War in Ukraine (Ongoing Thread) - Part IV- Civilians executed & buried in mass graves in city of Bucha, officials say

    [EVERYONE FEEL FREE TO USE. News III-March 12 to April 2  ; News II-March 1 to 12 ; News I-Feb. 24 to 28]

    Ukrainian civilians executed, people buried in mass graves in city of Bucha, officials say by Brad Dress @ TheHill.com, April 2 (excerpt after the jump)

    Ukrainian civilians were executed and left lying in the streets of Bucha, Ukraine, and hundreds of people were buried in mass graves in the city, which lies just outside of the capital of Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials. Ukraine presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak shared a photo appearing to show bodies lying in the streets of Bucha with hands tied behind their backs. Podoliak said the people had been shot dead by Russian troops. “These people were not in the military. They had no weapons. They posed no threat,” he tweeted. “How many more such cases are happening right now in the occupied territories?”

    [....] Later on Saturday, Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted out a video showing Ukrainian forces driving through Bucha. The video shows sensitive content: bodies littered across the city.“The Ukrainian city of Bucha was in the hands of [Russian] animals for several weeks. *Local civillians were being executed arbitrarily*, some with hands tied behind their backs, their bodies scattered in the streets of the city,” the ministry tweeted.

    In addition to the bodies strewn across the street, Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told news outlet AFP that 280 people had been buried in mass graves.  “All these people were shot,” he told the outlet.AFP reported that its journalists saw at least 20 bodies lying on a single street.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Saturday that Russian troops had left mines and were booby-trapping bodies [....]

    Comments


    I have not looked for verification for these. I do find that the tweeter has been pretty accurate so far, but I am not certain. In any case, even if any of these accusations do not pan out, I feel that they are still big news, the accusations are news in themselves.


    Russia has revised its Ukraine war strategy to focus on trying to take control of the Donbas and other regions in eastern Ukraine with a target date of early Mayhttps://t.co/LBcTc4k5Nq

    — CNN (@CNN) April 3, 2022


    unconfirmed videos:


    Lost in xlation


    Energy dependence


    What's the source of this? Thanks


    I'll try to dig out the Facebook comment i copied from


    Hey Jason - page from "Price Wars" by Rupert Russell.


    BREAKING: Russia calls for UN Security Council meeting to discuss the 'provocation of Ukrainian radicals' in Bucha

    — The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) April 3, 2022

    I note they are no longer "Nazis".

    In China, I believe the word they often use is "hooligans".

    Edit to add: Seems to me that someone's thinking ahead about defense for war crimes prosecution.


    Nazi symbolism seems to have deep resonance across the board in Eastern Europe.


    'This Is True Barbarity’: Life and Death Under Russian Occupation

    The town of Trostyanets was occupied by Russian forces for a month before the Ukrainian military liberated it. Residents described weeks of hunger and horror.

    By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak; with LOTS OF Photographs by Tyler Hicks @ NYTimes.com, April 3, 2022, Updated 9:59 a.m. ET

    TROSTYANETS, Ukraine — The last three Russian soldiers in this Ukrainian town are in the morgue, their uniforms bloodied and torn. The first one’s face is frozen in pain. The second has his wooden pipe in his lap. The third is stuffed in his sleeping bag.

    These dead are not all that was left behind in Trostyanets, a strategically located town in the country’s northeast, where Russian forces fled several days ago in the face of an orchestrated Ukrainian assault. A monthlong Russian occupation reduced much of the town to rubble, a decimated landscape of mangled tank hulks, snapped trees and rattled but resilient survivors.

    There are also stories, impossible to verify, highlighting the kind of hate left in an occupation’s wake and sharing a common thread of brutality: children held at knife point; an old woman forced to drink alcohol as her occupiers watched and laughed; whispers of rape and forced disappearances; and an old man found toothless, beaten in a ditch and defecated on.

    “Oh, God, how I wanted to spit on them or hit them,” said Yevdokiya Koneva, 57, her voice steely as she pushed her aging bicycle toward the center of town on Friday

    [....]

    Instead, a combination of logistics issues, low morale and poor planning among Russian forces allowed an emboldened Ukrainian military to go on the offensive along multiple axes, grinding down the occupying forces and splintering their front lines.

    The Ukrainian victory in Trostyanets came on March 26 — what residents call “Liberation Day” — and is an example of how disadvantaged and smaller Ukrainian units have launched successful counterattacks.

    It also shows how the Russian military’s inability to win a quick victory — in which it would “liberate” a friendly population — left its soldiers in a position that they were vastly unprepared for: holding an occupied town with an unwelcoming local populace.

    “We didn’t want this dreadful ‘liberation,’” said Nina Ivanivna Panchenko, 64, who was walking in the rain after collecting a package of humanitarian aid. “Just let them never come here again.”

    Interviews with more than a dozen residents of Trostyanets, a modest town of about 19,000 situated in a bowl of rolling hills roughly 20 miles from the Russian border, paint a stark picture of struggle and fear during the Russian occupation. The unrelenting violence from both Ukrainian and Russian forces fighting to retake and hold the town raged for weeks and drove people into basements or anywhere they could find shelter.

    On Friday, dazed residents walked through the destroyed town, sorting through the debris as some power was restored for the first time in weeks. Viktor Panov, a railway worker, was helping to clear the shrapnel-shattered train station of unexploded shells, grenades and other scattered explosives. Other men cannibalized destroyed Russian armored vehicles for parts or working machinery [....]




    Shot dead for no reason (and gotta say, that's just like what happened toSergio in Sacremento this weekend, dead for no reason is dead for no reason):


    Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Bucha today. His face says it all. pic.twitter.com/IWOmIdnnVT

    — Kateryna_Kruk (@Kateryna_Kruk) April 4, 2022



    The response to this reminds me of, after World War II, when scenes of the massacres and devastation of the Nazis were circulated around the West. The primary difference is that those scenes were circulated after the fact, when victory for the West had passed, and these scenes are here now. 

    It's not impossible that we're headed for an escalation. 

    It's really only the West that is pushing back against Russia - I wrote for the Hampton Institute back in 2016 that Putin has cultivated partnerships around the world that might stay quiet up front but will be more than loyal from behind. He has only cultivated more sense than, including with much of the African continent.



    Infowar: drone video of Mariupol targeted to Chinese-language audience by Ukraine's Foreign Affairs:

    Interestingly tweeted on the same day that Zelenskyy spoke to the UN Security Council?


    makes sense in light of

    Russia-Ukraine war: In Chinese media, the US is the villain

    In tightly-controlled media space, conflict is an opportunity for Beijing to advance its ‘information proxy war’.

    By Rachel Cheung @ aljazeera.com, April 6

    Hong Kong, China – China may portray itself as a neutral party in the war in Ukraine, but the message it communicates to its audience at home tells a different story.

    State news agency Xinhua calls the war “a special military operation” and “the Russia-Ukraine crisis” but never refers to it as an invasion. CCTV, the state broadcaster, mentioned civilian casualties for the first time only three weeks after Russia invaded. More recently, state outlets doubled down on the Russian conspiracy theory claiming the US is funding the development of biological weapons in Ukraine, including migratory birds that could spread avian viruses in Russia [.....]


    Interesting that Carlotta Gall, currently working as NYTimes's Istanbul bureau chief after a long career reporting from war zones and on terrorism beats, felt the need to jump back in and do boots-on-the-ground one more time:

    ‘Sitting at Home and Trembling.’ A Town Emerges After a Russian Retreat.

    By Carlotta Gall @ NYTimes.com,  April 4, 2022, 5:41 p.m. ET. Photos from location at link by Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

    NOVA BASAN, Ukraine — Badly frightened and hungry, residents of Nova Basan, a town east of Kyiv, emerged from their cottages and farmhouses on Monday, and described living through the terrifying ordeal of the Russian occupation — detentions, threats and a strict curfew that confined them to their homes with no outside communication for more than a month.

    Nova Basan, about 60 miles east of the Ukrainian capital, is one of a stretch of towns and villages retaken from Russian control after battles through the last week of March, and just now coming back to life.

    “It was terrible,” said Mykola Dyachenko, the official responsible for the administration of the town and surrounding villages. “People were not expecting such things.” He said he was among some 20 men who were held prisoner by Russian troops for 25 days during the occupation.

    He looked exhausted, his face waxy and pale. He said he had been put through what he called a mock execution 15 times while being questioned about local Ukrainian territorial defense forces and ammunition stored in the area.

    His interrogators fired an assault rifle over his head during the questioning, he said. His eyes were bound with sticky tape but he heard and felt the gunshot above his head. “It was psychological pressure,” he said. “They were trying to kick out of me information that I was not sharing.”

    Two other men also described being detained by Russian troops and told of soldiers beating them with rifle butts, and punching and kicking them. One described being tied up with his arms suspended. Another, Oleksiy Bryzgalin, 38, a construction worker, said he was strapped to a chair with a grenade between his legs for 30 hours and also had a gun fired beside the side of his head during interrogation.

    The detainees were moved around and held in barns and cellars and fed only two potatoes a day, with only one toilet break daily, Mr. Bryzgalin said.

    The detainees said they escaped from their makeshift jail as the Russian troops were preparing to withdraw last Wednesday. Five days later Mr. Bryzgalin said he still had pain in his legs from the cramped conditions and had trouble sleeping.

    The community administrator, Mr. Dyachenko, said he did not know the level of civilian casualties yet and said he was only just starting to organize search teams to check on residents. On Monday, he was heading out to investigate the report of an execution on Feb. 28 of six people by Russian soldiers in a nearby village, he said. That was just after Russian troops had arrived in the area, he said.

    Mr. Dyachenko said he also knew of a civilian killed in his car at a gas station when the Russian troops first entered the town. And, he said, a wounded member of the territorial defense had been held prisoner with him but was taken away and not seen since. The Kremlin has denied any Russian involvement in atrocities.

    Despite the fear and rough treatment of the civilian population, in the end Russian troops may have suffered more casualties than the townspeople. The Russian departure was part of a planned withdrawal announced by Moscow a week ago but it ended in a chaotic and bloody retreat after a fierce tank battle last Thursday, said soldiers and volunteers who took part, and residents of the town.

    On Monday Ukrainian soldiers were piling the bodies of dead Russian soldiers into a trailer pulled by an army jeep. The soldiers were killed when a Ukrainian tank sneaked close to the entrance of the town and opened fire on the Russian checkpoint guarding the main intersection, according to soldiers and volunteers who took part.

    “It’s the first lot we have picked up,” said Sr. Sgt. Andreiy Soroka, 38, the Ukrainian soldier in charge. “Nine and a half bodies,” he said matter-of-factly.

    Four of the men had died in the armored personnel carrier blown up by a Ukrainian tank, he said. Others among the dead Russian soldiers were a captain found in a nearby building, and an 18-year-old conscript in the garden of a house who had been shot, Sergeant Soroka said.

    [....]

    btw, here is Gall's current bio she has at the NYTimes- to me, she was known basically the expert go-to on Afghanistan--shows how much I was leaving out by thinking that!

    Carlotta Gall is the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times, covering Turkey.

    She was previously based in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, from 2013 to 2017, covering the aftershocks of the Arab Spring. Her recent work has also included investigations into Saudi Arabia’s influence on the post-conflict societies of Kosovo and Afghanistan, as part of a series on the gulf kingdom, and another on growing Iranian interference in Afghanistan, as part of a series on Iran.

    A British citizen, Ms. Gall began her newspaper career at The Moscow Times in 1994, reporting on the war in Chechnya and writing about the countries of the former Soviet Union. She also published work with The Economist and The Financial Times.

    She joined The New York Times in 1999, reporting from the Balkans during the war in Kosovo and Serbia, and from Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001 to 2011. 

    She was part of a team that received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009. She completed a Nieman Foundation fellowship at Harvard in 2011-2012.

    Ms. Gall is the author of “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan 2001-2014,” and co-author, with Thomas de Waal, of “Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus.” 


    here is one of the more striking photos by Prickett from Gall's report

    The remains of 10 Russian soldiers that had been collected from various points around the recently liberated village of Nova Basan.
    Caption: The remains of 10 Russian soldiers that had been collected from various points around the recently liberated village of Nova Basan.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times




    another Kamil Galeev thread (I have learned a lot from his threads!)



    from "Doctors without Borders" -




    Russians burned swastikas into victims' bodies, raped girls as young as 10: reports https://trib.al/sewb7TQ


    I note that the swastika burn claim came from  Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament who is among those accusing Russia of genocide.  Zelenskyy himself cited the following crimes in his speech to the UN Security Council

    He also claimed the militants raped and killed Ukrainian women in front of their families.

    “They cut off limbs, slashed their throats… Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them,” he said.

    “This is no different from other terrorists, such as Daesh,” Zelensky said, using an alternate name for ISIS. “Here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council.”

    but it does not say he mentioned that. I only point it out because if he was intent on being believable he would have mentioned only those crimes for which there was plenty of evidence, rather than just going for the most incendiary.


    There was a house I visited in Bucha with my colleagues, in one of the children's bedrooms there was a 50+ inch television. It was too big to steal so they just destroyed it with screwdrivers, they did it to every monitor in the house.https://t.co/Vl3Dao0NAi

    — Oz Katerji (@OzKaterji) April 6, 2022

    adding the earlier tweet in Walker's thread


    it's pretty clear now which side he is on:

    Pope Francis condemned #BuchaMasacre and kissed a #Ukrainian flag sent from Bucha - the town near #Kyiv, where #Russian troops raped, tortured and killed en masse literally everyone they met.#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/KyK6QmHoNc

    — Emine Dzheppar (@EmineDzheppar) April 6, 2022

    edit to add: and I see it's going to go on the front page of the Financial Times


    Ukraine Foreign Affairs now communicating to Arab-language speakers, tweeting the video that Zelenskky used in his address to the UN Security Council:


    Fukuyama:


    this is great BBC reporting from a small village near the Chernobyl zone recently liberated, it's pretty damn clear the people he talks to are not making shit up about abuse by the Russian military:


    (President of Rugby Europe)


    He's "Reporter for @TIME based in New York City, by way of Moscow, Kyiv and Berlin"




    the AFP picture of how Ukrainians are recently given to using garbage bags:


    pretty awesome, it's happening, just like that!

     



    now this is a very serious photo-op, witness stuff for history if not for war crimes trial


     

    Russia will crumble under sanctions and there will be a massive European Union that includes not just Ukraine but states like Moldova and even Georgia.

    — Orion Ngatchou (@Ngatchou123) April 9, 2022

    "I think they need an external enemy to keep themselves in check." - Vladimir Putin

     


    Quite likely the EU needs a real challenge to keep it from falling asleep. Hungary remains a real problem though.



    Wait, where's Lulu to explain it's no big deal, the west does worse and it's a false flag incident abetted by Bellingkat?


    Sure Aaron fucking Mate will find a way to excuse this


    that will be an easy one for him as it's being reported by the evil neo-Nazi regiment


    Putin's planning to blame a lot of bad stuff on British intel:




    Tweet by Head of Tech Ecosystem of Ukraine, Advisor at Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.@diiagovua @mintsyfra https://instagram.com/anmeek Ukraine





    Germany's Foreign Minister talking like the proverbial liberal who got mugged -

    Remarkable https://t.co/391guVDqVp

    — Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) April 12, 2022

    and that's before Russia bombs more cities as everyone's saying they plan to do...


    Agence France Presse Fact Check:


    Ukraine announces arrest of Putin ally in ‘lightning-fast’ operation

    Viktor Medvedchuk had escaped house arrest on treason charges days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

     in Washington @ TheGuardian.com, Last modified on Tue 12 Apr 2022 18.32 EDT​

    Ukrainian security services have announced the arrest of Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in Ukraine, the oligarch and opposition politician Viktor Medvedchuk, in what they called a “lightning-fast and dangerous” operation.

    The capture of Medvedchuk, who escaped house arrest on treason charges days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was first announced by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who posted a picture of the detainee on social media, dishevelled, in handcuffs and dressed in army fatigues with a Ukrainian flag patch.

    Medvedchuk in handcuffs and dressed in an army uniform.

    caption Viktor Medvedchuk in handcuffs and dressed in an army uniform. Photograph: Instagram account of Volodymyr Zelenskiy/AFP/Getty Images

    “A special operation was carried out by the security service of Ukraine. Well done!” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram, and later suggested exchanging him for Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia.

    “I propose to the Russian Federation to exchange this guy of yours for our boys and our girls who are now in Russian captivity,” Zelensky said in a video address posted on Telegram.

    Medvedchuk grew rich from Russian oil interests and his proximity to the Kremlin.

    Putin is godfather to his youngest daughter, and Medvedchuk’s coalition, Opposition Platform – For Life, pursued a pro-Moscow agenda until he was charged with treason in May 2021, accused of selling military secrets to Russia and exploiting the natural resources of Crimea under Russian occupation. He denied wrongdoing and was under house arrest before fleeing during the first days of the invasion.

    Investigators who went to Medvedchuk’s house found a replica of a vintage Pullman railway carriage, opulently furnished with gold fittings, standing at a mock-up of a railway station, all hidden under a tarpaulin.

    [.....]

    In January, the US put Medvedchuk and three other Moscow-backed Ukrainian politicians under sanctions, accusing them of involvement in a plot to set up a collaborator government in the wake of the Russian invasion.

    Zelenskiy also suspended Medvedchuk’s party – Ukraine’s largest opposition grouping – and several other smaller political parties tied to Moscow in March.

    Medvedchuk’s arrest and indictment angered Putin who threatened to respond to what he deemed to be political persecution.

    It was not immediately clear where and how he was captured.

    Ivan Bakanov, the head of the security service (SBU), thanked his investigators and counterintelligence officers who “proved their professionalism and conducted a lightning and dangerous multi-level special operation to detain deputy Medvedchuk”.

    “You can hide from justice. You can even wear a Ukrainian military uniform to disguise … But will it help you escape from punishment? Not at all!” the SBU said in a tweet [....]




    Visiting Kyiv, Bucha & surrounding Thurs. to show support: GOP Senator Daines & GOP Rep. Spartz. So much for the loudmouth Tucker-Carlsen /Trump wing (amplified on social media by shrieking libruls who are suckers for the troll bait of grifters,) representing "all Republicans"

    As two U.S. lawmakers visit Kyiv, the trip’s organizer says he hopes more officials, and weapons, will follow.

    By Andrew E. Kramer @ NYTimes.com, Apr. 14 

    Representative Victoria Spartz and Senator Steve Daines were shown a mass grave outside St. Andrew’s Church in Bucha during a visit to Ukraine on Thursday.
    Caption: Representative Victoria Spartz and Senator Steve Daines
    were shown a mass grave outside St. Andrew’s Church in Bucha
    during a visit to Ukraine on Thursday.
    Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

    BORODIANKA, Ukraine — In a hastily organized show of support for Ukraine, Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana traveled on Thursday to Kyiv and sites of rights abuses in the city’s suburbs, becoming the first American officials to turn up since the start of the war.

    “Nothing can substitute for actually being here, seeing it first-hand, spending time with the people and leaders here in Ukraine who have been horribly affected by this war,” Mr. Daines said in an interview, standing on a heap of rubble from an apartment building that had collapsed on its inhabitants in the town of Borodianka.

    It was important, he said, for American elected officials to show solidarity.

    Mr. Daines and Ms. Spartz, both Republicans, were invited by the Ukrainian government, with just over a day’s notice. Mr. Daines had broken off from a visit to Eastern Europe to make the trip. Ms. Spartz, who last year became the first Ukrainian-born lawmaker to serve in Congress, had planned an unofficial visit to Ukraine and later joined Mr. Daines for the trip supported by the Ukrainian government.

    Once in Kyiv, where they arrived by train from western Ukraine, the pair traveled by car escorted by the police on a route through stark scenes of destruction, blown-up Russian tanks and rubble, where rescuers were still searching for bodies. The two also observed an exhumation from a communal grave in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv where hundreds of bodies were found on the streets after Russian forces retreated.

    The horror in Bucha — where some victims’ hands were bound and some had been shot in the head, in a sign of extrajudicial killings — has become emblematic of the war’s toll and a new touchstone of rights abuse in wartime in Europe. Several European delegations have also visited the site.

    The two Republican lawmakers arrived as the Biden administration is considering sending a high-level official to Kyiv in the days ahead as a sign of support, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.

    President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made high-profile visits over the past month to countries neighboring Ukraine, and other top American officials have made similar visits, some coming close to the border. But no American official had publicly visited Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in late February, and the United States has evacuated all diplomats.

    Both Mr. Daines and Ms. Spartz said they were urging the United States to return diplomats to Ukraine as some European states have done now that Kyiv, the capital, is no longer under imminent threat of attack by Russia.

    “I hope that our visit will encourage more American officials and leaders to come, to stand with the people of Ukraine,” Mr. Daines said, while Ms. Spartz said it was “important to show our support, to show we care.”

    Standing in the rubble of the collapsed building, where Ukrainian officials have said that at least 21 people died, Mr. Daines found a child’s toy — a wooden car — and looked into apartments that had been peeled open by the explosion, revealing kitchen cabinets still hanging on a wall.

    In Bucha, the two watched the Ukrainian authorities remove three bodies from the tan clay soil of a churchyard where a communal grave was being excavated.

    Mr. Daines described what he had seen as “indisputable evidence of war crimes.”

    “It’s everywhere,” he said. “We’ve been driving for miles and miles and miles, seeing death and destruction caused by Vladimir Putin in this evil invasion.”

    Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said he had arranged the visit in the hope that more American lawmakers would follow, get a first-hand sense of the stakes in the war, and vote to provide additional weapons to Ukraine.

    Both Ms. Spartz and Mr. Daines said they supported bipartisan efforts in Congress to spur the Biden administration to deliver weapons to the Ukrainian Army more swiftly.

    “I think we should be providing the lethal aid that they need to win this war,” Mr. Daines said. “The humanitarian crisis will not end until the war ends. And the war will not end until the Ukrainians win.”



    U.S. confirms Ukraine missile sunk warship, as Russia ramps up attacks https://t.co/PzRGV4a2DT

    — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 16, 2022

    The Russian warship that sank this week in the Black Sea was hit by two Ukrainian-made anti-ship missiles, a senior U.S. defense official confirmed Friday,

    [....]

    The sinking removed a vessel that Moscow will be unable to replace in the Ukraine theater, according to the U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon. Russia has two other similar ships in its navy, but neither is based in the Black Sea. Turkey, which controls the entrance to the sea through the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, has said that it will only allow ships through that already have a home port there.

    Russia had previously acknowledged the sinking of the cruiser but said only that had been damaged by “heavy storms” and a fire. [....]

    also of special note in the article

    [....] In a recent phone call with President Biden, Zelensky made a direct appeal for the United States to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the U.S. arsenal, The Washington Post first reported.

    While Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart that he was willing to explore a range of proposals to exert greater pressure on Moscow, he did not commit to specific actions, according to people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive dialogue between the two leaders.

    Even during the Cold War, Washington refrained from designating the Soviet Union in this manner, despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorist actors throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

    Such a measure could have a range of effects, including the imposition of economic penalties on dozens of other nations that continue to do business with Russia; the freezing of Moscow’s assets in the United States, including real estate; and the prohibition of a variety of dual-use exports.

    The label, which requires a finding by the secretary of state, can be applied to any country that has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to a State Department fact sheet. The list names four countries: North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria. [....]

    edit to add that the NYTimes has a piece on the Pentagon confirmation about the ship too:



    (sound on)






    Significant development! https://t.co/LgQl16ynSZ

    — KT "Special Intelligence Operation" (@KremlinTrolls) April 19, 2022

    U.S. thinks that “limited offensive operations” supported by long-range fires have begun in the Donbas region as a prelude to a larger offensive. https://t.co/WFq5YNSkUm

    — Franz-Stefan Gady (@HoansSolo) April 19, 2022


    Additionally, I should add that most of what has been reported in the last few hours appears to be preparatory artillery bombardments (e.g., Russian fire on Ukrainian positions in Donbas last night) & localized probing attacks.

    (video via Red Fish Bubble 2.0) pic.twitter.com/44aL8h4QaQ

    — Franz-Stefan Gady (@HoansSolo) April 19, 2022

    calling out the woke and other "defunders" bullshit about spending on police after the NYC subway attack;

    Re: this viral tweet, I don't think police can ever stop each and every crime, but FWIW, America ranks behind Ireland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Scotland, Peru, and scores of other countries in police per capita. https://t.co/53WD9zC3N9 pic.twitter.com/p7S0JlRCkC

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 19, 2022


    This was pretty eye-opening to me back in 2020 https://t.co/Syhtljbu6E pic.twitter.com/nxtxch4xPZ

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 19, 2022

    And yes as @robin_pic points out the NYPD would not be a very large army. NYPD is around 50k people. Lebanon has a larger army (60k, not counting Hezbollah).

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 19, 2022

    380K followers. 10K retweets. 54K likes. And yeah, if the NYPD were an army, it would rank roughly in line with Bolivia and Chad, 75th on the list of countries. https://t.co/v4neSX9Bew

    — Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) April 19, 2022

     

    it's partly this idiotic thing where lots of people left and right naturally hate cops and authorities in general so they like the idea that if they can cut spending on police THEY ALL CAN GET A PONY! Lefty's pony might be more social workers, righty's might be lower property taxes, but the pony they are really more likely to get: a dystopian, falling apart crime-ridden community lacking law and order, with plummeting business activity, plummeting job availability, plummeting property values, higher and higher taxes because of lost tax base.....


    HELP!


    here's a version of the above with English subtitles (using a previous dupe comment to post it)


    war crime (#4,733? who's counting?)


    Ret. Lt.. Gen. Honore:


    Putin claims victory in Mariupol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yrmb0bqfI4


    If you've ever "caught" a porcupine or a bobcat - ownership in fact might be in question.


    PM's of Denmark & Spain did a surprise visit to Kyiv, following Boris's act :


    Has Ukraine Already Won? Today's Russia is not yesterday's USSR.

     

    One thing about the USSR, at its height it was actually led by a Georgian, Josef Stalin. The satellite states may have always been strong - it's why Putin's Russia has put so much effort in to mastering them.


    Is Russia on the verge of defeat? El American: https://elamerican.com/are-russians-on-the-verge-of-defeat-expert/


    200 Children killed in Ukraine. The first girl reminds me of Anne Frank.




    Blinken & Def. Sec. Austin in Kyiv!


    while Covid-obsessed me wonders what ever happened to Fauci's hope that people would never go back to shaking hands again? (not that I wanted it to happen - actually, it really freaked me out - still, this is a Biden cabinet member)






    He makes a good point that it is definitely one of those "never forgive, never forget" battles.


    Stalingrad lasted nearly 6 months with 2 million casualties.
    There are some analogies maybe but it was also 2 very serious armies -
    at the time of the counteroffensive 600K on the German side, 1.1million on the Soviet.
    Plus through a harsh winter pre-global warming to increase the cruelty, rather than mid-Spring.



    VERY welcome backgrounder on that reporter from Donbas, Illia Ponomarenko! I was always hesitant to take his stuff too seriously as I didn't know much about him. Now after reading this (from an incredibly prestigious source), I'm thinking he's about as good as you can get:


    (some of the replies to her thread are worthwhile, too)





    "We were beaten and humiliated." Stories of Ukrainians forcibly taken to Russia

    • Yogita Limaye
    • BBC, Kyiv

    April 29, 2022

    According to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, during the war, thousands of Ukrainian civilians were captured by Russian troops and forcibly taken to Russia. So far, only a few have managed to return home as part of the exchange of prisoners. All of them say that they were subjected to inhuman treatment in Russian prisons. The fate of many is still unknown [....] 



    video






    Retake Crimea?


    I kept waiting for confirmation of that hit, but couldn't find it,


    I'm not even a dog person but this gets me:

    I swear there's some genuis media minds working with Ukraine.




    Modern warfare?


    To me, the fact that this video was made is proof that they will do anything to win.


    Full 5:24 video of Zelensky's Victory Day message to Ukrainians, with English subtitles. At the end, he very much equates Putin with Hitler:

     


    So media seemed a bit bewildered about what the Z symbol Russians have everywhere means: https://youtu.be/aigX5BvF3jM

     

    I looked it up and, in the occult, "Z" appears to mean a symbol for.war.


    It's a Costagravas film from the early 70s, and...

    On Instagram, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) posted on 3 March that the "Z" symbol is an abbreviation of the phrase "for victory" (Russian: за победу, romanized: za pobedu), while the "V" symbol stands for "strength is in truth" (Russian: сила в правде, romanized: sila v pravde) and "The task will be completed" ...

    Meanwhile  war.  action in Ukraine goes poorly for them

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/05/11/the-russians-lost-nearl...



    google translation of text with video: Alexander Martynenko, a military serviceman of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, surrendered. Date of birth - 01/09/2004. At the time of his capture, he was exactly 18 years and 4 months old.


    more on the video of the 18-yr.-old Russian soldier:




    What did "treat them like that" imply?i didn't see a problem how they were treated, which was surprising.


    found a new good source, an interested REALIST following the action

    Gregor Martin @Guderian_Xaba

    Observing the conflict in the east. News from #Ukraine-#Russia war,

    without the RU propaganda and UA whitewashing.

    #Donetsk, #Luhansk, #Donbas. Locatiion: East Europe

    Last tweets:

    Toshkinvka, near Severodonetsk, has fallen to the enemy. The same for Dovhenke, at NW from Sloviansk.

    — Gregor Martin (@Guderian_Xaba) May 19, 2022


    Intense battle since dawn near #Sviatohirsk, at Yarova.

    — Gregor Martin (@Guderian_Xaba) May 19, 2022

    Sorry, but i don't think this will happen. Not because Ukraine won't have the capability to do this. https://t.co/fhfIdYGQ7e

    — Gregor Martin (@Guderian_Xaba) May 18, 2022

    Locals report there were clashes on the border for hours. Russian forces tried to enter #Ukraine coming from Suzemka, they were kicked back after battle. https://t.co/igeToQjWgN pic.twitter.com/MZ89VQABM1

    — Gregor Martin (@Guderian_Xaba) May 17, 2022

     


    Captive medic's bodycam shows firsthand horror of Mariupol, 1 hr. ago

    A celebrated Ukrainian medic strapped on a body camera to offer a firsthand look at Mariupol’s horror. Then Russian forces took her captive. Before her disappearance, Yuliia Paievska, better known as Taira, asked Associated Press journalists to safeguard the footage.


    all in good fun until it's used to support an argument that journalists are indeed enemy combatants

    #Ukraine: The famous Ukrainian Journalist Yuriy Butusov says that he and Ukrainian soldiers, while on reconnaissance, stole a Russian BMP-1 from a Captain Dmitry Furdui of the Russian 35th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, just 100m from enemy positions. pic.twitter.com/4cMmAW1aNK

    — Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 20, 2022

    This footage from Lyman, which Ukrainian forces had to abandon this week, explains why Ukraine says it won’t hold out much longer without US MLRS supplies that have been stuck in inter-agency deliberations for weeks. https://t.co/DKwov6GghD

    — Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) May 27, 2022





    that's a waaay interesting thread, thank you. Of special interest is the history as a place of refuge from serfdom (hence part of the transition in the west away from the middle ages to an era of more autonomous individuals) and just little interesting points like this:



    on the front line with the Right Sector militia -


    Ukrainian cosplay




    but for real:


    to be clear:

     






    Zelensky fires prosecutor general Venediktova, security service chief Bakanov




    They can get along, so begs the question: whose fault is all the divisive rhetoric in the U.S.? 


    Hold tight E.U., we're coming:


    Seems like just yesterday Hillary was being slammed for not denouncing fracking, which is largely behind that increased production. (coal provided half our energy in 2008 - now it's 18-19%)
    Not that we can export natural gas across the sea, but we do export fracking technologies.


    one thing I was not sure of is whether the exporting will be major but even if it isn't it helps bring the price down for everyone...



    Who to believe? surprise


    I'd expect Amnesty to have the same comments in most conflicts - fighting from city areas will invite attacks against civilians, but there isn't always a clean way to fight from non-civilain areas - it's war, it sucks by definition. But also, Russians are blasting civilian areas where there aren't weapons or troops, which is a war crime. Amnesty says as much. Some overreaction - Amnesty has its mission, freedom fighters have theirs. But good to remember and tone down if possible in case can avoid civilian losses. Certainly not written with "dick-in-mouth" tone.

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/ukraine-ukrainian-fightin...


    interesting that he thinks different


    The Navalny case was much worse.



    Trumpians might resist remote electronic evidence into their dens.





    NYTimes:


    Hey comrades, it's imperialist aggression, DOH!






    a really important victory to note because it wins more than just territory


    More advances - may have 25,000 Russians trapped in Kherson.
    Search "Beryslav" and "Lysychansk" in Twitter.
    Also possible they let 5000 Russians slip away so they could take advantage of further advance w/o being slowed by POWs, hard to tell


    He's just sayin'


    dupe deleted

     


    BREAKING: At least 8 people killed and 24 others injured after Russian missile attacks hit Kyiv, Ukrainian officials say. https://t.co/rks4eNGij3

    — NBC News (@NBCNews) October 10, 2022

     

    President Zelensky in a statement from Bankova street in Kyiv: terrorists are targeting energy infrastructure and civilians across Ukraine https://t.co/5Whyo9oxS7 #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/bycddu4YIW

    — Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) October 10, 2022

     


    UH OH?


    NYTimes video of Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities

     

     


    NYTimes Interactive Maps: Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

     Oct. 10, 2022  Where Russian missiles hit Ukraine

    Russian missiles struck nearly every region of Ukraine on Monday morning, killing at least 11 people and injuring dozens more in the broadest attack since the early days of Moscow’s invasion.....








    Bridge over troubled water


    And a fire swamp


    Drones have feelings too...


    his 'no kidding' summary -

    I'm not worried as I'll be dead. But younger folks better get on it, climate change isn't the only thing threatening you. (Heck if you really took to heart the messages in those comic books and video games you love, everyone is not thinking 'kumbaya')





    Latest Comments