World Politics

[Tracker]

48 minutes ago, Mark F said:

I saw a photo said to be around the kremlin, blocked off.... who knows where Putin is.  I would like to see him handed over to the International   criminal court. 

 

I suspect if there is a coup of some sort, Putin will suffer Mussolini's fate. There is a lot of anger in the Russian military.

[johnzo]

On 2022-09-10 at 1:30 PM, Tracker said:

Russia can do nothing without lethal blowback in several forms.

for sure. mutually assured destruction still holds.

the tricky bit is that Russia is wounded and humiliated, it's a totalitarian pretend empire with a paranoid streak, and they might not make the best decisions under duress. 

like, if Russia uses tactical nukes to defend Crimea, what then? 

or if Putin goes full strangelove, is there enough of a rational russian state to stop him?

the first scenario is the one that worries me more.  easy to tiptoe across the nuclear line and light the armageddon fuse.

Edited September 11, 2022 by johnzo

[Tracker]

'We ask you to relieve yourself of your post': Kremlin officials have begun a mutiny against Vladimir Putin
   

Halfway through his invasion of Ukraine's sixth bloody month, Russian President Vladimir Putin's grip on power in Moscow is imploding as scores of Kremlin officials are calling upon the 69-year-old autocrat to quit.

Putin had anticipated his February 24th "special military operation" to be a cakewalk through the Russian-controlled East into the Ukrainian capitol of Kyiv. But with the aid of a Western coalition led by the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's unshatterable resistance campaign has decimated Putin's combat forces and depleted his military's offensive capabilities.
Casualties have climbed into the tens of thousands. Numerous allegations of genocide committed against Ukrainian civilians have flooded international watchdog organizations. The global economy has suffered major setbacks. Europe quivers on the brink of potentially multiple atomic disasters. And Moscow's finest are either bogged down or on the run.

On Saturday, The Daily Beast reported that "just one day after several municipal deputies in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg called on the State Duma to try the Russian leader for treason, their colleagues in Moscow joined in and demanded he steps down because his views are 'hopelessly outdated.'"

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/kremlin-officials-mutiny-vladimir-putin/

[Tracker]

Ukraine Keeps Initiative, Claims It Reached Russian Border

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine kept the counteroffensive momentum in its war against Russia going Monday, saying it liberated one village after another and claiming that in one region it pushed the invaders back right up to the border in a lightning military move that stunned many. “Ukraine has recaptured territory at least twice the size of Greater London,” the British defense ministry said.

“In some areas of the front, our defenders reached the state border with the Russian Federation,” said the regional governor of the northeastern Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov. Russian troops crossed the border in the region on Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion.
Russia acknowledged the military developments by saying it was regrouping. As throughout the war, military claims were hard to verify independently.

After Sunday’s attacks by Russia on power stations and other infrastructure that knocked out electricity in many place across Ukraine, Kyiv authorities also said that electric power and water supplies have been restored to some 80 percent in the Kharkiv region.

“You are heroes!!!” wrote Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov early in the morning on Telegram, highlighting the ebullient mood in the nation that has endured more than 200 days of war and occupation. “Thanks to everyone who did everything possible on this most difficult night for Kharkiv to normalize the life of the city as soon as possible.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ukraine-keeps-initiative-claims-it-reached-russian-border_n_631efd7be4b0ed021df44590

[the watcher]

A good video by Al Jazeera . Some of it is pretty obvious but it's interesting none the less.

 

[the watcher]

Sounds like the entire campaign is teetering on collapse:

The military command of the Russian federation has stopped sending new units into Ukraine following a dramatic Ukrainian counter-offensive that has reshaped the war and left Moscow reeling, the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said Monday.

“The military command of the Russian federation has suspended the sending of new, already formed units into the territory of Ukraine,” officials said on the general staff Facebook page.

“The current situation in the theatre of operations and distrust of the higher command forced a large number of volunteers to categorically refuse the prospect of service in combat conditions,” the statement continued. “The situation is affected by information about the actual number of dead, while losses from private military companies and those mobilised from temporarily occupied territories are not taken into account. The situation worsens due to the general attitude toward their own wounded. In particular, in Russian hospitals, diagnoses and the nature of combat injuries are deliberately simplified and no time is given for rehabilitation in order to quickly return servicemen to the combat zone.”

This information could not be corroborated. The Kremlin has yet to respond.

•  
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[Tracker]

MoD of Ukraine confirmed the surrender negotiations of around 20 000 Russian north of Dnipro river, Kherson region! (Following the last wave of surrendering from Kharkiv, Monday morning) Also, Putin has retreated to his bunker in Sochi! Slava Ukraini! And all 18 regional governors in Russia have signed a letter urging Putin to quit.  Russian commanders are refusing to send more troops to Ukraine as they fear mutiny if they try to do so.
 

[Mark F]

wow.

who expected this?

 not possible without American, Biden, Democrat, military support.

some American payback for Putin wrecking their country.

* Putin has lost his EU energy lever...

 they have predictably moved quickly to other sources.

bonus.. China now has Russia by the nutz. squeeeeeeeeze.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-is-facing-defeat-in-putins-gas-war-against-the-european-union/

 

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Mark F

[Tracker]

43 minutes ago, Mark F said:

wow.

who expected this?

 not possible without American, Biden, Democrat, military support.

some American payback for Putin wrecking their country.

 

I think the moral of this story is that all empires fall and most fall quickly. That Putin in his arrogance chose to attack Ukraine where the people there have fought fiercely for not only their freedom from Russia but to avoid genocide only accelerated the process. Putin's attacks on Georgia and Chechnya gave him confidence that Ukraine would roll over as well and no doubt his advisors told him what he wanted to hear. 

The USA is facing the same scenario and their own hubris has prevented them from learning anything from their misadventures in Korea, Viet Nam, Lebanon and recently, Afghanistan- the graveyard of empires. When the American empire ends, it will probably do so, not with a bang, but with a whimper. 

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, Mark F said:

wow.

who expected this?

 not possible without American, Biden, Democrat, military support.

some American payback for Putin wrecking their country.

* Putin has lost his EU energy lever...

 they have predictably moved quickly to other sources.

bonus.. China now has Russia by the nutz. squeeeeeeeeze.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-is-facing-defeat-in-putins-gas-war-against-the-european-union/

 

 

China has seized $100 billion of Russian money in Chinese banks to ensure payment for goods sent to Russia. More good news for Putin and his oligarchs. This might be the last straw leading to Putin suffering a medical crisis or having a fatal accident.

[Mark F]

1 hour ago, Tracker said:

China has seized $100 billion of Russian money in Chinese banks to ensure payment for goods sent to Russia. More good news for Putin and his oligarchs. This might be the last straw leading to Putin suffering a medical crisis or having a fatal accident.

cant find that do you have an article?

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, Mark F said:

cant find that do you have an article?

[johnzo]

as the Russian invasion collapses, please enjoy this retro tweet where Ted Cruz confessed his Russian Army boner.

aged like milk, as the kids say.

Edited September 13, 2022 by johnzo

[johnzo]

19 hours ago, Tracker said:

MoD of Ukraine confirmed the surrender negotiations of around 20 000 Russian north of Dnipro river, Kherson region! (Following the last wave of surrendering from Kharkiv, Monday morning)
 

love to hear it from the Ukranians.

even if it was just a psyop, it's a good one ... with the Russian military command scrambled and ineffective this is basically the Ukranians offering the Russian fighting man a "get out of war free" card. If morale is as low as the news says there could be an avalanche of Russians tossing down their rifles and covering up their Z tattoos.

Stalin hated POWs and would often re-imprison liberated Soviet POWs, figuring they were bad soviets for choosing captivity over death, and furthermore they would be ideologically polluted by their time in captivity.  I wonder what kind of repercussions a modern Russian soldier would face for surrendering?

Edited September 13, 2022 by johnzo

[bustamente]

Rich Russians need to keep their opinions to themselves or they wont be rich Russians much longer

[TrueBlue4ever]

This may not be confirmed through other sources yet, but is reported:

 

[Tracker]

Another Putin Ally Dead After ‘Suffocating’ on Business Trip

Another top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has died this week, this time of an alleged “stroke” while on a business trip in the village of Roshchino in Russia’s far east region.

Vladimir Nikolayevich Sungorkin, 68, was editor-in-chief of the Russian state newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. According to the newspaper, Sungorkin died “suddenly” after showing signs of “suffocation” during the trip on Wednesday.

“It happened absolutely suddenly, nothing foreshadowed. We were in the village of Roshchino. We were driving, we were already making our way towards Khabarovsk, we planned to get there in the evening today, and from there to Moscow. All was good,” his colleague Leonid Zakharov, who had accompanied him on the business trip, wrote in a story for KP.

[Tracker]

[Tracker]

                                                 

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[Wideleft]

No such thing as it can't happen here.

“They have few new solutions for today’s destructive economic and environmental crises,” wrote Pankaj Mishra for Bloomberg Opinion about the far right. “They can, however, channel social unrest to their advantage by reheating identities of race, religion and ethnicity, and retailing myths of national greatness.”

Sweden’s election marks a new far-right surge in Europe

Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor

Columnist

September 16, 2022 at 12:01 a.m. EDT

 

Another taboo in Europe is about to be broken. In Sweden, voters delivered a narrow mandate after elections on Sunday to a loose coalition of right-wing parties, including one with a neo-fascist past. On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, a center-left Social Democrat allied to other left and green parties, conceded defeat. Her party had won 30 percent of the vote — making it still the single largest faction in parliament — but their coalition secured three fewer seats than their rivals to the right.

The kingmakers in Sweden are the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), a party founded in 1988 by ultranationalist extremists and neo-Nazis. Over the past decade, they have moved from the fringes of their country’s politics into the mainstream. This week, they secured some 20 percent of the Swedish vote, enough to make them the second-largest party in Sweden.

But they may not formally be in power. Such is the political stigma around them that they may remain technically outside a government led by the center-right Moderates and Liberals, yet crucially not in opposition. Coalition politics carry many complexities and wrangling over the new government may take weeks. Whatever the outcome, it seems the far-right SD believes it has a major seat at the table in a country long known for its progressive ethos and policies.

“Now we will get order in Sweden,” SD leader Jimmie Akesson wrote Wednesday on Facebook. “It is time to start rebuilding security, prosperity and cohesion. It’s time to put Sweden first.”

Akesson’s triumphalism has echoed across the continent. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Rally Party, hailed the SD’s success as a sign of nationalist resurgence. “Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” she tweeted.

Le Pen, of course, knows her share of false dawns, having been repeatedly thwarted in elections no matter incremental gains in defeat. But far-right parties have in the past decade been the beneficiaries of the collapse of the so-called “cordon sanitaire” set up by more mainstream parties to block them from winning power, entering governing coalitions in Swedish neighbor Finland, Austria and Italy. And even when not in government, their agendas have made their way into governance — the center-left government in Denmark, for example, checked right-wing nativism by adopting the anti-immigration policies of their rivals.

Italian elections later this month are expected to deliver perhaps the most emphatic victory for a European far-right party: The Brothers of Italy, which draws its origins from Italy’s neofascist movement, is currently leading in the polls and its leader, the charismatic Giorgia Meloni, is poised to be become prime minister with the backing of a number of other right-wing parties.

Akesson doesn’t have the political alliances that Meloni does but shares an antipathy toward migration, Islam and the spectral “globalist” establishment that far-right campaigners across the West have harnessed in their bids for power. “They don’t include Islam in Swedishness,” said Andrej Kokkonen, a professor of politics at the University of Gothenburg, to my colleagues. “You don’t get to be a Swede and a Muslim at the same time.”

“They have few new solutions for today’s destructive economic and environmental crises,” wrote Pankaj Mishra for Bloomberg Opinion about the far right. “They can, however, channel social unrest to their advantage by reheating identities of race, religion and ethnicity, and retailing myths of national greatness.”

 

Ahead of the election, Andersson pointed to the toxicity of the SD’s legacy. “There are rightwing populist parties in many European countries, but the Sweden Democrats have deep roots in the Swedish neo-Nazis and other racist organizations in Sweden,” she said last week on the campaign trail in an interview with the Guardian, highlighting an alleged incident where SD campaigners celebrated the Nazi invasion of Poland during World War II. “I mean, it’s not like other parties.”

But that has hardly dented their appeal. The SD emerged as a major political force in Sweden, siphoning off rural votes that once would have gone to parties on the other side of the political spectrum. “Treating nationalists as pariahs has not prevented their rise,” observed the Economist. “On the contrary: elections in Europe now are often a case of loudly pitting the mainstream against the supposedly unpalatable and hoping that not too many voters pick the ‘wrong’ side. Simply hoping the nasties go away has not, in fact, made them go away.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/sweden-election-far-right-democrats/

 

[17to85]

The silent majority is apathetic and complacent. But give these intolerant assholes power it might wake people the **** up to pay attention to politics more. 

[Wideleft]

9 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

The silent majority is apathetic and complacent. But give these intolerant assholes power it might wake people the **** up to pay attention to politics more. 

It's a slow game.  Took the Nazi's 34 years in Sweden to possibly gain the balance of power.  It's so slow, many don't see what's happening right in front of their eyes.

[Tracker]

New analysis predicts the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin
   
A new analysis is explaining how this time period may suggest the end is near for Russian President Vladmir Putin.

According to Newsweek's William M. Arkin, the authoritarian president may be running out of options as he fights to maintain his grasp on the country.
To support his arguments, Arkin included assessments from army and intelligence officials familiar with all of the events transpiring in Russia.

"Putin's options for the future are bleak, particularly as he increasingly feels the heat of domestic opposition," the first intelligence official said. Per Arkin, the official also noted "the impact of 60,000-plus Russian casualties and as well as the bite of sanctions and the controls on travel as challenges to Putin."

Another official also weighed in with what they are witnessing.  "We're seeing more and more blaming of Western weapons," says the second official, "as if it is an excuse for why Russia is losing. It's ironic, given that Putin-and-company normally argues that it can defeat NATO. Now it's, 'we couldn't have won because of Western intervention' that is seeking to deflect responsibility from Moscow."

So, how is Putin maintaining? Former World Champion chess player Garry Kasparov recently weighed in with an assessment of Putin's leadership and how he may be holding his position.
itches an 'obvious solution' to crippling Vladimir Putin's financial stronghold. Speaking to the Kyiv Post, Kasparov said, "Putin has never dealt with situations like this one." He also noted that Putin has "been lucky that he has always been able to escape.

"Continuing the war is the only way for Putin to stay in power," Kasparov said in the interview. "

He wants to create extra chaos in the free world hoping that a new window will open for him. It's really just a protracted agony. It is cynical and stupid, but Putin is willing to put thousands of civilians into graves in the months to come before the whole of Ukraine is liberated, if that will allow him to maintain power."

An army officer also shared his prediction of what's to come as he also pondered the limited long-term options Putin has.

"I'm not so sure I agree with the 'long war' predictions," the Army officer said as he suggested that Putin is running out of options for a viable conversion. "Everyone's talking about Putin's hold over Europe with his control of gas, that this is his ace in the hole. But if the heat intensifies back home, Putin may have to shift his attention to a winter disaster of his own making."

[HardCoreBlue]

2 hours ago, 17to85 said:

The silent majority is apathetic and complacent. But give these intolerant assholes power it might wake people the **** up to pay attention to politics more. 

Fingers and toes crossed.

1 hour ago, Wideleft said:

It's a slow game.  Took the Nazi's 34 years in Sweden to possibly gain the balance of power.  It's so slow, many don't see what's happening right in front of their eyes.

I have an 18 year old son and a 21 year old daughter. This is what they are heading into as a starting out young world adult citizen.