police.
2:07 ( https://twitter.com/k_sonin/status/1616828842924015619 )

- Konstantin Sonin @k_sonin | 11:03 AM · Jan 21, 2023
Professor of political economics, @HarrisPolicy at UChicago. Writing in Russian on http://facebook.com/konstantin.sonin and tweeting in English.
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According to google translate:

Украинцы нам не враги, а братья = Ukrainians are not our enemies, but brothers

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 4:00 PM · Jan 22, 2023:
DPhil/PhD Intl Relations @UniofOxford. Assoc Fellow @RUSI_org. Bylines @ForeignPolicy, WaPo etc 3 forthcoming books HurstPublishers

Morocco has reportedly distributed T-72B tanks from the Czech Republic to Ukraine
The most notable distribution of heavy weaponry from an African country to Ukraine
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Morocco choose sides, supplies T-72B tanks to Ukraine
Ekene Lionel, Darek Liam and Sarah Lesedi | December 19, 2022 - Updated on December 21, 2022

Morocco is jettisoning it’s neutral stance in the Russian-Ukraine conflict, to supply arms to Kiev.

Rabat had earlier chosen to back a de facto African-sponsored neutrality in the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, but has apparently succumbed to pressures from the United States.

The United States has secretly convince Morocco to deliver modernized T-72B tanks, and spare parts to Kiev.

Morocco will supply Ukraine with spare parts for T-72 tanks and will thus become the first African state to provide military assistance to Ukraine

Besides the spare parts, T-72B Main Battle Tanks modernized by Czech company Excalibur Army and intended for Morocco will be diverted to Ukraine...

https://www.military.africa/2022/12/morocco-choose-sides-supplies-t-72b-tanks-to...
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Mouâd ムアーッド 💉💉💉 @medmouad | :
A human in a transitional stage of his life / Un humain en phase transitoire de sa vie

I don't know about the source for the news but as far I know it was debunked
Here's an article talking about this topic in French from a well known local pure player
https://medias24.com/2022/12/20/le-maroc-a-t-il-livre-des-chars-a-lukraine-la-re...

4:10 PM · Jan 22, 2023
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Karin Heimann🇩🇰🇺🇦🇪🇺 @HeimannKarin | 4:05 PM · Jan 22, 2023:
Danish health care

Tunisia did support by sending two supply aircraft 👍

When will Putin give up Ukraine? Only when his inner circle forces him to stop (Guardian)

Unlike western leaders, the Russian president does not answer to voters or the media. Which means he plays a much, much longer game...

Ukraine war: Hiding from Putin's call-up by living off-grid in a freezing forest (BBC)

When Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation of Russian men in September last year, it took Adam Kalinin - not his real name - a week to decide that the best thing he could do was move to the forest. The IT specialist was against the war from the start, receiving a fine and spending two weeks in detention for sticking a poster saying "No to war" on the wall of his apartment building. So when Russia said it was calling up 300,000 men to help turn things around in a war it was losing, Kalinin did not want to risk being sent to the front line to kill Ukrainians. But, unlike hundreds of thousands of others, he did not want to leave the country. Three things kept him in Russia: friends, financial constraints and an unease about abandoning what he knows... And so he took the unusual step of saying goodbye to his wife and heading for the forest, where he has lived in a tent for nearly four months...

Dreadful. Hopefully someone in Putin's inner circle takes him aside...
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Trent Telenko @TrentTelenko | 7:29 PM · Jan 21, 2023:
Casualty 🧵 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1616956063856705536

"...US national intelligence went from 100,000 to 188,000 Russian casualties in the 13 days between 8 January to 21 January 2023..."
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Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel | 8:33 AM · Jan 22, 2023:
Former Spokesperson to President @ZelenskyyUa. Author: The Fight of Our Lives . @PostOpinions contributor proud Ukrainian

OMG. The heart is breaking. Marinka, Donbas. In the book I’m telling how we were visiting it together with Zelenskyy and how people were praying for peace 😭 Russia is a Terrorist!!!!
2:20 aerial of destroyed urban area ( https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1617153512596545536 )

Ukraine war: Germany won't block export of its Leopard 2 tanks, foreign minister says
Antoinette Radford | 23 Jan 2022

...Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday the government would request authorisation from Berlin. But he said Poland would send the tanks to Ukraine, even if it was not granted.

"Even if, ultimately we did not get this consent, within the framework of a small coalition….we will still hand over our tanks, together with others, to Ukraine," Mr Morawiecki said.

A spokesperson for the German government said it had not yet received any requests to authorise the delivery of the Leopard 2 tanks on Monday.

Last week, Mr Morawiecki said the country was ready to provide 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Kyiv.

...However, Warsaw ultimately wants Berlin and Nato allies to also send their own Leopards because government officials admit that 14 tanks will have a limited impact on Ukraine's fighting capacity.

The Leopard 2 tanks were specifically designed to compete with the Russian T-90 tanks, which are being used in the invasion.

There are believed to be more than 2,000 of them worldwide and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said about 300 of them would help ensure a Russian defeat...

Why are Leopard tanks so in demand?
Chris Partridge, BBC weapons analyst
...world-class weapon used by more than a dozen countries...have seen combat action in Afghanistan and Syria...nearly two-thirds of all Leopards produced are still in Europe. So physically getting Leopards to the fight is relatively straightforward. That also makes maintenance and repair - vital aspects of any weapons system - easier too...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64370165
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Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 6:57 AM · Jan 23, 2023:
BREAKING: Estonia will provide Ukraine with all of its 155mm howitzers
This is being perceived in Ukraine as the largest aid package that Estonia has provided so far
Estonia is also sending a veiled message to Germany that NATO countries should be willing to part with mass supplies of equipment to help Ukraine

>22 brone: you must support bringing us to the brink of Nuclear War

Let's assume for a second that Ukraine is the most democratic in the nation in the world, and nobody in the country has any opinions that are offensive to anyone. Would you believe that we should let it fall to an authoritarian Russia?

>20 brone: will Taiwan get the support that this dictator gets in Ukraine?

Should they? China is possibly more dangerous than Russia. Taiwan has not been recognized on the international field as a separate nation, and they've even denied it, claiming instead to be the rightful ruler of all of China.

>22 brone: are to involved in ... banning gas grills

Again, is this bad? It would be more productive to argue about the matter, instead of treating it as simple mockery.

>23 John5918: You and your rightwing boogeyman, You know i'm not right wing as you always imply and I hand it to you your good at implication I bet others have complained of implications when they don't agree with you. As far as the Catholic Church goes and its politics go I'll not bring our disagreements over here to this site where these people who are mostly ignorant of our Faith if not downright hostile, its not their fault for never having professed certain truths of our Faith, they cannot reject or doubt them thereby they are material heretics but incur no guilt thereby. Therefore I take no insult at being called "right winger" but you know what a ghetto catholic kid is growing up in a project in a northeast city, cradle catholic, dis-abled Viet Vet, subway worker, hardly the breeding ground for Nazi sympathies, It did breed tough hard Traditional Catholics though....JMJ.... PS If you do want to discuss our honest differences invite me back to the "Traditiona Catholic" site you had me excommunicated from.

>30 brone: i'm not right wing

Ambrose Bierce defined a conservative as "A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." You've made amply clear which side of that debate you're on.

Moreover, you blamed Biden for egg prices caused by avian flu and for a plane stoppage caused by a system failing that probably hasn't been upgraded this century. That's clearly right-wing partisanship.

It's like Shaq O'Neal claiming he isn't tall. Be honest about yourself.

>30 brone:

I don't believe that in >23 John5918: I made any reference to whether or not you are "right wing". You introduced the label "the left" in >22 brone:, so I don't think it is unreasonable for me to refer to "the right" in trying to unpack that term in the context of war and peace.

I did point out an apparent inconsistency in your position which avidly supports the right of US home owners to arm themselves to forcibly resist an armed invasion of their homes, while apparently not supporting the right of Ukrainians to be armed to forcibly resist an armed invasion of their homes. Personally I'm not wholly convinced by either argument, but at least that is a more consistent position than yours.

As for the Catholic Church, I merely quoted a senior Vatican official to show that the Church is part of the "anti-war" movement that you are apparently in favour of, ie you and I are in agreement on that one, and any disagreements that we have on other Church issues are irrelevant to this conversation and I did not mention them.

Hope the mere promise of NATO tanks has desired effect...

Germany and US announce plans to send {15, 31, respectively} tanks to Ukraine in major sign of support for Kyiv
Kevin Liptak, Stephanie Halasz, Sophie Tanno and Sugam Pokhare | January 25, 2023

... Speaking from the White House, Biden said the tanks would “enhance Ukraine’s capacity to defend its territory and achieve its strategic objectives” in both the near and long terms.

And while he touted the ability of the tanks to help Ukraine “counter Russia’s evolving tactics and strategy on the battlefield,” Biden insisted they should not be viewed by Moscow as an “offensive threat.”

“This is not an offensive threat to Russia. There is no offensive threat to Russia if Russian troops return to Russia, where they belong,” he said...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/europe/german-tanks-ukraine-intl/index.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ellie Kaufman (International Assignment Editor ABC News) @EllieCKaufman | 6:22 PM · Jan 24, 2023:
Twelve countries have agreed to supply Ukraine with around 100 Leopard 2 tanks if the German government gives its consent, according to a senior Ukrainian official who spoke exclusively to ABC News via @TSoufiBurridge

e.g.,

The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent | 12:52 PM · Jan 25, 2023:
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also said in an interview published on Jan. 24 that the Netherlands is considering delivering 18 Leopards to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Swedish Defense Minister Paul Johnson said he does not rule out sending its Stridsvagn 122 tanks to Ukraine.

Power & Politics @PnPCBC | 6:07 PM · Jan 24, 2023
Former minister of national defence Peter MacKay says he thinks Canada could deliver 14 Leopard 2 tanks in a matter of weeks to Ukraine: "It all depends on how quickly the government and the Department of National Defence want to move."
2:40 ( https://twitter.com/PnPCBC/status/1618022704401055744 )

Aslak Berg @BergAslak | 10:03 AM · Jan 24, 2023
Norway is considering donating 8 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine - out of only 36 available that's significant
https://www.dn.no/politikk/stridsvogner/krigen-i-ukraina/opplysninger-til-dn-nor...

Opinion: Are we seeing the beginning of the end of Putinism?
Michael McFaul (frmr US ambassador to Russia) | January 24, 2023

...Putin will not recover from his disastrous war in Ukraine.

First, major Russian victories on the battlefield are unlikely...

Second, Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine triggered the most comprehensive sanctions we’ve seen imposed against a single country, ending two decades of Russian integration into the global economy...

Third, Putin’s societal support is soft and declining...

...Organic mass movements in support of Russian imperialism have not emerged over the past year, but antiwar protests have...Since Putin invaded Ukraine, almost 20,000 people have been detained and arrested for protesting the war...

...a paranoid Putin felt compelled to shut down many independent media channels — including TV Rain and Echo of Moscow radio — and ban Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Yet viewership of Russian state-controlled media outlets is declining while audiences increasingly consume independent media operating from exile.

...The most likely scenario is Putin will remain in control for the near future, albeit discredited and diminished...Even if the process of unwinding begins in earnest only once he is out of power, Putin’s colossal failure in Ukraine could well be the beginning of the end of Putinism....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/24/putin-ukraine-war-legitimacy-...

Press Releases
Treasury Sanctions Russian Proxy Wagner Group as a Transnational Criminal Organization
US Treasury Dept | January 26, 2023

...PMC Wagner (Wagner Group) is a Russian private military company led by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Putin crony and the target of multiple U.S. sanctions. Wagner Group has been involved in Kremlin-backed combat operations around the world in support of Putin’s war on Ukraine. As Russia’s military has struggled on the battlefield, Putin has resorted to relying on the Wagner Group to continue his war of choice. The Wagner Group has also meddled and destabilized countries in Africa, committing widespread human rights abuses and extorting natural resources from their people. Today, the Wagner Group is being redesignated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13581, as amended by E.O. 13863, for being a foreign person that constitutes a significant transnational criminal organization. Wagner personnel have engaged in an ongoing pattern of serious criminal activity, including mass executions, rape, child abductions, and physical abuse in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali.

...today’s actions include the designation of persons {and entities} that support Russian defense-related entities.

DISRUPTING THE WAGNER GROUP’S GLOBAL NETWORK
RUSSIA: Joint Stock Company Terra Tech (Terra Tech)
CHINA: Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute Co. LTD (Spacety China) ...
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (CAR):
Officer’s Union for International Security (OUIS)
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Ivanov (Ivanov) is a Russian national and the director of OUIS.
Sewa Security Services
Valery Nikolayevich Zakharov (Zakharov), Wagner Group employee, served simultaneously as National Security Advisor to CAR’s President.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (UAE):
Kratol Aviation (Kratol)

SANCTIONING RUSSIA’S DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, INCLUDING THOSE SUPPORTING PREVIOUSLY SANCTIONED RUSSIAN FEDERATION DEFENSE-RELATED ENTITIES
Treasury is also designating the following targets to further degrade Russia’s war machine.
JSC Aviacon Zitotrans (Aviacon Zitotrans)
AO Ural Civil Aviation Factory (UCAF)
Joint Stock Company National Aviation Service Company (NASC)
LLC Research & Production Enterprise Prima (Prima)
Federal State Unitary Enterprise Scientific and Production Enterprise Gamma (Gamma)
LLC TKKH-Invest (TKKH-Invest): financial vehicle through which (Alan Valeryevich Lushnikov (Lushnikov) owns 75% Kalashnikov Concern.
JSC Aerospace Defense Concern Almaz-Antey (Almaz-Antey) and CEO Yan Valentinovich Novikov

TARGETING PUTIN’S CRONIES AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS
Rustam Nurgaliyevich Minnikhanov (Minnikhanov), chairman of the board of U.S.-designated Tupolev Public Joint Stock Company, which produces strategic bombers for Russia’s armed forces and his wife his wife, Gulsina Akhatovna Minnikhanova.

HOLDING RUSSIA ACCOUNTABLE FOR ILLEGAL ATTEMPTED ANNEXATION
Aleksandr Dmitrievich Kharichev hired personnel to administer Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Boris Yakovlevich Rapoport prepared the sham annexation referendums staged in September 2022 in the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts of Ukraine.

SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS...

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1220
______________________________________________________________

Mike Eckel @Mike_Eckel | 10:50 AM · Jan 26, 2023:
Opponent of Quiet Desperation. Contains Multitudes. Former Nigeria-With-Snow Correspondent. Illegitimi Non Carborundum. @mike_eckel@newsie.social RFE/RL

Much of the designations (by @USTreasury and by @StateDept) involve Wagner companies that were/are doing business in Africa.

Text excerpts
https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1618637416637792256/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1618637416637792256/photo/2
______________________________________________________________

The Wagner Group’s Playbook in Africa: Mali
Raphael Parens* / Foreign Policy Research Institute | March 18, 2022

Wagner Group has pursued the same playbook Mali that it previously executed in Sudan and CAR, demonstrating a strategic outlook and approach designed specifically for African states. 2 This strategy is based on Wagner’s response to African governments’ requests for security assistance, particularly when African leaders feel that Western states have not done enough to help them via security cooperation, military sales, or through anti-terrorism operations.

Wagner’s strategy involves a three-tiered approach. First, it conducts disinformation and pro-government information warfare strategies, including fake polls and counter-demonstration techniques. Second, Wagner secures payment for its services through concessions in extractive industries, particularly precious metal mining operations. Wagner uses a variety of organizations and companies to oversee these extraction projects. Third, Wagner becomes involved with the country’s military, launching a relationship directly with Russia’s military, usually through training, advising, personal security, and anti-insurgency operations. Throughout the process, the Russian foreign policy establishment’s involvement is clear, particularly as the beneficiary of military-to-military relationships with a new potential client state...

https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/03/the-wagner-groups-playbook-in-africa-mali/

* international security researcher focused on Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He specializes in small armed groups and NATO modernization processes.

Danes ‘furious’ over plan to abolish public holiday to fund defence budget (Guardian)

The Danish government’s plan to abolish a public holiday to help fund the defence budget amid the war in Ukraine is putting Denmark’s cherished welfare model at risk, the country’s biggest trade union confederation has warned... observed since the 17th century...

Russia's troll army's misinformation campaigns, e.g., against Sweden joining NATO, sounds familiar:
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1618735177219604481/photo/1
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1618735177219604481/photo/2
(excerpt from Twitter and Tear Gas, weblink below)

zeynep tufekci zeynep | 5:18 PM · Jan 26, 2023:
Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. Columbia professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter insight http://theinsight.org
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1618735177219604481

Lucky me, I run a center at Columbia (where I actually work, lol) that studies, among other things, harassment mobs as a means to silence and/or misinform, and have a book on all this.

Legal free copy:
Twitter and Tear Gas: The power and fragility of networked protest
Zeynep Tufekci* |2017(?)
Yale University Press (360p)
https://www.twitterandteargas.org/downloads/twitter-and-tear-gas-by-zeynep-tufek...

Russia’s Bloody Sledgehammer (Politico)

Last November, a snuff film began to circulate online depicting the gruesome murder by sledgehammer of a former member of the Wagner Group, a private military outfit closely linked to the Russian state. If such execution videos bring to mind the grisly tactics of ISIS, the similarities don’t stop there: Like ISIS before it, Wagner engages in extreme violence and is now actively recruiting foreign fighters to join its armed campaigns in numerous countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, has left a trail of death and destruction in every place it has operated since 2014, including Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali... So when the Biden administration designated the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organization on Thursday, it might have seemed like a significant step. But it is not enough: Wagner is not just a criminal syndicate, but something more akin to a terrorist group. And Biden can do more...

This piece was written by staff of The Sentry, an investigative and policy organization that seeks to disable multinational predatory networks that benefit from violent conflict, repression, and kleptocracy.

I am very sorry for the Ukrainian people

>31 prosfilaes: Ambrose as a writer is ok as a revolutionist he was never seen again....JMJ....

>32 John5918: I don't have any guns altough I see a base ball bat in the corner that could morph into protection against an intruder after of course I invited him and his thug friend to tea and crumpets....JMJ....

Amazing even after it is disclosed of massive corruption and the UPS driver has to fire half his thug cabinet, the military industrial complex is sending them abram tanks who taught or is going to teach these gangsters how to point them in the direction of Russia, I can see now the infighting of the para military and nazi factions of the Ukrainian military on who gets these first class battle tanks at US taxpayers expense....JMJ....

>40 brone: Not really a response to what I wrote, and a pretty cavalier response to the death of a US Army veteran possibly gunned down by foreign forces while operating as a journalist.

Ukraine war: UN accuses Russia of breaking child protection rules over refugees (BBC)

The head of the United Nations' refugee agency has accused Moscow of violating "fundamental" child protection principles by giving Russian passports to unaccompanied child refugees. Filippo Grandi added that Russia had then been putting these children up for adoption by Russian families. He said the UNHCR would try to get access to those affected and try to find solutions in their best interest. However, Mr Grandi admitted he did not know how many children were affected. "In the situation of war, you cannot determine if children have families or guardianship. And therefore, until that is clarified, you cannot give them another nationality or having them adopted by another family," Mr Grandi said...

Vladimir Putin’s war is turning Russia into a failed state, with uncontrolled borders, private military formations, a fleeing population, moral decay and the possibility of civil conflict:

Russia risks becoming ungovernable and descending into chaos
There is growing opposition to President Putin at home
Arkady Ostrovsky Russia editor, The Economist | 18 Nov 2022
https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2022/11/18/russia-risks-becoming-ungov...

‘Ukraine is not our enemy’: Russians risk arrest to honour victims of war (Guardian)

The Kremlin has stamped out public dissent but makeshift memorials to Ukrainian dead are a focus for those opposed to the conflict...

Ukraine war: Funeral held for battleground body collector (BBC)

Denys Sosnenko - a 21-year-old former Ukrainian national kickboxing champion - volunteered last year to work as a body collector for a charitable organisation known as Black Tulip, who scour the frontlines for the abandoned corpses of soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian. "Denys - there are many angels on your shoulders today - the angels of those you brought back home," said Alexey Yukov, the local head of Black Tulip, addressing the crowd. "Because of your work so many soldiers, who died in places no one would ever have looked, have been reunited with their families." Sosnenko died last week when the van he was driving - a van very much like the one that carried his body into the town square - hit an anti-tank mine close to the frontlines... Many of the bodies they've collected over the past 11 months have been those of Russian soldiers which have then been exchanged, across the frontlines, for the bodies of missing Ukrainian servicemen...

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum | 6:10 AM · Jan 30, 2023:
Staff writer @TheAtlantic. @SAISHopkins, @SNFAgoraJHU. Author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Red Famine, Twilight of Democracy.

If Ukraine had not fought back:
Quote Tweet

ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki | 4:26 AM · Jan 30, 2023:
Independent military history author and researcher. Also at https://mastodon.social/@ChrisO_wiki
w/ discussion: https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990453826498562
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1619990400508510208.html

1/ If Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had succeeded in 2022, Ukraine's industries would have been seized and taken over by Russian oligarchs. A leaked document shows that oligarch Konstantin Malofeev intended to create a 'DMZ Concern' from Ukraine's largest plants.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990400508510208/photo/1

2/ Malofeev is a billionaire who is a close supporter of Vladimir Putin and an aggressive promotor of religious conservatism. He's an overt monarchist who reportedly sees Putin as a new Tsar, and has links with far-right parties and individuals in Europe and the US.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990403998162946/photo/1

3/ The EU, US and Canada have sanctioned Malofeev for trying to destabilise Ukraine and finance separatism. He's closely linked to pro-Russian separatists and was the former employer of Igor Girkin. He's been accused of funding radical nationalist movements across Europe.

4/ The DMZ Concern document, a presentation possibly dated 30 May 2022, was published recently by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel. It sets out a business plan for the "expansion of production assets based on the results of the Special Military Operation".

5/ The first slide shows what appears to be the intended territorial division of a defeated Ukraine, with the whole of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts – up to the Moldovan and Romanian borders – under Russian control.
Map https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990411820535808/photo/1

6/ This would have stripped Ukraine of its entire coastline, all its ports and much of its heavy industry, hydroelectric and mineral resources. It would have become an economically devastated and landlocked rump state, likely under the control of a pro-Russian puppet government.

7/ Slide 2 describes the 'DMZ concern' as a vastly expanded version of the existing Donetsk Metallurgical Plant (DMZ) company, which operates mines and other industrial enterprises in the 'Donetsk People's Republic'. It states a goal of achieving:
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990417591918599/photo/1

8/ "consolidation of existing financial, economic, technical and market opportunities of enterprises of key industries in the liberated territories of the DPR, LPR and Kherson, Zaporizhzhia regions, which form the economic basis of the south-east region of the former Ukraine."

9/ After listing DMZ's existing holdings on slide 4 (#3 is missing), slide 5 of the plan lists "enterprises located in the liberated territories that are possible {candidates} for integration" with DMZ. They include some of Europe's largest mining and mineral processing plants.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990423480725506/photo/1

10/ These include the Marganets Mining and Processing plant and the Nikopol Ferroalloy plant (both in Dnipropetrovsk oblast), the Zaporizhstal steel plant in Zaporizhzhia oblast and others. Slide 7 discusses a number of additional Ukrainian factories being considered for seizure.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990427704377344/photo/1

11/ Slides 5.1 and 5.2 indicate that this was not just a theoretical exercise – the plan was already well advanced. Legal work had been done and management agreements had been signed as part of a three-stage plan to be carried out through 2022–2027.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990430686523392/photo/1

12/ Interestingly, slide 5.3 lists among various business and growth goals for the 2023–2027 period an objective of achieving "Entry into the markets of friendly and sub-allied countries of Eurasian Economic Union, Middle East (Iran, Syria), South-East Asia, Turkey and Africa."

13/ The plan sets out a goal of aligning the DMZ Concern with a "strategic partner" (presumably Russian) and inclusion of its enterprises in "the state programmes of the Russian Federation." It also raises the possible takeover of Odesa port to serve DMZ.

14/ The end result, anticipated on slide 8, is the "reactivation of cooperation and activities of enterprises in the key sectors of the liberated territories of the DPR, LPR and south-eastern Ukraine…
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1619990440723517440/photo/1

15/ …in the form of a cumulative increase in annual financial indicators from RUR 70 billion $990 million (data for 2021) to RUR 220 billion $3.1 billion by 2024." This would achieve the "creation of a major enterprise in the interests of the Russian Federation."

16/ The slide indirectly acknowledges the impact of the DNR's large-scale mobilisation of fighting-age men, most of whom are now likely dead, by describing a goal of the "preservation of 8,616 jobs (excluding those mobilized)". It anticipates having over 16,000 workers by 2024.

17/ The plan doesn't specify where the extra workers would come from, but it's likely that – as has happened in Crimea – large numbers of people would be relocated from Russia to repopulate Ukraine's south-east, replacing the Ukrainians who have fled or been deported from there.

18/ Needless to say, the Ukrainian owners of the seized enterprises would not have received a kopek in compensation. With their collective value of billions of dollars, Malofeev was planning arguably the biggest heist in history – though it's now hopefully been thwarted. /end

19/ Sources:
🔹 https://t.me/vchkogpu/36113
🔹 https://t.me/vchkogpu/36132
---------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Jeannette Wibmer @JeannetteWibmer ( Selbständige Rechtsanwältin / Vorstandsmitglied RegioSpitex, Spitex am Kohlfirst, Zentrum Kohlfirst,@CSMSchweiz +@DieMitteZH Andelfingen / Jurorin @ventureoffice ):

Well, I am not surprised at all: it was my assumption right from the start of the total #RussiaUkraineWar in 2024 {margd: 2014?}, that the real thing 🇷🇺#RussiaIsaTerroristState wants to conquer in 🇺🇦#Ukraine are natural resources+Southern #Ukrainian ports to ship stolen Ukrainian goods abroad.
Map ( https://twitter.com/JeannetteWibmer/status/1620063627641524225/photo/1 )

NATO: RUSSIA PREPARING NEW ATTACK
“We see no signs that Pres. Putin or 🇷🇺 is preparing for peace; Rather the opposite.
They’re preparing > 200,000 soldiers, perhaps more. They are actively acquiring new weapons, more ammunition.”
- NATO Gen. Sec. Jens Stoltenberg

- Jason Jay Smart @officejjsmart | 9:29 AM · Jan 30, 2023
'10 lifetime ban from Russia for opposing Putin. Special Correspondent @KyivPost 🇺🇦 Джейсон Джей Смарт, PhD 🇺🇸

>14 margd: contd.

Hungary Ousts Hundreds From Top Army Ranks, Defense Chief Says
Szalay-Bobrovniczky confirms scale of overhaul for first time
He rejects opposition criticism that overhaul is political
Zoltan Simon | January 31, 2023

Hungary’s nationalist government ousted hundreds of senior military leaders in the most far-reaching overhaul of the central European nation’s army since it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-31/hungary-ousts-hundreds-from-t...

Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof | 8:30 AM · Jan 31, 2023:
Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. Author of Siege of Mecca. Endorsing nothing. Now also on Telegram: https://t.me/yarotrofimov

Interesting that, despite all its corrupt oligarchs, Ukraine is actually in the same league of wealth diffusion as Germany, France and Sweden. Russia on the other hand…

Quote Tweet
Ruben Mathisen @rubenbmathisen | 2:33 PM · Jan 15, 2023:
PhD Candidate @UiB University of Bergen , Norway. Comparative Politics | Research on economic and political inequality | Use Twitter for #dataviz 📊📈

What percentage of total national wealth does the Top 1% in Europe own?

Highest: 🇷🇺 Russia 48%
Lowest: 🇧🇪 Belgium 15%

Europe as whole: 🌍 26%

#dataviz
Map % total wealth owned by top 1%
https://twitter.com/rubenbmathisen/status/1614707243856936960/photo/1
---------------------------------------------------------

{Top 1% owns 32.1% total national wealth in US -- google.}

The US awarded 24 million Tax Dollars to Meto-biota Hunter Biden helped secure these funds for just one of many gain of function bio labs in the Ukraine. Russia asserts that Biden's son was financing biolabs in the Ukraine and is confirmed by recently revealed e-mais by junior. It is obvious that "the big guy"knew about it. Meto-biota was introduced when junior was sitting on the board of Burisma a gas company. This "science project" as it was explained is one of 46 reported to be in Ukraine and one of 400 reported all over the world including funding the gain of function leak in Wuhan. All this time dad was in charge of relations with the Ukraine. Last year Joe addressed democrats and said, the introduction of the Forward Presence battle tank was not on the table as it would escalate the conflict into wwlll. Yesterday it was announced that 31 Abrams will be sent. as soon as this is announced the cross dressing piano playing comedian says it is not enough we want long range missles and F16 fighters, who in the Ukraine knows how to operate these highly sophisticated machines, this abrupt about face by the biden regime is criminal....JMJ....

>52 brone: It's just not interesting. Maybe if you had listened and stepped up your game, but you continue to treat truth casually and people without respect.

One book that shaped my worldview is So You Want to Be a Wizard; it said the way to great the Lone One (aka Starsnuffer, etc.) is "Greetings and defiance, fairest and fallen." If you want to have serious discussion, that seems to be something to keep in mind.

Sudan: The Wagner-RSF ties that block the path to democratisation (The Africa Report)

On 26 January 2023, the US Department of Treasury sanctioned entities connected to the Russian Wagner group. The list includes entities in CAR and UAE. However, it ignored all subsidiaries of Wagner’s main interlocutor in the region: Sudan’s Rapid Support Force (RSF) and its leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo AKA Hemeti. RSF-Wagner joint mining activities reportedly helped build up gold reserves in the Russian Central Bank, which was essential for Moscow in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine. CNN reported at least 16 Russian gold-smuggling flights out of Sudan to Russia over one year. RSF-Wagner joint ‘Meroe Gold’ venture is publicly flying a Soviet Union flag in their mining site near Al-Ibaidiya area in Northern Sudan. Furthermore, Wagner arranged Hemeti’s official visit to Moscow on the eve of the Ukraine invasion, where he publicly supported the Russian invasion saying “the whole world must recognise that {Russia} has the right to defend its people” one day before the Russian military assault...

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 2, 2023 (Backgrounder)
Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, George Barros, Layne Philipson, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan | Feb 2, 2023

...Key Takeaways

A Ukrainian intelligence official stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to capture Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by March 2023, supporting ISW’s most likely course of action assessment (MLCOA) for a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Russian authorities blocked internet cell service in occupied Luhansk Oblast likely as part of an effort to intensify operational security to conceal new Russian force deployments in Luhansk Oblast.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov supported ISW’s MLCOA assessment and possibly suggested that Russian forces have mobilized substantially more personnel for an imminent offensive.

Russian officials are continuing efforts to frame the war in Ukraine as an existential threat to Russian audiences in order to set information conditions for protracted war and maintain domestic support for continued military operations. These efforts on the part of Russian officials are not succeeding in generating the likely desired effect of motivating Russians to want to participate in the war, however.

Russian and Ukrainian sources suggested that Russian forces may be preparing offensive actions in the Svatove area.

Russian forces intensified ground attacks in the Kreminna area on February 2.

Russian forces continued ground attacks northeast and southwest of Bakhmut.

Russian officials are likely trying to prepare the Russian military’s disciplinary apparatus for an influx of mobilized personnel.

Russian forces and occupation authorities continue efforts to identify and arrest Crimean Tatars on allegations that they associate with extremist movements banned in Russia.

Russian federal subjects and occupation authorities continued announcing patronage programs to support infrastructure projects in occupied territories.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessm...
http://isw.pub/UkrWar020223

Maps
Assessed control of Ukraine terrain, 2 Feb 2023 ( https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1621324691909525504/photo/1 )
Assessed control of Kharkiv area, 2 Feb 2023 ( https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1621324691909525504/photo/2 )
Assessed control Donetsk area, 2 Feb 2023 ( https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1621324691909525504/photo/3 )
Assessed control of Zapohizia area, 2 Feb 2023 ( https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1621324691909525504/photo/4 )

Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch | 9:18 PM · Feb 2, 2023:
Editor-in-Chief, @TheDispatch (http://TheDispatch.com), LAT columnist. AEI Fellow. Host Remnant Podcast. Majordomo for Zoë and Pippa.

“Senior U.S. officials said this week that they believe the number for Russia is closer to 200,000. That toll, in just 11 months, is eight times higher than American casualties in two decades of war in Afghanistan.”

Soaring Death Toll Gives Grim Insight Into Russian Tactics
Moscow is sending poorly trained recruits, including convicts, to the front lines in eastern Ukraine to pave the way for more seasoned fighters, U.S. and allied officials say.
Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Thomas Gibbons-Neff | Feb. 2, 2023

...While the officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, they say the slaughter from fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and the town of Soledar has ballooned what was already a heavy toll.

With Moscow desperate for a major battlefield victory and viewing Bakhmut as the key to seizing the entire eastern Donbas area, the Russian military has sent poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, has been hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.

Russia analysts say that the loss of life is unlikely to be a deterrent to Mr. Putin’s war aims...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/ukraine-russia-casualties.html

How to Get a Breakthrough in Ukraine
The Case Against Incrementalism
Michael McFaul | January 30, 2023

...Even though Putin must understand by now that Ukrainians are willing to fight for as long as it takes to liberate their country, he still believes that time is on his side. That is because Putin expects Western governments and societies to lose their will and interest to keep helping Ukraine...

...As long as Russian soldiers occupy their country, Ukrainians will fight. They will fight with or without new advanced weapons, with or without harsher sanctions, with or without money to help them run their country. Understanding this key insight about the Ukrainian mentality today leads to an obvious policy recommendation for the West: help Ukraine win as fast as possible.

The best way to commemorate February 24, the anniversary of Putin’s invasion, is to make clear that this is the West’s strategy. This requires a rollout—coordinated by dozens of countries on the same day—of more and better weapons, tougher sanctions, new economic assistance, greater public diplomacy efforts, and a credible commitment to postwar reconstruction. This is also the best way to avoid being in the same place when February 24, 2024, rolls around.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-get-breakthrough-ukraine

>55 margd: I think you mean 2023 on the dates on the last four lines :-)

>58 bnielsen: Yep, thanks, fixed--still doing that in FEBRUARY!!!!

The carefully crafted warrior saint in the Project forever War, is all of a sudden being isolated American TV generals perceive the former commedian to be an obstacle to a negotiated settlement, Mark Milley America's top paper tiger is now openly calling for a settlement. yet the warmongers continue to push escalation, also opening the door for big American Companies such as Black rock and JPMorgan forr lucrative "reconstruction" at American taxpayer's expense. The neoconservatives have had their way upto just a few weeks ago Abram M1 Battle tanks and billions sent down the rabbit hole of corruption. Now the former commedian is asking for F16s'. If the death cult of the neoconservatives get their way, they will have to use western pilots against Russian targets and the armchair boys lose their proxy war of containment inside Ukraine. Reality is that for a year we heard a regime change in Russia is needed, putin is sick and how a Russian defeat is just a matter of time. The fact of the matter is the Ukraine is not getting the Crimea, or the Donban, and other regions back the bus is waiting outside the palace the best Ukraine can hope for is land lock and partition....JMJ....

Novoselivske village, Svatove district, Luhansk region.
Scorched earth. In January a Russian sniper shot the last remaining resident of the village. No buildings left intact.
"Russian world"

📹: Luhansk regiohal administration
2:11 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1622602642705850369)

- Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | Anton Gerashchenko | 9:26 AM · Feb 6, 2023
Ukrainian patriot. Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Founder of the Institute of the Future. Official enemy of Russian propaganda

UN chief fears world is heading towards ‘wider war’ over Russia-Ukraine conflict (Guardian)

The head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned that further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict could mean the world is heading towards a “wider war”...

>62 John5918: Antonio must have been reading my posts for the last year....JMJ....

Interesting account of Bolshevik attempt to conquer Poland post WW1--echoes of Ukraine today:

Cavalry and code-breaking: The Polish-Soviet war (40:00)
The Forum
Little-known conflict that shaped Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the First World War.
BBC | Release date: 09 February 2023
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct38tp

No more internet for Ukrainian drones? For reconnaissance or attack? US (and UK) pay but internal policy precluse Ukrainian defensive drones after Russia complaints? Lordy, there must be (Russian) tapes (on Elon Musk)! Starlinks, our very own Huawei?

Jim Sciutto (CNN) @jimsciutto | 8:07 AM · Feb 9, 2023:

New: SpaceX Admits Blocking Ukrainian Troops from Using Satellite Technology. “There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that," the SpaceX president told reporters, referencing reports on Starlink and drone use. "There are things that we can do, and have done."
_____________________________________________________

Nika Melkozerova @NikaMelkozerova | 4:30 AM · Feb 9, 2023:
Ukrainian at Politico Europe. An award-winning journalist. Bylines: NBC News, Vice, New Voice of Ukraine, OCCRP, NYT, the Atlantic and others. views my own.
https://twitter.com/NikaMelkozerova/status/1623615254730100737

Yo! Wondering why SpaceX limited Starlink services for the Ukrainian military, a nation that is resisting Russian invasion? The answer is interesting. On Jan 3--Feb 3, Russia and China complained at the UN that we were using Starlink to attack poor Ru soldiers with drones.

At this event https://meetings.unoda.org/open-ended-working-group-reducing-space-threats-2022 Ru complained right ahead of the offensive it has prepared for Ukraine, that Ukrainians dared to protect themselves with drones.

At UN meeting, space cooperation picks up momentum, but Moscow and Beijing play spoilers
American initiatives are seeing more support, while rivals used the opportunity to raise a litany of complaints against Washington.
Theresa Hitchens | February 03, 2023
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/02/at-un-meeting-space-cooperation-picks-up-mom...

And now we discover that SpaceX limited Starlink for Ukrainian soldiers, right ahead of the Russian offensive. One question. Are you fucking kidding me, @elonmusk ?

from the Breaking defense story about UN meeting: Iran’s delegation echoed China’s concerns with Starlink, further charging that SpaceX is “illegally” providing internet services to the Iranian populace, violating the country’s sovereignty.👇

Russia and China also vehemently decried what they in effect called the proxy use of commercial satellite firms by US and Western governments to assist Ukraine’s military in the ongoing war.

The head of the Russian delegation, Konstantin Vorontosov, spent almost 20 minutes on Jan. 31 reciting a litany of outrage at the numerous Western satellite firms providing products and services to Ukraine, calling each of them out by name and type of assistance.

That assistance, he said, is evidence of “the growing involvement of the United States and the NATO countries in the armed conflict on the side of Ukraine, which constitutes a direct threat to Russia’s national security.”

He, too, specifically lashed out at SpaceX, saying the Starlink communications terminals in Ukraine are being used “not just for communications, but also for guiding drones and also amending the trajectory of artillery shells.”

So now we're appeasing interests of Iran, Russia and China. Iran's claims are like "stop providing our people internet to give them chance to tell how we are killing them. it violates our sovereignty. Ukraine is bad cause it dares to kill Ru soldiers who came to invade. WTF!!!!!

I already see that "Ukrainians use Starlinks for free" so shut up. No, not every Starlink is free in Ukraine. Companies buy subscription through private individuals, volunteers collect money to buy a monthly fee. Poland, Great Britain, US government pay for Starlinks too

Preparing for Peace in Ukraine
The World Must Embrace Zelenskyy’s Peace Proposal and Peace Summit
Michael McFaul | Feb 7, 2023

...The ten-point peace plan of President Zelenskyy is as follows:

1. Radiation and nuclear safety.
2. Food security.
3. Energy security.
4. The release of all prisoners and deportees.
5. Implementation of the United Nations Charter and restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the world order.
6. The withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities.
7. Justice – by establishing a Special Tribunal regarding the crime of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and an international mechanism to compensate for all the damages caused by the war.
8. The prevention of ecocide: the need for immediate protection of the environment.
9. The prevention of escalation by effective security assurances, for which Ukraine has put forward the Kyiv Security Compact proposal.
10. The confirmation of the end of the war by a jointly signed document...

https://michaelmcfaul.substack.com/p/preparing-for-peace-in-ukraine

Internet & drones, tanks & jets, long-range missiles, Russian bear is squealing. All would be fine if they just went home...

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 8:42 AM · Feb 10, 2023:
DPhil/PhD Intl Relations @UniofOxford. Assoc Fellow @RUSI_org. Bylines @ForeignPolicy, WaPo etc 3 forthcoming books

The Russian Foreign Ministry is sounding the alarm about Ukraine using long-range missiles to strike Russian territory

Oleksii Reznikov's reassurances to the contrary are being aggressively countered by the Kremlin.

Tristan Snell @TristanSnell | 7:02 PM · Feb 9, 2023:
Lawyer, founder http://MainStreet.law repping small/mid-size businesses, entrepreneurs, creators. Prosecuted Trump University @ NY AG. Commentator MSNBC CNN.

BREAKING: Putin plans to destroy nation of Moldova.

Ukraine intercepted the Russian plans and handed them over to their western neighbor Moldova.

Putin's plan for 2023 is clearly to expand his war of aggression, surrounding Ukraine on another front.

Moldova must be defended.

Michael McFaul (frmr US Ambassador to Russia) McFaul | 12:33 PM · Feb 9, 2023:
Putin still practicing social distancing. Doesn’t strike me as a guy on a suicidal mission.

Quote Tweet
Sidhant Sibal sidhant · Feb 8
Flash: Russian President Putin meets Indian NSA Ajit Doval along with
NSAs of Iran, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan in Moscow

Photo
https://twitter.com/sidhant/status/1623386348441989120/photo/1

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 8:26 AM · Feb 11, 2023
Russia is draining water from Kakhovka reservoir on temporarily occupied territories

This puts in danger the cooling system at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, irrigation for nearly half-a-million acres of farmland and drinking water for many people

https://npr.org/2023/02/10/1155761686/russia-is-draining-a-massive-ukrainian-res...
Aerial photo ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1624399352562176002/photo/1 )

Visegrád 24 @visegrad24 | 2:46 PM · Aug 16, 2022
Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu has named some of Russia’s closest military allies:

- Burundi
- Guinea
- Cameroon
- Mali
- Sudan
- Uganda
- Chad
- Ethiopia
- South Africa.

0:22 ( https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1559612660727029765 )
From Anton Gerashchenko
__________________________________________________

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 8:43 AM · Feb 10, 2023:
Sergei Lavrov called for far-reaching assistance to West African countries facing jihadism
Beyond Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, Lavrov singled out Chad and nations on the Gulf of Guinea

Chad has a tense relationship with Russia over CAR, Wagner's role in Mali and training of FACT rebels in Libya

But Russia's outreaches to Mauritania and Wagner's engagement with Sierra Leone suggests that Lavrov's rhetoric has some policy grounding
---------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Roper @ChrisRoper | 5:06 AM · Feb 9, 2023:
“Coup belt”. That’s a scary term.
"Samuel Ramani, a fellow at think-tank Rusi, says Moscow has focused on a strip of countries running from Mali to Sudan. “They think they can build a ‘coup belt’ to give them influence and crowd out the west,” he says.”
---------------------------------------------------------------

Federica Urzo @FedericaUrzo | 7:26 AM · Feb 9, 2023:
“The #Kremlin views #Africa as an increasingly important power-projection theatre” said Samuel Ramani ⁦@UniofOxford
⁩ “They work with existing autocrats and create an authoritarian stability model which they equate with anti-neocolonialism” FT
⁩
How Russia’s propaganda machine is reshaping the African narrative
Moscow taps into continent’s frustrations and historic solidarity with Soviet Union to spread its version of events
Andres Schipani in Bangui, David Pilling in Johannesburg and Aanu Adeoye in Lagos February 9 2023
https://www.ft.com/content/d427c855-c665-4732-9dd1-3ae314464d12

Sudan: All roads lead to Khartoum as Russia, Israel and West vie in game of thrones (Middle East Eye)

Israeli and Russian delegations have been to Sudan in the last week, with US and EU envoys also present... Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in the Sudanese capital as part of a tour that includes Iraq, Mali and Mauritania... Lavrov said that the Russian mercenary Wagner Group was fighting terrorism in Central African Republic, that Russian military bases would be established on Sudan's Red Sea coast and that western powers were putting pressure on African governments to denounce Russia... The timing of the visits seems too good to be coincidental. “It does look like a bit of a power play,” Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential, told Middle East Eye...

United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately
February 12, 2023

MOSCOW (Reuters)..."U.S. citizens residing or travelling in Russia should depart immediately," the U.S. embassy in Moscow said. "Exercise increased caution due to the risk of wrongful detentions...Do not travel to Russia...Russian security services have arrested U.S. citizens on spurious charges, singled out U.S. citizens in Russia for detention and harassment, denied them fair and transparent treatment, and convicted them in secret trials or without presenting credible evidence," the embassy said..."Russian authorities arbitrarily enforce local laws against U.S. citizen religious workers and have opened questionable criminal investigations against U.S. citizens engaged in religious activity."...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/united-states-tells-citizens-depart-063057247.html

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/elon-musk-defends-restricting-ukraine-military...

Elon Musk Defends Restricting Ukraine Military Internet Service: ‘We Will Not Enable Escalation of Conflict That May Lead to WW3’

***
A billionaire subhuman announcing to the world that he can pull the service at any moment gives Putin the encouragement he needs to continue the fight far into the future.

Subhuman where have we heard that term before?....JMJ....

Cy Hirsch a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist reports The US blew up the Nordstum pipe line. Joe Biden giving the go ahead against the advice of the CIA....AMDG....

>76 brone:

As usual you omitted to link to a source. I can't find any reference to Cy Hirsch, but there is a Seymour "Sy" Hersh, now aged 85, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the My Lai massacre. Some of his later reporting is controversial and he has been criticised for relying on a single unverified anonymous source, as he does in his report on the Nord Stream sabotage (see Wikipedia). He has been "widely panned by journalists for promoting conspiratorial claims that hinge on dubious anonymous sources or speculation... His work, increasingly, has become popular with Russian state-controlled media... This story, when deconstructed, is merely a pile of purported second-hand information allegedly collected by someone connected in some unknown way to deliberations of a highly secret, multi-agency task force. Such a story falls prey to the same criticisms of other more recent work published by Hersh, which has relied on similarly questionable anonymous sources. If the U.S. did conspire to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline, Hersh's reporting has not proved that case..." (Snopes).

>76 brone: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/54372/did-the-cia-blow-up-the-nords...

Basically, he gets any number of checkable details wrong, so there's not really any reason to believe him.

Joe Biden another 80-year-old is quoted as saying in a recorded video on Feb 7th 3 weeks before the Russian Ukranian forever war, with a wobbling German Chancellor standing beside him that " if Russia invades...there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2". "we will bring it to an end". his undersecretary of State three weeks earlier in an unguarded comment said, "I want to be very clear to you today", "if Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward" By the way Hersh has been out with the leftist media since his hit piece on St. Hillary. before that he was their darling....JMJ....

>79 brone: By the way Hersh has been out with the leftist media since his hit piece on St. Hillary. before that he was their darling

I would have thought that someone who wrote a hit piece on St. Hilary of Poitiers would have you fuming.

>79 brone:

It's fascinating how you seem to believe that everything is somehow connected to "leftist". For journalists to verify their information with more than one credible source is not "leftist", it is merely professional, and helps to combat the spread of conspiracy theories and fake news. That is why Hersh couldn't get his story into mainstream media. Incidentally, when you look at who owns most of the big mainstream media, it is ludicrous to describe it as "leftist".

Edited to add: But I would be interested to read his piece on St Hilary, as that was an interesting period in church history, but as usual you omit to cite a link.

Brone has made the claim that he is not right wing and yet apparently he's separated all media into right/left and scornfully comments on what he doesn't like as leftist. What gives with that? Not every story or journalist needs to be classified one way or another even if you don't like how the stories they write on fit your own take on things. For instance I'm sure second amendment gun nuts are not going to like to hear last night's campus shootings at Michigan State U. Another thing to put them on the defensive. Should no one write about it? Of course they should.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 8:23 AM · Feb 15, 2023:

At least 6,000 Ukrainian children are kept in a network of Russian re-education facilities. They are taught pro-Russian curriculum and in some cases taken through military training - Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab.
https://hub.conflictobservatory.org/portal/apps/sites/#/home/pages/children-camp...
---------------------------------------------------

Russia’s Systematic Program for the Re-education and Adoption of Ukraine's Children
(Yale) Conflict Observatory | 14 February 2023

Key Findings

More than 6,000 children in Russia’s custody..
At least 43 facilities in network...
Network of children’s facilities stretches from Russia-occupied Crimea to Russia’s eastern coast...
Primary purpose of the camps appears to be political re-education...
Children from two of the camps have been placed with foster families in Russia...
Consent is collected under duress and routinely violated...
Children’s returns from at least four camps have been suspended...
All levels of Russia’s government are involved...

...Pharma giant Viatris, which makes the popular erection drug, said it was suspending supplies due to the war in Ukraine.

However, the Russian government vowed to ensure its men will still get access to drugs with the same ‘active’ ingredient.

Even before the Viagra ban, Russian companies making male impotence drugs with sildenafil have increased production by 11 per cent. Sales have also risen by 15%...

15 Feb 2023
https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/15/hard-times-for-putin-after-viagra-supply-to-russi...

The American people's support for the funding of the forever wars of the current regime in Washington, the Pentagon, Media is rapidly declining, pro Ukraine rhetoric has been toned down and is hardly even mentioned by these warmongers. Yet these people are still dumping endless taxpayers' money into the corrupt regime of Volodymyr Zelenski, to "advance freedom and democracy" and weaken by proxy Russia risking WWlll....JMJ....

>85 brone: You seem to care a lot about American public opinion when you can find a dodgy survey that suggests it might agree with your preconceptions, but it seems like it's not very convincing to you when it comes to solid evidence that it's completely against you. For example, the fact that Republicans can't win popular votes in this country doesn't seem to affect your stanning for the treason party, nor does the American people's absolute rejection of constraints on women's control of their own bodies seem to affect your conviction that women should be slaves of the state. Can you explain this incoherence in your views, or is it just one of those mysteries that man was not meant to comprehend?

Then too, you seem to have a real problem with "forever wars", but that doesn't seem to affect your deep affection for the party that has always sought to gin up its popularity by starting these wars. Again, coherent doesn't seem to be a specialty of yours. Does this ever bother you?

Russia must be defeated but not 'crushed', Macron says (BBC)

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he does not want to see Russia crushed by a defeat in Ukraine... "I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine, and I want Ukraine to be able to defend its position," he said. But he hit out against those who he said wanted to extend the war to Russia itself in a bid to "crush" the nation... "I do not think, as some people do, that we must aim for a total defeat of Russia, attacking Russia on its own soil," Mr Macron told the paper Le Journal du Dimanche. "Those observers want to, above all else, crush Russia. That has never been the position of France and it will never be our position"... Mr Macron insisted that now was not the time for dialogue with Moscow. But he did not shy away from mentioning peace talks as a final goal. The president suggested that Ukrainian military efforts, supported by allies, were the only way to "bring Russia back to the table and build a lasting peace". He also dismissed the prospect of regime change in Russia, describing similar efforts around the world as a "total failure"...

I like that Zelinsky didn’t dress up for the visit. He’s working.

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 8:52 AM · Feb 20, 2023:

BREAKING: The US confirms that it notified Russia ahead of Joe Biden's visit to Kyiv

White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan claims that this was for deconfliction purposes

Russian lawmakers and media outlets had previously made veiled threats against Biden if he visited Kyiv, so this underscores the endurance of a narrow US-Russia backchannel
_______________________________________________

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:23 AM · Feb 20, 2023:
Ukrainian patriot. Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Founder of the Institute of the Future. Official enemy of Russian propaganda

President Biden in Kyiv. It is an act of incredible bravery.
It is strong symbol of support and friendship.
It is a direct and very clear signal for Putin.
Ukraine will win!
Sincere admiration and gratitude from all Ukrainians!
Photo ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1627614797482061825/photo/1 )

This visit is the most important one in the whole history of Ukraine-US relations.
Photo ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1627628752011243523/photo/1 )
_________________________________________________

Rick Wilson (The Lincoln Project) @TheRickWilson | 7:11 AM · Feb 20, 2023:

This is an alpha move that lets the world see an American President standing firm, a clear ally of the brave Ukranian people in a war for their survival against a tyrannical despot.

This, MAGA, is the right side of history. You? Not so much.

https://nytimes.com/2023/02/20/us/politics/biden-ukraine-visit.html

Photo ( https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1627642006817087490/photo/1 )

Ukraine war: How the conflict is creating family rifts in Russia (BBC)

In a new film for BBC Storyville, father and daughter debate the war - a conversation playing out within many families in Russia today. It is hard to get an accurate picture of exactly how people in the country feel about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, given legislation which outlaws any comments deemed to discredit the military, or which refer to the military action as a war rather than a "special military operation". But a survey published in November 2022 by an independent Russian research group suggests it is dividing generations - 75% of respondents aged 40 and over said they supported the war, compared with 62% of those aged 18-24. Russian filmmaker Anastasia Popova says this chimed with her own perception as she travelled round the country to shoot the documentary. "I observed lots of different ruptures between families. Their children were mostly against the war, and their parents - the generation brought up during the Soviet Union, who watched {state-run} TV day and night - supported the war. I have the same rupture within my family," she adds, saying her father supports the military action. Relying on state TV for news means absorbing the official narrative of the Russian government day after day. Uliana, and others of her age group, are more likely to get their news from other outlets, such as YouTube and social media...

Revealed: Leaked document shows how Russia plans to take over Belarus
Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa | February 20, 2023

...According to the document (written for Putin’s Presidential Administration), issued in fall 2021, the end goal is the formation of a so-called Union State of Russia and Belarus by no later than 2030. Everything involved in the merger of the two countries has been considered, including the “harmonization” of Belarusian laws with those of the Russian Federation; a “coordinated foreign and defense policy” and “trade and economic cooperation … on the basis of the priority” of Russian interests; and “ensuring the predominant influence of the Russian Federation in the socio-political, trade-economic, scientific-educational and cultural-information spheres.”...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-belarus-strategy-document-230035184.html

Worth watching:

Putin and the Presidents: Timothy Snyder (interview) | (PBS) FRONTLINE
February 19, 2023 (57:36)

Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.

The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Michael Wiser for FRONTLINE on Sept. 26, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview is being published as part of FRONTLINE’s Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind our documentaries. Explore the transcript of this interview, and others, on the FRONTLINE website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview-collection/putin-and-the-presidents... ...

https://www.wpbstv.org/putin-and-the-presidents-timothy-snyder-interview-frontli...

STATEMENT ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE (Pax Christi International)

“Let us look at all those civilians whose killing was considered ‘collateral damage.’ Let us ask the victims themselves. Let us think of the refugees and displaced… the mothers who lost their children, and the boys and girls maimed or deprived of their childhood. Let us hear the true stories…look at reality through their eyes…In this way, we will be able to grasp the abyss of evil at the heart of war. Nor will it trouble us to be deemed naive for choosing peace.” – Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, 2020, par. 261.

One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pax Christi International expresses our deep concern for countless victims of a war that has led to death, injury, displacement, trauma, and ecological harm. This war has generated almost 6 million internally displaced persons and 8 million refugees; killed more than 7,200 civilians including over 400 children and hundreds of thousands of soldiers; and caused generational trauma.

The war of aggression against Ukraine has clearly demonstrated that no international authority exists with sufficient wisdom to effectively address the root causes or with adequate means to have prevented Russia’s brutal invasion. International law provides every sovereign nation with the right to self-defense. In a world of highly destructive weapons, armed self-defense may trigger an escalation to extremes that can even lead to a nuclear war.

For this reason, Pax Christi International urgently calls on the international community to
immediately facilitate diplomatic initiatives to restore the international order and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We plead with Russia and Ukraine to enter negotiations directly, on neutral ground, and with a mutually agreeable mediator.

Insufficient investment in developing and scaling up proven effective nonviolent strategies for defense, including civilian based defense, has created the impression that self-defense is always armed. Many Ukrainians are demonstrating clearly and with great courage, however, that nonviolent defense can be very effective and could be much more readily available with significant investment in resources, training, and research.

Pax Christi International calls on the international community to invest in developing
nonviolent strategies for defense and just peace.

As a human rights and peace movement, Pax Christi International advocates for the right of conscientious objection for soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. We call for
sufficient independence for media, political opposition parties, and civil society in Russia; we highly value the many forms of nonviolent resistance to the war by Russian society; and we support all Russians who protest against the war, risking arrest and imprisonment.

This war also shows the immorality of the possession of nuclear weapons and the urgent need for nuclear abolition. President Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine reminded the world that a single nuclear bomb detonated could create a humanitarian disaster of unparalleled proportions. A full-scale nuclear war would spell the end of human civilization as we know it.

Pax Christi International calls on all States to delegitimize these weapons and strengthen the legal norm against their use by signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Pax Christi International also urges a Human Security approach in Europe and in the world.
Russia should be included, as well as Belarus and Ukraine, in a broader security concept based on trust building and collective security, oriented by a just peace framework. A Human Security approach also recognizes with UN SCR1325 that peace and security efforts will be more sustainable if women take part in the prevention of violence, the delivery of relief, trauma healing, and recovery efforts for lasting peace.

The need for people-to-people peace processes that involve dialogue between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, including women and youth, are important to the prevention and transformation of violent conflict. Pax Christi International supports initiatives that allow contact, cooperation, and healing.

Pax Christi International is a movement for reconciliation and active nonviolence, founded at the end of the Second World War with a deep belief in the possibility of just peace. We are painfully aware that war is not limited to Ukraine; that violence is endemic in many corners of the world; that a new logic of peace and nonviolence is urgently needed.

We call Pax Christi members and all people of good will to pray and to mobilize for peace,
urging States to address the relationship between human security, care for creation, human dignity, and sustainable peace and to advocate urgently for dialogue.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is inflicting untold suffering on the Ukrainian people, with profound global implications. The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing. I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open.” UN Secretary General Antonio Gutérrez (6 February 2023)

"If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence here and now, in the present.” Mairead Maguire | Irish Peace Activist and Nobel Peace Laureate

Putin’s state-of-the-nation speech: What exactly did he say? (Al Jazeera)

President Putin blames the West and Ukraine for the war he ordered a year ago... ‘Russia is suspending its participation’ in the New START treaty... ‘A watershed moment for our country’... Western nations trying to ‘distract people’s attention’... ‘Responsibility is on West and Ukrainian elite’... ‘We don’t fight the Ukrainian people’... Donbas subjected to ‘undisguised hatred’... ‘Reviving enterprises and jobs’ in occupied Ukrainian lands... ‘I understand how unbearably hard it is’ for families of killed soldiers... ‘Child abuse all the way up to pedophilia are advertised as the norm’ in the West...

Amidst Chaos of War, A New Report Exposes the Stealth Take-over of Ukrainian Agricultural Land (Oakland Institute)

- One year into the war, a new report reveals how oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.
- Aid provided to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment program requiring the creation of a land market through a law that leads to greater concentration of land in the hands of powerful interests.
- Ukraine’s crippling debt is being leveraged by financial institutions to drive post-war reconstruction towards further privatization and liberalization in several sectors, including agriculture.
- Ukrainian civil society, academics, and farmers are demanding the suspension of the land law and of all land transactions; and calling for an agricultural model no longer dominated by oligarchy and corruption...

War in Ukraine defining new world order, says thinktank (Guardian)

Poll reveals west more united but gulf growing with countries such as India that do not subscribe to post-cold war view...

The toxic legacy of the Ukraine war (BBC)

Russia's invasion is leaving a toxic trace on Ukrainian soil, contaminating crops and posing a serious long-term risk to human health...

UN calls for immediate Russian withdrawal from Ukraine (Guardian)

The UN has overwhelmingly voted to call for Russia to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from Ukraine, marking one year since Moscow’s invasion by calling for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace”. Applause broke out when the result was announced. The resolution on Thursday night saw 141 countries in favour with seven against and 32 abstentions, including China...

China calls for Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, proposes path to peace (Al Jazeera)

China has called for a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia and a gradual de-escalation of the situation that will pave the way for peace talks, as part of a 12-point proposal to end the conflict... urges an end to Western sanctions against Russia, the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and steps to ensure the export of grain after disruptions caused global food prices to spike last year. “Conflict and war benefit no one,” the ministry said in a statement. “All parties must stay rational and exercise restraint, avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions, and prevent the crisis from deteriorating further or even spiralling out of control,” it said... The proposal mainly elaborates on long-held Chinese positions, including that all countries’ “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity be effectively guaranteed”. The plan also called for an end to the “Cold War mentality”, which is Beijing’s standard term for what it regards as global dominance by the United States and its interference in other countries’ affairs... Before the Chinese peace proposal was released, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it an important first step...

Ukrainian soldiers master British tanks in Dorset (Star)

I post this not because it has any earth-shattering importance but as a counterpoise to one of our posters who made condescending and disparaging comments about the ability of Ukrainian soldiers to learn to operate "sophisticated" western kit.

Now, Kyiv's soldiers are in the UK learning how to operate them. Some, like Sasha, are battle hardened. He's been fighting in eastern Ukraine. But he is swapping his old Russian T-80 tank for the British Army's Challenger 2... learning to drive a 60-tonne tank - much heavier and more sophisticated than anything they've been used to... Ukrainian soldiers are already wielding wrenches and tools - showing they're learning fast to keep them maintained. One of their British trainers, Lance Corporal Zach Reid of the King's Royal Hussars says the Ukrainians have shown they're "very bright, with technical skills which makes it easy to instruct"...

And we learn one top secret fact about British tanks - they contain tea-making facilities!

I'm surprised that tanks still have utility these days: I suspected the Pentagon was stockpiling them in desert parking lots. Guess not.

John Sipher @john_sipher | 9:49 AM · Feb 24, 2023:
Former CIA Clandestine Service. Now @SpycraftEnt , @AtlanticCouncil , #NAFO fella

“The key to understanding right-wingers’ growing Ukraine rage is that Russia’s failures don’t just show that a leader they idolized has feet of clay. They also show that their whole tough-guy view about the nature of power is wrong.”

Many people on the right equate being powerful with being a swaggering tough guy.

Opinion | Putin and the Right’s Tough-Guy Problem
What if wokeness doesn’t make you weak and swaggering does?
Paul Krugman | 23 Feb 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/opinion/putin-ukraine-toughness.html

For years, Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. What made him finally snap in 2022? (Guardian)

This war is Russia’s fault. But European nations rebuffing Russia during the noughties did not help...

Why Russia's invasion of Ukraine still divides Africa (BBC)

A year since Russia invaded Ukraine, opinion about the war amongst African countries appears not to have shifted much. Thirty countries - just two more than last year - voted in favour of a UN general assembly resolution that condemned Russia, supported Ukraine's territorial integrity, and called for peace. Madagascar and South Sudan - who both abstained on a similar resolution last year - voted with much of the rest of the world this time. Morocco also missed the 2022 vote but cast its ballot in favour of the resolution on Thursday. African nations accounted for nearly half of all abstentions... Officially these countries say their position is not aligned with either Russia or Western-backed Ukraine...

Some African countries had a decades-long relationship with the Soviet Union. After it collapsed in 1991, these ties continued with Russia, with many African independence leaders saying supplies of weapons and military training were key in helping the fight against white-minority rule and colonialism. In South Africa, during the struggle against apartheid, the US government designated the Africa National Congress - today's ruling party - a terrorist group... "Of course, unfortunately, more than unfortunately, the United States was much too sympathetic to the apartheid regime, so that history also doesn't get erased, you know, overnight"... But the colonial past doesn't entirely explain the current relationship, at least for some countries. Nations like Eritrea and lately Mali - both largely isolated from the global community - have found an ally in Russia... It is not possible to generalise the reaction and sentiment of a continent of more than 50 countries...

The latest Ukraine postage stamps showing a Banksy graffiti
artwork of a child throwing Putin are wonderful. The more of these stamps sold worldwide, the sooner Russia's war will end.

Given China's recent peace proposals for Ukraine, it might be worth looking at their Global Security Initiative Concept Paper, published last week.

>102 PinkSeeSaw: Nice! Here’s the stamp and the Guardian article:



https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/feb/25/ukraine-issues-banksy-mural...

The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln | 8:59 AM · Apr 4, 2022:
Some of the hardest things to watch are the most important things to see. Don't look away.
Genocide

2:08 ( https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1510965291827748871 )

Alternative media sources have presented information indicating the Ukraine war has been going on long before the 'special operation' it is called by the Russians. Leftist western Governments and their propaganda puppets the gov mouthpieces give the impression this war started last year when in fact the General Secretary of NATO Gen. Jens Stoltenberg openly admitted that Nato has been at war with Russia since 2014. The massive propaganda machine of the west has smothered the realistic danger that this war could spiral out of control. Just like the truth about the vaccines has slowly seeped out, an increasing number of Americans are warning what we appear to be heading into....AMDG.....

>106 brone: The Ukrainians have certainly held that the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a military incursion which they have never accepted. I believe that some Ukrainians consider the current conflict to be a new hot phase in a war that Russia has been waging against them since that invasion and seizure of territory.
How you get from that to "NATO has been at war with Russia since 2014" is beyond me, though. After all Ukraine is not part of NATO, and there has been no military action between NATO states and Russia in that time that I'm aware of. Can you expound on that?

>106 brone: Leftist western Governments

Just wondering who these "Leftist western Governments" are. The USA was far right under a Republican administration and centre-right under Democrats. UK, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Israel and Sweden have right of centre governments, and Australia and Norway have only ousted them relatively recently. The far right has polled well in Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Finland, France and Germany.

Perhaps "leftist" Denmark, Canada and New Zealand have been at war with Russia since 2014, but I must have missed that one.

But it seems that when you use the term "leftist" it is merely a pejorative against anybody you disagree with, and thus is not a very meaningful political term.

>106 brone: Alternative media sources have presented information indicating the Ukraine war has been going on long before the 'special operation' it is called by the Russians.

Ooh, and Lincoln was a Republican and the Earth is not actually a sphere. Yes, all of us have been watching and talking about the Ukraine-Russian conflict since 2014. That for one second you'd think that reasonably educated people wouldn't know that bewilders me.

Ukraine war: Viral conspiracy theories falsely claim the war is fake (BBC)

A number of US right-wing accounts with large followings posted a series of baseless claims that suggested the entire Ukraine war might be a hoax perpetrated by Western media and governments...

Seth G. Jones @SethGJones | 10:16 PM · Feb 27, 2023:
Vice Pres @CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), Dir of Intl Security Program, author “Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, & Rise of Irregular Warfare” (Norton), UChicago PhD

More Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine than in all Russian wars COMBINED since World War II, including Chechnya & Afghanistan. The avg rate of Russian soldiers killed per month is at least 25x more than Chechnya & 35x than Afghanistan. See our report: https://csis.org/analysis/ukrainian-innovation-war-attrition

Table ( https://twitter.com/SethGJones/status/1630406492389031939/photo/1 )

>111 margd: With the amount of money, equipment, and advisors we've sent them its a wonder they are not in Moscow by now, 113billion in two years, Abram tanks, sophisticated weapons systems, you think these guys open these crates and read the instructions, Americans are there on the ground using them to kill Russians we are at war again and if the American people dont wake up off our kids go again while the tyrants that start these wars plan the next one. They wouldn't even send a Fema team to Ohio to help with the greatest environmental disaster in the US in generations, where was Biden in the Ukraine pledging 5 billion more....JMJ....

>112 brone: Abram tanks, sophisticated weapons systems, you think these guys open these crates and read the instructions, Americans are there on the ground using them to kill Russians

From what I can see online the Abrams tanks are not yet in Ukraine, and the Wall Street Journal suggests that they may never reach Ukraine. If you have a credible source that US soldiers are "killing Russians" using Abrams tanks perhaps you would share it with us?

They will not simply "open these crates and read the instructions". If the process is anything like the UK supplying Challenger 2 tanks, combat-hardened Ukrainian tank crews who probably have far more experience of tank warfare than their British or US instructors will be trained in the technicalities of the new kit.

its a wonder they are not in Moscow by now

No, it's not a wonder, as that was never their intention. Ukrainians have no territorial ambitions outside their own country. They are simply defending themselves against the illegal invasion by Russia and seeking to push the invaders back across the border. They are not trying to escalate the war by incursions into Russian territory.

>112 brone: They wouldn't even send a Fema team to Ohio to help with the greatest environmental disaster in the US in generations,

First, it wasn't a FEMA qualifying accident. Government of laws, you know, not arbitrary power. https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/feb/22/ohio-train-derailment-how-fema-an...

The greatest environmental disaster in the US in generations? Have we forgotten about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? The numbers quoted about the Ohio incident are in the millions of dollars of damages, whereas the BP oil spill was more in terms of billions of dollars.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:58 AM · Mar 3, 2023:
Vuhledar - satellite images from 2 September and 26 January. { s Ukrainian town where Russians lost 130 tanks }

Planet Labs
satellite aerial photos ( )
--------------------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:26 AM · Mar 3, 2023:
"Change the video. It hurts me, to be honest" - Russian propagandist Mardan has a traumatic experience watching the video of an unknown drone flying over Russian military planes in Machulishchy airfield. {Minsk, Belarus. By partisans, Ukraine?}

0:42 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1631601839467552770 )

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 9:56 AM · Mar 2, 2023
Moldova is removing the Moldovan language from official legislation and replacing it with the Romanian language

A rejection of the Soviet past that will likely fuel more Russian fear mongering about Transnistria

Moldova moves to declare Romanian as official language
Andrei Chirileasa | 28 February 2023
https://www.romania-insider.com/moldova-parliament-romanian-official-language-20...
-------------------------------------------

Dumitru Cantea @canteadumitru
There is a decision of the Constitutional Court of Moldova from 2013 that obliges the legislature to change the phrase "Moldovan language" to "Romanian language" as it is in the Declaration of Independence. Finaly done.

Carolus Noceda Diaz @ivo_butterfly
Like there is German language but have Austrian variant and Switzerland variant. So language in Moldova should be: Romanian (Moldova) or Moldovan Romanian

ja_62 @ja_62x
Moldovan language was always basically just a name used for Romanian in Moldova, because Russian imperialists attempted to separate Moldovan identity from the Romanian really hard.
They just stopped appeasing feelings of their former colonial masters.

ChrisO_wiki | 2 March 2023

1/ Russia appears to have recently removed a span of the Kerch railway bridge to Crimea, presumably to carry out repairs following the (likely Ukrainian) bomb attack on the bridge last October. Here's why this is significant...

10/ Crucially, the track rests on top of an EPS (expanded polystyrene) layer, covered by a geoblanket, which can be seen being installed in the pictures below. This will have saved a lot of weight but is likely to be very vulnerable to heat.

11/ The video in tweet 5 above shows two distinct types of damage: the steel walkway and the rail tracks are severely deformed. Damage to the underlying deck, the girder main structure and pier bearings is not visible.

12/ There's no doubt that the span was exposed to very high temperatures. The deformation of the tracks indicates temperatures of 1200-1400°C. As can be seen from this frame of the video, the track directly underneath the burned wagons was melted.

13/ The heat will almost certainly have damaged the underlying geoblanket and EPS layer. It's also likely that the rubber bearings between the girders and the pier cap were affected. They protect the piers from vibration and absorb the girder's movement under heavy loads.

...20/ It's been reported that Russia is aiming to complete the repair job by July 2023, although the Russians are clearly working hard to expedite repairs before then. /end

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1631218284870656000.html

Looks like Russia is expecting Ukrainians to target Crimea?

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 10:45 AM · Mar 3, 2023
It is reportedly an embankment in Crimea, look like fortification lines on the seashore.
Are they preparing for beach season?

📹: serfktt/TikTok
0:49 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1631682091149844480 )

>114 prosfilaes: An American town suffers a major environmental disaster, but it doesn't qualify for help, yet in the same week we can pledge 5billion more to the proxy war in Europe. What group of taxpayers voted for that....JMJ....

>119 brone:

This appears to be the far-right narrative brone is promoting.

Rightwing Republicans rail against US aid for Ukraine: ‘We’ve done enough’ (Guardian)

Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, giving added voice to a grassroots revolt in the party that threatens bipartisan support for the war against Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Georgia congresswoman is a notorious provocateur who has made racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements and promoted bizarre conspiracy theories. Yet she has emerged as a prominent voice in the House of Representatives after forging a bond with the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who vowed that Republicans will not write a “blank cheque” for Ukraine. Greene told the Guardian that Joe Biden is “putting the entire world at risk of world war three”, a view widely held at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), America’s biggest annual gathering of conservatives...

How the War in Ukraine Ends
An eminent historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West.
David Remnick | February 17, 2023

...since the final years of the Soviet empire. (historian Stephen Kotkin) has published two volumes of a projected three-part biography of Stalin, and his works on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its aftermath are without peer in their precision and depth. After spending more than thirty years at Princeton, he is now at Stanford...He is well connected in Washington, Moscow, Kyiv, and beyond...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/how-the-war-in-ukraine-e...
------------------------------------------------------------

The New Yorker Radio Hour
A Year of the War in Ukraine (33:50--Kotkin interview starts at 12:25)

In the year since Russia’s invasion, Ukrainians have shown incredible fortitude on the battlefield. Yet an end to the conflict seems nowhere in sight. “Putin’s strategy could be defined as ‘I can’t have it—nobody can have it.’ And, sadly, that’s where the tragedy is right now,” Stephen Kotkin, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a scholar of Russian history, tells David Remnick. “Ukraine is winning in the sense that it didn’t allow Russia to take that whole country. But it’s losing in the sense that its country is being destroyed.” Kotkin says that the standards for a victory laid out by President Volodymyr Zelensky set an impossibly high bar, and that Ukraine—however distasteful the prospect—may be forced to cut its losses. He suggests it could accept its loss of control over some of its territory while aiming to secure expedited accession to the European Union, and still consider this a victory.

Remnick also speaks with Sevgil Musaieva, the thirty-five-year-old editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, an online publication based in Kyiv, about the toll that the war is taking on her and her peers. “We have to destroy the Soviet Empire and the ghosts of the Soviet Empire, and this is the goal of our generation,” Musaieva says. “People of my generation, they don’t have family. They don’t have kids. They just dedicate their lives—the best years of their lives—to country.”

Kotkin says that the standards for a victory laid out by President Volodymyr Zelensky set an impossibly high bar, and that Ukraine—however distasteful the prospect—may be forced to cut its losses. He suggests it might need to accept its loss of control over some of its territory while aiming to secure expedited accession to the European Union, and still consider this a victory.

https://link.chtbl.com/qOucM248

>120 John5918: Remember that the people pushing this are the same people who gave us twenty years of war in Afghanistan, because "we can't just leave", and then just left.

Who can take them seriously?

>120 John5918: This appears to be, key word appears. Once again, I have to explain I am not political I am a practicing Traditional Catholic much maligned these days. I am thus like many TLM Catholics are a believer in distributism, my post above has nothing to do with wings, all I'm saying is if you can distribute 113b worth of aid to a country a couple of thousand miles away you could siphon a few bucks to an American community a couple of hundred miles up the road set back on its heels....JMJ....

>123 brone: You say you're "not political" but you seem to be spending a lot of effort trying to make sure that America does not go to a lot of effort to help Ukraine fight off Russia.

Why is that?

It's not anything to do with East Palestine, since funding allocated to Ukraine does not affect funding allocated to aid in East Palestine. It's not like Russian Republican legislators are saying to themselves, well, we could spend money to help people who have been affected by industrial disasters caused by our historical failure to deal with infrastructure issues, but we can't because Ukraine. They're not. In fact, they've gone to a lot of trouble to try to keep Democrats from allocating funds to address infrastructure issues that would prevent those issues, and this was long before Ukraine. There is plenty of money allocated right now for cleanup in East Palestine, and if Russians Republicans want to spend more there, they can write the bills to spend more. (Well, I suppose Maggie Greene would struggle to write a bill, but she could get someone to help her with that.) The situation in East Palestine has nothing to do with the funding allocated for Ukraine, and yet you keep dragging it in.

So, getting us back on topic, what is it with you and Russia and Ukraine that you think America should not be involved?

>124 kiparsky: address infrastructure issues that would prevent those issues

Indeed. Not to stay off topic for too long, but in the LT thread on the Ohio rail disaster here there's an article which puts the spotlight on an issue railroad workers say they’ve been talking about for a while — bigger trains but not enough workers. Rail workers say the mantra in today’s world is to do more with less. They say across the country, the way rail systems operate right now is a danger to communities nationwide. Current and retired railroad workers alike are speaking out on a problem with the way the railroad system operates. “It’s very scary. We predicted stuff like this before. The precision-schedule railroading business model is a rush on car inspections. I mean, a car inspection used to be four, five minutes with a couple of car men. Now they’re pushing for under 90 seconds per car". In other words, in the US right wing free market capitalist economy, increased profit margins are more important that safety.

>121 margd: Ukraine is winning in the sense that it didn’t allow Russia to take that whole country. But it’s losing in the sense that its country is being destroyed

And that's why the traditional definition of a "just war" includes amongst its criteria that the good expected to be achieved should outweigh the damage expected to be caused. It may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Ukraine, not only due to the damage to infrastructure which may takes decades to repair, but also the damage to its people, both physically and in terms of trauma, which may take generations to heal, and damage to the environment, which might turn out to be irreparable in the context of the already existing ecological crisis in the world. There are no good options for the Ukrainian people, only a choice between various bad ones, and there are no "winners".

>123 brone: I am not political ... all I'm saying is if you can distribute 113b worth of aid

I don't know who I could talk to face to face who could tell me off the top of their head how much we've sent to Ukraine. There's an old friend now half a country away who probably could, but he also talked about Anti-Fa from his experiences in the inside of such groups. "I'm not political" is about your self image, not reality.

>125 John5918: Kotkin article also explored stuff Russia could do to NATO countries, other than nuclear. Maybe have--blowing up pipeline? Interesting, depressing read... With Moldova, Poland, Baltic countries, as well as Ukraine at risk, can't let Russia "win", if Ukrainians want to continue to fight...Designs on Africa as well.

Most of Ukraine’s winter grain crops in good condition, scientists say
Reuters | 6 March 2023

Most of Ukraine’s winter grain crops - winter wheat and barley - are in good condition and could produce a good harvest, Ukraine’s academy of agricultural science was quoted as saying on Monday.

...the reserves of productive moisture in the soil under winter crops remained “quite significant and did not cause concern”. The winter wheat area sown for the 2023 harvest decreased to around 4.1 million hectares from more than 6 million sown a year earlier because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year.

Of the winter wheat sown last year, only 4.9 million hectares were harvested in Ukrainian-controlled territory, as Russian forces occupied some areas. Ukraine’s wheat harvest declined to 20.2 million tonnes in 2022 from 32.2 million tonnes in 2021. Overall grain output fell to around 54 million tonnes from a record 86 million in 2021.

... the 2023 wheat crop could total 16 to 18 million tonnes but Ukraine saw no need to limit wheat exports for the upcoming 2023/24 July-June season.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/06/ukraine-war-live-updates-latest-news-on-russia-a...

"The most corrupt country in Europe",The Guardian....JMJ....

Per Ukrainian Dept of Defense

Total combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to March 8, 2023:
Image ( https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1633430579654848512/photo/1 )

@UIFuture @future_ui | 2:37 AM · Mar 11, 2023:
Official Twitter of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future

Prigozhin announced his political ambitions and intentions to build a political organization based on the "Wagner" PMC. Most likely, he will try to create it through the representatives of the "Wagners" in the regions.

Prigozhin makes such vibrant statements for few reasons.
Photo ( https://twitter.com/future_ui/status/1634458543150579712/photo/1 )

1.Putin does not tell him to stop, but on the contrary continues to push him against Shoigu;

2.PMC "Wagner" is needed by Putin in Africa, where an underground mining business of natural minerals has been established;

3.The ratings of such a political force can be quite low

War will end at negotiating table with Ukraine in ‘best place’, Sunak says (Guardian)

The war in Ukraine will end at the negotiating table, Rishi Sunak has said, as he vowed to support Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be in the “best possible place to have those talks”... "“Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table, but that is a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them"...

Paywall. Europe kept ITS lights on, too!

How Ukraine tamed Russian missile barrages and kept the lights on
As winter ends, Russia has lost this phase of the conflict
12 March 2023
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/12/how-ukraine-tamed-russian-missile-ba...

The Global South and the Ukraine War at the UN (International Crisis Group)

On 23 February, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” between Russia and Ukraine. While 141 of the Assembly’s 193 members voted in favour of the text, their statements before and after the vote pointed to significant differences over how to achieve the outcome it envisions. Western countries are still pledging to back Kyiv militarily, while non-Western states are more inclined to call for a negotiated peace. Thus far, however, the latter’s proposals for reaching that goal have been short on detail...

Russian jet collides with US drone over Black Sea
Henri Astier | 3/14/2023

..."Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9," the US statement said.

Several times before the collision the Su-27 fighter jets dumped fuel on the drone in a "reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner".

MQ-9 Reaper drones are large unmanned aircraft with a 20m (66ft) wingspan designed for high-altitude surveillance.

...White House spokesman John Kirby said Russian intercepts of US aircraft were not uncommon over the Black Sea, but it was the first time that one had resulted in a crash...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64957792

The Russia and China leaders, among others, where smart enough to figure out that citizens in a strong and healthy U.S. democracy would never have elected a clown like Trump. They saw 'blood in the water' and decided this was the perfect decade in which to shake things up around the globe. The Biden presidency was not the tripwire.

The Russia That Might Have Been
How Moscow Squandered Its Power and Influence
Alexander Gabuev | March 13, 2023

...Compared with their troubled imperial and Soviet past, Russians had never been so prosperous and, simultaneously, so free as in the first decade of the twenty-first century... Although the EU did not invite Russia to join the union, it did offer to harmonize trade regulations and remove many of the barriers that limited ties between Moscow and Brussels...As for its relations with the East, Russia managed to resolve a decades-old territorial dispute with China in 2005, finally putting the relationship with the new superpower on a predictable and productive footing... Finally, Russia maintained Soviet-era connections to many developing countries in the diverse global South...For the first time in its history, Moscow didn’t need to spend the bulk of its precious resources on defending itself against external threats or making a bid for global supremacy.

...Given its favorable economic and security relationships, Russia could have evolved into a nation with an economy similar to Canada’s {resource-based, agriculture, technology}, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and geopolitical neutrality. In short, Russia had the foundations it needed to become a prosperous, confident, secure, and trustworthy major twenty-first century power—a country that could help tackle some of the world’s pressing problems.

...a Russia that remained friendly to both China and the United States–led West could have remained flexible and pragmatic...

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-might-have-been
___________________________________________________

Instead, Russia is on a path that will eventually keep it in thrall to China?

Putin arrest warrant issued over war crime allegations (BBC)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The court alleges he is responsible for war crimes, and has focused its claims on the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia. It says the crimes were committed in Ukraine from 24 February 2022 - when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Moscow has denied the allegations and labelled the warrants as "outrageous". It is highly unlikely that much will come of the move - the ICC has no powers to arrest suspects, and can only exercise jurisdiction within its member countries - and Russia is not one of them. However it could affect the president in other ways, such as being unable to travel internationally. In a statement, the ICC said it had reasonable grounds to believe Mr Putin committed the criminal acts directly, as well as working with others. It also accused him of failing to use his presidential powers to stop children being deported. Russia's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, is also wanted by the ICC for the same crimes...

What does the ICC arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin mean in reality? (Guardian)

Forced deportation of populations is recognised as a crime under the Rome statute that established the court. Russia was a signatory to the Rome statute but withdrew in 2016, saying it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the court... It sends a signal to senior Russian officials – military and civilian – who may be vulnerable to prosecution either now or in the future and would further limit their ability to travel internationally, including to attend international forums... While Putin seems secure in his power now and safe from extradition, a future Kremlin leader may decide it is more politic to send him to The Hague than protect him...

Ex-member of Russian parliament, a historian & political scientist, suggests taking Istanbul?? (Never mind NATO Article 5.)

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:49 AM · Mar 18, 2023:
Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Founder of the Institute of the Future.

Semen Bagdasarov, Russian member of parliament, suggested making use of the catastrophe in Turkey caused by the earthquakes - take Istanbul from them and join it to Russia...

Update. Bagdasarov is an ex-member of Russian parliament.
He is an expert on the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, a specialist in the fight against terrorism, historian, political scientist, retired colonel.

1:24 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1637028332989566976 )

War in Ukraine: Christian Accompaniment and Turning to Diplomacy (William Temple Foundation)

How does one respond to such horror as war?... we heard the call from the Mayor of Kyiv to send religious leaders to the city. We organized an interfaith Just Peace delegation May 24-25th, 2022. As a praxis of accompaniment, that Pope Francis models, this delegation included seventeen religious leaders from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities within Europe and the United States. After this delegation, a participant from the United Kingdom facilitated 1,000 Ukrainian youth to enter the country. Some delegation partners led a 50 person peace caravan in Odessa 28-29 June. Some stayed with Ukrainians in Mykolaiv during the bombing. A 150 person peace march took place in Kiev on 11 July. On 1-5 August, a World Council of Churches delegation was sent to Kyiv. And a number of faith delegations have continued since then. One of the key advocacy calls of the interfaith delegation in May was to significantly increase humanitarian aid, which the European Union did on 9 June. Another key advocacy call was to unblock ports so grain can flow, which progressed with the 22 July negotiated agreement.

A very significant October 2022 report identified at least 235 nonviolent actions of resistance in Ukraine between 24 February through 30 June 2022. They found that nonviolent resistance: 1) hindered some of the long-term military and political goals of the Russian authorities, such as the institutionalization of the military occupation and repression in the occupied territories; 2) has protected many civilians; 3) undermined the Russian narrative; 4) built community resilience; 5) strengthened local governance, and 6) built social cohesion... Those we met asked for: 1) the sharing of their examples of nonviolent resistance, 2) advocacy to their government and other governments to support them by developing a nonviolent strategy of non-cooperation with the occupation, 3) resources such as financial, strategic campaign training, and technology/digital security; and 4) most pointedly, they asked that they not be left alone. One of the conflict monitors we met in Kharkiv and resourced by the UN, said that in the occupied areas where nonviolent resistance was the primary method, this approach decreased the repression. Whereas in the occupied areas or nearby when the Ukranians primarily leaned on violent resistance, this increased the repression...

to break the dynamic of violence, conflicting parties must be engaged in a consistent, flexible, trauma-mitigating and needs-based dialogue. This includes political dialogue as well as civil society dialogue. Yet, today key political leaders are resisting broader negotiations. Many of them argue that negotiations are only valuable after there is a military advantage on the ground. Such negotiations rooted in the power of domination rarely, if ever, yield sustainable solutions since re-humanization, consideration of grievances and needs, trauma, as well as paths to reconciliation are not adequately incorporated. To engage in such dialogue, it’s important to acknowledge that this war has been going on at least since 2014... Since the invasion of 2022, we do know that some mediated dialogues have succeeded with agreements on grain shipments, prisoner swaps and some evacuation routes. Early on in March 2022 there was also considerable progress on ending the war yet it seems from reports that UK Prime Minister Johnson pressed Ukraine to stop negotiations, and we heard from U.S. leaders like Defense Secretary Austin and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicating we should drain Russian resources... There have been substantial demonstrations in Europe recently to focus on diplomacy as well as similar increasing activity in the U.S... let us mobilize our faith communities to advocate for diplomacy to break the cycle of hostilities and illuminate our shared human dignity.

Samuel Ramani (Oxford) @SamRamani2 | 9:43 AM · Mar 19, 2023:

Russia says that 35,000 African students are in its universities
The pre-war figure was 31,000 and since 2010, the figure has tripled

Egypt is the biggest driver of the increase
More than one-third of African students in Russia are Egyptian and Egypt's increase was 7-fold over the same time horizon
But it also shows how Soviet legacies of education boost Russian soft power in Africa

Russian MP Leonid Slutsky announces new intra-parliamentary commissions with African countries
Intra-parliamentary dialogue played a key role in strengthening Russia's Africa ties in 1990s and 2000s
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Russia in Africa: Resurgent Great Power or Bellicose Pretender?
Samuel Ramani | February 2023

Challenging Western depictions, this consideration of Moscow’s post-Cold War Africa policy takes into account both African and Russian decisionmakers.

Description
Three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia has transformed from a fringe player to a resurgent great power in Africa. The October 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi highlighted the appeal of Russia’s normative agenda, the ubiquity of Russian military technology, and the breadth of Moscow’s presence on the continent. Beneath the pageantry, a darker side of Russia’s African resurgence looms large. From Libya to Madagascar, Russia has used sinister tactics to expand its influence, such as private military contractors, shadowy mining and energy deals with authoritarian regimes, and election interference campaigns.

This book presents a chronological examination of Russia’s post-Cold War foreign policy towards Africa, and outlines the factors that have enabled and impeded the growth of its influence. It pays special attention to the non-material factors behind this rising power; the domestic drivers of Russian decision-making; Moscow’s relationships with fellow external powers; and African perspectives on Russia’s geopolitical role. Samuel Ramani’s analysis cites extensively both Russian-language media and academic sources, and his own interviews with Russian and African elites. His fascinating study challenges popular depictions of Russia as an opportunistic anti-Western actor, instead emphasising Moscow’s strategic commitment to Africa and the endurance of historical memory.

Reviews

‘Ramani’s methodical chronicling of Russian foreign policy in Africa under President Vladimir Putin… is impressively researched and dispassionately narrated.’ — Africa Center for Strategic Studies

‘Fascinating.’ — African Business

‘An impressive book. The only recent full-length academic study of Russia’s engagement with Africa, it is a worthwhile contribution to the literature.’ — Paul Stronski, Senior Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

‘A comprehensive account of Russian policy towards Africa from the 1990s to the present. Original, detailed and engaging, it is a truly masterful work.’ — Mark N. Katz, Professor of Government and Politics, George Mason University

‘This is the encyclopedic and nuanced go-to guide for everyone interested in Russia’s relations with Africa: from students seeking an introduction to the topic to experts needing a comprehensive reference. Ramani’s language skills and on-the-ground interviews truly set this book apart.’ — Kimberly Marten, Professor in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University, and author of Weapons, Culture, and Self-interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia

Author(s)
Samuel Ramani DPhil teaches Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. The author of Russia in Africa, also published by Hurst, and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, he contributes regularly to Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, the BBC World Service, Al Jazeera and CNN.

https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/russia-in-africa/

Book--no touchstones yet

Putin’s War on Ukraine: Russia’s Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution
Samuel Ramani | April 2023
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/putins-war-on-ukraine/

Cold-blooded, but informative, analysis of where the combatants now stand in the battle over Bakhmut:

Rob Lee @RALee85 | 2:15 PM · Mar 20, 2023:
Senior Fellow @FPRI. Previously USMC , @ColumbiaSIPA , @CentreAST . Focused on Russian defense policy.
(For maps, etc., read at https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1637880591898095618 )

Thread on Bakhmut. Before talking about the tactical situation, it is important to put it in the strategic context. Ukraine conducted successful offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson after heavy Russian military attrition during the Battle of the Donbas left its lines vulnerable.

Russia's successful withdrawal from the right bank of Kherson and mobilization helped stabilize the lines and stopped Ukraine's advance to Kreminna. In order to make further serious gains, Ukraine went on the defense to buy time to form new units/train on NATO equipment.

The battle in Bakhmut began more than 6 months ago, but became a focus over the winter as both sides redeployed forces to Bakhmut from Kherson. Bakhmut thereby acquired a degree of political significance on both sides.

Russia began its winter offensive in late January. Russian forces have attempted to advance in several parts of the front while making minimal gains. In some areas like Vuhledar, Russian forces have suffered far heavier losses than Ukrainian forces.

Russia has also sustained heavy losses in Bakhmut, but the ratio of losses shifted as Russia took the flanks (which sit on high ground), beginning with the southern flank in January and the northern flank in mid/late-February including Yahidne on the 25th.

Although the center of Bakhmut has strong buildings and factories, the flanks are composed of houses without basements. Once they're targeted, they're no longer useful as fighting positions. Russian advances on the flanks put the main resupply routes within direct-fire range.

Newly mobilized soldiers are being sent to Bakhmut as combat replacements and the units don't have enough time to train them properly. There is a trade-off between sending mobilized soldiers to the front or to new units preparing for the spring offensive.

Although there was a 3-week period in which Russian artillery fire was reduced, it increased at the end of February as the 106th Airborne Division played a greater role, which coincided with greater Wagner-VDV cooperation. Russia has a substantial artillery advantage in Bakhmut.

Wagner commanders are given greater discretion and flexibility to fight as they see fit and to find/exploit weak points (TDF units are often deliberately targeted). Some Wagner units operate at night while others only during the day. Wagner convicts are not allowed to retreat.

Ukraine is prioritizing forming and training new units in three army corps for its spring offensive while trying to hold the entirety of the front line. But those are competing priorities, and Ukraine is deliberately holding back reserves. https://economist.com/zaluzhny-trans

This may give the impression that Ukraine is losing, but, in reality, Ukraine is not committing all of its resources to the front. Ukraine has a better chance of achieving another significant breakthrough this spring than Russia does during its current offensive.

Russia is dependent on a small number of elite units for their assaults (e.g. naval infantry, VDV, Wagner professionals), but they can grind their way to slow, costly victories by employing greater forces and artillery. An attritional fight is not in Ukraine’s interests.

Until its offensive, Ukraine's best strategy is to pick battles where it can achieve a favorable ratio of attrition and expend fewer munitions, which could weaken Russian forces' ability to defend without significantly sapping Ukraine's offensive potential in the coming months.

Although the attrition ratio in Bakhmut has been advantageous for the duration of the battle, the ratio is much less favorable now with Ru forces holding high ground on the city's flanks. Much of Russia's losses are prisoners of less military value than Ukrainian soldiers.

In contrast, in Vuhledar, the share of Russian casualties from elite units is higher than in Bakhmut, and it isn't clear if Wagner's use of convicts would be as effective in a less urban setting.

The upcoming Ukrainian offensive will be strategically critical and potentially decisive. Western aid, including ammunition, will likely peak this spring and summer, and it will take years before increases in artillery production capacity can be achieved.

Ukraine will not have air superiority, will face stronger Russian defenses than it did in Kharkiv, and will likely only be able to achieve localized superiority in artillery fire and forces. To gives its offensive the best chance for success, Kyiv needs to husband its resources.

There is no risk-free option for Ukraine. Retrograde operations are dangerous, withdrawing from Bakhmut could lead to more pressure on Siversk or elsewhere, and there is no guarantee Ukraine would be able to retake the city later if it withdraws.

But there is a risk that, by committing the necessary forces to continue holding Bakhmut (where its attrition ratio isn't favorable), Ukraine will sap some of the forces available for its strategically more important spring offensive. https://wsj.com/amp/articles/r

Another risk is that Russian forces will continue to press to the west to try to seize high ground north of Chasiv Yar, which is defensible terrain for holding Kramatorsk and Slovyansk. Encirclement is also a risk.

Encircling Bakhmut is Russia's best opportunity to inflict a serious defeat on Ukraine. The VDV's 106th Airborne Division has taken on a greater role, and the Russian MoD will likely prioritize cutting off the remaining MRSs by committing more resources...

The mud season has now begun, which could complicate a withdrawal or reinforcement, particularly if Russian forces advance closer to the O0506 hardball road. This could limit the use of wheeled vehicles.

As in Mariupol and countless other battles, Ukrainian forces have defended bravely and inflicted heavy losses on Russian forces in Bakhmut, which will likely aid Ukraine’s spring offensive. But the conditions have worsened over the past month.

What should Ukraine do? I don’t know. It isn’t a black and white issue and there is uncertainty. Russia may overextend itself trying to take the city and leave itself vulnerable to counterattack. It is ultimately a question of where Ukraine chooses to assume risk.

Caught off guard How the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin threw a wrench in the Kremlin’s plans for 2023
Meduza | 9:13 am, March 21, 2023

...multiple sources close to the Russian authorities have told Meduza that the Putin administration was not expecting the court’s announcement, and that the severe restrictions the warrant puts on the president’s ability to travel abroad could poke holes in the image he tries to project at home.

...In the leadup to Russia’s 2024 presidential election, the Kremlin planned to present Putin to voters as a “warrior against the West” and a “defender of Latin American and African countries against colonial oppression,” Meduza’s sources said. However, that plan would necessarily involve overseas trips that Putin will now likely be unable to take; because of the warrant against him, the Russian president could theoretically be detained in any of 123 countries. According to sources close to his administration, the Kremlin is unsure how it would be possible to “ensure the security” of the president given the new circumstances...

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/03/21/caught-off-guard
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Michael McFaul (frmr US ambassdor to Ru) McFaul | 10:40 AM · Mar 21, 2023:
This is what it's all about for Putin. This is what he wanted. The photo op. Getting weapons would be just gravy.

Quote Tweet
max seddon @maxseddon | 8:47 AM · Mar 21, 2023
Pomp and circumstance in the Kremlin as Putin's talks with Xi get underway.
1:05 ( https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1638160477170565120 )

Putin: China plan could end war, but Ukraine and West not ready for peace (BBC)

China's peace plan for Ukraine could be used as a basis to end the war, Vladimir Putin has said. But Mr Putin said the plan could be put forward only when they are ready "in the West and Kyiv". The Russian leader met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in Moscow to discuss the conflict, and relations between the two countries. China's plan, published last month, does not explicitly call for Russia to leave Ukraine. Listing 12 points, it calls for peace talks and respect for national sovereignty, without specific proposals. But Ukraine has insisted on Russia withdrawing from its territory as a condition for any talks - and there is no sign that Russia is ready to do that...

Hard to not think that China seeing Russia invading unoccupied regions of Ukraine late last March were not only rooting for the Russians to take as much as they could and hoping the rest of the world and particularly the United States, NATO and the United Nations would not respond. China has its own ambitions for Taiwan and if the western nations hadn't responded as they have China might already have invaded that island.

China's peace plan sounds pretty good, actually. The catch is that the disputing parties still don't agree on what constitutes sovereignty (#1)...* Actions this spring and summer will be crucial (Billy Crystal podcast w Anne Applebaum).

Grateful that China is pushing and Russia appears to have agreed to grain exports (#9) and non-use of nuclear weapons (#8).

China is playing the long game. Russia will come out of this the junior partner. (ETA : just read that China didn't say one way or other re the Siberian pipeline that Russia hopes for to sell its oil to China. Keeping Russia waiting? Cognizant of Russia's using oils to jerk around Europe? Recognizes the need to switch to renewables?)
----------------------------------------------------------------

China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis
2023-02-24

1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected. 

2. Abandoning the Cold War mentality. The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly. There is no simple solution to a complex issue. All parties should, following the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and bearing in mind the long-term peace and stability of the world, help forge a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture. All parties should oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security, prevent bloc confrontation, and work together for peace and stability on the Eurasian Continent.

3. Ceasing hostilities. Conflict and war benefit no one. All parties must stay rational and exercise restraint, avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions, and prevent the crisis from deteriorating further or even spiraling out of control. All parties should support Russia and Ukraine in working in the same direction and resuming direct dialogue as quickly as possible, so as to gradually deescalate the situation and ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire. 

4. Resuming peace talks. Dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis. All efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis must be encouraged and supported. The international community should stay committed to the right approach of promoting talks for peace, help parties to the conflict open the door to a political settlement as soon as possible, and create conditions and platforms for the resumption of negotiation. China will continue to play a constructive role in this regard. 

5. Resolving the humanitarian crisis. All measures conducive to easing the humanitarian crisis must be encouraged and supported. Humanitarian operations should follow the principles of neutrality and impartiality, and humanitarian issues should not be politicized. The safety of civilians must be effectively protected, and humanitarian corridors should be set up for the evacuation of civilians from conflict zones. Efforts are needed to increase humanitarian assistance to relevant areas, improve humanitarian conditions, and provide rapid, safe and unimpeded humanitarian access, with a view to preventing a humanitarian crisis on a larger scale. The UN should be supported in playing a coordinating role in channeling humanitarian aid to conflict zones.

6. Protecting civilians and prisoners of war (POWs). Parties to the conflict should strictly abide by international humanitarian law, avoid attacking civilians or civilian facilities, protect women, children and other victims of the conflict, and respect the basic rights of POWs. China supports the exchange of POWs between Russia and Ukraine, and calls on all parties to create more favorable conditions for this purpose.

7. Keeping nuclear power plants safe. China opposes armed attacks against nuclear power plants or other peaceful nuclear facilities, and calls on all parties to comply with international law including the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) and resolutely avoid man-made nuclear accidents. China supports the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in playing a constructive role in promoting the safety and security of peaceful nuclear facilities.

8. Reducing strategic risks. Nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought. The threat or use of nuclear weapons should be opposed. Nuclear proliferation must be prevented and nuclear crisis avoided. China opposes the research, development and use of chemical and biological weapons by any country under any circumstances.

9. Facilitating grain exports. All parties need to implement the Black Sea Grain Initiative signed by Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine and the UN fully and effectively in a balanced manner, and support the UN in playing an important role in this regard. The cooperation initiative on global food security proposed by China provides a feasible solution to the global food crisis.

10. Stopping unilateral sanctions. Unilateral sanctions and maximum pressure cannot solve the issue; they only create new problems. China opposes unilateral sanctions unauthorized by the UN Security Council. Relevant countries should stop abusing unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction” against other countries, so as to do their share in deescalating the Ukraine crisis and create conditions for developing countries to grow their economies and better the lives of their people.

11. Keeping industrial and supply chains stable. All parties should earnestly maintain the existing world economic system and oppose using the world economy as a tool or weapon for political purposes. Joint efforts are needed to mitigate the spillovers of the crisis and prevent it from disrupting international cooperation in energy, finance, food trade and transportation and undermining the global economic recovery.

12. Promoting post-conflict reconstruction. The international community needs to take measures to support post-conflict reconstruction in conflict zones. China stands ready to provide assistance and play a constructive role in this endeavor.

http://my.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zgxw/202302/t20230224_11030881.htm

* Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:43 AM · Mar 22, 2023:
"Where Putin's foot has stepped, that land is not alienable!"
- Russian propagandists claim that Mariupol will remain Russian.
1:22 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1638476397399408640 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:59 AM · Mar 22, 2023:

A Russian missile hit a residential building in Zaporizhzhia.
Rescue services at work.
Terrorist state continues attacking civilians.

📹: @ZelenskyyUa
0:28 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1638495718640893953 )

South African Journal of International Affairs
SAJIA Volume 29.4: Special Issue on Russia in Africa – Who’s courting whom?

Contents
Introduction to the special issue: Russia in Africa: Who is courting whom?
Steven Gruzd, Samuel Ramani & Cayley Clifford

Russia’s return to Africa in a historical and global context: Anti-imperialism, patronage, and opportunism
Allard Duursma & Niklas Masuhr

Perceptions of Russia’s ‘return’ to Africa: Views from West Africa
Leonid Issaev, Alisa Shishkina & Yakov Liokumovich

Russia’s private military diplomacy in Africa: High risk, low reward, limited impact
Ovigwe Eguegu

The quest for influence: Examining Russia’s public diplomacy mechanisms in Africa
Isaac Antwi-Boasiako

A differentiated courtship: A regime-type analysis of Russia’s Southern African (arms) trade, 2012–2019
Bhaso Ndzendze & Zimkhitha Manyana

Manifestations of Russian formal and informal strategies in Southern and Eastern Africa, 2000–2022
Dzvinka Kachur

Russia in the Horn of Africa: Re-engagement in a new strategic environment
Jithin Mathew & John S Moolakkattu

Russian interests in the Horn of Africa: A Red Sea foothold?
Francesco Generoso

Book Reviews

Russia in Africa: Resurgent Great Power or Bellicose Pretender? By Samuel Ramani
Reviewed by Joseph Siegle

Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order by Kathryn E. Stoner
Reviewed by Maxim Matusevich

Russia’s Corporate Soldiers: The Global Expansion of Russia’s Private Military Companies by Seth G. Jones, Catrina Doxee, Brian Katz, Eric Mcqueen and Joe Moye
Reviewed by Karen Philippa Larsen

Nuclear: Inside South Africa’s Secret Deal by Karyn Maughan and Kirsten Pearson
Reviewed by Isabel Bosman

Russia Rising: Putin’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa edited by Dimitar Bechev, Nicu Popescu and Stanislav Secrieru
Reviewed by Youssef Cherif

https://saiia.org.za/sajia/volume-29-4/

Global Politics in the Shadow of Ukraine (International Crisis Group)

I’m acutely aware that, to put it bluntly, the emphasis, especially in Western capitals, on Ukraine leaves a sour taste in much of the rest of the world. Few non-Western leaders sympathise with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and most recognise the peril his violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty poses. But few buy the narrative prevalent in Western capitals that the war is an existential global threat – at least not more so than challenges closer to home, like climate change, food scarcity, debt or indeed other wars. Many question how Western capitals can find so much money for Ukraine but so little for climate change adaptation, why Europe welcomes Ukrainian refugees while Afghans, Africans and Arabs die in the Mediterranean, or what Europe’s absorption with Ukraine means for its bandwidth for crises elsewhere. Many chafe at the costs their populations bear, particularly higher food and fuel prices, for a war they see as European.

Such sentiment is justified, but, like it or not, the Ukraine war is playing an outsized role in world affairs. It is not just the impact the war and sanctions have had on supply chains, commodity prices and inflation. Western leaders often now view policy elsewhere through the lens of Ukraine. That could be good if it helps with things the rest of the world cares about; less so if countries feel forced into camps. While multilateral diplomacy has just about muddled through, collapsed Russia-West relations, alongside China-U.S. tensions, hinder efforts to deal with global challenges. Plus, of course, the standoff over Ukraine still poses the gravest danger in decades of nuclear confrontation between major powers, with terrifying global repercussions. Russia suspending its participation in – basically pulling out of – the last nuclear treaty with the U.S. may have already blown apart the entire arms control system established during and after the Cold War. The war might be European, but it is reshaping geopolitical reality...

>148 margd: China's conception of "national sovereignty" is not, historically speaking, very encouraging.