Let’s start tonight by focusing on the where of the next ground attack, which will be coming from the northeast, east, southeast, and south of Ukraine. Below is the latest geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) on where the Russian military is from the British Ministry of Defence.
While you can click on it to make it bigger, here’s the shorthand for what you’re looking at. The salmon colored areas are Russian controlled. With the exception of two gaps, the first between Izium and Luhansk and the second farther north between Kharkiv and Sumy, the Russians basically have control over everything from Crimea north and a bit west to Kherson then all the way around the eastern border of Ukraine with Russia. The areas colored in with the diagonal hashing are contested. The one I want to focus on is the one between Izium and Luhansk. In this area Ukraine’s eastern forces, known as the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), are basically exposed between two different elements of the Russian invaders. The Ukrainian position is forming a salient, which you can see in the map below made by Ukrainian journalist Illla Ponomarenko:
The blue lines on the map indicate where the JFO is in relation to the areas under Russian control, still in salmon, and from which the Russians can and most likely will attack. As you can see, the JFO is surrounded on three sides by the Russians, which means it is very vulnerable. It can be encircled and reduced. The Ukrainians, now that they’ve held the central portion of the country and Kyiv is safe from land based attacks, need to both reinforce the JFO as soon as possible and reposition its front lines vis-a-vis the Russians to avoid it being encircled and reduced. Just as the Russians are racing to get units reorganized and moved to the south and east of Ukraine, as well as to bring in fresh personnel and equipment from Russia and other places, the Ukrainians need to be moving with all possible haste to get the JFO both reinforced and its position adjusted to ensure it isn’t going to be entrapped and destroyed.
Here’s today’s assessment from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense:
The operational update regarding the russian invasion on 12.00 on April 4, 2022
The fortieth day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to the russian military invasion continues.
A russian enemy continues to conduct full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine. A russian enemy command, in order to prepare for an offensive operation in east of Ukraine, deploys elements of the operational construction of the offensive group and increases the C2 system. A russian occupying forces are regrouping and trying to improve the tactical situation in some areas in southern Ukraine. The formation and relocation of additional units of a russian federation to participate in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine continues.
In the Volyn direction, the situation has not changed, units of the Armed Forces of the republic of belarus, with forces of up to four battalion tactical groups, continue to perform tasks to cover the border.
In the Polissya direction, there is a high probability of missile and bomb strikes on military and civilian infrastructure by russian enemy planes operating from belarusian airfields.
There is a movement of units of the Eastern Military District and airborne troops from the territory of the republic of belarus to the russian federation. The movement of weapons, military equipment and personnel is carried out by rail and air.
According to available information, separate units of the 35th All-Military Army (Belogorsk) and the 36th All-Military Army (Ulan-Ude) of the Eastern Military District are located in the settlements of Rechitsa and Yampol (Gomel Region of the republic of belarus).
In the Siversky direction, the enemy completed the withdrawal of units from the Central Military District to the Kursk region and began their further movement.
In the Slobozhansky direction, the enemy continues to blockade Kharkiv, carry out artillery shelling of the city, and regroup troops. Strengthens the air cover of important objects in the area of the city of Belgorod and areas of concentration of troops in the Kharkiv direction.
To clarify the positions of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the enemy is conducting reconnaissance in the area of the village of Barvinkove with the use of UAVs, also trying to restore the bridge over the river Siversky Donets near the city of Izyum. Near the settlement of Brazhkivka, with the help of a tank company tactical group, the enemy conducted reconnaissance by battle, had no success, and retreated to the previously occupied frontiers.
There is still a high probability of air and missile strikes on civilian targets in Kharkiv, and preparations are underway for an offensive in the direction of Slovyansk.
In the Donetsk and Tavriya directions, the main efforts of the enemy are concentrated in the areas of the settlements of Rubizhne, Popasna, preparation for the attack on Siverodonetsk, as well as gaining full control over the city of Mariupol. On it today a russian enemy struck 8 air strikes, street fights proceed. Ukrainian defenders are defending the city.
At the same time, the enemy completes the regrouping and replacement of units that have lost offensive capabilities in order to resume active offensive operations.
In the South Buh direction, our troops are pushing back the occupiers in the Kherson oblast. The enemy carried out air reconnaissance around Mykolayiv with use of the UAV.
In the Black Sea and Azov operational zones, the activity of the enemy ship group in the Black Sea is reduced due to difficult weather conditions (storm up to 4 points). The rest of the enemy ships perform tasks in certain areas.
Together to victory! We believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine! Keep calm! Glory to Ukraine!
There is video circulating today of a large number of Ukrainian Marines who supposedly surrendered in Mariupol early today or yesterday/over the weekend. I’ve seen no official confirmation of this yet, I’ve seen at least person claim the video is several weeks old and not from Mariupol, and the accounts initially posting the video are all pseudonymous with no way of knowing who is actually running them despite having high speed sounding names, even if they are being retweeted by people using their own names who are legitimate and usually credible. So until there’s more clarity, I’m just going to acknowledge this is out there and move on without further discussion.
Much more after the jump.
Over the past hour the Russians have begun bombarding pretty much every target in Ukraine they can identify.
Sirens have been activated in the Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Vinnytsia, Volyn, Zakarpattya, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr oblasts and in Kyiv.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 5, 2022
Everyone needs to prepare themselves that worse imagery, video, and reports are going to be coming from the other parts of Ukraine the Russians had occupied and/or are still occupying!
Source: https://t.co/ZE1aoJLxjE
— Anastasiia Lapatina (@lapatina_) April 4, 2022
And it’s just the Kyiv oblast…
— olexander scherba?? (@olex_scherba) April 4, 2022
⚡️Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova says the atrocities in Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast, are set to overshadow those committed in Bucha.
“In terms of human casualties, the worst situation is in Borodyanka. There’s a lot to process."
— Oleksiy Sorokin (@mrsorokaa) April 4, 2022
⚡️Russians' torture chamber discovered in basement of children's health resort in Bucha.
The bodies of five murdered men were discovered in the basement.
Their hands had been tied and they appear to have been tortured.
Source: Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/lIwUHHAUw5
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 4, 2022
Mariupol:
RT giddily reports that Russian soldiers captured and summarily executed 93 Ukrainians in civilian clothing who tried to escape from Mariupol. https://t.co/2g9OUkFIHy
— Slava Malamud ?? (@SlavaMalamud) April 4, 2022
The NY Times‘ visual investigative team have done an amazing job synching up the open source satellite imagery from Maxar’s with the video taken after the Russians were cleared from central Ukraine to refute the Russian government’s assertions that all of the war crimes being documented are false flags and hoaxes using crisis actors and, at the same time, were all actually committed by the Ukrainians to make the Russians look bag.
Not true, Russia. Here's the evidence. https://t.co/MjaCcq764u https://t.co/J0fkwlE5Ja pic.twitter.com/cmSkKefVZk
— Malachy Browne (@malachybrowne) April 4, 2022
Much more imagery and explanations of how they did it at this link.
If you’re wondering why Germany is still holding out, despite what we’re seeing from Bucha, this thread is an excellent socio-political and socio-economic explanation:
I know a lot of foreigners are struggling to understand why Germany keeps sending billions to Moscow while Russia is waging war against Ukraine. Here's a thread to explain how this looks from Germany:
— Marcel Dirsus (@marceldirsus) April 4, 2022
- The first thing to understand is that it’s not just the government. There are some exceptions but more or less Germany’s entire political class wants to keep buying Russian oil and gas. At least for now. They say they want to stop at some point in the distant future but not now.
- German elites are so reluctant to stop buying Russian energy because the consequences to Germany’s economy would be severe. Economists have been arguing about details for a while but everyone understands that Germany would take a very bad hit.
- It’s not just the economic damage itself, either: Uncertainty is a huge concern. The government evidently believes not only that the economic damage would be severe but also that it’s impossible to predict just how bad things would get. That scares them.
- The entire situation is just really awkward for many German politicians. They have to be seen to do something because there’s heavy political pressure but they desperately want to avoid damaging Germany’s economy. There are few military options.
- Many of the people that now have to figure out whether to support or reject energy sanctions played a huge role in creating dependency on Russian energy in the first place. That makes it quite a bit more difficult to manoeuvre.
- Since they desperately want to avoid energy sanctions, German politicians have come up with an impressive number of ways to confuse voters or try to convince them that Germany is either doing more than enough already or that energy sanctions would make no difference
- One argument that keeps coming up over and over again is something like this: Yes, we might be sending billions to Moscow but Putin can’t use that money because of sanctions. I’m pretty sure it came from an arcane debate between rival camps of economists but now it’s mainstream
- For politicians, that argument is great. Like 11 voters actually understand whatever the hell the economists are talking about but every politician can just repeat that German money is totally useless to Putin and plenty of people will believe it. Even more will be confused.
- The second tactic is diversion: “We might keep sending billions to Moscow but we’re doing everything else we can.” That’s obviously untrue. Take arms transfers, for example. There’s been report after report on delays, failures and incompetence.
- But, and this is lucky for the government, arms transfers are shrouded in secrecy. That’s good, because you don’t want everyone to know where and when you deliver what equipment, but it also allows the government to hide. They’re doing it, or at least they’re trying to.
- So what happens next? It’s really tough to say. Since not even the opposition supports tough energy sanctions, there’s definitely a scenario in which Berlin gets away with inaction. Much will depend on the trajectory of the war itself.
- We’re currently at stage 4 of German foreign policy. If the war gets any worse, pressure on Berlin could become so overwhelming that they change course, at least on oil. Every Russian war crime makes it tougher for Germany to do nothing.
- We’re now at stage two of German foreign policy: 1. Ignore issue as long as possible 2. Say it can’t be done 3. Watch everything get worse 4. Lose allied trust due to inaction 5. Reluctantly change course 6. “We’re amazing because we changed course
- This is fair criticism. I suppose it depends on your definition of “distant future.” I’d guess to many Ukrainians, those dates feel pretty distant because they want us to stop empowering Putin right now and not in a few months or years from now
- This omits the German government’s recent pledge to end all oil imports from Russia this year and gas by mid-2024. Nobody in positions of power wants to keep buying Russian oil and gas until “some point in the distant future.”
- In short: Germany wants to stop buying Russian oil and gas but it really doesn’t want to stop buying it right now. Whether it changes course or not will depend on the war. If it gets worse, Berlin might do it. If not, they can probably get away with not doing it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- /end
This morning, RIA_Novosti, which is Russian state controlled “news” media – and if you recall, the outlet that first planted the Hunter Biden, along with John Kerry’s stepsons and Liz Cheney, were undertaking illegal and unethical business trading off their fathers’ names in Ukraine back in May 2014 (see my Black PSYOP series for all the details including the screengrab) – ran a column, really more a polemic, calling for complete and utter destruction of Ukraine as a state, a society, and a culture. Here is the English translation courtesy of Mary Kravchenko. According to Kravchenko, the author is a political technologist.
What should Russia do with Ukraine?
Timofey Sergeytsev
We wrote about the inevitability of Ukraine’s denazification as early as last April. We do not need a Nazi, Banderite Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and a tool of the West used to destroy Russia. Today, the denazification issue has taken a practical turn.
Denazification is necessary when a considerable number of population (very likely most of it) has been subjected to the Nazi regime and engaged into its agenda. That is, when the “good people — bad government” hypothesis does not apply. Recognizing this fact forms the backbone of the denazification policy and all its measures, while the fact itself constitutes its subject.
This is the situation Ukraine has found itself in. The fact that the Ukrainian voter was choosing between the “Poroshenko peace” and the “Zelenskyy peace” must not deceive you: Ukrainians were quite happy with the shortest way to peace via a blitzkrieg, which was strongly alluded to by the last two Ukrainian presidents when they were elected. This was the method used to “pacify” home antifascists in Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro[the RU original uses the city’s former name “Dnipropetrovsk”], Mariupol, and other Russian cities — the method of total terror. And ordinary Ukrainians were fine with it. Denazification is a set of actions aimed at the nazified bulk of the population, who technically cannot be directly punished as war criminals.
Those Nazis who took up arms must be destroyed on the battlefield, as many of them as possible. No significant distinction should be made between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called “nationalist battalions,” as well as the Territorial Defense, who have joined the two other types of military units. They are all equally complicit in the horrendous violence towards civilians, equally complicit in the genocide of the Russian people, and they don’t comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis must be punished in such a way as to provide an example and a demonstration. A total lustration must be conducted. All organizations involved in Nazi actions must be eliminated and prohibited. However, besides the highest ranks, a significant number of common people are also guilty of being passive Nazis and Nazi accomplices. They supported the Nazi authorities and pandered to them. A just punishment for this part of the population can only be possible through bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and sparingly as possible relates civilians. The further denazification of this bulk of the population will take the form of re-education through ideological repressions (suppression) of Nazi paradigms and a harsh censorship not only in the political sphere but also in the spheres of culture and education. It was through culture and education that the pervasive large-scale Nazification of the population was conducted, ensured by the guarantees of dividends from the Nazi regime victory over Russia, by the Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, and the 8-year-long war against the people of Donbas, who have rebelled against the Ukrainian Nazism.
Denazification can only be conducted by the winner, which means (1) their unconditional control over the denazification process and (2) the authority that can ensure such control. For this purpose, a country that is being denazified cannot possess sovereignty. The denazifier state, Russia, cannot take a liberal approach towards denazification. The denazifier ideology cannot be challenged by the guilty party that is being denazified. When Russia admits that Ukraine needs to be denazified, it essentially admits that the Crimea scenario cannot be applied to the whole Ukraine. In all fairness, this scenario was also not possible in the insurgent Donbas in 2014. Only the 8-year-long rebellion against the Nazi violence and terror managed to result in an internal unification and deliberate, explicit, broad-scale refusal of retaining any association with or relation to Ukraine, who has identified itself as a Nazi community.
The period of denazification can take no less than one generation that has to be born, brought upm and mature under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years — starting from as early as 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism was given legal and legitimate forms of political self-expression and led the movement for “independence”, setting a course for Nazism.
The current nazified Ukraine is characterized by its formlessness and ambivalence, which allow it to disguise Nazism as the aspiration to “independence” and the “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality, to degradation) and claim that “there is no Nazism” in Ukraine, “only few sporadic incidents.” Indeed, there isn’t a main Nazi party, no Führer, no full-fledged racial laws (only a cutdown version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result — no opposition or resistance against the regime.
However, all listed above doesn’t make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of the German Nazism of the first half of the 20th century. Quite the opposite: since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” norms and limitations (which are essentially a product of political technologies), it can spread freely just like a basis for any Nazism — both European and, in its most developed form, the American racism. That’s why there can be no compromise during denazification, as in the case of the “no to NATO, yes to EU” formula. The collective West is in itself the architect, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Banderite supporters from Western Ukraine and their “historical memory” is just one of the tools of the nazification of Ukraine. Ukronazism poses a much bigger threat to the world and Russia than the Hitler version of German Nazism.
Apparently, the name “Ukraine” cannot be kept as a title of any fully denazified state entity on the territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people’s republics, newly created on the territories free from Nazism, must and will develop on the basis of practices of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of systems of essential services for the population.
Their political direction cannot be neutral in practice: the redemption of their guilt before Russia for treating it like an enemy can be manifested only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival, and development. No “Marshall Plans” can be allowed to happen on these territories. No “neutrality” in the ideological and practical sense that is compatible with denazification can be possible. Individuals and organizations who are to become tools of denazification in the new denazified republics cannot but rely on the direct organizational and force support from Russia.
Denazification will inevitably include de-ukrainization — the rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component in the self-identification of the population of the historical Malorossiya and Novorossiya territories, which was started by the Soviet authorities. Being a tool of the Communist superpower, this artificial ethnocentrism was not left unclaimed after its fall. It was transferred in its subservient role to a different superpower (the power above states) — the superpower of the West. It needs to be brought back within its natural boundaries and stripped of political functionality.
Unlike, for example, Georgia or the Baltic States, history has proved it impossible for Ukraine to exist as a nation-state, and any attempts to “build” such a nation-state naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilizational substance of its own, a subordinate element of an extraneous and alien civilization. Debanderization alone will not be enough for denazification: the Banderite element is only a hand and a screen, a disguise for the European project of the Nazi Ukraine, which is why the denazification of Ukraine means its inevitable de-europeanization.
The Banderite elites must be eliminated; their re-education is impossible. The social “bog,” which has actively and passively supported them through action and inaction, must go through the hardships of war and internalize the lived experience as a historical lesson and the redemption of its guilt. Those who didn’t support the Nazi regime and suffered from it and the war it started in Donbas must be consolidated and organized, must become the backbone of the new authorities, their vertical and horizontal framework. History has shown that the tragedies and dramas of the war time benefit the peoples who were tempted and carried away by their role as the enemy of Russia.
Denazification as a goal of the special military operation within the limits of the operation itself means a military victory over the Kyiv regime, the liberation of the territories from the armed supporters of nazification, the elimination of hard-line Nazis, the imprisonment of war criminals, and the creating of systemic conditions for further denazification in peacetime.
The latter, in its turn, must begin with the establishment of local governments, militia, and defense institutions, cleansed of Nazi elements, the launching on their basis of constituent processes to create a new republican statehood, the integration of this statehood into the close cooperation with the Russian agency on Ukraine denazification (newly established or reorganized on the basis of, for example, Rossotrudnichestvo), the adoption of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification under Russian control, the definition of boundaries and frameworks for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in regard to denazification, the establishment of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that in order to achieve the denazification goals, the support of the population is necessary, as well as its transition to the Russian side after its liberation from the terror, violence, and ideological pressure of the Kyiv regime, and after their withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of military hostilities, to be convinced of Russia’s long-term intentions, meaning “they will not be abandoned.” It’s impossible to foresee exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine, made up of five oblasts) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The exclusion line, however, will be found experimentally. Behind the line, a forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine will remain, with the formally banned Nazism and hostile to Russia. This is where the haters of Russia will go. The threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements must become a guarantee of the preservation of this obsolete Ukraine in a neutral state. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border, there will be a territory of potential integration into the Russian civilization, which is inherently anti-fascist.
The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as during the military operation. At each stage, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will become the results of the corresponding stage. In this case, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:
— The elimination of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, informational, and educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
— The establishment of people’s self-government institutions and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories to protect the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
— The installation of the Russian information space;
— The seizure of educational materials and the prohibition of educational programs at all levels that contain Nazi ideological guidelines;
— Mass investigations aimed to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology, and support for the Nazi regime;
— Lustration, making the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime public, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who have not become subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
— The adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification “from below,” a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
— The establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
— The inclusion of a set of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people’s republics;
— The establishment of permanent denazification institutions for a period of 25 years.
Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Because this is a purely Russian business. And also because it is not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine that will be eradicated. The process will also, and above all, affect Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation under the superpower of the West and the United States.
In order to put the Ukraine denazification plan into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, acknowledge itself as the last authority in protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve to preserve and that the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for itself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and found its expression in the world war and the Russian revolution, which were inextricably linked with each other.
Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. It implemented the main Western project that constituted an alternative to capitalism, which defeated the nation-states — the Socialist red project. It crushed German Nazism, a monstrous offspring of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was its outstretched hand of friendship, for which it received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.
Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it had selflessly provided. From now on, Russia will follow its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage — the leadership in the global process of decolonization.
As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and alliances with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.
* An extremist organization banned in Russia.
Translation: Ukrainian volunteers
Here’s Kravchenko’s analysis of the piece:
Disclaimer: What you are about to read is a direct translation of an article written by a russian propagandist. This is what real #Russia wants. Please read and share. This text will soon be translated into other languages so that everyone in the world can read about Russia’s crimes.
The original article in Russian is here. In case of deletion — a link to the web archive.
This is the article that was published by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti (Russian: РИА Новости). This media through the years was one of the main voices of Russian propaganda and fake news.
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RIA Novosti is known for its systematic support of the Kremlin, violation of journalistic standards and works according to so-called “temnik” (directives and agendas from the government). The position in this article corresponds to the position of Russia.
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This particular article is an indication of the Russian main narrative right now. RIA Novosti is trying to hide Russian crimes and spread cynical lies about the Ukrainian army, but also to provide media support for a full-scale program of destroying independent Ukraine.
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How does it work? Russians state the facts about cities that were destroyed and civilians that were tortured and murdered. They are talking about Mariupol (a city as big as Edinburgh, Florence, or Lyon) that was almost wiped out, as well as Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv — cities under bombardment. They mention the horrors of Bucha, where hundreds of people were murdered and tortured to death. They are talking about 161 children that died in Ukraine during these 40 days. However, they claim that it was the Ukrainian army that committed all these war crimes.
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The author, a Russian political technologist, also has the audacity to talk about the Soviet occupation of Ukraine. He is trying to support Putin’s narrative about Ukraine as an artificial country. Instead, the world should remember that the Soviet Union terrorized Ukraine for almost a century with forced collectivization, Great Purge, Terror-Famine (Holodomor), forced deportation, etc.
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In this article, the author is describing ways how Russians want to wipe out Ukraine in the same way the Soviet regime did it.
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It’s important to spread this article. The Russian war should be stopped now. It was supposed to be stopped 8 years ago when it only began. 71% of Russians feel proud about this war. 75.5% of Russians approve of the idea of a military invasion of the next country and believe that it should be Poland. According to respondents, this is a logical continuation of the so-called “military special operation of the Russian Federation”.
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The world should be aware of Russian methods, crimes, and plans. Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
Here’s a quick reminder from Slava Malamud about just what the Russians mean when they say NAZI:
I know I have said this before, but I will repeat it again and again, because Russian propaganda is powerful and pervasive.
The word "Nazism" does not mean, when uttered by Russians, what you think it means. In fact, many or most Russian citizens DON'T KNOW ITS MEANING…— Slava Malamud ?? (@SlavaMalamud) April 4, 2022
“But how can this be? Didn’t they fight against Nazism?” The fact is, Russians weren’t taught this. They were taught they fought against Germany. And the word “Nazism” was not commonly used. Instead, the enemy was universally referred to as “German-fascist invaders.” This is key.
Generations of Russians have been taught that the Soviet Union won The Great Patriotic War, which it fought alone against the enemy whose only goal was enslaving the Russian people. The larger “World War II” was rarely if ever mentioned. The West’s role was minimized…
As for the Holocaust, it simply never happened. The mass extermination of Jews was never referred to. The very word “Jew” was taboo in schools and in the movies. The “fascist-German invaders” exterminated Russians. The death camps were for Russians.
In fact, Hitler’s one and only crime, the entire definition of “fascism” was invading the USSR, killing Soviet people, wanting to enslave Soviet people and destroy Soviet socialism. If you asked many Russians about what happened to Jews during the war, they’d shrug…
Many assumed Jews were traitors and collaborators, because this went well with the long-established Russian stereotype about weak, cowardly Jews who don’t fight and avoid the military. I remember many arguments in school about this thing. “Jews didn’t fight. Jews were traitors”
The only change between then and now is that Russians currently use the word “Nazism” instead of “fascism” most times because they know it’s a more powerful term in the West. But the meaning remains the same: “anyone who is an enemy of Russia” and thus is subject to extermination
Malamud is originally from Moldova, nominally Jewish, and of Ukrainian descent on one side of his family. His grandfather and one of his uncle’s (if I’m recalling correctly) who were Ukrainian both served in the Soviet Army in WW II. If I’m recalling what he has written correctly, his grandfather died after the war as a result of his wounds and his uncle was killed in action.
Here’s a thread from someone who studies and teaches about genocide explaining why he is now calling what the Russians are doing in Ukraine genocide:
As a genocide scholar I am an empiricist, I usually dismiss rhetoric. I also take genocide claims with a truckload of salt because activists apply it almost everywhere now.
Not now. There are actions, there is intent. It's as genocide as it gets. Pure, simple and for all to see
— Eugene Finkel (@eugene_finkel) April 4, 2022
Got questions about why I think it is genocide. Until this morning I resisted applying the term. War crimes? Sure. Heinous rhetoric? You bet. What changed is the combination of more and more evidence, from different places, and even more importantly, explicit official rhetoric /1
— Eugene Finkel (@eugene_finkel) April 4, 2022
- The official legal definition of genocide is “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. When I teach genocide I start by saying that this definition has huge problems because it doesn’t give us /2
- clear thresholds (what “in part” does even mean?) and because it is almost impossible to prove intent. People who carry out genocide are usually not idiots, if there are orders at all they would be given orally. But, several things are important to realize. First, something /3
- that doesn’t start as genocide might evolve into one when conditions change. Russian invasion, in my view, did not start with clear genocidal intent, but evolved into one. Regime change and colonial subjugation are by themselves not enough to constitute genocide. Second, more /4
- evidence that Bucha is not an exception. Each massacre might be local initiative, together they are a campaign. And most importantly, the RIA Novosti (a state outlet) piece is one of the most explicit statements of intent to destroy a national group as such that I’ve ever seen /5
- I know Russian. I have read a lot of Russian nationalist rhetoric in my life. This is not some wild intellectual fantasy, it is a clear, actionable statement of intent by a state agency. The UN definition is problematic, but in this case it fits like a glove
Here’s an excellent interview with Russian journalist and current fellow at the Center for European Political Analysis (CEPA) Andrei Soldatov. It is all very good, but I think this is the buried lede, but only because of the order the questions were posed and it was the answer to the last question.
OR: How, then, do you see the war ending?
Soldatov: Putin’s usual way out of trouble is to escalate even more. I think that people in Moldova and in the Baltics should be extremely, extremely nervous right now. I think it’s absolutely possible that he might start something there, just like he did with the Donbass as a way out of Crimea.
Here’s some more:
OR: Say a little bit more about why Russia’s military performance has been so bad.
Soldatov: Well, there are things that are still not clear for me. Because some units of the Russian army, like the spetsnaz[special forces], are really good, very competent, and very well trained. So why they’ve performed so badly is a really good question. I think it has had something to do with morale. And the problems started before the war. Last year, there was a horrible story reported by the Russian media that in a spetsnaz brigade in Siberia, a commander had raped his soldiers as a form of punishment. That is absolutely unprecedented, because spetsnaz forces tend not only to be Russia’s most professional soldiers, but they don’t have hierarchical problems, because they fight in small groups where you need to trust everyone who’s with you. In the spetsnaz, it doesn’t matter whether you are lieutenant or a captain or just a soldier, you’re all in it together and do the same things. So it looks like something has broken down in the Russian military. That might help explain the really bad performance. And again, all the problems with bad planning and the chain of command were also a big factor.
Back in 2014, the Russians outperformed the Ukrainians by a long distance. For some reason, they’re not doing that now. There are so many mysteries. I’ll give you another example: why hasn’t a big cyberattack happened? It would make perfect sense, because it could produce panicked crowds of people jamming the roads and making it difficult for the Ukrainian military to move around. But that chance was missed completely. Disinformation operations have also not been good. They didn’t have lots of stories prepared for this war. This is very different from what we saw just eight years ago. I do not have an explanation, but it looks like several elements just went completely wrong.
OR: What you’re saying suggests massive disarray within the Russian state, the military, the political apparatus, and the intelligence services, as though everything is breaking down.
Soldatov: That’s my impression.
OR: Do you believe the reports that Russia is now shifting its military strategy and aims in Ukraine toward consolidating control over the east and abandoning the center and the west?
Soldatov: My fear is that they’re just playing for time. I think that when you have a guy in the Kremlin who is being absolutely delusional about the real situation in Ukraine, you can’t speak in terms of a coherent foreign policy. Let’s say he does secure the Donbass, this chunk of land that nobody wanted. He might even make it a part of Russia. So what? It’s never had the symbolic value for Russians that Crimea has. It’s not a big win. And the price is all these sanctions and all these problems with the rest of the world.
OR: So you’re saying that one shouldn’t talk about Russia shifting its strategy because there is no strategy? That Putin is just making things up as he goes along?
Soldatov: Yes. Because strategically speaking, I don’t quite understand his end game. Maybe you have some ideas, but I don’t get it.
OR: Is it possible that his maximalist objectives were just a smoke screen, and that his real objective has always been to establish a land bridge between Crimea and Russia proper and to permanently destabilize Ukraine—to turn a fairly successful, Western-leaning, increasingly liberal democracy into a failed kleptocratic state?
Soldatov: Maybe, but I have a problem with this argument. Because let’s say you want to destabilize Ukraine, or you want to create a land bridge between Crimea and Donbass. That could all be achieved with air strikes. You could do what the Israelis did to Lebanon in 2006, which is to bomb the infrastructure of the country into the ground. Just bomb all its bridges, all its railroads, everything. And if you did that, a lot of countries, especially in Europe, would say nothing about it. Remember that before the war, the French said, “Well, air strikes are bad, but they don’t qualify as a real invasion.” Only after the tanks started rolling into Ukraine did people in Europe say, “Okay, this is a real thing.” So why invite all these horrible sanctions on yourself when you always had the option to use your formidable aviation, which completely outmatched Ukraine’s? I don’t get it.
Much, much more at the link.
We’ll finish with this:
Ukrainian soldier returns home to his family after fighting in Irpin. pic.twitter.com/7VF9dWtnrd
— Gissur Simonarson ??????????? (@GissiSim) April 4, 2022
Open thread!
SiubhanDuinne
I hope this observation isn’t too off-topic, but in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence Assessment I’m struck by the fact that references to enemy combatants, countries, cities, etc. are rendered in lower case whereas references to Ukrainian cities, regions, people are capitalised. Is this a linguistic difference or is Ukraine throwing a little shade here by diminishing (uncapitalising) all things Russian … er, russian?
N.B. I didn’t go through the long pull quote examining every instance, but I noticed enough examples that it appeared deliberate rather than just random.
Again, sorry if this is inappropriate. I value these daily analyses, although recently I mostly don’t look at them until the next morning, to spare myself nightmares.
Mike in DC
Ukrinform on Twitter: “Собака не залишає власника, якого під Києвом розстріляли російські окупанти ? Джерело: UAnimals https://t.co/eb4Oml7rj3” / Twitter
Ukraine must win, and the West has to give them what they need to do so. The alternative is ten thousand Buchas.
Medicine Man
I’m struck by how the Ukrainians seemed to expect this from the outset.
When they say “the storm is coming”, is this the sort of thing the Q-anon types are thinking about? Or something that they may escalate to?
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m guessing whoever did the translation is throwing shade.
Fair Economist
I don’t see how the Russians can gain ground in Donbas. They will be bringing in untrained reserves and the usable parts of their defeated northern army – to throw against the very Ukrainians who just beat that northern army, who can get there first because of interior lines.
During mud season. It’s just going to be more of a mess for them.
Bill Arnold
@SiubhanDuinne:
Noticed that too. Little Russia calling Russia little (russia), or something.
A cultural translation would be appreciated.
Fair Economist
If the rest of Europe can’t get Germany to agree to a total Russian oil and gas cutoff, they should be at least able to get a cut – reduce usage by a half. Although, given Bucha is probably just the tip of iceberg of Russian atrocities, I don’t see how the Germans can obstruct much longer. Surely they know that.
Carlo Graziani
Adam, do the Ukrainians still control a usable interior road and rail net? Can they transfer resources to where they are needed?
Damien
Adam, what do you think is going to come next if Ukraine pushes Russia back? Let’s say hypothetically they retake Crimea, do they stop?
What do you see as the endgame?
Kent
How vulnerable are these oil and gas pipelines to sabotage? Nordstream runs mostly underwater through the Baltic from Russia to Germany, but there are also plenty of land-based pipelines. I would think that some eastern European volunteers or vigilante types, instead of packing up and going to Ukraine to shoot Russians might instead contemplate taking out some of these pipelines.
Kent
Russia can bomb and shell Ukraine for basically forever without needing occupying troops. And also control most trade coming and going to Ukraine via the Black Sea. There is no reason to think the conflict will stop simply because Russia no longer occupies Ukrainian soil.
Also, the Ukrainians are doing a valiant job defending their own terrain, but they are far from a major offensive force with the logistics and firepower to pull off any sort of invasion of Russia. That is an entirely different project from defense.
I don’t think the war ends until Russia says it ends. And they can keep it going for a decade or more if they really want to.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Probably best that they don’t. Getting the Germans, etc., to give up their habit is one thing. Forcing them to go cold turkey is another.
patrick II
How much is Germany handicapped by its right-wing political situation? There was a parade of (allegedly) 5,000 cars flying Russian flags in Berlin yesterday. We don’t talk about it much but even here there is a fair chance the right will take congress and perhaps Putin-lover Trump will be re-elected. People don’t like the war, but
I have heard complaints about Biden and gas prices. Is America willing to support the war and re-elect democrats only as long as it isn’t too inconvenient? And it would be much more than an inconvenience to the German economy.
patroclus
That Russian propaganda piece about “UkroNazism” is just chilling. I don’t know that much about Ukraine, but I have visited Kyiv and Kharkyiv and met many Ukrainians then (they loved our jazz and rock music) and I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet any Nazis. The whole premise of that gibberish is just ludicrous. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could really believe that ridiculous nonsense. If anything, it resembles Mein Kampf.
Mike in DC
@Kent: If the war goes past a year and Ukraine doesn’t have a Western integrated air defense system, fresh fighter jets, effective counter battery radar and some long range precision fire capacity, then we’re doing something wrong. If they do, then Russia will be forced to cease fire or else all those attacks will be answered in kind.
Carlo Graziani
@Damien:
My own view is that the Ukrainian Army can force a standoff on the (much larger) Russian Army, and call it a victory because the latter will just decay, whereas the former can be resupplied indefinitely. This will take months.
At the same time, economic shock due to sanctions (not just loss of oil revenue, but loss of key industrial inputs due to export controls, as well as vanished wealth due to frozen state and private assets) will provoke increasing political instability in Russia, making the war increasingly difficult to sustain. This will also take months.
Unfortunately, the 24-hour news cycle will demand to be fed daily, and drive narratives requiring timescales that don’t match the actual timescales characteristic of the war.
That will be $0.02.
Stephen
From a former co-worker in the oil & gas industry:
“Interesting to read about Ukraine’s huge gas reserves and potential. In August 2012, Ukraine announced an accord with an Exxon-led group to extract oil and gas from the depths of Ukraine’s Black Sea waters (after rejecting Russia’s offer from Gazprom of expertise in exchange for a profit share). “Interesting/coincidence” that in 2014 (2yrs later) in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, they not only gained Crimea, but the Black Sea waters 200 miles around it…
“Interesting/coincidence” that Ukraine’s Yuzivska gas field in Donetsk holds 2 trillion cubic meters of gas worth $900B.
In essence, Ukraine was about to take Russia’s place as the dominant supplier of gas to Europe.
Anyone wonder why he’s now only concentrating troops in those areas? Or think Pootin wanted to reclaim Crimea because it was Russias historical lands, or to protect the supposedly persecuted Russian’s in Donetsk? He couldn’t give a shit about Russian’s dying in Donetsk or saving russian lands of Crimea. Just wants to line his and his cronies pockets with stolen trillions of dollar’s. And if 10’s of 1000’s of people have to die for it so be it. The families of killed russian soldier’s apparently get less than $100 for their services. Drop in the ocean to the trillions pootin will be getting.”
Adam L Silverman
@Fair Economist: The Germans are absolutely paranoid about anything that disrupts their economy. I watched that drive all the euro discussions when I lived in Scotland in the early to mid 90s. They’re are absolutely freaked by anything that could slow growth or increase inflation. I’m convinced this is a socio-economic legacy of the interwar period between WWI and WWII.
ColoradoGuy
Once again, Germans pretend to look the other way when atrocities are committed. You’d think the political class would be embarrassed by German history repeating itself, this time around in high definition full color video.
ColoradoGuy
Once again, Germans pretend to look the other way when atrocities are committed. You’d think the political class would be embarrassed by German history repeating itself, this time around in high definition full color video.
JoyceH
@Kent:
I know they can’t do a conventional invasion, but they’ve done pretty well at taking on conventional forces with unconventional means. That Convoy that the press scare-promoted for a couple weeks seems to have been taken out by guys with dirt bikes and drones.
And something I’ve been wondering about. In the east there are a lot of Russian-speaking Ukrainians – I mean Ukrainians who speak Russian as a first language. So what I’m wondering is – can these Ukrainians pass for Russian? Because if they could, perhaps they could get themselves into Russian territory and do some unconventional strikes from there. Against military-government targets, of course, not civilian atrocities. But I think even a few strikes in the Russian interior could have an effect. (That one raid John Paul Jones inflicted on England didn’t have much of a military effect, but I think it caused some hysteria on the Brits’ home front.) And man, if Russians start suspecting every other Russian they don’t personally know of being a Ukrainian raider, that would complicate things for them!
gene108
@patrick II:
High food and fuel prices are causing discontent and problems all over the world. Whether or not criticism is justified seems besides the point. The party in power gets the blame.
featheredsprite
I earned an MA concentrating on Nazi Germany. I recognize genocide. That article by Sergeytsev is calling for completely sterilizing Ukraine and repopulating it with more acceptable people.
Scary as hell.
Fucking bastards
On the other hand, Hitler tried a similar effort and frankly failed. And he had a MUCH better military to work with.
patrick II
@gene108:
I agree. So, Biden is in charge during the war. Part of Putin’s strategy is economic hardship and chaos in other parts of the world, including the U.S., and, as Adam has pointed out, a worldwide shortage of grain. We are hurting them economically, but can Putin hurt is enough back to outlast Biden? If Joe loses congress, what happens to the war effort then? Are the politics of war more difficult to manage in a mostly un-propogandized democracy or a totalitarian state?
Jay
@patroclus:
yeah, there are Nazi’s in Ukraine, nationalism, multicultural differences, legacies of the end of WWI,
There are also way more Nazi’s in N’Orleans, Moscow, Portland, etc.
Origuy
The war got a little closer to me today. A member of the US Orienteering Team is the son of a friend of mine, a Ukrainian-American woman. He was training in Ukraine last summer in advance of the World Championships. One of the people he met was a Ukrainian coach, Oleksandr Sheremet. Sheremet was found in Bucha, dead with five bullet holes in his chest.
Jay
@Origuy:
fuck,…….
sorry, so sorry.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I would bet it is deliberate.
I do the same thing in my comments. rethuglicans do not get a capital letter. Often when commenting on Ukraine posts anything on the russian side gets uncapitalized.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Taking out an oil/gas pipeline would seem to be a rather dangerous undertaking to anyone within a reasonable distance, many, many miles I would assume. Also it would very likely make a major environmental disaster. Even one RR tank car spill or fire is a very major event.
Jay
@Ruckus:
pumping stations. Everything stalls. No fluid down the pipes, minimal environmental damage.
gene108
@patrick II:
If Democrats lose Congress, I doubt Republicans will bother much about the war in Ukraine to hurt President Biden. They’ll be too busy investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop, and all the people who promoted the Trump-Russia collusion “myth”.
As far as my broader point, part of the reason cited for the political crises in Pakistan and Sri Lanka is criticism of the handling of the economy, and rising food and fuel prices.
As Adam said, disruptions in Ukraine’s grain exports will hurt countries in the global south first. I don’t think Pakistan is that reliant in Ukrainian grain imports, but all the disruptions add up.
Pakistan, from March 25:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/25/pakistan-inflation-imran-khan-no-confidence-vote/
Pakistan a few days later:
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/4/3/pakistan-political-crisis-live-news-no-confidence-vote-blocked
gene108
@gene108:
Forgot to post about Sri Lanka:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60975941.amp
oldster
I was very glad to see that the US has plans to sell F-16s to Bulgaria. I feel some confidence that this means that a plan is in the works to transfer Bulgaria’s MIG-29s to Ukraine. (And I am confident that this happened because Joe Biden read the email I sent him, and took my advice.)
Next, we need to get more missiles into Ukraine so that they can shoot down more planes, as well as Russian missiles and cruise missiles. Star Streaks good; Patriots better.
Ukraine needs to have this wrapped up by the autumn at latest. Once the US Congress is retaken by Putin’s poodles, they will try to prevent Biden from helping Ukraine. And once the weather gets cold in Europe, there will be much less appetite for embargoing Russian fossil fuels.
We’re in a race for time. And a lot depends on it.
PeakVT
What people is the question. Russia’s Russian population is in decline. The country lost almost a million people in 2021. The war is adding an additional toll on top of COVID. The war is also going to devastate the birth rate for a few years.
Putin and Putin’s circle is as delusional about repopulating Ukraine as they are about everything else.
oldster
@ColoradoGuy:
“…You’d think the political class would be embarrassed by German history repeating itself,….”
It’s very sad. And it’s all driven by their worship of the great god Wirtschaft.
It sometimes seems that the only Nie Wieder that they truly believe in is “never again a hyperinflation like 1923.”
This is compounded by their having learned the wrong lessons from their militarization under Hitler, namely that Germany should avoid any military involvement whatsoever. So, there is a huge and powerful built-in constituency in favor of “pacifism,” i.e. letting Ukrainians die instead of sending them lethal aid. We saw this with the shipment of 5,000 helmets, and now we see it with their withholding of promised Marder IFVs.
The Baltics, the Poles, the Czechs, the Finns: they get it. They understand what Russia will do, tomorrow, if not stopped by force. For some reason, the German public is still stuck in a fuzzy dream-world where kumbaya happy-talk will bring the Russians into the family of Europe, but if we aren’t nice to them they may drive up our cost of living.
It’s sad. I have lived in Germany. I know and respect lots of Germans. But they need to get realistic about the peril that faces them, and the sacrifices that will be needed. Two points of inflation now, or send your son to die next year.
oldster
This despicable tweet, for instance, from Florian Post, a recent member of the Bundestag:
https://twitter.com/lapatina_/status/1511103926300553216
(translated, correctly, by a Ukrainian journalist.)
Sloane Ranger
Oldster, TBF, it’s not so much that Germany learned the wrong lesson, more we, the Allies, taught them the wrong lessons. By 1945, Germany had started 3 major European wars This was blamed on Prussian militarism and Nazism. So, the solution for the western Allies in setting up the GFR was to encourage an educational/cultural system that was actively anti anything that recognised military service as worthwhile. Even when they joined NATO, their role, if memory serves, was primarily logistic.
Unfortunately, we did our work too well!
bookworm1398
German politicians don’t want to cut gas, what is German public opinion on the issue?
Sloane Ranger
@bookworm1398: Germans on Twitter are mostly supportive of turning off the tap, but I haven’t seen any proper opinion polls.
On a different tack, someone upthread asked about the state of Ukraine’s internal transport system and whether it’s still good enough to quickly redeploy troops from the north to the east and south-east. Does anyone know?
Also, does Ukraine still have any reserves or large numbers of new recruits they can send to the east/south east to reinforce the salient?
Lastly, I’m not an expert, but looking at the map above and comparing it with previous maps, it looks to me as if Ukraine is splitting up the Russian controlled areas into smaller sections, I presume making them more easy to liberate. Am I wrong on this and, if I’m right, is it a viable strategy?
wetzel
@Mike in DC: Ten thousand Buchas are already on the way. The trains are assembling in Russia. Bucha is making the bodies docile for the real purge where the violence won’t be spectacular but invisible. FSB has institutional continuity going back to the 30’s. We are beourgeouis. We are existentially unable to process their intentionality because it is suprahuman. Genocide is the eschatological constitution of totalitarianism. Ukraine is a sacrifice being made to institute terror in Russia to carry out a purge.
debbie
FWIW (not much, I know), reading the comments, the video was discounted by many because the “marines” were shaven, they wore no camouflage, and they didn’t have the blue/yellow patches — they had red patches. Also the phone being turned vertically made it more difficult to get a better look at them.
wetzel
@wetzel: How could people be so evil? They are not individuals. Boris had dreamed of taking his daughter fishing on the green lake, the fish of gold, the laughing days of bliss, foam of flowers laughing together in the mist, now the wind is the trees blows her name there he will always miss. How can they be alive. What is the process for the Russian father who in his cognitions is seeing his own daughter in the pile in Ukraine. His government, his agent of justice in the world, has done this. The closer to the act the deeper the degradation. Cognitive dissonance will manifest outward animus to keep the view away from the death inside of symbolic meaning and try to find it in the pornography of violent spectacle. You hold your lantern up to judge the Russian and it will put your light out too because you will see a monster.
It is a mistake to think the change from yesterday’s happy ‘Boris’ into today’s miserable cowardly shade is a failure of government. Those are bourgeoisie values. They have a different instrumentality within the totalitarian cosmology. FSB understands the shift in behavior set that has occurred for Boris because it is his measurable aspect as genocide constitutes the totalitarian framework.
wetzel
There is an informational quality in what’s happening similar to disregulation in cancer in MTOR, MAP Kinase, PIP3 etc where certain conditions may pertain, patterns of single and double genetic lesions to variety genes such as Ras, retinoblastoma, and P53. Not the cell, not the tissue, not the organism, not the individual, but the society as an open dynamic system, transforms itself neoplastically and begins tumor growth. Existentially, the only people in the West capable of grokking FSB will be mild schizophrenics like me, because you have to get over on yourself to see it, honestly. You need phenomenology. People are not being raised on Husserl anymore to say the least.
Thought I was blowing a gasket last night and spent 4 hours at Emory Emergency. I got EKG’d, my blood pulled and x-rayed. I did not have any authoritative human conversation while I sat in the waiting room. I did not make initiation as a ‘cardiology patient’. After 4 hours I fucked out of there. Got the house and it was locked. I had to wake people up to get inside. Sing to yourself if you are driving to the emergency room. That’s the beautiful thing I learned. If it’s your own song, God won’t kill you. He told me himself! I thought that was another pretty good joke on his part. Wait I’m telling it wrong.
Ohio Mom
@wetzel: To extend the cancer metaphor, and I know this from being treated treated for breast cancer: a cancerous cell can escape the original tumor, travel to someone other part of the body and settle down there, nestled between normal cells.
The normal cells can influence the cancerous cell to “stay asleep.” Susan Love, an oncologist and writer, describes it as a “good neighborhood” but if the good neighbors slack off for some reason, the cancer cell can awake, start splitting and create a tumor.
The patient can go from many years — decades even — of thinking they were cured to suddenly finding out they are in Stage IV.
Scientists are trying to figure out the cell mechanics that make for a good neighborhood. But as you describe, it’s complicated.
Sorry to hear about your medical scare. Hope you follow up with your medical team (I am assuming you have one).
wetzel
What I mean about getting over yourself in mild schizophrenia would be to understand if God is telling you jokes it is because your unconscious is a humorist. Now as a schizophrenic you are asking what is the unconscious and now you are having a rational experience. You cannot rationally encompass structures of supervenience analytically, let alone emergence. I am writing about this with poetic, symbolic language, because I can’t find an analytical hook, but you have to stay within philosophy and science. The West has got to get past analytical philosophy, though. We have a philosophy gap.
We are bourgeoisie. You think our spiritual resources are strong. We are a free society. America has soul. FSB will outrage us. They will attempt to manage our violence so that our violence will serve their purge. Ideally they will implicate us in the genocide on their own people. We are already implicated because we do not have the efficacy to prevent it. Preventing Russia’s impending genocide on itself would actually do existential damage to Putin’s Russia, because it would prevent its full reconstitution as totalitarianism. The nuclear threat is their power to make us all disappear, so I believe nuclear weapons will be demonstrated so that everyone understands the new cosmology. Hillary said yesterday this was an existential moment. Soul is not enough. We have also got to be free. Leadership must stay to prose. This is not manipulation. It’s the rational basis, our island of sanity in plain communication, the sign we still have justice. The Ukraine War has got to get under the law at the Hague. FSB wants a crisis of degree for the West and Russia to spiral in reciprocal violence until we are the same. That is the future state their propaganda and policy is bent towards. Russian totalitarianism cannot fully establish unless it also happens to us.
wetzel
@Ohio Mom: Thanks for the kind words and solicitousness. My chest is hard to read because of chondritis. I have a favorable bias towards what happened last night. I have a Bronze plan. We don’t have things like ‘health care teams’ lol. We have 40 claims stuck in the portal denied. Our health care team shakes us down. Bronze plan health care is not even ethics adjacent to the idea of the doctor patient relationship. I’ll send a letter to the insurance commissioner!
Denali
@Wetsel,
Thanks for sharing your perspective so poetically. It is so hard to process what is happening before our eyes. I have family in the neighboring countries, so I have immediate concerns about what their future may be like. Normality is no longer an option.
J R in WV
This guy, timofey sergeytsev, is a good propagandist, but a terrible example of humanity — imagine writing so well about genocide. Creating an empty space where a vibrant people once lived, to be filled with, what? russia’s birth rate is so low they can’t replace their population as the elderly die off.
timofey is a monster, judging from what he has written. Evidently in russia anyone who opposes russian totalitarianism is a nazi, especially if you are from a nationality who fought russia in WW II like Ukraine. And timofey is good with obliterating the Ukranian people because they don’t want to be folded into the russian totalitarian state.
When the war crimes trials start, timofey needs to be in the dock with his hands restrained behind his back, like the deceased Ukrainians lying in the streets of the towns being abandoned by the russian totalitarian invaders. Perhaps we could send letters to his home address, informing timofey that he too is responsible for the mass graves full of innocents murdered by putinsky’s killers. Working to sell genocide to the russian people is right beside killing the innocents himself in my book. Glem G also too.
I’m sickened by the mass murder going on. Like some others, I have to wait until broad daylight the next day to read these updates. We’re going to bed early lately.
Thanks for keeping track of this monstrosity for us, Adam. Hope you are taking care of yourself down in the Florida jungles!
wetzel
Calling Emory. If there are new issues I’ll get in with a specialist. I won’t give anybody a hard time.
There is an X-ray tech down there that is good at philosophy so it’s interesting how things can go sometimes.
wetzel
I have now talked to five separate individuals. I’ve been trying to reach a medical person at the Emory Emergency Room on Clifton Road, preferably an MD or DO doctor. I was at the ER with chest pain last night. Blood was taken for cellular and chemical analysis. I was subjected to ionizing radiation which has varying tropisms in trasmittance in tissue but also the photon energy to produce free radicals, double strand breaks and misaligned nonhomologous recombination! Mutagenesis! Glaciers suns of silver miasmic waves and skies of embers!
I would like to know if I was having a major or minor heart attack last night. I’ve never had one that I know of, but I am itching to join the community of cardiology patients. It is lonely in my in-town neighborhood in Atlanta. It used to be ranch houses, but then the doctors came and destroyed all those houses. Now I feel like I’m doing something wrong every time I walk the dog. That’s where I learned that having a better dog is superior.
We don’t exactly know what to do here, because I’ve spoken to five people at Emory trying to reach somebody, until finally a P.A. in the E.R. and she hung up on me. She was the third. I guess you shouldn’t leave the ER. I seem to have messed up some kind of existential commitment or broken some kind of contractual obligation in the doctor patient relationship.
Now that I think about it. Fuck you, Emory Emergency Room. This is the second time they are taking direct aim at me with their emergency room. The last time was the 13 hours it took for me to get to surgery with the ruptured appendix, which I guess is undesireable. Med Schools use KASPAR test or some shit to teach the doctor-patient relationship. Maybe they will develop evidence based medical ethics like in Russia!
Well okay, it’s been thirteen hours since my first heart attack. I don’t see how Medical Records can help me. Please don’t tell me that’s who I have to talk to.
way2blue
@Fair Economist: Agreed. Summer is coming with warmer weather. At least cut imports in half. Blanket rooftops & parking lots with solar panels… Germany?
way2blue
@Stephen: Wow. My hope is that Ukraine regains all their lands by the end of this Russian invasion.
Wetzel
Working up a country song idea where he’s trying to decide whether he wants his ashes to be in a Maxwell House or Folgers can.
Geminid
@way2blue: Mediterranean suppliers may boost natural gas exports to EU countries in the medium term. Algeria already supplies 15% of Europe’s natural gas. Secretary of State Blinken visited Algeria on the last leg of his trip last week, and one of the topics he discussed with Algerian officials was an acceleration of natural gas production. In the eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Cyprus and Israel will become small natural gas exporters soon if not already.
Libya’s fossil fuel exports are depressed by a civil war. This war in Ukraine may hasten a resolution of that conflict. Turkey has supported one side, but that country is starting to patch up it’s relations with nations supporting the other side and that may presage a settlement.
These sources may substantially help Europe through the next few winters. Liquified natural gas shipped from more distant sources can pick up some more slack. Meanwhile, Europe can increase energy efficiency and accelerate the clean energy transition that has to happen anyway.
wetzel
@Ohio Mom: About the cancer like process you are talking about in human society I am absolutely sure Renee Girard could have helped us. He could explain FSB to itself today in a way would have main sense to them in its plain English anthropology. For Russia to escape from itself seems like an almost existential impossibility. FSB would have to accomplish something like overcoming schizophrenia on the suprahuman plane to be able to make a plan to sacrifice something without violence and save itself and humanity. There are things Renee said you try to get back to, but it’s losing somebody you love that carries that understanding on a human, individual level. Maybe it can come to comprehension in imagining losing the Russia they love. The degree of sin is so far beyond forgiveness the public in the West will only see it reconciling through international law.
I don’t understand it. I’m shaking. I’m going to go play with Blue and Molly.
wetzel
You know they’re here, the panoptic fuckers! I’ll talk philosophy with FSB. I had to put 100 little baseball sized pictures of Michel Foucault on my dorm walls to overcome that sourpuss.
The philosophy popular with FSB has interesting features. Ivan Ilyan and that Russian Orthodox philosopher. Dugin. He’s 60. I’m 55. Tell you what. You have some of your sneaky bastards come into my house here you got on your satellite. Remember my ticker!!! Whatever you do to me, you can do to him, so I don’t mind if you beat the shit out of me and put the bag over my head. I’ll just start singing my longest ballad, and so that’s got 15 minutes I know I can take any godamn thing in the world. I once had a beetle crawl into my ear and I’ve managed to stay married to the same woman for thirty years.
I had a fucked up philosophy like Dugin in 1992 except the people kept migrating West all the way trying to explain this to my English professors. Some would respond like I was some kind of gobsmacked genius, but the Jewish professors would get a horrible sadness like they could see the tragic dimensions of schizophrenia taking shape in me which had me writing a lot of letters to dear old Ted Turner back then for fuck’s sake.
I believe the structural features of Ilyan’s existential definition of the various symbolic forms of human dignity are unsupported in the light of the existential humanism of Heidegger, Bachelard, Girard, etc.
You come and get me and I’ll talk about these ideas with you. That is probably the fastest way because there is no commercial flight I can take to come and visit you. If you torture me, though, I’ll just start singing. I’ll bring Putin the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.