Russians are something. Morning of 10/1, AS the Russian forces were getting absolutely crushed in Liman, their "war correspondents" were reporting amazing successes in Liman, Ukrainians getting routed, etc. And I quote: "Оперативно-тактическая ситуация в Красном Лимане переломлена. ВСУ обескуражены и несут несоизмеримые потери." "The operational-tactical situation in Krasny Liman has been reversed. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are discouraged and suffer disproportionate losses." See here: https://www.yaplakal.com/forum1/topic2509981.html - this post got thousand+ likes (which is huge for that forum) and all the enthusiastic "way to gos". Before someone, after pages and pages of praises, posted that Liman was taken and all the Russian troops were killed or captured. Still some don't believe it. This amazing ability to just say "white" when it's black is something. Pathetic and wondrous at the same time.
Putin's speech. I know people hate him and think he's a tyrant or whatever. But, for gosh sake, at least read his own words (translated, of course) before criticizing. Sure, then maybe he's whatever. https://konstantinkisin.substack.com/p/putin-the-end-of-western-hegemony This is a reproduction of my live Twitter summary/translation of Vladimir Putin's speech: I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin's speech. Obviously, that won't happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible. Setting aside his brief comments on the recent "referendums", he spends most of his speech discussing the West. His primary complaint isn't NATO expansion, which gets only a cursory mention. The West is greedy and seeks to enslave and colonise other nations, like Russia. The West uses the power of finance and technology to enforce its will on other nations. To collect what he calls the "hegemon's tax". To this end the West destabilises countries, creates terrorist enclaves and most of all seeks to deprive other countries of sovereignty. It is this "avarice" and desire to preserve its power that is the reason for the "hybrid war" the collective West is "waging on Russia". They want us to be a "colony". They do not want us to be free, they want Russians to be a mob of soulless slaves - direct quote. The rules-based order the West goes on about is "nonsense". Who made these rules? Who agreed to them? Russia is an ancient country and civilization and we will not play by these "rigged" rules. The West has no moral authority to challenge the referendums because it has violated the borders of other countries. Western elites are "totalitarian, despotic and apartheidistic" - direct quote. They are racist against Russia and other countries and nations. "Russophobia is racism". They discriminate by calling themselves the "civilised world". They colonised, started the global slave trade, genocided native Americans, pillaged India and Africa, forced China to buy opium through war. We, on the other hand, are proud that we "led" the anti-colonial movement that helped countries develop to reduce poverty and inequality. They are Russophobic (they hate us) because we didn't allow our country to be pillaged by creating a strong CENTRALISED (emphasis his) state based on Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. They have been trying to destabilise our country since the 17th century in the Times of Trouble. Eventually, they managed to "get their hands on our riches" at the end of the 20th century. They called us friends and partners while pumping out trillions of dollars (his irony game is strong today). We remember this. We didn't forget. The West claims to bring freedom and democracy to other countries but it's the exact opposite of the truth. The unipolar world is anti-democratic by its very nature. It is a lie. They used nuclear weapons, creating a precedent. They flattened German cities without "any military need to do so". There was no need for this except to scare us and the rest of the world. Korea, Vietnam. To this day they "occupy" Japan, South Korea and Germany and other countries while cynically calling them "allies". The West has surveillance over the leaders of these nations who "swallow these insults like the slaves they are". He then talks about bioweapon research (haven't heard about them for a while) and human experiments "including in Ukraine". The US rules the world by the power of the fist. Any country which seeks to challenge Western hegemony becomes an enemy. Their neocolonialism is cloaked in lies like "containment" of Russia, China and Iran. The concept of truth has been destroyed with fakes and extreme propaganda (irony game still strong). You cannot feed your people with printed dollars and social media. You need food and energy. But Western elites have no desire to find a solution to the food and energy crises *they* (emphasis his) created. They solved the problems at the start of 20c with WW1 and the US established dominance of the world via the dollar as a result of WW2. In the 80s they had another crisis they solved by "plundering our country". Now they want to solve their problems by "breaking Russia". Russia "understands its responsibility to the international community" and will "do everything to cool the heads of these neocolonials who are destined to fail". They're crazy. I want to speak to all Russian citizens, do we want to replace mum and dad with parent 1 and 2? They invented genders and claim you can "transition". Do we want this for our children? We have a different vision. They have abandoned religion and embraced Satanism - direct quote. The world is going through a revolutionary transformation. A multipolar world offers nations freedom to develop as they wish and they make up the majority of the world. We have many like-minded friends in Western countries. We see and appreciate their support. They are forming liberation, anti-colonial movements as we speak - direct quote. These will only grow. We are fighting for a fair world for our country. The idea of exceptionalism is criminal and we must turn this shameful page. The breaking of the West's hegemony is INEVITABLE (emphasis his). There is no going back. We are fighting for our "great (as in big), historic Russia". Our values are (irony game crescendo): love of our fellow man, compassion and mercy. Truth is with us, Russia is with us.
Navalny was enthusiastically for the invasion and annexation of Crimea. He's a hardcore nationalist, his argument with Putin regime is about details, not goals.
as we already knew - this is a very very sick person. and corona pandemic isolation made him completely nuts. he is living in the past exclusively. dares to speak about freedom, democracy, ... dares to call anyone else "despotic" world will move on without him. and so will russia, hopefully.
i don't know if someone like navalny or chodorkowski or whoever should be in any new russian gov. would there be enough decent, honest and intelligent people left at all in todays russia - to form a new gov. / administration? i don't know - but i hope so. dictatorship, "system putin", mafia style ... are a dead end for any country. a free and progressive russia would be great for the entire planet.
I would use the same arguments as the Russians did used when mobilizing 300,000 to over 1 million Russians: "less than 1% of the population." So almost nothing. Just about 1.5 million Russians. So: all Russians politicians, all oligarchs, top of the army, complete FSB.
Your boy is getting crushed. He’s trying to nazify the Russian people with right wing culture wars. Total clown if you buy into any of that garbage. authoritarian countries seem strong until tested and liberal democracies seem weak until provoked. People will fight for freedom and run when they fight out of fear. Ask yourself, who’s running and who’s fighting.
As additional news has come in, it looks like the way the kabuki dance worked in Liman was that the Ukrainians made them an offer to surrender and told them that they "would be treated better than their own officers treat them." I guess as this scenario progressed and the offer was being considered the Russians decided to order the withdrawal and retreat of the men. Y'all know what was going on there. The Russians properly perceived that the men were getting ready to surrender and did not want that to happen. So they chose the lesser of two humiliations. Retreat vs. surrender. That will drive Putin's buddy nuts- Kadryvov or whatever the fuck his name is, the Chenchen guy who keeps telling Putin that no soldiers should be allowed to retreat and that they should be shot- including the general. Chechen Boy knows what happened there and so does Russian State TV. Russian command may say they retreated to a better vantage point but ain't nobody believing that- especially Chechen Boy. If anyone sees the Russian TV geniuses discussing this, do not hesitate to post. There is a lot of entertainment value there watching them melt down.