WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia

[Vicus]

German howitzers facing problems in Ukraine – Der Spiegel
Weapons supplied by Berlin are reportedly breaking down, with spare parts hard to find :ROFL:

German Panzerhaubitze 2000 artillery guns are failing to withstand the rigors of combat in Ukraine, and Berlin hasn’t sourced enough spare parts to keep the cannons working, Der Spiegel has reported.

Germany has sent Ukraine 14 of its state-of-the-art Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000 self-propelled howitzers, but problems emerged the moment they hit the battlefield. The guns were suffering from “wear and tear” and displaying error messages back in July, and six were recently sent to Lithuania for repair, the German newspaper reported on Friday.

Of these, only five will be heading back to the battlefield. Neither the German military nor its arms industry could provide the necessary spare parts to fix all the guns, the report continued, explaining that technicians had to cannibalize one of them to fix the others.

The German government has been aware of this parts shortage since late summer, when the military warned it to order “extensive spare parts packages,” Der Spiegel claimed. Such an order was apparently not made, and the shortage has hampered Germany’s plans to set up a repair hub in Slovakia.

In planning since September and announced by German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht earlier this week, the repair hub will maintain howitzers and air-defense systems sent to Ukraine by Berlin.

German military officials believe that Ukraine is firing as many as 300 rounds from each PzH 2000 per day, Friday’s report stated. Der Spiegel’s first article on the malfunctioning guns in July noted that 100 rounds per day is considered high-intensity use, and that ammo shortages were forcing Ukraine to load the cannons with incompatible ammunition.

https://www.rt.com/russia/566794-german-howitzers-broken-ukraine/

[Vicus]

Kiev is a Russian city – former president

Dmitry Medvedev ridiculed Ukrainian vows to “return” Crimea and referred to the country’s capital itself as a historical part of Russia

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recalled the Russian past of the city of Kiev on Sunday in response to promises repeatedly voiced by top Ukrainian officials to “return” the Crimean Peninsula.

“Sometimes the enemy’s statements need to be answered not only diplomatically or somehow allegorically,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

The Ukrainian leadership is in no position to talk about the “return” of Crimea, the former president suggested, explaining that Kiev itself is, in fact, a Russian city.

Medvedev listed “indisputable facts” about the city, stating that Kiev was “the capital of Ancient Rus,” as well as “a large Little Russian city within the Russian Empire”, and “a capital of a republic of the USSR.”

In Kiev, “people always thought and spoke Russian. To make it clear about what and where should be returned,” Medvedev, who is now the deputy head of the country’s Security Council, concluded.

The remarks come as top Ukrainian officials have repeatedly pledged to restore Ukraine to its borders as of 1991, fully “de-occupying” its lands and seizing the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. The most recent statement on this matter was uttered by Kiev’s deputy defense minister, Vladimir Gavrilov, in an interview with Sky News on Saturday.

“I think Russia can face a black swan in their country… and this can contribute to [our] success with Crimea,” Gavrilov said. “We can step into Crimea, for example, by the end of December. Possible? Possible. Not ruling out that it can be so.” :ROFL:

https://www.rt.com/russia/566891-kiev-crimea-return-medvedev/

from Vicus extra link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people

[Mashika]

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1593677892650733569

1593677892650733569

Let's look at the reality ...

Regarding the children whose lives have been ripped apart by in this horrendous war:
the UN has said claims that thousands of children have been removed from Ukraine
to Russia for adoption as part of larger-scale forced relocations and deportations are credible.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the personal status of children, including their nationality,
is prohibited.

In May, Putin signed a decree making it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship
to Ukrainian children without parental care. It also made it harder for Ukraine and surviving
relatives to win them back.

Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, the forced mass deportation of people -- and, in particular,
the forcible transfer of children -- during a conflict is designated as a war crime.

“There have been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian
-occupied territory, or to the Russian Federation itself,” Ilze Brands Kehris, the assistant UN secretary-general
for human rights, told the Security Council.

General Iryna Venediktova, prosecutor, said that the number of children forcibly transferred to Russia is
currently unknown, but is thought to be over 200,000. Evidence of such action would meet the rigorous legal
definition of genocide: the forced displacement of minors in Russia is part of a ‘Russification’ plan to erase
the Ukrainian identity and nation.

The reality is that those claims are just that, 'claims'

It's funny how people fall for this strategy of self reference. Can you find a link to the actual UN document where this is expressed as a fact? A claim is nothing more than that, a claim

You didn't provide a link to where you read this, and looking it up i see a lot of websites basically just copy/pasting the exact same words, an obvious signal that this is more media narrative pushing

Also if you go to a site like this

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/ukraine-conflict/1654177141-ukraine-accuses-russia-of-forcibly-deporting-over-200-000-children

Then you can see that they also do not have a link to anything official from the UN, it turns out that after following all the links on those articles, they are self-referencing, one link leads to another page on the same site that has more claims and links that also lead to pages/articles on that same site, you never get to the source

But after looking around, do you know what the "credible claims" source turned out to be? A video call where Elensky made that claim, with no evidence at all lmao

So it's all a lot of circling around with links to more 'evidence' and more claims that never produce any evidence of anything but they carefully avoid mentioning that the only source of these claims is something Elensky said on a video call! Talk about corrupt media narratives :)

And by the way, the worse thing is not that, the worse thing is that Elensky had no evidence of anything himself, and the 200,000 children number he mentioned, actually came from a public report by Russia!

So, Elensky read a report by Russia where they said that around 240,000 kids have been evacuated from the war zone, then he went to make his video call and used that number to claim genocide, then the Nazi friendly UN officials picked up this claim from Elensky and called it 'credible' because of course, and then the monkeys started typing and posting on the web and so on

Russia -> Elensky -> Video call -> UN -> Corrupt Mediocre Media -> People who eat it up

The UN has made no research or any kind of investigation on those claims so far, they only opened a case for it, and then Russia provided some documentation and evidence of what happened to those kids, and that information has not been made public yet by the UN, they also have not reported in the same way as they did with the 'credible claim'. That's very irresponsible and leads to people posting things like what you did there, it makes it look like there's already a verdict by the UN, a lot of people will just assume there is one because they don't know any better, see?

A responsible organization that is not playing around would avoid doing partial reports like that one, or make sure at least that it is made very clear that those claims have not been validated at all and that no investigation has occurred


But nope

~~

Perhaps you should be questioning why the UN makes misleading statements like this, or why the media you read is trying to mislead you with fake/partial information

Oh and check this one
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/8/un-says-credible-reports-ukraine-children-transferred-to-russia


United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the meeting that estimates from a variety of sources, including the Russian government, indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians.

"a variety of sources" she said, such as.... or are those 'anonymous sources' lol

Why can't she be honest and say that they just picked up the data from a report published by Russia about war refugees? How dishonest and lacking of morals/ethics, honestly

And then check the links on that article, it's once again self-reference, the links point to other articles/pages on the same site 'aljazeera' :)



The UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, said the reports of forced transfer of Ukrainians by Russian forces “must be investigated”.

See? It's pure BS, no investigation has happened at all, so these 'credible claims' are pure BS. There has been no real evidence provided, and the claim that Russia doesn't allow the UN to go into Donbass is also pure BS, they had been there and were able to do anything they wanted for years, and they did nothing. No one is stopping them from going, it's actually Ukraine who for example forbade the Red Cross from going into Donbass, and there's is plenty of evidence that the UN helped the Azov and other groups instead of doing their work to document the crimes committed by Ukraine over the past 9 years

If the people move to other countries in the middle east or any other place, they are refugees, including the kids sent over to the UK that are sexually abused or vanish forever. If they go to Russia, they are filtrated and it's genocide

I don't know why you are not bothered that these people are playing with your mind and plainly lying to you, without any shame. Doesn't that bother you at all?

[Arcturian108]

I got the following message from an Australian weekly newsletter coming out of Cairns. It is definitely not politically correct:

Cossack Colonel YURI KOMONYISKI:
"Yes, the RF has relinquished its hold over the Kherson region in its current form. However, the RF expects to rectify this situation in the not-too-distant future. The Kherson region was problematic from a logistical/supply point of view. The span of the Dnieper River is massive as the shore line is not visible from bank to bank. The Ukrofascists continue striking the Kakhovskaya Dam using American howitzers. Had they breached the dam it would have flooded the lower reaches isolating our troops, even though the RF had established fortified strongholds it could have become problematic. The dam is roughly 60km east of the city of Kherson it supplies essential water to Crimea and the Zaporoznoye Nuclear Power Station.

One should not forget the hydroelectric power station situated on the dam wall. The wall has been weakened by the Ukrofascists and will need repair. The other problematic issue is related to the locals giving away RF positions to the Ukros. The RF relocated all the Russian populace that were interested in leaving. The ones that chose to stay are now being persecuted by the Ukrofascists.

Still the RF continues to monitor the Ukrofascist movements, each time they move we launch many Ukros and their mercs continue to perish. Our military personnel Russian civilians are essentially out of the area making our target practice much easier, there will be less collateral damage.

Winter has arrived and the trees have lost most of their leaves. The RF finds it amusing the NATO puppet masters have dragged into Ukraine all of the discarded useless equipment from around the globe including open top hummers which aren’t particularly well suited to winter conditions, but we don’t mind. Recently we took some captives, these guys never fired a bullet. After we’d taken them captive, they were asked why they never fired a shot. It turns out the Americans provided firearms to the Ukrofascists used in Afghanistan. The grease used in these firearms froze in the subzero temperatures rendering the rifles all but useless, thank you America.

A batch of 18 bushmasters have been delivered to the Ukros and we find they burn particularly well, when hit under the front left tyre. Five minutes and the thing’s-a-smokin. They appear to handle light arms well, a good ride, great aircon comfortable seating other than that they bog down fast and deep often we find them abandoned they are useless against any larger shells.

The Chechens have been using them for some time no and would like to thank the Australian Prime Minister “Lebanesee” for the transport. Harsh on the juice they are great on the asphalt they must we can only assume they are used in Australia for grocery shopping.

The RF elite force “Wagner” had a traitor who abandoned his team and crossed over to the Ukrofascists. It seems he had Ukrainian family connections and apart from this he was mouthing off against his former RF comrades. In response he was caught in Kiev (in the middle of enemy territory) and had his head caved in with a mallet, which was filmed and is out there in cyberspace. Perhaps it was meant as a friendly reminder to others whom may be considering a similar move. The reach of the RF goes deeper than most many think.

The RF has started using advanced sniper rifles and once tuned they are very effective. We have our lads running amok in western Ukraine sabotaging all manner of things. The RF has gathered a fighting contingent significantly larger than anything Jewlensky can muster. The numbers are stacked against them. The RF is manufacturing lancets around the clock at a cost of $2000USD. They are exceptionally useful for terminating NATO heavy artillery, costing millions. They have been boosted to a 12-hour flight time allowing them to penetrate deep into enemy territory.

The Ukros continue to dig day and night along the Ukrainian Belarus border, building walls and trenches, digging up roads and building fortifications. It would appear they are worried that Belarus may strike. Kiev is almost entirely under a black out.

The RF has now introduced the death sentence for traitors and mercs fighting against the RF. If caught they will go to trial before sentencing under law active in the DNR/LNR. The RF continues to track down and neutralize mercs. Often we use their radio communications to identify their locations. Romania is overflowing with US mercs. Our intel informs that there are approximately 12,000 mercs. Should they cross over into the Ukraine then happy days - the Chechen’s are all too eager to catch up.

The American bioweapons labs exposed by the RF have largely been relocated to the pre-Baltic states, Hungary and Poland. It seems some of the pre-Baltic states want the bioweapons returned to Germany but the wannabe baby Hitler Scholtz is resisting. The Ukrainians are now starting to train the children 8 years of age and older in basic military skills. Jewlensky has now banned the Russian language entirely throughout the Ukraine, outlawed the opposition party, taken over all Ukro media and has given total control of media to Microsoft. So much for American democracy."

[Mashika]

Clown World of the day :ROFL::p

ukr_leaks_eng/1136
https://t.me/SputnikInt/25105
https://t.me/ukr_leaks_eng/1136


NATO’s General Secretary Stoltenberg has confused Ukraine during a parliamentary assembly of the alliance held in Madrid.

"No one should support Ukraine... Sorry, Russia" Stoltenberg said.

[Fellow Aspirant]

A very very interesting report from TASS. It appears that a group of Polish mercenaries killed their Ukrainian enforcers when the Poles refused to take risks and advance further after their initial offensives had been repelled.

Polish mercenaries stationed in the Liman area refused to go into battle after a number of failed attacks and later killed a group of Ukrainian nationalists that had been sent to re-establish order, the Lugansk People’s Republic’s (LPR) interior minister's advisor Vitaly Kiselyov said on Wednesday.

"There was an incident near Liman, where Polish mercenaries refused to tempt fate by trying to advance after several failed attacks," he wrote on Telegram.

According to Kiselyov, a group of Ukrainian nationalists, who were sent to sort the situation out, "failed to build a conversation" and its members were killed. "A massacre between foreigners and Nazis is looming," the official said.Bumping this with a new video interview with Col. Douglas Macgregor.

At 4:06, Macgregor references the incident, and this is the only other time I've heard this mentioned or reported anywhere. Clearly, the Ukrainians covered it all up, as there's no way they can afford to further antagonize the Poles. The very interesting section is just over a minute long, no more.

Ukrinform, operated by the Ukrainian state media, on the other hand, asserts that any claims of Polish mercenaries fighting (especially as intact Polish units) is Russian disinfo.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3615688-5000-polish-mercenaries-that-exist-only-in-russian-media-reports.html

The reasons given by the Ukrainian press, which are independently verifiable, are as follows:

First, a mercenary is a person who pursues a primarily commercial goal. When such mercenaries come to war, they are not combatants, that is, de jure they are not considered as persons taking part in combat operations as part of one or the other side of the armed conflict.

The Ukrainian legislation prohibits the participation of mercenaries in hostilities. In particular, according to paragraph 4 of Article 447 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, "participation of a mercenary in an armed conflict, military or violent actions is punishable by five to ten years of imprisonment."

At the same time, according to the decree signed by the President of Ukraine in 2016, foreigners can be accepted for military service under contract with the Armed Forces. On the initiative of President Zelensky, a few days after Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, the formation of the International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine was announced on February 27, 2022, which enabled foreign volunteers, including those with Ukrainian roots, to defend Ukraine.

The purpose of the International Legion is to resist the Russian army during the war. Representatives of the International Legion cannot be considered mercenaries in view of the definition of international law. According to the Geneva Convention, they are considered combatants, that is, persons directly participating in hostilities as part of the armed forces of one of the parties to an international armed conflict.

Secondly, the figure of 5,000 Polish mercenaries in the Zaporizhzhia direction indicated in the reports spread by the Russian media does not correspond to reality and, according to Anton Myronovych, spokesperson for the International Legion, is "nonsense." In a comment to Ukrinform, Anton Myronovych also emphasized that in any direction, the main burden of the war falls on the citizens of Ukraine, whereas the Russians, spreading information about the large number of foreigners on the Ukrainian side, are primarily pursuing the goal of showing that they are not at war with Ukrainians.

Thirdly, the spread of information by Russian media about the stay of Polish mercenaries in Ukraine also raised concerns in Poland. Stanisław Żaryn, Government Plenipotentiary for the Security of Information Space of the Republic of Poland, wrote on Twitter that the Kremlin’s information warfare against Poland are aimed on promoting the message about the alleged mass support of Ukraine by Polish mercenaries.

Infowars are a thing.

Brian

[Fellow Aspirant]

Nothing like a good fake to keep those naive born yesterday supporters going strong in their outcry


:waving::muscle:HersonVestnik/11110


lol

The caption explains that this exactly what it appears to be: someone being "mocked up" as a casualty. Were these pics used as proof of an atrocity?
If so, what was the context?

Brian

[Fellow Aspirant]

The Mozart group

Volunteers deliver crash courses in battlefield tactics that should take six months to teach
more at
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/05/mozart-group-western-ex-military-training-ukrainian-recruits


Could be worse, I suppose. They could be used as cannon fodder like the Russians are doing with their new "conscripts". I'll bet the Mozart group (founded several years ago to counter the Wagner Group) at least allows its soldiers to phone home regularly. The horror stories of troops left to fend for themselves points to a very serious problem for the Russian military: there is no NCO corps. Without sergeants to lead and keep order, the troops are on their own in battle.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/20/russia-military-families-conscripts-ukraine/?utm

Angry families say Russian conscripts thrown to front line unprepared
By Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova

November 20, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. EST

The wives of Russian soldiers conscripted to fight in Ukraine complained to Russian officials via video that their husbands were poorly prepared to fight. (Video: Courtesy of Vyorstka.

Irina Sokolova’s husband, a Russian soldier mobilized to fight in Ukraine, called her from a forest there last month, sobbing, almost broken.

“They are lying on television,” he wept, referring to the state television propagandists who play down Russian failures and portray a do-or-die war for Russia’s survival against the United States and its allies.

Sokolova, 37, cried for him too, and for their nearly year-old baby son, she said in a telephone interview from her home in Voronezh, in western Russia.

Sokolova is among dozens of soldier’s spouses and other relatives who are voicing remarkably public — and risky — anger and fear over the terrible conditions that new conscripts have faced on the front lines of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The soldiers’ relatives, mostly people who would normally stay out of politics, are tempting the wrath of the Kremlin by posting videos online and in Russian independent media, and even speaking to foreign journalists. They say that mobilized soldiers were deployed into battle with little training, poor equipment and often no clear orders. Many are exhausted and confused, according to their families. Some wander lost in the woods for days. Others refuse to fight.
“Of course he had no idea how terrible it would be there,” Sokolova told The Washington Post. “We watch our federal TV channels and they say that everything is perfect.”

The relatives typically do not criticize President Vladimir Putin or even the war, but their videos have exposed the rock-bottom morale of many conscripts, as Russia tries to surmount its recent losses by throwing a claimed 318,000 reinforcements into battle.

Yana, a transport worker from St. Petersburg, was a fervent pro-war patriot until her partner was mobilized.
In a phone interview, Yana confirmed video accounts by other military spouses that the men had to buy their own warm uniforms and boots and had little training. In Ukraine, they were given no food or water.

“They do not have any orders and they do not have any tasks,” she said. “I spoke to my husband yesterday and he said that they have no clue what to do. They were just abandoned and they have lost all trust, all faith in the authorities.”


On the videos, wives recite lists of grievances in tremulous voices. Conscripts pose in body armor that barely covers their ribs or film themselves in Ukrainian forests, listing their dead and complaining their officers are nowhere to be seen.

Details in the videos could not be independently verified but are consistent with accounts that family members provided in interviews with The Post, and with reports by independent Russian media, such as ASTRA, which exposed seven basement prisons for deserters in Luhansk.

Sokolova’s husband was mobilized to fight in the 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment on Sept. 22. He told her that he received no military training “and by Sept. 26, he was already in Ukraine,” she said.

He phoned late last month, having barely survived a major battle in which his unit was surrounded and many were killed. He and two others escaped without their backpacks and warm gear but were lost and ended up wandering in a forest.

“They were thrown in into the fire, so to speak, on the very first front line, but they’re not military men. They don’t know how to fight. They cannot do this,” Sokolova said, adding that her husband was in severe pain with pancreatitis. “I feel how awful it is for him there,” she said. “My heart is being torn apart.”

Families of other men mobilized to fight in the regiment said their loved ones were sent to the front line near Svatove, a small city in the Luhansk region, on their first day in Ukraine and given one shovel between 30 men to dig trenches.

Speaking in a joint video appeal first sent to independent Russian media Vyorstka, they said the commanders “ran away,” leaving the men to face three days of heavy shelling.

Several dozen mobilized soldiers from the regiment walked some 100 miles to Milove, on the Russian border, and demanded to return to their base near Voronezh, according to their video account on Nov. 3.

They were taken briefly to nearby Valuyki in Russia, but their request was ignored. “We wrote applications. We wrote reports. We did everything, but no one listens to us. Nobody wants to hear us,” a soldier, Konstantin Voropayev, said in the video, in which he also requested legal help.

Sokolova’s husband called her in a panic the same day from Valuyki, saying he and others were being sent right back into battle.

On Oct. 28, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that early problems equipping and training mobilized soldiers were resolved.

Military analyst Konrad Muzyka, of Poland-based Rochan Consulting, wrote in a recent analysis that despite the “abysmal morale” of conscripts the sheer volume of them could help Russia on the battlefield.

As the videos proliferate, Russian authorities appear to be losing patience. One mobilized soldier, Alexander Leshkov, faces up to 15 years in prison after swearing at an officer in a video, pushing him, and griping about the unit’s low-grade flak jackets, said his lawyer, Henri Tsiskarishvili.

“This is a profanation, an imitation of shooting, an imitation of exercises, an imitation of a formation,” Leshkov raged.

Yana and her husband, who have a 4-year-old son, were married with 43 other couples right before the men were sent to war. The Post agreed not to use her full name to shield her from arrest and prosecution.

In the couple’s apartment, the television was always on, pouring out the Kremlin’s line that Russia is fighting the United States, not Ukraine. “We don’t know anything else,” Yana said. “We are so used to believing in what we are told.”

But after her husband was drafted, she gave the television away because it was making her “aggressive.” She said she fears for her husband’s life but said she does not blame Putin, “because he is a smart person.”

“We are absolutely confused, at a loss, and we feel abandoned,” she said. “We’re crying from morning till night.”

Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Kremlin’s propaganda is working — for now — with the video protests not directed at Putin, or even at the war.

“Putin wants people to share responsibility for the war with him,” Kolesnikov said. “He wants their bodies and lives to be sacrificed on the altar of the struggle against NATO, the West, and global evil. This strategy of glorifying cannon fodder and heroizing death is risky, in a more-or-less modernized society which wasn’t ready to be involved physically in the trenches.”

After repeated military setbacks and high casualties, support for the war is waning. Levada Center independent pollster reported on Nov. 1 that 57 percent of Russians want peace talks while 36 percent want to keep fighting.

Sokolova said that the relatives of mobilized men “realize what is going on, but people whose relatives were not mobilized see the world through rose-colored glasses. They have no idea what’s going on, and they’re not interested.”

Yana told her son that his father is a superhero, fighting evil. The fairy tale matches Russia’s imperialist propaganda, yet deep down, it does not ring true. At heart, Yana said she is terrified her husband will never phone again and her son will grow up with no father.

“I am just an ordinary woman and I want to live in peace,” she said. “That’s all I want.”

[Fellow Aspirant]

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/ukraine-switching-the-lights-off.html
[...]
The targeting of 330 kilovolt transformers in various switching stations has cut some 50% of the distribution capability of Ukraine's electricity network. These transformers weigh up to 200 tons. There are no replacements. You do not buy them at the next corner but will have order them with years of lead time. As far as I can tell Russia is currently Russia the only producer of transformers of that type.

Yes, that's correct. (As best I know China makes them too, also with a couple of years of lead time.)


A dearth of 330 kw transformers? There are plenty of such advertised online, ready for immediate delivery. A quick search yields …

Made in China, listed on Alibaba
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/330-kva-transformer.html

India
https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/high-voltage-power-transformer-19049225648.html

Canada
https://www.3l2r.com/ecommerce/transformer/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1-P7hMC5-wIVfPvjBx1K4AqvEAAYASAAEgIm3fD_Bw

and lots of good prices on those that are reconditioned, from the states …
https://t-r.com/cart.php#!c=a&l=1

Getting them to where they are needed is indeed a problem, though.


Brian, you're getting your watts, volts and amps all mixed up. A 330 kV transformer (330,000 volts) at 15 amps (but maybe the current is a lot more than that) would be 4,950,000 watts.

This isn't the kind of thing you order on Amazon (or Alibaba!) and pay a little extra for 2-day shipping. :)


Well, I'm pretty sure my basic electrical conceptions are up to snuff, Bill. (No mention of amperes, but I guess they must be in there somewhere! :sherlock:)
I copied and pasted your post re: 330 kv transformers, just to make sure (late at night posting is fraught with possibilities for niggling errors ;))

I should have done so more carefully, w.r.t. the actual product on offer. Just a wee scroll down the first page, however, yields many descriptions such as these below. Regrettably, I am unable to "lift" the pics of these bad boys from the catalogues, so I'll have to merely post the item descriptions; pictures can be easily accessed by using the links ...

300 315 330 333 350kva 3 phase oil pole mounted step down transformer 11kv 0.4kv
FOB Reference Price:Get Latest Price
$2,799.00 - $3,999.00/ set |1 set/sets(Min. order)
10% OFF Product value more than $10,000.00, Capped at $666.00Get Coupon

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Okay, that's from a Chinese catalogue, to be sure; trade relations being what they are between the behemoths, I'd say the possibility of delivery to the US is in some doubt, but maybe the Chinese are more willing to sell to Ukraine.

The Indians, I'm sure would be willing to part with a few of these


High Voltage Power Transformer, 330 Kv
हाई वोल्टेज पावर ट्रांसफार्मर, 330 Kv
₹ 2 Lakh Get Latest Price
Material
Mild Steel
Primary Voltage
220 V
Phase
Single Phase
Output Voltage
440 V
Secondary Voltage
180 Mva

We are one of the well-distinguished companies in the market that are into providing High Voltage Power Transformer.
Price Range: Rs 200000 - 300000/unit



So, I hope you get my drift. Intriguingly, one of the most prolific manufacturers of transformers is just across the border to the west, i.e. Poland. Then there's the huge Siemens conglomerate in Holland.

That said, I acknowledge that the world wide market for transformers is in crisis right now, even (?) in the U.S. where the infrastructure maintenance on energy grids is at least a decade behind where it should be. The push for new capacity in the Green Energy market is also an exacerbation. With relatively few onshore suppliers (2?) the funding from Biden's Build Back Better Plan is languishing in accounts because everybody wants to order yesterday. As has been mentioned, waits of up to two years are not uncommon. Finding the transformers you need may involve some black market activity.

The destruction of energy distribution in Ukraine is an effective, diabolical strategy. Making war on the civilian population is still a war crime, however, just as it was during the Blitz on London, the fire bombing of Dresden, and Bomber Harris' "Kill em all" strategies during WW2.

Brian

[Bill Ryan]

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/ukraine-switching-the-lights-off.html
[...]
The targeting of 330 kilovolt transformers in various switching stations has cut some 50% of the distribution capability of Ukraine's electricity network. These transformers weigh up to 200 tons. There are no replacements. You do not buy them at the next corner but will have order them with years of lead time. As far as I can tell Russia is currently Russia the only producer of transformers of that type.

Yes, that's correct. (As best I know China makes them too, also with a couple of years of lead time.)


A dearth of 330 kw transformers? There are plenty of such advertised online, ready for immediate delivery. A quick search yields …

Made in China, listed on Alibaba
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/330-kva-transformer.html

India
https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/high-voltage-power-transformer-19049225648.html

Canada
https://www.3l2r.com/ecommerce/transformer/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1-P7hMC5-wIVfPvjBx1K4AqvEAAYASAAEgIm3fD_Bw

and lots of good prices on those that are reconditioned, from the states …
https://t-r.com/cart.php#!c=a&l=1

Getting them to where they are needed is indeed a problem, though.


Brian, you're getting your watts, volts and amps all mixed up. A 330 kV transformer (330,000 volts) at 15 amps (but maybe the current is a lot more than that) would be 4,950,000 watts.

This isn't the kind of thing you order on Amazon (or Alibaba!) and pay a little extra for 2-day shipping. :)


Well, I'm pretty sure my basic electrical conceptions are up to snuff, Bill. (No mention of amperes, but I guess they must be in there somewhere! :sherlock:)
I copied and pasted your post re: 330 kv transformers, just to make sure (late at night posting is fraught with possibilities for niggling errors ;))

I should have done so more carefully, w.r.t. the actual product on offer. Just a wee scroll down the first page, however, yields many descriptions such as these below. Regrettably, I am unable to "lift" the pics of these bad boys from the catalogues, so I'll have to merely post the item descriptions; pictures can be easily accessed by using the links ...

300 315 330 333 350kva 3 phase oil pole mounted step down transformer 11kv 0.4kv
FOB Reference Price:Get Latest Price
$2,799.00 - $3,999.00/ set |1 set/sets(Min. order)
10% OFF Product value more than $10,000.00, Capped at $666.00Get Coupon~~~

I'll stop quoting this post at the point where you copied and pasted Get Coupon. :)

If you think a 330 kV transformer — [B]like the one in the image below — can be ordered over the internet for $2,799.00 - $3,999.00, I'm not sure what to say.


Well, I'm pretty sure my basic electrical conceptions are up to snuff, Bill.You may not be right about that!

All evidence to date suggests you may not have any idea what you are posting, let alone how reliable your quoted sources are. I'll say no more, but will rather look forward to Mashika dismantling your posts if she chooses to. :)


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhyG9e0WYAcD8HS?format=jpg&name=large

[Fellow Aspirant]

Oof




It may have been programmed to gently land, but clearly the programe failed.

I suggest you learn a bit about what the speed required by a rocket to reach a far away place causes even after the fuel runs out, and how it affects the landing. Even if empty of fuel and with no warhead, there is a big explosion. If you want to learn about it or not that's up to you. If this is another "research" project that will never happen on your side, then so be it... 'the land is unchanged' either you do or not


~~


From your post i can only get two things, mostly :P

1. Copium is one hell of a drug. Once you get into it, there's no coming back, now you don't even need a drug government dealer to push you into it, you find your own way to it. It seems like everyone hooked on Copium has no path of recovery, they are left lose to create their own demise. Facts? Who cares, i'll invent my own facts!

It may have been programmed to gently land, but clearly the programe failed.

Maybe the Russian stock of cruise missiles has run out to the point where they are using their high end nuclear stuff without the extreme warheads. (?)


2. So i suppose Elensky and the UkroNazi government are all:

a. Liars
b. Corrupt
c. Scammers
d. Full of It
e. All of the above

Because they immediately claimed it could take a year or more to fix the transformers issue! I suppose they will embezzle all the money sent by you and 'the western partners' and then buy something cheap on alibaba and hope it gets blown up again next week so they don't have to prove they bought some cheap hardware that wasn't going to last for a couple months anyway because it was a cheap produced one :)

Let's add f to the list

f: Genius scammers taking advantage of naive western adults who have the mentality of toddlers who failed kindergarten first grade



Re the transformers -

A dearth of 330 kw transformers? There are plenty of such advertised online, ready for immediate delivery. A quick search yields …

Made in China, listed on Alibaba

https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/330-kva-transformer.html

India
https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/high-voltage-power-transformer-19049225648.html

Canada
https://www.3l2r.com/ecommerce/transformer/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1-P7hMC5-wIVfPvjBx1K4AqvEAAYASAAEgIm3fD_Bw

and lots of good prices on those that are reconditioned, from the states …
https://t-r.com/cart.php#!c=a&l=1



Getting them to where they are needed is indeed a problem, though.
Why would that be? With all the most fantastic support from the west, capable enough to leave their own citizens in the cold just to support Ukraine, you would think they have some planes or other means to deliver, i mean they deliver tanks and rockets and AD units every other week, what makes a transformer harder to deliver than a 50 tons tank or howitzer? Imagination or excuses?

Or is it that only arms that deliver money back to the 'western partners' have priority over things that are not good for the western military complex business, like a transformer would? Last time i checked the military complex doesn't build or sell transformers, so of course it is not on the menu for "aid" to Ukraine lol

Oh how much i hurt for the growing pains of western adults


Hi Mashika

As Bill has and others have so clearly pointed out, the time line of one year to replace the Ukrainian transformers is valid; it may even be optimistically short. Given this, your castigation of Zalenskyy is both wrong and overwrought.

So your number one take is invalid. Still, I'm glad that you found at least one of the things in my post that you wanted to lick.


Also

Apparently you missed the post that I was replying to, so here you are ...

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1528230&viewfull=1#post1528230

in which the relevant part is this (in bold text)

RUSSIA FIRED A GENUINE NUCLEAR CRUISE MISSILE INTO UKRAINE

It was carrying a mock up of a real nuclear warhead and was recovered by Ukranian forces. if that is not a shot across the bow I don't know what is, Russia could not have sent a clearer message. Rumor has it that Ukraine shot it down but I suspect it was programmed to gently land where they would see it to make sure the message was delivered.

In effect, you were agreeing with me (no need to apologize :bigsmile:) The laws of physics are immutable (so far :highfive:)

If you like, you can offer to educate Jim and Win Ru though, with one of your low key responses.

If only Elon Musk could program his rockets to land gently ... wait ... never mind ... :facepalm:


And my name's not "oof".

It was my given name ( I come from good Ukrainian stock but how did you know?) I subsequently had it changed when I got into shape. :bigsmile:

Brian

[Bill Ryan]

I suspect it was programmed to gently land where they would see it to make sure the message was delivered. Cruise missiles don't (and can't!) 'gently land'.

SpaceX boosters 'gently land'. Not military missiles.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkk9VIKWw2w

[shaberon]

a few days after Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine



Except it's not. Instead, it is about a 1% commitment, maybe 3%, not using their entire arsenal.

Suggest that "Ukrinfo", "Washington Post", etc., are not things we should read, and anything from England or Australia is probably even worse.

[Fellow Aspirant]

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/ukraine-switching-the-lights-off.html
[...]
The targeting of 330 kilovolt transformers in various switching stations has cut some 50% of the distribution capability of Ukraine's electricity network. These transformers weigh up to 200 tons. There are no replacements. You do not buy them at the next corner but will have order them with years of lead time. As far as I can tell Russia is currently Russia the only producer of transformers of that type.

Yes, that's correct. (As best I know China makes them too, also with a couple of years of lead time.)


A dearth of 330 kw transformers? There are plenty of such advertised online, ready for immediate delivery. A quick search yields …

Made in China, listed on Alibaba
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/330-kva-transformer.html

India
https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/high-voltage-power-transformer-19049225648.html

Canada
https://www.3l2r.com/ecommerce/transformer/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1-P7hMC5-wIVfPvjBx1K4AqvEAAYASAAEgIm3fD_Bw

and lots of good prices on those that are reconditioned, from the states …
https://t-r.com/cart.php#!c=a&l=1

Getting them to where they are needed is indeed a problem, though.


Brian, you're getting your watts, volts and amps all mixed up. A 330 kV transformer (330,000 volts) at 15 amps (but maybe the current is a lot more than that) would be 4,950,000 watts.

This isn't the kind of thing you order on Amazon (or Alibaba!) and pay a little extra for 2-day shipping. :)

Bill, I'm hoping that the wee smiling emoticon at the end indicates that you have said this as a joke. You can't really believe that I'm that stupid. :confused:

B

[Michel Leclerc]

See? It's pure BS, no investigation has happened at all, so these 'credible claims' are pure BS. There has been no real evidence provided, and the claim that Russia doesn't allow the UN to go into Donbass is also pure BS, they had been there and were able to do anything they wanted for years, and they did nothing. No one is stopping them from going, it's actually Ukraine who for example forbade the Red Cross from going into Donbass, and there's is plenty of evidence that the UN helped the Azov and other groups instead of doing their work to document the crimes committed by Ukraine over the past 9 years

If the people move to other countries in the middle east or any other place, they are refugees, including the kids sent over to the UK that are sexually abused or vanish forever. If they go to Russia, they are filtrated and it's genocide

I don't know why you are not bothered that these people are playing with your mind and plainly lying to you, without any shame. Doesn't that bother you at all?

Yes, Mashika, that is the question to ask. But I fear – or do I fear? – the answer is “No”.

The answer might even be: “No, because I want to give them the impression that I allow them to play with my mind because that is what I am expected to do.”

In the middle of the 90s one of my clients, higher-level management in a Belgian multinational, told me: “it suits me that I can pay those bastards" (he meant the Belgian army “to do that s..t in my place while I can lay back on my couch.” That was ±1995.

A variation of this I heard from a top-level consultant about 9/11: “I believe that 19 Arabs armed with pocket-knives...” (etc.): that was 2003, and another one about the “vaccines”: “as a German citizen I do what my government asks me to do": that was last year.

[Mashika]

Oof




It may have been programmed to gently land, but clearly the programe failed.

I suggest you learn a bit about what the speed required by a rocket to reach a far away place causes even after the fuel runs out, and how it affects the landing. Even if empty of fuel and with no warhead, there is a big explosion. If you want to learn about it or not that's up to you. If this is another "research" project that will never happen on your side, then so be it... 'the land is unchanged' either you do or not


~~


From your post i can only get two things, mostly :P

1. Copium is one hell of a drug. Once you get into it, there's no coming back, now you don't even need a drug government dealer to push you into it, you find your own way to it. It seems like everyone hooked on Copium has no path of recovery, they are left lose to create their own demise. Facts? Who cares, i'll invent my own facts!

It may have been programmed to gently land, but clearly the programe failed.

Maybe the Russian stock of cruise missiles has run out to the point where they are using their high end nuclear stuff without the extreme warheads. (?)


2. So i suppose Elensky and the UkroNazi government are all:

a. Liars
b. Corrupt
c. Scammers
d. Full of It
e. All of the above

Because they immediately claimed it could take a year or more to fix the transformers issue! I suppose they will embezzle all the money sent by you and 'the western partners' and then buy something cheap on alibaba and hope it gets blown up again next week so they don't have to prove they bought some cheap hardware that wasn't going to last for a couple months anyway because it was a cheap produced one :)

Let's add f to the list

f: Genius scammers taking advantage of naive western adults who have the mentality of toddlers who failed kindergarten first grade



Re the transformers -

A dearth of 330 kw transformers? There are plenty of such advertised online, ready for immediate delivery. A quick search yields …

Made in China, listed on Alibaba

https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/330-kva-transformer.html

India
https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/high-voltage-power-transformer-19049225648.html

Canada
https://www.3l2r.com/ecommerce/transformer/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1-P7hMC5-wIVfPvjBx1K4AqvEAAYASAAEgIm3fD_Bw

and lots of good prices on those that are reconditioned, from the states …
https://t-r.com/cart.php#!c=a&l=1



Getting them to where they are needed is indeed a problem, though.
Why would that be? With all the most fantastic support from the west, capable enough to leave their own citizens in the cold just to support Ukraine, you would think they have some planes or other means to deliver, i mean they deliver tanks and rockets and AD units every other week, what makes a transformer harder to deliver than a 50 tons tank or howitzer? Imagination or excuses?

Or is it that only arms that deliver money back to the 'western partners' have priority over things that are not good for the western military complex business, like a transformer would? Last time i checked the military complex doesn't build or sell transformers, so of course it is not on the menu for "aid" to Ukraine lol

Oh how much i hurt for the growing pains of western adults


Hi Mashika

As Bill has and others have so clearly pointed out, the time line of one year to replace the Ukrainian transformers is valid; it may even be optimistically short. Given this, your castigation of Zalenskyy is both wrong and overwrought.

So your number one take is invalid. Still, I'm glad that you found at least one of the things in my post that you wanted to lick.


Also

Apparently you missed the post that I was replying to, so here you are ...

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1528230&viewfull=1#post1528230

in which the relevant part is this (in bold text)

RUSSIA FIRED A GENUINE NUCLEAR CRUISE MISSILE INTO UKRAINE

It was carrying a mock up of a real nuclear warhead and was recovered by Ukranian forces. if that is not a shot across the bow I don't know what is, Russia could not have sent a clearer message. Rumor has it that Ukraine shot it down but I suspect it was programmed to gently land where they would see it to make sure the message was delivered.

In effect, you were agreeing with me (no need to apologize :bigsmile:) The laws of physics are immutable (so far :highfive:)

If you like, you can offer to educate Jim and Win Ru though, with one of your low key responses.

If only Elon Musk could program his rockets to land gently ... wait ... never mind ... :facepalm:


And my name's not "oof".

It was my given name ( I come from good Ukrainian stock but how did you know?) I subsequently had it changed when I got into shape. :bigsmile:

Brian

Honestly, i could not care less how long Elensky will take to get some new Transformers, or why is that important. The entire tech they are using is old soviet tech for the most part, and the Ukrainians are well know for not being able to build anything new since 30 years ago, everything they have is old soviet stuff that remained unchanged across 3 decades, so they have themselves to blame for being unable to quickly replace their units.

But talking about that stuff at this point is like saying "Wait why are around 20,000 people death in Donbass? And how did they died in the past 9 years before the military operation of 24 February started? Who were these people and who killed them?"

And then the response to those questions is "Yeah that's interesting, but let's talk about the weather, and food prices are very high right now!"

It's like a very very uninteresting and weak diversion tactic. In a debate that just doesn't cut it

The nuclear missile thing is equally weak argument to divert the conversation, "they probably have to use nuclear missiles with dummy warheads because they are running out of other missiles" is not a real argument based on hard facts or anything at all. It's just another diversion tactic that still doesn't work

It can be simply dismissed by observing the facts on the ground: "If the Russian army were using nuclear missiles in that way, they you would see lots of them all over the place and there would be plenty of evidence that 40/50 or more nuclear missiles were used in that way"

But there is zero evidence of that, so making a baseless claim and then trying to discuss it? that's just like discussing what kind of cheese the moon is made off, and divert from discussing if the moon is made or is not made out of cheese

So yeah, discussing a reality based on nothing but wishful thinking or twisted baseless observations is not a good way to spend time. Unless that's your purpose in the first place, to divert and derail from discussing more important matters and focus on menial details. Just a waste of time in the end

Oof is a sound made when you see something so wrong that you just go completely out of air and words, like when someone hits you very hard on the stomach and all the air goes out and you make that sound "oof", just because

Mashika: "Ukraine shelled a nuclear power plant and almost caused the death of millions of people"

Oof: Yeah, I read that nothing happened and there was no radiation released so we don't need to discuss the shelling and war crime by Ukraine anymore, that's water under the bridge. So... Do pigs have souls?

Mashika: "Really? You don't have any more thoughts on that than dismissing it as a nothingburger just because no people died this time? Oof...."

[Mashika]

There are a few members who post stuff here, but they always avoid the actual matter and just divert into pointless arguments, isn't that a bit annoying and boring?

I mean like this, why skip over a lot of points and then just reply with plain media talking points to a single item of a 10 item post? And then the response is just basically a copy/paste of media talking points taken directly from some random website. Not even an effort to produce an actual thought?

It's slow, boring and it doesn't speak much of the person posting talking points. That's just lazy and clumsy

And it makes me think the person has nothing interesting to say of their own. It's a copy/paste machine only

What's a "real conversation" ? Skipping all the points made by someone and then replying to the most uninteresting one with a very lazy reply that is basically just repeating something someone else said on another site and which was already a lazy attempt to begin with?

I don't know, but that's just a completely turn off

+ Thousands of people died
- They probably died of something
+ No really? Who could have guessed!
- Also some were born in another place the same day
+ Yes but we want to discuss the people who died and why
- I heard that new born babies poop a lot and sleep all day
+ Here's some evidence the death people were murdered and did not die of natural causes
- Oh well, in the global scheme those are thousands but millions have died since humanity exists

And it keeps going forever. Sorry but that's just noise

And it is very clear and obvious when people do derailing and adding noise thing. Sometimes it is a bit amusing and entertaining, but it gets boring very soon. honestly

:sleep::sleep::sleep::sleep::noidea:

[Mashika]

Here's something to ponder about

See this ship? Looks familiar?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ukrayina_at_Shipyard_imeni_61_Kommunara_Ingul_River_Nikolayev_7_December_2013.jpg

That's the Ukraina, a sister ship to the Moscow that was gifted to Ukraine by Russia. But Ukraine, being able to build ships back in the USSR times, and having the shipyards and everything necessary to complete it, just simply took it, and then let it rot for decades

Around 30 million dollars were needed to finish it, that's nothing. And yet, there it sits rotting away, how can a country not be able to spend 30 million dollars on this?

Ukraine can't build anything

They live out of hand outs and expect to be given everything for free and ready to go. Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve

Ukraine as a country inherited lots of resources, shipyards, know-how about lots of stuff that were the primary resources of the USSR, and they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row. Except sell it out for cheap to western "partners". And they continue to sell the country in pieces for very cheap because they have no clue how to progress on their own

They turned what could have been the third richest country in the world into a beggar than requires monthly handouts and has no production of any kind other than grains, they can't build any new tech, they can't research, they can't restore any industries they had, they do nothing but expect handouts

Research topic: How many billions did Russia give to Ukraine through the past 3 decades and what happened to that money and aid? And second, How is it that Ukraine is in a lot of debt, when Russia paid it all 30 years ago and helped them start fresh with lots of resources and zero debt? Why did it took so little time to go from being a potential most richest country in Europe to a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society?

Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries? Can Ukraine build nuclear power plants? No they can't, the ones they have are Soviet tech and they depended until very recently on Russia, but yet nuclear power was central in Ukraine, and they do have the know-how for sure

It's just that they just can't build anything, they went into full mediocre/lame mode and can't/won't even try to get out of it anymore.

They don't ask nicely, they demand handouts because they think they deserve them because they are "the master race"

[Rizotto]

Interesting analysis, 25 minutes:

Russia Continues Grinding Away Ukrainian Military & Electrical Power (Update for November 21, 2022)
(The New Atlas)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LtmulODrI

[Rizotto]

In the following November 20 CBC report about the situation in "liberated" Kherson, mention is made that the city had been heavily mined. It doesn't specifically state 'by the Russians prior to retreating', but it is strongly implied. A UN agent on site is even reporting that they hear "mines being detonated all day long" in Kherson as part of the current demining operation.

"NATO secretary general says alliance must prepare for 'long haul' in Ukraine"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nato-long-haul-ukraine-1.6658147


That is the first time I hear of reports alleging that Russians have been placing mines anywhere. Many Canadians (but not all) know by now that CBC is an incredibly biased propaganda machine, frequently lying by omission. But it is concerning that a UN agent is talking about mines being detonated all day long. What is going on?


Does anyone here have more information about this alleged 'demining operation in Kherson?

[Bill Ryan]

Made in China, listed on Alibaba
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/330-kva-transformer.html
[ ... ]
Bill, I'm hoping that the wee smiling emoticon at the end indicates that you have said this as a joke. You can't really believe that I'm that stupid. :confused:

Brian, it was you who posted that these huge transformers could be bought over the internet via Alibaba (the Chinese equivalent of Amazon)!

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterInfo1/status/1594956662624096256

1594956662624096256

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/SpriterInfo1/status/1594854021613092864

1594854021613092864

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/SpriterInfo1/status/1594960367092125697

1594960367092125697

[Tintin]

... November 20 CBC report...

"NATO secretary general says alliance must prepare for 'long haul' in Ukraine"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nato-long-haul-ukraine-1.6658147


Many Canadians (but not all) know by now that CBC is an incredibly biased propaganda machine, frequently lying by omission.

Does anyone here have more information about this alleged 'demining operation in Kherson?

Oh good lord, and you genuinely have my sympathy here - we suffer here in the UK too via the BBC.

Remember this from Jordan Peterson a while back?



"The legacy media are in an unrecoverable death spiral, spinning ever more uncontrollably. The CBC has become a mewling, meandering, self-righteous, slogan-spewing narcissistic near-corpse."

Source: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1473890590576332807?lang=en-GB

Couldn't have said it better myself and the second sentence there should serve as a strapline :)

As for the mines: I actually think that may (for a change) be mostly accurate but that's speculation only. Some commentators have suggested that RF allied forces did booby-trap the region north of Kherson City as a part of their tactical withdrawal and repositioning, and I've seen Telegram channel footage that seems to show that UKR forces lost a whole heap of men and equipment along the way as a result of the mining, when they weren't also being strafed in other ways.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterInfo1/status/1594960829065183234

1594960829065183234

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/SpriterInfo1/status/1594960120546557952

1594960120546557952

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1594248836943331329

1594248836943331329

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1594969473865453568


1594969473865453568

[Tintin]

what kind of cheese the moon is made off

:ROFL:

Swiss, I think, as a result of the ballistic arc from Ukrainian S-300AD system missile batteries :bigsmile:

:focus:

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1594971366243340288

1594971366243340288

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1594971372211638273

1594971372211638273

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1594971378381651969

1594971378381651969

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1594661050452160518

1594661050452160518

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1594425396577042433

1594425396577042433

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://www.rt.com/russia/566953-un-zaporozhye-ukraine-shelling/

UN responds to Russian nuclear risk request

The UN doesn’t have the capability to identify those behind the attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP), a spokesman for the secretary-general said on Monday. The comment came in response to Russia's call on the International Atomic Energy Agency to do its job properly and acknowledge that the shelling came from the Ukrainian side.

Around 30 projectiles struck the ZNPP over the weekend, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The nuclear energy corporation Rosatom said the damage caused to the facility’s spent fuel storage came close to triggering a disaster. Moscow said it was clear the fire came from the Ukrainian-held town of Marganets, but the IAEA has avoided naming any names.

“We have no way to determine” who carried out the attacks, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Monday.

“We would like these attacks to stop,” Haq added, noting that the Secretariat “shares the concerns” of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and “joins him in calling on all parties to cease fire” around the ZNPP.

Ukrainian attacks risk ‘nuclear disaster’ – Rosatom
Ukrainian attacks risk ‘nuclear disaster’ – Rosatom
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been under Russian control since February. Damage to the spent fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences, Rosatom has warned.

Both Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday that the IAEA should fully do its duty and name names.

“As an authoritative and independent international body, [the IAEA] must finally move away from abstract condemnations and demands to stop the shelling of the ZNPP without addressing the culprit, and clearly and unambiguously point at those carrying out the attacks,” Zakharova said. “This requires determination and responsibility. We really hope that they will be shown.”

Zakharova also accused Western governments of giving a “blank check” to the government in Kiev for “continuing their reckless attempts to cause irreparable damage” to the ZNPP.

This weekend’s attacks were the first major incident at the ZNPP since early September, when the IAEA stationed permanent observers at the site. According to Rosatom official Renat Karchaa, the IAEA inspectors surveyed the damage on Monday, accompanied by a Russian ballistics expert, and were able to see that the attack had come from the Ukrainian side. That report was transmitted to the IAEA headquarters.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1595003946711465984

1595003946711465984

[Ravenlocke]

https://sputniknews.com/20221122/suspects-in-multimillion-dollar-cryptocurrency-ponzi-scheme-busted-in-estonia-1104545821.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Suspects in Multimillion Dollar 'Cryptocurrency Ponzi Scheme' Busted in Estonia

The suspects allegedly laundered their ill-gotten gains through shell companies and then bought luxury cars and real estate with the money.




Authorities in Estonia have arrested two locals accused of being involved in a $575 million cryptocurrency fraud scheme.
The suspects, two Estonian citizens named Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin, are being charged by a court in the US with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The suspects were allegedly involved in tricking people into investing into the cryptocurrency mining service HashFlare and virtual currency bank Polybius, with both of these ventures being nothing but pyramid schemes.

The suspects allegedly laundered the proceeds of this fraud through shell companies and then used that money buy luxury cars and real estate.
“These defendants capitalized on both the allure of cryptocurrency, and the mystery surrounding cryptocurrency mining, to commit an enormous Ponzi scheme,” said Seattle US Attorney Nick Brown.
Both Potapenko and Turogin now face extradition to the United States. Four other individuals from Estonia, Belarus and Switzerland were also reportedly charged in this case, but their identities were not yet revealed to the media.

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https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/1595017021619859459

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[JackMcThorn]

I suspect it was programmed to gently land where they would see it to make sure the message was delivered. Cruise missiles don't (and can't!) 'gently land'.

Our cruise missiles in the u.s. navy [Tomahawks] were rocket launched and then had a turbine engine for 1ooo mile range, the rocket part was really brief just to get it airborne. So it wasn't powered by the rocket for very long at all. We launched quite a few of these [approx. 45] in 1998 at Iraq from my ship. One missile failed and it came toward the ship; they disabled it mid-flight and it fell right into the drink instead of striking our ship. Several of us witnessed this event.

My ship had the launcher forward on the bow so we could be aft on the fantail and watch these things launch. Some ships have them forward and aft so no one is allowed on deck for those launches. So I was on watch in engineering when we started firing but it was an all night ordeal. After watch some of us engineers went to the fantail to see the action. So the rocket takes off [at night the rocket blast is so bright over the ship it looks like daylight brightness] and shortly [seconds later] you can here the whine of the turbine engine as it takes over flight. The turbine will allow speeds of over 5oo mph but it can change velocity and many times they are designed to 'loiter' in an area before getting details required for striking a target. These things have a margin of error of approximately 1o metres. Their navigation systems check terrain and make adjustments accordingly. The navy also fires missiles without warheads to test ship's defences. No one is allowed on deck when these tests occur. There are versions of Tomahawk missiles relative to land strike, surface to surface, and surface to ship. They are quite complicated and in 1998 they cost a cool 1.3 million american, per missile.

So I think there is a possibility to land a cruise missile in a precise location without munitions. Why would someone launch a million dollar missile to send a message? Well any military generally speaking have sullied reputations regarding it's brains and acumen. But I wouldn't immediately discount the opportunity. Russia from time to time seems to be sending messages relative to its potential in battle.

These new hyper-sonic missiles, certainly would not 'land gently'. They use rockets but also one of the three types of hyper-sonic missiles uses a scramjet engine and these are referred to as cruise missiles also but they are very different from turbine engines.

Notwithstanding, I think it is possible to send a million dollar message - but if it were me, I would not waste the resources in such a way.

[Pam]

Don't forget to watch the news.... I don't know what thread to put this in, if there is a better one please change. Wow, we are definitely in the world of smoke and mirrors.


Reporting live from the war in Ukraine...whoops wrong green screen I can fix that!




3yFGhmB37r92

[Vicus]

Russia’s former southern capital renounces its past: How Ukraine is destroying its heritage
Ukraine is turning into a significantly more homogeneous and far less culturally diverse country

In recent years, Ukraine has become the battleground for a ‘war of monuments’ waged among various political forces. In 2014, the process reached a peak during the mass demolition of statues of Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet politicians. These events fundamentally changed the symbolism and policy of the country's historical memory, paving the way to a reality in which any public speech must now be accompanied by the words ‘Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!’

This was the slogan of Stepan Bandera's World War Two nationalist movement, which collaborated with Adolf Hitler's Nazis and took part in the Holocaust.

Although Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s team initially tried to ‘reset’ the historical memory policy, radical nationalism got the upper hand in this symbolic battle. Following the start of Russia’s military operation, this year, the so-called ‘decommunization’ policy became openly known as ‘de-Russification’ – even with over half of the population officially recognized as Russian-speaking.

Memory wars
After Russian troops entered Ukraine in February, many locals projected their hatred of Moscow onto objects of cultural and historical heritage that were in any way linked to the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, politicians actively supported such sentiment, using it as a cheap way to boost their personal ratings.

Over the past months, the number of initiatives aimed at the cultural and historical ‘de-Russification’ of Ukraine have ballooned. Examples abound. The Kiev City Council recently renamed 11 streets having any reference to Russia (Lomonosov, Magnitogorsk, and Belomorskaya streets, among others). It also completely excluded the Russian language from the curricula of the capital’s kindergartens and schools. The decision was supported by 64 out of 120 deputies. Vadim Vasilchuk, head of the Standing Committee on Education, Science, Family, Youth and Sports of the body, commented that teaching Russian in the current situation is “inappropriate.” In fact, Kiev’s educational institutions stopped teaching the language in any shape or form (including as electives) at the beginning of the academic year.

Meanwhile, other Ukrainian cities saw a wave of ‘de-Pushkinization’ sweep through. In November, monuments to the great Russian poet were toppled in Kharkov and Zhitomir, while the monument in Odessa was painted over with the inscription ‘Get out!’ In Kiev, one of the oldest monuments to the bard had been taken down a few weeks earlier.

continue: https://www.rt.com/russia/566917-ukraine-is-losing-heritage/

[Vicus]

Russia reinforcing border with Ukraine

‘Large scale’ work is underway, the governor of Belgorod Region has announced

A new line of defense is being created on the border between Ukraine and Russia’s western Belgorod Region, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced during a press conference on Monday.

The official said the move comes in response to increasing tensions at the border, but did not disclose details about the construction, warning that his statements are “being carefully listened to by our enemies.”

“I will state this briefly: the work is being carried out on a large scale. Since April, within the framework of our powers, we have been actively engaged in strengthening the borders,” Gladkov said.

Asked if he is referring to the so-called “Wagner line” — a system of anti-tank structures built by the Russian private military organization the “Wagner group” in the Donbass Region — Gladkov said he would prefer not to comment on other “respected people” and wanted to focus on Belgorod’s so-called ‘zasechnaya’ line.

A ‘zasechnaya’ line refers to wooden defensive structures, consisting of felled trees, used by Russia between the 10th and 18th centuries to defend against enemy raids.

“The Belgorod Region has always stood at the frontier of the defense of the Russian state, and continues to do so,” the governor said.

After Russia began its military operation in Ukraine in late February, Kiev’s forces have repeatedly shelled and launched drones against civilian and military targets in the region. In some cases, private residences, as well as a school and kindergarten have been struck.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced a “medium action level” alert in some parts of Western Russia. It grants regional officials additional authority to ensure security and quickly react to any emergencies.

https://www.rt.com/russia/566993-russia-reinforcing-ukraine-border/

[Vicus]

US downplays execution of Russian POWs in Ukraine

Washington’s envoy for war crimes has acknowledged videos showing executions of captives while claiming Russians have done worse

While acknowledging concern over videos that showed Ukrainian forces executing captured Russian soldiers, the US war crimes envoy has argued that allegations against Kiev’s forces pale in comparison to Moscow’s alleged atrocities. :sick:

“We are obviously tracking that quite closely,” Beth Van Schaack, US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Monday. “It’s really important to emphasize that the laws of war apply to all parties equally, both the aggressor state and the defender state, and this is in equal measure.”

However, Van Schaack added, “when it comes to the war in Ukraine, that’s really where the equivalency ends. When we’re looking at the sheer scale of criminality exhibited by Russian forces, it’s enormous compared to the allegations that we have seen against Ukrainian forces.”

The envoy also claimed that Kiev has dealt with allegations of wrongdoing more responsibly.

“Russia inevitably responds with propaganda, denial, mis- and disinformation, whereas the Ukrainian authorities have generally acknowledged abuses and have denounced them and have pledged to investigate them,” she said.

continue: https://www.rt.com/news/566961-washington-ukraine-pow-execution/

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1594972125085024258

1594972125085024258



https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1594954512137322497

1594954512137322497

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1594899106056511489

1594899106056511489

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/MintPressNews/status/1595116062751993860

1595116062751993860

C_-ycZtFzho

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ChannelOne_eng/status/1595059084990251009

1595059084990251009

https://twitter.com/ChannelOne_eng/status/1595057649712005121

1595057649712005121

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https://twitter.com/ChannelOne_eng/status/1594987375297724417

1594987375297724417

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Ukraine66251776/status/1595052406420951040

1595052406420951040

[Michel Leclerc]

Here's something to ponder about

See this ship? Looks familiar?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ukrayina_at_Shipyard_imeni_61_Kommunara_Ingul_River_Nikolayev_7_December_2013.jpg

(...) Why did it took so little time to go from being a potential most richest country in Europe to a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society?

Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries? Can Ukraine build nuclear power plants? (...)

Taking your questions as real questions and not rhetorical ones, Mashika, could it be that the answer is the absence of a government like Vladimir Putin’s?

In other words, in Ukraine the strategy of lobotomising, raping and raiding the morsels of the Soviet Union succeeded – because there was no“Putin” to take over from a “Yeltsin” (while in Russia there was one), and maybe there was not even a “Yeltsin” in Ukraine, whereas the Russian Yeltsin, in spite of all his defects had the wisdom not to hold up the transition ultimately?

And if that is the case – doesn’t that prove the theory right that political transformations depend on the presence or absence of leadership qualities in the leaders? (Instead of considering them uniquely dependent on sociological and/or economical constraints?)

The answers are yes, I guess (my questions being rhetorical). For the countries of the world to see, what has been and is happening to Ukraine is what happens to a country, or a nation, or a civilisation, or a culture when it does not stand up for its essence, and is not led by people who have the mission to do so.

[shaberon]

Too much fun. After the planeload of Nazis went to China begging for anything they could get their hands on, their next bright idea was to use state subsidies to pin Volkswagen in place. Then back to the plane and:




While most members were trying to focus on actual global issues, the G7 members within the G20 were effectively trying to hijack the summit and make it entirely Ukraine-focused, which failed for the most part.

It was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who had to admit that they had failed to isolate Russia at the G20 summit in Bali.



Lavrov got the full reception there--they even danced! But he is barred from the OSCE meeting in Lodz, Poland, which sounds fitting because:


...the organization was using high-resolution cameras, originally placed to conduct ceasefire monitoring, to relay DPR and LPR positions to the Kiev regime forces which then used the provided data to target or correct their artillery fire. The OSCE mission provided their observation data, captured by cameras and other monitoring equipment they installed over the years. In essence, OSCE was spying and effectively waging war on the side of the Neo-Nazi junta. To make matters worse, the provided monitoring data also included the movement of regular Russian military personnel in the early days of the special military operation.



After a weird attempt to "pressure" Ankara into letting Finland deploy "wall of nuclear missiles", without any proof, Turkey then got mad at the United States, because they must be behind the PKK attacks. Here is a brief timeline about how they responded to U. S. proxies--likely in areas that also contain U. S. forces:


On November 18, the United States Consulate General in Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, issued a security alert warning American citizens of a near Turkish military operation in northern Iraq and northern Syria.

18 November، 2022

Hasaka, SANA -The Council of Sheikhs and Notables of the Syrian Tribes and Clans in Hasaka, during a meeting in the city of Qamishli on Friday, renewed its rejection of the illegal presence of American and Turkish occupation on the Syrian lands in all its forms.

“The US presence in the region aims to control Syria’s resources and deprive the Syrians of them, and it is an illegitimate presence that aims to serve the interests of the Israeli enemy, strike civil peace, and to create discord among all sects. “the Council said in a statement.


Starting around the 20th:


“Turkey did not inform Russia in advance of conducting its air operation in Syria and Iraq, and this issue will be discussed during the Astana meeting,” Lavrentiev said in statements to reporters ahead of the start of the 19th international meeting on Syria in the Astana format.


The Russian envoy also noted that the “illegal” presence of US troops in Syria was significantly hindering stability in the region. He suggested that if Washington’s military contingent were to withdraw from the Northeastern part of the country, it would help to calm the situation.

Laverentyev’s comments came after Turkish warplanes carried out a series of strikes destroying 89 targets in Syria and Iraq on Sunday, which were reportedly linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the YPG.



Kurdish Firat News Agency (ANF) reported that Ankara has once again carried out an air attack against the city of Ain al-Arab in northern Syria.

On Sunday, the Turkish army shelled several villages in the northern countryside of Aleppo and fired missile barrages at the positions of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Al-Malikiyah area, north of Al-Hasakah, and Ain Issa area, north of Al-Raqqa.


In northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes targeted SDF-held areas in Aleppo, Raqqa and al-Hasakah, including the town of Kabani, the main stronghold of the Kurdish-led group.

The reporter of the Hawar News Agency, Essam Abdullah, was also among the casualties.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Force launched a fresh round of missile and drone attacks on the positions of separatist groups in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.

Sabereen News reported that the attacks set off warning sirens at the United States’ Consulate in Erbil.




22 November، 2022

Hasaka, SANA- the US occupation forces brought out a new convoy of tanks loaded with oil from Syrian territory towards the Iraqi territories.

Local sources from al-Yarubiya in Hasaka countryside told SANA reporter that a convoy including 44 US occupation tanks laden with stolen Syrian oil left Hasaka province heading towards Iraq via the illegitimate al- Mahmoudiyah crossing over the past hours.


That last bit is not even news, but a nearly ten-year-old story that just keeps happening.


Doesn't always work:


Yemeni armed forces said they have successfully prevented a foreign [Greek] oil tanker from stealing the country's direly-needed oil by forcing the vessel away from a Southern port.

Saree reported the most recent of such incidents less than two weeks ago, when the country’s army troops and allied fighters managed to stop a foreign oil tanker in the waters off the energy-rich Southern Shabwah Province as it was trying to smuggle hundreds of thousands of barrels of fuel out of the impoverished Arab nation.

And an earlier case that came last month, saw the Yemeni military conducting a warning strike against a Saudi oil tanker that was likewise attempting to steal crude supplies from another Southern oil terminal.



In serious matters (https://www.farsnews.ir/en/news/14010901000167/Repr-Ukrainian-Sldiers-Invlved-in-Mrder-f-0-Rssian-POWs-Tied-NATO) like executing POWs face down:


Ukrainian soldiers that executed 10 Russian prisoners of war belong to a brigade based in the city of Lvov that works closely with NATO, Russian broadcaster RT reported on Monday, citing a former Ukrainian soldier.

The soldier used to serve in this brigade, but switched to the Russian side after his father was executed by Ukrainians, the report said.

According to the former Ukrainian soldier, those deployed in the 80th brigade were taught to hate everything Russian long before the start of the special operation, RT said.

US troops, including forces with the Marine Corps, were involved in the training of the brigade, the soldier said.



And as sheer brutal honesty, speaking to Lexus and Vovan as Gabriel Macron (https://sputniknews.com/20221122/i-do-not-want-war-with-russia-polish-prez-spills-the-beans-about-recent-missile-incident-1104554084.html), the Lavrov-excluding Polish president says:


“You think I need war with Russia? No, I do not want that. I do not want a war with Russia, and I am very careful, trust me, very careful,” Duda said, adding that he did not consider invoking article 5 of the NATO Treaty.

Thinking that Eugene Zellner or whatever his name is, is nuts:


“He says they are completely certain that it was a Russian missile launched by Russians. And he said that it could not have been a Ukrainian missile launch,” Duda added.

[loungelizard]

Here's something to ponder about

See this ship? Looks familiar?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ukrayina_at_Shipyard_imeni_61_Kommunara_Ingul_River_Nikolayev_7_December_2013.jpg

That's the Ukraina, a sister ship to the Moscow that was gifted to Ukraine by Russia. But Ukraine, being able to build ships back in the USSR times, and having the shipyards and everything necessary to complete it, just simply took it, and then let it rot for decades

Around 30 million dollars were needed to finish it, that's nothing. And yet, there it sits rotting away, how can a country not be able to spend 30 million dollars on this?

Ukraine can't build anything

They live out of hand outs and expect to be given everything for free and ready to go. Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve

Ukraine as a country inherited lots of resources, shipyards, know-how about lots of stuff that were the primary resources of the USSR, and they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row. Except sell it out for cheap to western "partners". And they continue to sell the country in pieces for very cheap because they have no clue how to progress on their own

They turned what could have been the third richest country in the world into a beggar than requires monthly handouts and has no production of any kind other than grains, they can't build any new tech, they can't research, they can't restore any industries they had, they do nothing but expect handouts

Research topic: How many billions did Russia give to Ukraine through the past 3 decades and what happened to that money and aid? And second, How is it that Ukraine is in a lot of debt, when Russia paid it all 30 years ago and helped them start fresh with lots of resources and zero debt? Why did it took so little time to go from being a potential most richest country in Europe to a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society?

Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries? Can Ukraine build nuclear power plants? No they can't, the ones they have are Soviet tech and they depended until very recently on Russia, but yet nuclear power was central in Ukraine, and they do have the know-how for sure

It's just that they just can't build anything, they went into full mediocre/lame mode and can't/won't even try to get out of it anymore.

They don't ask nicely, they demand handouts because they think they deserve them because they are "the master race"

Careful - people might actually begin to think you don’t like the Ukrainian people … :bigsmile:


They live out of hand outs
they expect to be given everything for free and ready to go.
Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve
they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row
no production of any kind other than grains,
they can't build any new tech,
they do nothing but expect handouts
they have no clue how to progress on their own
a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society
It's just that they just can't build anything,
they went into full mediocre/lame mode
They don't ask nicely,
they demand handouts because they think they deserve them

You sound as if you consider the entire population of Ukraine to be parasites - lazy, incompetent, conniving, devious, manipulative, ungrateful … and the implication is that they are unfit to run their own, independent country.
I obviously don’t see the situation from the perspective of Russian nationalism, but that comes over as very harsh. As I’m sure you know, many atrocities committed throughout history began with words.


Ukraine can't build anything

You must know that statement isn’t true.

A quick glance around the internet shows that the emerging Ukrainian economy had growth of 3.2% in 2020.
The value of Ukrainian exports was US$68.24 billion last year, comprising mainly food/agricultural products, metallurgy and machinery, traded with 217 countries.
There’s also a flourishing IT industry - Grammarly originates from Ukraine. https://huri.harvard.edu/blog/ukraine-country-emerging-technological-innovation.


Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries?

Space/aerospace industries?
There are several private and state aerospace companies (along with start-ups) in Ukraine developing and building spacecraft, aircraft, and parts.
Pivdenmash https://yuzhmash.com/en/
Kurs Orbital https://kursorbital.com
Flight Control Propulsion https://flightcontrolpropulsion.com
Orbit Boy https://www.orbitboy.rocks
Antonov State Enterprise https://www.antonov.com/en
Space Agency http://www.nkau.gov.ua
Promin https://prominaerospace.com

No shipbuilding?
Products sold by Ukrainian shipbuilding companies in 2018 totalled almost UAH 3 billion. This is by 32% more than in 2017.
Ship repairs brought in another UAH 501 million (+47% compared to 2017).
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/
According to Ukrsudprom, in 2017–2018, 25 vessels were built for the domestic market, and three exported. In the same period, 263 and 108 watercrafts were repaired respectively.
Over 5 thousand people work at shipbuilding companies, with almost 3 thousand engaged in shipbuilding and ship repairing.
There were 10 major shipbuilding companies operating in 2021, along with 2 design centres and one engine manufacturer.
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/

Steel?
There is a list on Wiki of over 60 companies in Ukraine involved in the production of steel and cast iron, hardware and wire rope, pipes, and ore mining and enrichment,
and 24 more working in non-ferrous and alloy metallurgy.

Can't build new tech or do research?
The technology sector accounted for 4% of the country’s GDP and Ukraine was home to around 5,000 IT companies and 285,000 IT specialists.
There are over 300 universities in the country, all of which undertake research of various kinds.

Not bad for a people who “don’t build anything”.


PS
Isn’t that the ship that was ordered by Russia and then it never took ownership or paid for it because of the fall of the Soviet Union? Russia didn’t want it, and neither did Ukraine - I don’t think it was “gifted”.
Eventually, Russia said it would take it - but only if it was free. Brazil seems to be the latest potential buyer.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1595397882328535041

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1595400094131814400

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1595402053341388801

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1595411368399740929

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1595411931526942720

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https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1595412986457313281

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https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1595414316341248001

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https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1595415859379720192

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1595411869149593600

1595411869149593600



https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1595377642303197184

1595377642303197184

[Ravenlocke]

https://www.rt.com/news/567011-cia-spies-recruit-russians/

CIA reveals plan for disgruntled Russians

The CIA is interested in recruiting Russians “disgusted” with the conflict in Ukraine, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. The claim was made by deputy director of operations David Marlowe during a recent meeting at a Washington-area think-tank.

“We’re looking around the world for Russians who are as disgusted with that as we are,” Marlowe reportedly said, referring to the current events in Ukraine. “Because we’re open for business.”

Marlowe spoke “before a select audience of university faculty and staff” at George Mason University’s Hayden Center in Arlington, Virginia. The “CIA at 75” event was his first public appearance since he took office in June 2021, according to the WSJ. Though the event was held last week, the Hayden Center made the video of it public on Monday.

CIA Deputy Director for Analysis Linda Weissgold, described as responsible for producing finished intelligence reports for President Joe Biden and the rest of the US leadership, was also on the panel, along with the agency’s one-time acting director Michael Morrell.

Appointed by current CIA Director William Burns, Marlowe is an Arabic speaker whose expertise is in the Near and Middle East. According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin “squandered” all of his power and influence by “invading” Ukraine in February. He described the conflict as a massive failure for Moscow and said it presented opportunities for Western intelligence agencies to recruit disaffected Russians.

Russia responds to US intelligence reported recruiting attempts READ MORE: Russia responds to US intelligence reported recruiting attempts
The announcement follows several instances during which Western intelligence agencies have tried to approach Russian personnel serving abroad, according to Moscow.

Last month, Moscow summoned the Dutch ambassador over reports that a British spy had tried to recruit a Russian military attache in The Hague. Earlier this year, the Kremlin denounced US attempts to suborn Russian diplomats as “very impudent behavior” and “unacceptable.”

The Hayden Center was set up in 2017 by retired US Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, several months after he became a CNN contributor. Hayden ran the National Security Agency (NSA) between 1999-2005 and the CIA from 2006-2009, amidst such controversies as the waterboarding torture of terrorism suspects and warrantless mass surveillance of Americans.

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https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1595383062262472704

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https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1595379134078779397

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https://www.rt.com/news/567009-croatia-ukraine-president-troops/


Another EU country rejects training Ukrainian troops


Croatia can’t train Ukrainian troops on its territory as part of the EU aid program as that would be unconstitutional, President Zoran Milanovic said on Tuesday, responding to a request from the defense ministry in Zagreb.

“Given the justifiably great interest of the Croatian public in the announced participation of [Croatian military] members in the EU military assistance mission to Ukraine, and the unclear and unexplained circumstances that participation would entail, the Office of the President has to inform the public that the minister’s proposal is unfit to be considered,” Milanovic said, before explaining his reasoning.

Defense Minister Mario Banozic had sent Milanovic a draft proposal for Croatian participation in the European Union Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM), which reportedly involves training around 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers on the bloc's territory.

The Croatian constitution does not give Banozic grounds to make such a proposal, the president noted. Nor does it allow Ukrainian troops to set foot on Croatian soil, he argued, as Kiev is “not a member of any alliance” Zagreb belongs to and there are no international treaties otherwise regulating their status.

EU members to train Ukrainian military
EU members to train Ukrainian military
Milanovic’s public rejection of the EUMAM brief is the latest episode in the ongoing power struggle in Croatia. The social-democrat president, who has been in office since February 2020, has often been at odds with the legislature and the cabinet. The nationalist HDZ, which controls both, has been eager for Croatia to train Ukrainian troops. They also overruled Milanovic this spring, when he threatened to veto Sweden and Finland’s application to NATO in order to leverage concessions from the EU and the US.

The Croatian president’s criticism of EU sanctions against Russia – for being ineffective and backfiring on the bloc – has drawn the ire of Ukraine as well, which put him on its notorious “Peacemaker” blacklist, where those listed are regarded as 'enemies of Ukraine' and often subjected to threats and intimidation.

EUMAM was established on October 17 on the initiative of Czechia, currently presiding over the bloc. Nearby EU members Austria and Hungary have already said they will not participate in the mission either.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1595409055303929856

1595409055303929856

[shaberon]

Ukraine can't build anything

You must know that statement isn’t true.


It is at least partly true, especially in terms of power plants.

Yes the statistics indicate some employment, in fact they make missiles, too. Actually, it should be among the most productive countries in Europe, with various costs, such as the repeal of most labor laws, and health guidelines against biolabs. For example, when you pay workers 40% less, it makes monetary figures look better for the companies. "Economics" doesn't quite tell the whole story of the actual society.

[Fellow Aspirant]

I suspect it was programmed to gently land where they would see it to make sure the message was delivered. Cruise missiles don't (and can't!) 'gently land'.

SpaceX boosters 'gently land'. Not military missiles.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkk9VIKWw2w


Uhhhh ... yup. Like I said two days ago. I thought it was amusing to stop in mid sentence, as though it had just occurred to me, but I gather you failed to see the humour, because you seem to have pounced on a perceived opportunity to expose my ignorance. Did you? Or were you adding to the fun? Fair enough. :highfive:

Brian

[Isserley]

Here's something to ponder about

See this ship? Looks familiar?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ukrayina_at_Shipyard_imeni_61_Kommunara_Ingul_River_Nikolayev_7_December_2013.jpg

That's the Ukraina, a sister ship to the Moscow that was gifted to Ukraine by Russia. But Ukraine, being able to build ships back in the USSR times, and having the shipyards and everything necessary to complete it, just simply took it, and then let it rot for decades

Around 30 million dollars were needed to finish it, that's nothing. And yet, there it sits rotting away, how can a country not be able to spend 30 million dollars on this?

Ukraine can't build anything

They live out of hand outs and expect to be given everything for free and ready to go. Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve

Ukraine as a country inherited lots of resources, shipyards, know-how about lots of stuff that were the primary resources of the USSR, and they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row. Except sell it out for cheap to western "partners". And they continue to sell the country in pieces for very cheap because they have no clue how to progress on their own

They turned what could have been the third richest country in the world into a beggar than requires monthly handouts and has no production of any kind other than grains, they can't build any new tech, they can't research, they can't restore any industries they had, they do nothing but expect handouts

Research topic: How many billions did Russia give to Ukraine through the past 3 decades and what happened to that money and aid? And second, How is it that Ukraine is in a lot of debt, when Russia paid it all 30 years ago and helped them start fresh with lots of resources and zero debt? Why did it took so little time to go from being a potential most richest country in Europe to a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society?

Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries? Can Ukraine build nuclear power plants? No they can't, the ones they have are Soviet tech and they depended until very recently on Russia, but yet nuclear power was central in Ukraine, and they do have the know-how for sure

It's just that they just can't build anything, they went into full mediocre/lame mode and can't/won't even try to get out of it anymore.

They don't ask nicely, they demand handouts because they think they deserve them because they are "the master race"

Careful - people might actually begin to think you don’t like the Ukrainian people … :bigsmile:


They live out of hand outs
they expect to be given everything for free and ready to go.
Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve
they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row
no production of any kind other than grains,
they can't build any new tech,
they do nothing but expect handouts
they have no clue how to progress on their own
a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society
It's just that they just can't build anything,
they went into full mediocre/lame mode
They don't ask nicely,
they demand handouts because they think they deserve them

You sound as if you consider the entire population of Ukraine to be parasites - lazy, incompetent, conniving, devious, manipulative, ungrateful … and the implication is that they are unfit to run their own, independent country.
I obviously don’t see the situation from the perspective of Russian nationalism, but that comes over as very harsh. As I’m sure you know, many atrocities committed throughout history began with words.


Ukraine can't build anything

You must know that statement isn’t true.

A quick glance around the internet shows that the emerging Ukrainian economy had growth of 3.2% in 2020.
The value of Ukrainian exports was US$68.24 billion last year, comprising mainly food/agricultural products, metallurgy and machinery, traded with 217 countries.
There’s also a flourishing IT industry - Grammarly originates from Ukraine. https://huri.harvard.edu/blog/ukraine-country-emerging-technological-innovation.


Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries?

Space/aerospace industries?
There are several private and state aerospace companies (along with start-ups) in Ukraine developing and building spacecraft, aircraft, and parts.
Pivdenmash https://yuzhmash.com/en/
Kurs Orbital https://kursorbital.com
Flight Control Propulsion https://flightcontrolpropulsion.com
Orbit Boy https://www.orbitboy.rocks
Antonov State Enterprise https://www.antonov.com/en
Space Agency http://www.nkau.gov.ua
Promin https://prominaerospace.com

No shipbuilding?
Products sold by Ukrainian shipbuilding companies in 2018 totalled almost UAH 3 billion. This is by 32% more than in 2017.
Ship repairs brought in another UAH 501 million (+47% compared to 2017).
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/
According to Ukrsudprom, in 2017–2018, 25 vessels were built for the domestic market, and three exported. In the same period, 263 and 108 watercrafts were repaired respectively.
Over 5 thousand people work at shipbuilding companies, with almost 3 thousand engaged in shipbuilding and ship repairing.
There were 10 major shipbuilding companies operating in 2021, along with 2 design centres and one engine manufacturer.
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/

Steel?
There is a list on Wiki of over 60 companies in Ukraine involved in the production of steel and cast iron, hardware and wire rope, pipes, and ore mining and enrichment,
and 24 more working in non-ferrous and alloy metallurgy.

Can't build new tech or do research?
The technology sector accounted for 4% of the country’s GDP and Ukraine was home to around 5,000 IT companies and 285,000 IT specialists.
There are over 300 universities in the country, all of which undertake research of various kinds.

Not bad for a people who “don’t build anything”.


PS
Isn’t that the ship that was ordered by Russia and then it never took ownership or paid for it because of the fall of the Soviet Union? Russia didn’t want it, and neither did Ukraine - I don’t think it was “gifted”.
Eventually, Russia said it would take it - but only if it was free. Brazil seems to be the latest potential buyer.

I agree with lounguelizard.
I work for an Israeli company whose complete IT support is based in Ukraine and I know quite a few "Ukros" ( I dont like that term!). It is incorrect to say that Ukrainians are incompetent because I know very well how capable they are. It is also rude because the majority of people are not to blame for what is happening. It's the fault of governments, freemasons, secret societies, satanists, psychopaths ... I also don't like spitting on westerners in "developed countries" and I emphasize once again that the majority people of western countries are not the same as the vocal minority LGBTQWTF+ / woke / BLM, or their demented leaders.
Every time I enter this thread, I feel nauseous from the strong pro-Russian rhetoric based on Mashas thinking. Of course, I don't have to come here. I seem to be a bit of a masochist. :silent:

[Mashika]

Here's something to ponder about

See this ship? Looks familiar?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ukrayina_at_Shipyard_imeni_61_Kommunara_Ingul_River_Nikolayev_7_December_2013.jpg

That's the Ukraina, a sister ship to the Moscow that was gifted to Ukraine by Russia. But Ukraine, being able to build ships back in the USSR times, and having the shipyards and everything necessary to complete it, just simply took it, and then let it rot for decades

Around 30 million dollars were needed to finish it, that's nothing. And yet, there it sits rotting away, how can a country not be able to spend 30 million dollars on this?

Ukraine can't build anything

They live out of hand outs and expect to be given everything for free and ready to go. Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve

Ukraine as a country inherited lots of resources, shipyards, know-how about lots of stuff that were the primary resources of the USSR, and they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row. Except sell it out for cheap to western "partners". And they continue to sell the country in pieces for very cheap because they have no clue how to progress on their own

They turned what could have been the third richest country in the world into a beggar than requires monthly handouts and has no production of any kind other than grains, they can't build any new tech, they can't research, they can't restore any industries they had, they do nothing but expect handouts

Research topic: How many billions did Russia give to Ukraine through the past 3 decades and what happened to that money and aid? And second, How is it that Ukraine is in a lot of debt, when Russia paid it all 30 years ago and helped them start fresh with lots of resources and zero debt? Why did it took so little time to go from being a potential most richest country in Europe to a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society?

Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries? Can Ukraine build nuclear power plants? No they can't, the ones they have are Soviet tech and they depended until very recently on Russia, but yet nuclear power was central in Ukraine, and they do have the know-how for sure

It's just that they just can't build anything, they went into full mediocre/lame mode and can't/won't even try to get out of it anymore.

They don't ask nicely, they demand handouts because they think they deserve them because they are "the master race"

Careful - people might actually begin to think you don’t like the Ukrainian people … :bigsmile:


They live out of hand outs
they expect to be given everything for free and ready to go.
Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve
they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row
no production of any kind other than grains,
they can't build any new tech,
they do nothing but expect handouts
they have no clue how to progress on their own
a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society
It's just that they just can't build anything,
they went into full mediocre/lame mode
They don't ask nicely,
they demand handouts because they think they deserve them

You sound as if you consider the entire population of Ukraine to be parasites - lazy, incompetent, conniving, devious, manipulative, ungrateful … and the implication is that they are unfit to run their own, independent country.
I obviously don’t see the situation from the perspective of Russian nationalism, but that comes over as very harsh. As I’m sure you know, many atrocities committed throughout history began with words.


Ukraine can't build anything

You must know that statement isn’t true.

A quick glance around the internet shows that the emerging Ukrainian economy had growth of 3.2% in 2020.
The value of Ukrainian exports was US$68.24 billion last year, comprising mainly food/agricultural products, metallurgy and machinery, traded with 217 countries.
There’s also a flourishing IT industry - Grammarly originates from Ukraine. https://huri.harvard.edu/blog/ukraine-country-emerging-technological-innovation.


Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries?

Space/aerospace industries?
There are several private and state aerospace companies (along with start-ups) in Ukraine developing and building spacecraft, aircraft, and parts.
Pivdenmash https://yuzhmash.com/en/
Kurs Orbital https://kursorbital.com
Flight Control Propulsion https://flightcontrolpropulsion.com
Orbit Boy https://www.orbitboy.rocks
Antonov State Enterprise https://www.antonov.com/en
Space Agency http://www.nkau.gov.ua
Promin https://prominaerospace.com

No shipbuilding?
Products sold by Ukrainian shipbuilding companies in 2018 totalled almost UAH 3 billion. This is by 32% more than in 2017.
Ship repairs brought in another UAH 501 million (+47% compared to 2017).
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/
According to Ukrsudprom, in 2017–2018, 25 vessels were built for the domestic market, and three exported. In the same period, 263 and 108 watercrafts were repaired respectively.
Over 5 thousand people work at shipbuilding companies, with almost 3 thousand engaged in shipbuilding and ship repairing.
There were 10 major shipbuilding companies operating in 2021, along with 2 design centres and one engine manufacturer.
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/

Steel?
There is a list on Wiki of over 60 companies in Ukraine involved in the production of steel and cast iron, hardware and wire rope, pipes, and ore mining and enrichment,
and 24 more working in non-ferrous and alloy metallurgy.

Can't build new tech or do research?
The technology sector accounted for 4% of the country’s GDP and Ukraine was home to around 5,000 IT companies and 285,000 IT specialists.
There are over 300 universities in the country, all of which undertake research of various kinds.

Not bad for a people who “don’t build anything”.


PS
Isn’t that the ship that was ordered by Russia and then it never took ownership or paid for it because of the fall of the Soviet Union? Russia didn’t want it, and neither did Ukraine - I don’t think it was “gifted”.
Eventually, Russia said it would take it - but only if it was free. Brazil seems to be the latest potential buyer.

I agree with lounguelizard.
I work for an Israeli company whose complete IT support is based in Ukraine and I know quite a few "Ukros" ( I dont like that term!). It is incorrect to say that Ukrainians are incompetent because I know very well how capable they are. It is also rude because the majority of people are not to blame for what is happening. It's the fault of governments, freemasons, secret societies, satanists, psychopaths ... I also don't like spitting on westerners in "developed countries" and I emphasize once again that the majority people of western countries are not the same as the vocal minority LGBTQWTF+ / woke / BLM, or their demented leaders.
Every time I enter this thread, I feel nauseous from the strong pro-Russian rhetoric based on Mashas thinking. Of course, I don't have to come here. I seem to be a bit of a masochist. :silent:

Lol, or perhaps you have been conditioned to feel wrong about anything that puts Ukraine into a bad light? And it bothers you internally even if you try to not feel that way

Maybe if you went to look more into this, you would find that yes, "The Ukros" are vicious beasts with no morals or ethics, capable of killing their own people at any time if needed, or if they can get a personal win out of it

I never said that i talk about the entire Ukrainan population, that's your programming talking to you. I have been very clear tons and tons of times explaining i talk about the people in control, the top levels and governments, not the general population. If you truly had read my posts you would know that :)

And i was going to explain why the points made above are misleading and incorrect, some in purpose and some because of lack of research (don't just go pick up whatever you find on the next first and use it as proof just because it tells you what you want to hear, specially if the source if a pro Ukrainian site or organization)

So anyways, i was going to explain that but honestly what a bore this is, i know you won't care to read or understand anything said and will just skip and look away. I'm not assuming anything because i can clearly see you have done that already in the past, if like you said, you have been reading this thread and somehow did not find all the evidence about the war crimes and other crimes committed by Ukraine at least a bit bothersome

If you don't have more clarity of mind, then you'll continue to be a play thing and a tool for the advancement of the UkroNazi's agenda

First:
There's a difference between having a factory production line that builds products designed by a foreign company, in which you have zero control over the design and specifications and just get used as a sweatshop because of cheap labor and taxes and corruption that allows to get most of that for free, and a real innovative industry that produces things no one else does and can self-substain or advance without having to license or sell itself to others for cheap

Without the outsourcing and cheap labor/little taxes offer, there's nothing going on in Ukraine, nothing new is built or designed by and for Ukrainians ,they just get orders from some foreign company and follow them to specs, and that's it

And second:
If you go do some actual research, you'll find that most of the land, and these companies, are owned by foreigners who got them for very cheap, and that the 'owner' in Ukraine is basically just a name lender to simplify the operations and protect the company. All the money that is supposed to enter Ukraine through those industries, is already money that goes into the pockets of foreigners

Check the farming land owners, the Ukrainians in control of the regions forced the original farm owners to sell for ridiculous cheap prices or face bankrupcy, then they sold the land to foreigners and pocketed the money. Now when you see that Ukraine is selling thousands of tons of grain of this or that kind, that money that is displayed as stats is only going through Ukraine because that's how they skip on paying taxes due to corruption, then it goes into the safe heaven account of westerners from the US/UK/EU and never benefits the Ukrainian population.

It is a scam, it is draining Ukraine out of its resources and moving the money to the western hidden owners

But of course this is not expressed on those misleading articles/stats. And whoever dares to speak up about it may die of suicide or find themselves investigated because of 'pro-russian' views, then killed anyway while 'resisting arrest'

For someone who likes street level Ukrainians, you sure help with their destruction by looking away to the reality of their country

The only thing i got from your post and the one quoted is that you guys have no clue about what' truly goes on in Ukraine, or why, or who is behind it, and just think that somehow this is a two sided thing in which either you are pro-russian or pro-ukrainian. And that's the simplified childish view that is very useful to lead the masses in whichever way they may be useful

Tomorrow you may be told that Ukraine should not be supported, once it is not useful anymore to the western 'partners', then everyone will condemn the entire country without any attempt at reasoning

Open your eyes, or not, it's up to you

[Mashika]

The Grammarly example is actually hilariously ironic, because it is the perfect example and proof of what i have been saying, quote by the founder of that company:



They started the project in the Western world because, according to Alex Shevchenko, "unlike Ukrainian universities, Western educational institutions are very open to new technologies." At the same time, Lytvyn and Shevchenko decided to target customers who use English in everyday life, rather than English learners

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammarly

If that doesn't say anything to you about the actual ground level situation over there in Ukraine, then nothing will ever do

[pounamuknight]

Not bad for a people who “don’t build anything”

Ukraine has a profitable laundry sector as well

49963

https://twitter.com/klpjustice1/status/1595079626434519042

Imperial oligarchs love the Ukrainian laundry sector. Especially Lindsey Graham


49964

From 2013-2018, the South Carolina oligarch pursed near $200k (https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/lindsey-graham/industries?cid=N00009975&cycle=2018) for his warmongery. His 2015 politcal pac pocketed $50k (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/here-s-where-lindsey-graham-gets-his-campaign-money-170203231.html) from Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrup, etc

No guesses who funded his business trip to Kyiv in 2016

JeWHviwLMy8

But it was Julian Assange brilliantly summarized how the empire launders through war

_IGU_7alJ80

[shaberon]

I work for an Israeli company whose complete IT support is based in Ukraine...


Zionist occupation and its feeder?



Every time I enter this thread, I feel nauseous from the strong pro-Russian rhetoric based on Mashas thinking. Of course, I don't have to come here. I seem to be a bit of a masochist. :silent:


Sorry. It is actually a centuries-old multi-cultural dialogue, of which Israel and the West are not part of.

I suppose the most accurate term would be Silk Road. Even places that were not traditionally part of it, like west African countries, at least admire Russia for being the one to stand up and shout what they are all thinking. Again this summarizes ca. 85% of the earth's population of humans. Most of us would like a de-militarized, de-Nazified Ukraine, because we understand that most folks just want to be able to work and participate in normal affairs.

But, starting with that, eh, "philosophy" coming from Alexander the Great and military conquest of the Silk Road, we can be pretty sure there are still differences of opinion about this.

[Isserley]

Here's something to ponder about

See this ship? Looks familiar?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Ukrayina_at_Shipyard_imeni_61_Kommunara_Ingul_River_Nikolayev_7_December_2013.jpg

That's the Ukraina, a sister ship to the Moscow that was gifted to Ukraine by Russia. But Ukraine, being able to build ships back in the USSR times, and having the shipyards and everything necessary to complete it, just simply took it, and then let it rot for decades

Around 30 million dollars were needed to finish it, that's nothing. And yet, there it sits rotting away, how can a country not be able to spend 30 million dollars on this?

Ukraine can't build anything

They live out of hand outs and expect to be given everything for free and ready to go. Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve

Ukraine as a country inherited lots of resources, shipyards, know-how about lots of stuff that were the primary resources of the USSR, and they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row. Except sell it out for cheap to western "partners". And they continue to sell the country in pieces for very cheap because they have no clue how to progress on their own

They turned what could have been the third richest country in the world into a beggar than requires monthly handouts and has no production of any kind other than grains, they can't build any new tech, they can't research, they can't restore any industries they had, they do nothing but expect handouts

Research topic: How many billions did Russia give to Ukraine through the past 3 decades and what happened to that money and aid? And second, How is it that Ukraine is in a lot of debt, when Russia paid it all 30 years ago and helped them start fresh with lots of resources and zero debt? Why did it took so little time to go from being a potential most richest country in Europe to a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society?

Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries? Can Ukraine build nuclear power plants? No they can't, the ones they have are Soviet tech and they depended until very recently on Russia, but yet nuclear power was central in Ukraine, and they do have the know-how for sure

It's just that they just can't build anything, they went into full mediocre/lame mode and can't/won't even try to get out of it anymore.

They don't ask nicely, they demand handouts because they think they deserve them because they are "the master race"

Careful - people might actually begin to think you don’t like the Ukrainian people … :bigsmile:


They live out of hand outs
they expect to be given everything for free and ready to go.
Anything that requires any effort is immediately put away or thrown to the curve
they completely did nothing with that for 30 years in a row
no production of any kind other than grains,
they can't build any new tech,
they do nothing but expect handouts
they have no clue how to progress on their own
a self-entitled rude/nasty beggar and decadent society
It's just that they just can't build anything,
they went into full mediocre/lame mode
They don't ask nicely,
they demand handouts because they think they deserve them

You sound as if you consider the entire population of Ukraine to be parasites - lazy, incompetent, conniving, devious, manipulative, ungrateful … and the implication is that they are unfit to run their own, independent country.
I obviously don’t see the situation from the perspective of Russian nationalism, but that comes over as very harsh. As I’m sure you know, many atrocities committed throughout history began with words.


Ukraine can't build anything

You must know that statement isn’t true.

A quick glance around the internet shows that the emerging Ukrainian economy had growth of 3.2% in 2020.
The value of Ukrainian exports was US$68.24 billion last year, comprising mainly food/agricultural products, metallurgy and machinery, traded with 217 countries.
There’s also a flourishing IT industry - Grammarly originates from Ukraine. https://huri.harvard.edu/blog/ukraine-country-emerging-technological-innovation.


Where's the space industry? The shipyards? The steel plants? The electronics/nuclear industries?

Space/aerospace industries?
There are several private and state aerospace companies (along with start-ups) in Ukraine developing and building spacecraft, aircraft, and parts.
Pivdenmash https://yuzhmash.com/en/
Kurs Orbital https://kursorbital.com
Flight Control Propulsion https://flightcontrolpropulsion.com
Orbit Boy https://www.orbitboy.rocks
Antonov State Enterprise https://www.antonov.com/en
Space Agency http://www.nkau.gov.ua
Promin https://prominaerospace.com

No shipbuilding?
Products sold by Ukrainian shipbuilding companies in 2018 totalled almost UAH 3 billion. This is by 32% more than in 2017.
Ship repairs brought in another UAH 501 million (+47% compared to 2017).
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/
According to Ukrsudprom, in 2017–2018, 25 vessels were built for the domestic market, and three exported. In the same period, 263 and 108 watercrafts were repaired respectively.
Over 5 thousand people work at shipbuilding companies, with almost 3 thousand engaged in shipbuilding and ship repairing.
There were 10 major shipbuilding companies operating in 2021, along with 2 design centres and one engine manufacturer.
https://gmk.center/en/posts/steel-for-ships-what-ukrainian-shipbuilders-produced-in-6-months/

Steel?
There is a list on Wiki of over 60 companies in Ukraine involved in the production of steel and cast iron, hardware and wire rope, pipes, and ore mining and enrichment,
and 24 more working in non-ferrous and alloy metallurgy.

Can't build new tech or do research?
The technology sector accounted for 4% of the country’s GDP and Ukraine was home to around 5,000 IT companies and 285,000 IT specialists.
There are over 300 universities in the country, all of which undertake research of various kinds.

Not bad for a people who “don’t build anything”.


PS
Isn’t that the ship that was ordered by Russia and then it never took ownership or paid for it because of the fall of the Soviet Union? Russia didn’t want it, and neither did Ukraine - I don’t think it was “gifted”.
Eventually, Russia said it would take it - but only if it was free. Brazil seems to be the latest potential buyer.

I agree with lounguelizard.
I work for an Israeli company whose complete IT support is based in Ukraine and I know quite a few "Ukros" ( I dont like that term!). It is incorrect to say that Ukrainians are incompetent because I know very well how capable they are. It is also rude because the majority of people are not to blame for what is happening. It's the fault of governments, freemasons, secret societies, satanists, psychopaths ... I also don't like spitting on westerners in "developed countries" and I emphasize once again that the majority people of western countries are not the same as the vocal minority LGBTQWTF+ / woke / BLM, or their demented leaders.
Every time I enter this thread, I feel nauseous from the strong pro-Russian rhetoric based on Mashas thinking. Of course, I don't have to come here. I seem to be a bit of a masochist. :silent:

Lol, or perhaps you have been conditioned to feel wrong about anything that puts Ukraine into a bad light? And it bothers you internally even if you try to not feel that way

Maybe if you went to look more into this, you would find that yes, "The Ukros" are vicious beasts with no morals or ethics, capable of killing their own people at any time if needed, or if they can get a personal win out of it

I never said that i talk about the entire Ukrainan population, that's your programming talking to you. I have been very clear tons and tons of times explaining i talk about the people in control, the top levels and governments, not the general population. If you truly had read my posts you would know that :)

And i was going to explain why the points made above are misleading and incorrect, some in purpose and some because of lack of research (don't just go pick up whatever you find on the next first and use it as proof just because it tells you what you want to hear, specially if the source if a pro Ukrainian site or organization)

So anyways, i was going to explain that but honestly what a bore this is, i know you won't care to read or understand anything said and will just skip and look away. I'm not assuming anything because i can clearly see you have done that already in the past, if like you said, you have been reading this thread and somehow did not find all the evidence about the war crimes and other crimes committed by Ukraine at least a bit bothersome

If you don't have more clarity of mind, then you'll continue to be a play thing and a tool for the advancement of the UkroNazi's agenda

First:
There's a difference between having a factory production line that builds products designed by a foreign company, in which you have zero control over the design and specifications and just get used as a sweatshop because of cheap labor and taxes and corruption that allows to get most of that for free, and a real innovative industry that produces things no one else does and can self-substain or advance without having to license or sell itself to others for cheap

Without the outsourcing and cheap labor/little taxes offer, there's nothing going on in Ukraine, nothing new is built or designed by and for Ukrainians ,they just get orders from some foreign company and follow them to specs, and that's it

And second:
If you go do some actual research, you'll find that most of the land, and these companies, are owned by foreigners who got them for very cheap, and that the 'owner' in Ukraine is basically just a name lender to simplify the operations and protect the company. All the money that is supposed to enter Ukraine through those industries, is already money that goes into the pockets of foreigners

Check the farming land owners, the Ukrainians in control of the regions forced the original farm owners to sell for ridiculous cheap prices or face bankrupcy, then they sold the land to foreigners and pocketed the money. Now when you see that Ukraine is selling thousands of tons of grain of this or that kind, that money that is displayed as stats is only going through Ukraine because that's how they skip on paying taxes due to corruption, then it goes into the safe heaven account of westerners from the US/UK/EU and never benefits the Ukrainian population.

It is a scam, it is draining Ukraine out of its resources and moving the money to the western hidden owners

But of course this is not expressed on those misleading articles/stats. And whoever dares to speak up about it may die of suicide or find themselves investigated because of 'pro-russian' views, then killed anyway while 'resisting arrest'

For someone who likes street level Ukrainians, you sure help with their destruction by looking away to the reality of their country

The only thing i got from your post and the one quoted is that you guys have no clue about what' truly goes on in Ukraine, or why, or who is behind it, and just think that somehow this is a two sided thing in which either you are pro-russian or pro-ukrainian. And that's the simplified childish view that is very useful to lead the masses in whichever way they may be useful

Tomorrow you may be told that Ukraine should not be supported, once it is not useful anymore to the western 'partners', then everyone will condemn the entire country without any attempt at reasoning

Open your eyes, or not, it's up to you

Or maybe youve been conditioned to feel otherwise?
I do understand that this war is NATO driven and that Ukraine is country full of problems as well as nazi groups which are capable of anything. There are also such groups here in Croatia and you would probably find them in most countries. Its horrible.
People are generally very easily susceptible to programming and manipulation, so I understandably do not deny that this is a reality. Setting up the story as if Russia is pure perfection bothers me. It's a joke. I miss a critical opinion here and for the other side. There is a "great leader" in power for life with aspirations to restore the Soviet Union and with very good communication skills... hmmm

I also lack meaningful answer to the following Post (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?104824-Bill-Ryan-s-personal-Question-and-Answer-thread.-Pile-it-on.--&p=1526152&viewfull=1#post1526152) frim mr Lizard.
Thanks

[Bo Atkinson]

Yes, stop all Nazis, bravo, but in a snow ridden country, one cannot help but speak a little supportively of snow movers, (forgivably).

[Bill Ryan]

Every time I enter this thread, I feel nauseous from the strong pro-Russian rhetoric based on Masha's thinking.Many thanks, and I'd just like to respond to this, together with one or two other connected and relevant comments.

:heart:

Personally, while I know Masha very well and have the highest respect for her (and her many direct experiences and consequent direct knowledge), the bulk of the formation of my understanding of the geopolitical realities has come from these sources:

Websites with 24/7 updates:


https://southfront.org
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com (Andrei Martyanov)
https://www.moonofalabama.org
https://strategic-culture.org
https://consortiumnews.com
https://zerohedge.com
https://thesaker.is
https://thedreizinreport.com
https://sonar21.com (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbXlRalNCSnpwQTQtNnpFMFVZRGlGSHBndlNQZ3xBQ3Jtc0trRXF5dDVqT1NZLWVZVTdvSFpKRnMzSE4z S0doTEhiQnA3aUtZNHVZeGpWdzZzZjRMbUQzWUxMTERvQVNyZ2l2SFJtOU50VUw2T013QlVheFN2SFhuMndHVDVuZjVtYlp0cm96 bG12LU43c2o4eUV6NA&q=https%3A%2F%2Fsonar21.com%2F&v=vtf1yod_p4w) (Larry Johnson)
https://raymcgovern.com (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbDU3S0I0VDEwMjFkU0N1UnMzQWl1OHRhSkZ1Z3xBQ3Jtc0ttTHA3VGN2dVRfZ2I4VmVUdHN6aFZoUGI2 UWstdmNsVVpxaC0yLUhzVmtMNEpKUlhaMUdGSjZEdy1rdzVEX2VyQmhlb1hGRndud1JCYWVVNTVIUFUtN0ZqcDNZQW5sdkNxbkJw cExPN0ZRMVdpY0MwYw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fraymcgovern.com%2F&v=vtf1yod_p4w)
https://thegrayzone.com
Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas Macgregor (whenever they're interviewed)

YouTube channels:


Alexander Mercouris (https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderMercourisReal/videos)
The Duran (https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDuran/videos) (mainly Alexander Mercouris)
The New Atlas (https://www.youtube.com/c/TheNewAtlas/videos) (Brian Berletic)
Patrick Lancaster (https://www.youtube.com/c/PatrickLancasterNewsToday/videos)
Eva Bartlett (https://www.youtube.com/c/EvaKBartlett/videos)
Ania K (https://www.youtube.com/c/Throughtheeyesof/videos)
Alex Christoforou (https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexChristoforou/videos)
Danny Haiphong (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOxLhz6B_elvLflntSEfnzA/videos)
Redacted (https://www.youtube.com/c/RedactedNews) (Clayton and Natali Morris)
Kim Iverson (https://www.youtube.com/c/KimIversen/videos)
Jackson Hinkle (https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDivewithJacksonHinkle/videos)
Gonzalo Lira (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfUzUq5L9NFv2GMVGbEBgkg/videos)

I drew up that only-partial list (and posted it here (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1522734&viewfull=1#post1522734) for Brian/Fellow Aspirant), but he responded that [my paraphrase] he didn't think they reflected his worldview.

He's correct, of course, because his worldview is handed to him ready-made, like a microwaved TV dinner, from sources such as CBC and CNN. It is deeply flawed, false and manipulated.

But I have to also say something about the way the war is being presented in some other places, notably quite a large number of pro-Russia Telegram channels. There are many daily posts of real-time video footage taken from camera drones, showing unfortunate Ukrainian soldiers being killed right there onscreen.

You can't see who they are, and we'll never know their names. But the posted videos are often accompanied by rock music and a clever little comment about "minus one Nazi", or some such.

I can't properly express how distasteful that kind of thing is. These are human beings, maybe suffering terribly, and for all we know they may pretty much have been conscripts who were very afraid, totally didn't want to be there at all, and if they believed in any cause of any kind, they'd had their views formed for them by the same forces that formed Fellow Aspirant's worldview for him.

Some Ukrainian soldiers are sadistic, psychopathic Nazis and deserve to be shot on sight with or without trial. I'll say that clearly and without apology. But not everyone in Ukraine is like that. Of course not.

And I know that Masha knows this too. She's seen war and been in war, and she has shared some things with me privately that would make a grown man weep.

There's tragedy all around, and we should never forget this.

:flower:

I support the Russians in everything they're doing strategically, and I understand the important reasons why. But it's not about picking a side and then cheering for your football team.

We're seeing some very critical events unfold almost daily before our eyes, and if the US, the UK, the EU and NATO all crumble — as they may very well do, but if so the US will be the last to fall — in my strong informed opinion the world will largely be a better place for that.

Putin has recently made a number of very long, detailed and articulate speeches, which I have followed closely, and I agree with almost everything that he points out. I can't say that for a single part of any single speech from any single American or European politician. Not one. Just nothing and no-one, no-one at all.

The western world is politically, ethically and morally bankrupt. I think we're seeing it being methodically taken down, exactly as in the inevitable end of any decadent, arrogant and self-entitled empire. There's nothing anyone can do about it, and in a couple of decades (maybe just one, or even less) the world will look and feel very different.

[Isserley]

...But the posted videos are often accompanied by rock music and a clever little comment about "minus one Nazi", or some such.
I can't properly express how distasteful that kind of thing is. These are human beings, maybe suffering terribly, and for all we know they may pretty much have been conscripts who were very afraid, totally didn't want to be there at all...

Yes, thank you. This is what is missing on this thread.
It is important that such comments and criticisms are spoken out loud, otherwise it may appear as if we agree with these actions.


We're seeing some very critical events unfold almost daily before our eyes, and if the US, the UK, the EU and NATO all crumble — as they may very well do, but if so the US will be the last to fall — in my strong informed opinion the world will largely be a better place for that.

I am still not sure what this means. Who will crumble? The cabal/PTB or regular people? Im afraid that we both know the answer and is not good - so how will this result in a better world is beyond me.
The western leaders seam pretty happy with way the things are going with this war and energy crisis or am I missing something?


Putin has recently made a number of very long, detailed and articulate speeches, which I have followed closely, and I agree with almost everything that he points out. I can't say that for a single part of any single speech from any single American or European politician. Not one. Just nothing and no-one, no-one at all.

Yeah.. I don't trust politicians either. This includes Putin. I'm still waiting for him to walk the walk.
Similar phenomenon is now happening with Elon Musk..
imo Putin= typical virtue-signalling.


The western world is politically, ethically and morally bankrupt. I think we're seeing it being methodically taken down, exactly as in the inevitable end of any decadent, arrogant and self-entitled empire. There's nothing anyone can do about it, and in a couple of decades (maybe just one, or even less) the world will look and feel very different.

Again - who is beeing taken down? I have not seen a single arrest of those responsible for the war, covid and vaccine scam, crisis, pedo rings.. The only people who may suffer or will suffer are the common people.

But anyway I am glad we had this chat.. and in a couple of decades I hope u are right..:heart:

[Vicus]

Ukrainian stronghold of Marinka falls: Russians enter city center - Fierce street fighting - Shock defeat for Kyiv in Donbass (maps)

Bombing Su-25 - Watch video
23/11/2022 - 22:47
in Main topics , Ukraine
0
Moscow gives Donbas a free shot with the 20th Army: Slavyansk is under Russian grip - The Russians are in the outskirts of Lisichansk!


Important victory for the Russians in Donbass as after capturing Pavlovka they entered the city center in the strategic Marinka (or Maryinka). The Russians managed to crush the Ukrainian defenses after three months of heavy fighting.

Russians control 2/3 of the city with Ukrainian forces retreating towards Novomykhaylivka which will be the next target for Russian forces.

This is a serious development that will affect the fighting in Donbass and the combativeness of the Ukrainian Army as Maryinka is a key point in the south of the fortified defense line of the armed forces of Ukraine.

The city is almost completely destroyed. The Ukrainians had created a whole system of branches and trenches.

For example, the length of one of the trenches is about 1.5 kilometers, which has numerous branches, connecting 20 residential zones into a single defensive line.

The 100th Brigade of the Donetsk People's Militia and the 107th Battalion are operating in the area.

The Ukrainian army retreats from Marinka
According to Russian media, satellites are recording the retreat of Ukrainian troops from Marinka.

They specifically mention:

"After the Russian army entered Maryinka, unusual activity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to be recorded on the territory of this settlement. Initially, the information said that it was a reconstruction, however, satellite images show that the Ukrainian army began to retreat from the city.

At this time, an active movement of military equipment of the Ukrainian ED is recorded.

Experts attribute the retreat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the fact that the Ukrainian army, due to a lack of weapons, is unable to fight in urban conditions, and, possibly, the withdrawal of troops is due to efforts to preserve equipment and personnel.


continue:

https://warnews247-gr.translate.goog/ektakto-epese-to-oukraniko-propyrgio-tis-marinka-oi-rosoi-bikan-sto-kentro-tis-polis-sfodres-odomachies-kai-maches-soma-me-soma/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Ukrainian air defense launched a US-made AIM-120C missile from one of #Ukraine's new Norwegian-made NASAMS air-defense systems. It missed the target and crashed into a residential building in #Kiev
Many residents dead.

https://twitter.com/Ukraine66251776/status/1595623332107386880

[Michel Leclerc]

(...)


Putin has recently made a number of very long, detailed and articulate speeches, which I have followed closely, and I agree with almost everything that he points out. I can't say that for a single part of any single speech from any single American or European politician. Not one. Just nothing and no-one, no-one at all.

Yeah.. I don't trust politicians either. This includes Putin. I'm still waiting for him to walk the walk.
Similar phenomenon is now happening with Elon Musk..
imo Putin= typical virtue-signalling.


The western world is politically, ethically and morally bankrupt. I think we're seeing it being methodically taken down, exactly as in the inevitable end of any decadent, arrogant and self-entitled empire. There's nothing anyone can do about it, and in a couple of decades (maybe just one, or even less) the world will look and feel very different.

Again - who is beeing taken down? I have not seen a single arrest of those responsible for the war, covid and vaccine scam, crisis, pedo rings.. The only people who may suffer or will suffer are the common people.

But anyway I am glad we had this chat.. and in a couple of decades I hope u are right..:heart:

Isserley, thank you for your postings. I have myself praised Vladimir Putin’s speeches repeatedly and repeatedly expressed my disgust for the “Western” imperial stance and value systems, so I feel slightly motivated to intervene in this little “chat” you claim to be having with Bill Ryan.

Your description about Putin as "virtue-signalling" comes across to me as flippant. What is the problem with all those high-school and college or secondary school and university graduates? Can’t they read any more? On a general note: no they can’t, as dozens of studies have shown. In your case, no, you don’t seem to be able to read. Have you compared Vladimir Putin’s speeches with Olaf Scholtz’s, with Joe Biden’s, with Boris Johnson’s, with Emanuel Macron’s? I think you haven’t, because you would be confronted with glaring differences in logical coherence and ethical consistence. Vladimir Putin uses language the way it should be used: with a concern for rationality and transparency, and for communicative "engageability" and sincerity. In the others’ speeches there are non-sequiturs and nonsense and brutality and emotional coldness.

Your standard rejection of politicians is too easy (apart from having a ring of "let us have a Duce/Führer/Conducator/vozhd to lead us”): you live in a "democracy", I suppose? Then you are responsible for your country’s leaders. So you can’t just hide behind "they are all garbage", you need to be co-responsible in replacing them – and more than that (given that all voting systems in the West are now being sabotaged), in revolutionising the process of "democracy" itself.

As I have written in another post, I believe that "democracy" is the first stage of faschism. It is so because it does not solve the problem of guaranteeing the quality of the voters and as a consequence of the people elected. It is far more pertinent to use the terms "tyranny" as against "open society" and/or "free society". The West is a collection of "democracies", and as such, of tyrannies. I do not know in which country you were born or live, but when I assume it is a country belonging to the "West", the following remarks concern you directly. Haven’t you noticed that the whole process of representative democracy in your country is a fraud? Is it not clear to you that your country is in essence a tyranny – internally, towards its own citizens? (As belonging to the West, it is also part of the Western imperial power projection and of the imperialist agenda towards other countries.) But the key point is this: we cannot at the same time stand by as our own "democratic" societies show their real face in becoming tyrannies and criticise other societies for not being "democratic". As the fact of being a "democracy" is itself (a major) part of the problem (and is also being recognised a such by the world minus the West) it is logical that you (and all citizens of the West who have not developed some form of "inner resistance" associated with some form of "inner emigration") will pride themselves on their countries as "democracies" (actually meaning tyrannies) and will reserve the concept of "tyranny" for “enemies”.

So here is the choice: what do you prefer: to live in a country that claims not to be a tyranny while being one for all to see and is led by an irresponsible and corrupt "politician", or to live in a country that does not call itself a "democracy"-that-is-a-tyranny and may in many respects not be "open" and "free" (but does not claim to be so) that is led by a "politician" who is articulate, responsible, empathic and has a clear understanding of logical coherence of policies and of how means need to be used responsibly with respect to multiple objectives, both politically strategic and with respect to human free will, fairness and ethical standards?

Even if Russia and Vladimir Putin are “not yet there” with respect to these last expectancies, the countries of the West – I fear – have a far longer way to go. Back first, and then maybe they can get onto the good track.

[shaberon]

The West is a collection of "democracies", and as such, of tyrannies.



As expressed from University of Jerusalem, J. L. Talmon's 1952 book The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarian_democracy) addresses this, saying:

...in which the world crisis of to-day consists.


Hadn't two wars, or "The Great War", or another Thirty Years' War just been fought to fix everything?


Also called "messianic democracy", his ideas were not new, and carried forward by W. Engdahl and C. Bolin.



He describes:


... a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government.

It retains full power of expropriation and full power of imposition, i.e., the right of control over everything and everyone. Maintenance of such power, in the absence of full support of the citizenry, requires the forceful suppression of any dissenting element except what the government purposely permits or organizes.



He distinguishes "liberal democracy" as being less forceful/coercive, while fascist leaders often have popular support as if elected and approved. So you are just getting slightly different flavors of the same thing.

I am not sure that he takes into account the United States was formed to prevent democracy. But later we find significant legal changes, and, a sort of "coalition of international corporatism" viz. Pilgrims' Society, and the U. S. losing its founding principles in the early 1900s.


Such "corporatism" or Capitalism is indeed crumbling, as was told to Davos, 2019.

I am not well-versed enough to satisfactorily explain all the differences in Russian and Chinese systems, other than they are not this, not Capitalism in the right use of the word.

In the early U. S., there were corporations, limited to a twenty-year charter, and routinely closed for corruption. They were just for large public projects such as bridges and canals. But then we see around 1870, corporations stole the term "person" (from the 14th Amendment), which was used to protect a freed slave, one time. The idea that "a person is property" was turned into "property is a person".


That was a legal opinion, a judge's precedent, which spread like wildfire, because corporations employ lawyers who are skilled at such things, and most citizens don't yet know it happened.

Looking at the FTX guy, it continues to be true that corporatists give flowery speeches as mere window-dressing, while acting in powerful ways with utter contempt for humanity. Nothing new about him! Same as the old oilmen and industrialists. Ukraine is not just another Capitalists' war, it is so important it is like the spine of their system, which was already "dead" before this body of it was attacked.

This system is in a condition like a fatal wound to the femoral artery, and, instead of checking in for treatment, it marches around proudly, bleeding out.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/status/1595920268949860352
1595920268949860352

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/apocalypse0s/status/1595588854538727424

1595588854538727424

[Ravenlocke]

https://www.rt.com/russia/566935-they-robbed-ukraine/

Bye, bye Kiev, hello Cote D'Azur: As Westerners send aid, here's how Ukraine's corrupt elites are profiting from the conflict

Since the beginning of Russia's military offensive in Ukraine, the United States, the European Union – and their allies – have provided Kiev with $126 billion worth of aid, a number almost equal to the country's entire GDP. Moreover, millions of Ukrainians have found refuge in the EU where they were given housing, food, work permits, and emotional support. The scope is huge, even by western standards. Considering that the bloc has been funding Kiev while coping with an economic and energy crisis of its own, the assistance is perhaps especially notable.

Kiev bases its endless funding requests on the collapse of its economy, due to the war, and its need to “resist Russian aggression.” But is the aid reaching its intended destination?

Russia’s former southern capital renounces its past: How Ukraine is destroying its heritage
Russia’s former southern capital renounces its past: How Ukraine is destroying its heritage
The Monaco Battalion

While Ukraine has undergone a general mobilization affecting all men under the age of 60, many former and current high-ranking officials, politicians, businessmen, and oligarchs have moved to safety abroad - mainly to the EU.

The mass flight of Ukrainian elites started even prior to the armed conflict. On February 14, 2022, 37 deputies from the Ukrainian president's parliamentary faction “Servant of the People" suddenly went “missing.” Had MPs not been banned from leaving the country the very next day, others would’ve definitely joined them. Meanwhile, former officials and oligarchs enjoyed more freedom to move around. According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 20 business jets took off from Kiev’s Boryspol airport on the 14th as well.

Tycoons were at the front of the line. Entrepreneur and MP Vadim Novinsky, businessmen Vasily Khmelnitsky and Vadim Stolar, Vadim Nesterenko, and Andrey Stavnitzer all left the country on charter flights. Millionaire politician Igor Abramovich booked a private flight to Austria for 50 people – taking relatives, business partners, and fellow party members aboard. Oligarchs flew from Kiev to Nice, Munich, Vienna, Cyprus, and other EU destinations. Another group of businessmen took off from Odessa on private planes. The owner of Vostok Bank departed for Israel, while the head of the Transship group flew to Limassol. An ex-governor of the Odessa region, Stalkanat's Vladimir Nemirovsky, also left the country.

In the summer and early fall of 2022, ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ prepared several investigative documentaries about fit-for-service Ukrainian billionaires and officials spotted vacationing on the Côte d'Azur during the war. A movie with the ironic title “The Monaco Battalion” shows Ukrainian oligarchs resting at their villas, mansions, and on yachts. In the first part, we see businessman Konstantin Zhevago, who is included on Interpol’s wanted list, relaxing on his private yacht worth $70 million. The yacht graces the shoreline of the Côte d'Azur as Zhevago’s family disembarks. Kharkov entrepreneur Alexander Yaroslavsky, who promised to sell his yacht and transfer the funds towards the restoration of Kharkov, can be seen sailing alongside.


Ukrainska Pravda’ journalists also got a glimpse of the Surkis brothers in France, who’re currently renting apartments worth €2 million per year. Meanwhile, a $300,000 Bentley belonging to Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev was spotted near the casino in Monaco, and Eduard Kohan, the co-founder of Euroenergotrade, was seen at one of Monte Carlo’s chic hotels.

A whole colony of Ukrainian oligarchs has apparently taken up residence in the elite French commune of Cap-Ferrat. Land developer Vadim Solar, oligarchs Dmitry Firtash, Vitaly Khomutynnik, and Sergey Lovochkin are among those enjoying high life in the middle of the war. The Cap-Ferrat villa once belonging to King Leopold II of Belgium was bought by the richest Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. His neighbors are Alexander Davtyan, President of the Investment Group DAD LLC, and Vladislav Gelzin, a former deputy of the Donetsk Regional Council.

‘All the real skinheads went to Ukraine’: An American Neo-Nazi outlines the crimes of his Ukrainian ‘colleagues’
‘All the real skinheads went to Ukraine’: An American Neo-Nazi outlines the crimes of his Ukrainian ‘colleagues’
As the creators of the film repeatedly emphasize, deputies and businessmen of “pro-Russian” parliamentary factions left the country during the war. Yet many active supporters of the current government also prefer to defend their homeland from abroad.

‘Ukrainska Pravda’ managed to interview Andrei Kholodov, an MP from Vladimir Zelensky’s faction “Servant of the People”, from his current residence in Vienna. The Austrian capital was also chosen by nationalist Nikita Poturaev and Sergei Melnichuk, a former head of the Aidar battalion known for war crimes reported by Amnesty International. The former head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, 59-year-old Alexander Tupitsky, and the 45-year-old ex-prosecutor general of Ukraine Ruslan Ryaboshapka also preferred foreign “trenches.”

Members of the Ukrainian parliament are in no hurry to adopt vitally important laws for the country during wartime. According to the Telegram channel “Volyn News,” as of March 11, 2022, more than 20 MPs had moved abroad for unspecified reasons. The geography is extensive: Great Britain, Poland, Qatar, Spain, France, Austria, Romania, Hungary, UAE, Moldova, Israel, etc. In March, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine launched an investigation into the actions of six parliamentarians who have remained abroad.

Apparently, neither war nor punishment can put Ukrainian legislators to work. Only 99 deputies out of 450 attended the session of the Parliament on July 20. Presumably distracted by summer, the Côte d'Azur, the Maldives, and yachts… As for defending Ukraine itself – just leave it to the foreign volunteers, they say.


Where’s all the military and humanitarian aid going?

Some western benefactors have recently noticed that most of the military and humanitarian aid never reaches Ukraine’s army or ordinary citizens.

In an original documentary, CBS reported that about 70% of military aid failed to find its way to the intended beneficiaries and donor countries are often unable to control its intended use. According to the creators of the report, some of the weapons are sold on the black market. As US Marine Corps veteran Andy Milburn said, “I can tell you unarguably that on the frontline units these things are not getting there. Drones, Switchblades, IFAKs. They’re not, alright. Body armor, helmets, you name it.”

Is there a link between 'Aid to Ukraine,' the US Democratic Party and the suspicious collapse of the FTX Crypto exchange?
Is there a link between 'Aid to Ukraine,' the US Democratic Party and the suspicious collapse of the FTX Crypto exchange?
The Grayzone writes that weapons and humanitarian aid provided by the West to the Ukrainian military is being stolen along the way and never reaches the soldiers. At the same time, Ukrainian MPs recently gave themselves a 70% pay raise. The author of the piece argues that billions of dollars from the USA and the EU have been diverted.

A Ukrainian soldier named Ivan told journalists about western funds never reaching the front: “Imagine telling an American soldier that we are using our personal cars in the war, and we’re also responsible for paying for repairs and fuel. We’re buying our own body armor and helmets. We don’t have observation tools or cameras, so soldiers have to pop their heads out to see what’s coming, which means at any moment, a rocket or tank can tear their heads off.”

Samantha Morris, a medical doctor from the US, drew attention to the theft of medical supplies and the overall corruption: “The lead doctor at the military base in Sumy has ordered medical supplies from and for the military at different points in time, and he has had 15 trucks of supplies completely disappear,” she said. The doctors couldn’t even set up courses for medical assistants until a friend of the Sumy region governor interceded.

CNN talked to a retired US colonel who said that Ukrainian troops are short on supplies. Small arms, medical equipment, field hospitals and a lot more are under the control of private organizations – more concerned about stealing money than saving the lives of their compatriots.

As Stephen Myers, a former member of the US Department of State Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, insisted, “There is little to prevent a field commander from diverting some of the equipment to buyers, aka the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians or whomever, while claiming the equipment and weapons were destroyed…”

Thousands of tons of humanitarian aid is being stolen. In September, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) proved that the head of the Office of the President, Andrei Yermak, his deputy Kirill Tymoshenko, the head of “The Servant of the People” faction David Arakhamiya and his friend Vemir Davityan were behind the large-scale theft of humanitarian aid in the Zaporozhye region. Zaporozhye officials Starukh, Nekrasova, Sherbina, and Kurtev only superficially carried out the task of distributing aid. In six months, they organized the theft of 22 sea containers, 389 railway cars, and 220 trucks. Humanitarian aid was sold in ATB and Selpo – supermarkets owned by Gennady Butkevich and Vladimir Kostelman, respectively. Of course, Tymoshenko, Nekrasova and Davityan all became “refugees” and found asylum in Vienna.

The BBC made up a story about a Russian 'attack' on a Ukrainian city's water supply – where are the 'fake news' fact checkers?
The BBC made up a story about a Russian 'attack' on a Ukrainian city's water supply – where are the 'fake news' fact checkers?
Admittedly, not everyone is on the run. Andrei Yarmolsky, the scandalous former deputy head of the Volyn regional administration – accused of stealing humanitarian aid, supplying defective bulletproof vests, and illegally moving men out of the country – was promoted. He now works for the National Security and Defense Council.

Medical supplies are also being stolen. The Telegraph reportsthat “some of the donated supplies later made their way onto the hospitals’ pharmacy shelves: priced, and listed for sale". Health workers appropriate medicine, bandages, and medical equipment, and resell them to patients for whom they were intended to be free, the article says.

A similar story was told by the aforementioned doctor Dr Morris: “I got a call from a nurse at a military hospital in Dnipro. She said the president of the hospital had stolen all the pain medications to resell them, and that the wounded soldiers being treated there had no pain relief. She begged us to hand-deliver pain medications to her. She said she would hide them from the hospital president so that they’d reach the soldiers. But who can you trust? Was the hospital president really stealing the medications, or was she trying to con us into giving her pain medications for her to sell or use? Who knows. Everyone is lying.”

War for some, Gucci for others

Enormous cash flows from Western countries are continuously used by corrupt Ukrainian officials for personal enrichment and to acquire luxury goods.

In a recently busted corruption scheme, Odessa customs smuggled shirts, backpacks, sports shoes, belts, and other luxury items by Givenchy, Gucci, Polo, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Armani under the guise of army equipment. The documents, declaring the cargo as “for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” were signed by the acting head of the Odessa customs Vitaly Zakolodyazhny. According to MP Alexander Dubinsky, this is a common theft scheme. “The work of the customs is unsatisfactory because while some are fighting at the front, others are making money under the guise of their customs uniforms," the parliamentarian said.

To take another example, in May 2022, Western countries abolished customs duties for Ukraine. Within a week, over 14,000 passenger cars were imported into the country. As the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Mustafa Nayem commented, "Considering we’re a country at war, our partners in Poland, Slovakia, and Romania were quite surprised by this fast-paced upgrade to our vehicle fleet.”

As they go about acquiring luxurious clothes and cars, the thieves are also taking care to withdraw capital from Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin is absent from this week's G20 summit: What does it mean for the Russian President and the event itself?
Vladimir Putin is absent from this week's G20 summit: What does it mean for the Russian President and the event itself?
According to the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, Ukraine’s budget is missing UAH 4.5 billion worth of taxes from agrotraders: “In August-September 2022, almost 12 million tons of grain crops and oil estimated at UAH 137 billion were exported through the customs territory of Ukraine. Of these, almost 4 million tons were exported by fake companies existing only on paper.” Moreover, “most of the non-resident companies to which grain is exported are high-risk and involved in criminal investigations.” Is this the “grain deal” that the global community is actively cheering? It looks like Ukrainian fraudsters are corrupting not just their own country, but foreign states as well. And this is just one example out of many.

When the Surkis brothers left Ukraine, they took $17 million with them. But that’s just a trifle compared to the “heroes of the Euromaidan.” According to former People's Deputy of Ukraine Oleg Tsarev, after the outbreak of hostilities leading Ukrainian politicians sent both their capital and their families abroad.

He mentions that the parents and relatives of President Vladimir Zelensky and his wife all left the country. Zelensky’s predecessor, former president Petr Poroshenko, moved not just his children but also about a billion US dollars in cash to the UK.

The same applies to other major Ukrainian officials: former Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak, the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk and many others all took their families and fortunes, estimated at around a billion dollars, out of the country. And that’s not to mention the numerous politically-affiliated oligarchs.

Scammers of smaller stature can “individually join the EU” as well. A system of bribery allows military-age males to leave the country. According to Izvestia, the fee is currently between $8,000 and $10,000. The Ukrainian media also actively reports on people paying to cross the border.

***

The sympathy of Westerners towards a country at war is understandable. But while some countries are doing their upmost to aid Ukraine – even while facing an economic crisis themselves – corrupt Ukrainian officials are using the funding to amass personal fortunes and live the high life at fancy resorts. And all at the expense of taxpayers in the West.

In 2015, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, upon leaving the post of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, openly declared that he had become a billionaire. It is yet to be seen how many new Ukrainian super rich tycoons – nurtured by foreign military aid – will appear in the West by the end of the conflict.

[Ravenlocke]

35 Russian POWs released. Some were forced to walk and crawl after being shot in the knees.

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1595915162988339201

1595915162988339201

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://www.rt.com/russia/567082-cia-spy-recruit-embassy/


Moscow reacts to CIA plan to recruit Russians

A CIA bid to recruit agents among Russian citizens is yet more proof that the US is seeking to undermine the country, Russia’s embassy in Washington said on Thursday, adding that these attempts would not succeed.

The embassy was commenting on a recent Wall Street Journal report, which revealed that the CIA’s deputy director of operations, David Marlowe, had expressed interest in recruiting Russians who were “disgusted” with the Ukraine conflict, announcing that the agency is “open for business.”

“We had no illusions about the CIA’s anti-Russian activities,” the diplomatic mission wrote on Telegram, adding that it is common knowledge that the US intelligence community is trying “to destabilize the situation in Russia.”

According to the embassy, Marlowe’s remarks “only confirm Washington’s hostile course aimed at weakening our country from within through sophisticated subversive methods.”

CIA reveals plan for disgruntled Russians
CIA reveals plan for disgruntled Russians
It also noted that Marlowe’s words may have been motivated by “a trivial desire to get public attention and make Congress increase the intelligence agency budget.”

“One can hardly disagree with some experts who explain the Russophobic zeal of the CIA with the wish to compensate for reputational costs associated with the fiasco with the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan,” the mission said.

It declared that any attempts to sow discord in Russia “are doomed to failure,” claiming that most of its citizens support Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, which started in late February.

Last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned a Dutch ambassador to Moscow to protest against Western intelligence agencies’ attempts to recruit Russian personnel serving abroad. According to the ministry, US intelligence operatives tried to approach Russian diplomats in the Netherlands at least twice.

Appointed by current CIA Director William Burns, Marlowe is an Arabic speaker with expertise in the Near and Middle East. Marlowe believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin “squandered” all of his power and influence by “invading” Ukraine. He described the conflict as a massive failure for Moscow and said it spells an opportunity for Western intelligence agencies to recruit disaffected Russians.

[Ravenlocke]

https://tass.com/politics/1541553?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

Fifty Russian soldiers return from Ukrainian captivity — Defense Ministry

It is reported that all the released servicemen are receiving required medical and psychological assistance

MOSCOW, November 24. /TASS/. Fifty Russian soldiers have returned from the Ukrainian captivity, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced on Thursday.

"On November 24, 50 Russian servicemen who faced a fatal danger in captivity have been returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime as a result of the negotiating process," the ministry said in a statement.

Military transport planes of the Russian Aerospace Forces will deliver all the released servicemen to Moscow for medical treatment and recovery at the Defense Ministry’s medical institutions, it said.

"All the released servicemen are receiving required medical and psychological assistance," the ministry said.

The previous prisoner swap with Ukraine was held on November 23 when 35 Russian servicemen returned from the Ukrainian captivity.



https://tass.com/politics/1541651


Ukrainian army suffering major casualties trying to break through defenses in LPR

"Every day, they make four to six or even more attempts to carry out counteroffensive operations but they have come to realize that in fact, all their attempts lead to huge manpower and equipment losses on our segment of the frontline," Apty Alaudinov pointed out
LUGANSK, November 24. /TASS/. Ukrainian troops keep trying to break through the allied forces’ defenses in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), suffering major manpower and equipment losses, commander of the Akhmat commando unit and Deputy Commander of the 2nd Army Corps of LPR People’s Militia Apty Alaudinov told TASS on Thursday.

"Every day, they make four to six or even more attempts to carry out counteroffensive operations but they have come to realize that in fact, all their attempts lead to huge manpower and equipment losses on our segment of the frontline," he pointed out. "They are like moths flying into the fire, they keep trying every day, sending their fighters to die and they actually fail to even retrieve their dead so thousands of bodies remain scattered on the battlefields," Alaudinov added.

He said earlier that members of the 2nd Army Corps of the LPR People’s Militia and the Akhmat special operations unit had established a strong defense line between the city of Kremennaya and the Chervonopopovka settlement in the LPR.

[Mike Gorman]

Some people are stating that Masha is influencing people to be Pro-Russian, this is very disrespectful of the independent minds who contribute to this forum, if there is a largely pro-Russian sentiment this is because the geo-political events of the past 30 years show us that NATO is no longer representative of the old allied forces from WWII, that it has become a mockery of the values our forefathers and mothers defended, the anti-Nazi struggles of the 1940's. Russia is not all light and goodness, but it does have the right to defend its country, to demand that western entities do not use Ukraine as its plaything, and tool for deposing the Russian government. I think reasonable people everywhere understand why Russia mobilized and decided to do something about the Ukrainian situation, I rarely speak with Masha, I don't really know much about her, I wish her well but my thinking is the result of my own assessment of this situation, I am appalled with how the West has been corrupted and misguided by WEF groups, my own father was an Engineer in WWII, I was raised to hate Nazism, and to support freedom, this is why I feel sympathy for Russia, more power to them.

[Bill Ryan]

Cross-posting this from Houman's thread. :flower:



Russian Solider explaining organ harvesting by the Kyiv regime.
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/121/162/894/playable/726dc956df35456a.mp4

-dv2M2Hg23c
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/121/162/894/playable/726dc956df35456a.mp4

[Isserley]

Some people are stating that Masha is influencing people to be Pro-Russian, this is very disrespectful of the independent minds who contribute to this forum...

I am stating so YES :bigsmile:
It is the way it is. We are all influencers knowingly or unknowingly. What we write has an impact. But don't you worry I won't be disrespectful anymore with my posts on this thread lol.

.. one more thing - If a country is not NATO member it does not mean we should support its actions blindly. Based on that only NO.
We can support N.Korea in that case..

[shaberon]

...if there is a largely pro-Russian sentiment this is because the geo-political events of the past 30 years show us that NATO is no longer representative of the old allied forces from WWII, that it has become a mockery of the values our forefathers and mothers defended, the anti-Nazi struggles of the 1940's.

Yes, except we were conned then, too.

Again with, perhaps, a nod to Aldous Huxley...understanding that all of those events were centrally-planned in the 1930s, and with the "end of the war" you had Operation Paperclip, and no real reason for NATO--from the very beginning--other than to "keep Germany down", and theoretically cover the world like an umbrella.

Geo-politics since the beginning of the Great Game, then, shifted to the U. S. as the "provider".

Not hard to see that German unification was always retaliated by the UK, starting with the Boer Wars and Entente.

Admittedly, all this would have been quite hard to see for the typical person, whereas in modern times, at least the information is available. What we call Nazism is straight out of the Ivy League and Oxbridge, not otherwise. The "science" of economics is able to move it across borders, so that at first we don't notice how the obliterated Germany of the 1920s was beefed up almost exclusively by the U. S./U. K., while they also imported Eugenics and related ideas from our "intellectual centers".

"We" had moral values here, I know because they were passed on to me generationally, from conditions that were true, let's say, pre-1900. These values were already completely against the British Empire. On the other hand, German was almost our national language, since before the politically-motivated "Italian flood" about 49% of our settlers were German.

Besides the U. S., there are not many examples of a former colony licking the boots of its former master, and, then, roughly, eating it.

I am not really pro-Russia so much as anti-Deceit, the true power that seems to reign in English-speaking countries, perhaps even the English language itself. I think we are fortunate to have Masha; anyone like that has troubled to learn English as a second language in order to deal with us. Notice how very few Arabs, Chinese, etc., waste their time posting similar material in English-speaking venues? They know these things, but are not on a great mission to convince us about anything, because more of their efforts go in to maintaining their own existence.


Here again in "unintended consequences", note the double-speak of "ally" as in "Turkey is an ally of the U. S.", whereas "the Kurds" are not:


Syrian Kurds in Letter to Biden: US Must Aid Allies, Halt Turkish Attacks

Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder expressed “deep concern” over the recent Turkish strikes, claiming that in at least one instance they “directly threatened the safety of US personnel.” However, he reiterated that the US recognizes what he described as Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.”


Because the SDF and some Peshmergas are U. S. proxies, Iran and Iraq are doing smaller amounts of the same thing. If any of them hit the Americans, oh well. Yes, that totally is an "illegal occupation", while Russian naval and land bases are an agreement.

Turkey is "under pressure" to let Finland into NATO; Finland just lowered its physical requirements for military service, to accommodate "Playstation generation". China on the other hand is passing material intended to limit under-18 year olds to no more than three hours of video games a week, which they call "spiritual opium".

[Tintin]

Scott Ritter absolutely on fire here in this short 4 minute segment :muscle:

Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland Called Out On War Crimes Issue In Ukraine

nQgrI57OHL4

[Tintin]

hear! hear! Mick Wallace....

1595772886479937537

Source: https://twitter.com/wallacemick/status/1595772886479937537

Text:



"There's no legal framework for #EU to recognise a State Sponsor of Terrorism - Even the #US have refused to apply label to Russia. The idea that anyone from a blood-drenched #NATO State would label anyone else a sponsor of Terrorism before calling out their own State, is absurd.."

[Tintin]

In relation to the absurd continual shelling by the Ukrainians on the ZNPP :facepalm:

1595771826159976449

Source: https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1595771826159976449

[Tintin]

1595895336844890113

Source: https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1595895336844890113
Telegram link: https://t.me/MFARussia/14230

Text:



The abhorrent Nazi interpretation of eugenics was reincarnated in neoliberalism and received an official seal of approval in Canadian law. This is what all the progressives are appealing for today.

🔗 Read in full: https://is.gd/IGks2m

https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/Maria_Z_on_euthanasia_law_in_Canada.PNG

[Johnnycomelately]

Something lighter here, just an example of how fakeness/lieing can be advantageous in war.

Apparently courtesy of the Aidar Battalion, which claims to no longer be neo nazi.

WW2 Panther Tank Fighting in Ukraine 2022?
197,812 views Nov 24, 2022

Mark Felton Productions
1.77M subscribers

“Something strange was recently seen at a roadblock in Ukraine - was it a WW2 German Panther?”


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf_Utlv5NLI

[Tintin]

Extracted from Maria Zakharova's weekly press briefing, November 24, 2022 (https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1839975/#31) another history lesson, with occasional strong language :):


On the Ukrainian crisis


I would like to draw your attention to two dates in the history of modern Ukraine, or rather the region - November 21 and 22. They are associated with the beginning of two "Maidans", and in fact, two coups d'état organized by the West, which took place on the territory of the state, which ultimately led to the loss of Ukraine's independence.

For decades, the United States and its allies have sought complete control over Ukraine, ending its attempts at sovereignty and true statehood, turning it into a submissive instrument of anti-Russian politics and a military springboard to fight Russia. The “Orange Revolution” of 2004 with an illegal third round of elections was the forerunner of the armed anti-constitutional coup in 2014, when the West managed to bring frenzied national radicals to power, whose hatred for everything that is not connected with this nationalist agenda, for everything Russian made of them are obedient puppets, capable of any steps that are destructive for Ukraine.

Then, following the results of these two “significant” (unfortunately, with a minus sign) events in the history of Ukraine, an actor was brought in who was supposed to recall a certain role in history. He played her. True, the role turned out to be bloody. Today, the regime of V.A.Zelensky does not hesitate to do everything that the West dictates to him, namely, it continues military operations “to the bitter end” and “to the last Ukrainian.” He is ready to sacrifice the lives and destinies of his citizens, so long as financial and military assistance does not stop, without which the Kyiv authorities would not have lasted a day.

It is no secret that the Ukrainian army has long been completely dependent on the supply of Western weapons, intelligence, instructors and mercenaries. She is a tool. There are more and more facts indicating that in Ukraine there is a confrontation between Russia and NATO. An increasing number of military specialists from the countries of the alliance are fighting as part of a dozen private military companies and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

According to various sources, since February of this year, the United States has supplied Kyiv with weapons, including heavy artillery and MLRS, for $21.5 billion, the European Union for 8 billion euros. As a result of the seventh meeting of the Contact Group on the Defense of Ukraine in the "Ramstein format", the next package of military assistance to Kyiv was agreed with an emphasis on air defense and missile defense systems. It is not only what we see and hear what we are told. There is another side hidden from the Western and global public. The fact is that everything that happens is also a front for the financial machinations of the White House.

In order to draw NATO into the conflict even more, in order to allocate and supply even more money and opportunities, the V.A. Zelensky regime deliberately resorts to dangerous provocations and extremism, introducing more and more elements of terrorist activity into its actions. We have already spoken about the unsuccessful attempts to accuse Russia of involvement in the missile fall on the territory of Poland on November 15 of this year. However, this was not enough for the Kyiv regime. The Zaporozhye NPP is being attacked by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In the course of recent shelling, a number of facilities have been damaged, including sites where radioactive waste is stored (which even children understand is fraught with). The Kyiv regime continues to blackmail Europeans with a man-made disaster.

Exactly. This is not a threat to us. We have long recognized it and we oppose it. All this is being done for the “Western world”, for that part of the European continent that first followed its “big brother” in Washington, participated with its own hands in anti-constitutional coups in Ukraine, then supported “democratic transformations” in this country. This resulted in the strengthening of the dictatorial habits of the totalitarian regime and the complete rejection of sovereignty, democracies and freedoms.

Now they are forced to allocate huge funds for all this madness. On top of everything, with a certain regularity, the Kyiv regime and V.A. Zelensky remind them that they know how to fire at nuclear power plants so that as soon as someone in the West, including (perhaps in the first place) in Western Europe, thought or question which they will try to verbalize and ask themselves: what is their money going for, are they part or a party to the conflict, a sponsor of the bloodshed? They will immediately be reminded of the “correct answer” by once again firing at the nuclear power plant. This is nuclear blackmail. Perhaps history has not yet known this. In this sense, it is to be commended. V.A.Zelensky shows creativity. He is generously paid for this from across the ocean. Europe remains deaf-blind to what is happening on its territory.

November 21 this year V.A.Zelensky, speaking before the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, again called for support for Ukraine's application for membership in the bloc. Kyiv is convinced that in the conditions of the "war with Russia" NATO and the European Union are obliged to accept Ukraine into their ranks. Imagine what it will lead to.

They represent it in the EU. This is the only thing that somehow signals that a number of politicians in the EU have consciousness. They are at least to some extent, but the risks can be calculated. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities are not going to fulfill the pre-entry requirements. This was confirmed by the recent signing by V.A. Zelensky of the law on the abolition of lifelong financial monitoring in relation to politicians and senior officials. Thus, Kyiv made it clear that it does not intend to fight corruption and money laundering, but it will not stop demanding funding from the West. He fenced off all those who, in the territory of Ukraine, controlled by the Kyiv regime, in the ranks of the "bunker department" participate in the financial fraud of the US Administration. V.A.Zelensky secured them with this law and gave the green light to everything that the international community has long called corruption.

In the same way, the West is trying to ignore the terrorist methods used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the conduct of hostilities, and the atrocities to which Ukrainian neo-Nazis subject prisoners of war and local citizens living in territories under Russian control. The similarity of these atrocities with the crimes of the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War is appalling.

Recently, terrible footage of the execution of unarmed Russian prisoners of war near Makiivka spread around the world. November 22 this year In Ukraine, an investigation into this murder was announced. It seems that Western journalists, who needed the slightest chance to be humane in covering these cases, breathed a sigh of relief when the Kyiv regime announced an investigation. Then followed a blow to the entire liberal world, which for so many years supported the Kyiv regime, endowing it with the functions of democracy, openness and diligence. It was stated that Russian servicemen themselves were to blame for the death of unarmed prisoners of war. It's like they shot themselves. This despite the fact that the video is available. It is on the Internet. It is difficult to recall anything more blasphemous and immoral. It has been said many times that in its ideology, politics and daily activities the Kyiv regime is guided by and resembles its inspirers.

They glorified accomplices and Nazis. These are their heroes. They celebrate birthdays, sacredly honor the memory of those who collaborated with the Nazis and fascists. This similarity is confirmed by the Kyiv regime. It is on the Internet. It is difficult to recall anything more blasphemous and immoral. It has been said many times that in its ideology, politics and daily activities the Kyiv regime is guided by and resembles its inspirers. They glorified accomplices and Nazis. These are their heroes. They celebrate birthdays, sacredly honor the memory of those who collaborated with the Nazis and fascists.

This similarity is confirmed by the Kyiv regime. It is on the Internet. It is difficult to recall anything more blasphemous and immoral. It has been said many times that in its ideology, politics and daily activities the Kyiv regime is guided by and resembles its inspirers. They glorified accomplices and Nazis. These are their heroes. They celebrate birthdays, sacredly honor the memory of those who collaborated with the Nazis and fascists. This similarity is confirmed by the Kyiv regime.

The further, the more all their activities remind of the atrocities of modern international terrorism. Previously, such videos that were seen from Makiivka came from the "nests" of international terrorists, such as ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda.
Now V.A.Zelensky and his regime are doing this. Compare. Lots of materials. We have already gone through this in our country - the brutality of international terrorists in the North Caucasus in the 1990s. Let me remind you that one to one, one hundred percent coinciding with the current situation, the West supported those who were “abandoned” to the North Caucasus (by them and through their channels), in the same way they shot our unarmed, captured and in a hopeless situation guys . Just as it is now said about the “democratic” nature of the Kyiv regime and V.A. Zelensky directly, as in the 1990s. supported by J.Dudaev, A.

Years and decades later, the international community, in particular the "collective and civilized West" faced the same methods of struggle against them. These same international terrorists, who were fed in one "center", came to Europe. Then she was horrified.

A series of terrorist attacks swept through prosperous capitals such as Paris and Berlin. How many cities in Central and Southern Europe suffered from terrorist attacks. They were forced to admit that in the 1990s. Russia opposed international terrorism. Yes, they did not admit their involvement in this, but they had no more arguments to call those who committed terrorist acts against the civilian population, used terrorist methods during the fighting "fighters for freedom and democracy." The same will happen now. Give it some time.

Similarly, the methods of the Kyiv regime and its individual representatives will be collectively recognized as extremist and terrorist. There can be no other. It's all documented. The tribunal awaits them. I emphasize that the West will not have the opportunity to "wash off" what has become part of their "activities". They created this regime themselves. And now they sponsor those who commit extremist and terrorist acts.

The other day, a new video appeared on the Internet, in which Ukrainian militants make fun of a living person, bound and lying in a coffin. All I can say is: Inglourious bastards. None of this will go unnoticed, uninvestigated and unpunished.

Commenting on the massacre of Ukrainian Nazis over Russian prisoners of war, Ambassador of the US State Department for International Criminal Justice B.V. Shak, said that the scale of cruelty of the Russian armed forces allegedly surpasses the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That is, now the humanitarian aspect is measured by degree and ratio? Individual specific facts are not assessed? Why not remember yourself then? It could be.

If everything in the US State Department is now known from the point of view of comparison, then we can remember ourselves. We have to ask ourselves: in Vietnam were the American troops more brutal than the representatives of the Kyiv regime or less? Compare with yourself. It is strange to hear such a cynical statement from a professional lawyer, which is the American ambassador. In the words of B.V. Shak there is no morality, no compassion, and most importantly, there is nothing that is part of her functional duties. She is driven by only one thing - to shield and whitewash Ukrainian criminals, who are trained and supplied by the United States and its allies, not to mention the financial machinations of the United States. American journalists have already begun to write about this, in no way connected either with Russia or with other countries. Now this has a material embodiment and evidence base.

How many times in these eight years since 2014 have we talked about this? How many times have concrete facts been cited that all the aid that went in support of the Kyiv regime (at that time they were covered by humanitarian goals, economic development, assistance to democracy on the territory of Ukraine and its development) does not reach the addressee. We are no longer talking about the implementation of the stated goals. The assets associated with the Kyiv regime immediately return to bank accounts (not even leaving the same banks) and settle there.

This attitude of the West strengthens the conviction of the Kyiv regime in permissiveness and impunity. Condoning the crimes of the Kyiv regime, the West not only supports the murderers for whom there is no forgiveness and justification, but also becomes involved in their atrocities.

These events are another confirmation of the necessity and no alternative to all the declared goals, taking into account the changes and development of situations "on the ground".

[Tintin]

Some people are stating that Masha is influencing people to be Pro-Russian, this is very disrespectful of the independent minds who contribute to this forum, if there is a largely pro-Russian sentiment this is because the geo-political events of the past 30 years show us that NATO is no longer representative of the old allied forces from WWII, that it has become a mockery of the values our forefathers and mothers defended, the anti-Nazi struggles of the 1940's. Russia is not all light and goodness, but it does have the right to defend its country, to demand that western entities do not use Ukraine as its plaything, and tool for deposing the Russian government. I think reasonable people everywhere understand why Russia mobilized and decided to do something about the Ukrainian situation, I rarely speak with Masha, I don't really know much about her, I wish her well but my thinking is the result of my own assessment of this situation, I am appalled with how the West has been corrupted and misguided by WEF groups, my own father was an Engineer in WWII, I was raised to hate Nazism, and to support freedom, this is why I feel sympathy for Russia, more power to them.

Thank you :flower: (and in bold, above): it smacked of condescension, and was insulting, and inaccurate to say the very least on the part of that commentator. And thanks also to Bill for this excellent assessment of what we are doing here on this thread (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1529446#post1529446) :muscle: I might have written that myself, except you beat me to it :)

:focus:

[Bill Ryan]

A new interview with Col. Douglas Macgregor, originally published maybe a couple days ago and re-uploaded on his channel. (https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasAMacgregor/videos)

The interview is introduced with a replay of the Ukrainian video, that has rightly inflamed the emotions of millions of Russians, clearly showing the Ukrainian execution of Russian soldiers who has just surrendered.

As the host warns, look away if you prefer not to see this. :flower: The discussion with Doug Macgregor continues after that.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0BhWNWl0Q0

[Gwin Ru]

...

... Ukraine's light going out:


/scifiworld0/4400

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596052970990604288

1596052970990604288

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https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1595680662761394178

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596040291890647040

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596137444331528192
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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596142440792018944

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596135558040129538

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596125332045672448

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596114590328557568

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596104477735587840

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596087530323341312

1596087530323341312

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596093526345134082

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1596162883905531905

1596162883905531905


https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1596083825716920320

1596083825716920320

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1596084264537567232

1596084264537567232

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1596087301809278976

1596087301809278976

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1596164305166008322

1596164305166008322

https://www.rt.com/business/567114-canada-pays-ukraine-gas/


Canadians paying for Ukraine's gas – Kiev
Ukraine has received nearly $350 million from Canada to fill up its underground storage facilities with gas for the winter, Ukrainian media reported on Wednesday, citing Prime Minister Denis Shmigal.

The government in Ottawa has transferred 12.7 billion hryvnia ($344 million) to Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz he said, adding that “Ukraine earlier received this money from the government of Canada.” Shmigal also noted that the “procedure for using state budget funds for procuring gas in 2022-2023 was endorsed at today's [government] meeting.”

This week, Kiev also received €200 million ($208 million) from Norway for the same purpose and is awaiting another €300 million to be bankrolled by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development under the agreement reached earlier, the Ukrainian premier said.

The funding comes as citizens in Canada and the EU are facing unprecedented energy inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, with thousands of families struggling to pay their energy bills.

Canadians have seen a dramatic surge in electricity and gas prices in recent months. Energy analysts warn that households in the country can expect their bills to rise by between 50% and 100% on average this winter.

[Ravenlocke]

https://www.rt.com/news/567144-facebook-us-military-propaganda/

Meta confirms US military-linked propaganda campaign

Facebook’s parent company Meta has acknowledged the discovery of several clusters of fake accounts and pages believed to be linked to individuals “associated with the US military,” according to the company’s latest adversarial threat report published this week.

“Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military,” the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

The influence campaign was discovered earlier this year and in total Meta removed 39 Facebook and 26 Instagram accounts, as well as 16 pages and two groups, all for violating the company's policy against “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

The social media giant admitted that the large-scale operation ran beyond those several dozen accounts and across many other internet platforms, including Twitter, YouTube and Telegram – as well as major Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. It seemingly attempted to downplay the discovery by insisting that the “majority of this operation’s posts had little to no engagement from authentic communities” and highlighting similar “deceptive campaigns” by China and Russia.

Meta’s acknowledgement substantiates a bombshell investigation by the Washington Post that revealed the Pentagon was forced to launch a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare,” after a variety of social media accounts, which its operatives used to target foreign audiences in elaborate psychological warfare efforts, were exposed.

US Psy-Ops exposed: Washington isn't concerned about morals, it's worried about getting caught READ MORE: US Psy-Ops exposed: Washington isn't concerned about morals, it's worried about getting caught
The takedown of the influence network was initially highlighted by researchers at Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which back in August published a report about online networks allegedly pushing “pro-Western,” anti-Russia and other politicized narratives.

While the original study did not pin blame for the fake accounts on any particular actors, two officials later told the Post that US CENTCOM – the combatant command which oversees forces in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia – “is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny” for its influence operations.

At the time, CENTCOM refused to comment on whether any of the suspicious accounts were created by its personnel or contractors, but one official claimed such behavior would “absolutely be a violation of doctrine and training practices.”

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/status/1596161868426772482

1596161868426772482

https://tass.com/politics/1542033?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

Kiev needs Crimea, Donbass for Western military bases — lawmaker

According to Leonid ****sky, Zelensky "only pretends to be a pseudo-peacekeeper ready for negotiations if someone suggests them in front of his Western masters"

MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. Kiev views Crimea and Donbass as expendable territories where Western military bases and biological laboratories can be deployed, Leonid ****sky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and the chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee, said on Friday commenting on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s statement about Kiev’s intention to retake Crimea by "non-military means".

"Zelensky said that he would be ‘only be in favor’ if someone suggested to Kiev how to return Crimea to Ukraine ‘by non-military means.’ For Kiev, Crimea and Donbass are merely expendable territories that can easily be given away to the West so that they can use them to set up military bases or bio laboratories for deadly experiments. In exchange for more cookies," ****sky wrote on his Telegram channel.

****sky believes that in his statement Zelensky again demonstrated that "for the current Kiev authorities, people’s opinions and wishes mean nothing."

"It does not matter to the drug-addicted Nazis that the peninsula is the native land of the Crimeans, who long ago made their choice to reunify with Russia, who freely and openly cast their votes for it and became part of our country. Just like the defenders of Russian Donbass, against whom Kiev has been waging an eight-year war of extermination," the chairman of the Duma committee wrote.

According to ****sky, Zelensky "only pretends to be a pseudo-peacekeeper ready for negotiations if someone suggests them in front of his Western masters."

"We will not leave our own people behind and will not give up our own! Never again will Crimea be Ukrainian, since it has returned to its native harbor - to Russia. Forever," ****sky concluded.

Earlier, Zelensky said in an interview with the Financial Times that "if someone is ready to offer" Ukraine how to retake "Crimea by non-military means, I will only be in favor."

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://tass.com/world/1541883?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

NATO doors remain open for Ukraine — Stoltenberg

At the same time, Jens Stoltenberg stressed that it was necessary to focus on providing assistance to Ukraine in order for it to win the conflict with Russia

BRUSSELS, November 25. /TASS/. The NATO doors remain open for Ukraine, the organization’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday at a press conference ahead of a meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Bucharest on November 29 to 30.

"NATO’s door is open and we have demonstrated that not only in words, but also in deeds," he said, recalling that in recent years Montenegro and North Macedonia had become new members, and Finland and Sweden were invited to join NATO in 2022. "So we have demonstrated that NATO’s door is open and that it is for NATO allies and aspirant countries to decide on membership. This is also the message to Ukraine," the NATO Secretary General said.

At the same time, Stoltenberg stressed that it was necessary to focus on providing assistance to Ukraine in order for it to win the conflict with Russia.

According to the Secretary General, the foreign ministers of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, among others, have been invited to the Bucharest meeting to discuss "further steps to help them protect their independence".

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://tass.com/politics/1542037

UN says videos showing execution of Russian POWs are highly likely to be authentic

It is reported that the analysis of the videos conducted by the HRMMU "underlines the need for independent and detailed forensic investigations to help establish exactly what happened"
GENEVA, November 25. /TASS/. The videos showing how Ukrainian servicemen are shooting dead captive Russian soldiers are highly likely to be authentic, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement released on Friday, noting that the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) had come to this conclusion.

"Our Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has conducted a preliminary analysis indicating that these disturbing videos are highly likely to be authentic in what they show," Turk said adding that ‘the actual circumstances of the full sequence of events must be investigated to the fullest extent possible, and those found responsible appropriately held to account."

The analysis of the videos conducted by the HRMMU "underlines the need for independent and detailed forensic investigations to help establish exactly what happened," the UN High Commissioner said.

"We understand the Ukrainian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the events in Makiivka (or Makeyevka, where supposedly the events from the video took place - TASS)," Turk said.

"It is essential that all allegations of summary executions are investigated fully in a manner that is - and is seen to be - independent, impartial, thorough, transparent, prompt and effective," he added.

Turk called "on the parties to issue clear instructions to their forces that there should be no retaliation, no reprisals, against those they take as prisoners of war and to ensure that these instructions are fully complied with."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recalled that "the rules governing armed conflict set out in the Geneva Conventions demand this."

Earlier, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal case over the mass execution of captive Russian soldiers by the Ukrainian army. As the Investigative Committee said, "a video showing representatives of Ukrainian armed formations shooting at least eleven unarmed Russian servicemen who had been captured on the territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic" was the reason that the case was opened.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://tass.com/politics/1542039

NATO an accomplice to Kiev regime’s war crimes, says Russian diplomat


Earlier, Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance’s doors remain open to Ukraine, pointing out that NATO member states’ decisions to send various weapon systems to Ukraine should be made at the national level
MOSCOW, November 25. /TASS/. The North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) is an accomplice to the crimes committed by the Kiev regime, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

"NATO is an accomplice to the Kiev regime’s crimes," the diplomat wrote on her Telegram channel, commenting on NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s remarks that the alliance had significantly increased production of Soviet era equipment and ammunition, which Ukraine needs, in Eastern Europe.

Earlier, Stoltenberg said that the alliance’s doors remain open to Ukraine, pointing out that NATO member states’ decisions to send various weapon systems to Ukraine should be made at the national level.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/status/1596169396979830785

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Zelenskaya reveals number of Ukrainians ready to live without light, but with EU prospect

It is reported that 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union

KIEV, November 25. /TASS/. Over 90% of Ukrainians are ready to live without electricity and heat for years if they see the prospect of EU membership, Elena Zelenskaya, the wife of the Ukrainian president, said.

She cited a a recent poll where 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union. "You know, it is easy to run a marathon when you know how many kilometres there are," she told the BBC, according to the excerpts of her upcoming interview published on Friday. Zelenskaya did not specify who conducted the survey or how many people took part in it.

On Wednesday, an air alert was declared throughout Ukraine, it lasted for more than two hours. There were reports of explosions and damage to infrastructure in Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepr, Nikolayev and other cities. The vast majority of Ukrainian residents were left without electricity. All three Kiev-controlled nuclear power plants in Khmelnitsky, South Ukraine, and Rovne were urgently disconnected from the power grid. Outages also affected most thermal and hydro power plants, while some electricity grid facilities sustained damage.

On February 28, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed Ukraine's application for accession to the European Union. The EU heads of state and government at a summit in Brussels on June 23 approved granting Ukraine and Moldova the status of candidates for accession to the union. The countries need to fulfill a number of conditions, including reforms, to start accession negotiations. Earlier, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stressed that to start accession negotiations, Ukraine needed to strengthen the judicial system and fight against corruption, to carry out de-oligarchization and a number of other reforms. The process of negotiating the terms of the country's admission to the community can take an indefinitely long period, and candidate status does not guarantee accession to the EU.

On November 21, Zelensky once again called on Western countries to admit Ukraine to NATO and the EU.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1595820795896406021

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https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1595820804524183552

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https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1595820812376109056

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https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1595821372286324737

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596110211861065731

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https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596088186547093510

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https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596090666421215232

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https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596141711633293313

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https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1596179957499441152

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https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1596171858633584640

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1595784783019507712

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https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1596196140416106497
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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/status/1596204577019265030

1596204577019265030

[url]https://tass.com/politics/1542071?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

Russia-Donbass reunification was long overdue — Putin

"Now, it has become pretty obvious that this reunification should have happened earlier," the president said


NOVO-OGARYOVO, November 25. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that now it is clear that the reunification of Russia and Donbass should have happened earlier.

"As far as 2014 is concerned, of course, in hindsight, we know everything now, but we proceeded from the assumption that it might be possible to come to terms, that Lugansk and Donetsk would be able to reunite with Ukraine somehow within the framework of the Minsk agreements. We were sincerely working towards this, but we didn’t fully feel the mood of the people, it was impossible to understand what was happening there," Putin said on Friday at a meeting with the mothers of servicemen participating in the special military operation.

"Now, it has become pretty obvious that this reunification should have happened earlier. Maybe there would not have been so many civilian casualties, and there would not have been so many children killed by bombardments," Putin said.

"It's good that this happened in the end," he pointed out, praising the role of the sons of the women invited to the meeting, "who are now fighting there, on the frontline, on the second line, or on the third line - it doesn't matter - all of them are in the zone of the special military operation."

"I mean all our soldiers, including those who joined the armed forces as a result of mobilization," Putin stressed.

[Mashika]

https://tass.com/politics/1542037

UN says videos showing execution of Russian POWs are highly likely to be authentic

It is reported that the analysis of the videos conducted by the HRMMU "underlines the need for independent and detailed forensic investigations to help establish exactly what happened"
GENEVA, November 25. /TASS/. The videos showing how Ukrainian servicemen are shooting dead captive Russian soldiers are highly likely to be authentic, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement released on Friday, noting that the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) had come to this conclusion.

"Our Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has conducted a preliminary analysis indicating that these disturbing videos are highly likely to be authentic in what they show," Turk said adding that ‘the actual circumstances of the full sequence of events must be investigated to the fullest extent possible, and those found responsible appropriately held to account."

The analysis of the videos conducted by the HRMMU "underlines the need for independent and detailed forensic investigations to help establish exactly what happened," the UN High Commissioner said.

"We understand the Ukrainian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the events in Makiivka (or Makeyevka, where supposedly the events from the video took place - TASS)," Turk said.

"It is essential that all allegations of summary executions are investigated fully in a manner that is - and is seen to be - independent, impartial, thorough, transparent, prompt and effective," he added.

Turk called "on the parties to issue clear instructions to their forces that there should be no retaliation, no reprisals, against those they take as prisoners of war and to ensure that these instructions are fully complied with."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recalled that "the rules governing armed conflict set out in the Geneva Conventions demand this."

Earlier, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal case over the mass execution of captive Russian soldiers by the Ukrainian army. As the Investigative Committee said, "a video showing representatives of Ukrainian armed formations shooting at least eleven unarmed Russian servicemen who had been captured on the territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic" was the reason that the case was opened.[COLOR="red"]


Those cowards, this is despicable in all possible levels. And what a bunch of hypocrats they are

After 9 years of, and with the evidence of

- 14+ thousand people killed by the Nazis in Donbass through the cleansing performed by the Nazi Ukranian government
- Hundreds of kids killed by shelling with documented evidence (see the alley of angels)
- The murders of Odessa, also very well documented and even with videos and names of the people who were shooting at the people trying to escape the fire through the windows. Some of those murderers went later to form part of the Ukrainian government and are well know and they walk free, even receiving pay and medals for their service
- Documented evidence with thousands of pictures, names, hundreds of videos and all of this sent to the UN in thousands of very detailed reports of the mass cleansing that was going on for years

And those useless puppets never had the time to say anything about it, and remained silent, helping hide the reality of what was going on in Donbass. They pretended nothing was happening

And now they have this 'statement' to say? I can tell you why, they are just trying to save face, the only reason they speak up now with this insincere statement is because a lot of people in the west have already realized the truth of what goes on in Donbass, so this useless 'people' have no other choice but pretend to care and 'feel worried' about the events. And call for 'justice'.

It's all false and nothing will be done about it, they only expect to save face and then let some time go so that people forget and move on, these UN 'officials' are criminals and nothing more

The other thing is, the shelling of the power plant, they 'don't know who did it and from where it came from'. Well anyone, any soldier that has worked artillery can tell you where it came from and the distance and plenty more in less than 10 minutes, mostly 5 minutes is all it takes to figure out where a shell came from and then shoot back at it

The UN has people capable of performing this calculation, but they don't have one on site for no reason at all, knowing very well that the power plant is being shelled constantly. You don't need days or weeks, you need 10 minutes to figure out where a shell came from. This is also a criminal act by omission, these people are corrupt and criminals, you get a better chance at justice from a mugger on the street than from those people at the UN

There are tools, like basic compasses or sights that cost less than a hundred dollars and can be used to figure out where a shell came from in just a couple minutes or so, and these idiots at the UN say they can't figure it out and that it could take weeks of 'research' to document that. They are only playing with time to allow people to forget and move on. This is stupid, they have millions of dollars, basically an unlimited budget and they can't get a 100 dollar sight to do this job? They have a full army and they can't get someone to go stand there and spend 10 minutes to document it all? What kind of stupidity is that?

Anyone who supports these acts of corruption has the blood of thousands of innocent people in their hands, because the UN and all those countries who played ignorance through the past 9 years know very well what's going on, and for people who see the evidence and turn their eyes away, there's no excuse and no way out of it, they have blood in their hands and it can't be denied by playing with words, or stupid misleading sentences or promises that 'something will be done'

Something was already done, the militias of Donbass went to war against the Nazis in Ukraine, and then the people in the west started supporting the Nazis and wishing they win against the Ukrainian militias that have only tried to defend themselves from this bastardized version of 'democratic society' that exists in the west and specially in Kiev

I'm ashamed of looking at how people still play the defend the indefensible game. When are they going to grow up? People are dying and the idiotic behavior of 'it doesn't matter as long as Putin loses' is the main reason for the death of thousands.

This is an insult to intelligence, a spit in the face of the people of this world. There are no words to describe how much of an hypocrite the 'democratic world' has become

Jebus!

/rant

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596222798946791425

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https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596222807171530752

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[Mashika]

25 November 2022

Dear diary, today i feel like slapping someone for the first time in a long while

Sometimes, i think a slap in the face is the only way to apply some common sense into the dense and narrow minds of some people who act like zombies

I shall invent a new way to introduce common sense into dense like a rock minds, i'll call it 'The way of a thousand slaps'

All roads to common sense start with a first slap, followed by 999 more continuous slaps

If all goes well, after a thousand slaps the person may be so traumatized and brain damaged that they won't even know why or how it all started, but at least they won't be able to remember the time they proudly supported the Nazis. And that's a win for them, because there must be nothing worse than the cringe you'll get a couple years after it all ends and you remember that you proudly called for "Slava Ukraini" at some point in your life

- Slava Panini

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596206741829652480

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https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596206072464916480
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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596205169477550080
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https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596200448922361859
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https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596203137467322369

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¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596207016166432770

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[Ravenlocke]

“Putin has failed in many ways including failure against NATO, it’s time for Russia to leave Ukraine isn’t it?”, that’s one of the questions posed to the ambassador in this 22 minute interview.


BBC Newsnight uses own incompetence as argument in interview with Ambassador Andrei Kelin, 22.11.22

oJbxlNwqpl0

[Ravenlocke]

Bill Ryan already posted this on this thread but here it is one of several tweets on Twitter about it.

https://twitter.com/OCanonist/status/1594585861462626304
1594585861462626304

And with English subtitles,

https://twitter.com/BetteRyan1970/status/1596159898781331457

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[Michel Leclerc]

Bij way of an answer to your

“Dear diary, today i feel like slapping someone for the first time in a long while”

, Mashika...

It is precisely because "there is nothing worse than the cringe" that it is not so much one or one thousand "slaps in the face" that will achieve anything, but precisely that cringe.

The people we fight should not so much "wake up" (a cherished expression in NewAgeia) or "grow up" – what you have written – but repent, shocked to never-ending tears by their own depravity.

The Donets/Lugansk or Russian soldiers do not meet monsters when they meet the average Ukrainian soldier, but they may kill him or be killed by him, and when they meet the Divine after their death, "there was no other way" will be accepted as a sufficient reason for the kill in the predicament they were in as a soldier. That is also why reponsible leaders and armies neither have prisoners of war tortured nor torture them. Because torturing another human will not be forgiven by the Divine.

However, a person who tortures another human (or an animal, in my humble opinion) has become, at the latest when proceeding to that torturing, heartless – in the spiritual meaning that his or her spiritual centre left, or was taken out of, her or his body and soul. It amounts to this person having become an A.I.-directed robot, a "droid".

Consequently, nothing stands between the “termination” of this person (or rather of their heart-less shell) except mercy, which their still heart-full captors may be (but are not required to be) able and willing to show. This mercy may allow them after not one thousand slaps but after one thousand viewings of the recordings of the torture of their own or their fellow torturers’ victims to finally shed tears of remorse.

Only then can they be "reintegrated" into humanity by trying and asking forgiveness from the beloved ones of their victims.

This was the basic idea behind the gacaca tribunals in Rwanda. When we torture we leave humanity. It is only our "cringing", i.e. our total surrender to remorse for our deeds and pity for our victims that makes us eligible for getting a chance to somehow atone.

***

As a not unimportant side note: it is my conviction that Russia would be wise and successful in starting a massive psychological operation on the Ukrainian population (using hacking and other propaganda means) aimed at driving a wedge between the torturers and the (normal) soldiers so that the "still human" Ukrainians and soldiers turn against (their) torturers and "inhuman" "combatants in their name".

[Ravenlocke]

MAIMED In A PLAYGROUND By Ukrainian Petal Mine


On the 14th of November, @JohnMarkDougan-BadVolf ,
EvaKBartlett Masha and I were PRIVILEGED to be given the honour of meeting this remarkable young man. Bloodied, but not broken, he is on the road to recovery in the hands of the heroes and heroines working in the hospitals of Donetsk and Moscow.

Nikita is 14 years old. He loved to break dance and was into MMA. His dreams have NOT been crushed, rather, they've been made more challenging due to the Barbarism and war crimes practiced by Ukraine as they continue to fire prohibited munitions into residential areas of Donbass, often harming children, emergency workers, the elderly and partially sighted, among many other civilians.



-qyo5U5Umns

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/EvaKBartlett/status/1596056097609039873

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https://twitter.com/EvaKBartlett/status/1596056689530134533

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[Ravenlocke]

“Putin has failed in many ways including failure against NATO, it’s time for Russia to leave Ukraine isn’t it?”, that’s one of the questions posed to the ambassador in this 22 minute interview.


BBC Newsnight uses own incompetence as argument in interview with Ambassador Andrei Kelin, 22.11.22

oJbxlNwqpl0



https://twitter.com/RussianEmbassy/status/1596181729097953280

1596181729097953280

[Hughe]

dSzM0KDeiG4

English transcript of the Korean video

Ukraine is now in ruins from the war, but the upper classes of Kyiv are living in a different world, staying in such a nice beach Cote D'Azur, and Monaco in the south of France. Produced by independent journalist Ukraine Pravda, the documentary shows Ukrainian oligarchs who are relaxing in villas, mansions and yachts in Cote D'Azur.

The documentary title is Батальйо “МОНАКО” Monaco Battalion. Ukraine has great battalions. There is the Azov battalion, there is the Monaco battalion. Off the coast of Monaco, Ukrainian oligarch Konstantin Zhivago is shown relaxing in elegance on his $70 million private superyacht. This yacht is a super luxury class with a length of 65 metres. Strangely, name of the yacht is Z.

The owner of the ship claims that Z has nothing to do with the special military operation and is derived from his own name, Zhivago. The Yacht graces the coastline of Cote D'Azur. Konstantin Zhivago is on a wanted list in Kyiv. He is said to have embezzled $70 million while doing business in Ukraine. However, it is not clear whether he actually embezzled or was stamped because he did not pay the money.

On Cote D'Azur, oligarch Alexandre Yaroslavsky, who had pledged to sell his yacht to finance Kharkov's reconstruction, enjoys a leisurely life. Cote D'Azur, famous in Europe for its expensive land price, is home to many Ukrainians who fled as soon as the war broke out. Luxury vehicles with Ukrainian license plates are not uncommon here.

Oligarchs staying in Monaco are not only Zhivago. Another family of oligarchs, Hrihyori Surkis, also resides here. This person is said to be a pro-Russian oligarch, but there is no distinction between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainians when it comes to money. He has been living in Monaco since the beginning of the war, so he will not go back. Surkis left Ukraine with $17 million.

However, this is nothing compared to the protagonists of Euromaidan. Zelensky made a show of staying in Kyiv and fighting, but his parents and relatives all fled abroad. Petro Poroshenko also came to Ukraine briefly to put on a show in a bulletproof vest, but he fled his children to England and he himself is now in England. The money Poroshenko took out to Britain was $1 billion in cash. In addition, former Interior Minister Arsene Avakov, Chief of Staff to President Andriy Yermak, 2nd President Leonid Kuchma, and former Prime Minister Arsenyi Yachenyuk also stole at least 1 billion dollars abroad.

It is easy to go abroad even if you are not at the highest level, but at a certain level of high rank. It's military service, and if you pay a bribe, you'll pass without incident. Cross-border bribe ranges from $8,000 to $10,000. The escape of Ukrainian elites abroad began right before the special military operation. On February 14, 2022, ten days before the outbreak of the conflict, 37 members of the ruling People's Servants of the Zelensky faction disappeared. They sensed the war and fled.

On February 14, not only politicians but also major oligarchs left Kyiv with private passengers in their 20s. Businessmen and MPs Vadim Novinsky, businessmen Vasily Khmelnytsky, Vadim Stolar, Vadim Nesterenko and Andriy Stavnicher all departed by chartered plane. Billionaire politician Igor Abramovich left Kyiv with his relatives, business partners and fellow party members on a private plane bound for Austria.

Now the western media paints Ukraine as if it is fighting against Russia bravely, but the state function is paralyzed. Regardless of what happens to the people, each one dreams of a luxurious vacation by escaping abroad. On July 20, in the midst of summer, only 99 out of 450 were present at Congress. All intoxicated and preoccupied with yachts in Cote D'Azur, Monaco, Nice, and the Mediterranean. Ukrainian lawmakers, meanwhile, have raised their salary by 70%.

This is how the country looks like, so whether it's military aid or humanitarian aid, it's all pouring water into the bottomless pot. The US CBS broadcast reported that only 30% of the weapons supplied to Ukraine are delivered and the rest disappear in the middle. It is said that it is not delivered to the frontline troops fighting Russia, but it is not even traced where it goes. Drones, switchblades, firearms, bulletproof vests and anti-tank weapons are also making their way to the black market. It's not like 30% disappears, it's 70% are stolen.

On a CBS program, a Ukrainian soldier named Ivan confessed that he was buying a bulletproof vest and a helmet at his own expense because supplies were not being delivered. On the other hand, Samantha Morris, a doctor who traveled to Ukraine from the United States, said that general corruption, including drug theft, was rampant. He even said that 15 supply trucks disappeared entirely.

Even the British Telegraph reports that stolen medical supplies are later found on the shelves of hospital pharmacies. Foreign medical staff confessed that they bought these medicines at their own expense and provided them to patients free of charge. An American doctor named Samantha Morris said that the head of a hospital in Dnipro stole all the painkillers and sold them to the market, so he couldn't give painkillers to the injured who were being treated.

In addition, officials in Zaporozhye stole 22 sea containers, 389 railroad cars, and 220 trucks in six months, claiming to be distributing relief goods. They also sold the stolen humanitarian aid goods for money. Sympathy for a country at war is human. However, even in the face of an economic crisis due to the boomerang effect after many Western countries said they were helping Ukraine, corrupt Kyiv's high-ranking officials are accumulating personal wealth. Not only that, the general public enjoys resort luxuries that they couldn't even dream of.

Here's the next news. The New York Times reported on November 24 that an AGM-8B HARM missile, supplied by the United States to Kyiv, struck a civilian building in Ukraine on September 26, injuring three people. According to the newspaper, a missile launched by an Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29,
malfunctioned and deviated from the target and hit the fifth floor of a residential building in Kramatorsk.

Reporters at the scene found in the debris the electronic circuit card assembly number used in the AGM-8B missile. The NYT analyzed that the missile failed to find Russian radar and destroyed a civilian building due to running out of fuel. A spokesman for Ukraine's Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the matter. However, some analyze that the HARM missile misunderstood the TV antenna of a civilian building as a radar and followed it.

The weapons that Washington provided to Kyiv are surprisingly phony. Most recently, several people were killed when a US-supplied NASSAMS surface-to-air missile struck a civilian building in Kyiv. NASSAMS has been touting the AIM-120 surface-to-air missile as a weapon system that has been improvised as a surface-to-air weapon system to defend the US White House.

Two days ago, the US and the West accused Russia of airstrikes in Kyiv of targeting civilians. Russia is revealing that it has succeeded in precision strikes by selecting only infrastructure that can be used for military purposes. In response, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas, who is siding with Ukraine, is making the nonsense that Russia is weaponizing winter.



Bye-bye, Kiev, hello Cote d’Azur: As Westerners send aid, here’s how Ukraine’s corrupt elites are profiting from the conflict

Source: https://www.rt.com/russia/566935-they-robbed-ukraine/

БАТАЛЬЙОН "ВІДЕНЬ" 2. УП знайшла українських втікачів, віп-біженців та віп-туристів | Розслідування
Yutvt8C4oFE

[shaberon]

It's all false and nothing will be done about it, they only expect to save face and then let some time go so that people forget and move on, these UN 'officials' are criminals and nothing more

The other thing is, the shelling of the power plant, they 'don't know who did it and from where it came from'. Well anyone, any soldier that has worked artillery can tell you where it came from and the distance and plenty more in less than 10 minutes, mostly 5 minutes is all it takes to figure out where a shell came from and then shoot back at it


Isn't it interesting that a finger can always be pointed at "the enemy", but with major incidents like 9/11 or Nordstream 2, the most sophisticated defenses in the world are penetrated with impunity and no one has a clue??

And on "small" things like targeting a nuclear reactor--I suppose, with some hope that some small % of the fallout might drift into Russia--if Ukraine did it, then it was "an accident/unintentional"?

That is, at best they are in the "fog of war" with Musk's Starlink and probably all of the U. S. satellite recon, but they are "shooting blindly" just to be shooting at something?

The U. N. is pretty much an expanded NATO with bait for everyone to join, it does not really have another raison d'etre, in fact it would take a serious rewind and review to persuade me that it has ever accomplished anything useful. I forget the guy's name, pre-WHO, a Dr. Brock or something made a "radical" speech where he said, well, we should not automatically teach our children to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and so forth...pretty reasonable if you read what he actually said. However, he is famously taken out of context as the "architect of the NWO" and so forth, quite distorted from what actually happened.

Very stupid tricks.

Anything to make you "look that way" seems to work, yes, everyone is still getting away with everything...despite mountains of actual evidence already taken from Ukraine, plus additional news of financial and political corruption both driving and depending on this mess.

Keep in mind that the U. N. as such is mostly the product of engineered fascism in South America.






I'm ashamed of looking at how people still play the defend the indefensible game. When are they going to grow up? People are dying and the idiotic behavior of 'it doesn't matter as long as Putin loses' is the main reason for the death of thousands.

This is an insult to intelligence, a spit in the face of the people of this world. There are no words to describe how much of an hypocrite the 'democratic world' has become



This is the kind of thing that concerns me about Zone B, the 85%, global south, and so forth. By using English as the international language, I am afraid they are hypnotized by the word "democracy" and a lot of things about our financial system. I am afraid they may see these things as leading to material prosperity and therefor desirable.

It seems to be worse in India than in Russia and China.

Once you adopt "western values", they are notoriously hard to get rid of!



As an example, here was something else that ran amuck in Ukraine. It lies twice before it even starts talking. To understand English, a "Nation" is a culture, such as Welsh, Kurdish, or Maori. The biggest clues are they speak a mutually-intelligible language, and share a similar diet. So, the United States cannot possibly be a nation, but if you wanted to say the Navajo Nation or something like that, you would be correct. The medium size island of New Guinea has about 80 nations. Some of them were so nationalistic that they did not even know there was such a thing as other people! Never walk more than twenty miles from where you were born. This would be a natural consequence.

Anyway, here is some English about two lies in NED (https://sputniknews.com/20221125/us-ned-global-meddler-and-rightful-heir-of-cia-1104671859.html), or National Endowment for Democracy:



Last week, Sputnik obtained documents indicating that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US foundation, had interfered in the latest Malaysian elections. What is the NED, and why has it been repeatedly accused of fomenting coups d'etat worldwide?

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a self-described private, nonprofit foundation, which was founded in 1983. The organization is known for funding and supporting various non-governmental groups and institutions around the world which propagate "democratic" values.

According to the organization's official website, each year, the NED makes more than 2,000 grants to support the projects of NGOs working in more than 100 countries. But where does the money come from?

The non-profit admits that it receives an annual appropriation (about $100 million) from the US Congress through the Department of State and therefore is largely dependent on the continued support of the White House and American lawmakers. In a bid to maintain the veneer of a somewhat independent organization, the entity insists that its self-governing board of directors controls how the appropriation is spent.

NED's Board: Ex-Government Officials in Charge

What does NED's "independent board" look like? Like his famous predecessor, Carl Gershman, NED President and CEO Damon M. Wilson is a former civil servant.

From 2001 to 2004, Wilson served as deputy director of the Private Office of the NATO Secretary General, then, between 2004 and 2006, he worked as the director for Central, Eastern, and Northern European Affairs at the National Security Council. In 2007, he assumed the positions of executive secretary and chief of staff at the US Embassy in Baghdad, while between December 2007 and January 2009, Wilson worked as senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council.
NED's Vice Chairman Karen Bass is a member of the House of Representatives, while the entity's other two vice chairmen, Peter Roskam and David E. Skaggs, are also former congressmen. NED Secretary Marlene Colucci is a former special assistant to the president under the Bush administration. Michele Dunne, a treasurer, was a Middle East specialist at the US Department of State from 1986 to 2003, where she served in assignments that included the National Security Council, the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, the US Embassy in Cairo, the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. With a board packed by mostly career politicians and civil servants, the NED resembles nothing so much as a branch of the US government, rather than a "private" non-profit.


How NED Made CIA Covert Ops Overt

The story of the NED's creation also shows the entity's close connection with the US government. Rather than being an independent freedom-loving grant-disbursing entity, the NED is a brainchild of Cold War hawks seeking to curtail Soviet influence and implode the Soviet bloc from within, according to US independent journalists.

The entity's roots apparently trace back to the 1960s, when the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ran a program "which support[ed] media and contact activities aimed at stimulating and sustaining pressures for liberalization and evolutionary change from within the Soviet Union," the Soviet bloc, and its potential allies in the third world. The agency came under criticism when it came to light that it was funding and training opposition groups in countries tilting towards communism.
The other problem was that ties with the CIA cast a shadow on recipients of Washington's aid and their activities, which were meant to look like a grass-root noble "freedom fight." Therefore, the US government sought to create a separate vehicle, unaffiliated with US spooks, to do the job from the shadows.

In 1986, the US mainstream press admitted that the NED's program resembles the aid given by the CIA in the 1950s, 60s and 70s to bolster pro-American political groups worldwide. The NED's co-founder Carl Gershman explained at the time: ''It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the 60's, and that's why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that's why the endowment was created.''
Allen Weinstein, the other founder of the NED, put it more straightforwardly to the US press in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." Weinstein provided a glimpse of what he had been doing, including having a hand in the collapse of the USSR and protest movements in Eastern Europe in 1989; meddling in elections in the Philippines, Panama, and Nicaragua to "topple undemocratic regimes" there; consulting parliamentarians from the ex-Warsaw Pact's Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, and even assisting constitution-drafters in these countries.

Some US investigative reporters argue that despite being settled as a separate entity, the NED maintained ties with the CIA. They allege that behind the NED's creation in 1983 were specifically CIA Director William J. Casey and senior CIA covert operations specialist Walter Raymond Jr. Remarkably, a scan of Raymond's note dated January 2, 1985, appears to indicate that the NED's co-founder Carl Gershman coordinated decisions on grants with him.


NED's Post-Cold War Activities

The NED did not cease to exist after the USSR collapsed; quite the contrary, it stepped up its operations, at a time when the US was emerging as the sole superpower.

In 2003, then Texan Republican Representative Ron Paul called the NED as "nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad." The congressman explained that what the NED was doing in foreign countries would be "rightly illegal" in the US. Contrary to its established goals, the NED has been harassing duly elected governments, interfering in foreign elections, and emboldening the corruption of "democratic movements," according to the politician.

The NED operates four core recipient organizations: the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), which promote the US "democratic" political agenda abroad; the Solidarity Center, which partners directly with workers and their unions across the world, "supporting their struggle"; and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), which engages in overseas local private enterprises. Through these entities, the NED has considerably enhanced its presence and influence across the world over the past decades.

The NED is accused of fomenting regime changes in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, which the US mainstream press has had no scruples with bragging about. The list includes the 2000 Velvet Revolution in Serbia, which overthrew the Slobodan Milosevic government; the 2004 Rose Revolution in Georgia; the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Euromaidan coup of 2014. Earlier, between 2013 and 2014, the NED poured millions into its vast network of NGOs and activists in Russia, trying to disrupt and smear Russia's elections, influence government policy, and discredit the country's armed forces. In July 2015, the NED was declared an "undesirable organization" by Russia.

The organization played a big role sowing chaos in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The US press revealed in 2011 how "a small core of American government-financed organizations" had helped ignite uprisings during the Arab Spring against "authoritarian governments" in MENA. According to the media, the Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and Yemeni activists received training and financing from groups like the IRI, NDI, and Freedom House, funded by the NED. Would-be Arab rebels also attended technology meetings in New York in 2008, sponsored by Facebook*, Google, MTV, Columbia Law School, and the State Department. In 2011, a wave of revolutions engulfed Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Syria, Libya, and other countries.

When it comes to Latin America, the US government, the NED and another of Washington's non-profits, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have been accused of trying to subsidize coups against Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro in 2002 and 2019, respectively. In 2008, then Bolivian government official Juan Ramón Quintana claimed that the NED provided $10 million in 2007-2015 to NGOs and institutions to undermine the Evo Morales government. Some suspect that the NED was also involved in Evo Morales' ouster in 2019 via funding of the Fundacion para el Periodismo (Foundation for the Media) and Agencia de Noticias Fides Compania de Jesus (FIDES News Agency Company). The NED is also said to have spent tens of millions on botched attempts to topple then-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in 2010 and 2015.
In Asia, the NED was seen meddling in Hong Kong’s elections and interfering in China’s internal affairs via its core institution, the NDI. According to the Chinese government, the NED has funded opposition parties, groups, and organizations in Hong Kong since as early as 1997; in 2020 alone, the NED funneled two million US dollars to 11 Hong Kong-related projects, with a particular focus on disrupting LegCo elections. The US entity was also reported interfering in the affairs of ASEAN member states, including Myanmar and, recently, Malaysia.

Furthermore, British investigative website Declassified UK claimed in January 2022 that the NED had poured over £2.6 million ($3.15 million) into seven British independent media groups over the past five years, thus showing that Washington is eager to meddle in its Western allies' affairs, too. According to journalists, the list of recipients of the NED's generous aid include UK investigative groups Bellingcat, Finance Uncovered and openDemocracy, freedom and training organizations Index on Censorship, Article 19, the Media Legal Defence Initiative, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Tip of Iceberg

The NED, the heir of the CIA's covert Cold War programs, is continuing to build up its networks abroad and interfere in the sovereign affairs of world players to maintain Washington's dominance. Still, this is only the tip of the iceberg of the US' broader power structure, comprising its global spying and cyber apparatus busted by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks, CIA black sites, Pentagon military bases spread around the world, hundreds of secret overseas biolabs, and many other facilities which have yet to be scrutinized by the international community.

*Facebook is banned in Russia as an extremist organization.



Now, we don't know about this yet, because it was in the dark, just like Ukraine. Doesn't that sound suspicious? It sounds suspicious. I suspect the usual suspects, including ISIS, the Albanian Mafia, the CIA, the Bundeswehr, the Basque Separatists, the Shmoo, the Jewish Nazis, and Mr. Ukraine himself who figured out where true value lies, Gold (https://sputniknews.com/20221124/millions-in-golden-coins-missing-after-audacious-museum-heist-in-germany-1104615807.html):


A brazen late-night robbery of a German museum has local officials reeling as regional authorities suspect “organized crime” is behind the million-dollar caper.

A trove of ancient Celtic gold coins worth millions was stolen from a German museum, police revealed Tuesday.
State police in Bavaria said thieves made off with 483 coins and a lump of gold from the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany, after making it in and out of the building in less than ten minutes – and all without alerting authorities to their presence.

Per a preliminary investigation, the thieves pulled off the expert caper by disabling the power – and not just to the alarms connecting the museum to police, but to “the whole of Manching,” Mayor Herbert Nerb reportedly told a local media outlet.
Police say at just past 1 a.m. on Tuesday, the bandits snipped a cable at a telecoms hub and severed over 1,000 local connections, then broke into the museum and made off with the stash of gold, before finally vanishing into the night – all within under 20 minutes from start to finish.

Police quickly determined the telecoms attack was likely linked to an attempted robbery, but they misjudged the target. Instead of sending patrol cars to the museums, officers ended up at local banks instead.

The Bavarian minister of science and arts, Markus Blume, described “the loss of the Celtic treasure” as a “disaster,” noting that “as a testament to our history, the gold coins are irreplaceable.”

Highlighting the “incredible criminal energy” of the perpetrators, Blume claimed the heist was likely to be the work of trained professionals.

“It’s clear that you don’t simply march into a museum and take this treasure with you,” he reportedly told a German public broadcaster. “It’s highly secured and as such there’s a suspicion that we’re rather dealing with a case of organized crime.”



Bavaria is...let me translate...kaching kaching...Hong Kong in German. I don't have any proof, I just know I owned all the gold in Manching with my mind, and, someone had better do something, like make Germany a truly democratic country.

[Mashika]

Something about a picture and a thousand words...

1596287682954551296
https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1596287682954551296

[Mashika]

Bij way of an answer to your

“Dear diary, today i feel like slapping someone for the first time in a long while”

, Mashika...

It is precisely because "there is nothing worse than the cringe" that it is not so much one or one thousand "slaps in the face" that will achieve anything, but precisely that cringe.

The people we fight should not so much "wake up" (a cherished expression in NewAgeia) or "grow up" – what you have written – but repent, shocked to never-ending tears by their own depravity.

The Donets/Lugansk or Russian soldiers do not meet monsters when they meet the average Ukrainian soldier, but they may kill him or be killed by him, and when they meet the Divine after their death, "there was no other way" will be accepted as a sufficient reason for the kill in the predicament they were in as a soldier. That is also why reponsible leaders and armies neither have prisoners of war tortured nor torture them. Because torturing another human will not be forgiven by the Divine.

However, a person who tortures another human (or an animal, in my humble opinion) has become, at the latest when proceeding to that torturing, heartless – in the spiritual meaning that his or her spiritual centre left, or was taken out of, her or his body and soul. It amounts to this person having become an A.I.-directed robot, a "droid".

Consequently, nothing stands between the “termination” of this person (or rather of their heart-less shell) except mercy, which their still heart-full captors may be (but are not required to be) able and willing to show. This mercy may allow them after not one thousand slaps but after one thousand viewings of the recordings of the torture of their own or their fellow torturers’ victims to finally shed tears of remorse.

Only then can they be "reintegrated" into humanity by trying and asking forgiveness from the beloved ones of their victims.

This was the basic idea behind the gacaca tribunals in Rwanda. When we torture we leave humanity. It is only our "cringing", i.e. our total surrender to remorse for our deeds and pity for our victims that makes us eligible for getting a chance to somehow atone.

***

As a not unimportant side note: it is my conviction that Russia would be wise and successful in starting a massive psychological operation on the Ukrainian population (using hacking and other propaganda means) aimed at driving a wedge between the torturers and the (normal) soldiers so that the "still human" Ukrainians and soldiers turn against (their) torturers and "inhuman" "combatants in their name".

My frustration is not about or around how soldiers act, or what happens when we fight each other, it is mostly about the regular civilians who have no idea what's going on over the battle field but still have this dumb perception that they have a well informed clue, just based on propaganda that even for a random kid it makes no sense

For example: "Oh, i see there's a video of UkroNazis killing people openly and then they brag about it" but i don't see a reason to consider that group is bad, maybe this was a one off

Two weeks later it happens again, then they say "oh ok, but it happened only twice in the past months, surely it would be more obvious and constant if all of them were nazi murderers"

Two more weeks go by and another video or evidence comes up, then "oh ok, but now there's evidence of those guys, i'm pretty sure they will be detained and trialed, justice and legality and democracy!"

7 years go by and the same thing keeps happening all along, then they still go about it like "from 3 million people only 14,000 died that way, it just shows that it wasn't a planned event and every country/society has mentally ill people, and besides, all armies and countries in the world also do bad stuff"

2 more years go by and "There was no reason that Russia would invade Ukraine, this was unprovoked!"

Stupid is stupid

And this is about normal, street level people, not soldiers. But these regular non combatant people are the ones pushing things forward with their acceptance and blindness, because they are the ones actually giving the support and money the governments use to continue this war

Just look at the idiocity of "Ukrainian people are willing to spend 2/3 years in darkness and cold if that will get Ukraine into the EU". And a day after the EU accepts Ukraine all the roads and buildings and dumpsters will immediately clean up, paint themselves and become pretty and modern (westernized modern)

That's a foolish and ignorant society, and that's what is actually happening

Also remember that news guy in the EU that said something like "These are not people in the middle east, these are people who could be your neighbor" or something on those lines, when talking about the Ukrainian refuges

That guy is the kind that needs a thousand slaps. And not only to bring some common sense but more like to ensure he will shut up forever and only remembers how to eat crayons then after, because his words caused more damage than a bullet could to any single person. The perception of what is considered a person or neighbor who needs to be helped vs which ones are not worth to help, he helped form that in one of the worst possible ways

Things like this, just show the hypocrites working hard to form their perfect world view. Who's worthy of good treatment and who is not?
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/03/ukraine-exposes-europes-double-standards-refugees


Acting quickly and decisively, European governments have opened borders and European citizens have opened their homes in an unprecedented showing of solidarity towards refugees. But, with all eyes on Ukraine, the Greek coastguard continues to illegally push back asylum-seekers crossing from Turkey while Spanish police forcefully repel those who dare to jump the fence in Melilla.

The painful contrast exposes the double standards in the EU’s approach to refugees. With Europe’s grim history of restrictive asylum policies, it is wishful thinking that the warm welcome to Ukrainians will extend to all asylum-seekers. The EU solidarity to displaced Ukrainians illustrates the deeply politicized – and often discriminatory – nature of providing refugee protection.


As far as human rights, it remains the same as always was.

Western Ukrainian? Go ahead and here's your hotel room and free food
Eastern Ukrainian? Stop right there! go back to Russia you dirty genes person
Middle eastern? Bring up the hose with cold water filled with chemicals that will make them very ill, and shoot them if they try to go through
Afrikans? Shoot them at first sight, Or grab them, put them in ship containers and send them back, they don't have any feelings so it doesn't matter

'The land is unchanged'

[Mashika]

Most of the people killed in Donbass over the past 9 years were Ukrainians, and most of them civilians, this is no secret. Russian casualties are just very few among the 20+ thousands killed by now

What do you call it when a government kills their own population openly and brutally?

[Tintin]

Zelenskaya reveals number of Ukrainians ready to live without light, but with EU prospect

It is reported that 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union

KIEV, November 25. /TASS/. Over 90% of Ukrainians are ready to live without electricity and heat for years if they see the prospect of EU membership, Elena Zelenskaya, the wife of the Ukrainian president, said.

She cited a a recent poll where 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union. "You know, it is easy to run a marathon when you know how many kilometres there are," she told the BBC, according to the excerpts of her upcoming interview published on Friday. Zelenskaya did not specify who conducted the survey or how many people took part in it.



Here's a Telegram channel update concerning this:

Source: https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/33914

DonbassDevushka/33914

Text:



Remember when Zelensky's wife said that more than 90% of Ukrainians are willing to spend 2-3 years without electricity or heating just so they could join the EU according to some made up study?

Well...

People's Deputy Oleksandr Dubinsky arranged a survey of his own on the topic of 'what are the people of Ukraine ready to do in order to join the European Union'. He asked the question: "How long are you willing to live without heat and light, but for the sake of the prospect of EU membership?"
-14% answered that they are ready to endure days,
-8% - are ready to endure months,
-4% - a year.
-The most interesting thing is that 64% are not ready for such sacrifices at all.

The results upset Kiev, because it does not fit at all into the line promoted by the Office of the President presented by a made up study.

The first lady of Ukraine was hated after a bold statement in her BBC interview and Dubinsky, in accordance with the "European values" had to delete the poll.

[Mashika]

Zelenskaya reveals number of Ukrainians ready to live without light, but with EU prospect

It is reported that 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union

KIEV, November 25. /TASS/. Over 90% of Ukrainians are ready to live without electricity and heat for years if they see the prospect of EU membership, Elena Zelenskaya, the wife of the Ukrainian president, said.

She cited a a recent poll where 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union. "You know, it is easy to run a marathon when you know how many kilometres there are," she told the BBC, according to the excerpts of her upcoming interview published on Friday. Zelenskaya did not specify who conducted the survey or how many people took part in it.



Here's a Telegram channel update concerning this:

Source: https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/33914

DonbassDevushka/33914

Text:



Remember when Zelensky's wife said that more than 90% of Ukrainians are willing to spend 2-3 years without electricity or heating just so they could join the EU according to some made up study?

Well...

People's Deputy Oleksandr Dubinsky arranged a survey of his own on the topic of 'what are the people of Ukraine ready to do in order to join the European Union'. He asked the question: "How long are you willing to live without heat and light, but for the sake of the prospect of EU membership?"
-14% answered that they are ready to endure days,
-8% - are ready to endure months,
-4% - a year.
-The most interesting thing is that 64% are not ready for such sacrifices at all.

The results upset Kiev, because it does not fit at all into the line promoted by the Office of the President presented by a made up study.

The first lady of Ukraine was hated after a bold statement in her BBC interview and Dubinsky, in accordance with the "European values" had to delete the poll.

Add this to the evidence report... :ROFL:

The internet goes out in Kiev and then...
1596321172060266496

Imagine 2/3 years of that... lmao

I could very coldly :ROFL: make fun of this, and bully them in lots of ways, there's so much material there... :o

- Hello darkness my old friend...
- Slava Darkiny
- That was a dark spiritual moment for the Ukrainians
- When your mom cuts the lights and the internet because you don't have a job...
- Everything will be fine as long as I can see the lig......
- When your gf was about to post the first timed nakd pic and power goes out for an entire day
- etc....

~~

+ You're a monster Malisa
- I know....

nZOvAH8oR-Y

:ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:

[Mashika]

On a serious note, this comment on the lights out tweet video is more than needed to display/represent the desperation and suffering most people feel out there, while the politicians play pretend to be 'leaders'



it's like looking into Hell - the howls of demons


I remember posting some time ago on this same thread, about how we had to sleep back to back and under a single shirt so that our bare skins would touch and keep the heat among us, because otherwise we would freeze to death through the night out there in the fields. So we would remove our shirts, then back to back to ensure all body heat was shared and then put on bigger shirt to cover both persons and then above that all other stuff i we could manage an if there was one available do this inside a sleeping bag, otherwise you die, so yes, no complaining about it, it's the only option

It is no joke, that's very real and the suffering is beyond what i wish most people to go through

**

The people in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine (Luhanks, Donetsk etc) lived through this every single winter for the past 9 years, because the Ukrainan army made sure to destroy all means of heating and power for those regions non stop for years and years

So yeah, this is cruel, but if you are going to assume that 'Russia bad' because of it, then first ensure to say 'Ukrainian has done this to the Donbass civilians for almost a full decade and with no remorse, they even laughed at them and made memes out of how western ukrainians were at the beach while eastern ukrainians in Donbass froze to death every night)

So yeah, there's no good or bad guy here, there's only the results of war

[Tintin]

Exclusive footage of Zelensky :)

DonbassDevushka/33884

[Tintin]

“We don’t blame the whole Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are our friends, they are our relatives. They’ve been struck by evil, and it’s not their fault, ordinary people are not to blame for this. We will liberate them from fascism, we’ll show them brotherhood, and we’ll make friends. This is a good opportunity for us to defeat evil. God has honored us with this right to fight evil.” - "Kabar"



"These defenders, many living in dank trench conditions didn’t choose war, they responded to it, to protect their loved ones and their future. In spite of more than eight years of being warred upon by Ukraine, they retain their humanity." - Eva Bartlett

-------------------------------------

Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces are Defending their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism

By Eva Bartlett - November 19, 2022

Source: Covert Action Magazine (https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/11/19/maligned-in-western-media-donbass-forces-are-defending-their-future-from-ukrainian-shelling-and-fascism/?mc_cid=6215c201ab&mc_eid=69e7f049f6)

https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/word-image-48308-1.png?resize=696%2C530&ssl=1

America is widely understood to be a key instigator behind conflict in Ukraine that has pitted brother against brother

Smeared, stigmatized, and lied about in Western media propaganda, the mostly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass region were being slaughtered by the thousands in a brutal war of “ethnic cleansing” launched against them by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which the U.S. installed after the CIA overthrew Ukraine’s legally elected president in a 2014 coup.

Although the Donbass people had been pleading for Russian military aid to defend them against the increasingly murderous military assaults by the Ukraine government forces, which killed more than 14,000 of their people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to intervene. Instead, he tried to broker a peace agreement between the warring parties.

But the U.S. and Britain secretly colluded to sabotage peace negotiations, persuading president Zelenksy to ignore the Minsk III peace agreement that the Ukraine government had previously signed, and which had been countersigned by Russia, France and Germany.

Realizing that the U.S. and its NATO allies would never permit peace negotiations to succeed, Putin finally sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops went in to support and reinforce the outnumbered and outgunned Donbass Special Forces who had been defending their land against attacks by the Kyiv government for nearly eight years.

Voices From the Frontlines of Former Eastern Ukraine Republics

In the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in October, I went to a frontline outpost 70 meters from Ukrainian forces in Avdeevka (north and west of Donetsk), according to the Donbas commanders I spoke with there.

To reach that position, I went with two other journalists to a meeting point with two commanders of Pyatnashka—volunteer fighters, including Abkhazi, Slovak, Russian, Ossetian and other nationalities, including locals from Donbas.

From there, they drove us to a point as far as they could drive before walking the rest of the way, several minutes through brush and trenches, eventually coming to their sandbagged wood and cement fortified outpost.

It has changed hands over the years, Ukrainian forces sometimes occupying it, Donbas forces now controlling it.

One soldier, a unit commander who goes by the call sign “Vydra” (Otter), was formerly a miner from the DPR who had been living in Russia with his family. In 2014, he returned to the Donbas to defend his mother and relatives still there. He spoke of the outpost.

“We dug and built this with our hands. Several times over the years, the Ukrainians have taken these positions. We pushed them back, they stormed us…Well, we have been fighting each other for eight years.”

There, artillery fire is the biggest danger they face. “You can hide from a sniper, but not from artillery, and they’re using large caliber.”

His living quarters is a dank, cramped, room with a tiny improvised bed, with another small room and bed for others at the outpost.

A sign reads: “If shelling occurs, go to the shelter.” The kind of sign you see all over Donetsk and cities of the Donbas, due to Ukraine’s incessant shelling of civilian, residential areas. In a frontline outpost where incoming artillery is the norm, the sign is slightly absurd, clearly a joke.

An Orthodox icon sits atop the sign. Ukrainian nationalists hang and spray Nazi graffiti and slogans of death; these fighters revere their faith.

A poster, with the DPR flag, reads: “We have never known defeat, and it’s clear that this has been decided from above. Donbas has never been forced to its knees, and no one will ever be allowed to.”

The only things decorating the space are tins of tuna and canned meat, instant noodles, and washing powder. Their existence is bare minimum, nothing glamorous about it; they volunteer because, as they told me, this is their land and they will protect it.

Perhaps surprising to some, when Vydra was asked whether he hates Ukrainians, he replied emphatically no, he has friends and relatives in Ukraine.

“We have no hatred for Ukraine. We hate those nationalists who came to power. But ordinary Ukrainians? Why? Many of us speak Ukrainian. We understand them, they understand us. Many of them speak Russian.

I’ve been involved in sports a lot of time, wrestling. So, I’ve got a lot of friends in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathia.

I have relatives in western Ukraine, and we still communicate. Yes, they say one thing on the street, but when we talk to each other, they say, ‘Well, you have to, because the SBU is listening.’

Ukraine shouts about democracy, then puts people in handcuffs for no reason. My aunt got in trouble because they found my photo on her Skype.

And I’m on the Myrotvorets [kill list] website.” [As is the author, see this article.]

He spoke of Ukraine’s shelling from 2014, when the people of the Donbass were unarmed and not expecting to be bombed by their own country.

“When the artillery hit the city of Yenakievo, east of Gorlovka, we were defenseless. We went with hunting rifles and torches to fight them. Most of the weapons we had later were captured from them. We had to go to the battlefield without weapons in order to get the weapons.”

When asked if he was concerned that Ukrainian forces might take Donetsk he replied no, of course not, they didn’t succeed in 2014, they won’t now.

When asked whether he had a message for soldiers of the Ukrainian army, Vydra replied without hesitating, “Go home! We’ve been saying that since 2014: Go home. Unequivocally, we don’t want them here, but we don’t want to kill them. I’m not speaking about nationalists, I’m speaking about Ukrainian soldiers, who are drafted or forcefully employed in the Ukrainian army. Guys, go home, either surrender or go. This is our land. We’re not leaving, we’re not going anywhere.”

I asked how he felt to be treated and described as sub-human, to be called dehumanizing names, a part of the Ukrainian nationalists’ brainwashing propaganda. As I wrote previously:

“Ukrainian nationalists openly declare they view Russians as sub-human. School books teach this warped ideology. Videos show the extent of this mentality: Teaching children not only to also hate Russians and see them as not humans, but also brainwashing them to believe killing Donbas residents is acceptable. The Ukrainian government itself funds neo-Nazi-run indoctrination camps for youths.”

“It’s offensive,” Vydra said, “We are saddened: There are sick people. We need to heal them, slowly.”

I asked whether he thought friendship between Ukrainians and Russians would be possible.

“It will take years for any friendship. Take Chechnya, one region of Russia, it was at war. But slowly, slowly…We must all live together. We are one people.” Indeed, now Chechen fighters are one of the most effective forces fighting alongside Donbas and Russian soldiers to liberate Donbas areas from Ukrainian forces.

He opened a zippered trousers pocket and proudly brandished a small plastic sleeve containing children’s drawings, also containing icons of saints and Christ, and prayers…

“This is very personal, it’s like my guardian angel. I put it in plastic, I don’t even keep my ID in plastic. I’ve been carrying this one in my pocket since February. I’ve been in all sorts of hot spots. A child drew this, we receive letters from children. It’s very nice to look at them when it’s hard and we are under fire.”

He read one letter:

“We are waiting for you. Thank you for risking your lives to defend Donbas. Yulia and Ira.”

“I don’t even know who are Yulia and Ira,” he said smiling.

Showing the icons, he said, “This is Saint Ushakov, our great commander. This is Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Protector. This Abkhazi icon was given to me by the guys. This is a prayer book. And here is a prayer,” he said of one page prayer.

“These words are to support when times are very hard. When there is heavy shelling, it can go on for hours. So, while you’re sitting there, you can read this.

Especially for the younger guys, 22, 23 years old, just finished college. This is new to them.”

Commanders Speak of Geopolitical Reasons for Ukraine’s War

Outside, sitting in front of an Orthodox banner and a collection of collected munitions—including Western ones—two platoon commanders, “Kabar” and “Kamaz,” spoke of the bigger geopolitical picture. [See video (https://odysee.com/@EvaKareneBartlett:9/outpost-soldiers-humnity:5)]

https://avalonlibrary.net/Ukraine/2022_Russian_invasion_%28Operation-Z%29/Eva_Bartlett/Outpost_soldiers_humanity_Eva_Bartlett_October_2022.mp4

“America is running the show here,” Kabar said. “It builds foreign policy on the basis of how its domestic policy is built, which is through conflicts with external countries. They are accustomed to proving their power to their people through terrorism around the world, inciting fires in Syria, in the east. They played the card of radical Islam there.

And now they are playing the card of fascism. They do not see themselves on the other side of good. They need wars, blood, cruelty, and they signed Europe up for this.

However, they’ve missed one point: Russia, since the days of the Soviet Union, has never retreated in large scale wars. They took Europe and pushed it to slaughter Russia, and they put Russia in such a position that it must secure its national interests. Europe needs to understand this, to pay attention to history, to stop being led by the United States.”

When asked about his feeling regarding Ukrainians, “Kabar” replied similarly to Vydra.

“We don’t blame the whole Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are our friends, they are our relatives. They’ve been struck by evil, and it’s not their fault, ordinary people are not to blame for this. We will liberate them from fascism, we’ll show them brotherhood, and we’ll make friends.

This is a good opportunity for us to defeat evil. God has honored us with this right to fight evil.”

Kamaz, when asked why he is fighting, replied that this is his homeland, he was born here, and that he has a son who he doesn’t want to inherit Ukraine’s war on the Donbas.

“I myself am Greek by nationality. Ukrainians are Slavs, they are our brothers, their grandfathers fought together shoulder to shoulder with our grandfathers against Nazism and fascism. We are here to finish it, so that our children live a normal happy life. We are fighting for the future.”

He spoke of America’s continuous need for war.

“We’ve seen it in Syria and Yugoslavia, where they destroyed everything and then set everything up their own way, so the people must submit, almost like slaves.”

I asked whether he thought peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible.

“Yes, possibly, why not? But at the moment, the President of Ukraine said there will be no negotiations.

Negotiations are possible, but I think not with this president. When he comes to his senses, he will not be able to negotiate, because he took a lot of money.”

Before leaving the outpost, we chatted a bit with the commanders. A puppy sought the attention of a young soldier. Another puppy ran around our feet. The outpost commanders and soldiers take care of the dogs. Their presence added a somewhat surreal touch to the scene: an outpost which is routinely shelled, where life can cease to exist at any moment, and these happy, well-cared for puppies running around like dogs anywhere.

Western Media Inverted Reality, Lauding Nazis and Demonizing Defenders

While many in the West think that this conflict started in February 2022, those following events since 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmKkB7Bo21E) are aware that, following the Maidan coup and Odessa massacre, and the rise of fascism in Ukraine against the Ukrainian people, the Donbas republics wanted to distance themselves from Ukraine’s Nazis and fascism.

The sacrifices which the people of the Donbas republics have endured, particularly those fighting to protect their families and loved ones, have been and continue to be immense.

Just as the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army were maligned, so too have Donbas forces have been maligned by Western media, though both are defending their homelands from terrorist forces trained and funded by the West. Terrorists given the freedom to commit endless atrocities against Donbas civilians.

These defenders, many living in dank trench conditions didn’t choose war, they responded to it, to protect their loved ones and their future. In spite of more than eight years of being warred upon by Ukraine, they retain their humanity.

--------------------------

Related video linked in the article:

Oleg Yasinsky interviews Vasily Prozorov
Channel: Nothing Is Forgotten
Duration: 01:04:58

Description:


First week of November, Vasily talked with Oleg Yasinsky. Oleg is a well-known international journalist, translator, specialist in Latin America. I bring to your attention the conversation with him, published on Oleg's YouTube channel and subtitled into English by @NoOneIsForgotten .

For quick reference, below is the timing:

00:00 Introduction
02:54 History of the Maidan?
06:00 When did it become clear to you what the Maidan is leading to?
11:02 Were there people in the SBU who understood that the Ukrainian state would be used against the interests of their own people?
12:45 What are the mechanisms of subordination of the Ukrainian government to the West and what are the examples of this?
17:40 Why are the UK and MI6 so active on the territory of Ukraine?
20:45 When did the current armed conflict become irreversible? Could it have been avoided?
26:30 NATO biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine. What is known about this for certain?
29:45 What do you think about Julian Assange?
34:50 What kind of future for humanity do you dream of?
37:40 Can the revelations of the press prevent state crimes?
42:00 It has been repeatedly said about the permissibility of the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine. What do you think about it?
44:40 How do you see the independent press of the future?
56:40 What would you say to your former colleagues who are now from the Ukrainian side?
59:50 What are your human impressions of the Ukrainian prisoners?


Follow us on telegram:

https://t.me/ukr_leaks_eng

FmKkB7Bo21E

[Tintin]

dSzM0KDeiG4
Yutvt8C4oFE


More on the video content here:

Source: Klymenko Time (https://klymenko-time.com/en/novosti/batalon-monako-gde-peresizhivayut-vojnu-bogatejshie-lyudi-ukrainy/)

While ordinary Ukrainian men do not have the opportunity to go abroad even to work or for treatment, since all those liable for military service at the age of 18 to 60 were banned from leaving for the entire period of martial law, Ukrainian VIP refugees are quietly resting in Monaco, Monte Carlo and Nice . Relevant investigation опубликовала "Ukrainian Truth".

Journalists recorded:

-$65M 70m Yacht Named "Z" Constantine Zhevago (48 years old) was recorded off the coast of Monaco, and then she moved to the Italian island of Sardinia. Zhevago explained that the name is the first letter of the Latin spelling of his last name and has nothing to do with the Russian “special operation”. According to journalists, he has not entered Ukraine since September 2019, when an investigation was launched against him with suspicion of embezzling UAH 2,5 billion. depositors of his bank Finance and Credit.

-The family of the people's deputy "OPZZH" Grigory Surkis rents an apartment in a five-star hotel in Monte Carlo. After the start of the war, according to journalists, the Surkis left the country without declaring the cash they took out of the country - more than $ 17,5 million. According to journalists, the annual rent of apartments costs about 2 million euros. Also, the Surkis brothers are regularly seen in the local most famous casino, which is visited by the richest people. Both Surkis brothers are over 60 years old and are not subject to mobilization.

-Dnepropetrovsk businessman Vadim Ermolaev (54 years old - that is, subject to mobilization in the conditions of war), who is on the 45th place in the list of the richest people in Ukraine, also lives in Monte Carlo.

-People's deputy from the Opposition Platform for Life and a developer live in Nice Vadim Stolar (40 years). The deputy left Ukraine a few days before the start of a full-scale invasion and has not returned since then, although after the ban on the Opposition Platform for Life, a deputy group “Restoration of Ukraine” was formed under him in the parliament.

-On the Cote d'Azur in the villa of Leopold II, which is called the most expensive on the planet, lives the richest Ukrainian Rinat Akhmetov (55 years old), who bought the building in 2019 for more than 200 million euros.

-In the whole region, Ukrainian politicians and businessmen have turned the French resort of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat into the “French Koncha-Zaspa”: there are about 10 estates where cars with Ukrainian license plates enter. For example, a people's deputy from the Opposition Platform for Life lives there Igor Abramovich (37 years old, left a few days before the war), former and. about. Head of the Department for the Protection of the Economy of the National Police Sergei Vyazmikin and more

-According to journalists, there is also a house in Nice Victor Pinchuk (61 years old), one of the richest Ukrainians, as well as an oligarch Dmitry Firtash (57 years old), deputy Vladimir Skorobagach (53 years old), brother of an entrepreneur and deputy Vitaly Khomutynnik (46 years old) Yuri.
There is also a deputy's villa on Cap Ferrat Sergei Levochkin (50 years old), etc.

The journalists noted that all these people managed to track down this only in a few days of observation, and it is likely that there are many more famous Ukrainians living there who could not be seen these days.

According to unofficial information, many top officials and businessmen who remained in Ukraine, who knew about the impending invasion, also took their families abroad before the war.

--------------------------------

The Ukrainska Pravda video with English subtitles here:

P2ZOBFFvXFw

Description (premiered August 16th 2022)


Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainska Pravda has received several tip-offs that an obscene number of Ukrainian VIP refugees is concentrated in Monaco, Monte Carlo and Nice.

We heard various names and various addresses. But we decided that it’s better to see once than to hear a hundred times. We stopped off at the Cote d’Azur for a few days on our way to Turkey, where we tracked down the yachts of Russian oligarchs.

What we saw is in stark contrast to what Ukraine and Ukrainians have been experiencing for six months now.

The Cote d’Azur is historically a favourite holiday destination for the world’s elites. That is why it is difficult to understand why Ukrainian millionaires and billionaires, who have been weakening the country for decades now, would decide to “sit out” the war right there for all the world to see. A world which is now helping to make Ukraine stronger.

It seems anti-advertising can’t get any worse than Bentleys and Maybachs - the latest models - with Ukrainian licence plates.

Writer and presenter: Mykhailo Tkach
Cameraman: Yaroslav Bondarenko
Director: Andrii Ihnatenko

[Bill Ryan]

I remember posting some time ago on this same thread, about how we had to sleep back to back and under a single shirt so that our bare skins would touch and keep the heat among us, because otherwise we would freeze to death through the night out there in the fields. So we would remove our shirts, then back to back to ensure all body heat was shared and then put on bigger shirt to cover both persons and then above that all other stuff i we could manage an if there was one available do this inside a sleeping bag, otherwise you die, so yes, no complaining about it, it's the only option

It is no joke, that's very real and the suffering is beyond what i wish most people to go throughMasha shared this story in her post #2768 (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1497988&viewfull=1#post1497988), back on 13 May. I'll copy the entire thing here, and I'd very much appreciate it if everyone might spend a couple of minutes reading it all.

It's worth it. :flower::heart2:

~~~

And you know, when i was out there, we were deep in the fields and it made it impossible to go get food, so we had to hunt or find something to eat every day, and the only point where we new to get rations was kilometers away, and we could not make it at all because being very tired or possibly getting killed on the way. when you carry a rifle it hurts your shoulder after a while, it also makes your hand very tired, and you also need to carry lots of stuff and you are a kid, you can't handle a big pack meant for an adult in the same way, but you have to, so it kills you minute by minute until you can't walk anymore and fall back

And then you have to eat something, and finding a few apples or anything like a potato garden or carrots so becomes a treasure, and you have hope and eat it slowly so to make it last for long, because you don't know when the next time will be. Then you try to sleep very hidden away, behind a tree and you don't put fire to heat yourself because then you'll be found, so you better be used to the dark and the cold, and sleep with one eye open, listen for any out of place noise, and only rest for 2/3 hours or you may be captured

It works best if you sleep back to back with someone else, and then use a shirt to cover both of you, so that your skin touched on the back and heats you through sharing body heat through the night. That's a good tip to survive out there like that, otherwise if you sleep apart and alone from the others you may not make it because the cold will freeze you to death through the night, but if you do sleep sharing a sleeping bag and back to back like that, then you may be able to make it through

And like an idiot you dream that you are home and sometimes we did cry while sleeping, it was easy to notice, you cry because as a kid you dream you are home and your mom or dad is there and you are eating nice things or sitting there with them and imaginary things like that, and you feel protected and warm, but it's a fantasy. It's just you trying to keep yourself alive and with hope, that's all that means

One odd thing about those dreams is, that you dream you are home and eating nice stuff and you pick the stuff up and eating, but there is no flavor at all :) It's not real, but you don't care, because the thing that you care about is that you are home and safe, and warm :)

That's how war is in the end, honestly, just a bunch of dumb people longing to be home and feel safe, and becoming little kids inside while seeing their friends go missing day by day and only thinking "maybe i'll be the one missing tomorrow" and remembering the good things we had back home just not long ago

[Mashika]

I remember posting some time ago on this same thread, about how we had to sleep back to back and under a single shirt so that our bare skins would touch and keep the heat among us, because otherwise we would freeze to death through the night out there in the fields. So we would remove our shirts, then back to back to ensure all body heat was shared and then put on bigger shirt to cover both persons and then above that all other stuff i we could manage an if there was one available do this inside a sleeping bag, otherwise you die, so yes, no complaining about it, it's the only option

It is no joke, that's very real and the suffering is beyond what i wish most people to go throughMasha shared this story in her post #2768 (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1497988&viewfull=1#post1497988), back on 13 May. I'll copy the entire thing here, and I'd very much appreciate it if everyone might spend a couple of minutes reading it all.

It's worth it. :flower::heart2:

~~~

And you know, when i was out there, we were deep in the fields and it made it impossible to go get food, so we had to hunt or find something to eat every day, and the only point where we new to get rations was kilometers away, and we could not make it at all because being very tired or possibly getting killed on the way. when you carry a rifle it hurts your shoulder after a while, it also makes your hand very tired, and you also need to carry lots of stuff and you are a kid, you can't handle a big pack meant for an adult in the same way, but you have to, so it kills you minute by minute until you can't walk anymore and fall back

And then you have to eat something, and finding a few apples or anything like a potato garden or carrots so becomes a treasure, and you have hope and eat it slowly so to make it last for long, because you don't know when the next time will be. Then you try to sleep very hidden away, behind a tree and you don't put fire to heat yourself because then you'll be found, so you better be used to the dark and the cold, and sleep with one eye open, listen for any out of place noise, and only rest for 2/3 hours or you may be captured

It works best if you sleep back to back with someone else, and then use a shirt to cover both of you, so that your skin touched on the back and heats you through sharing body heat through the night. That's a good tip to survive out there like that, otherwise if you sleep apart and alone from the others you may not make it because the cold will freeze you to death through the night, but if you do sleep sharing a sleeping bag and back to back like that, then you may be able to make it through

And like an idiot you dream that you are home and sometimes we did cry while sleeping, it was easy to notice, you cry because as a kid you dream you are home and your mom or dad is there and you are eating nice things or sitting there with them and imaginary things like that, and you feel protected and warm, but it's a fantasy. It's just you trying to keep yourself alive and with hope, that's all that means

One odd thing about those dreams is, that you dream you are home and eating nice stuff and you pick the stuff up and eating, but there is no flavor at all :) It's not real, but you don't care, because the thing that you care about is that you are home and safe, and warm :)

That's how war is in the end, honestly, just a bunch of dumb people longing to be home and feel safe, and becoming little kids inside while seeing their friends go missing day by day and only thinking "maybe i'll be the one missing tomorrow" and remembering the good things we had back home just not long ago


Still better than sleeping like spoons on a drawer at some very high mountain cave with impossible to survive temperatures and altitude...

:raining::silent::bearhug::coffee:


:bolt:




https://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifhttps://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifhttps://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifhttps://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gif

[Tintin]

Poland’s state bank pays $2 million to US media and influencers for supporting Ukraine

By Military Monitoring (shared by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva)

Source: https://militarymonitoring.com/poland-hires-us-pr-companies-to-boost-western-support-to-ukraine/

Poland has hired two US PR companies to pay journalists and influencers for a pro-Ukraine campaign in the West. According to the official statement (https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/18747/2022-11-04/mikeworldwide-highlights-ukrainian-refugee-crisis.html), Poland’s state bank has hired MikeWorldWide and AMW PR for “a global campaign to inform the general public about the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

At the end of September, the PR company MikeWorldWide, headed by Michael W. Kempner, who, according to media reports, is linked to the Democratic Party, was tasked with boosting the Western support to Ukraine.

The primary objective “is to raise awareness among at least 50 million people of the actual dimension of the war in Ukraine and the scale of the damages,” according to MikeWorldWide’s services agreement with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.

Poland’s national bank has budgeted $3 million for the campaign. Of that amount, the company’s fee and out-of-pocket expenses are capped at $500,000 each.

Spending for paid media channels (e.g., ads on Facebook, Twitter, NPR, USA Today, Spotify, Vox) is set at $1 million if the campaign reaches an audience of 40 million people.

Another $1 million goes for influencers as long as 10 million people are reached.

Further more, in November Poland’s state bank hired (https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/18800/2022-11-16/amw-pr-pitches-media-ukraine-refugee-crisis.html) AMW PR, a top New York-based media relations company, to “pitch the refugee and humanitarian crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

AMW is to work with US and Canadian journalists, producers, bloggers, and podcasters under a six-month $150,000 contract with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.

[Tintin]

Source: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/10081

Text:



Memorial to beloved Gorlovka commander, Olga Kachura (https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/17093), killed August 3, 2022.

On August 4, while a funeral/farewell service for her was being held, Ukrainian forces bombed central Donetsk targeting the funeral and continuing shelling (https://t.me/Reality_Theories/8001) the very city centre, killing 6 civilians, including an 11 year old rising star ballerina (https://t.me/Reality_Theories/8079), her grandmother and her ballet teacher.

This is the Ukrainian terrorism (since 2014) which people like Olga were fighting, for the safety and future of the people of the Donbass.

Reality_Theories/10081

Video of the memorial unveiling in Donetsk City 'Alley of Heroes'

Source: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/10082

Reality_Theories/10082

[Bill Ryan]

I remember posting some time ago on this same thread, about how we had to sleep back to back and under a single shirt so that our bare skins would touch and keep the heat among us, because otherwise we would freeze to death through the night out there in the fields. So we would remove our shirts, then back to back to ensure all body heat was shared and then put on bigger shirt to cover both persons and then above that all other stuff i we could manage an if there was one available do this inside a sleeping bag, otherwise you die, so yes, no complaining about it, it's the only option

It is no joke, that's very real and the suffering is beyond what i wish most people to go throughMasha shared this story in her post #2768 (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1497988&viewfull=1#post1497988), back on 13 May. I'll copy the entire thing here, and I'd very much appreciate it if everyone might spend a couple of minutes reading it all.

It's worth it. :flower::heart2:

~~~
And you know, when i was out there, we were deep in the fields and it made it impossible to go get food, so we had to hunt or find something to eat every day, and the only point where we new to get rations was kilometers away, and we could not make it at all because being very tired or possibly getting killed on the way. when you carry a rifle it hurts your shoulder after a while, it also makes your hand very tired, and you also need to carry lots of stuff and you are a kid, you can't handle a big pack meant for an adult in the same way, but you have to, so it kills you minute by minute until you can't walk anymore and fall back

And then you have to eat something, and finding a few apples or anything like a potato garden or carrots so becomes a treasure, and you have hope and eat it slowly so to make it last for long, because you don't know when the next time will be. Then you try to sleep very hidden away, behind a tree and you don't put fire to heat yourself because then you'll be found, so you better be used to the dark and the cold, and sleep with one eye open, listen for any out of place noise, and only rest for 2/3 hours or you may be captured

It works best if you sleep back to back with someone else, and then use a shirt to cover both of you, so that your skin touched on the back and heats you through sharing body heat through the night. That's a good tip to survive out there like that, otherwise if you sleep apart and alone from the others you may not make it because the cold will freeze you to death through the night, but if you do sleep sharing a sleeping bag and back to back like that, then you may be able to make it through

And like an idiot you dream that you are home and sometimes we did cry while sleeping, it was easy to notice, you cry because as a kid you dream you are home and your mom or dad is there and you are eating nice things or sitting there with them and imaginary things like that, and you feel protected and warm, but it's a fantasy. It's just you trying to keep yourself alive and with hope, that's all that means

One odd thing about those dreams is, that you dream you are home and eating nice stuff and you pick the stuff up and eating, but there is no flavor at all :) It's not real, but you don't care, because the thing that you care about is that you are home and safe, and warm :)

That's how war is in the end, honestly, just a bunch of dumb people longing to be home and feel safe, and becoming little kids inside while seeing their friends go missing day by day and only thinking "maybe i'll be the one missing tomorrow" and remembering the good things we had back home just not long ago


Still better than sleeping like spoons on a drawer at some very high mountain cave with impossible to survive temperatures and altitude...

:raining::silent::bearhug::coffee:


:bolt:




https://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifhttps://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifhttps://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifhttps://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/smilies/0601a%20ROFL.gifThe following is way way off-topic on this very serious thread. But by way of explanation, and a tiny bit of needed levity, Masha's post was a private in-joke which I thought I might explain. :)

After Masha's very poignant original post (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1497988&viewfull=1#post1497988), I'd emailed her about a very slightly similar experience I'd had on a high mountain once where my friend Jim and I had found ourselves stranded for a long freezing night without any equipment at all. We survived just fine, like the two spoons Masha referred to. And we never even had any carrots or potatoes, either. :P

And a more serious point, equally off-topic, but interesting. In this post (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?119841-Over-reliance-on-tech-can-be-deadly&p=1526188&viewfull=1#post1526188) I told how a group of 14 ski-mountaineers had also become stranded overnight in a terrible Alpine storm. But for reasons I will never understand, they all separated to try to see the night through alone — and half of them died.

Sometimes, cuddling closely together is the much better plan — even if in my case my cuddle-mate (unfortunately!! :P ) was my bearded male buddy.

:focus:

[Mashika]

After Masha's very poignant original post (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1497988&viewfull=1#post1497988), I'd emailed her about a very slightly similar experience I'd had on a high mountain once where my friend Jim and I had found ourselves stranded for a long freezing night without any equipment at all. We survived just fine, like the two spoons Masha referred to. And we never even had any carrots or potatoes, either. :P

And a more serious point, equally off-topic, but interesting. In this post (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?119841-Over-reliance-on-tech-can-be-deadly&p=1526188&viewfull=1#post1526188) I told how a group of 14 ski-mountaineers had also become stranded overnight in a terrible Alpine storm. But for reasons I will never understand, they all separated to try to see the night through alone — and half of them died.

Sometimes, cuddling closely together is the much better plan — even if in my case my cuddle-mate (unfortunately!! :P ) was my bearded male buddy.

:focus:

Sorry :) Sometimes things get very dark (no pun intended about Ukraine) and i believe that if it starts going into that direction a bit of fun is not bad to lighten up the mood a bit

Otherwise the darkness engulfs and i think i already went through that at least a couple times on this thread in the past, when the videos of soldiers lacking equipment came up online and they died due to that, and in at least another case i can't remember well but also involving unnecessary deaths in a similar way :(



even if in my case my cuddle-mate (unfortunately!! ) was my bearded male buddy.

:sherlock::ROFL:

[Mashika]

Something i think would help to understand things a bit better

As a soldier, you get to see a lot of stuff that you wish you never had seen, and then some more and then even get to be on the other side of it, in which you are the one being looked at by others who wish they had never seen or been through that situation, so sometimes you are looking at a head lying there on its own and then you need to realize that at some point it may be your head the one other people will be looking at in horror and pain

So soldiers tend to joke and have dark humor, it's the only thing that keeps you a bit more sane and alive every day

So even after being in between the craziness, you find time to joke about things or make them less critical or important. Because deep inside you, after a battle or a shelling session against your position, there's deep inside you a sense of 'thank god i made it' and you are glad you didn't explode in a thousand pieces, even if you can clearly see your friend is all over the place. You still know that you are glad you survived and in between that you remain in shock and alert like a rabid animal watching for any other danger that may come

We had some dumb jokes, dark and dumb but that's what you get when you have to find something to clear your mind or to avoid being 'serious'. In my experience the people who are always too serious about things have not lived through much, because otherwise they would understand this

- Spontaneous soldier combustion: Incendiary bomb got the guy, he burned alive while running away
- Spontaneous soldier sublimation: Ever seen what happens to a BMP or an ACP or BTR when hit by a D-20 in close range? Not even a single small piece of the soldiers inside the IFV can be found, they sublimate
- Boots on the ground: Ever seen those cartoons where a bomb explodes and the shoes remain standing even if the guy wearing them is completely gone? That's actually true when a 152 mm shell hits your position at close range, the boots always survive but the person vanishes, so 'boots on the ground' lmao. Sometimes the foot of the person is inside the boot, but nothing else remains, only the pair of boots lying there

So how do you handle that? You have to make a bit light fun of it or you will go crazy (more than a healthy person can deal with)

So yeah, i may be 'immature' (i have been called that before) because of dumb jokes or bullying i do or similar, but there's a reason for it. I'm crazy but not in the bad way lol

[kfm27917]

The red line: Biden and Xi's secret Ukraine talks revealed
Owen Matthews
The Spectator
Sat, 26 Nov 2022 00:00 UTC
BidenXi
© Unknown
The Red Line
Since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China has played a decisive - though publicly low-profile - role in strategic decision-making in both Washington and Moscow. As I report for the first time in my new book Overreach, it was a back-channel intervention approved by Beijing that caused the US to scupper a deal for the Poles to provide Soviet-made MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainian Air Force back in March. And since September a flurry of personal diplomacy by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi with NATO and the US has led to a rare moment of public agreement over Russia, when Xi Jinping said that the world 'needs to prevent a nuclear crisis on the Eurasian continent' in a meeting with Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali.

Throughout the war, China's true position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been hard to pin down - not least because Beijing has been telling both sides what they want to hear. In March, Wang implicitly appeared to be blaming the US for 'stoking tensions' and 'sowing discord' with Russia. Last month he told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that 'China will also firmly support the Russian side, under the leadership of President Putin, to unite and lead the Russian people', according to state broadcaster CCTV. Wang also promised that 'China is willing to deepen contacts with the Russian side at all levels'. Yet in September, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Wang had told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that China 'stays open-minded to dialogues and exchanges with NATO and is willing to jointly promote the sound and steady development of bilateral relations ... in the spirit of honesty and mutual respect'.

So whose side is Beijing really on? The reality is that China has consistently backed only one side - its own. But the illusion of Chinese support was one of the many miscalculations that led Vladimir Putin down the road to war. At a summit in Beijing on 4 February this year, Xi and Putin announced a 'friendship without limits' with 'no forbidden areas' of cooperation. Both leaders declared the new level of Sino-Russian strategic partnership 'superior' to the alliances of the Cold War era. Beijing was aware of Russia's plans for a military operation, according to a source with longstanding close ties to the top levels of China's political and military leadership. But the Russians presented the coming military operation as a 'limited operation to recover a lost Russian province [and] reunite Russia within historical boundaries'. That narrative fitted China's own over Taiwan - though it was made clear that the Russian operation must not interfere with the Beijing Winter Olympics, which ended on 20 February - four days before Putin's invasion.

Most importantly, in a confidential annexe to the 'friendship without limits' was a mutual security guarantee that Russia had sought from China for decades but hitherto been unable to obtain, said the source. Like NATO's Article 5 - that an attack on one member is an attack on all - Beijing and Moscow pledged to come to each other's aid militarily in the case of a foreign invasion of their territory and if special conditions were satisfied concerning the cause of such an invasion. That extremely canny and prescient proviso, inserted at Chinese insistence, would effectively exclude territories recently annexed during wartime, thus releasing Beijing from any commitment to respond to attacks on annexed territories in Ukraine.

The scale of Russia's military operation - in particular the closely held secret of the blitzkrieg attack on Kyiv, of which even Lavrov was unaware as late as 21 February - took Beijing by surprise. Though the Chinese officially supported Putin diplomatically, blaming NATO for provoking the conflict, there was deep (and entirely well-founded) concern that Putin had overreached and would provoke the West into a united front that a limited operation in Donbas would have avoided. Putin's threat of nuclear escalation on 27 February alarmed the world, including the Chinese. A key priority for Beijing was for the Russo-NATO confrontation to 'avoid any nuclear escalation and to help in reaching a ceasefire', said the source, who has regular personal contact with the leaders of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Now Putin had - recklessly in Chinese eyes - played his most dangerous card right at the beginning of the conflict.

So when, a few days later, a further escalation threatened in the form of an offer by the Polish government to supply Ukraine with its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighters, the Chinese grew concerned. In truth, there was little likelihood of the Polish MiGs making much difference on the battlefield. Poland's 26 to 33 MiG-29s had been made in the early 1980s for the East German Air Force and had been sold to Warsaw for the symbolic sum of €1 each in 2003. Romania, which owned 20 similar MiG-29 jets, had decommissioned them many years ago. Nonetheless, a NATO country providing fighter jets of any kind to Kyiv represented an important symbolic, if not necessarily operationally significant, step towards direct NATO involvement in the conflict. Initially, Washington was positive. But a day later, on 8 March, the Pentagon abruptly reversed its position, pronouncing Poland's proposal 'not tenable'.

What changed Washington's mind? In part, it was an urgent and confidential back-channel initiative led by the UK-based Institute for East West Strategic Studies involving former European leaders and senior officials, and ultimately endorsed by the Chinese leadership. Ever since Putin's 27 February declaration on nuclear readiness, the PLA had also been reaching out through military-to-military (as opposed to diplomatic or political) channels to senior Russian general officers with whom they had made personal contact over years of joint military exercises and military procurement talks. Beijing's aim was to ensure that even if there were a political decision to use nukes, the Russian army would insist on sticking to its long-standing nuclear military doctrine to use them solely if provoked by attacks on Russian soil. Through these unofficial 'track two' contacts, Washington and the PLA agreed - unusually, given a deterioration in relations during the Donald Trump presidency - that if the US stopped the MiG deal, Beijing's generals would do their best to defuse Putin's nuclear threat on an operational level. 'It worked,' said the Chinese source. 'The [US] decided that supplying aircraft was a step too far.'

Though this back-channel initiative of early March has not been previously reported, the fact that the US retained a fundamentally cautious attitude to supplying strategic weapons to Ukraine throughout the war effectively confirms that Washington, remained deeply aware of Chinese concerns, which were shared with many of the largest nations in the European Union. Despite a dramatic escalation in supplies of money and military hardware - including NATO-standard 155mm artillery capable of firing guided shells and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System - NATO has held back on providing attack aircraft, helicopters, Nato-standard tanks, long-range battlefield missile and cruise missile systems.

At the same time, Chinese backing for Moscow remained equally cautious. Beijing offered diplomatic and informational support - but excluded significant military cooperation, forcing the Russians to buy drones from Iran, cannibalise domestic appliances for computer chips and attempt to buy back helicopters, missiles and missile defence systems from its military customers around the developing world. The threat of US sanctions on their global operations caused many leading Chinese banks such as ICBC, the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to withdraw credit and financing from Russia. Chinese energy giants such as Sinochem also suspended all Russian investments and joint ventures. In August, UnionPay - the Chinese equivalent of Visa and Mastercard - also ceased its cooperation with Russian banks, citing sanctions. The material motivation for Beijing's corporations to pull out of Russia was clear: before the war China did $100 billion in trade with Russia (rising by a projected $30 billion this year thanks to increased oil imports) but more than $1.5 trillion with the US and EU.

With Biden and Xi's joint condemnation of the threat of nukes at Bali earlier this month, the so-called 'track two' understandings of March have become a 'track one' public policy. Thanks to Wang's shuttle diplomacy, NATO and China have effectively aligned on not escalating the Ukraine-Russia conflict, according to the Chinese source. Over a series of meetings with NATO leadership since early September, Wang pledged to use China's considerable leverage in Moscow to dissuade Putin from using nukes, while in return NATO has affirmed that they would not provide strategic weapons to Ukraine.

At the Bali summit Xi (backed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi) publicly called for a 'return to diplomacy and stressing the urgency in finding a peaceful resolution'. That's a position yet to be officially embraced by NATO, which insists that the Ukrainians will decide when to come to the negotiating table. But many senior voices in NATO - for instance the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley and France's Emmanuel Macron - have independently suggested that Kyiv should prepare for peace talks. And China's security guarantees of Russia's pre-invasion borders made back in February could play an important role in building a face-saving off-ramp for the Kremlin as a counter to NATO's likely security guarantees for Ukraine.

China's price for its peacemaking? Beijing hopes to improve relations with NATO and Europe and bring an end to a bloody and futile war that its ally Putin began so recklessly. In Ukraine, China is, in the words of the source, 'ultimately positioning herself as our last hope for peace in this world'. The Ukrainians, who will likely be asked to sacrifice land for peace, may disagree.
About the Author:
Owen Matthews writes about Russia for The Spectator. His latest book Overreach, a history of the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war, will be published by HarperCollins in November

Comment: From a US perspective, China is playing everyone. From a strategic perspective, it is a balance that offers the most positive options and the least alienation...a concept with which the US is decidedly unfamiliar. And, unlike Western leadership, Putin is no dummy.
https://www.sott.net/article/474606-The-red-line-Biden-and-Xis-secret-Ukraine-talks-revealed

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596511364381831168

1596511364381831168

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596503851183620097

1596503851183620097

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1596515985636589569

1596515985636589569

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1596508303437496321

1596508303437496321

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1596508428888952837

1596508428888952837

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596516891526598657

1596516891526598657

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596516904406904834

1596516904406904834

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1595914299402342400

1595914299402342400

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1595912548527767557

1595912548527767557

[Ravenlocke]

Source: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/10081

Text:



Memorial to beloved Gorlovka commander, Olga Kachura (https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/17093), killed August 3, 2022.

On August 4, while a funeral/farewell service for her was being held, Ukrainian forces bombed central Donetsk targeting the funeral and continuing shelling (https://t.me/Reality_Theories/8001) the very city centre, killing 6 civilians, including an 11 year old rising star ballerina (https://t.me/Reality_Theories/8079), her grandmother and her ballet teacher.

This is the Ukrainian terrorism (since 2014) which people like Olga were fighting, for the safety and future of the people of the Donbass.

Reality_Theories/10081

Video of the memorial unveiling in Donetsk City 'Alley of Heroes'

Source: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/10082

Reality_Theories/10082


https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1594294687535243264

1594294687535243264

[Mashika]

Here's an example of Spontaneous Soldier Sublimation

Let's remember that there were people inside that BMP, and they are gone, and not just 'gone' as in dead, they are gone spiritually and physically from this world

+ Sr, we took the BPM out
- Any survivors?
+ No sr
- Body count?
+ Zero, sr
- ... SSS?
+ Yes sr

Only the logs on the other side will know the names and who was there on that BMP, there's nothing to send back to their families otherwise, only a letter or call to explain that they won't have a funeral because there's nothing to bury

There was no dramatic fight, or tank battle with shells and bullets flying all over the place and random explosions of mortar shells falling around, it was just there one second, and if you look at the end of the video, it wasn't there at all after it got hit, and that's all there is to it

Spontaneous Soldier Sublimation

v0HMhqHEPoo

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596475194679623683

1596475194679623683

https://twitter.com/rabiusambo7/status/1596475214212517889

1596475214212517889

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1596404547802447872

1596404547802447872

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1596423027163811840

1596423027163811840

https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1596425071525908480

1596425071525908480

[Tintin]

An interesting 25 minute film behind the scenes with the 'Wagner' PMC.

Wagner PMC: Contract with the Motherland

Source: Avalon Library (https://avalonlibrary.net/Ukraine/2022_Russian_invasion_%28Operation-Z%29/Wagner_PMC_-_Contract_with_the_Motherland.mp4)

https://avalonlibrary.net/Ukraine/2022_Russian_invasion_%28Operation-Z%29/Wagner_PMC_-_Contract_with_the_Motherland.mp4

[loungelizard]

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1593677892650733569

1593677892650733569

Let's look at the reality ...

Regarding the children whose lives have been ripped apart by in this horrendous war:
the UN has said claims that thousands of children have been removed from Ukraine
to Russia for adoption as part of larger-scale forced relocations and deportations are credible.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the personal status of children, including their nationality,
is prohibited.

In May, Putin signed a decree making it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship
to Ukrainian children without parental care. It also made it harder for Ukraine and surviving
relatives to win them back.

Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, the forced mass deportation of people -- and, in particular,
the forcible transfer of children -- during a conflict is designated as a war crime.

“There have been credible allegations of forced transfers of unaccompanied children to Russian
-occupied territory, or to the Russian Federation itself,” Ilze Brands Kehris, the assistant UN secretary-general
for human rights, told the Security Council.

General Iryna Venediktova, prosecutor, said that the number of children forcibly transferred to Russia is
currently unknown, but is thought to be over 200,000. Evidence of such action would meet the rigorous legal
definition of genocide: the forced displacement of minors in Russia is part of a ‘Russification’ plan to erase
the Ukrainian identity and nation.

The reality is that those claims are just that, 'claims'

It's funny how people fall for this strategy of self reference. Can you find a link to the actual UN document where this is expressed as a fact? A claim is nothing more than that, a claim

You didn't provide a link to where you read this, and looking it up i see a lot of websites basically just copy/pasting the exact same words, an obvious signal that this is more media narrative pushing

Also if you go to a site like this

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/ukraine-conflict/1654177141-ukraine-accuses-russia-of-forcibly-deporting-over-200-000-children

Then you can see that they also do not have a link to anything official from the UN, it turns out that after following all the links on those articles, they are self-referencing, one link leads to another page on the same site that has more claims and links that also lead to pages/articles on that same site, you never get to the source

But after looking around, do you know what the "credible claims" source turned out to be? A video call where Elensky made that claim, with no evidence at all lmao

So it's all a lot of circling around with links to more 'evidence' and more claims that never produce any evidence of anything but they carefully avoid mentioning that the only source of these claims is something Elensky said on a video call! Talk about corrupt media narratives :)

And by the way, the worse thing is not that, the worse thing is that Elensky had no evidence of anything himself, and the 200,000 children number he mentioned, actually came from a public report by Russia!

So, Elensky read a report by Russia where they said that around 240,000 kids have been evacuated from the war zone, then he went to make his video call and used that number to claim genocide, then the Nazi friendly UN officials picked up this claim from Elensky and called it 'credible' because of course, and then the monkeys started typing and posting on the web and so on

Russia -> Elensky -> Video call -> UN -> Corrupt Mediocre Media -> People who eat it up

The UN has made no research or any kind of investigation on those claims so far, they only opened a case for it, and then Russia provided some documentation and evidence of what happened to those kids, and that information has not been made public yet by the UN, they also have not reported in the same way as they did with the 'credible claim'. That's very irresponsible and leads to people posting things like what you did there, it makes it look like there's already a verdict by the UN, a lot of people will just assume there is one because they don't know any better, see?

A responsible organization that is not playing around would avoid doing partial reports like that one, or make sure at least that it is made very clear that those claims have not been validated at all and that no investigation has occurred


But nope

~~

Perhaps you should be questioning why the UN makes misleading statements like this, or why the media you read is trying to mislead you with fake/partial information

Oh and check this one
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/8/un-says-credible-reports-ukraine-children-transferred-to-russia


United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the meeting that estimates from a variety of sources, including the Russian government, indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians.

"a variety of sources" she said, such as.... or are those 'anonymous sources' lol

Why can't she be honest and say that they just picked up the data from a report published by Russia about war refugees? How dishonest and lacking of morals/ethics, honestly

And then check the links on that article, it's once again self-reference, the links point to other articles/pages on the same site 'aljazeera' :)



The UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, said the reports of forced transfer of Ukrainians by Russian forces “must be investigated”.

See? It's pure BS, no investigation has happened at all, so these 'credible claims' are pure BS. There has been no real evidence provided, and the claim that Russia doesn't allow the UN to go into Donbass is also pure BS, they had been there and were able to do anything they wanted for years, and they did nothing. No one is stopping them from going, it's actually Ukraine who for example forbade the Red Cross from going into Donbass, and there's is plenty of evidence that the UN helped the Azov and other groups instead of doing their work to document the crimes committed by Ukraine over the past 9 years

If the people move to other countries in the middle east or any other place, they are refugees, including the kids sent over to the UK that are sexually abused or vanish forever. If they go to Russia, they are filtrated and it's genocide

I don't know why you are not bothered that these people are playing with your mind and plainly lying to you, without any shame. Doesn't that bother you at all?

Sorry - I missed your reply (it was buried under a pile of tweets ;))



Can you find a link to the actual UN document where this is expressed as a fact?

Strawman - no one claims it to be fact. I went back to re-read my post and it made it perfectly clear that the allegations are “credible”. That’s all.


The UN has made no research or any kind of investigation on those claims so far, they only opened a case for it

Exactly. This is the relevant UN report A/77/533: Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine - Note by the Secretary-General
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N22/637/72/PDF/N2263772.pdf?OpenElement

It identifies an investigation into claims for forced transfers and adoptions as the next step:
VI. Next steps
114. Issues of interest will include possible violations in filtration camps, alleged forced transfers of people, conditions under which expedited adoptions of children are allegedly taking place, as well as changes in local administration and so-called referenda, the consequences of which are becoming clearer given recent events.

By the way, this report makes harrowing reading.
The conclusion states:
Based on its investigations of the events in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy in late February and March 2022, the Commission has found reasonable grounds to conclude that an array of war crimes and violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have been committed in Ukraine since 24 February 2022. As detailed in the present report, Russian armed forces are responsible for the vast majority of the violations identified by the Commission. The Commission has also found instances in which Ukrainian armed forces have violated international humanitarian law, including two situations in which they committed war crimes. While few in number, such cases will continue to be the object of the Commission’s attention.




then Russia provided some documentation and evidence of what happened to those kids, and that information has not been made public yet by the UN

Please share any verified documentation and evidence with us.


or make sure at least that it is made very clear that those claims have not been validated at all and that no investigation has occurred

The UN does make that perfectly clear.

In the second paragraph of this report, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights states, “We cannot yet confirm these allegations”.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1120412



If the people move to other countries in the middle east or any other place, they are refugees

But the claims in this situation are that people aren’t merely moving to other countries. They are being forcibly deported and unlawfully transferred from certain areas within occupied Ukraine. Big difference.

This report is by Human Rights Watch, dated 1st September (and of course, Russia closed down the Human Rights Watch office back in April - and that of Amnesty and Memorial and many other NGOs - in an attempt to silence those who defend human rights)

“We Had No Choice” - a report by HRW, subtitled “Filtration and the Crime of Forcibly Transferring Ukrainian Civilians to Russia”.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/01/we-had-no-choice/filtration-and-crime-forcibly-transferring-ukrainian-civilians

Here is Amnesty’s report, dated 10 November.

“Like A Prison Convoy” Russia’s Unlawful Transfer of Civilians in Ukraine and Abuses During Filtration” - a report by Amnesty, dated 10th Nov 2022
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur50/6136/2022/en/



It's pure BS, no investigation has happened at all, so these 'credible claims' are pure BS.

You cannot possibly know that.

It’s amazing to me that anyone, bearing in mind the utter confusion of war, can simply brush off these allegations as “BS”.

I cannot possibly know that they are true as no investigation has yet taken place.
And you cannot possibly know they are false.

But to dismiss them as “BS” to ignore possible war crimes and violations of human rights. I have to wonder why you would do that.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1500405070868926466

1500405070868926466

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/VanessaBeeley/status/1503332440894754817

1503332440894754817


https://thewallwillfall.org/2022/03/14/how-one-ukrainian-billionaire-funded-hunter-biden-president-volodymyr-zelensky-and-the-neo-nazi-azov-battalion/


How One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, And The Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion

Kanekoa’s Newsletter

Kolomoysky Owns Burisma Holdings

The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, but it was instead Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.”

Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.

The study, which was funded to dig up corruption on the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, instead found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine”.

Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.”

In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.

Kolomoysky Owns 1+1 Media Group

Kolmoysky, who currently holds a net worth of $1.8 billion making him the 1750th richest person in the world, owns holdings in metal, petroleum, and the media sector, where he has had a long history with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

For years, Zelensky’s company produced shows for Kolmoysky’s TV network, 1+1 Media Group, one of the largest media conglomerates in Ukraine. Zelensky achieved national fame portraying a president on a hit television sitcom called, Servant of the People, which was broadcasted on a channel owned by Kolmoysky.

In 2019, Kolmoysky’s media channels gave a big boost to Zelensky’s presidential campaign, while Kolmoysky even provided security, lawyers, and vehicles for Zelensky during his campaign. Kolmoysky’s bodyguard and lawyer accompanied Zelensky on the campaign trail as Zelensky was chauffeured around in a Range Rover owned by one of Kolmoysky’s companies.

The Pandora Papers showed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his TV production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms created in 2012, the same year Zelensky’s production company entered into a deal with Kolomoysky’s media group, which allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoysky’s Privatbank.

Zelensky’s political rival, President Petro Poroshenko commented on their connection during the campaign trail, “Fate intended to put me together with Kolomoyskiy’s puppet in the second round of the elections.”

After Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoysky, who had spent the last few years living between Israel and Switzerland, returned to Ukraine to keep up his relationship with the new president, nominating over 30-lawmakers to Zelensky’s newly established party and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament.

Kolomoysky Funds The Azov, Aidar, and Dnipro Battalions

Igor Kolomoysky has been a top funder of the Azov Battalion since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions and has personally deployed them to protect his financial interests.

Aljazeera:

Before becoming part of Ukraine’s armed forces, who funded Azov? The unit received backing from Ukraine’s interior minister in 2014, as the government had recognised its own military was too weak to fight off the pro-Russian separatists and relied on paramilitary volunteer forces.

These forces were privately funded by oligarchs–the most known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy magnate billionaire and then-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region.

Newsweek:

Groups of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists are committing war crimes in the rebel-held territories of Eastern Ukraine, according to a report from Amnesty International, as evidence emerged in local media of the volunteer militias beheading their victims.

Armed volunteers who refer to themselves as the Aidar battalion “have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions”, Amnesty said…

The Aidar battalion is publicly backed by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who also allegedly funds the Azov, Donbas, Dnepr 1, Dnepr 2 volunteer battalions, operating under orders from Kiev.

Reuters:

Some of Ukraine’s private battalions have blackened the country’s international reputation with their extremist views. The Azov battalion, partially funded by Taruta and Kolomoisky, uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo, and many of its members openly espouse neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic views. The battalion members have spoken about “bringing the war to Kiev,” and said that Ukraine needs “a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process.”

Kolomoysky’s Battalions Shell Civilians In Donbas

The Luhansk and Donetsk regions comprise a larger region known together as Donbas. In May 2014, shortly after the Obama administration’s Maidan-coup, the two regions held a referendum on seceding from Ukraine, in which 96% of Lukansk and 89% of Donetsk voted for the creation of two new independent entities in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow said the vote reflected the “will of the people,” but the European Union called the elections “illegal and illegitimate“, which quickly turned violent and descended into an all-out conflict between Russian-backed separatist forces and the Ukrainian military and pro-government militias.

Donbas became the epicenter of a battle for global influence between NATO and Moscow in which the homes, schools, and offices of innocent civilians were simply collateral damage, and water, electricity, and gas were regularly shut off for the residents who paid the ultimate price.

The War in Donbas has continued to this day killing an estimated 14,000 while tearing eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region into shreds.

Human Rights Watch reported on July 24, 2014, that Ukrainian government forces and pro-government militias had indiscriminately used unguided Grad rockets in populated areas, which violated international humanitarian law, the laws of war, and constituted war crimes.

While the Ukrainian government officials denied using Grad rockets in Donetsk, a Human Rights Watch investigation on the ground strongly indicated that Ukrainian government forces were responsible for the attacks and earlier in the month, Al Jazeera journalist had even filmed Ukrainian forces with Grad rocket launchers on the road to Donetsk.

While Kolomoysky’s Azov battalion led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, a 2014 Amnesty International report accused Kolomoysky’s Aidar Battalion of war crimes in Donbas specifically citing, “widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions”.

In October 2014, Human Rights Watch reported that Ukrainian government forces and pro-government militias were responsible for the widespread use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city.

“It is shocking to see a weapon that most countries have banned used so extensively in eastern Ukraine,” said Mark Hiznay, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Ukrainian authorities should make an immediate commitment not to use cluster munitions and join the treaty to ban them.”

This is not to say that both sides were not guilty of war crimes as Russian-backed separatists were also accused of using unguided rockets, shooting down civilian planes, and both sides have been accused of numerous war crimes.

The Minsk II agreement in 2015 ended the worst fighting and set up a buffer zone around the breakaway republics, but the deadly civil war has continued to drag on in the region until this day. Heavy weapons were banned by the Minsk agreements but were still frequently used, and to devastating effect.

Children’s schools in Donetsk have been hit so many times by indiscriminate shelling that basements are set up as make-shift bomb shelters and windows are piled high with sandbags. Donbas has also become one of the most landmine contaminated places on earth putting more than 220,000 children at risk.

“The shelling doesn’t leave a child’s psyche unscathed. Children are traumatized. They are terrified. There are children who become very emotional. They pour their feelings out,” said Iryna Morhun, the Principal of Krasnohorivka School, which was hit by a direct strike.

“On the other side, there are children who keep this pain inside. It’s very sad to see children who should be having a happy childhood suffer because of this war.”

Hunter Biden’s Laptop Talks About “Children Burned Alive” In Donetsk


The nonprofit research group, Marco Polo, which is doing a comprehensive report on Hunter Biden’s Laptop, made the connection between Hunter Biden’s text messages and Kolomoysky’s massacres in eastern Ukraine.

Text messages found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, show Hunter Biden asking Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow and his mistress, if she believed that he had “children burned alive in DONETSK” or “children killed in donetsk, Ukraine”.

Most likely, in reference to Kolomoysky, his reported Burisma Holdings boss, who was also funding the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion that was accused of war crimes and the shelling of civilians in eastern Ukraine.

In 2018, Congress banned U.S. arms from going to the Ukrainian Azov Battalion which used neo-Nazi insignia, openly accepted neo-Nazis into its ranks, and had been accused of ‘ISIS-Style’ War Crimes including beheadings.

“White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), an outspoken critic of providing lethal aid to Ukraine, said in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday. “I am very pleased that the recently passed omnibus prevents the U.S. from providing arms and training assistance to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine.”

In 2016, Kolomoysky’s Privatbank collapsed amid accusations of embezzlement and fraud. The bank failure cost the Ukrainian government — and by extension the American and European taxpayers who propped it up with aid funds — about $5.5 billion in a bailout.

In 2020, the Justice Department moved to seize Kolomoysky’s U.S. properties after accusing the oligarch of embezzling and defrauding billions of dollars from PrivatBank and laundering it into American properties, including a steel plant in Kentucky, a commercial high rise in Cleveland, and a Motorola manufacturing plant in Illinois.

Image
Source: Investigative Journalist Michael Sallah

In March 2021, the Biden administration barred Kolomoisky and members of his family from traveling to the United States because of “involvement in significant acts of corruption.”

It is highly unlikely Kolomoisky would have returned to the United States considering the Justice Department had already begun seizing his properties the year before and he had reportedly been traveling between Switzerland, Israel, and Ukraine in fear of being extradited to the United States.

As I am writing this, the U.S. Congress is approving another $14 billion in aid for Ukraine that will undoubtedly be funneled into the family members of corrupt U.S. and Ukrainian politician’s bank accounts and oligarch’s off-shore financial entities before making its way to the neo-Nazi battalions congress banned from receiving U.S. arms in 2018.

Do the people pushing so hard for war with Russia know about the “children burned alive” in Donetsk? Do they know that we are arming neo-Nazi battalions who have been shooting rockets and dropping cluster bombs on children in Donbas for the last 8-years?

[norman]

Boris Johnson Reveals Deep Divisions within Europe Over Ukraine War
November 26, 2022 The Sirius Report

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Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently stated during an interview with CNN Portugal that there were deep divisions among key EU nations leading up to the war in Ukraine. According to him, the French were “in denial right up to the last moment” and the Italians were reluctant to join other EU nations in their stance against Russia due to their “massive” reliance on Russian hydrocarbons.

The most interesting but perhaps unsurprising comment made by Johnson was that, for “all sorts of sound economic reasons”, Germany initially favoured a swift defeat for Ukraine

Germany has since denied Johnson’s claim, stating that he “has a unique relationship with the truth”. However, former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk previously said that during his meeting with German Finance Minister Christian Lindner on day one of the war, the latter smilingly told him (https://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/518513/Schwerer-Vorwurf-Finanzminister-Lindner-brachte-ukrainischen-Botschafter-Melnyk-zum-Heulen) that Ukraine would only last a few hours.

If indeed true, Germany’s initial economic concerns were more than valid given it is now struggling with a severe energy crisis and rising inflation, with German food price inflation (https://seekingalpha.com/news/3906269-germany-inflation-rate-confirmed-at-record-high-of-104) jumping 20.3% year on year in October. German Economy Minister Habeck also recently stated that Germany will incur losses of €60 billion in 2022 and €100 billion in 2023 due to being forced to purchase more expensive energy.

Although European leaders have continually praised European unity and solidarity over Ukraine, the reality may not be what it seems. Deep divisions remain over the EU’s proposed gas price cap, with media reporting (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe-ap-brussels-russia-ukraine-b2232190.html) that the energy crisis “has divided the 27-nation bloc in almost irreconcilable blocs”. Anti-war protests (https://www.ft.com/content/fedc259f-bf96-4a22-b032-bc181d4dd51d) have also spread across Central Europe, signalling growing discontent among European citizens over the economic impact of western sanctions.


https://www.thesiriusreport.com/geopolitics/boris-johnson-divisions-europe-ukraine/

[Ravenlocke]

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[Ravenlocke]

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[Michel Leclerc]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596597929707544576

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What a bittersweet revenge for the “Ossis” (the "Easties", the Germans from "East Germany”: the former German Democratic Republic, the "Communist bloc occupied Germany”) it would be that precisely they, after, once the German reunification achieved, having been plucked bare by the West German financial and economic elite and their representatives in the unified Germany (all their “communist” industrial conglomerates cannibalised and/or sold, their social protection system dismantled, their ex-communist/socialist political parties blackened as being "crypto-fascists” etc.)... that precisely they would lead in the push to get the American occupation force and their Rammstein fortress out... but in a way no wonder, because it is also they who got rid of the communist tyranny in the German Democratic Republic and dismantled the "Mauer” (the wall separating East and West Berlin)...

[Ravenlocke]

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The videos at this link,

https://theindicter.com/documenting-killing-of-russian-pows-by-ukraine-troops-geneva-convention-a-warcrime/

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ProfessorsBlogg/status/1594524650679189505

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[shaberon]

It’s amazing to me that anyone, bearing in mind the utter confusion of war, can simply brush off these allegations as “BS”.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International?

Really??

[Bill Ryan]

Source: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/10081

Text:


Memorial to beloved Gorlovka commander, Olga Kachura (https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/17093), killed August 3, 2022.

On August 4, while a funeral/farewell service for her was being held, Ukrainian forces bombed central Donetsk targeting the funeral and continuing shelling (https://t.me/Reality_Theories/8001) the very city centre, killing 6 civilians, including an 11 year old rising star ballerina (https://t.me/Reality_Theories/8079), her grandmother and her ballet teacher.

This is the Ukrainian terrorism (since 2014) which people like Olga were fighting, for the safety and future of the people of the Donbass.Reality_Theories/10081

Video of the memorial unveiling in Donetsk City 'Alley of Heroes'

Source: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/10082

Reality_Theories/10082Bumping this with a repeat of my post from 4 August (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1510660&viewfull=1#post1510660).

~~~

Here's a short 4 minute video published just three weeks before Olga Kachura was killed. :flower:

It's worth watching simply because from this one can understand how the Russian/DPR forces are devastating the Ukrainian troops with sheer artillery firepower, spectacular (and frightening) to watch. One can see how they often retreat against orders, surrender, or simply flee.

Those shells and missiles are all aimed with precision. No-one anywhere near their targets would have a chance.

This video is all about the brutality of war, and the interview with Olga that I copied above (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1510626&viewfull=1#post1510626) — highly recommended — is about the humanity of at least some of the wartime leaders. This is the paradox.

https://avalonlibrary.net/Ukraine/2022_Russian_invasion_%28Operation-Z%29/Olga_Kachura_%28b.1970%20-%20d.2022%29/Olga_%27Korsa%27_Kachura_Tribute.MP4

(https://youtube.com/watch?v=U6p86Ufl3nQ)https://avalonlibrary.net/Ukraine/2022_Russian_invasion_%28Operation-Z%29/Olga_Kachura_%28b.1970%20-%20d.2022%29/Olga_%27Korsa%27_Kachura_Tribute.MP4

[Ravenlocke]

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[Gwin Ru]

...

... quiz... can you point to where's Ukraine?


https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/lights-out-in-Ukraine.png

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[Ravenlocke]

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[Ravenlocke]

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1596777570825273345

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https://rebelion.org/ucrania-la-conspiracion-criminal/

Ukraine, the criminal conspiracy

A false flag operation, an "active disinformation" as it should be called. This is the genesis and history of the international provocation carried out by Kiev with the missile in Polish territory.

A crude operation of a government that knows that it can pass its propaganda as absolute truth, taking advantage of the censorship of the Russian media and the condescension of the West, which has completely disrupted the historical, military and political truth of the Russian operation in Ukraine.

American and Russian satellite studies were able to immediately detect the falsity of Kiev's claims, and Zelensky then tried a miserable reversal by talking about a "tragic accident" in an attempt to reduce the damage of the image, a real goal on his own goal.

There was no mistake: the Ukrainians fired a missile against Poland in an attempt to activate the mechanisms provided for in Articles 4 and 5 of the Atlantic Treaty, which provide, respectively, for the convening of the Atlantic Council at the request of a member State (art. 4) and the immediate military response of all in support of the member of the attacked Alliance (art. 5).

It didn't take much to unmask Kiev and discover its intention to hit Polish territory: the only thing needed was an expert in ballistics flanked by a common sense. The first would have shown that, given the absence of missiles with a boomerang trajectory, the one exploited in Poland, belonging to the Ukrainian armed forces, fell where it was thrown away. No matter how outdated and inaccurate the technology was, it could have been wrong but not completely reversed its course. Therefore, it was not aimed at Russian positions in the southeast, but rather and deliberately at Polish territory in the northwest.

The common sense counselor would add a consideration as simple as it is effective: who benefits from hitting Poland? Certainly not to the Russians, and for two obvious considerations. The first: Moscow has been immersed for months, parallel to the military field, in the search for a diplomatic solution to the conflict; a search that, in recent weeks, has led the United States itself to hold talks with Russian military high commanders and, at the same time, they are pressuring Zelensky to be willing to dialogue without unsustainable and unfeasible demands.

The second. The Russians were not born yesterday and are wary of extending the war scenario to NATO countries, since it is one thing that it supports the Ukrainian army and another is to start a formal and open war that, due to its territorial proximity to Russia, would quickly degenerate into both a conventional and a tactical nuclear conflict and, therefore, would start World War III.

Ukraine out of control

The Ukrainian attempt to drag the West into a total war against Russia reveals the sociopathic and criminal profile of a defeated regime. And although some media insinuate that Zelensky would be willing to negotiate, only that he lacks sufficient autonomy as a hostage to the military, it is likely that it is the politicians of Kiev, inextricably linked to the Nazi parties and the Azov military, who are playing both roles in the work. These are unscrupulous, corrupt and authoritarian businessmen, who emerged with the 2014 coup d'état that led to the nazification of Ukraine. Poroshenko himself, Zelensky's predecessor, said two days ago in a television interview that he had never intentionally respected the Minsk agreements: they only helped him to have 3 or 4 years for NATO to train and arm the Ukrainian army and make it the most fearsome in Europe. It is the same Poroshenko who said that his policy towards the Russian-speaking Donbass saw "our children at school and his children in shelters."

What happened has revealed the danger of the Ukrainian government, which, in order to obtain the direct participation of NATO or, failing that, a large increase in war supplies and money to continue an already lost war, has risked taking the planet to World War III. At the same time, the Ukrainian "stay behind" network begins to draw a panorama of difficulties in the control and management of combat for the United States itself, which continues to provide intelligence and satellite networks to provide the latitude and length of the objectives, but which begins to doubt being able to manage an army that has become a gigantic terrorist machine in which the chain of command is not clear.

From the elimination of the Ukrainian negotiator to the attacks in Russian border areas, through sabotaged gas pipelines and, now, uncontrolled reprisals, the management of the various Ukrainian military and intelligence fringes is becoming a problem within a problem for the strategy of reopening direct talks between Washington and Moscow and also poses serious problems in the more general perspective of NATO's internal reorganiz

There are precedents in the United States, such as having trained and armed the Mujahaidines in Afghanistan who later became Al-Queda or having trained those in Syria who later became Isis. Washington finances and arms to the militias of murderers in charge of supporting American interests everywhere, preferably in Asia Minor, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East: but then, in the face of the accumulation of forces, the different organizations intend to take for themselves the governments and resources of the places where they have defended Western interests. And so, in the face of a changing general picture, yesterday's useful "freedom fighters" become a "military surplus", an uncomfortable association that must be claimed and managed, to the point of being found as an enemy on the geopolitical board.

And if this is not necessarily bad for Washington, since it benefits from the continuous wars and reinforces its unipolar gendarme command, this is not how its European allies see it. For them, from the point of view of the effectiveness of the Atlantic Alliance, the Ukrainian issue should make them reflect on the incapacity of many NATO countries and those that aspire to be so in order to meet the fundamental requirement of the Atlantic Treaty, that is, to improve collective security.

Which, of course, is a rhetorical and propaganda demand, but indifference to the behavior of any individual member can cause damage to the national interests of other members, as was evident at the 2021 NATO summit in Madrid. Of the current member countries and those who aspire to be, at least eleven should be expelled or not admitted because they actively participate in the creation of insecurity within and at the borders of the Alliance, and many others because they are culpritly irrelevant.

Today's Ukraine is an example of this. NATO and the EU are conditioned by those who intend to promote and feed a continental war.

A war already lost

The situation on the ground for Kiev is dramatic. They proclaim certain victories, but half the country is already under the snow, without electricity and with little water, and the "general winter" has just arrived: it will hit hard between December and March and then it will be the tragedy. The Ukrainian army is disorganized and now only enters the areas that the Russians decide to abandon, although propaganda presents them as reconquerors. There is little help left, the international economic crisis does not allow much, and the fatigue of the US and EU governments due to Zelensky's arrogance does not induce further sacrifices. In the United States alone, Kiev has already received (officially, it is a conservative estimate) 17 billion dollars in weapons. To this must be added the approximately 15 obtained from Europe and the financing of mercenary battalions from Georgia, Great Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and Spain. Some 30,000 decarcarvers at $1,000 a day who have supported all the so-called Ukrainian counteroffensives but who, nevertheless, have not managed to resume a single meter of territory occupied by Russia, except those that Moscow has decided to abandon.

For its part, indifferent to all propaganda, Russia continues to occupy 25% of Ukraine and it must be taken into account the unsustainability of Kiev's allies to supply more weapons, with the reserve arsenals of the different NATO armies already empty. Which, in a situation of high tension with Russia, prevents greater generosity.

Russia denounces the horror

Russia, for its part, has asked the UN to pronounce on an atrocious crime committed by Ukrainian soldiers against unarmed Russian prisoners who were arrested. On Friday there was a massacre of Makivka, in the Donbass. The images, reconstructed by The Guardian and confirmed by several reconstructions, show ten Russian soldiers taken as prisoners, whom Ukrainian soldiers order to put their hands behind their heads and lie on the ground. One of the men dressed in black stands behind them and kills them all by shooting them in the head. The images stop and resume with the fallen men lying on a lake of blood.

The Kremlin asked international organizations to investigate the execution, reminiscent of Nazi reprisals. The spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, said that Moscow "has repeatedly drawn the attention of the international community to the cruel and inhuman treatment of the Russian military arrested by the Ukrainian side." Numerous evidence of the crimes has been ignored by the collective West, which supports Kiev in everything, and this makes American and European mentors complicit in these crimes."

We will see what the UN investigation discovers, assuming that there is still a Commission capable of investigating and assuming that the UN still exists.

[Delight]

The end of the empire.

s47elUKUZdk

[Ravenlocke]

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[Ravenlocke]

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[Ravenlocke]

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[Ravenlocke]

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https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1469031834860146688

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https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/1469034446326169604

1469034446326169604

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/MarkSleboda1/status/1596396077934338048

1596396077934338048

CN LIVE! S4E11 WHAT'S NEXT FOR UKRAINE? - Scott Ritter, Mark Sleboda & Tony Kevin

In Moscow: Mark Sleboda, IR & Security Analyst & US Navy vet-Nuclear Engineering;
In the US: Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer & UN weapons inspector;
In Canberra: Tony Kevin, Ret. Australian ambassador to Poland & diplomat in Moscow. (The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Consortium News or CN Live!)

The war in Ukraine began in 2014 as a civil conflict when Russian-speakers in the east resisted a coup that overthrew a democratically-elected president. The post-coup state then launched a war against the resisters for eight years, a war which Russia entered nine months ago on Feb. 24.

It was an expansion of the fighting that could have easily been prevented. A peace accord was never implemented by the Western-backed Kiev regime. Instead NATO armed and trained Ukrainian forces that included extremist groups which early this year began amassing at the conflict line with the east, poised for an offensive, prompting Russia to intervene. Peace treaties Russia presented to the U.S. and NATO last December, which would have seen NATO deployments of troops and missiles in Eastern Europe rolled back, were ignored, even as Russia spoke of a technical-military response.

The U.S. got the invasion it wanted and needed. Without it, it could not have launched its economic, information and proxy war designed to “weaken” Russia and return it to the servile state of the 1990s. Make no mistake. This is a U.S. war against Russia. Ukraine is simply the stage on which it is being acted.

However, the war is not going according to U.S. plans. The economic war, intended to bring down the Russian government, has backfired, with dire economic consequences and growing popular discontent in the West instead.

The information war is being lost outside of territories controlled by the West – which comprises the vast majority of humanity. And the war on the ground is not being won.

But the war hasn't gone according to Russian plans either. Moscow sought negotiations with Ukraine almost immediately upon entering the conflict. In March they had a deal in which Ukraine would remain neutral and Crimea would be recognized as Russian and Donbass as independent. But Western leaders, wanting to bleed Russia, stopped it.

A restrained invasion, insofar as invasions can be restrained, is now on the verge of a major Russian offensive. It is being preceded by widespread Russian strikes against power infrastructure, raising troubling questions about the effect on civilians.

Despite continuing propaganda that Ukraine is winning the war, Western leaders know what they are facing: freezing Ukrainians and Europeans and the looming Russian attack. This has led to talks about talks to end the war, but is it now too late?

Is Russia committed to reabsorbing all of Catherine the Great's imperial conquests in Ukraine or will keeping Ukraine out of NATO, recognition of Crimea and Donbass as part of Russia and withdrawal of NATO's forward deployments of men and missiles in Eastern Europe still be enough for Russia?

Is the U.S. and NATO still committed to a long war in the vain hope that it will bring down the Russian government? --- Joe Lauria, editor-i

u-KxE-PDKE8

[Michel Leclerc]

The end of the empire.

s47elUKUZdk

Bravo! Less fun-making and more bitter truths.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1596914204157841408

1596914204157841408

https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1596923593459654657

1596923593459654657

[Ravenlocke]

Today is Mother’s Day in Russia,

https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1596451359792168963

1596451359792168963


https://twitter.com/RussianEmbassyC/status/1596678379838885890

1596678379838885890

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1596907895324643335

1596907895324643335

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1596961052528619520

1596961052528619520

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596644157375782915

1596644157375782915

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596921486643580929

1596921486643580929


https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596943308395524097

1596943308395524097

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1596937478736605184

1596937478736605184

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596919539832610817

1596919539832610817


https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1596920818155819009

1596920818155819009

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/europeanMedia24/status/1596958569517252612

1596958569517252612

Article here,
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/11/27/7378216/


https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1596924885120737280

1596924885120737280

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/11/27/7378217/

Ukrainian soldiers injured in road accident with Estonian bus in Latvia
EUROPEAN PRAVDA — SUNDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2022, 20:27

Ukrainian military servicemen have been injured in a road accident that occurred in Latvia.
Source: press service of the Defence Forces of Estonia, as cited by European Pravda
A bus transporting people commissioned by the Estonian military department collided with a truck on the territory of Latvia. The bus was on its way from Poland to Estonia.
Quote: "As a result of the accident, one Estonian serviceman of the Defence Forces was injured and taken to the hospital for examination. The rest of the passengers who were injured in the accident are servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who were also taken to the hospital," the message reads.
The accident happened on the evening of 26 November, in the area of ​​the Latvian city of Ainaži, near the Estonian border, on the Via Baltica highway.
As a result of the accident, the bus driver died, 26 other people suffered injuries of various severity; three were in serious condition.
It remains unclear exactly how many Ukrainian soldiers were injured, but according to Estonian media, most of the passengers were Ukrainians.

Several traffic accidents occurred on the same road on Saturday due to snow and black ice.

[loungelizard]

It’s amazing to me that anyone, bearing in mind the utter confusion of war, can simply brush off these allegations as “BS”.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International?

Really??

Interesting … it doesn’t seem that you use the same degree of scrutiny when it comes to other sources quoted on this thread.
You’re happy to accept without question the word of Maria Zakharova, the Kremlin’s press officer, or TASS, or some faceless and
nameless bloke on Twitter. Do you have a problem with these NGOs because that both Amnesty and HRW have been accused
of anti-Western and anti-Israel bias? :ROFL:

Neither Amnesty nor HRW are perfect - they’re run by human beings, so of course they are flawed.

In the absence of some mythical, saintly saintly organisation that is concerned with the rights of invidividuals, what’s your answer?
Or don’t we need such organisations if they can’t be held up as paragons of virtue? Ooo, the dictator/tyrant/kleptocrats wet dream
- an end to those pesky people who keep cramping their style and drawing attention to the atrocities they commit, trying to hold
them accountable.

Sometimes, imperfect is all we have. Personally, although I may not agree with all the stances taken by each individual NGO, I am
grateful that they are there.

A hypothetical situation: your son/daughter has been imprisoned in Russia for 5 years for holding up a blank piece of paper in protest
against the war in Ukraine, under Putin's new censorship laws. Which human rights organisation would you go to for help?
You’d be hard pushed to find any at all in Russia ... pretty well all of them have been shut down :silent:

[loungelizard]

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor (death by hunger) genocide, when millions of Ukrainians starved to death in 1932/3 in a man-made famine orchestrated by Stalin.

49976

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1596804465428168704

1596804465428168704

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/VeraVanHorne/status/1596609557555720192

1596609557555720192

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/lilitica/status/1596998219724034048
1596998219724034048


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor


“ Discussion of the Holodomor became possible as part of the glasnost policy of openness. In Ukraine, the first official use of famine was a December 1987 speech by Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, on the occasion of the republic's 70th anniversary.[37] Another early public usage in the Soviet Union was in a February 1988 speech by Oleksiy Musiyenko, Deputy Secretary for ideological matters of the party organisation of the Kyiv branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in Ukraine.[38][39]

The term holodomor may have first appeared in print in the Soviet Union on 18 July 1988, when Musiyenko's article on the topic was published.[40] Holodomor is now an entry in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language, published in 2004, described as "artificial hunger, organised on a vast scale by a criminal regime against a country's population."[41]

According to Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, and Kai Struve, the Holodomor has been described as a “Ukrainian Holocaust". They assert that since the 1990s the term Holodomor has been widely adopted by anti-communists in order to draw parallels to the Holocaust. However this term has been criticized by some academics, as the Holocaust was a heavily documented, coordinated effort by Nazi Germany and its collaborators to eliminate certain ethnic groups such as Jews, Slavs, and Romani, ultimately killing 11 million people.[42] By contrast, the Holodomor does not have definitive documentation that Stalin directly ordered the mass murder of Ukrainians.[43] Barkan et al. state that the term Holodomor was "introduced and popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in North America before Ukraine became independent" and that the term 'Holocaust' in reference to the famine "is not explained at all."[

Cannibalism
Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor:[53][54]

Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.[55]
The Soviet regime printed posters declaring: "To eat your own children is a barbarian act."[56]: 225  More than 2,500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.[57] ”

[Mashika]

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor (death by hunger) genocide, when millions of Ukrainians starved to death in 1932/3 in a man-made famine orchestrated by Stalin.

49976

I wish you were more educated and had at least some kind of critical thinking so that we could have a smart discussion

This is as low as a kid trying to formulate thoughts on their first debate class in grade 3

First of all, you don't have any knowledge of the USSR and how it worked. And the Ukrainians did a lot of the harm themselves, just as they did form part of the holocaust by killing 50+ thousand polish-jews. Have you condemned the Ukrainians for the mass killing of Jews in ww2? Or are you also pro-nazi and will travel to Ukraine to present respects to the monument to Stephan Bandera?

I think you are pro-nazi because you don't want to criticize the Ukrainians for their crimes against humanity or want to learn the truth. See how easy and dumb it is to blame/accuse someone and create a 'with us or with them' scenario, so either you are a Bandera nazi supporter or are anti-nazi (pro-russian)

Second, this very uncreative and badly formulated attempt at smear Russia for what Stalin supposedly did falls flat in your ignorance of how the Soviet Union worked, let me explain:

- The Soviet Premiere had to be a citizen of the Soviet Union, born inside one of the multiple states that conformed the Union
- Stalin was a citizen of the Soviet Union
- You claim or suggest (poorly) that Russia is at fault for what Stalin ordered, because he was the Premier of the Soviet Union
- But Stalin was born in Georgia..... Not in Russia
- Stalin was never a Russian citizen, he was Georgian
- Therefore, under your poorly formulated logic, You should be blaming Georgia state right now, for all crimes Stalin committed?

Gosh, i wish you at least would have tried to learn a bit of real history to avoid making an embarrassment of yourself this way. Please stop embarrassing yourself



Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian-born revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.


Stalin also killed thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of Russians, because he was mad and he wasn't Russian, he did not care. Stalin is not well accepted in Russia these days, most people at the top level of the Russian government would rather make him disappear from history if they could. But they can't because it is undeniable what he did and that he existed. Unlike some western countries, we don't rewrite history at will to make us look better than we actually are, let's try to be more honest and accept mistakes of the past instead of hiding them under the carpet

So, to summarize:

Staling was a Georgian citizen, who was the Premier of the Soviet union and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians both in Ukraine and Russia, he was related to Russia as much as he was related to Ukraine or any other state of the Union

The Soviet Union was formed of several states, among those, there were two main states: Russia and Ukraine. Stalin was no citizen of any of those states and he had no special favoritism to any of them, he would kill Russians and Ukrainians just the same, without any discrimination

But i won't blame you, at least not directly, you just repeat western hate and divisive narratives, there's no original thought there and it's mostly just that, your mind seems to be full of propaganda and you believed the lies because you don't have any other framework of true or reference that you can use to filter out the BS you have been brainwashed with most of your life. So it is your government's and education system's fault in the very end

It is my opinion and practice that if you want to participate in a discussion or argument, or debate, you must first get some solid knowledge about the subject so that you don't just go and repeat generic, tired and baseless statements based on propaganda or false/half truths.

Come up with enough understanding so that you can formulate logical and reasonable ideas instead of just repeating brain dead and already proven wrong statements. Otherwise what's the point? You make yourself look bad and no one takes you seriously because they know more and can clearly see you came badly prepared for the debate

Now i''m bothered, why do i have to explain these things? This is something logical that any high school student should know, this is like debate 101 class or even a class from middle school. What i bother that i have to explain the basics like this. I think I'll go take a nap

~

Thanks for attending my history and critical thinking lesson

You may go away now

[Tintin]

This, from 1999. Jamie Shea was at the time the NATO spokesperson.....

https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/%27Shea_NATO_spokesperson_presser_1999.png

[loungelizard]

ET]


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor


Perpetrators of genocide have always tried to minimise, redefine or deny their actions in an attempt to escape responsibility.

I offer this as a balance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_denial

"Officially, the Soviet Union denied the famine and suppressed information about it from its very beginning until the 1980s."

"Mention of the famine was criminalized, punishable with a five-year term in the Gulag labor camps. Blaming the authorities was punishable by death."

"The true number of dead was concealed."

"The January 1937 census, the first in 11 years, was intended to reflect the achievements of Stalin's rule. Those collecting the data, senior statisticians with decades of experience, were arrested and executed, including three successive heads of the Soviet Central Statistical Administration. The census data itself was locked away for half a century in the Russian State Archive of the Economy."


For those who want to dig deeper into this complex issue, there are plenty of references, archives and sources on this page.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/NadiaInBC/status/1597004813979750400?s=20&t=ufIE8mzJuhjNJdSLUqUWjQ

https://kopamaros.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/the-holodomor-story/

The Holodomor Story
Posted on January 1, 2019
In the period of 1932–1933 a disastrous famine occurred throughout the Soviet Union, affecting areas including but not limited to Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Lower Volga and the North Caucasus. It has been used to claim that a genocide took place against Ukrainians through deliberate ‘terror–famine’ by the Soviet government. To try to present the famine as another Holocaust it has been branded with the similar name ‘Holodomor’ (meaning famine–plague) in recent times.

Famines had been a frequent occurrence in the Russian Empire and pre-collectivization Soviet Union and this was the last famine in Russian history (with the exception of World War 2 and 1946-1947 famine following its destruction). During the 1000 years preceding 1917 Russia experienced at least 433 years of famine. Far back in 1092 a famine killed 15 percent of Kiev’s population. Famines struck in years including 1872, 1891, 1905, and 1911. Anti-communists like to pretend that famine started with collectivisation and act like there was no famine during the NEP ignoring those of 1924, 1927 and 1928. In fact, the opposite is true since the long cycle of famines was ended following collectivisation.

It is important to understand the background and preceding years. After the revolution and First World War, the new revolutionary Soviet states of the former-Russian Empire were now under attack in a civil war and foreign invasion. Although the Red Army was able to eventually defeat these forces, this period brought immense destruction to the newly created Soviet Union. In 1921 the New Economic Policy was introduced to allow a steady recovery from the war and destruction suffered since 1914. The policy was in basic terms state-capitalism, a form of capitalism.

In this period the country suffered multiple famines, such as the 1921 Volga famine, which was caused by drought–induced crop failures as well as massive infestations of locusts, rodents, and plant diseases. This famine was witnessed by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen who headed a relief commission and took many photos of famine victims. In response to the reluctance of the European governments to help a revolutionary Russia during a famine Nansen is quoted saying “If the Governments of Europe agreed to assist them on their demand in October 1921, all those starving would have been saved.” In early 1924 the country was struck by another severe drought and, despite larger harvests in 1925 and 1926, Stalin admitted in 1927 that the country had not fully recovered from the 1924 famine. In July 1925 when the Dneprostroi project was under consideration, Stalin opposed it and stressed the need to expand agricultural machinery factories.

The situation in the countryside at the time of the NEP saw a rise in dominance of kulaks (meaning ‘tight-fisted’; basically the rural land-owners), who took advantage of the harsh situation of poor peasants and middle peasants to enrich themselves.

The kulak is a very interesting figure in rural Russia … There is no doubt that the methods used by this usurer and oppressor in the peasant’s blouse have not been of the cleanest … In Russian literature he has been dubbed the “village eater,” and has been clothed with all sorts of diabolical qualities.

― Wolf von Schierband “Russia, her Strength and her Weakness” 1904

The kulaks owned lots of land, and hired poor peasants, who owned little or no land, to work on their land for them. The kulaks, who accumulated more money thanks to their wealth, could buy the farming equipment and rent it out to the poor peasants who had none; further enriching themselves and making the peasants dependent on them. On top of this Kulaks would be able to make money through speculation and taking advantage of famine by hoarding grain to inflate prices and selling it at much higher prices to the hungry and desperate people, putting cities into a desperate situation.

In 1927, after the spontaneous evolution of the free market, 7 per cent of peasants, i.e. 2,700,000 peasants, were once again without land. Each year, one quarter of a million poor lost their land. Furthermore, the landless men were no longer accepted in the traditional village commune. In 1927, there were still 27 million peasants who had neither horse nor cart. These poor peasants formed 35 per cent of the peasant population.

The great majority were formed of middle peasants: 51 to 53 per cent. But they still worked with their primitive instruments. In 1929, 60 per cent of families in the Ukraine had no form of machinery; 71 per cent of the families in the North Caucasus, 87.5 per cent in the Lower Volga and 92.5 per cent in the Central Black-Earth Region were in the same situation. These were the grain-producing regions.

In the whole of the Soviet Union, between 5 and 7 per cent of peasants succeeded in enriching themselves: these were the kulaks. [8]

In 1927 another drought struck the Volga, Ukraine, and other regions which reduced grain production below subsistence in many regions. In 1927-1929 the country was experiencing another famine. During this famine the Soviet government of Ukraine established a famine relief commission called Uriadkom distributing aid including food and farm equipment. Ukraine recieved more aid than was sent to other parts of the USSR.

According to a report by the Uriadkom on 13 August 1928, 85.2 percent of the winter crops failed in the steppe regions of Ukraine in winter and spring 1928. These regions had planted half of their sown area in winter crops and usually had high and stable harvests. Peasants in the region reseeded the failed areas with spring crops, but this prolonged the spring sowing in the steppe almost a month, and the area was undersown because poor harvests in the region in 1927 left the peasants with insufficient seed. Both of these factors augured a reduced yield. Spring in 1928 was late, cold and dry; dust storms blew the soil away and in many cases made more reseedings necessary. In June and July, continued drought and heat harmed late-sown spring crops, and rains in August did not improve the situation.

[Mark B. Tauger “Grain Crisis or Famine?”]


This vulnerability to natural disaster when compared to the west was seen as a sign of agricultural backwardness by Soviet leaders. The famine was an important part of the argument that agriculture had to be changed.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us…

– Joseph Stalin, 1931 [12]

The Soviet Union desperately needed modern machinery and industrial equipment to recover from the destruction of the years of war since 1914 and to modernise and move their country forward.

Where is the way out? The way out is in the passing of small disintegrated peasant farms into large-scaled amalgamated farms, on the basis of communal tillage of the soil; in passing to collective tillage of the soil on the basis of the new higher technique. The way out is to amalgamate the petty and tiny peasant farms gradually but steadily, not by means of pressure but by example and conviction, into large-scale undertakings on the basis of communal, fraternal collective tillage of the soil, applying scientific methods for the intensification of agriculture.

[Fifteenth Congress of the Party, December 1927]

Large collective farms and modern machinery were the way forward and early experiments proved successful. A lot of inspiration came from large farms in the USA. Not to forget also is that fact that Russia had had a tradition of communal agriculture in the form of the Obshchina.

The initial step in that policy was a plan to establish several dozen sovkhozy (large mechanized state farms) in the eastern regions of the USSR, implemented in 1928 on Stalin’s initiative but with much discussion by specialists and the Central Committee. These farms were set up on non-peasant land in the eastern regions of the USSR (Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Volga basin and other regions had vast areas of remote unpopulated arid lands), and thus these sovkhozy were not established to exploit the peasants. These sovkhozy were to produce 1.5 million tons of marketable grain. The plan, modelled explicitly on Thomas Campbell’s totally mechanized farm of more than 60,000 acres in Montana, was implemented rapidly during 1928-29; by 1930, according to the confidential report by the agency in charge of these farms, these sovkhozy produced double the planned target amount of grain.

[Mark B. Tauger “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–39”]

The first Five–Year Plan began in October 1928 and the collectivization movement grew rapidly in the following years.

In 1931 severe drought and hot winds (sukhovei) affected regions across the USSR including the southern Urals, Western Siberia, Ukraine, Bashkiria and the Volga region. In the main spring-grain precipitation period, precipitation in the southern Urals and Western Siberia was one-fourth of the amount that agronomists there considered necessary for plant growth.

A Canadian agricultural specialist Andrew Cairns who made extensive travels through the USSR in 1932 wrote reports providing stark evidence of the effects of the 1931 drought on agricultural production. 38 of the 124 districts in the West Siberian Krai had total crop failures in 1931 according to the chief agricultural official of the krai. Sovkhozy near Omsk, that Cairns visited, had average grain yields of 1.8 and 2.5 centners per hectare in 1931, as opposed to 9.3 and 13 centners in 1930. According to officials, the Middle Volga Krai had lost 3-3.5 million tons of grain to drought. In Ukraine grain harvests also were reduced by drought. The 1931 drought created famine conditions in the USSR and many horses, the chief draught animals, were lost or severely weakened.

In 1932, drought also reduced harvests in some areas, even if the drought did not approach the severity of 1931. In August 1932, Cairns was told by the Soviet Union’s leading specialist on arid agriculture N.M. Tulaikov that drought and hot winds had ruined most of the crops on the left bank of the regions of the Middle and Lower Volga. Cairns himself saw large fields stunted and damaged by hot winds and drought south of Moscow. German agricultural attaché, Otto Schiller was told in August by the head of the agricultural of the Soviet statistical agency that drought and hot winds had reduced crops significantly in Ukraine, along the Volga, and in Siberia.

However, despite the existence of drought in 1932, drought in 1932 was not as severe or widespread as in 1931, and 1932 is not seen as a year of drought. Both Soviet officials at the time and historians overlook other environmental factors, aside from drought, affecting famine. Russian agriculture, which the government was at the time working to modernise, was far behind that of advanced countries in western Europe and was highly vulnerable to weather, pests, and diseases.

A sudden warm spell in January 1932 caused fall-sown crop to start growing, after which winter temperatures returned and killed a portion of the crop. At least 12 percent of the fall-sown crop in Ukraine was destroyed by this winterkill.

Despite regional droughts, 1932 was overall a warm and humid year. Heavy rains damaged crops and reduced yields in several regions, particularly on the right bank of the Volga, in the North Caucus, and in Ukraine. Cairns noted that in June drownings in basement apartments in Kiev were caused by heavy rains. Internal security police reported flooding in Uzbekistan cotton fields in August and a hurricane in the central industrial region in September. Slower sowing in 1932 was caused by “the large quantity of precipitation which interfered with work” according to a report prepared by the Ukrainian Agriculture Commissariat on 20 June 1932 on agricultural conditions and work in spring which reported heavy rainfall which was double or triple the normal amount, in April-early June, in many regions.

It may seem that more rainfall benefits crops, but British geographer David Grigg noted that in Europe generally, grain yields tend to be inversely related to rainfall during the growing season, in particular because it encourages the spread of crop diseases. A 1978 CIA report found rust and smut to be the main factors reducing grain quality and yield in the Soviet Union. In 1932 Soviet crops suffered from an extraordinarily severe combination of infestations of crop diseases and pests, indicated by Soviet agronomic literature as well as published and archived sources.

Several varieties of rust, a category of fungi that infests grains and many other plants, greatly harmed the crops in 1932. Rust causes plant cells to age prematurely, reduces the plants capacity to photosynthesize, and diverts increasing amounts of carbohydrates and other nutrients for the infestations own growth and reproduction. Rust can in some cases kill the plant but more ordinarily the rusted grain will appear to continue to grow normally but the harvest will consist of smaller or fewer grains. This means that a field could appear promising but then produce and extremely low yield because of the infestation. Rust is among the most difficult of plant diseases to combat and because of its destructive potential the US military even produced and stockpiled rust spores as a biological weapon in the 1950s and 1960s. Widespread outbreaks of rust in 1932 were documented by numerous publications. In the North Caucasus, Stem rust of wheat caused a loss of 80-90 percent of crop in regions near rivers in 1932 and 1933, according to a Soviet agronomic guidebook. Cairns and Schiller also observed widespread rust infestations and Soviet agronomists confirmed these impressions in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Byelorussia, the Central Black Earth Oblast, and the Volga region. However identifying rust required specialized knowledge and training so it appeared that the 1932 harvest would be better than it was. Famine survivors in the Volga region, interviewed by Russian historian Viktor Kondrashin, remembered how in the 1932 harvest the ears were somehow “empty.” Investigations at the time found that brown rust of wheat in destroyed 70 percent of the harvest in some regions of Ukraine and the North Caucasus and reduced the weight of grain and the number of seeds in ears.

Large outbreaks of smut also affected Soviet agriculture in 1932 and caused substantial losses of approximately 9 million tons. The Commissariat of Agriculture issued an emergency decree, in August 1932, on measures to deal with ergot, another plant disease.

Pests were another problem in 1932. The warm and humid weather led to severe insect infestations including locusts, field moths, and others. In one district of Ukraine it was reported that beet weevils had destroyed almost 500 hectares of beets in 3 hours. OGPU reports also claimed to have found a wrecking organization that operated in pest control organizations.

The loss of many horses was another great detriment to agriculture. Many horses had been lost from conditions in 1931 because desperate peasants would eat the horses fodder. But also many horses were slaughtered by Kulaks in protest of collectivization.

The threat of Kulak sabotage was a serious problem at the time. Frederick Schuman, who traveled in Ukraine at the time, later published in 1957 while a Professor at Williams College a book in which he spoke about the famine:

Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941.

… Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain.

Sabotage by opponents of the government was a serious issue. Ukrainian nationalists employed the use of sabotage against agriculture. Isaac Mazepa, who was head of Petliura’s anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian state in 1919–1920, openly gloats about the damaged inflicted in Soviet Ukraine by sabotage:

At first there were disturbances in the kolkhosi [collective farms] or else the Communist officials and their agents were killed, but later a system of passive resistance was favored which aimed at the systematic frustration of the Bolsheviks’ plans for the sowing and gathering of the harvest …. The catastrophe of 1932 was the hardest blow that Soviet Ukraine had to face since the famine of 1921–1922. The autumn and spring sowing campaigns both failed. Whole tracts were left unsown, in addition when the crop was being gathered … in many areas, especially in the south, 20, 40 and even 50 per cent was left in the fields, and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing.

– Isaac Mazepa, Slavonic Review Vol. 12, 1934

The harvest of 1932 was a much worse harvest than was expected and the environmental causes, such as rust, were not fully appreciated by the leadership and therefore they tended to suspect factors like mismanagement and sabotage.

The degree of overestimation can be approximated by extrapolating from the archival data for kolkhozy. Official figures for Soviet and Ukrainian kolkhoz yields (6.8 centners and 8.0 centners) are close to average yields for all sectors (7.0 centners and 8.1 centners). The archival figures for kolkhoz yields (6.4 centners and 5 centners) can be reasonably assumed to be close to the genuine yields for all sectors and, therefore, kolkhoz production data in the annual reports can serve as a basis for estimating total grain production in 1932. Thus, for Ukraine, the official sown area (18.1 million hectares) reduced by the share of sown area actually harvested (approximately 5 centners) gives a total harvest of 8.5 million tons, or a little less than 60 percent of the official 14.6 million tons. This result appears to support Holubnychy’s statement that 40 percent of the crop was lost in 1932. A similar calculation of the sown area in the Soviet Union (99.7 million hectares), reduced by 7 percent (based on the TsUNKhU data) to 92.72 and multiplied by the NKZ average yield of 5.4 centners, gives a total Soviet harvest of 50.06 million tons, almost 30 percent below the official figure of 69.87—within the range that Schiller predicted.

If the kolkhozy that did not complete annual reports had lower harvests than those that did and if Sovkhoz and edinolichnik harvests were as low as their 1932 procurements implied the harvest may have been well below 50 million tons.

[Mark B. Tauger “The 1932 Harvest”]


Following this bad harvest the country was struck by famine affecting people across the Soviet Union including Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Central Blackearth oblast, the Volga basin, portions of the Urals and Kazakhstan. This was a disaster of course first and foremost for the victims of famine but also for the country and regime which had its industrialisation affected and the “power-hungry” leadership of country had its opposition heightened. This was at a time when Japan had just invaded Manchuria and was a threat to the country. The government was now faced with the task of making sure that food was distributed to as many people as possible, including the people in towns and cities, while working towards a good harvest in 1933.

The country also suffered epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery which coincided with the famine and were responsible for many deaths.

The government introduced political departments, Politotdely, which played a crucial role to overcome the famine and help peasants produce a crop. The politotdely helped organize the sovkhozy and machine tractor stations and purged officials for malfeasance, replacing them by promoting thousands of peasants.

They were supported with the largest allocations of food and seed aid in Soviet history of 5.67 million tons and special sowing commissions set up in crucial regions like Ukraine, the Urals, the Volga and elsewhere to manage regional-level aspects of organization and supplies to farms.

[Mark B. Tauger “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–39”]

A report from the Central Blackearth oblast, one of the regions hit by famine, shows the work of the politotdely in the kolkhozy. With politotdely help, kolkhozy were able to make great improvements. They sowed 3.4 million hectares instead of 2.85 million hectares that they had in 1932, and 15 finished 15 days earlier.

They used fertilizer for the first time and sorted seed, they treated more seed against plant diseases, they weeded crops sometimes two and three times, and they took measures against insects. They completed harvesting grain crops in 65 days, versus 70 in 1932, and threshing in December 1933, a process that in 1932 had lasted the region into March 1933. They completed grain procurements in November 1933 (those of 1932 had lasted like threshing into spring 1933), paid off all of their seed loans, formed the necessary internal funds in kolkhozy and still managed to distribute to kolkhozniki much more in labour-day payments than the previous year, thereby ending the famine in the region.

[Mark B. Tauger “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–39”]


The Central Committee allocated more than half a million tons of seed loans to Ukraine and the North Caucasus in one February decree. By April 1933, aid to Ukraine exceeded 560,000 tons.

It is said by proponents of ‘holodomor’ that the state came to take grain from peasants to starve them. In reality grain procurements were standard in order to take a portion of grain to feed the cities.


During a shortage the hoarding of grain becomes a problem. Some peasants would hide grain to either sell at higher inflated prices, to have more food for themselves, or to receive more aid from the government. Many times this hoarded grain had been stolen from collective farms often by individuals who worked on them. It was necessary for the state therefore to find and seize hoarded grain to make sure that it was distributed to as many people as possible and to make sure aid was distributed to those that needed it most. This was not a unique situation and similar actions were taken in Tsarist times:

Governments worked hard to ensure that only the neediest peasants received aid, including by searching peasants’ homes―even in the 1891 famine―to expose hidden hoards that would disqualify them from aid.

[Mark B. Tauger “Famine in Russian History”]

Grain procurements targets were reduced multiple times. In Ukraine procurement quotas were reduced by 1.3 million tons in May 1932; 656,000 tons in July 1932; 1.15 million tons in October 1932; and 459,000 tons in January 1933 in response to appeals. In other regions there were requests to reduce procurements that were denied while Ukraine’s were granted. A big problem with the idea that the famine of 1932/33 was simply caused by the government taking grain is that grain procurements were actually less in 1932 than other years in the 1930s. In the first half of 1933, 5 million tons of grain procurements were returned to villages in the USSR.

Russia had been an agrarian country which relied on selling raw materials and agricultural produce. Exports of grain were an important part of funding the modernisation of agriculture and industrialisation which would end that situation. Western countries had placed embargos and restricted the Soviet’s alternative exports such as gold, meanwhile grain prices fell on world markets. Contracts for exports were signed in advance. The Soviets curtailed the exports of grain sharply when the crisis had become evident. The exports were reduced by over 66% from 5.2 million the previous year to 1.73 million in 1932, they were further reduced the following year. In the first half of 1933 aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported from the whole Soviet Union.

Despite all the damage caused, the country was able to overcome the famine and in 1933 they produced a much better harvest. Famines which had long plagued the territories of the Russian Empire would become (with the exception of those following the Nazi invasion) a thing of the past.

The propaganda campaign in the 1930s over famine in Ukraine was largely the work of Nazi Germany and fascist sympathisers. One important figure was the multi-millionaire American press magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst owned the biggest media conglomerate in the world and was known for the use of ‘yellow journalism’ (sensationalist journalism which often uses faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience etc.; the ‘fake news’ of the time). Hearst, known to millions as “America’s No. 1 Fascist” in the 1930s, employed Benito Mussolini in the thirties and the Hearst press became the Italian dictator’s chief source of income, paying him ten times the amount he received in salary from being the head of the Italian state. In the late summer of 1934, Hearst traveled to Nazi Germany and met with Ernst Hanfstaengl, press officer for the Reich and intimate adviser of Hitler. He then was later informed by four stormtroopers that a plane was waiting to take him to meet Hitler, who he met with for a discussion. Numerous agreements were reportedly reached, such as the agreement that Germany would buy its foreign news through Hearst’s International News Service

In October 1934, a man by the name of Thomas Walker entered the Soviet Union. After spending less than a week in Moscow, he spent the rest of his thirteen-day journey in transit to the Manchurian border, left and did not return. Four months later, in February 1935, a series of articles began appearing in the Hearst press by Thomas Walker, who is described as a “noted journalist, traveller and student of Russian affairs who has spent several years touring the Union of Soviet Russia”. Under such titles as “Six Million Perish In Soviet Famine” it is claimed that Walker “entered Russia last spring” (spring of 1934) and smuggled in a camera under dangerous and adverse circumstances to photograph the pictures accompanying the stories of a mammoth famine in Ukraine. This means, according to the version printed in the Hearst press, the Hearst press kept the story for 10 months before printing them in 1935 and that there was a famine during the spring of 1934. However the famine occurred in 1932 and the harvest of 1933, in contrast to that of 1932, was a great harvest. Furthermore, Thomas Walker did not enter the Soviet Union in the spring of 1934 but in October after receiving a transit visa in London on the 29th of September. He stayed in Moscow for five days before boarding a trans-Siberian train to the Soviet-Manchurian border which did not pass within several hundred miles of the black soil and Ukrainian districts which he later claimed to have saw and photographed.

The photographs, which Walker could not have taken, were inconsistent and many were clearly taken in different seasons. Many of the photos were taken a decade earlier, during the Volga famine, by Fridtjof Nansen. Some photos were identified as being from the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Empire, with one showing an Austrian cavalry soldier standing beside a dead horse during World War One. Similar faked photographs were also appearing in Nazi papers, including Voelkischer Beobachter and Der Sturmer, in Germany. These false images are still used to show the “holodomor” to this day.

Not only were the photographs and the trip to Ukraine a falsification but so was the identity of Thomas Walker. Walker was deported from England and arrested in the United States a few months after the Hearst series. The man turned out to be escaped convict Robert Green, who escaped from Colorado State Prison after serving two years out of his eight-years term for forgery. Robert Green had a trail of crime through the US and four European countries. Just a few of his crimes included forgery, “marriage-swindle” and violation of the Mann-White Slave Act (an Act against human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution). Green was indicted by a Federal grand jury on a charge of passport fraud and plead guilty. During the trial, a reporter noted, Green (Thomas Walker) “admitted that the ‘famine’ pictures published with his series in the Hearst newspapers were fakes and they were not taken in Ukraine as advertised.”

The propaganda campaign continued throughout the 1930s with the same false images being used in multiple publications, especially in Germany.

In Ukraine, the Ukrainian language was still being promoted. In Ukraine in 1934, over 55 million books were published in Ukrainian, an increase from 27 million in 1928. The number of books increased to over 65.3 million in 1937, almost 90 percent of all books published; only 5.8 million were published in Russian.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us…

– Joseph Stalin, 1931

In 1941 Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union. They were joined by Ukrainian nationalist collaborators the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; paramilitary wing: Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA).

The forces of Germans and Ukrainian nationalists were not met with the reception you would expect from a people who were targeted for genocide by the previous government. The support for the OUN was limited to the region of west Ukraine (Polish Galicia), which was under the control of Poland, not the Soviet Union, before it was unified with Ukraine in 1939. A Ukrainian priest, Father Ohienko, dispatched to Kiev by the Nazis, in a letter during the war wrote:

I have been here for several months but I can find no spiritual peace. You can’t imagine how Bolshevism has changed everything … People are malicious and consider us enemies… [1]

Many Ukrainians joined the partisans to fight the Nazi occupation and millions fought in the Red Army.

Today in Ukraine attempts are made to spread myths about the partisan movement in the occupied territories of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic allegedly being a fiction. In reality, this, of course, isn’t so. Perhaps its scale were a little exaggerated, but we can speak with confidence about 260,000 of its participants. This is a huge force. For comparison, UPA reached no more than 40,000 people. And if to remember that, besides 260,000 Soviet partisans, another 7 million more Ukrainians fought as a part of the Red Army, nobody should doubt who in reality the people of Ukraine supported back then. [11]


It was quickly noticeable that the propaganda and reality about the Soviet Union did not match up. As historian Heinz Hohne states:

Two sobering years of bloody war in Russia provided cruel proof of the falsity of the tale about sub-humans. As early as August 1942 in its “Reports from the Reich” the SD noted that the feeling was growing among the German people that “we have been victims of delusion. The main and startling impression is of the vast mass of Soviet weapons, their technical quality, and the gigantic Soviet effort of industrialization ― all in sharp contrast to the previous picture of the Soviet Union. People are asking themselves how Bolshevism has managed to produce all this.” [1]

Ukrainian nationalist Lev Shankivsky quotes the report of a Galacian “culture worker”:

One can come across an ordinary village girl … during our talk we discover that the girl is well-versed in mathematics, physics, chemistry … had finished secondary school and worked as a tractor driver … In other examples one could meet a former university, medical institute or teachers’ college student among the village girls. Such cases are frequent … People are well informed. One could discuss any political or social theme with the peasants … Our fellows fared badly in discussions on professional matters or knowledge of state structure …

― Lev Shankivsky Pokhidni hrupy OUN (OUN Marching Groups) 1958 [1]

After the defeat of the Nazi invaders, many of their Ukrainian collaborators flooded into western countries particularly Canada and the USA. These former collaborators would be useful in the Cold War. They would now resurrect the famine-genocide campaign.

An important figure in this cold war propaganda campaign was Robert Conquest. Conquest was formerly employed by the British Secret Service’s disinformation project, the Information Research Department. Robert Conquest published one of the most popular books on the famine-genocide, “Harvest of Sorrow.” The book uses the same discredited sources of Ukrainian nationalists, the Hearst press, and Nazi Germany. 13 references are made to a fictional novel written by Vasily Grossman. Conquest relies heavily on hearsay, rumour and anecdotes. Conquest is quoted as saying:

on political matters basically the best, though not infallible source is rumour [1]



Historians like J. Arch Getty criticised Conquest and his book, and observed that for no other period or subject, except the study of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, have “historians been so eager to write and accept history-by-anecdote.” Conquest later backed off his initial claim that the famine was deliberate, explaining in 2003 that he does not hold the view that Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine.

The holodomor would still be pushed as propaganda against the Soviet Union and many books etc. would be published with the same falsifications. It would be used as a weapon against not only the Soviet Union and communism but also against Russia because of the west’s desire to expand its influence over Ukraine.

It is quite simple to see that the famine that occurred was not deliberate or manufactured by Soviet leaders. The famine went completely against the interests of the Soviet Union, just as the Ukrainian nationalist said, it was a hard blow against the country. A famine would put the power of the countries leaders at risk, greatly damage the progress of industrialisation, create a propaganda story in foreign countries attacking the leaders and their policies, and weaken the country while under threat of foreign invasion. All of those things occured while the country was trying to industrialize, at the same time the country had new threats from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The famine clearly was not directed against Ukraine because many other areas also suffered famine and aid was given to Ukraine. The evidence shows that it was primarily environmental factors including draughts, plant disease, and pests, which caused crop failures and a bad harvest. The country was able to overcome famine with a much better harvest in 1933. The long cycle of famines were made a thing of the past following industrialisation and collectivization.

Sources

Fraud, Famine and Fascism by Douglas Tottle
Stalin, Soviet Agriculture and Collectivization by Mark Tauger
Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-33 by Mark Tauger
The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933 by Mark Tauger
Grain Crisis or Famine by Mark Tauger
Famine in Russian History by Mark Tauger
Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930–39 by Mark Tauger
Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens
Blood Lies by Grover Furr
Who Organised the Famine in the USSR in 1932-1933? by Nikolay Starikov
«Настоящий герой Украины»: как история жизни Сидора Ковпака помогает развеять мифы националистов by Aleksandr Kolpakidi [translation]
The Tasks of Business Executives (Speech Delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Managers of Socialist Industry, February 4,1931) by Joseph Stalin
Review of Anne Applebaum’s “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” by Mark Tauger

[loungelizard]

Stalin is not well accepted in Russia these days,

Your claim contradicts the research by the Levada Centre in 2019.

It shows that 51% of Russians admire and have affection for Stalin, and 70% see his role in history as mostly positive.

https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/04/19/dynamic-of-stalin-s-perception/


I think you are pro-nazi

:ROFL::ROFL: :ROFL::ROFL: Well, that's the first time anyone has called me that!


If I’m as stupid/poorly educated/dumb/juvenile/ignorant/lazy/dishonest/brainwashed/naive/laughable/ as you say I am (and if I’m that thick, how would I even know?),
it’s probably best to avoid responding to me as to do so would be a waste of time and energy :bigsmile:



You may go away now
Trying to silence dissent is not healthy, and it’s not what this forum is about.

[Snoweagle]

You mean the Levada Centre that was banned in Russia back along for being subversive to the state and classed as an enemy of the state?

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/node/9497_en

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/DeuNachrichten/status/1597288199663284224

1597288199663284224

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597292954464686082

1597292954464686082

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597268635130933248

1597268635130933248


https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597275994909732865

1597275994909732865

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/Nikolai11449196/status/1597306195215536128

1597306195215536128

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597290515669880834

1597290515669880834

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597307754439643136

1597307754439643136

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597256188500258816

1597256188500258816

[Ravenlocke]

:facepalm:

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597308436580294657

1597308436580294657

¤=[Post Update]=¤

[url]https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597297318721568768

1597297318721568768

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/TheHumanFund5/status/1597313225439469569

1597313225439469569

https://twitter.com/TheHumanFund5/status/1597244573822353408

1597244573822353408


https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1597217086740496386

1597217086740496386



https://twitter.com/TheHumanFund5/status/1597002456189530114

1597002456189530114

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1597101477201264640

1597101477201264640

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/1597300585271021568

1597300585271021568


https://sputniknews.com/20221128/ukrainian-commander-blabs-about-kievs-plans-to-try-to-seize-crimea-in-2023-1104798639.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Ukrainian Commander Blabs About Kiev’s Plans to Try to Seize Crimea in 2023

In a snap referendum held in the spring of 2014, shortly after a US-backed coup in Kiev, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly for their peninsula’s return to Russia, with the vote taking place just over 60 years after the region’s 1954 transfer from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet republic by Nikita Khrushchev.


A commander claiming to be “close to the planning process” of Ukrainian military operations has told UK media that Kiev has plans to attack Crimea in 2023.
“If we telegraphed our plans on social media and on TV, we’d achieve nothing,” Lieut. Gen (ret) Mikhail Zabrodsky, the Ukrainian Airmobile Forces commander tasked with trying to snuff out pro-independence militias in Donbass in 2014, said.
The officer, who had a criminal case opened against him in 2017 by Russia’s Investigative Committee for suspected war crimes in Donbass, insisted that a Ukrainian operation to seize Crimea was "not only possible," but "being prepared" for next year.
Authorities in Crimea have stepped up preparations to defend the peninsula in the event of aggression following repeated attacks on the region's infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge, Sevastopol port, and local railway infrastructure. A heightened state of emergency readiness was introduced in Crimea in October, after martial law was established in the neighboring Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, as well as Donbass.


The report comes weeks after revelations in leaked documents that British spies have been training an army of Ukrainian insurgents in the Black Sea port of Odessa to wage “guerrilla warfare” against Russian military and civilian targets in Crimea.
Crimea rejoined Russia in March 2014 amid unrest in Ukraine following the February 2014 coup in Kiev, which saw the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government and its replacement with forces seeking to drag Ukraine into NATO and the European Union. In an emergency snap referendum organized by authorities on the peninsula, over 96 percent of residents voted to join Russia, with a turnout of 83 percent.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1597102905475358723

1597102905475358723

[Ravenlocke]

This was prevented in Melitopol,

In Melitopol, a series of terrorist attacks were prevented, which were being prepared in crowded places by the Ukrainian special services.

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1597239713186054144

1597239713186054144

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/yanvonzeebroeck/status/1597243551082901505

1597243551082901505

https://twitter.com/yanvonzeebroeck/status/1597243712652079107

1597243712652079107

https://twitter.com/yanvonzeebroeck/status/1597243898505879552

1597243898505879552

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1597326505654517760

1597326505654517760

And from Alexander Mercouris,

Crisis for Ukraine in Bakhmut as Russia Captures Settlements, NYT Admits Heavy Ukraine Losses

QzXhhuT2aFU

[Mashika]

Stalin is not well accepted in Russia these days,

Your claim contradicts the research by the Levada Centre in 2019.

It shows that 51% of Russians admire and have affection for Stalin, and 70% see his role in history as mostly positive.

https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/04/19/dynamic-of-stalin-s-perception/


I think you are pro-nazi

:ROFL::ROFL: :ROFL::ROFL: Well, that's the first time anyone has called me that!


If I’m as stupid/poorly educated/dumb/juvenile/ignorant/lazy/dishonest/brainwashed/naive/laughable/ as you say I am (and if I’m that thick, how would I even know?),
it’s probably best to avoid responding to me as to do so would be a waste of time and energy :bigsmile:



You may go away now
Trying to silence dissent is not healthy, and it’s not what this forum is about.

I love this kind of meltdown, please don't stop posting мистер ящерица, it is very entertaining to read



Trying to silence dissent is not healthy, and it’s not what this forum is about.

Context мистер ящерица, Context is important, do you know what context means and how it is used?

You said a lot of incorrect things in your other post, but it's not time yet to reply to those, please keep posting more so i can have more material for fun times

Domo Arigato, мистер ящерица

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Nikolai11449196/status/1597306195215536128
1597306195215536128

https://twitter.com/MoonofA/status/1597263273568542722

1597263273568542722

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/ukraine-war-a-contentious-graveyard-in-poland.html


Ukraine War - A Contentious Graveyard In Poland

An independent Polish news site, Niezaleizny Dziennik Polityczny, has an interesting piece about Polish losses in the war in Ukraine.

I can not confirm the reports veracity but since at least 2014 the site has regularly published several news and opinion pieces per day. It seems to be opposed to the current conservative PiS led government in Poland.

Below is the machine translated Polish text:

A shameful end. American quarters for Polish mercenaries

In early November, the regional media announced plans to create burials similar to American war cemeteries in Olsztyn. The reports sparked a wave of indignation, both among the city's residents and Poles across the country. "This is a necropolis for Poles? We are from a different culture ”this is how indignant users in social media reacted to the strange ideas of the city council.
...
The municipal cemetery in Dywity is the main necropolis in Olsztyn and covers over 35 ha. Today it is loud about it all over Poland, because soon it will look like a war cemetery in the USA. It has to be like in an American movie. A large lawn with identical tombstones on it. Without trees, benches, angels bending over the dead. The tombstones will be the same, they will only differ in color. Their manufacturers provided for only three: black, gray and red-brown.
The main reason for the creation of the American cemetery in Olsztyn was the drastically increased number of burials in the region, mainly soldiers' graves.

This situation has become a real problem for the local government of Olsztyn, where the 16th Pomeranian Mechanized Division is stationed. Almost daily military funerals combined with volleys of honor began to irritate the residents and provoked numerous questions to the city administration and the command of the 16th Division. To avoid additional publicity of the problem, the authorities decided to create a separate "American" cemetery.
...
After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February this year, President Andrzej Duda and Minister of National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak officially called on Poles to join the ranks of mercenaries and fight on the side of the Kiev regime. Among the fighters who went to war were professional soldiers of the 16th Mechanized Division and veterans of the unit living in the region.

During the 10 months of bloody fighting, according to information from publicly available sources, over 1,200 Polish citizens died in Ukraine, including soldiers and veterans of the 16th PDZ. The number of injured and maimed people also amounts to several thousand.


The number of wounded is probably three times the number of dead, though that can vary depending on the war's circumstance. It means that in total some 4800 men of the Polish contingent in Ukraine were wounded or killed. Is that one third of the Polish 'mercenary' forces in Ukraine? Is it more? Or less?

We don't know but I expect that quite a lot of regular soldiers of the 16th Pomeranian Mechanised Division in Olsztyn have been 'asked' to take part in the war. The division consists of one armored and two mechanized brigades plus the usual auxiliaries which makes it a 15,000 men strong unit.

The style of Polish graveyards is typical for a Catholic European country. Trees, individual graves, elaborate tombstones, candles and flowers.

It is understandable that people in Poland do not like the plans for an 'American' style military graveyard:

The authorities prepared "special honors" for them. Uniform quarters are being built in Olsztyn: There are to be two slab sizes. Larger (meter by meter) are graves for officers, smaller ones (60 cm by 60 cm) are quarters for soldiers. It will not be possible to cover the tombstone with cubes, or to sprinkle pebbles and plant flowers. Only grass is to be spread around the graves. Such an inglorious end awaits the mercenaries who died in Ukraine.
There will be 1,700 of such burial places only in Olsztyn. Therefore, many Poles who believed in the false promises of government propaganda will be victims of the provocative international policy of the PiS regime.

With plans for 1,700 dead Polish soldiers, beyond those 1,200 already buried, the Polish government seems to expect its soldiers to take part in an even more intensified and longer war.

[Mashika]

(i)logical thoughts of the western kind

1597245463304237056

[loungelizard]

You mean the Levada Centre that was banned in Russia back along for being subversive to the state and classed as an enemy of the state?

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/node/9497_en

Nope.

I don't know what you're thinking of, but the Levada Centre that I'm referring to is alive and well at Nikolskaya St 17, Moscow and has so far avoided the Kremlin's kiss of death.
https://www.levada.ru/en/about-us/

[Mashika]

Here's another credible report the UN can reference, and they also can say it came from "some sources" as the previous one, or the one about viagra that conveniently all the nazi-lovers have suddenly forgotten once the truth about the 'credible sources' came out

https://news.sky.com/video/first-lady-of-ukraine-on-sexual-assault-in-war-12757441

These people are mentally ill, no doubt about it. But also degenerate hypocrites with triple faced corrupted morals

There's a low and then there these people, little dirty sell outs for anything that can give them some more money and power to kill without any repercussions. This is the bottom at the pit for low, soulless human beings

[Ravenlocke]

You mean the Levada Centre that was banned in Russia back along for being subversive to the state and classed as an enemy of the state?

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/node/9497_en


Nope.

I don't know what you're thinking of, but the Levada Centre that I'm referring to is alive and well at Nikolskaya St 17, Moscow and has so far avoided the Kremlin's kiss of death.
https://www.levada.ru/en/about-us/


To clarify about both links submitted by Snoweagle and Loungelizard,


Actually Snoweagle’s link is in reference to the same Levada Centre that you, Loungelizard referenced in your direct link to their website.

And yes Snoweagle is talking about the same polling organization known as the Levada Centre, which was included “ in the "Foreign Agents Registry" of the Russian Federation” in 2016 as archived in the link Snoweagle provided.

And even in the link you provided if you click on “About Us”,

https://www.levada.ru/en/about-us/

It explains in the History paragraph that in “2016 the Russian Ministry of Justice placed the Levada Center on the register of NGOs performing the functions of foreign agents. The center disagrees with this decision and trys to challenge it in court.”

[pounamuknight]

Expanding avenues of geopolitical research, I recently added Yandex to the toolbox. I should've done it earlier!

Ever wondered if Google doctors their search engine? Check it out

An easy image search experiment from Google vs. Yandex reveals geopolitical narrative manipulation vs. a bunch of pretty pictures

First off, Russia

49992

It's waaaaaay worse for Iran


49993

Finally, USA. Yandex image section first this time

49994

Not saying don't use or use either or. Just be aware. Imperial narrative is definitely in the google of the beholder

[Mashika]

Most hilarious thing is when they are recording their live stream for 'trench log' tiktok videos and a mortar shell hits right next to their hole and they immediately switch to Russian and start yelling all sorts of things, they go from Ukrainian to Russian in like 10 milliseconds
1597340392285880320

You can't pretend all the time, and when stuff like that happens, you just forget about the fake persona and completely go into your original self, the one that speaks Russian as a first language, even if you fake not knowing it correctly like Elensky does when he records his nightly video message :p

[shaberon]

Interesting … it doesn’t seem that you use the same degree of scrutiny when it comes to other sources quoted on this thread.
You’re happy to accept without question the word of Maria Zakharova, the Kremlin’s press officer, or TASS, or some faceless and
nameless bloke on Twitter. Do you have a problem with these NGOs because that both Amnesty and HRW have been accused
of anti-Western and anti-Israel bias? :ROFL:

Neither Amnesty nor HRW are perfect - they’re run by human beings, so of course they are flawed.



They are run by western superiority, and shall we say deceit by HRW assisting Syria's color revolutions for John McCain.

No, actually, "foreign propaganda" does not require the same "scrutiny" as anything from western sources.

You are witnessing the effects of Propaganda, which is the transfer of Reputation, having only limitedly to do with objective facts, which the individual cannot possibly make determinations about them all.

We are in an Empire of Lies. All I am trying to do is remove that capability, whether it means the Chinese NWO "takes over the world", or, you live in a desert, or, colonize an asteroid, or anything else you may be afraid of.


It is not feasible to say "accept without question", nor obviously would I have a problem if I thought Amnesty was effective at removing Zionism. So your guesses are wrong.

If you think Saints are a myth, I am not sure we can reach you at all. The main point is to silence the western echo chamber. It is not so much that NGOs are not paragons of virtue, they are tentacles for Capitalism to undermine humanity. For example, "New World Order" is a private company launched in 1980, behind what would be "Happytalism". That is the whole point of them. Penetration. Take the media, the schools, the industry, etc., in the guise of Democracy.


Against this, appearing in the English language in 1881:


The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the dark nations...

...that curse known as the "struggle for life," which is the real and most prolific parent of most woes and sorrows and of all the crimes? Why has that struggle become the almost universal scheme of the universe?

...each of them, always with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we find that struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian countries, most prevalent in Europe and America.

Those "intellectual classes," reacting upon the ignorant masses which they attract and which look up to them as noble and fit examples to follow, degrade and morally ruin those they ought to protect and guide.

The world in general and Christendom especially, left for two thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a failure.



Let us hold our breath and swallow whole the following observations from veteran German statesman Oskar Lafontaine (https://sputniknews.com/20221128/german-statesman-slams-eu-leaders-spinelessness-demands-natos-dismemberment-closure-of-us-bases-1104796406.html):



“Of course, I also mean the conflict in Ukraine, which began with the Maidan putsch in Kiev in 2014. Since then, the US and its Western vassals have been arming Ukraine and systematically preparing it for confrontation with Russia. Ukraine thus became a de facto, if not de jure, member of NATO. This backstory has been studiously ignored by Western politicians and the mainstream media,” Lafontaine told Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten in an interview published Sunday.

“For more than 100 years, it has been the declared aim of US policy to prevent German business and technology from merging with Russian raw materials at all cost. It is perfectly clear that, if you take this history into account, we are dealing with a US proxy war against Russia which has been prepared for a long time,” Lafontaine said.

“It is unforgivable that the SPD in particular betrayed the legacy of Willy Brandt and his policy of détente, and did not even seriously insist on compliance with the Minsk Agreements,” the politician said, referring to the 2015 peace agreements meant to restore peace to the Donbass.

Lafontaine slammed the German government over its limp-wristed response to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which he characterized as a “declaration of war on Germany.” It was “pathetic and cowardly” of the federal government to try to “sweep incident under the carpet,” despite evidence that “the USA either carried out the attack directly or greenlit it,” the politician said.

“It was a hostile act against the Federal Republic, and not only against us, and once again makes clear that we must free ourselves from American tutelage,” Lafontaine stressed. The politician pressed his country’s leaders to force the removal of all US military bases and nuclear weapons from German soil, and called for the creation of a European security architecture with France, separate from NATO, which he called an “obsolete” alliance that acts as a “tool to enforce the US’s claim to remain the sole power in the world.”

Lafontaine admitted that freeing Germany from Washington’s grip wouldn’t be easy, but stressed that he can’t see “any alternative” to such a radical step. “If we and other European countries continue to remain under US tutelage, they will push us over a cliff to protect their own interests,” he said.


“To use a hackneyed expression: We are experiencing the birth pangs of the transitional phase from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. And the question arises whether we will have a place of our own in this new world order, or be drawn into Washington’s conflicts with Moscow and Beijing as American vassals,” the politician emphasized.

Recalling his decades of experience in politics, Lafontaine lamented in decades past, German leaders, “at least in some conflicts, had German interests in mind, and did not throw them overboard in anticipatory obedience” to Washington. “You need to have a backbone when you are the head of a country. The image of Chancellor Scholz standing like a schoolboy next to President Biden when he announced that nothing would come of Nord Stream 2 was humiliating.”

Ukraine Disaster

Asked whether he believed Washington has achieved its aims in Ukraine, Lafontaine said that the answer was both “yes and no,” with the principle successes being the ruined relations between Russia and the European Union, and the “sidelining” of Berlin and Brussels “as the US’s potential geostrategic and economic rivals, for the time being.”

“They are setting the policies of EU states even more than before the Ukraine conflict (thanks also to compliant politicians in Berlin and Brussels). They can also sell their dirty fracking-derived gas, and the US defense industry is doing great business,” the politician said.

“On the other hand, they have not succeeded in ‘ruining Russia’, as [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock put it…overthrowing [Vladimir] Putin and installing a puppet government in Moscow to get better access to Russian raw materials, as was the case in [Boris] Yeltsin’s time,” Lafontaine said.

“And I have the impression that Washington has now realized that they are biting on granite here. Despite massive arms deliveries to Ukraine and the dispatch of numerous ‘military advisors’, Russia, which is a nuclear power, cannot be defeated militarily. In addition, Western sanctions are proving to be a boomerang: they hurt Western states more than Russia and will cause deindustrialization, unemployment and poverty. Working people in Europe are paying the price for the world power ambitions of a mad elite in Washington and the cowardice of European leaders,” Lafontaine concluded.


Information from the Delta C&C (https://southfront.org/leaked-documents-confirm-nato-plans-to-destroy-kakhovskaya-dam-in-kherson-region/) system shows:


The leaked documents confirmed that the Kakhovskaya dam was among the targets to destroy.

In its turn, the Russian side has all means to divide Ukraine in two parts by several missile strikes on the bridges and dams on the Dnieper River. Such attacks would leave the Ukrainian military without possibility to transfer any military equipment and personnel to the war-torn regions in the East. Such attacks would immediately bring Russia victory in the war in Ukraine and would save lives of Russian servicemen. However, the destruction of Ukrainian dams would also claim lives of hundreds of civilians. That’s why the Russian military does not launch its missiles on such facilities.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has already shown that Russia is fighting to protect people, while the United States and NATO pay no attention to the cost of human lives in the war they have ignited in Ukraine.



Elsewhere, for NATO of Kharkov (https://southfront.org/ukrainian-army-on-kharkov-front-lines/):


The reinforcement was mainly made up of foreign military, including former soldiers of the Bosnian and Albanian armies, as well as soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division “Getica” and the 2nd Mountain Rifle Brigade “Sarmizegetuza” from Romania.

The command of the operation, presumably, was entrusted to Polish officers from Rzeszow, who had previously served in the 21st the Podgalski rifle brigade.


On November 26, the Russian military reported a high-precision missile strike on the temporary deployment of Polish mercenaries near the village of Velikiye Khutora in the Kharkov region. Out of about 1,000 mercenaries, several hundred were killed and seriously injured.

[Bill Ryan]

Col. Douglas Macgregor on the videos of the cold-blooded murder of surrendered Russian soldiers, posted online by the Ukrainians themselves and widely circulated in Russia. (For anyone who wants to take a deep breath and see this with their own eyes, the executions are shown in the opening segment of the video (https://youtube.com/watch?v=k0BhWNWl0Q0) embedded in this post (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia&p=1529533&viewfull=1#post1529533).)

(@loungelizard, wake up.)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llHGDQM63Bo

[Helvetic]

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview for the film, Nazism on Trial, Moscow, November 26, 2022

Source: mid.ru (https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1840230/?lang=en&clear_cache=Y)

ZlZtkY_Nnco

Question: Today, we are being told (primarily by the Ukrainians) that the Russians have “made things up” and there are no Nazis in Ukraine and there have never been any. However, we remember history well. We can see that over the years of independence they have brought up vast numbers of Nazi-aligned organisations that enjoy support at the state level. For instance, the oligarch-sponsored Azov was under the Ukrainian Interior Minister’s wing. How did this become possible in a place that is called a European country? How did it happen? Did external forces influence it in any way?

Sergey Lavrov: Absolutely. Nothing would have happened without external forces, neither glorification of the Nazis, or the transformation of Nazism into the current Ukrainian government’s theory and practice. This has been the case since the creation of the Soviet Union. President Putin repeatedly made clear how Ukraine was formed within the borders in which it found itself at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Back then one of the masterminds of the US approach to international affairs and US dominance Zbigniew Brzezinski said that Russia with Ukraine was a superpower, but without Ukraine it was just a regional player. It was Washington's hands-on policy. In many ways, this position prevented our approach - “that’s the way life goes” - from coming to fruition after December 1991. We wanted to see Ukraine a good neighbour of ours and a reliable friend. Our “family ties” were tight, and so many people’s lives were intertwined. It was something we really wanted. I know what I’m talking about, because back then I was working on the issues that arose in the post-Soviet space.

The Americans sought to achieve the opposite outcome and to make Ukraine “anti-Russia.” The then Ukrainian leaders fell for the smooth tactics of the Americans. Back when no one could see Ukraine becoming an “anti-Russia,” President Leonid Kuchma wrote a book titled “Ukraine is not Russia.” Perhaps, everyone is striving to attain some kind of a romantic goal and to become part of some culture, but even then the subtext of this “tagline” was that there was Europe, and there was Russia.

Talk at the OSCE in the late 1990s about the need to build a common economic and humanitarian space, as well as a security space, spanning the entire Eurasian continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, turned out to be just that, empty talk. Behind these beautiful words, what the West really means was “either you’re with us or you’re with Russia.” Back in 2003, early on during another presidential race in Ukraine, the EU official figures, including Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, publicly stated that the Ukrainian people should decide who they want to be with: Europe or Russia. This particular “either-or” and “whoever is not with us is a Moskali” philosophy that is deeply embedded in European and Western minds has played a major, if not decisive, role in getting us where we are now. The neo-Nazi ideology is made part of Ukrainian life in every possible way.

You mentioned volunteer and nationalist battalions and regiments like Azov. When the coup took place in 2014, Azov was already known as an extremist organisation. In 2015, when deciding on the allocation of aid to Ukraine, including military aid, the US House of Representatives introduced a special clause to remove this formation from the list of recipients. Azov was put on the list of terrorist organisations in a number of European countries and Japan. Now, look at the Japanese outdo everyone. After the special military operation began, they officially apologised to the Azov members for putting Azov on the terrorist lists and assured them that “this will not happen again.”

Under what banners did the putschists come to power in February 2014? Their first demand was to strip the Russian language of its regional status, which it had under Ukrainian law. The hastily cobbled together Verkhovna Rada chose not to rescind this law, but the instincts of the people who illegally grabbed power became clear instantly. One of the coup leaders and head of the Right Sector (which is outlawed in our country just like the Azov regiment) Dmitry Yarosh said that Russians will never think like Ukrainians, will not speak Ukrainian and will not honour Ukrainian heroes, so the Russians must be pushed out of Crimea. This extremist was behind the idea of sending “friendship trains” to Crimea with armed thugs, including the Right Sector and other radicals. This highlights the philosophy and ideology of the people who carried out the coup and came to power. The West swallowed it whole.

Maidan was not yet at the boiling point and had not come to a head. The Ukrainian Security Service and the police did not use weapons, and NATO, speaking through then Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, repeatedly urged President Yanukovych not to use force against the protesters. When the coup was effectively carried out, the Maidan powerbrokers announced a “campaign” against Crimea, branded as terrorists the people of eastern Ukraine who refused to accept the neo-Nazi putsch and sent the armed forces and the nationalist battalions there. At that point, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the alliance called on the new authorities in Kiev to “use force” proportionally. Do you see the difference? No one really tried to cover this bias up. Dmitry Yarosh who told the Russians to get out of Crimea is, in fact, the spiritual father of Vladimir Zelensky who said exactly the same thing, but this time with regard to all of Ukraine. In September 2021, long before the current developments, taking a question about the people living in eastern Ukraine during an interview, the Ukrainian President said there were people and there were “species” (a slip of the tongue that is typical of Nazis), and that if someone lives in Ukraine and feels like a Russian, they should leave for Russia for the good of their children and grandchildren. This is exactly what Dmitry Yarosh was talking about. The Kiev regime’s neo-Nazi nature was clear from the start and has not changed a bit.

Question: This entire philosophy that they have adopted over the past few years has led to a situation where the second President of Ukraine is fighting Russia. The first one said that he was waging and heroically winning a proxy war against the Russian Federation. The incumbent president is saying that he is winning a real war. Both of them are united by the fact that they assured everyone that our two countries did not have and could not have a common future. They tried hard to erase our common past. What will be the outcome of the efforts to destroy our common past and history?

Sergey Lavrov: When Pyotr Poroshenko realised that a blitzkrieg aiming to forcibly suppress Donbass had failed, he decided to sign the Minsk Agreements and, as we believed at that time, he showed that he had deal-making skills. In reality, that was just a semblance of his negotiability. In July 2022, the former President of Ukraine told Radio Liberty that he had signed the relevant agreements, but that he did not intend to honour them. He noted that he had to temporise in order to obtain more Western weapons. This is undisguised cynicism. For many years after the signing of the Minsk Agreements, Western colleagues ignored their sabotage by Poroshenko and his regime. They used slogans, calling for them to be fulfilled because allegedly there was no alternative to these documents.

We submitted specific proposals to Germany and France, as countries that were involved in the Normandy Format. We also made proposals to the United States, the main patron and overlord of the Kiev authorities. We urged them to pressure Kiev to fulfil purely specific requirements, namely, a special detailed status for certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, rather than the whole of Donbass. We expected that they would clarify all aspects of that status, from A to Z. Although the relevant document was ready for signing, Poroshenko did his best to delay this process, and the West pandered to him in this respect. At the final stage of sabotaging the Minsk Agreements, Germany and France started claiming that Russia should fulfil them. However, there was no reply when President Vladimir Putin asked what we should do.

At that time, they were fighting a proxy war, and now a real war is going on. While stating his line, Vladimir Zelensky is saying that Ukraine will win this war and will regain control of all its territories, including Crimea. At the same time, he is forgetting the history of the peninsula. Perhaps he did not know its history when he was starring in the Club of the Merry and Resourceful show. I have no doubt that this line will fail.

We will not tolerate neo-Nazism on the territory of Ukraine. We are fighting neo-Nazis, rather than the people of Ukraine, and we have nothing against the latter. This nation is closely related to us, we are intertwined at the level of human destinies, and this concerns millions of families with a multitude of ties, spiritual, cultural and other bonds. I am convinced that the neo-Nazi government in Kiev will be unable to undermine this genetic code; at the same time, we must also accomplish a lot. It is necessary to offer specific ideas, involve civil society and facilitate contacts between people in Ukraine and Russia. The Russia-Ukraine-Belarus format existed some time ago, and public organisations and experts met within its framework in Minsk and elsewhere. For obvious reasons, this is not happening today, but we need to think about the future.

The people of Ukraine will be liberated from neo-Nazi rulers, and they deserve to live in neighbourliness, friendship and prosperity together with fraternal Slavic nations.

Question: The current regime appears to be in the terminal phase of the disease called Nazism. They are bringing up new Ukrainian “patriots” who are programmed for maximum cruelty which can be seen in their slogans (“a good Russian is a dead Russian” or “hang Moskali from a branch”) all the way to heinous violence that they are broadcasting on all channels. Europe is backing this. Aren’t they concerned that these people who are overflowing with hatred and aggression, and now armed with Western weapons, can take advantage of visa-free travel regulations and go to Europe in this state of mind?

Sergey Lavrov: Europe is playing along with the United States. The EU has almost no independence left. Washington has brought Brussels to heel. There are almost no independent voices left in the EU. Now and then, but increasingly less often, French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to remind everyone of the EU’s “strategic autonomy.” No one will let them create any kind of autonomy, let alone strategic.

European leaders are emboldening the Ukrainian government and encouraging neo-Nazi acts. President of the European Council Charles Michel, Head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg never stop saying that a “battle for European values” is going on in Ukraine, and President Zelensky is “defending freedom and democracy.” In the same way, they backed the neo-Nazi coup of 2014 which sought to abolish everything that is Russian in Ukraine. Later, it was codified in numerous laws outlawing Russian education, media and culture. Today, they are supporting the slogans which Vladimir Zelensky is using to carry out his campaign and presidency.

I operate on the premise that Europe is part of the processes that seek to revive neo-Nazism. It’s hard to draw other conclusions. President Macron recently wondered why Ukraine should live according to a Russia-imposed model. A statement that says it all. In the years that followed the coup, he never asked why the Russians in Ukraine should live according to a model imposed by the neo-Nazis, which is a clear case of double standards. A person who claims to be the number one politician in Europe is saying things like that unashamedly. Amazing.

You got it right in your assessment of the ensuing course of events. There are statistics showing that about 8 million Ukrainian refugees are now in Europe. There are media reports about some of them mistreating citizens of European countries and breaking the law. This is Europe’s choice. If they chose to provide shelter to Ukrainians, the vast majority of whom are people of means who want to continue to live like that going forward - then the people of Europe should feel the consequences of their choice for themselves. We saw similar things in a situation where the Europeans took in the militants from the North Caucasus during a rampage of international terrorism in that region of our country, or refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, including proponents and members of ISIS, who committed bloody crimes in a number of European countries. We do not wish evil to Europe. It must make up its own mind on what it wants to do.

The Arab Spring has created an enormous number of illegal migrants. The Europeans decided to give them legal status and began to place them on their territory and to agree on distribution quotas. The Arab Spring problem was created by military aggression, primarily, against Libya. That country was bombed out and turned into a black hole. It was later used as a conduit for refugees and illegal immigrants fleeing to Europe. Terrorists and weapons smugglers surged in the opposite direction to the Sahara-Sahel region. African countries are still dealing with the aftermath of the reckless Libyan operation, and the EU with the crowds of people of no definite occupation, not all of whom are willing to be law-abiding residents of the European countries.

Europe has created this situation in Ukraine, because it outright refused to convince Pyotr Poroshenko and then Vladimir Zelensky to honour the Minsk agreements. The EU was openly pandering to Kiev’s proclaimed policy for implementing Plan B to capture Donbass by force. This was the reason behind our special military operation. Over the years, we came to realise the futility of our trying to convince the West to consent to an equal and mutually respectful agreement on ensuring security for all without expanding the Alliance.

In this regard, Europe is, to a certain extent, acting as someone who is behind the current state of affairs as well. I hope that after the Arab Spring the EU will see the ongoing Ukrainian “wave” as food for thought, but so far the EU countries have not been thinking much about themselves. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made it clear (many are citing her) that she is aware of German voters’ issues, but it is now “more important” to meet Ukraine's needs for military help. With a philosophy like that, Europe… Well, I wish it good luck.

Question: We live in an interesting era when the media is a dangerous weapon. What is the role of the mass media in the revival, rise and flourishing of Nazism in modern Ukraine, in your opinion?

Sergey Lavrov: The role of the media, including traditional and electronic media, as well as social networks, is constantly growing but it is not they who “rule the roost,” but politicians. In recent years, we have already seen that the West, especially the United States, Germany, France and other European countries are good at “bossing around” journalists, the media, and ensuring loyalty to the policy that this or that government wants to pursue.

This is especially noticeable in the case of the Biden Administration, when almost all electronic media, television, and print publications are aimed at mobilising public opinion in support of what the United States is doing in Ukraine. However, this does not always work out. Now US newspapers are openly criticising the indifference with which the Administration treated the natural disaster in Florida against the background of tens of billions of US dollars allocated to Ukraine. This shows that the authorities cannot always control the media and public opinion. In Germany, there is virtually no dissent in the media. All mass media are “mobilised” to justify what the Germans are doing in Ukraine. In France, the situation is similar.

Europe, through various international agencies, primarily those created under the European Union, has been using outright censorship for more than a year (it started about eight years ago), preventing alternative points of view from reaching the public consciousness on the continent. A “good” example: when RT and Sputnik opened representative offices in Paris and tried to get accreditation at the Elysee Palace, they were refused. President of France Macron explained to journalists that “this is not the media but Moscow’s propaganda tool.” In addition, various platforms and associations were established in the West to protect freedom in cyberspace and the independence of the media, within which alternative sources of information were stifled under the pretext of finely worded slogans.

During the events leading up to the Soviet Union’s disappearance, we were so complaisant in all international arenas, as if an era of universal, eternal wellbeing had dawned. In 1990, at the initiative of France and other Western states, the OSCE adopted a document obliging all the member states without exception to provide full access for their citizens to any sources of information, both domestically and abroad. Therefore, the refusal to issue accreditation to RT and Sputnik at the Elysee Palace is a gross violation of the obligations assumed 30 years ago at the initiative of France.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1597228396735762433

1597228396735762433

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1597284939061497858
1597284939061497858

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1597235542139494400

1597235542139494400

[Bill Ryan]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1597284939061497858
1597284939061497858Well, good. :muscle:
If I were a skilled hacker I'd be doing much the same, and probably every day. :)

[Bill Ryan]

Light relief in a time of many serious problems. Physics students at the University of Belgrade in Serbia started a change.org petition to name a Black Hole after Vladimir Zelensky, because "Zelensky is like a black hole that sucks everything into itself."

The petition got over 50,000 votes (including 30,000 in one day) — and was then deleted by change.org. The students are continuing to pursue their proposal.

:)

https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/34389
DonbassDevushka/34389

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1597671412566671360

1597671412566671360

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1597671837479358464

1597671837479358464

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1597611393167298561

1597611393167298561

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/SpriterMonitor1/status/1597670691146715137

1597670691146715137

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1597493913186873344

1597493913186873344

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https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1597546099924795392

1597546099924795392

https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1597546459062480898

1597546459062480898

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597638194882699266

1597638194882699266

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597659574194307073

1597659574194307073

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597639190438899712

1597639190438899712

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597653625907838978

1597653625907838978

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597584716705980418

1597584716705980418

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Ukraine66251776/status/1597046767245459457

1597046767245459457

[Ravenlocke]

The Duran latest update,

Bakhmut, Marinka, Ugledar. Russia speeds up offensive. Macron to meet Biden

fmIFSeun_PU

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1597630642203901953

1597630642203901953

https://thecradle.co/Article/news/18952

Senior Ukrainian army officials secretly visited Israel to ask for defense assistance

Israeli media revealed on 28 November that a senior delegation from the Ukrainian army visited Israel last week in a bid to secure defense assistance from Tel Aviv.

“A delegation from Kiev, including a very senior member of the Ukrainian army, recently arrived in Israel for a series of meetings with [army] officials. The purpose of the visit was to promote the construction of anti-missile warning systems for the Ukrainians,”
Moriah Asraf Wolberg, the correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13 News, tweeted late on Monday.

The Israeli reporter added that the Ukrainian officials asked Tel Aviv to keep their visit a secret in order to avoid repercussions from Moscow.

She goes on to claim that leading the delegation was the deputy chief of staff of the Ukrainian armed forces.

The Ukrainian delegation allegedly met with high-ranking officials in the Israeli army and the Israeli ministry of security to ask for help in creating a missile alert system, which Israel has allegedly promised to build for Ukraine.

Besides the anti-air system, the Ukrainians reportedly demanded more military aid from Tel Aviv, as what has been offered to them will “not suffice.”

Earlier this month, Israel allowed NATO member states to provide Ukraine with weapons that contain Israeli-made components and funded the delivery of “strategic materials” to Kiev, under pressure from the White House.

To do this, Israel transferred several million dollars to an unidentified NATO member state that is “deeply involved in supplying military equipment to Ukraine.”

The unnamed country used the Israeli funds to purchase the “strategic materials” for Ukraine, in a scheme reminiscent of Poland’s recent role as a middleman to acquire Israeli anti-drone systems for the Ukrainian military.

Since the start of the war, senior Ukrainian officials – both in public speeches as well as private conversations with Israeli officials – have asked Tel Aviv for its Iron Dome defense system. However, Israel has so far refused to provide direct military assistance so as to avoid sparking a crisis with Moscow that would threaten its illegal operations in Syria.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1597675401328742401

1597675401328742401

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597686926643171328

1597686926643171328

[Mashika]

I wonder how the US and allies (serfs) will handle the narrative when Poland annexes a big chunk of Ukraine. If there is a referendum and people decide to join Poland in those territories, how ridiculous it is going to look for the US and other EU states that called the Donbass referendum a sham? So if the Donbass people hold a referendum and joins Russia it is a sham, but if the Ukrainians do to join Poland, it's democracy?

I can only imagine the mental gymnastic the nazi apologists will have to go through to explain and rationalize/cope with this.

There's going to be a lot of Copium going around. Going to be funny

[Mashika]

The shameless, corrupt and soul rotten ukronazis took pictures and other material from Donetsk in 2014, from the time they were killing kids openly and freely since no one was watching and then UN helped hide the evidence, and then pretended that it is Kharkov in 2022 and that these people are victims of "Russian aggression"

Another 'credible report' from 'some sources' for the UN and the fake human right organizations to use when creating their false narrative about what truly goes on in Donbass

1597358022791397377

They have truly no shame

[shaberon]

There's going to be a lot of Copium going around. Going to be funny


Is it perhaps Popium? Doesn't the Pope have much to do with Galicia, the original country of Ukraine, Greek Catholicism of Macedonia, and maybe even that continental equivalent of British Israelism, known as Sarmatism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatism):


Catholicism was the dominant faith and heavily emphasized because it was seen as differentiating the Polish Sarmatists from their Turkish and Tatar peers.

Sarmatism (or Sarmatianism; Polish: Sarmatyzm; Lithuanian: Sarmatizmas) was an ethno-cultural ideology within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was the dominant Baroque culture and ideology of the nobility (szlachta) that existed in times of the Renaissance to the 18th centuries.


In other words, Slavic Poles were told by their elites that, rather than being Slavs, they were Iranic Huns, who used the ancient art of Headbinding (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5289542/):


Indo-Iranian nomadic-pastoralists such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans who lived in the region of the Eurasian Pontic steppes and the Caucasus had practised cranial modification since the fourth millennium BC.

The Sarmatians apparently intentionally deformed the skulls of boys or certain boys by binding the skulls to force an elongated shape. They believed this made the boys more "war-like".


This, of course, turned their interest to Turkey, they dressed in silk and imitated Asiatic fashion. During this time was the Donmeh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%B6nmeh), leading up to the notorious Pole Jacob Frank (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Frank).


These are racist and religious doctrines of the most fundamental, that is, extremist kind.

Binding (https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/2344969/) has been found across all the southern Russian frontiers, such as Georgia and Crimea, and spread into Germany and perhaps France and more of Europe.

"Sarmatism" would say you are racially related, whereas "Catholicism" makes you superior to those heathen types.

I am told that real Macedonians reject all these top-down deliveries of fantasy, but, there must be those who take it very seriously, hence the Pope's nation-building, if we can call it that, or war and genocide, if we are not his subjects.


It does not sound like a "high value on human life" as Orthodoxy recommends.

[Mashika]

Amazing, for someone who is at a high level political position, this shows how uneducated and, very honestly, how mediocre and absurd the UkroNazis are

Self-entitled arrogant beggar, he doesn't ask, he demands. Next he will demand that all countries show their budgets and stockpile reports so that the Ukronazis go through the data and see how much they can get or transfer to Ukraine. These is ridiculous, but i wonder if countries on the international serf community will oblige

antinatocoalition/4916

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1597924450451984385

1597924450451984385



https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1597913370023579648

1597913370023579648

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/NeccaMonitor1/status/1597953325840105472

1597953325840105472

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1597990817179660288

1597990817179660288

[Vicus]

Top Chechen legislator debunks Pope’s ‘cruelty’ claims, says Vatican okay with Neo-Nazism

"Neo-Nazism, which blossomed on the support of the West and flourished in Ukraine, became an ideological extension of the ‘collective West’ in its ugliest incarnation, bringing death, destruction and genocide," Magomed Daudov stated

GROZNY, November 29. /TASS/. Chechen and Buryat servicemen have not committed a single war crime, on the contrary, they are battling neo-Nazism in Ukraine alongside the representatives of other Russia’s ethnicities, Speaker of the Chechen Parliament Magomed Daudov wrote on his Telegram channel, commenting on Pope Francis’ remarks in an interview with US media outlets on the "cruelty" of the Buryats and Chechens.

"I don’t know how the pontiff justified his arguments but there is not a single fact indicating that a war crime has been committed by the representatives of our nations. If he bothered to listen to the residents of the liberated territories, he would have learned that the Chechen fighters, much like the Buryats and representatives of hundreds of other ethnicities of the Russian Federation became saviors for these people. But no, it is easier to say something that fits in with the US agenda," he wrote.

He also reiterated that the Pope supported the legalization of same-sex marriages which contradicts the Koran and the Bible.

"Neo-Nazism, which blossomed on the support of the West and flourished in Ukraine, became an ideological extension of the ‘collective West’ in its ugliest incarnation, bringing death, destruction and genocide," Daudov added.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the Pope’s statements are not simply a display of Russophobia, but also an off-the-charts distortion of the truth.

https://tass.com/politics/1543205

[Vicus]

Russian troops advance in Donbass

The military has pushed Ukrainian forces from multiple locations in the region, the defense ministry says

The Russian military reported new advances in the north of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on Wednesday. Multiple locations have been liberated on the outskirts of the town of Bakhmut, a major stronghold held by Ukrainian forces, which has seen intense fighting in recent weeks.

"On the Donetsk axis, the settlements of Belogorovka and Pershe Travnya of the Donetsk People’s Republic were completely liberated during offensive actions [by] Russian troops," the Defense Ministry said in its daily briefing, adding that "up to 50 Ukrainian servicemen, four armored combat vehicles, three self-propelled artillery units and six soft vehicles were destroyed."

The village of Belogorovka is a small settlement located some 20 kilometers northeast of Bakhmut. The second settlement mentioned in the briefing is, presumably, the village of Ozaryanovka, located about 12 kilometers south of the town. It was known by the name Pershe Travnya before 2016 then got renamed under Kiev's ‘decommunization’ efforts.

Later in the day, the Defense Ministry announced the liberation of Andreevka, a tiny village five kilometers or so north of Ozaryanovka. On top of this, the acting head of DPR, Denis Pushilin, said the troops have entered the village of Kurdyumovka, located immediately next to Ozaryanovka. The settlements are located on an important supply route, crucial for the Ukrainian garrison of Bakhmut, he explained, referring to the town by its pre-‘decommunization’ name – Artemovsk.

"These settlements are extremely important because, after sweeping up Kurdyumovka, where the enemy is still resisting, [the troops] will reach the Artemovsk highway, severing the supply routes of the primary Ukrainian battlegroup," Pushilin told broadcaster Rossiya-24.

https://www.rt.com/russia/567443-bakhmut-donbass-military-advance/

[Vicus]

Ex-Russian president mocks EU over deleted claim on Ukrainian losses

Dmitry Medvedev claimed that Ursula von der Leyen’s actions betrayed her subservience to the US

Self-censorship from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after she deleted a tweet which mentioned Ukrainian casualties, is “humiliating”, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday.

He added that the climbdown showed the bloc is nothing but a US puppet.

“It is obvious that ‘Aunt Ursula’ was slapped upside the head by her bosses in Washington,” Medvedev said in a post on VK. “Seemed to hurt, too. It looks extremely humiliating.”

The president of the EU executive body had claimed in a speech that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the fighting so far, along with 20,000 civilians. Soon afterward, however, the tweet about it on von der Leyen’s account vanished. The reference was also removed from the transcript of the speech on the European Commission’s website, and edited out of the video the EC shared on social media again.

The self-censorship was subsequently confirmed, with spokeswoman Dana Spinant saying the number had been an “estimation” from “external sources” and referred to all casualties – those killed and wounded combined. Spinant also thanked everyone who “pointed out the inaccuracy” in von der Leyen’s original speech.

Medvedev served as the president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, and then as prime minister until 2020, when he accepted the post of deputy chairman of the National Security Council.

He has been an outspoken critic of the West since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. On Tuesday, he said NATO was a “criminal entity” that should repent for its crimes against humanity and be dissolved. Earlier this week, he commented on his Telegram account that the “marriage” between the EU and the US is headed for a divorce due to Washington’s “economic cheating.” :bigsmile:

[Snoweagle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h4e8llcfQQ

1h4e8llcfQQ

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom at the time he wrote the poem. (source: Wikipedia)

The poem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S93lvQ4Ukg8

S93lvQ4Ukg8

Typically British then, we are now witness to the modern equivalent.

[norman]

They wouldn't be lying, would they?

British Defence Ministry Officially Confirms Transfer Of Brimstone 2 Missiles To AFU
ukranews - 27 NOVEMBER 2022

https://ukranews.com/en/news/897759-british-defence-ministry-officially-confirms-transfer-of-brimstone-2-missiles-to-afu#:~:text=The%20UK%20Ministry%20of%20Defence%20has%20officially%20confirmed,of%20the%20packages%20 of%20military%20assistance%20to%20Ukraine.



https://ukranews.com/upload/media/2022/07/16/62d25965edcf6-mod_sign_mod_45154855.jpg.webp

https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/6382746e21a287d3164597a6/UK---Farnborough---Typhoon-and-missile-armaments/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960


They look like 'Air Launch' . . . . how the hell are they going to do that ?

[shaberon]

They look like 'Air Launch' . . . . how the hell are they going to do that ?


Conversion kit:

Chip from Taiwan, delivered ca. 2026

Ground launch tube from Soviet stockpile in Algeria

Wrenches from Harbor Freight

Excuses from the ether

Money from you

Ignore missile, use stick found on ground nearby.

[Gwin Ru]

...

... near future for Europe:


https://henrymakow.com/upload_images/dec14.jpg



By Dec 14 Europe is forecast to sink in a deep freeze. As the Arctic is still in its accumulation phase of collecting cold air, January can be expected to be much, much colder.


https://www.winterwatch.net/2022/11/winter-is-coming-update/

[Ravenlocke]

Winter offensive w/Patrick Lancaster & Alex at Reporterfy (Live)


s6DUVEi5gos

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598309927239536643

1598309927239536643

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598290149019947008

1598290149019947008

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598269168755044353

1598269168755044353

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598262416818999296
1598262416818999296

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1598315989665472512

1598315989665472512

[loungelizard]

I wonder how the US and allies (serfs) will handle the narrative when Poland annexes a big chunk of Ukraine.


You surely don't believe that!
This bit of Kremlin agitprop is intended to drive a wedge between Poland and Ukraine, particularly as, since the Russia invasion of Ukraine,
a strong alliance has been forged (and their shared memories of prior Russian aggression have played a part in that, of course).

This myth of Polish plans to annex parts of western Ukraine is a transparent attempt to sew the seeds of discord between Kyiv and Warsaw,
but no amount of empty rhetoric and fake “military orders” posted on social media will achieve that, mainly because the Poles don’t suffer
from the same severe case of irredentism as Putin does.

This is a classic case of “accusation in a mirror”.

[loungelizard]

You mean the Levada Centre that was banned in Russia back along for being subversive to the state and classed as an enemy of the state?

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/node/9497_en


Nope.

I don't know what you're thinking of, but the Levada Centre that I'm referring to is alive and well at Nikolskaya St 17, Moscow and has so far avoided the Kremlin's kiss of death.
https://www.levada.ru/en/about-us/


To clarify about both links submitted by Snoweagle and Loungelizard,


Actually Snoweagle’s link is in reference to the same Levada Centre that you, Loungelizard referenced in your direct link to their website.

And yes Snoweagle is talking about the same polling organization known as the Levada Centre, which was included “ in the "Foreign Agents Registry" of the Russian Federation” in 2016 as archived in the link Snoweagle provided.

And even in the link you provided if you click on “About Us”,

https://www.levada.ru/en/about-us/

It explains in the History paragraph that in “2016 the Russian Ministry of Justice placed the Levada Center on the register of NGOs performing the functions of foreign agents. The center disagrees with this decision and trys to challenge it in court.”

Thanks, Ravenlocke. I had assumed Snoweagle mistook “blacklisted” for “banned”.

The foreign agent designation does not formally ban Levada from operating - although sadly, as Russia’s only independent pollster, it’s on borrowed time
and will probably join the hundreds of NGOs that Putin has shut down since 2012 through his increasingly draconian ‘Legislative Act of the Russian Federation
regarding the Regulation of the Activities of Non-Profit Organiations Performing the Functions of a Foreign Agent’ (catchy title ...).

In fact, that already-prescriptive law has recently been amended yet again in a further attempt by the Kremlin to control the narrative: now, the names of
relatives and colleagues of those who still work in NGOs will be held on a “special register”. Scary stuff.

[loungelizard]

Interesting … it doesn’t seem that you use the same degree of scrutiny when it comes to other sources quoted on this thread.
You’re happy to accept without question the word of Maria Zakharova, the Kremlin’s press officer, or TASS, or some faceless and
nameless bloke on Twitter. Do you have a problem with these NGOs because that both Amnesty and HRW have been accused
of anti-Western and anti-Israel bias? :ROFL:

Neither Amnesty nor HRW are perfect - they’re run by human beings, so of course they are flawed.



They are run by western superiority, and shall we say deceit by HRW assisting Syria's color revolutions for John McCain.

No, actually, "foreign propaganda" does not require the same "scrutiny" as anything from western sources.

You are witnessing the effects of Propaganda, which is the transfer of Reputation, having only limitedly to do with objective facts, which the individual cannot possibly make determinations about them all.

We are in an Empire of Lies. All I am trying to do is remove that capability, whether it means the Chinese NWO "takes over the world", or, you live in a desert, or, colonize an asteroid, or anything else you may be afraid of.


It is not feasible to say "accept without question", nor obviously would I have a problem if I thought Amnesty was effective at removing Zionism. So your guesses are wrong.

If you think Saints are a myth, I am not sure we can reach you at all. The main point is to silence the western echo chamber. It is not so much that NGOs are not paragons of virtue, they are tentacles for Capitalism to undermine humanity. For example, "New World Order" is a private company launched in 1980, behind what would be "Happytalism". That is the whole point of them. Penetration. Take the media, the schools, the industry, etc., in the guise of Democracy.


Against this, appearing in the English language in 1881:


The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the dark nations...

...that curse known as the "struggle for life," which is the real and most prolific parent of most woes and sorrows and of all the crimes? Why has that struggle become the almost universal scheme of the universe?

...each of them, always with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we find that struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian countries, most prevalent in Europe and America.

Those "intellectual classes," reacting upon the ignorant masses which they attract and which look up to them as noble and fit examples to follow, degrade and morally ruin those they ought to protect and guide.

The world in general and Christendom especially, left for two thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a failure.



Let us hold our breath and swallow whole the following observations from veteran German statesman Oskar Lafontaine (https://sputniknews.com/20221128/german-statesman-slams-eu-leaders-spinelessness-demands-natos-dismemberment-closure-of-us-bases-1104796406.html):



“Of course, I also mean the conflict in Ukraine, which began with the Maidan putsch in Kiev in 2014. Since then, the US and its Western vassals have been arming Ukraine and systematically preparing it for confrontation with Russia. Ukraine thus became a de facto, if not de jure, member of NATO. This backstory has been studiously ignored by Western politicians and the mainstream media,” Lafontaine told Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten in an interview published Sunday.

“For more than 100 years, it has been the declared aim of US policy to prevent German business and technology from merging with Russian raw materials at all cost. It is perfectly clear that, if you take this history into account, we are dealing with a US proxy war against Russia which has been prepared for a long time,” Lafontaine said.

“It is unforgivable that the SPD in particular betrayed the legacy of Willy Brandt and his policy of détente, and did not even seriously insist on compliance with the Minsk Agreements,” the politician said, referring to the 2015 peace agreements meant to restore peace to the Donbass.

Lafontaine slammed the German government over its limp-wristed response to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which he characterized as a “declaration of war on Germany.” It was “pathetic and cowardly” of the federal government to try to “sweep incident under the carpet,” despite evidence that “the USA either carried out the attack directly or greenlit it,” the politician said.

“It was a hostile act against the Federal Republic, and not only against us, and once again makes clear that we must free ourselves from American tutelage,” Lafontaine stressed. The politician pressed his country’s leaders to force the removal of all US military bases and nuclear weapons from German soil, and called for the creation of a European security architecture with France, separate from NATO, which he called an “obsolete” alliance that acts as a “tool to enforce the US’s claim to remain the sole power in the world.”

Lafontaine admitted that freeing Germany from Washington’s grip wouldn’t be easy, but stressed that he can’t see “any alternative” to such a radical step. “If we and other European countries continue to remain under US tutelage, they will push us over a cliff to protect their own interests,” he said.


“To use a hackneyed expression: We are experiencing the birth pangs of the transitional phase from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. And the question arises whether we will have a place of our own in this new world order, or be drawn into Washington’s conflicts with Moscow and Beijing as American vassals,” the politician emphasized.

Recalling his decades of experience in politics, Lafontaine lamented in decades past, German leaders, “at least in some conflicts, had German interests in mind, and did not throw them overboard in anticipatory obedience” to Washington. “You need to have a backbone when you are the head of a country. The image of Chancellor Scholz standing like a schoolboy next to President Biden when he announced that nothing would come of Nord Stream 2 was humiliating.”

Ukraine Disaster

Asked whether he believed Washington has achieved its aims in Ukraine, Lafontaine said that the answer was both “yes and no,” with the principle successes being the ruined relations between Russia and the European Union, and the “sidelining” of Berlin and Brussels “as the US’s potential geostrategic and economic rivals, for the time being.”

“They are setting the policies of EU states even more than before the Ukraine conflict (thanks also to compliant politicians in Berlin and Brussels). They can also sell their dirty fracking-derived gas, and the US defense industry is doing great business,” the politician said.

“On the other hand, they have not succeeded in ‘ruining Russia’, as [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock put it…overthrowing [Vladimir] Putin and installing a puppet government in Moscow to get better access to Russian raw materials, as was the case in [Boris] Yeltsin’s time,” Lafontaine said.

“And I have the impression that Washington has now realized that they are biting on granite here. Despite massive arms deliveries to Ukraine and the dispatch of numerous ‘military advisors’, Russia, which is a nuclear power, cannot be defeated militarily. In addition, Western sanctions are proving to be a boomerang: they hurt Western states more than Russia and will cause deindustrialization, unemployment and poverty. Working people in Europe are paying the price for the world power ambitions of a mad elite in Washington and the cowardice of European leaders,” Lafontaine concluded.


Information from the Delta C&C (https://southfront.org/leaked-documents-confirm-nato-plans-to-destroy-kakhovskaya-dam-in-kherson-region/) system shows:


The leaked documents confirmed that the Kakhovskaya dam was among the targets to destroy.

In its turn, the Russian side has all means to divide Ukraine in two parts by several missile strikes on the bridges and dams on the Dnieper River. Such attacks would leave the Ukrainian military without possibility to transfer any military equipment and personnel to the war-torn regions in the East. Such attacks would immediately bring Russia victory in the war in Ukraine and would save lives of Russian servicemen. However, the destruction of Ukrainian dams would also claim lives of hundreds of civilians. That’s why the Russian military does not launch its missiles on such facilities.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has already shown that Russia is fighting to protect people, while the United States and NATO pay no attention to the cost of human lives in the war they have ignited in Ukraine.



Elsewhere, for NATO of Kharkov (https://southfront.org/ukrainian-army-on-kharkov-front-lines/):


The reinforcement was mainly made up of foreign military, including former soldiers of the Bosnian and Albanian armies, as well as soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division “Getica” and the 2nd Mountain Rifle Brigade “Sarmizegetuza” from Romania.

The command of the operation, presumably, was entrusted to Polish officers from Rzeszow, who had previously served in the 21st the Podgalski rifle brigade.


On November 26, the Russian military reported a high-precision missile strike on the temporary deployment of Polish mercenaries near the village of Velikiye Khutora in the Kharkov region. Out of about 1,000 mercenaries, several hundred were killed and seriously injured.



... nor obviously would I have a problem if I thought Amnesty was effective at removing Zionism.

Sorry - I thought you’d realise that was a joke (the smiley face was a hint …). I was being ironic - you made your views on Zionism quite clear earlier in this thread.


No, actually, "foreign propaganda" does not require the same "scrutiny" as anything from western sources.

Now that is a bold statement! It’s obviously one with which I completely disagree, but it explains a lot about what I’ve read on this thread, so thank you.
I would have responded to more of your post- I’m not ignoring you, but I’m afraid that the rest of it went straight over my head :o

¤=[Post Update]=¤


Domo Arigato, мистер ящерица

It’s миссис, not мистер.;)

[Vicus]

Putin's Remedy: A Fragmented, Toothless Ukraine Separated by a 100 Kilometer-Wide No-Man's-Land

“It seems probable that Russia will impose a solution. If, as expected, it becomes clear that the West can’t or won’t negotiate, it will behoove Russia to implement a maximalist solution. Or alternatively, Russia “bargains” by showing that it can create a dead zone in Western Ukraine as big as it likes. If Ukraine and its US minders don’t come to their senses, that dead zone will be awfully big.” Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

How does this end?

How does Russia create a “neutral” Ukraine that isn’t armed-to-the-teeth by Moscow’s enemies? How do they prevent Kiev from conducting joint-military drills with NATO or placing missile sites on Russia’s border? How do they stop the Ukrainian Army from shelling ethnic Russians in the east or training far-right paramilitaries to kill as many Russians as possible? How does Putin change Ukraine into a good neighbor that doesn’t pose a security threat and that doesn’t fuel anti-Russian hatred and bigotry? And, finally, how does one resolve the conflict peacefully if one side refuses to negotiate with the other? Check out this clip from an article at Mint News:

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday signed a decree formally announcing the “impossible” prospect of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin…

“He (Putin) does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky said on Friday. (Mint News)

The fact that Zelensky will not negotiate with Putin does not mean there will be no settlement. It just means that Zelensky will have no voice in the outcome. As the more powerful country, it has always been within Russia’s ability to impose a settlement that achieves its basic national security objectives, and that is precisely what Putin will do. The settlement will not be ideal nor will it completely end the hostilities, but it will provide a layer of protection from Russia’s enemies which is the best that can be hoped for given the circumstances. Regrettably, the settlement will also terminate Ukraine’s existence as a viable, contiguous state. And– after Russia has finished its special military operation– Ukraine will face a dismal future as a deindustrialized wastelands that is entirely dependent on its allies in the west for its survival.

continue with maps and video with Douglas Macgregor

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/putins-remedy-a-fragmented-toothless-ukraine-separated-by-a-100-kilometer-wide-no-mans-land/

[ExomatrixTV]

Ukraine Is About To Be Annihilated

dfgF4x7TCmM
(https://dissident-one.translate.goog/2022/11/30/poetins-remedie-een-gefragmenteerd-tandeloos-oekraine-gescheiden-door-een-100-kilometer-breed-niemandsland/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en#)
https://dissident.one/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Oekraine-gedemilitariseerd-696x456.jpg (https://dissident-one.translate.goog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Oekraine-gedemilitariseerd.jpg?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en)



map via John Helmer


“HIt seems likely that Russia will force a solution. If, as expected, it becomes clear that the West is unable or unwilling to negotiate, Russia will do well to implement a maximalist solution. Or else Russia “negotiates” by showing that it can create a dead zone in Western Ukraine as large as it wants. If Ukraine and its American guards don't come to their senses, that dead zone will grow horribly large.”


—Yves Smith, (https://translate.google.com/website?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/11/ukraine-armistice-how-the-ukraine-demilitarized-zone-of-2023-will-separate-the-armies-like-the-korean-dmz-of-1953.html) Naked Capitalism


How does this end?

How does Russia create a “neutral” Ukraine that is not armed to the teeth by Moscow's enemies? Asks Mike Whiney (https://translate.google.com/website?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/putins-remedy-a-fragmented-toothless-ukraine-separated-by-a-100-kilometer-wide-no-mans-land/) . How do they prevent Kiev from holding joint military exercises with NATO or placing missile sites on the Russian border? How do they prevent the Ukrainian army from firing on ethnic Russians in the east or training far-right paramilitaries to kill as many Russians as possible? How does Putin turn Ukraine into a good neighbor that does not pose a threat to security and does not fuel anti-Russian hatred and bigotry? And, finally, how do you resolve the conflict peacefully if one side refuses to negotiate with the other? Check out this excerpt from an article on Mint News:

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday signed a decree formally announcing the “impossible” prospect of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin….

“He (Putin) does not know what dignity and fairness are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia," Zelensky said on Friday. ( MintNews) (https://translate.google.com/website?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://www.livemint.com/news/world/ukraine-zelensky-signs-decree-rule-out-negotiation-russia-vladimir-putin-impossible-11664876727245.html)

The fact that Zelensky does not want to negotiate with Putin does not mean that there will be no settlement. It just means that Zelensky has no say in the result. As the most powerful country, Russia has always had the ability to impose a settlement that achieves its basic national security objectives, and that is exactly what Putin will do. The arrangement will not be ideal, nor will it completely end hostilities, but it will provide a layer of protection against Russia's enemies, which is the best that can be hoped for under the circumstances. Unfortunately, the settlement will also end Ukraine's existence as a viable, contiguous state.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Moscow-based journalist John Helmer, who thinks the Russian army will evacuate a large area of ​​central Ukraine during its upcoming winter offensive, and that much of that land will become part of a 100-kilometer wide demilitarized zone (UDZ) that will protect Russia from Ukrainian rocket and artillery attacks. As Helmer points out, the model for this military-imposed arrangement is “the Armistice of Panmunjom of July 27, 1953, which ended the Korean War….”. On the ground inside the UDZ (Ukraine Demilitarized Zone) there must be no electricity, no people, nothing except the means to monitor and enforce the terms of the ceasefire.” Here's more from Helmer:

Military source: …. Once the destruction of these targets is complete, the remnants of the infrastructure will be undermined and the area planted with sensors. The armies will then begin a rapid, phased withdrawal behind Russian lines, where the process of reinforcement and entrenchment has already begun.”

“Citizens and disarmed Ukrainian troops – with the exception of Ukrainian-Nazi units – are assigned one or two corridors through which they can leave the zone. They better not dawdle.”…

The sources agree that there will be a new military demarcation line before the thaw next spring; they differ on how it is drawn now and what it will look like next April. “For now, the line will be on the Dnieper, with a zone extending from the western bank into the hull of Ukraine – I think at a depth of no less than 100 km. This puts Russian territory out of range of most Ukrainian artillery. A 100 km deep zone also gives Russian forces time to track and intercept anything on the run…

“In the northern sector – that is from Kramatorsk and Slovyansk to Kharkov… these are garrisons and centers of hatred on or near the Russian borders; they will not be spared….(and) are qualified for de-electrification, depopulation and de-nazification.”

“The point to emphasize, especially in the Russian operations in the north… will not seize and hold territory. …The idea will not be to occupy the area, let alone manage it, for a long time. The goal will be to destroy enemies that raise their heads and the infrastructure they rely on; laying mines and sensors; and then withdraw.”

“Once the assigned transport and logistics nodes are taken, the task of destroying them by engineer units begins. Bridges, roads, railways, marshalling yards, rolling stock, airfields, fuel storage and depots, electrical substations, transmission and communication towers, central offices, warehouses, warehouses, agricultural equipment – ​​anything that could possibly be used to support Ukraine-NATO efforts towards east of the zone's western boundary will be destroyed. That will also be the work of the ground forces – more extensive and thorough than missile and drone strikes can achieve.”

“Civilians and disarmed combatants, without their motorized equipment, will be allowed to walk out of the zone onto specially prepared buses (such as Surovikin supervised in Syria) with whatever they can carry on their backs… Anyone who chooses within the zone will be explicitly told by radio, flyers and loudspeakers that he is considered an enemy combatant and will be treated as such. After a prescribed time, the “golden bridges” for the departing population will be destroyed. For those that remain, they will have no power, sanitation, or communication…” ( “Ukraine Armistice– How the UDZ of 2023 will separate the Armies like the Korean DMZ of 1953” (https://translate.google.com/website?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&u=http://johnhelmer.net/ukraine-armistice-how-the-udz-of-2023-will-separate-the-armies-like-the-korean-dmz-of-1953/%23more-70281) , John Helmer, Dances With Bears

https://dissident.one/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/oekraine-kaart-via-John-Helmer.png (https://dissident-one.translate.goog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/oekraine-kaart-via-John-Helmer.png?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en)

Ukraine map via John Helmer – click for larger Helmer sums it up perfectly. Putin is going to create a vast, uninhabitable no man's land in the center of Ukraine that will separate east from west and end Ukraine's existence as a viable, contiguous state. This is what a military-imposed regulation looks like. It's not ideal, and it won't necessarily stop all fighting, but it meets Russia's basic security demands that Washington chose to ignore.

Rest assured, Washington will not like this arrangement and will never agree to the new borders. But the United States will not have the last word on this matter, and that is extremely important, because Washington's role as "guarantor of world security" is now over. Russia is going to define the borders of Ukraine and so it will be. So yes, we can expect gnashing of teeth at NATO headquarters and the UN and in the White House, but with little effect. The matter is settled, unless, of course, the US and NATO want to bring ground forces into the conflict, which we believe will create a rift in NATO that will inevitably lead to its collapse. In any case, the fate of Ukraine will be decided in Moscow, not Washington, and that reality will have a significant impact on the distribution of world power. There's a new sheriff in town and he's definitely not American.


Conclusion

We think that Helmer's analysis is the most likely scenario for the future. Putin has held back admirably so far, but after nine months of senseless drudgery and bloodshed, it's time to wrap this up. Moscow has always had a sledgehammer in its toolbox and now it is going to use it. We wish it hadn't ended that way, but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Washington wanted to prolong this war as long as possible to exhaust Russia so that it could not project power beyond its borders or thwart US plans for the "turntable to Asia." But Putin foiled that plan. He has not fallen into Washington's trap and he is not going to pump blood and money into a black hole. He's going to solve this case once and for all and he's done with it. This is from an interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

“This whole conflict could have been avoided if we had just recognized Moscow's legitimate interests in what is happening in Ukraine….” What happens in Ukraine matters to the Russians…. So we could have stepped in early and said, 'Let's call a ceasefire and talk'. In fact, for the past 10 or 20 years, we could have listened to the Russians about their concerns about what was happening in Ukraine.Colonel Douglas MacGregor, (https://translate.google.com/website?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DdfgF4x7TCmM) “Ukraine is about to be Annihilated”, You Tube; 2:10 minute mark.


source (https://dissident-one.translate.goog/2022/11/30/poetins-remedie-een-gefragmenteerd-tandeloos-oekraine-gescheiden-door-een-100-kilometer-breed-niemandsland) ( Dutch 🇳🇱 )

[Ravenlocke]

https://tass.com/defense/1544531

Unlicensed production of Soviet weapons in Europe to violate copyright — federal service

The service said that in this connection Russia will reserve the right to take "corresponding retaliatory measures"
MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. The United States is instigating violations of international law by its speculations about the need for resuming the production of military equipment in Europe under Soviet licenses for subsequent supplies to Ukraine, the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation said on its website.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview with CNN on November 30, came up with an idea of resuming the production of Soviet-designed combat systems at enterprises of the countries once affiliated with the former Warsaw Treaty Organization in order to supply these weapons to Kiev. As the service said, within the framework of cooperation with the USSR, the member-states of the Warsaw Treaty Organization did receive fraternal assistance in organizing the production of Soviet models of weapons and military equipment on their territory.

"By calling for the resumption of the production of military equipment under Soviet licenses for its subsequent transfer to Ukraine, the US leadership, without being a party to those agreements and without bearing any responsibility for this, is pushing its allies towards violations of the fundamental norms of international law in the field of conventional arms control," the statement reads.

The service said that in this connection Russia will reserve the right to take "corresponding retaliatory measures."

[Ravenlocke]

https://sputniknews.com/20221201/lavrov-europe-building-security-not-with-russia-but-against-it-1104926212.html

Lavrov: Europe Building Security Not With Russia, But Against It

The Russian diplomat noted that NATO policies in Europe degraded back to the Cold War era, as Washington is bent on exercising total control over the EU, so any meaningful cooperation between Russia and Europe is unlikely in the near future.



Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the EU is trying to create a security system against Russia, not with it.
In his brief on European security issues, the foreign minister stressed that the old format of relations between Russia and the West is gone. Lavrov added he is not sure it is possible to restore cooperation between Russia and the EU on the European security issue, but Moscow is ready to hear what the Western countries have to say.
"If our Western colleagues understand their mistakes and express readiness to return to the discussion of the documents that we have proposed in December, I think it will be a positive factor. Although I doubt that they will have the strength and will to do it, but if it happens, then of course we will be ready to return to the discussion," Lavrov said.
Lavrov recounted the words of NATO's first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, who described the core policy of the alliance regarding Europe as "keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down".
“What is happening now means that NATO is returning to those conceptual priorities that were developed 73 years ago. Nothing has changed: they want to keep the Russians outside of Europe, the Americans have already enslaved all of Europe, and not only the Germans, but the entire European Union. So, the philosophy of dominance and unilateral advantages did not disappear anywhere after the end of the Cold War," he said.
Decaying Organizations
The diplomat also elaborated on the sad state of European intergovernmental organizations, noting that Western policies had crippled the Council of Europe beyond repair, while the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe also suffers from multiple problems.
He noted that Sweden, which presided over the OSCE last year, had abandoned a balanced stance, and had facilitated the subjugation of the organization by Washington and Brussels.
"Of course, the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine contributed to the discrediting of the OSCE's work in Ukraine, which, in gross violation of its mandate, did not respond to the daily violations of the Minsk agreements by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The OSCE mission essentially sided with the Kiev regime," Lavrov stressed, noting that that after the closure of the mission it was revealed that its officials cooperated with Western special services.
In the meantime, Poland, which has presided over it in 2022, is "digging a grave" for the OSCE, undermining any consensus that is left in there, he said.

"I can responsibly say that Poland's anti-presidency in the OSCE will occupy a most unattractive place in the history of this organization. No one has ever done such damage to the OSCE at its helm," Lavrov told reporters.


The security space in Europe is fragmenting, and the OSCE itself is becoming a marginalized entity, the diplomat added.
Earlier in the day, the annual conference of the 29th OSCE Ministerial Council started in the Polish city of Lodz. Warsaw did not allow Lavrov to take part in the meeting, as it believes that it is necessary to "absolutely isolate" Russia in the international arena amid its military operation in Ukraine, according to senior Polish diplomat Pawel Jablonski.

[norman]

Senate confirms Pentagon inspector general as funding for Ukraine increases
By Mike Glenn - The Washington Times - Thursday, December 1, 2022

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/1/senate-confirms-robert-storch-as-dod-inspector-gen/

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Robert P. Storch to serve as inspector general in the Defense Department. The 92-3 vote made him the first non-acting Pentagon IG since Obama-appointee Jon Rymer stepped down in January 2016.

The Project on Government Oversight advocacy group called the confirmation “great news.”

“We’ve advocated hard to get a (Defense Department) IG confirmed. It’s been a long seven years without someone filling this vital position. We’re glad to see Robert Storch get confirmed,” the group said in a Twitter post.

On Nov. 15, the Biden administration submitted a new $37.7 billion air request for Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders. If passed, it would bring the total U.S. support to more than $105 billion.

“The sheer magnitude and speed at which the federal government is sending aid calls for robust oversight,” the Project on Government Oversight said in a letter to top Democratic and Republican officials in the Senate.

Lawmakers in Washington should be working to ensure that there are guardrails on the enormous spending packages, the group said in its June 1 letter to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“Such oversight efforts should neither slow nor hinder Congress’ efforts to support Ukraine,” the group said. “Rather, it would ensure that the billions of dollars that the U.S. is sending arrives in the hands of its intended recipients, and does not inadvertently line the pockets of war profiteers who are seeking to use this war to enrich themselves.”

Mr. Storch most recently served as the Senate-confirmed inspector general at the National Security Agency.

[Ravenlocke]

https://tass.com/politics/1544357?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

Russia targets only Ukraine’s military potential-related infrastructure — Lavrov


As the top diplomat emphasized, high accuracy strikes, "put energy facilities, on which the functioning of Ukraine’s armed forces and the delivery of a huge amount of weapons depends, out of commission"

MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. Russia hits only those infrastructure facilities in Ukraine that have military significance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference on European security issues on Thursday.

"The infrastructure that is now under attack is crucial to the combat potential of Ukraine’s armed forces and nationalist battalions," Lavrov said.

As Lavrov emphasized, high accuracy strikes, "put energy facilities, on which the functioning of Ukraine’s armed forces and the delivery of a huge amount of weapons depends, out of commission. The West is pumping Ukraine with these weapons to be used for killing Russians."

"Our Defense Ministry and military experts, not only Russian, but also American ones, and military specialists from other NATO countries, draw attention to the fact that from the beginning, our military operation was carried out in a way that minimized the negative consequences for the civilian population and civilian infrastructure," he concluded.



https://tass.com/politics/1544609


Russia’s Ukraine operation came in response to OSCE’s inability to end bloodshed - envoy

It is reported that Russia was forced to launch a special military operation in response to deliberate attempts by the Kiev regime
WARSAW, December 1. /TASS/. Russia’s special operation in Ukraine was, among other things, a response to the inability of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to end the bloodshed in Donbass, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said, addressing a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers in the Polish city of Lodz on Thursday.

"Russia was forced to launch a special military operation in response to deliberate attempts by the Kiev regime and its foreign sponsors to simulate threats for Russians and Ukrainians on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine border. It was also a response to the OSCE’s inability to play a constructive role in ending the bloodshed in Donbass," the diplomat pointed out.



https://tass.com/politics/1544603

OSCE losing its effectiveness, Kremlin spokesman says


"Also, the organization is losing the ability to address security and cooperation issues in Europe not in words but in deeds," Dmitry Peskov said
MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is losing its effectiveness due to its anti-Russian stance, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"The organization is automatically losing its effectiveness because of the position that the OSCE has taken," Peskov pointed out, when asked if it was reasonable for Moscow to remain in the OSCE.

"Also, the organization is losing the ability to address security and cooperation issues in Europe not in words but in deeds," the Kremlin spokesman said, adding that it was happening because of an "antagonistic position" against Russia.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/

1598324403623936002



https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598264962035593216

1598264962035593216


https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598267678145531907

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598379487607279616

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https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598380373192413188

1598380373192413188

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1598188629155000320

1598188629155000320


https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1598099107582980096

1598099107582980096

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1598324574864678913

1598324574864678913

https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1598324578404782087

1598324578404782087


https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1598349065049309184

1598349065049309184

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1598275824318398465

1598275824318398465

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1598370448982564864

1598370448982564864

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1598257511504674816

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1598402804715905030

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https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1598391484402716672

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[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ChannelOne_eng/status/1598308133738319872

1598308133738319872


https://twitter.com/ChannelOne_eng/status/1598302008376963073

1598302008376963073

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https://twitter.com/ChannelOne_eng/status/1597966795583156225

1597966795583156225

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/RussianEmbassy/status/1598030331810287616

1598030331810287616

[Mashika]

Interesting … it doesn’t seem that you use the same degree of scrutiny when it comes to other sources quoted on this thread.
You’re happy to accept without question the word of Maria Zakharova, the Kremlin’s press officer, or TASS, or some faceless and
nameless bloke on Twitter. Do you have a problem with these NGOs because that both Amnesty and HRW have been accused
of anti-Western and anti-Israel bias? :ROFL:

Neither Amnesty nor HRW are perfect - they’re run by human beings, so of course they are flawed.



They are run by western superiority, and shall we say deceit by HRW assisting Syria's color revolutions for John McCain.

No, actually, "foreign propaganda" does not require the same "scrutiny" as anything from western sources.

You are witnessing the effects of Propaganda, which is the transfer of Reputation, having only limitedly to do with objective facts, which the individual cannot possibly make determinations about them all.

We are in an Empire of Lies. All I am trying to do is remove that capability, whether it means the Chinese NWO "takes over the world", or, you live in a desert, or, colonize an asteroid, or anything else you may be afraid of.


It is not feasible to say "accept without question", nor obviously would I have a problem if I thought Amnesty was effective at removing Zionism. So your guesses are wrong.

If you think Saints are a myth, I am not sure we can reach you at all. The main point is to silence the western echo chamber. It is not so much that NGOs are not paragons of virtue, they are tentacles for Capitalism to undermine humanity. For example, "New World Order" is a private company launched in 1980, behind what would be "Happytalism". That is the whole point of them. Penetration. Take the media, the schools, the industry, etc., in the guise of Democracy.


Against this, appearing in the English language in 1881:


The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the dark nations...

...that curse known as the "struggle for life," which is the real and most prolific parent of most woes and sorrows and of all the crimes? Why has that struggle become the almost universal scheme of the universe?

...each of them, always with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and damnations inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we find that struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian countries, most prevalent in Europe and America.

Those "intellectual classes," reacting upon the ignorant masses which they attract and which look up to them as noble and fit examples to follow, degrade and morally ruin those they ought to protect and guide.

The world in general and Christendom especially, left for two thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a failure.



Let us hold our breath and swallow whole the following observations from veteran German statesman Oskar Lafontaine (https://sputniknews.com/20221128/german-statesman-slams-eu-leaders-spinelessness-demands-natos-dismemberment-closure-of-us-bases-1104796406.html):



“Of course, I also mean the conflict in Ukraine, which began with the Maidan putsch in Kiev in 2014. Since then, the US and its Western vassals have been arming Ukraine and systematically preparing it for confrontation with Russia. Ukraine thus became a de facto, if not de jure, member of NATO. This backstory has been studiously ignored by Western politicians and the mainstream media,” Lafontaine told Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten in an interview published Sunday.

“For more than 100 years, it has been the declared aim of US policy to prevent German business and technology from merging with Russian raw materials at all cost. It is perfectly clear that, if you take this history into account, we are dealing with a US proxy war against Russia which has been prepared for a long time,” Lafontaine said.

“It is unforgivable that the SPD in particular betrayed the legacy of Willy Brandt and his policy of détente, and did not even seriously insist on compliance with the Minsk Agreements,” the politician said, referring to the 2015 peace agreements meant to restore peace to the Donbass.

Lafontaine slammed the German government over its limp-wristed response to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which he characterized as a “declaration of war on Germany.” It was “pathetic and cowardly” of the federal government to try to “sweep incident under the carpet,” despite evidence that “the USA either carried out the attack directly or greenlit it,” the politician said.

“It was a hostile act against the Federal Republic, and not only against us, and once again makes clear that we must free ourselves from American tutelage,” Lafontaine stressed. The politician pressed his country’s leaders to force the removal of all US military bases and nuclear weapons from German soil, and called for the creation of a European security architecture with France, separate from NATO, which he called an “obsolete” alliance that acts as a “tool to enforce the US’s claim to remain the sole power in the world.”

Lafontaine admitted that freeing Germany from Washington’s grip wouldn’t be easy, but stressed that he can’t see “any alternative” to such a radical step. “If we and other European countries continue to remain under US tutelage, they will push us over a cliff to protect their own interests,” he said.


“To use a hackneyed expression: We are experiencing the birth pangs of the transitional phase from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. And the question arises whether we will have a place of our own in this new world order, or be drawn into Washington’s conflicts with Moscow and Beijing as American vassals,” the politician emphasized.

Recalling his decades of experience in politics, Lafontaine lamented in decades past, German leaders, “at least in some conflicts, had German interests in mind, and did not throw them overboard in anticipatory obedience” to Washington. “You need to have a backbone when you are the head of a country. The image of Chancellor Scholz standing like a schoolboy next to President Biden when he announced that nothing would come of Nord Stream 2 was humiliating.”

Ukraine Disaster

Asked whether he believed Washington has achieved its aims in Ukraine, Lafontaine said that the answer was both “yes and no,” with the principle successes being the ruined relations between Russia and the European Union, and the “sidelining” of Berlin and Brussels “as the US’s potential geostrategic and economic rivals, for the time being.”

“They are setting the policies of EU states even more than before the Ukraine conflict (thanks also to compliant politicians in Berlin and Brussels). They can also sell their dirty fracking-derived gas, and the US defense industry is doing great business,” the politician said.

“On the other hand, they have not succeeded in ‘ruining Russia’, as [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock put it…overthrowing [Vladimir] Putin and installing a puppet government in Moscow to get better access to Russian raw materials, as was the case in Yeltsin’s time,” Lafontaine said.

“And I have the impression that Washington has now realized that they are biting on granite here. Despite massive arms deliveries to Ukraine and the dispatch of numerous ‘military advisors’, Russia, which is a nuclear power, cannot be defeated militarily. In addition, Western sanctions are proving to be a boomerang: they hurt Western states more than Russia and will cause deindustrialization, unemployment and poverty. Working people in Europe are paying the price for the world power ambitions of a mad elite in Washington and the cowardice of European leaders,” Lafontaine concluded.


Information from the Delta C&C (https://southfront.org/leaked-documents-confirm-nato-plans-to-destroy-kakhovskaya-dam-in-kherson-region/) system shows:


The leaked documents confirmed that the Kakhovskaya dam was among the targets to destroy.

In its turn, the Russian side has all means to divide Ukraine in two parts by several missile strikes on the bridges and dams on the Dnieper River. Such attacks would leave the Ukrainian military without possibility to transfer any military equipment and personnel to the war-torn regions in the East. Such attacks would immediately bring Russia victory in the war in Ukraine and would save lives of Russian servicemen. However, the destruction of Ukrainian dams would also claim lives of hundreds of civilians. That’s why the Russian military does not launch its missiles on such facilities.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has already shown that Russia is fighting to protect people, while the United States and NATO pay no attention to the cost of human lives in the war they have ignited in Ukraine.



Elsewhere, for NATO of Kharkov (https://southfront.org/ukrainian-army-on-kharkov-front-lines/):


The reinforcement was mainly made up of foreign military, including former soldiers of the Bosnian and Albanian armies, as well as soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division “Getica” and the 2nd Mountain Rifle Brigade “Sarmizegetuza” from Romania.

The command of the operation, presumably, was entrusted to Polish officers from Rzeszow, who had previously served in the 21st the Podgalski rifle brigade.


On November 26, the Russian military reported a high-precision missile strike on the temporary deployment of Polish mercenaries near the village of Velikiye Khutora in the Kharkov region. Out of about 1,000 mercenaries, several hundred were killed and seriously injured.



... nor obviously would I have a problem if I thought Amnesty was effective at removing Zionism.

Sorry - I thought you’d realise that was a joke (the smiley face was a hint …). I was being ironic - you made your views on Zionism quite clear earlier in this thread.


No, actually, "foreign propaganda" does not require the same "scrutiny" as anything from western sources.

Now that is a bold statement! It’s obviously one with which I completely disagree, but it explains a lot about what I’ve read on this thread, so thank you.
I would have responded to more of your post- I’m not ignoring you, but I’m afraid that the rest of it went straight over my head :o

¤=[Post Update]=¤


Domo Arigato, мистер ящерица

[B]It’s миссис, not мистер.;)

*Мисс Ящерица

Lol i wondered, thanks for letting me know, but i hoped you would correct me if i was wrong

I have a question, if you look at the recent Grad shelling of Donetsk, which hit homes and civilian structures only, what are your thoughts, considering this:

- HIMARS and other MLRS like Grad, are offensive weapons, you don't use those for defensive positions in almost 99% of cases due to the nature of the system. It is meant to hit lots of targets at once but it requires to know exactly what you will hit, specially for the HIMARS, otherwise it causes massive destruction but it may not cause any harm to the attacking troops as they move around. It is more specializes for usages such as hitting stationary/static targets, like buildings and such
- Given that it is an offensive, and not a defensive weapon, it's usage against civilian structures is considered 'aggression' and in no way a defensive move. For it to be a defensive move, it would have to target a silo or another building or possibly even barracks where the enemy is located. It will also be used as defensive only if you shoot at them a barrage of shells and they pinpoint your location and send a barrage of himars or grads your way, that would be 'defensive' in action, since the 'enemy' started firing and then you respond

So, if a city with only civilians is hit by a barrage of grads, meant for offensive action, and there was no enemy there. Is that a war crime?

It doesn't necessarily have to be HIMAR or Grad rockets, you can get the same effect with 152/155 shells from a Howitzer if close enough to the target. The main or key issue here is, the target was a city full of civilians, hit at random which was just standing there and from where no attack was launched against the Ukrainian forces.

What are your thoughts on this event? How do you catalog this action?

The UN has not provided any comment on it, or has done it's usual tweet about condemning this attack against civilian population. Would you condemn the Ukrainian forces for what is clearly a well documented war crime by now? With video and other evidence already collected?

Second question, why do you think the entire west is silent about this shelling?

[Mashika]

The reason i'm saying this is because of this

MLRS are not just some gun you pick up and shoot around. To shoot an MLRS, you need to know several things like distance, altitude, frequency of the target moving, and other things like if you truly need to shoot at that target, as in, what value is there to shoot at a couple soldiers that may survive the Grads, because Grad rockets are not perfect and it's just like a terror weapon, they are not precise enough to kill some couple guys hiding inside a trench, you need to hit a bigger area like a camp or a set of buildings, or a tank base with lots of tanks distributed across hundreds of meters, or maybe a small forest section with IFVs hiding inside, see?

So, someone has to calculate the coordinates in advance, make sure the target is still there, position the MLRS battery and then confirm all the data is correct, this is done with drones or with forward observers, and only then, you shoot for effect

This implies intent, not a quick 'defensive' action done out of trying to respond to enemy fire. Because as i said, MLRS are not a defensive weapon, those are offensive in nature. Hope this makes more clear what i'm asking here

So i would love to read your thoughts on that

[shaberon]

No, actually, "foreign propaganda" does not require the same "scrutiny" as anything from western sources.

Now that is a bold statement! It’s obviously one with which I completely disagree, but it explains a lot about what I’ve read on this thread, so thank you.




It is. You are wanting to tell us we are inhaling "Kremlin agitprop" as if we were addicted to Facebook.

It's not like that.

To perhaps explain a bit more clearly, I personally am using two propagandas:


United Lodge Theosophy

Mahayana Buddhism


I don't expect anyone to agree or understand it, but, the majority of this thread is close enough. Or, Putin's speech on Empire of Lies ( = Satan). No shortage of information about this, while, on the ground, I find myself increasingly surrounded by what I would call "human failures". The actual result of westernization has really just broken people at around a kindergarten level. I have spent my whole life watching things go backwards from what we were able to discuss when I was in kindergarten; our class actually voted for Carter, rather than electing the un-elected Gerald Ford. Now, the main thing I see is people nose down in their phones, except tonight I got to hear one using an earpiece having a mental meltdown for a few hours, in front of several other people, screaming and crying over nothing as far as I could tell. I usually ignore that stuff, but, it is hard to miss a certain volume of screaming.

In the past few years I have gotten to see the "first, dumbest" thing of its kind, shocking at the pure weakness of it, over, and over again, by...the vast majority. Pointlessly. That makes, I don't know, about sixty or eighty cases of it so far, and there is nothing to say on their behalf. Comparatively, the sensible, stable types I have met, amount to maybe five or so.

I can't enforce The Saker's rules of moderation here, which would be a shutout of Zone A, and the Fifth and Sixth columns in Russia (which are getting smaller). I would recommend a similar sanitization to anyone who would like to clean their mind.

[shaberon]

More fallout (https://sputniknews.com/20221130/poland-faces-surge-of-hiv-amid-ukrainian-refugee-influx-1104847869.html):


Polish doctors have sounded the alarm as the country's medical infrastructure seems to be under severe pressure amid a spike of new HIV cases; the situation has been worsened by lack of testing kits for the disease.

By the end of October, 1,910 new cases of HIV were detected in Poland. From January to July this year 1,056 cases of infection were recorded, compared to 561 case in year 2021. Polish media have called these statistics alarming.

Some of these new infections have been linked to the Ukrainian refugee influx. According to the data provided via the International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection, one in six people receiving anti-HIV therapy in Poland right now is from Ukraine.

Doctors and medical experts argue that Poland does not have the necessary medical infrastructure needed to treat that many HIV sufferers. Ukraine has roughly 260,000 people with HIV while Poland has only 26,500. Moreover, Poland has only 17 Antiretroviral Therapy centers in major cities compared to Ukraine, where around 390 ART centers are spread all over the country.

To make things even worse, the ART combination pill taken by the majority of Ukrainian who carry the virus is not available in Poland: 77% of them take “TLD” – a combination of drugs, including generic one. As a member of European Union, Poland can not legally use generics.

[Mashika]

Mahayana Buddhism

Tough luck, most people would not understand it, as you know very well this requires years of very hard focus and studies to even being to grasp the true nature of it

Most (not all) people want answers on a silver spoon given by a butler, they have not time for all that stuff about patient and they just want the "Buddhism in 24 hours" course. They don't 'want to know', they just 'need to look like they know'

:p



Putin's speech on Empire of Lies ( = Satan)

The amount of people who did not realize what he was referencing with 'The empire of lies' amazes me, he also in the past, lots of years ago, made references to the 'snakes on the west' but i do think this is not online or recent enough, i tried to look the video up but it's nowhere as far as i know. I did remember watching it on Channel One several years ago.



The actual result of westernization has really just broken people at around a kindergarten level. I have spent my whole life watching things go backwards from what we were able to discuss when I was in kindergarten

Across the Russian government offices, there is a running joke about the president of the united states of America being two/three kids stacked over each other under a trench coat. I have no doubt anymore about how that joke came to be. I do know it started sometime around the late 90's to early 2000's or so. It is not unfounded, very honestly

https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/vincent-adultman.jpg

[shaberon]

Mahayana Buddhism

Tough luck, most people would not understand it, as you know very well this requires years of very hard focus and studies to even being to grasp the true nature of it

Most (not all) people want answers on a silver spoon given by a butler, they have not time for all that stuff about patient and they just want the "Buddhism in 24 hours" course. They don't 'want to know', they just 'need to look like they know'

Putin's speech on Empire of Lies ( = Satan)

The amount of people who did not realize what he was referencing with 'The empire of lies' amazes me, he also in the past, lots of years ago, made references to the 'snakes on the west' but i do think this is not online or recent enough, i tried to look the video up but it's nowhere as far as i know. I did remember watching it on Channel One several years ago.


With respect to the former, that is kind of true, but a lot of that is, with Jihads devastating India, the Buddhism in Tibet and China is not really the same thing. It is actually much simpler. I am going to venture a guess that most Russians have no idea what was given to Tsar Nicholas II?

With respect to the second, it is the same as stated in original Theosophy as well, which, in its turn, was driven by Buddhism. Same message about the "collective west", broken down into English to be easier to understand. Similarly, original Theosophy was changed by its followers into something else. So instead of working for equality and giving us better social institutions, all was lost, and now we have this heated conflict which again, I am not sure most English speakers can begin to understand, and, of course, they do everything they can come up with to paint it as something other than it is. As most Russians probably do know, HPB was a Rurikid and Dolgoruki, which is probably meaningless to outsiders. In fact her grandfather had St. Germain's map of what the "new Europe" would be after the French Revolution, because, why? We cannot be completely sure, but it had a lot to do with war debts and how the Paris and Duverny bankers would gladly throw their country under the bus for money.

What Theosophy does for me is to prevent me from turning into a rabid crusader. I accept "goodness" in any of its forms, such as can be found in Orthodoxy, Jews against Zionism, or from personal experience, one of the wisest and kindest people I have met was a Muslim. Any of that is fine, even atheism, just not the fake stuff.




Across the Russian government offices, there is a running joke about the president of the united states of America being two/three kids stacked over each other under a trench coat. I have no doubt anymore about how that joke came to be. I do know it started sometime around the late 90's to early 2000's or so. It is not unfounded, very honestly


I wish it was a joke. Woodrow "rubber stamp" Wilson pretty much signed it away around 1913, and, shortly regretted having made one of the greatest mistakes ever, but...you sign it into law, it is hard to get rid of.


There is a massive article today from Cynthia Chung on Operation Gladio (https://thesaker.is/operation-gladio-natos-secret-war-for-international-fascism/) and international fascism, which, shortly after posting, has:

12019 Views

She doesn't even have the stuff behind the United Nations, it is mostly NATO, but it is pretty accurate and well worth putting some time into. Nothing but the steamroller of the "collective west", too big to cross-post.


In occupied Okinawa (https://sputniknews.com/20221201/watch-f-35-collapses-on-okinawa-runway-after-landing-over-electrical-issue-1104949739.html), an F-35 collapsed while being towed after:


A spokesman for the US Marines reportedly said the F-35B in question had been carrying out “standard training operations” when it was forced to land following a suspected electrical problem. According to a US military outlet, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing spokesman Maj. Rob Martins promised a “detailed investigation” into the damage sustained by the craft.


And, to our surprise, Indonesia (https://sputniknews.com/20221130/is-desire-to-conquer-behind-pentagon-affiliated-biolabs-in-ukraine--indonesia-1104905548.html) actually shut down a biolab a few years ago--thanks to not giving it an ever-renewing lease. One of the things we notice is:


Supari also had other concerns, saying that Indonesians never knew what NAMRU’s staff – American marines with diplomatic immunity - were carrying in their briefcases, and also pointing out that there were “several things that [the US] can’t explain about [NAMRU’s] role in the avian flu pandemic.”


And yes, they continue to do other "projects" there, with rabies, Dengue' fever, etc., all with that unilateral blanket of protection. Why does all the staff need a "get out of jail free" card?

Oh that's right--"We can't talk to you about this. And, for those things we can talk about, our investigations last for eternity".

[Tintin]

Source: https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1597980380271116288

1597980380271116288

[Carlitos]

Source: https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1597980380271116288

1597980380271116288

this guy ^ is so composed, seems to be well rested, and very articulate - he also makes the invaluable point that the nato backed ukrainian forces seem to be focused on destruction, and not so much on helping the people in the areas that they are shelling...

the consensus against anything russian here in NL is despicable. I have russian friends, and russian colleagues, talking about them like they are human beings, is like saying you did not take the vaccine... a sad state of affairs

all news from russia is totally blocked from entering through conventional channels... MSN in NL is incredibly refined, smooth short, very calm, and very shallow - people in general seem glazed over in a kind of soft soma-propaganda, quasi happy state... as a cold front comes into northern europe, 2 weeks of freezing weather expected - my energy bill is now higher than the rent ... what's next? it does not look like EU will compromise or even try to appease russia...

[Rizotto]

In this 28 minutes interview, Scott Ritter hypothesizes on the terms Russia might dictate to Ukraine to end this conflict and what Ukraine might look like in the aftermath.

"Scott Ritter - Ukraine Russia War Update 11-30-22"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QVDWt3OBJc

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1598625681700663296

1598625681700663296

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1598629045960318976

1598629045960318976

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598645123595657218

1598645123595657218


https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598671745669627905

1598671745669627905

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/status/1598648357903388674

1598648357903388674

[url]https://tass.com/society/1544793?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

Edward Snowden awarded Russian passport, attorney reveals

Anatoly Kucherena also said that Snowden’s spouse is currently submitting the required documents for Russian citizenship as well


MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. Former NSA (National Security Agency) employee Edward Snowden took an oath and was granted a Russian passport, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told TASS on Friday.

"Yes, he received a passport. He took the oath," Kucherena said in a response to a question as to whether Snowden has been given a Russian passport, adding that he personally met with Snowden yesterday.

The lawyer also said that Snowden’s spouse is currently submitting the required documents for Russian citizenship as well. Snowden and American acrobat and blogger Lindsay Mills married in Moscow in 2017.

Snowden’s US passport was annulled in 2013, but the White House explained back then that it was a routine legal procedure following the issuance of an arrest warrant and his citizenship status remained unchanged.

In late September, a Russian presidential decree was published stating that Snowden was eligible to be granted the Russian citizenship.

In 2013, Snowden leaked information on the electronic surveillance methods used by American intelligence services, including illegally eavesdropping on foreign leaders’ conversations.

Fleeing punitive consequences from US federal authorities, Snowden sent requests for asylum to several countries, including Russia. On August 1, 2014, he obtained a temporary Russian residence permit and later was granted an open-ended residency permit.

Back in the United States, Snowden is facing two counts of violating the Espionage Act, and he risks up to ten years in prison on each count.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598682492982140930

1598682492982140930

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598658929738686465

1598658929738686465

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598659725528338432

1598659725528338432

[Mashika]

Anti Ukronazi and Anti Elensky feelings are starting to popup in western Ukraine. People like this girl used to be afraid to speak up due to possibility of getting killed because of 'pro-russian' views, which means they could be accused of colaboration with the enemy and then in some cases killed under the pretense of 'resisted arrest'

But now they don't care, they are tired and obviously very angry, here's a rant she posted online and there are other people doing the same, they just don't care about the consequences anymore

The very angry part about European 'values' is at around 1:40 minute
DonbassDevushka/34820

[Mashika]

What should we call a country that:

1. Makes any other political party illegal, leaving only one as 'the official' party (making it impossible to have valid elections ever again)
2. Does background checks on its own citizens to figure out if they have Russian family or come from Russian ancestors. With the possibility of removing them from the general population if they fit that criteria
3. Commits democide against its own people, based on the language/political views or ethnicity, or all of the previous points
4. Does political persecution against anyone that doesn't conform to the imposed 'official narrative'
5. Does religious persecution, and removes all religions that do not conform or teach the 'official narrative'
6. Rewrites history and teaches a fabricated version of events that put war criminals as national heroes. and teaches this as a 'truth' to school children starting at kindergarten even
7. Makes it illegal to speak any other language than 'the official one' and persecutes people who speak it or refuse to stop speaking it. This includes all media channels like tv, radio, magazines and the internet

What is this situation called? Democracy? :clapping::ROFL:



https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598645123595657218

1598645123595657218


https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1598671745669627905

1598671745669627905

[Bill Ryan]

https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1598658929738686465

1598658929738686465

And one wonders what the heck "non-statutory relations" might be.