A drunk man that looks like Putin just can’t understand what is the point of hitting residential areas in Russia. Similarly, what is the point of placing troops in the residential areas? Why mass murder and loot in a foreign country? Why blow up Kakhovka Dam? What is the point of invading at all when you dealt hundreds of times more damage than what you claim has caused the invasion?
(Radio New Zealand)
Some of the propagandistic alterations may have been subtle enough to escape the attention of casual readers in that they were only a few words long, but they dramatically changed the context of a story. Amendments adding Kremlin talking points to stories included sentences that “neo-Nazis had created a threat” to Russian borders and that “Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum.”
EDIT: death toll up to ten
ETA: According to pro-Kremlin military blogger Yuri Kotenok … Maj Gen Sergei Goryachev died in a missile strike.
Projection is strong in this one.
If that’s the case I’m sure there are a LOT more in other countries that took a LOT more refugees.
So not in France then.
The English Conservative government has reached Rudy Giuliani level (a verb, a noun, and nine eleven) in their communication which drags Ukraine into everything. Obviously their internal polling shows it’s their most popular policy so they’re always at it. It was most notable when they had large internal migration last year and made a huge song and dance about it, but in fact the overwhelming majority of it was students.
Putin and his American creatures: “US giving Ukraine nukes!!”
Yup. Seeds already sown for that claim. And if the rubes are gullible enough to think that depleted rounds are “nuclear weapons” I’m not sure there is any hope for them.
Russia submitted a bill to parliament pardoning all small and medium crimes of participants of the so-called “SMO”.
Both professionals and mobiks will be exempted from criminal prosecution even if the crimes were committed before the law came into force. Those who receive state awards or retired from service will also be exempt.
The Russian army is becoming criminal not only de-facto but also de-jure.
Executive Summary
• The Russian project to cleave away Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region began immediately after
the 2004 Orange Revolution, with members of Aleksandr Dugin’s far-right Eurasian Youth
Union kicked into action from 2005 onwards as the “Donetsk Republic” movement, organizing
protests and ultimately paramilitary training camps.
• Aleksandr Borodai, Igor Girkin and Olga Kulygina - Russian operatives who would ultimately
lead the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and even head the self-declared Donetsk People’s
Republic - all had a common history in the Transnistrian war as the USSR collapsed. That
war itself set a precedent for the mechanisms used in Ukraine between 2014 and 2015 is
established in Transnistria in the early ’90s, with “former” KGB officials there confirming the
role of the Kremlin. Assets of the Russian special services who were sent there head security
after attempting to violently suppress revolution in Latvia. The Russian military proved decisive
on the side of separatists.
• By 1993, all the key players in the creation of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” were aligned
with the opposition to Boris Yeltsin during the constitutional crisis. Borodai, Kulygina and Dugin
were all present in Moscow during the standoff and ensuing violent crackdown by government
forces.
• Borodai, Kulygina and Girkin remained close through the ’90s, writing for Zavtra (Tomorrow),
a publication run by Aleksandr Prokhanov, a hardcore Russian nationalist and militarist, even
as Girkin went to work for the FSB.
• Borodai, Kulygina and Girkin were thrown into action in the stealth takeover of Crimea in
February 2014.
• This troika of operatives migrated to Donbas — Sloviansk and Donetsk, in particular —
coordinating their insurgent activities from the very outset, with Borodai’s role hidden until
mid-May. Borodai became “prime minister” of the DNR and appointed Girkin his “defense
minister,” responsible for a series of gruesome atrocities in and around Sloviansk.
• Girkin’s work for the FSB was by now well-established. Borodai’s ties to the service, however,
continued to be interrogated, with SBU (Ukrainian security) intercepts showing Borodai himself
hinting at a close relationship to Kontora (a Russian slang term for the FSB).
• Kulygina turned up in Sloviansk posing as an “academic expert on management theory,” but
expertly wielding an assault rifle. She was captured by HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence,
whose director believed her to be a high-ranking officer in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence
agency.
• Kulygina did not fold under questioning, but the Russians exerted enormous effort to secure
her release, including conducting mock executions of Ukrainian POWs and threatening
terror attacks on Kyiv. Kulygina was traded for three Ukrainian Spetsnaz commandos and 20
Ukrainian service members.
• Borodai and Girkin’s tenure in Donetsk was as short-lived as it is ignominious. Girkin is later
convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 using a
Russian-imported BUK anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 people on board.
• Borodai himself was replaced by the former Transnistrian KGB chief Vladimir Antyufeyev. The
nationalists like Girkin and Borodai weren’t the only extremists to be utilized by the Russian
security services in Ukraine. Just before the siege of Sloviansk had begun, members of a
KGB-spawned cult called Concept of Public Security or “Konceptsiya Obshchestvennoy
Bezopasnosti” (KOB) had taken over broadcasts at the city’s TV center. The group broadcast
lectures recorded in the 90s by the late Russian Maj. Gen. Konstantin Petrov, laying out
antisemitic conspiracy theories and mind-numbing management jargon.
• KOB originated in Russia and was first promulgated at the direction of Filipp Bobkov, head of
the KGB’s 5th Directorate. The movement combined veneration of Stalin and the USSR with
neo-paganism.
• The cult wormed its way into parliament, academia and the FSB over the course of the 90s
and early 2000s, but by the middle of that decade, it appeared to have run its course, with
an affiliated political party, KPE, deregistered after failing to win any seats in 2007 and Maj.
Gen. Petrov dying in 2009.
• But KOB played a quiet but key role in the network operating in Ukraine. A network of assets
was sprung into action in 2013 and 2022, with members appearing at protests and rallies,
organizing militias and “communes,” often in concert with other esoteric fringe movements, and
eventually coming to prominence in the form of long-time adherent and activist Kiril Stremousov,
who served as “deputy governor” and the face of the Russian occupation administration in
Kherson until his death in a purported car crash in November, 2022.
• Away from the realm of political technology, Neo-Nazis were increasingly involved in Russian
battlefield operations during the first invasion, setting up paramilitary groups to fight there and
operating with the Wagner Group.
• Rusich, known for committing war crimes in Ukraine, is a Sabotage-Assault and Reconnaissance
Group led by a former Russian paratrooper and self-declared Nazi named Aleksei Milchakov.
When it first appeared in Donbas as a paramilitary organization, it operated as part of Rapid
Reaction Group (GBR) “Batman,” headed by the Russian commander Aleksandr Bednov.
• Bednov was killed in 2015 in Luhansk. Surviving members of GBR Batman alleged that his
assassination was carried out by Wagner — the first ever public mention of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s
mercenary corps.
• Wagner joined the Russian army against Ukraine in the assault on Debaltseve. Despite Wagner’s
alleged role in their former commander’s murder, Milchakov and other Rusich fighters would
later reappear abroad, fighting alongside the group in Syria.
• Rusich returned to Ukraine in 2022, having linked up with Borodai in the meantime via the
Union of Donbass Volunteers organization he runs with Kulygina. The organization is funded
by ultra-Orthodox oligarch (and friend to the Western religious right) Konstantin Malofeyev,
and overseen by Vladislav Surkov.
• Rusich fighters were photographed with Borodai at a Union of Donbass Volunteers training
camp in Russia’s Belgorod region as late as April 2022.
• Rusich’s most visible deployment has been on the front line near the Donetsk suburb of Maryinka.
It has an outsized presence on social media, often championing the most violent and extreme
methods of prosecuting the failing war.
• Another fascist paramilitary group that followed a similar path from the battlefields of Donbas
to adventuring with Wagner abroad was Russkoye Imperskoye Dvizheniye (RID), the Russian
Imperial Movement, known for its extensive network of connections with Western neo-Nazis.
• RID’s paramilitary wing, the Imperial Legion, is helmed by Denis Gariev, who also runs its
Partizan Center training facility in St. Petersburg, training new legionnaires. It attracts neoNazis internationally.
• RID’s leaders had traveled to Kyiv and then Crimea in the early days of the Euromaidan
demonstrations that unseats Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Its goal was to set up
paramilitary groups that would be trained and dispatched to the occupied regions.
• RID later joins Wagner in their operations in Libya.
• The Imperial Legion returned to Ukraine in May 2022, engaging in heavy fighting in the
Kharkiv region before being forced to withdraw and regroup near Bakhmut. Much of the RID
propaganda around the war has been religious and apocalyptic in nature.
• The group has also been accused by Western intelligence officials of using their close contacts
with fascists in Spain to facilitate a series of letter bombings on behalf of the GRU, targeting
Spanish government and NATO allies’ diplomatic offices in the country.
Weren’t these kind of shells the cause of one of the first ultimatums from russia against western escalation some months ago?
ETA:
It was only three months ago, but it seemed so far away.
Yes, when the UK announced that it would give Challenger 2 tanks. But every new piece of Western hardware is an “escalation” and IIRC there were quite a few before then.
