I would have such a difficult time restraining myself from getting up and slapping the smirk right off his dumb face.
Late reply, but still:
Kremlin mulls Nuremberg-style trials based on second world war tribunals
Russia to seek to justify invasion of Ukraine by staging show trials of war prisoners, conflict scholars fear
Whoever wrote that piece, especially the headline, has my deepest contempt.
If you cannot convey the problem that this would be show trials like in the Soviet Union, Nazideutschland and other dictatorships, then fucking rewrite the headline until you do.
ETA: not directed at you, @GagHalfrunt , obviously, but at authors and editors of the Guardian.
The 
regime is working from a definition of “crime” that begins with “anything that threatens continued autocratic kleptocracy”. The 
has moved on from that definition (or at least the BBC has) has not…
not sure what the interviewer expected…
It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to compare these trials to the Soviet contributions in Nuremberg, where they attempted to pin the Katyn massacre on the Nazis, even though it was carried out by NKVD on direct orders from Stalin. We can expect to see Russians attempt to wash themselves of their own war crimes by convicting Ukrainian POWs for them.
Zelenskiy fires head of state security in Kharkiv
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram today that he has fired the head of state security service in Kharkiv for not working to defend the city.
AFP is reporting that Zelenskiy said in his daily national address that “law enforcement officers” are involved in his reason for dismissing the head of security service.
“I came, figured out and fired the head of the security service of Ukraine of the (Kharkiv) region for the fact that he did not work on the defense of the city from the first days of the full-scale war, but thought only about himself,” Zelensky said in his daily national address.
“On which motives? The law enforcement officers will figure it out,” he added.
Today Zelenskiy visited Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. Though much of the Kremlin’s focus has turned to the southeast region of the country, Russian forces are still shelling Kharkiv regularly.
Zelenskiy’s office said 2,229 buildings have been destroyed in Kharkiv and the region. “We will restore, rebuild and bring back life. In Kharkiv and all other towns and villages where evil came,” it said on his Telegram account.
Zelenskiy spent his trip meeting with local officials - the governor of Kharkiv region and the mayor of the city - to discuss reconstruction programmes for the region, calling on them to “find cool projects” to rebuild destroyed areas. “This is a chance for such districts to have a new face,” Zelenskiy said.
“In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result,” Zelenskiy said in a later post.
“But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man. They have no chance. We will fight and we will definitely win.”
“You know most of their contract soldiers contracts expire in 48 hours. There will sure want out of there . Bad enough for them, but of course it gets worse — the guys left there will be pretty thinned out and they are not gonna want to be there with no help. I guess Putin could try and hold them there — but that will about do it for his ability to get any more contract soldiers — and boy talk about a morale problem. Really — those guys did their contract — they expect to go home.“
Interesting, but I’m skeptical until it happens.
supposedly those flaws have been addressed in the t14 armata–but fortuitously, Russia hasn’t been able to put it into mass production…
note бРОНЕКАПСУЛА ДЛЯ ТРЕХ ЧЛЕНОВ ЭКИПАЖА – machine translates as armored capsule for three crew.
Songs for drones
The Russian army is trying to recruit more soldiers by offering high wages. Pay was already very high compared to civilian wages in provincial areas but now it is even more generous.
P.S. Via a comment on the Daily Kos piece, contract soldiers are being told that they can’t go home.
“90 days is off the plate. We have already been told to not even think about it,” Andrey said, adding that he was told his deployment in Ukraine would last until “the end of the operation, and then another two months.”
From an economic journalist at the ABC (A = Australian):
It [the Rouble] is up 16 per cent against the US dollar this year, making it the second-best-performing currency in the world after the Brazilian real.
The Russian propaganda machine would have you believe that this is a work of genius on Mr Putin’s part. It is not.
Russia’s economy is in the throes of its biggest decline in decades and the muddle-headed manipulation of its currency will only exacerbate the problem.
Usually, when an economy is in trouble, its currency falls, acting as a natural shock absorber by making exports more competitive and delivering foreign income.
Shortly after sanctions were imposed, Moscow retaliated by banning sales of the domestic currency and forcing buyers of Russian commodities, particularly natural gas, to pay in roubles. That sent it into orbit.
It may have boosted Mr Putin’s ego. But it has backfired. The sanctions have prevented imports, creating shortages of essential items such as food where prices have surged 20 per cent.
Even worse, given most of the country’s tax revenues from oil and gas are valued in US dollars, the stronger rouble has undermined the Kremlin’s budget. The domestic economy, meanwhile, is on track to shrink by 10 per cent.
Part of a larger article here:
If those ‘Soviet contributions’ would have been at the heart of the trials, then it wouldn’t be far of.
But every association between the currently expected trials and the historical (in more than one way historical) Nuremberg trials must not be included in headlines about current events, and the text needs to point out first and foremost that such an association or comparison is a propaganda effort to use the Nuremberg trials for a fascist purpose.
The longer I think about it, the angrier I get.
Absolutely. The mention of Nuremberg in the headline, especially from a publication that really ought to know better, is bullshit. My point was simply that, from the Russian perspective, there’s probably more than one reason why they want to make comparisons with Nuremberg.
There’s an email address here:
Or you can write a letter to the editor (for publication if selected)
I would favour the former as The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor has a better track record of taking up such issues and passing necessary feedback to the editorial depts.
What happens if Putin decides that he is losing in Ukraine? He will act to protect himself by declaring victory and changing the subject. He does not need an off ramp in the real world, because that is not where his power rests. All he needs to do is change the story in Russia’s virtual world, as he has been doing for decades. This is just a matter of setting the agenda in a meeting. In virtual reality there is always an escape route, and for this reason Putin cannot be “cornered.”
Russia is considering paying Eurobond holders by applying the mechanism it uses to process payments for its gas in roubles , Reuters reports.
The scheme, according to Reuters, would allow Moscow to pay bondholders while bypassing western payment infrastructure. Investors, however, said the move would not enable Russia to avoid a historic default on debt.
The news comes days after the US decided against extending a license that had permitted creditors to receive bond payments while enabling Russia to dodge default.
The Russian, finance minister, Anton Siluanov , said:
As happens with paying for gas in roubles: we are credited with foreign currency, here it is exchanged for roubles on behalf of [the gas buyer], and this is how the payment takes place. The Eurobond settlement mechanism will operate in the same manner, only in the other direction.
According to Reuters, the money would be channelled through Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD), which, unlike many Russian financial institutions, is not under western sanctions.
A financial market source told Reuters Russia planned to present the scheme to investors before its next payments, on two bonds, due on 23 June.
And
And
Russia ready to facilitate export of grain from Ukrainian ports in coordination with Turkey
In talks with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Russia was ready to facilitate the unhindered export of grain from Ukrainian ports, according to Reuters.
The Kremlin said of Putin’s call with Erdoğan :
During the discussion of the situation in Ukraine, emphasis was placed on ensuring safe navigation in the Black and Azov seas and eliminating the mine threat in their waters. Vladimir Putin noted the readiness of the Russian side to facilitate the unhindered sea transit of goods in coordination with Turkish partners. This also applies to the export of grain from Ukrainian ports.
Putin added, according to Reuters, that if sanctions were lifted, then Russia could “export significant volumes of fertilisers and agricultural products”.
Silos and ports across Ukraine are brimming with more than 20m metric tonnes of grain and corn that has nowhere to go, with Russia blockading the country’s Black Sea coast and the exit routes for Ukraine’s grain.
Ukraine used to export most of its goods through seaports but since Russia invaded the country, it has been forced to export by train or via its small Danube River ports.
As a result, global wheat prices leaped by 20% in March, owing to the direct impact of the war on wheat production, with the world facing a worsening state of food insecurity and malnutrition, at a time when 42 million people were already one step away from famine.
