🇷🇺🇺🇦 Discussion: Relations with Russia and the war in Ukraine

[squeekness]

The Russian Navy: Getting its ass beat by a country without a navy.

Hee hee.

 

[Iceman]

Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow claims it has identified drones used in Black Sea Fleet attack | Ukraine | The Guardian

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

The Daily Beast - Russia Now Has a Second Frontline Set Up Just to Kill Its Deserters: Intel
Russian soldier on leaked call said: “If someone runs back, we snuff them out.”

 

[squeekness]

The Daily Beast - Russia Now Has a Second Frontline Set Up Just to Kill Its Deserters: Intel
Russian soldier on leaked call said: “If someone runs back, we snuff them out.”

Nice. Dead if you do, dead if you don't. Not a great way to keep up morale.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Reuters - Russian hackers account for most 2021 ransomware schemes, U.S. says

 

[DJ Kornphlake]

 

[Iceman]

Medvedev threatens to bring back death penalty in Russia (msn.com)
To clamp down on any opposition to the war and Putin's policies no doubt.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Medvedev threatens to bring back death penalty in Russia (msn.com)
To clamp down on any opposition to the war and Putin's policies no doubt.

I guess they ran out of really high windows and poison.

There's not enough to kill the opposition.

 

[squeekness]

Medvedev threatens to bring back death penalty in Russia (msn.com)
To clamp down on any opposition to the war and Putin's policies no doubt.

Awful. This hurt my heart, the idea of being executed for telling the truth.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

NY Times - The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine
Russia’s meddling in Trump-era politics was more directly connected to the current war than previously understood.

On the night of July 28, 2016, as Hillary Clinton was accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia, Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, received an urgent email from Moscow. The sender was a friend and business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik. A Russian citizen born in Soviet Ukraine, Kilimnik ran the Kyiv office of Manafort’s international consulting firm, known for bringing cutting-edge American campaign techniques to clients seeking to have their way with fragile democracies around the world.

Kilimnik didn’t say much, only that he needed to talk, in person, as soon as possible. Exactly what he wanted to talk about was apparently too sensitive even for the tradecraft the men so fastidiously deployed — encrypted apps, the drafts folder of a shared email account and, when necessary, dedicated “bat phones.” But he had made coded reference — “caviar” — to an important former client, the deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who had fled to Russia in 2014 after presiding over the massacre of scores of pro-democracy protesters. Manafort responded within minutes, and the plan was set for five days later.

Kilimnik cleared customs at Kennedy Airport at 7:43 p.m., only 77 minutes before the scheduled rendezvous at the Grand Havana Room, a Trump-world hangout atop 666 Fifth Avenue, the Manhattan office tower owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Shortly after the appointed hour, Kilimnik walked onto a perfectly put-up stage set for a caricature drama of furtive figures hatching covert schemes with questionable intent — a dark-lit cigar bar with mahogany-paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling windows columned in thick velvet drapes, its leather club chairs typically filled by large men with open collars sipping Scotch and drawing on parejos and figurados. Men, that is, like Paul Manafort, with his dyed-black pompadour and penchant for pinstripes. There, with the skyline shimmering though the cigar-smoke haze, Kilimnik shared a secret plan whose significance would only become clear six years later, as Vladimir V. Putin’s invading Russian Army pushed into Ukraine.

Known loosely as the Mariupol plan, after the strategically vital port city, it called for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead. The new republic’s leader would be none other than Yanukovych. The trade-off: “peace” for a broken and subservient Ukraine.

 

[Tempus Fugit]

666 Fifth Avenue

If I were writing this as a novel that would be too on the nose for me to use. Life really is stranger than fiction.

 

[Iceman]

Ukraine war: Zelensky accuses Russia of 'energy terrorism'

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

Ukraine suffered a comms outage when 1,300 SpaceX satellite units went offline over funding issues | CNN Politics

 

[squeekness]

Ukraine suffered a comms outage when 1,300 SpaceX satellite units went offline over funding issues | CNN Politics

Great.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

The Hill - Russian flag comes down in Kherson, but Ukraine sees a trap

Russia’s flag has come down over the main administrative building in Kherson, Ukraine, but Ukrainian officials and war experts aren’t convinced surrender is nigh.

They suspect Russia may be setting an elaborate trap, creating the illusion of surrender while simultaneously ramping up reinforcements for a major battle to come.

“The statements coming from Russia are contradictory. They seem very intent on convincing everybody that they’re going to leave, but what they’re doing doesn’t seem to be consistent with that,” said Branislav Slantchev, a political science professor at University of California, San Diego, who writes about the war.

The flag is just the latest sign of surrender coming from Russia in the city of Kherson, a key strategic position that is crucial to Russia’s aspirations of advancing farther west, toward the major port in Odesa.

 

[squeekness]

The Hill - Russian flag comes down in Kherson, but Ukraine sees a trap

I hope that if it is a trap that Ukraine escapes it. I want the Russians gone so badly.

 

[:eek:]

Air Force: Penis drawn in sky near Russian base in Syria was accidental (taskandpurpose.com)

 

[Iceman]

Russian soldiers ordered to 'shoot everyone' in Bucha massacre (yahoo.com)

 

[squeekness]

Russian soldiers ordered to 'shoot everyone' in Bucha massacre (yahoo.com)

Nice. and when Putin fills his army with drafted criminals they won't even have to give the order for it to happen.

 

[:eek:]

U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiate with Russia - The Washington Post

 

[Iceman]

What is the negotiation going to be? You’ve invaded and killed tons of our people and taken much of our land. How about you keep half the land? Sound fair? Great, thanks.

 

[squeekness]

What is the negotiation going to be? You’ve invaded and killed tons of our people and taken much of our land. How about you keep half the land? Sound fair? Great, thanks.

They would be stupid to give in now.

 

[MagnarTheGreat]

NY Times - Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms
Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine.

 

[Herofan]

What do you have to do to create a society with soldiers that think doing horrible acts is okay and justified?

Saying that the other side/group is worse, is/would be horrible to you, and particularly is full of Nazis/fascists, can easily make a lot of people willing to be horrible to them.

 

[squeekness]

Saying that the other side/group is worse, is/would be horrible to you, and particularly is full of Nazis/fascists, can easily make a lot of people willing to be horrible to them.

It worked for Putin, right? Sigh...... I am so tired of it all.