Calilasseia wrote:Apparently the latest trick the Russians have devised, is to try and stop Neptune or Storm Shadow missiles from destroying their long range bombers, by covering said bombers in car tyres.

Independent politician Yekaterina Duntsova wanted to run on a platform to end the war with Ukraine.

But the electoral commission voted unanimously to reject her candidacy three days after her application, citing 100 "mistakes" on her form.

...

The commission said 29 people have so far filed to run for the presidency. But after today's decision, Mr Putin remains the only candidate to be able to register as a candidate.

tuco wrote:Admittedly, in the digital age where information flows relatively freely, it is a bit different but still, even if nobody is fooled pretense seems important for totalitarians.

In a bombshell interview, Salikov, who arrived to testify at the ICC, tells how Russia manufactured a “local uprising” in eastern Ukraine, funneled weapons over the border, and shelled its own territory to keep the conflict going

Igor Salikov was a Russian GRU officer and former Wagner PMC fighter who defected after witnessing war crimes in Ukraine. Since 2014, he participated in Russia’s covert takeover of eastern Ukraine under the direction of Vladislav Surkov.

In a bombshell interview with Russian human rights activist, Gulagu.net founder Vladimir Osechkin, Salikov described how Surkov carefully crafted the narrative of a separatist uprising led by locals.

Russian proxies like Salikov were restricted to Soviet-era equipment to mask their involvement. Salikov even witnessed how forces under Aleksandr Zakharchenko deliberately shelled Russian-held areas like Donetsk cemetery, blaming Ukraine to manufacture pretexts for escalation.

Salikov realized no true “liberation” was underway – residents were pawns in a larger geopolitical scheme. Through propaganda, isolated incidents were exaggerated into fables of Ukrainian brutality used to justify further bloodshed. But on the ground, most citizens prioritized stability over external manipulation sold as “liberation.”

Salikov’s insider perspectives expose the lies and hybrid warfare tactics that enabled Russia’s long-term campaign. The interview will likely be used within the framework of an international investigation, and in the work of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We found this interview so important that, after writing its short overview, we created the English subtitles for the entire 2 hours of the video. Below is their shortened text version, adapted for clarity.

In the last half-hour, Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spoke to Russian news agency Tass about the attack in Belgorod. Here is a quick summary of what she said:

Russia has requested a meeting of the UN Security Council in the wake of events in Belgorod. (Russia has a powerful role on the council as a permanent member)

Britain and the United States are culpable for the "terrorist attack" on Belgorod because they "incite the Kyiv regime to carry out terrorist actions", she claims

EU countries that supply weapons to Ukraine are also responsible, she says

Ukraine says it has verified the names of more than 19,000 children who have been transferred to Russia or Russian-controlled territory. Over recent months, 387 children like Sasha have been tracked down by relatives and brought back home, with the help of the charity Save Ukraine and SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine, among others.

Their accounts have helped officials and investigators build a picture of a Russian effort to remove children from Ukraine — often under the pretext of rescuing them from the war zone — to turn them against their homeland and into loyal Russian subjects. Some described a feeling that the Russian authorities used them to lure their Ukrainian families to the Russian side.

The Russian strategy was deliberate, premeditated and systematic, according to the accounts of dozens of children and their families, as well as evidence collected by Ukrainian and international human rights and war crimes organizations.

The Russian authorities relocated children from Ukrainian orphanages and certain schools en masse, according to Russian documents gathered by Lyudmyla Denisova, formerly Ukraine’s top human rights official, which she shared with The New York Times. Russian soldiers and police officers escorted the children on buses. Regional authorities housed the Ukrainian children and placed them with Russian foster families. A decree by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia opened the way for Russian families to adopt Ukrainian children.

The exceptional scale and duration of the effort has little comparison in modern warfare, and the forcible transfer of children, war crimes investigators point out, can be an act of genocide under the Geneva Convention.

Masha Gessen wrote:
I can’t get one passage out of my mind. In the history-lecture portion of the interview, when Putin got to 1939, he said, “Poland coöperated with Germany, but then it refused to comply with Hitler’s demands. . . . By not ceding the Danzig Corridor to Hitler, Poles forced him, they overplayed their hand and they forced Hitler to start the Second World War by attacking Poland.” (This is my translation.) The idea that the victim of the attack serves as its instigator by forcing the hand of the aggressor is central to all of Putin’s explanations for Russia’s war in Ukraine. To my knowledge, though, this was the first time he described Hitler’s aggression in the same terms.

Putin has reproduced Hitler’s rhetoric before. Ten years ago, announcing the annexation of Crimea, he seemed to borrow from Hitler’s speech on the annexation of Sudetenland. At the time, I assumed that the language had come from a speechwriter who knew what they were doing while Putin may not have. But the way Putin described the beginning of the Second World War in his interview with Carlson suggests that, although he keeps accusing Ukraine of fostering Nazism, in his mind he might see himself as Hitler, but perhaps a wilier one, one who can make inroads into the United States and create an alliance with its presumed future President.

It’s telling, too, that Putin took the time to accuse Poland of both allying with Nazi Germany and inciting Hitler’s aggression. As he has done with Ukraine in the past, he is positioning Poland as an heir to Nazism. He mentioned Poland more than thirty times in his conversation with Tucker. If I were Poland, I’d be scared.

don't get me started wrote:I heard Trump's invitation to Russia to attack NATO members that do not meet the 2% military spending target with disgust but not surprise.
(These unnamed members were characterized by Trump as countries who don't pay- of course there are no NATO members who have a zero military budget, but his easily led and highly suggestible audience will come away with that notion.)...

Germany has admitted the apparent hack by Russia of a military meeting where officers discussed giving Ukraine long-range missiles - and possible targets.

Audio of the video-conference meeting was posted to social media by the head of Russia's state-run RT channel.

The officers discuss how the missiles could hit the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the illegally annexed Crimea.

Russian politicians said the audio proved that its "sworn enemy" was planning attacks.

Tortured_Genius wrote:Russia publishes German army meeting on Ukraine (BBC)

Germany has admitted the apparent hack by Russia of a military meeting where officers discussed giving Ukraine long-range missiles - and possible targets.

Audio of the video-conference meeting was posted to social media by the head of Russia's state-run RT channel.

The officers discuss how the missiles could hit the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the illegally annexed Crimea.

Russian politicians said the audio proved that its "sworn enemy" was planning attacks.

This raises so many questions, not so much about the hack and content of the meeting, but why the Kremlin chose to publicise it.

To me this looks like a desperate attempt to dissuade Germany from supplying Taurus to Ukraine whilst shoring up crumbling public support for the war within Russia.