Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[KYHorn 17,046]

 

 

[bolverk 29,671]

3 hours ago, Bevo said:

In France what is the difference between hard left (socialist) and hard right (communist)? In the US, as foreign policy goes the right has traditionally been more supportive of the military's needs and has been stronger against communist aggression than the left.  Is there indication in France that the right wing candidate in France would capitulate to Russia and break away from NATO support of Ukraine? Because, I don't see much NATO gains from Macron's negotiations with Putin.

Generally, the further out you go on either side, the poorer the relations between France and NATO/EU would be.

Zemmour (far-far-right party Reconquête - Reconquest) has backed off wanting to leave the EU but wants stronger autonomy. He also wants to pull out of NATO's unified command structure.

Le Pen (far-right party National Rally) is generally a Eurosceptic but hasn't voiced support for getting out of the EU lately. She used to want France to dump NATO entirely but now says she'd like to pull out of the unified command structure.

Pécresse (center-right party Republicans) is generally pro-EU and pro-NATO.

Macron (centrist/center-right) is strongly pro-EU and pro-NATO.

Hidalgo (center-left Socialist Party) is pro-EU and pro-NATO.

Jadot (centre-left to left-wing Europe Écologie Les Verts - Green Party) is pro-EU but has been squishy on his support for NATO but supposedly doesn't want to leave it...now.

Mélenchon (left-wing La France Insoumise - Unsubmissive France) is generally a Eurosceptic and wants out of NATO.

Roussel (far-left Communist Party) wants out of NATO.

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by bolverk

[dimyh 1,874]

Really good discussion with former ambassador McFaul about the lead up to the rise of Putin and the workings of his inner circle. Covers a lot of areas previously discussed on this thread but nice to have some personal perspective. Plus some insight on the negotiation angles. Only complaint is that they cut video short and don't get to hear all of the commentary.

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

^I've heard this too, but I am not seeking it out, nor wanting to, but it seems like a LOT of people are saying they've also stumbled across this video

 

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3,868]

I'm so confused as to how Boris Johnson went from being a stooge for Brexit to being a stand up dude in the fight against tyranny.

Seems like the subject of a Pink Floyd double album.

Edited April 9, 2022 by ShaggyBevo RIP

[MillerEP 30,455]

^Comedy of errors

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

^This could be very bad. If they start going with this line of thinking, then this could give them the cover they need to do mass mobilization and transfer of private industry into war production. Right now they can't because it is illegal (on paper, which we know what that is worth) to do that for times not designated as a "war" which is handicapping their efforts to reconstitute and replace current losses. We all know they can do mental gymnastics to justify whatever they want if they feel like it, but this seems a bad omen to me.

 

[Brisketexan 105,121]

Generally, the further out you go on either side, the poorer the relations between France and NATO/EU would be.
Zemmour (far-far-right party Reconquête - Reconquest) has backed off wanting to leave the EU but wants stronger autonomy. He also wants to pull out of NATO's unified command structure.
Le Pen (far-right party National Rally) is generally a Eurosceptic but hasn't voiced support for getting out of the EU lately. She used to want France to dump NATO entirely but now says she'd like to pull out of the unified command structure.
Pécresse (center-right party Republicans) is generally pro-EU and pro-NATO.
Macron (centrist/center-right) is strongly pro-EU and pro-NATO.
Hidalgo (center-left Socialist Party) is pro-EU and pro-NATO.
Jadot (centre-left to left-wing Europe Écologie Les Verts - Green Party) is pro-EU but has been squishy on his support for NATO but supposedly doesn't want to leave it...now.
Mélenchon (left-wing La France Insoumise - Unsubmissive France) is generally a Eurosceptic and wants out of NATO.
Roussel (far-left Communist Party) wants out of NATO.
 

Will do my best to avoid taking this CR, but far-left populism and far-right populism have this in common: they both hate institutions and alliances. That is because the presence of institutions and alliances is a check on authoritarian exercises of power, which is a common element of both flavors of extremist populism. Far left types like Maduro In Venezuela have a great deal in common with far-right populists like Putin and Orban: they both crush dissent and control information, they both run functionally command economies, their power is tied closely to the military and use of force. Answering to institutions or peers limits one’s abilities to use those tools. So, authoritarian populists are uniformly anti-coalitions, institutions, and collective alliances. They will speak the loudest against alliances, unions, and anything that is a constraint on their exercise of power, using buzzwords like “the people’s right to self determination.” But they don’t mean that. What they mean is that they want to nation to be free from any external checks on its ability to just do what it wants; among the checks they REALLY want to get out from under is the check that requires a nation to have free and fair elections, a free press, etc.
From whichever wing it comes, the dangerous force is authoritarianism. In that respect, all authoritarian regimes are aligned in their fight against institutions and any regional or global order.

[freyguy 4,269]

3 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

^This could be very bad. If they start going with this line of thinking, then this could give them the cover they need to do mass mobilization and transfer of private industry into war production. Right now they can't because it is illegal (on paper, which we know what that is worth) to do that for times not designated as a "war" which is handicapping their efforts to reconstitute and replace current losses. We all know they can do mental gymnastics to justify whatever they want if they feel like it, but this seems a bad omen to me.

 

The brain damage is stupifying.

[MillerEP 30,455]

The regiment of fighting geese checks the result of their work.

The bodies of killed civilians were found in an underground passage in Mariupol

 The City Council said that the Russian military had set up a body collection point there and taken hundreds of corpses to similar sites every day, then destroyed them in mobile crematoria or buried them in mass graves.

❗️ Regarding the impact on the tank with nitric acid in Luhansk region

 Vapors from the explosion of a tank with 4 tons of nitric acid spread in the area of Russian positions near Kudryashivka and Varvarivka

[MillerEP 30,455]

This BTR-82A was the 39th captured and 104th lost by the Russians in this war. Mileage is only 2000 km. He got to the repairs on his own, was serviced and went to the Armed Forces.

Soldiers of the Azov Regiment effectively worked on the positions of the Russian occupiers, from where they fired mortar fire.

 The enemy's KRAZ was damaged without the possibility of further operation and the occupiers' BC was destroyed.

In Rubezhnoye, the Russians looted and burned the production of Dodo Socks socks

 

[bolverk 29,671]

6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Will do my best to avoid taking this CR, but far-left populism and far-right populism have this in common: they both hate institutions and alliances. That is because the presence of institutions and alliances is a check on authoritarian exercises of power, which is a common element of both flavors of extremist populism. Far left types like Maduro In Venezuela have a great deal in common with far-right populists like Putin and Orban: they both crush dissent and control information, they both run functionally command economies, their power is tied closely to the military and use of force. Answering to institutions or peers limits one’s abilities to use those tools. So, authoritarian populists are uniformly anti-coalitions, institutions, and collective alliances. They will speak the loudest against alliances, unions, and anything that is a constraint on their exercise of power, using buzzwords like “the people’s right to self determination.” But they don’t mean that. What they mean is that they want to nation to be free from any external checks on its ability to just do what it wants; among the checks they REALLY want to get out from under is the check that requires a nation to have free and fair elections, a free press, etc.
From whichever wing it comes, the dangerous force is authoritarianism. In that respect, all authoritarian regimes are aligned in their fight against institutions and any regional or global order.

Horseshoe theory

[MillerEP 30,455]

Now, if a preventive strike on Lukashenka's fucking hell hadn't been dealt in six hours... 🇧🇾

This is just a preemptive strike.

^Lol

 

[Pato del Muerto 52,492]

If the map in 1945 is their justification, there’s a few more Eurasian countries that should perk up their ears. 
 

It also sounds very aggy. 

[Hook1997 5,354]

Damn Boris is in Kyiv!  I know they are shifting from there but that seems like a big risk.  Also Russia knows if something happens to him, it’s ballgame but some of their soldiers are dumb enough to launch a bunch of rockets his way. 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Hook1997

[MillerEP 30,455]

🇬🇧🇺🇦 177 electric generators from Great Britain arrived in Ukraine

^Supposedly the soldier who recorded that video going around yesterday of him raping that toddler

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

Ukraine has already received 5,000 Starlink terminal

Kharkiv region -11 (dead Russians)

The Russian army is not strong. It's just long. Russia has fought many wars with different countries, but its military power will end here in Ukraine.

 93 OMBr Cold Yar

❗️ On the morning of April 9, the former head of the Kherson Regional State Administration, Andriy Putilov, was abducted from Kherson.

[MillerEP 30,455]

^Says "Elon Musk Dick"

78-year-old writer Yevhen Bal dies near Mariupol after three days of torture by Russian military

 This was announced by the representative of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine Pavlo Kushch

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

^Just out for a stroll. I  bet Johnson's security detail was shitting bricks that entire time.

[Ron Swanson 176]

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Generally, the further out you go on either side, the poorer the relations between France and NATO/EU would be.

Zemmour (far-far-right party Reconquête - Reconquest) has backed off wanting to leave the EU but wants stronger autonomy. He also wants to pull out of NATO's unified command structure.

Le Pen (far-right party National Rally) is generally a Eurosceptic but hasn't voiced support for getting out of the EU lately. She used to want France to dump NATO entirely but now says she'd like to pull out of the unified command structure.

Pécresse (center-right party Republicans) is generally pro-EU and pro-NATO.

Macron (centrist/center-right) is strongly pro-EU and pro-NATO.

Hidalgo (center-left Socialist Party) is pro-EU and pro-NATO.

Jadot (centre-left to left-wing Europe Écologie Les Verts - Green Party) is pro-EU but has been squishy on his support for NATO but supposedly doesn't want to leave it...now.

Mélenchon (left-wing La France Insoumise - Unsubmissive France) is generally a Eurosceptic and wants out of NATO.

Roussel (far-left Communist Party) wants out of NATO.

 

The wife and I fly out for Paris this afternoon.  I guess we'll get to see first hand any shenanigans that occur after the election results.

[bolverk 29,671]

7 minutes ago, Ron Swanson said:

The wife and I fly out for Paris this afternoon.  I guess we'll get to see first hand any shenanigans that occur after the election results.

Bon voyage!

[Sawbonz 27,548]

1 hour ago, MillerEP said:

^This could be very bad. If they start going with this line of thinking, then this could give them the cover they need to do mass mobilization and transfer of private industry into war production. Right now they can't because it is illegal (on paper, which we know what that is worth) to do that for times not designated as a "war" which is handicapping their efforts to reconstitute and replace current losses. We all know they can do mental gymnastics to justify whatever they want if they feel like it, but this seems a bad omen to me.

 

Seems like if they take this tack then the UN should expel Russia as by that reasoning it is not the legitimate successor to the USSR

[Longhornlove 4,815]

5 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Especially the women, right?

Nata Lee for sure. I wood definitely fuck that.

[MillerEP 30,455]

45 days of full-scale Russian invasion in 🇺🇦 !

 In Lysychansk, a high-rise building, a gas station and an enterprise are on fire.

 More than 15,000 civilians are missing

 307 healthcare facilities have already been damaged by the shelling!

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

A unit of the Zaporizhzhya separate TRO brigade in cooperation with another unit of the Armed Forces destroyed a T-72 tank and an MTO-80 armored vehicle repair vehicle of the occupying forces.

Destroyed tank of racists.

 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21,905]

26 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Seems like if they take this tack then the UN should expel Russia as by that reasoning it is not the legitimate successor to the USSR

There is actually a legal opinion, written by an Israeli I think, that supports this position based on the UN Charter and how the other Soviet Republics were treated by the UN after the breakup of the USSR.  I saw it online, but I can’t find it now.

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

2 hours ago, MillerEP said:

^This could be very bad. If they start going with this line of thinking, then this could give them the cover they need to do mass mobilization and transfer of private industry into war production.

They can mobilize all they want, but they still need millions to actually occupy Ukraine, and they simply don't have the manpower and trucks to do that.  And Ukraine never even hit the full-on insurgency phase, and now they are boosting their air defenses, naval defenses, etc. as we speak.  

 

But if they try to do mass mobilization after Putin and the state media has been saying that things are going okay and that no conscripts are being used or needed....that's a FAFO moment.  And it will also cause some upheaval in Russian society - way too many would-be conscripts have bought their way out of being conscripts over the years, so that practice would have to end right then and there. And any internal resistance to men being called up is going to tie up troops/internal police/national guard, resources that Russia desperately needs in Ukraine.

2 hours ago, MillerEP said:

Right now they can't because it is illegal (on paper, which we know what that is worth) to do that for times not designated as a "war" which is handicapping their efforts to reconstitute and replace current losses. We all know they can do mental gymnastics to justify whatever they want if they feel like it, but this seems a bad omen to me.

I think Putin has to wrap something up by early May.  He can't wait the 4-6 months it would take to  go full on mass mobilization (from the moment war is declared to letters being sent out, to men showing up for induction, etc.), and he simply doesn't have the capability to get the untrained masses into combat anyways.

And war production......rifles and uniforms will be about it, and maybe trucks.  Way too many of their fancier systems either ended production many years ago, and would be hard to start back up quickly (think of all of the retooling needed, plus a large pool of technically skilled people to restart and produce the fancy stuff), or they rely too heavily on imports from the outside that they either are blocked from importing, or probably can't afford.

There is also the fact that right now, it takes a month or two of basic training plus a few more months of advanced training before a conscript is ready.  If they give them a month or two of training, and a rifle (or tell them to pick up the next rifle they see), it'll be a fucking slaughter of Russian youths.

As Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.”

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

6 hours ago, Eastwood said:

The Chinese don’t appreciate anything involving discussions about their business, internal or external. But if we make the distinction that we will step in if it involves invasions (Taiwan) but not internal struggles, that sends the appropriate message. That has been our policy towards the numerous genocides in Africa since the Somalia experiment failed.

And in the end, China has no say because they are not an ally to any party involved. They are hostile, culturally and economically, to almost every country on the planet.

Taiwan is getting a big boost in their Patriot/air defenses

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-up-to-95-million-equipment-training-taiwans-patriot-missile-system/

I think the Chinese Air Force at this point is far more competent than the Russians (or at least the Chinese would have a unified command), but it's not hard for the US/etc. to see what can be applied to Taiwan (and Taiwan has a big fucking moat around it).

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

3 hours ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

I'm so confused as to how Boris Johnson went from being a stooge for Brexit to being a stand up dude in the fight against tyranny.

Seems like the subject of a Pink Floyd double album.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12,301]

13 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

As Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.”

yeah, well, fuck that guy.

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

That dead Russian colonel that I mentioned yesterday, that's their 9th so far.  That's a lot - that's basically 9 regiments that lost their commanders.

And they've lost another Lt. Colonel, and this one is interesting to me because of the artillery angle - he was a MLRS battalion commander.  He would not have been anywhere near "The Front", and because he's a battalion commander, shouldn't have even been been near some of the forward deployed MLRS -  I would assume he would be well in the rear, probably near his regimental commander and/or one or more generals.

This was from one of the memorial pages, so the translation is shitty, but sounds like the Ukrainians hit his dugout with something (could be a UAV dropping a grenade):

"The commander of the jet artillery battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Dormidontov died on March 20. On the page of the parish it is written that two more officers died together with Dormidontov: "the enemy's men got exactly into the dugout, where there were 3 officers: the division commander, the battalion commander and the aircraft gunner.""

"The enemy mine hit exactly in the dugout, where there were three officers: the division commander, the battalion commander and the aircraft controller, the report says."

 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

Let's spoiler the long twitter posts?

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

Anybody curious about Russian reserves/conscripts, etc.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/explainer-russian-conscription-reserve-and-mobilization

Quote

Current law limits mobilization of reserves to soldiers and sailors younger than 45 and officers younger than 55. Men who transferred to the reserve less than two years ago, fathers of three or more children, and those with criminal records are also exempt from mobilization under current law.[22] The Russian State Duma adopted a bill on February 22 to strengthen general mobilization, making it mandatory for men to appear at a military commissar’s office without receiving a conscription notice from regional authorities.[23] This law will reduce the administrative time needed to enlist conscripts if the Kremlin announces martial law. Russian independent media source Vazhnye Istorii explained that the Russian military can activate both reservists and new conscripts during general mobilization, including those previously exempted from conscription.[24] In the event of a general mobilization, the Russian Army will likely attempt to fill the ranks of nascent reserve units and backfill combat casualties from units already serving in Ukraine.

That'll get ugly as a shitload of men will go AWOL/go on the run.

This is the kind of fun stuff that could entail:

(If this is true, it's the exception and not the norm)

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[bolverk 29,671]

If you've got a bit of time, below are a couple of good reads appearing in today's NYTimes (spoilered to avoid longcatting) on the domestic political climate inside Russia regarding dissent and crackdown by the Kremlin. The long term question we've all been asking in this thread is "Will the Russian people tolerate a full-blown descent into totalitarianism?"

Also, I'm posting a video of seemingly ordinary Russians either following the party line or trying to remain politically neutral, which is an obvious coping mechanism for not getting into trouble.

Spoiler

Putin’s War in Ukraine Shatters an Illusion in Russia
Russians long lived with an understanding: Stay away from politics, and live your life as you choose. The war in Ukraine wrecked that idea.

By Sabrina Tavernise April 9, 2022, 9:00 a.m. ET

The last time I was in Russia, the summer of 2015, I came face to face with a contradiction. What if a place was unfree, but also happy? How long could it stay that way?

Moscow had blossomed into a beautiful, European city, full of meticulously planted parks, bike lanes and parking spaces. Income for the average Russian had risen significantly over the course of the previous decade. At the same time, its political system was drifting ever closer to authoritarianism.

Fifteen years earlier, Boris Yeltsin had left power in shame, apologizing on national television “for having failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one go.”

By the summer of 2015, his successor, President Vladimir V. Putin, had seemingly made Russia bright and prosperous. The political system he built was increasingly restrictive, but many had learned to live with it.

Many Russian liberals had gone to work for nonprofits and local governments, throwing themselves into community building — making their cities better places to live. A protest movement in 2011 and 2012 had failed, and people were looking for other ways to shape their country. Big politics were hopeless, the thinking went, but one could make a real difference in small acts.

There was another side to this bargain: Mr. Putin was seemingly constrained, as well. Political action may have been forbidden, but there was tolerance when it came to other things, for example religion, culture and many forms of expression. His own calculus for the system to run smoothly meant he had to make some room for society.

Moscow in February, before the start of the war.

I lived in Russia for nine years, and began covering it for The New York Times in 2000, the year Mr. Putin was first elected. I spent lots of time telling people — in public writing and in my private life — that Russia might sometimes look bad, but that it had a lot of wonderful qualities, too.

But in the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, I have felt like I am watching someone I love lose their mind. Many of the Russian liberals who had turned to “small acts” are feeling a sense of shock and horror, too, said Alexandra Arkhipova, a Russian anthropologist.

“I see lots of posts and conversations saying these small deeds, it was a big mistake,” she said. “People have a metaphor. They say, ‘We were trying to make some cosmetic changes to our faces, when the cancer was growing and growing in our stomachs.’”

I began to wonder whether Russia was always going to end up here, and we just failed to see it. So I called Yevgeniya Albats, a Russian journalist who had warned of the dangers of a K.G.B. resurgence as early as the 1990s. Ms. Albats kept staring into the glare of the idea that at certain points in history, everything is at stake in political thought and action. She had long argued that any bargain with Mr. Putin was an illusion.

She said 2008 was a turning point, the moment Mr. Putin divorced the West, even invaded another country, and the West barely noticed.

“For Putin, it was a clear sign,” she said by telephone last month, “that he can do whatever he wants. And that’s exactly what he started doing. He behaved extremely rationally. He just realized that you don’t care.”

She was referring to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, which came shortly after President George W. Bush began to talk about NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. I covered that war, and spent the night with a Russian unit in the Georgian town of Gori and remember how invigorated the soldiers seemed, laughing, joking. The Soviet defeat in the Cold War had left a bitter sense of humiliation and loss. The invasion seemed to have renewed them.

“When Putin came, everything changed,” one officer told me. “We got some of our old strength back. People started to respect us again.”

A Russian soldier sitting on a tank in the Georgian town of Igoeti in 2008.

Ms. Albats sounded tired but determined. The day we talked, she had traveled to a Russian penal colony to be present for the sentencing of her friend Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s popular opposition leader, who used his allotted time to give a speech against the war.

“We now understand that when Putin decided to go into war in Ukraine, he had to get rid of Navalny,” she said, because he is the only one with the courage to resist.

Indeed, Mr. Navalny never accepted the turn away from direct confrontation and was building a nationwide opposition movement, leading people into the streets. He rejected the bargain and was willing to go to prison to defy it.

Mr. Arkhipova pointed out that his mantra, that the fight was not of good against evil but of good against neutral, was a direct challenge to the political passivity that Mr. Putin was demanding.

Many people I interviewed said the poisoning of Mr. Navalny in 2020 and the jailing of him in early 2021, after years of freedom, marked the end of the social contract and the beginning of Mr. Putin’s war. Like Al Qaeda’s killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Putin had to clear the field of opponents.

Greg Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, argues it was the political opposition’s success, which began to accelerate in 2018 and 2019, that tipped Mr. Putin toward war.

Professor Yudin said it was inconceivable to Mr. Putin that there could be people inside Russia who wanted the best for their country, yet were against him. So he looked for traitors and nursed an obsession with the idea that the West was after him.

“It’s a feature of this kind of regime,” Professor Yudin said. “It recodes internal dissent into external threats.”

As for my 2015 question — how long can a place be unfree and also happy — perhaps we have lived into the answer. Many liberals have left. Many of those who have not left face fines or even jail. In the weeks after the invasion, the police detained more than 15,000 people nationwide, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group, substantially higher than in the protests in 2012, when about 5,000 people were detained over 12 months, said Ms. Arkhipova, who studied that movement.

Ms. Albats has stayed and is angry at Russian liberals who have not.

The message, she said, is that “Russian liberals, they don’t have any tolerance for any problems.” She added, “They just run away.”

Russians who fled the country gathered last month in Istanbul.

At the same time, she said, it’s an extremely hard choice. “Choosing between jail and not jail, I’d rather choose not jail,” Ms. Albats said, adding that she already faces thousands of dollars in fines just for reporting about the war.

Mr. Yudin said the choice was hard because the crackdown was complete, and because political opposition was now being pulverized.

“The best comparison is Germany in 1939,” he said. “What kind of democratic movement would you expect there? This is the same. People are basically right now trying to save their lives.”

Not everyone, of course. Lev Gudkov, a sociologist at Levada Center, a research group that tracks Russian public opinion, told me that about two-thirds of people nationwide approve of Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine.

“It is a less-educated, older part of the population, mainly living in rural areas or in small and medium-sized cities, where the population is poorer and more dependent on power,” he said, referring to those who rely on public funds like pensions and state jobs. “They also receive their whole construction of reality exclusively from television.”

He points out that “if you look at 20 years of our research since Putin came to power, then the peaks of support for Putin and his popularity have always coincided with military campaigns.”

One such campaign was the war in Chechnya, a particularly brutal subduing of a population that in 1999 was Mr. Putin’s signature act before being elected president the first time. We are starting to see some of the features of that war in Ukraine: bodies with hands bound, mass graves, tales of torture. In Chechnya, the result was the systematic elimination of anyone connected to the fight against Russia. It is too soon to say whether that was the intent in Bucha.

Residents of Bucha walking past the body of a civilian left in the street there last week.

Now the bargain is broken, the illusion has shattered. And the country has been pitched into a new phase. But what is it? Mr. Yudin argues that Russia is moving out of authoritarianism — where political passivity and civic disengagement are key features — into totalitarianism, which relies on mass mobilization, terror and homogeneity of beliefs. He believes Mr. Putin is on the brink, but may hesitate to make the shift.

“In a totalitarian system, you have to release free energy to start terror,” he said. Mr. Putin, he said, “is a control freak, used to micromanagement.”

However, if the Russian state starts to fail, either through a collapse of Russia’s economy or a complete military defeat in Ukraine, “unleashing terror will be the only way for him to save himself.”

Which is why the current situation is so dangerous, for Ukraine and for people in Russia opposed Mr. Putin.

“Putin is so convinced that he cannot afford to lose, that he will escalate,” Professor Yudin said. “He has staked everything on it.”

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3,868]

2 hours ago, MillerEP said:

^Just out for a stroll. I  bet Johnson's security detail was shitting bricks that entire time.

Dude carrying the bag in the Boris video? Is that the UK nuke football? What the hell is the pucker factor of being assigned to carry that while the UK PM is 'strolling' around Kyiv in wartime? Damn.

[Sawbonz 27,548]

That is a huge fuck you to Putin

[bolverk 29,671]

Article 2

Spoiler

Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War
Citizens are denouncing one another, illustrating how the war is feeding paranoia and polarization in Russian society.

A screen last month in St. Petersburg, Russia, showing a “Z” symbol in the colors of the St. George ribbons.

Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, showed an uplifting YouTube video to her eighth-grade class last month in which children, in Russian and Ukrainian, sing about a “world without war.”

After she played it, a group of girls stayed behind during recess and quizzed her on her views.

“Ukraine is a separate country, a separate one,” Ms. Dubrova, 57, told them.

“No longer,” one of the girls shot back.

A few days later, the police came to her school in the port town of Korsakov. In court, she heard a recording of that conversation, apparently made by one of the students. The judge handed down a $400 fine for “publicly discrediting” Russia’s Armed Forces. The school fired her, she said, for “amoral behavior.”

“It’s as though they’ve all plunged into some kind of madness,” Ms. Dubrova said in a phone interview, reflecting on the pro-war mood around her.

With President Vladimir V. Putin’s direct encouragement, Russians who support the war against Ukraine are starting to turn on the enemy within.

The episodes are not yet a mass phenomenon, but they illustrate the building paranoia and polarization in Russian society. Citizens are denouncing one another in an eerie echo of Stalin’s terror, spurred on by vicious official rhetoric from the state and enabled by far-reaching new laws that criminalize dissent.

There are reports of students turning in teachers and people telling on their neighbors and even the diners at the next table. In a mall in western Moscow, it was the “no to war” text displayed in a computer repair store and reported by a passer-by that got the store’s owner, Marat Grachev, detained by the police. In St. Petersburg, a local news outlet documented the furor over suspected pro-Western sympathies at the public library; it erupted after a library official mistook the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for that of Mark Twain.

Marat Grachev was fined more than $1,200 for the “No War” sign hanging in his computer repair store in Moscow.

In the western region of Kaliningrad, the authorities sent residents text messages urging them to provide phone numbers and email addresses of “provocateurs” in connection with the “special operation” in Ukraine, Russian newspapers reported; they can do so conveniently through a specialized account in the Telegram messaging app. A nationalist political party launched a website urging Russians to report “pests” in the elite.

“I am absolutely sure that a cleansing will begin,” Dmitri Kuznetsov, the member of Parliament behind the website, said in an interview, predicting that the process would accelerate after the “active phase” of the war ended. He then clarified: “We don’t want anyone to be shot, and we don’t even want people to go to prison.”

But it is the history of mass execution and political imprisonment in the Soviet era, and the denunciation of fellow citizens encouraged by the state, that now looms over Russia’s deepening climate of repression. Mr. Putin set the tone in a speech on March 16, declaring that Russian society needed a “self-purification” in which people would “distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths.”

In the Soviet logic, those who choose not to report their fellow citizens could be viewed as being suspect themselves.

“In these conditions, fear is settling into people again,” said Nikita Petrov, a leading scholar of the Soviet secret police. “And that fear dictates that you report.”

In March, Mr. Putin signed a law that punishes public statements contradicting the government line on what the Kremlin terms its “special military operation” in Ukraine with as much as 15 years in prison. It was a harsh but necessary measure, the Kremlin said, given the West’s “information war” against Russia.

Prosecutors have already used the law against more than 400 people, according to the OVD-Info rights group, including a man who held up a piece of paper with eight asterisks on it. “No to war” in Russian has eight letters.

Graffiti reading “No to war” in Russian on an advertising board in St. Petersburg last month.

“This is some kind of enormous joke that we, to our misfortune, are living in,” Aleksandra Bayeva, the head of OVD-Info’s legal department, said of the absurdity of some of the war-related prosecutions. She said she had seen a sharp rise in the frequency of people reporting on their fellow citizens.

“Repressions are not just done by the hands of the state authorities,” she said. “They are also done by the hands of regular citizens.”

In most cases, the punishments related to war criticism have been limited to fines; for the more than 15,000 antiwar protesters arrested since the invasion began on Feb. 24, fines are the most common penalty, though some were sentenced to as many as 30 days in jail, Ms. Bayeva said. But some people are being threatened with longer prison terms.

In the western city of Penza, another English teacher, Irina Gen, arrived in class one day and found a giant “Z” scrawled on the chalkboard. The Russian government has been promoting the letter as a symbol of support for the war, after it was seen painted as an identifying marker on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine.

Ms. Gen told her students it looked like half a swastika.

Later, an eighth grader asked her why Russia was being banned from sports competitions in Europe.

“I think that’s the right thing to do,” Ms. Gen responded. “Until Russia starts behaving in a civilized manner, this will continue forever.”

“But we don’t know all the details,” a girl said, referring to the war.

“That’s right, you don’t know anything at all,” Ms. Gen said.

A recording of that exchange appeared on a popular account on Telegram that often posts inside information about criminal cases. The Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the K.G.B., called her in and warned her that her words blaming Russia for the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, last month were “100 percent a criminal case.”

She is now being investigated for causing “grave consequences” under last month’s censorship law, punishable by 10 to 15 years in prison.

Ms. Gen, 45, said she found little support among her students or from her school, and quit her job this month. When she talked in class about her opposition to the war, she said she felt “hatred” toward her radiating from some of her students.

“My point of view did not resonate in the hearts and minds of basically anyone,” she said in an interview.

The “Z” symbol on a building in St. Petersburg. It has become a symbol of support for the war.

But others who have been the targets of denunciation by fellow citizens drew more hopeful lessons from the experience. On Sakhalin Island, after local news outlets reported on Ms. Dubrova’s case, one of her former students raised $150 in a day for her, before Ms. Dubrova told her to stop and said she would pay the fine herself. On Friday, Ms. Dubrova handed the money over to a local dog shelter.

In Moscow, Mr. Grachev, the computer repair store owner, said he found it remarkable that not one of his hundreds of customers threatened to turn him in for the “no to war” text that he prominently displayed on a screen behind the counter for several weeks after the invasion. After all, he noted, he was forced to double the price of some services because of Western sanctions, surely angering some of his customers. Instead, many thanked him.

The man who apparently turned in Mr. Grachev was a passer-by he refers to as a “grandpa” who, he said, twice warned his employees in late March that they were violating the law. Mr. Grachev, 35, said he believed the man was convinced he was doing his civic duty by reporting the store to the police, and most likely did not have access to information beyond state propaganda.

Mr. Grachev was fined 100,000 rubles, more than $1,200. A Moscow politician wrote about the case on social media, including Mr. Grachev’s bank details for anyone who wanted to help. Enough money to cover the fine arrived within two hours, Mr. Grachev said.

He received 250,000 rubles in total, he said, from about 250 separate donations, and he plans to donate the surplus to OVD-Info, which provided him with legal aid.

“In practice, we see that not everything is so bad,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Grachev is now pondering how to replace his “no to war” sign. He is considering: “There was a sign here for which a 100,000 ruble fine was imposed.”

 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

2 minutes ago, bolverk said:

If you've got a bit of time, below are a couple of good reads appearing in today's NYTimes (spoilered to avoid longcatting) on the domestic political climate inside Russia regarding dissent and crackdown by the Kremlin. The long term question we've all been asking in this thread is "Will the Russian people tolerate a full-blown descent into totalitarianism?"

I would argue that they already have the totalitarianism if they are already being threatened with jail for discussing casualties or calling it a war (a very important legal distinction in Russia these days), and if they are being banned from certain social media.

The short-term question is "Will the Russians tolerate the government declaring war and ordering every male between the ages of 18-45 to report to their local military commissar’s office without a conscription notice and without having been in the reserves?"

Because that's the one that could break open the society.  

[bolverk 29,671]

2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I would argue that they already have the totalitarianism if they are already being threatened with jail for discussing casualties or calling it a war (a very important legal distinction in Russia these days), and if they are being banned from certain social media.

The short-term question is "Will the Russians tolerate the government declaring war and ordering every male between the ages of 18-45 to report to their local military commissar’s office without a conscription notice and without having been in the reserves?"

Because that's the one that could break open the society.  

The first article I posted was talking about their shift from authoritarianism to totalitarianism with one of the differences being that quiet dissent/neutrality was acceptable before and, yes, they can be fined or jailed now, but in the second article, some are still getting away with it (a little bit). They're on the path though.

Please read both if you're interested.

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

6 minutes ago, bolverk said:

The first article I posted was talking about their shift from authoritarianism to totalitarianism with one of the differences being that quiet dissent/neutrality was acceptable before and, yes, they can be fined or jailed now, but in the second article, some are still getting away with it (a little bit). They're on the path though.

Please read both if you're interested.

Will read them. I have noticed that a bunch of the Russian YouTuber/influencer types have bailed on Russia for greener pastures either in Western Europe, or in some of the outlying Asian countries.  A few that remain, while I'm not going to watch their full videos or anything, a few minutes of watching the intros to their latest videos make it clear that they know they are treading a fine line between getting in trouble, but not pissing off their audiences with the propaganda.

[MillerEP 30,455]

 

[MillerEP 30,455]

The first trophy of Russian legion (Russians who are fighting on Ukrainian side). Captured lieutenant Yuriy Shalaev.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzweb9/the_first_trophy_of_russian_legion_russians_who/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

After long time with no connection to the outside world, people from the liberated territories of Ukraine have ability to call their family thanks to Starlink [subbed]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzoxfc/after_long_time_with_no_connection_to_the_outside/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

Ukrainians blocking Russian and Belarusian trucks on the Polish-Belarusian border

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzyugs/ukrainians_blocking_russian_and_belarusian_trucks/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

❤🇺🇦 I'm not sure where this is but it's truly inspiring

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzq74p/im_not_sure_where_this_is_but_its_truly_inspiring/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Great setting for Legia during the match against Lech. #Ukraina

[MillerEP 30,455]

The Estonians put the value of their purely military support for the #Ukraine at 222 million euros. According to available information, small Estonia is the largest supplier of arms and equipment for the Ukrainian army in the EU.

Redeployments:

 

[InkaUtexas 25,918]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Let's spoiler the long twitter posts?

No. Watch it all. Just cuz you cannot scroll quickly when taking a shit and watching on your phone means nothing. 

We all, the entire world, needs to be witness. @MillerEP is doing damn good work. His sources are known, he is not posting political shit and is doing us all a favor. 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

No. Watch it all. Just cuz you cannot scroll quickly when taking a shit and watching on your phone means nothing. 

We all, the entire world, needs to be witness. @MillerEP is doing damn good work. His sources are known, he is not posting political shit and is doing us all a favor. 

I'm not saying he's not doing us a favor, it's just slow as shit and makes the page jump all over the place when they are loading.

[InkaUtexas 25,918]

Just now, atomheartbevo said:

I'm not saying he's not doing us a favor, it's just slow as shit and makes the page jump all over the place when they are loading.

Well you are not getting hammered by a GRAD right now, so I would say you can handle it. 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

$35 million aircraft.  These are/were still in production, although it's one of those situations where the sanctions/etc. could have crippled production.

 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

44 days into the war, and Russia is the one using fucking IEDs and landmines and boobytraps.

 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

Various sites are saying that the Brits will be giving them Sea Spears, which are basically upgraded Hellfires (15 miles or less range), and not Harpoons.

While it would be great if they could deploy Harpoons, the upgraded Hellfires would be easier for them to equip and get into combat, and they can hit smaller/fast boats that would be making the landings (and they still have plenty of weapons to hit the large ships as we've seen).