Kombat Kitteh!
Nuclear plant director detained by Russians
The director general of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, Ukraine’s state nuclear agency Energoatom said today.
Ihor Murashov was arrested while driving from the facility to the nearby town of Enerhodar on Friday afternoon. Murashov was reportedly blindfolded and taken to an unknown location.
tl;dr By annexing all the occupied territories Putin has given the Russian army a mission which it is incapable of fulfilling (it cannot even hold all the Donbass).
Second, he has made Ukrainians even more determined to liberate all their land.
Third, he has ensured that Western military support for Ukraine will be increased.
Fourth, he is continuing to normalise the use of nuclear weapons.
Fifth, he is continuing “energy warfare” against Europe.
Sixth, he has made peace negotiations impossible, because he cannot put the occupied territories on the table.
Russia says its troops quit key eastern town Lyman
Russia’s defence ministry says it has withdrawn Russian troops from the strategic town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine.
“Because of the threat of encirclement the allied troops have been withdrawn from Red Lyman to better positions,” it says, quoted by Russian state news agencies.
Red Lyman was the old Soviet name for Lyman, which Ukrainian forces say they have entered. Russia calls its troops “allied” with local Moscow-backed fighters.
withdrawn to better positions
As in, fetal?
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1576208830341709825
Guardian liveblog:
Chechnya head : Moscow should consider low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s region of Chechnya, said Moscow should consider using a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after a major new defeat on the battlefield.
In a message on Telegram addressing Russia’s loss of its stronghold of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, Kadyrov wrote: “In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons”.
Kadyrov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions - including Donetsk, where Lyman is located - and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, saying Moscow would defend the lands it had seized “with all our strength and all our means”, Reuters reports.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1576212467688312832
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1576212790515101696
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1576212998116425728
That’s heartbreaking.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Russia’s top military brass had “covered for” an “incompetent” general who should now be “sent to the front to wash his shame off with blood.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the business magnate close to Mr. Putin who leads the Wagner Group — an army of mercenaries fighting for Russia in the war — issued a statement an hour later declaring that he agreed with Mr. Kadyrov.
“Send all these pieces of garbage barefoot with machine guns straight to the front,” Mr. Prigozhin said in an apparent reference to Russia’s military leaders.
I really hope that when Putin is deposed, he won’t be seen as “the moderate”.
