REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 08:00
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Friday, June 7, 2024 7:58 AM

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


Russia's continued demographic crisis will present long-term constraints on human capital within Russia. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on June 6 that Russian birth rates have faced larger-than-average declines in Russian regions closer to Ukraine, and Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov told the WSJ that increasing Russia’s birthrate is a Russian government priority.[96] The WSJ reported that as of July 2023 920,000 Russians have left Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion and noted that Russia has failed to increase migration flows to Russia.[97] The Russian Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy noted in a report published in January 2024 that 47 percent of Russian manufacturing firms reported labor shortages, and the Gaidar Institute stated in its latest forecast report on the Russian economy published in March 2024 that labor shortages resulting from long-term population decline, partial military mobilization, and decreased immigration flows will limit opportunities for increasing Russian economic output.[98] The Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report in December 2023 that projected that Russia would face a shortage of 4.8 million workers by the end of 2023.[99] The Kremlin is currently pursuing an uneven migration policy to fill certain labor requirements with migrants, although crypto-mobilization campaigns targeting migrants and appeals to anti-migrant sentiment are likely undermining this effort.[100] Continued labor shortages will place limits on Russia's ability to further mobilize its defense industrial base (DIB) in the near-to-medium term and pose existential issues for long-term Russian economic viability.

Russia's demographic crisis is likely further incentivizing Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempt to subsume the Ukrainian people into Russia. Select Kremlin officials are promoting the return of "compatriots abroad" and the "reunification of Belarusians and Ukrainians" with Russia as an alternative to migration, and Russian victory in Ukraine would represent a dramatic shift in Russia's demographic situation.[101] American Enterprise Institute (AEI) political economist Nicholas Eberstadt told the WSJ that the Kremlin's most successful population program has been the illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories, where roughly five million Ukrainian live and from where Russia has deported roughly 4.8 million Ukrainians to Russia.[102] A Russian victory in Ukraine would grant Russia access to millions more people whom it could impress into military service and the Russian economy as well as Ukraine's resources and industrial capacity.[103]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-6-2024

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

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Friday, June 7, 2024 8:24 AM

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


Limitations on Western capabilities to train partner pilots on F-16 fighter jets are reportedly creating bottlenecks that will affect Ukraine's ability to effectively field F-16s in the future. Politico reported that Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium plan to send over 60 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine in Summer 2024.[25] Politico reported on June 5 that US, European, and Ukrainian officials and lawmakers stated that US, Danish, and Romanian F-16 pilot training facilities can only train a limited number of Ukrainian pilots, however. Politico reported that US Air Force Spokesperson Laurel Falls stated that the US National Guard is planning to train 12 Ukrainian pilots by the end of September 2024. The Danish training facility is reportedly training eight Ukrainian pilots, but this facility will reportedly close in November 2024, and the Romanian training facility is reportedly not yet operational. A full squadron of 20 aircraft requires 40 pilots. A former DoD official reportedly stated that if the current training constraints continue, Ukraine will only have enough pilots for a full squadron at the end of 2025. Ukraine will not be able to use all the Western-provided aircraft as effectively as possible until the necessary number of Ukrainian pilots complete training.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-6-2024

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

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Friday, June 7, 2024 9:09 AM

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


Artillery-Delivered Mine Systems Are Key In Ukrainian Defense

By Vikram Mittal | Jun 7, 2024,05:18am EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2024/06/07/artillery-deliver
ed-mine-systems-are-key-in-ukrainian-defense/?sh=778764bf2195

While drones, electronic warfare, and artillery have played significant roles throughout the Russia-Ukraine war, many battlefield outcomes have been decided by a different technology: mines. As Western-provided ammunition starts to arrive at the Ukrainian frontlines, the 10,000 Remote Anti-Armor Mine Systems (RAAMS) included in the recent American aid package will replenish Ukraine's supply of artillery-delivered mines. These systems arrive at a critical time, with Russian forces making advances in the Kharkiv Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, and the Donetsk Oblast. The RAAMS will provide Ukraine with crucial capabilities as they attempt to push back this renewed Russian offensive.

Each RAAMS round contains nine M718 or M741 anti-tank mines within a 155mm artillery shell. When fired, the RAAMS disperses these mines over a designated area. With a range of up to 17 kilometers, the system allows for long-distance deployment of a minefield. Upon hitting the ground, the mines activate and are designed to disable armored vehicles by targeting their vulnerable undercarriages. The M718 and M741 mines are equipped with magnetic sensors, such that they can detonate in the presence of a combat vehicle without requiring the vehicle to drive directly over it.

A key feature of these mines is their self-detonation capability. The M718 mines self-detonate after approximately 4 hours, while the M741 mines do so after about 48 hours. This self-detonation mechanism serves several important purposes. First, it minimizes the risk of collateral damage by ensuring that RAAMS-emplaced minefields, which are less precisely placed than traditional minefields, do not pose a prolonged threat. Second, it allows military units to transition rapidly from defensive to offensive operations, as the temporary nature of the minefields means they can advance without the risk of encountering their own mines. This dual benefit enhances both the safety and operational flexibility of Ukrainian forces, especially since the mines will be deployed in Ukrainian territory.

Although nine anti-tank mines per round might seem limited, a doctrinal minefield intended to disrupt an enemy advance only has a density of one mine per 200 square meters. As such, one RAAMS round can cover an area of 1,800 square meters. If a minefield is 100 meters deep, 55 RAAMS rounds could produce a minefield that is 1 kilometer long. Additionally, these systems do not include anti-personnel mines. While a variant of the RAAMS uses anti-personnel mines, Ukraine did not receive this system, as it has signed the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the use of anti-personnel mines.

As these rounds arrive at the Ukrainian frontlines, they will make an immediate impact on the battlefield. The Ukrainians have previously received 40,000 RAAMS rounds, which they have used extensively over the last two years of conflict. Consequently, they are experienced in using these rounds and can readily integrate them into their defensive maneuvers.

Russia is conducting a number of offensive operations, with their main effort focused on the Kharkiv Oblast in a push towards Kharkiv City. Around the town of Vovchansk, which is northeast of Kharkiv City, Ukraine has launched a successful series of counterattacks to reclaim territory. RAAMS rounds are particularly useful for counterattacks, as they allow the Ukrainians to quickly establish temporary obstacle belts to secure recaptured areas. Additionally, with Russia preparing for a new concentrated effort to push through Ukrainian defenses, Ukraine can swiftly establish new RAAMS-emplaced minefields to disrupt Russian maneuvers. By doing so, they can force Russian forces to take routes that make them more vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery.

Meanwhile, in the Luhansk Oblast, the Russian forces are attempting to break through the Ukrainian defenses along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line. Should Russian forces penetrate the Ukrainian lines, a hastily emplaced RAAMS minefield could prevent them from exploiting the breakthrough. Similarly, in the Donetsk Oblast, Russian forces are advancing towards Chasiv Yar in an effort to take this key city. In this dynamic battlefield, a RAAMS-emplaced minefield could be used by the Ukrainians to protect their flanks from a Russian attack.

The war is at a critical juncture, and the current Russian offensive has the potential to make significant gains. Consequently, the Ukrainians must hold off this offensive to avoid losing a substantial portion of their country. The recent aid package from the United States is arriving just in time to support the Ukrainian efforts. In particular, the 10,000 RAAMS rounds will make an immediate impact on the battlefield.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Anti-Armor_Mine_System

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

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Friday, June 7, 2024 1:11 PM

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


Jun 07, 2024 at 7:07 AM EDT

Russian lawmaker and former deputy commander of Russia's Southern Military District Andrey Gurulyov told a Russian outlet that Moscow should strike the Netherlands, a NATO member with a nuclear strike to cripple Europe's energy facilities.

"We know very well how to deliver critical damage and put it on its knees – in fact it can be done in a day with the minimal use of our nuclear arsenal," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also warned that threats of Moscow using nuclear weapons in its ongoing war in Ukraine should "not be taken lightly" by the West.

https://www.newsweek.com/us-announce-bold-new-nuclear-strategy-1909423

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

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Friday, June 7, 2024 2:02 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




Quote:
SECOND: Are Putin’s Nuclear Threats Working?


They prefer that Russia should actually nuke us to demonstrate that they're serious?


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Solar on rooftops and carports, dummy.


SECOND: I see why Russians and you have so many unsolved problems. Both can't imagine solutions beyond killing Ukrainians, stealing their land, and making the survivors slaves for one and "Solar on rooftops and carports" for the other.

SIGNY: I've come up with a dozen solutions.
*****
Hey SECOND, you (pretend to) care so much for the earth. How do you feel about nuclear Armageddon?

SECOND: Signym, all your solutions are of a single kind: Let Russia win. Let Trump win. As a principle of governing, let the mentally ill make the decisions because Signym and 6ix are not getting all that they want from America's present government.


a) The west CAN'T win. We can't win this conventional war (which BTW WE started) and nobody wins in a nuclear war.

The whole issue for Putin is NATO EXPANSION TO RUSSIA'S BORDERS AND NEAR ABROAD SECURITY.

If we had not...

Broken most if our nuclear treaties with Russia
Placed nuclear capable missile installations in Poland and Romania

Insisted on Ukraine in NATO...
Stoked a coup ...
Diddled Russian for YEARS with the Minsk agreements ...
While we armed Ukraine to the teeth (and bragged about it afterwards) ...
Forced Ukraine to reneg on the draft peace agreement, initialed in Turkey, 2022 ...
Pushed Ukraine into a cage match/ fight to their death...

STRUCK THREE OF RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC NUCLEAR EARLY WARNING RADAR SYSTEMS (Ukraine pushed the buttons but WE provided the targeting)...

My jaw dropped when I read that.
Yours should have, too.
That bullshit about a "rogue" Zelensky is just that: bullshit.
THAT was an act of NATO's strategic war on Russia.

You think Russia was gonna let that slide???

At the very least, Russia could enforce an unannounced no-fly zone over the Black Sea.

Quote:
Meanwhile, Russia is not mentally healthy enough to stop making death threats:


Yeah.
Bc placing nuclear- capable missile installations on Russia's border and striking at three early warning installations isn't a death threat???? /snark

b) Speaking of insanity....

We've been preparing for war on Russia for years.
Your lack of insight... it's terrifying. Not bc YOU'RE terrifying, but bc you represent current WH insanity.

The issue for Russia is near abroad security. They have been telling us since 2007.

Address that, and everything else goes away.




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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Saturday, June 8, 2024 7:02 AM

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:

The issue for Russia is near abroad security. They have been telling us since 2007.

Address that, and everything else goes away.
Not really, Signym.

Russian President Vladimir Putin articulated a theory of victory in Ukraine on June 7 that assumes that Russian forces will be able to continue gradual creeping advances indefinitely, prevent Ukraine from conducting successful operationally significant counteroffensive operations, and win a war of attrition against Ukrainian forces. Putin stated following his speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that Russia does not need to conduct another call-up of reservists similar to Russia‘s September 2022 partial mobilization because Russia is not trying to rapidly achieve its military objectives in Ukraine.[1] Putin acknowledged that the current Russian military contingent committed to the war in Ukraine (reportedly the Russian military’s entire combat-capable ground force as of January 2024) would be insufficient for a rapid victory but suggested that Russian forces are instead pursuing a more gradual approach.[2] Putin stated that Russian forces aim to "squeeze" Ukrainian forces out "of those territories that should be under Russian control" and therefore Russia does not need to conduct another mobilization wave.[3] Putin asserted that Russian crypto-mobilization efforts are sufficient for this approach and that Russia has recruited 160,000 new personnel so far in 2024 (a figure consistent with reports that the Russian military recruits between 20,000-30,000 recruits per month).[4]

Putin's assessment that gradual Russian gains will allow Russia to achieve his goals in Ukraine is predicated on the assumption that Ukrainian forces will be unable to liberate any significant territory that Russian forces seize and that the Russian military will be able to sustain offensive operations that achieve gradual tactical gains regardless of heavy losses. Western intelligence has previously assessed that Putin assesses that US and Western support to Ukraine is “finite" and that Russian forces have blunted Ukrainian efforts to retake significant territory.[5] Putin's assessment has been reinforced by the recent months of delayed Western security assistance and corresponding Ukrainian materiel constraints, which allowed Russian forces to seize and maintain the theater-wide initiative and conduct consistent offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine that achieved gradual tactical gains.[6] Putin's June 7 comments support ISW's previous assessment that Putin's assessment of Ukrainian capabilities and how Putin’s perceived limits to Western support would incentivize Putin to pursue creeping offensive operations indefinitely if more rapid operations that lead to rapid decisive results seem unattainable.[7]

Putin's theory of victory rests on Russia's ability to outlast and overcome pledged Western security assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainian efforts to mobilize more of its economy and population for the war effort, indicating that Putin likely assesses that Russian forces will be able to leverage their advantages in manpower and materiel to overwhelm on Ukrainian forces. Putin's apparent assessment that Russia can "squeeze" Ukrainian forces out of all the lands it desires to occupy assumes that Ukraine will not acquire and sustain the manpower and materiel required to prevent indefinite Russian attempts to gradually advance along the front or needed to contest the initiative and conduct operationally significant counteroffensive operations.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-7-2024

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

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Saturday, June 8, 2024 7:19 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's big press conference, debunked

https://kyivindependent.com/putins-big-press-conference-debunked/

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a now-rare press conference with senior editors from international media outlets on June 5. Putin blamed Ukraine and the West for Russia's war crimes, and made a new round of threats and jaw-dropping lies.

The Kyiv Independent examines some of the more notable statements.

'World has lost its mind'

Before Putin began taking questions from journalists, he engaged in some light back-and-forth with the director general of Russian state media TASS, Andrei Kondrashov, who was hosting the event.

Noting this was the first time Putin had met with international media editors in some time, Kondrashov said that since the last such event "many of the countries they represent have suddenly become unfriendly towards Russia."

"This will perhaps be the first meeting amid such international tensions," he said, adding: "It looks like the world has lost its mind, that someone is intentionally pushing it towards a catastrophe."

Misplaced optimism

Putin began by apologizing for being late to the event, a regular occurrence employed by the Russian president in an attempt to assert dominance over people including Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, the Financial Times and, most recently, right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson.

"It is very difficult to escape from the grip of Gazprom CEO, who tells you everything about every element and infects you with his optimism," Putin said.

While the content of Putin's meeting with Alexey Miller was not made public, a recent report commissioned by Gazprom painted a far from "optimistic" picture.

The company will not be able to recover losses incurred from Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine for at least 10 years, it said.

Western sanctions have increasingly targeted the Russian oil and gas industry, whose profits fuel the Kremlin's war machine in Ukraine. The European Union pledged to reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels in the wake of the 2022 invasion, leading to a 71% drop in gas imports from 2021 to 2024.

Ukraine's non-existent army

Putin made a rare statement about Russian troops losses during the event, and while he didn't mention specific numbers, he claimed they are "certainly significantly smaller than those of the opposite party."

"As for irretrievable losses, the ratio is one to five," he added.

Moscow didn't release any estimates of the losses suffered by their Armed Forces since 2022, though the consensus among Western governments and analysts is that Russian losses figures released by the Ukrainian government are broadly accurate.

According to Ukraine's General Staff, the number of killed or wounded Russian soldiers since the start of the full-scale invasion passed the grim milestone of 500,000 last month, and on June 6 stood at 515,000.

Putin said that Ukraine is losing "up to 50,000 soldiers" each month, meaning that according to the Russian president Ukraine has up to 1.3 million soldiers dead or wonded since February 2022.

Given Ukraine's total military personnel numbers around 1 million, this would mean every single member of Ukraine's Armed Forces was dead or wounded.

The nuclear threat

Once again, Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons and provided a justification for it.

"For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use it," he said.

"We have a nuclear doctrine, look what it says. If someone's actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible for us to use all means at our disposal. This should not be taken lightly, superficially."

This is not the first time Putin or other senior Russian officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons.

In February 2022, three days after the launch of the full-scale invasion, Putin said he had put Russian nuclear forces on “special combat readiness.” The U.S. later said it had observed no change in the status of Russian nuclear forces.

In April 2022, when it was clear the Kremlin's invasion wasn't going according to plan and Western nations ramped up military support to Ukraine, Putin hinted Russia would use nuclear weapons if "someone from the outside tries to intervene in Ukraine."

In September 2022, Putin threatened outright to use nuclear weapons, saying in a televised speech: "I'm not bluffing."

In January 2023, Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said continued supplies of Western weapons to Ukraine could be met with a nuclear response if they are used to "seize our territories." Just a few months before, Ukraine had already used Western weapons to help liberate swathes of Ukraine annexed by Putin just weeks earlier.

In June 2023, Putin announced the first tactical nuclear weapons to be stationed in Belarus.

In February 2024, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Ukraine if Moscow loses all occupied Ukrainian territories.

It's just one of several times Medvedev has made such threats, most recently on May 31 when he insisted he was "not bluffing."

Fourth biggest economy

According to Russian state media outlet TASS, Putin said that Western sanctions against Russia had failed and "the goal he set for the country to enter the top four economies of the world has been achieved."

It's not true by all accounts.

According to the 2024 predictions by the International Monetary Fund, Russia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the 11th largest in the world and sixth based on the purchasing power parity (PPP).

PPP compares the economies of different countries by comparing the costs of a set basket of goods. It does not take into account factors such as local costs, taxes, tariffs, and other measures usually used to determine the strength of a country's economy.

In the landmark 2003 economic study "Burgernomics," the authors noted that PPP is not a good reflection of reality.

Additionally, the Kremlin hides a significant amount of economic data.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes that turning Russia into a black box will help support his claims that sanctions do not work, confusing Western policymakers, journalists, and citizens," Foreign Policy noted in a March 2023 piece titled "Don't trust Russian numbers."

Good intentions

In a particularly passionate section of the event, Putin said the idea that Russia would attack a NATO country was "rubbish."

Russia made similar claims in the months, weeks and even days leading up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin also insisted Russia had no "imperial ambitions."

According to the online encyclopedia Britannica, imperialism is defined as: "State policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas."

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

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Saturday, June 8, 2024 10:54 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


You posted this because the Kiev Independent has a strong history of truth- telling?
I spotted a lie in every para.




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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Saturday, June 8, 2024 2:03 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:
You posted this because the Kiev Independent has a strong history of truth- telling?
I spotted a lie in every para.
Signym, what you did is called meta-lying. You read nothing, then make false claims. It is very you.

'Russia now is like 1984': Inside a Russian dystopian library

By Steve Rosenberg, Russia Editor, in Ivanovo | June 2, 2024

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckrr1k1xl0lo

Russian propaganda tells people the country is marching on to economic and military success

If the billboards in Ivanovo are to be believed, Russia’s really going places.

“Record (breaking) harvest!”

“More than 2000km of roads repaired in Ivanovo Region!”

“Change for the Better!”

In this town, a four-hour drive from Moscow, a giant banner glorifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine covers the entire wall of an old cinema. With pictures of soldiers and a slogan:

“To Victory!”

These posters depict a country marching towards economic and military success.

But there is one place in Ivanovo that paints a very different picture of today’s Russia.

I’m standing outside it. There’s a poster here, too. Not of a Russian soldier, but a British novelist. George Orwell’s face stares down at passers-by.

The sign above it reads The George Orwell Library.

Inside, the tiny library offers a selection of books on dystopian worlds and the dangers of totalitarianism.

There are multiple copies of Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four; the story in which Big Brother is always watching and the state has established near-total control over body and mind.

“The situation now in Russia is similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four,” librarian Alexandra Karaseva tells me. “Total control by the government, the state and the security structures.”

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party manipulates people’s perception of reality, so that citizens of Oceania believe that "war is peace" and "ignorance is strength".

Russia today has a similar feel about it. From morning until night, the state media here claims that Russia’s war in Ukraine is not an invasion, but a defensive operation; that Russian soldiers are not occupiers, but liberators; that the West is waging war on Russia, when, in reality, it was the Kremlin that ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“I’ve met people who are hooked on TV and believe that Russia isn’t at war with Ukraine, and that the West was always out to destroy Russia,” Alexandra says.

“That’s like Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it’s also like Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. In that story the hero’s wife is surrounded by walls that are essentially TV screens, talking heads telling her what to do and how to interpret the world.”

It was a local businessman, Dmitry Silin, who opened the library two years ago.

A vocal critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he wanted to create a space where Russians could “think for themselves, instead of watching TV”.

Dmitry was later prosecuted for “discrediting the Russian armed forces”. He’d been accused of scrawling “No to war!” on a building. He denied the charge. He has since fled Russia and is wanted by police.

Alexandra Karaseva gives me a tour of the library. It’s a treasure trove of literary titans from Franz Kafka to Fyodor Dostoevsky. There is non-fiction, too; histories of the Russian Revolution, of Stalin’s repressions, the fall of communism and of modern Russia’s failed attempts to build democracy.

The books you can borrow here are not banned in Russia. But the subject matter is very sensitive. Any honest discussion of Russia’s past or present can bring problems.

Alexandra believes in the power of the written word to bring change. That’s why she is determined the library stays open.

“These books show our readers that the power of autocratic regimes is not forever,” Alexander explains. “That every system has its weak points and that everyone who understands the situation around them can preserve their freedom. Freedom of the brain can give freedom of life and of country.”

“Most of my generation had no experience of grassroots democracy,” recalls Alexandra, who is 68. “We helped destroy the Soviet Union but failed to build democracy. We didn’t have the experience to know when to stand firm and say ‘You mustn’t do this.’ Perhaps if my generation had read Nineteen Eighty-Four, it would have acted differently.”

Eighteen-year-old Dmitry Shestopalov has read Nineteen Eighty-Four. Now he volunteers at the library.

“This place is sacrosanct,” Dmitry tells me. “For creative young people it’s a place they can come to find like-minded citizens and to get away from what’s happening in our country. It’s a little island of freedom in an unfree environment.”

As islands go, it is, indeed, little. Alexandra Karaseva is the first to admit that the library has few visitors.

By contrast, I find a large crowd in the centre of Ivanovo. It’s not Big Brother people have stopped to listen to. It’s a Big Band.

In bright sunshine an orchestra is playing classic Soviet melodies and people start dancing to the music. Chatting to the crowd I realise that some Russians are more than willing to believe what the billboards are telling them, that Russia’s on the up.

“I’m happy with the direction Russia’s heading in,” pensioner Vladimir tells me. “We’re becoming more independent. Less reliant on the West.”

“We’re making progress,” says a young woman called Natalya. “As Vladimir Putin has said, a new stage for Russia has begun.”

But what about Russia’s war in Ukraine?

“I try not to watch anything about that any more,” Nina tells me. “It’s too upsetting.”

Back at the George Orwell Library they’re holding an event. A local psychologist is finishing a lecture on how to overcome "learned helplessness" and believe you have the power to change your life. There are ten people in the audience.

When the lecture ends, librarian Alexandra Karaseva breaks the news.

“The building’s been put up for sale. Our library has to move out. We need to decide what to do. Where do we go from here?”

The library’s been offered smaller premises across town.

Almost immediately one woman offers her van to help with the move. Another member of the audience says she’ll donate a video projector to help the library. Others suggest ideas for raising money.

This is civil society in action. Citizens coming together in time of need.

Admittedly, the scale is tiny. And there’s no guarantee of success. In a society with less and less space for “little islands of freedom,” the library’s long-term future is uncertain.

But they’re not giving up. Not yet.

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

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Saturday, June 8, 2024 2:45 PM

SECOND

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


Tom Hanks is likening Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

"I never thought there could be a land war in Europe in my lifetime, once again, because it had proven to be so disastrous for all of humanity the last time somebody tried that," Hanks opined about the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.

"Funny how often it comes out of the ego of one human being," he continued. "One guy, back in the 1930s says, 'No, I'm gonna solve all of these problems 'cause I know what works and what does not work.'"

Hanks said that he believes the American public could once again rally around a cause as significant as a world war, but that it might take a while to get everyone on the same page.

"I have absolute 100% faith in the American people and the concept of what is right and what is wrong, and if something as definitive as what happened in Europe back then [happened now], I don't think there'd be any question," he said. "It would take time, it would not be overnight, it would be thought out."

Hanks also expressed awestruck admiration for the young soldiers who fought on D-Day.

"They left absolutely all of the comforts of a very comfortable America, safe America on the other side of the ocean, and they put themselves here, for what?" he said. "Because it was the right thing to do. They were not defending a status quo, they were not gaining territory, they were not here for riches, they were not here to conquer anything. They were really here in order to mend the future."

Hanks remains proud of Saving Private Ryan.

"For good or for bad, that movie is a document that has to accurately reflect the tenor of that day, and I'd like to think that we did," he said. "And hearing it from a number of people [who] said, 'As confusing as that is, multiply that — we did not have the smell of cordite, or burning flesh, or you know, blood on the sand — but we did have some version of whatever you can get out of a motion picture, I think we captured that, to Steven [Spielberg]’s credit. And I will also go along with the audience's credit as well. They were willing to suspend whatever disbelief of it, and say, if you’ve ever wondered what it was like, that's as close as somebody in Davenport, Iowa, or Oakland, Calif., or Minneapolis, Minn., was going to get to it.”

https://ew.com/tom-hanks-shades-vladimir-putin-at-d-day-memorial-86604
37

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

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 7:17 AM

SECOND

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


Putin Ally Says 'Sanitary Zone' Should Include NATO Countries

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has said that a buffer zone in the war in Ukraine extends to the Atlantic Ocean.

By Brendan Cole | Jun 08, 2024 at 10:13 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-solovyov-nato-1910012

Russia's buffer zone in Ukraine effectively extends to the whole of Europe due to the range that Western weapons provides Kyiv's forces, Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has said.

In March, Putin called for a new "sanitary zone" within Ukraine to help protect against long-range strikes by Kyiv and cross-border raids. He said such a buffer area "would be quite difficult to penetrate" with foreign weapons.

Solovyov, who has close ties to Putin, raised this topic on his evening program on the Russia 1 channel where he frequently describes the war started by Putin as a proxy conflict between NATO and Moscow and calls for missile strikes on the West.

One guest, Rodion Miroshnik, a Russian foreign ministry ambassador-at-large, asked "why is there a question about a sanitary zone?" given that the 20-mile distance between the combat zone and the border city of Belgorod could be breached by Ukrainian artillery and multi-launched rocket systems (MLRS).

But Solovyov said that "the real sanitary zone is the Atlantic," with the arrival of F-16 fighter jets and "missiles that can travel 1,000 km (621 miles)."

"These dirtbags will not calm down until Russian soldiers are making porridge to feed the liberated citizens of Berlin, Paris and Lisbon," he said in comments in a clip shared on X by journalist and Russia watcher, Julia Davis.

Solovyov said that he was in favor of "very harsh methods" in the war suggesting that a Russian flag would be planted in the rubble after the country's destruction after which "we will build everything from scratch."

Solovyov also spoke of the need for "Nazi dirtbags to be eradicated," referring to one of Putin's justifications for his full-scale invasion being to "denazify" Ukraine, which has been roundly rejected by Kyiv and the international community.

Solovyov then used dehumanizing rhetoric in describing the fight against Ukraine by asking, "have you ever tried getting rid of bedbugs?"

Next to the video clip, Davis posted on X: "Meanwhile in Russia: Vladimir Solovyov insisted that Russia's 'sanitary zone' should stretch all the way to the Atlantic.

"He compared Ukrainians to "bedbugs" that have to be eradicated, in order for Ukraine to be 'cleansed," the posted added.

https://t.co/a3EmnhHuIi
https://t.co/D92QThk5JH
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 8, 2024

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

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 7:21 AM

SECOND

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


Russia is shutting down Ukraine's electric grid. Europe is next.

Russian strikes have caused widespread damage to Ukraine's energy grid, and Ukraine will continue to face serious constraints on power generation capacity. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated on June 7 that only 27 percent of large Ukrainian thermal power plants (TPPs) are operational and that Russian missile and drone strikes damaged or destroyed the other 73 percent.[23] Shmyhal stated that recent Russian strikes have knocked out 9.2 gigawatts of Ukrainian generation capacity and stated that this is half of the generation capacity that Ukraine used in Winter 2023-2024.[24] The Financial Times (FT) reported on June 5 that Russia has knocked out or captured over half of Ukraine's generation capacity, bringing Ukrainian energy production to below 20 gigawatts from 55 gigawatts before the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.[25] Shmyhal stated that Russian forces have destroyed 42 power generators and damaged 20 hydropower generators at Ukrainian energy generation facilities.[26] Shmyhal emphasized that Ukraine is taking steps to relieve pressure on Ukraine's energy grid and plans to restore as much energy generation capacity as possible before Winter 2024-2025.[27] Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom stated on June 7 that it connected an additional reactor at an unspecified nuclear power plant to the energy grid.[28] The head of Ukrainian state electricity transmission operator Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, stated that this will relieve Ukrainian power constraints for the next two weeks before increased summer consumption begins.[29] Shmyhal stated that Ukraine is currently importing 1.7 gigawatts from the European Union (EU) but that the EU is able to export a maximum of 2.2 gigawatts to Ukraine.[30]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-8-2024

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

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 12:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The issue for Russia is near abroad security. They have been telling us since 2007.

Address that, and everything else goes away.

SECOND: Not really, Signym.


Yes, really.

Quote:
Russian President Vladimir Putin articulated a theory of victory .... gains will allow Russia to achieve his goals in Ukraine


So, what are Russias goals?
You'd think, when dealing with a military superpower, we (policy makers, media, people) should pay attention to WHAT PUTIN SAYS, instead of inserting our own hysterical propaganda points.

But, no.

So, WHAT DOES PUTIN SAY about Russia's goals?

Bet you don't remember what he said at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. It was an important speech that pointed towards Russia's future security goals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Munich_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin

And I'll bet you don't remember his European security architecture that he proposed right before launching the SMO, do you?
Of course not!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/world/europe/russia-nato-security-d
eal.html

And, OF COURSE, you don't remember the stated goals for Russia's operation in Ukraine either.(Hard to find a western outlet that lays out all three cleanly but this is partial)
https://www.ft.com/content/714f74fa-08de-4085-99ac-5f786feb47ad

Different Russian politicians and media outlets say different things. Some are Eurasianists, like Dugin. Some are religious. Some play the "bad cop", like Medvedev. But if you want to know OFFICIAL Russian policy, you should pay attention to Putin and Lavrov, or their official spox Peskov and Zakharova. Unlike the WH, they're very careful what they say. No "shooting from the lip".


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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 12:40 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Here are two examples talking points posted as if what Putin said:

Quote:
the Russian military will be able to sustain offensive operations that achieve gradual tactical gains regardless of heavy losses.


That's not what I heard. What Putin said, according to a less biased source, is that the reason why they're going slow is to minimize troop losses. So they will "clear" an area by any means necessary- bombs, artillery, drones etc- before moving in.

More hysteria:

Quote:
Russia is shutting down Ukraine's electric grid.
Yes
Quote:
Europe is next.

WTF? Why in God's name would they want to do that?

But this is Ukie PM Shmyhal saying that, as reported by Nuland's neocon thinktank:

https://www.understandingwar.org/
Institute for the Study of War

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 1:18 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:
Here are two examples talking points posted as if what Putin said:

Quote:
the Russian military will be able to sustain offensive operations that achieve gradual tactical gains regardless of heavy losses.


That's not what I heard. What Putin said, according to a less biased source, is that the reason why they're going slow is to minimize troop losses. So they will "clear" an area by any means necessary- bombs, artillery, drones etc- before moving in.

More hysteria:

Quote:
Russia is shutting down Ukraine's electric grid.
Yes
Quote:
Europe is next.

WTF? Why in God's name would they want to do that?

But this is Ukie PM Shmyhal saying that, as reported by Nuland's neocon thinktank:

https://www.understandingwar.org/
Institute for the Study of War
Putin invaded Ukraine because (picking only one of many stated reasons Putin has given) NATO's existence irritates Putin. A few more Putin words: invade to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Looking at a map of Europe, it's all NATO. Putin hasn't turned off Europe's lights yet, but nothing is stopping Putin from firing missiles at both Ukraine's and Europe's power plants, which are powering Ukraine, nothing other than it would highly motivate Europe to fire missiles at Russia's power plants. The cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the EU would be motivated to do something for a change, something more than their present-day spending on ammo to boost their own economies.

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

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 4:53 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Another stupid troll.

NATO'S existence doesn't irritate Putin. NATO'S expansion to Russia's borders, and the emplacement of nuclear capable missile installations poses a security threat to Russia.

Do you really think anyone believes your stupid shit anymore?

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 5:26 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:
Another stupid troll.

NATO'S existence doesn't irritate Putin. NATO'S expansion to Russia's borders, and the emplacement of nuclear capable missile installations poses a security threat to Russia.

Do you really think anyone believes your stupid shit anymore?
These NATO countries touch Russia and would have to leave NATO:
Latvia
Poland
Lithuania
Estonia
Finland
Norway

And all the other NATO countries are close enough to launch nukes at Russia. Those would have to leave NATO, too.

How many countries does that leave in NATO? Let me count: Oh! Zero countries in NATO!

I forgot the Kuril Islands of Japan. Russia stole those islands in the last week of WWII and Japan has wanted their return ever since. I guess Russia should threaten to nuke Japan unless it stops asking for its property back. Oops! Too late. Russia has already threatened to nuke Japan thousands of times over the Kuril Islands.

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

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Sunday, June 9, 2024 7:01 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Another stupid troll.

NATO'S existence doesn't irritate Putin. NATO'S expansion to Russia's borders, and the emplacement of nuclear capable missile installations poses a security threat to Russia.

Do you really think anyone believes your stupid shit anymore?




T

Ukraine DESTROYS Russian SU-57 Fighter Jet; MAJOR Belgorod Attack |



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Sunday, June 9, 2024 7:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Another stupid troll.

NATO'S existence doesn't irritate Putin. NATO'S expansion to Russia's borders, and the emplacement of nuclear capable missile installations poses a security threat to Russia.

Do you really think anyone believes your stupid shit anymore?

SECOND: These NATO countries touch Russia and would have to leave NATO:
Latvia
Poland
Lithuania
Estonia
Finland
Norway

And all the other NATO countries are close enough to launch nukes at Russia. Those would have to leave NATO, too.


Stupid troll

Putin already addressed that in late 2021. That's what "security architecture" means.

AFA nuclear capable missiles... ANYONE can launch nuclear missiles at anyone from any place.
It's FLIGHT TIME that makes the difference.

What a 'tard.
And that's an insult to the mentally challenged everywhere.

-----------

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Monday, June 10, 2024 6:00 AM

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:

Stupid troll

Putin already addressed that in late 2021. That's what "security architecture" means.

AFA nuclear capable missiles... ANYONE can launch nuclear missiles at anyone from any place.
It's FLIGHT TIME that makes the difference.

What a 'tard.
And that's an insult to the mentally challenged everywhere.
Do you realize that you are defending Putin, a murderer and thief who justifies his criminality by blaming the people he steals from? No, because Russia is heroic and NATO/EU is villainous! Your preference for Russia shows a lack of good sense. I predict that has caused you many misfortunes unrelated to politics and war.

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

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Monday, June 10, 2024 6:00 AM

SECOND

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


The Biden Administration’s limited policy change permitting Ukraine to use US-provided weapons to strike some Russian military targets in a small area within Russian territory has reduced the size of Russia’s ground sanctuary by only 16 percent at maximum. US policy still preserves at least 84 percent of Russia's ground sanctuary – territory within range of Ukrainian ATACMS.

US officials’ statements also indicate that Ukrainian forces may be constrained from striking Russian military targets that are not actively involved in ground attacks and strikes against Ukraine.[4] The reduction of the sanctuary space’s area may be less than 16 percent, therefore.

Maps at
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-9-2024

Sanctuary After Policy Change


Sanctuary Before Policy Change


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

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Monday, June 10, 2024 6:02 AM

SECOND

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


War in Ukraine: Historian Jörg Baberowski's stark assessment
German expert straightforward about Russia. "Putin will not lose this war"

7:03 AM EDT, June 9, 2024

https://essanews.com/war-in-ukraine-historian-jorg-baberowskis-stark-a
ssessment,7036594496702081a

Jörg Baberowski is an expert on the history of Russia and the USSR. The 63-year-old expressed his opinion on the war in Ukraine. In his view, Ukraine is not capable of completely driving Russian troops out of its territory.

Baberowski believes that Russia will achieve its goals in the war with Ukraine.

“Putin will not lose this war. (...) Ukraine is running out of men, and its dependency on American and European arms production is growing. Western weapons systems need to be replaced, repaired, and supplied with ammunition. I doubt the Americans and Europeans will want to be permanently involved in this,” said German historian Jörg Baberowski in an interview with "Der Spiegel."

The German historian with Polish roots (the historian's grandfather was Polish) believes that Ukraine cannot achieve a military victory over Russia. He also notes that Putin's army does not have the resources to decisively tip the scales of victory in its favor.

Therefore, Baberowski warns against Putin, who he believes has adopted a strategy of harassing Ukraine and its allies. The dictator is playing the "war fatigue" card – "Eventually, Putin will get what he demands," notes the German expert.

Consequences of the war in Russia

The historian also sees that the war in Ukraine will have internal consequences in Russia. This includes enlightening the Russian elites that Putin's ambitions to revive the Soviet Union are just a pipe dream.

“Russia will learn lessons from this war. Its elites will understand that Russia's military capabilities are limited, and its weapons systems cannot compete with the West. Putin may dream of resurrecting the Soviet Union, but that dream will not come true,” concluded Baberowski.

Who is Jörg Baberowski? https://www.google.com/search?q=Jörg+Baberowski

In a 2014 interview with Der Spiegel, Baberowski reiterated his support for Ernst Nolte, saying,

Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasn't vicious. He didn't want people to talk about the extermination of the Jews at his table. Stalin, on the other hand, delighted in adding to and signing off on the death lists. He was vicious. He was a psychopath.[4][9]

Baberowski clarified his remarks by noting that while "Stalin enjoyed violence, Hitler did not."[4][9] Baberowski added that this did not make Hitler's actions morally better, but worse.[9]

While working as a student, Baberowski advocated for the views of historian Ernst Nolte, who had launched the Historikerstreit controversy by arguing that the Germans did not deserve special culpability for The Holocaust.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Baberowski

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

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Monday, June 10, 2024 6:03 AM

SECOND

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


Russia’s blackmail ‘concealed’ by Angela Merkel

Former chancellor said there had been no reason to believe Kremlin would limit supplies via Nord Stream 1 pipeline, says German newspaper

By James Jackson Berlin | 9 June 2024 • 6:46pm

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/09/angela-merkel-concea
led-russian-gas-blackmail-information/

Angela Merkel knew that Russia could attempt to blackmail Europe into launching a major gas pipeline but “concealed” the information, according to Handelsblatt, the German newspaper.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was designed to double the flow of Russian gas directly to Germany but it was hugely controversial because of the risk it posed to Ukraine.

Critics feared that if it supplied gas directly to Europe, Russia would be able to starve Ukraine’s economy of the transit fees it had been collecting.

As those fears were voiced and the pipeline also awaited approval for other regulatory hurdles, Russia began reducing gas supplies through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which also carried gas from Russia to Germany.

In her final months as German chancellor in 2021, Ms Merkel told Handelsblatt that there had been no reason to believe Russia was limiting gas deliveries.

However, according to confidential documents seen by the newspaper, the economy ministry warned that Russia was filling gas storage facilities “very slowly” and that relying on the Kremlin for gas could have “dramatic consequences”.

The revelation comes as new documents published by Süddeutsche Zeitung, the newspaper, also showed that two consecutive Merkel governments intensively pushed for Nord Stream 2 to come online, claiming its deal with Gazprom, the energy company – which is majority state-owned – was a “private-sector project”.

This was despite repeated criticism of the project from the US and European allies, which said the pipeline would make Europe too reliant on Russian gas. Other European governments said the link was vital to secure energy supplies amid a surge in gas prices in 2021.

Germany told the Kremlin that a condition of the deal, which had been set to transport Russian gas 761 miles through the Baltic Sea, was that Russia would continue to use onshore gas pipelines through Ukraine.

But internal economy ministry documents warned after a meeting with Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor-turned-Gazprom lobbyist, that the state fossil fuels giant “could not be forced” to do so.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 was officially cancelled. Both pipelines – Nord Stream 1 and 2 – were then destroyed by unknown attackers in September that year.

Reacting to the newspaper revelations, Robert Habeck, the Green Vice-Chancellor, called the previous government’s judgment a “historic mistake”. “We should have never made ourselves dependent on Putin’s gas.”

Felix Banaszak, the Green MP, went further, calling for a public inquiry and describing Nord Stream 2 as “the biggest economic, energy and foreign policy failure since the founding of the federal republic”.

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

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Monday, June 10, 2024 11:14 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Stupid troll

Putin already addressed that in late 2021. That's what "security architecture" means.

AFA nuclear capable missiles... ANYONE can launch nuclear missiles at anyone from any place.
It's FLIGHT TIME that makes the difference.

What a 'tard.
And that's an insult to the mentally challenged everywhere.

SECOND: Do you realize that you are defending Putin, a murderer and thief ... blah blah blah ...


When all else fails, you resort to "BUT PUTIN!!!" ?


I'm merely pointing out that expanding NATO to Russia's borders and placing nuclear capable missile installations within a few minutes flight time of Moscow threatens Russia's security.
Anyone who doesn't recognize that has cranial- rectal inversion.


Quote:
...who justifies his criminality...


Speaking of criminality...

Quote:
If we had not...

Broken most of our nuclear treaties with Russia
Placed nuclear capable missile installations in Poland and Romania

Insisted on Ukraine in NATO...
Stoked a coup ...
Diddled Russian for YEARS with the Minsk agreements ...
While we armed Ukraine to the teeth (and bragged about it afterwards) ...
Forced Ukraine to reneg on the draft peace agreement, initialed in Turkey, 2022 ...
Blew up Nordstream
Pushed Ukraine into a cage match/ fight to their death...

STRUCK THREE OF RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC NUCLEAR EARLY WARNING RADAR SYSTEMS...

That bullshit about a "rogue" Zelensky is just that: bullshit. Ukraine pushed the buttons but WE provided the targeting.
THAT was an act of NATO's strategic war on Russia.
You think Russia was gonna let that slide???
We've been preparing for war on Russia for years.
Your lack of insight... it's insane.

The issue for Russia is near abroad security. They have been telling us since 2007.
Address that, and everything else goes away.




Were any of our actions lawful, SECOND?


I could add to the list:
*Overthrowing a dozen, if not more, democratically elected governments, starting with Mosaddegh in Iran in 1952

* Arming and funding mass murdering dictators and movements across the globe, including Suharto https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesi
a-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/, the Contras, and Muslim terror groups (ISIS, al QaedaL in Libya, Syria, and Chechnya)

* Literally bombing and destroying other nations that posed no threat to us whatsoever, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice!), and Libya

* Creating color revolutions or otherwise interfering in other nations' internal politics pretty much everywhere, from Germany to Taiwan to Chile

You name- calling Putin, after you openly promoted destroying Russia for all kinds of ridiculous reasons*?
* "What the tsars did. What Stalin did. Russian national character. Too many resources ... unfair!".

Well, that's the pot calling the kettle black, innit?



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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Monday, June 10, 2024 7:02 PM

THG


Comrade signym, if Russia is winning the war explain this.

T

Russian Army EVACUATES Crimea



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Monday, June 10, 2024 7:09 PM

THG


Yup...

T


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Monday, June 10, 2024 7:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Yeah. Sure. Whatever...

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

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, June 10, 2024 8:53 PM

THG


T

US Threatens Russia With Total Destruction


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Monday, June 10, 2024 10:03 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:

I could add to the list:
*Overthrowing a dozen, if not more, democratically elected governments, starting with Mosaddegh in Iran in 1952
If you read faster, Signym, you'd know more about the CIA. From today:

When the C.I.A. Messes Up
Its agents are often depicted as malevolent puppet masters — or as bumbling idiots. The truth is even less comforting.

By Daniel Immerwahr | June 10, 2024

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/17/the-cia-an-imperial-hist
ory-hugh-wilford-book-review

Wilford stresses the “boomerang effects” of the C.I.A.'s work: the violence brought home. But that was only a taste of the mayhem wrought abroad. The coup that killed Diem was followed by four more in South Vietnam over the next two years. This was not unusual, O’Rourke found in surveying the aftermath of U.S. Cold War interventions. More than half the leaders covertly installed were subsequently either assassinated or ousted in a revolution or a coup. A regime-change attempt, moreover, raised the odds that the targeted state would clash with the U.S., experience a civil war, or stage a mass killing. Washington’s interference was not only counterproductive, O’Rourke writes; it also had “disastrous consequences” for the people caught in its wake.

The political scientist Lindsey A. O’Rourke, in her 2018 book, “Covert Regime Change,” conservatively tallies fifty-four Cold War campaigns to oust a government or tilt an election outside Europe, twenty-four of which succeeded. One might ask whether the C.I.A. deserved credit or merely backed the sides that would have won regardless. Either way, the map was sprinkled with tiny blue stars — Iran, Guatemala, Chile — marking U.S. victories.

The book being reviewed is Hugh Wilford’s The CIA - An Imperial History [1 ed.]

Signym, you can download it for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Hugh+Wilford

The other book, Lindsey A. O’Rourke’s “Covert Regime Change,” is also free at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Lindsey+A.+O%E2%80%99Rourke

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

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Monday, June 10, 2024 10:12 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Another stupid troll.

NATO'S existence doesn't irritate Putin. NATO'S expansion to Russia's borders, and the emplacement of nuclear capable missile installations poses a security threat to Russia.

Do you really think anyone believes your stupid shit anymore?

SECOND: These NATO countries touch Russia and would have to leave NATO:
Latvia
Poland
Lithuania
Estonia
Finland
Norway

And all the other NATO countries are close enough to launch nukes at Russia. Those would have to leave NATO, too.


Stupid troll

Putin already addressed that in late 2021. That's what "security architecture" means.

AFA nuclear capable missiles... ANYONE can launch nuclear missiles at anyone from any place.
It's FLIGHT TIME that makes the difference.

What a 'tard.
And that's an insult to the mentally challenged everywhere




T

When USA Let Loose And Turned Russian Wagner Group Into Mist.



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Monday, June 10, 2024 11:28 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

US Threatens Russia With Total Destructionn


You're too stupid to realize you're making my point for me??

And the more you post, the worse it gets??

Too funny!!!




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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Monday, June 10, 2024 11:53 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:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

US Threatens Russia With Total Destructionn


You're too stupid to realize you're making my point for me??

And the more you post, the worse it gets??

Too funny!!!

Signym, you did NOT watch the video. Here are the words:
Quote:
The US threatened Russia with total destruction. The Polish foreign minister says “The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke even if it doesn't kill anybody we will hit all your positions in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we'll destroy all of them” Adding that India read Russia the riot act over the potential use of nuclear weapons. He also said that China doesn’t want them to use nukes — because it would cause South Korea and Japan to become nuclear nations.

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

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Tuesday, June 11, 2024 6:35 AM

SECOND

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


A Russian milblogger who focuses on Russian air and air defense and has been largely critical of the Russian MoD criticized the Russian MoD in response to the strikes, claiming that Russian officers are falsely reporting no losses to their superiors despite actually suffering heavy losses.[5]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-10-2024

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

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Tuesday, June 11, 2024 6:38 AM

SECOND

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


It's not just convicts. Russia is forcing its African migrants and students to fight for them in Ukraine.

Russia is forcing thousands of African migrants and students to join in their war efforts against Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing assessments from European officials.

According to Bloomberg's report, Russian officials have threatened not to renew the visas of African migrant workers and students if they didn't join the Russian Armed Forces.

Some African workers have even been threatened with deportation if they do not agree to fight in Ukraine, one European official told Bloomberg. Others have resorted to bribing Russian officials to stay out of the conflict, per the outlet.

This wouldn't be the first time the country has turned to unorthodox and controversial recruitment measures to replenish its troops.

Russia's reliance on attrition warfare has seen it continually drawing on its prison population to fuel its war effort.

In October, Russia's Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov said the country's prison population had plunged to a historic low of 266,000, per The Washington Post. Russia's prison population stood at 420,000 before the war.

In fact, Russia has recruited so many inmates that it has started to close down some of its prisons.

A local official told lawmakers in March that some prisons had to be shut down because of "a one-time large reduction in the number of convicts," per the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-forcing-african-migrants-and-st
udents-to-fight-in-ukraine-2024-6

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

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Tuesday, June 11, 2024 6:46 AM

SECOND

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


Russian prisoners face grim fate in Ukraine war with Wagner Group
Every third prisoner from the Wagner Group did not return. Families received billions.

7:49 PM EDT, June 10, 2024

https://essanews.com/russian-prisoners-face-grim-fate-in-ukraine-war-w
ith-wagner-group,7037131481990785a

At least 48,000 prisoners from Russian colonies have been recruited to fight in the war in Ukraine by the Wagner Group. Journalists have determined that one in three prisoners did not return from the war. Families were paid nearly 1.2 billion USD in compensation.

The recruitment of prisoners for military service as part of the Wagner Group carried out in penal colonies, was described by its leadership, including the then-leader of the formation, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as "Project 42174" or "Project K." Inmates were offered the chance to regain their freedom and receive a pardon after six months of service at the front. Additionally, it was assured that in the event of death on the battlefield, their families would receive significant compensation.

The Wagner Group's first prisoner recruitment took place on July 1, 2022, in one of the penal colonies in the Leningrad region. According to information provided by journalists who analyzed internal Wagner Group documents, the last such case was recorded on February 7, 2023, in the Kemerovo region in Siberia.

Thanks to the journalistic investigation, it was possible to identify 341 out of 501 camps where prisoners recruited to the front were serving their sentences. Of these 341, as many as 227 are penal colonies with maximum security, and 28 are prisons with special status intended for hazardous criminals, including those sentenced to life imprisonment, according to data revealed by BBC and Mediazona.
"Bakhmut meat grinders"

The authorities of the Wagner Group did not hide the fact that prisoners sent to the front under Bakhmut were condemned to death. The battle for this city was called the "Bakhmut slaughterhouse." During it, a total of more than 19,500 Wagner Group soldiers died, of which nearly 17,200 were conscripts from penal colonies, according to a Monday report.

According to Prigozhin, the goal of the "Bakhmut meat grinders" was to kill more Ukrainian soldiers. He claimed that 50,000 soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces died near Bakhmut, and another 50,000–70,000 were wounded. The Ukrainian project UALosses, which counts the casualties of the Ukrainian Armed Forces based on publicly available obituaries, confirms only 8,900 Ukrainian soldiers who died near Bakhmut.

Prigozhin admitted the actual number of Wagner PMC losses near Bakhmut — about 20,000 people — but lied about the number of dead prisoners. "During the operation, I selected 50,000 prisoners, of whom about 20 percent died. The same number died as those who came to us under contract," said the founder of PMC in an interview with V-blogger Konstantin Dolgov in May 2023.

"Most of the Wagnerites died in the 'Bakhmut meat grinder' – more than 19,500 people," reports Mediazona.

The report states that the Wagner Group paid families of fallen prisoners compensation totaling nearly 1.2 billion USD. Each family was to receive 55,000 USD and an additional 3,300 USD for funeral arrangements.

The battle for Bakhmut

The Battle for Bakhmut was one of the longest and bloodiest confrontations during Russia's war against Ukraine. The fights lasted from August 2022 to the second half of May 2023, when Prigozhin announced that his units had captured the city.

Information about recruiting Russian prisoners for military service and sending them to war has been appearing since 2022, almost from the beginning of the Kremlin's open invasion of Ukraine. Reports from the Russian editorial offices of BBC and Mediazona align with previous estimates from Western analysts, who estimated the number of prisoners recruited to the front at a minimum of several tens of thousands.

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

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Tuesday, June 11, 2024 10:01 AM

SECOND

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


Why aren't patriotic Russians by the millions volunteering to fight Nazis and NATO?

Prisoners In Russia Down To Historic Low; Moscow Now Sourcing Recruits From Africa For Ukraine War – UK

By Ashish Dangwal | June 11, 2024

https://www.eurasiantimes.com/new-africa-becomes-hotbed-for-russian-mi
litary/

This move is seen as a clear indication that Moscow is grappling with a significant shortage of mobilization resources, particularly prisoners, a group it has heavily relied upon to mitigate public dissatisfaction with the war.

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

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Tuesday, June 11, 2024 2:31 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

US Threatens Russia With Total Destructionn


You're too stupid to realize you're making my point for me??

And the more you post, the worse it gets??

Too funny!!!




Nope, your spin is nothing but bullshit. Putin threatens to use them as well as his supporters in Russia. America says don't. Big difference.

Hey, check this out. And don't miss the part where he mentions how the United States is helping Ukraine.

Now that's too fummy...

T

'Special operation might crumble' as Ukraine strikes key targets in Russia| Hamish De Bretton-Gordon



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Wednesday, June 12, 2024 5:32 AM

SECOND

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


Will Russia’s history of violence come home to roost?

by Alexander J. Motyl | 06/11/24 1:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4715098-will-russias-history
-of-violence-come-home-to-roost/

Putin’s life is also marked by incessant violence, from his childhood and adolescence in tough neighborhoods to his fateful decision to join the most bloodthirsty of the Soviet Union’s institutions — the KGB, the secret police — in 1975, at the very height of its crackdown against the dissident movement and just seven years after the Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia’s short-lived attempt to create “socialism with a human face.”

Putin knew exactly what he was doing. Small wonder that his assumption to power in 1998-1999 was accompanied by the terrorist bombings of several apartment buildings. Hundreds of Russians were killed, the Chechens were blamed, and Putin had his pretext for the Second Chechen War.

There followed the war in Georgia in 2008, the occupation of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Interspersed throughout were the murders of some 20 oppositionists, the defenestrations of a score of businessmen, the killing of the putschist Valery Prigozhin and a series of attempts to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

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

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Wednesday, June 12, 2024 5:53 AM

SECOND

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


For Some In Russia's Far-Flung Provinces, Ukraine War Is A Ticket To Prosperity

By Mike Eckel | June 11, 2024 17:32 GMT

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-war-ukraine-wages-poverty-prosperity/32
988390.html

Men keep signing up to fight, drawn by extraordinarily high wages. That also goes for well-above-average wages at defense factories working full-tilt to churn out tanks, guns, bullets, and other gear.

And those wages -- plus death benefits for widows and children, and compensation for the wounded -- are flooding into regions, fattening bank accounts, and jolting local economies in a way not seen since the Soviet collapse -- this time for the better.

For Russians who revile the millionaires who emerged overnight in the chaotic 1990s or those who have benefited less from the growth in prosperity in the 2000s, it’s added to a sense of righting past wrongs.

“A large-scale redistribution of resources in favor of the less well-off has prompted a widespread shift in perceptions of justice for the first time since 1990,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center polling organization, wrote.

In August 2022, the average wage across Russia was around 62,000 rubles a month ($700 in today’s dollars). But in poorer regions, wages were markedly lower in some cases, according to research by the Bank of Finland’s Institute for Emerging Economies. In the North Caucasus, the average monthly wage in 2022 was just 35,000 rubles. ($400).

Signing bonuses for men volunteering to fight in Ukraine, meanwhile, have been climbing toward 700,000 rubles ($7,860 in today’s dollars) -- more than an entire annual salary for many men.

Under a March 2022 decree signed by Putin, soldiers injured on the battlefield receive 3 million rubles ($33,700 in today’s dollars) in compensation; families of killed soldiers, meanwhile, receive 5 million rubles. Both are princely sums, particularly in lower-cost regions of Russia.

By paying high wages for fighters, the Kremlin has avoided what would be a deeply unpopular second round of mobilization. Putin himself bragged about how many volunteers were signing up to fight during an economic conference last week.

“Instead of strict mobilization, the government is paying huge amounts of money to those who signed military contracts,” Kurbangaleeva said.

One 21-year-old woman from Cheboksary, the capital of the Volga River region of Chuvashia, said her brother was reported killed in early April near Avdiyivka, a focus of heavy fighting in Ukraine. She said her sister-in-law, now a single mother of two young children living in a village outside Cheboksary, had been told to expect 5-million-rubles ($56,000) in compensation for her husband’s death.

“They were never particularly luxurious – they lived modestly, and never went to any resorts or on vacation,” the woman, who did not want her name published for fear of repercussions, told RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service. “They saved and saved. There was money, but it was never enough, so my brother went to fight. He went there because of the money. Where can you earn money like that in Chuvashia?”

Russia also now counts some 6,000 military-industrial factories and related enterprises, a threefold increase from before the 2022 invasion, according to Elina Ribakova, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior director at the Kyiv School of Economics.

More than 3.5 million people work in those factories, manning around-the-clock shifts and six-day workweeks.

Salaries, meanwhile, have increased from 20 to 60 percent since the invasion, Ribakova said in an article published by the Financial Times. Moreover, many companies offer exemptions from being sent to fight in Ukraine.

One illustrative example, Kurbangaleyeva said, was for a low-skilled seamster or seamstress working in a factory: In late 2021, he or she might have a monthly salary of 15,000-20,000 rubles; now salaries run around 120,000-130,000 rubles.

Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military and defense industry, said he doubted the income flowing to poorer regions was creating fundamental change in local economies.

If anything, he said, it is fueling inflation, which stood at 7.3 percent last year, and is projected to exceed 5 percent this year.

“Payments for [war] losses are not being transformed into the financial capital,” he told RFE/RL. “Money is just spent to cover bank loans and urgent needs of family members -- for instance, parents -- for the purchase of apartments or building…houses, for purchase of cars and so on. Among other things, these payments contribute to the high monetary inflation all around Russia.

Still, the ongoing distribution of wealth might be compared -- inversely -- to what happened in the 1990s, when high inflation, privatization, the plummeting ruble, and systemic disruptions sucked prosperity out of Russia’s provinces, said Laura Solanko, a Bank of Finland researcher.

“But if we think about the Putin era, nothing comparable easily comes to my mind,” she told RFE/RL.

Is It Sustainable?

The flow of wages and benefits to poorer regions has not only spurred a burst of economic activity on a local level; it’s also effectively bought support for continuing the Ukraine war, experts said.

“For Russia’s citizens, the decision to support the war is no longer merely influenced by political rhetoric and propaganda; it is now also driven by pragmatism,” Kurbangaleeva wrote in an article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The sense of normalcy is largely ensured by socio-economic stability, which the state has devoted considerable resources to maintain,” Volkov, of the Levada Center, wrote in his own piece for Forbes.

The bigger question is: is it sustainable, say, if the war ends tomorrow?

Andrei Yakovlev, a Russian economist and associate fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, said demobilized soldiers would expect continued high wages, as would well-paid factory workers in the event that defense-plant production was scaled back.

“From a political point of view, it can be dangerous for the Kremlin,” he told RFE/RL. “It [would] be cheaper for the Kremlin to keep all the soldiers on the front line. Because if they will come back to Buryatia, Chuvashia, and face again much lower salaries…. there are no comparable incomes, which [could] be provided for these people in the regions.”

“As they say in Russian,” Kurbangaleeva said, “For some war is hell, for others it pays well.”

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

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Wednesday, June 12, 2024 6:06 AM

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


'Spy mania': Why is Russia accusing its own physicists of treason?

By Sergei Goryashko, BBC Russian | June 9, 2024

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8001gvp4dpo

Scientist Anatoly Maslov, 77, was sentenced in May to 14 years in a penal colony

Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently boasts that his country is leading the world in developing hypersonic weapons, which travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

But a string of Russian physicists working on the science underlying them have been charged with treason and imprisoned in recent years, in what rights groups see as an overzealous crackdown.

Most of those arrested are elderly, and three are now dead. One was taken from his hospital bed in the late stages of cancer and died soon afterward.

Another is Vladislav Galkin, a 68-year-old academic, whose home in Tomsk in southern Russia was raided in April 2023.

Armed men in black masks arrived at 04:00, digging through cupboards and seizing papers with scientific formulae on them, a relative says.

Mr Galkin’s wife, Tatyana, says she has told their grandchildren – who liked to play chess with him – that he’s on a business trip. She says Russia’s security service, the FSB, has forbidden her from speaking about his case.

Laser expert Dmitry Kolker pictured a few months before he was arrested in hospital in the late stages of pancreatic cancer

Since 2015, 12 physicists have been arrested who are all associated in some way with hypersonic technology or with institutions that work on it.

They are all charged with high treason, which can include passing state secrets to foreign countries.

Russian treason trials are held behind closed doors, so it’s not clear exactly what they are accused of.

The Kremlin has said only that “the accusations are serious” and it can’t comment further because special services are involved.

But colleagues and defence lawyers say the scientists weren’t involved in weapons development and that some of the cases are based on them openly collaborating with foreign researchers.

And critics suggest the FSB wants to create the impression foreign spies are chasing weapons secrets.

Much more at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8001gvp4dpo

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

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Wednesday, June 12, 2024 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


Ukraine should retaliate by destroying Russian power plants. But lacking a competent strategy, it does not. And so the war of Dumb vs. Dumber continues.

Putin Cuts Ukraine’s Power

With constant assaults on the electricity grid, Moscow is adding an explosive twist to an old playbook.

By Keith Johnson | June 11, 2024, 2:27 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/11/russia-attacks-ukraine-energy-inf
rastructure-power-plants-electricity/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921

Russia’s renewed and much broader assault on Ukraine’s energy sector this spring, which has now destroyed roughly half of the country’s electricity generation capacity, represents an explosive blow to Kyiv’s resilience, civilian morale, and industrial production. What’s worse, the ongoing Russian attacks on the vulnerable energy system offer few prospects of a quick fix that could right the situation before Ukraine enters its third winter of the war.

Since early this year, Russia has set out to finish the job it failed to complete in early 2023—the destruction of Ukraine’s civilian energy sector, especially the power plants that provide light and heat for millions of Ukrainians.

Beginning in March, Russia has specifically targeted Ukraine’s biggest power plants in six massive waves of missile and drone strikes, wiping out about 9 gigawatts of electricity generation, or half the country’s total. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a reconstruction conference in Berlin on Tuesday that Russian strikes have wiped out 80 percent of Ukraine’s big coal- and gas-fired power plants and one-third of its hydroelectric facilities.

Especially as a result of the last two big attacks, in early May and early June, Ukraine has had to ration electricity for industrial and residential consumers, leaving many with power for only short periods of time; some cities, such as Kharkiv, on the country’s eastern front line are virtually powerless. Russia’s assaults, which the U.K. ambassador to the United Nations has argued are in part an attempt to terrorize civilians, are even a subject for the U.N. Security Council.

As bad as Russia’s attacks have been so far, they could get worse. Russia has already hit some of Ukraine’s natural gas storage facilities—underground bunkers that are used to store fuel both for domestic needs and to backstop European consumption. Further Russian strikes there could expand the pain of energy attacks beyond Ukraine’s borders, right at a time when Europe is scrambling to find a solution for gas transit flows across Ukraine into landlocked Eastern European countries, especially Austria.

The other big worry is that Russia, after having already destroyed Ukraine’s main sources of baseload power generation, will finally knock its remaining three nuclear power plants off the grid. (Russia has since the early days of the war occupied Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, using it as a shield for its occupation of south-central Ukraine, but the station—Europe’s largest nuclear facility—is in shutdown and not generating power.)

“It sounds mad to attack the nuclear power stations, but Russia could hit the transformers near the nuclear plants. If they did this, the power system will lose its unity, and the country will be split into different energy islands, some with spotty power and some entirely without,” said Andrian Prokip, an energy expert at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute in Kyiv.

The undeniable success of this year’s Russian assault is a sharp contrast to its ultimately failed bid in the first winter of the war to freeze Ukraine into submission. Russia has thrown more ordnance at more vulnerable targets this time around, leading to longer-lasting damage that will be far costlier to repair. Only after the big strikes in early May did Ukraine have to start rationing power to residential and industrial consumers. There is concern among big industry, such as the country’s once-vaunted steel and iron industry, that the power outages could kneecap what appeared to be a miraculous wartime recovery of industrial output.

“The difference is that before they mainly targeted transmission lines and substations and now they are destroying power generation plants,” said Slawomir Matuszak, a Ukraine specialist at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. “The previous attacks were relatively easy to recover from—a question of days or weeks. But you’re looking at one to two years now for a real rebuild, if that even makes sense, because they can simply be attacked again.”

For Ukraine’s leaders, the renewed Russian strikes pose a threat to the country’s already strained ability to sustain years of unremitting bombing assaults, social and economic disruption, and the increased mobilization of service members. The new campaign has redoubled Ukraine’s desperation to bolster its air defenses in order to protect what’s left of its energy system.

“Russia’s goal hasn’t changed—they seek to destroy our energy system and use it as a weapon against our citizens,” said Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who leads the pro-European party Holos and who described the constant disruptions to daily life from the power outages that come atop Russia’s ceaseless use of stand-off weapons to batter civilian residences across the country, including her own. (Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia had launched 135 glide bombs in just the last day.)

“So we are saying, get us the F-16s, get us the Mirages, get us to this luxury point where we can go to bed and know that we will wake up in the morning,” Rudik said, referring to U.S.- and French-made fighter jets. “In Ukraine, we do not have this luxury.”

The increased pace of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure has also injected fresh urgency into the question of how and when to leverage Moscow’s frozen assets for Ukraine’s assistance. U.S. and European leaders are working on a plan to turn the proceeds of frozen Russian cash into a large loan for Ukraine. For those on the receiving end of Russian attacks, even discussions such as those at the reconstruction conference in Berlin seem too focused on rebuilding Ukraine after the war, rather than reinforcing Ukrainians’ will to resist now.

“We need the money now,” Rudik said. “We have a simple task before us: to survive the summer and get through the winter somehow.”

Some Western countries are heeding Ukraine’s pleas for more air defense, which could help protect both cities and critical infrastructure from Russian attacks, especially after the devastation unleashed in the May and June strikes. Germany is now mulling the dispatch of a fourth Patriot air defense battery, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz urging allies to do more; Italy is preparing to send more air defense systems of its own, while even recalcitrant countries such as Spain are sending more air defense ammunition. Late last week, the Biden administration included more air defense missiles in its latest aid package for Ukraine.

Getting more air defense is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition to begin rebuilding Ukraine’s battered electricity sector. Even at big plants that had an air defense umbrella, such as Kyiv’s critical Trypilla generating station, Ukrainian forces simply ran out of ammo under Russia’s big assault in April; the plant was demolished. But even with better air defenses, energy experts doubt more than 2 to 3 gigawatts of power generation capacity could be rebuilt before winter. That would still leave a big shortfall in power generation, not to mention the ongoing damage to combined heat-and-power plants that provide central heating during Ukraine’s brutal winters.

One short-term, but expensive, fix would be to rely on more electricity imports from Europe. Just before this year’s Russian assault began, Ukraine was actually exporting excess electricity production to Europe—but that was soon reversed. Today, Ukraine can import about 1.7 gigawatts of electricity from Europe and in a pinch can even get more than 2 gigawatts of power. The problem is that imported electricity is more expensive than the subsidized power Ukraine generated at home, exacerbating the country’s already strained finances.

The other solution, long broached in Ukraine, is to build more small, decentralized power plants, including small gas-fired turbines and renewable sources such as solar and wind power. The push for more renewables has actually increased during the war, and especially in the wake of this spring’s Russian onslaught, as Ukraine seeks new sources of power generation.

On Tuesday, members of the G-7+ Energy Coordination Group and Ukraine’s government outlined plans to make the electricity sector more resilient, including through more distributed generation. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday at the Berlin conference that Brussels is raising money for urgent power sector repairs as well as a host of small-scale generators. “The aim is to help decentralize the power system and thus increase resilience,” she said.

The biggest advantage of replacing hulking, centralized power plants with a lot of smaller, widely scattered sources of power is that they are a lot harder to blow up with scarce Russian missiles.

“If you have sources of microgeneration, and lots of them, then Russia will not have enough missiles to hit all of them, even if they knew where they were,” Prokip said. “So distributed generation is the right way to go, but the government didn’t take enough steps to do this when it could.”

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

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Wednesday, June 12, 2024 11:43 AM

THG


T

ATTACK ON MOSCOW, RUSSIA PUSHED BACK IN KHARKIV


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Wednesday, June 12, 2024 6:00 PM

SECOND

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


June 12, 2024
Eye of the Beholder

https://www.dailychatter.com/stories/no-war-for-muscovites-in-bubble-o
f-peace-and-prosperity/

Russian-American historian Yuri Felshtinsky recently told Times Radio that Russian elites are in a “state of panic” over Russia’s massive losses in the war against Ukraine. In order to maintain their control over the country, however, Felshtinsky said, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his domestic allies have worked hard to make sure residents of Moscow, the country’s capital and its most important city by far, have yet to suffer any privations due to the war.

Bars, nightclubs, and restaurants continue to operate like normal in the city, reported Agence France-Presse. And the losses here are minimal – soldiers conscripted to fight in the war tend to come from Russia’s poorer regions, or other countries. On May 9, when Russia held celebrations commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, wounded soldiers did not march in the parade on Red Square.

YouTube channels like Window to Moscow appear to corroborate this state of affairs, though they are not news organizations whose accuracy can be verified. On the other hand, Bloomberg notes that the data belies this image, making it seem as if these YouTube channels doth protest too much, as they present idyllic images of a magnificent city so as to fool audiences into thinking nothing is wrong in Russia.

Russian officials have certainly launched other efforts – and laws – to make sure their interpretation of reality and history eclipses any critical views of their rule. “The situation now in Russia is similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four,” librarian Alexandra Karaseva said in an interview with the BBC, referring to George Orwell’s classic 1948 novel about a dystopian dictatorship. “Total control by the government, the state and the security structures.”

Putin, for instance, has purged the country’s universities of liberal-minded critics who might cast shade on his invasion of Ukraine, suppression of human rights and civil liberties, and corrupt government and economic system that benefits his friends while impoverishing his constituents. Instead, reported the Washington Post, he has mandated that higher education institutions promote patriotism, reject Western influences, and punish faculty and students who might speak out against his rule.

However, while life in Moscow and elsewhere away from the front is outwardly pleasant, an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty – as well as shuttered stores and compulsory optimism about Russia’s future – exists in the capital, contended Le Monde.

Maybe ordinary Russians understand how the war in Ukraine has resulted in devastating losses that will likely harm their country for generations to come, wrote World Politics Review, even if they manage to defeat, occupy, and annex Ukraine.

Or maybe they feel the panic that Felshtinsky described.

Still, as Russian data analyst Alexandra, 32, awaiting her dessert at a trendy restaurant in Moscow before going bar-hopping, said, “Even during the Second World War, women continued to put on makeup and buy lipstick,” adding, “This shows that we should continue living … We go out and have a good time.”

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

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Thursday, June 13, 2024 6:49 AM

SECOND

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


The costs of stalemate in Ukraine

By Eric Kramer | June 12, 2024 9:47 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2024/06/the-costs-of-stalemate-in-ukraine

Apparently the administration is letting Ukraine hit military targets in Russia, though still with some restrictions. This is way overdue.

It seems clear that Russia under Putin is an expansionist power. Only a decisive defeat will prevent brutal ethnic cleansing in Ukraine. Defeat may also lead Putin to refrain from further aggression against his neighbors, and even get him to accept a vision of Russia as an ordinary European country that stands to prosper by living in peace with its neighbors. Thinking more broadly, if the administration is so worried that our very cautious support for Ukraine will trigger escalation by Putin, why should Xi think that we and our allies would stand up against an attack or blockade aimed at Taiwan? And letting Ukraine twist in the wind after Biden has given such public backing to Zelensky makes Biden seem ineffectual. That’s not a good look at a time when the world seems (and is) a chaotic and potentially dangerous place. Finally, victory by Trump would quite likely be a disaster for Ukraine and for Europe, but the scale of the disaster can presumably be limited by helping Ukraine do as well as possible before January 2025. All of this suggests we should long have had much more of a sense of urgency about helping Ukraine.

Of course, there could be issues not apparent to outsiders and non-experts, as indicated by a recent story in WAPO that the administration is worried about damage to the radars Russia uses to track incoming nukes, which could be destabilizing. But my guess – I’m just reading the tea leaves here, and have no special expertise – is that this temporizing and trimming is in large part characterological. Biden is a consensus seeker. This is a very commendable trait in general, and an important reason to support Biden. But it can lead to an overly protracted decision-making process (over two years for ATACMS!) with an emphasis on coalition management and a split-the-difference approach to policymaking. Again, this is just a guess; we’ll see what the historians say.

In my most optimistic moments I hope that a clear defeat in Ukraine could bring Russia back into the European fold – and out of China’s orbit – perhaps with some kind of partial EU membership. Pulling Russia back into Europe should be our overarching goal for the war. Obviously this will be very difficult to achieve, if it is achievable at all. But if this is where we want to end up we should articulate it and do what we can to maximize our chances of success. And it seems to me that Putin needs to be faced with the prospect of a decisive loss to accept a future for Russia as a normal European country that he evidently does not find appealing. Putin has no reason to turn westward unless he is clearly defeated and needs to give up his grandiose empire building. Of course, even then he may choose to ally with China.

I’ve never been a hawk before, but Putin (and Xi) have changed that. The gains from clearly defeating Putin’s Russia are potentially quite large, and the costs of a loss or even a stalemate are frightening.

Addendum: Lawrence Freedman has some characteristically thoughtful comments here, and reaches conclusions that are somewhat more nuanced and temperate than mine. https://samf.substack.com/p/fuzzy-red-lines-in-ukraine

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 7:05 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine signed bilateral ten-year security agreements with the United States and Japan on June 13 as other partner states reaffirmed their long-term support for Ukraine within the Group of 7 (G7) and Ramstein formats.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on June 13 that he signed bilateral ten-year security agreements with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of the ongoing G7 Summit.[1] The US-Ukraine agreement provides for long-term cooperation in defense and security, economic recovery and reform, and the advancement of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration.[2] The Japan-Ukraine agreement provides for Japan's $4.5 billion contribution to Ukraine in 2024 and continued ten-year long support in security and defense, humanitarian aid, technical and financial cooperation, reconstruction efforts, and sanction measures against Russia.[3] Zelensky lauded both agreements as historic breakthroughs for Ukraine's bilateral relations with both the United States and Japan.[4]

The United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister's Office reported on June 12 that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will announce up to £242 million (about $208 million) in bilateral assistance for Ukraine's humanitarian, energy, and economic and social recovery needs while at the G7 Summit.[5]

French outlet France24 reported that G7 leaders are also finalizing details on the transfer of up to $50 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine by the end of 2024.[6] G7 countries collectively possess $235 billion in frozen Russian assets, and G7 leaders are reportedly brokering a deal that would rely on a US-led $50 billion loan that would reach Ukraine by the end of 2024 and be "topped up" with contributions by other allies.[7]

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also announced during a Ukraine Defense Contract Group at the Ramstein Airbase in Germany on June 12 that NATO partners will agree on a comprehensive military and financial aid package for Ukraine during the upcoming NATO summit in July 2024 and emphasized that NATO will lead efforts to provide security assistance and training for Ukraine.[8] Stoltenberg also stated that the supply of weapons to Ukraine may become mandatory for NATO members in order to ensure that NATO's security assistance for Ukraine remains "reliable and large-scale."[9]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-13-2024

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 7:16 AM

SECOND

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


Vladimir Putin has sent so many criminals to die in Ukraine that Russian jails are now empty

As many as 150,000 Russian prisoners were press-ganged and recruited into the military to go to the frontline

By Chris Hughes, John O'sullivan, Chris Hughes | 12:14 ET, JUN 13 2024

https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/russian-prisoners-ukraine-war-p
utin-33025380

Russian prisons and penal colonies are being shut down due to a significant decrease in the prisoner population, with nearly 100 jails already closed. This is largely attributed to the fact that many prisoners have been killed while fighting in Ukraine.

An estimated 150,000 Russian prisoners, including murderers, rapists, robbers, and gangsters, were forcibly recruited into the military and sent to the frontline. Those who survived Russia's brutal battles, such as the fight for Bakhmut, were paid, released, and sent home.

This scheme was orchestrated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now-deceased leader of the Wagner Group mercenary outfit. As a result, many prisons were almost emptied, and criminals became more desperate to avoid incarceration.

Prigozhin, a former aide to Russian President Putin, died mysteriously last year at the age of 62 when his private plane crashed after taking off from Moscow.

It is believed that Prigozhin and his recruiters persuaded 50,000 prisoners to enlist, while an additional 100,000 have been released to fight by the Russian Ministry of Defence. From March 2023 to the same period this year, the number of prisoners decreased by 20 percent, leading to the closure of 88 jail institutions out of 900, reports the Mirror.

In an effort to further reduce the costs of imprisoning individuals, three more colonies in Siberia will soon be closed, with additional closures expected in the coming year. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the number of Russian prisoners was approximately 420,000. It is now believed to have reduced to around 336,000.

The year-long battle for Bakhmut saw tens of thousands of Russian soldiers killed, with over 20,000 believed to have been ex-prisoners in Wagner uniforms. It's estimated that the Kremlin has had to shell out $1 billion in posthumous payments to the families of those who died up until August last year, via the Wagner Group.

At the height of the conflict, Wagner was losing approximately 200 men daily as they were sent in waves toward Ukrainian defenses. Russia expert Bruce Jones commented: "The decline in the Russian prison population is mainly related to the illegal invasion of Ukraine, as well as changes in Russian social conditions.

"It is due to tens of thousands of conscripted convict mercenaries being annihilated or seriously disabled in Putin's conflict with Ukraine. Also criminals are conscious of the likelihood of being sent to war and killed if found guilty and jailed. Criminals are more "choosy" and careful in the choice of the crimes that they commit. And there are fewer police officers available and fewer arrests being made, with the criminal justice system, because of fewer resources, also under strain."

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 7:18 AM

SECOND

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


Russian federal subjects (regions) continue to increase monetary incentives to recruit military personnel. Chelyabinsk Oblast Governor Alexei Teksler proposed increasing one-time regional payments for contract military personnel (kontraktniki) to 350,000 rubles.[69] Russian opposition outlet Chelyabinsk of the Future stated that this is the second time in 2024 that the Chelyabinsk Oblast government has increased payments to kontraktniki following an increase from 75,000 to 225,000 rubles.[70] Russian opposition outlets also noted that 14 Russian federal subjects have similarly increased payments to kontraktniki in 2024.[71]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-13-2024

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 1:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Meanwhile ...

Quote:
Putin Names Two Conditions For Ending The War 'This Very Minute'
Friday, Jun 14, 2024 - 08:55 AM

Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Friday speech addressed the West's efforts to host a major Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland this weekend. Though scores of world leaders will be there, Russia has not been invited, and China [India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and other invited attendees] has [have] snubbed the event citing that it's pointless without Moscow's representation given it is a party to one side of the war.

Putin outlined his "conditions" for peace. He said for the military operation to be halted Ukrainian forces would have to withdraw from the four regions annexed by the Russian Federation. "Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions," Putin said in a televised address.

Russia held referendums in late September 2022 for these war-torn oblasts, and the overwhelming majority of voters were in favor of being absorbed into Russia, which Kiev and the West called a "sham" election.

Putin also stipulated a second main condition for ending the war: Ukraine must reject ambitions to join the NATO alliance.

"As soon as Kyiv says it is ready to do this and begins really withdrawing troops and officially renounces plans to join NATO, we will immediately — literally that very minute — cease-fire and begin talks," Putin said in the talk given to a gathering of diplomats.

Interestingly, Putin showed signs he could be willing to compromise when it comes to territory, which is a bit of the first and hopeful sign that he's serious about finding ways to wind down the war. According to AFP:

The Russian leader said he did not "rule out maintaining Ukrainian sovereignty" over the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions "on the condition that Russia has a strong land link with Crimea."

But despite what appears to be very serious possible overtures, the Zelensky government has long maintained that it will not countenance negotiations or peace settlement until there is a full withdrawal of Russian armed forces from Ukrainian territory as existed pre-February 2022.

The weekend Swiss peace summit is expected to focus on gaining full international backing for Zelensky's 10-point peace formula, however international press has acknowledged this as still "a largely symbolic effort".

The sixth point of Kiev's plan reads as follows: it calls on Russia "To cease the hostilities, Russia must withdraw all its troops and armed formations from the territory of Ukraine, plain and simple. Ukraine’s full control over its state border, recognized internationally, needs to be restored."

Putin also took opportunity Friday to reiterate that Zelensky is 'illegitimate' and is serving as a mere puppet of the West:

For Moscow this of course remains a non-starter, and Putin has frequently emphasize that it will never give up the newly acquired four eastern territories, which have long been Russian-speaking areas, both historically and currently.


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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Friday, June 14, 2024 10:52 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:
Meanwhile ...
Why Putin Remains Uninterested in Meaningful Negotiations with Ukraine - Jun 14, 2024

The Kremlin will continue to feign interest in negotiations at critical moments in the war to influence Western decision-making on support for Ukraine and to continue efforts to extract preemptive concessions from the West.

The Kremlin has repeatedly engaged in a large-scale reflexive control campaign that aims to influence Western decision-making.[22] Reflexive control is a key element in Russia's hybrid warfare toolkit and relies on shaping an adversary with targeted rhetoric and information operations in such a way that the adversary voluntarily takes actions that are advantageous to Russia.[23]

Kremlin officials claimed that Russia was open to negotiations in December 2022, likely to delay the provision of Western tanks and other equipment essential for the continuation of Ukrainian mechanized counteroffensives.[24]

Western reporting on Putin's alleged interest in negotiations in Winter 2023-2024 coincided with prolonged debates in the US about security assistance for Ukraine, and the Kremlin may have feigned interest in a ceasefire at this time to convince Western policymakers to pressure Ukraine to negotiate from a weakened position and agree to what would have very likely been a settlement that heavily favored Russia.[25]

The Kremlin may again be feigning interest in negotiations in order to influence the ongoing Western debate about lifting restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russia and convince Western policymakers that changes in these restrictions may lead to Russian unwillingness to negotiate in the future.

More at https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/why-putin-remains-uninte
rested-meaningful-negotiations-ukraine

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 6:18 AM

SECOND

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


An unnamed senior US Department of Defense official reportedly said that the Biden Administration has no imminent plans to lift restrictions prohibiting Ukrainian forces from striking military targets in Russia’s operational and deep rear areas in Russian territory with US-provided weapons.[37]

Politico reported on June 13 that the senior official said that there is a “constant conversation and reassessment” of US policy restricting deeper Ukrainian strikes into Russian territory and that no decision is final, but that there is no “impending” policy change.

ISW assesses that the Biden Administration’s limited policy change permitting Ukraine to use US-provided weapons to strike some Russian military targets in a small area within Russian territory has reduced the size of Russia’s ground sanctuary by only 16 percent at maximum.[38] ISW assesses that the West is not using the ability to substantially disrupt Russian operations at scale by allowing Ukraine to use Western-provided weapons to strike Russia’s operational rear and deep rear areas in Russian territory.[39]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-14-2024

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

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