Putin shows up at the hospital and unleashes all his charm on a couple soldiers, who clearly looked like they were participating in a hostage video. The first thing the soldier wants is permission from Putin to "continue to serve" ie. go back to Ukraine. Yeh, I guess some of us here- myself included- fail to understand how special it is to participate in the special operation. Nevermind that they don't seem to have any wounds and if they did their officers would have shot them in Ukraine. One of the soldiers says he has been on army contract for eight years, so he is an army stooge, not just a one-year conscript. Probably he works down at one of the recruiting centers in Moscow and has never been to Ukraine- and his officer called him up and told him to get his arse over to the hospital because they needed a couple stooges to appear with Putin. Putin visits injured soldiers for the first time as he puts on charm offensive in Russia amid economic fallout from his war in Ukraine https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...oldiers-time-puts-charm-offensive-Russia.html
You see Gary, you and I are two completely different people, you are full of hatred towards Russians whilst I don’t hate Ukrainian people, I actually feel sorry for them, that they were misled by Kiev regime who told them that Donbas is basically terrorists, that’s total horseshit, they never bombed Ukraine but Ukraine did bomb Donbas for 8 years. Donbas didn’t want to be part of the new Ukraine and that’s that, it’s a national conflict, not what the likes of you are trying to portrait #terrorists Russia is defending Donbas and yes, payback is being served as well as preservation of national interests of Russia, after all, you may well consider NATO to be a defense organisation but who is it meant to be protecting from? Russia. So don’t be surprised when Russia doesn’t view it as a friendly entity.
Orcs are orcs Pu. Disorganised, greedy and spiteful. You are one born and bread so have to find an excuse or question yourself and you are here to get a release of endorphins. One man chose this insanity and it wasn't the comedian. Durte thinks he is a cunt Pu.
The scene from Servant of the People when he discussed the relationship between Ukraine and Russia with the phantom of Ivan the Terrible. Very inciteful and prescient. https://9gag.com/gag/aLvLEov
Kissinger vs. Soros on Russia and Ukraine The notable nonagenerians offer dueling visions of world order at the World Economic Forum. By Walter Russell Mead May 25, 2022 https://www.wsj.com/articles/duelin...singer-soros-foreign-policy-peace-11653509537 Henry Kissinger speaks at an event in Berlin, Jan. 21, 2020. Photo: omer messinger/Shutterstock Two American immigrants, both survivors of life under Nazi rule still making waves in their nineties, set the terms of debate at the World Economic Forum. Henry Kissinger, who celebrates his 99th birthday this week, made a virtual appearance to urge against attempts to defeat or marginalize Russia, calling on Ukraine to accept the territorial losses of 2014 to end the war. A few hours later, George Soros, in person at the forum at age 91, warned that victory in the war against Vladimir Putin’s Russia was necessary to “save civilization” and urged the West to provide Ukraine with everything it needs to prevail. Their prescriptions are radically different, but their perceptions have much in common. Both men believe that American values and interests make the defense of peace in Europe a primary goal of American foreign policy. Both see themselves as defenders of what is best in Western civilization. Both see the war as a major shock to the world system and fear the consequences of a long military struggle. Messrs. Kissinger and Soros both believe that Russia is ultimately a secondary problem for American policy, and that the future of U.S.-China relations is of much greater significance in the long run. George Soros answers questions after speaking in Davos, Switzerland. Photo: fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Where they disagree is on the nature of the order and civilization they seek to conserve. Mr. Soros, much like the Biden administration, sees the dominant issue in world politics as a struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. Democracies are obliged by law to respect the rights of their citizens at home, and must conduct themselves under the restraints of international law abroad. Totalitarian rulers reject such limits at home and abroad, and Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is as lawless as his treatment of dissidents at home. His attack on Ukraine is an attack on the fundamental principles of international order, and if that attack succeeds, international politics will return to the law of the jungle by which, as the Athenians once told the Melians during the Peloponnesian War, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The Kissinger position is less ideological. There always has been and always will be many types of government in the world. America’s job is to create and defend a balance of power that protects our freedom and that of our allies at the least possible risk and cost. We do not have a mission to convert the Russians and Chinese to the gospel of democracy and we must recognize that rival great powers have rights and interests that must be respected. Russia, as Mr. Kissinger told the Davos audience, is and will remain an important element in the European state system, and an enduring peace must recognize that unavoidable fact. Looking at history, the one thing that seems clear is that neither approach yields an infallible guide to success. The French and British leaders who tried to appease Hitler in the 1930s made very Kissingerian arguments about the need to respect German national interests. The neoconservatives pushing George W. Bush to invade Iraq made Sorosian arguments about the totalitarian nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime. As Messrs. Kissinger and Soros would both agree, mechanistically applying any theory of history to the messy realities of international life is a good way to get into trouble. When Winston Churchill, a man who demonstrated both Sorosian and Kissingerian characteristics through his long career, was asked about postwar planning in 1942, he replied with words Western leaders should remember today. “I hope these speculative studies will be entrusted mainly to those on whose hands time hangs heavy, and that we shall not overlook Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery Book recipe for jugged hare—‘First catch your hare.’ ” Our hare is not caught. Far from asking for terms, Mr. Putin may be preparing for a war of attrition—and a long war holds many perils for the West. Russia’s new tactic of threatening the world food supply by blockading Ukrainian ports reminds us that Mr. Putin still has some cards up his sleeve and many Europeans appear to fear a Russian gas embargo more than Russia fears a European boycott. Ukraine cannot fight a long war without enormous help from the West, economic as well as military. What will happen to its currency as Ukraine spends everything it has on a war of survival? How many $40 billion aid packages is Congress prepared to pass? How much economic aid is the EU ready to provide at a time when many EU economies are struggling with inflation and high fuel prices? If the war causes food shortages and even famines around the world and political instability spreads into such countries as Egypt, will the West be able to coordinate a global response even as it continues to aid Ukraine? Henry Kissinger and George Soros may have dominated the Davos debates, but Mrs. Glasse will probably have the last word.
Putin’s Puppets Can’t Stop Bitching About the Grueling Cost of His War https://www.thedailybeast.com/russi...ueling-cost-of-vladimir-putins-war-in-ukraine CRUSHING The Kremlin mouthpieces who hyped up the war in Ukraine are now having a pity party over the crushing impact the conflict has had on Russia. Julia Davis Published May. 26, 2022 Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty Russia state media has descended into a seemingly endless moan-fest about the unprecedented Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, all while dishing out distractions and schadenfreude to convince everyday Russians that Americans are even worse off. During Tuesday’s broadcast of state TV show 60 Minutes, referring to the shortage of baby food in the U.S. with a spiteful scowl, host Evgeny Popov said: “American children have nothing to eat.” Journalist Andrei Sidorchik replied with an even uglier diatribe: “Meanwhile, Ukrainian children are getting missiles and bombs delivered to them, which are supposed to somehow secure their future... They’ll have no fathers, no homes, their country will be burned out, they’ll have nothing that American children have.” Popov retorted: “But they’ll have McDonald’s!” When Russia’s own problems are being discussed, the mood in Kremlin-controlled TV studios is far from jolly—in part because state media mouthpieces were so wrong in their earlier predictions about how the war would impact Russia. While Putin was mounting his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his top propagandists were tilling the soil of public opinion, assuring everyday citizens that the war would be quick and relatively painless. In January, TASS published commentary by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who asserted that Russia isn’t afraid of sanctions because “We are quite big and quite self-sufficient to be harmed by these sanctions." He claimed that sanctions were even beneficial for the Russian economy: “To some extent we are trying to take advantage of them in terms of developing our domestic economy, our domestic production.” In mid-February, appearing on the state TV show The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan boasted: “McCain is dead, Obama is gone, Putin is still here." She brazenly dismissed the idea that Russia would face severe sanctions for re-invading Ukraine: "What can they do to us? What did they do to us after Crimea? Where’s our ‘economy in tatters’?” In a case of “be careful what you wish for,” Russia’s war was met with a barrage of punishing sanctions. While the Kremlin is repeatedly asserting that the sanctions are not working, these denials simply mean that the regime of President Vladimir Putin has no intention of altering its course. Meanwhile, the restrictions are battering Russia’s faltering economy, which was already undermined by decades of corruption and mismanagement. One paramount problem plaguing the Kremlin is the lack of high-performance computer chips, due to the Western ban on the export of semiconductors to Russia. Advanced semiconductors power critical battlefield systems and without them, the Russian military’s fighting ability is severely eroded. The frustration over Russia’s current impotence to secure its own chip manufacturing is spilling out even in the tightly controlled state media environment. On Tuesday’s 60 Minutes, host Popov shot down suggestions from pundits that Russia can quickly organize its own production of semiconductors. “One factory that produces semiconductors would cost us $20-30 billion... It’s quite clear that we can’t build them quickly. We have to look for them on foreign markets. It’s utopia for us to suggest we could be making them here,” Popov said. Vladimir Avatkov, from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, delivered a sunny—albeit an Orwellian—outlook: “In the non-Western world, they’re looking at us with hopeful anticipation. They’re waiting for the time when Russia can actively involve and attract others into its new security architecture.” Even seasoned a propagandist like Popov seemed aghast at the delusional forecast and snidely asked: “They’re waiting to join us, even though we have no Visa, Mastercard, iPhone, or McDonald’s?” While Russia is waging war and promising peace, concerns about sanction-caused shortages keep leaking out in state media. Russian soldiers are reportedly buying supplies and equipment at their own expense, state media propagandists are crowdfunding the purchase of drones—and everyday citizens are sending toilet paper to the Russian troops. Last week, the deputy speaker of the Russian Duma, Pyotr Tolstoy, boasted on 60 Minutes: “Do you know what our constituents are doing? They’re buying packages of toilet paper... and bringing it to us, so we can send them to our soldiers.” Desperate to free itself from the chains of unsparing sanctions, Russia is resorting to blackmail on a global scale. Putin’s state media is trying to twist the looming food crisis, caused by Russia’s war, to the Kremlin’s advantage. In April, RIA Novosti published an article about the daunting prospect of global hunger, entitled: “Russia has a weapon against the West that is more frightening than missiles.” Russia is preventing Ukraine from using its main ports on the Black and Azov Seas, which is interfering with the country’s extensive grain exports. “This is only the beginning of the struggle.” On Wednesday, news agency Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko, who responded to Western appeals for the Ukrainian ports to be unblocked by requesting the removal of sanctions against Russia’s financial sector and the country’s exports. While Ukraine’s grain is being blocked from reaching its recipients, the Kremlin’s state media mouthpieces frame the approaching crisis as a mere “market competition” which Russia intends to win. During last week’s broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, Simonyan boasted that unlike India and the United States, Russia had no drought and would experience no shortage of food. She added that Moscow could choose to share or sell its extensive food stocks, but only with those who behave “nicely” towards Russia. In another state media venting session on Tuesday, senior member of the Communist Party Yuri Afonin delivered a grim forecast: “The West is ready to fight us until the end... How can we respond? Only with a sovereign economy, the rebuilding of our economy. Yes, there are some people—thankfully, there’s less and less of them—who keep hoping that everything will settle down, calm down and return to normal. They need to understand, that will never happen,” he said on Tuesday’s 60 Minutes. Host Popov complained: “They’re offering us the ’90s, they want to humiliate us, they want hunger, unemployment, technological underdevelopment.” Afonin replied: “Unfortunately, there is no end in sight. This is only the beginning of the struggle.”
I posted this yesterday in the Russian economy thread. The Russians are bleeding reserves but I must admit not as bad as I expected. They had a $40B drawdown in the first 30 days of the war and are now at about $1B a day. We need cut more energy buys.
Storage, it's a thing. It is sort of a Golden Oldies week I guess. Hearing from Kissinger and Soros. Whatever. Thow it all into the mix. I listen to Soros here because he is referring to a factual consideration related to storage- versus some of his ideological babbling and dabbling. George Soros says Russia’s gas storage is almost full — and Europe should hold its nerve https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/26/putin-george-soros-says-russia-is-blackmailing-europe-with-gas.html
Putin - keeping the "special" in "special operations". New Punishments Await Russian Defectors as Putin Grows Alarmed Over Ukraine New legislation that would impose 2o-year prison sentences on Russians who fight for a foreign cause follows growing concern in the Kremlin about the state of Putin’s invasion. https://www.usnews.com/news/world-r...defectors-as-putin-grows-alarmed-over-ukraine