World Politics

[GCn20]

On 2022-03-25 at 11:35 PM, Fatty Liver said:

Brezhnev, Khruschev and Stalin were all communists, they basically owned nothing as everything belonged to the state.

Here is a link to a great documentary on Kruschev, if you jump to the end it shows him planting potatoes in his garden beside his ramshackle dacha, not exactly leading the life of a Tsar.

Here is what Russia is supposed to be today

"The 1993 constitution declares Russia a democratic, federative, law-based state with a republican form of government. State power is divided among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Diversity of ideologies and religions is sanctioned, and a state or compulsory ideology may not be adopted."

Putin skipped some steps by jumping directly to the "gilded age" and anointed a small network of robber barons to run the Russian economy.

 

You gotta hand it to Putin, he achieved a level of thievery in 20 years that our politicians have been striving to do for 200 years now. 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/roman-abramovich-and-ukrainian-peace-negotiators-suffer-symptoms-of-suspected-poisoning-11648480493

[HardCoreBlue]

1 minute ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/roman-abramovich-and-ukrainian-peace-negotiators-suffer-symptoms-of-suspected-poisoning-11648480493

What I’m sorry I couldn’t hear over the Will Smith slapping Chris Rock noise. What’s happening?

We are so f’d as a species right now.

[Mark F]

What we would all like to see 

 

Ukrainian and Russian troops join forces, go to Moscow, drag putin out of his hideout, and   execute him 

ceausecu style. 

round up enablers like lavrov, and make them work for every meal.

Putin last summer

 

"Let's start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, by the Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began almost immediately after the 1917 revolution," Putin said on Monday.

Putin added that Lenin, who rose to power after the downfall of the Romanov royal family, was the "author and creator" of Ukraine. "

 

another Myth shattered....."Putin is very smart", along with soviet military might.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Mark F

[WildPath]

Honest question. Why are so many victims not dying when they are poisoned by the Russians? It seems like a pretty easy thing to get the dosage right to kill someone, you don't really have to worry about dosing too much. Is the intent just to scare?

Skripal, Navalny, Abramovich....

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, WildPath said:

Honest question. Why are so many victims not dying when they are poisoned by the Russians? It seems like a pretty easy thing to get the dosage right to kill someone, you don't really have to worry about dosing too much. Is the intent just to scare?

Skripal, Navalny, Abramovich....

The point of this apparent poisoning by Russia was to disrupt things so that there would be an excuse for Russia to abort the proceedings. Making people sick would be a convenient reason without raising too much alarm.

[WildPath]

2 hours ago, Tracker said:

The point of this apparent poisoning by Russia was to disrupt things so that there would be an excuse for Russia to abort the proceedings. Making people sick would be a convenient reason without raising too much alarm.

But was about the other poisonings? Skripal & Navalny for example. Seems obvious to me that it was an attempt on their lives, not sure why it didn't succeed.

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-russia-war-1.6400809

Quote

Russia's deputy defence minister said that Moscow has decided to "fundamentally ... cut back" operations near the capital and another major city to "increase mutual trust" at talks aimed at ending the fighting.

Alexander Fomin said Russian forces would cut back "military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv."

Fomin's statement came Tuesday after another round of talks Russia and Ukraine held in Istanbul and appeared to be the first major concession the Russians have made since the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine more than a month ago.

Putin's aim of a quick military victory has been thwarted by stiff Ukrainian resistance — but still hopes were not high for a breakthrough.

 

Putin's ground forces have become bogged down because of the stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, combined with what Western officials say are Russian tactical missteps, poor morale, shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, and other problems.

In response, Russia appeared to be concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years, the official said.

In other developments:

• The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog arrived in Ukraine to try to ensure the safety of the country's nuclear facilities. Russian forces have taken control of the decommissioned Chornobyl plant, site in 1986 of the world's worst nuclear accident, and of the active Zaporizhzhia plant, where a building was damaged in fighting. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said the war "is putting Ukraine's nuclear power plants and other facilities with radioactive material in unprecedented danger."

• Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east, Ukraine's military said in a post Tuesday. It said the Orthodox church — the country's majority religion — was the most affected but that mosques, synagogues, Protestant churches and religious schools were also destroyed.

• Bloomberg News said it has suspended its operations in Russia and Belarus. Customers in both countries won't be able to access any Bloomberg financial products and trading functions for Russian securities were disabled in line with international sanctions, it said. Bloomberg Philanthropies pledged $40 million US, meanwhile, in support for Ukrainians and refugees.

 

[Mark F]

Hard to know what is fact on putin debacle, but this sounds like a mess:

😂 "pen and paper system, postal mail"

https://www.aviation24.be/amp/

"A powerful and effective cyberattack on the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) infrastructure that took place on Saturday morning has erased all documents, files, aircraft registration data and mails from the servers. In total, about 65 terabytes of data was erased. The news became known on Monday morning, the agency’s official website (favt.ru) went also down. 

Officially, the Russian Federation does not confirm anything but blamed it on temporary lack of access to internet and a malfunction of the electronic document flow system of Rosaviatsia that they switched over to a (pen and) paper version: information exchange will be carried out via AFTN channel (for urgent short message) and postal mail.

It is alleged that the attack occurred due to poor performance of contractual obligations by company LLC “InfAvia”, which operates the IT infrastructure of Rosaviatsia. “The prosecutor’s office and the FSB have been sitting at Rosaviatsia since Saturday,” said a person familiar with the case.

 

(putin seems to have stolen everything possible)

The authorities are now looking for a backup, if any. The Aviation Herald wrote that no backup of these data exists due to lack of funds allocated by Russia’s Ministry of Finance."

Edited March 29, 2022 by Mark F

[Tracker]

14 hours ago, WildPath said:

But was about the other poisonings? Skripal & Navalny for example. Seems obvious to me that it was an attempt on their lives, not sure why it didn't succeed.

When you look at the performance of the Russian military, its not hard to imagine that the GRU could screw this up. Besides, the point may have been to scare off negotiators so as to give the military time to complete their sweep of Ukraine.

[WildPath]

13 minutes ago, Tracker said:

When you look at the performance of the Russian military, its not hard to imagine that the GRU could screw this up. Besides, the point may have been to scare off negotiators so as to give the military time to complete their sweep of Ukraine.

This is my thinking - it could be intentional or pure Russian incompetence. But it seems like killing someone with poison is pretty hard to screw up.

[JCon]

4 minutes ago, WildPath said:

This is my thinking - it could be intentional or pure Russian incompetence. But it seems like killing someone with poison is pretty hard to screw up.

It's probably harder than one would think. You need to deliver a certain amount of the poison, which cannot be easy. 

In Navalny's case, if he hadn't received urgent medical treatment, he would have died. 

I'm not ruling out Russian incompetence, it's just that getting enough poison into someone to kill them, would be challenging. Especially if their target is leery of such an attack. 

[Tracker]

30 minutes ago, JCon said:

It's probably harder than one would think. You need to deliver a certain amount of the poison, which cannot be easy. 

In Navalny's case, if he hadn't received urgent medical treatment, he would have died. 

I'm not ruling out Russian incompetence, it's just that getting enough poison into someone to kill them, would be challenging. Especially if their target is leery of such an attack. 

And if it was administered by ingestion, you cannot tell if the carrier was consumed entirely or partially.

[Tracker]

Russian Forces Driven Away From Kyiv as Ukraine Regains Territory and Kills Top Commander

Ukraine’s military says they have “eliminated” another Russian colonel, adding to a long list of high-ranking Russian military personnel wiped out in Putin’s war against Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces announced on Tuesday that Colonel Denis Kurilo, the commander of the 200th separate motorized rifle brigade, was killed outside Kharkiv.

Kurilo’s reported death, on the 34th day of the Kremlin’s “special operation,” comes after at least seven Russian generals were killed in Ukraine, according to both Ukrainian and Western officials.

It also comes as the Ukrainian military announced several territorial gains, with the northeastern town of Trostyanets liberated from Russian troops and several areas outside Kyiv reported back in the hands of Ukraine. The military said territories in the Chernihiv region were also liberated.

-BBC

[HardCoreBlue]

26 minutes ago, Tracker said:

And if it was administered by ingestion, you cannot tell if the carrier was consumed entirely or partially.

Mother F’ers. Imagine walking into the room with these f’s to do ‘peace’ talks?!

Just now, Tracker said:

Russian Forces Driven Away From Kyiv as Ukraine Regains Territory and Kills Top Commander

Ukraine’s military says they have “eliminated” another Russian colonel, adding to a long list of high-ranking Russian military personnel wiped out in Putin’s war against Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces announced on Tuesday that Colonel Denis Kurilo, the commander of the 200th separate motorized rifle brigade, was killed outside Kharkiv.

Kurilo’s reported death, on the 34th day of the Kremlin’s “special operation,” comes after at least seven Russian generals were killed in Ukraine, according to both Ukrainian and Western officials.

It also comes as the Ukrainian military announced several territorial gains, with the northeastern town of Trostyanets liberated from Russian troops and several areas outside Kyiv reported back in the hands of Ukraine. The military said territories in the Chernihiv region were also liberated.

-BBC

In my dreamworld it’s at the point where I hope Ukraine takes Russia for their own with no civilian causalities. 

[Fatty Liver]

2 hours ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Mother F’ers. Imagine walking into the room with these f’s to do ‘peace’ talks?!

In my dreamworld it’s at the point where I hope Ukraine takes Russia for their own with no civilian causalities. 

 

Yah, not too likely.

"Almost 3.9 million refugees have left Ukraine (as of 28 March 2022), while an estimated 6.5 million people have been displaced within the country (as of 18 March 2022). In total, more than ten million people – almost a quarter of the population – had left their homes in Ukraine by 20 March."

That many less Ukrainians for Putin to deal with, it shouldn't be too difficult finding ethnic Russians to fill the gaps left by the Ukrainians who have fled once the infrastructure is restored.  Weather-wise Ukraine is like comparing BC to the prairies, a much more temperate and comfortable place to live compared to the frigid steppes of Russia.  The process may take a longtime if the Ukrainians continue to fight, but eventually I think his plan is to erase the Ukraine nation from all maps and absorb the territory into Russia. 

[Tracker]

 

First strike on Russian terrain: Ukrainian Tochka U missile devastates military facilities near Belgorod. 

 

 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

15 hours ago, Tracker said:

 

First strike on Russian terrain: Ukrainian Tochka U missile devastates military facilities near Belgorod. 

 

 

Is this confirmed? 

I haven't seen anything confirming the strike. A fire and explosion... but no confirmation of missle strike.

[Tracker]

41 minutes ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

Is this confirmed? 

I haven't seen anything confirming the strike. A fire and explosion... but no confirmation of missile strike.

Confirmed by BBC that there were massive explosions in the named Russian city. The UA reported that they had hit a military target- a base or munitions dump.

Russian liberators found dead in a field with no wounds, left behind by their own command to starve and freeze

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

1 minute ago, Tracker said:

Confirmed by BBC that there were massive explosions in the named Russian city. The UA reported that they had hit a military target- a base or munitions dump.

Yeah, still a bit vague. I hope it's true, but I will sit on that assumption and wait for confirmation- especially since the info war is raging on both sides.

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

SOme very interesting information on the logistics of the failed attempt to take Kyiv in 2 days and what scenarios might playout:

 

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://boingboing.net/2022/03/30/donald-trump-is-referred-to-as-our-partner-trump-on-russian-state-tv.html

[JCon]

1 minute ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://boingboing.net/2022/03/30/donald-trump-is-referred-to-as-our-partner-trump-on-russian-state-tv.html

He has laundered their money for years. 

[17to85]

2 hours ago, JCon said:

He has laundered their money for years. 

And worked tirelessly to undermine western alliances on Putins behalf, and to ease sanctions on Russia. 

 

Yeah the entire GOP is the pro-russia party.

[Tracker]

4 hours ago, 17to85 said:

And worked tirelessly to undermine western alliances on Putins behalf, and to ease sanctions on Russia. 

 

Yeah the entire GOP is the pro-russia party.

Not all, but many.