I sure hope Girkin is being unduly optimistic about the state of Russian forces!
Itâs fun to hear anyway.
The likely end-stage illness, sure, but thereâs only reason why Russia would build so many bomb shelters, and itâs not good. More like end-of-the-world depressingly scary.
One used to see where fallout shelters were in cities along the East Coast of the US, now I canât remember the last time I saw the ubiquitous sign anywhere.
Nobody is upgrading ours. Now thatâs disturbing.
Letâs hope Putin kicks before he does something really stupid.
Ukraine had withdrawn from its libraries 19 m copies of books by last November that came either from the Soviet era or were in Russian, a senior lawmaker has said.
Reuters reports:
Yevheniya Kravchuk, deputy head of the Ukrainian parliamentâs committee on humanitarian and information policy, said that of the 19m books, 11mwere in Russian.
âSome Ukrainian-language books from the Soviet era are also written off,â Kravchuk said according to a statement published on the website of the Verkhovna Rada, the countryâs parliament.
âThere are also recommendations to write off and remove books whose authors supported armed aggression against Ukraine.â
It was not immediately clear what happened to the withdrawn books.
After Russia moved to annex Ukraineâs Crimean peninsula in 2014, Kyiv increasingly restricted the use of Russian books. The process of the so-called âde-russificationâ sped up when Russia invaded the country nearly a year ago.
In mid-2022, Ukraine restricted the distribution of Russian books, seeking to further sever cultural ties between the two neighbours and undo policies that Kyiv authorities say have suppressed Ukrainian identity for centuries.
âIn general, the ratio of books in Russian and Ukrainian languages in our libraries is just very regretful,â Kravchuk said. âSo now we are talking about the fact that it is necessary to renew funds and purchase books in the Ukrainian language as soon as possible.â
She added that about 44% of books in Ukraineâs libraries are in Russian, the rest in Ukrainian or languages of the European Union countries.
Iâm not sure it would be any less disturbing if signs were popping up all over the place in NATO countries.
My hope is there are enough sane people between Putin and the folks that push the actual GO buttons in the silos, bombers, or subs. Putin might be suicidal, and maybe some will comply, but not enough. Expecting similar poor performance of their nukes as with the army, maybe we escape the worst scenario.
I have no idea how the Russian nuclear C&C works. Maybe Putin has the Big Red Button close at hand at all times? Or he just shoots any refusniks and replaces them until someone complies.
These are the lies I tell myself things will be OKâŚ
The Daily Mash is already on it:
Anti-imperialism:
More anti-imperialism: