Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Saturday, August 22, 2026 17:36
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Thursday, August 20, 2026 1:31 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Inside Russia's Banderol missile, a hybrid drone-bomb-missile

Russia is increasingly using Banderol loitering munitions to strike Ukraine — weapons that function as de facto cruise missiles and whose attacks are destructive and dangerous.

Editor: Bohuslav Romanenko | August 20, 2026, 09:54 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/banderol-technical-specifications-range-w
arhead-and-risks-infographic-and-description-50634405.html

A supplier of several components for the Banderol cruise missile is the joint-stock company Chip and Dip, which is on the U.S. and Ukrainian sanctions lists but is not sanctioned by Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, or the European Union as a whole.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 20, 2026 1:38 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

'Land for peace' won't stop Russia's war on Ukrainian identity

By Vincent Artman | August 20, 2026 6:55 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/land-for-peace-wont-stop-russias-war-on-uk
rainian-identity/

As Russia's war against Ukraine grinds on with seemingly no end in sight and the Russian leadership rejecting any talk of ceasefires or meaningful negotiations, there has been a growing chorus arguing that Kyiv must face reality, admit that military victory is impossible, enter negotiations, and agree to territorial concessions.

"Land for peace" might be a "difficult choice," or so the argument goes, but it is the only way to avoid a crushing defeat.

Even setting aside the question of whether such unilateral concessions would actually produce a just and durable peace, what is strangely absent from "land for peace" proposals is any acknowledgment that what is at stake is more than "border adjustments."

Territory, after all, is not empty. Indeed, as Olga Burlyuk has argued, the "pornography of land concessions" requires us to imagine a Ukraine without people: since it's "just land" being traded away, "there is no harm in losing some."

But even if for some, "land for peace" may appear to be a tidy formula, reality is far messier: millions of Ukrainians live under an occupation regime that is designed to eradicate their identity.

Much more at https://kyivindependent.com/land-for-peace-wont-stop-russias-war-on-uk
rainian-identity/

--------------

An estimated 3 to 6 million Ukrainians live under Russian occupation, though precise numbers are hard to verify due to ongoing conflict and mass displacement. https://voxukraine.org/en/false-the-same-number-of-ukrainians-live-in-
russia-as-in-ukraine

Current Estimates

• Ukrainian Government Estimates: Ukrainian officials, including former reintegration ministers, have stated that up to 6 million Ukrainians (including 1.5 million children) live in areas seized by Russia since 2014 and 2022.

• Independent and International Estimates: Other tracking groups and general consensus estimates place the active population remaining in the occupied territories (including Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia) closer to 3 to 5 million, noting that roughly half of the original population fled or was displaced following the 2022 full-scale invasion.

• Broader Context: Total population inside Ukraine's internationally recognized borders is roughly 35 million, with about 29 to 30.5 million living in territory controlled directly by the Ukrainian government.

Factors Impacting the Numbers

• Displacement and Flight: Millions fled westward or abroad at the start of the war.

• Deportations: Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly deported or transferred deeper into Russian-controlled regions.

• Inflow of Russian Citizens: Russia has systematically moved Russian citizens and administrative workers into occupied zones like Crimea and parts of the Donbas, altering the demographic balance.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 20, 2026 3:14 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ukraine Planned to Swarm Moscow Airports With AI-Guided Drones

By Simon Shuster | August 20, 2026, 12:03 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/ukraine-moscow-a
irports-ai-drones/688337/

Early this year, Ukrainian officials came to President Volodymyr Zelensky with a risky new plan to end the war with Russia. It would require expanding their bombing campaign to include a set of targets and a class of weapons they had long avoided. In addition to Ukraine’s ongoing strikes against Russian military bases, oil refineries, supply lines, and logistics hubs, the officials wanted to launch waves of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports, hoping to stop international carriers from flying in and out of the Russian capital, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plan, which has not been previously reported.

Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive military operations. If executed, the plan would mark a terrifying milestone in the history of warfare: an attack in which swarms of autonomous drones equipped with AI guidance systems would seek out and hit their targets without a human pilot controlling their movements. Such systems have been tested by various countries in recent years, including the United States. But the legality of their use has been vigorously debated as a possible violation of the laws of war, and they have never been deployed at scale.

When officials presented the plan to Zelensky this winter, he expressed strong reservations, one of the sources said. He worried that it could be seen as “piracy” if the drones hit a civilian airliner in Moscow, especially if the strikes killed or injured passengers, airport staff, or members of the flight crew. But in his desperation to find a Russian pressure point that could restart the peace process, Zelensky allowed preparations for the strikes to continue for several months this spring and early summer, both sources said.

A spokesperson for Zelensky declined to comment. Another official in the president’s office denied the existence of a plan to launch swarms of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports. “That’s total nonsense,” the official told me, asking not to be named in an article about this topic. Ukraine has long sought to force the closure of Russian airports, the official added, and its drone strikes against various targets in Russia have often achieved that goal for short periods of time. But Ukraine does not have long-range weapons that are precise and reliable enough to hit Russian airports without posing an undue risk to civilians, the official said.

According to Russian aviation authorities, airports across the country were forced to close 114 times during a one-month period last summer, from June 28 to July 28, usually due to the threat of Ukrainian drones. Moscow was affected by the highest number of shutdowns—at least 17 in total at its four main airports. The Russian association of travel agents reported more than 290 of these incidents nationwide in the first quarter of this year. The airport closures, which Russians refer to as a kovyor, meaning “carpet,” usually last a few hours before authorities give the all-clear and allow flights to resume. “We’ve only ever had one operation against the airports,” the official said. “Force the Russians to declare ‘carpets’ all the time.”

By the middle of spring, the plan to force a more permanent shutdown of Moscow’s airports had advanced far enough to receive a code name: M&Ms, a reference to the many small, cheap, and nearly identical drones that the mission would require. To overwhelm Russian air defenses, the operation would need to send as many as 1,000 drones a night to airports in and around Moscow, said one of the sources familiar with it.

Attacks of that size would not be far outside the norm in this conflict. Earlier this week, Russian authorities reported shooting down 791 Ukrainian drones in a single night, one of the largest attacks of the war; more than 600 of them were flying toward the Moscow region, according to the city’s mayor.

“The idea is to shut down the Moscow airspace to civilian flights for an extended period of time,” one of the sources familiar with the plan told me. Since the start of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, civilian air travel over Ukraine has been suspended. But Russian airports have mostly remained open, and millions of passengers used them this year to travel abroad. Due to Western sanctions, only a few international carriers still fly in and out of Moscow, including Turkish Airlines and Emirates, which many well-to-do Russians use to reach hubs in Istanbul and Dubai.

Forcing those carriers to stop flying to Russia would make life less comfortable for officials, oligarchs, and other wealthy loyalists of President Vladimir Putin. “People in the elites might come to Putin and say: We have a problem here,” said one of the sources familiar with the Ukrainian plan. That kind of pressure from the elites, in combination with other wartime strains on Russia’s economy and society, could force Putin to negotiate a peace deal, the source said.

Both sources told me planning for the operation was halted in July, when Zelensky abruptly fired its mastermind, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. As the architect of Ukraine’s military drone program, Fedorov had worked on the plan for most of this year, keeping it a secret even from some of his closest aides. He helped assemble a team of Ukrainian computer programmers to develop the AI guidance system, and he secured financing from Ukraine’s allies in Europe to produce the autonomous drones at scale, the two sources said.

Having served throughout the war as a crucial member of Zelensky’s team, Fedorov changed this month into a potential rival for the presidency. In a video address posted on YouTube yesterday, the former defense minister called for Ukraine to hold elections and choose a new government. Ukraine has not held presidential or parliamentary elections since 2019, because Ukrainian martial law, which has been in effect since the start of the invasion, prohibits elections in a time of war. Opinion polls taken in recent weeks show that Fedorov has grown popular enough in Ukraine since his dismissal to pose a serious challenge to Zelensky in a presidential race. “Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia,” Fedorov said in his speech.

The same day, the Ukrainian Parliament confirmed the nomination of a new defense minister, Yevhenii Khmara, a decorated military veteran. The vote in Parliament foreclosed Fedorov’s hopes of returning to his previous post anytime soon. It also threw into doubt the future of the operation known as M&Ms. One of the sources familiar with the plan expressed hope that the new defense minister would carry it forward. “We will try. Technically it’s possible,” the source said. “You can revive this project with a new team, but it would take, in my view, around three months.” By that time, another brutal winter of war will have arrived.

In the months before his dismissal, Fedorov pursued numerous high-tech plans to force the Russians to negotiate before the onset of winter. The Atlantic reported earlier this month that he had appealed for help from Elon Musk, and that Zelensky had asked President Trump to secure Musk’s assistance. The Ukrainians needed Musk to allow the use of Starlink, his satellite-communications network, as a navigation tool for drones to hit targets inside Russia, including Russian ballistic-missile launchers, with precision. Musk has refused to allow the use of Starlink over Russian territory. He has not replied to my messages seeking comment on the matter.

As an alternative to Starlink, the Ukrainians have rushed to develop reliable drones equipped with AI, which offer a way to get around Russia’s counter-drone defenses. Most attack drones require a pilot to guide them to their targets, through radio signals, mobile internet connections, or some other means of remote control. Russia, like most advanced military powers, uses electronic jamming to disrupt the signal between enemy drones and their pilots, forcing the weapons to crash or veer off course.

Last summer, the Ukrainians found an ingenious way around this problem. They hid 117 drones inside five long-haul trucks and hired unwitting drivers to bring them close to Russian air bases. Once in position, the drones connected to the internet, reportedly using Russian SIM cards, and flew out of the trucks’ secret compartments. Drone pilots back in Ukraine used the internet connection to guide most of the weapons to their targets. The mission, known as Operation Spider’s Web, damaged or destroyed roughly two dozen Russian warplanes, including nuclear-capable bombers, that stood parked on the tarmac of their bases in Russia.

Ukraine’s latest plan would allow the drones to pilot themselves, using an AI-powered technique known as map matching, the two sources familiar with the plan told me. The technique involves uploading detailed maps of a drone’s intended flight path to its onboard computer, along with pictures of its targets. As the drone flies, its camera collects images of the terrain below. The onboard computer uses an AI model to compare those images with the ones stored in its memory, a bit like a person consulting a map on an unfamiliar highway. When the camera spots something that matches, or resembles, the image of the target, the drone flies into it and explodes. A human pilot does not need to confirm that the drone has found the right target before it strikes.

When this technology first appeared in Ukraine a couple of years ago, some drone manufacturers told me, they had declined to make it available to their clients in the military, because they found it too risky. One drone maker showed me an AI-targeting system with a kind of accuracy selector, which he could slide up and down on a screen. If he chose the lower setting, it would give the drone permission to attack even if its AI model is only 30 percent certain that it sees the right target. The highest setting tells the AI to reach 90 percent certainty before it decides to strike. Even that did not seem precise enough for the manufacturer, who wondered what would happen if a child on a bicycle were to enter the frame of the drone’s camera as it locked onto its target: “Who is responsible if that kid dies?”

Ukrainian officials, arms makers, and military officers have wrestled with such questions for years. Some have called for the Ukrainian Parliament or an international body such as the United Nations to develop guidelines for the use of AI targeting in warfare. No such rules exist in Ukrainian law. The U.S. and most of its allies have vague guidelines about a human needing to be “in the loop” before an AI model decides to attack. But most experts on the laws of war see such restrictions as outdated and insufficient.

Zelensky raised concerns about unintended targets being struck when it came to the plan to attack Moscow’s airports, one of the sources familiar with these conversations told me. The officials behind the plan offered work-arounds, the source said. They suggested, for example, that Ukraine would warn civilian airlines to avoid Russian airports and evacuate their planes before the swarm of Ukrainian drones arrived. “If they say to themselves, You know what, it’s getting too risky. Why even continue flying there?” the source said. “That would already have quite an impact on the Russian elites. Those are their main connections to the outside world.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 21, 2026 5:20 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Kuchma names three fatal mistakes in Ukraine's years of independence

August 21, 2026 11:14

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/4156202-kuchma-names-three-f
atal-mistakes-in-ukraines-years-of-independence.html

Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has identified the removal of Ukraine's tactical nuclear weapons, the decision not to sign an EU Association Agreement in Vilnius, and the failure to prevent Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014 as three fatal mistakes during Ukraine's years of independence.

Kuchma, Ukraine's second president, expressed this view in an interview with Ukrinform.

"Among the unquestionable mistakes, I would definitely name the catastrophic decision not to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union in Vilnius. But, emotionally, the hardest thing for me personally to accept is the de facto surrender of Crimea in February-March 2014. There was no response to the actions of the 'little green men,' who calmly and brazenly took control of the Ukrainian peninsula. Let me remind you: formally, they were not even identified as Russians. They were unknown terrorists, and they should have been dealt with accordingly. A decisive response in Crimea could have stopped the attempted annexation at its very beginning," Kuchma said.

He also separately mentioned the loss of Ukraine's nuclear weapons. According to the former president, agreeing to the removal of Ukraine's tactical nuclear weapons in 1992 was a fatal mistake. He said that by 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was concluded, there was essentially nothing left to decide regarding Ukraine's strategic security – everything had already been settled two years earlier.

"The point is that the Budapest Memorandum deprived Ukraine of strategic weapons whose condition and characteristics would not have allowed them to provide nuclear deterrence anyway. But at the beginning of our independence, we did have the weapons needed for that. We had about 3,000 tactical nuclear warheads. In principle, we could have used them to defend ourselves against Russia at that time. They had an optimal range of operation and included nuclear aviation bombs, artillery shells and naval torpedoes – in other words, the entire range of tactical nuclear weapons. And unlike the strategic arsenal, Ukraine could control and deploy them itself," Kuchma said.

As reported, the removal of all tactical nuclear weapons from Ukrainian territory to Russia was completed on May 7, 1992. About 2,500 tactical warheads were transferred under pressure from international partners and because Ukraine lacked the technical and financial resources to maintain them.

At a Cabinet meeting on November 21, 2013, the Ukrainian government adopted a resolution titled "Issues Concerning the Conclusion of the Association Agreement between Ukraine, on the one hand, and the European Union, the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, on the other," suspending preparations for the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. The decision triggered mass protests that eventually grew into the Revolution of Dignity.

On February 20, 2014, Russian troops without identifying insignia began landing in Crimea. On March 16, 2014, a so-called referendum on Crimea's status was held in the temporarily Russian-occupied Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, in violation of Ukrainian and Crimean legislation. It took place under pressure from Russian troops and paramilitary "self-defense" groups and with the support of Russian propaganda media.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 21, 2026 5:26 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The US Does Not Understand Air Power, But Does Ukraine?

The Wildberries Campaign And The Fallacy Of Signalling

Phillips P. OBrien
Aug 21, 2026

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-us-does-not-understand-air-
power

This piece might be a little technical. It is about conceptions of air power, and in particular how states are using it now (particularly the USA and Ukraine). It is built on the ideas that I have mentioned in a number of places before, from books to articles, but not brought together in this way. I hope that it makes sense.

The piece is built around the idea that the US has (once again) revealed that it does not understand how to use air power, and as such has terribly bungled a war—and ended up weakening itself. It then moves on to Ukraine. I would say Ukraine shows signs that it grasps how to use air power better than the USA—though those signs are not as clear as many would have thought. There has been, at times, an overly celebratory discussion of the Ukrainian use of air power—when their campaign is, imho, more uneven than people realize. By that, I mean that to this point they might have been able to achieve more if they had used their air power more methodically. By looking at the Ukrainian air campaign against the Russian company Wildberries, I will try and provide some illustration of what I mean.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 21, 2026 6:01 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Putin is threatening Britain again – this time he could be cornered enough to do something reckless

It isn’t the first time the Kremlin has warned of consequences for the UK over its support for Ukraine. From arson to sabotage, Russia has been testing Britain’s defences for years. But desperation could lead to a real attack, and it is something we are in no way prepared for, writes Owen Matthews

Thursday 20 August 2026 14:09 BST

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-threat-uk-drone-
ukraine-war-b3035606.html

The Kremlin’s reaction to news that British-built long-range drones had been used in the latest Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russian territory was predictably furious. And once again it came with a threat of retaliation.

“The United Kingdom is acting as an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” thundered the Russian Embassy in London in a statement. “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer … The deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support of Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.” . . .

. . . So far, such an escalation remains remote – but only because Putin believes that his army’s slow advance across Donbas means that he will eventually crush Ukraine’s resistance. However, as I wrote last month for The Independent, trouble for Putin is much closer to home, with increasing tensions inside Russia’s elite between business interests exhausted by the war and those securocrats who owe power and incomes to continued conflict.

A cornered, desperate Putin will be far more dangerous, and more unpredictable and last month two senior Kremlin sources, one of whom meets regularly with the president, were quoted as saying they predicted a “high probability” of escalation in the coming months.

Two things are clear – one, that Britain is extremely vulnerable and unprepared for attack, whether it’s in cyberspace or on its critical infrastructure. The other is that Russian spies and soldiers have been methodically probing our weaknesses, ready to strike if and when the Kremlin grows sufficiently reckless to give the order.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 6:39 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russian Occupation Update, August 21, 2026

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-occupatio
n-update-august-21-2026/

Russian and occupation officials are highlighting Russian efforts to militarize schools in occupied areas ahead of the 2026-2027 school year. Russian Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov visited School No. 25 in occupied Simferopol, Crimea, on August 17 to review preparations for the upcoming school year.[8] Images from the visit show Kravtsov and Crimea occupation head Sergei Aksyonov looking at rifles and ammunition, which are likely part of teaching materials for the now mandatory “Fundamentals of Homeland Security and Defense (OBZR)” course. Aksyonov highlighted the fact that School No. 25 has opened a museum dedicated to Russia’s war in Ukraine and has integrated military-patriotic programming into the school’s operations, including through visits by active-duty Russian personnel, volunteer activities, and “Lessons on Courage.” Russia has used the Lessons on Courage program to expose children and youth in occupied Ukraine to active-duty and veteran Russian military personnel as a way of normalizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.[9] Chair of the Commission of the Public Chamber of occupied Crimea for Education, Science, and Educational Activities Natalia Reznichenko told pro-Russian radio station Radio Sputnik Krym on August 16 about other preparations in Crimean schools in advance of September 1.[10] Reznichenko stated that the Russian Ministry of Education is trying to standardize education across Russia and occupied Ukrainian regions, and has introduced the new mandatory “Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia” and OBZR courses in line with presidential decrees. Reznichenko also noted that schools in occupied Crimea will begin testing a behavioral assessment model for grades two through eight, which Ukrainian officials have warned could endanger schoolchildren and impose punishment for any perceived anti-Russian sentiment or behavior.[11] Russia has been institutionalizing the militarization of schools in occupied Ukraine since 2014 but has significantly scaled up these efforts since 2022.[12] Federally mandated courses such as the Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia and OBZR represent the increased formalization of militarization programs for children and youth.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 6:51 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ukraine Launched Record 8,477 Drones and 26 Flamingo Missiles in One Week, Russia Claims

By Vlad Litnarovych | Aug 22, 2026 11:11

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-launched-record-8477-
drones-and-26-flamingo-missiles-in-one-week-russia-claims-21900

Ukraine carried out what appears to be its largest weekly long-range strike campaign of the war, launching 8,477 drones and 26 Flamingo cruise missiles at targets inside Russia, according to figures released by the Russian Defense Ministry, cited by Russian outlet Interfax on August 21.

If accurate, the numbers would mark a record for the amount of Ukrainian aerial strike weapons deployed against Russia over seven days. Ukrainian public officials have not commented on these figures. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry does not publicly release the number of aerial targets launched against Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry also claimed Ukraine launched 70 guided aerial bombs and 17 rockets fired from HIMARS and Vampire systems during the same period.

Moscow asserted that Russian air defenses intercepted all of the weapons listed in its report. Those claims could not be independently verified.

Russia further claimed that its Aerospace Forces shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet during the week and destroyed two unmanned Ukrainian Navy boats in the Black Sea. Neither Ukraine nor any other sources have confirmed those losses.

For example, in mid-August, Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missiles struck a space-industry facility in Samara involved in producing rockets for a Russian satellite communications project intended to serve as an alternative to Starlink.

Previously, reports emerged that Ukraine is turning its homegrown Flamingo cruise missile from a rare deep-strike weapon into a recurring threat for Russia.

Ukraine has sharply increased its use of domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles against targets inside Russia this summer, with the pace of attacks nearly doubling over the past six months.

Moscow also claimed that Ukraine has set another record for the scale of its drone attacks on Russia, with Russian sources claiming that its air defenses shot down 1,671 UAVs in just 24 hours.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 7:06 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Putin Can’t Stop Russians Peeking Behind the Curtain Forever

By David Averre | Aug 21, 2026 at 09:39 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-war-economy-fuel-shortages-drone
-strikes-12352005

The scale of their suffering is considerable. But Ukrainians never thought this was anything other than a full-scale war. Almost immediately, the population understood they were locked in a battle for their statehood and survival.

The Russian public was sold something very different: a lightning offensive so precise and effective it was not classed as war, but merely a special military operation. Within weeks, if not days, Ukraine would be conquered, the troops welcomed as heroes, and Russia’s status as a great power restored.

That has not transpired.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 7:25 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

There’s a Better Way To Measure How Much Russians Support Putin

By Alexander Shulga | August 21, 2026

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/21/theres-a-better-way-to-measu
re-how-much-russians-support-putin-a93558

Every time new trust ratings for President Vladimir Putin are released, some commentators point out that public support for Putin’s course of continuing the war remains unchanged; others note that this support is on a slow downward trend. These arguments distract from the main point and, let us be honest, suit Putin’s administration perfectly well.

It should be stressed from the outset that the methods used cannot be considered valid and cannot provide a snapshot of Russians’ real attitudes on this question. Russian sociologists are unlikely to be unaware of this. Quite the opposite.

If, after four and a half years of the full-scale phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war, after hundreds of thousands of Russian deaths, after trillions of dollars in economic losses, after the country’s expulsion from major global markets, all manner of restrictions and bans imposed on citizens, hours-long queues for gasoline and so on, around 70% of Russians say they fully or mostly trust the Kremlin usurper, then his power is truly sacred: neither Western economic sanctions nor Ukraine’s kinetic sanctions have shaken the people’s love or their credit of trust.

However, the closed nature of the polling — choosing between a set selection of answers and the explicit question of whether they trust Putin —only measures the ability of Russians to work out what is the most acceptable answer.

Of course, the decline of this indicator is also extremely important. In regimes that are moving from consolidated autocracy toward totalitarianism, support for the father of the nation must be maximal. Anything below 80% is acceptable but undesirable, while a figure below 55% is cause for panic. In such regimes, all procedures of real democracy are replaced by acclamation of the de facto sacredness of the head of state’s power.

This, incidentally, is one of the main reasons why Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison. Speaking out in favor of peace and stopping the war is to commit heresy against what the usurper is carrying to the masses. Maintaining a totality of public support requires reminders of what is permitted and what is not, even for those who had previously seemed to be allowed to say such things.

What looks like an incredible success in Western democracies in terms of trust levels is, for the Russian regime and others like it, a failure and a reason to replace the head of the presidential administration at a minimum, or to start a small victorious war in the most extreme case. An even greater problem arises when the war has already been started, but is neither small nor victorious.

That is why Putin’s trust ratings, obtained through closed questions, are still regularly published despite the authorities being well aware that they don’t show the full picture. They allow the authorities to demonstrate a minimally acceptable level of what is passed off as trust. These indicators also allow attention to be diverted from the real level of trust in Putin.

And in the conditions of today’s Russia, the real level of trust in the head of state can only be attempted through open-ended questions that give respondents room to maneuver and express their own opinion rather than repeat what they currently consider to be a socially acceptable answer.

This is precisely the approach chosen by the Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia when conducting two sociological surveys in the Krasnodar and Rostov regions. Respondents were asked the same question: “Which Russian politician or statesman do you trust most of all?”

The question was not multiple choice, so respondents had to choose the first politician who came ot mind. In both regions, respondents’ answers were quite similar: Putin was named by 39% in the Krasnodar region and 37% in the Rostov region, far below the 68-70% quoted by more prescriptive surveys.

This is precisely why we no longer see open-ended questions about trust in VTsIOM polls. When they tried, they recorded just 29.5% expressing trust in Putin in April 2026.

Of course, none of the other politicians or public figures received even a tenth of Vladimir Putin’s rating in either region. Only Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received more than 2% of mentions, reaching 4% in the Rostov region.

This hardly speaks in Putin’s favor. Lavrov has held his post for almost as many years as Putin has ruled the Russian Federation and has essentially become his transmitter. This is the clearest indicator of the system created for Putin over the years, and of the sham character of both parliamentarism and the government's role in the Russian Federation.

In addition, it is important to recall not only trust in Putin and the minuscule trust in all other political actors, but also the share of Russians in the regions who trust no one at all or cannot or do not want to answer this question. In both regions, this share exceeds Putin’s trust rating: 44% in the Krasnodar region and 47% in the Rostov region, respectively. Crucially, different generations have different levels of trust in Putin. As surveys in both regions show, an entire generation has grown up in Russia whose attitudes differ significantly from the average levels of trust in him. Among young people under 30, mentions of the Russian president as the politician or statesman they trust most of all stand at only 16% in the Rostov region and 24% in the Krasnodar region.

The difference in trust becomes even more striking when comparing the answers of young people and the older generation. In the Krasnodar region, the gap is twofold: 24% versus 48% among citizens aged 55 and over. In the Rostov region, it is almost threefold: 16% versus 45%.

In addition, residents of large cities in both regions are substantially less likely to name Putin as the politician they trust most, as well as being more likely to say they do not trust any politicians at all. They are also exactly the people who would be targeted by another round of mobilization.

In a situation where the continuation of the war against Ukraine rests on the faith that Putin knows what he’s doing, the lack of trust evident through this methodology could have serious implications. After all, passive support is not the same as a demand for active support in its most extreme form: going to the front and dying there. Kremlin political technologists surely know about the gap between formal and real trust in Putin. And, surely, they would like Russians themselves not to discuss this gap for as long as possible.

Alexander Shulga is director of the Institute of Conflictology and Analysis of Russia

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 12:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Wow, biased much SECOND?

Tell your bot to find more credible sources instead of having it splatter all the crap it can find all over the board.

Better yet, why don't YOU do some REAL ANALYSIS instead of being such a Johnny one-note?

SIX's departure from the board exposed that you and THGR aren't DOING ANYTHING with your lives. You're not even thinking. Both of you are utterly static and BORING. As a result, the board is immensely boring.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 5:36 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, biased much SECOND?

SIX's departure from the board . . .

Departure? I hope the corpse of that little Nazi is rotting in the heat of a swampy basement. Same for Russians. Presumption of death in Russia requires that 6ixStringJoker has been dead five years, but if he does not return to gloat or mourn about Putin's/Trump's victories/defeats in 11 weeks, shortly after the November 3, 2026 election, I'd presume he is dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_death#Russia

ALL POSTS BY 6IXSTRINGJACK http://fireflyfans.net/mthreaduser.aspx?u=20928

6ix's most recent post on Russia
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=12493
88#1249388

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
82% of Ukrainians believe Ukraine will win war with Russia, poll finds

Wow. Their propaganda machine was way better than yours was before it broke.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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