Russia: international moves, W responses, Putin...Ukraine...China...internal devts. 15

Russia's Gas Production Collapses to Late-Stage USSR Levels
Brendan Cole | 9/30/23

...The country's state energy giant Gazprom said in its latest report that gas production in the first half of 2023 was 179.45 billion cubic meters (bcm). Gazprom added that this represents a year-on-year decrease of nearly a quarter (24.7 percent), and a 26.5 percent drop in gas supplies to the domestic and foreign markets...

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-gas-production-collapse-ussr-levels-1831087

I could not find a public recording of Amb. Freeman's speech from the last thread, but here is a segment of a recent interview in which he covered many of the same points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9h2-_CaXSc

As for the Canadian Parliament fiasco, someone ought at least to mention it. I'll let Mark Felton handle that. It's short and withering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPoFzmDteg

> As for the Canadian Parliament fiasco, someone ought at least to mention it.

#140 and #141 in previous thread.

>4 margd: Sorry, I must have scrolled past it.

'They're just meat': Russia deploys punishment battalions in echo of Stalin
Reuters | October 3, 2023

...The penal squads, each about 100-150 strong and embedded within regular army units, have typically been sent to the most exposed parts of the front and often sustain heavy losses, according to Reuters interviews with the people, who identified at least five Storm-Z teams fighting to repel a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south.

...nightmarish engagements that saw much of their squads wiped out.

...the Storm-Z units come under the direct command of the defence ministry.

The squads also combine convicts who volunteer to fight in exchange for the promise of a pardon with regular soldiers being punished for disciplinary breaches...officers had sent soldiers to Storm-Z for being drunk on duty, for using drugs, and for refusing to carry out orders

...One group of about 20 Storm-Z fighters in Zaporizhzhia, who were part of unit number 22179, decided they'd had enough of their treatment, refused an order to go back to the frontline, and recorded a June 28 video complaining about their treatment. Reuters called numbers listed for the unit, but they were out of operation...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/theyre-just-meat-russia-deploys-punishment-...

"functional defeat" of Russia in the Black Sea...
Ukraine actions + Turkey's refusal of naval ships entrance to Black Sea?

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 8:30 AM · Oct 3, 2023:
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1709184046482247780

BREAKING: Britain's Armed Forces Minister James Heappey hails the "functional defeat" of Russia in the Black Sea
Heappey says that the Russian Navy has been forced to retreat to ports where it cannot inflict serious damage on Ukraine
This process was set into motion by Russia's movement of key naval assets to Novorossiyk* after the Moskva sinking and now has culminated in Britain's view

* Novorossiysk is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Population: 262,293. It is one of the largest ports on the Black Sea. It is one of the few cities designated by the Soviet Union as a Hero City. {Hero City is a Soviet honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during World War II. It was awarded to twelve cities of the Soviet Union, today located in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.} ... (Wikipedia)
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ETA:

Ukraine has won a massive naval victory without having a navy
Russia's hold over Sevastopol is slipping, with huge implications for the Black Sea Fleet
Tom Sharpe | 21 September 2023
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/21/ukraine-war-zelensky-putin-russia-na...
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ETA:

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 10:31 AM · Oct 4, 2023:

Ukraine's systemic attacks on Crimea's military infrastructure, logistics centers, Black Sea Fleet command centers, and Black Sea Fleet ships led to gradual relocation and withdrawal of the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol. Some ships were relocated to Feodosia, many to Novorossiysk.

In particular, the Black Sea Fleet has relocated all submarines (Kalibr missile carriers) from Sevastopol - Crimean media.
Reportedly, there are none of them currently at the anchorage in the Southern Bay. The only submarine at the dock is the captured Ukrainian submarine "Zaporizhzhia".
It is reported that most of the submarines have been relocated to Novorossiysk.

Largely due to this partial neutralization of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the fact that the actual fleet is now locked in Sevastopol, navigation northwest of the Black Sea, along the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria has become safer.

Ukraine's three Black Sea ports have been able to resume receiving ships for grain exports. This is despite Russia's threats to shell ships traveling to Ukrainian ports.

The first 10 ships have already used the corridor that Ukraine started building after Russia refused to renew the grain agreement. It is also reported that international insurance companies have started to restore coverage of insurance risks.

As stated at the Warsaw Security Forum by the UK's Junior Defense Minister James Heappey: "Ukraine has achieved a functional defeat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet."

Thus, Crimea and the Black Sea near Crimea are now the most important area where a turning point in the war may take place.

Presently, it can be stated that:
▪️ Russian most advanced "state-of-the-art" air defense systems are clearly not capable of intercepting Western cruise missiles.

▪️ The attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (the most important military facility in Crimea), and the strikes on the Black Sea Fleet are catastrophic for Russia: they demoralize Russians and show Ukraine's initiative.

▪️ Crimea is not only a logistics center, but also the most important military base of the Russian operation in Ukraine, and that is why there are and will be landmark events there, which may determine the final outcome of the war. "Who controls Crimea in the end of this war, will be the winner" - Ben @general_ben
Hodges.

This also demonstrates once more the need and importance for Ukraine to acquire long-range missiles (TAURUS and ATACMS). Each such missile is a significant contribution towards the future Ukrainian Victory.

Image ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1709576930171703445/photo/1 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 7:41 AM · Oct 4, 2023:

I read this piece by Valery Pekar, Ukrainian professor, researcher and expert, and decided to share it with you. The following is the translation of his Facebook post (I shortened it a little bit):

"Western elites are afraid of three options of how events might develop further:

1️⃣ They are afraid of Ukrainian defeat: it would mean a political defeat for all who supported Ukraine, and strengthening of the global authoritarian vector, with a likelihood of Russian aggression spreading to Europe and the start of Chinese aggression.

2️⃣ They are afraid of Russian defeat: it means Russia breaking down, collapsing, a humanitarian catastrophe, a refugee crisis of a huge scale, uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons and excessive strengthening of China.

3️⃣ They are afraid of the war dragging on: it means accumulation of fatigue in their societies, aggravation of internal political confrontation, and, in the end, Ukrainian defeat with all the consequences from point 1.

If you {Western elites} fear Ukrainian defeat, Russian defeat, war dragging on, then what remains?

🔷 One of the options is to continue living with the myths that represent the old outlook on the world, e.g.:

🔹Putin will die (he won't because a person who has several doubles controlled by his close environment, cannot die);
🔹After Putin's death Navalny will become president of Russia (he won't because the real power is in the hands of the FSB and other clans and even if Navalny is set free and appointed president, it wouldn't change anything);
🔹After Putin's death and Navalny's inauguration, he will democratize Russia in a couple of years (he won't because democracy requires citizens and institutions, and Russia has neither).

🔷 Another option is to freeze the war. But in order to do that, Russian and Ukrainian sides must agree to negotiations and freezing, and neither side agrees to this at the moment: Ukrainian society won't approve if Ukrainian political leaders do that, and Putin doesn't want negotiations. He thinks that time plays into his hands and he just needs to wait for Ukraine to exhaust herself.

🔷One more option is to do nothing and hope for something to happen that will change the situation or lead to new information appearing. For example, Putin will die (see above). This is what's happening right now, with the slogan "We'll be with Ukraine for as long as it takes" - takes to do what?

❗️So, the absence of vision of how the war will end makes the end of war rather complicated and even impossible (hopefully, no one harbors any illusions anymore that the AFU reaching the borders of 1991 will mean the end of the war).

🔷 What can be done?

There is only one way: Ukraine must show maximum initiative in this issue. Ukraine must realize, analyze and demonstrate possible scenarios of the post war world to our allies. A desirable scenario must be agreed upon and a request for all the resources and mechanisms that are necessary to carry it out must be made. Formulate a clear and concise message to non-Western countries (sometimes called "the global South"). Gather a global coalition for sustainable peace, like the coalition for Ukrainian defense. Otherwise the marathon will turn into running in circles."

Replies: https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1709534079400509654

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:29 AM · Oct 4, 2023:

Reportedly, in a drone attack on Belgorod region of Russia, an S-400 Russian Triumf air defense system was destroyed. It costs about $1.2 billion.

Russian Telegram channels reported that about 20 explosions were heard in the area where the system was located. There was a power outage in settlements nearby.

This is the second Russian Triumf complex destroyed in the past month. The first one was hit in Yevpatoria on September 14...

Денис Казанський @den_kazansky | 2:51 AM · Oct 5, 2023:

The leader of pro-Russian militants of Donetsk, Pavel Gubarev, says that Russia will not be able to kill all Ukrainians, so it will have to create concentration camps in Ukraine to "re-educate" the local population...

0:34 ( https://twitter.com/den_kazansky/status/1709823704241246305 )
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The Republicans Who Are Treating Ukraine as Their Hostage
Why some in the GOP are increasingly taking a grossly instrumental view of the war in Ukraine.
Will Saletan | Oct 5, 2023

...Even Republican leaders who support Kyiv are threatening to withhold aid unless Democrats offer concessions on other issues. They’re treating Ukraine as a hostage—not a Russian hostage, but a Republican hostage...

...Over the last year, in Economist/YouGov polls, the percentage of Republicans who favor “decreasing military aid to Ukraine” has doubled, from 27 percent to more than 50 percent. In the latest Economist survey on this question, taken a week ago, 60 percent of Republicans said we should reduce aid to Ukraine, and half of that 60 percent wanted to cut off aid entirely. Democrats, by contrast, have hardly budged. Only 14 percent want to reduce the aid.

...REAGANITE FOREIGN POLICY—the idea that America should play a moral and forceful role in the world, particularly against Russian aggression and in defense of democracy—isn’t dead. You can still see vestiges of it in the House, the Senate, and the 2024 presidential campaign, where several Republican candidates continue to make the case for Ukraine.

But that faction no longer dominates the party. Today, Reaganites are outnumbered by Republican isolationists. And Republican leaders won’t continue to aid countries like Ukraine unless—from the party that still stands firmly for democracy—they get something in return...

https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/republicans-treating-ukraine-as-their-hostage

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 7:38 AM · Oct 5, 2023:

BREAKING: Spain offers new air defence and anti-drone systems to Ukraine
Spain is offering these systems to protect Ukraine's energy and port infrastructure
The Spanish military will pair these new systems with extensive training for Ukraine in the use of demining equipment

https://www.barrons.com/news/putin-says-russia-s-mission-is-to-create-new-world-...
Putin Says Russia's Mission Is To Create 'New World'

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia's mission was to create a "new world" and blamed Western hegemony for Moscow's grinding offensive in Ukraine.

Putin has portrayed Russia's full-scale military intervention in Ukraine -- launched in February 2022 -- as part of a long-standing confrontation with the West.

"We are tasked, essentially, with building a new world," Putin said, adding the West was aiming for global "hegemony".

"The West always needs an enemy," he said.

Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko | 3:43 PM · Oct 5, 2023:
Live straight out of Bucha... and originally from Donbas. One out of so many out there.

Vladimir Putin, Oct. 5, 2023: "...if Western defense supplies are terminated tomorrow, Ukraine will have a week left to live as it runs out of ammunition."...

0:14 (https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1710017768152616970 )

Russian strike kills 51 gathered for wake in east Ukraine
AFP | Issued on: 06/10/2023 - 06:33Modified: 06/10/2023

Groza (Ukraine) (AFP) – A Russian strike killed at least 51 people gathered for a wake in northeastern Ukraine Thursday, provoking outrage from Western leaders for what the UN warned could be a war crime.

The mourners for a fallen Ukrainian soldier had gathered at a cafe in the village of Groza, in the Kharkiv region.

People who had been in a shop in the same building were also killed in the attack on the small village, which had a population of 330 people.

A spokeswoman for the regional assembly, quoted by Ukrainian media, said it was the single deadliest attack since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.

AFP journalists at the scene of the aftermath saw blackened and dismembered bodies spread out on the ground opposite the ruins of the cafe.

Police and soldiers loaded white body bags of unidentifiable bodies onto trucks that would take them to Kharkiv for DNA testing...

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231006-russian-strike-kills-51-gathered-...
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Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:15 AM · Oct 6, 2023:

The aftermath of yesterday's Russian missile strike on Groza village in Kharkiv region.
The phones of the people killed by Russia kept ringing. Imagine the person on the other end who kept trying to find out if their loved ones were safe.
Look at the scale of destruction in the end of the video.

0:15 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1710191999582716362 )

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 5:37 AM · Oct 6, 2023:

BREAKING: Russia calls for faster production of Su-34 fighter jets

Sergei Shoigu visited Novosibirsk where he hailed how Su-34s can make 4 to 5 flights per day

Shoigu is calling for a ramp up in air power production as Russia prepares for a likely winter offensive with an expanded defence budget

Here is Shoigu in Novosibirsk
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1710228614392733766/photo/1

Benjamin Tallis 🇺🇦 @bctallis | Last edited 6:05 AM · Oct 6, 2023
Intl Politics & Security | #NeoIdealism | Snr Fellow @dgapev #ActionGroup #Zeitenwende |🇺🇦🇪🇺🇩🇪🇨🇿🇬🇧 | CoHost #BerlinsideOut pod {Berlin}

This is so important. When you watch these clips you’ll know what must be done.

Only victory and meaningful justice can end the cycle of aggression. And, every day, more evidence is collected for a Special Tribunal on Russian aggression.

Let’s get #SpecialTribunalNow trending.
09:13 ( https://twitter.com/bctallis/status/1710234771555557546 )
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NEXTA @nexta_tv | 10:29 AM · Oct 5, 2023:
Putin: "We did not start the so-called war in Ukraine."
0:24 ( https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1709938822476427324 )

Victor Cha @VictorDCha | 2:20 PM · Oct 6, 2023:
Georgetown / CSIS {thinktank Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown U} / former USG official/ author/ NBCNews /

Putin-Kim summit just theatrics and toasts? Don't think so. Fresh new @CSIS

@CSISKoreaChair @BeyondCSISKorea imagery yesterday of the RR border between DPRK and Russia shows the highest level of railcar traffic we have ever recorded pre- or post-pandemic. Don't think this is just food...(tarping obscures contents of railcars)

Dramatic Increase in DPRK-Russia Border Rail Traffic After Kim-Putin Summit
October 6, 2023, by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., Victor Cha and Jennifer Jun
https://beyondparallel.csis.org/dramatic-increase-in-dprk-russia-border-rail-tra...

As Ukraine reels from attacks on land, conflict at sea signals hope
Drones and missiles keep Russian fleet at bay and supplies and trade flowing at ports
Luke Harding in Odesa and Dan Sabbagh | 8 Oct 2023

...Ukraine’s counter-offensive on land – designed to liberate the south of the country, and to bisect occupying Russian forces – has been going slowly. It has proved difficult and costly. Ukrainian brigades equipped with western battle tanks have struggled to advance through minefields and entrenched Russian positions.

In the Black Sea, however, Kyiv has made remarkable progress. Drones and UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles have destroyed targets in Crimea. These include air defence batteries, a shipyard and the white neo-classical headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Last week satellite images revealed Moscow’s mighty navy has left the deep water port of Sevastopol. It has gone east, to the safer Russian harbour of Novorossiysk.

Meanwhile, merchant ships are sailing again. According to Yurii Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy minister responsible for seaports and maritime, more than 30 vessels have arrived or departed from Odesa and the neighbouring ports of Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi. They have carried cargoes of grain, sunflower oil and metals, including a consignment of iron ore.

So far Ukraine’s unilateral “humanitarian” grain corridor appears to be working. Under the old UN and Turkey-brokered deal Russia was able to “inspect” containers as they made their way through the Black Sea, causing delays. Now ships can move unimpeded. Their route goes through Ukrainian territorial waters before passing Romania and Bulgaria, both Nato members...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/08/as-ukraine-reels-from-attacks-on-l...

Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv | 2:46 AM · Oct 10, 2023:

US Congress' infighting is about to cost even more lives.
Likely cautious on uncertain supplies from the US, in a week's time, Ukraine has gone from destroying 48 units of Russian artillery/day to only 7.
This, as Russia is about to receive huge supplies from North Korea.

Infographic ( https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1711634173138485492/photo/1 )

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 5:46 AM · Oct 10, 2023:

BREAKING: British intelligence says it is "highly unlikely" Russia will announce further mobilization in Ukraine before the March 2024 presidential elections

Putin needs to thread the needle between avoiding unpopular moves, such as mobilization, and appeasing ultranationalist who could engage in election cycle agitation and back these unpopular moves

Stealth conscription via electronic register and a frozen frontline might work

Winter is coming...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 11:41 AM · Oct 10, 2023:

Several days ago, Finland and Estonia reported that the undersea Balticconnector gas pipeline running between the two countries across the Baltic Sea was temporarily taken out of service due to a suspected leak.

Today, Finland's PM Petteri Orpo stated that damages to the underwater gas pipeline "couldn't have happened naturally. The damaged underwater communications cable was most likely hit in Estonia's Exclusive Economic Zone.

Also, there is information that the Russian survey vessel Sibiryakov was conducting “underwater activities” by the Balticconector pipeline throughout the summer. And now there is a hole in the pipeline.

Read more information here:
Undersea pipeline damage appears to be deliberate, says Finland
Media cites intelligence sources saying Russian sabotage suspected after unusual drop in pressure
Jon Henley | 10 Oct 2023
https://theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/undersea-pipeline-damage-appears-to-be...

Photo, Compression station of the Balticconnector gas pipeline in Inkoo, Finland ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1711768817292939726/photo/1 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 10:35 AM · Oct 11, 2023

Reportedly, a large patrol ship Pavel Derzhavin of the Black Sea Fleet blew up in Sevastopol today. It is unclear what happened exactly.
Waiting for official confirmation.

Photo patrol ship ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1712114623007084659/photo/1 )

KyivPost @KyivPost | 7:05 AM · Oct 12, 2023:
The award-winning Kyiv Post is the top international source of English-language news about Ukraine since 1995.

⚡️#Romania's Defense Ministry has reported that another Russian #drone struck its territory last night.
Russian drones were targeting locations in the Ukrainian city of #Izmail, but one of the drones managed to cross the #Danube River and hit Plauru, Romania.

Satellite Map ( https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1712424325335118253/photo/1 )
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'No risk' that NATO member Romania will be dragged into war, senior alliance official says
NATO Deputy-General Secretary Mircea Geoana says there is “no risk” that alliance member Romania will be dragged into a war following the recent discovery of drone fragments on its territory near the border with war-torn Ukraine
STEPHEN MCGRATH and VADIM GHIRDA | September 11, 2023

...After the second discovery of drone fragments on Saturday {9 Sept 2023}, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis responded by saying they were “similar to those used by the Russian army” and that the incident indicates there has been “an absolutely unacceptable violation of the sovereign airspace of Romania, a NATO ally, with real risks to the security of Romanian citizens in the area.”

...Geoana also said he welcomes plans by the United States to supplement the Alliance’s air policing of the Black Sea region as well as adding more NATO troops to the 5,000 already based in Romania. “This should reassure us and give us a lot of confidence and calm,” he said.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion against Ukraine in February last year, NATO bolstered its presence on Europe’s eastern flank, including by sending additional battlegroups to Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.

“Imagine what would have happened if we were not a NATO member state," Geoana added. "We belong to the strongest alliance in the history of humanity.”
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Romania joined North Atlantic Treaty Organization on March 29, 2004... (Wikipedia)

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:19 AM · Oct 12, 2023:
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1712367358851891574

Russia has launched a major offensive on Avdiivka. One more defining battle of the war is underway.

The video shows yet another attempt to move a large armored column of Russians from Krasnohorivka to cover the northern flank of the Avdiivka front.

Approximately 20 units of equipment (tanks, IFVs, MT-LBs). Part of this column was destroyed, but the scale of the offensive is epic.

Avdiivka is of strategic importance to Russia, as this city is actually the gateway to Donetsk, the main communication hub in the occupied territories. In order to establish a foothold in the occupied Donbas, Putin needs to move the front line away from Donetsk.

In 2022, Russian troops launched an offensive against Avdiivka, trying to deeply encircle the city from both flanks. It was stopped due to heroic resistance of Ukrainians.

The battle for Avdiivka will be more fierce than the battle for Vuhledar in winter.

The presence of shielded buildings in Donetsk and Yasynuvata facilitates covert actions, deployment of artillery in residential areas, and hidden operations of armored vehicles. Russia has concentrated significant aviation forces that use high-precision weapons, a large number of shells that could be supplied by North Korea and Iran.

Russians are trying to create a great advantage in drones. Russian drones, along with artillery, are being used to hit the front lines, and the enemy is trying to open the way for their infantry and tanks to break through the combat formations of our troops, primarily using a large number of high explosive munitions.

The main attack is coming from the south of Avdiivka. Unlike the first offensive on Avdiivka, which lasted from July 2022 to March 2023, the current attack is planned to cover the city in a much shorter arc. However, the enemy is trying to avoid fighting in the urban areas and create a threat of encirclement for our troops in the city.

The situation is very serious.

A very heavy battle has begun.

✒️: Ukrainian military journalist Yurii Butusov @UButusov
0:39 convoy ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1712367358851891574 )
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margd: discussion re timing (Israel) and NATO priorities and limitations (US House speaker)

The White Helmets @SyriaCivilDef | 8:21 AM · Oct 14, 2023:
We're the Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets), our humanitarian work helps communities prepare for, respond to & recover from attacks. We've saved +128k lives.

A home, torn apart by a ruthless attack, has become the scene of unbearable loss. At this site, #WhiteHelmets volunteer Ahmed Mahdi Ahmadou's mother was killed and father injured after Russian airstrikes last night...
Just a few days ago, they fled their city Ariha after it ravaged by fierce bombings. Seeking refuge, they settled in a house in the agricultural lands near the city, in the Jabal Al-Arbaeen region, only to be pursued by attacks once again.

2:02 ( https://twitter.com/SyriaCivilDef/status/1713168206750163249 )

Worst Russian Land Battle Defeat in Nine Months – Kremlin Forces Hit a Wall at Avdiivka
Dozens of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers drove forward into open ground laced with minefields. It turns out the Ukrainians were ready.
Stefan Korshak | October 13, 2023

Ukrainian troops fighting from thick fortifications in the eastern sector have used massive artillery strikes backed by anti-tank missiles and drone swarms to hand the Russian army its worst battlefield defeat in nine months, sources said on Friday.

Large-scale tank and armored infantry attacks under the command of Russia’s 25th Combined Arms Army launched between 100-200 armored vehicles in a two-pronged attack starting Monday with the objective of encircling Ukrainian forces dug in around the town of Avdiivka, a coal-mining community near the northern suburbs of the Russia-controlled Ukrainian city of Donetsk...

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/22706

Ukraine updates: Russia says drone attacks on Sochi thwarted
DW | 14 Oct 2023

Russian officials said two drones were shot down over the Black Sea in the southern resort city. Meanwhile, fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka has continued. ...

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-russia-says-drone-attacks-on-sochi-thwarte...

Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv | 11:38 AM · Oct 14, 2023:

Every video of the landscape coming out of Avdiivka is confirming that Russia's kamikaze attack didn't just cost them a stellar amount of tanks and armor, but a stunning level of personnel losses.

Aerial photo R casualties and equipment ( https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1713217834728210926/photo/1 )

Anti-war Russian clergy face punishment
Maria Katamadze | 15 Oct 2023

Clergy have been defrocked and fined in court for speaking out against the war in Ukraine as the Russian Orthodox Church brings members into line ideologically.

Praying for peace puts Russian clergy at risk
Public penance for the priests
How does the Russian Orthodox Church view anti-war statements?
Clandestine anti-war church life

https://www.dw.com/en/like-partisans-anti-war-russian-clergy-face-punishment/a-6...

Remember how Ukrainian defenders and some civilians holed up in a bunker underneath steel rolling plant in Mariupol? This what it looked like by the time they surrendered to Russia. (What lays ahead for Gaza City?)

KyivPost @KyivPost | 3:49 AM · Oct 16, 2023:

This is how the #Azovstal in #Mariupol looks now
It was one of the largest metallurgical plants in the world, employing more than 10,000 people.

0:57 ( https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1713824475903344936 )

Samuel Ramani {Oxford U} @SamRamani2 | 7:54 AM · Oct 17, 2023:

Russia's Fighterbomber Telegram channel says that ATACMS {long-range guided missile that gives operational commanders the immediate firepower to win the deep battle} dealt a devastating blow to an airfield operated by Russia's Northern Military District
It calls it the most serious of the war and predicts further such attacks

The location appears to be Berdyansk in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. ATACMS are aiding the southern axis of Ukraine’s counter offensive. Here is the Telegram post which offers no location details
https://t.me/fighter_bomber/14410
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Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss | 7:22 AM · Oct 17, 2023:
Editor @insidereng , @ . ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror... Next book: GRU {NYC}

Looking like the Russians lost a bunch of “Alligator” helicopters in a massive Ukrainian strike on Berdyansk airfield.
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Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko | 5:00 AM · Oct 17, 2023:
Live straight out of Bucha {journalist, Bucha, Ukraine}

Yep, given the avalanche of hardcore, instant copium and hysterical moaning in faschist Z-channels this morning, Russian air forces have really had a bad night in Berdyansk.
Waiting for satellite images.
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ETA

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 2:47 AM · Oct 21, 2023:
Russian propagandists discuss the strike on Luhansk and Berdiansk aircraft with ATACMS missiles. "There was practically nothing left undamaged", they say glloomily and predict more strikes.
1:39 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1715620883169980545 )

Meanwhile in Syria, Russians bombs TENTS??

The White Helmets @SyriaCivilDef | 8:58 AM · Oct 17, 2023:
Scenes of our response to the renewed Russian airstrikes on the Al-Qashwa camp near Sheikh Yusuf, west of #Idlib, today, Tuesday, October 17th, inspecting the conditions of civilians and extinguishing fires in two tents...
1:53 ( https://twitter.com/SyriaCivilDef/status/1714264663871934658 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 7:01 AM · Oct 18, 2023:

Putin was next to Xi Jinping at the welcome dinner for the Belt and Road Forum and for the official photo, as well. Of course, it is not a coincidence as these things are carefully planned in advance.

Putin's visit to China was also planned a long time ago. Apart from negotiations with the Chinese leader, it is Putin's chance to re-establish himself as a global leader who still matters in global politics. He probably wants to look for allies and supporters among Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America - participants of the Forum.

It is widely known and clear that China cares about China and Chinese interests. In a situation of weakened Russia, China will use Russia and its resources to its advantage. No doubt, Putin understands that, too.

I've looked through Russian media and noted that their coverage of Putin's visit is not that extensive - they focus on other news more. This could mean that the Kremlin regime doesn't have high hopes about Putin's attendance of the Forum, so they don't want to hype up this event. Thus, it might be aimed more at the international audience to demonstrate that Russia (and Putin personally) still rank high.

This is a demonstration that Putin continues having international support, forms new blocks and alliances in opposition to the United States.

Photos ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1714597464529883634/photo/1 )
---------------------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:25 AM · Oct 18, 2023

Interesting and symbolic decoration for Putin's speech in China.
A huge ikebana on a black pedestal creates an impression of Putin speaking from a coffin.
And the blue-yellow background suits the general theme quite well.

Photo ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1714588524010262594/photo/1 )
-------------------------------------------------

Andreea Roxana @soft_dusty_pink
...The Chinese president also spoke standing there.
Photo ( https://twitter.com/soft_dusty_pink/status/1714698082560983171/photo/1 )
-------------------------------------------------

WarySociologist 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @WarySociologist
...RT has prudently cropped the shot since.

Ambassador Bridget A. Brink @USAmbKyiv | 11:04 AM · Oct 18, 2023:
{US Ambassador to Ukraine}

27 ships! Six more ships have now sailed through the Black Sea humanitarian corridor, bringing the total to 27. Russia’s brutal war cannot stop Ukrainian grain and valuable cargo from reaching the world.
----------------------------------------------

Map, ships (https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1714713489766306109/photo/1)

>21 margd: Finland pipeline, contd.

Sweden reports damage to Baltic Sea cable with Estonia
DW | October 17, 2023

Sweden said its undersea cable with Estonia was damaged at roughly the same time as a Finnish-Estonian pipeline and cable. Sweden and Finland have both moved to join NATO since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.dw.com/en/sweden-reports-damage-to-baltic-sea-cable-with-estonia/a-6...

>2 davidgn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gS09ogK4is And now the recording surfaces.

NB: Freeman should have been the chairman of Obama's National Intelligence Council.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna29739446

U.S. warns of Russian efforts to sow doubt over upcoming elections around the globe
Nicholas Riccardi | 20 Oct 2023

...“Russia is pursuing operations to degrade public confidence in the integrity of elections themselves,” the U.S. stated in a cable sent this week to embassies in more than 90 countries to be passed onto those governments...Russia appears encouraged by its success in amplifying the lies by former President Donald Trump and his supporters during and after the 2020 presidential election falsely blaming widespread fraud for his loss...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-warns-of-russian-efforts-to-sow-doubt-ove...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 2:16 AM · Oct 24, 2023

"Meat assaults" by Russian troops: despite numerous losses, Russian troops continue to actively attack Avdiivka. Some of the fiercest fighting is taking place here along the entire front line.

DW
2:00 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1716700049478918528 )

Spy vs. spy: How Israelis tried to stop Russia’s information war in Africa
This never-before-told tale reveals how covert online battles in the French-speaking Sahel region helped topple governments.
Elizabeth Dwoskin | October 21, 2023

...how Russia spent years laying the groundwork online for political upheaval in a region overlooked by the West...

...quickly saw that the local political adversaries and Islamic extremists they had been hired to combat were not Kaboré’s biggest adversary. The real threat, they concluded, came from Russia, which was running what appeared to be a wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing Burkina Faso and other democratically-elected governments on its borders.

Pro-Russian fake news sites populated YouTube and pro-Russian groups abounded on Facebook. Local influencers used WhatsApp and Telegram groups to organize pro-Russian demonstrations and praise Russian President Vladimir Putin. Facebook fan pages even hailed the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary network run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the late one-time Putin ally whose Internet Research Agency launched a disinformation campaign in the United States to influence the 2016 presidential election.

...Politicians the world over — from President Biden to the head of the United Nations — have decried disinformation, calling it one of the greatest threats to democracy in modern times. But there is no consensus on how to regulate it because virtually every country engages in influence operations — even though few will admit to doing so...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/21/percepto-africa-france-russ...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 4:09 AM · Oct 22, 2023:

Mamut Usseinov from Moscow says that he was in the mosque when the men were taken from prayer to the military recruitment office in Lyubertsy. There they were forced to pass a medical examination and then sent to Balashikha for distribution.

They were forced to sign a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry, otherwise they were promised deportation and being banned from entering Russia.

0:27 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1716003955992363065 )

‘What’s this all for?’: Russian deserters call on former comrades to join them (Guardian)

Men tell of escape to Armenia, guilt and remorse as growing number of soldiers flee ‘criminal war’ in Ukraine...

Ukraine war: Russia executing own retreating soldiers, US says (BBC)

Russia is executing soldiers who try to retreat from a bloody offensive in eastern Ukraine, the White House has said. According to the US, some of the casualties suffered by Russia near Avdiivka were "on the orders of their own leaders"... A Ukrainian army spokesperson said that Russian troops were refusing to attack Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka because of heavy losses and that there had been mutinies in some units. "Russia's mobilised forces remain under-trained, under-equipped and unprepared for combat, as was the case during their failed winter offensive last year," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a briefing on Thursday. He said that the Russian military "appears to be using what we would call 'human wave' tactics, just throwing masses of these poorly trained soldiers right into the fight." "No proper equipment, no leadership, no resourcing, no support. It is unsurprising that Russian forces are suffering from poor morale"...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:58 AM · Oct 27, 2023:

Russia is building military plants across the country in three shifts, satellite images show.

@cxemu has discovered noticeable changes in the territories of Russian military plants with the help of satellite images. Here are a few examples provided by the journalists:

Kazan Aviation Plant:
Strategic bombers such as the Tu-22m3 and Tu-160, which Russia uses to launch missiles at Ukraine, are built and repaired at this plant.

Back in 2018, construction of a new large hangar began on the site, but it accelerated in 2022 and was almost completed this year. According to military experts, strategic bombers can also be repaired and modernized in this facility.

Irkutsk Aviation Plant:
The profile of this enterprise is the repair and production of Su-30 fighters of all modifications. In the period from 2019 to 2021, a hangar with access to the airfield appeared on the territory of the plant, and the construction of another, similar facility is being completed already this year. Such facilities, according to aviation expert Khrapchinsky, can be used to repair civilian aircraft like the Sukhoi Superjet and fighters like the Su-30.

Dubnensky Machine-Building Plant and Kronstadt:
On the company's territory in the city of Dubno, Moscow region, among others, the Raduga Machine-Building Design Bureau is located, producing such missiles as the Kh-22, Kh-55, and Kh-101.

In 2021, construction of a large building began here, and it has been completed this year. This is a new private factory for the production of Russian UAVs, owned by the company Kronshtadt (the company is associated with the Joint-Stock Financial Corporation Sistema of Russian oligarch Yevtushenkov). The company's profile is the production of military drones under the Orion, Helios and other brands, with various modifications - from reconnaissance to attack drones.

0:23 (https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1717843314588709130)

Janis Kluge @jakluge | 3:54 AM · Oct 27, 2023
Russia & Economics. Deputy Head of Eastern Europe & Eurasia Division. German Institute for International and Security Affairs @SWPBerlin

The table shows the proportion of social media discussion compared to official media. The idea is that official media drives social media discussions, and the index is about how much resonance there is for a certain topic.

Russians are more worried about the lack of hollywood movies like "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" in Russian cinemas than about a new wave of mobilization. Meanwhile, the biggest fear are drone attacks. Those are the results of social media analysis in Q3/2023.
https://kommersant.ru/doc/6298834

Table ( https://twitter.com/jakluge/status/1717807256849584609/photo/1 )

Novaya Gazeta Europe @novayagazeta_en | 10:52 AM · Oct 26, 2023:
The English-language version of http://novayagazeta.eu News from Russia free of censorship

Olga Nazarenko, a 48-year-old Russian political activist, died last week in hospital after a two-week battle to save her life. Doctors say the injuries she suffered suggested a severe beating and falling from a great height. The cause of her injuries remains unclear. 🧵(1/6)
Photo ( https://twitter.com/novayagazeta_en/status/1717554833408835935/photo/1 )

According to her friends, Olga was caught by law enforcement who knew she’d do something to mark Vladimir Putin’s birthday – she was injured in the early hours of 7 October. (2/6)
Text ( https://twitter.com/novayagazeta_en/status/1717554836856606952/photo/1 )

3/6
Screen grab ( https://twitter.com/novayagazeta_en/status/1717554839222194229/photo/1 )

The main symbol of her protest against the war became the Ukrainian flag she kept on her balcony and the blue and yellow ribbons she wore on her backpack. The police repeatedly removed both, but she would always replace them. (4/6)
Photo ( https://twitter.com/novayagazeta_en/status/1717554841864564814/photo/1 )

5/6
Screen grab ( https://twitter.com/novayagazeta_en/status/1717554844356018467/photo/1 )

6/6
A woman who knew no fear
An anti-war activist in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, dies in unexplained circumstances
Novaya Gazeta Europe | 26 October 2023
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/10/26/a-woman-who-knew-no-fear-en

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 8:02 AM · Oct 27, 2023:

Hungary and Slovakia are against the allocation of a €50bn aid package to Ukraine from the EU fund.

According to Politico, citing an informed source in the EU diplomatic circles, this was not a surprise, as Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico had announced in advance that they would not support the project.

The Hungarian prime minister is sure that the EU support does not work, while the head of the Slovak government referred to the problems of corruption in Ukraine, the diplomat specified.

The EU budget update requires the support of all 27 EU members.

Orbán wants Ukraine to ‘negotiate’ for military aid cash
Laura Kayali | October 27, 2023
https://politico.eu/article/orban-wants-ukraine-to-negotiate-for-military-aid-ca...

>45 margd: contd.

Janis Kluge @jakluge | 3:10 PM · Oct 27, 2023:
Russia & Economics. Deputy Head of Eastern Europe & Eurasia Division. German Institute for International and Security Affairs @SWPBerlin

Right now, Ukraine could get $1 billion per month in earnings from the "frozen" Russian assets. It would work like a trust fund for Kyiv: The substance isn't spent, but there is an eternal stream of subsidies from interest. Way more than Ukraine ever made from gas transit.

Quote
Henry Foy @HenryJFoy | 8:36 AM · Oct 27, 2023:
Financial Times Brussels Bureau Chief, and writer of Europe Express morning briefing. Past lives in Moscow, Warsaw, London and Delhi.

EU leaders back use of earnings from Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine, with officials telling the FT that the European Commission is expected to put forward legal proposals in early December. https://ft.com/content/a25c5a77-74d4-4886-8fa1-70ad1b668a2f

Mob storms Dagestan airport in search of Jewish passengers from Israel
Airport in Russia’s Muslim southern region closed after hundreds storm tarmac and climb on to planes
Andrew Roth | Sun 29 Oct 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/29/mob-storms-dagestan-airport-in-sea...
__________________________________
ETA

US rejects Putin claim that West organised anti-Jewish airport mob
Christy Cooney | 30 Oct 2023

The US has dismissed as "absurd" claims by Russia that an anti-Israel riot at a Dagestan airport on Sunday was organised by Ukraine and the West...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-67267339

>47 margd: contd.

Dagestan: How widespread is antisemitism in Russia?
Juri Rescheto | 31 Oct 2023

On Sunday, an angry crowd stormed Makhachkala airport in Russia's majority-Muslim Dagestan republic, looking for Jews. Just how prevalent is antisemitism in Russia today?

...Oleg Petrovich Orlov of the Memorial human rights organization told DW that antisemitic sentiments had been simmering in the Caucasus region since the latest Israel-Hamas conflict erupted. Even so, no one had expected such an outbreak, not even Dagestan authorities in the capital Makhachkala, Orlov added.

While he did say Dagestan is known as a region "where street action is much more visible than elsewhere in the Caucasus," Orlov also emphasized that Telegram channels had played a "provocative role." He said they called for the storming of the airport, above all the Morning Dagestan Telegram channel.

While the creators behind Morning Dagestan deny being antisemitic, their channel is full of antisemitic content and provocative articles. The fact that such a channel can exist is surprising given how closely Russia's FSB intelligence agency controls such media outlets and how quickly, if necessary, it can block them, Orlov told DW.

"Of course, I don't believe that the intelligence services would have deliberately wanted protests of such magnitude; it is possible the situation simply got out of control," he said.

The Memorial expert said that although Russia is growing ever more totalitarian, the Russian state appears weak. In Dagestan, the Russian state has been caught off-guard, just like last June, when Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin marched on Moscow...

https://www.dw.com/en/dagestan-airport-riot-how-widespread-is-antisemitism-in-ru...

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 3:10 AM · Nov 2, 2023:

Russia shelled 118 settlements in Ukraine yesterday
The most intense shelling of 2023
Gaza might have people's attention but the Ukraine War is still raging
_________________________________________
ETA

Ukraine reports most extensive Russian shelling of its settlements so far this year
Russia has shelled more than 100 settlements over the last 24 hours – more than in any single day so far this year, Ukraine said on Wednesday.
France24 | 1 Nov 2023
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20231101-russia-shells-more-than-100-ukrainia...

>49 margd: Gaza might have people's attention but the Ukraine War is still raging

As is the war in Sudan and no doubt many other places that western media pays little attention to.

>50 John5918: I suspect Russia supports wars anywhere that distract.

>51 margd:

Nice to hear a bit of common sense amongst all the "emotionally satisfying" and totally pointless violence. I think this would have been more relevant to the Israel thread rather than the Russia one, but nevertheless it has relevance to all these pointless wars.

Samuel Ramani {Oxford U} @SamRamani2 | 5:15 PM · Nov 1, 2023:

BREAKING: Ukraine accuses Russia of dropping explosives in the path of civilian vessels in the Black Sea
Ukraine says that Russia attempted 3 such drops in 24 hours
Russia uses aerial bombs, sea mines and explosives near the grain corridor
The marine insurance facility for Ukraine's grain exports announced in September 2023 is critical for agricultural trade

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 12:20 PM · Nov 1, 2023

According to Bloomberg (which cites a South Korean lawmaker), the DPRK has sent Russia more than a million artillery rounds for the war in Ukraine.

This is approximately the amount of ammunition Russia spends on the war with Ukraine in two months. Presumably, in exchange for ammunition, North Korea received technological assistance from Russia.

This might be space technology, as Pyongyang's previous two attempts to launch a spy satellite at the beginning of the year failed. Now the DPRK plans to launch a satellite for the third time, intelligence reports.

https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-01/north-korea-sent-1-million-rounds...

Does Speaker of the House Mike Johnson really believe in religious freedom?
John Fea | November 2, 2023

Conservative evangelicals like to talk a lot about religious freedom. When they do address this topic, they are usually talking about their own religious freedom–freedom not to bake a wedding cake, or something like that. I am sure Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, is a champion of religious freedom. But why won’t he meet with the bishop of the Ukrainian Evangelical Church {Ivan Rusyn} and others in Washington today who want to talk with American legislators about the threat the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had on religious freedom?

...{Johnson's} work as a lawyer before being elected to Congress, Johnson has said, put him on “the front lines of the ‘culture war’ defending religious freedom.”

But when it comes to an actual war to defend religious freedom, not so much. While regularly offering prayers for Ukraine, Johnson in May was one of 57 lawmakers — all of them Republicans — who voted against a $39.8 billion aid package for Ukraine. At the time, he told the Shreveport Times that this country had more urgent priorities at home. As speaker, he has opposed the Biden administration’s request to include money for Ukraine in a funding bill to address what Johnson described as Israel’s “pressing and urgent need.”

Just to be clear, Rusyn is an evangelical Christian. He shares the same faith as Mike Johnson. He is, what evangelicals call, a brother in Christ.

https://currentpub.com/2023/11/02/does-speaker-of-the-house-mike-johnson-really-...
·

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 9:50 AM · Nov 4, 2023:

BREAKING: British intelligence believes that Russia lost 300 armoured vehicles around Avdiivka in 3 weeks

The Kremlin’s Efforts to Covertly Spread Disinformation in Latin America (Media Note)
US Dept of State Office of the Spokesperson | November 7, 2023

The Russian government is currently financing an on-going, well-funded disinformation campaign across Latin America. The Kremlin’s campaign plans to leverage developed media contacts in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, among other countries in Latin America, in order to carry out an information manipulation campaign designed to surreptitiously exploit the openness of Latin America’s media and information environment. The Kremlin’s ultimate goal appears to be to launder its propaganda and disinformation through local media in a way that feels organic to Latin American audiences to undermine support for Ukraine and propagate anti-U.S. and anti-NATO sentiment...

What we know...
The actors involved...
The mechanics of the Campaign...
The Kremlin’s hidden hand...

https://www.state.gov/the-kremlins-efforts-to-covertly-spread-disinformation-in-...

The West Must Defeat Russia
Putin hasn’t given up his plans. He thinks Ukraine’s allies will lose interest.
Anne Applebaum | November 10, 2023

...The allied fight against Russia in Ukraine has damaged Russia’s ability to project negative power in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But despite his extraordinary losses, Putin still believes that time is on his side. If he can’t win on the battlefield, he will win using political intrigue and economic pressure. He will wait for the democratic world to splinter, and he will encourage that splintering. He will wait for the Ukrainians to grow tired, and he will try to make that happen too. He will wait for Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and he will do anything he can to help that happen too...

...The stark truth is that this war will only end for good when Russia’s neo-imperial dream finally dies...

To reach that endgame, we need to adjust our thinking. First, we need to understand, more deeply than we have done so far, that we have entered a new era of great-power conflict. The Russians already know this and have already made the transition to a full-scale war economy. Forty percent of the Russian state budget—another conservative estimate—is now spent annually on military production, about 10 percent of GDP, a level not seen for decades. Neither the U.S. nor its European allies have made anything like this shift, and we started from a low base...

Secondly, we need to start helping the Ukrainians fight this war as if we were fighting it, altering our slow decision-making process to match the urgency of the moment...

...Spending...now will produce savings down the line, and not just because we can prevent a catastrophe in Ukraine. By learning how to fight Russia, a sophisticated autocracy with global ambitions, we will be better prepared for later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran. More important, by defeating Russia we might be able to stop those larger conflicts before they begin. The goal in Ukraine should be to end Russia’s brutish invasion—and to deter others from launching another one somewhere else.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/us-ukraine-support-putin-defea...

Ukraine to Putin: You cut our power, we kneecap your biggest economic driver
Ben Lefebvre | 11/10/2023

Ukraine Energy Minister German Galushchenko..., after meeting with Biden administration officials and lawmakers, said Russia has regularly perpetrated cyberattacks against Ukraine’s electric grid and is expected to ramp up physical attacks as temperatures fall and people depend more on energy to heat their homes.

His comments came after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month Ukraine, which has launched multiple attacks against Russian targets, would “respond” if Russia stepped up attacks on his country’s power grid this winter. This could open the door to the possibility that the European conflict could add more turmoil to global energy markets.

When asked if Zelenskyy’s “response” could include Ukraine targeting Russia’s vast oil and gas operations — by far the biggest driver of its economy — Galushchenko replied, “It would only be fair.”...

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/10/ukraine-energy-russia-00126592

Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63 | 11:36 AM · Nov 10, 2023:
Join RDI! @Renew_Democracy. Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Author, speaker, 13th World Chess Champion

Upcoming report by @WLCongress {World Liberty Congress} EE/CA Group on Russian sanctions is an eye-opener. In 2022, Kyrgyzstan exported 115,920 detonators to Russia, the kind used in landmines, up from zero in 2021. Also 2022, Kyrgyzstan imported 193,536 detonators from Canada. Sanctions, @JustinTrudeau?

Image ( https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1723016676403191912/photo/1 )

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-talks-russians/

Zelensky’s tensions with his generals reached a peak with Zaluzhny’s November 1 interview with The Economist. He asserted that the war had reached a “stalemate.” He conceded that “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

What’s worse is that Zaluzhny implied that the stalemate would evolve into defeat for Ukraine. A stalemate entails a long war of attrition. In a companion essay published simultaneously by The Economist, he explained that a long war “as a rule, in most cases, is beneficial to one of the parties to the conflict. In our particular case, it is the russian sic federation, as it gives it the opportunity to reconstitute and build up its military power.”

Zaluzhny said that in a prolonged war, Ukraine will run out of the “required volume” of missiles and ammunition while Russia, despite sanctions, is increasing its production capabilities. And even if it didn’t run out of weapons, he added, it will run out of men: a war of attrition “leads to the lack of Ukraine's ability to achieve superiority over the enemy in reserves by increasing their number.” A close Zelensky aide told TIME that, even if the United States gave Ukraine all the weapons it needed, Kyiv doesn’t “have the men to use them.”

The response, of course, was that someone saw fit to assassinate Zaluzhny's chief of staff. (Or at least, reading between the lines, that's how it appears. Perhaps it really was an accident.)

In any case, I'm afraid Ms. Appelbaum is no less out of touch with reality than Zelensky.

Ambassador Bridget A. Brink @USAmbKyiv | 4:31 AM · Nov 13, 2023:
US Ambassador to Ukraine

Today the 100th ship departed the Black Sea humanitarian corridor - an export lifeline for Ukraine that has delivered 3.7 million tons of food & goods to the world.
Image ( https://twitter.com/USAmbKyiv/status/1723996971050926405/photo/1 )

>58 margd: Anne Applebaum's article

Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov |
President, Kyiv School of Economics; Adviser, Zelensky administration; Minister of economy, Ukraine, 2019-2020; Associate professor, University of Pittsburgh

Anne Applebaum writes the West must defeat Russia
But why? Why should an ordinary citizen of a Western democracy care about defeating Russia? Don't they have bigger problems at home?
Here is a list of 10 reasons why...

https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1723693841193009497
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1723693841193009497.html

max seddon @maxseddon | 1:39 AM · Nov 14, 2023:
moscow bureau chief FT

The US-led price cap on Russia’s oil sales is being almost completely circumvented.
One senior European government official said “almost none” of the shipments of seaborne crude in October were executed below the G7’s $60-a-barrel limit.
------------------------------------------------------------

Almost no Russian oil is sold below $60 cap, say western officials
Allies discuss ways to ‘toughen up’ key sanction as Moscow circumvents limits on seaborne crude
David Sheppard and Chris Cook in London, James Politi in Washington DC and Anastasia Stognei in Tbilisi | 14 Nov 2023

...A US Treasury official said the goal {of the price cap} was not just an effort to “make as many barrels of oil as possible travel under the cap”, but also “to change Russia’s incentives in a way that makes it make hard choices”. Shifting to selling oil largely without western insurance and shipping has caused “great cost” to the Kremlin...

https://www.ft.com/content/09e8ee14-a665-4644-8ec5-5972070463ad
____________________________________________
ETA

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:11 AM · Nov 15, 2023:

Denmark will be given the task of inspecting and potentially blocking tankers of Russian oil sailing through its waters under new EU plans.
The G7 price cap demands western ship insurers only provide cover to Russian shipments where the oil has been sold for less than $60 a barrel. But a growing number of tankers carrying Russian crude is suspected of sailing with falsified financial statements or non-western insurance - Financial Times

Peskov's {Putin spokesman} comment:
"I do not possess such information." "Maybe our transportation ministry has it (information)." "Everyone should probably be warned in advance about compliance with all the rules of international merchant shipping."
Photo Peskov ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1724746996970373501/photo/1 )

Ukraine war: Locals forced to take Russian passports, report says (BBC)

The Kremlin has launched a wide-ranging campaign to force Ukrainians in occupied territories to become Russian, an investigation has found. Ukrainians are being denied healthcare and free movement unless they take up Russian citizenship, evidence suggests...

Russian artist Sasha Skochilenko jailed for anti-war messages (BBC)

A Russian anti-war activist has been sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket pricing labels with anti-war messages. Sasha Skochilenko, 33, an artist from St Petersburg, has been in detention since April last year. She was convicted of spreading "false information" about the Russian army. Her lawyers pleaded for her acquittal, saying that chronic illnesses she suffers from mean she is at risk of dying in prison. Weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ms Skochilenko protested by replacing supermarket labels in a St Petersburg supermarket with anti-war messages, a small act called for by a feminist collective. The replacement labels read: "The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol. Around 400 people were hiding inside," and: "My great grandfather did not fight in WWII for four years so that Russia could become a fascist state and attack Ukraine." Ms Skochilenko admitted the charges. In her closing statement, the artist struck a defiant tone, asking the court: "How little faith does our prosecutor have in our state and society if he thinks that our statehood and public security can be ruined by five small pieces of paper?" "Say what you want - I was wrong, or I was brainwashed," she said. "I will stand by my opinion and my truth"...

Swimming rivers and faking illness to escape Ukraine’s draft (BBC)

Nearly 20,000 men have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the war to avoid being drafted, the BBC has discovered. Some have swum dangerous rivers to leave the country. Others have simply walked out under cover of darkness. Another 21,113 men attempted to flee but were caught by the Ukrainian authorities, Kyiv confirmed. After Russia's invasion, most men aged 18-60 were banned from leaving. But data obtained by the BBC reveals dozens have made it out daily. We have spoken to several men who have escaped in order to join family abroad, study, or simply make a living. "What am I supposed to do {in Ukraine}?" one man, Yevgeny, said. "Not everyone is a warrior… you don't need to keep the whole country locked up. You can't lump everyone together like they did in the Soviet Union"...

If You Care About Ukraine or Palestine, You Should Care About Sudan (The Phoenix)

a bloody conflict that has displaced more than four million people, killed tens of thousands of civilians, and led to bloody ethnically-motivated massacres... one side (the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF) has been backed by Russia and the Wagner Group... The Western media and government have been very happy to report extensively on Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine. Some have gone as far as to describe these as the first major wars of the 21st century. This attitude reflects a fundamental disregard for human life when it appears in “uncivilized” (read: largely Black) forms. Nearly as many civilians have died in Sudan... as in Ukraine or in Gaza. Several times more civilians have been displaced in Sudan than in Gaza. And yet few have batted an eye or sought to do anything about the conflict. This is not to say we should not care about life in Ukraine or Palestine; we most assuredly should. But we should also care about life in Sudan, or in any of the other African countries in turmoil...

>68 John5918: Perhaps a thread is needed on news media chosen emphases as they influence public consciousness and action, e.g.,
Ukraine, now Gaza, but less on Sudan
Biden's age/gait, but less on Trump gibberish and talk about "vermin", plans, etc.
quoting opposing voices as equivalent, e.g., science v anti-vaxx
the trite, when planet ecosystm is being destroyed.

Less so in DW and BBC, but US media outlets (not just Fox) seem unduly swayed these day by consumers' desires?

No reward in our system for preventing, rather than correcting bad outcomes--this goes for reporting as well as politics? e.g., one hears far more about George Bush killing (thousands?) in Iraq than saving millions from HIV; more in news about passing events than the collapse of global ecosystems and The Sixth Great Extinction...

Гюндуз Мамедов/Gyunduz Mamedov @MamedovGyunduz | 2:40 AM · Nov 17, 2023:
PhD in Law | Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine 2019-2021

{Google translation} Over 100 🇺🇦 settlements in Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions were shelled yesterday. Houses, administrative buildings, a medical facility, a shop, gas stations, a car wash and infrastructure facilities were damaged. 9 people were killed and 11 others were injured, including 1 child.

Photo 4-storey apt bldg
https://twitter.com/MamedovGyunduz/status/1725418537567633505/photo/1

>69 margd: news media emphases

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 8:16 AM · Nov 18, 2023:

According to the report by the GDELT Analysis Service, about 8% of all daily news on CNN were devoted to Ukraine. After the outbreak of the war between Hamas and Israel, the number dropped to less than 1%. CNN writes about this after analyzing the data of media analysts.

At the same time, the focus of attention has shifted from the Russian-Ukrainian war itself to speculation about the extent to which the U.S., NATO and Europe are willing to provide Ukraine with military and financial aid.

I think Putin is rejoicing.
And if the trends continue, I'm afraid that Russia can go further, and it doesn't seem like the world is ready for that...

ABC News ABC | 1:35 PM · Nov 17, 2023:
Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has gone public about the reduction in the supply of artillery shells to Ukraine, telling reporters that deliveries of the munitions have "really slowed down."
https://abcnews.go.com/International/zelenskyy-warns-supply-vital-artillery-ammu...

>69 margd: media truth stuns when one sees it:

Nazi-Curious Madman Currently Under Indictment For 91 Felonies Gives Speech
Charles P. Pierce | Nov 13, 2023

Trump's rhetoric, coupled with his stated plans for his next presidency, should clarify for any thinking human being the fact that he must not be elected next year....

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a45822510/trump-veterans-day-spee...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 7:48 AM · Nov 15, 2023:

The government in Finland is considering whether to close some crossing points on the border with Russia to prevent people from trying to enter without proper documentation - AP.

Peskov's comment:
"We deeply regret that the leadership of Finland has chosen the way on such a conscious distancing from the previous, kind level of the character of our bilateral relations."

Finland knows better than most about "kind relations" with Russia.
-------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 7:10 AM · Nov 18, 2023
Finland had to close four border crossing points with Russia due to illegal migrants, whose actions appear to be organized.

Russian media are information that the Finnish authorities are preparing a plan to completely close the border with Russia "in case of necessity".

Finnish Interior Ministry reported about complete closure of four crossing points on the border with Russia since November 18. The roads were blocked with special barrier structures.

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency stated its readiness to send its forces to the Finnish-Russian border to ensure security, the Finnish public broadcaster Yle reports.
At the same time, Russian media Important Stories said that the closure of the border has not reduced the flow of illegal migrants trying to get from Russia to Finland.

The illegals reach the border crossing points on identical bicycles of the Russian brand Stels. To calm the crowd that was unresponsive to orders and warnings, Finnish border guards had to use gas dispensers.
0:57 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1725849014791250209 )
-------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:14 PM · Nov 18, 2023

There are reports in the media about clashes with migrants on Finnish-Russian border control points.

The migrants are coming from the Russian side.

Video shows the Niirala border control point at the Russian-Finnish border.

DW 0:23 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1725970758973714572 )
-------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 2:33 PM · Nov 19, 2023:
Migrants from Russia continue their attempts to break into Finland.

Finland's authorities have closed four out of the eight border crossing points with Russia. They justified their decision by a large number of migrants from third countries that they blame Russia for: Russian… authorities let migrants pass without the required documents.

According to Itlalehti media, many shelter seekers arrive to the border by bikes and some adult men use children's bikes.
Photo ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1726322826397745156/photo/1 )
-------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | Last edited 8:45 AM · Nov 20, 2023
Closing the border with Finland is just the beginning.
Predictably, soon the same illegals might appear near Estonia etc.

Russia is creating this situation not so much to demonstratively worsen relations with Finland and create problems for it, but to recreate the Iron Curtain for its own citizens.

Putin's regime wants to bring back the situation of the USSR and the Cold War.
After the borders are sealed, the Internet in Russia is most likely to be "locked" - it will become slow and controlled.

Asaad Sam Hanna @AsaadHannaa | 4:01 PM · Nov 20, 2023:
Syrian-American. U.S. Army, EmissaLLC CEO, int-Affairs fellow Columbia. Frmr #WhiteHelmets, journalist @Almonitor @GVinArabic, Raising Awareness.

We lost more than 30,000 people in Aleppo city northern Syria.
More than 33,000 buildings were destroyed.
All residents were displaced and not allowed to go back to their homes.
This was committed by the Syrian government, Russia, and Iran.
1:31 ( https://twitter.com/AsaadHannaa/status/1726707247198384572 )

Anne Applebaum (The Atlantic) @anneapplebaum | 9:56 AM · Nov 25, 2023:

Today is the annual day of remembrance for the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine. 90 years ago Stalin sent activists to confiscate food from Ukrainian peasants. Millions died.

To mark this day, Putin sent dozens of drones to attack Kyiv. Like Stalin, Putin wants to erase Ukraine.
-------------------------------------------------

Red Famine. Stalin's War on Ukraine
By Anne Applebaum

Ukraine war: Fierce row erupts over 2024 election
Abdujalil Abdurasulov | 25th November 2023

...All elections - including presidential ones {March 2024} - are prohibited under the country's current martial law, imposed after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

...The discussion about Ukrainian elections is partly being pushed by US politicians ahead of the country's election in 2024, particularly by a small group within the Republican party, says Olha Aivazovska, chairwoman of the election monitoring network Opora.

She argues that some hard-right Republicans are using the issue to justify their demand to block military aid to Ukraine...

...Security...A displaced population...our soldiers… cannot vote or be nominated as candidates...schools - which are normally used as polling stations - being damaged...an outdated voter registry...restricted rights under martial law...lack of funding.

...Experts agree that under the current circumstances, holding free and fair elections with a competitive political process is just not possible.

It's not surprising then that the idea of having presidential elections is deeply unpopular in Ukraine. A survey conducted by Kyiv's International Institute of Sociology in November showed that more than 80% of respondents wanted to have elections only after the war has ended...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67440357

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 2:56 PM · Nov 26, 2023:

Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant is on fire in Russia. The plant produced and repaired tanks and other heavy military equipment.

Local Russian Telegram channels report that a transformer exploded on the plant.

0:12 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1728865362459197824 )
------------------------------------------------

0:17 ( https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1728853878068871310 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:03 PM · Nov 26, 2023:

A storm washed away trenches in occupied Crimea that Russian army dug out on the beaches.

According to information from Crimean media, in Yevpatoria the water washed away the defense line on the coast, engineering buildings and firing positions.

The speed of wind at the coasts of occupied Crimea reaches 115-130 kilometers per hour, the waves are 8-9 meters tall. In Crimean mountains, the wind is up to 150 kilometers per hour.

0:08 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1728867065015009785/video/1 )
0:42 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1728867065015009785/video/2 )

Historians come together to wrest Ukraine’s past out of Russia’s shadow (Guardian)

The opening salvo in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year was not a rocket or a missile. Rather, it was an essay. Vladimir Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in summer 2021, ranged over 1,000 years of history in its 7,500 words to assert that the two countries are “one people”. Now, 90 international and Ukrainian historians are coming together under the umbrella of the new London-based Ukrainian History Global Initiative to wrest Ukraine’s past from the shadow of Russian and Soviet narratives. The historians want Ukraine’s history to take its place among a wealth of global stories – from the part it played in the history of the ancient Greeks who founded trading emporia on the Black Sea, to its connections with Byzantium, and its links with the Vikings who ruled the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus. Putting Ukraine into the picture will change understanding of major world events, said Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, at a launch for the initiative at the British Museum in London. “The whole history of the second world war looks different if you understand that Germany’s main war aim was the conquest of Ukraine. And I would venture to say that the history of the 21st century looks different if you understand the reasons why Ukraine resisted the Russian invasion”...

Ukraine says spy chief's wife is being treated for poisoning with heavy metals
The Associated Press | November 29, 2023

The wife of Ukraine's intelligence chief has been diagnosed with heavy metals poisoning and is undergoing treatment in a hospital, a spokesperson for the agency said Tuesday as the country's war with Russia stretched into its 22nd month.

Marianna Budanova is the wife of Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the military intelligence agency that is known in Ukrainian as GUR for short...

...Earlier this year, {Andrii Yusov, the agency's spokesman} told Ukrainian media that military intelligence chief had survived 10 assassination attempts carried out by the Russian state security service, or FSB.

Previously, Budanov had also told local media that his wife lives with him in his office, which could suggest he was the intended target for the poisoning...

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/29/1215756943/ukraine-spy-chief-wife-treated-poisoni...

Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa | 9:15 AM · Nov 29, 2023:

Russia was not elected to the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibution of Chemical Weapons for the first time in history.

OPCW is a very reputable international body and terrorists have no place in it.

At the same time, Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania were elected for the period 2024-2026. Ukraine will actively contribute to strengthening the OPCW.

I am grateful to all of the countries that supported our candidacies and voted Russia out.

In less than a month, Russia failed three elections to international bodies for the first time in history. This is the logical result of Russia's actions: its role in international affairs keeps diminishing and its isolation keeps growing.

KyivPost @KyivPost | 5:02 AM · Nov 30, 2023:

🇺🇸A bill to seize assets belonging to sanctioned Russian oligarchs to aid rebuild Ukraine has been introduced in the US Congress.
The bill was introduced by both Democrats and Republicans from both houses of Congress. {Sen Whitehouse & Graham, Reps Wilson & Cohen}

Text Sen Whitehouse announcement ( https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1730165321279910067/photo/1 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:29 AM · Dec 1, 2023:

"... found a can of stewed meat, diluted it with water from the Dnipro and drank it for a week not to starve to death."

More Russian soldiers revealed details of life on the front line in the Kherson direction. They say that Russian defense ministry has abandoned them, there is no documentary evidence that they are at war, nor is there any provision. From food and medicines to uniforms, they bought it all at their own expense.

The command prefers to leave the wounded to rot rather than issue evacuation orders. No officers are at the positions, the soldiers are sent to slaughter.

And yet, no thoughts of getting out of Ukraine and refusing to participate in the war.

3:28 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1730549560127156581 )
------------------------------------------------------

Vladimir Putin Urges Russian Women To Have "8 Or More" Children
World News Edited by Amit Chaturvedi | Updated: December 01, 2023

Vladimir Putin's remarks are being linked to the Ukraine War in which Russia has suffered a high number of casualties. However, in his speech, he did not directly refer to Russian soldiers' deaths in the conflict...

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/vladimir-putin-urges-russian-women-to-have-8-or-...

NEXTA @nexta_tv | 7:03 AM · Dec 2, 2023:
The largest Eastern Europe media.

In our military doctrine, to break through the kind of defenses we see in southern #Ukraine, you need an air advantage, and much more. We did not provide that to the Ukrainians," former CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus said in an interview with the BBC

The military criticized the slowness of the West and said that it was delays in arms deliveries that caused the failure of the AFU counter-offensive.

"There was a delay in making decisions on Abrams, a delay with Leopard. We delayed cluster shells that could have been very useful, ATACMS. And finally, Western-style airplanes."

He also pointed to Western mistakes that he believes indirectly led to the war in Ukraine.

"Putin decided that he could escape responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine because we did not take sufficient measures after the occupation of Crimea."

Photo Petraeus ( https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1730920594827284762/photo/1 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 11:58 AM · Dec 1, 2023:

Security Service of Ukraine has organized the second explosion at Russian Baikal-Amur railroad - DW, citing a source in the law enforcement structures.

"The Russians were twice trapped by the SSU - another fuel train exploded on the Baikal-Amur railway line", the source said. According to them, this explosion became the second stage of the SSU's special operation to disrupt an important Russian railroad that is used for military logistics, as well.

"The first freight train exploded directly in the Severomuy tunnel. To continue the movement, the Russians began to use the detour that passes through the 'Devil's Bridge.' This is exactly what the SSU was counting on: when the train was passing over this 35-meter high bridge, the explosive devices embedded in it went off," the source said.

0:12 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1730632422503362844 )
---------------------------------------------------

Quote
Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:47 AM · Nov 30, 2023

Russian media report an explosion in a Severomuysk tunnel in Buryatia, the longest in Russia (over 15 km long).

"It is the only serious railroad between Russia and China. And now this route that Russia uses for military supplies as well, has been paralized" Russian media write.

Some Russian Telegram channels say that the explosion was an operation by Ukrainian Security Service.

There has been no confirmation from the Russian authorities.

Photo tunnel ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1730176641769320804/photo/1 )
------------------------------------------------

Quote
Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:24 AM · Dec 1, 2023

Russian Telegram channels report that on November 30, saboteurs blew up a freight train in Buryatia at the Itykit-Okusikan crossing, which consisted of 50 train cars, including 41 tank cars with diesel and 3 tank cars with aviation fuel.

Further transportation of the cars is still impossible - the explosion seriously damaged the tunnel rails, and the leaked fuel flooded them (one of the train's tank cars burned out, the other two had holes). A criminal case under the article "terrorist act" was initiated on this fact.

Later, another train was blown up in the same area: 4 tanks were burned out, two more were damaged by fire. According to preliminary data, the fuel spilled over an area of 150 square meters.

0:42 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1730503216461222164 )

Russians' Support for Ukraine War Hits Rock Bottom: Poll
Brendan Cole | Nov 30, 2023

... a poll by the research group Chronicles indicates that, ahead of the 2024 election, Putin might have an uphill battle in maintaining the population's support for the war as they feel its economic consequences. The survey found that pro-war Russians are a minority and were outnumbered by those who favor peace...

The Moscow-based research group asked 1,199 adults across Russia a series of questions in a phone poll between October 17 and 22. It found that the core of support for the war was only 12 percent, compared with 22 percent in February, one year after the start...

Russians with a consistent pro-peace position were at 18.5 percent in October, a small drop from 20 percent in February....

More than half (52 percent) of respondents said they experienced anxiety or depression, an increase from 32 percent in March 2022, a month after the invasion started...

The poll found that 44 percent of respondents have experienced a decrease in family income, while 20 percent said crucial medicines are no longer available. Only 5 percent expected their income would improve because of an increase in military spending in 2024...

The number of respondents who would not accept withdrawal from Ukraine without reaching military goals decreased from 47 percent in February 2023 to 33 percent in October 2023...

Another poll out this week, by the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and the Levada Center, found that Russians were getting tired of the war but were divided about how to end it.

Sixty-eight percent of Russians support continuing the war, 22 percent strongly oppose a cease-fire under any circumstances, and about 20 percent strongly oppose the war. Meanwhile, 72 percent said they support peace talks, although only 19 percent are willing to make concessions to Ukraine for the sake of peace.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-war-ukraine-pollster-chronicles-1848315

After promptin border closures w Finland, etc., Russia initiates counterintelligence in response to drone attack, train explosion. (Next: March elections?)

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 4:29 AM · Dec 5, 2023:

Russian Duma announced the revival of counterintelligence SMERSH in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories - Russian MP Gurulev.

"We have created a department that works in the new territories in this approximate way," Gurulev wrote, meaning the times of World War 2, when SMERSH {ca}rried out extrajudicial massacres of detainees during World War II.

In his opinion, a similar structure should operate in all Russian regions. "I talked to the Far East, where we have based nuclear submarines, our ships. They, as well, may be threatened, so we need to treat defense issues a little differently," Gurulev said.

1:16 { https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1731969062714962350 }

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 2:41 PM · Dec 4, 2023:

Putin threatening Latvia that they will be treated "with the same dirt-like attitude".

Context: Around 3,500 Russian citizens in Latvia received letters from the migration authority asking them to leave the country. The government body said on September 21 that they were people who hadn't submitted documents to extend a permanent residence permit or hadn't registered for a Latvian language test by September 1. They must leave Latvia by November 30, it said. An amendment passed by parliament in 2022 tightened residency rules for Russian citizens in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. To continue living in Latvia, they must apply for permanent residence status and prove a decent knowledge of the Latvian language.

0:25 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1731760571001811430 )

Russia (~145 million) had demographic challenges, then war killed off soldiers and others left. (Arab?) countries advertised that Russian citizenship was available for "husbands". Now Russian women are pressed to have EIGHT (!) children...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:24 AM · Dec 7, 2023

Russian State Duma speaker urged to teach schoolgirls to cook borshch (a Ukrainian dish, by the way) and boys "to hold a hammer".

Today, Russian State Duma adopted a bill on compulsory labor lessons in the second and third readings. According to Volodin, boys can master "some new technologies" so that in the future they can be "a support for women."

Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said that society has come to "believe that a woman should first get an education, make a career, provide herself with a material base, and then only worry about childbearing." Russia is facing "the most difficult demographic challenges," and to overcome them, it is necessary to revive the tradition of large families, Putin said. According to him, earlier families had seven or eight children or even more.
0:39 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732722750815387866 )
----------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:01 AM · Nov 29, 2023

Putin urged Russian families to have eight children: "Having many children and a large family should become a norm, a way of life for all peoples of Russia."

Recently, Russian officials of all levels voiced similar thoughts. Now that Putin said this, will it become a law? twitter.com/Gerashchenko_e…

0:58 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732722750815387866 )
----------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 1:47 PM · Nov 22, 2023:

"The reluctance to have a child is now completely contrary to state policy" - Russian officials of all levels call women to start having children early (at 20) and have more children.

This could be the indicator that apart from needing more cannon fodder and more labor force, Russian authorities don't want to have an educated and free-thinking population. In Russia, families with many children are usually rather poor, many on the brink of survival. These children often aren't able to get university degrees and start working low-level jobs as early as possible to contribute to the family budget.

The Kremlin has seen that smart people can be dangerous. So it wants a lot of poor people and, as an added bonus, give women fewer chances for education, career and independence.

2:52 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1727398336187998352 )

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:02 AM · Dec 7, 2023:
Aaaand an eighth malfunctioning of a Russian plane in a week didn't take long to happen.
A Boeing 777 was about to fly out from Moscow when white smoke started coming out from under one of the seats. The plane was suspended from flights.
How many more will we see this week?
0:03 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732717327278363119 )

2:13 AM · Dec 7, 2023:
Russian media report that the engine of a cargo TU-204 plane caught fire during takeoff in Ulan-Ude. The plane dumped fuel and managed to land.
0:32 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732659584366469203 )

6:11 AM · Dec 5, 2023:
A Russian airlines plane has suffered a flight failure for the sixth time in a week.
A passenger plane flying from Kazan to Moscow made an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, according to the TV channel "360" with reference to the source. The publication notes that the aircraft failed control of the stabilization system. There were 182 passengers and six crew members on board.
This is already the sixth plane of Russian airlines in a week, which encountered a breakdown in the air. Thus, on Saturday, an Aeroflot Airbus A321 flying from St. Petersburg to Moscow requested an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo airport due to the failure of the left engine.

... https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1730899286307586284

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 11:04 AM · Dec 7, 2023:

Russian media report that Elektrozavod factory is on fire in Moscow.
It is Russia's largest manufacturer of various transformer and reactor equipment.
1:10 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732793180158931330 )

174 foreign components found in Russian military drones, 120 from US...

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | Last edited 7:00 AM · Dec 8, 2023:

Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention @NAZK_gov launched an open database of foreign components in weapons - the first in the world of this kind.

The database already contains over 2,000 components used by Russia and Iran in various drones, missiles etc.

Tracing their routes from suppliers to the hands of murderers is crucial. Instruments like this one can be helpful in cutting those supply routes.

Developers hope that the database will help investigators, customs officers, bank workers, consultants and many others who want to make their impact on justice and peace.

Link to the database: https://sanctions.nazk.gov.ua/en/military-components/?fbclid=IwAR1vM_caS3LoPMEyG...

📸: Kyiv School of Economics
Pie chart ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1733094188726509764/photo/1 )

A difficult watch.

20 Days in Mariupol
November 21, 2023 / 1h 37m
PBS Frontline: Season 2023: Episode 22

An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city as Russian forces close in, they capture what become some of the most defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.

After nearly a decade covering international conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine war, for The Associated Press, Mstyslav Chernov makes his feature film debut with 20 Days in Mariupol. The film draws on Chernov’s daily news dispatches and personal footage of his own country at war. It offers a vivid, harrowing account of civilians caught in the siege, as well as a window into what it’s like to report from a conflict zone, and the impact of such journalism around the globe.

Made in partnership with The Associated Press, 20 Days in Mariupol has had a decorated run on the 2023 film festival circuit — including winning the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary and the Tim Hetherington Award at Sheffield Film Festival. The film was also honored with DocEdge Film Festival’s awards for “Best International Director” and “Best International Editing.”

In partnership with: AP

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/20-days-in-mariupol/

Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid
Flora Garamvolgyi and David Smith | 10 Dec 2023

Hungarian appearance at two-day event part of Orbán’s transatlantic attempt to bolster Russia’s war...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/10/hungary-viktor-orban-republicans...

Ukrainians in ‘Mortal Danger’ if Help Runs Out – Olena Zelenska
Adrian Smith | December 10, 2023

The First Lady gave her stark assessment of the potential consequences of Western aid – and indeed Western support for Ukraine – fading away.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/25275

1:01 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1733819514951790980 )
---------------------------------------------------------

Julia Davis (The Daily Beast) @JuliaDavisNews | 5:02 PM · Dec 10, 2023:

Meanwhile in Russia: state TV experts on Vladimir Solovyov's show rejoiced that US aid to Ukraine is suspended, praised Trump for all that he did to undermine the faith of US allies in America & reminisced about how good Trump's presidency was for Moscow.

3:04 ( https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1733970476567855118 )
(Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqFlPF-0Ur4 )
Andrey Sidorov is glad that US aid to Ukraine is suspended
---------------------------------------------------------

Fareed Zakaria @FareedZakaria | 2:38 PM · Dec 10, 2023:
WaPo columnist. Host of CNN's GPS...

War-weariness, the politics of the right in the US & Europe, and the looming possibility of Trump’s return to the White House: Big factors hang over the futures of Ukraine & NATO

Part 2 of my conversation w/ @TheAtlantic’s @anneapplebaum & AEI’s* Kori Schake
5:56 ( https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/1733934231737213201 )

* American Enterprise Institute. Nonpartisan think tank advancing policy ideas rooted in democracy, free enterprise, and American strength.

>96 margd: contd.

Martin Kragh @MartinKragh1 | 5:25 PM · Dec 9, 2023:
Eastern Europe, Russia. Deputy Director of SCEEUS, @UIsweden
. Associate Professor at IRES, Uppsala University.

🧵MFA {Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs} spox Maria Zakharova states Russian conditions for ‘peace’ in Ukraine:

- West stops military support to Ukraine
- West & Ukraine accepts ‘new territorial realities’
- Ukraine ceases all military activities
- Ukraine is fully ‘demilitarised’ and ‘de-nazified’
…
Quote
РБК @ru_rbc · Dec 9
Для прочного и справедливого мира на Украине Запад должен прекратить поставки оружия Киеву, а тот, в свою очередь, — принять «новые территориальные реалии», прекратить бои и вывести войска с российских территорий, заявила Мария Захарова
{Translation: For a lasting and just peace in Ukraine, the West must stop supplying weapons to Kiev, which in turn must accept the "new territorial realities", stop fighting and withdraw troops from Russian territories, Maria Zakharova said}

https://www.rbc.ru/politics/09/12/2023/657482d09a7947a7686f57aa

New Situation Update on how the war in Ukraine has affected civilian perspectives on firearm possession (Small Arms Survey)

The previous intensive phase of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict (2014–15) triggered a short-lived but discernible upswing in violent criminal incidents in Ukraine. This causes concern for a potential greater future increase resulting from the current full-scale war. New analysis shows that Ukrainians are already experiencing increased crime levels—and are arming themselves for security. From Conflict to Consequence: Nearly Half of Ukrainian Men Would Like to Own a Firearm, Or Already Have One —a new Situation Update from the Small Arms Survey’s Ukraine project—marks the beginning of the Survey’s Situation Update series on arms proliferation in Ukraine, and gauge the perceptions of the Ukrainian population regarding firearms.

Key findings include:

- Between 2010 and the end of the 2014–15 phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war, lethal criminal violence in Ukraine increased by nearly 50 per cent. This raises the possibility of an even steeper future increase in violent crime resulting from the current full-scale war.
- In spite of the increasing crime victimization rate of households since the 2022 invasion, incidents involving firearms remain less common compared to the pre-invasion period. Nonetheless, trust in the police—while still high—has declined since winter 2022–23, and approximately 14 per cent of Ukrainian civilians now carry some form of typically non-lethal weapon for self-defence, which is more than a twofold increase from 2019 and more than a threefold increase from 2011.
- The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine initially led to a slight decrease in firearms kept in households as civilians and weapons were mobilized for the war effort. As of summer 2023, household ownership levels have gone back up, but the number of firearms held by these households has decreased by approximately 20 per cent since the start of the full-scale war.
- Survey respondents believe that the acquisition of firearms has become more straightforward than in winter 2022–23, although it still presents much greater challenges than in 2019. Acquiring ammunition appears to be more difficult than acquiring firearms.
- Between 43 and 46 per cent of men in every age group indicated that they either already own a firearm (7 per cent overall) or would like to own one. Only 11 per cent of women expressed the desire to own a firearm.
- The survey indicated that more women than men expressed negative views about firearms: they have less desire to own a firearm, they are less likely to think they are necessary, and not many would feel safer if their household had a firearm. Nonetheless, many respondents, among them women, thought women ‘in their area’ expected their husbands to be able to use a firearm.

Elections
Russia: March 2024
US: Nov 2024
Canada: on or before October 20, 2025

Hungary: opposing EU membership talks and funds for Ukraine
-------------------------------------------------

Pressure mounts on Hungary to unblock EU membership talks and funds for Ukraine
LORNE COOK | December 11, 2023

BRUSSELS (AP) — Pressure mounted on Hungary on Monday not to veto the opening of European Union membership talks and the supply of economic aid to war-torn Ukraine at a pivotal EU summit this week, after Prime Minister Viktor Orban demanded that the issue be struck from the agenda.

With tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance blocked by Senate Republicans in the United States, Ukraine is desperate to ensure longer-term financial and military assistance as fighting in its almost 2-year war with Russia bogs down.

In a draft of the summit statement seen by The Associated Press, the EU’s leaders will decide to open accession negotiations with Ukraine. But Orban is not backing down. He insists that a “strategic discussion” is needed, given the stalemate on the battlefield and uncertainty about U.S. leadership after elections next year...

https://apnews.com/article/eu-ukraine-hungary-orban-corruption-a2d819cbef5dd93e3...
-------------------------------------------------

Putin’s good friends in America
Many Republicans resist aid to Ukraine on the basis that anything harmful to Biden must be right for their party
Edward Luce | 13 Dec 2023

...the wealthy Heritage Foundation, now better described as hard-right populist...has embraced Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, which is openly lobbying Republicans to block new funding for Ukraine.

They might succeed in the short term. Republicans are split between staunch supporters of Ukraine and a blend of isolationists and overt Putinistas. JD Vance, a senator from Ohio, is a mix of the last two...

https://www.ft.com/content/2ad14344-6587-4eb4-b93d-35dc23ae2bbe
---------------------------------------------------

Q&A: ‘We’ll Be at Each Others’ Throats’: Fiona Hill on What Happens If Putin Wins
The veteran Russia watcher is deeply alarmed as Washington reaches an inflection point on the war in Ukraine.

... “The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” she said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden.”...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/12/fiona-hill-ukraine-putin-00131...
--------------------------------------------------

"MAGA" in Canada:

Liberal Party @liberal_party | 5:10 PM · Dec 12, 2023:
{Pierre Poilievre is leader of the Canadian Conservative party. Chrystia Freeland, a Liberal, is Deputy Prime Minister. Venue is Question Period in the Cdn Parliament.}
0:42 ( https://twitter.com/liberal_party/status/1734697334418583951 )

Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews | 1:23 PM · Dec 13, 2023:
Columnist @TheDailyBeast, creator of the Russian Media Monitor, sanctioned by Russia, member of @TheEmmys. I watch Russian state TV, so you don't have to.

If you ever wonder what you might have done in times of Hitler, you’re doing it now.

10 Minutes of Hate: Russian lawmakers and leading propagandists explain what Russia wants to do to Ukraine and Ukrainians.

10 minutes of hate: Russian propagandists talk about Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDMbF-F4lo
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1734653765343453232

Opinion: But now we dance
How do Ukrainians live with the war? What does normality mean, what purpose do plans for the future have when a missile could strike in the next moment? A personal essay by filmmaker and writer Iryna Tsilyk.
Iryna Tsilyk | 14/12/2023

...our allies are nervous and doubtful, wanting guarantees, hoping for our victory while also fearing it. Dear Ukrainians, you must go through this war neither on foot nor on horseback, neither clothed nor naked, you must impress everyone with a spectacular counterattack, but without F-16s and enough modern weapons, you must uphold Europe’s honor without angering the hydra too much lest it pulls out its nuclear trump card. But how long will your resilience last? How many more brave young men and women can you throw into the maw of the monster? What should we ultimately bet on – red or black? It is important to think strategically.

...My husband recently was invited to work in Kyiv, although still in the ranks of the army. But I often realize those five days {battle and retreat} profoundly changed him. Sometimes I feel such scorched emptiness in him, such darkness, that I’m afraid to look deeper.

I don’t know what lies ahead for him and me, just like for each of these beautiful people. No one has a crystal ball to foresee what the fate of Ukraine and the world overall will be. It’s hard for me to think about whether the Western world we’re so eager to be on the same team with will be able to protect the people I love. It hurts me to watch my 13-year-old son select classes on military analytics at his school, take interest in drone production, and watch videos of one of the Ukrainian assault brigades recruiting new soldiers. What will become of all of us when he comes of conscription age? This thought paralyzes me...

https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/12/14/but-now-we-dance-essay-by-iryna-tsilyk/

Orbán blocks EU €50 billion budget spending for Ukraine
European Pravda, Ukrainska Pravda — Friday, 15 December 2023

...President of the European Council Charles Michel ... emphasised that the topic of the discussion was not only the financing of Ukraine. EU leaders were offered a "mega package" for approval, which included funding for support to Ukraine, migration program spending, and the EU Solidarity Fund and defence. ""Only one country failed to agree to this decision..."

...Orban previously promised to block the beginning of accession negotiations with Ukraine but later allowed this decision to be made. This did not happen when they voted on finance.

However, as Michel emphasised, the "mega package" was not rejected but postponed as the leaders agreed on an additional summit devoted to this issue. "We will return to this issue at the very beginning of next year and try to reach unanimity to make the implementation of this mega-package possible," Michel said. Sources noted that he was talking about the summit already at the beginning of January.

During a summit in Brussels, European Union leaders approved the European Commission's recommendation to open accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova and agreed on the 12th package of sanctions against Russia.

However, Orbán's representatives later warned that Ukraine must overcome the Hungarian veto 70 more times if it wants to join the EU.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/12/15/7433163/
---------------------------------------------

Michael McFaul (frmr US ambassador to Ru) McFaul | 3:31 AM · Dec 15, 2023
The EU made an institutional design mistake in not spelling out the conditions under which members can be suspended or expelled.

Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union

Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union is a procedure in the treaties of the European Union to suspend certain rights from a member state. While rights can be suspended, there is no mechanism to expel a state from the union. The procedure is covered by TEU Article 7. (Wikipedia)

The High Price of Losing Ukraine
Military-Strategic and Financial Implications of Russian Victory

Frederick W. Kagan, Kateryna Stepanenko, Mitchell Belcher,
Noel Mikkelsen, and Thomas Bergeron | December 14, 2023

...Conclusion
This brief paper evaluates only the narrow question of some of the military-strategic and financial tradeoffs of various possible outcomes of the Russian war in Ukraine. We have considered elsewhere the important question of possible Russian escalations in the face of defeat and we do not minimize those considerations. We have argued strongly that American values align with American interests in Ukraine and that there is a strong and cogent values-based argument for helping Ukraine liberate all its land and its people. We still believe that that is true.

But the American people are being asked to spend a lot of money helping Ukraine fight Russia, and it is not unreasonable for them also wonder what the financial cost of not helping Ukraine would be. This essay is meant solely to serve as a departure point for a data-driven and realistic discussion answering that question.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine

{ISW is a policy research organization focused on U.S. national security.}

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html

Avoiding a Long War
U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

by Samuel Charap, Miranda Priebe

...Conclusion
The debate in Washington and other Western capitals over the future of the Russia-Ukraine war privileges the issue of territorial control. Hawkish voices argue for using increased military assistance to facilitate the Ukrainian military's reconquest of the entirety of the country's territory.71 Their opponents urge the United States to adopt the pre-February 2022 line of control as the objective, citing the escalation risks of pushing further.72 Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that the goal of U.S. policy is to enable Ukraine "to take back territory that's been seized from it since February 24."73

Our analysis suggests that this debate is too narrowly focused on one dimension of the war's trajectory. Territorial control, although immensely important to Ukraine, is not the most important dimension of the war's future for the United States. We conclude that, in addition to averting possible escalation to a Russia-NATO war or Russian nuclear use, avoiding a long war is also a higher priority for the United States than facilitating significantly more Ukrainian territorial control. Furthermore, the U.S. ability to micromanage where the line is ultimately drawn is highly constrained since the U.S. military is not directly involved in the fighting. Enabling Ukraine's territorial control is also far from the only instrument available to the United States to affect the trajectory of the war. We have highlighted several other tools—potentially more potent ones—that Washington can use to steer the war toward a trajectory that better promotes U.S. interests. Whereas the United States cannot determine the territorial outcome of the war directly, it will have direct control over these policies.

President Biden has said that this war will end at the negotiating table.74 But the administration has not yet made any moves to push the parties toward talks. Although it is far from certain that a change in U.S. policy can spark negotiations, adopting one or more of the policies described in this Perspective could make talks more likely. We identify reasons why Russia and Ukraine may have mutual optimism about war and pessimism about peace. The literature on war termination suggests that such perceptions can lead to protracted conflict. Therefore, we highlight four options the United States has for shifting these dynamics: clarifying its plans for future support to Ukraine, making commitments to Ukraine's security, issuing assurances regarding the country's neutrality, and setting conditions for sanctions relief for Russia.

A dramatic, overnight shift in U.S. policy is politically impossible—both domestically and with allies—and would be unwise in any case. But developing these instruments now and socializing them with Ukraine and with U.S. allies might help catalyze the eventual start of a process that could bring this war to a negotiated end in a time frame that would serve U.S. interests. The alternative is a long war that poses major challenges for the United States, Ukraine, and the rest of the world.

(The RAND Corporation needs no introduction. This piece came out early this year.)

>100 margd: https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1206766324355096576?lang=en
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the clips are legitimate.
Watch her film sometime. :-) ETA: My father first ran across it years ago, largely because he used to wear the same uniform and was also a whistleblower. But the circumstances couldn't have been more different.

>105 davidgn: Hmm, no chance Russia's out to tarnish her reputation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Davis_(journalist)
http://www.juliadavisnews.com/
https://uproxx.com/viral/alex-jones-russian-state-tv-appearance/

>106 margd: Watch her movie and tell me what you think.

Davis should be lauded for her efforts as a whistleblower, but the adjectives that come to mind are "shrill" and "over the top."

ETA: Also cf. from 13:53: https://www.happyscribe.com/public/conspiracy-theories/brittany-murphy-s-death-p...

>107 davidgn: Is there a link? I went looking, but didn't find movie that you seem to be referring to?

>108 margd: Got Xfinity? https://www.xfinity.com/stream/entity/4985467412751015112
I'm not sure where else it might stream.
Here's the IMDB.
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4086538265/

---

OK, found a pirate repost on YT, in two parts. -------ETA: Sorry, guess that was not the film, but an internet radio show about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LHC-C-ODO0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08COa3Pzmxc

The NYT (paywalled): https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/movies/top-priority-focuses-on-julia-davis.ht...

DW News @dwnews | 4:43 AM · Dec 17, 2023:

The last German soldiers in Mali, part of the MINUSMA mission, returned home after Mali's Russian-backed military government demanded the withdrawal of all international peacekeepers:

0:57 ( https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1736321247078760715 )

This Sachs long-form is balm to sore ears right now. One of the few sane voices left.
Extremely Ignorant and Dangerous Policies | Jeffrey Sachs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jowfG780mQM

For the most part, the "wise men" are either dead or have long since shuffled off into retirement.
https://youtu.be/jowfG780mQM?si=XpgbzuhMF0Q5su50&t=414 Brief Topic shift from Israel/Yemen
Main section on RUS/UKR starts around 13:00.

Could equally well fit in the Israel thread. Might even cross-post.

And here's Amb. Chas Freeman from today.
Dispatches from another world where people still were capable of complex thought which retained some tenuous connection to reality. Trust nobody under 80.
NATO Unity Has Cracked | Chas Freeman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58DptJJ8kQc

----
To the (Rove) quote in the following:
They believed it then, they believe it now, and they will never cease doubling down on stupid until we all go bust. Arguably, we already have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

Unfortunately, the formerly proud "reality-based" liberals have all gone over to the crazy side. I suppose one should expect nothing else from an empire in terminal decline.

Anti-war candidate barred from Russia’s presidential election (Guardian)

A former TV journalist has been disqualified from running against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election because of alleged flaws in her application to register as a candidate. Footage from a meeting of the central electoral commission in Moscow showed members voting unanimously to reject the candidacy of Yekaterina Duntsova, who had wanted to run on a platform to end the war in Ukraine and release political prisoners. Her disqualification was seized on by Putin’s critics as proof that no one with genuine opposition views will be allowed to stand against him in March – the first presidential election since the start of the 22-month conflict. They see it as a fake process with only one possible outcome...

Putin’s election plan, Navalny’s disappearance. It’s no coincidence, Russian former minister says
Anna Chernova, Richard Quest, Anna Gorzkowska, Julia Puckette and Jessie Gretener | December 23, 2023

...Vladimir Milov, a former Russian deputy energy minister and now an adviser to Navalny, told CNN’s Richard Quest that the timing of Navalny’s disappearance was “no coincidence,” noting the announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin of his intention to run again in Russia’s elections in March 2024 – a move that could see him retain power until at least 2030.

“I think it is a deliberate tactic. It is no coincidence that Navalny disappeared exactly the moment when the so-called sham presidential elections were announced, and that Putin announced that he was going to be running again...Putin is really willing to show that he is going to enter the Kremlin for another term through intimidation, through repression, through pressure on society, and that is clearly a blackmail on all the opposition forces” ...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/22/europe/navalny-disappearance-putin-election-intl-...

Elements of an Eventual Russia-Ukraine Armistice and the Prospect for Regional Stability in Europe
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/12/elements-of-an-eventual-russia-ukra...
and
https://www.stimson.org/2023/elements-of-an-eventual-russia-ukraine-armistice-an...

A very long-form interview with Col. Wilkerson by a Dutchman. Bleak assessment of the future of Europe.

Time to Talk: Lawrence Wilkerson, Ret. US Colonel
The Hague Peace Projects
4.14K subscribers
24,509 views Dec 23, 2023
Peace in Gaza and Ukraine: Time to Talk!.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBOr9BhdaD8

Jakob de Jonge interviews Lawrence Wilkerson, Ret. US Colonel

Support Peace through Dialogue: thehaguepeace.org
Follow more discussions on: StopTheWar.nu
An initiative by The Hague Peace Projects

Putin Quietly Signals He Is Open to a Cease-Fire in Ukraine
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine-war-cease-f...

h/t MoA :
"This flight from Moscow to DC and back stayed on the ground for some 54 hours. Those were looong negotiations.
It is likely not by chance that this somewhat positive New York Times piece appeared soon after the flight had left."
https://www.moonofalabama.org/17i/mflight.jpg
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/12/the-moa-week-in-review-ot-2023-315.html

The WW1 Christmas Truce: 'The war, for that moment, came to a standstill' (BBC)

During the bleak winter of 1914, amid the mud, blood and chaos of World War One, an extraordinary series of ceasefires spontaneously occurred along the Western Front. In the 1960s the BBC spoke to some of the men who, over that exceptional Christmas period, decided to lay down their arms...

Lordy, Navalny must have tapes--or nine lives--to still be alive?

DW News @dwnews | 9:23 AM · Dec 25, 2023:
UPDATE: Russian jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny, whose whereabouts had been unknown for almost three weeks, is in a penal colony in northern Russia, his allies said. His lawyer was granted access.
Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is seen on a screen via a video link from his penal colony during court hearings

Russia: Alexei Navalny located in Siberia prison, allies say
DW | 25 Dec 2023

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has resurfaced in a penal colony in northern Russia after weeks of being missing, his allies said. Navalny's lawyer was granted access to the politician.

...Alexei Navalny is "doing well," his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Monday, saying that the Russian opposition figure had been located in a penal colony in Russia's far north, in the Yamalo-Nenets region of western Siberia. The Kremlin critic has been missing for weeks, with many fearing for his life..."His lawyer visited him today" ...

...the manager of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation organization, Ivan Zhdanov, said...the IK-3 facility was nicknamed the "Polar Wolf" prison camp and that it was among the most remote in Russia.

"The conditions there are brutal"....there is permafrost at the camp, it's very difficult to reach and no letters are delivered there...

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-alexei-navalny-located-in-siberia-prison-allies-say...
----------------------------------------------------
ETA:
Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny located at Siberian penal colony two weeks after disappearance
Katharina Krebs and Christian Edwards | December 25, 2023

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/25/europe/alexey-navalny-russian-opposition-foun...

>119 margd: I'm glad he finally turned up.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:40 AM · Dec 26, 2023

Russian Novocherkask landing ship has been hit by Ukrainian tactical aviation in occupied Crimea - Ukrainian Air Forces...

0:16 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739551109667049518 )

A photo appeared in Russian Telegram channels that reportedly shows the Novocherkask landing ship after being hit by Ukrainian Armed Forces in occupied Feodosia.

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739597110402580830/photo/1

Earlier, Shoigu reported to Putin that the ship was "damaged."
--------------------------------------------------

Phantammeron @Phantammeron
Wow that is a big explosion. Im guessing it had ordnance or bombs on board?
--------------------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 5:13 AM · Dec 26, 2023:

Russian media post this video of reportedly the moment Novocherkask landing ship was hit and detonated.

"Whoa, that is hot!" the women on the video comment.

0:25 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739590350363050213 )
--------------------------------------------------

Ukraine updates: Fighters hit Russian ship, port in Crimea
DW | 25/26 Dec 2023

Ukraine's air force said it destroyed the Russian "Novocherkassk" landing ship in a Crimean port, while Russian officials said it was damaged and claimed to have shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets....

...Meanwhile, Ukraine's parliament announced plans to change the age from which people can be eligible for conscription from 27 to 25, as Kyiv's government and military consider an expanded mobilization.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-fighters-hit-russian-ship-port-in-crimea/l...
--------------------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:37 AM · Dec 26, 2023:

"The explosion was really powerful. Detonation lasted a long time. The fire was large-scale. So, we will still wait for more detailed data, because the combat work carried out is half the battle. Further, it will be necessary to collect comprehensive information about its results" - Nataliia Humeniuk, head of United Coordination press center of South Defense Forces, about the Ukrainian strike on Russian Novocherkask landing ship in Feodosia, Crimea.

She also noted that "such a large detonation was caused not just by the fuel or ammunition of the ship itself."

"The specifucs of large landing ships is that they are now used by the enemy practically constantly as logistical objects, as transportation of important cargoes, which they cannot afford in any other way. We remember that they have difficulties using the famous Kerch bridge and other transport and logistics routes. So, it's quite likely that it was a kind of "Christmas present", fully wrapped," Ms Humeniuk said.

She added that currently Russians have dispersed their ships in different ports and bays. "The majority of them are concentrated in Novorossiysk. And this is the recklessness with Feodosia, assuming that it is far enough. They now know that "far" for us is not far enough."

Photo ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739565970069352882/photo/1 )
------------------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 6:52 AM · Dec 26, 2023:

Russian media report that large fragments of the Novocherkask landing ship, which was hit by the Armed Forces of Ukraine strikes tonight, can be found in the vicinity of Feodosiya port.

Russian navy can organize a quest game to put this puzzle of a ship together.

0:30 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739615236284395871 )
--------------------------------------------------

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 4:15 AM · Dec 26, 2023:

On March 24, 2022, Russian Novocherkask landing ship was already hit in another port - in occupied Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia region.

According to open data, the Novocherkask is a large landing ship of Project 775 (775/II) in service with the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

It is designed for amphibious landing on unequipped coasts and transferring troops and cargo, including various types of armored vehicles and tanks.

The ship was built in 1987 at the shipyard in Gdánsk, Poland. The ship joined the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR Navy the same year.

Large landing ships of Project 775 are codified by NATO as Ropucha (Polish for "frog").

Photo ship ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739575580788437105/photo/1 )
---------------------------------------------------

Oliver Alexander @OAlexanderDK | 5:14 AM · Dec 26, 2023
OSINT Analyst - Work/Interviews featured in Telegraph, @ForeignPolicy, @WashingtonPost, @DerSpiegel et al.

There is basically nothing left of the Novocherkassk. As you can see the entire front half of the vessel is now underwater/completely gone.

Photo ( https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1739590549315723674/photo/1 )
Photo ( https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1739590549315723674/photo/2 )

Oliver Carroll @olliecarroll | 1:54 PM · Dec 26, 2023:
Foreign Correspondent for TheEconomist | Covering Ukraine, Russia, Belarus

Zelensky reports that Russian army struck an evacuation train in Kherson station earlier today. “The emergency services are working at the scene. Number of victims yet to be confirmed.”
-------------------------------------------

Maria Avdeeva @maria_avdv | 2:01 PM · Dec 26, 2023:
Security expert covering invasion from day one. Countering Russian disinformation since 2014 🇺🇦

Russia attacked evacuation train and railway station in Kherson. The number of casualties is currently being assessed. More than 100 civilians are at the bomb shelter, they will be transferred by buses to Mykolaiv

⬛️ This is the harrowing sound of today's Russian shelling
0:22 ( https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1739723174818762949 )

>122 margd: Would be nice if we had any moral standing to complain. That's gone.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 9:05 AM · Dec 27, 2023

A Russian "military correspondent" shows off a Russian flag in the ruins of Mariinka. "Here it is, our Mariinka! No homes, no cars, no people!" - this is what Russia is proud of.

I've added a video of Mariinka in 2020. It was a frontline town then, but there was life there.

1:22 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1740011145879322962 )

Moscow court hands long jail terms to two men for reciting poetry (Guardian)

A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced two men to years in prison for taking part in the recital of verses against the Ukraine campaign during an anti-mobilisation protest last year. Artyom Kamardin, 33, received a seven-year sentence for reciting a poem, and Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five and a half years for attending the protest. The two were seen behind a glass partition in a heavily guarded courtroom. Just before his sentencing, a smiling Kamardin recited a poem that refers to poetry as “gut-wrenching” and often disliked by “people accustomed to order”. After the sentence was read out, there were cries of “Shame!” from supporters in the courtroom, some of whom were later detained by police outside the court building, an AFP reporter saw...

Samuel Ramani (Oxford U) @SamRamani2 | 6:34 AM · Dec 29, 2023:

Russia launched a barrage of 158 drones and missiles on Ukraine
Lviv, Dnipro, Odesa, Kyiv and Kharkiv were all targeted
The largest Russian barrage in recent times { response to Ua bombing of Ru landing vessel? >121 margd: >122 margd: }

Russia has retaken some land around Robotyne
A blow to Ukraine's morale, as it imperils one of the few notable successes of the spring counter-offensive
The gains are incremental, Russia has only captured a few square miles around Robotnye and pushing from Verbove
But Oleksandr Tarnavskyi's admission of difficulty on the southern frontline, which includes Zaporizhzhia, is concerning for Ukraine
Russian proxy in Zaporizhzhia Evgeny Balitsky's claims that Russia will take over Robotyne and undo Ukraine's counter-offensive gains is unrealistic though
Russia has the edge but its attritional style of warfare means few large gains are imminent
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war.html

Samuel Ramani (Oxford) @SamRamani2 | 7:03 AM · Dec 29, 2023

DR Congo's contentious elections threaten to add to instability
Martin Fayulu {opposition politician, widely viewed as the legitimate winner of the DRC's 2018 presidential election, former oil company executive} has warned of an "electoral coup d'etat" by incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi, who remains the frontrunner

An election re-run has been ruled out but Tshisekedi's triumph would deepen mistrust
This presents an opportunity for Russia to strengthen ties with DR Congo, as the US's weak response to spiralling M23-inspired violence and democratic fragility gives it an opening

Col. Wilkerson on where we are and how we got here. Decades of opportunities turned to ashes.
Real Danger: Nuclear Weapon Use | Col. Larry Wilkerson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46S5DIhOMCM

This message has been deleted by its author.
(Russian soldiers crucify, torture, "interrogate" mouse like it was Ukrainian soldier, filming it... Mice in my house are fair game, but not THIS game...)

Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof | 1:07 AM · Jan 2, 2024
Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal.

Another massive Russian missile barrage on Kyiv, causing fires and electricity/water supply disruptions. Russia’s aim is to force Ukraine to run out Patriot/Nasams missiles now that Congress has halted military aid, and then to destroy the batteries themselves. Critical times.

A major own goal that will play directly into the BRICS' hands and fatally undermine confidence in the Western financial system. If it's down to this or Congress appropriating funds, far better Congress should appropriate funds, all else being equal. You know your empire is close to its final downfall when its leaders perennially roll out of bed asking, how can we shoot ourselves into the foot today?

Washington puts forward G7 plan to confiscate $300bn in Russian assets
Proposal would accelerate preparations in time for a February summit to show solidarity with Ukraine
https://www.ft.com/content/d206baa8-3ec9-42f0-b103-2c098d0486d9

>131 davidgn: A European proposal was to pay Ukraine the interest, while holding the Russian principal intact until the day when the country abandons its imperial dreams.

>132 margd: In which case the benefit to Ukraine becomes mostly symbolic (a few million dollars here or there?) whereas the damage to confidence in the Western financial system is only partially attenuated. It only looks like a good idea in comparison to wholesale expropriation.

>132 margd: >133 davidgn: I suppose I stand corrected. Here is a cogent argument for the legality and soundness of such a plan, under the particular circumstances. It also appears that the amount would not be so negligible as I supposed. I'll have to look into it further.


BRUEGEL: The European Union should do better than confiscate Russia’s reserve money
By Nicolas Véron in Brussels January 3, 2024
https://www.intellinews.com/bruegel-the-european-union-should-do-better-than-con...

Naomi O'Leary @NaomiOhReally | 4:15 AM · Jan 6, 2024:
Irish Times Europe Correspondent. Host of the Irish Passport podcast. Previously with Reuters, Politico, AFP. Keep calm and report the facts.

Aid to Ukraine as a percentage of GDP (not what you might expect)
Bar graph, donor country by GDP ( https://twitter.com/NaomiOhReally/status/1743561879765635441/photo/1 )

Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 @maria_drutska | 12:08 PM · Jan 6, 2024:
Work in UA foreign affairs sector, ex-UA defence sector.

Russia is using five times more artillery shells per day than Ukraine, - WSJ.

Yes, Ukraine requires assistance. Yes, the commitment “as long as it takes” is more than anyone expected or wanted. However, NATO nations must acknowledge that there is no security architecture for Europe without Ukraine. This is an undeniable truth. Hence, there is a compelling need to intensify, not diminish, the defense support for Ukraine.

Bar graph artillery shells Ru Ua summer 2023 current ( https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1743681075811930454/photo/1 )
-------------------------------------------------------------

René Duba @ReneDuba (conflict analyst)
It must be added that Russian soldiers have complained that North Korean shells go just anywhere.
Ukranian howitzers and shells are precise. They keep on hitting targets.
____________________________________________

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en | 3:22 PM · Jan 6, 2024:

On January 2nd, Russia attacked Kharkiv not with a Russian missile. The remains of a (supposedly) North Korean missile were found in the city.

The missile used is similar to an Iskander but it's still another missile - spokesperson on Kharkiv regional prosecution office Dmytro Chubenko.
1:07 ( https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1743729870176149694 )

>136 margd: Given a choice between supplying Israel and supplying Ukraine, I'd take Ukraine any day. Unfortunately, our national commitment to genocide is too strong.

Still, with or without the stocks that have been diverted to Israel, this war-that-should-never-have-been would be already lost for Ukraine.

>137 davidgn: Ukraine would have already lost this war.

In real terms everybody has already lost in Ukraine, Israel, Sudan, and all the other senseless wars which are going on at the moment. There are no winners, and the narrative needs to change.

>138 John5918: Well said, John.

Russia batters Ukraine in biggest air strikes since new year barrage
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urges allies to help replenish depleting air defence stocks
Roman Olearchyk | 8 Jan 2023

Russian forces have pounded Ukraine with nearly 60 missiles and attack drones, the largest nationwide air strikes since a massive barrage over the new year period.

As Moscow intensifies its campaign of hitting energy infrastructure and other targets for the second successive winter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged western allies to approve military aid packages to boost Kyiv’s depleted air defence capabilities.

...General Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said air defences intercepted {ONLY!} 18 of 51 missiles fired overnight into Monday morning, as well as eight attack drones, adding that “critical, civil infrastructure, industrial and military facilities were attacked”...

https://www.ft.com/content/e1e54f7a-246d-4dd7-8b5e-974705058e9b
-----------------------------------------

Maria Avdeeva @maria_avdv | 5:44 AM · Jan 8, 2024:
Security expert covering invasion from day one. Countering Russian disinformation since 2014

Russia launched 51 missiles at Ukrainian cities, including 4 Kinzhals and 6 Iskanders. Ukrainian air defense intercepted 18. Main attack targeted central Ukraine, not covered with Patriot systems. Ukraine needs more weapons to stop Russia

Morning news in Ukraine informs you how quickly Kinzhal missile can reach your city. It's 1.7 minutes for Kharkiv and 3.2 minutes for Kyiv
Map ( https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1744242588658303482/photo/1 )

The propaganda that damned Ukraine
Moscow, Kyiv and Washington are caught in a fog of miscalculation
BY CHAS FREEMAN JR.

https://unherd.com/?p=487346

Chas W. Freeman is a retired American diplomat. He has served as the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and was the main interpreter for Richard Nixon during his pivotal trip to China in 1972.

January 4, 2024

The way the American media has dealt with the Ukraine War brings to mind a remark credited to Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”

It is a more verbose expression of a better-known maxim: in war, truth is the first casualty. It is typically accompanied by a fog of official lies. And no such fog has ever been as thick as in the Ukraine war. While many hundreds of thousands of people have fought and died in Ukraine, the propaganda machines in Brussels, Kyiv, London, Moscow and Washington have worked overtime to ensure that we take passionate sides, believe what we want to believe, and condemn anyone who questions the narrative we have internalised. The consequences for all have been dire. For Ukraine, they have been catastrophic. As we enter a new year, a radical rethinking of policy by all concerned is long overdue.

This is a consequence of the fact that the war was born in and has been continued due to miscalculations by all sides. The United States calculated that Russian threats to go to war over Ukrainian neutrality were bluffs that might be deterred by outlining and denigrating Russian plans. Russia assumed that the United States would prefer negotiations to war and would wish to avoid the redivision of Europe into hostile blocs. Ukrainians counted on the West protecting their country. When Russia’s performance in the first months of the war proved lacklustre, the West concluded that Ukraine could defeat it. None of these calculations has proved correct.

Nevertheless, official propaganda, amplified by subservient mainstream and social media, has convinced most in the West that rejecting a draft peace treaty before the invasion and encouraging Ukraine to fight Russia is somehow “pro-Ukrainian”. Sympathy for the Ukrainian war effort is entirely understandable, but, as the Vietnam War should have taught us, democracies lose when cheerleading replaces objectivity in reporting and governments prefer their own propaganda to the truth of what is happening on the battleground. So, what is happening on the battleground? And how are the participants in the Ukraine War doing in terms of achieving their objectives?....

>141 davidgn: Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”

Reminds me of the iconic British comedian Kenneth Williams: "Everyone's becoming better and better at less and less ....Eventually someone's going to be superb....at nothing"

Just as an aside: assuming global trade disruption at maritime choke points continues and intensifies in coming years -- as it stands every chance of doing -- three guesses where much of it will be re-routed going forward (pending the icebreaking capacity and/or climatic conditions).

Russia Accelerates Plans for Year-Round NSR Navigation to Grow Volume
https://maritime-executive.com/article/russia-accelerates-plans-for-year-round-n...

Russia plans to open Northern Sea Route year-round in 2024
Pilot programme due to start in January as Arctic LNG 2 gears up for launch
https://www.tradewindsnews.com/gas/russia-plans-to-open-northern-sea-route-year-...

Russia Planning Year-Round Navigation of the Northern Sea Route (aka Polar Express) in Early 2024
What is Going on With Shipping?
174K subscribers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_7VGL5IUgw

"Well, that was stupid to encourage, now wasn't it?" -- (says anyone in the West with a brain, a decade or two from now.)
Egypt was screwed before. How about now?

How about declaring a Gaza ceasefire so the Houthis will keep their rockets and drones to themselves? That's really all it should take (as things stand, at least).

>143 davidgn: Russia's side of Arctic was first to open to shipping, but Canada's is not far behind. Even China is positioning itself as an Arctic power! (Not to mention its activities in South China Sea...) Even America is making claim to waters between islands of Canada's Arctic archipelago...

Elsewhere (extinction thread?) I posted study on how much of shipping is "dark", unaccounted for... I was always amazed by extent of illegal activities (fishing and otherwise) of commercial fishers on Great Lakes, but extrapolated to the world's oceans...yikes!

So, oil, pipelines, and now shipping interests are behind so much war... and Russia & China... ( Rachel Maddow Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth etc.)
--------------------------------------------------------

So adventures/grabs of Russia, China (and Iran and North Korea and other violent, power-hungries) should go unchecked?
Yeah, yeah, I know--"But, Americuh". No angels, but do you truly not see any difference??

Hamas is using North Korean weapons in Gaza, South Korea confirms
The report comes just days after the IDF revealed stockpiles of sophisticated Chinese-made weaponry used by Hamas in Gaza.
LEON KRAIEM | JANUARY 8, 2024
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-781219#google_vignette
---------------------------------------------------------

Andreas Umland @UmlandAndreas | 2:28 AM · Jan 7, 2024:
Analyst @SCEEUS_UI @UISweden : http://sceeus.se/en/. Docent NaUKMA
. Editing @ibidem11 book series SPPS & Ukrainian Voices http://ibidem.eu/en/reihen/gese

There is a lot of talk about conflict resolution and ending the war in Ukraine today. Oddly, there is already a relevant agreement signed by Russia, Ukraine, the EU and US called "Geneva Statement on Ukraine" and published on 17 April 2014. It says, among others:

"All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated."

Moscow just needs to fulfill these "musts" it undersigned almost 10 years ago - and the war is over.

Text of joint statement on Ukraine
AP | April 17, 2014
https://apnews.com/united-states-government-47a41daa68f244d48c4d8629b48b7572

>144 margd: The problem is those who seem to think we can check all of these threats all at once, having driven them to unite against us.
Complete, utter failure of grand strategy. The world regards us as goddamn maniacs, and rightly so. Neither is this new, but we've been reinforcing and proving that point of view correct over the entire course of my adult life.

Also, that was 2014. We've provoked and lost a war since then. What part of that does the author not understand?
Also, since then, there's been Minsk I and Minsk II, which are documents that would be slightly less bizarre to reference. But nobody on the Western side ever had any intention of implementing either.

Patrick Lawrence: Europe and the Legitimization of Deception
https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/08/patrick-lawrence-europe-and-the-legitimization...

By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

The U.S., having no need of or gift for statecraft, has long practiced what I’ve taken to calling the diplomacy of no diplomacy. You can’t expect much from bimbos such as Antony Blinken or Wendy Sherman, Blinken’s No. 2 at the State Department. All they can do is roar, even if they are mice next to any serious diplomat.

But have the European powers now followed along? I fear to ask because I fear the answer. But I must, given recent events.

Early last year, when Petro Poroshenko stated publicly that the post-coup regime in Kyiv had no intention of abiding by diplomatic commitments it made in 2014-15 to a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, a few eyebrows arched, but not over many. Who was the former Ukrainian president, anyway? I had him down from the first as a self-interested dummkopf who did what Washington told him to do and nothing more, no shred of statesmanship about him.

It was another matter when, in early December, Angela Merkel admitted in back-to-back interviews that the European powers were up to the same thing. The objective of diplomatic talks in late 2014 and early 2015, the former German chancellor told Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, was not, as they had pretended, a framework for a federalized Ukraine in the cause of a lasting peace between its hostile halves: It was to deceive the Russians to give Kyiv time to prepare for a military assault on the Russian-speaking provinces in the east, whose people had refused to accept the U.S.–orchestrated coup that brought compulsively Russophobic Nazi-inflected nationalists to power in February 2014.

Merkel’s revelations came as a shock, of course. But I contrived to mark down her comments as an inadvertent indiscretion in the autumn of a long-serving leader’s years. Merkel made her remarks more or less in passing. There was no boasting in them. She did not seem proud of her duplicity.

Now François Hollande weighs in. A few days before the year ended, the former French president gave a lengthy interview to The Kyiv Independent. In it he made the Franco–German position perfectly clear: Yes, Merkel and I lied to the Russians when we negotiated the Minsk I and Minsk II Protocols in September 2014 and February 2015. No, we never had any intention of making Kyiv observe them or otherwise enforcing them. It was a charade from the first and—the part of this interview that truly galls—Hollande advanced this as wise, sound statesmanship.

Let us count the betrayals we must assign to the hapless Hollande and the inconstant Merkel....

>145 davidgn: Here it is in 30 seconds from Amb. Freeman. This is where we stand.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iQ78ZpMzbxY

Let that sit on repeat until it sinks in.

ETA: Or better yet, watch the whole thing. It's the latter.
cf. https://www.librarything.com/topic/355917#8345332
referencing
https://www.librarything.com/topic/355917#8343931

>144 margd: The Russians are also about 40 icebreakers ahead of the U.S. and Canada combined last I checked, and in a position to maintain or increase that gap.

To https://www.intellinews.com/top-ukrainian-politician-david-arakhamia-gives-seven... (which I cited in our excursus here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/350258#8347207 ), add the apparently latest confirmation by Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi (#8? Higher?).

Ukraine insider: Putin wanted negotiations, the West chose war
The Grayzone
332K subscribers

https://youtu.be/68SKPmcvESY?si=c4N9RGdw-HAAPIV5 (with short introduction)
https://youtu.be/68SKPmcvESY?si=c4N9RGdw-HAAPIV5&t=76 (direct to Amb. Chalyi comments)

The US and Russia HAD an agreement on Ukraine (1994), and Russia broke it--twice (2014, 2021). >144 margd: Umland, AP
--------------------------------------------------------

Budapest Memorandum

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances (1994)...Russia, the US, and UK... confirmed their recognition of ...Ukraine becoming part(y) to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively removing all Soviet nuclear weapons from their soil, and that they agreed to the following:

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act {Helsinki Accords to improve the détente between the East and the West})...

Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
--------------------------------------------------------

Opinion | Putin wants us to negotiate over the heads of our allies ...
Dec 21, 2021Opinion Putin wants us to negotiate over the heads of our allies. Washington shouldn't fall for it.
Michael McFaul | December 21, 2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com › opinions › 2021 › 12 › 21 › putin-draft-treaties-negotiations-allies-mcfaul

>149 margd: Budapest: negotiated at a time when the understanding was that NATO would not be expanding east of Germany. Difficult to imagine, at the time, the chutzpah it would take to try to expand it even to Georgia and Ukraine and (by implication) take Sevastopol.

Have you ever read (present DCI) Burns' 2008 cable? You should.
NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES William J. Burns
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
It's quite important. (And Burns should be SecState, not DCI).

As for how this has played out since, with the minimal necessary detail:
https://neutralitystudies.com/2022/03/why-permanent-neutrality-is-right-for-ukra... Pascal Lottaz and Nasir A. Andisha (emphases mine)

The tragedy for Ukraine (and Georgia) is that the mix of internal disunity in conjunction with their geostrategic importance to both, Russia and the West has produced a deteriorating security dynamic. Both parties were furiously competing to include them in their alliances and partnership arrangements, Russia in its “Commonwealth of Independent States” (CIS) and the West in NATO. The latter had the upper hand in this game, declaring in a NATO summit, in April 2008, that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” This emboldened the Government of Georgia to fire the first shots in a regional conflict that quickly became a war with Russia and since morphed into a frozen conflict. Russia later recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries, effectively dividing Georgia into three separate entities, much like Ukraine right now.

This bold adventure reestablished Russian power in the region and paused NATO’s enlargement plan, simply because there is no political way to reach the necessary unanimity of NATO states when it comes to admitting a new member with an ongoing conflict, as that would import the conflict straight into the alliance. Therefore, all Russia must do to block Georgian or Ukrainian membership in NATO is to keep the frozen conflicts the way they are, and that is exactly what Moscow has been engaged in since NATO membership for both countries became a real prospect. In Ukraine, too, the occupation of Crimea and the frozen conflict in the Donbas started after the Maidan uprising of 2014, in which a Russian-friendly Government in Kyiv was replaced by a pro-Western government and the prospect of Ukraine applying for NATO membership became real.

It is doubtlessly true that Russia broke its promises under the Budapest Memorandum when it invaded and occupied Crimea, backed separatist forces in the Donbas, and is breaking it again right now with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But it is also true that the Ukrainian parliament scrapped the country’s neutral status and officially declared its bid to join NATO. The tit-for-tat escalation among Russia, Ukraine, and NATO has been deteriorating the entire European security architecture, with the situation at its most dramatic now after war broke out. But let’s not forget, over ten thousand people had already lost their lives in the simmering conflict in the Donbas between 2015 and 2022. That is why under any reasonable political scenario, it had already been impossible for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, despite the West’s mantra that the door would remain open.

(ETA: Of course, if the Ukrainians were to successfully re-subjugate the Donbass and Crimea by force, as the Russians believed they were preparing to do with their shiny new NATO-trained army, and as Merkel and Hollande have admitted was the general plan in >145 davidgn:, rather than implement Minsk II, that bar to Ukraine joining NATO would no longer be operative, now would it?)

To Michael McFaul's implication (oft repeated by many in explicit and caterwauling fashion) that this was was NOT really what this was all about:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ukraine-nato-expansion/ Branko Marcetic

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve been told that the issue of NATO expansion is irrelevant to the war, and that anyone bringing it up is, at best, unwittingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, at worst, apologizing for or justifying the war.

So it was curious to see NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier this month say explicitly that Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his criminal war as a reaction to the possibility of NATO expanding into Ukraine, and the alliance’s refusal to swear it off — not once or twice, but three separate times.

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament on September 7. “That was what he sent us. And (that) was a pre-condition for not invade (sic) Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.”

“He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite,” Stoltenberg reiterated, referring to the accession of Sweden and Finland into the alliance in response to Putin’s invasion. Their entry, he later insisted, “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he's getting the exact opposite.”

It’s not clear if Stoltenberg was referring to the draft treaty Putin put forward in December 2021 and simply mixed up the seasons (the provisions of each are the same), or if he’s referring to an earlier, as-yet-unreported incident. In any case, what Stoltenberg claims here — that Putin viewed Ukraine’s NATO entry as so unacceptable he was willing to invade to stop it, and put forward a negotiating bid that might have prevented it, only for NATO to reject it — has been repeatedly made by those trying to explain the causes of the war and how it could be ended, only to be dismissed as propaganda.

The only logical conclusion, if we’re to listen to the hawks, is that the man in charge of the very alliance helping Ukraine defend itself from Putin is, in fact, working for the Russian leader and spreading his propaganda....

As for "negotiating over the heads of our allies," clearly McFaul pretends to have forgotten that the purpose of NATO (as its first secretary-general, Lord Ismay, put it) was always to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Unfortunately, this purpose does not seem to have much evolved. At the end of the day, we still run the show. It was the American side, not the Russian, which made no serious attempt at negotiating and which patently preferred war -- of the "let's you (Ukrainians) and them (Russians) fight" variety.

cf. https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/nato-chief-admits-expansion-behind-... Jeffrey Sachs

Putin made one last attempt at diplomacy at the end of 2021, tabling a draft U.S.-NATO Security Agreement to forestall war. The core of the draft agreement was an end of NATO enlargement and removal of U.S. missiles near Russia. Russia’s security concerns were valid and the basis for negotiations. Yet Biden flatly rejected negotiations out of a combination of arrogance, hawkishness, and profound miscalculation. NATO maintained its position that NATO would not negotiate with Russia regarding NATO enlargement, that in effect, NATO enlargement was none of Russia’s business.

The continuing U.S. obsession with NATO enlargement is profoundly irresponsible and hypocritical. The U.S. would object—by means of war, if needed—to being encircled by Russian or Chinese military bases in the Western Hemisphere, a point the U.S. has made since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Yet the U.S. is blind and deaf to the legitimate security concerns of other countries.

So, yes, Putin went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to Russia’s border. Ukraine is being destroyed by U.S. arrogance, proving again Henry Kissinger’s adage that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, while to be its friend is fatal. The Ukraine War will end when the U.S. acknowledges a simple truth: NATO enlargement to Ukraine means perpetual war and Ukraine’s destruction. Ukraine’s neutrality could have avoided the war, and remains the key to peace. The deeper truth is that European security depends on collective security as called for by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), not one-sided NATO demands.

cf. also https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/11/03/nato-provoked-putin-stoltenberg-comes-cl... Binoy Kampmark

Why not ask UKRAINIANS what they want?

>151 margd: They sure didn't want this.

ETA: Less flippantly:

But what do the Ukrainians want? That question is also relevant because for a “real” neutral solution to emerge, one needs three ingredients: the willingness of one side, the willingness of the other side, and the willingness of the state in question to start playing that role. For the situation before the war, experts like Olga Oliker have pointed out that a majority of Ukrainians in the government-controlled areas of the country favored NATO accession. Nicolai N. Petro, on the other hand, held that this only remains true as long as the populations of the Donbas and certainly Crimea are not counted in the assessment. A 2020 study finds that overall, the opinion of Ukraine citizens was highly diverse with a majority only favoring “good relations” with NATO but not accession.

ETA https://neutralitystudies.com/2022/03/why-permanent-neutrality-is-right-for-ukra...

Your question is not particularly like, but helpfully analogous to, a Briton asking ca. 1864, "But what do AMERICANS want?"
At least insofar as the correct response would be: "Which Americans?"
You might try listening to this piece, which should have aired on Radio Slovakia International:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0qzJys953o
Many kudos to the producer, Jeremy McCormick, and particularly to interviewee Nicolai Petro.

>152 davidgn: Another analogy that's not particularly close, but intellectually helpful. What would happen if a government in Ottawa decided that Canada must be a culturally unitary state and that the barbarous Quebecois and Acadians, hopelessly in thrall to the cultural influence of an ancient French empire long since extinguished, should be forced to be educated and conduct business solely in English and fined for speaking French in public? How would that go?

cf.
https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/ukraines-far-east-effects-genealogy-ukrainia...
(Which illustrates the depth of the cultural gulf).

>151 margd: >152 davidgn: >153 davidgn:
You may also recall that Zelenskyy campaigned and won his mandate as the peace candidate.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/zelenskyys-peace
BLOG POST
Zelenskyy's Peace
Victor Karvatsky
By Viktor Karvatskyy on May 7, 2020

That, in broad electoral mandate terms, might also be taken as a clue to what "Ukrainians want"ed (though the devil was always in the details).

>151 margd:

A very good question, but it raises a whole lot of new questions. Which Ukrainians? The government or the people? Which people? The ones who are clearly (and vocally) in favour of fighting to the death, or the ones who are working for peace, or suffering silently, or fleeing the country, or refusing to join the army, or are simply dying? What about the Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity?

But since the war in Ukraine is not just about two isolated countries with a private beef with each other but is part of a much bigger geopolitical power struggle between the USA, NATO and the west on the one hand, and Russia on the other, it has moved beyond the wishes of the Ukrainians, even if some parties conveniently but mendaciously claim to be respecting those wishes.

And finally, there is a much wider conversation to be had about the means we use to support legitimate causes and to oppose illegitimate actions. The Ukrainians are legitimately resisting an illegal and violent occupation of their land. How far and using what measures should the world support Ukraine and oppose Russia's illegal acts, ie where is the line to be drawn? Starting World War 3? Using nuclear weapons? Allowing the environmental destruction of a large part of central Europe, with some environmental damage far further afield? Negatively affecting the food security of much of the rest of the world, including some of the poorest countries?

It is not as simplistic as many of the protagonists, social media, propaganda and sound bites wish to make out.

>155 John5918: Very well said, John.

>151 margd: I seem to recall you once expressed respect for Medea Benjamin and CODEPINK.
Here's a lecture she delivered in October of '22 on her book, War in Ukraine (which came out with a second edition not too long ago and is due for a third out in May). You might find it helpful.

War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict - Medea Benjamin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dNW_cmREL8

In 2019, even without voters in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Zelenskyy won an indisputable majority in second round of voting, in an election recognized as free and fair. He is a native Russian speaker whose electoral support was strongest in Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. I can believe Ukrainians are growing weary of this war, but I bet they don't feel they can quit, with or without assistance of NATO. Holodomor.

"Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (Zelenskyy) is a native Russian speaker whose electoral support is strongest in Russian speaking regions of Ukraine. His rival Petro Poroshenko in contrast won support in predominantly Ukrainian speaking regions

...According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), Zelenskyy won the second round with 73.22% of the votes...The election was recognized as free and fair....

...the March 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia and the occupation of parts of Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast by separatists (since April 2014) made roughly 12% of eligible voters unable to participate in the elections."

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1743547904621772916
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election

>157 margd: They'll quit when they run out of people and can't maintain the lines. Do we really want things to get to that point? Wars don't usually end that way. (Although, some do. And some take it a bit further still. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/td9a40/how_the_paraguayan_war_end... )
I'm aware of the electoral results. I'm not sure what your point was. You write as though Zelenskyy passed the language laws.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1S110Y/

He didn't win on that account. He won on a peace ticket. Did you have a different point?

>157 margd:

I don't think anybody is challenging the democratic credentials and legitimacy of President Zelensky and his government. But >151 margd: is apparently seeking to learn what Ukrainians want, and an election held in 2019 several years before the war began, no matter how free and fair, can hardly be used to judge the mood of the Ukrainian people two years into an arguably unwinnable war of attrition.

>153 davidgn: Actually, in Quebec they are close to forcing English speakers to be "educated and conduct business solely in (French) and fined for speaking (English) in public." I understand fears of being swamped by English-speaking North America, but a former colleague (bilingual), now a prof at McGill U, is worried about implications for his world class institution:

Quebec to raise university fees and mandate French for out-of-province students
Nadine Yousif | 15th December 2023
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67706840

>160 margd: My father's an alumnus. He'll be interested to hear.

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Matthew Hoh (another Ridenhour Prize winner) has an interview (by Nima) directly relevant to this discussion, which brings in a number of the daunting complexities. (As for the headline: too late for that).
Win the War By not Fighting it | Matthew Hoh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu2mFQjBUNo

A little history from Ivan Katchanovski.
This is how the sausage is made (in more ways than one).

The “snipers’ massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2023.2269685

Swedish alarm after defence chiefs' war warning
A warning to Swedes from two top defence officials to prepare for war has prompted concern and accusations of alarmism.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67935464

I'm not sure how to get my head around this. Does someone know something? Or is it simply a sop to Saab? Or meant to somehow influence NATO accession?

Russian Orthodox priest faces expulsion for refusing to pray for victory over Ukraine (Guardian)

A prominent liberal priest faces expulsion from the Russian Orthodox church for refusing to read out a prayer asking God to guide Russia to victory over Ukraine. In a verdict published on Saturday, a church court said Aleksiy Uminsky should be “expelled from holy orders” for violating his priestly oath. The decision was forwarded for approval to Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian church who strongly backs President Vladimir Putin. The case shows how the church is clamping down on internal dissent as it throws its support behind Putin and his “special military operation” in Ukraine, which is now nearing the end of its second year...

Boris Akunin: Russia designates author ‘foreign agent’ (BBC)

Russia has designated Boris Akunin, one of the country's most popular novelists, a foreign agent. Mr Akunin was added to a register of "terrorists and extremists" by Russia's justice ministry over his objections to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The 67-year-old is well-known for his longstanding criticism of President Vladimir Putin. Prior to the war, Mr Akunin's detective novels were best-sellers in Russia, until authorities banned his books...