Iryna Bilotserkovets, a model and television presenter, wore a metal eyepatch and bikini for the photoshoot and talked to the magazine about the extensive reconstructive surgery to her face required after she was shot multiple times in Kyiv just a few days after the invasion began in February 2022
“Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out …”
re: “Russia has doubled its 2023 defence spending target to more than $100 billion”
Oligarchs not happy I’m sure.
Reflect for a moment on the reality in Russia. Alexey Navalny, an opposition leader who poses zero political threat to Putin’s reign, has received an additional 19-year prison sentence on top of his current nine years. This is a man who has once survived a near-fatal poisoning incident after exposing Putin’s corrupt and rotten system. Similarly, the famous dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, before his failed appeal against his 25-year sentence, has endured two poisoning episodes. Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, termed a “traitor” by Putin himself, faces no legal, financial, or personal repercussions after the orchestrated mutiny. On the opposite, he continues to move freely between Russia, Belarus, and possible third locations with impunity.
This is in line with the tendencies I observed, they men learn to fight for dominance, women learn to fight for survival. That motivation makes you more ruthless. Female soldiers are less inclined to take prisoners, I felt, because they know they themselves are targets, the traditional threat of rape.
I don’t like making this observation because it is too pat, too sexist. But as an oversimplified example, it works. And so I toss it out here for discussion, so that you can give me a better explanation.
(“041200” would be a strange time, so I think that it means 12:00 on the fourth day of the month.)
041200 is a date-time group. Full format for 1200 UTC on 04 August would be 041200ZAUG2023
NAVTEX does it a bit differently:
TL;DR: No, but the symbolism is strong with this one.
Or, to quote:
Jurcic summed up the size of Croatia’s support succinctly: “Croatia’s help for Ukraine in the war is almost at the level of a statistical error. It is, in other words, insignificant.”
“Croatia above all wanted to express its sympathy with Ukraine, to show that it is on Ukraine’s side and supports the country. It is more a symbolic gesture of support.”
