„Human Life Has No Value There“: Baltic Counterintelligence Officers Speak Candidly About Russian Cruelty https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/...officers-speak-candidly-about-russian-cruelty
great article - thanks for sharing ... (even more) hell is waiting for russia(ns) Conclusion In late February 2022, Putin set about to orient Kyiv’s direction by force. He succeeded, in manner of thinking, but certainly not in the way he intended. In direct contrast to Russia’s frightful trajectory, the world is witnessing the full-throated and inspiring political birth of a Ukrainian nation-state, its founding myth strengthened by the shared trauma of conflict and common hardships. Ukraine is clearly now a nation with an inarguably separate identity to Russia that seeks a westward orientation, a goal apparently now reciprocated by Western countries who aim to embrace Ukraine as one of their own culturally and morally, even if membership in institutions like the European Union and NATO aren’t immediately on the table. Unlike the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which provoked divided loyalties in many parts of Ukrainian society (Sharkov, 2017), Putin’s latest invasion has hardened and consolidated Ukraine’s national resolve—arguably creating the very thing he sought to strangle at birth, a politically confident and culturally separate nation, through his own reckless actions. To search for useful historical comparisons, one may need to look to the last century to find a strategic own goal as detrimental to one’s own country as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It is, potentially, the greatest geopolitical blunder since Adolf Hitler invading Russia in 1941 after violating the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, and essentially ensuring the Third Reich’s defeat as a result. Even Britain and France’s ill-judged misadventure in Suez in 1956 did not cause such catastrophic results to the invading powers—the withdrawal from Suez at U.S. and Soviet insistence cementing imperial decline, but not causing either to lose much of their military capabilities or to become reviled as a pariah state. Moreover, while the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was fundamentally misguided, causing great death and destruction and destabilizing the region for years hence, that invasion did not substantially weaken American military, economy, or civil society, and America’s reputational place in the world recovered rather quickly. By contrast, Putin’s miscalculation in Ukraine has weakened Russia at an elemental level, setting it back decades across all measurable and intangible axes of political, military, and economic power, hobbling Russian statecraft and strategic action for decades. Even if Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were to dust off his famous “reset” button with the West, there is no going back to the status quo ante-bellum. Russia will, likely for a generation, remain a pariah state removed from the Western world. Russia will still limp along, albeit outside of most Western initiatives and fora. On the contrary, Chinese and Indian responses to Putin’s actions have been discouraging for those who wish for norms and ethical considerations to inform and guide international relations. Luckily for Putin, their actions may attenuate the effects of sanctions to a degree by throwing Russia some economic lifelines. Russia may yet find some ways to muddle through the coming decade, but the rump of a once-powerful empire is now subjected to perpetual decline, so long as Putin helms the ship of state, under the weight of its faltering economy, crumbling military, chastened intelligence services, toxic international brand, dwindling demographics, and terrorized civil society. What is ultimately so striking about Putin’s gamble is that, in the end, the geopolitical world order it will help to create is almost exactly the opposite of the one he sought to avoid by invading Ukraine in the first place: a diminution of the Russkiy Mir. Gains and losses at the operational level in Ukraine are at this stage almost wholly irrelevant to the future of the Russian state. Putin cannot stitch together enough tactical victories in Ukraine to translate his war into a strategic success, and certainly not at a cost bearable by the Russian state. His blunder has caused catastrophic harm to Russia across every facet of statecraft in the short term, and, moreover, has imperiled Russian development and prosperity in the medium term. For the long term, Putin has set the conditions for Russia’s great leap backwards.
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-10-17-22/index.html Military jet crashes into residential area in Russia, state media reports From CNN's Katharina Krebs Fire caused by a Russian jet that crashed into a residential building in the city of Yeysk, Russia, on Monday. A Russian Su-34 supersonic fighter-bomber jet crashed into a residential building in the city of Yeysk on Monday, the Russian state media TASS reported. The crash was due to ignition of one of the engines, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported citing the country’s defense ministry. It is not clear how many people were in the fighter jet. “On October 17, 2022, a Su-34 aircraft crashed while climbing to perform a training flight from the military airfield of the Southern Military District,” the ministry said in a statement to RIA. “According to the report of the ejected pilots, the cause of the plane crash was the ignition of one of the engines during take-off. At the site of the crash of the Su-34 in the courtyard of one of the residential quarters, the plane’s fuel ignited.” The area of the fire that started after the crash is 2,000 square meters, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations told RIA. The information about casualties in the area is being established, according to the ministry. Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Krasnodar Krai region, is on his way to the city, he said in a statement on his Telegram channel. “Emergency services are already working on the spot — all regional fire and rescue garrisons are engaged in extinguishing the fire,” he added. The state media reported that another resident of the city specified that this residential building has nine floors. The entire house is on fire, according to the eyewitnesses, as quoted by TASS. Yeysk is located across the water from the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol.
Indeed. As Atlantic posted. Those planes are expensive puppies too: "The Su-34 has a reported price tag of more than £43 million." Looks like some hang-gliding just coincidently going on the background there too. Or at least that is how it will be reported. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-n...ia-war-latest-belarus-putin-fighting-donetsk/
"Tourists" they said. Four Russians Caught Taking Pictures Illegally In Norway https://www.rferl.org/a/russians-norway-taking-illegal-photographs/32088028.html
The Russians are savages who dwell on the lower rungs of humanity. Very low. Ukrainian conductor shot and killed by Russian troops for refusing to participate in concert The Ukrainian musician was the conductor of the top orchestras in Kherson, a port city which has been occupied by invading Russian forces since March of this year. https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/ukraine-conductor-killed-russia-kherson/
'Your own will shoot you': Russia's defensive lines led by convicts, intercepted call show https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...adimir-Putin-Russian-troops-Kremlin-latest-vn