You nuts? I shouldn't be surprised though, always the ones that never lived in Russia are the most knowledgable about what's it like there.
Vlad calling up the annual batch of conscripts in the midst of the mobilization of the reserves and new recruits for the mobilization (who are supposed to be just reserves, except everyone knows that just being male of any kind gets you called up.) Also, conscripts cannot be sent to conflict zones under Russian law unless war is declared, except everyone knows that they are. What a mess. Frigging idiot. Putin signs new decree, calling up 120,000 Russians https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-signs-decree-calling-120-172332869.html
Some of the draftees are taking themselves out before they get anywhere near Ukraine. Drafted Russian rapper, 27, takes his own life after telling fans ‘I’m not ready to kill’ in Ukraine in haunting message https://www.the-sun.com/news/6344309/drafted-russian-rapper-takes-own-life-haunting-message/
Many in Russia want change... Jailed dissident Alexey Navalny says Russia must be transformed after war https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/30/europe/navalny-ukraine-war-intl/index.html Imprisoned Russian dissident Alexey Navalny says the only way for his country to avoid an “endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism” is to become a parliamentary democracy. Writing in the Washington Post, Navalny said while Western nations have rightly asserted the importance of Ukraine’s independence and preventing Russia from winning the war in Ukraine, they need to begin thinking about what Russia will look like once the fighting stops. “The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive,” Navalny wrote in an essay conveyed to The Post by his legal team. He is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence at a penal colony. “The issue of postwar Russia should become the central issue – and not just one element among others – of those who are striving for peace. No long-term goals can be achieved without a plan to ensure that the source of the problems stops creating them,” wrote Navalny. “Russia must cease to be an instigator of aggression and instability.” Navalny is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critic, and his dissenting views have nearly cost him his life. Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in 2020, an attack several Western officials and Navalny himself openly blamed on the Kremlin. Russia has denied any involvement. After a five-month stay in Germany recovering from the Novichok poisoning, Navalny last year returned to Moscow, where he was immediately arrested for violating probation terms imposed from a 2014 case. Earlier this year, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on fraud charges he said were politically motivated. Navalny said in his essay, which was published the day Putin announced Russia would annex about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, that the war in Ukraine – like conflicts before it – have helped those who hold power in Moscow. “The Russian elite over the past 23 years has learned rules that have never failed: War is not that expensive, it solves all domestic political problems, it raises public approval sky-high, it does not particularly harm the economy, and – most importantly – winners face no accountability,” Navalny wrote. The solution, Navalny asserts, is to adopt a form of democratic government that decentralizes power, similar to what the Baltic states have employed. “The threat to peace and stability in Europe is aggressive imperial authoritarianism, endlessly inflicted by Russia upon itself,” Navalny said. “Postwar Russia, like post-Putin Russia, will be doomed to become belligerent and Putinist again. This is inevitable as long as the current form of the country’s development is maintained. Only a parliamentary republic can prevent this.”
Russian forces leave Lyman Russian troops have pulled out of the town of the strategic city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine “due to the risk to be encircled” and moved to “more advantageous frontiers” Russia’s ministry of defence said via Telegram on Saturday. Ukraine forces encircled Russian forces in the eastern town earlier today where Russia’s forces at Lyman totalled about 5,000 to 5,500 soldiers. Ukrainian soldiers were later seen raising the nation’s flag before the entrance sign to the city. The retreat comes a day after Vladimir Putin signed “accession treaties” formalising Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine, marking the largest forcible takeover of territory in Europe since the second world war. Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern forces, previously said: Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and it is psychologically very important. https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-10-01-22/index.html
Reports are still coming in. The Russians make it sound like it was a tidy evacuation to a better position. But earlier today, I read some Ukrainian reports that said that there were 5000 to 5500 hundred in there but "it would be less now because so many were killed." That sounds less than tidy for the Russians. Have to see some more reporting. I also saw a report where the former Ukrainian governor of Donetsk said that the Russians had asked for a deal to evacuate their soldiers which Ukraine did not accept- but the report included a statement from Ukrainian Defense that said that they had no information on that. Some real time reporting going on right this hour. A couple more hours will give a better understanding i think.
absolutely right - no doubt. but how many people - beside putin and medvedev - have literally to be killed ... ... and what else has to happen in this rotten "country" - so that - one day - something at least similar to democracy and rule of law can evolve? ---> for the first time ever in the history of "russia" ???