🔴 Trump/Ukraine/Russia Files 2022
Permalink: https://wp.me/PDKwi-6Kc
With Tweets, Retweets, links to articles and excerpts, I’ve tried to document this national soap opera/tragedy we’re living through. The resources at the beginning are a mixed bag of timelines and documents and I provide a clickable cast of characters (Russians, mostly).
What does this have to do with The Blacklist? A lot, actually. Russian mob figures, spies and apparatchiks. Semion Mogilevich, the Smart Don, reminds me of Red, though Red is a lot nicer and much better-looking.
Featured are drawings (she calls them “maps”) by @Jzikah, and “Mueller, She Wrote” is the best podcast I’ve ever come across. The three women who do it are comedians, though they’re all super smart and A.J. (the lead) has a PhD and is a Veteran.
Caution: You may enjoy this feature a bit more if you’re of the liberal persuasion. This is the single place on this blog where *there are politics* though I tend to stick with MSM, specialized sources (ex-Intel Community, altGov, and reputable sleuths) and other people I’ve learned to trust.
🇷🇺 Press Here For Recent Articles and Discussion
🇷🇺 Press Here For Index to all Trump/Ukraine/Russia Files
💽Recommended⋙ Mueller She Wrote Podcast ⋙ http://bit.ly/2PgTKWs or Press ⇊ ⇊
Other Podcasts:
The Asset (Center for American Progress) 🌟
The Dworkin Report (Scott Dworkin)
Gaslit Nation (Sarah Kendzior, Andrea Chalupa)
The Lawfare Podcast (Benjamin Wittes, Brookings)
The Josh Marshall Podcast (TPM)
The Mother Jones Podcast (David Corn)
Mueller Time (Eric Leval, Chris Carey)
The Oath (Chuck Rosenberg, MSNBC)
The Report (Lawfare)
On Topic (Renato Mariotti)
Skullduggery (Michael Isikoff, Yahoo)
Trump Inc (q4- 8qProPublica)
Trumpcast (Slate)
🔊 PlayerFM: Best Trump Russia Investigation Podcasts (2019) http://bit.ly/2MKbtV8
Twitter List: INVESTIGATORS: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/investigators
// Investigative reporters, Trump-Russia sleuths, Intelligence Community, Legislators, “alt-gov,” and Targets
Russian Intelligence Services:
Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) – The Foreign Intelligence Service reports directly to the President of Russia.
GRU – Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces.
Federal Security Service (FSB) – The Federal Security Service is responsible for counter-intelligence, state security and anti-terrorist operations
🔄 ECFR , Mark Galeotti [EU] (2016): Introduction: Putin’s hydra: Inside Russia’s intelligence services http://bit.ly/2NZWN1h
// 5/11/2016, Intro
⋙ 📒 ECFR, Mark Galeotti [EU] (2016): Report: Putin’s Hydra: Inside Russia’s Intelligence Services [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NYjG5b 20p
// May 2016, Full report
Key People: Alexander Abramov, Roman Abramovich, Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov, Rinat Akhmetov, Rinat Akhmetshin, Yulya Alferova, Yuri Andropov, Anatoly Antonov, Anne Applebaum, Andrii Artemenko, Arron Banks, Andrey Baronov, Alexander Bastrykin, Sergey Beseda, Vitaly Bespalov, Leonid “Len” Blavatnik, Anna Bogacheva, David Bogatin, Alexander Bortnikov, Victor Boyarkin, Wm Browder, Mariia Butina, Carole Cadwalladr, Michael Caputo, Yuri Chaika, Igor Chekunov, Sergey Chemezov, Anatoly Chubais, Michael Cohen, George Cottrell, Igor Danchenko, Oleg Deripaska, Andrii Derkach, Igor Divyekin, Kirill Dmitriev, Aleksandr Dugin, Arkady Dvorkovich, Paul Erickson, Oleg Erovinkin, Nigel Farage, Dmitri Firtash, John Fotiadis, Gene (Evgeny) Friedman, Igor Fruman, Daniel Gelbinovich, Valery Gerasimov, Rob Goldstone, Sergei Gorkov, Henry Greenberg, Fiona Hill, Andrew Intrater, Ivan the Terrible, Bidzina Ivanishvili, Ramzan Kadyrov, Brittany Kaiser, Mikhail Kalugin, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Saak Karapetyan, Eugene Kaspersky (Kaspersky Lab), Denis Katsyv, Irakly (“Ike”) Kaveladze, Michael Khodarkovsky, Nikita Khrushchev, Konstantin Kilimnik, Sergey Kislyak, Artem Klyushin, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Konstantin Kosachev, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Yury Kovalchuk, Aleksandra Krylova, Elena Khusyaynova, Simon Kukes, Sergey Lavrov, Alexander Litvinenko, Howard Lorber, Alexander Lukashenko, Yuriy Lutsenko, Simona Mangiante, Alexander Mashkevich, Michael McFaul, Viktor Medvedchek, Josef Mifsud, Alexey Miller, Sergei Millian, Semion Mogilevich (Don Semyon), Konstantin Molofeev, George Nader, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, Lyudmila Narusova, Sergei Naryshkin, Alexei Navalny, Eduard Nektalov, Konstantin Nikolaev, Vyacheslav Nikonov, Yevgeniy Nikulin, Alexander Nix, Isabel Oakeshoff, George Papadopoulos, Lev Parnas, Sam Patten, Nikolai Patrushev, Alexander Perepilichnyy, Dmitry Peskov, Peter the Great, Igor Pisarsky, Petro Poroshenko, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Sergei Prikhodko, Vladimir Putin, George Ramishvili, Dmitry Rogozin, Alexander Rovt, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Konstantin Rykov, Mikheil Saakashvili, Felix Sater, Igor Sechin, Leonid Shebarshin, Anastasia Shevchenko, Sergey Shoigu, Viktor Shokin, Oleg Solodukhin, Christopher Steele, Ruslan Stoyanov, Oleg Solodukhin, Peter Strzok, Sergei Surovikin, Taiwanchik (aka Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov), Bill Taylor, Andriy Telizhenko, Gennady Timchenko, Oleg Tinkov, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (aka Taiwanchik), Aleksandr Torshin, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Yulia Tymoshenko, Anastasia Vashukevich (aka Nastya Rybka), Viktor Vekselberg, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Alexander Vindman, Vyacheslav Volodin, Curt Weldon, Andy Wigmore, Alexander Yakovenko, Viktor Yanukovych, Boris Yeltsin, Ivan Yermakov, Marie Yovanovitch, Viktor Yushchenko, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, Maria Zakharova, Joel Zamel, Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Bios w links (Wikipedia unless otherwise noted): Alexander Abramov, Roman Abramovich, Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov, Rinat Akhmetov, Rinat Akhmetshin, Yulya Alferova (National Compass), Yuri Andropov, Anatoly Antonov, Anne Applebaum, Andrii Artemenko, Arron Banks, Andrey Baranov (Bloomberg), Alexander Bastrykin, Sergey Beseda, Vitaly Bespalov (NBC), Leonid “Len” Blavatnik, Anna Bogacheva (NYT), David Bogatin (NYT), Alexander Bortnikov, Victor Boyarkin (TrumpRussia), William Browder, Mariia Butina, Carole Cadwalladr, Michael Caputo, Yuri Chaika, Igor Chekunov, Sergey Chemezov, Anatoly Chubais, Michael Cohen, George Cottrell, Igor Danshenko, Oleg Deripaska, Andrii Derkach, Igor Divyekin, Kirill Dmitriev, Aleksandr Dugin, Arkady Dvorkovich, Paul Erickson, Oleg Erovinkin, Nigel Farage, Dmitri Firtash, John Fotiadis (Archinect), Gene (Evgeny) Friedman, Igor Fruman, Daniel Gelbinovich (Daily Beast), Valery Gerasimov, Rob Goldstone, Sergei Gorkov, Henry Greenberg (Miami Herald), Fiona Hill, Andrew Intrater, Ivan the Terrible, Bidzina Ivanishvili, Ramzan Kadyrov, Brittany Kaiser (Cambridge Analytica), Mikhail Kalugin, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Saak Karapetyan, Eugene Kaspersky (Kaspersky Lab), Denis Katsyv, Irakly Kaveladze, Michael Khodarkovsky, Elena Khusyaynova, Konstantin Kilimnik, Sergey Kislyak, Artem Klyushin (National Compass), Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Konstantin Kosachev, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Yury Kovalchuk, Nikita Khrushchev, Aleksandra Krylova (NYT), Simon Kukes, Sergey Lavrov, Alexander Litvinenko, Howard Lorber, Alexander Lukashenko, Yuriy Lutsenko, Konstantin Malofeev, Simona Mangiante (Papadopoulos), Alexander Mashkevich, Michael McFaul, Viktor Medvedchek, Josef Mifsud, Alexey Miller, Sergei Millian, Semion Mogilevich (Don Semyon) …
Cover: KyivPost (10/18/2019): Shady Cast of Characters: Engineers of Trump-Ukraine Scandal http://bit.ly/2MZCilW
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, Lyudmila Narusova, Sergei Naryshkin, Alexei Navalny, Eduard Nektalov (NYMag), Konstantin Nikolaev, Yevgeniy Nikulin, Vyacheslav Nikonov, Alexander Nix, Isabel Oakeshoff, George Papadopoulos, Lev Parnas, Nikolai Patrushev, Sam Patten, Alexander Perepilichny, Dmitry Peskov, Peter the Great, Igor Pisarsky (RIM), Petro Poroshenko, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Sergei Prikhodko, Vladimir Putin, George Ramishvili (Bloomberg), Dmitry Rogozin, Alexander Rovt, Giorgi Rtskhiladze (CNBC), Nastya Rybka (aka Anastasia Vashukevich) (WaPo), Dmitry Rybolovlev, Konstantin Rykov, Mikheil Saakashvili, Felix Sater, Igor Sechin, Leonid Shebarshin, Anastasia Shevchenko (Amnesty Intl), Sergey Shoigu, Viktor Shokin, Oleg Solodukhin, Christopher Steele, Ruslan Stoyanov, Peter Strzok, Sergei Surovikin, Taiwanchik (aka Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov), Bill Taylor, Andriy Telizhenko (BuzzFeedNews), Gennady Timchenko, Oleg Tinkov, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (aka Taiwanchik), Aleksandr Torshin, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Yulia Tymoshenko, Anastasia Vashukevich (aka Nastya Rybka) (WaPo), Viktor Vekselberg, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Alexander Vindman, Vyacheslav Volodin, Curt Weldon, Andy Wigmore, Alexander Yakovenko, Viktor Yanukovych, Boris Yeltsin, Ivan Yermakov (Moscow Proj), Marie Yovanovitch, Viktor Yushchenko, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, Maria Zakharova, Joel Zamel, Volodymyr Zelenskyy
,
By @WendySiegelman
Key Documents
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 LawfareBlog: Litigation Documents Related to the Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2OVch6n
// new November 2018, to be continually updated
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 House.gov: Select Committee to Investigate the JANUARY 6TH Attack on the United States Capitol https://january6th.house.gov
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 JustSecurity: Public Document Clearinghouse: UKRAINE Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2CEsQ2F ‼️ Links to ALL documents ‼️
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 AmericanOversight: Trump-Ukraine Key Figures and Documents http://bit.ly/2C24bES
AmericanOversight: The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine http://bit.ly/2BYSY89 from FOIA requests
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 JustSecurity, Andy Wright: Just Security Launches the Russia Investigation Congressional Clearinghouse http://bit.ly/2L21uHz
// 8/22/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 Lawfare: Full Text of the Mueller Report’s Executive Summaries http://bit.ly/2IFLewq
// 4/18/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 Lawfare: Document: The Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2vcgNpN
// 4/18/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: The Whistle-Blower Complaint: Read the Document [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2nq4FAD
// 9/26/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo: Trump impeachment inquiry: Latest news and updates http://wapo.st/2P09WuE [Continually updated]
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo, Kate Rabinowitz and Kevin Schaul: Who’s involved in the Trump impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/2W673dg
// orig published 10/21/2019
By @jzikah has a new book! Cartoon President http://amzn.to/2QUeZhk @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 Court Filing (1/17/2019): Civil Action No. 1:18-cv-03501 [pdf] http://cnn.it/2CBddZy (111p) Democratic National Committee v.: Russian Federation, DJ Trump For President, Inc (and others)
// 1/17/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄 TheAtlantic, Yoni Appelbaum: Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2FykFIP
//March 2019 cover story
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Politico Mag, Darren Samuelsohn: The Only Impeachment Guide You’ll Ever Need http://politi.co/2QHcJGi
// 1/11/2019, As talk of the I-word heats up, here’s POLITICO Magazine’s soup-to-nuts answers to all your questions about the politics—and the practical realities—of removing a president.
⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo, Max Boot: Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset http://wapo.st/2D7IJQ9
// 1/13/2019
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg (Editor): UNTHINKABLE: 50 Moments That Define an Improbable Presidency http://bit.ly/2RvDFOn
// Jan 2019; Donald Trump’s 50 Most Unthinkable Moments ~ 50 Articles
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Wikipedia: Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018) http://bit.ly/2Bh12jP
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Axios: Timeline: Every big move in the Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Euh3H9
// 12/12/2018
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Moyers&Co: Interactive Timeline: Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump http://bit.ly/2uVHc9j
// continually updated
⋙ 💙💙🔄📒 DocumentCloud: Steele Dossier [pdf] http://bit.ly/2y5ZhnF 35p
⋙ 💙💙🔄📒 FBIRecordsVault: Records Between FBI and Christopher Steele http://bit.ly/2KqLoF1
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ AP: Mueller Investigation documents http://bit.ly/2ihbK0l
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ CitJourno: Trump/Russian Mob Connections http://www.citjourno.org
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ CNN, Marshall Cohen, Tal Yellen & Liz Stark: Tracking the Russia investigations (documents) http://cnn.it/2hVCpU5
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Russian Hacking and Influence in the U.S. Election http://nyti.ms/2NqFXeY
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ BrennanCenter: Trump-Russia Investigations http://bit.ly/2yRKcu6
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Politico: The people connected to the Russia probes [ Interactive ] http://politi.co/2FUDhz2 //➔ Democrats, Prosecutors, Law Enforcement/Lobbyists/Media,Team Trump, Foreign Nationals
⋙ 💙💙🔄 TheMoscowProject: Trump’s Russia Cover-Up By the Numbers http://bit.ly/2ycY959
// Center for American Progress; 80+ contacts with Russia-linked operatives https://themoscowproject.org/about/ http://bit.ly/2ycY959
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NBCNews: Russia timeline: Key players, meetings and investigation details http://nbcnews.to/2vtR3YW
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ DailyBeast: Democrats Release the Fusion GPS Testimony on Trump and Russia http://thebea.st/2qMmH1d w attachment [pdf] ⋙ via Dianne Feinstein http://bit.ly/2FjtlPP
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Justice Department Gives Congress Comey’s Memos on Trump http://nyti.ms/2HdLe2Z
// 4/19/2018 ➔ DocumentCloud: http://bit.ly/2HOGC4z
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ DOJ: Indictment of Internet Research Agency LLC et al … [PDF] http://bit.ly/2CqdHzD 37p //➔ Mueller Investigation
// 2/16/2018
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Amy Siskind: The Weekly List ~ “This is How Democracy Ends” https://theweeklylist.org
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Mueller Has List of Questions for Trump http://nyti.ms/2rfDuqK + http://nyti.ms/2HExEKi
// 4/30/2018, Majority Relate to if Trump Obstructed Inquiry on Russia
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: The Trump Lawyers’ Confidential Memo to Mueller, Explained [ Document ] http://nyti.ms/2kKPgq9
// 6/2/2018, NYT article about document: http://nyti.ms/2swIZSc
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ TIME: The Arguments President Trump Has Made Against the Mueller Investigation http://ti.me/2MdeARX
// 6/8/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ TIME: Wikipedia: Links between Trump associates and Russian officials http://bit.ly/2K42VDF
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ WaPo: Who has been charged in the Russia probe and why http://wapo.st/2toNwH2
// continually updated; WaPo Russia page
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ ForeignAffairs Anthology: A New Cold War? Russia and America, Then and Now 1947- http://fam.ag/2KEA4dF
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Justice.gov: Mueller Indictment of 12 Russians in the GRU for Election Hacking [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NbphV6 29p
// 7/13/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ FactCheck.org: Timeline of Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2KZ4qaQ
// posted 6/7/2018, updated 7/13/2018; Key moments in the FBI probe of Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election; Readable
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Legal Process Server: DNC Lawsuit vs Russia, Wikileaks, et al http://bit.ly/2KIOhBq
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT, Linda Qiu: Truth-Testing Trump’s 250-Plus Attacks on the Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2MY609E
// 8/18/2018
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Justice.gov: Manafort Plea Agreement [pdf] http://bit.ly/2CZiVb7 17p
// 9/14/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄💽 NYT: Opinion | Operation Infektion: A three-part video series on Russian disinformation http://nyti.ms/2OHqSSV
// 11/12/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ PasteMag, Jacob Weindling: A Year of Trump and Russia: The 75 Stories That Defined the Mueller Investigation in 2018 http://bit.ly/2QWN1SU
// 12/28/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ LawFareBlog: Document: Indictment of Roger Stone [pdf] http://bit.ly/2UdQgmj 24p
// 1/25/2019
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄📋 NYT: Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2MAZCps
// 1/26/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄 BuzzFeedNews: These Secret Files Show How The Trump Moscow Talks Unfolded While Trump Heaped Praise On Putin http://bit.ly/2DWQ2ed
// 2/5/2019; ⏳TIMELINE ⌛️
⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo: What we learned about Trumpworld outreach to Russia since Mueller’s investigation began http://wapo.st/2twkXYE
// 2/19/2019, And what we still don’t know.
⋙ 💙💙🔄 ◕📋 NYT, Larry Buchanan and Karen Yourish: Trump Has Publicly Attacked the Russia Investigation More Than 1,100 Times http://nyti.ms/2T2HSsN
// 2/19/2019
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
;
⋙ 💙💙🔄 ◕📋 WaPo, Philip Bump: The 81 people and organizations just looped into the Trump probe — and why they were included http://wapo.st/2SJrw41
// 3/4/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Full Document: Trump’s Call With the Ukrainian President [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2lfBkbC (Annotated)
// 9/25/2019″
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: The Whistle-Blower Complaint: Read the Document [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2nq4FAD
// 9/26/2019
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ HPSCI: Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report http://bit.ly/2LlnJsX
// 12/3/2019; House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Report: House Judiciary Committee report on their articles of impeachment against President Donald John Trump http://bit.ly/2Ek2rIa 658p
// 10/15/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Lawfare: House Releases Impeachment Trial Brief http://bit.ly/2ucCo3Y document 111p
// 1/18/2019
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Trial Memorandum of the US House of Representatives in the Impeachment Trial of President Donald J Trump http://bit.ly/2uePNsc
// 1/18/2020
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Trial Memorandum of President Donald J Trump http://bit.ly/2NGi2XK 171p
// 1/20/2020
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Vox, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Prokop: The ultimate guide to the Donald Trump impeachment saga http://bit.ly/2SoXpkm
// Updated: Feb 5, 2020, 8:06pm EST, Published: Nov 5, 2019, 8:06am EST
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ 📀 Press Here For Impeachment Trial on Cspan
// 1/20/2020-2/5/2020
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ LawFare: Confronting the Capitol Insurrection [Index Page] http://bit.ly/3mfMDNc
⏳WaPo: The full Trump-Ukraine impeachment timeline http://wapo.st/35odsUl
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⭕ Feb 2021 Second Trump #Impeachment Trial
Day One: Rules etc
Day TWO: C-SPAN: U.S. Senate Impeachment Trial Day 2, Impeachment Managers’ Constitutionality Arguments http://bit.ly/3aa1CCQ
// 2/9/2021;
Day 2 of the impeachment trial of former President Trump for incitement of insurrection began with senators voting 89-11 in favor of the trial organizing resolution. Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) then made opening remarks followed by a 13-minute video showing footage of former President Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech and of the actions of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol that day. Afterward, impeachment managers Representatives Raskin, Joe Neguse (D-CO), and David Cicilline (D-RI) presented their arguments for the constitutionality of impeaching a former president. Representative Raskin in his arguments talked about bringing his daughter and son-in-law with him to the Capitol on January 6.
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
Day THREE: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 3, Part 1 http://bit.ly/374q3zm
// 2/10/2021;
The first part of Day 3 of the impeachment trial of former President Trump for incitement of insurrection began with House impeachment manager Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asserting that the former president had “surrendered his role as commander in chief” and become “the inciter in chief.” He played the January 6, 2021, video Mr. Trump posted on Twitter in which he told his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol to “go home.” Representative Joe Neguse (D-CO) then outlined impeachment managers’ plan for arguing their case. In the final segment of part 1, Representatives Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) described the former president’s actions leading up to and after the 2020 election
Day Three: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 3, Part 2 http://bit.ly/3tYOS9Y
// The Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump continued with House managers presenting video and tweets they say indicate that former President Trump incited the deadly January 6 riot.
Day Three: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 3, Part 3 http://bit.ly/372bYSY
// Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Entire remarked on the breach of the Capitol and attacks on police officers.
Day Three: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 3, Part 4 http://bit.ly/3aZ82DV
// An effort by Sen. Mike Lee to remove remarks by the House impeachment managers from the official record sparked confusion on the Senate floor.
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
Day FOUR: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 4, Part 1 http://bit.ly/3rXW1pf
// 2/12/2021
Former President Donald Trump’s defense lawyers made their case that Mr. Trump was innocent of charges of inciting an insurrection. They compared speeches by Democrats and others to the former president’s remarks in their defense, and stated that “the article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance.”
Day Four: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 4, Part 2 http://bit.ly/3ddmmeG
// After a recess, Former President Donald Trump’s defense continued to make their case that Mr. Trump was innocent of charges of inciting an insurrection. In this portion of the impeachment trial, attorney Bruce Castor spoke.
Day Four: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 4, Q&A http://bit.ly/3jLkwD0
// In this portion of the second impeachment trial of former President Trump, senators asked questions of both the House managers and Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) then announced that Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman would be receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, due to his actions during the January 6 riots.
Day FIVE: C-SPAN: Senate Impeachment Trial Day 5 http://bit.ly/3b2haHL
// 2/13/2021
The Senate acquits former President Trump of inciting an insurrection, 57-43. Earlier, the House managers and the defense made closing arguments. Also, House Manager Raskin (D-MD) read a written statement from Rep. Herrera Beutler (R-WA).
● Majority Leader Schumer on Impeachment Acquittal of Former President Trump http://bit.ly/2OFAT8V
// Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered remarks after the Senate voted to acquit former President Trump, 57-43. Seven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to convict Mr. Trump.
● Minority Leader McConnell on Impeachment Acquittal of Former President Trump http://bit.ly/3djH5NM
// Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered remarks after the Senate voted to acquit former President Trump, 57-43. Seven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to convict Mr. Trump.
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
Twitter Threads
⭕ 9 Feb 2021 Impeachment #2: Day 1
💙 🧵 RT @atrupar Rep. Raskin’s opening impeachment trial statement: “Their argument is that if you commit an impeachable offense in your last few weeks in office, you do it with constitutional impunity.” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1359206921039974406?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Here is the entire video timeline of the January 6 insurrection as presented by the House impeachment managers 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1359216739054190593?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 10 Feb 2021 Impeachment #2: Day 2
🔄 💙🐣🧵 RT @jentaub It’s on. Day 2 of the Trump Impeachment Trial 2.0. February 10, 2021. We will have a dinner break at 6 p.m. ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1359548695038087169?s=20
🔄 💙🐣🧵 RT @atrupar Raskin: “This case is much worse than someone who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theater. It’s more like like a case where the town fire chief, who’s paid to put out fires, sends a mob not to yell fire in a crowded theater, but to actually set the theater on fire.”
🔄 💙 WaPo: See all the evidence presented in Trump’s impeachment trial http://wapo.st/3qeb1ii
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⭕ 11 Feb 2021 Impeachment #2: Day 3
🔄 💙🧵 RT @jentaub 🇺🇸 It’s on. Day 3. The Trial of Donald Trump 2.0 continues at 12:04 p.m. on February 11, 2021 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1359911216588685317?s=20
// Defense
🔄 💙🧵 RT @atrupar The Thursday installment of Trump’s #ImpeachmentTrial begins with a Baked Alaska clip 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1359914413709492232?s=20
⭕ 12 Feb 2021 Impeachment #2: Day 4
🔄 💙 🧵 RT @jentaub We have begun. It’s Day 4 of the Trump Impeachment Trial 2.0. The defense is putting on their case. The first lawyer is Van Der Veen. 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1360274181510807556?s=20
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
🔄 💙 🧵 RT @atrupar “Lord, infuse them with the spirit of nonpartisan patriotism” — Senate Chaplain Barry Black’s prayer begins the Trump defense portion of the #ImpeachmentTrial 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1360275280775028740?s=20
⋙ 🔄 💙 🧵 RT @atrupar [Q&A] Lindsey Graham, Kevin Cramer, and Roger Marshall use an impeachment trial question to own the libs 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1360337066215804930?s=20
⭕ 13 Feb 2021 Impeachment #2: Day 5
🔄 💙 🧵 RT @jentaub Day 5 of the Donald Trump Impeachment Trial 2.0. February 13, 2021. Wonderful! They are going to debate whether to subpoena witnesses and documents ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1360605971198967809?s=20
🔄 💙 🧵 RT @atrupar “Lord, touch and move them to believe that end does not justify the means” — Senate Chaplain Barry Black’s prayer begins the Saturday portion of the #ImpeachmentTrial 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1360607971055656962?s=20
@Jzikah’s Amazon page: http://amzn.to/3tUTM6Y
⚖️ House Committee Hearings on the Jan 6, 2021 Insurrection ⚖️
Day 1: June 9, 2022: Overview
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol https://january6th.house.gov
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go ¤ The first public hearing of the January 6th Committee. Chair Thompson begins with his personal history and says each committee member has one thing in common “we swore the same oath . . to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1535050380429516801?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Bennie Thompson begins January 6 hearing: “I’m from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try to justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1535050790720634891?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: First Open Testimony Before January 6 Committee http://bit.ly/3zynEvU
// After months of closed door investigations, the House January 6 Committee held its first hearing with public testimony about what transpired-and why-during the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Day 2: June 13, 2022: “The Big Lie”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go. Day 2 of the January 6th Committee Hearings gaveled in late at 10:46 am EDT. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1536359652514213888?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar The second January 6 hearing begins with Liz Cheney talking about how Trump listened to advice from “an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1536361664601374721?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Second Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/39jgMrH
// The “Big Lie”; The House committee looking into the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol held its second hearing with witness testimony to make public the committee’s findings after a year of investigations.
Day 3: June 16, 2022: “Mike Pence”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go. Day 3 of the January 6 Committee hearing ¤ Focus today is on the pressure campaign on VP Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “We are fortunate for Mr. Pence’s courage” says Chair Bennie Thompson. ¤ “But the danger hasn’t receded.” ¤ 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1537481664821174278?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar The third January 6 hearing gets underway with a clip of Greg Jacob, former counsel to Pence, telling the committee that John Eastman admitted in front of Trump on January 4, 2021, that the pressure campaign against Pence violated the law
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1537483292886601729?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: The House Jan. 6 committee returns today for a third public hearing focused on VP Pence. Follow along as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1537449714676793345?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Third Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3xx77WC President Trump’s Campaign to Influence Vice President Pence
// 6/16/2022; The January 6 Committee held its third public hearing focusing on former President Trump’s efforts to convince former Vice President Pence to not certify the 2020 election results.
Day 4: June 21, 2022: “Fake Electors”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Bennie Thompson begins the fourth January 6 hearing by saying: “The lie hasn’t gone away. It’s corrupting our democratic institutions. People who believe that lie are now seeking positions of public trust.”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1539295123107991554?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @kyledcheney NEW: Trump’s plan to seize power on Jan. 6 depended on state legislatures adopting alternate electors. He leaned heavily on state and local officials to do that while his team of lawyers — Eastman et al — developed a fringe legal theory to back the push.
📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1539201863702261760?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Joining @MaryLTrump for today’s January 6 hearing, Live now
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1539289189920948224?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: Day 4 of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s public hearings begins at 1pm ET. Follow along for live updates as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1539262716677918721?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Fourth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3OhikBF President Trump’s Campaign to Influence Vice President Pence
// 6/21/2022; The January 6 Committee held its fourth public hearing to outline findings after a year of investigating the Capitol attack in 2021.
Day 5: June 23, 2022: “Department of Justice”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Cheney begins the fifth January 6 committee hearing by saying a focus will be an unsigned draft letter Trump and Jeffrey Clark wanted the DOJ to send to Georgia officials citing known lies to urge them to convene a special session to approve a fake set of electors
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1540050703128862721?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: The fifth public hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee begins at 3pm ET. Follow along as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1540018644121427968?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 😆 RT @emptywheel Spouse, listening to his first bit of the Jan6 hearings, of Liz Cheney’s promise we’ll hear about what Trump did on 1/6: Is that called foreshadowing? ¤ Me, lit PhD: She’s making herself the omniscient narrator.
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1540049823365218306?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Fifth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3tX3gkK
// 6/23/2022; The January 6 Committee holds a fifth public hearing on the alleged pressure campaign by Trump administration officials on the Justice Department to help overturn the 2020 election results.
Day 6: June 28, 2022: “Cassidy Hutchinson”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar we’re underway with the special June 28 hearing of the January 6 committee. Yes, Fox News is taking it live.
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1541829781385248771?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: The Jan. 6 committee holds a last-minute public hearing at 1pm ET today, which will include testimony from a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Follow along as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1541789726960750593?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Wow! On January 2 Rudy told Cassidy Hutchinson Trump and team were going to the Capitol on the 6th. Cassidy asked her boss about it and he said “There’s a lot going on Cass. Things might get real real bad.” ¤ She said today, “That was the first moment I remember feeling scared.”
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1541834209265963012?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel This woman is 26. She’s about to provide really damaging testimony about one of the most dangerous men in America.
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1541829534248566784?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @lrozen J6 hearing starting, featuring Cassidy Hutchinson, former special assistant to Trump and aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows
📌 https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1541829799169122308?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Sixth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3bp657u
// 6/28/2022; Cassidy Hutchinson, former senior aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that President Trump said, “You know, I don’t even care that they have weapons. They aren’t here to hurt me.” Her testimony came during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is the sixth in a series of hearings – after months of closed-door investigations – detailing the committee findings on the January 6 attack. Ms. Hutchinson shared her experiences of the days leading up to and after the attack, including President Trump’s alleged altercation with Secret Service in the back of the presidential limo because the Secret Service refused the president’s demands to go to the Capitol after his rally speech.
Day 7: July 12, 2022: “Assembling the Mob”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Liz Cheney begins the July 12 hearing of the January 6 committee with this: “President Trump is a 76 year old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1546906042927353857?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE: Jan. 6 Committee holds seventh public hearing, focused on the role far-right extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers played in Capitol attack. Get expert analysis in real-time on our live blog http://msnbc.com/jan6hearings
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1546903393297465344?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel And we’re off! ¤ “We settle our differences at the ballot box.” ¤ [Note: I’m going to break off at 2 to cover some live hearings.]
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1546903190574071808?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Pat Cipollone agreed that Donald Trump should have conceded the election at some point and time (at least, apparently on December 14 when Electoral College met).b
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1546909222935445509?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ECMcLaughlin Live tweet of today’s January 6th hearing is right here. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/1546902951687467008?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Seventh Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3P2quy5
// 7/12/2022; January 6 Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said that former President Trump “tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” and that the matter has been reported to the Justice Department. The revelation came as Rep. Cheney delivered her closing statement during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is the seventh in a series of hearings – after months of closed-door investigations – detailing the committee findings on the January 6 attack. Testifying before the committee was Jason Van Tatenhove, the former spokesperson for the extremist group the Oath Keepers, who said the group is a “violent militia” and “the best illustration for what the Oath Keepers are happened January 6th when we saw that stacked military formation going up the stairs of our Capitol.” Also testifying was Stephen Ayres, who pled guilty to breaching the U.S. Capitol.
Day 8: July 21, 2022: “Dereliction of Duty”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Liz Cheney begins the January 6 committee’s primetime July 21 hearing by announcing more hearings are coming in September
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1550272235709296640?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ECMcLaughlin Livetweet of tonight’s 1/6 hearing will be right here.
⬇️⬇️⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/1550260159783378944?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MollyJongFast Letsssssssss gooooo
📌 https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1550270058752102400?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🔲 RT @MaryLTrump Join me and @JohnFugelsang @NormOrnstein @cmclymer @AdamParkhomenko @jentaub @georgehahn @BrianKarem @WajahatAli watching the hearings NOW
📌 https://twitter.com/MaryLTrump/status/1550272287772798976?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Eighth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack https://tinyurl.com/36ea45sh
// 7/21/2022; “For the weeks between the November election and January 6, Donald Trump was a force to be reckoned with,” said January 6 Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), later adding, “and then he stopped. For 187 minutes on January 6th, this man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved.” His remarks came as he delivered his opening statement during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is the eighth in a series of public hearings – after months of closed-door investigations – detailing the committee findings on the January 6 attack. The chair went on to say if there is no accountability for January 6th, “I fear that we will not overcome the ongoing threat to our democracy.” During her closing testimony, Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) touched on the former president’s supporters, saying, “he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. And on January 6th, Donald Trump turned their love of country … ”
Day 9: October 13, 2022: “Summary and Subpoena”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Follow this thread for video highlights from what is likely to be the final January 6 committee hearing
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1580603168404037635?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel Spouse, as Liz Cheney says they may make criminal referrals: Thank you Liz Cheney, you read my mind. [He had just asked if they could do that.]
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1580606914505080834?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ TomDreisbach [NPR] Here we go: The latest @January6thCmte hearing has started. ¤ NPR’s livestream is available here:
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/TomDreisbach/status/1580605465796304901?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @tomlobianco [YahooNews] “Good afternoon, and may god bless the United States of America,” House Jan 6 Chair Bennie Thompson says in opening statement of #January6thHearings
📌 https://twitter.com/tomlobianco/status/1580605071498174471?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @scottwongDC DAY 9 of the Jan. 6 hearings about to get underway. Follow along on our @NBCNews live blog here for all the updates: https://tinyurl.com/2wf2eyt3
📌 https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/status/1580603641878425602?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 🐣 RT @SethAbramson (📢) LIVE THREAD: This thread is a live-tweet of today’s House January 6 Committee hearing. I’m an attorney, journalist, and historian who has been contacted by the Committee and whose January 6–focused substack, PROOF, the Committee has cited. I hope you will RETWEET and follow.
📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1580574750581018626?s=20
By @AshaRangappa_
Day 9: July 21, 2022: “Summary and Resolution”
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Ninth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack https://tinyurl.com/3cb42ubb
// 10/13/2022; January 6 Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) offered a resolution to issue a subpoena to hear from former President Trump regarding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She said, “We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion, and every American is entitled to those answers so we can act now to protect our republic.” Her resolution came during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol after committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said members wanted to hear from the former president because he “is required to answer for his actions.” The committee members recounted prior evidence in lockstep with newly-obtained evidence, such as the Secret Service’s knowledge of a planned attack on the U.S. Capitol prior to January 6. They also shared never-before-seen video of members of Congress seeking safety and asking for help during the attack. .
Day 10: Dec 19, 2022: “Indictment Referrals and Adjournment”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar The final January 6 committee hearing is about to begin. Follow along for a video thread.
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1604899834191876096?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @axios The Jan. 6 select committee’s final public meeting is underway.
Follow this thread for updates. 👇
📌 https://twitter.com/axios/status/1604901456091484163?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MacFarlaneNews Standing by for our CBS News special report on the final public meeting of House Select Jan 6 Cmte. And votes on criminal referrals. Starts at 1pm eastern
📌 https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1604897048230187014?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Final Hearing on U.S. Capitol Attack https://tinyurl.com/2xt5j77b
// 12/19/2022; The January 6 Committee holds its final public hearing on the attack of the U.S. Capitol.
💙 ⚖️ 📔 This❗️⋙ 📔 Lawfare: Jan. 6 Select Committee Documents https://tinyurl.com/44fxvfjk
⋙ Lawfare: Jan. 6 Select Committee Document: Executive Summary [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/42p4bkx7 154p
⋙ Lawfare: Jan. 6 Committee Issues Final Report https://tinyurl.com/4867dtra 845p
⋙ Lawfare: Jan. 6 Committee Releases Witness Interview Transcripts https://tinyurl.com/43f5k7y6
by @ErikAukan
💙 🔄 📔 MFA of Ukraine (Official): War in Ukraine: Russia Invaded Ukraine https://war.ukraine.ua
// Reports, statistics, articles
💙 Ukraine Twitter List: https://twitter.com/i/lists/157259218?s=20
💙 Ukraine War Twitter List: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1545071393397784576?s=20
💙 Tim White’s awesome log: Search @TWMCLtd ✛ “Day 999” or use dates: https://twitter.com/search-advanced
(The War started on 2/24/2022)
⭕ 31 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @mfa_russia 🎙 President Putin: The West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression.
💬Today, they cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia.
☝️ We have never allowed anyone to do this and we will not allow it now.
🔗 https://is.gd/E3S5LX
⋙ 🐣 The U.S. is always prepared to fight two major wars at the same time.
You invaded Ukraine, remember? NATO countries are providing weapons for Ukraine to defend itself.
Your AF are weak due to corruption & antiquated methods.
The West wants you to LET Ukraine BE. The rest is gravy
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1609454512439267330?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 IMPORTANT. Bradley Fighting Vehicle is the kind of technology edge can can help Ukraine bring this war to a close. Also need to add M1 Abrams tank. ATACMS 300 km missiles. Armed Reaper drones. Backed up by contractor maintenance in Poland and Rumania.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Just the mention of Ukraine getting Bradley IFVs excites me.
– Armed with a 25mm cannon, 7.62mm machine gun, and 2 TOW Anti-tank launchers
– Crew of 3. Can carry 7 infantry dismounts
– Spaced laminate armor. Can add reactive
– Advanced sighting/positioning software/capability
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ So if releasing Trump’s tax returns pursuant to a lawful statutory process is a major invasion of privacy, releasing the contents of someone’s entire hard drive that some rando computer guy copied to the entire world is even worse, right? I’m just trying to keep up
🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv Beyond belief. Russia coldly and cowardly attacked Ukraine in the early hours of the new year. But Putin still does not seem to understand that Ukrainians are made of iron. America is absolutely confident Ukraine will prevail in 2023. Slava Ukraini!
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZhiZhuWeb “This year can be called a year of losses for Ukraine, Europe, & the whole world. But that’s wrong. We shouldn’t say that.
We haven’t lost anything. It was taken from us. …
The world did not lose peace – #Russia destroyed it.” ~Zelensky
Video: https://youtu.be/ANaVkRxDPCI
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZhiZhuWeb/status/1609362520061476866?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “This year can be called a year of losses for Ukraine, Europe, & the whole world. ¤ But that’s wrong. We shouldn’t say that.
We haven’t LOST anything. It was TAKEN from us.
Ukraine did not lose its sons & daughters
– they were taken away by murderers.
Ukrainians did not lose their homes
– they were destroyed by terrorists.
We did not lose our lands
– they were occupied by invaders.
The world did not lose peace
– RUSSIA DESTROYED IT”
🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv Beyond belief. Russia coldly and cowardly attacked Ukraine in the early hours of the new year. But Putin still does not seem to understand that Ukrainians are made of iron. America is absolutely confident Ukraine will prevail in 2023. Slava Ukraini!
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZhiZhuWeb “This year can be called a year of losses for Ukraine, Europe, & the whole world. But that’s wrong. We shouldn’t say that.
We haven’t lost anything. It was taken from us. …
The world did not lose peace – #Russia destroyed it.” ~Zelensky
Video: https://youtu.be/ANaVkRxDPCI
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin failed to achieve any of his major objectives in Ukraine in 2022 — no “unity of Slavs”, no “denazification”, no “demilitarization”, no taking Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Kherson, no liberating Donbas & no stopping NATO expansion. His invasion of Ukraine has been a colossal failure.
🐣 RT @patriottakes Staying classy.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1609361329864822785?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] @realDonald Trump [ts] HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of the Radical Left Democrats, Marxist Lunatics, China loving Coco Chow and her Obedient Husband, Mitch, and Clueless RINOS, who are working so hard to DESTROY our once great Country. More importantly, HAPPY NEW YEAR to the Incredible, Brave, andmStrong American Patriots who Built, Love, and Cherish America. The REAL leaders of our Country will always remain FAITHFUL and LOYAL to you. The USA will be back, Bigger & Better & Stronger than ever before. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!
WaPo: Missiles rain down on Ukraine as Putin gives combative New Year speech https://tinyurl.com/ban5vjtb “The attacks indicate that Putin has no intention of letting up his campaign to leave Ukrainians without light, heat and water this winter”
President[.]gov[.]ua: In year-end interview Olena Zelenska talks about her work during the war https://tinyurl.com/ycy4r36v
💙 🐣 RT @walter_report New Years Greeting of @ZelenskyyUa
💽 17m [tr] https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1609325115585728513?s=20/photo/1
// video address with clips from year
≣ President[.]gov[.]ua: New Year greetings of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy [transcript] https://tinyurl.com/ypudtdu7
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @nytimes President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine delivered a rousing New Year’s Eve address on Saturday night, recalling a year that he said truly “began on Feb. 24” with fear over Russia’s invasion but ended with his country hopeful for victory.
⋙ NYT: Zelensky recounts a year that ‘struck our hearts’ in his final address of 2022 https://tinyurl.com/4bu3hpxc “Zelensky recounted moments of despair and triumph alike, and heralded the resolve of his fellow Ukrainians”
// “This year has struck our hearts,” President Zelensky said, according to a translated transcript of his New Year’s Eve address that was posted on his official website. “We’ve cried out all the tears.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine delivered a rousing New Year’s Eve address on Saturday night, recalling a year that he said truly “began on Feb. 24” with fear over Russia’s invasion but ended with his country hopeful for victory.
“We have overcome the panic,” he said. “We did not run away but united. We have overcome doubts, despair and fear.”
Standing in darkness with a Ukrainian flag rippling gently in the breeze behind him, Mr. Zelensky recounted in a videotaped speech many notable moments from the war — including the attack on a maternity hospital, the intense fighting at the Azovstal steel plant, the destruction of a Russian bridge to Crimea, the retaking of Kherson, the sinking of a Russian flagship — as the video cut to footage that underscored his words.
“This year has struck our hearts,” he said, according to a translated transcript posted on his official website. “We’ve cried out all the tears. All the prayers have been yelled. 311 days. We have something to say about every minute.”
The speech was just one of the hundreds Mr. Zelensky has given this year in a relentless campaign not only to steel his country to fight Russia’s army but to galvanize support for Ukraine abroad.
While the history of most wars is written by the victor after the fact, Mr. Zelensky has created a story line of the war against Russia in real time, a running narrative telling Ukrainians in nightly video addresses how they should view the battles, justify their hardships and believe in the country’s ultimate success.
As the New Year approached, Mr. Zelensky recounted moments of despair and triumph alike, and heralded the resolve of his fellow Ukrainians. The first missiles in February, he said, “destroyed our labyrinth of illusions” but had also shown Ukrainians “what we are capable of.”
“This is the year when Ukraine changed the world, and the world discovered Ukraine,” he said. “We were told to surrender. We chose a counterattack! We were told to make concessions and compromises. We are joining the European Union and NATO.”
All Ukrainians — those working, attending schools or “just learning to walk” — are participating in Ukraine’s defense, Mr. Zelensky said. And although 2022 could be called a year of losses, he said that was not the right way to think of it.
“We haven’t lost anything,” Mr. Zelensky said. “It was taken from us. Ukraine did not lose its sons and daughters — they were taken away by murderers. Ukrainians did not lose their homes — they were destroyed by terrorists. We did not lose our lands — they were occupied by invaders. The world did not lose peace — Russia destroyed it.”
The world has rallied around Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said, from the main squares of foreign cities and their halls of government to the top of Google’s search results.
“Ukrainians surprise,” he said. “Ukrainians are applauded. Ukrainians inspire. Is there anything that can scare us? No. Is there anyone who can stop us? No. Because we are all together. It is what we are fighting for. One for each other.”
As he closed his remarks, Mr. Zelensky offered his hope for the year ahead: victory. ¤ “One wish for all Ukrainians,” he said. “Let this year be the year of return. The return of our people. Soldiers — to their families. Prisoners — to their homes. Immigrants — to their Ukraine. Return of our lands. And the temporarily occupied will become forever free.”
That includes not just the territory Russia has captured since the invasion began more than 10 months ago, but also Crimea, the peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014 — “the area of independent Ukraine, as it was since 1991,” he said. “As it will always be.”
He concluded, “May the New Year bring all this. We are ready to fight for it. That’s why each of us is here. I’m here. We are here. You are here. Everyone is here. We are all Ukraine.”
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa & @ZelenskaUA Wish for miracles? 🇺🇦 create them themselves.
Want faith, hope? Both have been in the army for a long time.
Want light? It’s in each of us.
Today it’s only one wish.
It’ll come true not by a miracle, but our work. Fight. Mutual aid. Humanity.
Happy New Year! Year of our victory
🖼 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1609268349447331840?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @igorsushko My hope for the New Year: ¤ That Ukrainians & the civilized world defeat the totalitarian regime of #Russia once and for all. ¤ That #WindofChange sweeps through all corners of Russia so that Russians find the courage take destiny into their own hands and ACT! ¤ Glory to #Ukraine!
🐣 RT @CanadianKobzar So who are Ukrainians? In my opinion Ukrainians are the embodiment of one word – Воля. Volyia translates to “free will”. This is a core trait that is deeply embedded in the DNA of every Ukrainian from Svyatoslav to Zelensky. 18/24
🖼 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1609251636400238595?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @justartsndstuff “Predicting the events of the coming year, he said that Russia will not only withdraw from Ukraine, but also lose its own territories ¤ “Everything that will look “tasty” to respected Western and not only partners, everything will also be occupied,””
⋙ UAWire: Former DPR Defense minister Girkin predicts Russia’s collapse in 2023 https://tinyurl.com/34r2evz9
The former “Defense Minister” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Igor Girkin,who is wanted by the Netherlands and Ukraine, summed up the results of 2022 and gave a forecast for the next year 2023.
Among the main “achievements” of the outgoing year, he predicted a major geopolitical defeat for Russia and the failure of Russia’s “special operation”, which was planned “as an easy campaign for homespun coats” with a change of leadership in Kyiv. Girkin blamed the failures of the Russian army on the Russian president Vladimir Putin and the country’s military leadership. According to Girkin, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu and the head of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov are the ones who are the most responsible for the failures.
“Shoygu failed the special military operation, turned our army into a parade institution good only for fireworks and holiday events. If you do not replace this thief Shoygu and this cretin chief of the general staff, then the war will be lost,” Girkin said.
Predicting the events of the coming year, he said that Russia will not only withdraw from Ukraine, but also lose its own territories. “Kuban will be occupied, and Sochi will be occupied, and Crimea will be occupied. And not only that. Everything that will look “tasty” to respected Western and not only partners, everything will also be occupied,” Girkin said. ¤ He also noted that in general, 2023 will be a year of a significant deterioration in life and serious upheavals for both the people of Russia and Ukraine.
💙🐣 RT @SlavaUk30722777 🇺🇦Happy New Year everyone!🎉 I am so thankful of all the support we get from every corner of the world. You guys and girls are awesome. I will leave you with one of my favorite songs by Viktoria Leléka that i have posted once, because its just so lovely and cheerful. Much love🥰
🎹 💽 https://twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1609250596225421319?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1815 UTC 31 DEC / RU has resumed heavy attacks against the eastern and southern suburbs. UKR forces are in contact near Bakhmutse, Podhorodne, east of the O-0507 cut-off in the industrial area and west of Andriivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1609248021816180737?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SVATOVE – KREMENNA / 1745 UTC 31 DEC/ On 31 DEC, UKR forces are reported to have perused [sic] retreating RU units as far as Zmiivka. RU losses in the last 48 hours included several infantry fighting vehicles, as well as two newly deployed T-90 main battle tanks.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1609241486272638978?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /1440 UTC 31 DEC/ The cross-river reconnaissance and targeting missions of UKR Partisans and Special Operations Forces bore fruit this week in a spectacular series of precision strike missions in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1609196744494964740?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @anders_aslund My 3 expectations for 2023:
1. Ukraine will decisively defeat Russia.
2. Putin will lose power & probably his life.
3. Putin’s authoritarian kleptocracy regime will collapse.
We should greatly welcome all three events.
NYT: The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Election Narrative https://tinyurl.com/5n6bahbu “[T]he averages were … affected by a widening imbalance between a dwindling number of reliable, reputable nonpartisan polls, and a proliferation of questionable surveys”
// The errant surveys spooked some candidates into spending more money than necessary, and diverted help from others who otherwise had a fighting chance of winning
⭕ 30 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw The more people are familiar with the contents of #January6thReport, the better for the health and survival of American democracy. ¤ This audio recording of the Report is now out. By @CeladonBooks @MacmillanUSA and @NewYorker with epilogue from @RepRaskin 🔊https://tinyurl.com/7pkv55wu
🐣 RT @RepSpeier For someone who brags about his riches, his taxes show he is a loser —biz losses of $105m in 2015, $73m in 2016, $45m in 2017, and $23m in 2018. Now we understand why he didn’t want us to see his tax returns.
⋙ CNN: Key takeaways from six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns https://tinyurl.com/yeyu7rvh
WaPo, Jason Willick: How to shield Ukraine from America’s culture wars https://tinyurl.com/5n6km9rf “[T]he US is successfully weakening Russia’s military, thereby reducing its capacity to undertake future costly aggression. The US is also upholding the importance of national sovereignty”
🐣 RT @PowerUSAID For 308 days the Ukrainian people have lived with a constant threat of violence & danger, they’ve buried loved ones, watched their homes be demolished, & been separated from their families. Proud to partner w/ @ZelenskaUA to support much needed mental health services in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskaUA We are not fine because of the war. Therefore, the National Mental Health Program was actively developed this year. We attract foreign specialists and study international experience to create a truly comprehensive project. What we have already achieved: https://bit.ly/3FZvss7
🖼 https://twitter.com/PowerUSAID/status/1608577914081275904?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📊 RT @BrookingsGov 73% of Americans approve of the recent protests in Iran.
73% also feel that the U.S. should continue to support Ukraine despite threats from Russia.
And 78% say China-Taiwan tension is at least a somewhat serious problem for the U.S.
⋙ Brookings (12/16): Americans can still agree on some things https://tinyurl.com/2c2evh4j
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Goodnight #Ukraine. I’ll leave you a picture by Kostyantyn Revutskyi. It shows Ukrainian military stretchers in the town of Bakhmut. It shows the bloody price paid for preserving democracy.
🖼 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1608919144833122304?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck Ignoring their own casualties, the Russian fascist invaders are launching “meat waves” at the defenders of Bakhmut. ¤ Russian mobiks and prisoners come on like zombies – until Ukrainian soldiers run out of bullets killing them all. In this way, the enemy hopes to gain ground.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1608889912358760450?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @petestrzok Trump “received more than $55 million in gross income from more than 12 countries, including Azerbaijan, Panama, Canada and Qatar” and his 2020 “returns showed that he filed foreign tax credits in more than 12 countries, including China, Qatar and Israel.”
⋙ WaPo: House panel releases Trump tax returns in another setback for former president https://tinyurl.com/r5m8xfym
UkrInform: Ukraine may[!] get ATACMS next year, depending on battlefield developments – Kuleba https://tinyurl.com/yca36bhm “According to Kuleba, there is a level of symbolic weapons, and there is a level of specific needs of the army as of today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow”
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1608925188036624385?s=20/photo/1
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba is confident that next year Ukraine will receive ATACMS ballistic missiles with a range of up to 300 km, as well as modern drones, but this will also depend on the situation on the battlefield. ¤ The head of Ukrainian diplomacy stated this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine, Ukrinform reports. ¤ “Next year, yes. But it will also depend on the situation on the battlefield,” Kuleba said.
He noted that in the issue of obtaining weapons, there are loud stories that are circulating at the moment involving tanks, warplanes, or ATACMS. ¤ “The army has its specific needs. Relatively speaking, if I were offered a hundred tanks or a hundred howitzers now, I would not hesitate to say a hundred howitzers now, while tanks could come tomorrow – because I know the real demand at the front line and understand that it is now much more critical,” said the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to Kuleba, there is a level of symbolic weapons, and there is a level of specific needs of the army as of today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. ¤ “And at every meeting of the Supreme CinC Staff, chaired by president, we look at it from this angle: what is needed here and now, and what will be needed tomorrow to defeat the enemy,” the minister explained.
At the same time, he noted that the military assistance that foreign partners provided for the past 10 months, including weapons and munitions, is unprecedented both in terms of volumes, range, and number of countries involved in the process. ¤ “Of course, we are at war and we never have enough, so we always ask for more, but we must remember a simple fact: we receive more support than any country has received, at least in the 21st century,” Kuleba emphasized.
As Ukrinform reported, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Patriot systems are included in the new package of military aid to Ukraine in the amount of $1.85 billion. The Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksii Reznikov, said that the Ukrainian military will master the Patriots quickly. ¤ The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is considering the possibility of sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine as part of a further package of military support to defend against Russian aggression.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /1320 UTC 30 DEC/ As RU shelling of Kherson and N bank settlements continue, UKR Partisans and SOF carry out cross-river reconnaissance and targeting operations. On 30 DEC, explosions and large secondaries were reported in Henichesk at the JCT of the P-47 and M-18.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1608813963969716225?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /1245 UTC 30 DEC/ RU units have crossed the rail right-of-way W. of Myika Pond & again at Andriivka and Kurdiumivka. These gains have proven costly: in the last 24 hours, RU has sustained 690 troops killed in action and at least 1800 wounded on all axes of contact.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1608805674586341378?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EmbassyofRussia 🇷🇺FM #Lavrov on special military operation: We are in no hurry. We would like to finish, as soon as possible, war the West was preparing for & eventually unleashed against us through Ukraine. Our priority is the lives of soldiers & civilians that remain in the zone of hostilities
⋙ 🐣 It’s not the West which has been “preparing for & eventually unleashed” hostilities in Ukraine:
Reuters (March 2, 2018): Putin says he’d reverse Soviet collapse if he could: agencies https://tinyurl.com/2w8z237u … It’s Putin
// Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he would reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union if he had a chance to alter modern Russian history
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1608886930032455685?s=20/photo/1
// cover NYT 12/26/1991: “GORBACHEV, LAST SOVIET LEADER, RESIGNS: ¤ U.S. RECOGNIZES REPUBLICS’ INDEPENDENCE”
📔 Rand (2016): The Post–World War II, Rules-Based Liberal Order https://tinyurl.com/2p8e56vu
WaPo: Putin, unaccustomed to losing, is increasingly isolated as war falters https://tinyurl.com/5688snxy “More than 300 days of brutal war against Ukraine have blown up decades of Russia’s carefully cultivated economic relations with the West, turning the country into a pariah”
// A new gulf is emerging between the president and much of the country’s elite
As Putin approaches New Year’s Eve, the 23d anniversary of his appointment in 1999 as acting Russian president, he appears more isolated than ever.
More than 300 days of brutal war against Ukraine have blown up decades of Russia’s carefully cultivated economic relations with the West, turning the country into a pariah, while Kremlin efforts to replace those ties with closer cooperation with India and China appear to be foundering the longer the war grinds on.…
Even though Putin gathered leaders of former Soviet republics for an informal summit in St. Petersburg this week, across the region the Kremlin’s authority is weakening. Putin is due to discuss regional affairs with Chinese President Xi Jinping over video conference on Friday morning in Moscow, but Xi already made clear in September his “concerns” over the war.
India’s Narendra Modi this month wrote an article for Russia’s influential Kommersant daily calling for an end to “the epoch of war.” “We read all this and understand, and I think he [Putin] reads and understands too,” the state official said. …
Among Russia’s elite, questions are growing over Putin’s tactics heading into 2023 following the series of humiliating military retreats this autumn. A divide is emerging between those in the elite who want Putin to stop the military onslaught and those who believe he must escalate further …
“There is huge frustration among the people around him,” said one Russian billionaire who maintains contacts with top-ranking officials. “He clearly doesn’t know what to do.” … ¤ The billionaire, the state official and several analysts pointed to the postponement of Putin’s annual State of the Nation address, when the Russian president generally lays out plans for the year ahead, and the cancellation of his annual marathon news conference as signs of Putin’s isolation and an effort to shield him from direct questions since he has no map for the road ahead. … ¤ “In the address, there should be a plan. But there is no plan. I think they just don’t know what to say,” the billionaire said. “He is in isolation, of course. He doesn’t like speaking with people anyway. He has a very narrow circle, and now it has gotten narrower still.” …
Putin again sought to lay the blame on the U.S. and NATO for dragging out the war, in what seemed almost a tacit admission that he had lost control of the process. “How can he tell us everything is going to plan, when we are already in the 10th month of the war, and we were told it was only going to take a few days,” the state official said.
Putin appeared exhausted in his recent appearances, Stanovaya said. And even if he does have a secret plan of action, most of the Russian elite is losing faith in him, she said. ¤ “He is a figure who in the eyes of the elite appears to be incapable of giving answers to questions,” she said. “The elite does not know what to believe, and they fear to think about tomorrow.” ¤ “To a large degree, there is the feeling that there is no way out, that the situation is irreparable,” she continued, “that they are totally dependent on one person, and it is impossible to influence anything.”
Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser at Russia’s Central Bank who resigned and left Russia in the weeks after the start of the invasion, said in an interview that her former colleagues “try not see the war in terms of winners and losers. But they know there is no good exit for Russia right now.” ¤ “There is a feeling that we cannot attain the political aims that were originally forwarded,” the state official said. “This is clear to all.” But no one knows how large a loss Russia can sustain before its leaders believe its existence is in jeopardy, he said.
With such a huge question mark hanging over the year ahead, two camps have emerged within the elite: “The pragmatists who consider that Russia took on the burden of a war it can’t sustain and needs to stop,” and those who want to escalate, Stanovaya said. ¤ Those in favor of escalation include Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Putin ally who leads the Wagner Group of mercenaries and continues to publicly berate Russia’s military leadership. …
There are also inescapable questions about glaring weaknesses in the Russian military that have become apparent in recent months, including its evident inability to properly train and equip the 300,000 called up during the autumn mobilization. ¤ “The fact is that these 300,000 mobilized do not have enough weapons,” Markov said. “When will they get the military technology? Putin also does not have the answer to this question.”
According to Markov, who supports escalation, India and China’s doubts have arisen because Putin did not win fast enough. “Privately they say, ‘Win quicker, but if you can’t win, we can’t build good relations with you,’ he said. “You should either win or admit your loss. We need most of all for the war to end as fast as possible.” ¤ Others said the reason for the tepid relations with India and China’s leaders was because they were clearly more worried about further escalation. “We hear there is a worry about the prospect of escalation to the nuclear level,” the longtime member of Russian diplomatic circles said. “And here, it seems to me everyone spoke very clearly that this is extremely undesirable and dangerous.”
Inside Russia, every now and then, members of the liberal-leaning elite are voicing their growing concern. ¤ In an interview last week with Russian daily RBK, Mikhail Zadornov, chairman of Otkritie, one of Russia’s biggest banks, who served as finance minister from 1997 to 1999, noted that Russia had lost markets in the West that it had been building since Soviet times. “For 50 years, a market, mutual economic connections, were being built. Now they are destroyed for decades to come,” Zadornov said.
On the whole, members of Russia’s economic elite “understand this isn’t going to end well,” the Russian billionaire said. Prokopenko, the former Central Bank official, said the Russian elite, including many under sanctions, are watching the situation in horror: “Everything they built collapsed for no reason.
⭕ 29 Dec 2022
WSJ, David Satter: Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the USSR https://tinyurl.com/37yu6zup “When the imaginary world of Soviet ideology collapsed, all that was left in Russia was rule by criminals & the drive to dominate [its] neighbors” “We need to…free Russia from the burden of its past”
// The Soviets reassembled the Russian Empire on the basis of ideology. He seeks to duplicate that feat.
Russia’s inability to rid itself of the Soviet legacy is the underlying cause of the war. If Ukraine cedes territory, the Soviet imperialist mentality will survive intact. Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1853-56) led to the emancipation of the serfs, and defeat in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) led to Russia’s first constitution. We need to support a decisive Ukrainian victory to punish aggression—and to free Russia from the burden of its past.
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 Proud to have played a small part in this 💙💛
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikeSallah7 Exclusive: Just after leaving the front lines, President Zelensky made a secret overseas call to Mitch McConnell: Turn over the billions seized from oligarchs to the devastated country. Days later, it worked: legislation passed to help Ukraine rebuild.
💙 ⋙ Pittsburgh PostGazette: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s secret call to Mitch McConnell puts squeeze on oligarchs https://tinyurl.com/yc7zeukc
// His plea to the top Republican pushes law to crack down on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies
🐣 RT @ MaryLTrump “Biden has not only demonstrated the greatest foreign policy mastery since G.H.W. Bush, but has transcended his achievements by being the 1st president to create a post-Cold War foreign policy that meets the moment.” ¤ Great summary of an amazing 2 years.
⋙ DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Biden’s Midterm Foreign Policy Report Card https://tinyurl.com/bp92xw2z
// There were surprising successes and dispiriting disappointments—but overall a transformative rejuvenation of America’s international standing.
MSN: Former NATO supreme commander calls on the West to «mobilize» its industry to provide more arms to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/bmv6mz3v
// U.S. General (ret.) Wesley Clark “has called on the United States and other Western countries to “mobilize” part of their industry in order to provide Ukraine with as many weapons as it needs as long as the war with Russia continues”
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: 2022 Could Have Been Worse—Much, Much Worse https://tinyurl.com/yh5fpyjb ‘Russia could have won. A Republican red wave could have happened. Inflation might have kept going up. The economy could have entered a full-fledged recession’
// For Biden and a crisis-battered country, an oddly optimistic end to an objectively bad year.
The nation, understandably, remains in a sour mood. It’s hardly good news that seventy-six per cent of Americans in the most recent Gallup survey think the country is on the wrong track, down from a high of eighty-seven per cent last summer.
But expectations are everything in politics. And the one truly good thing you can say about 2022 is this: It could have been worse. Much, much worse. Russia could have won. A Republican red wave, predicted by history and the polls, might have swept radical Trumpist election deniers into control of both houses of Congress and key state-election offices. Inflation might have kept going up. The economy could have entered a full-fledged recession.
On the world stage, Biden has rallied the West to Ukraine’s defense, secured large bipartisan majorities in Congress to send billions in military assistance, impose sweeping sanctions on the Russian economy, and negotiate the accession of previously neutral Finland and Sweden into nato. With this unprecedented aid, Ukraine has managed to fight Russia to a standoff. Kyiv, predicted by experts in the Pentagon and elsewhere to fall within days, still stands. “Against all odds and doom-and-gloom scenarios,” Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a buoyant thank-you speech to a joint session of Congress this month, “Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking.” He called this “our first joint victory. …
🔄 💙 📔 MFA of Ukraine (Official): War in Ukraine: Russia Invaded Ukraine https://war.ukraine.ua
// Reports, statistics, articles
🐣 RT @RFERL Despite constant shelling by Russian forces, a New Year’s tree was put up in Bakhmut, a hotly contested area in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. ¤ Most of Bakhmut’s prewar population of 70,000 have fled. Volunteers hope the tree will be a sign of hope for those who remain.
💽 https://twitter.com/RFERL/status/1608543633535270912?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /2050 UTC 29 DEC/ After a lull, RU has resumed piecemeal attacks against the eastern suburbs. UKR forces are in contact near Podhorodne, north of the M-03 / T-13-02 intersection, and east of the O-0507 cut-off in the industrial area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1608562701973991425?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @wartranslated Update from Bakhmut, 29 December 2022.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1608553994657619968?s=20/photo/1
// graphic descriptions; chilling
🔄 💙 🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar This is the ongoing megathread containing all of my history pieces – the Kobzar Chronicles.
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1586445851341520896?s=20
// tags: Ukrainian History of Ukraine
⋙ 🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar FELLAS! STAY AWHILE AND LISTEN! Today is part one of three of my 2022 Magnum Opus, a thread to answer a deceptively simple question – what is ‘Ukrainian’? This is going to be a LONG thread as condensing 2000 years of history is no small task. 1/19 […]
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1607918704033148929?s=20
⋙ 🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar [12/28/2022) FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! Here is Part 2 to my thread on what are Ukrainians! Today we discuss the Триединый русский народ or the Three Russian Peoples theory. Understanding this will help you understand Putin, Stalin and Russian imperialism since the 17th century. 1/15
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1608158128700260352?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar [12/30/2022) FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! Part 3 of my threads is coming, but today I wanted to talk about an important issue that has come up. One that must be understood in order to combat current Russian propaganda – What is the origin and meaning of “Ukraine”. 1/23
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1608854044394819585?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🧵 RT @CanadianKobzar [12/31/2022] FELLAS! Stay awhile and listen! Today is Part 3 of 3 exploring the question of who are Ukrainians. This will also be my last post of 2022! At the end, I will be giving some final lighthearted thoughts on what it is to be Ukrainian. Enjoy! 1/24
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianKobzar/status/1609251575737769987?s=20/photo/1
[…] ⋙ go to first link
WaPo: Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war https://tinyurl.com/25sxuzw8 The Battles of Kharkiv/Izium and Kherson City
// By Isabelle Khurshudyan, Paul Sonne, Serhiy Morgunov and Kamila Hrabchuk
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 1800 UTC 29 DEC/ RU is attempting to reduce pressure on Svatove with a series of attacks west of the urban area. Staging from the salient near the Andriivka reservoir, RU launched a number of company-sized attacks between Kryvoshyivka and Andriivka
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1608521698386808832?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 28 Dec 2022
NYT: Republicans Step Up Attacks on F.B.I. as It Investigates Trump https://tinyurl.com/997e926t “Trump’s supporters [have] stepped up their assaults on the F.B.I., seeking to undermine the bureau just as it has assumed the lead in an array of investigations of Mr. Trump”
// Historically, the F.B.I.’s critics have come from the left. But the bureau’s array of inquiries into former President Donald J. Trump has turned the tables.
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky: “Last year, 70,000 people lived [in Bakhmut]. Now only a few civilians are left there. There is no place that is not covered with blood. There is no hour when the terrible roar of artillery does not sound. Still, Bakhmut stands.” 📸 @Liberov
¤ https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1608128164760363008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📊 RT @YVindman 10 months into the war — 65 percent of Americans support continuing to arm Ukraine, 66 percent support continuing economic aid and 75 percent favor continuing sanctions on Russia. Ukraine is a bipartisan, unifying subject.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA AXIS /1800 UTC 28 DEC/ W of Kremenna, UKR forces are reported to be in contact with RU units at Dibrova & Kuzmyne. Elements of UKR’s 140th Marine Recon Battalion and the 111th Territorial Defense Brigade are reported to be closing on the villages from the south and west.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1608158490077306880?s=20/photo/1
Newsweek: Russia Running Out of Troops in Battle for Bakhmut, Battalions Split Up—ISW https://tinyurl.com/yjudhttc “Russian forces in the Bakhmut area are no longer operating as company and battalion tactical groups, but are instead operating in smaller groups of 10 to 15”
// “Russian losses, the ISW said, are likely forcing the Russian military in the Bakhmut area to use squad-sized assault groups … no longer operating as company and battalion tactical groups”
🐣 RT @milposp #Bakhmut is perfectly emblematic of #Russia’s abysmal and catastrophic failure in #Ukraine. #Bakhmut is the Stalingrad of my generation. It’s symbolism of #Ukrainian strength and resilience multiplies every day while the occupiers suffer incalculable losses.
🐣 RT @ @wartranslated Yo, the Russians made up a new reason why they can’t take Bakhmut. Now it’s because Ukraine has pulled up enormous manpower to it. One might think the ratio is 10x in favour of . But they’re still taking “enormous losses”. From prisoners. In defence. ¤ https://t.me/brussinf/5444
🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Russia will use nuclear weapons in case of defeat in the war, says Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto ¤ “The use of tactical nuclear weapons is planned by Russia. For us, this is unthinkable, but for Moscow, yes, if the point of no return is passed, if they risk defeat.
⋙ 🐣 the exact definition of “nuclear blackmail”
there’s no way to know if it’s another bluff, but one thing is sure:
if the world falls for it, it will change to entire nature of international relations
the world must not and will not fall for it
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Gotta admire American ability to quickly ramp LNG exports to specific nations when needed. ¤ Putin really thought the rest of the world was as incompetent and technologically backwards as Russia.
◕ https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1608140708841689088?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @United24media Remember last week Zelenskyy passed on a 🏅 medal from a captain in Ukraine to Biden to give “to a very brave president”? ¤ Well, guess who got Biden’s insignia in return during Zelenskyy’s speech in Ukraine’s Parliament today…That same captain!!! What an exchange 🥺
🖼 https://twitter.com/United24media/status/1608155205614592005?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Whoa.. Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock talking Ukraine reconstruction with Zelensky. ¤ BlackRock is the biggest of the big, bigger than most central banks. [link]
🐣 RT @robreiner All you need to know about Trump’s tax returns is he fucked a porn star and wrote it off as a business expense. What we’d really like to know is when he’ll be Indicted for stealing Top Secret Documents and Inciting an Armed Insurrection to Overthrow the US Government.
🐣 [To:] @stavridisj I hope you will talk to someone in the administration about Ukraine’s need for ATACMS. I am sure Ukraine would abide by US conditions for their use, even if it meant pre-approval of targets @NicolleDWallace @IgorNabokov
🐣 RT @NOELreports The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation evacuated their command from Kreminna, but it’s too early to talk about the de-occupation of the city, – Speaker of the Eastern Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Cherevaty.
🐣 RT @Tendar It’s possible that the Russian defense at Kreminna has been compromised far worse than expected. Serhiy Hayday speaks of the possibility that AFU might enter the city soon. ¤ Take it with a grain of salt but it would be consistent with the recent events I have reported about.
🐣 RT @KyivPost ⚡️ Haidai: Fierce battles are taking place next to Kreminna, the Russians are engaging large reserves. ¤ If Ukraine returns Kreminna, he says, the Russian defense line in Luhansk Oblast will crumble.
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “First, they throw in the mobilized soldiers for certain death, like meat…Then, if they break through, the more experienced fighters move in.” An account of fighting around #Kreminna in #Ukraine, from @RFERL
🐣 RT @RFERL “The Russians understand that if they lose Kreminna, their entire line of defense will fall,” one local official said.
⋙ RFE/RL: ‘We Fight With Our Brains. They Fight With Numbers’: Ukrainian Paratroopers On The Battle For The Donbas City of Kreminna https://tinyurl.com/2y6ubzs2
// Amid relentless fighting, one official claims that Ukrainian forces are closing in on recapturing Kreminna, which would disrupt Russian supply
⋙ 🐣 RT @vinm300 Michael Clarke (BBC) said exactly the same ¤ “Around Kreminna and Svatove they are very close to a big breakthrough that would throw Russian forces 40 miles back to the next natural defensive line, close to where their invasion effectively began in February”
🐣 RT @WSJ Ukrainian authorities said their army was closing in on the Russian-occupied city of Kreminna, control of which could allow Kyiv to significantly expand its efforts to retake Russian-held areas in Ukraine’s east
⋙ WSJ: Ukraine Sets Sights on Retaking Key Eastern City https://tinyurl.com/5n2p29sb “Kreminna would be a symbolic prize for Kyiv, giving Ukraine a solid foothold in Luhansk”
// Recapturing Kreminna could mark breakthrough for Ukraine’s efforts to dislodge Russian occupation of its east
The capture of Kreminna would give Ukraine access to major roads leading to the city of Rubizhne and the nearby industrial center of Severodonetsk, both heavily damaged in fighting over the summer, as well as to the town of Starobilsk.
Many of the Russian units attacking the city of Bakhmut to the south are advancing from Rubizhne and Severodonetsk, Mr. Haidai said, meaning that securing Kreminna and launching offensives on those cities could allow Ukraine to disrupt Russia’s onslaught against Bakhmut, aiding its embattled Ukrainian defenders. …
Starobilsk, on the other hand, overlooks key roads across the region, Mr. Haidai said. “Whoever controls Starobilsk can essentially control with firepower the entire logistics of Luhansk region,” he said. “There’ll be almost no road left along which the enemy can calmly transfer either equipment or manpower.” ¤ Kreminna would be a symbolic prize for Kyiv, giving Ukraine a solid foothold in Luhansk, a region which has been under near-total Russian control since the summer.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar on Monday described Bakhmut as Ukraine’s “eastern fortress,” and said Russia had concentrated a huge amount of firepower there as it seeks to capture the Donetsk region by the end of this year. Ukraine’s defenders currently hold around 40% of the region. Taking Kreminna could help reverse the momentum in the east and put Russia on the defensive in Donetsk too.
🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en “Our soldiers are not just service people. They are the hope of millions for life. They are the hope of Europe for calm. They are the world’s hope that the time of empires has passed,” @ZelenskyyUa awarded Ukrainian Warriors in Parliament today.
🧵 RT @albir2024 Every day there are new videos on Telegram showing groups of Russian soldiers being killed by grenades dropped from drones, others killed in open fields trying to attack #Bakhmut, groups being captured and other surrendering. There are also videos of trenches full of dead Wagner
📌 https://twitter.com/albir2024/status/1608192743548788737?s=20
I wonder what is the total number of casualties in the Russian army in the last 2 months. There are reports of 1:1 ratio for KIA and WIA. Russians leave their dead comrades behind and run away. I estimate that there are around 200 KIAs per day and perhaps more WIA and captured.
That is probably a total of 500 casualties per day. Over 2 months that is 30.000 troops. Plus all the equipment, weapons, radios, boots, etc. I feel RuAF don’t have enough men to conduct effective offensive operations, and at the same time they are wasting men for nothing.
If there is any sense in the strategy of the RuAF and their political aims, I really fail to understand it. If they think that Ukraine is going to negotiate a settlement that will allow Russia to keep some Ukrainian territory, I think they are mistaken.
Ukraine can not allow Russia to control any part of its territory, that will mean that in 5-10-15 years time Russia will attack again. Ukraine ONLY chance is to expel all RuAF and then join EU and NATO, in that way its territorial integrity will be safeguarded for the long term
Russia can’t be trusted. It has violated every single bilateral agreement with Ukraine and will not respect Ukraine territorial integrity unless it is protected by NATO. Russia knows that it can’t fight NATO in conventional warfare.
RuAF are several decades behind NATO in training, equipment, leadership and technology. They are outgunned and outclassed at every level. Russia’s economic woes will ensure that gap widens in the medium term.
In summary, Russia can’t win this war. It only needs to decide how many men is going to lose, and how much of its economy is going to be destroyed before it completely pulls out of Ukraine
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ “There is a temptation to act as if something is not shocking if we have heard part of it before, as though this were a mark of political sophistication.” Read this 15-pt list from @TimothyDSnyder. It should still shock you.
⋙ Substack, Timothy Snyder: January 6: The Facts https://tinyurl.com/yc29p8pk
// A very concise summary of the Select Committee’s Final Report
What did Trump know, and when did he lie about it? How did his Big Lie lead to specific actions to overturn and election and bring down the American system? What did the coup attempt of 2020-2021 look like from within the Trump administration itself?
Thanks to the excellent “Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” we now know the answers to these and many other questions. I provide here just the briefest of summaries of the report’s recounting of the events of November 2020-January 2021. …
Here is my very brief summary of the factual part of the report, in fifteen quick points. I am deliberately understating here; the evidence, in the Final Report itself, permits much broader conclusions.
1. Trump knew that he was likely to lose the 3 November 2020 election, and planned in advance to declare victory (to tell a Big Lie) if he lost.
2. On 3 November 2020, Trump knew that he was very unlikely to have won the election of that day, and declared victory anyway. In the days following, aware that he had lost, he continued to declare victory.
3. Over and over again in November, December, and January, Trump publicized specific claims of electoral fraud shortly after being informed that they were false.
4. Aware that his advisors, campaign officials, and cabinet knew his claims of fraud to be false, Trump promoted people, such as Rudolph Giuliani, who would lie for him in public.
5. In the full knowledge that he had lost the election and that his claims of fraud were false, Trump made several deliberate efforts to overturn the election results and thus American democracy.
6. In states he had lost, Trump personally pressured state officials to fraudulently and illegally alter the electoral outcome.
7. Informed that the Department of Justice had investigated and found no evidence of fraud, Trump nevertheless sought to use its powers, via Jeffrey Clark, to intimidate state officials to change electoral outcomes.
8. Knowing that he had lost the electoral college vote, Trump oversaw an effort to create fake slates of electors. These entirely bogus documents were then sent to the vice-president (who refused them).
9. Though aware that it was the vice-president’s role only to count the electoral votes, Trump pressured the vice-president not to do so, on the theory that the vice-president could, in effect, choose the president.
10. Even the person who devised the plan regarding the vice-president, John Eastman, knew it to be illegal.
11. Knowing by January 6th that all that remained was the formality of certifying Biden’s victory, Trump encouraged supporters he knew to be armed and angry to halt this procedure and violently overthrow our form of government.
12. Trump’s call to violence was successful because enough of his supporters believed his lies and understood what he wanted them to do: prevent a peaceful transition of power.
13. At a time when the Capitol was under attack, the vice-president was in flight, and the members of the vice-president’s security detail feared for their lives, Trump urged his supporters on to further violence.
14. After the failed coup attempt, a number of Republican legislators sought presidential pardons, thereby acknowledging their fears that they had acted illegally.
15. Even had Trump believed that he had won the 2020 election, which he did not, his coup attempt would remain a coup attempt, and his crimes would remain crimes.
These are some of the simple facts, as we now know them, two years on.
Two years ago, I wrote a long essay about the January 6 insurrection, entitled “American Abyss.” It could be published right after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, because I had written it beforehand, as a study of the Big Lie and its consequences. Thanks to the work of some excellent reporters and editors, I could add details from the horrors of the day before the final text went to press in The New York Times Magazine.
Trump’s coup attempt itself was predictable, and I had been predicting it throughout the autumn of 2020. Indeed, since the publication of On Tyranny in early 2017, I had been trying to make the case that something like this could happen in the United States, and in late 2020 I spent a lot of time saying that it would happen. I like to think that this helped to prepare some of us for the coup attempt when it did come.
Trump is obviously personally responsible. But the techniques he used are not unique to him, and could be perfected by others. The weaknesses he exploited are structural. Now that a coup attempt has taken place, and we know a great deal about how it happened, it is important for us to ask some of the deeper questions about why it could have happened, not least to make sure that nothing similar takes place in the future. In posts to come, I will be interpreting the report, returning to some of the themes I established these last few years, such as the Big Lie.
🐣 📋 RT @RichardvReeves About 110,000 more men than women have died from Covid-19 in the U.S. (595k v 484k), according to data from @CDCgov https://tinyurl.com/28yrak6w
◕ https://twitter.com/RichardvReeves/status/1604952451312148480?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 in recent years, more women in general live past 85, resulting in higher numbers of women’s deaths in 85+ group ¤ were it not for that factor, the difference in death rates by sex would likely be even more pronounced
🐣 RT @NOELreports The USA will purchase IFATDS automated artillery fire control system kits for Ukraine’s HIMARS. The kits are intended for 18 future new HIMARS of Ukraine
🖼 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1608165958874714113?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports It’s a network of computer workstations that process/exchange information. They transfer data from the front observer to the unit which provides fire support. It includes automatic processing of requests for fire with сonfigured management, creating several tactical decisions etc
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 “Because we didn’t want to, quote, provoke Vladimir Putin, by showing weakness, we provoked Vladimir Putin. We have to understand that Vladimir Putin’s ambitions are the restoration of the old Russian empire.” John McCain got it
💽 https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1608075321076600833?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 27 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @glynmoody Ukraine says forces closer to recapturing key eastern city of #Kreminna: “The Russians understand that if they lose Kreminna, their entire line of defence will fall” #UkraineWillWin
⋙ TheGuardian: Ukraine says forces closer to recapturing key eastern city of Kreminna https://tinyurl.com/v34y9u9s
// Luhansk city could be step towards launching offensives on Russian-held Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk
🐣 RT @DonLawr86874954 […]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DonLawr86874954/status/1607704356299894786?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jamie raskin The best predictor of a successful coup is a recently failed one where the plotters learn the weaknesses in the existing structure and then regroup to try again. There must be no second chances for coup plotters, which is what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is all about.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Europe not only freezes, it is also living in poverty, according to Russian propagandists – people have no money to buy presents or Christmas trees.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1607782175138803713?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS / 1900 UTC 27 DEC/ UKR SOF / Partisans identified a RU barracks/HQ area in the occupied city of Novobilozerka. A precision strike by UKR artillery is reported to have killed 100 RU personnel, including 15 employees of the Russian FSB.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1607813260983533568?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BadrobotLinda George Santos called Ukraine’s govt a totalitarian regime & other Kremlin talking points ¤ Now we find out he was director of an illegal Ponzi scheme, going by the name of George Devolder, & received over $60k from one of Russia’s notorious oligarchs ¤ Who is George? ¤ #DemVoice1
NYT: Man Sentenced to 16 Years in Prison for Plotting to Kidnap Michigan’s Governor https://tinyurl.com/v9yedasn “[T]he defendant, Adam Fox, called Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a ‘tyrant,’ railed against her Covid-19 restrictions and mused about a second American revolution”
// Jurors convicted Adam Fox of scheming to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 in what federal prosecutors described as a threat to American democracy.
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Cassidy Hutchinson’s courage reminds us never to underestimate each citizen’s power to effect positive change. We must follow her lead. Democracy depends upon it.”
⋙ Salon: Democracy depends on flawed whistleblowers like Cassidy Hutchinson https://tinyurl.com/4erxsva7
// Cassidy Hutchinson made an imperfect hero. But her kind of courage is crucial to protecting our fragile democracy
🧵 RT @ Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi: This week will be important for Ukraine from a political point of view. We enter the next year and must maintain a common understanding of our national goals.
📌 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1607836023131705346?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Of course, this is the liberation of our land from the enemy, as well as the restoration of Ukraine, the return of our people home, the further rapprochement of our state with key partners, the opening of new opportunities for Ukraine in the world […]
🧵 RT @Victorshi2020 BREAKING: the House Ways and Means committee will release six years of Trump’s tax returns in their entirety on Friday according to CNN. Accountability matters and we deserve to see them. What a great gift for us and democracy before the end of the year.
📌 https://twitter.com/Victorshi2020/status/1607833351452524544?s=20
💙 🐣 RT @saintjavelin These are the memes of the year.
💽 [YouTube] https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1607845567228686336?s=20/photo/1
// #NAFO memes award show
🐣 RT @ ZaleskiLuke The eight stages of Trump’s guilt:
1. “I didn’t do it”
2️⃣ “I didn’t do anything wrong”
3. “I didn’t do anything illegal”
4️⃣ “The people accusing me are guilty”
5. “The law is illegal”
6. “Prove it!”
7. “What happened didn’t happen”
8️⃣ “It’s fine, I did it and I’ll do it again…”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZaleskiLuke/status/1607804165652381697?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @ @realDonaldTrump Very interesting, because until recently the political Hacks and Thugs of the highly partisan January 6th Unselect Committee were seldom talking about your favorite President, me, as it related to the PROTEST on Election Fraud. NUMBER ONE, as President, I have total Immunity. Number two, I did nothing wrong. Then the Committee members, mostly the same sleaze that pushed the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, started saying that “Trump” did it. Even Shifty Schiff got into the act again. SAD!!!
🐣 RT @NOELreports “Neither total mobilization, nor a panicked search for shells, nor secret contracts with Iran, nor Lavrov threats will help. Russia should face reality. Ukraine will demilitarize Russia to the end, expel them from all occupied territories. Silently wait for the final,” Podolyak
⭕ 26 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Time to add a third potential federal crime: campaign finance fraud.
In 2021, Santos incorporated the Devolder Org in FL, which has no known assets.
In 2022, he reports income of $750k, all from Devolder. He then gives $700k to his campaign.
Where did that money come from?
⋙ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman [Dec 20] If allegations are true (and Santos has not even denied them), there are at least two possible federal crimes at play:
1) conspiracy to defraud the US (same as Mueller with Russians in 16 and Trump in 20), and:
2) filing false statements to FEC.
@EDNYnews should investigate. …
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes Who is George Santos? The GOP representative-elect to Congress on Long Island says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But his résumé appears to be mostly fiction.
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction. https://tinyurl.com/2ca2br82
// Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But he seems to have misrepresented a number of his career highlights.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Air Force calls explosions on Russia’s Engels airbase ‘consequences of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.’ ¤ Yurii Ihnat, Air Force spokesman, said that “if the Russians thought that the war would not affect them deep in the rear, they were wrong.”
🐣 RT @DougKlain “Every single hard-earned US dollar is a bullet aimed at autocracy. This is the arsenal of democracy at work. Americans know the true value of freedom and appreciate the price Ukrainians are paying,” writes @AndriyYermak for @AtlanticCouncil.
⋙ AtlanticCouncil, Andriy Yermak: Ukraine is the front line of the free world https://tinyurl.com/mptzb9ce
// Inside title: Bakhmut: Fortress of Freedom
// Western support for Ukraine must remain strong in 2023 to prevent a Russian victory that would fuel a global authoritarian revival, warns the
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @stephenalbert11 The bottom line:‘The democratic world cannot afford to lose this war. If Russian dictator Vladimir Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he will inevitably wage further wars of aggression. Crucially, other dictators will view Russia’s success as a green light for their own invasions.’
🐣 RT @adnashmyash Back in 2014, John McCain fully predicted Putin’s next moves.
“Not to provoke Putin is to show weakness, which will 100% provoke Putin”
“A developing and democratic Ukraine is a threat to Putin’s power”
“He will try to cut more Ukraine and then Baltics”
💽 https://twitter.com/adnashmyash/status/1607448947613736961?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SquireDigital 31/ The Starobilsk rail link may soon be out of service. ¤ What is left? ¤ Donbas has three lines to supply that area, but is not connected to Mariupol. ¤ Also Kherson (ferry) is not directly connected with Melitopol. ¤ And ATACMS can disrupt even the long ways by hitting two bridges
🌎 https://twitter.com/SquireDigital/status/1607542762051600384?s=20/photo/1
// railway map
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba 31 years ago Russia abused the UN Charter and usurped USSR’s seat at the UN Security Council — bypassing the only legitimate procedure set by the Charter. Russia’s presence at the UNSC and the UN as a whole is illegitimate. Ukraine’s official statement: https://bit.ly/3PV8qqQ
🐣 RT @Porter_Anderson Media [CNN:] @MarkHertling to @PamelaBrownCNN: “I’ve negotiated with some of [#Putin’s] military officers, his generals. First of all, they lie. Secondly, they will never negotiate evenly. And thirdly, if they do negotiate and you think you have a deal, they will renege on that deal.”
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The mentally deranged former POTUS is now visciously attacking @Olivianuzzi—who he allowed to interview him—because she reported accurately & in great detail about how his life is falling apart more by the day in every way.
⋙ [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1607551390012035073?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] The Fake & Corrupt News is only getting worse! As an example, I agreed to do a short telephone interview for a once very good, but now on its “last legs” and failing, New York Magazine. The reporter was a shaky & unattractive wack job, known as “tough” but dumb as a rock, who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago. Her name, Olivia Nuzzi. Anyway, the story was Fake News, her “anonymous sources” don’t exist (true with many writers), and I’m happily fighting hard for our GREAT USA!
🧵 RT @judgeluttig The New Yorker’s brilliant Editor and gifted writer, David Remnick, on January 6 and the January 6th Committee’s Final Report: ¤ “Part of Trump’s dark achievement has been to bludgeon the political attention of the country into submission.
📌 https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1607395814858715137?s=20
⋙⋙ NewYorker, David Remnick: The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection https://tinyurl.com/mr47seh9
// The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection
When a nation has been subjected to that degree of cynicism—what is politely called “divisiveness”—it can lose its ability to experience outrage. A republic is predicated on faith—not religious faith but a faith in the fundamental legitimacy of its political institutions
and the decisions they issue. To concede the legitimacy of statutes, rulings, and election returns is not necessarily to favor them. It’s simply to participate in the basic system that gives them form and force; citizens can, through democratic machinery, seek to defeat
or contest candidates they deplore, initiatives that offend them, court opinions they consider misguided. In contrast, the campaign that culminated in the Capitol attack of January 6th was, fatefully, against democracy itself.
It sought to instill profound mistrust in the process of voting—the mechanism through which, even in highly imperfect democracies, accountability is ultimately secured.”
🧵 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Medvedev’s forecast for 2023 🤡🤡🤡
📌 https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1607478723913056263?s=20
orig: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1607455031816495105?s=20
1. Raising the price of oil to $150 and gas to $5,000.
2. The return of the UK to the EU.
3. The collapse of the EU and the euro after the return of the UK.
4. Capture by Poland and Hungary of the western regions of the former Ukraine.5. Creation of the Fourth Reich on the basis of Germany, Poland, the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and the “Kyiv Republic”
6. War between France and the Fourth Reich. Partition of Europe and Poland.
7. Separation of Northern Ireland from Great Britain8. American Civil War, independence of California and Texas. Creation of the union state of Texas and Mexico. Elon Musk’s victory in the US presidential election.
9. Transfer of all major stock markets and financial activity from the US and Europe to Asia.10. The collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system, including the collapse of the IMF and the World Bank. Rejection of the euro and the dollar as world reserve currencies. The return of the gold standard.
NYT Mag, Jim Rutenberg. (11/2/2022): The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/bdhnyt3m
// 11/2/2022; Russia’s meddling in Trump-era politics was more directly connected to the current war than previously understood.
// segment replayed on @DeadlineWH
🐣 RT @michaelluo Speechless at this extraordinarily brave, visceral, and important story by Luke Mogelson, who spent two weeks embedded in the front lines, documenting the unimaginable. War reportage at its finest. Journalism in its most vital function: bearing witness.
⋙ NewYorker, Luke Mogelson: Trapped in the Trenches in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2s4hx78z
// Along the country’s seven-hundred-mile front line, constant artillery fire and drone surveillance have made it excruciatingly difficult to maneuver.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/1430 UTC 26 DEC/ North of Svatove, UKR forces have advanced across the H-26 HWY at Krokhmalne and then again from Kryvoshyivka to Kuzemivka. The interdiction of the H-26 and the rail from the north increases pressure on Svatove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1607380442440953859?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 25 Dec 2022 🎅🏼
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: The Cynic’s Dilemma https://tinyurl.com/27hy26sd “Polities in Europe and the United States that not so long along seemed indifferent to autocracy and to be careening toward xenophobia are engaged in the most selfless act of solidarity in recent memory”
// As 2022 comes to a close, I feel something unfamiliar, something I can’t entirely trust: optimism.
🐣 RT @ybarrap “I think that the Electoral College now, which has given us five popular vote losers as president in our history — twice in this century alone — has become a danger.” ~ Rep. Raskin ¤ The Electoral College is hazardous to democracy, Raskin says
⋙ Politico: The Electoral College is hazardous to democracy, Raskin says https://tinyurl.com/2p87syk3
// “There are so many curving by-ways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief,” he said.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ NotAFollower13 70% of this entire economy voted Biden in 2020 maybe we have more power than we realise & since the GQP is not interested in democracy or the Constitution we should harness that power b4 they steal 2024 & never leave
🐣 RT @broe_jake The cost of natural gas today in Europe is cheaper than it was a year ago (Dec 2021). Was this part of Russia’s master plan to freeze out Europe this winter? 😅
◕ https://twitter.com/broe_jake/status/1607212134240522240?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @patriottakes The change is in response to your coup attempt.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1607194269194014720?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] The Vice President did indeed have the power to send Electoral Votes back to State Legislatures for reapproval despite the constant drum from Democrats and RINOS that he “ABSOLUTELY DID NOT.” BUT, they just put CLARIFYING language in the disgraceful “OMINOUS” BILL, making sure that A V.P. DOESN’T DO WHAT THEY ALL SAID COULD NOT BE DONE. So why the new language? Because it was iust another political Con Job!
⋙ 🐣 Question I have is: If SCOTUS decides that the independent state legislature theory is valid (in the case they just heard), do the revisions to the Electoral Count Act render their decision moot, or would their decision override the the revised ECA?
🎹 WSJ (12/9/2021): ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’ Review: A New Take on a Christmas Classic https://tinyurl.com/3scmxks5 ⋙ I just watched this on pbs and loved it
// 12/9/2021; Composer and educator John Mauceri leads the Royal Scottish National Orchestra through his own reworking of both Hoffmann and Tchaikovsky in a performance narrated by Alan Cumming
🎹 RT @Gerashchenko_en “We are not waiting for a miracle because we are creating it ourselves” – Christmas greeting by @ZelenskyyUa
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1606934242935861249?s=20/photo/1
// full nessage; Carol of the Bells (piano) in background: “Christ is born. Let’s praise him”
⭕ 24 Dec 2022
💙 PresidentUa[.]gov: Christmas greetings of the President of Ukraine to Western Rite Orthodox Christians https://tinyurl.com/mryexapa
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️Volodymyr Zelenskyi congratulated Ukrainians on Christmas. ¤ “Today and all the coming winter holidays we meet in difficult circumstances. Someone will see the first star in the sky over Bakhmut, Rubizhne, and Kreminna today.
💽 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1606710725107453953?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua Someone will celebrate the holiday in other people’s homes, but not in other people’s homes – Ukrainians who gave shelter to Ukrainians.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BriteLu We should have a sense of gratitude towards President Zelenskyy! He could have escaped Ukraine just like what the President of Afghanistan had done! However, he chose to fight for the dignity of the free world. He is a hero of the free world today and deserves to be revered.
MoscowTimes: The Cost of War: Russia’s Economy Faces a Decade of Regress https://tinyurl.com/5t2dkk47 “Russia looks set to see yet another lost decade, with a decade of stagnation followed by a decade of regression”
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Oh my god. This isn’t parody. ¤ I have said it before, if his family weren’t all despicable grifters like he is, they would involuntarily commit him to a psychiatric facility and try to work an insanity plea deal. This is maybe his most purely insane rant of all time.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1606792327456260096?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] Merry Christmas to EVERYONE, including the Radical Left Marxists that are trying to destroy our Country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is illegally coercing & paying Social and LameStream Media to push for a mentally disabled Democrat over the Brilliant, Clairvoyant, and USA LOVING Donald J. Trump, and, of course, The Department of Injustice, which appointed anSpecial “Prosecutor” who, together with his wife and family, HATES “Trump” more than any other person on earth. LOVE TO ALL!
🎹 RT @OlenaStarynets Merry Christmas &Happy New Year!
https://youtu.be/a5ZSz7R_dKE via @YouTube
🇺🇦Glory to Ukraine!🌻❄️🎄❄️❤️😺
#UkraineWillWin,#UkraineWar,#UkraineRussiaWar,#UkrainianArmy,#Mariupol,#StandWithUkraine,
#Ukraine,#Україна,#UkraineWarNews,#ArmUkraineNow,#Crimea,#ЗСУ,#KhersonisUkraine,#Bakhmut
💽 https://twitter.com/OlenaStarynets/status/1606730847184617472?s=20/photo/1
🎹 RT @OlenaStarynets Ukrainian Christmas Carol ❄️❄️❄️
https://youtu.be/ZbeDMX5phOo via @YouTube
🇺🇦Glory to Ukraine!🌻❄️🎄❄️❤️😺
#UkraineWillWin,#UkraineWar,#UkraineRussiaWar,#UkrainianArmy,#Mariupol,#StandWithUkraine,
#Ukraine,#Україна,#UkraineWarNews,#ArmUkraineNow,#Crimea,#ЗСУ,#KhersonisUkraine,#Bakhmut
💽 https://twitter.com/OlenaStarynets/status/1606731743134117890?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw Biggest infrastructure bill since Eisenhower, major China competitiveness law, most significant gun reform since 1994, Respect for Marriage Act, reauthorizing Violence Against Women Act, Burn Pits Act for vets, massive support for Ukraine, Electoral Count Act reform: Biden rules!
WaPo: Twitter brings Elon Musk’s genius reputation crashing down to earth https://tinyurl.com/44efzvcm
// Musk’s intense focus on his social media company purchase has devolved into the culture wars. Meanwhile, Tesla is tanking.
🐣 RT @LeaderMcConnell Continuing our support for Ukraine is morally right, but it is not only that. It is also a direct investment in cold, hard, American interests.
🖼 https://twitter.com/LeaderMcConnell/status/1606672668719288321?s=20/photo/1
// photo McConnell and Zelensky
⭕ 23 Dec 2022
WaPo, Ruth Marcus: For Cassidy Hutchinson, ‘I don’t remember’ wasn’t good enough https://tinyurl.com/262up3nh “If Hutchinson’s live testimony before the select committee was riveting, her deposition testimony, taken several months later and released Thursday, is a page-turner”
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Unhinged Friday continues
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1606497805941772288?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @ @realDonaldTrump [ts] The highly partisan Unselect Committee of political Hacks & Thugs should be ashamed of themselves. I fought terrible Liz Cheney and she lost her House Seat in RECORD fashion. I fought Cryin’ Adam K and he quit. The Committee Dems are the same Russia, Russia, Russia and Impeachment crowd. Of course they don’t want me to run because I beat them twice (they cheated, just look at the FBI Facebook & Twitter Scandals!) and am leading in the polls, by a lot. That’swhat this is all about. Scammers!!!
CNN: No directive: FBI agents, tech executives deny government ordered Twitter to suppress Hunter Biden story https://tinyurl.com/bdffhkuw After the 2020 Russian influence operation, “Twitter executives were hyper suspicious of anything that looked like foreign influence”
⋙ As for the $3.4M payment, “The FBI says the bureau is obligated under federal law to reimburse companies for the cost they incur to satisfy subpoenas and other legal requests as part of the FBI’s investigative work”
🐣 RT @ tomiahonen Tax… DEDUCTION ¤ Trump paid $130,000 hush money to Stormy Daniels. Then WROTE IT OFF AS A TAX DEDUCTION? ¤ Yes. Congratulations America. You just got grabbed by the pussy […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @abigaildisney The best part of the tax returns is that he WROTE OFF the payment to Stormy Daniel’s. Wow. The cojones.
🐣 RT @ neal_katyal Amazing how many Trump White House witnesses claim not to recall momentous things. Either a shockingly large % of Trump’s inner circle had sudden memory loss on Jan 6, or Cassidy Hutchinson wasn’t the only witness being told to protect Trump by claiming bad memory.
💙 WSJ: Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers https://tinyurl.com/mrxta7vn “Over time, Mr. Putin, who has never served in the military, has become so wary of his own command structure that he has issued orders directly to the front line”
// Russia’s president built a power structure designed to deliver him the information he wants to hear, feeding into his miscalculations on the Ukraine war
This article is based on months of interviews with current and former Russian officials and people close to the Kremlin who broadly described an isolated leader who was unable, or unwilling, to believe that Ukraine would successfully resist. The president, these people said, spent 22 years constructing a system to flatter him by withholding or sugarcoating discouraging data points.
U.S. officials said they have struggled to find a Kremlin insider who both has influence over Mr. Putin and also isn’t wrapped up in his narrative of Russian grievance. The president increasingly speaks of Russia in near-religious terms, as a 1,000-year-old civilization waging a holy struggle that will right historical wrongs and elevate him into a pantheon of conquering czarist leaders such as Peter the Great.
Though contact between the U.S. and Russia occurs almost every day, whether through their embassies, the Pentagon or the CIA, those conversations have become constrained, said U.S. officials, who have found some of Mr. Putin’s closest allies to be even more hard-line than the authoritarian leader himself.
Mr. Putin wakes daily around 7 a.m. to a written briefing on the war, with information carefully calibrated to emphasize successes and play down setbacks, according to the former Russian intelligence officer and current and former Russian officials. ¤ He has long refused to use the internet for fear of digital surveillance, Russian and U.S. officials have said, making him more dependent on briefing documents compiled by ideologically aligned advisers. … …
NYT, Brenda Wineapple: Donald Trump Is Now Forever Disgraced https://tinyurl.com/3uenrexu At the center of four criminal referrals was Donald Trump, “the man who hatched a scheme that would, if successful, defraud Americans of their sacred right to have their vote count”
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Brutal cover of New York Magazine profiling Trump’s failure and isolation. ¤ Lead story by @Olivianuzzi: “Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection.”
// NYMag cover: “Party of One”: caption: “At Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s reelection campaign is off to a lonely start.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1606344803234766848?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NYMag, Olivia Nuzzi: The Final Campaign https://tinyurl.com/wca7pn9t
// Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection. (Which isn’t to say he can’t win.)
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump denounces the J6 report, says the Committee is all “marxists” who covered up that FBI informants in the crowd instigated it and police opened the doors and let everyone in. Says the search at Mar-a-Lago was illegal, & Jack Smith, his family & friends are all Trump haters.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1606419102557519873?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol Kevin McCarthy voted to reject the electors and to acquit Trump, tried to sabotage the proposed bipartisan Commission and then the House Select Committee, and has embraced fervent January 6th defenders. ¤ This man should not hold the Constitutional office of Speaker of the House.
🖼 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1606299554315440128?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Thank you 🇺🇸 Congress, @SpeakerPelosi, @GOPLeader, @LeaderMcConnell, @SenSchumer, @SenatorLeahy, @rosadelauro for additional $45 bln aid to 🇺🇦, & for unwavering bipartisan support 🇺🇦 in our fight for freedom. It’s crucial that 🇺🇸 people’re side by side w/ 🇺🇦 people in this struggle.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1940 UTC 23 DEC/ RU forces continue a well-established pattern of disjointed company and platoon sized assaults in the Bakhmut Area of Operations. UKR gov’t sources report more that 500 RU troops were killed in the last 24 hours; several hundred of them in Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1606371870688874504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Azovsouth Putin is calling for an immediate end for the war in Ukraine. This comes after the lost of support from his allies and internal pressure amongst his generals who have realized they can’t hold any grounds in & have lost more than 100,000 soldiers in a 3days military operations. [Source: https://tinyurl.com/5x5cy3cv%5D
⋙⋙ “Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said. “We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner the better, of course.” ¤ Lukashenko is expected in Moscow tomorrow to meet Kadyrov and Prigozhin
⋙ 🐣 he needs to withdraw all troops from all territory of Ukraine, return citizens including children, pay for damages and submit to international justice; ¤ see Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan: https://tinyurl.com/4d8x9p5f
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Thank you @POTUS. It’s an honor for me to visit 🇺🇸, to address the 🇺🇸 people and Congress, to meet with the leader of the country that helps us stand. And win! This visit showed our countries stand together on the side of good, democracy and justice. Creating the future together!
⋙ 🐣 RT @POTUS Ukraine and the Ukrainian people don’t just inspire us – they inspire the world. ¤ It was an honor to host President Zelenskyy at the White House.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1606392874094010368?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Key findings from the Jan. 6 committee’s final report [Interactive] https://tinyurl.com/3s67596t
MSN/Forbes, David Axe: Bakhmut Is ‘Soaked In Blood’ As Eight Of Ukraine’s Best Brigades Battle 40,000 Former Russian Prisoners https://tinyurl.com/29wu89ns
// At least eight of the Ukrainian army’s heaviest brigades keep interrupting The Wagner Group’s plan—and making the battle for Bakhmut a statement about Wagner’s weakness rather than its strength.
🧵 RT @vorobyov Why do russians keep attacking #Bakhmut despite massive losses? ¤ I’ve not seen a reasonable enough explanation for this question. So I’ll offer my hypothesis in this thread. ¤ Their goal is purely psychological: to sow an impression of a massive loss in the minds of Ukr civilians
📌 https://twitter.com/vorobyov/status/1606318366897197056?s=20
Bakhmut has been so embedded in the news cycle over the past several months that many Ukrainians gauge the war by looking at Bakhmut. ¤ russians know that — and probably try to use that. Their thinking may well be: “if we occupy Bakhmut, 🇺🇦civilians will believe they are losing”.
Some folks (mostly in the West, not in Ukraine) offer a hypothesis that Bakhmut is a “strategic location”. ¤ I think this view is misplaced: there are other road connections both to the Kramatorsk/Sloviansk and Pokrovsk, and Ukr troops have other lines of defences to fall back on
The thesis that russians seek to signal that they are retaking the entire Donetsk region is also weak. ¤ Look at the map: there are so many other (larger) cities under 🇺🇦 control in Donetsk region that this attempt at symbolism would be laughable even for the russian propaganda.
That’s why I think that this goal of taking Bakhmut is not dictated by the russian military brass but rather the FSB, who believe (LOL) that they know how to manipulate the Ukr public opinion with military means. ¤ That also explains the large role of Wagnerites in that hotspot.
And the sunk cost fallacy is playing a major role in that push: having lost so many troops there, russians believe they have to double down. ¤ That’s it: there is no strategic design for Bakhmut,only a blind attempt at a massive psy-op.
russians did not learn their February lesson
🐣 RT @AndyKimNJ I just got to see up close the Ukrainian flag that President Zelenskyy presented in his address before Congress last night. Powerful to read all the words and see the signatures of the fighters at the frontlines. “With full respect and gratitude from the defenders of Bakhmut”
🖼 https://twitter.com/AndyKimNJ/status/1606011696643837952?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Lunatic rant #2 of the morning. He’s doing great.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1606299509155237888?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] The FBI used Twitter and Facebook to bludgeon the 2020 Election to Biden. Nothing Negative could be said about him, especially as it related to Hunter’s Laptop From Hell, and ONLY Negative could be said about me. They were illegally after “Trump” at a level of ferocity, hate and yes, desperation, that has never been seen in our Country before. Other Media companies were involved also. The change in the Election was Complete & Total, with Millions of votes switched, at least 17%. TRUMP WON BIG!
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Grandpa needs a strait jacket. Yikes. A telltale sign of a Very Stable Genius is to spew out completely deranged nonsense in an all caps rant that sounds identical to an escaped mental patient yelling at a lamppost on a streetcorner.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1606299093478756352?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] SO, WE CAUGHT THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED
STATES, THROUGH THE USE OF THE FBI & OTHER AGENCIES. CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY CHEATING ON THE 2020 Presidential Election, AND COMPLETELY & ILLEGALLY CHANGING ITS RESULT. THIS WAS ONLY ONE OF MANY FORMS OF CHEATING, BUT FRANKLY, IT WAS A BEAUT! THE FBI HAS NO EXCUSE, THEY WERE CAUGHT COLD, BUT THIS MUST NOT BECOME A COLD CASE. NOW WHAT? HONEST & BRAVE PROSECUTORS & JUDGES MUST STEP UP & CLEAN OUT THIS CANCER WHICH IS DESTROYING OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY!
NBCNews: McConnell calls out ‘diminished’ Trump, vows not to bow to his candidates in 2024 https://tinyurl.com/39fdvy8w
// The Senate GOP leader says in an interview that Trump hurt the party in the 2022 elections by making swing voters see Republicans as “nasty” and attracted to “chaos.”
NYT, Vanessa Friedman (Mar 2022): The Man in the Olive Green Tee https://tinyurl.com/yj52dsf5
// 3/21/2022; How President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine transformed the meaning of a piece of cotton.
★ Omg: Medriva is reporting 3,011 COVID-19 deaths yesterday. Due to reporting patterns, Thursday numbers are usually high, but this number matches some of the worst days of Omicron a year ago https://medriva.com/charts/
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1606214980398981120?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 22 Dec 2022
💽 NYT: Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha https://tinyurl.com/2mfpjjpw
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Adam Schiff: Don’t Forget That Many Republicans in Congress Enabled Trump’s Big Lie
⋙ NYT: Adam Schiff: My Fellow Members of the Jan. 6 Committee and I Don’t Want You to Forget About ‘the Republican Congressmen’ https://tinyurl.com/2s3t2xmb
// The Jan. 6 committee found that multiple laws were violated in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and not just by Donald Trump’s foot soldiers.
🐣 RT @7Veritas4 He didn’t wear a suit.
This is how he wanted to be seen.
Not as a President or a General.
But as a soldier.
Fighting for his people, his country.
Asking us to help him defeat tyranny. ¤
It was perfect.
🖼 https://twitter.com/7Veritas4/status/1606052189452976128?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @KleptoCaucus New statement from bipartisan, bicameral congressional leaders behind the provision to use forfeited assets of Putin-linked criminals & oligarchs to help rebuild Ukraine #omnibus
// Signatories: Sen Michael Bennett, Sen Richard Blumenthal, Rep Steve Cohen, Sen Lindsey Graham, Rep Tom Malinowski, Sen Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep Joe Wilson
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KleptoCaucus/status/1606053916604616704?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Joint Statement on Senate Passage of the Russian Oligarch Assets Transfer Provision
“This new law will enable proceeds from recovered Russian oligarch assets to be sent directly to Ukraine for defense, reconstruction, and reparation. It’s a matter of basic justice that Russian criminals linked to Putin should pay for this brutal, illegal, and unprovoked war against Ukraine. Today, Congress has ensured that they will. Potential assets total in the billions. We encourage our friends and allies in the G-7 and in the European Union to follow suit. This law is the product of bipartisan collaboration that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that will continue. Today is a good day for the long- suffering people of Ukraine and the American taxpayer, and a bad day for Russian oligarchs and Putin’s thugs.”
WaPo: Live Updates: Jan. 6 report recommends Congress ban Trump from running again https://tinyurl.com/7app3cu2
📔 FINAL REPORT: Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/2kvxfka3 845p
// 845p; December 00, 2022 ¤ 117th Congress Second Session ¤ House Report 117-000
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: January 6 Select Committee Final Report: Placing Blame for Capitol Riot on ‘One Man’ https://tinyurl.com/murfc8uf How former President Donald J. Trump carried out “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election”
// The report expanded on this summer’s televised hearings, describing in detail what it called former President Donald J. Trump’s “multipart plan” to overturn the 2020 election.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA AXIS / 2130 UTC 22 DEC/ A RU assault centered on the O-130505 Road was repelled by UKR forces east of Ploschanka. Sources indicate that UKR troops are attempting to consolidate a lodgment on the east bank of the Krasna River near the P-66 HWY bridge at Pischane.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1606040682719608832?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS /2000 UTC 22 DEC/ RU forces have registered slight and costly gains in the vicinity of Ivangrad and Opytne. South of Klischiivka, reports indicate that UKR’s Chechen Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion is in contact along the rail right-of-way south of the Myika Pond.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1606014955941007361?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /2100 UTC 22 DEC/ On 20 DEC, UKR carried out a precision strike on the RU airfield near Kakhovka, killing 150 RU troops and wounding 50; more than 20 RU vehicles and pieces of equipment were destroyed. RU positions at Mykolaivka were also hit.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1606030578813308928?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Senate approves $1.7 trillion omnibus bill to fund government https://tinyurl.com/yeyu72e3 It includes $773B for domestic spending, $885B for defense, plus $44.9B for Ukraine. It clarifies the Electoral Count Act and finances Biden’s agenda. The vote was 68-29.
// The bill would avert a shutdown and increase spending on domestic programs and the military. The House is planning to vote on it Friday
The Senate on Thursday adopted a sprawling, roughly $1.7 trillion bill that would fund the government through most of 2023, as Democrats and Republicans resolved a last-minute standoff over immigration and voted to avert a shutdown in the final days of the year.
The bipartisan 68-29 vote teed up the measure for debate in the House, which plans to act before the deadline on Friday to approve a package that boosts domestic and defense spending, finances President Biden’s economic agenda and provisions a raft of new emergency aid, including to Ukraine.
The compilation of long-stalled appropriations bills, known as an omnibus, would provide nearly $773 billion for domestic programs and more than $850 billion for the military, covering expenses through the 2023 fiscal year, which concludes at the end of September. Republicans had insisted on robust Pentagon funding in months-long talks with Democrats, who secured some — but not all — of the health, education, labor and economic spending they wanted.
The must-pass nature of the bill — the final major piece of legislation before Congress resets in the new year — also offered a window for lawmakers to advance other long-stalled priorities. The sweeping omnibus is filled with provisions that would expand some Medicaid benefits, help Americans save for retirement, revise the presidential electoral vote-counting process and ban TikTok on government devices. …
Lawmakers also agreed to send $44.9 billion in emergency military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. The amount exceeded Biden’s initial request, and lawmakers delivered it shortly after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke to a joint session of Congress. …
🐣 RT @Riten023 The moment when “Slava Ukraini” is being chanted in Congress and Zelensky responds with “Geroyam Slava” [“Glory to the Heroes”] holding back tears.
💽 https://twitter.com/Riten023/status/1605739980193533953?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mymysharona43 YOU KNOW his people suffering is killing him…children..he knows so much more of the atrocities than we do and being a father…he knows his countries loss of innocent children grandma and grandpa…so flipping sad..you can see the pain..
🐣 RT @ Flash_news_ua⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi: On the longest night of 2022, more than 60 of the most famous locations in the world turned off the lights as a sign of solidarity with our state and called on their visitors to join the collection for generators for Ukrainian hospitals.
💽 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1605975934892249090?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 HUGE: The US Senate just voted UNANIMOUSLY to send recovered oligarch assets to Ukraine! Russia will pay for the war!
🐣 RT @marceelias Apparently the rightwing is upset that the Senate made some changes to the Electoral Count Act based on my recommendations.
⋙⋙ ElectionTransparencyInitiative [rw]: Electoral Count Act, Re-Written by Democrat Campaign Lawyer Marc Elias, Imposes Judicial Supremacy to Override States https://tinyurl.com/3keen29n
// For the last two years, Republicans have rejected Democrat attempts to override and rig state election laws for partisan gain, but now Republicans …
⋙ 🐣 RT @marceelias This is what I wrote about the improvements to the ECRA and why I now support the bill.
⋙⋙ DemocracyDocket, Marc Elias: It Is Time to Reform the Electoral Count Act https://tinyurl.com/bdfaztbe
NYT Editorial: The Last Lesson of the Jan. 6 Committee https://tinyurl.com/2p9e8p7v “The lesson, in part, is that our democracy is inescapably fragile. … The dangers remain clear and present, so this work is not complete”
⋙ 🐣 Reminiscent of this chilling quote: “Civilization is hideously fragile…there’s not much between us & the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish” – CP Snow
The lesson, in part, is that our democracy is inescapably fragile. It requires Americans and those who serve them as elected officials and in law enforcement to act in good faith. The committee rightly spent many hours of its work documenting the actions of all those local, state and federal officials who defied Mr. Trump’s demands and acted in many different ways to protect democracy.
The dangers remain clear and present, so this work is not complete. House Republicans will be in the majority come January, including many who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory and some who encouraged the rioters.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en [Soloviev:] “The more we burn in Ukraine, the easier it will be for us to bomb Europe and United States”.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1605895005041819654?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 21 Dec 2022
NYT: Their Final Moments: Victims of a Russian Atrocity in Bucha [Interactive] https://tinyurl.com/38vc7msb
WaPo Editorial: Zelensky’s visit highlights that freedom is winning in Ukraine — for now https://tinyurl.com/t9twus6t “Likening the war in Ukraine to the American Revolution, he declared that ‘the Russian tyranny has lost control over us’”
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Russia’s first official reaction to Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s visit to the US and meeting with Biden was expressed by Russian Ambassador to Washington Antonov. ¤ “Escalation, the consequences of which can not be imagined,” said the ambassador in response to the support of Ukraine.
HuffPo: Sean Hannity Testified He Didn’t Believe Trump’s Election Fraud Lies ‘For 1 Second’ https://tinyurl.com/mr2kjxnu
// That didn’t stop the Fox News host from featuring fraud proponents with wild, unproven allegations on his show.
🐣 RT @mayajonesmj It is simple: Far-left candidates DO NOT flip seats and moderates DO. We need to remember this in order to take back seats in tough swing districts next cycle! Read more:
⋙ NYT, Thomas Edsall: What Really Saved the Democrats This Year? https://tinyurl.com/48mknw5x
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard His speech was not Churchillian, it was Zelenskillian. It was excellent.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “When I was in Bakhmut yesterday, our heroes gave me their battle flag…they asked me to bring it here…let this flag stay with you…this flag is a symbol of our victory…We will win because we stand and fight. Ukraine, America, and the entire free world.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1605731238114783232?s=20/photo/1
≣ NYT: Full Transcript of Zelensky’s Speech Before Congress https://tinyurl.com/yfpkza6h
// The Ukrainian president delivered an emotional appeal for further American support, vowing that his country would prevail in its war with Russia.
💽 C-span: Ukrainian President Zelensky Address to Joint Meeting of Congress https://tinyurl.com/4su6c263 28mins
//. “Against all odds, and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn’t fall,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he began his remarks to a joint meeting of Congress on U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion. He thanked Congress for the United States’ financial assistance, but said, “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.” As President Zelensky ended his remarks, he presented to Congress a “battle” flag from the front lines of Ukraine, calling it a “symbol of our victory in this war.” As the president concluded, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in turn presented to him an American flag that was flown over the U.S. Capitol earlier in the day in honor of his visit.
🐣 RT @NewYorker Donald Trump’s tax returns illustrate that when dealing with rich and aggressive financial operators, the Internal Revenue Service often finds itself overmatched.
🖼 https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1605737157393629184?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NewYorker, John Cassidy: Trump’s Tax Returns Reflect a Broader American Problem https://tinyurl.com/4yzekx6s
// When dealing with rich and aggressive financial operators, the Internal Revenue Service often finds itself overmatched.
WaPo, Molly Roberts: What Elon Musk failed to understand about Twitter https://tinyurl.com/yz32vmp2 “Musk has made many mistakes running Twitter, but the biggest? Assuming his new toy was a technology company.”
🐣 RT @NewYorker Donald Trump’s tax returns illustrate that when dealing with rich and aggressive financial operators, the Internal Revenue Service often finds itself overmatched.
🖼 https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1605737157393629184?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NewYorker, John Cassidy: Trump’s Tax Returns Reflect a Broader American Problem https://tinyurl.com/4yzekx6s
// When dealing with rich and aggressive financial operators, the Internal Revenue Service often finds itself overmatched.
NYT: Beside Zelensky, Biden Vows Support for ‘As Long as It Takes’ https://tinyurl.com/v8tt5s2p
// multiple commenters; The Ukrainian leader, on his first trip abroad since Russia’s invasion 10 months ago, appeared at a joint news conference with President Biden and will address a joint session of Congress later Wednesday.
🐣 RT @POTUS Join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and me as we hold a joint press conference. [36:50]
💽 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1605680707740786689?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 An alliance not of convenience, but of necessity, one that is creating a vital new world order based on moral values. The free world fell asleep after the Cold War and it has become Ukraine’s thankless, bloody task to wake them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndriyYermak The leaders of the free world. A historic meeting of the Presidents of 🇺🇦 and the 🇺🇸 – @ZelenskyyUa and @POTUS. ¤ A great victory is ahead. 💪
¤ https://twitter.com/AndriyYermak/status/1605680135398645761?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @EP_President 300 days of standing with Ukraine. #SlavaUkraini
💽 https://twitter.com/EP_President/status/1605459843153805312?s=20/photo/1
🐣 ‘We were spending $10-$12B a MONTH on Iraq’ per Gen Barry McCaffrey, on @DeadlineWH on @MSNBC
🐣 RT @McFaul The fastest way to end Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is to stop Russia on the battlefield. That requires providing Ukraine with more and better weapons.
💙 🐣 5% of our defense budget (plus the bravery and ingenuity of the Ukr armed forces) exposed the Russian military as antiquated, corrupt and vulnerable ¤ imagine what 10% would do
😅 RT @DarthPutinKGB Zelensky is in DC to thank US for just 5% of its defense budget which has vaporized the Russian military & reduced it to a laughing stock. ¤ I remain a master strategist.
CSIS (12/16): Patriot to Ukraine: What Does It Mean? https://tinyurl.com/2s3d4njd “Patriot has become the U.S. Army’s air and missile defense workhorse, a key element of U.S. power projection, and a premier symbol of U.S. commitment to allies and partners”
🐣 RT @ John_Hudson this is what’s in Zelensky’s goodie bag today
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Mark_some_one/status/1605616783230046210?s=20/photo/1
// Defense Budget
● One Patriot air defense battery and munitions;
● Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
● 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
● 10 120mm mortar systems and 10,000 120mm mortar rounds;
● 10 82mm mortar systems;
● 10 60mm mortar systems;
● 37 Cougar Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MAP) Vehicles;
● 120 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs);
● Six armored utility trucks;
● High-speed Anti-radiation missiles (HARMs);
● Precision acrial munitions;
● Over 2,700 grenade launchers and small arms;
● Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
● Demolition munitions and equipment;
● Night vision devices and optics;
● Tactical secure communications systems;
● Body armor and other field equipment.Capabilities in DoD’s $850 Million USAI package are expected to include:
● 45,000 152mm artillery rounds;
● 20,000 122mm artillery rounds:
● 50.000 122mm GRAD rockets;
● 100.000 rounds of 125mm tank ammunition;
● SATCOM terminals and services;
● Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @progrock6string One Patriot battery system? ONE?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @StatisticalMind It only operates as a battery. One battery is 6 to 8 launchers each with up to 16 missiles. So “only one” system costs >$1B and has up to 128 missiles ready to fire. Most nations only have 4-10 batteries. Even the US only has 50 active batteries.
🐣 …
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1605616374302195713?s=20/photo/1
The Disqualification Clause
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides:
“No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice- President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
🧵 RT @DavidCornDC I did a quick read of the just-released House Ways and Means Committee report on Donald Trump’s tax returns and shot out a few tweets. Here they are as a thread.
📌 https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1605407289975967744?s=20
⋙⋙ ≣ NYT: Document: Report on Trump’s Tax Returns [Interactive] https://tinyurl.com/b87cje2v
// This report summarizes the House Ways and Means Committee’s review of the I.R.S. examination of Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidCornDC The bottom line: There is much on Trump’s taxes—possibly improper declarations of expenses and losses, questionable loans to his kids, undocumented charitable donations, weird loan forgiveness & more—that warrant review. No wonder he wouldn’t release them.
🧵 RT @ryanjreilly SCOOP: One of the FBI’s own confidential informants warned the bureau, just hours after Donald Trump’s “will be wild” tweet, that the far-right saw it as a “call to arms,” and that Jan. 6 could get violent.
📌 https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1605573777403715585?s=20
💙 🐣 RT @stavridisj Big day for President Z. His message in 5 words: to Ukrainians: Reassurance, to Americans: Gratitude, to Europeans: Solidarity, To Russians: Defiance and To Putin: Scorn
🖼 https://twitter.com/stavridisj/status/1605554084328652800?s=20/photo/1 -2
// TIME Person of the Year covers: 1941 Churchill, 2022 Zelenskyy
🐣 The Russians are sending their worst (prisoners) to die in Ukraine. Ukraine is sending its best. The US should offer access to fertility services to Ukrainian service members, so if wives want to have their husband’s children post-mortem, they still can
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Wowza. SO desperate AND dumb simultaneously.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1605278297494953984?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] In other words, John Eastman and others were correct in stating that the Vice President of the United States had the right to do what should have been done. The only reason this change is being promulgated is to reform The Electoral Count Act so that the VP cannot do what they powerfully said he couldn’t do, but if it couldn’t be done, why are they making this law change? The whole thing is one big Scam! [link]
💙 🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov Eastern Ukraine is holding on & fighting. ¤ The heroic defense of Bakhmut continues for several months. This is a new legendary page in the history of our struggle & defense of Ukraine VS the rus killers and invaders. ¤ Today Bakhmut is a fortress. Strong & indomitable. We Will Win!
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa (Ukraine government official) On my way to the US to strengthen resilience and defense capabilities of 🇺🇦. In particular, @POTUS and I will discuss cooperation between 🇺🇦 and 🇺🇸. I will also have a speech at the Congress and a number of bilateral meetings.
≣ NYT: Document: Report on Trump’s Tax Returns https://tinyurl.com/b87cje2v
⋙ pdf: https://tinyurl.com/ycxxu23b 28p
WaPo: House committee votes to make public Trump’s tax returns https://tinyurl.com/4dfa5nd9
// Panel says IRS did not perform mandatory audits during Trump’s first two years in office despite signs there was much to investigate
After the vote, the committee revealed that the Internal Revenue Service did not audit Trump’s returns during his first two years in office, despite a rule mandating such reviews, and never completed any audits while he served. ¤ The IRS began its first audit of Trump’s returns on the same day that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) sent a written request in April 2019 for the information and then assigned the bulk of the work to just one agent, the panel said.
The Trumps reported losing $31.7 million in 2015, $32.2 million in 2016 and $12.8 million in 2019, according to information provided by the committee. But they reported $24.4 million in 2018 income and $4.4 million in 2019 income, before losing $4.7 million during his last full year in office, 2020, according to the tax committee’s report.
The amount of taxes they paid fluctuated, too, peaking at $2.1 million in 2018 but dropping to $271,973 in 2020, according to the report. The average federal taxes the pair paid over the six years examined by the committee was $739,327, according to a Post analysis of the figures. By claiming millions in deductions, the Trumps reduced the net federal income taxes they paid to $750 in 2016 and 2017 and $0 in 2020, according to the report.
Committee members raised concerns about a wide array of credits and deductions the Trumps claimed on their taxes, including those for charitable contributions, debts, business expenses and conservation easements on his golf courses and other properties, including the Seven Springs estate in New York. …
🐣 RT @DcWalaDesi .@PressSec issued the following statement on #Zelensky’s meeting with .@POTUS #Biden today. #Ukraine #UkraineRussianWar #Russia
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DcWalaDesi/status/1605452890532990977?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Statement by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
on the visit of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine
President Biden has invited President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine to visit Washington D.C. to underscore the United States’ enduring commitment to Ukraine. President Biden looks forward to welcoming President Zelenskyy today, December 21, at the White House, after which President Zelenskyy will address a joint session of Congress, demonstrating the strong,
bipartisan support for Ukraine. Three hundred days ago, Russia launched a brutal assault against Ukraine. In response, President Biden rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity. During the visit, President Biden will announce a significant new package of security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression. The visit will underscore the United States’ steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, including through the provision of economic, humanitarian, and military assistance.
⭕ 20 Dec 2022
WaPo, Greg Sargent: The GOP is quietly ‘Trump-proofing’ our system behind his back https://tinyurl.com/47f6u5k2 “Trump’s effort to subvert his presidential reelection loss exploited many weaknesses in the [Electoral Count Act] that would be fixed if the omnibus passes, as expected”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS /2245 UTC 20 DEC/ The line of contact conforms basically to the P-66 HWY between Svatove and Kremenna. On 19 DEC, UKR repulsed a RU probe down the O-130505 Road toward Makiivka. UKR ops east of Dibrova increase pressure on Kremenna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1605331752251445248?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @lisaabramowicz1 Roughly 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees have left the company since Musk assumed control.
🐣 📋 RT @ ChuckPfarrer PUTIN’S WAR ON PEOPLE: Russia’s news agency TASS boasts that more than 5 million UKR citizens have been deported from Ukraine to ‘relocation centers’ in Siberia and the RU arctic. Among those displaced are more than 721,000 UKR children: with thousands separated from the parents.
🐣 RT @ZaleskiLuke He wants people to be so inundated and confused they just accept these dumb poll things are real and representative cause folks no longer can tell the difference between reality and social media and truth and propaganda anymore—Then he’s king without having to be actually elected
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ZaleskiLuke/status/1605416057316974593?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump [ts] “The FBI and Twitter COLLUDED to elect Joe Biden.” Jesse Watters. In other words, the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLEN. It all began a long time ago, they SPIED on my campaign, and tried to “RIGG” the 2016 Election, but failed. Remember, our government is doing this, not a person or party. What should be done about such a terrible thing, or should we let someone who was elected by cheating and fraud stay in office and continue to destroy our Country?
🐣 RT @HalcombeL Lavrov – “We didn’t want to lose a friend, so we raped your wives, stole your kids, and froze your grandparents to death.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @yasminalombaert The reason of “The special military operation” has changed again. ¤ The special operation was absolutely necessary to thwart plans to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian country,” Lavrov said during the talks. His words are quoted by TASS.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/1604959014122672136?s=20/photo/1
💽 C-span (video): Senator McConnell Touts Priorities in $1.7 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill https://tinyurl.com/mwxrrfxt McConnell said “providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians” is the United States’ Number One Priority, “according to most Republicans”:
// Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell speaks about his party’s priorities included in the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill unveiled today, including additional funding for Defense and Ukraine.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1605339157865574400?s=20/photo/1
“Let’s step back and say, what are the real needs of the country right now: Making sure the Defense Department can deal with the major threats coming from Russia and China, providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians. That’s the Number One priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans. That’s how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment.” (at 1:02 from start)
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1520 UTC 20 DEC/ During the period 19-20 DEC, Ukrainian forces successfully engaged Wagner Group positions up and down the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA). It is assessed that RU forces, exhausted by a week of heavy combat, could not defend recent gains.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1605221487564447746?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @ @lotsofuss So when we hear Republicans complain about the border, just remember they voted against border funding 191-2. ¤ Hypocrites.
◕ https://twitter.com/lotsofuss/status/1605006402723856384?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Ok, even for him, this is really, really insane. Anyone else spewing a rant this crazy would be chased down with a net and carted away in a strait jacket.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1605220209144393729?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ @realDonaldTrump The so-called Deep State, often referred to by many other names, including “Cheaters, “Insurrectionists,” “Communists,” and yes, even our good old “RINOS,” have been working on sinister and evil “plots” for a long time, even well before I came to office. They are long seated Swamp Creatures, and are bad news for the USA. Remember very early on when Obama, Biden, Holder, and Comey were SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN? I wonder if their handpicked Special “Prosecutor” Jack Smith, knew what was going on?
🐣 The January 6th Committee will go down in history as the best, most effective House panel ever assembled. Chair Bennie Thompson exuded dignity, Liz Cheney’s voice was a clarion call, the voice of the True Patriot, and the overall quality of the membership was simply 🌟stellar🌟
CNN: Lawmakers unveil sweeping $1.7Tr government funding bill to avert shutdown https://tinyurl.com/yc37yw3w The bill provides $$772.5B for non-defense spending, $858B for defense, and $44.9B in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies
✅ PolitiFact (June 9, 2022): Hannity: “Donald Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol” before Jan. 6, 2021, but was “rejected” by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. https://tinyurl.com/bdh6fj7u Politifact rates this ‼️FALSE‼️
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1605208268728852480?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Hannity said, “Donald Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol” before Jan. 6, 2021, but was “rejected” by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
There is no record of Trump formally authorizing 20,000 National Guard troops prior to the Jan. 6 attack. There is also no record of Pelosi rejecting such an authorization — and experts said she would not have had the authority to do so as House speaker. ¤ We rate Hannity’s claim False.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent President Volodymyr Zelensky greets Ukrainian fighters on the front line in Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast during an unannounced visit on Dec. 20. ¤ Video by Ukrainian public broadcaster Freedom.
💽 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1605160868261597184?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @zachfulk1 this is very dangerous but necessary, he is looked at as a beacon of hope for his people and bakhmut has been hell on earth for months this is what the soldiers need when morale begins slipping.
🐣 RT @olliecarroll Zelensky has made an unannounced visit to Bakhmut, which is right on the front line. He’s been taking a lot of risks recently. As if he wants to do the reconnaissance himself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisPo70954821 His actions say that he’s willing to risk his life a little, in solidarity with the men and women fighting. He is also saying that his life is less important than that of Ukraine. ¤ Its selfless leadership, a lesson in leadership that people in power should pay attention to.
🐣 RT @DefenceU The President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa visited Bakhmut and presented awards to the defenders of the city. ¤ Courage. ¤ Leadership. ¤ Invincibility. ¤ #UAarmy
¤ https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1605181568342966272?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ The military in Bakhmut asked Volodymyr Zelenskyi to hand over the Ukrainian flag to the US Congress as a sign of gratitude for the supplied weapons.
💽 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1605174610617544704?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports “NATO’s war against Russia will be like a real three-day operation,” American parliamentarian Adam Kinzinger wrote in response to a question from a social network user why NATO has not yet defeated Russia in an open confrontation.
⋙ Newsweek: NATO Could Take Out Russia in 3 Days: Congressman https://tinyurl.com/2s4dpvkv
WaPo: Congress unveils $1.7 trillion deal to fund government, avert shutdown https://tinyurl.com/566mtcyz The bill incorporates the Electoral Count Act, intended to prevent another Jan 6th, and includes an additional $44.9B in military and economic assistance for Ukraine
// Lawmakers must act swiftly to approve the so-called omnibus before a temporary spending agreement lapses at the end of this week
Democratic and Republican negotiators early Tuesday unveiled a roughly $1.7 trillion deal to fund the U.S. government through most of 2023, setting up a last-minute sprint on Capitol Hill to approve the sprawling package and avert a potential shutdown.
The 4,155-page measure, known in congressional parlance as an omnibus, included funding for key elements of President Biden’s economic agenda, new boosts to defense programs and an additional $44.9 billion in emergency military and economic assistance for Ukraine.
Democrats did not achieve all of the increases to domestic spending that they initially had sought, a concession in talks with Republicans, who are set to assume control of the House in January. But the two parties’ leaders did agree to stitch onto the measure a wide array of long-simmering and stalled bills, recognizing the omnibus marks their final major legislative opening before Congress resets in the new year.
Lawmakers appended proposals to improve pandemic readiness, extend some Medicaid benefits, help Americans save for retirement, ban TikTok on government devices and change the way the country counts presidential electoral votes. The bipartisan election bill — known as the Electoral Count Act — sought to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. …
Lawmakers also provided new money for some of Biden’s top accomplishments, including bipartisan laws to boost U.S. infrastructure and to promote the domestic manufacturing of small computer chips, known as semiconductors. And the bill provisioned about $40 billion in emergency funds in response to recent natural disasters, including Hurricane Ian.
Republicans also refused to relent in their long-standing opposition to delivering new money to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. The White House had asked for $22.4 billion, largely to purchase and facilitate the next generation of vaccines, yet GOP lawmakers refused to budge even as top administration officials warned about the risks of poor preparation.
⭕ 19 Dec 2022 ⚖️ Final Day Jan6 Committee
NYT, Maggie Haberman: A Diminished Trump Meets a Damning Narrative https://tinyurl.com/mr696vs6 “For many members of a party that would like to recover from three bruising election cycles, Mr. Trump has never felt more like a product of the past”
// Former President Donald Trump’s current woes extend beyond the report by the House Jan. 6 committee, but the case the panel laid out against him further complicates his future.
WaPo Editorial: Why the Jan. 6 committee mattered https://tinyurl.com/5ydyt2zx They provided a “searing picture of what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, … exhibiting the cowardice of those who, out of fear of Mr. Trump, refused to help it reckon with that dark day”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The Jan. 6 committee just lowered the boom on Trump. Now the ball is in DOJ’s court https://tinyurl.com/y2e63z82
NYT: Jan. 6 Committee Refers Former President Trump for Criminal Prosecution https://tinyurl.com/2zftydh8 Trump is charged with: Insurrection; Obstruction of Official Proceeding; Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; and Conspiracy to Make False Statement
// The committee accused the former president of inciting insurrection and other federal crimes as it referred him to the Justice Department, which does not have to act on its recommendations.
🔄 💙 📔 Lawfare: Jan. 6 Select Committee Documents https://tinyurl.com/44fxvfjk
⋙ Lawfare: Jan. 6 Select Committee Document: Executive Summary [pdf] https://tinyurl.com/42p4bkx7 154p
⋙ Lawfare: Jan. 6 Committee Issues Final Report https://tinyurl.com/4867dtra 845p
⋙ Lawfare: Jan. 6 Committee Releases Witness Interview Transcripts https://tinyurl.com/43f5k7y6
🐣 RT @lukebroadwater [NYT]
Jan. 6 committee criminal referrals:
Insurrection:
-Trump
Obstruction of official proceeding:
-Trump
-Clark
-Eastman
-Chesebro
Conspiracy to defraud US:
-Trump
-Eastman
-Clark
-Chesebro
-Meadows
-Giuliani
Conspiracy to make false statement:
-Trump
-Eastman
-Chesebro
🐣 RT @cspan .@January6thCmte Criminal Referrals of President Trump to the Department of Justice:
I. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding
II. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
III. Conspiracy to Make a False Statement
IV. “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid or Comfort” an Insurrection
#Jan6
💽 https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1604922563880423424?s=20/photo/1
// Raskin lays out the charges
⋙ 🐣 RT @cspan .@RepRaskin:”We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report. But we have gone where the facts and the law lead us, and inescapably they lead us here.”
~~~~~~~~~~
🐣 RT @TheEconomist Vladimir Putin’s war is turning Russia into a failed state, with uncontrolled borders, private military formations, a fleeing population, moral decay and the possibility of civil conflict [link]
WaPo Editorial: How Elon Musk destroyed Twitter… and how to save it https://tinyurl.com/muzmcerc “If there’s anything to learn from the Musk era at Twitter, it’s that the free-speech absolutism Mr. Musk claimed to espouse is untenable as a guiding principle”
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Recently, there has been much commentary about whether #Ukraine can – or should – seek to take back its Crimean territory through the force of arms. #Crimea remains Ukrainian territory, occupied by Russia since 2014. A thread on how all roads may lead to Crimea in 2023. [Thread] 1/20
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1605079411048337408?s=20
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1715 UTC 19 DEC/ Contract fighters from the Wagner Group, including convicts recruited from RU prisons, are being fed into the hellish fight for Bakhmut. Daily RU casualties have been estimated at 100 RU troops killed per day and upwards of 200 wounded.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1604887065862078465?s=20/photo/1
WaPo Editorial: 22 good things that happened in 2022 https://tinyurl.com/9wmspkjf
1. Ukraine still stands.
2. American voters rejected extreme candidates.
3. Gas prices are no longer at heart attack levels.
10. The world (mostly) averted a global food crisis.
14. More than 4 million people got jobs.
16. Schools reopened — and stayed open.
18. Bipartisanship on guns, same-sex marriage and chips.
19. Deficit reduction made a (very modest) comeback.
🐣 RT @ArnabNRoy Wtf is this?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ArnabNRoy/status/1604733439970013184?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @REVMAXXING NAFO was successful for a reason. We need to study their tactics.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @LateToDinner00 They had money, media personalities, state and NGO support, as well as botnet resources and passes from social media companies to break TOS. The k-hive, but bigger. All of the points they relied on for success seem to be exclusive to state-backed orgs.
🐣 RT @REVMAXXING Dude, we literally have the same support. Such as Elon, and Andrew Tate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LateToDinner00 Lmao. They have the social democratic establishment since the ww2. You cant challenge that.
🐣 RT @ FedorovMykhailo Cold, shelling 24/7 and endless heroism of 🇺🇦 defenders. This is briefly on what is happening near Bakhmut right now. The heart of Ukrainian invincibility is here — the future of the civilized world is at stake. By @United24media
💽 https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1604800611798507520?s=20/photo/1
🚫🐣 RT @iamraisini [Thread] Elon Musk is a pathological liar, a charlatan and a Super Villain. I have nothing against him but as an investor in Tesla & Twitter, i have serious concerns about his long track record of lies, his treatment of staff at Tesla, SpaceX & Twitter. This thread is about that
📌 https://twitter.com/iamraisini/status/1598006529814560769?s=20
// 12/2/2022; I don’t know if @iamraisini is a real angel investor and there are several individuals with the surname of Raisini assc’d with Raisini Records which IS a Qatari music company. The sources listed are real.
⋙ 🐣 Thanks for the list of articles. I hope whatever happens, that Twitter survives. It’s a nerve center for news and discussion. Musk clearly does not understand it’s not an engineering company. ¤ PS. I’ll never buy a Tesla, but StarLink is a great service
🐣 RT @iamraisini [(which?) Raisini, “angel investor”] [13 hrs ago] Just overheard Elon Musk discussing investment opportunities from the Amir of Qatar @TamimBinHamad & other Saudi Royals for his businesses, specifically Twitter, but from their body language & diplomatic response, it didn’t seem very positive. They asked him to find a suitable CEO
⋙ 🐣 RT @iamraisini Elon tweeted this after he was told by his Saudi & Qatari investors to get his shit together. They are not happy with the way he is proving to be an amateur CEO and asked him to step down.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @elonmusk Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @iamraisini That tweet followed by this ‘pretend’ poll asking if he should step down as CEO to save the embarrassment. Remember that Saudi Prince @Alwaleed_Talal invested $1.89 Billion and Qatar @QIA about $400 Million in Twitter. They are the real Power at Twitter. ¤ I have spoken.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @elonmusk Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll. […]
🐣 RT @KremlinTrolls Musk is in trouble.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1604789597887778818?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] There are three things he doesn’t seem to grasp:
• That it’s the community that matters, not the tech
• Where the value is in that community
– What the right-wing-nut-jobs want.Musk is in trouble. Firstly, he seems to think he’s bought a tech company (‘not enough coders, too many managers) when what he’s really bought is a community of users. What makes Twitter work, what makes it potentially valuable, isn’t the tech (which isn’t that special) but the community that uses it – that, in particular, it’s become the medium of choice of journalists and politicians.
That’s the value, right there. Every journalist worth their salt uses Twitter – and most use it a lot. Ditto pretty much every politician. Making blue ticks pay? That’s part of the same problem: he doesn’t understand the blue ticks are what make the site valuable to others. They’re the user base he should care about, not the right-wing-nut-job community.
But he doesn’t even understand them. Right wing nut-jobs don’t just want a place where they can rant, abuse and say whatever words they want. If they did, they’d be quite content with Gab, Parler, Truth Social, some bits of 4Chan, Reddit etc. See? They’ve got plenty of spaces. No, what they want is a place where they can rant at the libs, at the MSM, at the people they hate. If those people aren’t there (and they aren’t on Gab, Parler, Truth Social etc), the ranting isn’t nearly as fun.
It’s a mess. So if Musk manages to drive the libs away, that’s ruined. If the libs are driven off, the right-wing will be jubilant for a while, but then bored. And then Twitter dies. So Musk has to keep the libs on board. And the advertisers too. because they’ll run like hell if Twitters just a hate-speech hell-site. And that means moderation. It means keeping the Nazis off the site. It means keeping control of abuse and hate speech. It means cutting down the misinformation. All things Musk doesn’t want to do. If he turns Twitter into a hell-site, he kills it.
So what can he do? It’s not easy. There’s no simple solution, no magic wand. Free speech is bloody difficult. I’d suggest he read Habermas, but of course he won’t. So it’ll be messy, and I suspect he’ll just get bored eventually, but who knows? That’s the thing. Handing over Twitter to a massive-ego, massive- wealth, unpredictable billionaire is kind of a metaphor for the whole way we’ve dealt with the internet. It’s mess. We just have to do what we can.
🐣 📊 RT @elonmusk Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
Yes: 57.5, No 42.5
17.5M votes; 5:20am CT ⋙ final
¤ https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZeleskiLuke The world’s richest man has taken possession of a global social media platform used by the world’s journalists, scientists, governments, private citizens, businesses, religions, militaries and health/emergency services to share all vital information—It’s going as you might expect
⋙ 😅 RT @hugolowell Remember Musk can still remain chief twit if Pence has the courage
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @EricG1247 People are voting in a different way.
◕ https://twitter.com/EricG1247/status/1604626795436724224?s=20/photo/1
// Tesla stock chart: down 50% in last year, ⅓ since assumed control of Twitter
⭕ 18 Dec 2022
WSJ: Battle for Bakhmut Is Critical Test of Russia’s Prospects in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3m7usrjs “Bakhmut has become the war’s main battlefield, with Ukraine and Russia alike pouring in troops, tanks and artillery”
// Russia’s new war commander promised advances in exchange for retreat in the south. Bakhmut in the east is where he is trying to show those gains.
(📊) DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Russia Can Finally See That Putin’s ‘Days Are Numbered’ https://tinyurl.com/2s35kuvt “Both independent and Kremlin-controlled polls show that Putin has lost support for his war, with less than 30 percent of the country wanting it to continue”
// The war in Ukraine has destroyed Putin’s aura of infallibility back home, and even the Kremlin seems to have realized this is the beginning of the end.
🐣 RT @joshdr83 The head of lettuce wins again!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuddLegum UPDATE: The tweets by @TwitterSupport this morning, announcing a new policy banning linking to competing websites, have been deleted. ¤ The policy itself was deleted from Twitter’s website.
🐣 RT @john_sipher “Vladimir Putin will go down in history not merely as the man who failed to restore the Russian empire, but as the destroyer of the Russian world.”
⋙ TheGuardian, Timothy Ash: In Ukraine, I saw the greatest threat to the Russian world isn’t the west – it’s Putin https://tinyurl.com/mr29ru9f
// The Kremlin’s imperial war has made its own culture and language a common enemy for people across its former empire
The time has come to ask whether, objectively speaking, Vladimir Putin is an agent of American imperialism. For no American has ever done half as much damage to what Putin calls the “Russian world” as the Russian leader himself has.
This thought came to me recently when I was in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, talking to Ukrainians made refugees in their own country by Putin’s war. “I was a Russian speaker until 24 February,” said Adeline, an art student from the now Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka, referencing the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion earlier this year. Russia has failed to take over Ukrainian culture, she said, so now it has set out to kill it. Several other Ukrainian students told me they find “the spirit of freedom” in Ukrainian literature, but of subservience to power in Russian literature. …
Wherever I turned, in every conversation, there was a total rejection not just of the Russian dictator, not merely of the Russian Federation as a state, but of everything and almost everyone Russian. Polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows that some 80% of Ukrainians had a positive attitude to Russia in 2013; by May 2022, the figure was just 2%. A university lecturer told me that his students now write “russia” with a small initial letter. “I don’t correct them.”
This may be unsurprising in Ukraine, a country suffering from a Russian war that is now primarily directed against the civilian population. But the same thing is happening across much of the territory of the former Russian (and subsequently Soviet) empire – which, since the early 2000s, Moscow has tried to reimagine as the russkiy mir, or Russian world. …
Russian culture is thus a collateral victim of Putin’s self-devouring cannibalism. There was an alternative future in which Russian-speaking culture, like today’s English-speaking culture, may have become multiculturally enriched by authors and artists from all its former colonies. What would contemporary English-language literature be without authors from India, Africa and Oceania? And, after all, fine contemporary Ukrainian writers such as Andrey Kurkov write – or should I say wrote? – in Russian.
But we must keep our eyes on the main tragedy. Putin is trying to recover parts of the Russian empire by brute force and terror. He recently boasted that the Azov Sea has become an internal Russian sea, adding that even Peter the Great “had still to fight to gain access to [it]”. About 14 million Ukrainians, a staggering one-third of the country’s population, have been made homeless. Europe has seen nothing like this since 1945.
Even in Lviv, in the far west of Ukraine, I encountered frequent multi-hour power cuts, because Russia has destroyed about 50% of the country’s energy infrastructure. (You can donate to help Ukrainians get through the winter here.) What does Ukraine need most? Every single person I spoke to gave the same answer: weapons, weapons, weapons. Give us the tools, they say, and we will finish the job. And so we should. ¤ In the end, Vladimir Putin will go down in history not merely as the man who failed to restore the Russian empire, but as the destroyer of the Russian world.
WaPo: Musk blamed a Twitter account for an alleged stalker. Police see no link. https://tinyurl.com/y66kda8s The confrontation took place at a gas station 26 miles from Los Angeles International Airport and 23 hours after the @ElonJet account had last located the jet’s whereabouts
// Twitter owner Elon Musk threatened legal action, changed the platform’s rules and suspended journalists’ accounts after a confrontation involving his security team at a gas station. But the incident’s timing and location cast doubt on a link to the @ElonJet account.
WaPo: After backlash, Elon Musk is staking his leadership on a Twitter poll https://tinyurl.com/79z3c6hj “Musk’s ownership of Twitter — which he bought in October for $44 billion — has plunged the site into turmoil”
// After a new policy prompted backlash, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said future policies would be determined by polls
Musk’s ownership of Twitter — which he bought in October for $44 billion — has plunged the site into turmoil. He ousted the company’s executives and installed a team of loyalists, laid off more than half the staff and dialed back Twitter’s content moderation. He has engaged in misinformation as the site’s owner and hastily rolled out new and confusing changes, courting controversy and alarming advertisers, some of whom paused their spending on the site.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA/2345 UTC 18 DEC/ UKR forces repelled a RU assault on Chervonopopivka during 16-17 DEC. The Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) extends to the E side of the P-66 HWY, south from Pischane to Zhytiivika. On 18 DEC, UKR troops engaged RU units SE of Kuzmyne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1604617793525227521?s=20/photo/1
Insider, Linette Lopez: Elon’s stale playbook https://tinyurl.com/3ebzt7v2
// At Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk was a jerk with a grand vision. At Twitter, he’s just a jerk.
🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 BREAKING: The January 6th Committee met today and finalized three criminal referrals that they’ll issue against Donald Trump to DOJ tomorrow. Those include obstruction, conspiracy to defraud the government, & incitement of insurrection according to MSNBC.
⭕ 17 Dec 2022
🧵 RT @NOELreports SitRep – 17/12 – Bakhmut fights back
An overview of the daily events in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Bakhmut fights back. Reinforcements have arrived and Russians are getting acquainted with ammunition unknown to them ;-) Thread 1/X
📌 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1604239052286328839?s=20
🐣 I did set up an @Auriandra account on Post, but I will be heartbroken if Twitter implodes. I have been an avid user since 2009. I think of all the work I’ve put into creating topic-based Lists especially, but it’s the depth of expertise and friendships I value most. ♡
NYT: An Alternate Reality: How Russia’s State TV Spins the Ukraine War https://tinyurl.com/2s3wv23x “[P]roducers at the state media company cherry-picked from conservative Western media outlets like Fox News and the Daily Caller, as well as obscure social media accounts”
// Leaked emails detail how Russia’s biggest state broadcaster, working with the nation’s security services, mined right-wing American news and Chinese media to craft a narrative that Moscow was winning.
WaPo, Dan Balz: Biden vs. Trump? In 2022, there was a clear winner and a clearer loser https://tinyurl.com/3bxb3ze6 “Biden proved to be one of the most successful newly elected presidents, politically speaking, in generations”
// Biden and his party defied the history of midterm elections. Trump’s missteps helped make that possible. This pattern continues to play out ahead of 2024.
🐣 RT @dklaidman After a long, rough patch @POTUS is ending 2022 with big wins. From falling gas prices and declining inflation to passage of the Respect for Marriage Act and a deal that avoids a gov. shutdown, Biden has revitalized his hands presidency. @alexnazaryan reports
⋙ YahooNews: Biden began 2022 in rough shape. He’s ending it with a series of wins. https://tinyurl.com/5n8rbrfa
// President Biden started out the year in sorry shape. Since then, however, he appears to have revitalized his presidency through a series of lucky breaks and savvy moves
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Holy shit. The level of fear, lying and misdirection, as well as the spelling skills of a 3rd grader (“PATRIOTICLY”) is quite impressive here.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1604281133205581824?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] They say that the Unselect Committee of Democrats, Misfits, and Thugs, without any representation from Republicans in good standing, is getting ready to recommend Criminal Charges to the highly partisan, political, and Corrupt “Justice” Department for the “PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICLY” speech I made on January 6th. This speech and my actions were mild & loving, especially when compared to Democrats wild spewing of HATE. Why didn’t they investigate massive Election Fraud or send in the Troops? SCAM!
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Russia spent 70 years stockpiling missles (including thousands given to them by Ukraine), used two thirds of them in 9 months bombing Ukraine.. ¤ And we still have electricity, wifi, heat, water, traffic lights, restaurants, food delivery apps..
⋙ 🐣 RT Flash_news_ua⚡️ 75% of the capital’s residents already have heat supply, – Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klychko says. ¤ “Heat workers continue to work for the second day in order to stabilize the situation with heat supply in Kyiv”, – Klychko writes.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski It doesn’t bother me that he wakes up each morning and puts out different versions of this rant about 5 hours after his last rant before going to bed.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1604114297931829248?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @ @realDonald Trump Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer. The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of “Justice,” and “Intelligence,” all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer. These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Countrv will die!!!
🐣 RT @nexta_tv US President Joe #Biden’s administration has asked #Congress to provide #Ukraine with an additional $38bn. ¤ This was announced by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan
NYT, Anton Troianovski: Eight Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Putin’s War https://tinyurl.com/4cv49uud
// Secret Russian battle plans, intercepts, and interviews with Russian soldiers and Kremlin confidants revealed new details of how Vladimir Putin botched his invasion of Ukraine.
● Reached by phone inside Russian hospitals, wounded soldiers described being sent to war with little food, training, bullets or equipment — and watching about two-thirds of their platoon get killed.
● Many of the people closest to Mr. Putin fed his suspicions, magnifying his grievances against the West.
● The United States tried to stop Ukraine from killing a top Russian general.
● A senior Russian official told the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, last month that Russia would not give up, no matter how many of its soldiers were killed or injured.
● Days into the invasion, Mr. Putin told Israel’s leader that the Ukrainians had turned out to be “tougher than I was told.”
● Invading Russian soldiers used their cellphones to call home, enabling the Ukrainian military to find and kill them.
● The day of the invasion, Mr. Putin set a trap for Russian business tycoons, putting them on television “to tar everyone there,” as one of them described it.
● Mr. Putin’s fractured armies have sometimes turned on each other; one soldier said a tank commander deliberately fired on a Russian checkpoint.
⭕ 16 Dec 2022
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The Childish Drama of Elon Musk https://tinyurl.com/yckp7vdu “[W]e can at least shelve all of Musk’s blather about free speech. Twitter is an important part of how we disseminate and process news, and it’s now in the hands of an irritable and unpredictable child”
// Yet again, an important part of the public square is controlled by a narcissistic toddler.
For the past few days, Elon Musk has been throwing a gigantic temper tantrum on his platform, Twitter. It is not usually a matter of public interest when a narcissist like Musk goes haywire, but just as Donald Trump’s anger warped our public life, Musk’s conniptions could affect our culture and how we get information.
… Musk took ownership of Twitter in late October and, in a flurry of Calvinball rule changes, declared this week that revealing the whereabouts of his jet was the same as doxxing (that is, publishing personal data about private citizens), decreed this a violation of Twitter’s terms of service, and banned [Jack Sweeney‘s @ElonJet] account.
Musk claims that a stalker used the location of his jet to attack a car that his son was in. He has not presented any evidence that this event happened or, it seems, filed any police reports. And in a karmic plot twist, the founder of the investigative journalism site Bellingcat tweeted that his team ascertained that the event did not take place near an airport. But Musk used this story to go after yet more accounts. None were sharing the real-time location of his jet, but some were reporting on the ban of @ElonJet and the Musk Twitter tantrum that went with it.
Within hours, the account bans had piled up. Musk took out the independent journalist Aaron Rupar, a regular thorn in his paw. He banned Donie O’Sullivan of CNN. He scragged the accounts of Drew Harwell at The Washington Post, Micah Lee of The Intercept, and Ryan Mac of The New York Times. As the night wore on, he vanished Keith Olbermann—sure, he’s annoying, but still—and Matt Binder of Mashable. And just for good measure, when Steve Herman of that notoriously left-wing organization known as Voice of America merely affirmed the news that Musk was banning his critics, the Chief Twit zotzed that account too.
The usual Twitter tempête de merde ensued. Twitter’s liberals swore that this was the last straw and that they were all decamping to alternatives, usually the Mastodon social network. … and so Musk seemingly went through another round of sweaty, angry panic, in which Twitter declared references to Mastodon to be “unsafe,” eventually blocking links to Mastodon itself in the name of safety and virtue and all that is holy and good—which is also convenient, because Mastodon is one of Twitter’s few competitors. …
Now, unless you’re Very Online—and I am, for both personal and professional reasons—none of this matters very much at the moment. But Musk’s weird rampage does have an impact on the way the world around you exchanges information. Twitter has many levels; for some people, it’s a place to talk about oddball hobbies and exchange pet pictures. (Have you met my cat?) But it’s also an extremely valuable conduit for news, information, culture, and argument. Twitter doesn’t control the news, but it helps to shape public debate about many issues. Indeed, Musk’s entire public rationale for taking over Twitter was to preserve an important venue for free speech.
Musk’s defense of free speech is nonsense. One of the world’s richest men—who is not shy about his politics or his contempt for the free press—has reinstated Donald Trump, white supremacists, and any number of dangerous malefactors to Twitter, but he has made it clear that Donie O’Sullivan is beyond the pale. He has purchased an important and influential piece of the public square not to enhance public debate, but to punish people who annoy him. As if to underscore this point, Musk joined a Twitter Spaces live audio chat with journalists who asked him to explain what he was doing. He abruptly left the meeting—and then Twitter Spaces itself was shut down. (This was, he tweeted, to fix a “Legacy bug.” He announced on Friday evening that Spaces had been restored.)
… I think he lost his cool because for more than a month, he’s been in way over his head with an impulsive purchase, his fortunes are plunging, and he got booed by a crowd of thousands of people at a Dave Chappelle performance …
But we can at least shelve all of Musk’s blather about free speech. Twitter is an important part of how we disseminate and process news, and it’s now in the hands of an irritable and unpredictable child. This is one more step in the infantilization of American life, in which we must accommodate and work around the behavior of grown men and women who not so long ago would have been pushed out of public life either by our collective political disgust or by responsible shareholders who would insist that their corporate leaders get back to work instead of making a spectacle of themselves.
NYT: Putin’s War https://tinyurl.com/ymkjpmdh A Times investigation based on interviews, intercepts, documents and secret battle plans shows how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia: This is the inside story of historic Russian failures [multimedia]
// Secret battle plans, intercepts and Russian soldiers’ accounts show how a “walk in the park” became a disaster for Moscow.
The Times investigation found a stunning cascade of mistakes that started with Mr. Putin — profoundly isolated in the pandemic, obsessed with his legacy, convinced of his own brilliance — and continued long after drafted soldiers like Mikhail were sent to the slaughter. ¤ At every turn, the failures ran deeper than previously known:
● In interviews, Putin associates said he spiraled into self-aggrandizement and anti-Western zeal, leading him to make the fateful decision to invade Ukraine in near total isolation, without consulting experts who saw the war as pure folly. Aides and hangers-on fueled his many grudges and suspicions, a feedback loop that one former confidant likened to the radicalizing effect of a social-media algorithm. Even some of the president’s closest advisers were left in the dark until the tanks began to move. As another longtime confidant put it, “Putin decided that his own thinking would be enough.”
● The Russian military, despite Western assumptions about its prowess, was severely compromised, gutted by years of theft. Hundreds of billions of dollars had been devoted to modernizing the armed forces under Mr. Putin, but corruption scandals ensnared thousands of officers. One military contractor described frantically hanging enormous patriotic banners to hide the decrepit conditions at a major Russian tank base, hoping to fool a delegation of top brass. The visitors were even prevented from going inside to use the bathroom, he said, lest they discover the ruse.
● Once the invasion began, Russia squandered its dominance over Ukraine through a parade of blunders. It relied on old maps and bad intelligence to fire its missiles, leaving Ukrainian air defenses surprisingly intact, ready to defend the country. Russia’s vaunted hacking squads tried, and failed, to win in what some officials call the first big test of cyberweapons in actual warfare. Russian soldiers, many shocked they were going to war, used their cellphones to call home, allowing the Ukrainians to track them and pick them off in large numbers. And Russia’s armed forces were so stodgy and sclerotic that they did not adapt, even after enduring huge losses on the battlefield. While their planes were being shot down, many Russian pilots flew as if they faced no danger, almost like they were at an air show.
● Stretched thin by its grand ambitions, Russia seized more territory than it could defend, leaving thousands of square miles in the hands of skeleton crews of underfed, undertrained and poorly equipped fighters. Many were conscripts or ragtag separatists from Ukraine’s divided east, with gear from the 1940s or little more than printouts from the internet describing how to use a sniper rifle, suggesting soldiers learned how to fight on the fly. With new weapons from the West in hand, the Ukrainians beat them back, yet Russian commanders kept sending waves of ground troops into pointless assaults, again and again. “Nobody is going to stay alive,” one Russian soldier said he realized after being ordered into a fifth march directly in the sights of Ukrainian artillery. Finally, he and his demoralized comrades refused to go.
● Mr. Putin divided his war into fiefs, leaving no one powerful enough to challenge him. Many of his fighters are commanded by people who are not even part of the military, like his former bodyguard, the leader of Chechnya and a mercenary boss who has provided catering for Kremlin events. As the initial invasion failed, the atomized approach only deepened, chipping away at an already disjointed war effort. Now, Mr. Putin’s fractured armies often function like rivals, competing for weapons and, at times, viciously turning on one another. One soldier recounted how the clashes became violent, with a Russian tank commander deliberately charging at his supposed allies and blowing up their checkpoint. …
The more setbacks Mr. Putin endures on the battlefield, the more fears grow over how far he is willing to go. He has killed tens of thousands in Ukraine, leveled cities and targeted civilians for maximum pain — obliterating hospitals, schools and apartment buildings, while cutting off power and water to millions before winter. Each time Ukrainian forces score a major blow against Russia, the bombing of their country intensifies. And Mr. Putin has repeatedly reminded the world that he can use anything at his disposal, including nuclear arms, to pursue his notion of victory.
As far back as January, with the United States warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was imminent, a retired Russian general named Leonid Ivashov saw disaster on the horizon. In a rare open letter, he warned that using force against Ukraine would threaten “the very existence of Russia as a state.”
In a recent phone interview, General Ivashov said that his warnings before the war echoed what he had been hearing from nervous Russian military officials at the time. Though the Kremlin insisted an invasion was not on the table, some could tell otherwise. Service members told him that “victory in such a situation is impossible,” he said, but their superiors told them not to worry. A war would be a “walk in the park,” they were told.
The last 10 months, he went on, have turned out to be “even more tragic” than predicted. Nimble Ukrainian generals and soldiers have outmaneuvered a much bigger, more lethal foe. The West, cheered by Ukraine’s successes, has provided ever more powerful weapons to drive the Russians back.
“Never in its history has Russia made such stupid decisions,” General Ivashov said. “Alas, today stupidity has triumphed — stupidity, greed, a kind of vengefulness and even a kind of malice.”… …
NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Plans Vote on Referring Trump for Insurrection and Other Charges https://tinyurl.com/2cvksszb The other charges are “for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States”; the insurrection charge is new
// The committee also was expected to recommend charging the former president with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and defrauding the American people.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: The Left’s Fever Is Breaking https://tinyurl.com/39jr72ne Maurice Mitchell’s piece,“Building Resilient Organizations,” “systematically lays out some of the assertions and assumptions that have paralyzed progressive outfits” in a self-defeating “doom loop”
↥ ↧
💙 TheIntercept, Ryan Grim: How Meltdowns Brought Progressive Groups to a Standstill https://tinyurl.com/y4wee5j5
// 6/13/2022; stop hiring activists; Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History
★ WaPo: Can politics kill you? Research says the answer increasingly is yes. https://tinyurl.com/5df9rkth “[P]eople living in more-conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to covid-19”
// tags: various measures various studies; In one study, researchers concluded that people living in more-conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to covid-19. The other, which looked at health outcomes more broadly, found that the more conservative a state’s policies, the shorter the lives of working-age people.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Ben Shapiro slams Trump for his NFT grift: “Almost completely craters his presidential campaign .. it’s cringeworthy, it just is .. a money grab .. On every available front, it’s maybe the dumbest politics I’ve ever seen. It’s painful. It’s painful!”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1603876635916189696?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar I want to thank everyone for all the support and kind words over the past day and some change. I was pretty bummed about getting suspended initially but quickly realized it’d be fine because I’m blessed to have an amazing online community. Seriously, I appreciate it a lot. Cheers
⋙ 🐣 wonderful to have you back!
🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄
🎅🎄🎁🌟🐱Very Merry!🐱🎄🌟🎁✨🎅
🎅🎄🎁🌟🐱Very Merry!🐱🎄🌟🎁✨🎅
🎅🎄🎁🌟🐱Very Merry!🐱🎄🌟🎁✨🎅
🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄❣🎄
blessings to your family! 💫
TheGuardian: Twitter’s suspension of journalists sets ‘dangerous precedent’, UN warns https://tinyurl.com/23c74pdh First the EU, now the UK and the UN have expressed concerns. Germany said “press freedom must not be switched ‘on and off on a whim’”
//. Pressure grows on Elon Musk as EU says social media platform could face sanctions over suspensions
The United Nations is “very disturbed” by Twitter’s abrupt suspension of a group of US journalists, a spokesperson has said, warning that the move sets a “dangerous precedent” – as the EU said the social media platform could fall foul of forthcoming digital regulations.
Stéphane Dujarric said on Friday the UN was “very disturbed” by the barring of prominent tech reporters at news organisations including CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times who have written about Musk and the tech company he owns.
Dujarric said media voices should not be silenced on a platform that professed to be a haven for freedom of speech. “The move sets a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, physical threats and even worse,” he told reporters.
Germany’s government said press freedom must not be switched “on and off on a whim” and Downing Street also raised concernsover the suspensions. …
NBC: A Biden admin official recently told members of Congress that Ukraine has the military capability to take back Crimea https://tinyurl.com/3yfzszf7 “The Ukrainians ‘continue to shock the world with how well they’re performing on the battlefield,’ a U.S. official said”
// No offensive is imminent, but officials worry that a large-scale attack that threatens Russia’s hold on the peninsula could push Putin to use nuclear weapons.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer JDAMS FOR UKRAINE: Washington is considering providing Ukraine with JADAM kits that turn unguided aerial munitions into “smart bombs” capable of hitting RU military positions “with a high degree of accuracy.” https://tinyurl.com/tz337e2h
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1603500646107189248?s=20/photo/1
TheGuardian (Sep 7): Leonard Leo: the secretive rightwinger using billions to reshape America https://tinyurl.com/5n7wkzmj Leo is now pushing the legal theory st issue in Moore v Harper ~ that state legislatures have the power to run elections without intervention from the courts
// Marble Freedom Trust, advocacy group headed by Leo, has received vast $1.6bn donation to push conservative causes
⋙ ✛ Leonard Leo funneled millions through his dark money network to help seat Trump’s three SCOTUS picks (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh & Coney Barret)t; we’ll have to see how these three vote of Moore v Harper; Alito and Thomas will likely side with the “indecent state legislatures” theory
🐣 RT @DempseyTwo A $1.6 billion dollar gift. Imagine you’ve just delivered a Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe. You’ve achieved this because you were able to choose the very Justices who gave you that option. What could the next billion be for?
⋙ ProPublica: Conservative Activist Poured Millions Into Groups Seeking to Influence Supreme Court on Elections and Discrimination https://tinyurl.com/47bfpfvk
// Newly obtained records show how Leonard Leo, an architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts, has been funding groups pushing to change elections and anti-discrimination laws.
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Yep, ¤ Putin invaded Ukraine to solidify his power, a legacy that protects him sufficient to be allowed to exit and KEEP what he’s looted from Russia. ¤ Now, it’s all backfired, assuring he leaves power only in a box.
⋙ 🧵 RT @mbk_center [Mikhail Kodhokosky] Putin cancelled his annual press conference for the first time in a decade as well as his address to the Federal Assembly. Although the Constitution mandates communications between the President and the Parliament. Here’s a thread on why this is a significant sign 1/11
📌 https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1603793252800512002?s=20
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/5n7frc7h
Putin has nothing to say to ordinary Russians and the Russian elite. He can’t possibly avoid talking about the war, its goals, and its course in his statements. He also lacks solid justifications and forecasts in light of the Russian army’s failures 2/11
Putin’s forces failed to seize Kyiv as well as demoralise Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainians managed to liberate several captured territories in late summer and early autumn and successfully launched symbolic retaliatory strikes upon Russian territory 3/11
Kherson – the only regional centre taken and even formally absorbed into Russia – was liberated. Ukraine was able to sink The Moskva, Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea fleet. Moreover, they caused devastating explosions which demolished the vital Crimean bridge 4/11
Kremlin had to abandon its rhetoric of rescuing Ukrainians from Nazis. Instead, Putin has made it blatantly obvious he is bent on destroying the peaceful civilian infrastructure as a form of warfare against the Ukrainian people and state, and that they are the ultimate goal 5/11
The current situation occurs in the context of the continuing deterioration of living standards and extensive mobilisation taking place in Russia. Meanwhile, the elite and business sector have largely lost foreign assets and access to the benefits of Western civilisation 6/11
Putin is losing this war, as the goals are no longer clear, and both the elite and the population are bearing the costs. He can’t explain the purpose of his invasion or when it will come to an end. He’s not able to meet public demand so he cancelled all public talks 7/11
The decision to cancel all events is also motivated by fear of potential successful sabotage by Ukrainians as they have demonstrated their ability to attack targets deep within Russian territory 8/11
Russia’s most strategic military airfields, located 650 km from the front line, were destroyed by a drone attack. Besides, Western Siberia has already been affected by several mystery fires at sensitive Russian facilities 9/11
No one can guarantee that Putin won’t have to address the media or the parliament while the Kremlin is on fire or a bridge over the Moskva River is in shambles. 10/11
No one can guarantee that Putin won’t have to address the media or the parliament while the Kremlin is on fire or a bridge over the Moskva River is in shambles 10/11
To conclude, Russia’s domestic politics are now largely shaped by Ukraine’s successful military campaign. Putin started the war to address his personal issues and remain in power. However, Ukraine already has power over his domestic agenda 11/11
🐣 RT @ianbremmer from the eu commission’s vp for values and transparency:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1603760609324961792?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] RT @VeraJourova News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying. EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct. @elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.
🐣 RT @frontlinepbs In an interview for FRONTLINE’s March 2022 doc “Putin’s Road to War,” journalist @juliaioffe discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Watch and read: https://to.pbs.org/3MD9ldJ
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/frontlinepbs/status/1603760632414732288?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “I think he’s more dangerous than he’s ever been at any point in the last 22 years. I think he did not expect to lose in Ukraine, and therefore he will not lose! ¤ “He will grind the country down to a fine, fine ash.” JULIA IOFFE, journalist and co-founder of the media company Puck
🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer MAGA is SO mad about Trump’s trading cards. 🤣🤣🤣
MAGA: he’s going to announce that he’ll be speaker of the house!!
Also MAGA: he’s going to be reinstated!!
Trump: look, I’m an astronaut 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1603478277175365639?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @angelaretail First Lie Of The Day:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/angelaretail/status/1603733788881817600?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT [ts] @realDonaldTrump The Eric Holder/Obama disciple, Special “Prosecutor” Jack Smith (he’s no Jack Smith), has found NOTHING that I have done wrong or differently than other Presidents on the “Boxes Hoax” (Raid of Mar-a-Lago), including the fact that Presidents are PROTECTED under the Presidential Records Act, the Clinton Socks Case, & more. Now “Smith” is snooping around the PERFECT PHONE CALL I made to the Georgia Sec. of State challenging the corrupt Presidential Election results, my absolute right to do!
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA/1330 UTC 16 DEC/ UKR forces have infiltrated the heavily forested areas to the west and south of Kremenna. Combat in this terrain favors the coordinated use of small units of infantry. RU units are reported assaulting west of Lysychansk
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1603742271870042113?s=20/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ EuropeanCommission (Nov 16): DIGITAL SERVICES ACT: EU’s landmark rules for online platforms enter into force https://tinyurl.com/mu37zbpc “Designed as a single, uniform set of rules for the EU, these rules will give users new protections and businesses legal certainty”
// The DSA applies to all digital services that connect consumers to goods, services, or content. It creates comprehensive new obligations for online platforms to reduce harms and counter risks online, introduces strong protections for users’ rights online, and places digital platforms under a unique new transparency and accountability framework. Designed as a single, uniform set of rules for the EU, these rules will give users new protections and businesses legal certainty across the whole single market.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1603737641534439425?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Enhanced safeguards for fundamental rights online
The new rules protect users’ fundamental rights in the EU also in the online environment. New protections for the freedom of expression will limit arbitrary content moderation decisions by platforms, and offer new ways for users to take informed action against the platform when their content is moderated: for example, users of online platforms will now have multiple means of challenging content moderation decisions, including when these decisions are based on platforms’ terms and conditions. Users can complain directly to the platform, choose an out-of-court dispute settlement body or seek redress before Courts. ¤ New rules also require platforms’ terms to be presented in a clear and concise manner and to respect users’ fundamental rights. …
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone EU threatened #Twitter owner Elon Musk with sanctions after several journalists accounts were abruptly suspended. EU commissioner Vera Jourova warned the EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon”
⋙ BBC [UK]: Twitter threatened with EU sanctions over journalists’ ban https://tinyurl.com/5n725eck
The EU has threatened Twitter owner Elon Musk with sanctions after several journalists covering the company had their accounts abruptly suspended.
Reporters for the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were among those locked out of their accounts.
EU commissioner Vera Jourova warned that the EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom. ¤ “Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon,” she tweeted. ¤ She said: “News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying. The] EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our Media Freedom Act.”
The sanctions could be applied under a new Digital Services Act, which is currently going through the EU Parliament but could be in force by next year. ¤ Under the terms of the proposed new law, the EU Commission will be allowed to impose fines of up to 6% of the global turnover of a service provider that it finds breaks its rules. ¤ In extreme cases the EU could ask a court to suspend a rogue service, but only if it is “refusing to comply with important obligations and thereby endangering people’s life and safety”.
A Twitter spokeswoman earlier told tech website The Verge that the ban was related to the live sharing of location data. ¤ It comes after Mr Musk vowed to sue the owner of a profile that tracks his private jet. ¤ The list of banned journalists also includes The Intercept’s Micha Lee, Mashable’s Matt Binder, and independent reporters Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster.
A spokesman for the New York Times called the suspensions “questionable and unfortunate”, and said neither the paper nor reporter Ryan Mac received any explanation for the action.
CNN said the “impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters… is concerning but not surprising”. It has asked Twitter for an explanation and will “re-evaluate our relationship based on that response”. ¤ CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, whose account was among those suspended, said the move was significant for “the potential chilling impact” it could have for journalists, particularly those who cover Mr Musk’s other companies.
When he completed his takeover of the social media site in October, Mr Musk addressed potential advertisers in a tweet in which he spoke of buying Twitter because he wanted to “try to help humanity”, and said he wanted “civilisation to have a digital town square”.
Mr Musk has not commented directly on the suspensions, but said in a tweet that “criticising me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not”. ¤ He added that accounts engaged in doxxing, which refers to the release of private information about individuals online, receive a temporary seven-day suspension.
“Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” he tweeted. ¤ “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.” ¤ He added: “If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!”
The technology tycoon has since set up a poll asking whether he should unsuspend the accounts “now” or “in seven days”, suggesting the decision could be reversed sooner rather than later.
Matt Binder, a journalist for Mashable and one of those suspended, said he didn’t know why he had been banned. ¤ “I’ve been very critical of Musk in my reporting,” he told the BBC. ¤ But he said that Mr Musk’s claim “that everyone that got suspended was doxxing him – due to the jet tracker”, was not true. ¤ He said he had never tweeted a hyperlink to the tracker, but had mentioned the account after it had been suspended. ¤ “Clearly the people who were suspended were handpicked, because there are literally hundreds of accounts per minute who tweeted the link.”
Mr Binder, who has been on Twitter since 2008 and has been reporting on the developments at the social media site, said he was surprised at the ban on journalists. ¤ “I knew it was a possibility but really thought he wouldn’t because it would entirely wreck the facade of being a free speech platform.”
Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told The Verge that bans are related to a new rule introduced on Wednesday that prohibits “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.” ¤ “Without commenting on any specific accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk,” Mrs Irwin told the outlet. ¤ “We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts.”
At the heart of all this is a father raging about the sharing of location data of his private jet, which he claims led to a security incident involving his young son X. ¤ The Twitter feed that started it all was scraping publicly available flight data. Not very decent, perhaps, but not illegal. ¤ His fury has now extended to journalists who he claims also shared his location – which by the way Twitter itself uses to sell ads, although users can opt out of sharing it.
But this is a fundamentally flawed approach to moderation. I bet many of us wish we could suspend or ban social media accounts that post content we dislike.
It’s not the first time Elon Musk has taken a very personal approach to content moderation. He refused to allow Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on Twitter because he had used the death of children to further his career – and mentioned the loss of his own child, 10-week-old Alexander. ¤ He has also suspended accounts which impersonated him. ¤ Fundamentally, Elon Musk has shot down in flames his much-trumpeted commitment to “free speech”. Free speech as long as it doesn’t upset him personally, appears to be the message.
Mr Musk later spoke to journalists on Twitter Spaces, part of the social media app that allows live audio conversations. ¤ His short appearance generated an audience of 30,000 but after answering a few questions about the ban he left and Twitter Spaces itself has since appeared to be suspended.
On Wednesday, Twitter suspended the account @ElonJet, as well as other accounts using publicly available information to track his private plane. ¤ The owner of @ElonJet, Jack Sweeney, 20, also had his personal account blocked. Mr Musk has since vowed to take legal action against him, as well as “organizations who supported harm to my family”. ¤ Mr Musk said a “crazy stalker” had used live location sharing to find and accost a vehicle carrying his children in Los Angeles.
Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon, which has emerged as an alternative to Twitter since Mr Musk bought it for $44bn in October. ¤ It came after Mastodon used Twitter to promote Mr Sweeney’s new account on Thursday, according to the New York Times. ¤ Links to individual Mastodon accounts also appeared to be banned. An error message notified users that links to Mastodon had been “identified” as “potentially harmful” by Twitter or its partners.
WaPo: ‘Wiped out’: War in Ukraine has decimated a once feared Russian brigade https://tinyurl.com/2swk98u4 “Because so many of its contract soldiers and senior members of its officer cadre were lost, ‘it will take years to rebuild … ,’ said a senior European intelligence official”
// The bloody fate of the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade is emblematic of Vladimir Putin’s derailed invasion plans
🐣 RT @NBCPolitics Democratic lawmakers criticize Elon Musk after Twitter suddenly suspended a number of high-profile journalists who have been covering the company and its billionaire CEO.
⋙ NBCNews: Democrats criticize Elon Musk for suspending journalists covering Twitter https://tinyurl.com/yc2xc7kd
// Rep. Lori Trahan said the company’s move to suspend a number of high-profile journalists seemed to run counter to assurances she received from Twitter officials the same day.
⭕ 15 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger in his farewell speech to Congress: “I know that standing up for truth would cost me my job, friendships, and even my personal security. I would, without hesitation, do it all over again.” H/t @PoliticusSarah
💽 https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1603568455457935361?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rhazibkhan i’ve written 9 pieces on the steppe (not counting the anatolia piece that talked about turks). all of them are linked in the piece below. probably next up will be the the turks before islam
¤ https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1603657007743275010?s=20
💙 ⋙ Substack, Rhazib Khan: Entering Steppelandia: pop. 7.7 billion https://tinyurl.com/ymap6sya
// 4/8/2021; Why the steppe matters to me, and why it should matter to you
CNN: Here’s what’s in the $858 billion defense bill https://tinyurl.com/mr2saavu “The NDAA would extend and modify the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, as well as authorize $800M in funding in fiscal year 2023, which is $500M more than was contained in last year’s defense bill”
// Defense Budget
⋙ 🐣 Background: CSIS (Nov 18, 2022): United States Aid to Ukraine Explained in Six Charts https://tinyurl.com/42ms5ycx “U.S. aid to Ukraine totals $68 billion, and the White House has just asked Congress for another $37.7 billion.”
🐣 RT @tedlieu No. @elonmusk way overpaid for Twitter and he can basically do whatever he wants with it. The First Amendment prevents Congress from regulating speech on Twitter, a private business. It is not Government’s role to tell Twitter who to ban, who to suspend or who to promote.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jason_kint I don’t know what happened here but if @elonmusk doesn’t fix this within the hour with an explanation by morning, I’ll be on Capitol Hill tomorrow demanding that he be hauled in front of Congress.
¤ https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1603635197559218176?s=20/photo/1 -4
// screenshots of suspended accounts
⋙ 🐣 a platform as key to national security, a forum for international diplomacy, exchange of ideas and conversation, should be run as a utility in the interest of the public good, like the mail service
⋙⋙ 🐣 for instance, during the early days of the pandemic, Twitter was a clearinghouse for “pre-prints” from various servers, allowing the very latest research to be rapidly shared ¤ more recently, it has been key to the sharing of OSINT (open source intel) about the war in Ukraine
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ No one is suggesting the Bill DeJoy should be reading everyone’s mail and deciding what to deliver. But that illustrates the problem with their ask — the government can’t do moderation: it becomes censorship.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣I understand; but there are established relationships between countries already regarding what can be sent in the mail; the EU is talking to Musk currently about what changes are needed for Twitter to meet its guidelines
🧵 RT @oneunderscore__ Journalists who cover Elon Musk have been suspended on Twitter tonight: @donie O’Sullivan from CNN, Aaron Rupar and the Washington Post’s @drewharwell.
📌 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1603551884748460034?s=20
🐣 RT @KyleKulinski Recent Elon bans:
Elonjet
Jack Sweeney (ran elonjet)
Mastodon
IGD News
Aaron Rupar
Donie O’Sullivan (CNN)
Drew Harwell (WaPo)
Matt Binder
Ryan Mac (NYT)
Micah Lee (Intercept)
Keith Olbermann
“Free speech absolutist” my asscheeks
🐣 RT @SkinnerPm Probably wasn’t a good idea to privatize national security stuff like, I don’t know, launching satellites into space cuz, I don’t know, (gestures over to the unstable child with money).
WaPo: Twitter abruptly suspends more than half a dozen journalists https://tinyurl.com/59xwk7we
// No reason for the suspensions was given, though many had written or tweeted about the dramas surrounding billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform
🐣 RT @SethAbramson POST NEWS (http://Post.News/sethabramson):
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1603448427022585856?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] NEWS SUMMARY: Fake “billionaire” Donald Trump is selling $100-apiece low-rent Photoshopped JPEGs. not NFTs, as he claims, as they’re not limited in number, will be sold forever, and come with fine print (aimed at limiting class-action civil liability down the line) explaining that they’re for “personal enjoyment,” not “investment”-to poor Americans at Christmastime. These poor Americans will now have $100 less (or even considerably less than that, given that Trump is advising people to buy up to hundred” of these worthless JPEGs at a time) for food, gas, and Christmas gifts for their kids. This tragicomic level of naked hucksterism has never before been associated with the Office of the Presidency-whether a current occupant or a former one-even taking into account the four years Trump
🐣 RT @EverydayWarren “Better than Lincoln, better than Washington.”
💽 https://twitter.com/EverydayWarren/status/1603429930380959745?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar Oh my goodness Trump’s “major announcement” is even more pathetic than I anticipated
[TextLink:] 🖼 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1603419684329619458?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here! These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting. Go to collecttrumpcards.com/ & GET YOUR CARDS NOW! Onlv $99 each! Would + maTweetreat Christmas gift. Don’t Wait. They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENA/ 0320 UTC 15 DEC/ North of Kremenna, between Chervonopopivka and Zhytiivika, the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) appears to be fluid. On 14 DEC, RU conducted fire missions on the village of Pischane, indicating the presence of UKR forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1603226847260590081?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 14 Dec 2022
💙 RT @Ayei_Eloheichem Finally finished @TimothyDSnyder’s brilliant Yale lecture series on Ukraine. ¤ I cannot recommend this highly enough, even for those with some grounding in Ukrainian history. ¤ It contextualizes events and even the foundational ideas of history itself.
💽 https://twitter.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/status/1603247075453415427?s=20/photo/1
// link to YouTube series
🐣 RT @general_ben Exceptional analysis and writing by @LukeDCoffey. We’re not prepared. Too many people still can’t believe Ukraine will actually defeat Russia on the battlefield, so they can’t imagine this collapse. ¤ Preparing for the Final Collapse of the Soviet Union
⋙ HudsonInstitute: Preparing for the Final Collapse of the Soviet Union https://tinyurl.com/2d4tkkkz
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: top state TV propagandists can’t help but laugh out loud at Trump’s “Superman” announcement.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1603266056167993344?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @thedailybeast New Yorkers on the jury that convicted the Trump Organization of tax fraud and other related crimes last week were deeply offended at the way those two Trump firms cheated everyday people, said a juror who exclusively spoke to The Daily Beast.
⋙ DailyBeast, Jose Pagliery: Inside the Jury Room for the Trump Org Criminal Trial https://tinyurl.com/3zrs583u
// Jurors thought a Trump Organization lawyer was insulting. They knew the employees were liars. And the defense team’s jingle fell flat.
NYT: Defenses Carved Into the Earth https://tinyurl.com/4avsncck Russia is building a vast network of trenches, traps and obstacles to slow Ukraine’s momentum. Will it work?
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1603328675012907009?s=20/photo/1
💙 NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Are We in the West Weaker Than Ukrainians? https://tinyurl.com/2fyrs7nz “Some of the most momentous decisions the United States will make in the coming months involve the level of support we will provide Ukraine”
// Thank God someone is standing up to Putin.
“We will beat the Ukrainian out of you so that you love Russia,” a Russian interrogator told one torture survivor I spoke to in Ukraine, before he whipped her and raped her. That seems a pretty good summation of Vladimir Putin’s strategy.
It isn’t working in Ukraine, where Putin’s atrocities seem to be bolstering the will to fight back. That brave woman triumphed over her interrogators, albeit at horrific personal cost.
But I worry that we in the West are made of weaker stuff. Some of the most momentous decisions the United States will make in the coming months involve the level of support we will provide Ukraine, and I’ve had pushback from some readers who think President Biden is making a terrible mistake by resolutely helping Ukraine repel Russia. …
Polls find American support for aid to Ukraine still robust but slipping, especially among Republicans. And almost half of Americans want the United States to push Ukraine “to settle for peace as soon as possible,” even if it loses territory — a finding that must gladden Vladimir Putin’s heart.
The exhaustion with Western support for Ukraine may continue to gain ground in the coming months as people grow weary of high energy prices and, in the case of some European countries, possible rolling power cuts. …
The fundamental misconception among many congressional Republicans (and some progressives on the left) is that we’re doing Ukraine a favor by sending it weapons. Not so. We are holding Ukraine’s coat as it is sacrificing lives and infrastructure in ways that benefit us, by degrading Russia’s military threat to NATO and Western Europe — and thus to us.
“They’re doing us a favor; they’re fighting our fight,” Wesley Clark, the retired American general and former supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, told me. “The fight in Ukraine is a fight about the future of the international community.”
If the war ends in a way favorable to Russia, he argues, it will be a world less safe for Americans. One lesson the world would absorb would be the paramount importance of possessing nuclear weapons, for Ukraine was invaded after it gave up its nuclear arsenal in the 1990s — and Russia’s nuclear warheads today prevent a stronger Western military response. ¤ “If Ukraine falls, there will certainly be a wave of nuclear proliferation,” Clark warned.
For years, military strategists have feared a Russian incursion into Estonia that would challenge NATO and cost lives of American troops. Ukrainians are weakening Russia’s forces so as to reduce that risk.
More broadly, perhaps the single greatest threat to world peace in the coming decade is the risk of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait that escalates into a war between America and China. To reduce that danger, we should help Taiwan build up its deterrent capacity — but perhaps the simplest way to reduce the likelihood of Xi Jinping acting aggressively is to stand united against Russia’s invasion. If the West falters and allows Putin to win in Ukraine, Xi will feel greater confidence that he can win in Taiwan.
Putin has been a destabilizing and brutal bully for many years — from Chechnya to Syria, Georgia to Moldova — partly because the world has been unwilling to stand up to him and partly because he possesses a powerful military force that Ukraine is now dismantling. Aside from energy, Russia’s economy is not substantial.
“Putin and Russia are weak,” Viktor Yushchenko, a former Ukrainian president who challenged Russia and then was mysteriously poisoned and disfigured, told me. “Russia is a poor country, an oil appendage to the world, a gas station.”
The world owes Ukraine for its willingness to finally stand up to Putin. If anything, I’d like to see the Biden administration carefully ratchet up the capabilities of the weaponry it supplies Ukraine, for it may be that the best way to end the war is simply to ensure that Putin finds the cost of it no longer worth paying.
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone backing peace negotiations is craven, fatigued or myopic. Gen. Mark Milley and other Pentagon officials are understandably worried that the Ukraine conflict could spiral out of control into a nuclear war. That’s a legitimate concern, and it’s always good to peer through the fog of war for off-ramps. But bowing to nuclear blackmail and rewarding an invasion would create their own risks for many years to come, and on balance those dangers seem greater than those of maintaining the present course.
In arguing for the West to stand with Ukraine, I’ve emphasized our national interest in doing so. But we have values at stake as well as interests, for there is also a moral question to face.
When one nation invades a neighbor and commits murder, pillage and rape, when it traffics in thousands of children, when it pulverizes the electrical grid to make civilians freeze in winter — in such a blizzard of likely war crimes, neutrality is not the high ground.
Let’s not let Russia beat the Ukrainian out of us: The world could use a spinal transplant from brave Ukrainians.
🐣 RT @ukrainewar24 U.S. officials have devised plans to send #Ukraine JDAM kits, equipment that converts unguided munitions into smart bombs that can target #Russian military positions with a high degree of accuracy, U.S. officials familiar with the matter say. #UkraineRussiaWar
🐣 RT @NOELreports Yanukovych’s properties has been seized – BAKC (Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) ¤ “BAKC confiscated all of Yanukovych’s property. A residence in Mezhyhirya, a hotel and restaurant complex in Sukholuchcha, an apartment, money and more than half a thousand cultural values.”
🐣 RT @NATO ❄️ Season’s greetings from all of us at NATO 🎵 #WeAreNATO
🎶 https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1603020985271169024?s=20/photo/1
// Ring Christmas Bells; Happy Holidays from all of us at NATO [2022] ¤ A multinational group of soldiers from NATO Allied countries sing ‘Carol of the Bells’, a holiday classic composed by Mykola Leontovych and lyrics by Peter J. Wilhousky, in a snowy forest in Latvia.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski I’m sure it will be either his Infrastructure Plan or Health Care Reform Plan.
⋙⋙ [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1603071076006875140?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🖼 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO! I will be making
a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow. Thank you!
⋙ 🐣 maybe that he’s going to start a Trumpist party? What else could it be? he knows things are looking bad for his chances to clinch the GOP nod ¤ that way he’ll keep the money flowing to pat his legal bills
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Passage of these ECA fixes, especially along with this cycle’s defeat of numerous gubernatorial candidates who were essentially running on a vow to subvertfuture elections, would amount to major action in defense of democracy and self-rule.”
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: The plan to stop a future Trumpist coup moves closer to reality https://tinyurl.com/mr439rc3
“I expect an omnibus will contain priorities both sides want to see passed into law, including more funding for Ukraine and the Electoral Count Act,” Schumer said, in a reference to an end-of-year spending bill the two parties are negotiating. ¤ Speaking about reform of the ECA, the 1887 law that governs how presidential electors are counted in Congress, Schumer added: “It will be great to get that done.”
This is welcome news. The Senate version of ECA reform would clarify the vice president’s role in counting electors as purely ceremonial, make it harder for Congress to invalidate legitimate electors and make corruption of the appointment of electors at the state level much harder.
All these points would make a rerun of Trump’s 2020 effort less likely, in part because they would patch up ECA vulnerabilities that invited him to attempt it. He pressured his vice president to halt the electoral count, got Republican members of Congress to vote to cast out Joe Biden’s electors and pressed state legislatures to appoint sham electors for him instead.
Because of this, ECA reform has long risked being seen as “anti-Trump.” That might have rendered it unlikely that 10 GOP senators would support it and make it possible to circumvent a filibuster. ¤ But Schumer’s announcement is cause for real optimism. That’s because it’s unlikely Schumer would have made it if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) hadn’t quietly indicated support for attaching reform to the omnibus.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a longtime proponent of ECA reform, says she’s optimistic that Republicans will remain behind this endgame. Klobuchar notes that McConnell voted for ECA reform in the Rules Committee, and it’s supported by well over a dozen other GOP senators.
New developments this week forcefully underscored the need for reform. In a widely noted speech, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) openly declared that had she been in charge of Trump’s insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, it would have been “armed.”
And text messages from House Republicans to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, unearthed by Talking Points Memo, show members of Congress scheming in the run-up to Jan. 6 to overturn Trump’s loss in all kinds of ways, with one even calling for Trump to declare martial law.
What all this means is that the insurrectionist spirit will run strong in next year’s GOP-controlled House, which would be likely to try to help with any effort by Trump — or an imitator — to subvert the 2024 presidential election. Under current law, if a GOP-controlled state legislature appointed electors for the Republican nominee in defiance of the state’s popular vote, the GOP House could count those electors, leading to a stolen election or constitutional crisis.
Reform of the ECA would make that much harder to pull off. It would require governors to certify lawful electors, create new pathways for legal challenges to corruptly appointed electors and require Congress to count the electors validated by the courts.
“The clock is ticking towards midnight,” Matthew Seligman, a legal scholar and ECA expert, told me. “Congress seems poised to pull us back from the brink, at a moment when the extreme wing of the GOP House seems more eager than ever to trigger a crisis.”
Passage of these fixes, especially along with this cycle’s defeat of numerous gubernatorial candidates who were essentially running on a vow to subvert future elections, would amount to major action in defense of democracy and self-rule. As the unabashed and continuing insurrectionism of Greene and other House Republicans demonstrates, it’s poised to come not a moment too soon.
🐣 RT @therecount Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he would support a bipartisan full-year spending bill if it is ready for passage by late next week. ¤ “Otherwise, we’ll be passing a short-term continuing resolution into the new year.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @therecount “Hell no” was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s reported message to House Republicans behind closed doors, when discussing his position on the spending package proposal.
⋙⋙ CNN: McCarthy and McConnell on collision course as Congress barrels toward messy finish https://tinyurl.com/73fwd627
🐣 RT @francis_scarr In a rare admission on state TV, Donetsk militia commander Alexander Khodakovsky suggests that Russia lacks the conventional means to win the war ¤ His conclusion? ¤ “But we have nuclear weapons for that. We created them for such situations. That is why there is only one option.”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1602743461270151169?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA As a result of the HIMARS attack on Melitopol on December 11, the entire command of the 58th Russian Army was eliminated – General Staff
🐣 RT @NOELreports A message to my followers from the Netherlands. Be aware, Solovyov is not happy and will get you! You tulipsniffers!
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Attention, Netherlands! ¤ Solovyev is displeased with the idea of a tribunal in the Hague. ¤ Can’t wait to see him there, on trial.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1603046290761424897?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok A plot right out of “The Americans” ¤ New Hampshire couple living a quiet New England life—going to Celtics games, vacationing in Florida, selling nightlights on Etsy… And smuggling semiconductors & ammunition for Russia’s war machine.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1603050873311367169?s=20/photo/1-4
🐣 📊 RT @NOELreports 74% of EU citizens approve of supporting Ukraine in the war against the Russian Federation – European Parliament.
The highest percentages are Sweden (97%), Finland (95%), the Netherlands (93%), Portugal and Denmark (92%). Bulgarians and Greeks (both 48%) have the least support.
◕ https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1603028064786841600?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul I wonder if Professor Sachs has ever watched any of Solovyov’s shows? Or had a Russian-speaking RA do so for him? If he did, he would be embarrassed to be on with him. Or … well … he should be embarrassed. Tragic to watch.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr US economist Jeffrey Sachs was back on Solovyov Live this morning
⋙ 🐣 📋 RT @McFaul People seem to have forgotten that USSR/Russia has been offered many security guarantees in the past: Helsinki Final Act, Paris Charter, Budapest Memorandum, NATO-Russia Founding Act etc. US/Europe have never broken any of these security commitments to Russia. #FactsMatter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @aasmall3 I used to work directly with Sachs as an economist at Columbia Univ. My tl;dr: he misses his faded stardom desperately and he will do or say damn near anything to get “back in the game”. Content not important, as long as he’s the star of the show. ¤ An embarrassment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @capitolhunterss
Consider the possibilities
A. Sachs is guileless and clueless
B Sachs has let ego warp him
C Sach understands who Solovyov is, but has some motivation to support him ($, or kompromat)
You’re assuming A. But is that the most likely?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @aasmall3 I know him personally. It’s B.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PostcardDepot What we have here is a desperate plea for celebrity. Going back to his work in the 1990s at least. There are more like him. Look around. It’s rooted in a sense of insecurity & the need to have the attention of others at whatever cost. Others live life without these impediments.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterpalmer901 What a disgrace that a man of such stature as Jeffrey Sachs has stooped to hobnobbing with propagandists of genocide. What a fall.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jds9973 Sachs’ flawed advice back in the 90s is at least partially responsible for the current kleptocracy. He gave intellectual cover for the theft of state assets.
⋙ 🐣 RT @simsburymike He had conflict of interest issues back in the 1990s.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/simsburymike/status/1602874693488345091?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] U.S. CANCELS HARVARD CONTRACT, PROBES ADVISERS TO RUSSIA
June 7, 1997The U.S. government yesterday canceled a $14 million contract with Harvard University after allegations that two senior American economie advisers to the Russian government had abused their positions in Russia for private financial gain.
The decision by the U.S. Agency for International Development effectively winds up a program that had been the centerpiece of U.S. assistance efforts to Russia since collapse of Communism in 1991. Over the past seven years, Harvard economists have been part of the team advising the Russian government on its transition from a socialist economy to the free market.
Harvard economists led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs played a key role in helping the Russian government draw up a sweeping privatization program and advise Russian leaders in establishing Western-style capital markets. AID already has spent some $43 million on the Harvard program and had a further $14 million earmarked.
🐣 RT @SquawkCNBC “What @elonmusk is doing on @Twitter is damaging the $TSLA brand,” says @munster_gene. “Elon is Tesla’s brand and he needs to pull it together…It’s going to cause some long term damage if he doesn’t right the ship.”
💽 https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1603002991539281920?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AllanMargolin How much net worth have these 3 lost since House GQP sent this Oct 7th Tweet?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AllanMargolin/status/1602984348520783874?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @JudiciaryGOP Kanye. Elon. Trump.
⭕ 13 Dec 2022
FoxNews (12/13/2022): Biden admin seeks $4 billion in additional border funding, predicts post-Title 42 border surge https://tinyurl.com/5b69tz7t
// border security
🔆 This❗️⋙ YahooNews: Exclusive: An intel analyst tried to prevent the Jan 6 attack — but DHS failed to act https://tinyurl.com/4r7dy2mt “[It was] not just an intelligence failure, but it also represented a failure to take intelligence and take steps operationally to protect against the threat”
WaPo: Congress reaches early deal to fund government, races to avert shutdown https://tinyurl.com/2s3jtdyy If the measure can’t pass by 12/22/2022, it could kick the deal into the new Congress, where a GOP majority in the House would seek more cuts to Biden’s programs
// Democrats and Republicans released no details of their ‘framework’ as work proceeds to pass a spending bill
Newsweek: Melitopol Bridge Strike Hints Where Ukraine Wants to Bring Winter Offensive https://tinyurl.com/ssw35jsh
🐣 RT @olex_scherba Amen to that!
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko America is right now getting back to where it was supposed to be, right from the beginning of its history.
To being a beacon of hope, democracy, and the pursuit of happiness.
Right now, America, when it comes to Ukraine, is doing the right thing.
⋙ 🐣it has a lot to do with Democrats being in charge
hopefully, the Republicans have learned some lessons and will return to being reasonably conservative without playing around with🔥authoritarianism🔥
🐣 RT @aravosis Top Zelensky advisers accuses Elon Musk of using Twitter to disadvantage Ukraine and help Russia in the war.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Podolyak_M “War in Ukraine” disappearance from Twitter trends. Radical curtailment of tweets mentioning ru-aggression coverage. Users aren’t allowed to register or log into accounts with Ukrainian phone number. @elonmusk, I wonder if will we ever see “Twitter Files” about Fall/Winter 2022
🐣 RT @tribelaw These insurrections in Congress should be nowhere near public office; they’re every bit as unsuited to hold power in the United States as are those who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021
⋙ RollingStone: GOP Congressman Wanted Trump to Invoke ‘Marshall Law’ to Stay in Office: Leaked Texts https://tinyurl.com/4k5n2a6v
// Mark Meadows texts show Rep. Ralph Norman calling for Trump to declare “Marshall Law” to overturn the 2020 election.
DOJ: Five Russian Nationals and Two U.S. Nationals Charged with Conspiring to Obtain Military-Grade and Dual-Use Technologies from U.S. Companies for Russia’s Defense Sector https://tinyurl.com/4u946ehp
// “‘As alleged, the defendants perpetrated a sophisticated procurement network that illegally obtained sensitive U.S. technology to facilitate the Russian war machine,’ stated United States Attorney Peace.”
🐣 RT @Acyn McConnell on Candidate Quality issues: Anybody remember who mentioned that back in August? Look at Arizona, New Hampshire, and Georgia… Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in 2022 because of the support of the former President…
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1602743437018603521?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol “If there was ever a time for the last sensible Republicans to remember that they are the party of Lincoln, the man who saved the Union and its Constitution, and to declare a war against their seditionist wing, this is it.”
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The Republicans Need a Reckoning https://tinyurl.com/35cwe88p
// The party of Lincoln must end its embrace of sedition.
🐣 RT @chuckPfarrer PATRIOTS FOR UKRAINE! The US is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine. The Patriot is considered to be one of the most advanced air defense systems in the world. It will defend UKR cities. https://tinyurl.com/5fc5s6ef
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1602764330998452224?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 Patriots going to Ukraine. Finally!
⋙ CNN: Exclusive: US finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/n5dese6n
Ukraine has been calling for the US to send the advanced long-range air defense system that is highly effective at intercepting ballistic and cruise missiles as it comes under a barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks that have destroyed key infrastructure across the country. It would be the most effective long-range defensive weapons system sent to the country and officials say it will help secure airspace for NATO nations in eastern Europe.
🐣 RT @mfa_russia 🎙 FM Sergey #Lavrov: The West is striving to preserve the domination that it has enjoyed for almost half a millennium but it is impossible to stop history. ¤ ☝️ Economic figures convincingly show that the world is evolving towards multi-polarity.
⋙ 🐣 actually, the world appears to be evolving toward bi-polarity (freedom/repression), which is manic-depression, which seems fairly accurate ¤ the question is what to do about all the “depressed” young people in authoritarian states who see no future … ?
🐣 RT @TwitterSupport If you start seeing a checkmark that’s not blue, you’re doing it right. We’re adding more account distinctions. ¤ Gold checkmarks will appear on verified, official businesses on Twitter. ¤ And coming soon, grey checkmarks will appear on government and multilateral accounts.
⋙ 🐣 you should use red checkmarks for previously banned accounts or those spouting disinformation or promoting extremism or hatred ¤ that would make Twitter ♡ safe ♡ again
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /0015 UTC 13 DEC/ Following a heavy and destructive series of artillery barrages, RU forces were able to achieve a lodgment in a residential area south of the H-32 HWY. UKR artillery targets RU Lines of Communication & Supply (LOCS).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1602456126922149894?s=20/photo/1
[Textbox:] ASSESSMENT: Following a heavy and destructive series of artillery barrages, RU forces were able to achieve a lodgment in a residential area south of the H-32 HWY. Consolidating this gain will prove difficult as the approaches to the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) are exposed and offer limited cover for arriving RU reinforcements or logistical support. Near the Myika pond south of the city, a RU attempts to cross the rail right of way at Klischiivka have again been rebuffed. Platoon-sized assaults at Andriivka and Kurdiumivka have crossed the rail line but are vulnerable to UAV controlled artillery strikes targeting the RU axis of advance and its Lines of Communication & Supply (LOCS).
⭕ 12 Dec 2022
WaPo: How a Trump-allied group fighting ‘anti-white bigotry’ beats Biden in court https://tinyurl.com/45jtjyzk Through dozens of federal lawsuits, America First Legal, led by Stephen Miller, is challenging Biden Administration efforts to remedy racial and sex/gender disparities
// America First Legal was founded last year by Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigrant family separation policy
🐣 RT @BillKristol “The constitutional officer second in line to the presidency should not be someone who tried to overturn the last election for the presidency.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Bill Kristol and Jeffrey Tulis: Should an Election Denier Be Speaker of the House? https://tinyurl.com/6x5ap3zt “The new speaker should not be any of the 147 … who went along with the mob and voted to reject the electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania”
Forbes: Ukrainian Troops May Be Massing For Their Fourth Counteroffensive. Russian Artillery Is Already Trying To Stop Them https://tinyurl.com/5b96uftu The “Zaporizhzhia left hook” has been rumored for months ~ but is it real, or the fantasy of imaginative ret. milbloggers?
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NO PLACE TO HIDE: On 12 DEC, a demolition raid was conducted against the M-14 HWY bridge over the Molochna canal E of Melitopol. This UKR Partisan attack succeeded in buckling the road deck and rendering the bridge unsuitable for the transportation of tanks or artillery.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1602470742926426112?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports Ukraine blew up a bridge at the eastern gate of Melitopol, located at the highway E58 towards Kostyantynivka. At first the claim was ‘HIMARS’ but quickly after the footage emerged, we couldn’t see impact holes. It’s more likely sabotage, not HIMARS. […]
TheWeek: Ukraine says it destroyed Russia’s Wagner militia Luhansk headquarters, army base in Melitopol https://tinyurl.com/449hdj3c
🐣 RT @NOELreports #Kreminna
➡️ AFU is gradually closing Kreminna from most sides. Russia can only escape east.
➡️ There was fighting reported near Ploshchanka (1)
➡️ AFU repelled an attack near the P66 at Chervonopopivka (2)
➡️ Russia counterattacked at Serebryanskyy forest, but retreated (3)
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1602436810583736321?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenceU @ZelenskyyUa: Ukraine needs modern tanks, constant artillery support with guns and shells. We need more rocket artillery and more long-range missiles. The more effective we are with such weapons, the shorter the Russian aggression will be.
🐣 RT @POTUS I joined G7 Leaders and President Zelenskyy to discuss the progress we’ve made under Germany’s presidency to address pressing challenges of our time – Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, climate, food and energy security, infrastructure, and more. ¤ We’re more united than ever.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast Dr. Anthony Fauci told a science reporter for the journal Nature on Monday that he simply does not have time to “waste” on perennially online billionaires, especially the ones tweeting about him: “A lot of that stuff is just a cesspool of misinformation.”
⋙ DailyBeast: Fauci Brushes Off Twitter ‘Cesspool’ After Elon Musk’s ‘Prosecute’ Post https://tinyurl.com/yhvzteyb
// “A lot of that stuff is just a cesspool of misinformation,” the president’s chief medical adviser said.
🐣 When @RichardHaass talks about “the decisions we have to make” about Ukraine’s future, he clearly means “us” (the US and Europe), as if Ukraine itself has no say or agency: this is the exact opposite of the position @POTUS has articulated.
@Morning_Joe @JoeNBC
⋙ 🐣 “Nothing about them [Ukraine] without them”
”For as long as it takes”
~ @POTUS
🧵 RT @kyledcheney NEW: Jan. 6 committee members have been reviewing drafts of their final report for weeks. We have some of the first details of what the report will look like — including chapter topics.
📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1602264509711884289?s=20
⋙⋙ Politico: What the Jan. 6 select committee’s final report will look like https://tinyurl.com/3zwkpvxc
// A large executive summary describes former President Donald Trump’s culpability for his extensive and baseless effort to subvert the 2020 election, according to people briefed on its contents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney The report will begin with an extensive executive summary detailing Trump’s conduct from start to finish. It will track and supplement the story laid out in the public hearings.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney The 8 chapters:
1) The Big Lie
2) State/local govt pressure
3) False electors
4) Effort to corrupt DOJ
5) Pence pressure campaign
6) Summoning the mob
7) 187 minutes of inaction
8) Analysis of the Capitol attack
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney The report is expected to include multiple appendices, and in totality it will include the work of each of the committee’s five investigative teams. ¤ It will also include long-awaited legislative recommendations.
🐣 RT @saintjavelin What do you guys think this means
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AndriyYermak 🇺🇦🇺🇸📞=🚀🌎💪
⋙ 🐣 Well, I know @ZelenskyyUa talked to @POTUS @JoeBiden last night: hmmmm …
YahooNews: Marjorie Taylor Greene Says ‘We Would’ve Won’ If She Organized The Jan. 6 Attack https://tinyurl.com/3k86wjbk “If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” she said to a group of pro-Trump Republicans
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) suggested the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol would have been successful if she’d been running the show.
“I want to tell you something. If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” she said of the Jan. 6, 2021, attempt by supporters of then-President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the New York Post.
Greene made the comment during a speech filled with “one-liners trolling the political left” at an annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club in Manhattan, the Post reported.
The guest list included a range of high-profile right-wingers, including Rudy Giuliani and Bannon, both former Trump advisers, and Donald Trump Jr., who reportedly spoke after Greene. Members of the white nationalist website VDARE, right-wing propaganda group Project Veritas and far-right political operative Jack Posobeic were also at the event.
Republican speakers repeatedly voiced anti-democratic and authoritarian ideology, which received loud cheers from audience members, SPLC reported.
Several newly elected Republican lawmakers were reportedly present, including New York’s George Santos, Georgia’s Mike Collins and Florida’s Cory Mills.
Last year, Rolling Stone reported that Greene and other far-right members of Congress participated in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent, according to people who organized the pro-Trump rallies in Washington, D.C., that preceded the Capitol attack.
Greene has also been a loud advocate for people jailed over their roles in the deadly attack on the Capitol, referring to them as “political prisoners.” Nearly 900 individuals have been arrested in connection to the breach, including over 275 who were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
KyivPost, Aaron Rhodes: Pressure Grows on Ukraine to Stop War https://tinyurl.com/3pranx98 Macron, Milley and Schroeder do not a “groundswell” make; theirs is a smattering of dissenting voices; most people understand the dangers Russian imperialism presents
// Amid a groundswell of voices calling for Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war on Russia’s terms – why on earth should Ukraine compromise its very right to exist as a sovereign state?
// “Any ceasefire brought about by negotiations on Russia’s terms would not end Russia’s war against Ukraine, and amount to appeasement that would only encourage further aggression.”
🔄 🐣 Because they’ll be coming for Fauci, too, not just Hunter Biden, here are a couple of good backgrounders:
★ ✅ FactCheck[.]org: The Facts – and Gaps – on the Origin of the Coronavirus https://tinyurl.com/b7acpwma
// 6/25/2021
★ ✅ FactCheck[.]org: The Wuhan Lab and the Gain-of-Function Disagreement https://tinyurl.com/mt7k47u7
// 5/21/2021; Posted on May 21, 2021 | Updated on July 1, 2021
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1602244597903753220?s=20
😅 RT @DefenceU HIMARS comes for every occupier.
They say that conscripts in russia are being told spooky stories: if you criticize putin and disobey your commanders, the evil HIMARS will come after you at night.
The truth is, HIMARS can’t tell whether an occupier is good or bad.
🖼 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1600492575219240960?s=20/photo/1
// 12/7/2022
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA AXIS /0245 UTC 12 DEC/ UKR task elements have crossed the Krasna River and engaged RU units at Pischane. These attacks have compelled RU to divert forces from defensive positions west and south of Kremenna to cover the important rail and road junction at Zhytlivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1602115953965563904?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 11 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @officejjsmart Did you know that Poland 🇵🇱 means “Land of Fields” (Pol = field), and Ukraine 🇺🇦 most like related to being the border (U = at; krai = the borderlands) of Byzantium/Russian Empire. ¤ This video is right now, about one hour into Western Ukraine 🇺🇦, from Poland 🇵🇱, on the bus. [vid]
WaPo: Putin is trying to silence those who tell of the war’s horrors https://tinyurl.com/yus7maev “‘We won this trial,’ [opposition politician] Yashin declared on his Telegram channel after the verdict. ‘We told the truth about the war crimes and called to stop the bloodshed’”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has imposed Stalin-like restrictions on speech about the military and its disastrous invasion of Ukraine. On Friday, opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 8½ years in prison for calling attention to possible war crimes committed by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha during the early days of the war. This marks another attempt to lock up the truth.
In a YouTube livestream in April, Mr. Yashin dissected evidence of potential war crimes documented by Western journalists and Ukrainian officials to debunk the official Kremlin line that the reports were staged or fabricated to smear Russia. Criticism of the military has been made criminal under Russian law. Mr. Yashin, who helped organize protests against Mr. Putin in 2011, was charged in July and tried recently for “spreading false information” about the military.
False information? A growing body of evidence suggests otherwise. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Dec. 7 published the report of an investigation that found Russian forces had carried out at least 441 extrajudicial killings of civilians around Kyiv. The investigators documented 73 summary killings in Bucha, and they were working to corroborate 105 more. The report said that when Ukrainian security forces and journalists entered the town on April 2, they “saw dozens of dead bodies, first on the streets and then in many other locations: in yards, apartments, basements, vehicles, forested areas and improvised individual and collective graves.”
Mr. Putin may hope that by jailing Mr. Yashin, he will intimidate others into silence. But the truth won’t sit quietly behind bars. The barbarism that has taken place in Ukraine is being closely observed and should lead to war crimes trials. Recently, researchers at the Royal United Services Institute in London obtained copies of orders issued to a range of Russian units before and during the launch of the invasion on Feb. 24. Their plans included “the murder of Ukraine’s executive branch and the capture of parliament.” The Russian security services and military rehearsed “kill-or-capture” missions to find those behind Ukraine’s pro-democracy Maidan Revolution in 2014. They were to be put on trial and executed. The plans included seizing Ukraine’s national heating, electricity and financial operations to subjugate the population. Mr. Putin assumed Ukrainians would submit in a matter of days. Such was the depth of Mr. Putin’s delusion, which has now led to tens of thousands of deaths.
“We won this trial,” Mr. Yashin declared on his Telegram channel after the verdict. “We told the truth about the war crimes and called to stop the bloodshed. … With this hysterical verdict, the authorities want to frighten us all, but in fact they only show their weakness. … Only weak leaders seek to shut everyone up, to burn out any dissent.”
🐣 RT @anders_aslund On the war in Ukraine:
1. Ukraine is holding Bakhmut in Donbas in spite of furious attacks by Wagnerites.
2. Ukraine bombed Wangerite HQ in Luhansk oblast.
3. Ukraine bombed Kadryovtsy center in Melitopol.
4. Ukraine waits with offensive until Christmas freeze.
🐣 RT @ cepa “The death and destruction Ukrainians are experiencing now at Russian hands echoes what the Soviet Union inflicted on the Baltic states and other countries. The only choice is to stop it now, or suffer more later.” @edwardlucas
⋙ CEPA, Edward Lucas: The Only Path to Peace https://tinyurl.com/fz6s9yfv “[T]he real cause of the war and the only chance of lasting peace: the defeat of Russian imperialism”
// The way to stop the war is for Ukraine’s allies to do more.
As Christmas looms, behold a modern marvel. The festive scene is an advanced country being reduced to conditions that our grandparents would have found unbearably primitive. At best, the cuts in power, heat, water, and sewerage are exhausting and humiliating. At worst, they are lethal. The old, the ill, the disabled, and other vulnerable people die quietly from cold, stress, and disruption to healthcare. Yet so far, morale is — miraculously — undented. Ukraine fights on.
The wondering awe at Ukrainians’ resilience is sincere, if patronizingly distant. But it begets complacency. We could treat the results of Russia’s terror strikes as a colossal humanitarian emergency. Big rich countries could send thousands of power engineers to restore the grid. We could scour the world for spare parts. Even more usefully, we could provide more weapons: air defenses to prevent future attacks and tanks to press home the advantage.
But we don’t. Winter lasts only a few months. They’re tough. They will manage. Ukraine will continue to win the war, but slowly. As the military advantage consolidates, the door to a diplomatic solution opens. Expert Western deal-makers will win Nobel prizes for their efforts. Escalation avoided, Russia constrained, Ukraine survives, and maybe even our energy prices go down again: what’s not to like?
That, put crudely, is Western thinking about Europe’s worst war since 1945. It is both cruel and dangerous. Cruel, because the suffering of the Ukrainian population (and the tens of thousands of battlefield casualties) are just collateral damage: something we have to accept on the road to an eventual ceasefire. Dangerous, because it ignores the real cause of the war and the only chance of lasting peace: the defeat of Russian imperialism.
… Military victory may now be out of sight for Russia, but a path to success is still visible: the longer the war goes on, the greater the chance of war-weariness in Ukraine and — more likely — among the vital Western allies.
Some Western voices regard even this approach as too tough and too risky. The American economist Jeffrey Sachs, writing in the Financial Times, decries “maximalist demands” which, he argues, will leave Ukraine in ruins, consolidate rest-of-the-world opinion behind Russia, wreck the European economy and risk nuclear war. So start land-for-peace talks now. Yet, given Russia’s violation of previous deals it signed, why would any ceasefire carry credibility? The only way such an agreement could stick would be from NATO membership for Ukraine, or its equivalent, backed up by a hefty outside military presence — which is just what Sachs opposes.
In the “new West,” eyes are clearer and thinking crisper. In a blisteringly good article in the latest Foreign Affairs, the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, argues that the war is not an east-west tussle over squares on a chessboard. It is about real people and real countries, with real hopes — and real fears. The death and destruction Ukrainians are experiencing now at Russian hands echoes what the Soviet Union inflicted on the Baltic states and other countries. The only choice is to stop it now, or suffer more later.
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost He’s totally unhinged tonight. 🍿🍿🍿
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1602119724933865472?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣RT @realDonald Trump. [ts] “This was ELECTION INTERFERENCE. THE DISINFORMATION WAS COMING FROM THE FBI AND FACEBOOK. IT WAS COMING FROM ADAM SCHIFF AND DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES. THIS WAS A VERY DAMAGING STORY TO BIDEN BEFORE THE ELECTION, AND THEY WERE GOING TO KILL IT.” BOTTOM LINE: THE ELECTION WAS RIGGED & STOLEN! MIRANDA DEVINE AS INTERVIEWED BY MARK LEVIN. AMAZING!!
🐣 RT @ SpiroAgnewGhost *VERY STABLE GENIUS ALERT* ¤ Impressive use of ALL CAPS, a sign of the stablest genius possible. ¤ #Unhinged
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1602115542051352576?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] HOW CAN THE JANUARY 6TH UNSELECT COMMITTEE MAKE CRIMINAL REFERRALS WHEN THEY HAVE’NT SPOKEN ABOUT, OR STUDIED, THOSE THAT RIGGED THE 2020 ELECTION, THE TROOPS NOT BEING BROUGHT IN BY PELOSI, OR NOW, THE ELECTION FRAUD DETERMINATIVELY REVEALED BY TWITTER? THESE ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS!!!
🐣 RT @AthenaMia2nd … According to reports, US forces of the Mozart PMC were rushed to Bakhmut town. For the first time in history we have a full-scale confrontation between the Russian Wagner PMC and the American Mozart PMC, two private military companies.
🐣 “According to reports … “ ¤ Do you have a link to source re: “American Mozart PMC” ¤ thank you ! ¤ ♡ ૂི•̮͡• ྀ ♡
🐣 RT @TheMozartGroup Absolutely not true. We do not carry weapons or engage in combat. We train Ukrainian military and evacuate civilians. We DO NOT engage in combat.
¤ https://twitter.com/TheMozartGroup/status/1602106433222369280?s=20
🐣 RT @tomricks1 “If Melitopol falls, the entire defence line all the way to Kherson collapses”
⋙ BBC: Ukraine war: Odesa and Melitopol under attack https://tinyurl.com/ykss5vux
// Russian drone attacks leave 1.5 million Ukrainians without power and Kyiv bombards occupied Melitopol.
🐣 RT @UkraineRussia2 It is reported that Ukraine received new GMRLS Himars missiles with a longer range of up to 150 kilometers from the USA. Today they were first used against the Russian military base in occupied Melitopol. Thank you to the friendly people of the USA for this help ¤ #HIMARS
x /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 “It is reported … “ Can you provide a link to the source? ¤ thank you ! ¤ ♡ ૂི•̮͡• ྀ ♡
🐣 RT @DefMon3 I think this is true, it will be very hard to capture Bakhmut without an encirclement. As long as RU does not have Soledar, i think Bakhmut is safe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Bakhmut under control of the AFU, still. Just like Girkin said, the defenses are almost unbreakable and the soldiers’ morale despite the conditions on the ground remains good. [vid]
🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en Terrorist and murderer Girkin: Russia has two powers [~Two forces are at play in Russia]: apathetic leadership of the country that already lost the war and liberals headed by Navalny that are going to enter the Kremlin to organize a bloody democracy. ¤ Girking [sic] himself wants the throne, it seems?
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1601864867845054465?s=20/photo/1
Reuters: Some Russian soldiers in Ukraine unhappy with top brass, Russian nationalist and Kremlin critic Igor Girkin says https://tinyurl.com/36x2zyda
Some Russian officers fighting in Ukraine are unhappy with the military top brass and President Vladimir Putin because of the poor execution of the war, an influential nationalist Russian blogger said after visiting the conflict zone. …
In modern Russia, direct public criticism of Putin is rare though nationalist bloggers have been outspoken about the conduct of the war, especially the costly Russian defeats in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in September.
Igor Girkin, a nationalist and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 and then organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, said there was some discontent with the top brass.
In a scathing 90-minute video analysing Russia’s execution of the war, Girkin said the “fish’s head is completely rotten” and that the Russian military needed reform and an intake of competent people who could lead a successful military campaign.
Some at the mid-levels of the military, Girkin said, were open about their dissatisfaction with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and even Putin. ¤ “It is not just me… people are not blind and deaf at all: people at the mid-level there do not even hide their views which, how do I put it, are not fully complimentary about the president or the defence minister,” Girkin said. …
Putin casts what he calls Russia’s “special military operation” as a watershed moment when Russia finally stood up to the arrogant West, led by the United States, after decades of humiliation since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. ¤ Russia, Putin says, is defending Russians in Ukraine against a decadent West that ultimately wants to carve up Russia’s vast resources and eradicate Russian civilisation.
The West denies such a plot. ¤ Ukraine and the West say Putin has no justification for what they cast as an imperial-style war of occupation. Ukraine says it will fight until the last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
The West, Girkin said, wanted to foment a revolutionary situation in Russia akin to the February Revolution in 1917 when Tsar Nicholas II abdicated amid popular and elite anger over Russian failures in World War One.
Russia, he said, had a lack of effective tactical missiles and it was unclear if it could produce enough while Russia had failed to establish air superiority due to Ukrainian air defences. ¤ “Our Ministry of Defence has simply slept through the fact that the whole world has moved to new tactical aviation,” he said.
Girkin was convicted in absentia by Dutch judges for murder over his role in the shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of 298 passengers and crew. Russia, which has repeatedly denied downing the jet, rejected the verdict.
🐣 RT @ JayinKyiv To get through to the populist GOP types, the Fox news zombies, extrapolating on the following narrative is effective.
“No country loves America more than Ukraine. The US cannot allow our allies to be bullied by this little gargoyle in Moscow.”
🐣 RT @McFaul Medvedev may be the most pathetic senior official in Russia. There is no way he believes the BS he spouts. But he says it anyway. Дмитрий, как тебе не стыдно?
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Former Russian “President”, Alcoholic Goblin, Dimitry Medvedev crawls out of the whisky bottle long enough to say that Russia will destroy everyone except China and South America with “the most powerful means of destruction”.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Correct change in US defense policy by the Pentagon. Ukraine must execute a violent counteroffensive against Russian military forces to include vital targets inside Russia and in the Black Sea. Next step is US providing 300 kilometer ATACMS missiles.
⋙ 🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar 2/ The source said the Pentagon has changed its perspective following the recent intensification of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and that the Pentagon has become less concerned regarding the risk of escalation.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1601771599707140098?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ SundayTimes [UK] (12/9): Pentagon gives Ukraine green light for drone strikes inside Russia https://tinyurl.com/45eh332u “The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against Kyiv’s critical infrastructure”
// 12/9/2022
⭕ 10 Dec 2022
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder A thread bringing together some thoughts about #fascism from the last decade.
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1601594291725701121?s=20
💙 🧵 📋 RT @AmoneyResists McConnell: “We have a 50-50 senate, and America is a 50-50 nation.” ¤ Um, no you don’t, and no, it isn’t, ¤ @LeaderMcConnell. ¤ Sinema’s defection didn’t extend to her committees, so in every way that matters, it’s a 51-49 senate. And Those 51 Dems represent 43 MILLION more Americans.
📌 https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1601686232287023109?s=20
⋙ 🐣 📋 RT @AmoneyResists In addition, the 10 most populous states (CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA, MI, OH, GA, & NC) have more than half the U.S. population (179 million people) but only 20 senators [20% of the senate]; the same # as the 10 least populous states, which have a combined 7.9 million people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ California, which has a population of 40 million, gets two senators.
Wyoming, which has 580,000, also gets 2 senators.
The Dakotas, which have a combined population of 1.6 million, get 4 senators.
Meanwhile, Washington D.C (750K) and Puerto Rico (3.3 million) get ZERO.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /0350 UTC 11 DEC/ UKR Partisan elements identified a Russian HQ/Barracks facility outside the urban area of Melitopol. The complex, formerly a luxury spa/hotel, was engaged by UKR long range precision strike artillery on 10 DEC.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1601769390986629120?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @2ug2ug A lot of westerners don’t know details about Russia. Like what the 21 republics are called. Where they’re located. How they came to be parts of the Russian Federation. We aren’t taught these things – we have to teach ourselves.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/2ug2ug/status/1601615677227692032?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 The future of Ukraine is the future of the world
🐣 RT @SierraPoppies These airfields are said to have been attacked:
1️⃣ Belbek Airport Sevastopol
2️⃣ Simferopol
3️⃣ Yalta
4️⃣ Dzhankoy
Eight HIMARS rockets are said to have been launched at Melitopol. The city with its airfield is the central logistics hub for the southern Russian army group.
🐣 RT @tomaburque Reports of a strike on an enemy troop concentration in Melitopol tonight and that there were significant casualties. Let’s hope! 😀🇺🇦🚀💥🇷🇺🔥💀 #RussiaIsLosing
🐣 RT @trajaykay occupied Melitopol 🇺🇦 🚭🚭russian military base
Join us @MriyaReport 2 deep dive into all the details of all the explosions heard tonight
🇺🇦🐆🇺🇦🐆🇺🇦🐆🇺🇦🐆🇺🇦
We have many ex.N current Army, Navy, military 2 help us analyse it @and @DaftWhiskyPilot @B1on4de 🔊https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1BRJjZomRRRJw
😅 RT @JoaoPio3 The USS Enterprise, captained by @MattPPea has warped into Earth’s orbit above #Sevastopol. Major teleport mishaps did not prevent it from shattering all previous records by bringing 2450$ in donations, totaling 10890$ donated thus far! #nafofleet @U24_gov_ua @Official_NAFO
💽 https://twitter.com/JoaoPio3/status/1601151226338369537?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer TARGET CRIMEA: On the night of 10 December, explosions were reported at the Russian air force base north of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea. Explosions were also reported at the rail junction in Dzhankoya in N Crimea. Developing story. [link]
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1601696278874050561?s=20/photo/1
🐣 I always appreciated Twitter’s annotations about eg vaccine misinformation, fact-checks, and links to reputable sources.
I‘ve never been fond of unmoderated comment sections. I‘m careful about who I follow and use Lists, Block, Mute and Word Mute liberally.
I still ♡ Twitter
🐣 RT @ duty2warn Elon is trying to flip the script by creating the narrative that Twitter interfered with the election by suppressing right wing misinformation and hate speech ¤ Musk is an evil liar working in alliance with the domestic and foreign enemies of the Constitution. ¤ #TwitterFiles3
🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin with a brief frontline update stating Ukrainian forces are accumulating in Zaporizhziha direction. Everywhere else, Russians are in passive defence and the Bakmut offensive has practically zero changes of breaking through Ukrainian defence. https://t.me/strelkovii/3510
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1601522025872642048?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @brianklaas As someone who has studied coups—interviewed people tortured in their wake, gotten to know the generals, seen countries ruined by violent military takeovers—it’s grotesque to see absolute morons use the word to describe content moderation after a politician incited a violent mob.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepMTG Breaking news ¤ This is evidence of a coup
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mtaibbi THREAD: The Twitter Files THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP ¤ Part One: October 2020-January 6th
🐣 Just based on my experience, I’d say not all Ukr/Ru accounts are being “shadow banned,” but some I’m not seeing: eg @McFaul @JuliaDavisNews @AVindman
━━━━━━━▼ Election Stats
🔄 💙🐣 Many post-election analyses obscure the fact what White voters still comprise about 70% of voters. Consequently, Whites continue to have an outsize impact on elections. For instance, of Dems, White Women still outnumber Black Women by 3X (16.7% v 5.3% of all voters)
// tags: Swing Analysis (though it’s not); NBC Exit Poll: https://tinyurl.com/scmxy9hn
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1601529786496876546?s=20/photo/1
:—% of All—: :-% of Dems-:
All Dem GOP Dem GOP
WM 36% 35%/ 63% 12.6%/ 22.7% 26.3%
WW 37% 45%/ 53% 16.7%/ 19.6% 34.9% 61.2% Total White
BM 5% 82%/ 17% 4.1%/ 0.9%. 8.6%
BW 6% 88%/ 10% 5.3%/ 0.6% 11.1% 19.7% Total Black
LM 5% 53%/ 45% 2.7%/ 2.3%. 5.6%
LW 6% 66%/ 33% 4.0%/ 2.0%. 8.4% 14.0% Total Latin
AO 5% 49%/ 47% 2.5%/ 2.5%. 5.2% 5.2% All Other
47.9%/ 50.6%
WM=White Men (etc), AO=All Other (NBC Exit Poll)
🐣 NBC Exit Polls: In the Midterm Elections, of DEMOCRATIC Voters:
61.2% were White
19.7% were Black
14.0% were Latin/Hisp
5.2% were All Other
https://tinyurl.com/scmxy9hn
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1601713211476090882?s=20/photo/1
↧
:–– % of Dems ––:
WM 26.3%
WW 34.9% 61.2% Total White
BM 8.6%
BW 11.1% 19.7% Total Black
LM 5.6%
LW 8.4% 14.0% Total Latin
AO 5.2% 5.2% All Other
WM=White Men (etc), AO=All Other (NBC Exit Poll)
━━━━━━━▲
🐣 RT @McFaul The Russian army is losing on the battlefield against Ukraine soldiers, so Putin has ordered them to attack Ukrainian civilians instead. Any honorable soldier would be embarrassed to carry out such attacks against grandmothers and children.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /0100 UTC 10 DEC/ RU losses are consistently estimated as 100 soldiers Killed in Action (KIA) per day, w/ scores more wounded daily. UKR officials describe the increasingly futile RU effort to take the city as ‘a meat grinder’.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1601379853705818112?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 9 Dec 2022
WaPo, David Stern: After missile strikes, Ukrainians persist without electricity, water, heat https://tinyurl.com/ycks84es “‘I had one child in the elevator, the other I’m baptizing, and tomorrow we have a heart operation,’ Tkachuk said. ‘This was a horrible time.’”
ForeignAffairs, Marlene Laruelle: Putin’s War and the Dangers of Russian Disintegration https://tinyurl.com/398njpuh “Russia’s breakup is unlikely. … The best outcome would be for local self-government—inscribed in the Russian constitution but scrapped by Putin”
// The Unraveling of a Fragile Multiethnic State Could Lead to More Violence
… Could Russia splinter? ¤ Russia’s geography makes cohesiveness elusive. Spanning 11 time zones, it is the largest nation in the world by landmass. Twenty percent of its population is not ethnically Russian but belongs to local indigenous nations. While Moscow was named the third most prosperous city in the world by the UN-Habitat’s City Prosperity Index a few weeks before the war began in February, a large part of the Siberian subcontinent is impoverished and sparsely populated. In the far north, declining extractive industrial cities predominate. In the Far East, residents are economically more connected to China, Japan, and South Korea than to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Under Putin’s leadership, power has been heavily centralized in Moscow and political and cultural autonomy in the provinces have been reduced. …
To be sure, Russia’s breakup is unlikely. In the aftermath of Putin’s disastrous war, however, the regime will nonetheless face growing pressures to decentralize. The best outcome would be for local self-government—inscribed in the Russian constitution but scrapped by Putin—to become a reality. This refederalization of Russia would be possible only if accompanied by a national reckoning on the legacy of Russia’s colonialism. This reappraisal would be important for ethnic Russians as well as for minorities. But as in the United States and Europe, that societal transformation will take decades. It is worth pursuing, however. Only a Russia that decentralizes politically and culturally can reform itself from the inside out.
🧵 RT @mtaibbi 1. THREAD: The Twitter Files ¤ THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP ¤ Part One: October 2020-January 6th
📌 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601352083617505281?s=20
[ThreadReader] https://tinyurl.com/37jsf823
ABCNews: Judge declines DOJ request to hold Trump team in contempt over classified documents https://tinyurl.com/2p8j53vm
// A federal judge has declined a DOJ request to hold Trump’s team in contempt over classified documents.
RT @CBSNews Incoming House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, enthusiastically supports continuing to aid Ukraine in its hard-fought war against Russia.
⋙ CBSNews: Incoming House Foreign Affairs chairman favors heavily arming Ukraine “100%” https://tinyurl.com/5xx9hz7d
// GOP Rep. Michael McCaul says U.S. military aid that’s “destroying the Russian military” has been a “pretty good investment.”
🐣 RT @nytimes NATO’s secretary general warned on Friday that Russia’s war in Ukraine could expand into a wider war with the Atlantic alliance.
⋙ NYT: NATO’s secretary general warns that a ‘full blown war’ with Russia is ‘a real possibility.’ https://tinyurl.com/mpa676cb
// “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published on Friday.
🐣 RT @marceelias There is no doubt that in 2022, democracy was on the docket and it won!
🐣 RT @k_sonin Cannot stop thinking about today’s fire in the former IKEA mall near Moscow. When it opened in 2000, it was a whole new world for us. The pucture is so symbolic of Putin’s destruction of Russia. Everything good has to go.
TheGuardian: Putin suggests possibility of settlement to end war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yeebrn69 “Despite all evidence to the contrary, Putin claimed that his military operation was going to plan. ‘Everything is stable. There are no questions or problems there,’ he said”
// Russian president still claims ‘special military operation’ going to plan during Kyrgyzstan press conference
🐣 .[…] such an insightful song about love:
♫ It was almost love
It was almost always
It was like a fairytale we’d live out
You and I
And yes some dreams come true
And yes some dreams fall through
And yes the time has come for us to say goodbye
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CUT AND RUN? Abbas Gallyamov, a former aide to the Russian President, claims that Putin and his entourage are buying up property on Venezuela’s Margarita Island in the event they have to leave Russia. The Daily Beast reports.
⋙ DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Putin Is Preparing to Flee When Russia Implodes, Ex-Aide Says https://tinyurl.com/39t5np75
// 12/7/2022; “The leader’s entourage has not ruled out that he will lose the war, be stripped of power, and have to urgently evacuate somewhere.”
🐣 RT @duty2warn The ALL CAPS nutcase is at it again. He is deranged, delusional, sociopathic, and increasingly maniacal. To treat him as a serious presidential candidate, is preposterous. MSM needs to stop normalizing him! He’s a blathering fool. A traitor. A criminal. A butt-naked ex-Emperor.
🐣 RT @justartsndstuff Girkin: “The whole world is laughing at Russia. For 9 months we managed to be defeated by Ukraine. ¤ In the heads of the president and the elites, the war is lost” ¤ @vidtranslator ¤ translate
⋙ 🐣 RT @olga_penina Openly calling for a military coup
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Bakhmut Holds! ¤ My recent communication with a unit on the ground confirmed the information about the difficult situation forming on the south eastern sector of the frontline. Russian forces are currently attacking from three directions the battles rage.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw This would be more serious than DOJ just saying they believe documents are still missing: ¤ “Trump attorneys had received word in early November from Justice officials who said they believed the former president still had documents in his possession.”
⋙ CNN: Justice Department demanding Trump team attest all documents marked classified have been returned https://tinyurl.com/49pv4dk8
🐣 RT @kpolantz Happening now: Jay Bratt +DOJ prosecutors in a sealed hearing w Trump lawyers before Chief Judge Howell in DC. It’s about holding Donald Trump in contempt re: classified docs subpoena. ¤ 12+ reporters, our lawyer @CTobinJD waiting outside the courtroom, asking for public access
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/kpolantz/status/1601292825177784320?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 2100 UTC 9 DEC/ UKR tactical elements have established positions across the P-66 HWY in the vicinity of Chervonopopivka. On the west bank of the Krasna River, RU forces have targeted artillery on UKR observation points (OPs) near the town of Ploshchanka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1601317251545968641?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost What the actual fuck? Deranged lunatic keeps responding to himself this morning on all his posts.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1601252434516402176?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Thank you!
⋙ 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump ELON: The Twitter releases are a revelation in that they show, in a very powerful fashion, the FBI and “Justice” illegally colluding, proving conclusively, in one more very powerful way, that the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged & Stolen. What everyone is REALLY waiting to see, however, is the Twitter information and thought process leading up to the time of the so-called “Election,” and ultimately the “Deplatforming” of the President of the United States. Big moment in history. Thank you!
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost What a lunatic.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1601250254539497472?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Police State!
⋙ 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [ts] WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE FBI & “JUSTICE” DEPARTMENT? THEY SEEM TO BE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL! THERE IS, RIGHT NOW, A “WEAPONIZATION” OF JUSTICE THE LIKES OF WHICH OUR COUNTRY HAS NEVER SEEN BEFORE. THE TWITTER AND FACEBOOK SCANDAL HAS ALREADY PROVEN TO BE, WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN,THEIR MOST SINISTER ACT IN HISTORY. EVEN THE RINOS & THE WEAK ARE OPENLY ADMITTING THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS RIGGED, BUT IN A DARKER WAY THAN EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE. SO MANY LIVES DESTROYED!
Reuters: U.S. House overwhelmingly approves bill backing record military spending https://tinyurl.com/2p9ycj8y The bill, which passed 350-80 “paves the way for the defense budget to hit a record $858 billion next year, $45 billion more than proposed by President Joe Biden”
⋙ 🐣 “The fiscal 2023 NDAA authorizes $858 billion in military spending and includes a 4.6% pay increase for the troops, funding for purchases of weapons, ships and aircraft; and support for Taiwan as it faces aggression from China and Ukraine as it fights an invasion by Russia.”
// tags: Defense Budget
NYT Editorial: This Case Should Never Have Made It to the Supreme Court https://tinyurl.com/2p8yvsb4 Moore v Harper argues that state legilstures are not subject to state judicial review or veto power in setting federal election rules: it is the (hopefully) last Jan 6 court case
// independent state legislature theory
Jacobin, Tony Wood: Since Boris Yeltsin, Russians Have Been Living in an Imitation Democracy https://tinyurl.com/2ewfnh29 “The 2000s were marked by … Russia’s growing resentment of its choice between subordination or exclusion from the post–Cold War order”
Imitation Democracy was written in the late 2000s, synthesizing the remarkable analysis of the post-Soviet political order that Dmitrii Furman had developed over the previous few years. It was first published in Russian in 2010, just after the high point of what Furman called the “imitation-democratic” system. By the time it came out, Vladimir Putin had served two terms as president (2000–2004 and 2004–8) and handed power to his appointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev — a seamless transition, validated by apparently democratic elections, that displayed the system’s confidence and solidity. But as Furman argued back in 2010, the very nature of the system meant that it was headed for a period of crisis sooner or later.
… Most coverage of the country had tended to set Russia alongside one or more Western states, with occasional provocative exceptions comparing it to other middle-income countries. Furman, by contrast, placed Russia in the company of the states that in fact most closely resembled it: the fourteen other republics that had emerged from the disintegration of the USSR.
The question was how and why the trajectories of these countries diverged after 1991. Here, Furman drew on his prior formation as a scholar of comparative religion, finding deep cultural roots for the different political systems that would emerge during the 1990s. But he also ascribed many of the gaps that began to open up between former Soviet states to their differing endowments: their degrees of regional and ethnolinguistic diversity, their confessional divisions, the extent to which their social structures tended toward hierarchy or rough egalitarianism. All of these were enabling, though not in themselves sufficient, conditions for a given country to break from the “imitation-democratic” pattern with which they had all begun.
… Furman highlights the degree to which countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan were able to establish more genuinely competitive political systems than that in Russia. (In this respect, too, he was engaging in a comparison many of his fellow Russian liberals would find uncomfortable: in the march toward democracy, had Russia fallen behind Kyrgyzstan?)
Yet the Colour Revolutions that took place in these countries — Rose in Georgia in 2003–4, Orange in Ukraine in 2004, Tulip in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 — were the exceptions: the imitation-democratic regime type remained dominant across most of the post-Soviet space through the 2000s. Within that species, Russia’s was the most stable and successful of all, reaching an undisturbed maturity — what Furman calls its “golden age” — in Putin’s second presidential term, from 2004–8.
… [Furman] argues … , a period of crisis awaited, in which the contradictions of the system would multiply. These included not only a widening gap between democratic “form” and authoritarian “content,” but also an atrophying of “feedback mechanisms” — a loss of contact between rulers and ruled, rendering it ever more difficult for the regime to get an accurate read on society.
At this point, the very impulses to control society and eliminate political challenges that had enabled its consolidation would turn from assets to liabilities. For Furman, this was not so much a matter of individual failings as of systemic evolution. In his biological metaphor, after reaching maturity imitation democracies inevitably enter a period of senescence and decline. Either their grip on power is loosened, or the very tightening of that grip produces crises of rule. The question then becomes one of whether the system is swept away by those crises, or whether it can survive them by adapting or renewing itself.
… Furman clearly did not imagine Putin would return to power in 2012, let alone that he would remain there a decade later, his grip on power extended indefinitely thanks to a 2020 constitutional amendment. But this in itself arguably confirms Furman’s diagnosis of senescence.
… Faced with multiplying dangers — the fallout from the global economic crisis after 2008, the sudden upsurge of popular protest at home in 2011 — Russia’s ruling system responded by returning Putin to power and heightening its use of repressive methods. An imitation democracy still in the process of growth would have been able to find another leader, would have imagined other options for its prolongation beyond simply insisting on more of the same.
… When Furman was writing, many of the events that would prepare the ground for the present disaster still lay in the future: the Maidan protests and fall of Viktor Yanukovych in 2013–14, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for separatist militias in the Donbas over the following years, and the establishment of sanctions against the Russian regime by the United States and its allies.
Even in the wake of all this, the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 [was] indicative of precisely the kinds of pathology Furman identified as likely in an imitation-democratic regime in its senescence: a narrowing of decision-making circles, a lack of feedback mechanisms, and above all a growing insulation of those at the top from reality.
… The 2000s were marked by the expansion of NATO into former Soviet republics, and by Russia’s growing resentment of its choice between subordination or exclusion from the post–Cold War order.
… Furman situated [CIS] in a longer historical arc, identifying it as the “final form of the Russian empire,” which was now reaching the end of a century-long process of dissolution. Made fifteen years ago, his arguments about Russian nationalism and imperialism seem especially worth returning to in the light of current events
Furman identified three distinct avatars of the Russian empire, each embodying a distinct stage of its entropic decline. The first, of course, was the vast domain of the Romanov dynasty, which was different from its European peers in lacking a distinction between metropole and colony. For much of the empire’s existence, Russian ethnicity also conferred little advantage on its citizens (indeed in many cases the reverse applied: Poles and Finns could exercise more liberties than Russian serfs). Yet in the second half of the nineteenth century, a combination of top-down Russification policies and an expansion of literacy fostered a growth of national consciousness across the empire, leading to mounting centrifugal tensions
In 1917, the empire fell apart under the pressure of world war and popular revolt. It could only be knitted back together by shifting its foundations: in the wake of the Civil War, the Bolsheviks created a nominally federal union that enshrined the rights of national minorities, while remaining strictly unitary and centralized in practice. This was a second incarnation of the empire, but a highly contradictory one. For Furman, while the USSR replicated the tsarist empire in territorial outline, it was distinct from it in its deliberate submergence of Russian nationalism. The price of continued de facto Russian dominance was its de jure denial. …
For Furman, the abruptness of the USSR’s collapse crucially conditioned the character of Russia’s “post-imperial syndrome.” In a March 1991 referendum held across most of the Union — the exceptions were the Baltic states, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova — an overwhelming majority of voters, some 78 percent, supported the preservation of the USSR. Nine months later, however, the Union was dissolved by the presidents of only three of its constituent republics. (As Furman put it, “somewhere in the Belovezha forest [in Belarus], three men got together and overnight, ‘over a half-litre’ [bottle of vodka], decided everything.”)
The speed and furtiveness of this decision would have far-reaching consequences. Not only was Russian society “not prepared for non-imperial existence and non-imperial politics”; on a more basic level, “the collapse of the USSR was not understood as the emergence of fundamentally new relations between truly independent states.”
This was why, for Furman, the CIS that emerged from the USSR’s ruins was such an ambiguous construct: at once an association of free and sovereign states, and a fictive container for an imperial politics Russia had yet to relinquish — a privileged zone of influence that it termed its “near abroad.” Yet this third avatar of the Russian empire was an extremely weak, diluted one, offering only a “phantom unity” across what used to be the imperial space. The newly independent states would inevitably diverge.
… Furman argued, the fate of the Commonwealth of Independent States was ultimately tied to that of imitation-democratic regimes themselves — which in his view were slated for disappearance, sooner or later. In line with this, it is not coincidentally the countries that have diverged most from Russia in terms both of their internal politics and above all their geopolitical alignment that have peeled away from the CIS: Georgia withdrew in 2008 and Ukraine from 2014 onward.
… [I]t may make more sense to take Furman’s analysis of Russian imperial decline less as a prediction than as a diagnosis. ¤ … [I]f imperial politics and imitation democracy are functionally interlinked, then bringing about such a shift will also require a democratization from within that is accompanied by a rejection of the imperial worldview — a rethinking of Russia’s place in the world and of its purposes and possibilities at home.
🐣 RT @NOELreports The use of sports to whitewash war crimes is disgusting – Dmitry Kuleba reminded IOC President Thomas Bach about 184 Ukrainian athletes killed by the Russian Federation in response to a proposal not to politicize sports
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1601131939406446594?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Since February, Russia has killed 184 Ukrainian athletes. And now Mr. Bach is quoting Emmanuel Macron as allegedly saying “sports should not be politicized” and athletes from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus should be treated equally. Using sports to whitewash war crimes is sickening.
⭕ 8 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag ✓ Remarkable video: an apparently intoxicated Putin admits to deliberately destroying Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure but claims Ukraine “started it”
💽 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1601010612380672000?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Richard36791883 ”They started it”. Very mature. But on a serious note, if this video is out someone let it out. And in that case his days are numbered. He has become a liability for Russia. Good riddance.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/1400 UTC 8 DEC/ Heavy fighting continues as RU presses platoon & company sized assaults on the line of contact. Reports indicate that a Russian assault south of the H-32 HWY has reached the embankment of a retention pond on the Bakhmutka River north-east of Ivangrad.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1600849805932392453?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KREMENNA/0230 UTC 8 DEC/ UKR is exploiting the interdiction of the P-66 HWY between Ploschanka and Chervonopopivka. Tactical pressure is being exerted on Kremenna in the north, at Zhytiivika, and south of of the urban area at Shypylivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1600681677982142464?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @judgeluttig Let me correct the record below and say that I told @neal_katyal yesterday after we left the Court that his was the single best oral argument I have ever heard made before the Supreme Court of the United States. He was masterful!
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal Such a privilege to argue #MoorevHarper in the Supreme Court on behalf of Becky Harper, @CommonCause & other voter protection groups. Anything you liked in my argument was really the product of incredible work by so many, especially @judgeluttig, Abha Khanna, Elisabeth Theodore +
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal Stanton Jones, Allison Riggs, Katie Wellington, Will Havemann, Olivia Molodanof, Sam Hirsch, Jessie Amunson, Zach Shauf, Erik Zimmerman, and many many more. ¤ A decision is expected by June, 2023.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal I can’t tell you how many sleepless nights these people put into this. If you know any of them, please thank them.
WaPo: War has tamed Ukraine’s oligarchs, creating space for democratic change https://tinyurl.com/4asd7apk “This is the end of an epoch, the end of a political culture,” said a former adviser to Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky’s top aide
// Ukraine may have the opportunity to rebuild a postwar society that is more democratic, less corrupt and more economically diversified
[Russia’s] attacks were designed to leave Ukraine cold and dark this winter. But they also deepened a financial crisis for the plant’s owner, Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest man. ¤ Akhmetov’s wealth has dived from $7.6 billion to $4.3 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to Forbes. In 2012, before Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in Ukraine’s east, locations where Akhmetov also had numerous assets, the magazine estimated his wealth at $16 billion. …
One billionaire becoming less of a billionaire isn’t breaking hearts in a country fighting a war for its very existence. But it provides some insight into how the Russian invasion is affecting Ukraine’s oligarchs, a group of fewer than 20 fantastically wealthy people who have wielded outsize — and often, anti-corruption activists contend, malign — influence over Ukraine’s politics, economy and society since the country’s independence in 1991.
“This is the end of an epoch, the end of a political culture,” said Viktor Andrusiv, a former adviser to Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top aide, who has written extensively about Ukraine’s oligarchs and is now fighting on the front lines in the Ukrainian army. …
Pressure on oligarchs had already been building before Russia’s invasion, with a “de-oligarchization” law promoted by Zelensky that took effect this year. The law places limits on the political activity of super-rich individuals who meet certain criteria, including those who have major holdings in television and other media to press their financial interests and political agenda. The Zelensky government is also crafting antitrust measures to crack down on monopolies controlled by oligarchs in areas from coal mining to electricity to railroads.
“The system was so strong and well institutionalized that it was quite difficult to break, but we will do everything we can to make sure it never recovers,” said Rostyslav Shurma, a close economic aide to Zelensky who previously worked for many years as a top executive in Akhmetov’s steel company, Metinvest. … …
WaPo: Walker’s loss in Ga. spurs new GOP hand-wringing, calls for new strategy https://tinyurl.com/yu8wt9yu “A longtime Republican operative associated with McConnell, summed it up in a tweet Wednesday morning: ‘Georgia may be remembered as the state that broke Trump once & for all’
⭕ 7 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en [12/10/2022] Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after multiple strikes against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure – @thetimes
⋙⋙ TheTimes [UK]: US gives Ukraine green light for drone warfare inside Russia https://tinyurl.com/ykbvp7p5
// The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile
⋙ 🐣 [12/10/2022] … more like “turning a blind eye”:
YahooNews (12/7): U.S. has not encouraged Ukraine escalation in war with Russia – White House national security spokesman John Kirby https://tinyurl.com/3t6b293r “We have not encouraged them to do that”
WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) – The United States has been very clear with Ukraine about accountability over weapons systems and its concerns over escalation of the war with Russia, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
“We have been consistent on our concerns over over escalation. We have not encouraged them to do that,” Kirby told reporters, after apparent Ukrainian drone strikes on two airbases deep inside Russia. (Reporting by Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu;Editing by Franklin Paul)
WSJ: Pope Francis Compares War in Ukraine to the Holocaust https://tinyurl.com/3z2a5w37 “Pope Francis on Wednesday compared the war in Ukraine to the Nazi genocide of the Jews, in his latest escalation of rhetoric on the war.”
// Pontiff intensifies his rhetoric on Russia’s invasion, which he recently likened to the Soviet genocide
Greeting Polish pilgrims at his weekly public audience at the Vatican, the pope noted a recent commemoration of Operation Reinhardt, the 1941 German effort to exterminate the Jews of Poland, which killed about two million people. ¤ “History repeats itself, repeats itself. Look at what is happening now in Ukraine,” the pope said, in an apparently off-the-cuff comment added to his prepared text. …
The pope last month compared the war in Ukraine to Stalin’s 1930s terror famine, which he called genocide. Though he followed his usual practice of not naming Russia as the aggressor on Wednesday, his latest comment seemed likely to irritate Moscow, which has presented its invasion as an effort to “denazify” Ukraine, falsely claiming that the government is controlled by a cabal of American-sponsored neo-Nazis.
SCOTUS Hearing Transcript: Moore v Harper (“Independent State Legislature”) https://tinyurl.com/2adp3yp7
// Timothy Moore vs David Thompson, Neal Katyal, Donald Verrelli, Elizabeth Prelogar
(adv:) Judge Luttig;; Katyal starts at p 70
TheGuardian: Reichsbürger: the German conspiracy theorists at heart of alleged coup plot https://tinyurl.com/bzatjzk3 The group’s members “believe the German state is an artificial construct that illegitimately replaced the ‘Deutsche Reich’ of the Nazi era”
// Despite description of alleged plotters by prosecutors as a ‘motley crew’, the threat was considered very real
At 6am on Wednesday, German special forces stormed a house in the Berlin lakeside villa quarter of Wannsee and arrested a former MP of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Birgit Malsack-Winkemann. Three minutes later, they entered the Waidmannsheil hunting lodge in Bad Lobenstein in Thuringia. Simultaneous raids took place in 30 other locations, including a car repair shop and a carpenters’ studio, as well as in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbühel and the Italian city of Perugia.
Twenty-five people were arrested, and by lunchtime eight of them were in police custody, among them a serving soldier of the elite KSK unit, a lawyer, a pilot, a gourmet chef and a prince, the alleged ringleader who had led the plans to overthrow the German state and replace it with a “monarchistic order”. …
The most dominant among the group of what the state prosecutors called a “conglomerate of conspiracy theorists” were the Reichsbürger, who believe the German state is an artificial construct that illegitimately replaced the “Deutsche Reich” of the Nazi era. …
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Brave nation. Superb political and military leadership. They must fight or disappear as a people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IanBremmer the only correct choice:
🖼 https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1600499099383599107?s=20/photo/1
// TIME: 2022 Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelenskyy
NYT: After Georgia Loss, G.O.P. Stares Down Its Trump Dilemma https://tinyurl.com/4znw7w8p “The midterm losses like Mr. Walker’s not only squashed the G.O.P.’s high hopes of retaking control of the Senate but also signaled the party’s steep climb ahead”
// Republicans from Georgia to Washington traded blame for their bruising defeats in the Senate races. Much of it landed on Donald Trump.
EDNY (DOJ): Russian Intelligence Agent Charged with Fraud and Money Laundering https://tinyurl.com/5a49wmz2 “Kremlin-backed Ukrainian politician and oligarch, Andrii Derkach, was sanctioned for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election … ”
// Full title: Russian Intelligence Agent Charged with Fraud and Money Laundering in Connection with Purchase and Use of Luxury Beverly Hills Real Estate
// Defendant Was Sanctioned in 2020 for Attempting to Interfere in the U.S. Presidential Election
“Kremlin-backed Ukrainian politician and oligarch, Andrii Derkach, was sanctioned for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election on behalf of the Russian Intelligence Services. While participating in a scripted Russian disinformation campaign seeking to undermine U.S. institutions, Derkach simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit from a Western lifestyle for himself and his family in the United States. The FBI will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to identify Russian intelligence operations, disrupt Russian information laundering networks, and bring to justice those who seek to engage in criminal conspiracies to undermine the integrity of U.S elections and evade U.S. sanctions,” stated Assistant Director-in-Charge Driscoll.
“Attempting to enjoy the safety, security, and freedoms of an open society, while secretly working to undermine that very society, is a hypocrisy that runs through every sanctions charge announced by the Task Force. It is a particularly egregious hypocrisy in the case of Andrii Derkach – sanctioned for attempts to undermine American democracy, while corruptly seeking to benefit from its protections,” said Task Force KleptoCapture Director Andrew C. Adams.
Since 1998, except for a hiatus from November 2006 to November 2007, Derkach was a member of the Verkhovna Rada (Rada), Ukraine’s Parliament. During his time in the Rada, Derkach was a member of the Party of Regions, a pro-Russia political party, which was the ruling party in Ukraine from 2010 until the 2014 Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution. On September 10, 2020 the United States Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned Derkach and several companies he controlled pursuant to Executive Order 13848, calling him “an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services” who “waged a covert influence campaign” to undermine the 2020 U.S. presidential election. …
TheBulwark, Joe Perticone: House Republicans ‘May Dig Their Own Grave’ With Fringe Political Investigations https://tinyurl.com/4mff6tbt
// The contrast between the two chambers may become quite pronounced during the 118th Congress.
🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump BREAKING-Mitt Romney BLASTS Republicans over their plan to “investigate” Hunter Biden: “The American people want us to tackle some of the big challenges we have—immigration, inflation, and so forth—& the other things that divert from those priorities I think are a waste of time.”
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Good timing…Derkach was IDed by the *Trump admin* of being a Russian agent working to spread to disinfo in 2020 to discredit Biden, & Giuliani, who gave the Hunter Biden laptop contents to the NY Post, was working w/ him in this effort. I explain here:
⋙⋙ MotherJones, David Corn: What Musk and Co. Want You to Forget About #TwitterFiles https://tinyurl.com/h2545vnj
// The billionaire, Trump, and the right are ignoring an inconvenient backstory.
… … After Musk acquired Twitter, he decided to revisit this episode. He turned over Twitter’s internal records to Matt Taibbi to report on what had occurred within Twitter regarding the Biden laptop. …
On Friday night, Taibbi, citing those internal documents, posted a long Twitter thread that reported on how Twitter had dealt with the Biden laptop story. But the thread did not reveal a massive conspiracy. It showed Twitter employees scrambling to manage a tough issue. As New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo noted, the thread amounted to a “half dozen screenshots of content moderation policy executives earnestly debating content moderation policy.”
Musk, in a tweet, claimed Taibbi’s report showed “government involvement in censoring people on Twitter,” that was not the case. No one in the government had pushed Twitter to shut down the laptop story. The Biden campaign—which was not a government entity—did ask Twitter to block the sharing of dick pics from the laptop, a request in line with Twitter’s rules and reportedly honored. According to Taibbi’s thread, in 2020 the Trump White House also asked Twitter to repress material, and the company assented. Hardly evidence that Twitter was covertly plotting with the Biden camp to crush Trump.
Musk demonstrated tremendous ignorance and bad faith. In response to a Taibbi tweet citing a Twitter document saying that requests from the “Biden team” were “handled,” Musk tweeted, “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” As conservative (non-Trumper) writer David French pointed out, “Biden was not president in 2020, and therefore there was no government involvement in his campaign’s requests. The First Amendment is not implicated when only private actors are involved.” Kevin Fox, a tech developer, put it this way: “A political campaign sends Twitter a list of tweets that refer to the campaign and violate Twitter’s terms of service and Twitter takes them down. This is what Elon Musk says tonight is a ‘blatant violation of the 1st Amendment’, as he willfully misrepresents the facts.”
The bottom-line: The Taibbi thread showed no conspiracy, just a hot mess. Twitter employees were in a difficult situation, striving to figure out what to do about the laptop article. …
Indeed, Twitter and others had good reason to be suspicious about the Hunter Biden story, given its origins. For over a year, Giuliani and other Trumpers had been trying to gin up a scandal about Biden and Ukraine. As part of this endeavor, Giuliani had been working with a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach, who was promoting the unproven allegation Biden had improperly forced the firing of that Ukrainian prosecutor to help Hunter and Burisma. And Derkach was bad news.
Weeks before the laptop story, the US Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions on Derkach—the son of a former KGB official—and dubbed him “an active Russian agent for over a decade.” It was the Trump administration that declared Derkach was one of a group of “Russia-linked election interference actors.” The Treasury said he had maintained “close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services” and had “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 US presidential election.” Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s own Treasury secretary, proclaimed, “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.” Previously, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had told Congress that Derkach was “spreading claims about corruption” as part of the Kremlin’s effort to undermine Biden’s campaign.
Here was yet another Russian attack on a US election, and Giuliani was in league with one of its perps. This was all public information when the laptop story broke. And, as the New York Post reported, Giuliani had a starring role in this caper, for he was the source who had shared the laptop with the New York Post. Of course, this rendered the whole thing suspect. Plus, the New York Post story presented as fact the debunked allegation that Biden had corruptly pushed to fire the prosecutor to aid his son and Burisma. (I went into all the details when the New York Post article first appeared.) So Murdoch’s propaganda outfit was citing the laptop to back up the Russia-pushed Ukrainian bunk. This story—through Giuliani—was directly connected to a Kremlin disinformation operation—which, I repeat, had been identified by the Trump administration.
Moscow was at it again, according to Trump’s own appointees. Thus, there was cause to wonder about this Giuliani-linked laptop story and to be cautious about spreading it. Perhaps Twitter made the wrong call. But it was not pressured by the Deep State or anyone else to do so. At the time, Russia was scheming to discredit Biden, and Giuliani was colluding with this endeavor. Whether the laptop was real or not—whether the data on it could be trusted or not—the New York Post was eagerly using it to bolster a false narrative being promoted by a Russian agent. That’s what made the story problematic. …
Had the nation fully accepted the reality of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and had the Trump administration’s own conclusion that Putin in 2020 was once more trying to assist Trump via information warfare been widely recognized (and acknowledged by Trump and his loyalists), the New York Post story would have been clearly seen for what it mainly was: an amplification of Moscow’s anti-Biden skullduggery. Context matters. This story did not appear out of the blue. Yet the Trump-Russia denialism of 2016 had fostered an atmosphere in which talk of Russian interference was routinely dismissed by the right—and by such Russian hoax hoaxers as Taibbi and Greenwald. Giuliani was publicly working in the open with a Russian agent in this operation, and that didn’t spark a full-scale scandal.
What Twitter did at the time, right or wrong, was not as significant as the joint Russia-Giuliani operation. Yet Trump World denizens have focused on the handling of the New York Post story to concoct yet another deflective scandal. Musk and Taibbi have played right into their hands. …
Republicans, no surprise, leaped to embrace this new bogus scandal. GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy exclaimed, “We’re learning in real-time how Twitter colluded to silence the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop just days before the 2020 presidential election.” He suggested House Republicans would launch an investigation once they take over in January. Expect it to get the full Benghazi treatment.
How did Trump respond to Taibbi’s nothingburger? In a social media post, The Former Guy insisted it revealed “MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD AND DECEPTION.” He called for throwing out the 2020 election results and noted that “fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination” of the US Constitution. He essentially asserted he should now be installed as president. Or, perhaps more accurately, dictator.
This is what Musk and Taibbi—and their enablers—wreaked: a former president and current presidential candidate exploiting their alt-right kowtowing to call for the suspension of constitutional governance. What’s next? A call for armed resistance? Good work, fellas. This is exactly what the Russians want: division-driven politics in the United States that covers up their repeated efforts to boost a bigoted, narcissistic, and chaos-fomenting authoritarian. In his few short weeks as the uber-man of Twitter, red-pilled Musk has done much damage to the site and its brand. Advertisers are fleeing, trolls and bots are being empowered, and racists, antisemites, and Nazis have been welcomed back online. Moreover, Musk has now fueled the irrational paranoia of far-right extremists and bolstered support for Trump’s dangerous claims that he and his followers are victims of nefarious and evil schemers. Musk’s machinations may be doing more than breaking Twitter. They are contributing to the breaking of the nation.
🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports US indicts Andrii Derkach on sanctions busting charges. ¤ EDNY US Attorney: “The conduct of this Kremlin asset, who was sanctioned for trying to poison our democracy, has shown he is ready, willing, and capable of exploiting banking system in order to advance his illicit goals.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports If that name is familiar to you, you were paying attention before the 2020 election — and during its aftermath.
⋙⋙ Law&Crime (2020): U.S. Sanctions Three Russians and Rudy Giuliani Ally Known as ‘Ukrainian Putin’ for Election Meddling https://tinyurl.com/bde53fs4
// 9/10/2020
The U.S. Department of Treasury on Thursday sanctioned three Russian nationals and one Ukrainian politician with ties to the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for attempting to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Andrii Derkach, a pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian Parliament, saying that he’s been an active Russian agent with close ties to the Kremlin for over a decade.
“Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election,” read the statement from Treasury. “Today’s designation of Derkach is focused on exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting our upcoming elections from foreign interference. This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated.”
Derkach, who was once dubbed the “Ukrainian Putin,” assisted Giuliani last year in drafting a counter-report aimed at discrediting the investigation of former special counsel Robert Mueller. Derkach provided Giuliani with “flagrantly inaccurate information” that reached the highest levels of the U.S. government.
The son of a KGB officer, Derkach released a series of edited audio recordings earlier this year that he claimed revealed corrupt conversations between Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko.
“Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday. “The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.”
Russian nationals Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev, and Darya Aslanova, all of whom were apparently employed by the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), were also designated for supporting the organization’s cryptocurrency accounts. According to Treasury, the IRA uses a series of cryptocurrencies to fund its election meddling efforts “in furtherance of their ongoing malign influence operations around the world.”
Following the announcement of the sanctions, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) responded by maligning Senate Republicans’ ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden, saying it’s based in part on misinformation spread by Derkach.
“White Democrats are pushing for more aggressive action against Russian assets interfering in our elections, Republicans are using their conspiracy theories to advance bogus investigations,” Wyden said. “Senate investigations should not parrot conspiracy theories pushed by Russian agents under U.S. sanctions, and Senate Republicans should immediately abandon this blatantly political effort.”
🐣 RT @igorsushko DOJ has charged a Russian spy who fed Rudy Giuliani bogus dirt on the Biden family with money laundering over his alleged attempt to secretly buy two luxury Beverly Hills condos.
⋙ RollingStone: Rudy Giuliani’s Russian Spy Pal Charged With Money Laundering https://tinyurl.com/hu62pyxt “Giuliani publicly met with Derkach during a 2019 trip to Ukraine, where [Guiliani] was soliciting dirt about the Bidens in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election”
//. The Justice Department has charged Andrii Derkach, who fed Rudy Giuliani bogus dirt on the Biden family, with money laundering.
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT has charged a Russian spy who fed Rudy Giuliani bogus dirt on the Biden family with money laundering over his alleged attempt to secretly buy two luxury Beverly Hills condos.
Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian member of parliament who the Trump administration accused of being “an active Russian agent for over a decade,” allegedly used a shell corporation to hide his ownership of the condos and move the $4 million used to buy them, according to a criminal complaint.
“While participating in a scripted Russian disinformation campaign seeking to undermine U.S. institutions, Derkach simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit from a Western lifestyle for himself and his family in the United States,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Driscoll said in a press release accompanying the charges.
The Trump administration sanctioned Derkach shortly before the 2020 election on the grounds that he was “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who had “waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives” to influence the presidential election.
Derkach featured prominently in efforts by Rudy Giuliani to spread bogus conspiracy theories that former Vice President Joe Biden pressuring Ukraine to commit to anti-corruption measures was a secret plot to quash a criminal investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian company where Biden’s son, Hunter, served as a board member.
Giuliani publicly met with Derkach during a 2019 trip to Ukraine, where the then Trump lawyer was soliciting dirt about the Bidens in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election.
Derkach also cozied up to congressional Republicans by sending packages of alleged Biden dirt to Sens. Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, and then-Rep. Devin Nunes. U.S. intelligence and fellow lawmakers repeatedly warned lawmakers that Derkach had ties to Russian intelligence and was seeking to undermine the election, making some Republicans skittish about embracing the Ukrainian politician. But Giuliani was undeterred.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund I am sad to see that Jeffrey Sachs, my old friend & partner in advising the Russian reform government, 1991-94, now has gone all out in attacking democratic Ukraine & the West in favor of Putin’s authoritarian kleptocracy. I can no longer stand aside. ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/yy3rcabj
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund In the end, the interviewers ask: “To be clear, Professor Sachs, you’ve denounced Russia’s invasion as violent, of Ukraine?
Sachs: “I am sorry, Amy, I missed the opening.”
“You’ve denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?”
[Not done before in the interview.]
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund This is a morally disastrous answer. Only when prompted by a sympathetic interviewer can Sachs say that the Russian invasion was cruel, but he does not blame Russia or Putin for their invasion of Ukraine. He justifies Russia’s war of aggression & genocide (not mentioned).
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Sachs: “Of course. Absolutely, this was a collision that is disastrous, and the cruelty of the Russian invasion is enormous. But the foolishness, recklessness of the U.S. neoconservatives to push to this point is also something that needs accounting.” […]
⋙⋙ 🐣 The Republican Neocons are no longer a factor in US politics. The most pro-Ukraine forces in the US at this point are pro-democracy Democrats, many of whom opposed the Neocons in their heyday at the beginning of the (contrived) Iraq War. Sachs has become a pacifistic idealist
[ThreadReader Text]:
In the end, the interviewers ask: “To be clear, Professor Sachs, you’ve denounced Russia’s invasion as violent, of Ukraine?
Sachs: “I am sorry, Amy, I missed the opening.”
“You’ve denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?”
[Not done before in the interview.]Sachs: “Of course. Absolutely, this was a collision that is disastrous, and the cruelty of the Russian invasion is enormous. But the foolishness, recklessness of the U.S. neoconservatives to push to this point is also something that needs accounting.”
This is a morally disastrous answer. Only when prompted by a sympathetic interviewer can Sachs say that the Russian invasion was cruel, but he does not blame Russia or Putin for their invasion of Ukraine. He justifies Russia’s war of aggression & genocide (not mentioned).
Sachs has one aim: to blame the US, the West, NATO & in particular the neocons. But what are his specific arguments: “NATO as Ukraine’s security doesn’t work. It’s an explosive brew.” (=no argument, only emotions: Sachs does not like NATO).
An elementary observation is that the East European countries that managed to become members of NATO in time have been safe from Putin’s aggression, while Ukraine & Georgia who failed to flee into safety in time were attacked by Putin in 2008, 2014, and 2022.
Sachs makes a passionately pro-Russian statement about Crimea: “Crimea has been historically and will be in the future, effectively, at least de facto Russian.” This sounds like a justification of Stalin’s deportation of the Crimea Tartars in 1944. They were live there longer.
Is Sachs justifying the Soviet & Russian policy of offering retired military officers retirement in Crimea? Presumably he does know of such a policy.
Then he comes to the kleptocratic Ukrainian President Yanukovych, whom he incredibly defends. He “was negotiating with Russia to give, essentially, a long-term lease to satisfy Russia’s security desires and needs as a balancing…”
Sachs reveals his ignorance.In 1997, Ukraine leased Sevastopol to Russia for 20 years through a bilateral agreement with Russia. In 2010, Putin’s underling Dmitri Medvedev pressurized pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych to lease Sevastopol for another 25 years for dubious gas price discounts. He did so.
Russia could easily occupy Crimea in 2014.because Ukraine had allowed Russia to lease the Sevastopol naval base on Crimea. The lesson from Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 is that Ukraine needs to seize full control also of Sevastopol.
But Sachs, who does not know much about Russia or Ukraine, claims: “But the United State, very unwisely and very provocatively, contributed to the overthrow of Mr. Yanukovych in early 2014,setting in motion the tragedy before our eyes.”
This is a truly outrageous statement.First, on January 16, 2014, Yanukovych adopted the so-called “dictatorship laws” that just about passed through the Ukrainian parliament. They corresponded to Putin’s anti-democratic laws of 2005. The Ukrainian people & parliament rebelled & ousted Yanukovych the next month.
Second, this happened because of Ukraine’s strong civil society & democratic feelings, which Sachs could not care less about.
Third, the US did not play any role in Yanukovych’s ouster.What I most of all cannot understand about Sachs is that he refuses to criticize Putin in any way.
Does Sachs prefer dictatorship (Russia) over democracy (Ukraine & the West)? He had better clarify his preferences after even Democracy Now! ask him so!
In no way does he criticize Putin’s, or even Yanukovych’s, kleptocracy. Is he now all anti-Western, anti-US and prefer any vile authoritarian kleptocrat over a Western-oriented democrat?I could go on, but the case is so obvious.
Has Sachs stopped thinking and become a simplistic Putin propagandist?
Shape up, Jeff! Are you a serious intellectual any longer?
Are you for democracy?
Are you against kleptocracy?
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Anyone saying Donald is being cooperative in this additional search is guessing, and they’re guessing wrong in my opinion. A judge ORDERED this. Kise wanted to but trump rebuffed him. This is NOT the DoJ teaming up with a cooperative Donald to avoid another FBI search. 1/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote If the FBI has credible evidence of probable cause, they would search. Devlin Barrett is acting like the DoJ has hard evidence and is simply being nice to Donald by not searching. I seriously doubt that’s the case, and it’s really irresponsible for him to posit it. END/
↥ ↧
WaPo: Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida https://tinyurl.com/mpcap5jf
// The former president’s lawyers have told federal authorities no classified material was found in additional searches of Trump Tower in New York and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
🧵 RT @UNOFFICIAL_17 [Zelensky:] “I’ve held a meeting of the Staff today. Commanders’ reports, analysis of the situation in specific directions. ¤ First of all, regarding the Donetsk region, Bakhmut districts and other hottest spots. A very fierce confrontation is ongoing there, every meter counts. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/UNOFFICIAL_17/status/1600614255392333842?s=20
I thank all our guys who destroy the enemy right there – every day, every night, every hour. ¤. Of course, due attention was paid to the Luhansk region and Kharkiv region at the Staff’s meeting, there were reports on the situation in general and on the borders. /2
Energy sector is a permanent item on our agenda–at the Staff &government levels.I’ve held a meeting on the stabilization of the energy system&protection of power plants.We’re constantly increasing the generation&supply of electricity–we’re adding more volume almost every day./3
“I am grateful to all partners of our country! ¤ Glory to all who work for the victory! ¤ Glory to each of our warriors – to all those who obtain life for Ukraine! ¤. Glory to Ukraine!”/4
President Zelenskyy
🐣 RT @wartranslated Freshly de-mobilised Girkin takes sarcasm up a notch and promises to only comment on the special operation in the tone most favourable for Russian MoD. In line with the new approach, he lists the stages of the war as they would appear to genius strategists in Kremlin.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1600599629044846602?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ 🐣 RT @MariaJagcat Why is it even in Moscow he is not worried about being nullified by Putin?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Roland09191 Wow, that Falkenhayn reference is a masterful burn. Girkin hints at Falkenhayn’s “exhaustion strategy” which culminated in the 10-month battle of Verdun in WW1, which after massive losses on both sides did not prove decisive, without major gains for the Germans.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Megapaak If i would not know it any better, i would have guessed that he is on NATO payroll. I am really amazed that he can post such stuff without repercussions…
⋙ 🐣 RT @Rrrrolf He may be a real monster but he can throw shade with the best.
ABCNews: Trump hosts event featuring QAnon, ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theorist at Mar-a-Lago https://tinyurl.com/2cvnv9h8 “[T]he event was billed as a fundraiser in support of a ‘documentary’ on sex trafficking — one of the pillars of the QAnon conspiracy theory”
// tags: Liz Crokin: The event came two weeks after Trump had dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes
🐣 RT @shustry My story for TIME’s 2022 Person of the Year is partly about my trip with President @ZelenskyyUa to Kherson last month. On his private train, we talked about empires, Hitler and Stalin, Charlie Chaplin and Lee Kuan Yew, and a lot besides. Have a read:
⋙ TIME, Simon Shuster: TIME 2022 Person on the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky https://tinyurl.com/57kypd3u
🐣 RT @NOELreports “Soon there will be no safe zones in Russia. We will be able to hit all targets in the territory, including in Siberia. We have no range limits,” an anonymous defense adviser to the Ukrainian government told the Financial Times.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1600464608539463681?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Matt Bai: Kanye West, Elon Musk and the problem with public shaming https://tinyurl.com/26xethzp ‘1000s of slurs are 1000s too many, but Twitter has something like 41M daily active users in the US alone. We’re not talking about a remotely significant percentage of tweets’
WaPo: Drop in Republican turnout meant a bigger win for Warnock in Georgia runoff https://tinyurl.com/yckc36fk “Democrats padded their Senate majority on Tuesday night thanks in part to a rebuke of the Republican candidate in Georgia’s suburbs”
🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1600602549945569280?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Supreme Court majority questions massive shift of election authority https://tinyurl.com/y3d5xxfb “A majority of Supreme Court justices … seemed reluctant to conclude that state legislators have the power to set federal voting rules without any oversight from state courts”
💙 🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Well deserved ten times over. TIME’s 2022 Person of the Year is President Volodymyr Zelensky and the spirit of #Ukraine. #TIMEPOY https://tinyurl.com/2xfz45uw
🖼 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1600477386818158594?s=20/photo/1
NBCNews: Fauci criticizes ‘extreme’ ideological divide that has led to disproportionate Covid deaths https://tinyurl.com/3ewx5kxx “Differences in ideology are healthy. … But when they get so extreme that it prevents you from doing something that’s life saving, that is really awful” ~ Dr Fauci
// The president’s outgoing chief medical adviser told NBC News it was “unconscionable” that some people did not get the vaccine “based on political ideology.”
🐣 RT @mfa_russia Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia: ¤ Obviously, uncontrolled supply of weapons to the Kiev regime is turning into a global problem, which however fails to be a game changer on the ground. ¤ https://is.gd/ToEFZa
⋙ 🐣 Your claim that you bomb Ukraine’s infrastructure in order to “break the militaristic backbone of the Kiev regime” is hogwash, Your own tv propagandists have made clear the purpose to deprive the population of light, heat and water and force millions to flee. But they are strong:
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1600457094632681472?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky: “Without You”
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Given the incoherence of his campaign speeches, I was struck by Hershel’s moving concession speech. It was beautiful in its simplicity. No excuses. Walker showed grace and reaffirmed basic American values our politicians need to show in victory and defeat
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeNBC “I want you to believe in America, and continue to believe in the Constitution, and I especially want you to believe in our elected officials and pray for them.” ~Hershel Walker [link to speech]
WaPo: On east front with Ukrainian troops: Constant shelling, no heat or coffee https://tinyurl.com/24umyvtk “Ukrainians have refuted suggestions of an operational pause, saying that would just give Russia time to regenerate its forces at a moment they appear weakened”
⭕ 6 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @phildstewart @SecDef: U.S. is not preventing Ukraine from developing its own long-range strike capability
⋙ 🐣 Looks like a quote: Is there a source?
🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of Arestovych and Feygin daily broadcast, Day 286, December 6, 2022. This update was provided by Stepan: https://twitter.com/childsacrifice1
https://tinyurl.com/yc2yzxp8
[ThreadReader:] https://tinyurl.com/2p8kjab2
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1600404830375116801?s=20
WaPo: Warnock beats Walker in Ga. runoff, growing Democrats’ Senate majority https://tinyurl.com/2h9rvajk
// 51.4%/48.6%; Warnock’s win gave Democrats their 51st Senate seat — handing them more leverage in a chamber that for two years has been evenly split
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump issues a statement reacting to the verdict, blaming everything on Allen Weisselberg
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1600273846543650816?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports The United States of America has sufficient stockpiles of weapons to continue helping Ukraine, – US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Sanctioned Russian state-controlled VTB bank says it was hit by the largest cyberattack it has ever experienced, describing it in a statement as “unprecedented” [link] via CNBC
NYT: Trump Organization Found Guilty on All Counts in Tax Fraud Scheme https://tinyurl.com/4dzn5fbz
// The former president’s company had been accused of providing off-the-book benefits to executives. The testimony of its former chief financial officer proved crucial to the case.
🐣 RT @RiegerReport MCCONNELL: Anyone seeking the presidency who thinks that the Constitution could somehow be suspended or not followed, it seems to me would have a very hard time being sworn in as president of the United States.
💽 https://twitter.com/RiegerReport/status/1600217061640310802?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq I have Rudy G’s disciplinary hearing still going in the background today and all I can tell so far is the man is completely indignant and lacking in remorse. He doesn’t see anything he did as being unethical or improper.
⁉️🐣 RT @NOELreports Russia is ready for a diplomatic settlement of the situation in Ukraine to eliminate the reasons that forced the start of the special operation, — Deputy Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the UN Vasyl Nebenzia ¤ Losers, literally.
WaPo: Attacks on Russian airfields carried out by Ukrainian drones, Kyiv official says https://tinyurl.com/yeu965hc ‘A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that all three attacks were carried out by Ukrainian drones’
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Referring to a ceasefire, US Secretary of State @SecBlinken warned Russia could seek a phony off-ramp to the #Ukraine war that wouldn’t produce a durable peace & would only allow Russian troops to re-group and attack Ukraine again.
⋙⋙ CNN: Blinken warns against “phony off-ramp” for Russia https://tinyurl.com/4rnpvs4k
⋙ 🐣 it’s like, having failed to curb Macron in his views, the US (and much of Europe), has had to come out and clearly state the counter-narrative: ie that appeasement won’t work
🐣 RT @KyivPost President @ZelenskyyUa on Tuesday, Dec. 6, visited the frontline region of #Donetsk in east #Ukraine, describing fighting in the area as “difficult” with #RussianForces pushing to capture the industrial city of #Bakhmut.
⋙ KyivPost: Zelensky Visits Donbas Near ‘Difficult’ Ukraine Front https://tinyurl.com/4xaubvkb
🐣 RT @michaeldweiss War criminal Igor Girkin: Ukraine “will NOT freeze in winter, will NOT rebel and will NOT fight worse. Vice versa. Its soldiers…will only fight harder and harder against the ‘Muscovites,’ avenging the hardships that their relatives and friends in the rear are forced to bear.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin is back, and in a long post describing his impressions slanders the Russian approach, saying the Russian forces are apathetic, the soldiers don’t know what they’re fighting for, and is not expecting any success in the near future. https://t.me/strelkovii/3495
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1600112329059958786?s=20/photo/1 -3
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Everyone solemnly declaring that Ukraine must become “neutral” should remember that Ukraine was neutral, it did disarm, and the war is the result
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul As a Ukrainian friend reminded me today, Ukraine did not just give up nuclear weapons when signing the Budapest Memorandum, but also the strategic delivery vehicles – bombers and rockets – that would have been very useful to Ukraine in the fight to repel the Russain invaders now.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @oleksiireznikov Today marks the 28th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum. ¤ Ukraine fulfilled its part of the agreement to voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from 🇺🇲🇷🇺🇬🇧. 1/3
📌 https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1599798607669886977?s=20
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov 19 years later, russia waged war against us. To mark the anniversary of the agreement, today russia launched a new wave of missile attacks against Ukraine. ¤ The reaction of the world was insufficient. 2/3
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov This cannot happen again. Agreements must be honored. Evil must be punished. ¤ Ukraine’s victory = a new global security architecture = peace and stability in Europe. 3/3
🐣 RT @wartranslated The UAV attacks of today and yesterday are taken very seriously by Russian channels. For example, Zhivov shows that missile attacks against Ukraine cannot be considered an asymmetrical response and that soon Ukraine will be attacking targets even deeper in Russia.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1600086873711386624?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Today, 2 more airfields in Russia were attacked. One of the targets is Kursk. There, according to the governor, an oil reservoir caught fire. Also, “Povyornutie na voyne” channel reports that there was an attempt to attack the airport “Belbek”. However, the air defense shot down all enemy drones.
After yesterday’s attack on the airport in the city of Engels, we got a precedent in which Russia, in accordance with the “doctrine of nuclear deterrence,” can launch a retaliatory nuclear strike.
The situation is more serious than it seems. ¤ American satellites filmed and published the location of our nuclear missile carriers, and a few days later an American proxy attacks this airfield. Unthinkable military arrogance, to which Russia has not yet responded.
Planned missile strikes cannot be considered a symmetrical response to this kind of aggression. Even more, attacking only Ukrainian targets is not a symmetrical response. ¤ It is necessary to attack American facilities and global communications. Naturally, not with own hands. But without creating counter-threats, next time they will fly to Moscow.
The United States and its allies each time increase the degree of confrontation, climbing more and more beyond the red lines that do not exist: an attack on the Moskva, an attack on the Crimean bridge, the destruction of the Nordstreams, shelling of Belgorod and Crimea, strikes on strategic objects in Russia. Here we do not even touch on sabotage activities on the territory of Russia, which we have taken out of the brackets.
Someone, I remember, wrote back in the summer that everything would end with Russia demonstrating its inability to respond even to strategic threats to its security.
Yesterday’s missile strike [against Ukraine], judging by the comments of experts, did not fully achieve its goals. A large number of missiles were shot down. Which is also predictable after the delivery of Western air defense. Each time mass missile strikes will have less and less effect.
The fork in which we are now looks like this: either Russia sharply increases the degree of escalation, or the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Western allies continue to hit targets in ever deeper Russian rear.
🐣 RT @McFaul Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine! Glory to Ukraine!
⭕ 5 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 There should be no limitations on the right of Ukraine to defend their civilian population from criminal Russian attack. This was another brilliant tactical surprise against Russian assets firing from their own airspace and bases.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Today is the day the Ukrainian Air Force managed to strike two strategic airfields deep in the Russian rear and then repelled a major missile attack on the nation. ¤ Not a bad Monday, huh?
🐣 RT @Tendar If the new Ukrainian drones indeed have a range of 1000km then all Russian positions from the Finnish border down to Dagestan are in range. Even as deep as Kazan can be hit. ¤ That is definitely a game changer. #Ukraine #Russia
🌎 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1599674042058911745?s=20/photo/1
[Comments are great]
⋙ 🐣 RT @thebrexiteer Impressive how came up with Neptunes, sea drones and 1000km range air drones since 2/24 and all was able to do was buying crappy Iranian made plastic shaheed-136
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TheM_Dawini That’s because a huge part of the Soviet military industrial complex was located in Ukraine. The skills are there, it’s the funding that’s the problem. Ironically a lot of the missiles that Russia has thrown at Ukraine belonged to Ukraine until the disarmament in the 90s.
🐣 RT @Tendar Good morning! An oil storage facility at the Kursk airport in Russia has been hit by a drone. #Kursk #Russia #Ukraine
¤ https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1599997583434272769?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 the ingenious Ukrainians find a way: the US proscription on striking Ru only applies to US-made weapons; these drones appear to be Ukr modifications of “Soviet-era jet drones,” per @nytimes (unconfirmed)
⋙⋙ NYT: Ukraine Targets Bases Deep in Russia, Showing Expanded Reach https://tinyurl.com/yncj5fwm “Ukraine has already demonstrated its ability to use drones in new and unexpected ways, and to adapt old systems to perform new functions.”
// Launching drones at air bases 300 miles from its own territory, Ukraine changed the geography of the war. It said it had developed drones with a range of over 600 miles.
Ukraine executed its most brazen attack into Russian territory in the nine-month-old war on Monday, targeting two military bases hundreds of miles inside the country using drones, according to the Russian defense ministry and a senior Ukrainian official.
The drones were launched from Ukrainian territory, and at least one of the strikes was made with the help of special forces close to the base who helped guide the drones to the target, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to convey sensitive information.
The strikes signaled a new willingness by Kyiv to take the fight to bases in the heart of Russia, raising the stakes in the war, and demonstrated an improved ability to attack at a distance. Shortly after the attacks on the bases, Russia sent a barrage of missiles streaking toward Ukrainian cities.
The Kremlin said that the weapons launched by Ukraine were Soviet-era jet drones and were aimed at bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles from the Ukrainian border. It said that its forces had intercepted the drones, and that “the fall and explosion of the wreckage” had “slightly damaged” two planes, killing three servicemen and wounding four others. …
Ukraine’s Western backers have refused to supply it with long-range weapons that could strike far into Russian territory, trying to avoid being drawn more deeply into the conflict. But Ukraine’s state-owned weapons maker, Ukroboronprom, said in October that it was “finalizing the development” of a drone with a 165-pound warhead and a range of more than 600 miles, and said on Sunday that it had completed tests of the weapon.
“We hope to be able to test it in combat use,” Natalia Sad, a spokeswoman for the arms maker, said on national television Sunday night.
It was not clear how Ukrainian special forces were able to infiltrate Russia, or how close to either base they got. But the car bomb assassination in August of the ultranationalist commentator Daria Dugina, believed to have been carried out by Ukrainians, showed similar capabilities.
“Ukraine’s ability to strike deep into Russian territory is not just militarily significant,” said Max Bergmann, a former American diplomat and expert on European and Russian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“It also sends a message to Russia that continuing the war is not cost-free, that it is not just Ukraine which is vulnerable to long range drone and missile strikes; so is Russia,” Mr. Bergmann said. “This is useful for Kyiv, since when or if the two countries ever sit down, a commitment to stop attacks on Russian territory is now a valuable chip Ukraine has to offer.”
Ukraine has already demonstrated its ability to use drones in new and unexpected ways, and to adapt old systems to perform new functions.
The naval harbor of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was rocked by a series of mysterious explosions on Oct. 29. Footage of sleek, black maritime drones maneuvering around the bay targeting Russian warships soon emerged. Ukraine has still not acknowledged being behind the attack, but President Volodymyr Zelensky, while still not claiming credit, announced a fund-raising campaign to secure “a fleet of marine drones.” …
Only a few hours after the explosions in Russia on Monday, Ukrainian officials said that more than a dozen Russian bombers had taken off from the Engels-2 air base. Air-raid alarms sounded in Kyiv, the capital, and other cities. Ukraine’s Air Force said more than 70 missiles were fired and more than 60 shot down.
“Unfortunately, we still cannot ensure complete security to our sky — there were several hits,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “Unfortunately, there are victims. As of this time, there are four people killed by Russian strikes today.” …
🐣 RT @INTobservers Today the Armed Forces of Ukraine went on a breakthrough along the Svatove-Kreminna line, while the stupid Russian terrorists launched their missiles against the infrastructure. Expecting good news from this direction soon. Glory to the heroes 🇺🇦
🐣 RT @mhmck When Ukraine’s peer democracies refuse to shelter the sky, or provide long-range weapons to the defenders, or embargo trade with the aggressors they are making a moral choice that Russia’s unjust war will go on longer and more innocent Ukrainians will die.
📊 ChicagoCouncil Poll: Solid majorities of Americans continue to support supplying Ukraine with arms (65%) and economic aid (66%) https://tinyurl.com/yu3zd9sf (n=1,030 adults, 11/18-20/2022) Support among Democrats and Independents is stronger
⋙ Full Report: https://tinyurl.com/bddktbuu
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1600005983757078528?s=20/photo/1
⇈ ⇈
🚫 WaPo: Support slipping for indefinite U.S. aid to Ukraine, poll finds https://tinyurl.com/vy3pjdcv
🖼 MSN: Can Russia break Bakhmut? Putin wasted 6000 lives in two weeks trying https://tinyurl.com/ydh6jutc
// slideshow
🐣 RT @Tendar An extensive video from @wartranslated showing the situation in Bakhmut from the side of Ukrainian soldiers. ¤ According to them the Russian plan is to encircle Bakhmut by the end of this year. But AFU is confident to thwart that plan. #Bakhmut #Ukraine
💽 7min [tr] https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1599351395617951744?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AndyOstroy This moron doesn’t even realize that when he puts “legitimately” in quotes he’s actually telegraphing the fact he knows he’s full of shit and lost… #Trump
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AndyOstroy/status/1599956697417555968?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] WE WANT PEOPLE WHO “LEGITIMATELY” WON THE ELECTION TO LEAD OUR COUNTRY, NOT PEOPLE WHO HAD TO CHEAT IN ORDER TO WIN!!!
[Text:] SIMPLY PUT, IF AN ELECTION IS IRREFUTABLY FRAUDULENT, IT SHOULD GO TO THE RIGHTFUL WINNER OR, AT A MINIMUM, BE REDONE. WHERE OPEN AND BLATANT FRAUD IS INVOLVED, THERE SHOULD BE NO TIME LIMIT FOR CHANGE!
🐣 RT @ResisterChic Trump Monday denied wanted to terminate the Constitution, two days after suggesting the termination of all rules … even those found in the Constitution. ¤ He can deny all he wants but we have receipts and they can be used against him in court of law. #OurBlueVoice #ProudBlue22
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ResisterChic/status/1599968554694344704?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to “terminate” the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS. What I said was that when there is “MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,” as has been irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election, steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG. Only FOOLS would disagree with that and accept STOLEN ELECTIONS. MAGA!
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Among many reasons the rest of us have had a hard time comprehending the descent of so many Americans into mass psychosis is a belief that anyone who embraces such nuttery must have traumatic reasons for doing so. But it’s affluence and plenty, not trauma, that led us here. /1
This was a reason I was blocked for a time trying to write “Our Own Worst Enemy.” I wanted, very much, to take seriously the economic and social arguments about decline and hardship and all that made by both the right and left about why people were turning against democracy. /2
I read, with great care (as a working scholar), several works about liberal democracy and why it wasn’t working. It took a while before I just put them all down and realized most of them were basically hooey, especially the ones about “the elites” and yadda yadda yadda. /3
Because the problem staring right at us was that the threat was from people who were part of the dominant economic and political class. They were not part of the cultural “elite”, but never had been. And revisiting Hoffer and others, I realized we had our answer but hated it. /4
The danger was not some unemployed guy on opioids, it was from a bored woman named Marge who was tired of being married to a rich guy and having affairs at the crossfit gym. But to realize this is to realize that the problem is huge and perhaps impossible to solve. /5
Americans love problems we can fix. If only we cared more about the empty towns! If only we spent more on addiction! If only we could bring back good jobs!
But what if *none* of that will work? That’s the scary part. So we reject it. /6There is no bill you can pass, no social program, that will solve the problem of a dentist or realtor who has decided that life is just too goddamn dull and that they’re gonna spice up their week by getting some tactical gear and cosplaying the Second Civil War. /7
This is why I switched gears early on when writing “Our Own Worst Enemy.” If we’ve learned anything since 2017, it’s that the initial arguments about “elitism” and economics were very wrong. This is a civic vacuity that comes from peace, affluence and high standards of living. /8
This doesn’t mean we are hopeless, but we have to stop thinking we can fix or legislate our way out of this by rebuilding the downtown of East Cupcake or by handing out free college. Those ships have sailed. The way out is harder, if simpler. /9
For example:
– Concentrate on local issues as a way to build civic resilience
– Speak forcefully for civic values instead of being intimidated by kooks (and do not argue with their nuttery)
– Outvote them (duh)
– Do all of this in concert with like-minded citizens. /10
⋙⋙ 🐣 I essentially agree with this. Perhaps we are so biologically attuned to survival in the face of external threats that we create threats from imagined enemies, often our neighbors, when none exist. ¤ Then we see Russia and Ukraine and remember what a real enemy is like.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “He has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy in the wider global contest with authoritarianism that could define the course of the 21st century. Zelenskyy has also come to embody the courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people in their fight.”
⋙ FinancialTimes: FT Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelenskyy. ‘I am more responsible than brave’ https://tinyurl.com/7sf2b2as
// The president of Ukraine embodies the resilience of his people and has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy
🐣 RT @NOELreports Wonderful footage. Kadyrov’s henchmen film Russian anti-aircraft defenses unable to shoot down incoming GMLRS projectiles. They get audibly angry about it and are praying.
🔥 💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1599880923138228224?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Goodnight #Ukraine. Today Ukraine successfully attacked 2 Russian military airfields deep inside Russia. Today Ukraine successfully downed 60 of around 70 Russian cruise missiles. Today Ukraine successfully made Russia look fucking stupid & it’s only Monday
DefenseNews: Army plans ‘dramatic’ ammo production boost as Ukraine drains stocks https://tinyurl.com/yhvm7w4s
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian military researcher explains that such a tight arrangement of strategic bombers at airbases is due to a lack of expenditure in this type of weaponry, and only a few airbases are ready to take them.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1599874411431366656?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @wartranslated Reactions to the Engels airbase explosion: “Voennyi Obozrevatel” is not happy at all with the work of those protecting the airbases. https://t.me/milinfolive/94004
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1599703352475934720?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The sheep in the rear continue to demonstrate their absolute unsuitability. Neither Saki in the Crimea, nor Veretye in the Pskov region, nor even an attempt to strike drones on Shaikovka, where the Tu-22M3s are based, taught these people anything. That is, the trend of strikes against the airfields of the Aerospace Forces, and even more so, the aviation with long- range missiles, was obvious.
Sometimes it seems to us that these people can be put a bomb in their pocket – they still won’t notice anything, and if they notice, they will say that everything was planned. Even now, the airfields with strategic aviation cannot be covered by air defense systems with installed radars with AFAR (for example, Pantsir-SM) just to counter the small commercial drones that Ukrainian saboteurs use to attack objects on Russian territory almost from the very beginning of hostilities.
“Porvyornutie na voyne” write that there are no gabions or embankments on Engels. One can recall the drone attack on Khmeimim on New Year’s Eve from 2017 to 2018, where there were no means of protecting aviation at the front-line airfield either. Gabons began to be exhibited after the attack, which claimed the lives of several people and disabled equipment. And then, a few years later, hangars appeared, lo and behold. Same here, after the fact they will be showing off gabions and photographing their presence. When it’s no longer needed. And then everything is forgotten again.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Zhivov believes the attack gives Russia a legitimate reason for a nuclear strike
[Text:] The attack on Engels is a legitimate reason for a nuclear strike. Early this morning, an unknown UV attacked a completely defenseless airfield where our Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear missile carriers were stationed. Even the most loyal of bloggers are bursting at the seams with rage.
While you are raging with impotent rage, I decided to take another look at the document “On the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence”, and found that we have a precedent for the use of a nuclear strike. Right now. Without additional conditions.
We read paragraph 19 “c”: the impact of the enemy on critical state or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the failure of which will lead to the disruption of retaliatory actions of nuclear forces.
The drone hit the airport where long-range strategic aviation is based. An important part of the nuclear triad. A blow to it clearly falls into the above paragraph.
“Dear Ukrainians”, I sincerely congratulate you, you and your crazy American comrades were still able to fully meet our nuclear doctrine. From now on, your complete nuclear annihilation will be the legitimate response of the Russian Federation to aggression
🐣 RT @wartranslated Good lord he angry
[Text:] I’m wondering, what kind of retards during the war ordered to collect almost all strategic
aviation and put it together, shoulder to shoulder, on one airfield in the open? At what level of the military hierarchy are such issues decided? Will someone be punished for this criminal negligence or sabotage? When will the retards and seniles in big uniforms stop making decisions in the conditions of modern warfare?
🐣 RT @paulmasonnews Highly significant: the USA signalling special tribunal for Putin, Shoigu etc & UN resolution – but prosecuting the leaders cannot exonerate the individual perpetrators of war crimes #StandWithUkraine
⋙ TheGuardian: Russian war crimes draft resolution being circulated at the UN https://tinyurl.com/2prb9ma5
// US opposition may be softening after lobbying by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/0010 UTC 5 DEC/A Russian assault on the T-13-02 axis was stopped by UKR forces in the parkland NE of the H-32 HWY junction. Present RU losses in this AO are reported to be as high as 50 KIA daily– upwards of 350 dead and as many as 1000 wounded per week.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1599554315886428160?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 4 Dec 2022
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin Cronies Resort to Begging on Live TV Over War Failures: ¤ “Everyone with no exception will be held accountable. All of us will be considered guilty.” ¤ “If we manage to lose, the Hague—whether real or hypothetical—will come even for a street cleaner.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin Cronies Resort to Begging on Live TV Over War Failures https://tinyurl.com/45u4yhnn
// Russia’s mounting wartime disasters have forced Vladimir Putin’s top cheerleaders into desperate public pleas for help.
On Monday, head of RT Margarita Simonyan appeared on The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov and admitted that the Kremlin’s collaborationist elite has concerns about the possibility of being tried for war crimes. After disingenuously claiming that neither the Russian leadership nor her fellow propagandists in the studio ever wanted to conduct strikes against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, Simonyan said, “I am amazed by our people—and I unfortunately know many of them—including those in very high circles, who are afraid of this and are scared to call things by their proper names because of what people over there may think.”
Simonyan defiantly asserted: “We could spit on what they think over there! People who are afraid of the Hague—listen, you should be afraid to lose, to be humiliated and be afraid to betray your people. Let me tell you that if we manage to lose, the Hague—whether real or hypothetical—will come even for a street cleaner who is sweeping the cobblestones behind the Kremlin.”
During Wednesday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, host Olga Skabeeva carried on with the same theme. “God forbid, we can’t allow it and don’t even say it out loud but suppose that suddenly something happens and our country is unable to achieve victory: then we should proceed from the premise that everyone with no exception will be held accountable—whether they are located within the Russian Federation or abroad. Those abroad will most likely be immediately arrested. Whether he is a collaborator of Putin’s regime or was just passing by, it doesn’t matter. All of us will be considered guilty. What’s at stake is not only the existence of the country, but also the carefree existence of every citizen of the Russian Federation—our future is on the line.”
Skabeeva added: “In order to avoid the Hague tribunals, the initiation of criminal cases, compensation, reparations—in order to avoid all this, we need a total intensification of military actions, we have to squeeze and pressure them so much that they approach us about a truce or a peace process… Otherwise, they will insist on capitulation.”
During the most recent broadcast of Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, Margarita Simonyan put in another appearance and delivered the new directive: in order to protect Russia’s already tattered image as a military superpower, any supply problems concerning equipment, weapons and ammunition are to be discussed behind closed doors and not on-air. She unwittingly confirmed that the said issues were systematic and serious by urging the government to take extreme measures to secure the funds for the troops.
Simonyan described those who are not mobilized to serve on the frontlines as the people who aren’t fulfilling their duty to their country. “How can we sleep while knowing that we aren’t sharing and aren’t participating?,” she asked. “Rich people should get a hold of themselves and remember that we can’t continue living the way we’ve been living since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. We have to restore social equality.” RT’s head urged the rich to forego buying Chanel purses and “adopt” dozens or hundreds of needy families for whom they can provide. …
🐣 RT @ @RpsAgainstTrump BREAKING: LIZ Cheney SLAMS Donald Trump for calling for the “termination” of the Constitution- “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” ¤ #TraitorTrump
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum It is amazing how many people can’t seem to understand this, even though there is no evidence whatsoever that Putin wants to end the war
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul No one I know is against diplomacy with Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine. And no one I know has a workable, realistic strategy for achieving or even starting that process. Shouting “more diplomacy” is not a strategy. It is not “realism.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Putin will stop fighting only when he has lost and when he understands that the war was a mistake ¤ This has been true since I wrote it more than six months ago
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum (May): The War Won’t End Until Putin Loses https://tinyurl.com/4ybbvrek
// 5/23/2022; Offering the Russian president a face-saving compromise will only enable future aggression.
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Wow. Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese describes Ukraine’s heroic defense against Russian aggression as an example of “humanity at its very best facing the very worst.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @UA_Institute Thank you Mr. Scorsese for this powerful speech and for standing with Ukraine. ¤ Notes from Ukraine. NYC. @UA_Institute @razomforukraine @ucmfnyc @MFA_Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/UA_Institute/status/1599510913232429056?s=20/photo/1
NYT at 4:39pm(!), Maggie Astor: Trump’s Call for ‘Termination’ of Constitution Draws Rebukes https://tinyurl.com/34ef3ree Trump’s call “to overturn the 2020 election drew a degree of bipartisan condemnation over the weekend, with a flood from Democrats and a trickle from Republicans”
// Republicans were still cautious — or silent entirely — about shunning the former president-turned-2024 candidate.
WaPo, Ruth Marcus: Trump’s call for suspending the Constitution is too dangerous to ignore https://tinyurl.com/4h9eh8en “Trump is laying the groundwork for a coup. … We do not want to give him oxygen, yet there are times we dare not ignore him. This is one.”
🐣 RT @McFaul Smart, effective diplomacy, especially with Russians, means never giving up any negotiating chit until the end game. Nothing is agreed until all is agreed. Those calling for Zelensky to give concessions before negotiations have started are violating this rule of Diplomacy 101.
🧵 RT @GLandsbergis Why aren’t we sending Ukraine all the tools needed to end the war? Why are we avoiding specifics during the debate on Ukraine‘s membership of NATO? Because the belief is still alive that after the war we can return to business as usual, as if February 24th was just a glitch.
📌 https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1599441986288656385?s=20
The tactic of leaving Russia undefeated and ready for future partnership is toxic. It leads to calls to end the war by negotiation instead of ending it with a Ukrainian victory. Some even suggest Ukrainian territorial concessions to the invaders as a gift.
That isn’t how the rules-based international order works. Russia shouldn’t get invited to ‘peace’ negotiations as a reward for brutally invading, occupying and murdering its neighbours again and again.
The creeping normalisation of Russia’s actions is fundamentally wrong. Also misguided is the belief that the current security architecture of multilateral regional and global organizations must be preserved as the ‘best we have’.
International organisations completely failed to prevent conflict of a magnitude unseen in Europe since WW2. At the very least there must be change within those organizations. But we should not rule out the possibility of some organisations disappearing and new ones forming.
With previous conflicts in Europe, the security architecture was rethought after the fighting ended, new structures appeared. For example, the United Nations appeared after mistakes made during the League of Nations era.
First Russia has to face defeat on the battlefield. For that Ukraine needs all our help. All the weapons, all the assistance we can give. Otherwise Russia will continue trying to reinvent the continent according to its own imperialist world vision.
It is in Europe’s interest to fight off and defeat the invader. After this defeat a new system needs to be created out of the lessons learnt from previous mistakes.
Reliance on economic exchange as a principle of mutual assurance, desecuritization, veto power on security issues given to the aggressors – these are some of the misconceptions which failed to ensure the safety of the continent.
Our strategy needs to be rethought and reflected in a new security architecture that will ensure the safety of the continent for decades to come. And we should start creating this new system with Ukraine, not with Putin’s Russia.
🧵 RT @anders_aslund Today, @washingtonpost has published an article by Robert Wright, “Biden can help Zelensky, and Ukraine, by pushing for peace,” which illustratively gets everything wrong. Let me point out what is wrong:
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1599420038326661120?s=20
1. “Biden can help Zelensky, and Ukraine, by pushing for peace.” ¤ No, in surveys 90% of the Ukrainians regularly state that they expect Ukraine to win. Whoever stops short of victory will lose political power. ¤ Wright just ignores Ukraine’s democratic politics.
2. Putin has violated all relevant international agreements & bilateral agreements with Ukraine. Wright only states that “this war has been extremely costly for rusia and for Vladimir Putin.” That does not make Putin a reliable person. He must be defeated to be checked.
3. “If an enduring peace can be had through negotiation…then negotiations would be in America’s interest.” ¤ We know that is not true: Putin would not give up & Zelensky would be ousted by democratic politics. Remember that Ukraine is democratic while Russia is a dictatorship!
4. “The war is costing America lots of money.” ¤ No US government money is better spent. ¤ For 3% of the annual US defense budget, Ukraine has taken out half of the Russian military force, one of the US international adversaries.
5. “this spending is inflationary.” No, it is tiny: $40bn out of the US $23,000bn GDP = 0.17% of US GDP.
6. Wright contradicts himself: “some European officials are accusing the United States of profiteering,” that is, the US is benefiting economically. ¤ Obvious US economic benefits are more US LNG exports, more US arms exports & the arms not only of Russia but also China (largely Russian made) are being proven obsolete. The US military & arms producers learn in real time which arms that are good & which are not.
7. “every day the war continues, more Ukrainians die, and more of Ukraine gets wrecked.” ¤ If Wright had been democratically inclined, he would instead have asked what the Ukrainians want, which they have stated so clearly so many times: Kick out the Russians!
8. The only reference that Wright cites for his not very democratic defeatism for Ukraine is Samuel Charap, who has persistently advocated that Ukraine should give up territory to Russia.
9. Similarly, Wright does not even mention the EU or that Ukrainians with more than two-thirds majority want to join both the EU & NATO. ¤ For the Ukrainian nation this war is existential. ¤ Nor does he mention Russian war crimes or genocide.
10. Needless to say, Wright does not cite any Russian proposal for negotiated settlement, because they are all maximalist. He just mentions Putin once in passing, since the best way of defending Putin is to ignore him.
11. What nearly all Ukrainians understand is that there can be no lasting peace with Russia until it has been DEFEATED. ¤ A peaceful settlement with Russia requires that Ukraine regains its whole territory from February 2014, including Donbas & Crimea.
12. Wright mentions Russia’s “casual seizure of Crimea in 2014.” It went so easily because Russia had leased the Sevastopol naval base on Crimea from Ukraine. The lesson from Russia’s occupation of Crime is that Ukraine needs to seize control of Sevastopol also.
13. Ukraine leased Sevastopol to Russia for 20 years through a bilateral agreement of 1997 and for 25 years through another bilateral treaty of 2010. ¤ Since Putin has canceled both these treaties, no legal basis exists for Russia holding on to Sevastopol any longer.
14. Fortunately, I am convinced that well-informed @POTUS & @JakeSullivan46 are smart enough to recognize Ukraine’s democracy & not jeopardize the fate of Ukraine’s democratically-elected leader. ¤ They have told us so repeatedly: Ukraine decides.
🐣 RT @YuliaTymosha It’s 1 am and i’m lying in my bed contemplating life. And all I can think about how Feb 24 stole a part of me forever, a part full of youth, hope, dreams, the one that believed in a beautiful world, the one that didn’t feel this empty and desensitized.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1340 UTC 4 DEC/ Fighting heavy as RU forces attempt to improve their tactical positions. In the last 24 hours UKR and RU forces traded numerous airstrikes in the Bakhmut AO. UKR air defenses confirm downing a RU Orlan-10 recon UCAV, and an SU-24 ground attack aircraft.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1599395597479383040?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📊 RT @KyivIndependent UK Defense Ministry: Keeping tacit approval of war among population likely to be ‘increasingly difficult for Kremlin.’ ¤ The U.K. Defense Ministry cited the recent polling that shows that Russian public support for the war against Ukraine is “falling significantly.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1599325292530905089?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] ● Recent polling suggests that Russian public support for the ‘special military operation’ is falling significantly.
● An independent Russian media outlet has claimed access to data collected by Russia’s Federal Protective Service for internal use. The data indicated 55% of Russians favour peace talks with Ukraine, with only 25% claiming to support continuing the conflict. These results are consistent with a separate October 2022 survey where 57% of respondents reported being in favour of talks. In April 2022, around 80% of Russians claimed to support the operation.
● Despite the Russian authorities’ efforts to enforce pervasive control of the information environment, the conflict has become increasinaly tangible for many Russians since the September 2022 ‘partial mobilisation’. With Russia unlikely to achieve maior battlefield successes in the next several months, maintaining even tacit approval of the war amongst the population is likely to be increasingly difficult for the Kremlin.
⭕ 3 Dec 2022
MSNBC, Frank Figliuzzi: Donald Trump ought to face the same charges the Oath Keepers did https://tinyurl.com/mtdc45fr
// Bringing down the leaders of the Oath Keepers should not be the government’s end goal.
Tuesday’s convictions of five Oath Keepers — including founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes and top deputy Kelly Meggs who were found guilty of the gravely serious charge of seditious conspiracy — may seem like game-winning goals, but they’re just critical points the Justice Department put on the board right before halftime. The government’s successful prosecution sidelines some strong players, but the captains and coaches we have reason to suspect called the shots on Jan. 6, 2021 (former President Donald Trump and his minions) remain on the field.
To win the game, special counsel Jack Smith, who’s been appointed to investigate Trump’s role in the violence of Jan. 6, needs to use the same playbook that worked against the Oath Keepers. That is, he should be looking to see if seditious conspiracy and obstruction of Congress charges are warranted for Trump and those in his inner circle.
… Smith, and his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, may ultimately decide that there are more palatable alternatives to charging Trump and his advisers with crimes punishable with decades in prison, but I believe Smith has valid predication to explore using the same charges applied to the Oath Keepers.
The jury accepted the government’s argument that a defendant need not have entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 to be guilty of obstructing Congress or guilty of seditious conspiracy. The jury also accepted the government’s argument that the defendants’ failure to stop the confirmation of the Electoral College vote tally made them no less guilty. Rhodes, who was in Washington that day, never entered the Capitol. He denied ordering others to breach the Capitol and claimed they were “stupid” to have done so, but the jury didn’t buy his attempt to distance himself from that day’s violence.
The jury accepting those arguments ought to worry Trump, adviser Roger Stone, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and others in that orbit.
An FBI agent testified that just minutes after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, Rhodes communicated with Stone via a “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group established to coordinate Trump’s post-loss tactics. “What’s the plan? We need to roll ASAP,” prosecutors say Rhodes asked Stone. Rhodes attached a proposal to occupy the streets of Washington and to enter the Capitol. The night before the attack on Congress, Stone was onstage in Freedom Plaza telling thousands of Trump supporters, “I will be with you tomorrow, shoulder to shoulder.”
At events just prior to the riot, Stone used Oath Keepers as his personal security guards. The day before the 2020 election, Roger Stone had been recorded by a documentary crew stating, “F— the voting, let’s get right to the violence.” The attempted use of force is a key element of the seditious conspiracy statute. And force isn’t even required for an obstruction of Congress charge. …
On Jan. 6, Trump — the Justice Department could argue — incited a crowd that he knew to be armed to go with him to the Capitol. He told those in attendance “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” We don’t know if the committee or the Justice Department has seen more evidence that could support a charge of sedition against the former president, but we know that Trump spread disinformation about a “stolen” and “rigged” election and that he tried pressuring Vice President Mike Pence, the president of the Senate, out of certifying election results. That sounds like the framework for charges of either obstructing Congress or obstructing an official act to me. …
🐣 RT @ igorsushko #France: Macron said West should address #Russia’s need for security guarantees if Putin agrees to negotiations about ending the war in #Ukraine… ¤ Russia was last invaded by Hitler in 1941, after Stalin & Hitler agreed to a conspiracy to murder & slice up Europe among themselves
🌎 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1599185993130999808?s=20/photo/1
// Molotov Ribbentrop Pact
🐣 RT @atrupar What is a Nazi sympathizer, right-wing hack, and guy who wants to terminate the constitution
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1599169533368889347?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @JudiciaryGOP
Kanye. Elon. Trump.
8:05 PM • 10/6/22 • Twitter for iPhone
2,751 Retweets 11.2K Quote Tweets 15K Likes
🐣 RT @NOELreports This wonderful, smart woman is a gift from heaven. The new type of leaders we need in this world.
⋙ 🐣 RT @dwnews “We would be in trouble without the United States.”
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin says Russia’s war in Ukraine shows that the European Union isn’t strong enough.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1599003729801396231?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 I’ve had a lot of experience dealing directly with the Russians following the collapse of the USSR. Such promise to escape the madness of the Stalin era. These pundits have lost the moral horizon. Religious hysteria? Nuclear weapons? Mass flight of citizens?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Head of RT Margarita Simonyan lies that Russia basically conquered Kyiv during the first week of the war, then simply gave it back. Simonyan explains why she doesn’t believe Russia would strike Kyiv with nuclear weapons—not because many people would die but because of holy sites.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1599243012789264384?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 When journalistic and legal standards for truth disappear, this is what happens. We’re seeing something like this happen on the right as their trust in these institutions erodes ~ encouraged by people like Trump ¤ cc: @JuliaDavisNews
NBCNews: U.S. intel chief says Russia is using up ammunition in Ukraine faster than it can replace it https://tinyurl.com/2afmp35v
// Putin has been “surprised” at the lackluster performance of his military but his political objectives for the war have not changed, the intelligence director [Avril Haines] said
🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar Conditions in eastern #Ukraine are reportedly becoming more conducive for a higher pace of operations as winter sets in. http://isw.pub/UkrWar120322
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1599227120005550080?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1There’s been a lot of fuss about Elon Musk disclosing emails from previous Twitter management about how the company dealt with data from Hunter Biden’s laptop that was posted on Twitter. But it’s worth pointing out how this is disastrous for both Twitter and Musk himself. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1599147000469270528?s=20
🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu I would expect Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, or their lawyers, briefed FPOTUS’s attorneys. Very likely his meltdown was precipitated by the report he got of what they were asked and how they testified. Possible that the attorneys told him to expect to be charged. Perhaps soon.
🚫😅 TheBulwark, Tim Miller: No, You Do Not Have a Constitutional Right to Post Hunter Biden’s Dick Pic on Twitter https://tinyurl.com/3xtv5cy3
// Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi’s First Amendment follies.
🐣 RT @RANDCorporation”Musk’s rhetoric on the issue and even a lot of the tweets that he’s posted himself are clearly signaling either a disinterest or clearly a disengagement from counterterrorism,” said RAND political scientist Pauline Moore.
⋙ WaPo, Cristiano Lima: As Twitter defends its counterterror work, experts fear a spike under Musk https://tinyurl.com/4xjhssxs “Researchers said that gaps in Musk’s stated amnesty plans could leave room for accounts engaged in radicalization or recruitment efforts that might not be illegal to make a comeback”
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein It will be very interesting to view the front pages of the WashPost, NYT, WSJ, etc, tomorrow. A former president has called for shredding the Constitution to overturn an election. It should bring banner headlines above the fold.
🐣 🎹 RT @IrynaVoichuk This video tells about the history of the legendary song Shchedryk, one of the symbols of Christmas, through the prism of the history of Ukraine, after all, this music was created in Ukraine by the genius composer Mykola Leontovych.
Full video at the link: https://youtu.be/KKF9sGRV4Vg
// History of Carol of the Bells
WaPo: White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election https://tinyurl.com/3j7svst8 “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned” ~ White House spokesman
The White House issued a stern rebuke on Saturday after former president Donald Trump suggested suspending the Constitution in his ongoing crusade to discredit the results of the 2020 election.
“Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement, calling the Constitution a “sacrosanct document.” ¤ “You cannot only love America when you win,” he added.
Trump’s message on the Truth Social platform reiterated the baseless claims he has made since 2020 that the election was stolen. But he went further by suggesting that the country abandon one of its founding documents.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote.
The post came a day after Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, claimed he would expose how Twitter engaged in “free speech suppression” in the run-up to the 2020 election. But his “Twitter Files” did not show that the tech giant bent to the will of Democrats.
“UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” Trump followed up in another post on Saturday afternoon on Truth Social.
Trump’s sustained and unfounded attacks on the 2020 election result culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. Many GOP candidates also echoed his false claims ahead of this year’s midterms, but lost their efforts to win key state posts.
In the weeks since the election, Trump has continued to press the lie that the 2020 election was rigged as he has announced his next White House bid.
Trump, who last month announced he would run again for president, helped launch Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Musk has said he would allow Trump back on Twitter but the former president has not rejoined the platform.
The Democratic National Committee condemned his comments on Saturday, as did several other politicians. ¤ “Trump’s words and actions are unacceptable, they stoke hatred and political violence, and they are dangerous,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) wrote in a tweet. ¤ “Trump just called for the suspension of the Constitution and it is the final straw for zero republicans, especially the ones who call themselves ‘constitutional conservatives,’” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on Twitter.
As he has done before, the former president also baited GOP leaders into weighing in on his claims. ¤ “I wonder what Mitch McConnell, the RINOS, and all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the Presidential Election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough, are thinking now?” he [Trump] wrote Saturday in a subsequent Truth Social post.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1530 UTC 3 DEC/ Reportage indicates that RU has registered incremental gains in the Bakhmut Area of Operations (AO). RU has continued indiscriminate barrages along the line of contact. UKR and RU conducted numerous aviation strike missions during the past 24 hours.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1599066360419856385?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 2330 UTC 3 DEC/ UKR forces are reported to be in contact on the outskirts of the city of Kremenna, the southern anchor of RU defenses along the important P-66 HWY. On 2 DEC, UKR tactical elements crossed the P-66 HWY in the vicinity of Chervonopopivka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1599181531510996993?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CinC_AFU Spoke with #GenMilley, Chairman of @thejointstaff. Thanked for the significant effort, that #GenMilley, @SecDef & @POTUS @JoeBiden are putting personally into meeting 🇺🇦Defence Forces needs in repelling 🇷🇺large-scale aggression. ¤ #ValeriiZaluzhnyi
⋙ 🐣 RT @CinC_AFU Shared assessments of the situation on the front line & security risks which are borne by 🇷🇺 missile strikes. Detailed our requests in weapons & equipment, air & missile defence systems. Ensured that despite the harsh warfighting conditions we continue the struggle for our Victory
Racial Composition of Voters in New Democratic Party Primary States:
PewResearch (Mar 2022): Racial and ethnic composition among democrats and Democratic leaners by state https://tinyurl.com/bdtdxtut
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1599130627546415104?s=20/photo/1
// 3/31/2022;
Also totals: PewResearch (Oct 2020): What the 2020 electorate looks like by party, race and ethnicity, age, education and religion https://tinyurl.com/bz8d9nv5
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1599130632562495488?s=20/photo/1
// 10/26/2020: Totals and Total Dems
White/Black/Hispanic/Other
69%/ 11%/ 11%/ 8% United States
59%/ 19%/ 13%/ 8% Democrats
41%/ 51%/ 6%/ 2% South Carolina Dems
44%/ 14%/ 29%/13% Nevada Dems
94%/ 1%/ 2%/ 3% New Hampshire Dems
25%/ 73%/ —%/ 2% Georgia Dems
67%/ 23%/ 4%/ 6% Michigan Dems
🐣 RT @wineaintsweeter Remember when trump paid the national enquirer almost $2000,000 to dump a story of his extra-marital affairs. The national enquirer then paid off the woman with Trump’s campaign money.
⋙ NBCNews: National Enquirer publisher fined $187,500 for Trump hush money payment https://tinyurl.com/4dz2fden
// 6/2/2021; The FEC found that the cash the tabloid paid to keep Karen McDougal quiet about her alleged affair with Donald Trump was an unlawful campaign contribution.
⋙⋙ 🐣 and the 💰he had Michael Cohen pay to Stormy Daniels
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump this morning calls to be reinstated as president and declared the winner of 2020, or to have a new election immediately.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1599023769019826176?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!
WaPo: After Kherson, Ukraine’s military ponders new push south and east https://tinyurl.com/yc85d3f5 “Kyiv is … intent on liberating cities such as Melitopol and Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located” ~ and on cutting Putin’s “land bridge” to Crimea
⭕ 2 Dec 2022
🔄 ❤️ ✅ FactCheck[.]org: U.S. Aid to Ukraine, Explained https://tinyurl.com/yp4m665n
// Defense Budget
NYT: Zelensky Proposes Barring Orthodox Church That Answers to Moscow https://tinyurl.com/mr2muw6k “[M]any Ukrainians now adhere to a newer Orthodox church, based in Kyiv, created specifically to be independent and not answer to Moscow”
// Ukraine’s president called for legislation to prevent an ancient branch of the Orthodox Church, led by a Putin ally, from operating in his country, but it remains unclear how that would work.
The leader of the Russian church, Patriarch Kirill, has strong ties to President Vladimir V. Putin, whose long tenure he has called “a miracle of God,” and has endorsed the invasion.
But that branch of Orthodoxy is rapidly losing support, while many Ukrainians now adhere to a newer Orthodox church, based in Kyiv, created specifically to be independent and not answer to Moscow. There is little difference between the two churches in terms of religious practice or doctrine, but the divide between them on Ukraine and its identity relative to Russia is wide — and widening.
Kyiv has long worried that Russia is using the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to provide cover for a network of clandestine agents trying to undermine Ukraine from within. The Ukrainian authorities have said that as of October, 33 priests had been arrested for assisting Russia since the invasion began in February, mostly by funneling information to Moscow’s forces. …
Sounding much like Mr. Putin, Kirill has argued that Ukraine is not a truly separate nation, that Russia has a legitimate claim on lands beyond its borders, and that the invasion is a justified defense against Western liberalism. In Moscow on Friday, he spoke of Donbas, the partly Russian-occupied region of Ukraine where the war for control still rages.
Ukraine’s Constitution guarantees “the right to freedom of personal philosophy and religion,” including the right “to perform alone or collectively and without constraint religious rites and ceremonial rituals, and to conduct religious activity.” But it also allows for restrictions on that right “in the interest of protecting public order.”
In April, a survey found that 74 percent of Ukrainians wanted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to cut its ties with Russia, and 51 percent wanted that church banned.
The Orthodox churches in both countries share the same religious rituals, abide by the same creed and trace their origins to the same event in 988, in Kyivan Rus, the east Slavic state that both Russia and Ukraine consider the root of their modern countries. In that year, Grand Prince Volodymyr — Vladimir to Russians — of Kyiv, a pagan, converted to Orthodox Christianity.
WaPo, David Von Drehle: The GOP is stuck in a doom loop begun 30 years ago https://tinyurl.com/mwcrtetn ‘In the last eight presidential elections, only once, in 2004, has the Republican won a majority of the popular vote’
🐣 RT @ SpiroAgnewGhost Trump found a new topic to spew out totally unhinged lunacy in a delusional rant about…the 2020 election. The man is conspicuously insane and yet he commands a cult of 50,000,000+ people—it will never stop being the most unexplainable thing of all time. ¤ 1st of 2 posts:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1598837956726632450?s=20/photo/1
[TextLink3:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1599152321140695041?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] What the FBI did with harassing, cajoling, and intimidating Big Tech companies into corrupting the 2020 Presidential Vote to the side of the Radical Left is no different in meaning than STUFFING THE BALLOT BOXES, only far more sophisticated and impactful. This is a major and very serious violation of the law, yet they come after me for what virtually every other President has done, and is allowed to do by law, probably as a means of complicating and covering up their massive Election Crime!!!
[Text2:] So now it is learned that the FBI, and others in conjunction with the “Justice” Department, met with Big Tech companies to bend them into saying bad things about “Trump” and Republicans in order to RIG & STEAL the 2020 Presidential Election, which was a Scam and a Fraud. Now additional evidence, different but just as illegal and sinister as the many other forms of cheating used, is flowing out of the crevices of this corrupt wound. This is big “stuff.” DO SOMETHING as our Country Melts!!!
[MoreText: I wonder what Mitch McConnell, the RINOS, and all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the Presidential Election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough, are thinking now? They are a disgrace to our great Party, and to our Nation, which has become a laughing stock all over the World!
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/2015 UTC 2 DEC/ UKR has advanced the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) to a line conforming with the N-S axis of the P-66 HWY. Ukrainian maneuver elements have severed the P-66 HWY north of Kremenna- severing RU’s Lines of Communication & Supply (LOCS).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1598769574413234176?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Robillard Democracy was a major issue for Rs who backed Dems in the midterms: 64% of GOPers who voted for Democrats said Trump’s election denial was the #1 reason they did so. ¤ Read @PaulBlu on some new polling from @StopBigMoney:
💙 ⋙ 📋 📊 HuffPo: New Polling Shows Democracy Mattered In The 2022 Midterms https://tinyurl.com/4bshakzn “64% of GOPers who voted for Democrats said Trump’s election denial was the #1 reason they did so”
// 12/1/2022; The findings indicate that concerns about protecting democracy helped Democrats beat expectations in November’s elections.
In his final speech before the Nov. 8 midterms — the first general election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — President Joe Biden warned that “American democracy is under attack” from “extreme MAGA Republicans” who would seek to “suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself.”
“This is no ordinary year,” Biden said. “So I ask you to think long and hard about the moment we’re in. In a typical year, we’re often not faced with questions of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy or put us at risk. But this year, we are.”
The press and some Democratic Party allies panned the president’s remarks. His speech was “head-scratching,” according to CNN’s Chris Cillizza. It was “important” but “puzzling,” said Politico’s Playbook newsletter. “[As] a matter of practical politics, I doubt many Ds in marginal races are eager for him to be on TV tonight,” tweeted David Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s top political aide.
The results of the election, however, speak for themselves. The predicted Republican “red wave” disappeared before it reached shore, with the GOP only picking up 8 seats to narrowly take control of the House. It could still lose one seat in the Senate. Democrats flipped control of more governorships and state legislature chambers than Republicans. And, most importantly, nearly all high-profile election deniers lost their races, including competitive secretary of state competitions in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada and gubernatorial contests in swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Now, one poll of the 71 most competitive House districts backs up the importance of the democracy issue in Democrats’ midterm success. Concerns about threats to democracy motivated Democrats and independents to turn out while also helping independents decide to vote for Democrats, according to a voter survey from Nov. 11-16 by Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm.
“The biggest takeaway here is just how important protecting democracy was for voters in this House battlefield immediately coming out of the election,” said Molly Murphy, the president of Impact Research, which conducted the survey for Democratic Party-aligned political action committees End Citizens United and Let America Vote.
Six in 10 voters cited protecting democracy as an extremely important reason that they decided to vote in November. This put the issue ahead of inflation (53%), abortion (47%) and crime (45%). When asked to choose the top two issues that motivated them to vote, 50% chose protecting democracy, second only to inflation at 55%.
These findings are largely in line with preelection surveys from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, NBC News, Quinnipiac University Poll and the Grinnell College National Poll, as well as exit polling from The Associated Press, NBC News and CNN.
The issue of democracy “was really one of the most dominant factors” for Democrats and independents in determining whether they would turn out and “decisive in decision-making in terms of whether independent voters were going to vote for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate,” Murphy said.
Among Democrats, 73% cited protecting democracy as an extremely important reason that they decided to vote. Fifty-one percent of independents similarly cited it as extremely important, on par with the 53% who cited inflation.
Forty-one percent of voters who cast ballots for Democrats said protecting democracy was one of the top two reasons for voting as they did. It was the top reason among voters surveyed, listed only slightly above abortion (39%) and not liking the Republican candidate (38%).
The issue also likely moved some Republican voters to cross over and cast ballots for Democratic candidates. Sixty-four percent of Republicans who voted this way said their biggest concern was Republican candidates supporting former President Donald Trump and (incorrectly) believing that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In the House battleground districts surveyed by Impact Research, the two top threats to democracy selected by voters were “government corruption and the influence of money on our politics” (53%) and “politicians refusing to accept the results of elections they disagree with” (41%).
“The threats to democracy don’t stop with election denials. Voters want the system to work for everyone, and they recognize that the deck is stacked against them because of all of the money in politics,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United. “They want candidates who will take on special interests and level the playing field.”
It was clear that Democratic candidates understood the connection between voters’ perceptions of government corruption and other issues of democracy erosion, as many ran ads focused on their rejection of corporate PAC donations and support for banning lawmakers from trading stocks.
A record 72 Democratic candidates, including [Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), the only Democrat to win a competitive House race in New York this year], won their elections while refusing to accept corporate PAC donations, with one more race still to be decided in a Georgia Senate runoff this month. That’s up from 59 at the beginning of the previous Congress. Meanwhile, two high-profile lawmakers who reneged on their 2018 promise to reject corporate PAC money — Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) — lost.
But the biggest penalty was paid by Republican candidates who sided with Trump’s lies, the kind that Biden pointed out in his Nov. 2 speech. ¤ “These core norms and values can really outpace things that are temporal economic issues if they [voters] feel that those things are being threatened,” Murphy said. “And they did.”
🐣 RT @Cirincione I recommend this story for an gripping portrayal of how awful the war in Ukraine is – for both sides. It also underscores why the Ukrainian Defense Minister said yesterday, “Signs are accumulating that Russia needs a pause at all costs.”
⋙ CBC[.]ca: Why the battle for the small city of Bakhmut is so important to both Russia and Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/5n7v89bt “The quagmire of carnage now consuming the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been mostly overlooked, given Ukraine’s battlefield successes”
// Conditions are terrible, casualties are enormous and significance of Bakhmut is debatable
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1530 UTC 2 DEC/ Heavily outnumbered UKR forces continue to resist a RU offensive against the city. UKR recon UAVs direct precision artillery strikes against a RU salient south of Ivanhard.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1598701025715965952?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @ EuromaidanPress The Ukrainian army has lost 13,000 soldiers killed in action, Ukraine’s Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podoliak said ¤ The number likely doesn’t include those servicemen who are missing. This could bring the number of KIA to 20,000. https://tinyurl.com/57ex965v
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR Some reliable experts say there will be no missile strikes on Ukraine because the USA and the West have warned russia that there will be asymmetric strikes on bases and airports and military facilities, so russia is scared and will not dare to attack.1/
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR After Dec 15, the ground will freeze, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will go to South on an offensive on Crimea, so the end is near. 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR The author assumes problem is that the West does not want a “Great, ultimate victory of Ukraine”, it wants a Western-controlled defeat of russia, so that the turmoil in russia does not affect the situation in the world, the USA & China are agreeing on a “russia’s gradual defeat.”
⭕ 1 Dec 2022
AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson: Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian Genocide: Nobody can claim they did not know https://tinyurl.com/yc7ptxx8 “Advocates of appeasement must recognize that there can be no middle ground between Russian genocide and Ukrainian national survival”
🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, Day 280, November 30th, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak THREAD https://tinyurl.com/mr2udw3p ¤ 🔥 Battlefield update:
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1598236546104266753?s=20
NYT: Trump Embraces Extremism as He Seeks to Reclaim Office https://tinyurl.com/4y5fjnnn “Trump’s acceptance, if not outright courtship, of the militant right comes as the Republican establishment blames him for the party’s failure [in] the November midterm elections”
// As he gets his presidential campaign underway, Donald J. Trump has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics.
Former President Donald J. Trump once again made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago. ¤ He stands with the mob.
Mr. Trump sent a video statement of support to a fund-raiser hosted by a group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Project on behalf of families of those charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said. The country, he warned, “is going communist.”
The video underscored just how much the former president has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics as he seeks to reclaim the White House through a rematch with President Biden in 2024. With the Justice Department targeting him as well as some of his violent allies, Mr. Trump’s antigovernment jeremiads lately sound like those once relegated to the outer edges of the political spectrum.
He has embraced extremist elements in American society even more unabashedly than in the past. The video comes as Mr. Trump has been using music sounding like a QAnon theme song at recent rallies and hosting for dinner Kanye West, a rap star under fire for antisemitic statements, and Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist.
And it comes just two days after the conviction of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, placed Mr. Trump at the spiritual heart of a seditious conspiracy to illegitimately keep power in a way that is unparalleled in American history.
Mr. Trump’s acceptance, if not outright courtship, of the militant right comes as the Republican establishment blames him for the party’s failure to do better during the November midterm elections. Republican officeholders, led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party leader in the upper chamber, argue that Mr. Trump’s promotion of candidates based on fidelity to his false claims about the 2020 election cost them seats.
“Trump is doubling down on his extremist and cult leader profile,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present” and a history professor at New York University. “For someone of Trump’s temperament, being humiliated by people turning away from him will only make him more desperate and more inclined to support and associate with the most extremist elements of society. There is no other option for him.” …
“Trump’s inner orbit is keenly aware that he’s lost the excitement of 2016, and there’s a school of thought that ginning up the most die-hard part of his base is the key to bringing it back,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as White House strategic communications director for Mr. Trump before breaking with him after the 2020 election. “The reality is, however, that means reaching out to fringe, racist elements that have traditionally been sidelined by the mainstream of the party.” …
WaPo: Trump Mar-a-Lago special master struck down by appeals court https://tinyurl.com/32fvwf26 “The appeals court decision was an emphatic win for the Justice Department, and the latest legal loss for Trump”
// The three-judge panel said Judge Aileen Cannon erred in appointing a special master to review documents seized by the FBI
🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump now fears betrayal as he should. He fears negative comments from the Right will seep into his base, kill his leverage. He fears being charged with crimes; exposure of a lifetime of secrets and lies; loss of relevance; loss of grift; having a legacy as a loser. ¤ Humiliation.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump is setting the stage for how he’ll handle his own eventual indictment
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump issues a special address to J6 defendants: “Our country is going communist .. People are imprisoned right now. People are being tormented. Can’t let it happen. We’re going to stop it, and we’re going to win.”
💽 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1598524943205015552?s=20/photo/1
// Trump video to followers on Jan6 participants: “weaponization on Justice Department”
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Trump creates losers — and Judge Cannon has joined those ranks. She tried to disrupt the criminal investigation of Trump but (remarkably) Republican judges of the 11th Circuit stopped her political nonsense! Donald hasn’t yet corrupted the entire federal judiciary, thankfully.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_BREAKING: 11th Circuit shoots Cannon down: finding no one is above the law and her decision violated bedrock principles of equal justice and separation of powers. Powerful decision (and rebuke).
🐣 RT @gtconway3d The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion makes brutally clear that they agree. To say that the court of appeals today completely eviscerated Judge Cannon’s ruling and Trump’s arguments is an understatement.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn [9/15] Conway: This [Cannon’s] ruling is absolutely a disgrace. And I don’t think it’s going to take very much to overturn it. Barr told The New York Times that the original motion by Trump’s lawyers was a crock of ¤ shit, a crock of shit. This opinion is worse than that..
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1570570377486647296?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @SnarkBolan It’s a cult. She’s in it.
🧵 RT @KlasfeldReports It’s hard to know where to begin with how lacerating the 11th Circuit’s slapdown of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case is—whether it’s calling his arguments a “sideshow” or indirectly calling Cannon’s ruling “radical.” ¤ The article hashes it out. Some more thoughts:
⋙⋙ Law&Crime, Adam Klasfeld: ‘The Answer Is No’: Conservative 11th Circuit Panel, Including Two Judges Trump Appointed, Puts a Stop to Special Master’s Mar-a-Lago Review https://tinyurl.com/ydjt284t
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/yc4dxab3 23p
📌 https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1598457751188955136?s=20
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Trump’s unqualified “judge” Aileen Cannon in Florida just got OVERRULED by federal court of appeals in Mar a Lago documents case. No more Special master!
⋙ CNN: Appeals court halts special master review of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago in major defeat for Trump https://tinyurl.com/bdzbxb9a
In a major defeat for former President Donald Trump, a federal appeals court on Thursday halted a third-party review of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate. ¤ The ruling removes a major obstacle to the Justice Department’s investigation into the mishandling of government records from Trump’s time in the White House.
In a ruling on Thursday, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s order appointing a so-called special master to sort through thousands of documents found at Trump’s home to determine what should be off limits to investigators.
“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”
The 11th Circuit said that either approach would be a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and that “both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Trump’s unqualified “judge” Aileen Cannon in Florida just got OVERRULED by federal court of appeals in Mar a Lago documents case. No more Special master!
⋙ CNN: Appeals court halts special master review of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago in major defeat for Trump https://tinyurl.com/bdzbxb9a
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The MAGA cult should face facts: America will never be theirs again https://tinyurl.com/bdfrf3a5 “Republicans have put their party at odds with the values of the overwhelming majority of the country. … [T]he ground is shifting under the MAGA cult’s feet”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/2200 UTC 1 DEC/ RU forces occupy a W bank lodgment of the Bakhmutka River south of Ivanhard. RU attempts to supply materiel and reinforcements across the T-05-13 HWY are made costly by UKR artillery and aviation strike missions. RU piecemeal attacks continue.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1598435461307191296?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @KyivPost Russian Public Support for War Plummets – Leaked Poll ¤ A leaked #Kremlin poll has revealed that public support for #Russia’s invasion of #Ukraine has dropped significantly, with just one in four Russians now in favor. ¤ Read more on our website.
⋙ 📊 KyivPost: Russian Public Support for War Plummets – Leaked Poll https://tinyurl.com/4uzn2fuh
// Published by the Kremlin’s Federal Guard Service (FSO), the report was intended for the eyes of senior government officials, but was leaked to independent Russian news site Meduza.
🧵 RT @generalsvr_en Dear subscribers and guests of the channel! Yesterday, #Russian President Vladimir #Putin had a very difficult day, which ended quite dramatically. Wednesday morning began for Putin with a depressing report on the state of the Russian economy. 1/15
📌 https://twitter.com/generalsvr_en/status/1598268709465825280?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @generalsvr_en Moreover, yesterday, the leadership of the military bloc was not ready to guarantee the President a significant advance on any sector of the front before the New Year. #Putin was informed that the cold snap, predicted for early December in the #Luhansk region,…6/15
⋙ 🐣 RT @generalsvr_en Going down the stairs, #Putin stumbled and fell on his buttocks. After that, he fell on his side and slid down a couple of steps. The incident took place in front of the President’s bodyguards, who quickly reacted and rushed to help Putin.9/15
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Three security officers helped the President to get to the nearest sofa and called the doctors, who are on duty at the residence. Medics arrived within a few minutes but could not immediately examine the President. #Putin suffers from oncology of the gastrointestinal tract.10/15 […]
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/ 0115 UTC 1 DEC/ RU forces continue daily ‘revenge shelling’ of the urban and suburban areas of Kherson. UKR recon UAVs indicate that RU units are constructing defensive positions along the south banks of the Dnipro River and along the M-14 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1598121554357145600?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 30 Nov 2022
🚫 Gingrich360: Quit Underestimating President Biden https://tinyurl.com/mwszsu79 “[C]onservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms”
// If Republicans are going to successfully work through the next two years in Congress – and win the presidency in 2024 – we need to look much more deeply at what worked and what did not work in 2020 and 2022.
Republicans must learn to quit underestimating President Joe Biden. … ¤ The clarity of winning and losing creates a clarity of analysis about who is doing well and who isn’t. ¤ If you apply that simple model to Biden, you realize how well he is doing by his own definition of success. …
Like most Americans, I do not approve of the job he is doing. … ¤ However, conservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms. He has only built upon and fortified the left-wing Big Government Socialist woke culture system. ¤ … Our aversion to him and his policies makes us underestimate him and the Democrats. ¤ But remember: Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan both preferred to be underestimated. Both wanted people to think of them as pleasant – but not dangerous. They found being underestimated was a major asset. While people laughed at them, they were busy achieving their goals and getting their programs implemented.
Biden has achieved something similar. ¤ He has spent 50 years in public life (elected to the U.S. Senate at 29 and only eligible to be sworn in after the election in 1972). Biden genially bumbled into becoming a major force in the Senate. While he failed miserably in attempting to run for president, he ended up as vice president for eight years. Then he stayed in the basement and won in 2020.
The Biden team took an amazingly narrow four-vote majority in the U.S. House and a 50-50 tie in the Senate and turned it into trillions of dollars in spending – and a series of radical bills. The latest bill on sexual rights overriding all other rights was bitterly opposed by virtually every conservative even as it passed with Republican support.
Biden has carefully and cautiously waged war in Ukraine with no American troops. Although poorly timed and slowly delivered, U.S. weapons and financial aid have helped cripple what most thought would be an easy victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Despite terrible problems with the economy, crime, and the border (which led many analysts, me included, to assume the GOP would make big gains in November) Biden and his team executed a strategy of polarizing Americans against Donald Trump supporters. They turned Jan. 6 into a crisis which eclipsed the Left’s previous summer of fire, chaos, and destruction. They also grossly exaggerated the threat to abortion rights. And it all worked. ¤ The Biden team had one of the best first term off-year elections in history. They were not repudiated. They did not have to pay for their terrible mismanagement of the economy.
If Republicans are going to successfully work through the next two years in the Congress – and win the presidency in 2024 – we need to look much more deeply at what worked and what did not work in 2020 and 2022. ¤ This is a much bigger challenge than I would have guessed before the election.
WaPo, George Will: How racial preferences feed grasping grievance groups and grow ever more absurd https://tinyurl.com/4up8hyj6 Yep. Too much Pluribus, not enough Unum.
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️The European Commission recommended suspending the allocation of 7.5 billion euros to Hungary due to problems with the rule of law, — Euronews.
NYT: President Zelensky of Ukraine rebukes Elon Musk’s peace proposal https://tinyurl.com/4htujet6 “Western democracies should be most concerned about Putin’s expansionist military ambitions, [Zelensky] said”
// Speaking at the DealBook summit, the Ukrainian leader said the billionaire would do well to fully understand the situation before making pronouncements about it.
🐣 RT @AzovMolozensky Russian propagandists machinery is claiming our retreat in #Bakhmut ¤ But the reality is opposite on the ground ¤ Our air force has just hit 2 Wagner command control centers today💪🏻🇺🇦 ¤ Yes! Difficulty situations but this is our land we understand it better than Putin does ☠💀
WaPo: Trump’s dinner with antisemites provides test of GOP response to extremism https://tinyurl.com/yrx57n3j Will this finally be the straw that broke the camel’s back? If it is, it may have more to do with the GOP’s poor showing in the midterms, for which many blame Trump
// Republicans are showing increasing willingness to criticize Trump over his meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who has issued anti-Jewish diatribes
🐣 RT @Acyn Garland: Smith promised to the American people in his own statement that there would be no pause or hiccup in his work. I understand that is exactly what’s going on now.
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1598058398821613570?s=20/photo/1
GovExec: More Republicans Died Than Democrats after COVID-19 Vaccines Came Out https://tinyurl.com/34v68w6z “The [Yale] study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida.”
// The sharp divergence in excess death rates that emerged in the post-vaccine period “is pretty striking… and the magnitudes are quite large.”
CNN: Iranian protesters celebrate World Cup defeat, as fears surround players’ return https://tinyurl.com/yv34ve54
// Iranians celebrate US soccer win
Politico [EU]: Europe’s anti-American itch https://tinyurl.com/3ryr5pc4 “Despite America’s political divisions, the country has never been stronger in terms of its military might or its economic muscle” ~ “Europe’s blame game is really about something else — envy”
// Europeans have only themselves to blame for their industrial and strategic failings.
WSJ: EU Official Warns Elon Musk That Changes Are Needed at Twitter https://tinyurl.com/y5uakm97 “Twitter will have to ‘significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising,’ Mr. Breton said”
// Thierry Breton, EU internal market commissioner, says changes are needed to comply with new EU law
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “The war was lost long ago. The challenge remains one of getting Putin and his circle to accept this view. If this is to happen there is no alternative to keeping up the military pressure.” Another superb @LawDavF essay on the war in #Ukraine.
⋙ Substack, Lawrence Freedman: Is Russia losing? https://tinyurl.com/2xr64e68
// 11/23/2022; And if it is, when will it concede?
🐣 RT @ksadjadpour USA’s Antonee Robinson consoles Iran’s Ramin Rezaian after America’s victory. Iran’s regime has tried hard to brainwash its people against the US, but most Americans who’ve been to Iran will tell you it’s among the friendliest places they’ve ever visited.
💽 https://twitter.com/ksadjadpour/status/1597922491426799619?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📊 RT @IanSams46 New poll: ¤ By a 3-to-1 margin, Americans say House Republicans should focus on inflation (76%) vs. investigating President Biden (24%)
◕ [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/IanSams46/status/1597921686321782785?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] NavigatorPoll: Americans Want GOP to Focus on Costs, Crime, and the Border
Over Investigating Biden and Banning Abortion
// Just one in four or less would prefer the Republican Party focus on investigating President Biden and his administration or banning abortion nationwide when pitted against lowering costs, reducing violent crime, and dealing with the situation at the southern border.
🐣 RT @vonderleyen Russia must pay for its horrific crimes. ¤ We will work with the ICC and help set up a specialised court to try Russia’s crimes. ¤ With our partners, we will make sure that Russia pays for the devastation it caused, with the frozen funds of oligarchs and assets of its central bank
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1500 UTC 30 NOV/ RU forces have taken the village of Andrivka and are attempting a lodgment on the a W bank of Bakhmutka River. RU conducted multiple close air support sorties in support of this assault. In the north, RU forces were held on the T-13-02 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1597968190403117056?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @POLITICOEurope When Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine in February, few people expected Kyiv’s forces would nine months later be threatening to reclaim Crimea. ¤ That no longer feels like a military impossibility.
⋙ Politico [Eu]: Target Crimea https://tinyurl.com/pj8969fy
// Partisans are mobilizing, and Russians are trying to sell their holiday homes — as fear grows that the war is closing in on the peninsula.
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 “German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann acknowledged that Germany bears responsibility for the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine because it backed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.” Finally, the truth
⋙ Politico: Berlin’s push for Nord Stream 2 contributed to Ukraine war, German minister says https://tinyurl.com/mrxzwfuj
// Justice minister says it’s Germany’s duty to ‘confront this truth directly.’
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Putin’s terrified of the Russian people. Tomorrow a new “foreign agents” law leading to arrest/fines etc. for effectively watching/reading something on social media – for “influence or pressure” of foreign actors. Putin will also publish your address etc. hoping someone attacks U
🐣 RT @DefenceHQ Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 30 November 2022
Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/Msfo50LQJUv
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1597845621347700736?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] In July 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved amendments to the 2012 ‘Foreign Agents Law, which has been widely used to repress opponents of the regime. The new measures are scheduled to come into force on 01 December 2022.
The 2012 law defined ‘foreign agents’ as individuals or organisations who have received financial support from abroad. The amendments will extend the definition to those which are merely under undefined ‘influence or pressure’ of foreign actors. The Ministry of Justice will also have the power to publish the personal details and addresses of designated *foreign agents’, almost certainly placing them at risk of harassment.
The new laws will further extend the repressive powers available to the Russian state. This continues a trend since Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, but which has dramatically accelerated since the invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin is likely acting preemptively to prevent greater domestic dissent as the conflict remains unresolved and increasingly impacts Russians’ everyday lives.
🐣 RT @tassagency_en The civilized world does not need NATO, a “criminal organization” whose member states account for just about 12% of the world’s population, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said: http://go.tass.ru/jxmTw
🔄📋 ⋙ 🐣Wouldn’t you be better off investing in your people than invading your neighbors?
Basic Stats US vs Russia
USA Russia
$23Tr $1.7Tr GDP
$767B $61.7B Military
5550 5977 Nukes
333M 146M Pop.
99.4% 77% (indoor plumb)
– – – – – – – – – – –
3.8M 6.6M SqMi
152M 123M Arable Hectares
54.5° 33° Avg F° (20% Arctic)
// most recent: 2021 or 2022
92.9 23/SqMi Pop. density
⋙ 🐣 As long as Russia continues to invade its neighbors, the civilized world will need NATO. ¤ AS NATO, the EU and the US have all made clear, we will continue to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes“
🐣 RT @McFaul Absolutely inspired by brave protestors in Iran and China … and early voters in Georgia…. and warriors in Ukraine. Democracy is not dying; it’s on the move.
💙 🐣 RT @GEsfandiari A wonderful display of sportsmanship following U.S. victory over Iran in #WorldCup2022
💽 https://twitter.com/GEsfandiari/status/1597851221767131137?s=20/photo/1
// players hug and comfort
⋙ 🐣 RT @tafakor [tr from Persian] This shows that the people of Iran do not have any kind of enmity with the American people, and it is only the politicians who beat the drum of enmity.
⋙⋙ 🙏 peace and love to you
⭕ 29 Nov 2022
Pravda [UA]: Starlink to be imported to Ukraine free of duty and VAT https://tinyurl.com/5n8d7u9u The Cabinet of Ministers on Tuesday lifted the import duty and VAT on Starlink terminals, and energy and water purification equipment, “making these products approximately 25% cheaper”
🐣 RT @wartranslated Despite loud noises made by Russian media, Wagner admits they are far from taking Bakhmut. But they also seem oddly proud of essentially being on a suicide mission, “not taking losses into account”, except that it’s the lives of untrained convicts they really talk about.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1597571466127892482?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “Three Prigozhin’s strikes”: why the PMC continues to move forward?
Yesterday there was information that PMC “Wagner” occupied three villages south of Bakhmut, namely Zelenopolye, Ozaryanovka and Andreevka. Some media began to claim that this success could soon be developed into the encirclement of the enemy’s Bakhmut grouping, but this is not so.The occupation of the villages seriously fortified by the enemy is, of course, an achievement, but the encirclement of Bakhmut is still very far away – in the north of the city, the encirclement of the Ukrainian flank has not even really begun. It is important to note that now the section of the front near Bakhmut, held by the Wagners, is nearly the only one where the Russian army is slowly but successfully advancing.
The thing is that the Wagner is essentially a unit specially sharpened for assaults, an analogue of the assault groups of the First World War. In the area of the Donbass branch of Verdun, the PMC objectively have few opponents. After all, their storm troopers are still “daredevils” – they do not take losses into account, and often have good military training or experience with weapons, including melee. Which, by the way, is very important – in the cramped conditions of
mud-filled trenches, the formula “The bullet is a mad thing; only the bayonet knows what it is about.” is more relevant than ever.
🐣 RT @therecount 61-36: The U.S. Senate passes the Respect for Marriage Act, repealing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and codifying federal recognition of states’ same-sex and interracial marriages. ¤ 12 Republicans joined Democrats in voting “yes.” All the “no” votes were Republican senators.
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie “Trump exceeded our worst fears. We expected him to bring a claque of opportunists and various other mooks and goons with him to Washington, but we underestimated the ability of the GOP’s immune system to fight off a complete surrender” [sic]
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Never Trump Means Never https://tinyurl.com/mr273p58
// Opposing Trumpism is about more than rejecting one man
… We expected him to bring a claque of opportunists and various other mooks and goons with him to Washington, but we underestimated the ability of the GOP’s immune system to fight off a complete surrender to Trump’s parasitical capture of the party. We appreciated the threat of Trump, but we were surprised by the spread of Trumpism—the political movement that arose as a malignant mass incarnation of Trump’s personality, based on racism, nativism, isolationism, the celebration of ignorance, and a will to power that was innately hostile to American institutions. Trumpism is now the only real animating force in Republican politics; indeed, DeSantis, the great GOP hope, is so much a Trump sycophant that he has even learned to stand and gesture like Trump.
… The immediate circumstance that precipitated all this online whining about the Never Trumpers and generated the sweaty attempts to seize their mantle was, of course, Trump’s dinner this weekend with an anti-Semite and a white supremacist. Top Republicans who should be desperate to scour the stink of Trumpism off the GOP but who fear Trump and his base once again went weak in the knees. Most stayed quiet; others employed careful circumlocutions. Mike Pence said Trump should “apologize” for the dinner, as if it were a faux pas. Senator John Thune blamed Trump’s staff—always a handy dodge in Washington. …
Only a very few were specific and unequivocal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell finally weighed in today with a shot at Trump’s ambitions, saying that “there is no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy,” and that “anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.” But Senator Bill Cassidy was more direct: “President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” he tweeted. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.” Cassidy’s words are admirably clear, but while he argues that such attitudes are not the Republican Party, they are, in fact, espoused by people widely tolerated by the base of the Republican Party—starting right at the top with Donald Trump.
The Republicans know they have a problem. Many of them seem to believe their only recourse now is to say that they were all Never Trumpers in the hope that voters will somehow draw an unwarranted distinction between Trump and the party he has captured from top to bottom. But those of us who said “Never Trump” years ago—and meant it—know the difference.
🐣 RT @POTUS Today’s bipartisan Senate passage of the Respect for Marriage Act proves our nation is on the brink of reaffirming a fundamental truth: love is love. ¤ I look forward to the House passing this legislation and sending it to my desk, where I will proudly sign it into law.
🐣 RT @TheTweetOfJohn Musk’s dictatorial management style risks driving the company into unforced business blunders, content moderation disasters, and the degradation of core platform features that help keep vulnerable users safe, according to Yoel Roth.
⋙ CNN: Twitter is less safe due to Elon Musk’s management style, says former top official https://tinyurl.com/ycyzpa8u
🐣 RT @January6thCmte Today’s convictions are a victory for the rule of law and reinforce the fact that the violence of January 6th included a deliberate attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and block the transfer of presidential power.
🐣 RT @POTUS Gas prices have fallen to levels they were at prior to Putin’s invasion – down $1.50 a gallon since their summer peak. ¤ This is important breathing room for American families and meets a key commitment I made. We’ll continue to do everything we can to bring prices down even more.
◕ https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1597652006625329153?s=20/photo/1
NBC: The inside story of Trump’s explosive dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes https://tinyurl.com/4yvnmsvv The dinner was a set-up to confront Trump about abandoning his extremist base. And to embarrass him. “The master troll got trolled,” an adviser said
// What was supposed to be a private dinner ended up being a political nightmare.
Just two days before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump was planning to have a private, uneventful dinner with an old friend: Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. ¤ The two had arranged to break bread Tuesday night at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of private phone conversations as Ye lost lucrative partnerships and became a mainstream cultural pariah for his antisemitic remarks, according to those familiar with the talks between the two men.
But Trump may have been walking into a trap in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded halls — one that leveraged his own penchant for spectacle and showmanship against him. Ye arrived with three guests, including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.
Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview, but others at the crowded members-only club figured out his identity. News of the meeting prompted an avalanche of criticism, from some Republican rivals and allies of Trump and his then-week-old presidential campaign. …
The headline-grabbing attention on his guests — and therefore the subsequent fallout — were all but ensured by Trump before the dinner when he made a grand entrance at about 8 p.m. on Nov. 22 to meet his guests.
“We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered,” Fuentes told NBC News. “He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table.”
Trump made sure they sat at his specially reserved table on the patio, for all to see, according to Fuentes.
But the dinner wasn’t the happy photo-op the president had planned. ¤ Ye criticized Trump for not doing enough to help pay the legal bills of those arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots; and he also told Trump he might run for president against him and said Trump should instead be his running mate — all of which angered the former president, who attacked Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, according to two dinner participants and Ye, who blasted out a “Mar-a-Lago debrief” video to his 32.2 million Twitter followers the next day.
“Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes,” Ye said in the video. ¤ Fuentes said that he praised Trump as “my hero” and criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his potential GOP primary challenge to Trump, but he also told him to his face at the dinner that the onetime 2016 insurgent was in danger of becoming a scripted establishment bore who could lose in 2024.
Some Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have condemned the dinner, with Pence calling on Trump to apologize. ¤ One longtime Trump adviser, who didn’t want to go on the record criticizing his preferred candidate, said it was clear that Fuentes’ presence was part of a headline-grabbing setup. ¤ “The master troll got trolled,” the adviser said. “Kanye punked Trump.”
As advisers to Trump have attempted to quell the backlash, some have insisted that the former president was essentially tricked by the rapper and his guests — a suspicion backed up by Milo Yiannopoulos, the anti-Trump, far-right provocateur who is now acting as a political adviser to Ye.
Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who was banned from Twitter in 2016 for inciting a racist campaign against the comedian Leslie Jones, told NBC News that he was “the architect” of the plan to have Fuentes travel with Ye in the hopes of slipping him into the dinner with Trump. The intent, according to Yiannopoulos, was for Fuentes to give Trump an unvarnished view of how a portion of his base views his candidacy.
Yiannopoulos persuaded a former Trump 2016 campaign adviser from Florida, Karen Giorno, to give Ye a ride to Mar-a-Lago, which she said led her to become an accidental member of Ye’s dinner party. Yiannopoulos said he also wanted Giorno to brief Ye on Trump and politics and, if she went to the dinner, to lend a sense of political gravitas to the discussion. The fourth member of the party was a man Ye later identified as a parent of a student at his private school in California, Donda Academy. (Donda shut down for the year after Ye’s antisemitic remarks.) Yiannopoolos said he was unsure of why the man traveled with them.
Yiannopoulos said Fuentes is serving in an advisory capacity to Ye. Giorno is not an official member of the unofficial Ye campaign team but flew to Los Angeles to meet with them this week. ¤ “I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News. ¤ “I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end,” he added.
And, Yiannopoulos said, he arranged the dinner “just to make Trump’s life miserable” because news of the dinner would leak and Trump would mishandle it. ¤ Fuentes echoed the sentiment: “I hate to say it, but the chickens are coming home to roost. You know, this is the frustration with his base and with his true loyalists.”
Trump fumed afterward that Ye had betrayed him by ambushing him. “He tried to f— me. He’s crazy. He can’t beat me,” Trump said, according to one confidant, who then relayed the conversation to NBC News on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. ¤ “Trump was totally blindsided,” the source said of Fuentes’ presence. “It was a setup.”
Some in Trump’s orbit had cautioned him not to have dinner with Ye, under fire for antisemitism, in the first place, according to two sources who had been briefed on an internal damage assessment the campaign performed after the controversy erupted. ¤ But Trump is known for refusing to heed cautious counsel, guardrails and gatekeepers. So he went ahead with the dinner alone, telling confidants that he thought Ye needed his counsel. One confidant told NBC that Trump acknowledged he wanted the rapper to be seen because “it would be fun for the members” of Mar-a-Lago.
Trump issued three successive statements in as many days on his Truth Social media platform admitting Fuentes was there while disavowing knowledge of his identity prior to and during the dinner.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “There is… an added benefit of the jury taking this thoughtful approach convicting on some counts and acquitting on others. What that says is these defendants got a fair trial… This actually will strengthen the case on appeal” – @glennkirschner2 w/ @NicolleDWallace
🐣 RT @CBSNews “USA! USA!” President Biden jumped back on staged in Bay City, Michigan to announce Team USA’s win against Iran at the World Cup. ¤ A brief USA chant erupted in the room. https://cbsn.ws/3idAuZS
💽 https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1597711026400681984?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jensstoltenberg #NATO foreign ministers met FM @DmytroKuleba & pledged sustained support to #Ukraine as it fights #Russia’s aggression. Putin is trying to weaponise winter & force Ukrainians to freeze or flee. We will not back down or be divided.
🐣 RT @mhmck Hungary, a firm ally of the Russian terrorist state, blocked the full participation of Ukraine in a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest. ¤ The continued membership of Hungary in NATO destroys the possibility of collective security in Europe.
🐣 RT @Acyn McConnell: There is no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy. Anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgement, are highly unlikely to ever be elected President
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews⚡️NATO is discussing the transfer of Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine, – Stoltenberg.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy https://tinyurl.com/4aypvzfc “Rhodes and followers, dressed in combat-style gear, converged on the Capitol after staging an ‘arsenal’ of weapons at nearby hotels, ready to take up arms”
🐣 RT @kenbensinger Stewart Rhodes and his 4 Oath Keepers co-defendants have been found guilty for 18 of the 28 charges. Only 2 were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Scorecard (* denotes guilty of seditious conspiracy)
Rhodes: 3/5*
Meggs: 4/5*
Harrelson: 3/5
Watkins: 4/6
Caldwell: 2/5
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/kenbensinger/status/1597719890617851905?s=20/photo/1
// handwritten scoresheet
🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: A jury convicted the leader of the Oath Keepers and one of his subordinates of seditious conspiracy for plotting to keep Donald Trump in power.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Oath Keepers Leader Convicted of Sedition in Landmark Jan. 6 Case https://tinyurl.com/nhhzkuwr
// A jury in federal court in Washington convicted Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right militia, and one of his subordinates for a plot to keep Donald Trump in power.
🐣 RT @nytimesworld In a speech to Britain’s lawmakers in Westminster on Tuesday, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, called for accountability for the terror Russia is inflicting on the Ukrainian people
⋙ NYT: Ukraine’s first lady addresses British lawmakers, calling for ‘justice’ https://tinyurl.com/bdh67jxs “Ms. Zelenska said that Ukrainians have documented thousands of war crimes committed by Russia, and called for the institution of an international tribunal to prosecute them”
NYT: NATO ‘will not back down’ in its support for Ukraine, its secretary general says https://tinyurl.com/mcmp6zx8 Antony Blinken and the top diplomats from more than 30 European nations are meeting today in Romania to plan NATO’s support for Ukraine over the winter
🐣 RT @NATO ❝We need to support Ukraine… what we see is that President Putin is trying to use winter as a weapon of war❞ ¤ @jensstoltenberg spoke to media in Bucharest, where #NATO foreign ministers are set to address more support for Ukraine ¤ #ForMin | #StandWithUkraine
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Oh my god. This is so unhinged, crazed and destructive to the entire Republican Party for obvious reasons. He wants to take them down with him as he spirals into full lunacy.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1597611306470674432?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump REMEMBER, YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FAIR & FREE ELECTIONS WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. WON’T AND CAN’T HAPPEN!II
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump This is a MUST WATCH. Our Elections are Rigged. Mail-In Ballots are a total SCAM. How about all of those “BROKEN” Republican Voting Machine? GET SMART REPUBLICANS, OR YOU WON’T HAVE A PARTY (OR A COUNTRY) LEFT
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer HANGING BY 3 THREADS: The keys to the control of Crimea’s logistical, fuel and food supplies are the highly vulnerable Kerch Straits Bridge, and the occupied city of Melitopol. The liberation of Melitopol would cut off Crimea from reinforcement and supply from the UKR mainland.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1597615389231697920?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Illiterate Grandpa Ranty says Karl Rove is the “DINIER of DINIERS” 🤣🤤 ¤ My elementary school cousin spells better than this unhinged imbecile
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1597606110529466371?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonalTrump [ts] RINO Karl Rove, a man with a losing record the likes of which few political operatives would be able to get away with, including his loss to me in 2016, fights so hard and so stupidly, but is constantly on Fox News and the once great Wall Street Journal, explaining how things should be done – and he doesn’t have a clue. People can’t stand him, a clone of even more unpopular Paul Ryan, who sadly runs Fox News, now on a very bad path. Rove is a DINIER of DINIERS, which makes him a fool. WATCH!
DailyBeast: Kanye West Storms Out of Interview After Tim Pool Lightly Defends Jews https://tinyurl.com/yue3v4kd “Though Pool pushed back more on Monday than he normally does—and after Ye and his campaign staff walked out in a huff, Pool did forcefully denounce antisemitism on air”
// Ye and his entourage of far-right trolls bailed on a mostly friendly chat with Tim Pool when his antisemitic rants were given the mildest of pushback
⭕ 28 Nov 2022
🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: Recent claims of Russian gains around #Bakhmut do not portend an imminent Russian encirclement of the city. ¤ Read the latest on #Ukraine in tonight’s Russian offensive campaign assessment w/ @criticalthreats:http://isw.pub/UkrWar112822
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1597417203837460480?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 5/ Russian sources have notably propagated spurious claims regarding gains around #Bakhmut as part of a continued information operation since October, and recent unsubstantiated territorial claims may be part of this continued information operation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 6/ Even if Russian forces have indeed succeeded in taking control of settlements south of #Bakhmut, these gains do not threaten the critical T0513 (Bakhmut-Siversk) & T0504 (Bakhmut-Kostyantynivka) routes that serve as major Ukrainian ground lines of communication into Bakhmut.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 8/ Russian forces in #Klishchiivka, in order to advance any further, would have to cross three kilometers of fields with little cover and concealment. Russian troops, in their current degraded state, are likely unable to be able to accomplish this task quickly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 10/ Russian claimed advances around #Bakhmut over the course of November 27 and 28 are thus unlikely to generate operational-level effects and certainly not quickly. [link]
Newsweek: Leaked FSB Letters Reveal How Russian Officials Have Discussed Nuclear War https://tinyurl.com/ys6u579x ‘Igor Sushko, the executive director of the Wind of Change Research Group, … has translated the correspondence to English. He shared all the emails with Newsweek’
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Truth can defeat ‘gaslighting,’ the word of the year. But not always https://tinyurl.com/4zmp2w74 “[T]hat proposition relies on shame, and Trump taught his party that shamelessness is a kind of superpower”
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture The resilience of the Ukrainian people is awe inspiring. The flip side is that we cannot allow this barbaric, illegal conduct by the Russians to become normalized. And we must not, in western publics, become de-sensitized to brutal behaviour by authoritarians. @IAPonomarenko
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko I’m telling you, it’s a miracle how people adapt to things like massive blackouts, missile attacks, and the lack of heating and other basic necessities in wartime. ¤ Modern technology + solidarity and mutual supportiveness + a bit of imagination = life goes on as it should
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT AXIS/ 0015 UTC 29 NOV/ RU consolidated advances across Bakhmutka River S of the urban area. The Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) now conforms to the rail line in the vicinity of the village of Andrivka. UKR artillery continues to exact a heavy toll on RU infantry.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1597410388840435718?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Minutes later after the one above, another totally deranged rant extremely similar to one he made last week. Does he not remember that? Is his brain THAT broken?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1597338284019318785?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Many Republican Judges go out of their way to show they are beyond reproach, & will come down hard on people before them in order to prove they cannot be “bought” or in any way show favor to those who appointed them. People, including me, are oftentimes shocked by the lack of courage and wisdom shown. As soon as they get appointed, they go “ROGUE!” Democrat Judges are the exact opposite in attitude – Screw you, this guy appointed me, I’m a Democrat all they way, you don’t have a chance. So SAD!
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost My god. He can’t stop. Multiple times attacking Smith today so far. ¤ He has this unique knack of showing how terrified he is with these non-stop unhinged outbursts instead of just keeping his mouth shut which any lawyer would advise.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1597337266191409152?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonald Trump [ts] This fully weaponized monster, Jack Smith, shouldn’t be let anywhere near the political persecution of “President Donald J. Trump.” I did nothing wrong on January 6th, and nothing wrong with the Democrats’ fix on the Document Hoax, that is, unless the six previous Presidents did something wrong also …
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Democrats’ lame-duck priorities have shifted https://tinyurl.com/47f53ahs “Democrats should … protect Ukraine and Justice Department funding, eliminate debt ceiling blackmail, pass ECA reform, and protect same-sex marriage. … The rest can wait”
🖼 WhiteHouse: 2022 Holidays at the White House: “We The People” https://www.whitehouse.gov/holidays-2022/
WhiteHouse: Holiday Tour Brochure https://tinyurl.com/2unwnrs7 (printable)
NPR: White House unveils its holiday decor, including 77 trees and ‘We the People’ theme https://tinyurl.com/y27xz8xs
🐣 RT @hunterschwarz This year’s White House Christmas theme is “We The People.” @FLOTUS Jill Biden: “The soul of our nation is, and always has been, ‘We the People.’ … Room by room, we represent what brings us together during the holidays and throughout the year.”
🖼 https://twitter.com/hunterschwarz/status/1597271248073097218?s=20/photo/1 -4
NYT: Turning Point for Garland as Justice Dept. Grapples With Trump Inquiries https://tinyurl.com/ywhpdh9n
// After months of an already hyperpartisan political environment, the attorney general appears to be acknowledging that his approach has to be recalibrated.
⭕ 27 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @AVindman Hey @elonmusk this is where I work @votevets. If you want to help veterans donate to this group. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @VoteVets It’s simple: @AVindman is pulled by a sense of service and what’s right—no matter if it’s @realDonaldTrump attacking him or @elonmusk. We’re proud he’s a VoteVets’ advisor. The 2M Veterans, military families, and supporters who are part of our organization are with him. 100%.
🐣 RT @AVindman Thank you for the kind words. As you know I’m a great admirer of yours.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AnneApplebaum It’s incredible how Vindman’s bravery infuriates the powerful. You can be a billionaire or a president and still be conscious of your own amorality, your own cowardice, your own lack of principles.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @davidfrum If Vindman had not spoken out at the risk of his career, Ukraine might have been cut off by a vengeful President Trump from the US aid it needed to prepare its defense against Putin’s impending invasion. ¤ Which is why enemies of Ukraine and democracy hate Vindman so much.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko They attack Alex Vindman and defend Stephen Miller. That’s the Republican Party & Elon Musk.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf This is no contest. @AVindman is a man of irreproachable character and great courage who has dedicated his life to the service of his country. The other guy…is none of those things.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman I’ll put my reputation up against yours any day. I’ve spent my entire adult life in service to my country. Upheld my oath to protect & defend this nation at great personal cost. You’ve demonstrated yourself to be a purveyor of hate and division. Let history be the judge.
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @elonmusk Vindman is both puppet & puppeteer. Question is who pulls his strings … ?
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 $44B to be a troll. Wow. Biden is asking Congress for $39B to support Ukraine for all of next fiscal year. Think of all the good that $44B could have done
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @AVindman Tesla stock is plummeting, Twitter is on the verge of insolvency, SpaceX succeeded in spite of you. You have a chance to salvage your legacy. Try this as your touchstone. Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless-Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. LeaDeRSHIP. #Armyvalues
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @AVindman Kinda weird that @elonmusk gets to decide how like a half-billion people communicate. Way too much power for one erratic individual to wield, don’t you think?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: the host and his guest concur that Ukraine should be erased off the map and even the memory that it existed should be destroyed. The host says that Russia will always be an empire and being in a state of war is only natural for any empire of Russia’s size.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1597089807171485696?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture [Mick Ryan] In the wake of the Ukrainian victory in western #Kherson, and in the midst of Russia’s ongoing terror bombing campaign against Ukrainian civil infrastructure, we should look at the man in charge of Russia’s campaign. A thread on General #Surovikin. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1597088884734955520?s=20
🐣 RT @wartranslated It is quite peculiar how last night, Russian channels began pushing a psyop about an ultimatum to Ukrainians at Bakhmut. They always do these when things aren’t going well. GREY ZONE laughed this claim off earlier today.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1596843925402431489?s=20/photo/1 -4 (2 in Ru)
[Text 1:] Regarding the ultimatum in Bakhmut.
– Bakhmut and Artemovsk are in the operational environment.
– Today, our gangsters came in and completely cleared Belogorovka.
– The offensive is in full swing, there is no talk of withdrawal.
– Regarding the ultimatum on the 27th – I confirm it.
– Today, the guys have also made moves in this direction.
– Surrender, do not die for the European standards imposed on you. They brainwashed you and made enemies out of us. Think![Text 3:] And now, the morning has come, which means that already more than three hours ago, a non-existent ultimatum has expired. Mr. Hohol lost two cities at once – Bakhmut and Artyomovsk (just in case, it’s teh same thing). And Mr. Vahnir (?), respectively, acquired these two cities.
But in reality, both sides of the front simply woke up, rubbed the dried Slavic soil off their faces with fresh wet Slavic soil, and, perhaps, laughed at the Internet news that they were told by the HQs, and went on slaughtering each with the backdrop of artillery explosions.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski For Trump’s entire life, he has feared that eventually he might have to deal with someone like Jack Smith.
🔆 This❗️⋙ MoscowTimes, Andrei Kolesnikov: Scientific Putinism: Shaping Official Ideology in Russia https://tinyurl.com/4zkfmdzd A new mandatory college curriculum, “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood,” marks the transition of Putin’s Russia from authoritarianism to totalitarianism
There is a belief that the Russian elite under President Vladimir Putin has only ever been interested in money. Yet Putin’s militant, anti-liberal, anti-Western, isolationist, paternalistic, and harshly authoritarian regime has always had an ideology. ¤ This ideology is not systematized, but it does exist, and snippets of it can be found throughout Putin’s speeches, articles, and interviews. Now the war in Ukraine has necessitated a more articulated ideology, however.
The initiative to systematize and codify Putinism has led to a presidential decree listing Russia’s “traditional spiritual and moral values,” as well as the development of a new ideological curriculum for colleges.
It is no longer enough to indoctrinate children in kindergartens and schools. It is now time to unify the worldviews of college students, and, by extension, those of their professors, whose ranks will inevitably be purged. A similar course taught during the Soviet era was known as “Scientific Communism.”
The name for this new curriculum is “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood,” though it might as well be called “Scientific Putinism.” It is composed of four units: “History” – historical policy as the imposition of a mythologized official version of history, which is one of the instruments for manipulating the mass consciousness of Russians; “Cultural Codes” or the “traditional spiritual and moral values,” around which Putin has ordered federal and regional governments to unify; “Russia and the World” — a justification of isolationism, anti-Westernism, and jingoism; and “Vision for the Future,” which sets out what the state hopes to achieve beyond victory in Ukraine and the destruction of the “fifth column.”
The curriculum justifies the cult of the eternal leader and doubles down on the idea that Russia is fighting the forces of evil in Ukraine in an effort to “de-satanize” the country. However, at the same time, Scientific Putinism lacks key components such as development goals or a vision for Russia’s future, focusing as it does almost exclusively on the past.
During Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, there were teams working on a future-oriented ideology and making road maps based on the idea that Russia would fast-track the modernization of the state and society. Putin’s ideology, however, is one that fundamentally opposes modernization.
Putin has successfully convinced a significant portion of the population that Russia must regain its status as a great power, and that Russia is under attack by both the liberal West and traitors at home. As the regime has grown more authoritarian, its ideology has also become more archaic, its propaganda more obtrusive, and any hopes of modernization have dwindled.
An ideology that consists of historical, cultural, and religious myths, bogus traditions, and resentment seeks to legitimize an authoritarian regime and delegitimize those who oppose it.
Such an ideology makes it possible to label nonconformists as enemies, and to divide people into “us” and “them.” The division into “us” and “them” doesn’t just provide a marker for self-identification, it also serves to convince the public that there is a certain majority from which they should not stray.
In the past, the only requirement for being part of the “us” was passive, silent, conformist support. Today, however, this is not enough: Russians must surrender their very bodies to be cannon fodder in the supreme leader’s holy war against the “satanic” forces of the West. This is no longer authoritarianism; it is totalitarianism.
Imperialism and colonialism are key components of Putinism and key factors in the war. There is nothing new about this ideology; it comes almost verbatim from Stalinism and from earlier Eurasian and Slavophile narratives.
The war is being passed off as striving to restore historical fairness, as defensive and preventive, and as liberation. According to Putin, the land of the empire must be “returned and reinforced.”
In just a few years, the regime has evolved from a cult of the victory of 1945 to a cult of war itself, and Putin has managed to persuade a large segment of Russian society that the “special military operation” of 2022 is a natural continuation of World War II. In essence, it is an existential war between Russian and Western civilizations.
Putin has started to refer to Russia as an entire civilization. The state is not just sacred and worthy of the ultimate sacrifice; it is also a separate and superior civilization with a “thousand-year history” and its own special path.
Within this history, cultural codes are being passed down from generation to generation as part of the country’s political DNA. This state-civilization has its own pantheon of heroes unchanged from the Soviet era: Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Joseph Stalin, and Yuri Gagarin.
This state-civilization has always been under attack by enviers and foes, making its state of permanent conflict critical, and not simply limited to the battlefield. The state must win in all aspects — in culture and in sports, in the construction of Olympic facilities, and in the war against Ukraine and the West.
To defend the sovereignty of this state-civilization, the Kremlin is counting on the security services, or siloviki, who have been given additional funding and are reinforced by spin doctors and so-called “journalists” in the Kremlin’s service.
The Culture Ministry, the communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, and the Russian Orthodox Church are becoming de facto siloviki themselves, enjoying as they do the right to block or ban media, restrict the sales of books by authors who oppose the war, and decide who can perform on theater stages.
The ideology has become corporeal, bolstered by political and military acts, such as the annexation of Crimea and the “special military operation.” In short, the special ideological operation is ongoing, and it seems to be faring rather better than the military one.
This article was originally published by the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace
🐣 RT @Jodarka I pray for the defenders holding the line to be protected tonight and this day from every bomb, may they be warm and dry, maybe they not lose hope or courage. May Bakhmut continue to hold. I pray for each prisoner who is writing a prayer on the wall write now, may God answer them
⋙ 🐣 🙏 Amen.
🐣 RT @7Veritas4 The beard tingles tonight…
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/7Veritas4/status/1596977212175310852?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] @realDonaldTrump [ts] Jack Smith (nice, soft name, isn’t it?), is a political hit man, who is totally compromised, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near our already highly WEAPONIZED & CORRUPT “Justice” Department and FBI, which are stuffed with, and listening to, Radical Left “MONSTERS,” who will cause difficulties for our Country the likes of which we have not seen before. By the way, OBAMA SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN (and got caught!), & what about the MASSIVE Joe & Hunter BIDEN CORRUPTION (Evidence already in!)?
🐣 RT @tribelaw The reason I’m not leaving — yet, anyway — is that I dread “unwinding connections to sources, colleagues,” and over 1.35M followers. The alternatives don’t yet ”offer the same reach, or the rich vein of dissimilarity across social and geographic lines.”
⋙ 🐣 Twitter is not about the software or a celebrity’s feed, it’s about the breadth and depth of the community. Governments, scientists, experts use it to share important info and communicate with each other. It has tools to craft your experience. But the bottom line: it’s the users’
❤️ 🧵 RT @igorsushko 🚨[thread] My translation of the Nov 27 #FSBletters from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Subject: Games surrounding Belarus to force involvement in the war and FSB’s psychological profile on Prigozhin. Over 2,300 words. Please share far & wide.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1596984008726175744?s=20
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russia’s strategy for decades to come is discussed on Russian state TV. Along with the claim that the Ukrainian language does not exist, pundit predicts Russia’s absorption of the neighboring countries into “one big Russian home,” with eventual expansion to the Balkans & Poland.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1597005533760073729?s=20/photo/1
NYT: In Ukraine, Bakhmut Becomes a Bloody Vortex for 2 Militaries https://tinyurl.com/bdh76w7j “The front line, on the city’s outskirts, looks like a muddy moonscape, or a scene from World War I. At night, residents can hear the grumble of Russian jets prowling the skies”
// Even as they have celebrated successes elsewhere, Ukrainian forces in one small eastern city have endured relentless Russian attacks. And the struggle to hold it is only intensifying.
… The front line, on the city’s outskirts, looks like a muddy moonscape, or a scene from World War I. At night, residents can hear the grumble of Russian jets prowling the skies.
In recent days, Ukraine has sent floods of reinforcements into Bakhmut, including Special Forces and lesser trained territorial defense fighters, according to soldiers, local residents and a U.S. defense official.
The Russians have continued to throw formations from Wagner Group, an infamous paramilitary organization with direct ties to the Kremlin, at Ukrainian trenches. But they are now supported by a new tranche of Russian rank-and-file forces redeployed from the Kherson front, according to the U.S. defense official and Ukrainian soldiers.
The intensity of Russia’s attempts to seize the city has baffled military analysts. Elsewhere along their 600-mile front line, the Russians are mostly digging in for winter to entrench and conserve resources.
In summer, after Russian forces captured the neighboring province of Luhansk, seizing Bakhmut might have looked like a natural progression in Russia’s campaign to conquer the east — a step toward two more important cities, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. But now, analysts said, given the degradation of Russian forces and their ammunition shortages after a series of setbacks, that goal seems improbable, especially after the loss of their foothold in the northeast.
“The Russian military is still dealing with unrealistic political demands to show progress,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va. “But given poor quality of available forces and decreasing stocks of artillery ammunition, they are unlikely to be successful, because once again the Russian military appears to be feeding units piecemeal without adequate support.”
Russia’s strategy in Bakhmut is reminiscent of its seizure of the eastern cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in June. There, Russian troops relied on superior artillery fire to overpower Ukrainian forces and gain ground. But the Ukrainian forces they faced then were short of both shells and Western-supplied artillery — something that is no longer as pressing, especially in Bakhmut.
“In the six months that I’ve been in Bakhmut, I have never seen our artillery working like this,” said a Ukrainian soldier in the city, referring to the volume of Ukrainian shells fired. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. …
“Battles like Bakhmut consume forces that could be used elsewhere,” Mr. Kofman said, adding that Russian forces are using people they deem “expendable,” but even so, they cannot afford to waste that much artillery.
The Ukrainian forces holding Bakhmut are from a hodgepodge of units, including the 93rd Mechanized Brigade and the 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade, crack units that have been worn down by nonstop Russian assaults.
Troops from other brigades have arrived in recent weeks to plug holes in the lines and shore up formations floundering after heavy casualties. But even though the numbers of Ukrainian wounded and dead are steep, the attacking Russians are suffering far worse, Ukrainian soldiers say, as their exposed assaults are cut down by artillery and machine-gun fire.
U.S. defense officials estimate that Russia and Ukraine have each suffered around 100,000 wounded and dead over the course of the war, though those numbers are impossible to verify, the casualty numbers in Bakhmut even more so. …
Recent battlefield advances around Bakhmut have been measured in yards, not miles. Every day is a kaleidoscope of Russian and Ukrainian forces either pushing forward or retreating, often resulting in minimal gains at a bloody cost. …
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone The endless cold. ¤ The endless glutinous mud. ¤ The endless Russian shells. ¤ The endless death. ¤ The endless Russian attacks. ¤ These pics give a visual sense of what Ukrainian troops defending the town of Bakhmut are enduring.
🖼 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1596890110703853568?s=20/photo/1 -4
// Getty Images
🧵 RT @DefMon3 A dive in to the importance of Luhansk as a logistics hub for the Russians. ¤ I will provide some though on why Luhansk city is a key location for the Russian logistics apparatus with the help of some very high resolution satellite images and a few maps.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1596872759950594048?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 26 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @AVindman Bull@&$% I don’t believe a former marine general is involved with Vagner. This is a bunch of nonsense from Progozhin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpencerGuard WTH? “(as part of Wagner PMC), which is commanded by a US citizen, a former general of the Marine Corps,” Prigozhin said” I hope all the right organizations are looking into this. [link]
¤ https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1596718505272913920?s=20
⋙ Here’s the reporting in The DailyBeast: Former U.S. Marine General Working for Putin’s Private Army, Founder Claims https://tinyurl.com/2asc9v3f //➔ It was also reported in Barron’s; anyone know Finnish?
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1597211596371431424?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The founder of the notorious Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries on Friday claimed a former U.S. Marine Corps general is in its ranks commanding a “British battalion.” Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the bold assertion in response to questions from the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat about Finnish fighters working for Wagner. According to the press service for Prigozhin’s Concord company, he said there were around 20 Finns in the group. “As a rule, these are highly qualified specialists, very ideological and motivated,” Prigozhin was quoted as saying. “I have a very good opinion about the Finns on the battlefield. They are fighting in a British battalion (as part of Wagner PMC), whose commander is a US citizen, a former general of the Marine Corps.”
🐣 RT @StandByUkraine I believe either prigozhin or Putin will make a move on the other soon. Their relationship is unsustainable. Prigozhin won’t disarm and has little incentive to waste his army on bakhmut now. He needs to salvage it for what happens after putin. Putin knows this. He’ll replace him
🐣 RT @abstractedaway This was Ukraine in 1919. Notice the Kuban region, east of the sea? The Holodomor was, in part, targeted to wipe out the Ukrainian population there and forcibly russify that territory.
🌎 https://twitter.com/abstractedaway/status/1596606293128740865?s=20/photo/1 ⋙ HolodomorMuseum [US]: The curtailment of Ukrainization in the Kuban https://tinyurl.com/4xh2dky7
// 8/10/2022
🐣 RT @Johnyrocket69 There’s a videos of 45 Russian tanks headed to Bakhmut. Maybe that’s their threat to surrender. We’ll see if they do the usual retreat after a few tanks explode. #Ukraine
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Washington post op Ed inadvertently tells the truth. DeSantis would mean “GOP return to normal.” So lying, thuggish, racist, authoritarian, Orbanism is normal for the Republican Party.
⋙ WaPo, Jim Geraghty: DeSantis would pave the way for a post-Trump GOP return to normal https://tinyurl.com/bdz59w83
// Plenty of Americans across the partisan divide would have good reason to root for the Florida governor to win the Republican nomination.
⋙ 🐣 DeSantis is in many ways WORSE than Trump. But, he’s so obvious in his cosplaying and so extreme and so humorless, I doubt he’ll fly as a candidate. But we’ve thought that before dot dot dot
🐣 RT @profgalloway You rise/fall to the level of your peer group. ¤ In other news, Trump is dining w/Nazis.
🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Trump’s former ambassador to Israel. Narrator: he’s not “better than this.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1596631159487827968?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this. Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong. 1/
🐣 RT [Rabbi] @JonahPesner We forcefully condemn the meeting between Former President Trump, Ye & Fuentes who is a reprehensible antisemite and white supremacist. We call on people of all faiths & political affiliations to join in unequivocal condemnation. Hate can’t be normalized.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman To all those who profess to condemn antisemitism among our leaders, but are quiet when Holocaust denier/white supremacist Nick Fuentes and avowed antisemite Kanye West are welcomed to dinner by Donald Trump: your silence is deafening. ¤ Speak out now by name or don’t speak at all.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The Ukrainian military has achieved 100% of its realistic agenda for the autumn campaign.
The Kharkiv and the Kherson operations successfully completed before the raining season is a very, very good result.
Now the winter campaign coming our way.
🐣 RT @N525E931 Ukraine slowly loses some of their best people in Bakhmut. OTOH the Wagner burns through the stock of the worst people of Russia. ¤ Even if the casualty ratio is 1:100, it is, unfortunately, Ukraine who gets weakened this way
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaximusClaudius Even the “worst people in Russia” need ammo, small arms, heavy weaponry, supplies and logistic capacity. So they are consuming military ressources that could be used somewhere else. ¤ History has demonstrated impressivley that creating “Verduns” tends to be not that succesfull.
🐣 RT @RadfieldChris By the way, three or two hours ago, the Special Forces of the Russian Federation issued an ultimatum to the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Bakhmut. In three hours something should start.
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian forces are regrouping significant among of units around Donetsk in order to send into Bakhmut direction.
⋙ 🐣 RT @StandardJohnnyB Why are they so obsessed with Bakhmut? Is there a huge washing machine factory there or something?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Geof17773624 They want the whole of the Donbass, and that means talking Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, and they can’t do that without first taking Bakhmut. The road to Kramatorsk runs up from Bakhmut.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ImHere4boobies Full control of Bakhmut gives Ukraine multiple avenues of penetration into an area that could bisect Russian forces and their supply lines. People get fixated on Russia wanting to take it for their own needs and forget that an objective can equally be denying it to your enemy.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @EvaLeyst Lithium!
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @EvaLeyst One word might be the key to the whole war.
⋙⋙⋙ 🌎 renewablematter[.]eu: Ukraine: all lithium reserves and mineral resources in war zones https://tinyurl.com/33m5wu59
Geologists call it the Ukrainian shield. That land in the middle which starts from the northern border with Belarus up to the shores of the Azov Sea, in the south of Donbass. According to the studies of the Ukrainian geological service, in the ancient rocks of this shield are hidden lithium deposits with great potential. Findings that have been identified mainly around the area of Mariupol, the port city of Donbass torn apart by Russian bombing. …
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Simon_P_Hannah It’s a key town for supply routes
🐣 RT @NOELreports Russian copium overload. ¤ “The Armed Forces of Ukraine in Bakhmut were given an ultimatum demanding to lay down their arms and surrender! They gave time until November 27 until 6:00”
🐣 RT @We_LoveRussia [5:45pm] The Bakhmut garrison demands permission from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to retreat from the city, otherwise it will be forced to capitulate! ¤ Wagner was given an ultimatum to the Armed Forces of Ukraine until 6.00 am – to surrender!
// 2:50am local
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en While Ukrainian civilians experience problems with electricity, heat and network in most regions, our Defenders in Bakhmut are fighting for Ukrainian freedom in such conditions. ¤ Unbreakable! Glory to Heroes!
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1596534680383197185?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🕯Each year on the last Sat. of November, #Ukraine commemorates the millions of #Holodomor victims Stalin starved to death in 1932-3. This 90th year the past is more than memory, as #Russia’s war is #genocide too. ¤ Read @EuromaidanPress’ extensive library:
⋙ .EuromaidanPress: What to read about the Holodomor at Euromaidan Press https://tinyurl.com/495yj89s
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian volunteers are having another tragedy today: the Russian ministry of defence suddenly blocked the import of various military equipment and clothes into Russia with no explanation. Vatniks have no idea what’s going on.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1596596035551649793?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] We don’t know how to comment on this. The Ministry of Defense bent customs so that it would not let into Russia everything that we buy for our fighters: drones (China), thermal vision (iRay, China), sights (NightForce USA via Dubai), clothes, shoes and more. Someone really wants to stop the flow of good things to the troops. We don’t understand at all who needs to be asked for permission for import, this is some kind of nonsense elevated to an absolute.
🐣 RT @stavridisj Ukraine is a tale of 2 wars…1 on the ground ..1 in the air.The Ukrainians are winning on the ground, but Russians are winning in the air and destroying Ukraine’s electric grid.We need to increase air defense to help win the 2nd war – doing that will break the Russian war effort.
AP: New state voter fraud units finding few cases from midterms https://tinyurl.com/27bzb4az //➔ Ron DeSantis wastes more money on another political stunt. So far the biggest breach was by GOP activists who breached voting equipment in Georgia’s Coffee County in 2021
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS /1730 UTC 26 NOV/ UKR forces advance to within small arms range of P-66 HWY. This effectively interdicts a 15 km section of roadway, cutting RU Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) between Svatove and Kremenna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1596554842360934401?s=20/photo/1
NYT: The U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals https://tinyurl.com/4yy36ns2 “‘We are committed to providing Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield,’ Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said this month”
// tags: Defense budget; The West thought an artillery and tank war in Europe would never happen again and shrunk weapons stockpiles. It was wrong.
“A day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan,” said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. …
The West is also trying to come up with alternative systems, even if they are older, to substitute for shrinking stocks of expensive air-defense missiles and anti-tank Javelins. It is sending strong signals to Western defense industries that longer-term contracts are in the offing — and that more shifts of workers should be employed and older factory lines should be refurbished. It is trying to purchase ammunition from countries like South Korea to “backfill” stocks being sent to Ukraine.
There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory. …
The Ukrainians want at least four systems that the West has not provided and is unlikely to: long-range surface-to-surface missiles known as ATACMS that could hit Russia and Crimea; Western fighter jets; Western tanks; and a lot more advanced air defense, said Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist who is now a senior adviser at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The ATACMS, with a range of some 190 kilometers, or about 118 miles, will not be given for fear they could hit Russia; the tanks and fighter jets are just too complicated, requiring a year or more to train in how to use and maintain. As for air defense, Mr. Cancian said, NATO and the United States deactivated most of their short-range air defense after the Cold War, and there is little to go around. Producing more can take up to two years.
Maintenance is key, but there are clever answers for relatively simpler equipment, like the M-777 howitzer given to Ukraine. With the right parts, a Ukrainian engineer can link up to an American artillery officer in Fort Sill, Okla., and get talked through maintenance over Zoom.
Ukraine has also proved adaptable. Its forces are known inside NATO as “the MacGyver Army,” a reference to an old television series in which the hero is inventive and improvisational with whatever comes to hand.
To shell Russian positions at Snake Island, for instance, the Ukrainians put Caesars, with a 40-kilometer range, on barges and towed them out 10 kilometers to hit the island, which was 50 kilometers away, astonishing the French. Ukraine also sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with its own adapted missiles, and has built drones that can attack ships at sea.
American officials insist that the U.S. military still has enough matériel to continue supplying Ukraine and defend U.S. interests elsewhere. ¤ “We are committed to providing Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said this month after announcing more Stinger missiles for Ukraine.
Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.
As of September, the U.S. military had a limited number of 155-mm artillery rounds in its stockpiles, and limited numbers of guided rockets, rocket launchers, howitzers, Javelins and Stingers, according to an analysis by Mr. Cancian.
The shortage in 155-mm artillery shells “is probably the big one that has the planners most concerned,” Mr. Cancian said. ¤ “If you want to increase production capability of 155 shells,” he said, “it’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end.”
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Vladimir Makey, 64, head of Belarus Foreign Affairs Minister, is dead. There are rumors he might have been poisoned. ¤ Makey was named as a possible successor of Lukashenko. He was one of the few not under Russian influence. ¤ Rumors say this might be a hint to Lukashenko.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT /1430 UTC 26 NOV/ RU’s piecemeal offensive continues. RU units have made small gains in S and NE suburbs;RU troops occupying these areas suffer heavily as they are exposed to UAV directed Ukrainian artillery. RU continues artillery barrages of the Bakhmut urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1596510085769232384?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Lavrov: “The people of Ukraine will be liberated from neo-Nazi rulers, they deserve to live in friendship next to their Slavic brothers.” 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
⭕ 25 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @marceelias They hate me because I fight, they fear me because I win.
⋙ 🐣 RT @honestelections We can’t continue to allow activist attorneys to rewrite election law in the middle of voting! ¤ That’s not how our system is supposed to work.
⋙⋙ 🐣 The courts found that the proscription on voting on the Saturday after a holiday did not apply to runoffs. Both GOP Raffensperger and Sperling announced on 11/9 that counties could hold early in-person voting on 11/26. ¤ This is not “rewriting” election law. It’s applying it.
🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar “According to @TheStudyofWar, the Wagner Group views the #Bakhmut battle as an opportunity to score public-relations points by proving the mercenaries can win … while the rest of the #Kremlin’s forces lose.” via @forbes
⋙ Forbes, David Axe: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Personal Brigade Is Fighting One Of the Ukraine War’s Hardest Battles https://tinyurl.com/3f5z276n The battle ”might prove pivotal to the wider war—and Zelensky’s future—as Russia spends its last good forces for no real gain”
// In weeks of failed attacks on Bakhmut, the Russians have lost potentially hundreds of men killed and wounded—and the 1st Presidential Brigade and …
Officially, it’s the mission of the Ukrainian national guard’s 1st Presidential Brigade to defend the leader of Ukraine. In peacetime, that might mean manning guardposts in Kyiv and escorting the president on his travels. ¤ But Ukraine isn’t at peace—and hasn’t been since 2014, when Russian troops first seized Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula then invaded eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. So the 1st Presidential Brigade’s remit has, uh, somewhat expanded.
Now in addition to protecting Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky and his family, the elite brigade, thousands strong and nicknamed for 17th-century Ukrainian military hero Bohdan Khmelnytsky, guards strategic facilities in Kyiv such as power plants. And it also fights on the front. ¤ And not just any sector of the front. Arguably the hardest sector: the fields and forests around Bakhmut, a town with a pre-war population of around 70,000, 30 miles north of Donetsk, the seat of the separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic” in Donbas.
As Ukrainian forces press their advantage, three months after launching twin counteroffensives in the east and south, Bakhmut is one of the few places where the Russians and their separatist and mercenary allies still are trying to attack.
The battle for Bakhmut, which pits Russian regulars, DPR separatists and mercenaries from The Wagner Group against the Ukrainian forces holding the town—including the 1st Presidential Brigade—might be the most absurd of these isolated Russian offensive operations. Which of course is little comfort to the 1st Presidential Brigade troopers hunkering in cold, muddy trenches around the town.
Bakhmut itself doesn’t have a lot of military value. Certainly not any value that’s worth the lives of the few good troops the Kremlin has left after nine months of grinding warfare and repeated botched efforts to raise new forces.
According to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., The Wagner Group views the Bakhmut battle as an opportunity to score public-relations points by proving the mercenaries can win … while the rest of the Kremlin’s forces lose.
But the Ukrainian military is determined to deprive the Russians of any victory in Bakhmut, even a P.R. one. It’s not for no reason that the 1st Presidential Brigade has sent at least one of its battalions and the battalion’s BTR-4 wheeled armored vehicles to the town to fight alongside forces including the 93rd Mechanized Brigade—itself one of the Ukrainian army’s better brigades.
One video, recorded by a 1st Presidential Brigade trooper, speaks to the intensity of the fighting. He and some comrades man an M-2 heavy machine gun in a trench in a forest outside Bakhmut as Russian snipers take aim at them from three directions. “Get out of my forest!” one trooper shouts as he returns fire with his AK-style assault rifle.
Other videos that recently have circulated online depict Ukrainian drones dropping improvised bombs on Russian troops cowering in shallow dugouts outside Bakhmut—and killing seemingly scores of them.
In weeks of failed attacks on Bakhmut, the Russians have lost potentially hundreds of men killed and wounded—and the 1st Presidential Brigade and other Ukrainian units still control the town.
The Ukrainian president’s personal brigade might be a long way from Kyiv and the president. But it’s fighting, and so far winning, a battle that might prove pivotal to the wider war—and Zelensky’s future—as Russia spends its last good forces for no real gain.
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald Putin’s Potemkin regime. Everything, from votes, to referendums, to organizing mobilizations, is a sham – including a meeting with “soldiers’ mothers.”
⋙ 🧵 RT @irgarner Putin met soldiers’ mothers today. Here’s Vladimir, patiently listening. He wants to hear what ordinary people have to say. Except it turns out these mothers are not so ordinary…
📌 https://twitter.com/irgarner/status/1596157232017657856?s=20
// actresses and sympathizers
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @irgarner […] People have asked me since day one of the war: what happens when the bodies start coming back? When mothers start crying on TV? ¤ Here’s the answer: Nothing. Not for years. Not until the mass of corpses is so high that it’s unavoidable. The state will PR its way out of the crisis.
⋙⋙ 🐣 sort of like the “Brooks Brothers ‘riot’“ that halted vote counting in FL in 2000, engineered by none other than ‘dirty trickster’ Roger Stone, under the direction of James Baker: think how differently things might have been!
CSIS (Nov 18, 2022): United States Aid to Ukraine Explained in Six Charts https://tinyurl.com/42ms5ycx “U.S. aid to Ukraine totals $68 billion, and the White House has just asked Congress for another $37.7 billion.” ¤ This aid is paid for by US taxpayers.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1596280166275506176?s=20/photo/1
// Defense budget
🐣 RT @ChrisEl26250812 So,…um, someone in Europe said that the USA was profiting from the war…?
⋙ 🐣 actually not true as far as I know; sometimes upgraded replacements are sold to NATO partners who then provide their earlier models to Ukr ¤ the US has budgeted $40B for this year, asking $39B for next year ~ budgeted by Congress, paid for by US taxpayers
⋙⋙ 🐣 budget includes humanitarian assistance and State Department expenses related to the war
🐣 RT @NATO #NATO stands with Ukraine in its brave fight against Russian aggression. We will continue to provide support for as long as it takes ¤ #ForMin | #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
🐣 RT @vonderleyen During my phone call with @ZelenskyyUa today, I expressed EU solidarity with Ukraine in the face of Russia’s criminal attacks on civilian infrastructure. ¤ @EU_Commission is stepping up support, including with partners, to support the restoration of power and heat in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA A secure Europe is a Europe in which Russia is defeated: politically, militarily, and economically. A defeated Russia means a safe Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and the rest of Europe – Duda.
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava “At any cost, Germany will continue to support Ukraine… We will not allow Russia to blackmail us with hunger and cold!” – Head of the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany Berbok.
‼️ In this new era of Twitter, in addition to “Block” and “Mute,” which apply to entire accounts, you may want to use the “MUTE WORDS” function. ¤ It will remove tweets from your timeline if you want to bow out of a specific topic. ¤ The navigation is a bit tricky. Here’s how:
⋙ 🔆 To not see Tweets containing specific words:
Start at (…) just above the blue “Write Tweet” icon
➔ Settings and Support
➔ Settings and Privacy
➔ Privacy and Safety
➔ Mute and Block
➔ Muted Words
● Write the words you want to mute
● Set the duration
🧵 RT @wartranslated Sorry for the long post, but it’s quite telling that the rift within the Russian forces between the army and military reporters on one side, and Wagner+Kadyrov “realists” on the other persists. Here Prigozhyn’s GREY ZONE blasts those who blamed ill-fated Serpukhov mobiks… 1/3
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1596175436811472897?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Here GREY ZONE, and whoever is behind it, completely and individually disintegrates all the military reporters who referred to 2014 as a point where volunteers survived despite all the problems. They show the mobiks were completely unprepared and it was not their fault. [txt]
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated GREY ZONE shows the mobiks do not owe anything as they are that, mobilised, not contract soldiers, so if they’re not trained or supplied, you cannot expect much of them. [txt] ¤ https://t.me/grey_zone/15929
⭕ 24 Nov 2022 🍁
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 [11/25] I just spent the week meeting with ~30 different EU officials and not a single one said anything like this. Literally the opposite – transatlantic cohesion is strong and we stand with Ukraine
🧵📌 RT @MollyMcKew This is a very strange story, so let’s me clear about some things:
1) there is remarkable unity among the allies on support for Ukraine, especially since Russia’s renewed missile strikes targeting civilian infrastructure
2) this is not just political—public opinion is high /1
⋙⋙ 🚫 PoliticoEU: Europe accuses US of profiting from war https://tinyurl.com/sphtmb2x
// Unnamed sourced but .Fr and Ger; EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade as Vladimir Putin’s war threatens to destroy Western unity.
// blames high LNG prices, Inflation Reduction Act as protectionist
3) this story attempts to conflate discussions among the allies with weakening support for Ukraine — which simply is not true
4) Russia is working hard to create pressure on points that can cause stress/division — energy, power, food, etc /25) yes, america had more war materiel stockpiled and this has been vital in the context of Ukraine — and as everyone had been saying for years, many European allies were not spending enough on defense /3
6) same is true in energy. America focused on domestic production including methods like fracking Europeans oppose, so we are in different positions now. We can all help each other without knives in hands. PS Germany turn your nuclear power plants back on FFS
7) yes, everyone’s war stocks need to be replenished & this should be an intra-alliance plan. US was way slow ordering add’l munitions & signaling need for defense industry to step it up. We all are & must bridge gap together while continuing to arm 🇺🇦 Plenty for all natl indus /5
8) the allies+ — nato plus Sweden Finland and pacific treaty allies of US — have been using and need to keep using this context of support for Ukraine to strengthen all the fault lines Russia tries to pull all, and speak openly about unevenness and concerns /6
9) be extra cautious amplifying DIVISION narratives especially when they are relying on unnamed sources. Use the context. We must stay united. We know. Russia knows. /7 ¤ And from me, sorry for horrific typos lately, sheesh
🐣 RT @marceelias No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen. U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 3
⋙ 🐣 RT @EricKleefeld Here was Brad Raffensperger two years ago, warning people there would be legal consequences if they moved into Georgia just to vote in a Senate race: “Let me be clear, those who come to Georgia with the intention of voter fraud will be prosecuted. https://tinyurl.com/ycx6spew
⋙⋙ “If you illegally participate in our elections, you might be spending a lot more time in Georgia than you planned.”
↥ ↧
This casts some doubt on how problematic it is: CNN: Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker getting homestead tax break in 2022 on Texas home https://tinyurl.com/4barwbzv
NYT, Jesse Wegman: Is Donald Trump Ineligible to Be President? https://tinyurl.com/2m25m98u Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, bars from public office anyone who, “having previously taken an oath” to support the Constitution, “engages in insurrection or rebellion”
… [W]e shouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. The facts are well known but necessary to repeat, if only because we must never become inured to them: Abetted by a posse of low-rent lawyers, craven lawmakers and associated crackpots, Mr. Trump schemed to overturn the 2020 election by illegal and unconstitutional means. When those efforts failed, he incited a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol, causing widespread destruction, leading to multiple deaths and — for the first time in American history — interfering with the peaceful transfer of power. Almost two years later, he continues to claim, without any evidence, that he was cheated out of victory, and millions of Americans continue to believe him.
The best solution to behavior like this is the one that’s been available from the start: impeachment. … But nearly all Senate Republicans came to his defense, leaving him free to run another day.
There is another, less-known solution in our Constitution to protect the country from Mr. Trump: Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office anyone who, “having previously taken an oath” to support the Constitution, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to America’s enemies.
On its face, this seems like an eminently sensible rule to put in a nation’s governing document. That’s how Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who has drafted a resolution in Congress enabling the use of Section 3 against Mr. Trump, framed it. “This is America. We basically allow anyone to be president,” Mr. Cicilline told me. “We set limited disqualifications. One is, you can’t incite an insurrection against the United States. You shouldn’t get to lead a government that you tried to destroy.”
This was also the reasoning of the 14th Amendment’s framers, who intended it to serve as an aggressive response to the existential threat to the Republic posed by the losing side of the Civil War. Section 3 was Congress’s way of ensuring that unrepentant former Confederate officials — “enemies to the Union” — were not allowed to hold federal or state office again. As Representative John Bingham, one of the amendment’s lead drafters, put it in 1866, rebel leaders “surely have no right to complain if this is all the punishment the American people shall see fit to impose upon them.”
And yet despite its clarity and good sense, the provision has rarely been invoked. The first time, in the aftermath of the Civil War, it was used to disqualify thousands of Southern rebels, but within four years, Congress voted to extend amnesty to most of them. It was used again in 1919 when the House refused to seat a socialist member accused of giving aid and comfort to Germany in World War. …
… As Jan. 6 showed the world, Mr. Trump poses a unique and profound threat to the Republic: He is an authoritarian who disregards the Constitution and the rule of law and who delights in abusing his power to harm his perceived opponents and benefit himself, his family and his friends. For that reason, I am open to using any constitutional means of preventing him from even attempting to return to the White House. …
So could Section 3 really be used to prevent Mr. Trump from running for or becoming president again? As a legal matter, it seems beyond doubt. The Capitol attack was an insurrection by any meaningful definition — a concerted, violent attempt to block Congress from performing its constitutionally mandated job of counting electoral votes. He engaged in that insurrection, even if he did not physically join the crowd as he promised he would. As top Democrats and Republicans in Congress said during and after his impeachment trial, the former president was practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of Jan. 6. The overwhelming evidence gathered and presented by the House’s Jan. 6 committee has only made clearer the extent of the plot by Mr. Trump and his associates to overturn the election — and how his actions and his failures to act led directly to the assault and allowed it to continue as long as it did. In the words of Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, Mr. Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.” …
It’s not the legal questions that give me pause, though; it’s the political ones. ¤ First is the matter of how Republicans would react to Mr. Trump’s disqualification. An alarmingly large faction of the party is unwilling to accept the legitimacy of an election that its candidate didn’t win. Imagine the reaction if their standard-bearer were kept off the ballot altogether. They would thunder about a “rigged election” — and unlike all the times Mr. Trump has baselessly invoked that phrase, it would carry a measure of truth. Combine this with the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from right-wing media figures and politicians, including top Republicans, and you have the recipe for something far worse than Jan. 6. On the other hand, if partisan outrage were a barrier to invoking the law, many laws would be dead letters.
The more serious problem with Section 3 is that it is easy to see how it could morph into a caricature of what it is trying to prevent. Keeping specific candidates off the ballot is a classic move of autocrats, from Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela to Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus to Vladimir Putin. It sends the message that voters cannot be trusted to choose their leaders wisely — if at all. And didn’t we just witness Americans around the country using their voting power to repudiate Mr. Trump’s Big Lie and reject the most dangerous election deniers? Shouldn’t we let elections take their course and give the people the chance to (again) reject Mr. Trump at the ballot box? …
… [Rep Jamie] Raskin argued that this queasiness is built into the provision. “What was the constitutional bargain struck in Section 3?” he asked. “There would be a very minor incursion into the right of the people to elect exactly who they want, in order to obtain much greater security for the constitutional order against those who have demonstrated a propensity to want to overthrow it when it is to their advantage.”
The contours of the case for Mr. Trump’s disqualification might get stronger yet, as the Justice Department and state prosecutors continue to pursue multiple criminal investigations into him and his associates and as the Jan. 6 committee prepares to release its final report. While he would not be prohibited from running for office even if he was under criminal indictment, it would be more politically palatable to invoke Section 3 in that case and even more so if he was convicted. …
But it’s essential to remember that not all democracies have happy endings. Which brings us to the most unsettling answer to the question I began with: Sometimes a democracy doesn’t protect itself. There is no rule that says democracies will perpetuate themselves indefinitely. Many countries, notably Hungary and Turkey, have democratically undone themselves by electing leaders who then dismantled most of the rights and privileges people tend to expect from democratic government. Section 3 is in the Constitution precisely to help ensure that America does not fall into that trap.
Whether or not invoking Section 3 succeeds, the best argument for it is to take the Constitution at its word. “We undermine the importance of the Constitution if we pick and choose what rules apply,” Mr. Cicilline told me. “One of the ways we rebuild confidence in American democracy is to remind people we have a Constitution and that it has in it provisions that say who can run for public office. You don’t get to apply the Constitution sometimes or only if you feel like it. We take an oath. We swear to uphold it. We don’t swear to uphold most of it. If Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s about protecting the Constitution of the United States.”
Surely the remedy of Section 3 is worth pursuing only in the most extraordinary circumstances. Just as surely, the events surrounding Jan. 6 clear that bar. If inciting a violent insurrection to keep oneself in office against the will of the voters isn’t such a circumstance, what is?
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 1430 24 NOV/ RU forces were repulsed at Stelmakhivka. Heavy RU shelling along Forward Edge of Battle Area. 10 Russian Lancet UCAVS reported downed by UKR air defense units. RU constructing defenses.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1595777046177013760?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 23 Nov 2022
Substack, Lawrence Freedman: Is Russia losing? https://tinyurl.com/2xr64e68
// 11/23/2022; And if it is, when will it concede?
DailyBeast, Jose Paglieri: Trump’s Legal Problems All Converged Into One Day of Spectacular Failures https://tinyurl.com/2ptc74j5 Accused of 1) bank fraud, 2) rape, 3) retaining classified dicuments, 4) inciting an insurrection; ✛ must turn over tax records to Congress
// Democrats can get his taxes. The Trump Organization is careening toward a fraud trial. The FBI might get the upper hand. And Donald Trump could get taken down like Bill Cosby
In a matter of hours Tuesday, former President Donald Trump suffered humiliating defeats in courtrooms across the country that put him on track to have his personal taxes exposed, see his company dismantled, face a trial for an alleged rape, and confront the unencumbered power of the Department of Justice. …
In the midst of this maelstrom of legal trouble, the real estate mogul’s longtime personal accountant completely disavowed the company’s financial shenanigans, saying if he’d known the way executives were dodging taxes for years, he would have died of shock. “I probably would’ve had a heart attack,” Donald Bender testified in Manhattan criminal court, where the Trump Organization is defending itself at trial against the District Attorney’s Office.
Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day started at 10 a.m. in Manhattan civil court, where his family company is fighting the New York Attorney General’s $250 million lawsuit that accuses the company of widespread bank fraud. Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who had to repeatedly step in during the AG’s three-year investigation to force the Trumps to testify and turn over documents, has finally lost his patience.s The judge … set the civil trial for Oct. 2, 2023, which means that Trump’s namesake company might be stripped of its ability to do business in New York in the midst of his next presidential run.
Then at 2 p.m., a panel of federal appellate judges in Atlanta indicated they are inclined to completely unravel Trump’s attempt to block the FBI, which is investigating the way he kept more than 100 classified records without permission at his oceanside Florida estate. …
Minutes later that afternoon, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s attempt to block Democrats on the House’s Ways and Means Committee from getting copies of his personal tax returns from 2013 to 2018. …
… [N]ow that New York’s new adult survivor’s law will soon allow victims [E Jean Carroll] to sue their abusers, Trump will face the same kind of legal action that ruined Bill Cosby. This lawsuit isn’t expected to raise any new issues, but it will target Trump directly—and his wallet. …
On top of it all, these cases are playing out as Trump faces a new and very real threat of criminal indictment from the DOJ’s special counsel, Jack Smith, who was appointed last Friday by Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into Trump’s mishandling of classified materials, his attempts to obstruct that investigation, and the former president’s attempts to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election.
WaPo, George Will: Be thankful for the pugnacious Zelensky’s magnificent resistance to suppression https://tinyurl.com/2x6wnhtc “Be thankful for the nobility the war has elicited from those attacked, and for the demonstration that individual leaders still matter”
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1595782041731211265?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Ukrainians know the price they pay for having to chew thru the Russian army with only some of the necessary tools. ¤ When they don’t have the right tools, the gap is made up with lives. Ukrainian lives. ¤ And I think everyone of us should understand this [link]
🐣 RT @igorsushko In 2002, terrorist #Prigozhin “served” then-President #Bush and First Lady at their meeting with #Putin and his-then wife whom he discarded for young gymnast Alina Kabaeva.
🖼 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1595575989261635584?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko Prigozhin at that time was already a known bandit, had previously served 9 years in prison, & has various venereal diseases. That our Intelligence Community and Secret Service allowed such a character in the same room with the President on hostile soil is insane.
🐣 RT @sentdefender Law Enforcement at the the Foxconn iPhone Plant in the Chinese City of Zhengzhou appear to have completely lost control of the situation.
💽 https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1595565694493638658?s=20/photo/1
// riot
🐣 RT @wartranslated Wagner’s Grey Zone publishes commentary alongside a photo of a sledgehammer put into a musician’s briefcase that will be allegedly sent to the European Parliament as an “information case”. This is a response to the EP calling to recognise Wagner as a terrorist organisation.
💽 🖼 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1595525040740655118?s=20/photo/1 -4
[Text:] Evgeny Prigozhin, on behalf of the Wagner Group, submitted an information case to the European Parliament Earlier, Politico asked Yevgeny Prigozhin if he heard about the initiative of the European Parliament deputies to call on the European Union to recognize the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization, to which he replied as follows:
“Today I held a meeting with the commanders of the Wagner Group, where I told them this sad news … From today we decided to declare the European Parliament dissolved. But before this procedure enters into legal force, I have been instructed to submit an information case to the EuropeanParliament.”
Prigozhin fulfilled his desire and handed over to the representative of the European Parliament a kind of “information case”, which outwardly resembles a case for carrying a musical instrument, but it does not contain a violin at all … True, I can’t say what the contents could mean. This is the first time I see something like this.
🚫 🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Prigozhin sent the European Parliament a sledgehammer in a violin case with an engraved logo of”Wagner” and traces of “blood” on the handle. ¤ This is the Putin’s world, that Ukrainians are fighting alone, giving their lives to stop.
💽 🖼 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1595503405208072192?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ 🐣 he must have gotten the blood from his soldiers who are being slaughtered by the 1000s in Bakhmut and whose corpses are left to rot in the trenches ¤ he’s a monster and a fool
// deleted when I read in the comments this was staged and filmed for EUP (see above)
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Kyiv is one of the largest and oldest cities in Europe. It was founded in 482 AD. ¤ Kyiv has seen many wars and hardships. It also persevered and overcame all of them – and Ukraine, as well.
🐣 who controls the dam at Nova Kakhovka?
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimPotier1 Russia. The canal’s starting point is at Tavriysk, just a short distance [east] from Nova Kakhovka.
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost 🚨🚨🚨🚨BREAKING from NYT: The U.S. Department of Justice/Special Counsel is seeking to question Mike Pence as a witness in connection with its criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election.
🐣 [Meme: Russia is a Terrorist State]
● European Parliament, Nov 23, 2022 (“State Sponsor of Terrorism”)
● NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Nov 21, 2022 (“Terrorist State”)
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1595494528118652930?s=20/photo/1
// tags: #RussiaIsTerroristState #TerroristState
🐣 RT @ColbyBadhwar BIG DEVELOPMENT: Per @IsmailDemirSSB, Pres of 🇹🇷 [Turkey] Defence Industry Agency, TRLG 230 can actually hit targets 150km away. Today @DefMon3 posted this map showing what the provision of GLSDBs (also with a 150km range) would look like. I think we now know what 🇺🇦 hit Dzhankoi with.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @ColbyBadhwar [Nov 21] Per @oryxspioenkop, 🇹🇷 has provided 🇺🇦 w/ an unknown number of ROKETSAN MCL MLRS and TRLG 230 rockets. Broadly comparable to the GMLRS, but they have laser guidance and can hit targets painted by the TB-2. MCL is a modular system that will replace all other MLRS Turkey operates.
◕ https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1595130495012306944?s=20/photo/1 -2 +1
🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en CSTO summit started in Yerevan today. ¤ It looks like that they are trying to stay away from Putin ¤ Maybe he has blood dripping from his hands? ¤ Well, it’s brave to take half a step back…
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1595482528391086106?s=20/photo/1
// CSTO: “The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)[3] is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The Collective Security Treaty has its origins in the Soviet Armed Forces, which was replaced in 1992 by the United Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and was then itself replaced by the successor armed forces of the respective independent states.” Wikipedia
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/ 1630 UTC 23 NOV/ UKR Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions destroyed a Russian S-300 complex near Polohy. UKR recon UAVs indicate that RU units are constructing defensive positions along the M-14 HWY between Kakhovka and Melitopol.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1595450287392710661?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @djrothkopf Do not allow yourself to become numbed to the scale and depravity of Russia’s crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Every day they demonstrate why they must be defeated, why we must support Ukraine fully until they achieve that defeat. They are fighting for us all.
⋙ 🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv [Bridget Brink] More cruel missile strikes across the country as Russia tries to punish Ukraine for daring to be free. I have seen the strength of the people of Ukraine, and I know Russia’s attempt to dominate Ukraine by plunging it into the cold and dark will fail. We stand with Ukraine.
🐣 RT @dim0kq This man is Mykola Leontovych. He wrote probably the most famous Christmas carol in the world – « Shchedryk » or « Carol of the bells »
Do you know why he was not able to give the world another similar masterpiece?
🖼 https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1595192184747311106?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @dim0kq He was killed and robed in his family house by a russian agent, who disguised himself as a traveler who has nowhere to stay. ¤ He woke up at night, shot Leontovych, robbed his family and left.
🐣 RT @wartranslated More crazy rhetoric from the Russian streets. Both young and old people support the continuation of the war. Source @Ioann199
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1595357987677290497?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Rockets hit Kyiv right after European Parliament recognized Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. ¤ Confirmation received.
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love European Parliament recognises Russia as a state sponsor of b and as a state which uses means of terrorism. ¤ Resolution was approved with 494 votes in favour, 58 against and 44 abstentions, during the monthly plenary session in Strasbourg. Link-
⋙ EuroNews: Ukraine war: European Parliament votes to declare Russia a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ https://tinyurl.com/bdd8u77k “‘Russia poses a risk to the safety and security of the whole European continent and the rules-based international order,’ the resolution reads. ”
The European Parliament has declared Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” over the “brutal and inhumane” acts inflicted upon Ukraine and its citizens since the launch of the invasion.
“The deliberate attacks and atrocities carried out by the Russian Federation against the civilian population of Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law amount to acts of terror against the Ukrainian population and constitute war crimes,” MEPs said in a non-binding but highly symbolic resolution.
The text merged three different resolutions filed by the European People’s Party (EPP), Renew Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR).
The EU’s terrorist list, which was set up in the aftermath of 9/11 and is reviewed every six months, only allows the bloc to blacklist specific individuals and organisations.
So far, only 13 persons and 21 entities have been added, such as Hamas, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’ (PKK), Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) and the military wing of Hezbollah.
🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel It’s still scary when the explosions are so loud. My friend with her new-born daughter is in the bomb shelter. My cousin is in the bomb shelter. My 82-year-old granny is in the corridor. If there was at least something to stop this I’d do it. Tell me what!
🐣 RT @ELINTNews Waves of Russian cruise missiles hitting Ukraine. Launched by Russian bombers near Caspian Sea. Explosion has hit Kyiv. Air defence active near Dnipro, Poltava and Lviv
🧵 RT @carlquintanilla A thread MORGAN STANLEY: “.. we see the situation at #Twitter potentially exposing $TSLA to risk along a number of areas including: (a) consumer sentiment/demand, (b) commercial partnerships, (c) government relations/support; and (d) capital markets support.” [Jonas]
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1595382451853230082?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] … Tesla Sheds $0.5 Trillion of Cap in 2 Months …
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlquintanilla 2. ¤ “.. $RIVN could emerge as a short-term beneficiary of any potential commercial disruption/eroding customer loyalty at Tesla. .. Even if 10% of the unwinding of the ‘Tesla trade’ was re-allocated into other auto stocks… this could have material sector ‘flow’ implications.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlquintanilla 3.Tesla shares this year vs. #bitcoin
◕ https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1595383365678538752?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jhall Meanwhile Citi upgrades $TSLA from Sell to Neutral ¤ Raises price target.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Such an important decision to declare Russia a terrorist state! ¤ Very grateful to our Allies and friends for supporting Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @guyverhofstadt 🛑BREAKING: The European Parliament adopts a resolution declaring Russia a terrorist state. ¤ Putin’s regime is a state sponsor of terrorism, complicit in war crimes & must face the international consequences.
⭕ 22 Nov 2022
🧵 RT @Tendar The Russian defeats and withdrawals have considerably decreased the length of the front line and I’m only counting the one inside Ukraine. I made some statistics and have given my opinion and prognosis about the upcoming months. Thread 1/10
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1595173156016295954?s=20/photo/1
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/4b2nwa6h
The overall length of the remaining front line is around 880 km, but around 380 km are rivers, especially the Dnipro River, making up around 350 km the lion’s share. The remaining “water” front lines are the Oskil and Siversky Donets River as well as a few lakes and ravines. 2/10 🌎
The Zaporizhzhia front (land based) is currently the smallest, making up only 115 km. It is also currently the quietest front, but Ukraine has massed considerable forces in that sector which might soon commence a full scale offensive. 3/10 🌎
The Donetsk front is around 230 km long and currently the most active front. It is also the only sector where Russian conduct offensive operations but with devastating results for them. It is therefore the sector with highest Russian casualties. 4/10 🌎
The most Northern fronts are in the Luhansk/Kharkiv sector. It is around 187 km long with some intense battles primarily at the Svatove-Kreminna line. Currently, it is more a stalemate but Russian forces are getting ground down. 5/10 🌎
Especially Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia are weak spots of the Russian defense. Both have weakened Russian battle groups and reinforcements made up by conscripts. Kherson is relatively stable thanks to the Dnipro and Donetsk hosts the bulk of the surviving Russian special forces. 6/10
Overall I predict that Ukrainian forces will keep up the pressure on all sectors, including Kherson/Dnipro River and eventually will push at 1 or maybe even 2 front lines. Russia will try to slow down the Ukrainian progress but ultimately will fail to stop AFU. 7/10
The Russian offensives at Bakhmut, Avdiika and Pavlivka are tactical failures and strategically seen total blunders. It is obvious that Ukrainian forces in that sector are ordered just to decimate Russian troops while other AFU units keep pushing in remaining sectors. 8/10
My prognosis is that AFU will reach the Sea of Azov by March-May and little later in summer the administrative border of Crimea. This unfolding military disaster for Russia will likely end with political consequences in Moscow. By that time the Russian defeat is too apparent.9/10
I also do not exclude that the collapse of the Russian regime might happen far earlier. All what I’m certain of is that once triggered it will happen fast. It will be accompanied with a final military collapse of Russian forces in Ukraine, most notably in Donetsk and Crimea.10/10
WaPo, Henry Olsen: Election denial is reaching new levels of absurdity in Arizona https://tinyurl.com/mrjtfm4c “[T]he American Enterprise Institute estimates that Trump-backed candidates in competitive House races ran five points behind the level mere partisanship would predict”
// Full: 📋 “Philip Wallach of the American Enterprise Institute estimates that Trump-backed candidates in competitive House races ran five points behind the level mere partisanship would predict. All of the defeated Trumpy Arizonans lost by less than five points.”
Politico: Trump has (yet another) bad legal day https://tinyurl.com/2zre3h5p “‘It makes him look like a political fighter. He is the master of framing,’ said a Republican strategist close to Trump’s team. ‘And he wants to be a political martyr’”
// The former president is getting squeezed badly right now. But he’s been here before.
NYT: Court Appears Ready to End Special Master Review in Trump Files Inquiry https://tinyurl.com/39hzj9cc “[T]he panel expressed concern that Judge Aileen M. Cannon … had acted without precedent by ordering a review of the seized material”
// Two of the three judges had already expressed skepticism about a court’s intervention after the F.B.I. seized records from the ex-president’s home.
🧵 RT @ThePlumLineGS A big deal: If Raphael Warnock wins in Georgia, Dems will exert much more control over Senate investigations. They should use this to drown out bad faith House GOP nonsense. ¤ “We have an obligation to fully use our subpoena power,” @brianschatz tells me:
📌 https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1595072731023826950?s=20
⋙⋙ WaPo: Why Trump and Kevin McCarthy should fear a Warnock victory https://tinyurl.com/5em746r4
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS […] If Warnock wins, a 51-seat Democratic majority could:
*Scrutinize the Supreme Court leaking scandal
*Examine Trump’s sleazy foreign payments while president
*Continue the 1/6 committee’s work
*Scrutinize law enforcement failures related to 1/6
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote 11th circuit opens saying they’ve read all the briefings and asks the parties to present their arguments quickly. The government is up first and gives background. No equitable jurisdiction, plaintiff hasn’t demonstrated likelihood of success, and can’t show irreparable harm.
// 11th Circuit Court of Appeals hears DOJ arguments to dismiss Special Master in Mar-a-Lago documents case
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1595131305859350528?s=20
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/ 1930 UTC 22 NOV/ Political pressure from Moscow has forced RU commanders into a series of costly attacks on Bakhmut. The latest RU thrusts appear to be an attempt to execute a pincer movement. It is assessed unlikely that RU will accomplish this goal in the near term.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1595134735990558720?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 BREAKING: NBC projects Doug La Follette wins re-election in Wisconsin’s Secretary of State race — beating Amy Loudenbeck who literally wanted to dismantle Wisconsin’s election commission. This is great news for democracy and free & fair elections.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 Worth noting that he won by only .3%. Every. Vote. Matters.
🐣 RT @minna_alander An important thread for all of us who have been infused by the Russian narrative of events since 2014 in western media. ¤ It was never about NATO expansion. It was about Ukrainians wanting a (European) perspective for their country, separate from Russia.
⋙ 🧵 RT @TheStanislawski Exactly 9 years ago today, I was in a pub with my uni pals when we heard the news that then-president Yanukovych would not sign the association agreement with the EU, crushing Ukraine’s European hopes and locking us to Russia. ¤ We were not buying it. ¤ Here’s what happened next
📌 https://twitter.com/minna_alander/status/1594945445213704193?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStanislawski […] In 2022, we have entered the final stage of the events triggered by Maidan. ¤ This war will decide who wins in the end – the people who have chosen a democratic European future for their country or a bunch of post-Soviet police states led by dictators with imperial issues. …
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 there is a certain cynicism among progressives in the US since we have made many mistakes in the past, yet most see in Ukraine a re-assertion of our “better angels,” a vision of who we have been and are at our best: a reminder that freedom and human rights are worth fighting for
🧵 RT @P_Kallioniemi In today’s #vatnik soup I’ll introduce a KGB agent and a billionaire who disguises himself as a holy man.His name is Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev,but he’s better known as Patriarch Kirill. Gundyayev is a close ally of Putin and he has called Putin’s rule a “miracle of god” 1/8
📌 https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1594965325828820992?s=20
🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Anastasiya: @Anastasiya1451A
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1595042087283499008?s=20
WarTranslated link: https://tinyurl.com/4jdtysh2
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/562u4y4x
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone You’ve got to hand it to #Ukraine – they’re chasing Russia’s Black Sea fleet around the #BlackSea. With Russia having moved its submarines from #Crimea to Novorossiysk from #Crimea, Ukraine looks to have attacked the oil terminal at Novorossiysk. Squeaky bum time for orc sailors.
🌎 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1594979842520391680?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 21 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @BillKristol Nothing in this interesting and well-reported piece on aspects and factions of the New Right makes me any less inclined unapologetically to defend the Old Liberalism against any version of New Right illiberalism.
⋙ Salon, Kathryn Joyce: The postliberal crackup: The GOP’s post-midterm civil war starts with the New Right https://tinyurl.com/bdfuv2tj
// “Integralists” battle “national conservatives” over religion, capitalism and the far-right conquest of America
TheAtlantic, George Packer: A New Theory of American Foreign Policy https://tinyurl.com/ynvp9jca “The institutions and rules of the postwar era … depended on not just US power but the American example. … Its decay in the US has coincided with the rise of authoritarianism globally”
// The United States can—and must—wield its power for good.
American exceptionalism has two faces, equally transfixed with a sense of specialness—one radiant with the nation’s unique beneficence, the other sunk in its unrivaled malignity. These extremes, confounding friends as well as enemies, are unrealistic and unsustainable.
… The Biden administration seemed to have picked up where the Trump administration left off, accepting the harsh diagnosis of critics: After 20 years of failed wars, the age of intervention was over. Any thought of using force to transform other countries met the definition of insanity. A wave of recent books … [list of books] … portrays a country so warped by endless war, white supremacy, and violence that its very nature now drives it to dominate and destroy. Ackerman concludes that it is “increasingly difficult to see America as anything more than its War on Terror.”
The best that such a country can do for the world is as little as possible. After the fall of Afghanistan, Moyn, a law and history professor at Yale, told Vox: “The most remarkable fact about liberals today is that, aside from a few, they’ve all learned their lesson.” What lesson? That “humanitarian intervention” is a contradiction, and war itself almost always wrong; that the U.S. cannot change other countries and does a lot of harm trying; that Americans are willing to accept far too much violence in the name of “security” and “democracy”; that the period of American global hegemony was a disaster best consigned to history. …
Beneath the restrainers’ views lies a shared hostility to what they often call “liberal elites”—the policy makers and plugged-in experts and pundits who never listened, and whom they despise for continuing to see America as a benevolent power. How could anyone still believe that fairy tale? For restrainers on the right, liberal zeal threatens national sovereignty and traditional values around the world and at home. For those on the left, democracy is the pretty lie that hides the brutality of capitalism and imperialism. These views are at bottom antithetical: The right wants more national power without international rules, and the left wants the nation-state to disappear. But the two sides have made a temporary marriage at what they see as liberalism’s sickbed.
With the withdrawal last year of the final troops from Kabul, restraint appeared to have won an uncontested victory. It lasted six months.
In february, as more than 130,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, restrainers refused to believe the Biden administration’s warning that Vladimir Putin was about to invade. A war would upend their fixed views of international politics: that states pursue rational interests, not mad dreams of ancient glory; that U.S. leaders manufacture intelligence for their own ends; that imperialism is a uniquely American sin. Therefore, a war wasn’t possible. When it came anyway, restrainers found ways to place the blame on the U.S.:
“Emulation of the American way of being in the world is largely complete with Putin’s shock and awe assault.”
“The neocons on the right … they’re power drunk, they are bloodthirsty, and they cannot be trusted … Joe Biden is sleepwalking us towards war.”
“At first Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had at least the morally instructive quality of showing what a humanitarian intervention looks like from the other side.
“It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine.”These statements … give neither Russia nor Ukraine any agency—only the U.S. drives history. The war is not about Putin’s fantasy of a restored empire, or Ukraine’s determination to remain an independent democracy. It’s simply one move of a long game in which America is the aggressive player, Russia a threatened opponent capable of being restored to reason, and Ukraine a hapless pawn. Putin was only reacting to NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders.
None of this analysis held up. The NATO alliance has always remained a defensive one, posing no military threat to the Russian Federation, never seriously considering Ukrainian membership, and guilty of no historic betrayal, either, as the Johns Hopkins historian M. E. Sarotte shows in Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post–Cold War Stalemate. The book argues that both superpowers squandered the chance for cooperation after the Cold War, but it refutes the Russian claim that expansion broke an explicit American promise to advance NATO “not one inch eastward.” In any case, Putin had offered an entirely different justification on the eve of the invasion: Ukraine was part of Russia. Ukraine didn’t exist. …
This restraint is not a hard-won prudence in the face of tragic facts. It’s a doctrinaire refusal, by people living in the safety and comfort of the West, to believe in liberal values that depend on American support. The restrainers can’t accept that politics leaves no one clean, and that the most probable alternative to U.S. hegemony is not international peace and justice but worse hegemons. They can’t face the reality that force never disappears from the world; it simply changes hands.
Meanwhile, the war has reduced their position to rubble. U.S. intelligence turned out to be accurate. Putin has rejected any serious negotiations, both before invading and since. His purpose is not to neutralize or “liberate” Ukraine, but to annihilate it for the dream of Greater Russia. Occupying troops have committed atrocities on an unimagined scale. NATO weapons have allowed Ukrainians to defend themselves and eventually regain lost territory in a conflict they understand to be a fight for survival. European support has not disintegrated under Russian blackmail. American leadership has proved decisive in holding the West together in defense of collective security and democratic values. The war is about freedom. Russia is likely to lose.
But we should pause before closing the book on the post-9/11 years and never listening to the restrainers again. The war has kindled hope, at times bordering on triumphalism, for a renewal of liberal democracy, not just as a guide to foreign policy but as a mission at home. In September, the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama told The Washington Post, “If Ukraine is able to defeat Russia, the demonstration effect is going to be really tremendous. It’s going to have domestic political consequences inside every democracy that’s threatened by one of these populist parties … I do think that we could recover a little bit of the spirit of 1989. Ukraine could trigger something like that in the United States and Europe.”
Imagining that a Ukrainian victory would have a decisive effect on the internal politics of Western democracies is unwarranted exuberance. Illiberal populism continues to thrive in countries whose governments support Ukraine—Poland, the U.K., France, Italy, Sweden. The major non-Western democracies—India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa—have stayed more or less neutral on the war; India began to criticize only when Russia began to lose. In the U.S., arming Ukraine still has bipartisan backing in Congress and from the public, but a Republican win in the midterm elections could allow the party’s Trumpist wing to block military aid; and if Trump is reelected in 2024, the U.S. might well switch sides. In that case, American politics would transform Ukraine, not the other way around.
In 1989 it was possible to believe that Europe would lead the way toward a more integrated, cosmopolitan world under an American security umbrella; it was easy to discount the force of nationalism. That ceased to be true a long time ago, as Fukuyama knows: It’s the subject of his latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents. He argues persuasively that liberalism—individual freedom, equal rights, rule of law, consent of the governed, open markets, scientific rationalism—is in retreat around the world, not because of “a fundamental weakness in the doctrine,” but because of “the way that liberalism has evolved over the last couple of generations.” The causes of its decline run deep: globalization, rapid technological change, inequality, mass migration, institutional sclerosis, failures of leadership. In the past few decades, an exaggerated emphasis on freedom has driven polarization in democracies, including ours: radical egalitarianism on the left, reactionary authoritarianism on the right. Both forms of illiberalism seek to forge group identities—exclusive, intolerant ones, steeped in resentment—to replace the national identities that have become corroded in an era of globalization.
The institutions and rules of the postwar era, which enabled a historic expansion of freedom and prosperity around the world, depended on not just U.S. power but the American example. It doesn’t seem possible for liberal democracy to remain healthy abroad but not at home, and vice versa. Its decay in the U.S. has coincided with the rise of authoritarianism globally. The likely successor is not, as the left wishes, world government and international law under the aegis of the United Nations, but rival nationalisms, including Trump’s “America First,” with “might makes right” in every neighborhood.
The Biden administration, while disavowing the term cold war, is already waging one—invoking a global contest between democracy and autocracy, using industrial policy to gain strategic advantage over China in areas such as microchip production. In The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry Today, Hal Brands, a historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, revisits the U.S.-Soviet contest for its now-forgotten lessons on how to conduct “high-stakes, long-term competitions.” But a new twilight struggle would be far murkier than the Cold War’s stark ideological contest between two systems across the globe. China, a totalitarian state that delivers the goods, is the obvious peer adversary today, but Brands also includes Russia, though he was writing before Putin and Xi Jinping announced a friendship with “no limits” between their two countries on February 4 at the Beijing Olympics. Their statement featured the terms multipolarity, polycentric world order, and civilizational diversity , but its real message for the U.S. and the West was blunt: You had your turn—now butt out. Three weeks later, Putin gave the world a look at the multipolar future.
American policy in the original Cold War was to contain Soviet communism until it finally altered its character or collapsed. This time around there’s no universal ideology to combat, only brutal, cynical dictatorships. Illiberalism today is entirely negative. In place of utopia, it offers resentment—of American power, Western elites, decadent globalists. Putin gives the Russian people nothing they’re willing to die for. When he declares a national emergency, they flock to the airports and borders rather than risk their skins in defense of the motherland.
Brands is concerned with “winning a long-term rivalry,” but what this would mean today isn’t clear. Maintaining military and technological supremacy? The fall of authoritarian regimes? Limitless expansion of the free world? Or something more modest, like improved behavior from Moscow and Beijing? Brands is well aware of flaws in the Cold War analogy, but he doesn’t reckon with the most important difference. When the last twilight struggle began, the U.S. had just emerged from the ruins of World War II energized and unified by victory, the world’s dominant country by far. Today we can’t hold an election without fear of civil war. Any thought of winning a new cold war has to start from this dismal fact.
Rather than relearning the lessons of the Cold War, or overlearning those of the post-9/11 years, we have to escape the old pattern of wild swings by facing what is new. We’re left to resolve two hard and conflicting truths: Autocratic regimes will exploit American restraint to enlarge their power at the expense of their own people, their neighbors, and the international order. But American action will stoke illiberal reactions when it brings domination, not freedom.
… The best thing we can do for the world’s disrepair is to fix our own collapsing house. That sentiment is becoming more and more common today, expressing a prudent sense of limits. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote that “democracy promotion at home rather than abroad should be the focus of U.S. attention,” because there’s more at stake here and a better chance of success.
… The American-led order lasted three-quarters of a century, and people struggling for democracy in other countries are less eager to see it end than the Quincy Institute is. Even when they resent our interference, they also want our support. And in this country, invocations of “national interest” and strategies for “long-term rivalry” absorb experts more than they move ordinary people. As American history shows, we’re loath to sacrifice for an international cause that has nothing to do with freedom.
Russia’s war has demonstrated that a decent world isn’t possible without liberalism, and liberalism can’t thrive without U.S. engagement. Ukraine shows one way for America to use its power on behalf of freedom: Instead of sending troops to fight and die for democratic illusions in inhospitable countries, send arms to help an actual democracy repel a foreign invader. No U.S. troops, no meddling in civil wars, no nation building, no going it alone. Collaborate closely with allies and take measures to avoid catastrophe. Call it the Biden doctrine—it’s been remarkably successful.
… Where democracy exists, strengthen it and defend it against foreign subversion, if necessary with arms. Where it doesn’t, take care to understand particular movements for change, and offer only support that preserves their legitimacy. Align U.S. policy with the universal desire for freedom, but maintain a keen sense of unintended consequences and no illusions of easy success. … … Declining to affirm any transcendent moral order, liberalism loses its attractive power when it offers a flat world with a smartphone in every pocket and nothing meaningful to live for. And it triggers bitter reaction when it fails to grasp the abiding appeal of nationalism.
In the age of Putin, Xi, and Trump, liberalism and nationalism seem to be mortally opposed. The first is universal (“globalist,” in the derisive phrase of nationalists), the second particular; the first ennobles the individual, the second exalts the community. But in a healthy society, liberalism and nationalism coexist; in fact, they’re inextricable. Without shared identity and strong social bonds, liberty atomizes citizens into consumers, spectators, gamers—easy targets for a demagogue. But national solidarity can’t endure if it’s coerced. A people kept compliant with lies of national greatness, shopping, and police roundups will turn on one another in the face of crisis.
When I asked Ukrainians what the war was about, they inevitably gave two answers in a single phrase: survival and freedom. “Patriot war and democratic war—you cannot distinguish,” Denys Surkov, a crew-cut, scowling doctor, told me. “It’s the same war.” Ukraine is fighting for its existence as an independent nation, and for the right of Ukrainians to choose their own way of life, their own form of government—which is democracy. These two causes are inseparable and reinforce each other. Without a sense of nationhood, Ukrainians wouldn’t have the unity and collective will to resist at such a steep price. Without liberal values and a democratic government, Ukraine would likely divide into ethnic and regional factions.
Something similar is true here in the U.S. Our national identity has always been rooted in democracy. Nothing else, not blood and soil, shared ethnicity or faith, common memories or moneyed pursuits, has ever really held Americans together—only what Walt Whitman called “the fervid and tremendous idea.” It’s as fragile as it is compelling, and when it fails, we dissolve into hateful little tribes, and autocrats here and abroad smile and rub their hands. Don’t imagine that America can bring the light of freedom to the world, but don’t think the world will be better off if we just stop trying.
NYPost, William Barr: Trump threatens to burn down the GOP, it’s time to move on https://tinyurl.com/mskhcse9 “Trump’s willingness to destroy the party if he does not get his way is not based on principle, but on his own supreme narcissism”
… [I]t is now clear [Trump] lacks the qualities essential to achieving the kind of unity and broad election victory in 2024 so necessary if we are to right our listing republic. It is time for new leadership.
For many, supporting Trump was an act of defiance — a protest. The more over the top he was, the more they savored the horrified reaction of the elites, especially the media. Arguments that Trump wasn’t presidential missed the point. Trump’s supporters wanted a disrupter. His voters felt that the left was taking a wrecking ball to the country, and they wanted to strike back with their own.
I worried that no one could govern effectively in constant wrecking-ball mode. Still, I hoped that Trump would rise to the seriousness of the office and the moment. So once he became the GOP’s nominee, I supported him.
Unfortunately, after he was elected, Trump brought his wrecking-ball style to the task of governing the nation. He did not temper his disruptiveness and penchant for chaos. While his basic policy judgments were usually sound, his impulsiveness meant that things were almost always about to fly off the rails. When he became fixated on bad ideas or wanted to take things too far, it took his senior staff and cabinet secretaries an ungodly amount of maneuvering to keep him on track.
Take his handling of COVID. The pandemic was not necessarily fatal to Trump’s re-election chances. What hurt Trump was not the substance of his decisions, but his tonal response. His behavior reinforced what many people found repellant about his personality. He yielded to his impulse for pettiness and pointless nastiness; got drawn into infantile name-calling spats; and, in his press conferences, made everything about himself. …
Despite the persistent advice from his advisers that he address the loss of support in the suburbs, he focused almost exclusively on energizing his base, and he did this by putting out a steady diet of red meat designed to arouse the passions of those who already supported him. The theory was that this would lead to such a massive turnout of his supporters that it would swamp whatever his feeble opponent could generate.
There were two basic problems with this strategy. First, Trump’s base did not need to be whipped up, they were already galvanized. Second, Trump pandered to his base in a way that reinforced and intensified the alienation of many suburban voters in the battleground states.
As a result of this strategy, Trump succeeded in driving a record turnout of his own supporters. But he also generated a more massive turnout for Joe Biden. The millions of voters who flocked to the polls to pull the Democratic lever set historic records and swamped the Trump voters. They did not come to vote for Biden; they came to vote against Trump.
Fraud did not prevent Trump’s second term. Trump himself was the reason.
Looking ahead to the presidential election of 2024, I believe the defining feature of our political landscape continues to be the sharp leftward lurch of the Democratic Party. That opens up a historic opportunity for the GOP — the opportunity to revive something like the old Reagan coalition: a combination of Republican-leaning, college-educated suburbanites; culturally conservative working-class voters; and even some classical liberals who are repulsed by the left’s authoritarianism.
Forging this coalition requires more than bombastic rhetoric. It requires a substantive, strategic, and disciplined president capable of executing a plan to achieve the durable reforms needed to set the country back on a sane course. …
It is painfully clear from his track record in both the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms that Donald Trump is neither capable of forging this winning coalition nor delivering the decisive and durable victory required. Indeed, among the current crop of potential nominees, Trump is the person least able to unite the party and the one most likely to lose the general election.
Trump’s extraordinarily divisive actions since losing in 2020 are not those of someone capable of leading a party, much less a country. Right after his defeat, he treacherously sabotaged GOP efforts to hold the Georgia Senate seats.
The GOP’s poor performance in the recent midterms was due largely to Trump’s mischief. He fueled internal fights within state parties. He attacked popular Republican governors in Maryland, New Hampshire and Arizona to dissuade them from running for Senate seats they could have won. He supported weak candidates for key Senate and House seats based solely on their agreeing with his “stolen election” claims. And after foisting these candidates on the GOP, he failed to provide them adequate financial support, largely sitting on a massive war chest of cash raised from small dollar donors.
It seems to me that Trump isn’t really interested in broadening his appeal. Instead he is content to focus on intensifying his personal hold over a faction within the party — a group that is probably no larger than a quarter of the GOP, but which allows Trump to use it as leverage to extort and bully the rest of the party into submission.
The threat is simple: Unless the rest of the party goes along with him, he will burn the whole house down by leading “his people” out of the GOP.
Trump’s willingness to destroy the party if he does not get his way is not based on principle, but on his own supreme narcissism. His egoism makes him unable to think of a political party as anything but an extension of himself — a cult of personality.
Trump is due credit for stopping progressives’ momentum and achieving important policy successes during his administration. But he does not have the qualities required to win the kind of broad, durable victory I see as necessary to restore America. It is time for the 45th president to step aside.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 As is so often the case with Putin, the cruelest answer is correct. When Russia retaliated against US sanctions in 2012 by blocking adoptions it was to show there was nothing he wouldn’t do, even harm Russian children. So why not Ukrainian ones?
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum This is one of the most inexplicable aspects of the war: the Russian theft of Ukrainian children. ¤ Why would they do it, and so systematically? I understand they hate Ukrainians, they want to eradicate Ukraine, but why make small children suffer?
⋙⋙ WaPo: Near Kherson, orphanage staff hid Ukrainian children from Russian occupiers https://tinyurl.com/mtebmjjm
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov had clearly given up on the idea of defeating Ukraine militarily. In his desperation to scare the West into stopping its support, he resorts to nuclear threats—but even fellow propagandists are sick of it & say he lost all sense of reality.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1594915216026112000?s=20/photo/1
SciAm, Joe Bak-Coleman: Twitter Is Not Rocket Science—It’s Harder https://tinyurl.com/mutcjjyf “[D]ecisions about the design of digital social systems can affect millions of people, change global policy, and shake entire financial systems”
// Elon Musk wants to run Twitter like SpaceX. But human behavior will make it much more difficult
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/ 2300 UTC 21 NOV / RU forces continue shelling of urban targets in Kherson and other north bank positions. UKR reports that Russian UAVs are conducting cross-river reconnaissance to assist in target selection for RU artillery and missile forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1594821233950031877?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated I just love it when pro-Russians delve into doom philosophy, such as Dimitryiev (who, by the way, has links to Rybar) who describes how Russia has practically lost all of its imaginary greatness, meanwhile regular Russians are desperate to get more of it when things go sour
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1594779525791027220?s=20/photo/1
Many authors continue to be indignant at the inefficiency of domestic propaganda, the clumsiness of “soft power”, and continue searching for an ideology. It seems to me that this problem is somewhat outdated. After all, 2022 has clearly shown that the problem is not propaganda, ideological formulas and soft power. But the fact that there is actually nothing to promote. The structure and management that the Russian Federation can boast of is a dead end branch of social development that even the most thoughtless supporters demand to be radically reformed.
You can inflate the brilliant images of the Heavenly City as much as you like, but at the first collision with reality, they will crumble. And it turns out that Russia does not have an invincible army and all-powerful special services, does not offer rapid economic growth, does not promise security and stability, that it is not a stronghold of Christianity and traditional values. That its state apparatus is not able to insert windows, and the industry, having piled on with all its might and budget, is not able to produce a “drone out of shit and sticks.” This means that any successful propaganda project will be an imitation. As is actually happening now, when people are simply begging for a portion of convincing propaganda that will allow them to plunge into the world of intoxicating dreams for at least another day.
And no one, no one!, has ever asked himself the question: what are we talking about to people? And in order to understand this, you just need to dive into reality. You know where it is now. I recommend everyone to visit it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Panopticon2022 I think this is probably the sharpest internal commentary that has come out of Russia. It talks about the internal, psychological, ideological and economic emptiness of the nation – the vast gulf between aspirational desire to greatness and the absolute sham of a reality.
⋙ 🐣 RT @StatisticalMind I mean he isn’t wrong. The Soviet Union at the height of the cold war also engaged heavily in propaganda but it also accomplished things and had a military which wasn’t a potato. Thirty years of graft and corruption have hollowed Russia out.
🐣 RT @carlbildt Seeing the increasing role of Wagner Group and Kadyrov, openly questing the performance of the armed forces, one wonder if might be moving to an age of “war lords” with competing forces and differing political ambitions – failure thus gradually fracturing the Putin regime.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress NATO Parliamentary Assembly unanimously recognizes Russia as terrorist state ¤ The resolution also calls for the establishment of a special tribunal to bring Russia’s regime to justice for its heinous war crimes
🔆 This❗️⋙ EuromaidanPress: NATO Parliamentary Assembly designates Russia as a terrorist state, calls for Tribunal to bring justice for Russia’s war crimes https://tinyurl.com/2p9f9fpz The current president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is US Rep Gerry Connolly (D-VA 11)
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1594752594341150729?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ Maks_NAFO_FELLA The NATO Parliamentary Assembly recognized Russia as a terrorist state, Yehor Chernyov, head of the permanent delegation of Ukraine to the NATO PA. ¤ “All 30 NATO countries supported the proposals of our delegation. The Assembly called for the creation of a special Tribunal”
🐣 RT @EspresoTV [tr] Euromaidan became the first successful battle in the great war with Russia, – Director of the Museum of the Revolution of Dignity Poshivaylo https://tinyurl.com/46nxhv72
🖼 https://twitter.com/EspresoTV/status/1594707478536658947?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ukraine_world
“You may have dignity without freedom.
You may have freedom, but you may not be worthy of it.
These are values that are best revealed together only.
That is why today has a double name.
Because Ukraine has both”.
Source: Volodymyr Zelenskyy
¤ https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1594630760903876609?s=20/photo/1 -3
// Ukraine’s Freedom and Dignity Day
🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en I was so happy to see that a big friend of Ukraine @chefjoseandres of @WCKitchen received an award from @ZelenskyyUa today! ¤ Mr. Andres and World Central Kitchen do so much for the people of Ukraine. Proud to see such amazing humans helping us! ¤ Congratulations and thank you!
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1594699948612014081?s=20/photo/1
// Chef Jose Andres award
🐣 RT @TLDR
⚡️Kremlin has finished discussing a second wave of mobilization, date will be decided soon.
⚡️Kremlin confirms agreements with Tehran regarding the production of drones.
⚡️Kremlin aims to achieve its goals of SMO through negotiations because its army can do fuckall.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Pescov,Briefly:
🔥The Kremlin is not discussing a second wave of mobilization;
🔥There are no agreements between Moscow and Tehran on the production of drones;
🔥Russia, through negotiations with Kyiv, wants to achieve the goals of its “special military operation” in Ukraine;
⋙ 🐣 RT @TLDR Dunno whether to tag this as sarcasm since it will most likely happen like this.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Zelensky: We must be worthy, we must not give up. Because Ukrainians aren’t used to giving up. Because they have dignity. And therefore freedom! We can be left without money. Without gasoline. Without hot water. Without light. But not without freedom. https://tinyurl.com/42v2bkv5
🐣 RT @NOELreports If Iran starts supplying ballistic missiles to Russia, then the Ukrainian army can receive high-precision ballistic missiles: the head of the National Security Council of Israel, Eyal Hulata, said this at a forum in Bahrain, the state media corporation “Kan” reports.
🐣 RT @wartranslated An insight from the Russian “Veteran’s Notes” channel saying say that in the Makiivka situation a week ago, it was not just 11 mobilised who tried to surrender, but the WHOLE battalion of mobiks ran off and left others to their own devices.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1594647380422496256?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 20 Nov 2022
Otter[.]ai, Razib Khan: Whiteness bonus https://tinyurl.com/syd7ztza
// 11/20/2022; podcast; paragraphs added; the genomic and cultural history of whiteness
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Whiteness RKahn Nov 2022
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Russian propagandist explaining why negotiations, at this point, are nothing but a ruse that would allow Russia to prepare for the next invasion
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: accused war criminal Zakhar Prilepin—who spends a lot of time on the frontlines and previously boasted of “killing many” in Ukraine—admits that Russia wants to negotiate merely to regroup and finish fighting later, any potential peace accords notwithstanding.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1594408064337301504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DenesTorteli ⚡️Patriarch Kirill wasn’t always the holiest man in Russia, billionaire, super yacht owner. ¤ Before he found the ultimate scam, he was a street gangster like everyone around Putin. 🔎@JayinKyiv #Hungary #DenesTorteli #Ukraine 🇭🇺❤️🇺🇦👇🏻
¤ https://twitter.com/DenesTorteli/status/1594335646239395845?s=20/photo/1 -4
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Democracy defenders have many reasons to be grateful this Thanksgiving https://tinyurl.com/4j2judjs “For those determined to protect democracy, the rule of law and a decent, kind America, there is so much to be grateful for”
🐣 RT @ukraine_world Dog of Goodwill: UNICEF officially awarded Patron the title and signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Within the framework, UNICEF and Patron will cooperate in the area of mine risk education and psychosocial support. ¤ Source: UNICEF Ukraine
🐣 RT @ BillKristol As Thanksgiving approaches in the U.S., we give thanks for many things. This year our thoughts turn especially to the brave people of Ukraine and Iran, whose courage reminds us of the worth, and cost, of freedom.
“Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”
“Woman, Life, Freedom!”
🖼 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1594343982322126849?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 the freedom diaspora is real ¤ and I also give thanks for the midterm elections, which showed it’s too early to give up on freedom here at home as well
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews #MordorOnFire: There is a fire in the area of three railway stations in Moscow. The reasons are still unknown.
💽 https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1594308862156357634?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @general_ben Part of why I am confident Ukraine wins this war. The Kremlin will acknowledge soon what @TimothyDSnyder said…it’s bad to lose in Ukraine but worse to lose in Russia. Russian forces will have to shift focus and resources back to Russia. Prigozhin and Kadyrov see opportunity.
¤ https://twitter.com/general_ben/status/1594275891596640256?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ The popularity of businessman and founder of Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin becomes dangerous for the head of the Kremlin, who will soon have to negotiate with Prigozhin not to create political competition — Newsweek.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PlanetarAnanda Igor Sushko claims here – I can’t say if thats true – that “Prigozhin and Kadyrov are building & save their best man” for such rogue action aiming for Ru throne. First deplet of Russian forces, then entering in and taking the throne.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko [11/17] TikTok #Kadyrov keeps pumping out promo reels. This force is probably a lot more likely to be used to try to take over the #Kremlin & attempt to depose Putin than be sent to #Ukraine. Both Kadyrov and Prigozhin are saving their real forces for that potential.
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1593321332506120193?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 well, at least Prigozhin is succeeding with creating tech illusions; his prisoner conscripts are just getting slaughtered in the meat grinder of Bakhmut with no progress to show for it ¤ but it’s all about illusions anyway: Russia had the world fooled about “2nd greatest military”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1315 UTC 20 NOV/ RU forces continue costly, unsuccessful assaults on Bakhmut. Overhead imagery confirms that RU fontal attacks in the vicinity of the NE suburbs of Bakhmutske & Pidhorodne have resulted in the deaths of 100s of RU mobniks.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1594314696420909056?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukraine’s general’s command style “allows others to realise their capacities and talents”, whereas in Russia’s military, “only one to two people make decisions and the rest are told to shut up.” “No way the Ukrainians pause for the winter . . .”
⋙ FT: ‘We hit them with slingshots’: Ukraine’s ‘iron general’ shows his mettle https://tinyurl.com/c4raddt9
// General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi’s unorthodox tactics have helped to tip the balance in the war
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/0300 UTC 20 NOV/ UKR forces have advanced to positions essentially cuting a 20Km stretch of the vital P-66 HWY. This is the principal and most direct Line of Communication and Supply (LOCS) linking Svatove and Kremenna, the southern anchor of of the RU defensive line.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1594169088313593861?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 19 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @EmmaDaly “Billionaires exist at our collective pleasure. If enough of us decided to, we could enact labor, tax, antitrust & regulatory policies to make it hard for anyone to amass that much wealth while so many beg for scraps.”
⋙ NYT, Anand Giridharadas: This Week, Billionaires Made a Strong Case for Abolishing Themselves https://tinyurl.com/4e88kee3 “In the extraordinary week gone by … four of our best-known billionaires laid waste to the image of benevolent saviors carefully cultivated by their class“
// Musk, Bezos, Bankman-Fried, Trump: some of our most prominent billionaires laid waste to their carefully cultivated image as …
As of this writing, Elon Musk is running Twitter into the ground, with much of the company’s staff fired or quitting, outages spiking and everyone on my timeline hurrying to tell the app the things they have been meaning to say before it departs for app heaven (or hell?).
In tweeting through one of the most extraordinary corporate meltdowns in history, Mr. Musk has been performing a vital public service: shredding the myth of the billionaire genius.
His particular pretension of benevolence is that his uncontainable genius can solve any challenge. Now he is lavishing his mind and time on electronic money, now on colonizing Mars, now on electric cars and solar panels, now on saving Thai soccer players trapped in a cave, now on liberating speech from its liberal oppressors.
Mr. Musk’s genius pose has long been undermined by his actual record, which is defined by claiming credit for what others have built and is shot through with complaints of discrimination, mismanagement and fraud.
But it wasn’t until Mr. Musk took over Twitter that his claim of infinitely transferable genius truly fell apart. That what Mr. Musk has called the global town square can be eviscerated in a time period somewhere between a Scaramucci and a Truss makes one wonder if we should be more skeptical of all the other billionaire geniuses with ideas for our schools, public health systems and politics. …
It’s too soon to tell if Mr. Bezos’s philanthropy will help others, but what’s certain is that it will help Mr. Bezos a lot. Mega-philanthropists of his ilk tend to give through foundations, which they establish in ways that save them an immense amount in taxes, sometimes merely by moving the money from one of their own accounts to another. Giving will also burnish Mr. Bezos’s reputation, in that way preserving and protecting his opportunity to earn yet more money — and to do more social damage. …
Then, of course, there was Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced crypto kingpin whose spectacular downfall, along with that of FTX, the company he founded, caused $32 billion to disappear, much of it belonging to hundreds of thousands of regular people. …
Finally, of course, this week there was Donald Trump (because let’s face it, there’s always Donald Trump), who has incarnated the most dangerous billionaire pretension of all: that of the hero who in all the world is the only one who can save us. He gamed the system so effectively that only he knows how to un-game it; he manipulated politicians so much that only he knows how to drain the swamp; he amassed so much money that only he is above corruption.
On Tuesday night he addressed a crowded room at Mar-a-Lago and, as expected, announced that he was going to run for president again. He said the usual things that politicians are supposed to say, about how he was doing it for America’s benefit. But this time it was no longer possible to imagine that even he believed it. After all, only a week had passed since America had voted in the midterm elections and rejected most of the high-profile candidates he endorsed — in the process, even Republican commentators agree, rejecting him. He dragged the party down so far that it did not regain the Senate and only barely regained the House.
Fearing even more disastrous outcomes, trusted advisers and allies encouraged him not to run again, or at least to delay his announcement. But they were wasting their time. Standing up there onstage, so low-energy that even Jeb Bush’s son felt compelled to comment, Mr. Trump took in the applause but offered no new ideas or directions. It was a variant of the performance that the others had been putting on, but with one crucial difference: Unlike Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Bankman-Fried, who strain to show us how public-spirited they are, Mr. Trump could hardly be bothered to care.
It was a particularly unsubtle reminder that billionaires are not our saviors. They are our mistake.
🐣 RT @McFaul Stopping Putin’s invasion of Ukraine must be an immediate goal of U.S. national security leaders. Avoiding war with China over Taiwan is the most important goal. Strengthening deterrence in Asia now will prevent war in the future. We can walk & chew gum at the same time.
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The fuckhead’s account is back alive.
⋙ 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump (Jan 6, 2021) If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!
[Twitter: ] Stay informed This claim about election fraud is disputed Find out more
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: a lawmaker argues that the strikes against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure are meant to express Russia’s “holy hatred” towards Ukrainians and prompt them to overthrow Zelensky. Others pontificate that freezing Ukrainian civilians will prompt a capitulation.
💽 https://twitter.co/JuliaDavisNews/status/1594068262996045825?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1594118635366354944?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky: “Without you!”
⋙ 🐣 [link to:] 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en For centuries Ukraine fought for her freedom and independence – starting with the Cossacks. ¤ Today we are in battle again – and we have our brave 21st century Cossacks fighting for our future. ¤ We will triumph. ¤ Listen to this beautiful song by Jerry Heil!
⋙ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1594060052641488897?s=20
🧵 RT @SenWhitehouse Start with the proposition that a purely voluntary “ethics code” with no means of inquiry or enforcement is just a wall decoration.
📌 https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1593987580227264512?s=20
// SCOTUS ethics and recusal issues; Ginni Thomas, Alito leaks, Faith and Action
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent US defense secretary: ‘Russia’s invasion offers preview of a possible world of tyranny and turmoil.’ ¤ “Putin’s fellow autocrats are watching and they could conclude that getting nuclear weapons would give them a hunting license of their own,” U.S. Defense Secretary Austin said
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent This could lead to a “dangerous spiral of nuclear proliferation,” Austin said on Nov. 19 at a security forum in Canada.
TheAtlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany (4/28): Why Hunter Biden’s Laptop Will Never Go Away https://tinyurl.com/azs2ce4f How the story became less about the contents of the laptop than about the MSM’s and social media’s attempts to avoid a “Hillary’s emails 2.0”
// 4/28/2022; Could anything that happens with this laptop bring us closure?
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en
Instead of a thousand words.
A child of war. ¤ Kherson.
📷: András Hajdú D. / haidu_d Instagram
🖼 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1594046049051557888?s=20/photo/1
// tags: moving photo of boy who’s suffered too much boy who’s seen too much
🐣 RT @rybar_en In the Zaporizhia direction, AFU command continue to concentrate forces at forward positions for a likely offensive on Melitopol. According to inhabitants of the region, the plan is to concentrate 25-40 thousand men along the entire length of the front.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman As Republicans whine about the new Special Counsel appointed to ensure impartiality, let’s remember that Trump’s AG named John Durham special counsel weeks before the 2020 election to pursue a baseless investigation that turned out to be one of DOJ’s most wasteful failures ever.
🐣 RT @BradWilcoxIFS Family men enjoy a happiness premium. Looks like it is growing, doesn’t it?
◕ https://twitter.com/BradWilcoxIFS/status/1593954759098212353?s=20/photo/1
// Men’s Happiness by Family Status
🐣 RT @tribelaw Months ago, I urged appointment of a special counsel. More recently, I thought it was too late. Now that I see the details, I think Garland has done exactly the right thing and that Smith is exactly the right prosecutor to take it on. Full speed ahead!
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Merrick Garland was right to appoint a special counsel https://tinyurl.com/mrxkx88m
🐣 RT @ @AWeissmann_ For those concerned that the appointment of a Special Counsel will delay things: just the opposite. Jack is a super fast, no-nonsense, and let’s-cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. And now, with less DOJ bureaucracy in decision-making, the investigations can move faster.
⭕ 18 Nov 2022
🧵 RT @BasedWarszawa 1/14 Time for a thread [thread] A legendary thread. A based thread. A brief introduction to the great man himself. General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 🇺🇦
📌 https://twitter.com/BasedWarszawa/status/1593986066347950080?s=20
CNN, Oliver Darcy: Twitter is the world’s digital public square. What happens if it dies? https://tinyurl.com/htwxddtx “[C]ommunications would become fractured across multiple social media websites, leading to a seismic disruption and slowdown in the flow of information”
… And if Twitter (TWTR) were to suddenly cease to exist, the consequences would be enormous, given how integral the platform is to global communications. ¤ The platform has often been compared to a digital town square — and for good reason. It is much more than simply a social media website.
World leaders use Twitter to communicate, journalists use Twitter to newsgather, dissidents in repressive countries use Twitter to organize, celebrities and major brands use Twitter to make important announcements, and the public uses Twitter to often monitor all of it in real-time.
If the platform were to die off, or to become unusable because of instability issues, no single space would likely replace it. ¤ “Twitter vs not Twitter isn’t a simple binary, particularly not for news journalism. The 24 hour global connectivity has changed almost everything about workflows in newsrooms and even for freelance journalists,” said Emily Bell, founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, a series of tweets Friday. “What replaces it, or what Twitter becomes now with an owner expressly hostile to and ignorant of the business of daily reporting, is really unsure.”
Instead, communications would become fractured across multiple social media websites, leading to a seismic disruption and slowdown in the flow of information. …
YahooNews: Key Evangelical Figures Turn On Trump: ‘He Used Us’ https://tinyurl.com/yckrv78h “If he‘s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.” ~ Everett Piper (The Washington Times); Others deserting Trump: Mike Evans, Robert Jeffress, James Robison
CEPA, Timothy Ash: It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia https://tinyurl.com/kxeehm5t “US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment”
// The cost-benefit analysis of US support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level.
Altogether, the Biden administration received Congressional approval for $40bn in aid for Ukraine for 2022 and has requested an additional $37.7bn for 2022. More than half of this aid has been earmarked for defense.
These sums pale into insignificance when set against a total US defense budget of $715bn for 2022. The assistance represents 5.6% of total US defense spending. But Russia is a primary adversary of the US, a top tier rival not too far behind China, its number one strategic challenger. In cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives.
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Democracy’s Dunkirk https://tinyurl.com/y38mvhft ‘I have no faith in the regenerative power of a party that has devolved into an anti-constitutional, violent movement led by cowards and opportunists, likely only to replace one authoritarian with another’
// The fight to preserve American democracy continues.
November has been a good month for democracy. Brazil’s autocratic president, Jair Bolsonaro, authorized the transfer of power after losing in national elections to a left-wing challenger. Russia’s murderous army is literally on the run in Ukraine. And American voters went to the polls and defied both history and expectation: They left the Senate in the hands of Democrats, gave the House to the Republicans by only a tiny majority, and crushed the electoral aspirations of a ragtag coalition of election deniers, Christian nationalists, and general weirdos.
That’s the good news. But as relieved as I am that some of my darkest worries did not come to pass last week, democracy is still in danger. What happened last week was an important electoral victory that allows all of us to fight another day—specifically, two years from now. Without the defeat of the deniers in 2022, the 2024 elections would likely have fallen into chaos and perhaps even violence. Both are still possibilities. But voters rallied and turned back the worst and most immediate threats to the American system of government. …
Like Dunkirk, the midterms were a necessary, but not final, victory. The old saw about “the most important election in our lifetime” turned out to be true this time: Without multiple defeats of the worst state and federal candidates in recent history, the unraveling of American democracy would have accelerated and the security of future elections would be in doubt, at least in the states captured by the election deniers and their associated charlatans.
If you want a vision of what such a nightmare might look like, imagine a close election in 2024. Battleground states are counting ballots with armed people swarming around election sites and state offices. Arizona Governor Kari Lake, Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano, and Wisconsin Governor Tim Michels are all frantically calling and texting one another on Election Night, and ordering their state institutions to hold off on finalizing the results. Meanwhile, Arizona Secretary of State Mark Finchem (a former member of the Oath Keepers) reaches out to his like-minded counterparts—Jim Marchant in Nevada, Kristina Karamo in Michigan—to ensure that none of them will certify Democratic wins, perhaps in hopes of flipping the decision to their legislatures or sympathetic judges. If Karamo misses the call, it’s because she’s busy strategizing with Michigan’s new Republican governor, Tudor Dixon, a conspiracy-theory-spouting flake who thinks that COVID restrictions and the George Floyd protests were an attempt to topple the U.S. government.
Fortunately, all of these people were soundly defeated—except for Lake, who lost in a squeaker and, true to form, still refuses to concede to Democrat Katie Hobbs. But among them, they garnered millions of votes. These 2022 losers and other, similar candidates are still out there, and they will all continue their best efforts (as Lake is demonstrating) to corrode the foundations of our constitutional order.
Which brings us to Donald Trump.
As I wrote a few days ago, Trump’s 2024 candidacy confronts us, once and for all, with a decision about what kind of country we are. I hope that the Republicans deny him their nomination: A spirited fight within the GOP that ends by flushing Trump out of the American political system would be good for the Republicans and for America. But I have no faith in the regenerative power of a party that has devolved into an anti-constitutional, violent movement led by cowards and opportunists. Especially because the current crop of possible GOP contenders is just another collection of poltroons and Trump imitators; the Republican primaries are likely only to replace one authoritarian cult leader with another.
American democracy’s Dunkirk means that the danger to the 2024 election from chicanery and outright attack, both political and physical, is much lower now than even a month ago. Turnout in 2022 was high, as midterms go, but not high enough, particularly—and as usual—among young voters, whose turnout, at just over 27 percent, was actually lower than in 2018 (when it hit its highest level ever). And we’re stuck for years to come with some truly odious candidates who managed to get past the voters. (I am, of course, speaking of J. D. Vance here, among others.) The Kari Lakes and the Tudor Dixons will resurface in two years. If we are going to turn them back once and for all, we must not underestimate their resentment and will to power. We know who they are; we must decide who we are.
🐣 RT @DucuGavril Russia has spent at least $300 million to sway both politics and policy in more than two dozen countries since 2014, according to a newly declassified review by U.S. intelligence agencies that warns the Kremlin is not done with plans to pay for influence.
⋙ VOA: Report: Democracies at Risk From Russian Money, Meddling https://tinyurl.com/44peyrym
// A newly declassified US intelligence assessment warns Moscow is covertly funding select political parties and candidates in more than a dozen countries
🐣 RT @SecBlinken Russia must halt detentions and disappearances, withdraw its forces from Ukraine, and end a war that it cannot and will not win – no matter how brutal its tactics. A new #ConflictObservatory report documents additional allegations of Russia’s abuses.
⋙ StateDept: Accountability for War Crimes and Other Atrocities in Ukraine: Recent Reporting on Unjust Detentions and Disappearances in Kherson Oblast https://tinyurl.com/34yxjxhh
The Conflict Observatory, a program supported by the U.S. Department of State, released an independent report today that details numerous instances of unjust detentions and disappearances in Kherson, Ukraine, as they relate to Russia’s ongoing filtration operations. Russia must halt these operations and withdraw its forces to end a needless war that it cannot and will not win – no matter how despicable and desperate its tactics.
Prepared by Conflict Observatory partner Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, the new report is available at ConflictObservatory.org. It presents publicly available information about the experiences of more than 220 individuals who are victims, survivors, or witnesses to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, including gender-based violence, at the hands of Russia and Russia-backed forces. Survivors and witnesses identified at least five individuals who died, as a result of their mistreatment in detention. The report also identifies 12 detention and checkpoint locations across Kherson oblast and Crimea, and notes a disproportionately high incidence of reported mistreatment of members of the Crimean Tatar community.
🐣 RT @ikhurshudyan People hid weapons. They reported the movements and locations of Russians troops. And many had handlers from Ukrainian security services. Our story on the resistance movement in Kherson, a subtle, sustained insurgency that helped force the Russian retreat:
⋙ WaPo: Stealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces https://tinyurl.com/2p9yaa7p
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Excellent article about the advantages Smith has over Mueller, including the point I brought up earlier about not having to work under the constant threat of being fired.
⋙ Politico: New Trump special counsel launches investigation in Mueller’s shadow https://tinyurl.com/3zncs4z8
// The Justice Department hopes to avoid pitfalls of the last special counsel investigation targeting Trump.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS /0230 UTC 19 NOV/ UKR forces have consolidated incremental advances and have established positions within 200 meters of the important P-66 HWY. This effectively cuts the Line of Communication and Supply (LOCS) linking RU forces in the city of Svatove and Kremenna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1593791833657704448?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Here is the document appointing John (“Jack”) Smith as Special Counsel, signed by Attorney General Merrick Garland
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1593703409210753024?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @kyledcheney UPDATE: The special counsel appointed by Garland is JACK SMITH, DOJ’s former public integrity chief. ¤ He once secured the conviction of a CIA official charged with “illegally disclosing national defense information and obstructing justice.”
⋙ Politico: Garland names Jack Smith special counsel for Trump criminal probes https://tinyurl.com/3ns5c5nn
// Smith, a former chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, will oversee criminal matters related to former President Donald Trump.
🐣 RT @sgurman “Based on recent developments, including the former president’s announcement that he’s a candidate for president in the next election & the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @sgurman NOW: Garland appoints John L. “Jack” Smith as special counsel overseeing investigations into Donald Trump. He is the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving the former president.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The key here, once Garland decides to appoint a special counsel, will be picking someone who will be able to hit the ground running and move the investigation forward without delay.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: Garland to Name Special Counsel to Determine Whether Trump Should Face Charges https://tinyurl.com/4f7emf3v “The exact scope of the special counsel’s remit and who it would be couldn’t be determined”
// A formal announcement would come days after Mr. Trump announced another bid for the presidency
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1593678830270562304?s=20/photo/1
The move reflects the sensitivity of Mr. Garland overseeing any investigation into Mr. Trump now that he is a declared presidential candidate. President Biden, who has said he intends to run for re-election in 2024, nominated Mr. Garland to head the Justice Department in part for the former judge’s promise to insulate the agency from political influence.
Some legal experts have anticipated such an appointment. Regulations governing special counsels provide for the attorney general to name an outsider if he determines that the investigation or prosecution presents a conflict of interest for the department and recusals of certain officials wouldn’t be enough to overcome the concerns.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The key here, once Garland decides to appoint a special counsel, will be picking someone who will be able to hit the ground running and move the investigation forward without delay.
⋙ WSJ: Garland to Name Special Counsel to Determine Whether Trump Should Face Charges https://tinyurl.com/4f7emf3v
// A formal announcement would come days after Mr. Trump announced another bid for the presidency
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua⚡️Ukraine will produce heavy weapons and military equipment with at least six NATO countries, — the website of the state concern.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua “Yes, we are building closed-loop ammunition production lines, jointly producing armored vehicles and MLRS and developing new high-tech weapons”, – the message reads.
🐣 RT @ StratcomCentre The photo shows an elderly couple from Bakhmut after an enemy missile hit their home. ¤ You can take away people’s house, destroy what they have built for years. But love and loyalty cannot be taken away. This is the difference between us and Russians. ¤ Photo by Eddy van Wessel.
🖼 https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1593652745021673472?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports More visual evidence that Makiivka, Luhansk oblast south west of Svatove is clearly under Ukrainian control. Not a single surviving house, ruins and death are the consequences of the “Russian peace” that reigned here for 8 months.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Stephen Colbert: “Yes we know it’s troubling…but still nice to see the Republicans take the House without Zip Ties.”
WaPo: GOP operative found guilty of funneling Russian money to Donald Trump https://tinyurl.com/2p8uskx4 “Jesse Benton, 44, was pardoned by Trump in 2020 for a different campaign finance crime, months before he was indicted again on six counts related to facilitating an illegal foreign campaign donation”
// A longtime Ron Paul aide helped a Russian businessman get into a Trump fundraiser; Trump later pardoned him for another campaign finance crime
💙 TheAtlantic, Michael Gerson (Apr 2018): The Last Temptation https://tinyurl.com/bpa3stv4 “It is the strangest story: how so many evangelicals lost their interest in decency, and how a religious tradition called by grace became defined by resentment” #LongRead
// How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory
Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist appearing twice weekly in The Washington Post. He served as a top aide and speechwriter for George W. Bush
RIP Michael Gerson🙏
🐣 RT @TWMCLtd One of Vladimir #Putin’s inner circle tells @meduza_en that they understand #Russia “already lost the war” ¤ Worth translating the original here – Meduza has consistently been one of the most reliable Russian news sources
[TweetLink:] https://twitter.com/TWMCLtd/status/1593560908298493953?s=20
🐣 Benghazi and Hillary’s emails led to nothing. The Durham investigation was a bust. Even the IRS “scandal” wasn’t (though few know this). But now, we are to entertained by Hunter Biden’s laptop for two years. ¤ When will people catch on? The GOP can’t do policy
😅 Secret Republican poll revealed!
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1593514887870914560?s=20/photo/1
// poll altered to show “Hunter Biden’s laptop” at 120%
🐣 RT @DefenceU New trend in Ukrainian fashion. In Kherson children are asking their liberators to sign their outerwear. Those unique pieces may one day be auctioned at @Sothebys 📷Daniyar Sarsenov
🖼 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1593499249118945280?s=20/photo/1 -2
⭕ 17 Nov 2022
WaPo, Henry Olsen: Biden deserves props for his masterful Ukraine policy https://tinyurl.com/4rrw2eyh “Biden has reinvigorated NATO and brought the Europeans closer to our views on China. That’s cause for celebration across the partisan divide”
WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Michael Gerson followed his faith — and America was better for it https://tinyurl.com/5furzfbp A life of civility, salt, and grace. RIP Michael Gerson.
AtlanticCouncil: Kherson euphoria highlights the folly of a premature peace with Putin https://tinyurl.com/yh9s4k8v “[I]t is vital to keep in mind that any compromise would come with crippling costs. For Ukraine, it would mean betraying and abandoning millions of citizens”
🐣 As Twitter users scatter in a dozen directions, it should be clear that Twitter was never about the platform: it was about the forum. It has been a meeting place used by people and organizations around the world. It is irreplaceable, but apparently not indestructible.
🐣 RT @astroehlein “Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.” – Václav Havel
(today marks the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989)
🖼 https://twitter.com/astroehlein/status/1593140002023952384?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Imagine all the GOP House craziness you can. ¤ Now, magnify that insanity and loonbucket fuckwittery by a billion. ¤ Then transport it to the pinnacle of Burning Tire Mountain as an endless cascade of clown cars plunge into the radioactive waste dump at the peak.
🐣 RT @POTUS When I think of Nancy Pelosi, I think of dignity. ¤ History will note her as the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in history – she is first, last, and always for the people. America owes her a debt of gratitude for her service, patriotism, and dignity.
🐣 RT @gheliason (11/15) #Ukraine suffers catastrophic losses in Pavlovka last night. 1400 casualties, 10 tanks, and aircraft.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tweetsmachine3 (11/17) BREAKING NEWS: 600 dead russian soldiers in the last 6 hours due to their failed attacks in Bakhmut. Why is Putin sending all these people into death? Wow.
🐣 RT @ Pouletvolant3 Lignes de front au 16/11
Secteurs :
🌐 Svatove
🌐 Bakhmut
🌐 Donetsk Ouest
🌐 Hulyaypole (Sud-Est Zaporizhzhya)
Sources: @projectowlosint | @AndrewPerpetua
@Michel_Goya @egea_blog @jdomerchet @duprat_alain #UkraineRussianWar
🌎 https://twitter.com/Pouletvolant3/status/1593188690234597377?s=20/photo/1 -4
✅ WaPo FactChecker (10/19): The misleading claim that bank reports show Hunter Biden ‘committed serious crimes’ https://tinyurl.com/3wfwwsbw Filing of an SAR does not mean a bank believes a crime has been committed, as Rep James Comer (R-KY) claimed THREE PINOCCHIOS 🍄🍄🍄
// 10/19/2022
🐣 RT @TDF_UA “You are doomed, aggressor, ¤ As the Witch presaged you” ¤ Meet a junior sergeant callsign “Witch” from the 241 Kyiv TDF Brigade. During the defense of Bakhmut, the platoon under her leadership repulsed six enemy infantry attacks in just one night.
🖼 https://twitter.com/TDF_UA/status/1592876342940684288?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Tendar Russians frantically defending Ploshchanka and at the moment they can hold the line, but they also know that if the front cracks there or nearby the entire Russian front West of the Krasna River has to fall back, eventually exposing Svatove. #Svatove #Luhansk #Ukraine
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1593263520229072898?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/1510 UTC 17 NOV/ With targeting data provided by UKR Partisans and deeply inserted SOF, UKR conducted a precision strike fire mission on HQ elements of the Russian 58th Combined Arms Army, located in the city of Melitopol. 100 RU casualties reported.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1593255834607230977?s=20/photo/1
CNN: Some US weapons and ammunition for Ukraine are low in supply https://tinyurl.com/yft9bkzv “Multiple officials underscored that the US would never put at risk its own readiness, and every shipment is measured against its impact on US strategic reserves and war plans”
🐣 RT @McFaul Great thread.
⋙ 💙 🧵 RT @AKamyshin [Trains] So. Another long story about our yesterday trip to #Mykolaiv and #Kherson. Danger: [thread]
📌 https://twitter.com/AKamyshin/status/1593015717963923456?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT […] @AKamyshin Meanwhile, @WCKitchen started doing what they do the best – distributing food right at the railway station. 3500 food packages done that day. That was the first large scale food distribution since liberation. It was incredible.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT […] @ Another long but happy day where we’ve done our best to help people of #Kherson and #Mykolaiv get back to normalcy asap. Never possible without our friends from @WCKitchen and @MSF_Ukraine. Real #IronBrotherhood. Will remember what you do for my country forever in my life.
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba I had a call with @SecBlinken right during another massive missile attack on Ukraine this morning. We share the view that Russia bears full responsibility for its missile terror and its consequences on the territory of Ukraine, Poland, and Moldova. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba I thanked the U.S. for its crucial defense assistance and emphasized that deliveries of air defense systems to Ukraine need to be sped up. NASAMS have proved their efficiency already. I am also convinced that the time for “Patriots” has come. 2/2
🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent The ISW reported that Russia’s forced adoptions and deportations of Ukrainian children “under the guise of vacation and rehabilitation schemes” likely result in a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign on top of apparent violations of the Genocide Convention.
🧵 RT @TheDeadDistrict Three months ago, as Ukrainian troops were struggling to advance against Russian forces in the south, the military’s headquarters in Kyiv quietly deployed a valuable new weapon to the battlefield.1/
📌 https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1593140728850681857?s=20
It was not a MLRS, cannon or other kind of heavy artillery from allies. Instead, it was a real-time information system known as Delta — an online network that military troops, civilian officials and even vetted bystanders could use to track and… 2/
… share desperately needed details about Russian forces. ¤ Ukraine unveiled the Delta situational awareness system in October of 2022 during the NATO TIDE Sprint closed event in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA. 3/
The software, developed in coordination with NATO, had barely been tested in battle. 4/
But as they moved across the country’s Kherson region in a major counteroffensive, Ukraine’s forces employed Delta, as well as powerful weaponry supplied by the West, to push the Russians out of towns and villages they had occupied for months. 5/
The big payoff came Friday with the retreat of Russian forces from the city of Kherson — a major prize in the nearly nine-month war. 6/
⭕ 16 Nov 2022
Substack, Timothy Snyder: Help stop a genocide https://tinyurl.com/2p95rhsm It’s easy. Here’s how
MSNBC, James Downie: The most revealing part of Trump’s 2024 announcement https://tinyurl.com/5bfs6czw “It’s as if the cancer that you hoped was in remission announced on national television that it’s back”
// All the old hits were played, and most of the dog whistles were blown.
// Now we have to live at least a year with the specter of another Trump term, one that would likely make his first one look like a picnic. It’s as if the cancer that you hoped was in remission announced on national television that it’s back
MSNBC: DeSantis won, but DeSantis-ism lost https://tinyurl.com/4dcvzw5a “[T]he midterm was a defeat for DeSantis’ entire political persona — the angry, uncompromising, vindictive, anti-woke politician who will unceasingly attack Democrats and give liberals no quarter”
// His politics played well in Florida, but failed elsewhere.
🐣 RT @cbouzy Trump has doomed Republicans’ chances for 2024. If Trump isn’t the nominee, many of his supporters will sit out the election in protest, and if he is the nominee, he will galvanize Democrats and Independents against him. McConnell should’ve convicted him when he had the chance.
😅 RT @duty2warn For clarity: Donald Trump is a conman, fraud, and thief. Flynn’s a traitor. SCOTUS is corrupt. JFK Jr is dead. Fox News is NOT news. McConnell is an obstructionist. Bannon is a destructionist. Putin’s a war criminal. Ginni is nuts. DeSantis is a despot. And DeJoy deserves deJail.
Wonkette, Liz Dye: Batboy vs Turtle: Rick Scott Thinks He’s Going To Take Out Mitch McConnell https://tinyurl.com/3jf64n4a Scott “blithely predicti[ed] that his party would pick up six seats, even as it embraced a slate of crappy candidates it didn’t vet or choose”
🐣 RT @gdhint Adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, Podolyak: Only Russian is responsible for the war in Ukraine and massive missile strikes. Only Russia is behind the rapidly growing risks for the border countries.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gdhint/status/1592830479308591104?s=20/photo/1
AP (10/28): Russia’s hope for Ukraine win revealed in battle for Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/2p5v5kcf
// 10;28/2022
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes yesterday were significant and widespread, reportedly targeting energy infrastructure, military installations, weapons systems and civilian infrastructure. Kyiv, Lviv and other regions in the west were part of Russia’s strikes.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1592761429882724355?s=20
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Mobilised Russian soldiers were sent to the front line at gunpoint near Svatove before being defeated and fleeing. They have been told by their commanders, “You are decommissioned material, if you don’t go [back] there, we will shoot you,” according to relatives.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1591804632346808321?s=20
// 11/13/2022
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @tendar Russian sources say that the battle in Russian-occupied Luhansk has severely intensified today. Kreminna is directly attacked from the forest, artillery strikes on Svatove and a push from Makiivka. Together with the fighting in Kuzemivka yesterday this might be something bigger.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1592175394677198849?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @gdhint Adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, Podolyak: Only Russian is responsible for the war in Ukraine and massive missile strikes. Only Russia is behind the rapidly growing risks for the border countries.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gdhint/status/1592830479308591104?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Updated total from Russia’s $700,000,000 attempt to destroy every power plant in Ukraine. ¤ Of 90 missles, Ukraine got 75.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Solovyev starts to realize that less and less countries are willing to support Russia or remain under its influence. ¤ (This is yesterday’s video)
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1592809327542562817?s=20/photo/1
// displayed: UN vote condemning “annexation,” including CSTO “partners” and India
🐣 RT @HenryJFoy NEW – Nato and G7 leaders discuss intelligence suggesting that missile which killed two in Poland may have been fired by Ukraine’s air defence systems https://tinyurl.com/3ftjxjpy via @financialtimes
⋙ 🐣 We shouldn’t lose perspective that the missile would not have been fired apart from Russia’s brutal missile attack on Ukrainian cities, one of the worst barrages yet, as Russia attempts to punish Ukraine for its the liberation of Kherson
🐣 🚀 RT @mmpadellan This is cool as hell. ¤ BACK TO THE MOON, BABY! ¤ #Artemis1
💽 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1592780735534239750?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 15 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @sahilkapur McConnell on 2022: “We under-performed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party, in leadership roles, is that they’re causing chaos, negativity, excessive attacks. And it frightened independent and moderate Republican voters.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @sahilkapur McConnell: “I never predicted a red wave. We never saw that in any of our polling in the states that we were counting on to win.” He says Republican candidates in NH (Bolduc) and AZ (Masters) were “just crushed by independent voters.” He reiterates “candidate quality” matters.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @Acyn McConnell: We underperformed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party and leadership roles is that they are involved in chaos.. which is why I never predicted a red wave
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1592631794029170689?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ArgoJournal 2022 Senate Exit Polls: ¤ Among Moderate
📊 https://twitter.com/ArgoJournal/status/1592636799020859392?s=20
🐣 RT @ArgoJournal 2022 Senate Exit Polls: ¤ Among Independents
📊 https://twitter.com/ArgoJournal/status/1592640134889213952?s=20
// Dems did. well among moderates and independents
🐣 RT @alfranken Congrats to horrible lying scumbag Kevin McCarthy on winning the nomination to lead a terrible group comprised almost entirely of nut jobs and/or chickenshits.
WhiteHouse: Joint Statement of NATO and G7 Leaders on the Margins of the G20 Summit in Bali https://tinyurl.com/3whw2bn5
Today, the Leaders of Canada, the European Commission, the European Council, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States met on the margins of the G20 Summit in Bali and released the following statement:
We condemn the barbaric missile attacks that Russia perpetrated on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure on Tuesday.
We discussed the explosion that took place in the eastern part of Poland near the border with Ukraine. We offer our full support for and assistance with Poland’s ongoing investigation. We agree to remain in close touch to determine appropriate next steps as the investigation proceeds.
We reaffirm our steadfast support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the face of ongoing Russian aggression, as well as our continued readiness to hold Russia accountable for its brazen attacks on Ukrainian communities, even as the G20 meets to deal with the wider impacts of the war. We all express our condolences to the families of the victims in Poland and Ukraine.
🐣 RT @vonderleyen While G20 leaders were meeting and calling for the war to end, Russia conducted massive strikes against Ukraine. ¤ With G7 and NATO partners, we condemn these brutal acts. ¤ We also offer full support to Poland and assistance with the investigation on the explosion at the border.
💽 https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1592757119400710145?s=20/photo/1
🐣 he just can’t quit us
NYT: Trump Announces 2024 Run, Repeating Lies and Exaggerating Record https://tinyurl.com/5n6p49as “Trump’s insistence on another campaign has set off a roiling debate … over whether the party can thrive with him as its leader — and, if not, how it can effectuate a divorce”
// In a rambling speech, former President Donald J. Trump said he would seek another term, ignoring Republicans’ concerns that he was to blame for the party’s weak midterm showing.
🧵 RT @atrupar “Please welcome, the next president … ”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1592699865498144769?s=20/photo/1
// Trump announces he’s running at Mar-a-Lago
🐣 RT @Acyn McConnell: We underperformed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party and leadership roles is that they are involved in chaos.. which is why I never predicted a red wave
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1592631794029170689?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava Russian troops in the Kherson region are advancing 15-20 km deep from the established borders on the left bank of the Dnipro to protect themselves from the shelling of the AFU, -Natalya Humenyuk.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1592477332698464258?s=20/photo/1
// they are moving from the east bank of the Dnipro further east, out of MRLS/HIMARS range
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 My best guess is KH-55/X-555 or 3M14 Kalibr. ¤ The crater looks to big for an AD missile impact.
🖼 https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1592594854600912896?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian Ministry of Defence publishes a message completely denying any involvement with the missile explosions in Poland. Moreover, they blame Poland for “deliberate escalation”.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1592610210061123584?s=20/photo/1 -2
⚡️ The statements of the Polish media and officials about the alleged fall of “Russian” missiles in the area of the settlement of Przewodów is a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation.
● No strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border were made by Russian armaments.
● The wreckage published urgently by the Polish media from the scene in the village of Prewodów has nothing to do with Russian weapons.
🐣 RT @Phoenix4517 Thing is the logistics of it being a UA S300 are a bit complex. It would have to fail to hit a missle flying along a certain path, had its auto destruct fail, and then travel 6km into poland before either hitting the ground or running out of fuel
🐣 RT @EliotHiggins [Bellingcat] Worth noting the missile at the site in Poland looks like it could be an air defence missile, rather than a cruise missile. More images of the debris will help confirm that either way.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CalibreObscura A certain resemblance to a part of a motor section of 5V55-series missiles used with S-300 SAM systems here. In that case, this may be the remains of a Ukrainian AD missile, or perhaps that plus the cruise missile it intercepted. ¤ However this is NOT AN ID AT THIS TIME. Brb.
🖼 https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura/status/1592593028220620802?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ W7VOA No confirmation that missiles from #Russia have landed in #Poland, says @PentagonPresSec. “We’re going to get the facts and when we have more to provide we will.”
🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien The Russian missile screw-up that ended up killing two Poles will result in NATO invoking article 4 not article 5 (see below). The consultation will probably result in more support for Ukraine, particularly air and anti-air power. Will give Poland some real influence.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1592598256512798720?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Article 4: The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security ofany of the Parties is threatened.
Article 5: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
‼️ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/ 1830 UTC 15 NOV/ Reliable sources report that UKR has conducted landings on the Kilburn Peninsula, west of Kherson. This strip of land controls access to the port cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv. UKR ops appear to have caught RU napping.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1592584393113362433?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul Ukrainian soldiers defeated Russian soldiers on the battlefield near Kherson, so Putin responds by launching a massive terrorist attack against Ukrainian civilians. Typical.
🐣 RT @ DavidMFriend1 Ron Klain: “President Biden is underestimated because his triumphs are the triumph of wisdom, decency & determination: values underappreciated in today’s media & political culture” @MollyJongFast @WHCOS @POTUS
⋙ VanityFair: “Voters Are Smarter Than the Media”: The Pundit Class Misjudged the American People https://tinyurl.com/mr2tbwtz
// The midterm results were a gut-punch to journalists predicting doom for Democrats. It again shows, says Ron Klain, how Joe Biden “has been underestimated as a candidate, as a president, and as a party leader.”
🐣 RT @MikeSington [NBC] Rupert Murdoch has told Trump his media empire will not support another Trump run for the presidency. News Corp source: “We have been clear with Donald. There have been conversations. Rupert made it clear to Donald we cannot back another run for the White House.”
🐣 RT @highbrow_nobrow The American Enterprise Institute has officially rejected Donald Trump.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1592547161446965249?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The Republican Party substantially underperformed in yesterday’s elections. Candidates backed by former president Trump had the worst results. Moving forward, the GOP should reject an economic policy agenda based on Trumpian populism and grievance. In its place, the GOP should develop an economic agenda that would foster macroeconomic stability and increase prosperity and opportunity.
≣ PresidentUA: Speech by the Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, at the G20 Summit (transcript) https://tinyurl.com/38dfbsvp “Ukraine has always been a leader in peacemaking efforts; if Russia wants to end this war, let it prove it with actions”
// transcript; video address
🐣 RT @BySteveReilly Here are your final results for the 17 candidates who were part of the election-denying America First Secretaries of State Coalition.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BySteveReilly/status/1592510969233960960?s=20/photo/1
// 16 of 17 lost
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky presents 10-step peace plan and tells G20: “If Russia says that it supposedly wants to end this war, let it prove it with actions. Obviously it’s impossible to trust Russia’s words, and there will be no Minsk-3, which Russia would violate immediately after signing.”
[Text💽Link:] https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1592427657601650689?s=20/photo/1 -2
[Text:] So, here are the proposals of Ukraine:
1. Radiation and nuclear safety.
2. Food security.
3. Energy security.
4. Release of all prisoners and deported persons.
5. Implementation of the UN Charter and restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the world order.
6. Withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities.
7. Restoration of justice.
8. Countering ecocide.
9. Preventing escalation.
10. Confirmation of the end of the war.
🐣 RT @ kyledcheney JUST IN: Latest update in Jan. 6 cases:
-900 arrests
-447 guilty pleas (110 to felonies)
-316 sentences handed down
https://tinyurl.com/2p9376nk
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1592244026140286976?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski One of the centerpieces of Dem campaigns in 2024 will be the boorish obnoxiousness of the MAGA majority in the House, who will elevate the worst among them, shining a bright spotlight on their mania. They will launch investigations, fight with each other, and accomplish nothing.
🐣 The Line held …
The Circle was Unbroken …
The Best found their conviction
While the rantings of the Worst were quelled
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1592458847222104064?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons https://tinyurl.com/45an9h97 While Russia threatens use of brawny, over-powered weapons, NATO tests a new generation of agile, cyber-enhanced capabilities that “will be about maximum drones and minimal humans”
// Though the battle for Ukraine remains largely a grinding artillery war, new advances in technology and training there are being closely monitored for the ways they are starting to shape combat.
⭕ 14 Nov 2022
NPR: Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy makes surprise visit to liberated city of Kherson https://tinyurl.com/24xhe2r2
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The Russian Empire Must Die https://tinyurl.com/bcsv8avs “[D]efeat is the only path to modernity; … military failure is necessary for the creation of a more prosperous, open society”
// A better future requires Putin’s defeat—and the end to imperial aspirations.
During the quarter century of its formal existence, the Moscow School of Civic Education did not have a campus, a syllabus, or professors. The school instead ran seminars for politicians and journalists, led by other politicians and journalists, from Russia and around the world. It operated out of the Moscow apartment of its founders, Lena Nemirovskaya and Yuri Senokosov. They had met in the 1970s while working on a Soviet philosophy journal, and shared a hatred of the violent, arbitrary politics that had shaped most of their lives. Nemirovskaya’s father was a Gulag prisoner. Senokosov once told me he could not eat Russian black bread, because the taste reminded him of the poverty and tragedy of his Soviet childhood. …
At the time, this project did not feel naive, idealistic, or radical, let alone seditious. Even during the first decade of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, democratic politics were restricted but legal in Russia; opposition views were tolerated, as long as they didn’t attract too much popular support; and there were many endeavors to organize discussions, training sessions, and lectures on democracy and the rule of law. Nemirovskaya told me that it never occurred to her that she was creating a “dissident” organization. On the contrary, her efforts were meant to support exactly the kind of transformation that people in power in Russia in the ’90s said they wanted. But slowly, those people were pushed out, or changed their mind. Officers of the FSB, the Russian secret police, began showing up at the seminars and asking questions. Negative articles about the school appeared in the Russian press. Finally, the state designated the school as a “foreign agent” and decreed that it had to advertise itself as such.
In 2021, the school was closed. Nemirovskaya and Senokosov sold their apartment and moved to Riga, Latvia, where they still run seminars, only now for exiles. Many of their friends, colleagues, and former students trickled out of the country too. In the spring of 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine, that trickle became a wave. Tens of thousands of Russian journalists, activists, lawyers, and artists left the country, bringing with them whatever remained of independent media, publishing, culture, and the arts. Among them were many people who might have once attended a seminar on local government at the Moscow School of Civic Education. ¤ That moment felt, to many inside and outside Russia, like the end of the story. But it wasn’t—because stories like this one never end. …
Outside the country, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians are beginning to understand how closely the empire and the autocracy are linked. Some of the new exiles have given up on politics altogether, and many are just dodging the draft. But a large cohort oppose the war from abroad, through Russian-language websites that report on the war and try to get information to Russians in Russia. TV Rain, shut down by the government in March, is up and running again, online, based in Riga. Navalny’s team, the remnants of his large national organization, is making videos that have millions of viewers on YouTube, which can still be accessed in Russia. …
In at least one respect, all of these 21st-century exiles are unlike their 20th-century predecessors: They remain abroad, or in jail, because of a terrible war of imperial conquest. Many therefore oppose not just the regime, but the empire; for the first time, some argue that it is not just the regime that should change, but the definition of the nation. Kasparov is one of many who argue that only military defeat can bring political change. He now believes that democracy will be possible only “when Crimea is liberated and the Ukrainian flag is flying over Sevastopol.” …
The cultural weight of the past is heavy, and the habits of autocracy—especially the habit of living in fear—persist. The attraction of power is also strong. The people who have it will not want to lose it, and the next government of Russia might well be even more repressive than the one that runs Russia now. But accidents happen; unexpected events occur. Countries evolve, sometimes creating better governments and sometimes worse ones. Empires fall: The Russian empire fell, the Soviet empire fell, and sooner or later Putin’s new Russian empire will fall too. From his prison cell, Kara-Murza has pointed out that the more than 17,000 detained anti-war protesters far outnumber the seven people who were arrested in Moscow’s Red Square when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to stop that country from changing. Nemirovskaya, from her exile in Riga, recently told me that her efforts were not in vain. She still believes that the three post-Soviet decades left their mark: Whatever happens next, “we will never again live the way we did then.” Leonid Volkov, the leader of Navalny’s organization in exile, told me last year that he believes the most important thing he and his colleagues can do is simply be prepared for change, whenever it comes.
I have argued before that there is no guarantee that American democracy can survive, that what happens to America tomorrow depends on the actions of Americans today. But the same is true of Russia. The country’s future will be shaped not by mystical laws of history but by how its leaders and citizens absorb and interpret the tragedy of this shocking, brutal, unnecessary war. The best way that outsiders can help Russia change is to ensure that Ukraine takes back Ukrainian territory and defeats the empire. We can also keep supporting those Russians, however small their number, who understand why defeat is the only path to modernity; why military failure is necessary for the creation of a more prosperous, open society; and why, once again, the empire must die. We don’t need to search for idealized “good Russians”—no savior will emerge to fix the country, not now and not ever. But Russians who believe the future can be different will keep trying to change their country, and someday they will succeed. In the meantime, no one should ever concede to Putin the right to define what it means to be Russian. He doesn’t have that power.
TheAtlantic: Joe Biden Was Right https://tinyurl.com/3j938sbx “[T]he midterms showed that money and gerrymandering and voter suppression can be overcome when people actually show up and vote. Ballots are more powerful than Peter Thiel’s checkbook”
// The president said that this election was about democracy, and the voters agreed.
… Biden took heat from friends and foes alike for making closing arguments in favor of democracy instead of prosaic “kitchen-table” issues, but the president—a man with half a century of experience in elected politics—knew the voters better than his critics did.
Consider the magnitude of what happened last week. The Republicans went into the midterms as heavy favorites, with advantages that included the patterns of political history, some star power, money from churlish billionaires, and—in theory—Donald Trump. The Democrats had every headwind imaginable, including an unpopular president, a fractious coalition, and an economy beset with high inflation.
The misfit flotilla of Republican election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted flakes and phonies was poised, it seemed, to board the American ship of state without much resistance. Instead, much of the Republican fleet sank within sight of the shore. A few survivors (such as the reprehensible J. D. Vance) made it to the beach, and the GOP seems likely to control the House by the thinnest of margins. But the Republicans fell short when the voters noticed their extreme positions on almost everything, including January 6, elections, and abortion.
Jim Marchant of Nevada, for example, put together a slate of fellow election-denying secretary-of-state hopefuls under the banner of “America First.” This congerie of conspiracy theorists ran as a bloc that promised to make voting more difficult and hold up election results they didn’t like. … Marchant and the rest of the deniers lost, except for one candidate in Indiana (not exactly a battleground state). …
The challenge to American democracy is not over, but the 2022 results should give the prodemocracy coalition hope, for many reasons.
● American voters stepped back from the abyss. (Even if they cut it a little close for my comfort.) As my colleague Anne Applebaum tweeted, “the biggest story” of the midterms is that “the 2024 election is safe, or safer, from another, better organized, MAGA attempt to steal it.” …
● The midterm results suggest that Americans (and American women, especially) made a decision not to separate abortion rights from democracy; I suspect that they viewed the overturning of Roe v. Wade as part of the overall right-wing assault on their liberties. …
● Three cheers for the American system of government. Frustrated liberals have sometimes wished for a parliamentary system … Republicans could have used parliamentary supremacy to ram through changes in important laws and kept power for a long time. Instead, American federalism and the distinct mandates required for both the executive and legislative branch functioned as the Founders intended, ensuring that the GOP majority of 2016 could be broken in 2018 independent of the presidency, and that Democratic gains would have to be revalidated at the ballot box in 2020 and 2022
● Perhaps most heartening, the midterms showed that money and gerrymandering and voter suppression can be overcome when people actually show up and vote. Ballots are more powerful than Peter Thiel’s checkbook.
We should not lull ourselves into believing that the fight for democracy is over. The local governments, state houses, and the new Congress will still have plenty of odious characters in them. There’s still a lot of work to be done.
Nonetheless, the gloom and gathering darkness I felt last week has dissipated to a considerable degree. The president and the prodemocracy forces issued a call to the public to defend the American system, and the public responded in force. I regularly criticize the public for a lack of civic virtue; I even wrote a book about it. But I must give credit where it is due: The voters, this time, proved me wrong—and showed that Joe Biden was right
WaPo, Greg Sargent: The quiet vindication of Liz Cheney https://tinyurl.com/4m2n7shf “[D]efeated candidates include all the election-denying nominees for secretary of state in key presidential battlegrounds such as Arizona, Nevada and Michigan”
🐣 RT @AriBerman Election denier Republicans have lost governor’s races in AZ, CO, IL, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NY, PA, WI
NYT, Paul Krugman: Trump Is Weak, but the G.O.P. Is Weaker https://tinyurl.com/2xb7b3y8 “Fox News, the main source of political information for much of the G.O.P. base, gave Trump the kind of hagiographic coverage you’d expect from state media in a dictatorship”
🐣 RT @BillKristol Fun!
⋙ 🐣 RT @ scottwongDC SCOOP: @RepMTG’s worst fears could soon be coming true. ¤ DON BACON (R-Neb.) tells @NBCNews he’s willing to work with DEMS to elect a moderate Speaker if 218 Republicans can’t agree on a candidate. @RepDonBacon w/ @KyleAlexStewart @jonallendc
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Conservatives warn McCarthy: You don’t have the votes for speaker https://tinyurl.com/45hx2x74
// Rep. Kevin McCarthy is expected to secure the GOP nomination for speaker in Tuesday’s leadership elections, but conservatives say he can’t get the votes needed on the House floor without their help.
🐣 RT @Reuters Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrived in Kherson, greeted with cheers in the newly liberated city, as residents gathered to raise the Ukrainian flag https://reut.rs/3g47e78
💽 [En] https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1592389431964696577?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers https://tinyurl.com/y3bawsct //➔ so, Trump’s belief he is above the law means he is above the law?
// A review by agents and prosecutors found no discernible business interest in the Mar-a-Lago documents, people familiar with the matter said
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the investigation is ongoing, that no final determinations have been made, and that it is possible additional information could emerge that changes investigators’ understanding of Trump’s motivations. But they said the evidence collected over a period of months indicates the primary explanation for potentially criminal conduct was Trump’s ego and intransigence.
The analysis of Trump’s likely motive in allegedly keeping the documents is not, strictly speaking, an element of determining whether he or anyone around him committed a crime or should be charged with one. Justice Department policy dictates that prosecutors file criminal charges in cases in which they believe a crime was committed and the evidence is strong enough to lead to a conviction that will hold up on appeal. But as a practical matter, motive is an important part of how prosecutors assess cases and decide whether to file criminal charges.
Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, said keeping hundreds of classified documents, many marked top secret, at a private home “is such a perplexing thing to do” that it makes sense for prosecutors to search for a motive.
“It makes perfect sense as to why prosecutors would be spending time scouring through the various records and documents to look for some kind of pattern or theme to explain why certain records were kept and why others were not,” Mintz said. “In presenting a case to a jury, prosecutors typically want to explain the motive for committing a crime. It’s not necessary to prove a crime, but it helps tell the story of exactly how a crime unfolded, according to the government.”
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald “People should get their heads around the idea that Ukraine is going to defeat Russia on the battlefield, the old fashioned way. They have irreversible momentum. Now is the time to put the pedal to the metal.” – US Lt. General (ret) Ben Hodges
⋙ Politico: U.S. scrambles to reassure Ukraine after Milley comments on negotiations https://tinyurl.com/4xzsrvjx
// The top general’s remarks about a “window” for talks angered Ukrainian officials, people familiar with the matter said.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard I am still in awe. A President visiting his troops, his people, on the very front line, with the enemy less than 10km away. A man who rose to the occasion and became the leader his people needed. A historic hero for others to embody. Be more like @ZelenskyyUa
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Kherson, the biggest prize his troops have won so far, and vowed to press on recapturing all occupied lands https://reut.rs/3AdTmhu
💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1592274926970589185?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GlastnostGone Commander of #Ukraine’s forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, told General Milley, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the “Ukrainian military will not accept any negotiations, agreements or compromise – Russia must leave all the occupied territories.”
⋙ CNN: Ukrainian commander tells US counterpart Russia must leave all occupied areas as condition for negotiations https://tinyurl.com/bdfuks8b
🐣 RT @nexta_tv Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi: “The Ukrainian military will not accept any negotiations, agreements or compromise solutions. There is only one condition for negotiations – Russia must leave all the occupied territories.”
🧵 RT @CinC_AFU [Zaluzhnyi] In a conversation with #GenMilley, Chairman of @thejointstaff, thanked for everything done for us by the 🇺🇸people. Assured, we’ll fight until we have no strength. Our goal is to liberate the whole 🇺🇦land. 🇺🇦soldiers will accept no negotiations, agreements or compromise solutions.
📌 https://twitter.com/CinC_AFU/status/1592240402954072066?s=20
🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed at talks in Bali on Monday that nuclear weapons should never be used, including in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @BillKristol
Democrats held the Senate, won key governorships, and outperformed in a mid-term. The most dangerous election deniers lost. ¤ I am heartened.
A Republican Party permeated and debased by Trumpism won the national House popular vote & could win WH & Senate in 2024. ¤ I am alarmed.
🐣 RT @New_Narrative The Republicans lost the election – and so did Putin, MBS and Netanyahu – By @MaxBoot
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: The Republicans lost the election – and so did Putin, MBS and Netanyahu https://tinyurl.com/m5myhrv3
🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #7QuestionsUKRWar #1PageAssessUKRWar #Urkaine Looks like appeasers and useful chowderheads got a bug again to figure out how to make little mad tsar happy. That ain’t one of the questions at this point.
🌎 ◕ https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1592030246488133632?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 13 Nov 2022
NYT: Trump Wanted I.R.S. Investigations of Foes, Top Aide Says https://tinyurl.com/yfnkksfx
// John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff, said that as president, Donald J. Trump wanted investigations into perceived enemies like James Comey, the former F.B.I. director.
Mr. Kelly, who was chief of staff from July 2017 through the end of 2018, said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been critical of him, including seeking to revoke the security clearances of former top intelligence officials. …
Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted. He said that despite the president’s expressed desires to have Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe investigated by the I.R.S., he believes that he led Mr. Trump during his tenure as chief of staff to forgo trying to have such investigations conducted. …
Throughout Mr. Trump’s presidency he regularly, in both public and private, ranted about Mr. Comey, whom Mr. Trump had fired in May 2017, and Mr. McCabe, who played a leading role in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Mr. Kelly said that along with Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe, Mr. Trump discussed using the I.R.S. and the Justice Department to investigate the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan; Hillary Clinton; Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post, whose coverage often angered Mr. Trump; Peter Strzok, the lead F.B.I. agent on the Russia investigation; and Lisa Page, an F.B.I. official who exchanged text messages with Mr. Strzok that were critical of Mr. Trump. …
WaPo: Election deniers lose races for key state offices in every 2020 battleground https://tinyurl.com/hamtfz44 “Election administrators and voting rights advocates said the rebuke of election deniers seeking state-level office was a refreshing course correction by U.S. voters”
// The candidates could have gained power over election administration. Voters rejected them in the six most pivotal states.
Voters in the six major battlegrounds where Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat in 2020 rejected election-denying candidates seeking to control their states’ election systems this year, a resounding signal that Americans have grown weary of the former president’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud.
Candidates for secretary of state in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada who had echoed Trump’s false accusations lost their contests on Tuesday, with the latter race called Saturday night. A fourth candidate never made it out of his May primary in Georgia. In Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most prominent election deniers lost his bid for governor, a job that would have given him the power to appoint the secretary of state. And in Wisconsin, an election-denying contender’s loss in the governor’s race effectively blocked a move to put election administration under partisan control.
Trump-allied Republicans mounted a concerted push this year to win a range of state and federal offices, including the once obscure office of secretary of state, which in many instances is a state’s top election official.
Some pledged to “decertify” the 2020 results, although election law experts said that is not possible. Others promised to decommission electronic voting machines, require hand-counting of ballots or block all mail voting. Their platforms were rooted in Trump’s disproven claims that the 2020 race was rigged, and their bids for public office raised grave concerns about whether the popular will could be subverted, and free and fair elections undermined, in 2024 and beyond.
Election administrators and voting rights advocates said the rebuke of election deniers seeking state-level office was a refreshing course correction by U.S. voters, whose choice of more seasoned and less extreme candidates reflected a desire for stability and a belief that the nation’s elections are in fact largely secure.
“This was a vote for normalcy,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who prevailed against a Democratic opponent Tuesday after defeating U.S. Rep. Jody Hice in the spring primary. Hice, who was endorsed by Trump, spent the campaign attacking Raffensperger for refusing to block Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia.
Voters “were looking for and rewarded character,” Raffensperger said. “They were looking for people who could get the job done. They rewarded competence.”
Elsewhere, the losers included Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, as well as three candidates for secretary of state — Mark Finchem of Arizona, Jim Marchant in Nevada and Kristina Karamo of Michigan — all of whom sought to overturn the 2020 result. Losing gubernatorial contender Tim Michels in Wisconsin would have had the power to push a Republican plan to eliminate the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and transfer election administration to the secretary of state or another partisan office. …
“It’s positive for our country when losers of elections accept their defeat,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “American democracy is predicated on that. It’s also good at this point that they’re not flagrantly denying the result.”
Although many candidates denying the outcome of the 2020 vote came up short in their bids for state office, the U.S. House was a different matter. At least 150 election deniers were projected to win their House races as of Saturday — an increase over the 139 Republicans who voted against the electoral college count following the assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
Overall, more than 170 election deniers on the ballot for the U.S. House, Senate and key statewide offices were projected to win their elections as of Sunday, according to a Washington Post analysis. The Post identified candidates as election deniers if they questioned Biden’s victory, opposed the counting of Biden’s electoral college votes, expressed support for a partisan post-election ballot review, signed onto a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 result or attended or expressed support for the rally on the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Election denialism is not going away overnight,” Griswold said. “The attacks on voting rights and the attacks on American democracy will not stop.” ¤ Still, many voters said in interviews that defeating such candidates was a driving force in their votes on Tuesday. …
Democrats were also aggressive in defining their opponents as election deniers and spending money to emphasize the point. Aguilar spent $1 million airing an ad called “Dangerous,” featuring various election-denying statements from Marchant — and suggesting that the Republican would be willing to rig an election in the future.
Even as many election-denying candidates have accepted their defeats quietly, Trump has continued to try to stir up his supporters with unsubstantiated claims that fraud is occurring in Nevada and Arizona as ballot counting continues in both states. …
🐣 RT @nytimes Russia’s pro-war activists delivered over the weekend their most cutting criticism to date of the military’s performance in Ukraine. The drumbeat of denunciations broke the taboo against singling out Vladimir Putin and Russia’s very system of government.
⋙ NYT: Russia’s War Hawks Step Up Criticism of Military Over Kherson Withdrawal https://tinyurl.com/2p8asayu “People tied to the Kremlin are less likely to openly question Putin’s role in the course of a war that Russia started:’They built a big lie & they need to live this big lie’”
// Even Vladimir Putin and the Russian government were targets, but there was no evidence that the volume of blame would be a real liability.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom And just to be clear, I think that’s a *good* thing. We need to end this recent nonsense of taking trolls-as-candidates seriously, and simply ask the public: Is this really what you want?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom If Katie Hobbs wins this, I and a lot of other people have a big plate of crow to eat about not debating Lake: Hobbs will have shown that some candidates are just beneath serious engagement and so obviously terrible that the voters don’t need a debate to make up their minds.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @Nate_Cohn No projections in AZGOV, but make no mistake: Lake didn’t get the tallies she wanted and probably needed out of Maricopa. ¤ It will presumably close further, but Lake doesn’t have many batches left. Each time she falls short, her target in the outstanding vote gets higher.
📌 https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1591970723668660224?s=20
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD: I’ve long believed we would hold the house. And there’s still a chance. And you know I don’t like to entertain hypotheticals about what might happen IF we don’t hold the house. But I need to get this off my chest. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1591980118825906176?s=20A
First of all, regardless of what happens in the house, DEMOCRACY prevailed this election. We flipped governor seats, we flipped state legislatures, we held the senate, and the voters rebuked election deniers and trumpism. AMAZING. 2/
But let’s say the GOP takes the house, which I’m hoping they don’t do. First, they will TEAR THEMSELVES APART. Because of the narrow majority, the crazy sect will have leverage and the infighting will be the top story. 3/
With these slim majorities, and with ALL the things Biden got done in the first two years, I honestly wasn’t expecting much legislation in the next two years regardless of who controlled what. So IF they take the house, we get to sit back and watch the GOP implode. 4/
This midterm was lost by the GOP because of their insane conspiracy theories and denialism. And if they decide to put that on display for the next two years, we will ABSOLUTELY CRUSH them in 2024. Those kinds of shenanigans are what LOST them this election by and large. 5/
So anyhow, I think the dems could hold the house, but in the event they don’t, a GOP house will not wreck the democracy we just preserved thanks to Gen Z. Hope that doesn’t tarnish my optimistic reputation. ❤️ END/
🐣 RT @WCKitchen Today WCK teams reached Kherson & nearby communities with food kits for the first time since Ukraine took back control of the area. WCK’s Valery jumped in the car to help deliver—his mother lives in Snihurivka, so this was the first opportunity he had to see her in 7 months.
🖼 https://twitter.com/WCKitchen/status/1591939410333151232?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @katiehobbs A statement from our campaign manager on the #AZGov results
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/katiehobbs/status/1591974524110909442?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] STATEMENT FROM HOBBS’ CAMPAIGN MANAGER ON TODAY’S TABULATION RESULTS
With the latest tabulation results from Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties, Katie Hobbs is the unequivocal favorite to become the next Governor of Arizona.
Katie has led since the first round of ballots were counted, and after tonight’s results, it’s
clear that this won’t change.As the county election officials finalize tabulating the results, I want to again thank every staffer, every volunteer, and every supporter on this campaign. Every door knock, every phone call, and every conversation made the difference in this close race.
🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar #Putin likely elevated Russian Army General Sergey #Surovikin and let him withdraw from western #Kherson on condition that he take the rest of #Donetsk Oblast using Russian forces recouped from western Kherson as well as newly-arriving mobilized servicemen. [thread]
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1591976871322951682?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar 10/ The UAF attacked the barges and landing areas as well, but the ferry system was in any case insufficient to supply the 20,000-some Russian mechanized troops trying to hold their lodgment on the western bank of the river. http://isw.pub/UkrWar111322
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian army left behind them the same atrocities in Kherson region as it did on other regions, – @ZelenskyyUa
Investigation has already documented about 400 war crimes, bodies of murdered civilians and soldiers are being found.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1591902472586481664?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost “The president’s words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem.” {Trump’s} “words endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.” —Mike Pence comment from new ABC interview airing tomorrow night
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT: 2330 UTC 13 NOC/ RU’s piecemeal assaults on Bakhmut have resulted in high casualties and limited gains. The terrain in the vicinity of the urban area greatly favors UKR defenders. UKR artillery, firing from covered positions, continues to break up RU attacks.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1591926057124626432?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @djrothkopf In ’20, @JoeBiden was second guessed by many (me included). He wasn’t exciting. Too old school. Talked about healing. Talked about a clear agenda when the other side had little to offer but hate & good TV ratings. And he won decisively despite the skepticism of the “smart money.”
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1591820164940836866?s=20
For two years, he was derided for reaching out to the other side, for his compromises with the left or with the centrists in his own party, for not be exciting enough. He ignored the Beltway buzz. He did the dullest thing imaginable: he governed.
The American Rescue Plan lifted millions out of poverty and helped stimulate a job boom that now has produced 10 million jobs, a record, more than the last three GOP administrations added up. Record number of quality judges were appointed. Executive orders undid Trump’s damage.
He made the bold decision to end America’s longest war. He passed the largest piece of infrastructure legislation in half a century. He helped tame a pandemic. Critics, even within his own party said, “Don’t do too much, don’t spend too much, the bond markets won’t like it.”
But the jobs kept being created. When Putin challenged the decency and the West in Ukraine, Biden led and has been central to NATO and global support for Kyiv that has produced extraordinary results and made all safer. It was all part of restoring American standing worldwide.
He and a disciplined Democratic Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act that also was the biggest piece of environmental legislation in US history. He took steps to reduce healthcare costs for Americans even when zero Republicans supported it.
In fact, with few exceptions, the Democrats passed a rich agenda, that also included the important Chips and Science Act that will help the country compete and create more and better jobs in the future, in the face of constant GOP obstruction.
Still, the savants and pundits said, the Democrats would be crushed in the 2022 elections. The GOP had momentum. Inflation would do Dems in–even though it was a global phenomenon and the GOP was closely linked to its causes from Putin to corporate profiteering.
There would be a Red Wave. Biden was too busy focusing on democracy and protecting the fundamental rights of women and voters when, the GOP talking heads and the bogus polls said what was front and center was inflation and only that and the Dems were doomed.
But Biden stayed laser focused. He said his first act in the new Congress would be to guarantee a woman’s reproductive freedom. He made moving, heartfelt speeches about why it is essential to reject the lies, the election deniers, the coup plotters.
The result was the best result for a new president in a midterm election in sixty years, maybe longer. The Democrats held the Senate. It is still unclear how many seats they will lose in the House. But it won’t be what was predicted.
In fact, it is still possible that the Ds could hold the House, still possible the Dem margin in the Senate could be better than it was. Election deniers running for top posts were rejected. Legislatures were flipped. The Republican leadership is turning on itself.
And Biden’s first comments after the election were about the work to come, the governing ahead. Joe’s too old. Joe’s too boring. Joe’s too quick to compromise. Joe’s too stubborn. Joe’s out of touch. Joe’s…just off to the best start of any POTUS in more than half a century.
Left in his wake, defeated by his experience and his wisdom and his determination and his truly exceptional world class team, are the media favorites, the highly rated pundits, the best-selling columnists, the know-it-alls, the fancy insiders.
I could write the same thing about @SpeakerPelosi or @SenSchumer, co-authors of this remarkable record. You could say it about so many members of the united, mobilized Democratic team that this time around weathered the GOP efforts at suppression, ignored their lies & showed up.
You could sat it about the Gen Z voters and the women and people of color who saw the threat and made the effort to fight for democracy. You could say it about all of you who have participated in the wholesale rejection of the greatest threat to our system we’ve seen since WWII.
Common sense is not exciting. But what we just saw was a victory for common sense. Decency doesn’t drive clicks. But what you just saw was a victory for decency. Governing is tedious, incremental, arcane. But what you have seen for two years are the benefits of governing.
The conventional wisdom has been wrong about @POTUS @VP @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer @WHCOS, the president’s cabinet, @TheDemocrats and their team from day one. Maybe we will learn. Probably we won’t. But we can be grateful that they will ignore all that.
We can be grateful that at a perilous moment in US history, they will focus on the work that needs to be done, on the threats we face at home and abroad, and on what matters. And if the past is any indication, they will continue to succeed…against the odds, on behalf of us all.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/ 1530 UTC 13 NOV/ UKR working to reestablish vandalized utilities and communications in Kherson urban area. Arrests of RU soldiers in civilian clothes continues. UKR art’y hits troop concentration in cross-river strike on Dnipriany; RU casualties extensive.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1591816834239860737?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ABC NEW: After Democrats defy expectations in congressional midterms, Speaker Pelosi tells @GStephanopoulos that Democrats never accepted “when pundits in Washington said we couldn’t win because history, history, history.” ¤ “Elections are about the future.” http://abcn.ws/3hBJk3l
💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1591798884015083520?s=20/photo/1
😢 RT @aprilsparkles1 The dog Krym, who lost his entire family due to the attack of the Russian occupiers in the Dnipro on September 29th has died.
-Deputy Mayor of Dnipro, Mykhailo Lysenko.
His entire family died that day – grandmother, mother and two children. #RussiaIsATerroristState
🖼 https://twitter.com/aprilsparkles1/status/1591437902340399105?s=20/photo/1 -3
// RIP Krym
⭕ 12 Nov 2022
WaPo Editorial: Here’s how Congress can make the lame-duck session a mighty one https://tinyurl.com/49yjnvdc 1. Prevent the risk of a catastrophic default, 2. Fight Russian aggression, 3. Protect democracy at home, 4. Don’t let a wish list get in the way of realism
🧵 RT @PowerUSAID Amid much debate about where the U.S. stands on whether or not Ukraine should negotiate. In Air Force One press gaggle, National Security Advisor @JakeSullivan46 just gave detailed comments on @POTUS position. Highly recommend reading in full:
📌 https://twitter.com/PowerUSAID/status/1591393902820724736?s=20/photo/1
MR. SULLIVAN: So, I’ve obviously seen a number of press stories on this topic, and I thank you for the opportunity to lay down what I think are the four core elements of consensus in the U.S. government and, fundamentally, what President Biden believes about this question. The first is: He said in the press conference it’s up to Ukraine to decide when and how they want to negotiate. Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. We’re not going to pressure them; we’re not going to dictate to them.
The second is that we believe in a just peace based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that are not things we made up but that are embedded in the U.N. Charter. The G7 leaders spoke to these principles of a just peace, including territorial integrity. President Zelenskyy has spoken to these.
The third point is that Russia is doubling down on its “annexation, quote, unquote annexation of Ukrainian territory. That’s not exactly a sign of seriousness about negotiating. As long as Russia holds the position that it simply gets to grab as much territory as it wants by force, it’s hard to see them as a good-faith counterparty in a negotiation.
And the fourth and final point is that the U.S. approach remains the same today as it was six months ago, which is we’re going to do everything we can, including our announcement, our military announcement our military security assistance announcement yesterday to put Ukraine in the best possible position on the battlefield so that when they make their determination to proceed, they’re in the best possible position at the negotiating table.
And one more big-ticket item. So there’s kind of this sense of when is Ukraine going to negotiate. Okay, ultimately, at a 30,000-foot level, Ukraine is the party of peace in this conflict, and Russia is the party of war. Russia invaded Ukraine. If Russia chose to stop fighting in Ukraine and left, it would be the end of the war. If Ukraine chose to stop fighting and give up, it would be the end of Ukraine. So this whole notion, I think, in the Western press of “When is Ukraine going to negotiate?” misses the underlying fundamentals, which is that Russia continues, even as recently as the last 24 hours, to make these outlandish claims about annexed Russian territory quote, unquote, “Russian territory” – including territory they just left.
🐣 RT @EricSchultz lot of egg on plenty of faces but it does seem like the Times was particularly strident predicting a Republican wave long before votes were counted.
¤ https://twitter.com/EricSchultz/status/1591450772881149955?s=20/photo/1 -4
// nytimes #FAIL headlines
WaPo, Dan Balz: In election 2022, the party of Trump pays for being the party of Trump https://tinyurl.com/z4yujzzb “In today’s divided country, all presidents are polarizing, but Biden may not be all that frightening to voters. He certainly doesn’t engender the reactions that Trump did”
Substack, Timothy Snyder: Of sanctions and silencings, https://tinyurl.com/2cfx3z39
// Russia’s war as cultural suicide
🐣 RT @SimonWDC Chief purveyors of Hopium this cycle were clearly @TomBevanRCP and @SeanTrende. ¤ Wasn’t the Democrats.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Politics_Polls [11/6/2022] RCP Senate Projection:
Republicans 54
Democrats 46
🌎 https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1589469463292047361?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 gotta wonder the extent to which this deliberate distortion (achieved by flooding the zone with biased R-leaning polls) was effective in dissuading Dem leaners from voting
🐣 RT @MichelleKinney “Just to be clear, at The Lincoln Project, we are not trying to save the Republican Party. We are trying to burn the Republican Party to the ground.” @stuartpstevens @AliVelshi 🔥✊🇺🇸
💽 https://twitter.com/MichelleKinney/status/1591633605591433216?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @tomiahonen This is a massive win for Democrats. We kept the Senate, in the first midterms after one party took the White House. This cycle should have been devastating against us ¤ Two big keys: Trump got involved, & reaction to Roe vs Wade. But also great politics by DEM ¤ I will do a Thread
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1591643814522920960?s=20
🐣 RT @ThirdWayKessler Lake needs 56% of remaining votes to win according to this article. Not an easy task.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes Every election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls this year, as voters roundly rejected extreme partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.
⋙⋙ NYT: Voters Reject Election Deniers Running to Take Over Elections https://tinyurl.com/hnew4ezh
// With Jim Marchant’s defeat by Cisco Aguilar in Nevada’s secretary of state race, all but one of the “America First” slate of candidates who espoused conspiracy theories about the 2020 election were defeated.
🐣 RT @mikepompeo Conservatives need to make the case: helping Ukraine defeat Putin is in our interest. ¤ It will strengthen our national security, deter a foe, and lower costs for Americans.
🐣 RT @McFaul So what data and facts did you (and others) miss to be so wrong? Genuinely curious. Polling? Focus groups? Under-engagement with women and young people? Punditry Groupthink?
‼️ ⋙ 🐣 RT @FrankLuntz [11/7/2022] When the dust settles from the 2022 midterms, the GOP will have between 233-240 House seats – outdoing their total from 1994. ¤ Republicans also will take control of the Senate, but that won’t be clear until Friday. #ElectionDay
// prediction #FAIL
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: MSNBC has taken another seat away from the GOP in their house projection. 222, then 221, then 220, now 219. LFG!!!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Revision on House projection
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1591572930575495169?s=20/photo/1
// Kornacki on @msnbc; 218 required to control House: whew!
🐣 RT @Acyn Jolly: This is not a split decision. This is a historic victory for Democrats, where the ground is shifting in American politics, and the voters for three elections in a row have now said, we want to go the direction of Democrats are taking us.
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1591575985581088769?s=20/photo/1
// also David Jolly (in same segment): if GOP wins, it’s because of aggressive gerrymandering
WaPo: Kherson residents celebrate liberation and describe trauma of occupation https://tinyurl.com/ycxhth5a “‘Life under occupation was horrible,’ said Tetiana Fomina, 58. ‘It was like living in a concentration camp. We were never free’”
🐣 RT @wartranslated Commander of the southern group, Major-General Kovalchuk is greeted by Ukrainians in Kherson. ¤ But check out the cope in Russian channels saying the crowd is tiny, the crowd is just local bums looking at the General with fear, and soldiers treating people with contempt 🤡
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1591531673824694273?s=20/photo/1 -3
🐣 RT @amanpour “Ukraine is maybe the most important place in the world right now, and the fate of freedom writ large really does hang on what happens in Ukraine,” says historian @TimothyDSnyder, who’s teaching an open class on the history of Ukraine at Yale.
💽 https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1591136688860172288?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ For once, the shoe is on the other foot. Today, it’s the GOP wailing and screeching about their failure of messaging. The GOP’s message discipline was central to its success for decades. ¤ You could wake candidates up out of a sound sleep and they’d rattle off the MOTD.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1591483651442753536?s=20
2/ They tested and polished and tweaked and worked it on hitting the right tone and messages. It’s an art form. ¤ It’s also dead. ¤ Trump killed it. Now, the persuasion doesn’t matter, only the lib-pwning. They’re bound and locked into profoundly stupid ideas like…
3/ election denial, January 6th defenses, and shouting about the catalog of imaginary demons. (Caravans! Antifa! Chynese fentanyl! Drag queen story hour cannibalism!) ¤ They delivered those messages with volume and efficiency from a well-tuned machine.
4/ It’s just that…wait for it…voters didn’t like it. No matter where you stand on abortion, the audience for the state GOP’s legislatures setting up snitch bounties (eg Texas) and forcing pre-teen rape victims to carry and ectopic victims to die has a very small constituency.
5/ Telling them the exhausting horseshit that Trump secretly won and was cheated in 2020 also has zero appeal outside the My Pillow crowd. (A friend on an anti-anti-Trump listserve shared their beautiful misery over this weighing down 2022 candidates and I am HERE for it.){
6/ And NRSC and Slytherin Head Boy Rick Scott’s plan to kill social security went over like a chlamydia outbreak in the Villages. ¤ None of it worked because it was alien, discordant, and often just fucking weird. ¤ The bigger lesson is that the Trumpfunk was all over them.
7/ But by all means, boys, pretend it all went swimmingly and the only thing you need is another $100 billion from some credulous hedge fund bro.
🧵 RT @judgeluttig I don’t think of the mid-term elections in the partisan political terms of whether the Democrats or the Republicans “won” or “lost.” I think of these midterm elections only in the “constitutional” terms of whether American Democracy won or lost.
📌 https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1591469218645655552?s=20
For America’s democracy, these midterms were the most important elections in our Nation’s history. And the elections were indisputably a resounding victory for American democracy.
On November 8, the American People did what I observed in a series of Constitution Day speeches this fall they had the power to do: dispossess those politicians who have betrayed them, of the power that they had vested in, and entrusted with, those politicians.
Then re-vest their power anew in political leaders who understand better than their predecessors today that they serve the American People and are obligated by the Constitution to represent the interests of the People and the Nation at the seats of government — federal and state.
I appreciate the observation might seem quaint. But it is, and was in this important election, anything but quaint. That all power resides in the American people, not in their government or political leaders, will always be the profound fact and truth of the American experiment.
“Our political leaders having failed us, to whom do we turn? The answer lies in the first seven words of the Constitution written by the prophets of our nation’s founding. We turn to ourselves, to “We the People of the United States.”
We ourselves must come to the aid of our struggling America. ¤ We are the ones constitutionally possessed of the power over our governance and thus over our destiny. “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” ¤ we wrote in our Declaration of Independence.
Just as the People vest and entrust their power in their political leaders, so also can they divest those political leaders of that entrusted power – divest the demagogues and charlatans among their leaders who have betrayed them. ¤ They can do this as soon as the next election, and that is exactly what they need to do.”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom
1. Democracy can be on the ballot, and citizens can, in fact, respond to that.
2. Parties need to suffer thorough defeats, over and over, before they will reform. The GOP – which turned into a loony seditionist movement – isn’t done learning this lesson, but we’re getting there.
🐣 RT @ DmytroKuleba Met with @SecBlinken. I emphasized that when we see Kherson residents greeting their liberators with tears of joy, we also feel grateful to the US and the American people for all the support. I thanked the US for upcoming decisions to send us more of advanced military equipment.
🧵 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine
– 12 November 2022
Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/4su550LBtWS
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
📌 https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1591314686120632320?s=20
⭕ 11 Nov 2022
🧵 RT @AVindman “Gen. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has made the case that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in & so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.”
⋙⋙ NYT: Top U.S. General Urges Diplomacy in Ukraine While Biden Advisers Resist https://tinyurl.com/3xpxdwpa
// Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made the case that the Ukrainians should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.
📌 https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1591109814251360258?s=20
🐣 RT @rammstein_fella 👇
This is the guy that Trump tried to bribe into blackmailing Biden and Putin tried to bully into giving up his country. He was a comedian who became a leader in an age where leaders everywhere became clowns. What a fucking champion. #Zelenskiy
🖼 https://twitter.com/rammstein_fella/status/1591181499201486848?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer TOO LATE FOR TALK: The Kherson fiasco has sent a chill through the Kremlin. Putin sycophant Sergei Markov now suggests that a RU ‘return’ to pre-Feb 24 lines could be possible. It’s getting obvious that Putin has started a war that RU can no longer win.
⋙ WaPo: Loss of Kherson city shatters Putin’s war goals in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/ye29ddus
🐣 RT @cbouzy Cortez Masto will take the lead after the next update.
◕ https://twitter.com/cbouzy/status/1591223149445926913?s=20/photo/1
// Laxalt leads by just 798
🐣 RT @ryanjreilly Trump claims he sent the FBI to Florida to stop voter fraud in 2018. Officials say no such thing happened.
⋙ NBC: Trump claims he sent the FBI to Florida to stop voter fraud in 2018. Officials say no such thing happened https://tinyurl.com/35px2wsa
// Sarah Isgur, who was a top Justice Department spokesperson at the time, said Friday that the series of events described by the former president “never happened.”
🐣 RT @BBCSteveR Moscow calls the Kherson retreat “a redeployment” or “a manoeuvre.” Whatever they choose to call it, this was a withdrawal from the only Ukrainian regional capital the Russians had managed to occupy since 24 February. My thoughts on Kherson.
⋙ BBC, Steve Rosenberg: Putin can’t escape fallout from Russian retreat in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/bdedb2bd
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa For almost 250 years the men and women of the United States armed forces have prevailed against tyranny. Your example inspires Ukrainians today to fight back against Russian aggression. ¤ On behalf of all Ukrainians, Happy Veterans Day and thank you for your service.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1591049559504875520?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @yarotrof Liberated Kherson singing Chervona Kalyna, a song that was banned for nine months. No electricity — Russia destroyed the power lines before leaving.
💽 https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1591100046635929608?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenceU OK, so some say we are made of steel… but somehow our eyes can still tear up.
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1591180213500641280?s=20/photo/1
// entering Kherson from pov of soldiers in vehicle being flooded with happy people
🐣 RT @McFaul Agreed. All of Putin’s propagandists on tv right now are in shock, depressed, angry, and not sure what the new talking points are supposed to be.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en It’s interesting to just observe their faces as they discuss the news.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1591197074862710785?s=20/photo/1
// copium on Ru tv
🐣 RT @costareports Dark time in Trump’s inner circle. Spoke to several longtime friends, donors, and aides in the past 24 hours. Many say he’s listening to very few people, isolated, and meanspirited about his potential rivals. Several of them say they’re tired of his rants and are avoiding him.
⋙ 🐣 RT @costareports “I have never seen him more irresponsible and chaotic then he is today. He seems to be in self-destruct mode. It is irresponsible to attack DeSantis and Youngkin, and it’s irresponsible to announce in any time in the near future” especially before GA runoff, per a Trump adviser.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Our anthem on Kherson’s central square 💛💙
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1591161658256523266?s=20/photo/1.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Some people spoke about Dugin’s letter from yesterday, here’s the full translation. He states that Russian authorities reached the limit of what they can surrender. He blames Putin directly for the failures and low-key threatens him with death. https://tinyurl.com/3dvjk2ww
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1591181876815106048?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Kherson is surrendered. A Russian city was surrender, the capital of one of the regions of Russia – the same as Belgorod, Kursk, Donetsk or Simferopol. If you don’t care, then you are not Russian. Russians are now clenching their teeth in pain, weeping and suffering as if their hearts were torn out, their children, brothers, mothers and wives were killed in front of their eyes. If you aren’t hurting now, you’re nothing.
Authorities. They are responsible for this. What is the meaning of autocracy, which is what we have? We give the Ruler absolute fullness of power, and he saving us all, people, state, people, citizens, at a critical moment. If he surrounds himself with shit, or spits on social justice, this is unpleasant, but at least he is saving us. What if he isn’t? Then – the fate of the *king of the rains” (read Frazer). Autocracy also has a downside. Completeness of power in case of success, but also completeness of responsibility for failure. You thought otherwise?
How to get out of the situation? Immediately move from a sovereign to a commissar dictatorship, that is, introduce an ideology. The ruler almost did. But again, almost. And Kherson was surrendered not almost, it was completely surrendered. No issues with Surovikin. He is not a politician, he is responsible for the technical side of the front. The strike is not at him. You know whom. And no PR will save here anymore. In a critical situation, political technologies do not work at all. History speaks today. And it utters terrible – for us – words.
This is not a betrayal, this is a step towards Armageddon. The conditions of the winning West, this civilization of Satan, will never be acceptable for Moscow. This means that tactical nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons will remain. That is the end. And here is the most important thing.
Under the pressure of circumstances and it is very bad that this is so, it is terrible that this is so) we made a number of military-political corrections in the management of the SMO (why it is so late is a separate question). But it hasn’t worked (so far). The last resource is ideology. The real one, not the fake that the presidential administration, scared to death by the uprising of reality, is trying to sell. Stop playing around: Russian Idea. Only that. It is foolish to go for the total destruction of mankind only because of the fear of the Russian Idea, of our ideology. There is no other way. The authorities in Russia can’t surrender anything else. The limit has been reached. But there are not enough purely technical means for Victory. The war must become a people’s war in full measure. But the state should become popular, Russion.too, Not like it is now.
🐣 RT @NOELreports Alexander Dugin directly blamed Putin for the retreat from Kherson. He stated that the power in Russia is almost autocratic, but if the tsar cannot save the people, then he will face the “king of the rains fate” (a man whose stomach was ritually torn open by his fellow tribesmen)
🧵 RT @wartranslated Day 260, November 10th. Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak https://tinyurl.com/cvpxyvz3
🔥 Battlefield update:
🔥 Kherson:mSnihurivka is controlled by 🇺🇦. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1590999011468742659?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated 🔥 Goodwill gesture: ¤ Putin addressed “Ukrainian partners”, and mentioned goodwill gesture.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated 🐣 RT @ Previous goodwill gestures from Kyiv, Sumy did not had any impact.
🔥 U.S. position: 🇺🇸 State department encouraging 🇺🇦 to signal for negotations, waiting for 🇷🇺 to back up their regular announcements.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ wartranslated 🔥 Weapons: ¤ 🇺🇸 sending 4 Avenger SAM systems, 100 HMMWV , 400 grenade launchers. ¤ Biden mentioned two types of missiles, 🇺🇦 promised 160 miles range [257km], which would be a 3-fold increase to M142 HIMARS range. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ [🔥 NATO] 🇺🇦 won’t be accepted until end of war, but it’s de facto already a member, and getting assistance. will be one of most powerful members, with significant battle experience, that’s hard to obtain elsewhere. ¤ End of thread
🐣 RT @wartranslated Video showing damage to the Antonovsky Bridge after it was destroyed by Russian forces.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1591003415651311616?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck Most of the Russian occupiers stationed on the right bank of the Dnipro are still there. This force was estimated to be about 20,000. The Russians are trapped on the wrong side of destroyed bridges and crossings they no longer control. ¤ The scale of Ukraine’s victory is massive.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine
«Більша половина окупаційних війсь ще знаходиться на правому березі Херсонщини»
(Most of the occupying forces are still on the right bank of the Kherson region) https://tinyurl.com/49z9fm4p
NYT: Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter https://tinyurl.com/mm536bve An f*ing mess
// Mr. Musk ordered immediate layoffs, fired executives by email, laid down product deadlines and has transformed the company.
🐣 RT @nytimes Democrats grew increasingly optimistic on Thursday that they would hold the Senate as votes were counted in Arizona and Nevada. “I think we have a very legit chance of expanding our majority from 50 to 51,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia.
⋙ NYT: Democratic Hopes Rise on Senate Control as Two States Count Votes https://tinyurl.com/2ar5b4bn
// In Arizona and Nevada, Republicans’ path to victory appeared to narrow, though both races remain close. The G.O.P.’s odds of success are greater in the House.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Ukrainian Troops Enter Kherson as Russia Says Its Withdrawal There Is Complete https://tinyurl.com/kjm6v3bu “The move puts Kyiv on the cusp of achieving one of its most significant victories of the war and deals a bitter blow to President Vladimir V. Putin”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/11 NOV/ UKR forces will now begin the painstaking process of de-mining buildings and locating RU troops who have changed into civilian clothing.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1591086144640667649?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Dugin hints that it is time to kill Putin for surrendering Kherson. For understanding: according to Frazer, “if it doesn’t rain, the king is simply killed.”
[Orig ling] https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1591065531150643200?s=20
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1591088737894678528?s=20/photo/1
AGDchan
Kherson surrendered. A Russian city was commissioned, the capital of one of the regions of Russia – the same as Belgorod, Kursk, Donetsk or Simferopol. If you don’t care, then you are not Russian. Russians are now clenching their teeth in pain, weeping and suffering as if their hearts were torn out, their children, brothers, mothers and wives would be killed in front of
their eyes. If you don’t hurt now, Imyou’re nothing. Power. She bears for it a responsibility.What’s the point autocracy, and we have it? We give the Ruler absolute fullness of power,
and he saves us all, people, state, people, citizens, at a critical moment. If for this he surrounds
himself with shit or spits on social justice, this is unpleasant, but if only he saved. What if it doesn’t save? Then – the fate of the “king of the rains (see Frazer*). At autocracy has a downside.~ Aleksandr Dugin, (Putin’s Rasputin)
~~~~~~~~~~
* The fate of the king of the rains: “There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail” ~ James Frazer, The Golden Bough. Frazer was was an early comparative anthropologist. https://tinyurl.com/2p9m2ftr
⋙ 🐣 RT @Fireblade577 Putin is heading for a major conflict with the fanatical nationalists he has nurtured for the past 20 years ¤ We are likely to see a lot of car accidents in the near future when he sends the message to stand down
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1330 UTC 11 NOV/ RU forces on the N bank of the Dnipro collapsed on all axes of contact. Nearly all defensive positions were abandoned as RU units were routed. UKR troops are confirmed to be operating in the urban area of the city of Kherson.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1591069200281661442?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Imagine what election turnout would have been had the inflation number (down) and the stock market surge (up), and the liberation of Kherson had happened a couple of days earlier. ¤ In fact, Russia postponed announcing its troop withdrawal so Biden wouldn’t get credit (per Ru tv)
🐣 RT @maria_drutska In case you want to see how “Second Army of the World” on foot runs from #Kherson, here is the video
💽 https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1590997739378446337?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports The moment we all have been waiting for. #Kherson city is liberated. The flag is hoisted over the regional administration building. The army is in the centre. No more Russian resistance. Now let’s clean up the region and move forward! ¤ THE MAP 👇¤ 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦😎🥰
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1591058799594721280?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Center of Kherson right now. Locals chant ZSU (Ukrainian Armed Forces) and cheer our Warriors. ¤ Imagine all the emotions on that square! ¤ Our soldiers report they had to slow down their advance because they are hugged and kissed so much.💛💙
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1591058623613976577?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian “Veteran’s notes” is unable to process the tragedy of the liberation of Kherson.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1591016324230414336?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] I couldn’t even imagine, it doesn’t fit in my head (the same as how understanding of the scale of the Universe doesn’t fit in my head), what Kherson could have been exchanged for. Such colossal image losses should be justified by something. If this justification does not appear in the coming days or at least weeks in the form of the successes of our army at the front, then this will result in a total demoralization of society and distrust of the authorities. People are not ready to endure humiliation all the time.
NYT, Nate Cohn: Why Some States Went in Different Directions in Midterms https://tinyurl.com/2p9cw23n
// Abortion rights and antidemocratic stances were more relevant or pressing in some places than others.
🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko Breaking: Democrat Mark Kelly defeats Republican Blake Masters in Arizona Senate race
⭕ 10 Nov 2022
WaPo, Greg Sargent: 5 ways to ‘crazyproof’ the country against the chaos of a GOP House https://tinyurl.com/4vbkd34j 1. prevent debt ceiling extortion, 2. prevent stealing of elections, 3. immigration and dreamers, 4. secure funding for Ukraine, 5. protect DOJ investigations of Trump
1. Defuse future debt ceiling crises
2. Reduce the risk of a stolen presidential election
3. Avert chaotic gridlock on immigration
4. Prevent defunding of aid to Ukraine
5. Protect investigations of Trump
TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: More MAGA Than Ever https://tinyurl.com/c8n58kzs “Donald Trump may have endorsed candidates such as Herschel Walker, Doug Mastriano, Kari Lake, and Mehmet Oz, but it was primary voters who chose them”
//; It’s hard to overstate how radicalized and anarchic the base of the Republican Party remains.
Heading into Tuesday, the conditions that traditionally shape midterm elections strongly favored Republicans. The party of the incumbent president usually does poorly, especially in the incumbent president’s first term. Republicans picked up 54 seats in the House of Representatives midway through Bill Clinton’s first term, and 63 seats two years into Barack Obama’s.
This year Republicans had the added advantage of President Biden’s 42 percent approval rating. Voters also expressed profound unhappiness with the direction of the country. Their views on the economy were overwhelmingly negative, reflecting inflation at the highest level in four decades and real wages declining. People were worried about crime and the failure to secure the southern border. As John McCormick of The Wall Street Journal put it, “Voters on Tuesday cast ballots with overwhelming angst about the economy and little faith in President Biden’s abilities to fix the nation’s ills.”
Yet Democrats did far better than many political experts predicted and than most Democrats expected. As of this writing, control of the Senate is undetermined but leaning Democratic. Republicans are likely to take control of the House by a razor-thin margin, the result of picking up a dozen or so seats. And Democrats appear to have made gains among governorships and in state legislatures.
“This may prove the best midterm performance by the sitting president’s party since 2002,” my colleague David A. Graham wrote. ¤ Part of the reason was the Dobbs decision, which elevated abortion as an issue and energized abortion-rights voters. The New York Times’ Ezra Klein speculated that “negative polarization” helped Democrats; the fear of Republicans prevented the governing party’s normal turnout decline from happening. Preliminary data indicate that he’s correct. The Democratic base showed up, and its coalition held together quite well. Democrats did better among independents than did Republicans. Because of gerrymandering, fewer seats were in play than in the past. And politically, America is fiercely divided. Neither party can dominate the other.
But the main reason Democrats did well is Donald Trump. ¤ Many of Trump’s handpicked choices—in New Hampshire, in Georgia, in Arizona, in Pennsylvania, in Maryland—were unimaginably bad candidates. Trump kept enough attention on himself to prevent the election from being a clear-cut referendum on the unpopular incumbent. (As unpopular as Biden is, Trump is even more unpopular.) And Trump’s main imprint on the GOP—crazed conspiracy theories, dehumanizing policies, lawlessness and chaos—freaked out a lot of Americans who would otherwise have voted Republican. …
[I]t’s hard to overstate how radicalized and anarchic the base of the Republican Party remains. Donald Trump may have endorsed candidates such as Herschel Walker, Doug Mastriano, Kari Lake, and Mehmet Oz, but it was primary voters who chose them. …
Trump is hardly invincible, nor does he have a lock on the 2024 nomination. Polls indicate that younger Republicans and those with college degrees are becoming disenchanted with him. Trump’s descent into an ever darker, ever more deranged world is creating unease even among some who voted for him. Events can intervene, including health and indictments. And DeSantis has, at this early stage, shown the ability to excite MAGA world. …
This also needs to be said: If the Republican Party does break with Trump now, it will be for only one reason, which is that he’s costing it power. Everything else he did—the relentless assault on truth, the unlimited corruption, the cruelty and incitements to violence, the lawlessness, his sheer depravity—was tolerable and even celebrated, so long as he was in power and viewed by Republicans as the path to more power.
The Republican Party remains diseased. There are a few exceptions, such as Senator Mitt Romney, but Americans should consider the GOP a threat to liberal democracy until we see evidence of dramatic changes. The most encouraging news from the midterms was that just enough Americans understood this; an election that should have been a Republican tsunami produced barely a trickle. As Lisa Lerer of The New York Times put it, voters “showed a limited appetite for the burn-down-the-house approach that Mr. Trump has spread throughout the Republican Party.”
The past half-dozen years have not been easy ones for American democracy. The stress test is hardly over, and the struggle will intensify. But Tuesday was a good day. Voters seemed to understand the nature of the threat; they stepped up rather than succumb to apathy or despair. Americans still have a republic, and most of them still want to keep it.
NYT: Democratic Hopes Rise on Senate Control as Two States Count Votes https://tinyurl.com/5f3xa5cr
// In Arizona and Nevada, Republicans’ path to victory appeared to narrow, though both races remain close. The G.O.P.’s odds of success are greater in the House. […]
😅 RT @RalstonReports “She does not have the amount of votes left to be able to catch us.” –Adam Laxalt to Tucker Carlson ¤ I guess it’s over, everyone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS This is laying the groundwork to claim fraud if Catherine Cortez Masto does overtake Laxalt, as expected. And he’ll go right back on Tucker’s show when he does so.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RalstonReports Replying to @RalstonReports Under the usual withering questioning from Tucker, Laxalt all but says the election was secure: ¤ “In Clark County, we did so much to make sure this is a secure election. We have lawyers everywhere. We had election observers.” ¤ Maybe he didn’t see what Trump said about it…
🐣 RT @alexbward NEW: Biden tells reporters “I don’t think the conflict will be resolved until Putin gets out of Ukraine.” ¤ Sides with Zelenskyy’s condition for peace talks.
🐣 RT @nytimes “I’m prepared to work with Republicans, but the American people have made it clear — they expect Republicans to work with me as well,” President Biden said on Thursday, adding that he will block GOP efforts to reverse his agenda on issues like taxes. https://nyti.ms/3EmBUKb
🐣 RT @general_ben Great tweet, Mike. I predict President Putin will next lose the Battle of Crimea, the decisive phase of the Campaign, in the coming Summer. And then he loses the coming internal Battle of the Kremlin before the end of next year. @McFaul @WarintheFuture @MarkHertling
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @McFaul Putin lost the Battle of Kyiv. He lost the Battle of Kharkiv. He lost the Battle of Kherson. Where will he lose next?
🐣 RT @John_sipher “The West should show clearly and loudly that thuggery needs redress, and make an example of the goon running Russia.”
⋙ TheEconomist: Mikhail Khodorkovsky says now is no time to push for peace talks in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mr2pc5j6
// The former oil mogul explains that the war will not end while Vladimir Putin remains in power
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Narcissists will always tell you: You owe everything to them, and you’d be nothing without them. Textbook.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sahilkapur One of the more peculiar Trump statements. “Fox only made it because of me” …
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1590878941480644609?s=20/photo/1.
[Text:] Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
If CNN were smart, they’d open up a Conservative network, only have me on, and it would be the most successful network in History. Fox only made it because of me, Twitter only made it because of me, and even Facebook is now in the tubes, having lost almost $90 billion in value since I was taken off, which was considered one of the biggest mistakes in business over the last two years, because with Trump go tens of millions of people who believe in MAGA, who want to Make America Great Again, and Put America First!
🐣 RT @Redistrict [Dave Wasserman, @CookPolitical] I’ve seen enough: Sen. Mark Kelly (D) wins reelection in #AZSEN, defeating Blake Masters (R).
🐣 RT @ TimothyDSnyder China has peaked, Russia is retreating, and Trump is done. There’s hope, people.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Russian withdraw in defeat from Kherson is very real.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ItsArtoir Confirmed territory changes in Kherson in the past 24 hours, visualised.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ItsArtoir/status/1590857998770896896?s=20/photo/1
// animated map
🐣 RT @wartranslated Pro-Russian Dimitriyev says that according to his sources, there’s an actual panic among Russian forces in Kherson.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1590835709610713088?s=20/photo/1.
[Text:] They write that panic has begun among the Russian military in Kherson. It is not possible to cross calmly, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to hit the crossings, there were no agreements. A military disaster is brewing. Therefore, the plans for the winter described above can be adjusted for the worse. It is quite possible that the Dnieper will not become a freeze line.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ And last I checked Trump’s sending in FBI and DOJ to interfere with election tabulation would be, well, fraud.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney Trump unloading on DeSantis over on Truth Social.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1590844069118607364?s=20/photo/1 -3
// this is the full 3-page post from Truth Social
❤️ ‼️ 🐣 RT @joshtpm um… WHAT?
¤ https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1590850314768375809?s=20/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @ FrankFigliuzzi1 Trump says that when he was POTUS, he sent the FBI and federal prosecutors to Broward County to ensure a win for Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott. Do I have that right? [text ↥ ↧]
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski This part seems interesting.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1590858919517118465?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] .. also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen…
↥ ↧
TIME (2018): Florida’s Vote Counting Controversy Spells Trouble for 2020 https://tinyurl.com/4e3wymfw
// 11/10/2022
🐣 RT @wartranslated This is the angriest Solovyev I’ve ever seen.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1590827196079550464?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Ukrainian troops advance on Kherson with caution; U.S. to send more air defense https://tinyurl.com/bdz6wcm7 “The [US] pledged an additional $400 million in security assistance for Ukraine, including Avengers air defense systems that come equipped with Stinger missiles”
// Defense budget
🐣 Stunning‼️According to the NBC Exit Polls: 43% of voters had college degrees, including 19% who had advanced degrees(!) Others had some college or earned Associates degrees. Only 16% “Never attended college”(!) Did the nerds save democracy? https://tinyurl.com/scmxy9hn
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1590890803161092096?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SLAUGHTER ON THE RIVER: Local sources have reported that RU troop concentrations on the banks of the Dnipro have come under sustained UKR artillery fire. Heavy casualties are reported, and said to be mounting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON: Russia’s hopes of a successful withdrawal hang by the slender threads of an improvised series of ferry barges, shattered pontoon bridges and blasted road spans. The ferry landings will become prime targets for UKR precision artillery– and killing fields for RU soldiers.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/2350 UTC 10 NOV/ RU troops have fallen rapidly down the M-14 HWY axis. UKR troops have followed to the outskirts of Kherson. Local sources report massive RU casualties from continued UKR artillery strikes on Kherson crossing points.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1590853638628708353?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Twitter’s content moderation head quits as departures alarm the FTC https://tinyurl.com/unjv3ptd “because [Twitter now] performs no identity verification, a stream of fake accounts has proliferated…, including for Biden, Pope Francis and former prime minister Tony Blair”
// Yoel Roth had become the public face of Twitter’s efforts to reassure users and advertisers the service would not become a ‘free-for-all’
🐣 RT @MondaireJones When you cancel student debt and deliver on climate action.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Victorshi2020 NEW: data confirms 18-29-year-olds voted for Democrats more than *any other* age group yesterday. Young people literally prevented a Red Wave & saved Democrats. Full stop. ¤ If you know a young voter, please thank them.
🐣 📋 RT @NoLieWithBTC Joe Biden just had the best first midterm election performance for any Democrat since John F. Kennedy.
WSJ Editorial: Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser https://tinyurl.com/2p96uzky What will Democrats do when Donald Trump isn’t around to lose elections?
// He has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022; race by race litany of how Trump sabotaged the election
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/1245 UTC 10 NOV/ The important city of Snihurivka is confirmed liberated by UKR forces. The RU retreat has been methodical, and UKR continues a careful pursuit. For RU, the crossing of the Dnipro remains the most critical and dangerous evolution of the campaign.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1590686849395490816?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON: Russia’s hopes of a successful withdrawal hang by the slender threads of an improvised series of ferry barges, shattered pontoon bridges and blasted road spans. The ferry landings will become prime targets for UKR precision artillery– and killing fields for RU soldiers.
🐣 RT @DefenceU Just get the hell out of our land! 🎶 Led Zeppelin @ledzeppelin
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1590650724831985664?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RalstonReports Here’s what we know on the Nevada Senate race, if we assume the rurals are all but spent, will only add a couple thousand at most to Laxalt’s lead: ¤ If CCM continues to win urban mail at current clip, taking 65%, she will easily overtake Laxalt with 110,000 mail (at least) left.
🐣 RT @RalstonReports If her margin decreases from 65-30 to 60-30, for instance, she would still [w]in decisively.
If it is 60-35, same.
If it’s 55-30, same.
If it’s 55-35, same.
She wins in all those models. ¤ Buckle up. ¤ Good night to all. See you for more math tomorrow!
⭕ 9 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @abughazalehkat Here’s Fox News’ midterms meltdown, summed up in 40 seconds:
💽 https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1590542903755309056?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Top Russian propagandist says that Russia waited to announce the Kherson withdrawal until after Nov. 8, to make sure it does not help Joe Biden and the Democrats in the midterms. More in my recent article: ⤵️ [link]
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1590580794850185217?s=20/photo/1
WhiteHouse: Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference https://tinyurl.com/2xhuakrc
NYT: Trump Under Fire From Within G.O.P. After Midterms https://tinyurl.com/2yudxth5 “Conservative allies criticized Mr. Trump on social media and cable news, questioning whether he should continue as the party’s leader and pointing to his toxic political brand”
// “Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,” a longtime adviser said.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone For over 20 years, Putin’s lied and manipulated the often gullible & apathetic Russian people. But thanks to brave #Ukraine, not even Putin & the Kremlin’s formidable propaganda machine can hide Russian sons and husbands dying.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Wives of mobilised soldiers from Kursk caught in an argument with the city administration. ¤ The men were sent to the frontline, their units were destroyed piece by piece, so some retreated to Starobils’k. Note the language used by the administration representative.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1590450412762824704?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Remember how I said that to get a party to start reforming itself, it’s not enough to vote against someone like Trump, you have to deprive it of electoral oxygen at every level in every election until the political pain gets high enough?
⋙ 🐣 RT @SykesCharlie “After 3 straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it’s time for even his stans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.” — John Podhoretz in NY Post
⋙⋙ NYPost: Here’s how Donald Trump sabotaged the Republican midterms https://tinyurl.com/mrhtnftz
// What Tuesday night’s midterm election results suggest is that former President Donald Trump is perhaps the most profound vote repellant in modern American history.
🐣 RT @RalstonReports [Jon Ralston] New NV numbers, via @s_golonka: ¤ In Senate race, combined results from Lyon, Nye and Washoe have reduced Laxalt’s lead to under 16,000. ¤ Washoe mail was huge for CCM, as she turned a 5K deficit there to a 400-vote lead. The urban mail is coming in with large margins for Dems.
🐣 RT @AP: BREAKING: Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia next week, avoiding a possible confrontation with the United States and its allies over his war in Ukraine.
⋙ APNews: Russia’s Putin won’t attend upcoming G-20 summit in Bali https://tinyurl.com/2s3euu8u
🐣 RT @Tendar BREAKING Russian High Command has issued a general retreat to all surviving Russian forces at the Western bank of the Dnipro River. Around 40,000 Russian troops are now officially running. #Kherson #Ukraine
🧵 RT @IrynaVoichuk Today, on the day of the Ukrainian language, I would like to tell you some of the historical facts about the linguocide that this melodic language has experienced for many years. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/IrynaVoichuk/status/1590366164655697920?s=20
// supression of Ukrainian laguage and culture
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture More information is emerging about the Russian withdrawal from West Bank of the Dniepr River in #Ukraine. This will have a range of impacts on the war. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1590524003994972160?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Channel4News “Democracy is who we are.” ¤ President Biden celebrates a more successful than predicted mid term elections for his Democratic Party, and says he will continue to work with Republicans in “confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”.
💽 https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1590482025110130688?s=20/photo/1
// more general comments about election
🐣 RT @TristanSnell Another loser from the midterms: Putin. ¤ Even if the Republicans win the House, it will be a narrow majority, not enough to defund US aid to Ukraine, which a broad majority of Americans support. Putin needed a true red wave, and he did not get one.
🐣 RT @Devilstower “On Wednesday, Gateway Pundit’s top pinned post announced: BLOOD MOON BLOODBATH… Democrats Steal Midterms, Communism Comes Home to America… Crime, Inflation, Record Gas Prices, War, Open Borders and Corruption WIN BIG”
⋙ Dkos: Right-wing pundits, poohbahs reach for the Copium after their ‘red tsunami’ fails to materialize https://tinyurl.com/bdewpt5k
// After everyone in the Republican Party’s elite political circles—from Tucker Carlson to Donald Trump to the New York Times editorial board—cement
🐣 RT @saintjavelin Another one bites the dust. ¤ Watching this surreal poetry performance by Russian-installed Kherson official Krill Stremousov to commemorate his loss.
💽 https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1590442839871062016?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acyn Jeanine: so many people voted on issues that weren’t the issues we thought they were voting on. We thought it was about the economy, inflation crime..
🐣 RT @Acyn Question: Who do you think would be the tougher competitor? DeSantis or Trump ¤ Biden: it would be fun watching them take on each other
🐣 RT @POTUS We lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first midterm election in at least 40 years. ¤ And we had the best midterms for Governors since 1986. ¤ The American people spoke.
🧵 😅 RT @ tomiahonen My Dearest Vladimir How’s your war going in Ukraine? Why are you retreating out of Kherson? Only losers retreat. You should have built a wall ¤ I’m miserable. The election has been a disaster. These Republicans are all morons ¤ I miss hearing your voice. Couldn’t you just call me
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1590438454265249792?s=20
// parody: Trump writes some letters letters
🐣 RT @Acyn Watters: There’s just not the hatred for Joe Biden the way there is for Obama and the Clintons. There’s not a hate Biden vote that’s out there
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1590470476257697795?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CAR BOMB? @igorsushko has posted photographs of the single vehicle ‘road accident’ that took the life of Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the RU occupation government of Kherson. Noting the absence of tire marks, it appears that Stremousov outlived his usefulness to the FSB.
¤ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1590462934240866304?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Russia announces retreat from city of Kherson https://tinyurl.com/mr42xr2d “The move is a major setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had declared the annexation of the Kherson region”
🐣 RT @POTUS Commander and I burnt the midnight oil last night calling some of our great election winners. ¤ I’m looking forward to the work we’ll do together.
💽 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1590435289910181889?s=20/photo/1
‼️ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Moment Surovikin and Shoygu admit defeat in the Kherson direction and announce the withdrawal of troops.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1590368333727424512?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @texerc Amazing being able to get access into the actual meeting where this was decided. Didn’t feel scripted at all. [not!]
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS/ FLASH TRAFFIC/ 1550 UTC 9 NOV/ RU forces are reported to be executing a withdrawal from all N bank positions around Kherson. UKR forces have been granted a golden opportunity to smash retreating RU units while motion. Mass RU casualties expected at river crossings.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1590368525084168193?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw Biggest takeaway from tonight: ¤ It’s well worth the struggle. Democracy remains viable. ¤ “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”– Senator Edward M. Kennedy, 1980.
YahooNews: Putin’s ‘Fierce’ Navy Stranded in Hiding After Devastating Attack https://tinyurl.com/mr3m9sw9 “Russia has a large navy, but its losses in the Black Sea are difficult to replace. Moscow cannot simply send more ships to the Black Sea, since Turkey controls the straits”
🐣 RT @jason_kint Absolutely the most important two minutes I’ve heard from a candidate this evening. In this moment.
💽 https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1590203115478794240?s=20/photo/1
// Tim Ryan concession speech
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Fox post on Truth Social this morning
⋙ 🐣 RT @FoxNews Conservatives point finger at Trump after GOP’s underwhelming election results: ‘He’s never been weaker’
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1590321975276494849?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Conservatives point finger at Trump after GOP’s underwhelming election. Some conservatives are saying it may be time for the GOP to ditch Donald Trump after election results in the Senate and elsewhere showed a lackluster push from his candidates.
🐣 Exit Polls: “Only 3 in 10 Americans want to back down on aid to #Ukraine” ~ David Ignatius on @Morning_Joe on @MSNBC
🐣 RT @Rohit_Ideas Russia’s hopes for a Republican landslide to hurt Ukraine are vanishing fast https://ift.tt/qd6FOe1 While the U.S. midterm election results roll in, the vote count is being closely watched half way across the world by Ukraine and Russia. #RohitKadimisetty #BusinessNews
⋙ CNBC: Russia’s hopes for a Republican landslide to hurt Ukraine are vanishing fast https://tinyurl.com/25teb56b
// While the U.S. midterm election results roll in, the vote count is being closely watched half way across the world by Ukraine and Russia.
🐣 RT @olex_scherba It’s almost 5am in Ukraine. Still watching #ElectionDay on CNN. There’s nothing more mesmerizing in the world of politics than American election nights.
🐣 RT @Schwarz Since Elon Musk took over Twitter on October 28, Tesla’s worth has gone down by about $120 billion, over 16%. Tesla’s shareholders presumably aren’t thrilled about that, or the fact that Musk’s borrowed 50 Tesla employees to work on Twitter.
◕ https://twitter.com/schwarz/status/1590071489285718017?s=20photo/1
// $TSLA stock chart
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Trump is indeed furious this morning, particularly about Mehmet Oz, and is blaming everyone who advised him to back Oz — including his wife, describing it as not her best decision, according to people close to him.
🐣 RT @ RonFilipkowski No matter how Trump or MAGA try to spin it, that was an epic disaster for them. They were certain of a 3-4 seat majority in Senate and 25-30 seat majority in House while picking up several governorships and Secs of State. None of that happened. What a historic day.
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy FM #Lavrov: Selfish approach of US-led Western alliance clearly runs counter to aspirations of an overwhelming majority of countries, interested in shaping a #multipolar world order with more justice and injecting a bigger dose of genuine #democracy into international relations.
⋙ 🐣 Nations freely choose to join Western alliances like #NATO and the #EU. ”Genuine democracy” does not exist in #Russia and again and again former soviet countries have chosen the “genuine democracy” models of the West and turned their backs on Russian-style autocracy. #NAFO
⋙ 🐣 Prigozhin bragged about interfering in the US Midterm Elections. Guess what? It didn’t work. Democracy won. We aren’t going anywhere.
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy FM #Lavrov: Selfish approach of US-led Western alliance clearly runs counter to aspirations of an overwhelming majority of countries, interested in shaping a #multipolar world order with more justice and injecting a bigger dose of genuine #democracy into international relations.
⋙ 🐣 Nations freely choose to join Western alliances like #NATO and the #EU. ”Genuine democracy” does not exist in #Russia and again and again former soviet countries have chosen the “genuine democracy” models of the West and turned their backs on Russian-style autocracy. #NAFO
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Problem Russia’s mobilised cannon fodder face in #Ukraine is, they have no military structure & supply/logistics. When they arrive, Russia’s simply throws them into the frontline without any adequate means of supplying & caring for them. Hence they feel abandoned. Hence they run.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Mobilised from Ulyanovsk, Penza Oblasts and Bashkiriya retreated from “LPR” after getting shelled, some reached the Belgorod border in 5 days. One of them recorded a message for his wife, explaining they’re being beaten by military police and threatened to be sent back.
🔊 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1590090794647449600?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Dear Republican Party: Drop Trump. Drop MAGA. Drop election denialism. Stop attacking our institutions. Stop spreading conspiracy theories. Stop the political violence. Stop taking away our rights. ¤ Let’s debate actual policy to solve our nation’s problems.
🐣 RT @AntonioArellano HUGE: Exit polls in key states including AZ, NH, PA and WI, show young voters supported Democrats by OVER 70%! ¤ The future is young and progressive.
◕ https://twitter.com/AntonioArellano/status/1590192564409602049?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Trump lost 40 house seats in his first midterm.
Obama lost 63
Clinton lost 52
Reagan lost 26
Carter lost 15
Biden’s house is a dead heat.
OUTSTANDING night for dems 💙💙
🐣 RT @dutytowarn This was an absolutely dreadful, atrocious, nightmarish day for Trump. He is going down. And while he might announce, he now has no shot at being the 2024 GOP nominee.
⭕ 8 Nov 2022
🧵RT @anders_aslund”Ukraine seizes control of five ‘strategic’ companies from oligarchs”
Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta (Igor Kolomoisky)
MotorSich (Vyacheslav Boguslaev)
AvtoKraz (Kostyantyn Zhevago)
Zaporizhtransformator (Kostyantyn Grigorishin)
This is important. [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1590009482574434304?s=20
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/45sauh9j
🐣 RT @djrothkopf For a guy who has been a Senator, Vice President and President, you’ve got to admit, @JoeBiden is probably the most consistently, repeatedly and unfairly underestimated political leader of our time.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf Credit also must go to @SpeakerPelosi and @SenSchumer who have worked tirelessly and never gave up even when loud choruses of “very smart people” were telling them it would be a blow out.
🐣 RT @VaughnHillyard Tonight, the GOP GOVERNOR Candidates Who Refused To Say If They’d Have Certified Biden’s 2020 Win In Their States:
❓ Kari Lake, Arizona
❌ Tim Michels, Wisconsin
❌ Tudor Dixon, Michigan
❌ Doug Mastriano, PA
❌ Darren Bailey, Illinois
❌ Dan Cox, Maryland
❌ Lee Zeldin, NY
🐣 RT @ VaughnHillyard Tonight, the Election-Denying Secretary of State Candidates from States Biden Won:
❓ Mark Finchem, Arizona
❓ Jim Marchant, Nevada
❌ Kristina Karamo, Michigan
❌ Kim Crockett, Minnesota
❌ Audrey Mendonca-Trujillo, NM
❌ Pennsylvania/Picked by GOV:
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Lauren Boebert going down harder than Donald Trump on the Mar a Lago waffle station.
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Yikes
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1590223660148994048?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] BenShapiro: From red wave to red wedding
🐣 A lot of pundits are re-writing their post-mortems right now.
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1590215686747750400?s=20/photo/1
// Dark Biden: “No More Malarkey!”
🐣 Reasons for Dems’ Good Showing (my take):
1. Democracy (anti-Trump)
2. Abortion
😜 RT @RonFilipkowski Mike Lindell says China has joined forces with the Democrats to steal elections tonight, but his cyber guys have caught them red-handed and he is gathering evidence.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1590201813047078915?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EmbassyofRussia 🇷🇺President Vladimir #Putin: For decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine experienced direct, overt interference from Western countries in its internal affairs. Actually, they tried to do the same in Russia.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/EmbassyofRussia/status/1589972454189199360?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] For decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine experienced direct, overt interference from Western countries in its internal affairs. Actually, they tried to do the same in Russia, but, unfortunately, in Ukraine they managed to instill in the minds of millions of people the pseudo-values that led to the fact that they created an anti-Russia on this territory, sowing hatred, raping people’s consciousness, depriving them of their true history – Vladimir Putin President of the Russian Federation
🐣 RT @ SimonWDC Happy Election Day, midday! No Election Day turnout numbers, but got more early vote fr TargetEarly:
– EV turnout 43m, 8% over 18
– Ds up 50-39 (+11), 5m natl vote lead
– In 18 at this point 47-44 (+3), 20 48-41 (+7)
– D state “firewalls” growing, electorate getting younger 👇
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 More stories of Russian mobilised soldiers being sent to the frontlines around Svatove without ammunition, food or commanding officers. ¤ Reportedly some units attempted to abandon their positions but were turned around at Svatove and sent back to the frontline.
🐣 RT @DefenceU Major General Tetiana Ostashchenko, Commander of the 🇺🇦 Medical Forces, is the first woman to become a general in #UAarmy. ¤ She makes every effort to save the life of every wounded warrior. Because we value every single one of our people.
#UAGenerals
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1589962745222684672?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Such a contrast with Russia, whose soldiers were told to buy their own medical supplies, including sanitary pads and tampons to stanch bleeding. Bulletproof vests were quickly sold at prices so high, few could even afford them.
🐣 RT @MSNBC More than 44M people have already cast their ballots in the 2022 midterm elections — and that’s before polls even opened this morning.
⋙ MSNBC: 44 million votes cast ahead of Election Day. That’s huge https://tinyurl.com/mrxrykcn
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] President #Putin: Efforts to weaken, tear apart and destroy #Russia are ongoing. They underlie the developments in #Ukraine. We will never let this happen. We will defend our Fatherland the way our heroic ancestors did.
⋙ 🐣 You’ll defend your fatherland with THESE guys? They’re surrendering all over between Svatove and Bakhmut, complaining they weren’t trained, aren’t equipped properly, basically thrown to be slaughtered like dogs. Shame on your abusive, drunk, deadbeat “fatherland”
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589948090630680576?s=20/photo/1
// Ru troops who surrendered near Svatove
⭕ 7 Nov 2022
😅 RT @RonFilipkowski Detective Lindell is ready: “We are tracking every race by cyber. I want all the bad guys out there to know, we are watching. I’m putting them all on notice!”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1589965347607564288?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Gee, the DOJ could just outsource it’s monitoring operation to Mr. Pillow himself!
Re: DOJ: Justice Department to Monitor Polls in 24 States for Compliance with Federal Voting Rights Laws https://tinyurl.com/33n5vuw5
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589973936179384320?s=20/photo/1
MSNBC, Ja’han Jones: Trump’s DHS treated George Floyd protesters like terrorists, report shows https://tinyurl.com/54n4d6su The newly unredacted report “gave the false impression Portland was facing a serious threat of terrorism & baselessly classified protesters as nefarious actors”
// A Department of Homeland Security report shows how the Trump administration falsely categorized people as threats during George Floyd protests in 2020.
🔆 This❗️⋙ RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: The Hard Voter Data Indicating Democrats Will Outperform the Polls and Hold Congress: In Data (and Women) We Trust https://tinyurl.com/8pbc63fy Wow! Great analysis. Hope you’re right! @SimonWDC @tbonier @bfry1981
// The details on some hard current voter data that reinforces itself and call into question current polling numbers that have so many key Senate and House races neck-and-neck
↥ ↧
🐣 @bfry1981 I read your new analysis on the “hard voter data” and as a systems analyst, I found it convincing though I want to read it carefully again. I will post a link in the morning. I left a donation. I’ve been obsessed with @SimonWDC’s data but was concerned the extra early votes …
⋙ 🐣 @bfry1981 might just be taken from Election Day votes, but you addressed that with the Pew data. I hope this will help esp Fetterman, Hassan, Kelly, and Warnock, which would be enough. I think Mandela Barnes and Tim Ryan (who I like a lot) are out; the polling gaps are too wide
🐣 The GOP won’t do anything about:
Crime (voted vs extra cops)
Immigration (torpedoed last attempt to fix it)
Inflation (voted vs windfall profits tax)
But they WILL:
Pare back Mcare & Soc Security, increase your taxes, ban abortion & gay rights, side w Russia, weaken democracy
🐣 RT @MorningConsult Our recent data shows that the potential for crossover support in the #midterms is largest in New Hampshire, with a quarter of voters approving of the job performance of both Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) and Gov. Chris Sununu (R). https://morningconsult.biz/3Vgl3iC
📊 https://twitter.com/MorningConsult/status/1589866561996984320?s=20/photo/1
// Also: Kemp plus Warnock
WaPo: Russia’s heavy casualties in Ukraine spark outcry and rare official response https://tinyurl.com/4ck4zchr ‘Steep Russian casualties in key battles in eastern Ukraine have prompted an unusual public outcry by surviving soldiers who say their units were led to slaughter’
🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien This seems like a particularly horrible phase of the war, Russia is rushing many of its draftees to the front lines and the Ukrainians are looking for groups of them to hit.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Ukraine hits 17 concentrations of Russian troops in east ¤ Over the last day, Ukraine’s military struck 17 areas with Russian troops and military equipment, five command posts, and a Russian ammunition depot in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent The Russian troops were based in Krasnohorivka, Bakhmut, Ivanhrad, Opytne, Klishchiivka, Maryinka, Pavlivka, Vodyane, and Mayorsk in the Donetsk Oblast and Belohorivka in Luhansk Oblast, the General Staff said.
◕ https://twitter.com/Zettelnotizen/status/1589623134495608832?s=20/photo/1
// separate chart show huge increase in Russians killed, heavy equipment lost
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 In my view Ukrainian command did a perfect job this summer. ¤ Froze the frontline across most of the southern and eastern frontlines. ¤ Counterattacked around Kherson and Kharkiv changing the initiative. ¤ Made Russian forces get bogged down in brutal combat around Bakhmut.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian forces are now digging in heavily around Zaporizhzhia frontline and are throwing everything they have at Bakhmut. ¤ Since Russian forces don’t have another direction of attack on Kramatorsk the capture of Bakhmut is completely useless militarily.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @andrenaleen I don’t believe there is going to be a pause this winter. Both sides are on the clock, and Ukraine is much better equipped for it, thanks to the Allies. ¤ Entrenched, rotation-free RU forces are going to be miserable.
🐣 📋 RT @general_ben Russia has a massive personnel problem…no Russian wants to be in the Russian Army now. 500K military age males fled the country to avoid mobilization. Different ethnic groups in Russia reconsidering their role. Meanwhile Ukraine has 700K in uniform. I like Ukraine’s chances! […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @gennchappell13 This gentleman also seems to hold an outdated view of war in which waves of infantry are dispositive. But times & the implements of battle have evolved, & even in the old days, vast numerical advantage could be and often was blunted by superior tactics, strategy, & intel.
🐣 RT @mattyglesias The GOP operative class is younger, better educated, and more urban than the national average which means their intuitions pull the party to the center. ¤ The Dem operative class is also younger, better educated, and more urban but that means their biases pull Dems off-center.
⋙ 🐣 ”Operative class” is an odd expression. I’m sure the crew of staffers are well-educated, a new generation of Rogers Stones, Paul Manaforts, Lee Atwoods and Steve Bannons. It takes cleverness to concoct the schemes and cosplays for the unwashed rubes they prey upon:
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589864142751440897?s=20/photo/1
// education by political party
⋙⋙ 🐣 I wonder which operative came up with “Ron DeSanctimonious” because it sure as hell wasn’t Trump
🐣 RT @marceelias No need to clone, I have an excellent team. Thank you for your support and kind words.🙏
⋙. 🐣 RT @harrylitman Just wish we could clone @marceelias. He and his team beat back 6 or so challenges today alone—cynical lawless R maneuvers to selectively disenfranchise Ds.That’s the good news. The bad news is they have lots more plans for the coming days, inc giving a false impression of fraud.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Chris Hayes: “If Republicans retake the House, the entire conference, or at least the overwhelming majority of it, will take its marching orders from Trump.” https://on.msnbc.com/3TaBQ4B
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1589820143789494272?s=20p/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 welcome to the co-presidency🫣
🐣 RT @judgeluttig The National Constitution Center honored Ukraine President Zelenskyy with the Center’s Liberty Medal tonight. The ceremony in Philadelphia was magnificent. Senators Coons and Portman actually awarded the medal to Zelenskyy in Kiev, where Zelenskyy made extensive remarks
⋙ 🐣 RT @ConstitutionCtr .@ConstitutionCtr President and CEO @RosenJeffrey delivers remarks from columnist @GeorgeWill: “We are here today to salute [President Zelenskyy] for making vivid two essential virtues: stubborn bravery [and] unapologetic patriotism.” #LibertyMedal
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Elon. Trump. (and Kanye and Putin): Resentment. https://tinyurl.com/2p8tddsk “Musk just lit $44 billion, with a B, on fire so that he could be a hero to an army of trolls that continues to goad him into doing even dumber things”
// A combination more powerful than one might think
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON CITY/ 7 NOV/ Dressed in civilian clothes, RU troops continue to construct urban strongpoints and fighting positions in the city. Mass searches and arrests continue as RU troops attempt to identify Partisans in the urban area.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1589606125074518022?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ So here it is. He’s back, and people are finally realizing that no amount of “He’s the Former Guy” wishcasting was going to work. ¤ No amount of “He CAN’T run if he’s under indictment” copium is changing the grim reality of our world now. ¤ Will it be tonight at 8pm?
📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1589766502529441794?s=20
2/ Lucy, football. Or maybe he’ll cry havoc and let slip to mooks of war. Nothing — save a shark attack, a meteor strike, or a medical crisis was ever going to stop his return. ¤ Already, the replay of 2016 is in full flood. The Good Republicans, that vanishing tribe…
3/ …are convinced the GOP is ready to move one [on?]. Ready to leave Trump behind. Ready for Ron or Glenn or someone, ANYONE else but the gibbering umber golem. ¤ It’s only demonstrates how profoundly they misread the MAGA takeover then, and now.
4/ There is no GOP primary. Stop imagining a white (very) knight riding to the rescue. You think a mumbling podge like Ron DeSantis wants to have Trump jape and caper while beating him to death in debate after debate after debate? ¤ If they talk him into running, it’s malpractice.
5/ The GOP primary is all humiliation kabuki, a searing exercise in masochism (which is why Cotton not running surprises me, iykwim) and fuckery. ¤ It won’t stop reporters from covering it as if its a real thing, but it’s performance art from people angling for 2028.
6/ Brief break while I take some lamb out of the oven.
7/ It’s Trump’s need for this moment and attention that makes him a stronger competitor than anyone else in the field. ¤ Do you still think there’s a person underneath there? There isn’t. It’s just an ebon maw, an endless void of narcissism and sociopathy.
8/ it will be worse this time. More cruel. More insane. More conspiratorial. His devoted followers and Trumphadi shock troops of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers et al view this is an all or nothing battle for control. ¤ Watch for all the schemers like Bannon to return to the fold.
9/ he is most certainly beatable, but if Democrats, independents, NT, reporters, and activists go into 2023 thinking they have a year off, think again. ¤ The dumbest premise of 2016 was “my guy can wait until X takes out Trump” and by then they were all PTSDed.
10/ Already, you can sense the tidal gravity of media attention turning back to him. As @stuartpstevens ¤ is fond of saying, “The greatest danger is not realizing what’s the greatest danger. ¤ It’s Trump. ¤ And he’s back. ¤ Get ready, because this will be one hell of a fight.
🐣 RT @atrupar Trump lawyer Christina Bobb previews that MAGAs will try to declare victory as votes are being counted: “There should absolutely be a result no later than the middle of the night, early Wed. morning. I think those areas that don’t have a result, it’s gonna look very suspicious”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1589772135815577600?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln A #RedMirage is on the horizon. ¤ Republicans will attempt to call the election before every mail-in ballot is counted. They’ll do everything in their power to stop the vote counting.
⋙ 🐣 … Trump just has to wave his ✨magic wand✨ over the vote totals at midnight and that’s who won!
easy-peasy ~ just like declassifying documents
TheGuardian: ‘We were completely exposed’: Russian conscripts say hundreds killed in attack https://tinyurl.com/yc6ps8ay Despite obscene losses among barely trained and ill-supplied men, Putin hails the success of his mobilization of 318,000 new troops for the war
// Survivor tells of being abandoned to attack near Makiivka, as anger grows in Russia over death toll from war
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: Kremlin-funded state TV explains why they’re rooting for MAGA Republicans in the midterms and reveal the key talking points their trolls and useful idiots will be spreading to undermine Biden and the Democrats.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1588218623868297217?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Some Democrats see momentum in 2022 early vote. Here are the caveats https://tinyurl.com/yxrjze3e Early voting is up in many states and Democrats are doing well, but a lot has changed since 2018, and extrapolating from these numbers is difficult
WaPo, Max Boot: Putin just backtracked under pressure. That’s a hopeful sign for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2p84xxh4 “Instead of squeezing Kyiv, the Biden admin should be doing its utmost to persuade New Delhi, Ankara and Beijing to influence Putin to end his unprovoked invasion”
🐣 RT @ABlackPolitical On May 19th of this year every single Republican in the US House of Representatives voted no on a gas price gouging bill that would have reduced costs at the pump. ¤ Republicans continue to complain about this, even though they are the cause. See receipt below. #VoteBlueTomorrow
¤ https://twitter.com/ABlackPolitical/status/1589688423979560960?s=20/photo/1
// photo C-SPAN House vote totals
🐣 RT @DemocracyDocket ALERT: The U.S. Department of Justice announces it will send election monitors to ensure compliance with federal voting laws to polling locations in 67 jurisdictions in 24 states, including Maricopa County, AZ, Harris County, TX and Fulton County, GA.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Rumor has it Donald is going to announce today during the JD Vance rally. He probably thinks this will protect him from indictment. It won’t.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Rumor has it Donald is going to announce today during the JD Vance rally. He probably thinks this will protect him from indictment. It won’t.
🐣 RT @ kylegriffin1 Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch known as ‘Putin’s chef’, says he has interfered in U.S. elections and will continue doing so: ¤ “We have interfered [in U.S. elections], we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way.”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: husband of the head of RT Margarita Simonyan, Tigran Keosayan (a propagandist in his own right, albeit not nearly as popular as his wife), argues that nuclear threats/strikes are the way to go. He compares Russia to Tatar Mongols, arguing that might is right.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1589680357380861958?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ thedailybeast “I think it was stupid to go into the Capitol. One, because it wasn’t our mission. And two, it opened the door for our political enemies to persecute us. And that’s what happened and here we are,” Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes said on the stand.
⋙ DailyBeast: Oath Keeper Boss Does His Best to Wipe Hands of Capitol Riot https://tinyurl.com/mr24znke
// Stewart Rhodes claimed Monday that he never intended for his militia members to get “wrapped up into all the nonsense with Trump supporters.”
🐣 RT @NOELreports Russian mobilized soldiers, captured by the 92nd brigade turned out to be Muscovites. They didn’t eat for three days and they were fired upon by their own artillery.
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1589699023950467072?s=20/photo/1
Fortune: U.S. companies post their biggest profit growth in decades by jacking up prices during the pandemic https://tinyurl.com/5n6dmw6d //➔ Every Republican voted AGAINST a tax on windfall profits intended to stifle price-gouging
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589701326459441152?s=20/photo/1
// 3/31/2022; inflation profits
🐣 RT @NoLieWithBTC .@BernieSanders: “Why is it that in Europe, inflation is at 11%? You think that’s Joe Biden’s fault? In the UK, it’s at 10.1%. And it is higher in many parts of the world than it is in the US… The major reason for inflation today is the outrageous level of corporate greed.”
💽 https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1589677787644039168?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AymanMSNBC “The GOP has become a fascist-style party,” @ruthbenghiat tells @AymanM in discussing the hallmarks of far-right authoritarian movements, namely hyper-nationalism, disdain for minority rights, an obsession with crime, and a reluctance to condemn political violence. WATCH:
💽 https://twitter.com/AymanMSNBC/status/1589424075931279360?s=20gphoto/1
TheGuardian: Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin admits interfering in US elections https://tinyurl.com/5n6kndv7 “‘Gentlemen, we interfered, we are interfering and we will interfere’ Prigozhin … has been accused of running a ‘troll factory’ to influence the outcome of votes”
// Russian businessman and founder of Wagner group says interfering will continue as midterms loom
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] President #Putin: Much in the West today is determined by radical-liberal agenda. To suit it, key historical events are presented in completely distorted & inverted form, truth is cancelled. This distorts people’s consciousness, erodes values and undermines their footing in life.
⋙ 🐣 This is clearly part of the Russian campaign to influence the US Midterm elections. There are too many buzzwords specific to the US. This is illegal election interference.
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589638928612855811?s=20/photo/1
// Statue of Liberty drawing sword
⋙ 🐣 Putin’s thinking cap #fail makes him think #TerroristState Russia can lecture the West about values (like genocide, torture and rape, apparently)
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589642902694920192?s=20/photo/1
// Putin Rasputin (raspberry head)
WaPo: Republicans sue to disqualify thousands of mail ballots in swing states https://tinyurl.com/evrm3rds “The potential for chaos is especially high in Pennsylvania, where the legal fight is ongoing and could … determine control of the U.S. Senate”
// The lawsuits coincide with a systemic effort by GOP leaders to persuade voters to cast ballots in person, not absentee
🧵 RT @SimonWDC Happy Monday all!
Been a good few days, Ds closing strong:
– Ds big early vote lead keeps growing
– Ralston calls NV for Cortez Masto
– Last 6 non-partisan natl tracks have Ds up 1.5 pts
– Ds favored to keep Senate in non-partisan polls
– red wave may come, not here yet 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1589594489739321344?s=20
🐣 RT @ BradBeauregardJ On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver shows how the Republican Party had people at every level trying to overturn the 2020 election and they’re running for office at every level all over the country. ¤ This is the most important election of our lives and we must get out the vote huge!
🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine
– 07 November 2022
Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/lwOq50LvHl0 p
¤ 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] /photo/1 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589506717326651392?s=20/photo/1
INTELLIGENCE UPDATE
On 03 November 2022, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, stated that Russia had lost over twice the number of aircraft in Ukraine than in the Soviet-Afghan War. This amounts to 278 aircraft lost in Ukraine compared to 119 in Afghanistan.
Whilst we cannot independently verify these figures, Russia’s continued lack of air superiority is likely exacerbated by poor training, loss of experienced crews, and heightened risks of conducting close air support in dense air defence zones.
This is unlikely to change in the next few months. Russia’s aircraft losses likely significantly outstrip their capacity to manufacture new airframes. The time required for the training of competent pilots further reduces Russia’s ability to regenerate combat air capability.
⭕ 6 Nov 2022
🧵 RT @ Trump is holding a rally in Miami, Florida. Follow along for a live thread.
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1589367862023819265?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “DNR military commander Aleksandr Khodakovsky claimed that Russian friendly fire may have caused up to 60% of total Russian losses since mid-May.” Highly unlikely to be true, but if so, whatever works @TheStudyofWar #UkraineRussiaWar
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1589343126212481024?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Key Takeaways
• Wagner Group financier Yevheniy Prigozhin seeks to obfuscate his efforts to strengthen his independent power base with an appeal to the concept of Russia’s historic unity.
• Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian confirmed that Iran began providing Russia drones before February 24, but strangely denied that Russian forces have used them in combat.
• DR military commander Aleksandr Khodakovsky claimed that Russian friendly fire may have caused up to 60% of total Russian losses since mid-May.
• Ukrainian troops reportedly continued counteroffensives along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Russian forces continued to set up defensive positions along the Dnipro River.
• Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian logistics and transportation in Kherson Oblast.
• Russian forces continued to attack around Bakhmut and claimed unspecified advances.
• Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area and in western Donetsk.
• Continued poor conditions for mobilized soldiers catalyzed a large-scale protest in Kazan.
• Unknown actors reportedly attempted to assassinate high-profile Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Supreme Court Judge Aleksandr Nikulin.
• Russia continues to deploy personnel to staff administrative positions in occupied areas. Russian forces continued mass evacuations in
• Kherson Oblast. Over 80% of Kherson residents reportedly have been evacuated.
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald In Ukraine, we’re not afraid of cruise missiles. ¤ We’re not afraid of Iranian Shahed flying bombs. ¤ We’re not scared by Putin’s nuclear bomb threats.s The only thing we’re scared of, is that you, the civilized world, stops supporting us. ¤ Please, don’t make us scared.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 If you ever doubt the importance of doing everything possible to support Ukraine, just look at the people against it. You immediately doubt their motives, their sanity, or, as in this case, both.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol [MTG:] “Under Republicans not another penny will go to Ukraine.”To @GOPLeader: Is this in fact the position of House Republicans? Is @RepMTG the de facto GOP Leader? ¤ h/t @Acyn
💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1588300985482764288?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 sickening: she is the worst of the worst and McCarthy will do anything for power ~ even elevating her
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ The Russian news outlet Verstka reported yesterday that hundreds of mobilised Russian soldiers have died on the front line. TV Rain has independently corroborated it, reporting that officers told the men “You are meat, that’s why you were brought here.” Translation follows.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1589355678770290688?s=20
🐣 RT @ criticalthreats #Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the direction of #Svatove and #Kreminna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/criticalthreats/status/1589440872265191424?s=20/photo/1
// ISW map
🐣 RT @nytimes Researchers have identified a new and more narrowly targeted Russian misinformation effort ahead of Tuesday’s midterms. It appears intended to not only undermine the U.S. electoral system, but also the Biden administration’s military assistance to Ukraine.
⋙ NYT: Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday’s Midterms https://tinyurl.com/3p49w9rr Putin is betting big on #MAGA isolationism and Tucker Carlson’s overt pro-Russian propaganda
// Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine.
The account was previously linked to the same secretive Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, according to the cybersecurity group Recorded Future.
It is part of what the group and other researchers have identified as a new, though more narrowly targeted, Russian effort ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. The goal, as before, is to stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system. This time, it also appears intended to undermine the Biden administration’s extensive military assistance to Ukraine. ¤ “It’s clear they are trying to get them to cut off aid and money to Ukraine,” said Alex Plitsas [#Fella], a former Army soldier and Pentagon information operations official now with Providence Consulting Group, a business technology company. ¤ The campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans like Nora Berka — have added fuel to the most divisive political and cultural issues in the country today. …
It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort. ¤ The campaigns show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceoptive content. …
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ZaleskyLuke it should trouble every american that the right wing and trump are in absolute sync (and have been) with putin. their talking points and anti-democratic actions and agendas are antagonistic to the rule of law and ongoing–and have led to two impeachments and an attack on congress
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch NEW VIDEO with @CAPAction Here are the facts: Republican-led states have much HIGHER crime rates than Democratic-led states. This is not a game. #MAGALiesCostLives
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1589407548817346561?s=20/photo/1
// game show format with Trump Cruz Rubio and fact-checks
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder I have been hearing the idea from some Republicans that Ukrainian resistance comes at a cost to Americans. Nothing could be more wrong. Ukrainian resistance provides extraordinary security benefits to Americans. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1589260108537610240?s=20
In fact, Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s genocidal invasion does more for American security than any American policy does – or could do. It has changed the global balance in a way that makes peace more likely in decades to come. 2/
Republicans present China as America’s real, long-term rival. Democrats agree. The scenario for a U.S.-China war is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. By resisting a Russian invasion, Ukrainians have shown the difficulty of such operations, making this scenario less likely. 3/
By fighting in self-defense, Ukrainians have thus reduced the risk of a major war and of a nuclear war. This extraordinary achievement is due to the courage and skill of Ukrainians. They do not get much credit for it. They should get more credit, and more support. 4/
For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have failed to formulate a policy that could prevent Russia from weakening and undoing the international order. Russia serves as a cat’s paw, doing what China would not wish to be seen doing. 5/
In defeating Russia’s armed forces and exposing Russia’s weakness, the Ukrainians have both made a larger war in Europe far less likely, and gotten China’s cat’s paw under control. 6/
The Ukrainians have reduced the possibility of Chinese aggression through Russia, and made direct Chinese aggression less likely. They have done all of this just by defending themselves, without making any move against China. 7/
Without the Ukrainians, the United States would lack the policy instruments for this. By resisting, Ukrainians created an opportunity for U.S. policy that would not otherwise have existed. 8/
No American lives have been placed at risk. U.S. assistance to Ukraine amounts to a rounding error in the defense budget. 9/
The gains Ukrainian resistance brings to American security are so enormous that the US national security establishment is embarrassed to speak of them directly. 10/
It is awkward to say that another country is doing so much for us. It is awkward to say that Ukrainian resistance has done more for the safety of Americans than any U.S. policy since the end of the cold war. But it is true and must be said. 11/
Reversing the U.S. policy of aiding Ukraine will undo all of these gains. There is still time to revive Russia and reassure China, which is what ending support of Ukraine will mean. Such a policy reversal would make Americans far less safe and secure. 12/
My concerns about the Russian invasion of Ukraine are the prevention of genocide and the defense of democracy. But those who think first of U.S. interests should acknowledge what Ukrainians are doing for American security. The least we can do is be on our own side 13/13
💙🐣 RT @CBSSunday Historian Jon Meacham on how the 16th president faced an election during the Civil War, when the continuation of democracy was still an open question – and how it resonates with the first post-insurrection midterm election. https://cbsn.ws/3t0SUz4
💽 https://twitter.com/CBSSunday/status/1589278852337000448?s=20/photo/1
YahooNews/TheHill: RNC chair says committee can’t pay Trump’s legal bills if he announces 2024 run https://tinyurl.com/2p9absac Oh my ~ trouble in paradise?
🐣 RT @ RonFilipkowski At Michael Flynn and Eric Trump’s ‘Reawaken America’ event, they struck the ground with imaginary arrows 7 times to call upon God to bring victory to the Republican Party in the midterms.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1589232505584254977?s=20/photo/1
// comments on evangelical cults and mixing with MAGA movement
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer BURN RATE: Ukraine has adapted NATO’s AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation (HARM) missile to take out RU air defenses. UKR pilots flying Suppression of enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions have taken out more than 200 RU surface air missile systems.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1589316344897732608?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SimonWDC The huge Dem performance in the early vote is the biggest and most important story in American politics right now.
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @SimonWDC Got our late Sat TargetEarly update:
– Despite electorate being older and whiter than 18/20, Ds lead 50-39 in early vote. That’s 10 pts better than 18, 3 pts better than 20. We have a 4.2m vote lead
– D energy we saw in 5 House specials/Kansas is showing up in the election 1/
¤ https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1589217947998093313?s=20
🐣 RT @BillKristol Hey, don’t want to interrupt my Democratic friends when they’re engaged in their favorite sports of The Gnashing of Teeth and The Tearing of Garments, but it looks as if the Democratic Party will have the best midterm performance by a party in the White House in two decades.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1400 UTC 6 NOV/ Russian combat engineers are working to establish defensive positions & atrillery fire bases on the S. bank of the Dnipro River. Partisans and UKR SOF identify RU troop concentration in Chulanivka; UKR precision strike munitions score direct hits.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1589256103409614849?s=20A/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenseU [Ua] The cemetery of russian missiles and ammunition. They used to shell Kharkiv with it. ¤ This is what thousands of rotten teeth of a dying empire, a terrorist state, look like.
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1585736594186698752?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @uasupport999 BREAKING: information confirmed by wives of Russian mobilised, who complain that a battalion of their men went without preparation & immediately into battle. Only 41 survived, 500 died. ¤ Recently mobilized in Voronezh & liquidated in the Luhansk region, reported by RosSMI.
💽 https://twitter.com/uasupport999/status/1589246157687226368?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @uasupport999 This is how the building of the regional administration of Kherson, looted by the orcs, looks like now – they took out absolutely everything, including toilet bowls. ¤ #UkraineRussianWar #Ukraine #Kherson #RussiaisATerroistState
💽 https://twitter.com/uasupport999/status/1589243245741379584?s=20/photo/1
🧵 PewRsrch (6/30/2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z Some interesting charts from the last three election, including the 2018 Midterm; a thread 1/8
// 6/30/2020; An examination of the 2020 electorate, based on validated voters
📌 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236517578231809?s=20
PewRsrch (2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z Biden’s voters were more racially and ethnically diverse than Trump’s, but GOP voters slightly less likely to be White 2/8
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236522834071552?s=20/photo/1
PewRsrch (2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z A higher share of Biden’s voters were from suburban areas compared with Clinton; meanwhile, the GOP is losing suburban voters 3/8
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236527153889280?s=20/photo/1
PewRsrch (2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z Differences in educational attainment of Trump, Biden coalitions: Close to half of Democratic voters had college degrees 4/8
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236531751190532?s=20/photo/1
PewRsrch (2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z Whites college/no college: Democrats are losing the White working class to Republicans but do better with college-educated Whites 5/8
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236536561741824?s=20/photo/1
PewRsrch (2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z Nearly half of Biden’s voters were younger than 50 6/8
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236541796548608?s=20/photo/1
PewRsrch (2020): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z The gender gap narrowed among White voters ~ will the reversal of Roe change this? 7/8
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236547911847936?s=20/photo/1
PewRsrch (2021j: White evangelical Protestants constituted roughly a third of voters for Republican candidates in the past three elections https://tinyurl.com/3n8u2rv6 8/8
// 6/28/2022
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589236553351852038?s=20/photo/1
KyivPost, Iuliia Mendel: Always Remember What Putin Represents and why his Russia has to be Defeated https://tinyurl.com/57s3e6j2 Iuliia Mendel, former press secy to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, recounts Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine. She also gives her firsthand impression of Putin
🐣 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych for 5 November, kindly brought to you by Janat: @Janat_H1 https://tinyurl.com/fb7b5au6
Battlefield Update: A series of unsuccessful RU attacks in various locations. The front line shows only small, tactical-level changes. …
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Reuters: The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on Saturday issued an open letter to Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter Inc, urging him to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter
⭕ 5 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom OMG. I laughed. Hard. So did Lynn. Well played. :D
⋙ 🐣 RT @kcwilson781 RadioFreeTom Reacts to Twitter’s Plan to Charge for Verified Accounts @RadioFreeTom (you may have to hit the refresh for video to play) https://tinyurl.com/3zs6hkaz
🐣 RT @ CKlardek Russia is run by the Soviet-era KGB. All the rebranding, fake party politics, new nationalism, Russian Orthodox blessings of genocide, holy wars and tyranny – it’s all just part of the KGB-crafted deception. Just like the retreat from Kherson, nothing is real.
🐣 RT @Lorelei_0502 Perhaps next Ramstaine should be held somewhere in #Bakhmut, #Avdiivka, #Mariinka, or #Vugledar, on the line that Ukrainians call “0”. Receiving the first hand experience of what hell on earth really is, would surely speed up the delivery of ATACMS, Lepards, Abrams, F-15, etc.
🐣 RT @tupayaskotina The reason why 🇷🇺 wants Bakhmut is the city’s name. Between 1924-2015 it was called Artemivsk, a commie name. Feb,14 🇷🇺 captured it but July,14 🇺🇦 recaptured it. As a grand decommunization gesture & FU to putin 🇺🇦 renamed it Bakhmut. Prighozin to gift it to Putler for more power
🐣 RT @tupayaskotina The reason why 🇷🇺 wants Bakhmut is the city’s name. Between 1924-2015 it was called Artemivsk, a commie name. Feb,14 🇷🇺 captured it but July,14 🇺🇦 recaptured it. As a grand decommunization gesture & FU to putin 🇺🇦 renamed it Bakhmut. Prighozin to gift it to Putler for more power
🐣 RT @LvivJournal Bakhmut. The remains of the ruzZian army after their attempted breakthrough #lviv #kherson #Bakhmut
💽 https://twitter.com/LvivJournal/status/1588947949727645696?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ benbvi3ws TRANSLATION : ⚠️If the Russian Federation succeeds in its plan to seize Bakhmut and Soledar, they will go on to Kramatorsk and Slavyansk‼️[links]
¤ https://twitter.com/benbvi3ws/status/1589075701000544256?s=20
🐣 RT @KSwaggest Kherson was always going to be a slog, all that open ground to take. Luckily Ukraine is making progress and Russias losses seem higher with 5000 dead in the last wk which is prob attributed to the mobiks. A whole Ru BTG got wiped out near Svatove Nov 2nd all mobiks from same town
🐣 RT @mhmck The Armed Forces of Ukraine have advanced to the village of Ploshchanka in Luhansk region and are 2 kilometres away from the Svatove-Kreminna highway in this sector of the battlefront. ¤ The Russian fascist invaders shelled Ukrainian positions near Ploshchanka today. 1/2
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1588953300841336833?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck As well as Ploshchanka, the rashists shelled Makiyivka and Nevs’ke in Luhansk region, Kyslivka and Tabayivka in Kharkiv region, and Yampolivka and Tors’ke in Donetsk region. ¤ –General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 18:00 on 5 November 2022 2/2
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1588954012908654593?s=20/photo/1
🐣 It’s well known that the GOP appeals to fear. Research has shown that conservatives have larger amygdalae, the “fear center” of the brain. How does this start? Possibly, it starts here ⬇️ (Wikipedia)
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1589120668280717313?s=20/photo/1
// Corporal punishment US and Europe
🐣 RT @ @apmassaro3 Expressing a willingness to negotiate with Russia prolongs the war. Russia views it as weakness
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Andrey Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Committee on Defense, claims that Russia “surprised” everyone with its invasion of Ukraine. He spews the usual nuclear threats, but host Vladimir Solovyov spoils them with concerns about Russia’s economy.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1588989746520666112?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews [still: Solovyov: “We can’t win”]
¤ https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1588989746520666112?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @WandererSmurf A really interesting clip Julia. ¤ Years of utterly corrupt practices & bad planning have left Russia unable to conduct a prolonged war. It is finally dawning on some of them that they are incapable of matching their opponents industrial & logistical armaments capacity to win.
🧵 RT @ulrichspeck The most dangerous wrong idea of our times? ¤ Ruling elites in Russia and China have convinced themselves that only America stands in the way of their dream: to run an empire and to rule the world.
📌 https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1588123148335329280?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ulrichspeck The truth is that nobody wants to be ruled by Russia or China. That’s why they have to resort to aggression. ¤ Which has set in motion plenty of counter-moves by countries in their respective neighborhoods.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ulrichspeck It is not America that stands in their way, it is the people in the countries they want to dominate. ¤ Blaming America is an easy excuse for Russia’s and China’s failure to make the countries they want to see in their “sphere” an attractive offer. […]
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 These fellows are a recruiting nightmare. The 18 year old young men will be glad to learn they are expendable. It is quite true that Russia has a severe healthcare disaster…. in particular with men. Alcohol abuse is chronic to Russian culture.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: a pundit argues that younger men should be trained and sent into combat, so there are no widows or children to pay when they get killed. Another argument is that Russians over 40 are too worn out by alcohol consumption to run, jump or be any good in combat.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1589035403105173504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/ OO30 UTC 6 NOV/ RU is planning the withdrawal to the S. bank of the Dnipro River. This long-delayed move will require retreating RU units to synchronize complex retrograde maneuvers. Any RU miscues in this intricate evolution will be quickly seized upon by UKR forces.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1589046216830382080?s=20&/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @RealMaxNeville
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MrKovalenko 1/ Russian forces in the #Kherson region are trying to fool #Ukrainians that they are retreating. In fact, they’re preparing strongholds/traps for urban fighting with artillery support from the eastern riverbank, said spox of the Ukr South Command Natalya Gumeniuk of Ukr TV.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrerHi Max. I’ve often said on @MriyaReport that UKR is highly unlikely to enter Kherson city to engage in a costly urban fight. The ‘money’ is to be made harrying retreating RU forces, and shelling them as they pile up against the river. Best to you !
🐣 RT @IgnatiusPost Must read on Ukraine by @washingtonpost team — U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiate with Russia
⋙ WaPo: WaPo: U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiation with Russia https://tinyurl.com/5csujxt7
// The encouragement is aimed not at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table but ensuring it maintains a moral high ground in the eyes of its backers.
⋙⋙ likely why @JakeSullivan46 was there; better idea: @POTUS should get an NSAdvisor who’s not afraid of his own shadow
#KhersonIsUkraine
#ZaporizhzhiaIsUkraine
#CrimeaIsUkraine
#DonetskIsUkraine
#LuhanskIsUkraine
#KharkivIsUkraine
#SlavaUkraïni
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Wow. Russian “mobilization” is turning into Russian slaughter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MrKovalenko A survived Russian mobilized soldier Alexei Agafonov told RU media Verstka how his entire battalion of more than 500 poorly equipped men died under Ukrainian artillery fire near Svatove, Luhansk region on Nov 1-2. They had only 3 shovels to dig trenches… [link Ru]
🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer Wow. One of Obama’s better endings, and THAT is saying something.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Strong finish
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1589030321424670724?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CAPAction Dr. Oz said abortion should be up to “local political leaders.” ¤ “Are you going to petition the mayor? Are you calling the sheriff? City council member, school board?” – @BarackObama
💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1589030918463066113?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acyn Obama: The presidency does not change who you are. You can tell by my successor. It didn’t change him.
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1589025496230133760?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acyn Obama: So that was their tactic in 2010. 2014, same playbook, tried to make you afraid of everything, you had a Ebola, ISIS, immigrants, and they were all coming to your neighborhood. It turned out that there was no ISIS fighters pouring across the border…
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1589024587102261249?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar Obama in Philadelphia on Republicans: “This is one of the only major parties worldwide that actively tries to discourage citizens from voting.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1589023406212644865?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Obama on GOP scare tactics: “10 years later, not a single person has faced a death panel from Obamacare. On the other hand, 35 million people now have health care coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1589024076634492929?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @amanpour Putin “has made it very clear that he sees this war [in Ukraine] as a war against democracy,” says historian @anneapplebaum – and other autocrats are on his side. “That’s why it’s so important that the democracies continue to fight back.”
💽 https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1588603125073575939?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @JayinKyiv So, at minimum 15,000,000 Russians have fled the country since February. ¤ That’s over 10% of the country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @christogrozev Interesting stats from Russia’s FSB; for once they might be believable: nearly 15 m (!) Russians left the country since the war began; this is more than 5 times more than same period last year. Primary (initial) destinations: Turkey, Georgia, Finland, Abkhazia and Kazakhstan.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @christogrozev nearly 10 m left in Q3, double the number who left in Q2. The Q3 2021 number was 1.3 m
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder After dropping the previous propaganda about NATO and Nazis, Moscow now maintains that its war in Ukraine is justified by the presence of Satan.
⋙ Pravda[UA] (10/25): Russia’s Security Council claims there are “hundreds of sects” in Ukraine and demands “desatanisation” https://tinyurl.com/3h59342j
TheHill, Ariel Cohen and Vladislav Inozemtsev: How to expel Russia from the UN https://tinyurl.com/2p8dandu
// Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow, Non-Resident, at the Atlantic Council and Director, Energy, Growth, and Security Program, International Tax and Investment Center. Vladislav Inozemtsev, special adviser to the Middle East Media Research Institute’s (MEMRI) Russian Media Studies Project, is founder of Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies and a member of the Russian International Affairs Council
🧵 RT @LeeHudson_ Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante says Ukraine has helped him understand what really matters. “What really matters is production.” ¤ “We as a country did our best to not do production,” LaPlante said. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/LeeHudson_/status/1588614102586646528?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @LeeHudson_ Why can’t we produce Stingers faster? The line was shutdown in 2008. ¤ “We all did that,” LaPlante says meaning DoD and Capitol Hill. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @LeeHudson_ “American equipment is the best in the world for this broken acquisition system, LaPlante says. ¤ “The tech bros aren’t helping us too much [in Ukraine],” LaPlante says
⋙ 🐣 RT @LeeHudson_ “The sausage making is still going on” but we need to do multiyear procurements for munitions, LaPlante says.
🐣 RT @mattyglesias About a third of Americans say it would be “very bad” to have a strong leader who doesn’t bother with elections. ¤ Slightly more people — including *most* with no post-secondary education — think this would be good.
◕ https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1588881444231086081?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa In 6 months, @u24_gov_ua united hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world in helping 🇺🇦. We are grateful to everyone for supporting our values, for believing in 🇺🇦 and our victory. We feel that the world is supporting 🇺🇦, and this gives us strength in our struggle.
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1588865575282884608?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Allan_Straarup President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shown himself to be a hero and a beacon of light in a time of darkness ¤ He has united the heroic Ukrainian people in their fight against the vicious and unprovoked Russian aggression
#SlavaUkraini
#StandWithUkraine
#UkraineUnderAttack
⭕ 4 Nov 2022
WaPo, Colbert King: Democrats learn the hard way: Internecine warfare is the deadliest https://tinyurl.com/mr34c6dj “[W]hat’s needed … is an agenda and leadership that unify and energize the Democratic spectrum, and which attract an American majority”
// We don’t know what will happen Tuesday. But we know how the Democrats got here.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Russia’s Ecocide in #Ukraine. The Oskil river reservoir is one huge ecosystem. Holding back the rivers water for around 85km, it’s home to countless wildlife, plants, trees etc. & it’s sandy beaches & water, is a huge tourist boom to the area. And Russia killed it.
🖼 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1589173176625295360?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenceU The russian occupiers staged a man-made natural disaster in the Kharkiv region. ¤ While retreating, they blew up the floodgates of the dam of the Oskil reservoir. The reservoir, which before the invasion was 85 km long and up to 4 km wide, is now completely shallow.
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1588649775393820672?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ @bopanc China has warned Russia against threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, in a rare departure from its usual tacit support for Moscow. Via @WSJ
⋙ WSJ: China Rebukes Russia’s Nuclear Threats in Ukraine for First Time https://tinyurl.com/2p96jdjh
// Chinese leader Xi Jinping departed from his support for Moscow during talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
🐣 RT @EndGameWW3 US nuclear forces chief says Ukraine ‘just the warmup’ for larger crisis ¤ “The big one is coming, and it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested a long time,” he said.
YahooNews: US nuclear forces chief says Ukraine ‘just the warmup’ for larger crisis https://tinyurl.com/49wfsahz
// The senior naval officer in charge of America’s nuclear triad says the current worldwide tensions sparked by Russia’s war against Ukraine could be the opening act for a larger conflict that the US must prepare for.
// US Strategic Command commander Admiral Charles Richard
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 I’ve been working for a Russia without Putin since 2001. My thoughts in this WSJ symposium on what may come after him, now that Putin’s end is in sharper focus than ever. The world, not just Russia, must be ready to act.
⋙⋙ WSJ, (Various): After Putin https://tinyurl.com/26yk2vbf
// Russia’s president could lose power in any number of ways. What will the end of his rule mean for his own country, Ukraine and the world?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 “Russia after Mr. Putin is as difficult to picture as he intended. Every dictator must appear irreplaceable, to be the lesser evil, the devil we know. But Mr. Putin’s end will come, as much a surprise to him as to anyone else. Let us learn from the past and be ready.”
🐣 RT @@AndriyYermak Had a meeting with the NSA to the US President @JakeSullivan46. Discussed topical issues of cooperation between 🇺🇦 and 🇺🇸 and continued aid for 🇺🇦 in its struggle for freedom and independence. @JakeSullivan46 visit is an extremely important signal of 🇺🇸 support for 🇺🇦.
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🐣 RT @marceelias We can’t let election vigilantes win, and we can’t ignore what they’re trying to do to our democracy. The entire GOP leadership is complicit in the vigilantism we are seeing around the country.
💽 https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1588648470465986560?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @OPolianichev The Soviet visual propaganda widely reproduced this image. Posters touting the myth of the friendship of nations usually depicted Ukrainians as dark-haired and brown-eyed, in contrast to blue-eyed and blonde Russians. 13/
🖼 https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1588223855646380032?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS /2045 UTC 4 NOV/ RU forces have attacked across the P-66 HWY and now occupy a salient from Novovodiane in the east to the vicinity of Makiivka in the west. The RU salient is dominated by high ground to the west, offers limited cover, and is smothered by UKR artillery.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1588630480676872192?s=20/photo/1
// “UKR reported that RU occupiers have suftered more than 840 troops killed in action, many by UKR artillerv.”
🐣 RT @duty2warn GOP congressman Dan Crenshaw says pro-Trump lawmakers privately admit they know accusations of a stolen 2020 presidential election aren’t true and it is a continuing political stunt, a lie to rile people up. ¤ “It’s a huge manipulation,” he added.
🐣 RT @NOELreports Today the US President’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan arrived in Kyiv. He met with high-ranking Ukrainian officials and discussed a number of important issues. The adviser to the President of the United States got acquainted with the operational situation at the front.
🐣 RT @ JoyceWhiteVance In our country, announcing you’re a candidate for the presidency is not & can never be a defense strategy in a criminal investigation.
🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer I can’t stop laughing. Imagine spending 44 billion dollars just to get fact checked by the thing you bought 🤣🤣🤣
⋙ 🐣 RT @elonmusk Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the Tweetctivists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
⋙⋙ © Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Reporting shows advertisers suspending or canceling ad buys over concerns with Twitter platform direction, especially as related to content moderation.
[Links to WSJ, MSN, DailyMail]
🐣 RT @ShannonRSingh Yesterday was my last day at Twitter: the entire Human Rights team has been cut from the company. ¤ I am enormously proud of the work we did to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, to protect those at-risk in global conflicts & crises including Ethiopia,
🐣 RT @ShannonRSingh Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and to defend the needs of those particularly at risk of human rights abuse by virtue of their social media presence, such as journalists & human rights defenders.,
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShannonRSingh I will forever be grateful for the privilege of getting to work with @cynthiamw @heysarah & @EstherOhrt on the Human Rights team, along with so many other brilliant, mission-driven individuals across the company. […]
⋙⋙ 🐣 thank you for your efforts: I’ve seen so much improvement in Twitter over the years ~ it became a safe and open place for the free exchange of thoughtful views, a shining star among social media platforms ¤ I hope you and your colleagues find happiness and success
🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump can’t face losing. Yet he DID lose the House, Presidency AND Senate. His banks cut ties. His accountants quit. His brand is worthless. Company, CFO indicted. Thrown off Twitter, FB. His platform defaulting. Engineered a coup. Stole top secret documents. Wait, there’s more-
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Six bankruptcies. Charity shut down. University deemed bogus. Failed in casino business, as the House! Booed at World Series. Laughed at in the UN. Lost 63 post-election lawsuits. Even lost FAKE audits! Now losing his mind. Soon his freedom. ¤ If Trump’s NOT a loser, then WHO IS?
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa I am thankful to @POTUS and the people of for another $400 million military assistance package. For armored vehicles that will help us liberate Ukrainian land. We appreciate this continued support!
DeptDefense: $400 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/5n6hn3ks
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Tendar US approve another military package for Ukraine worth 400 million USD. It includes:
– 250 units of M1117 [armored security vehicles]
– 1100 units of Phoenix Ghost drones
– MIM-23 Hawk air defense systems
– 40 armored boats
– 45 T-72 MBTs [main battle tanks]
#Ukraine
// defense budget
DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Republicans Are Bad for the Economy. Here’s Why https://tinyurl.com/2679km9a Polls say voters trust the GOP more than Democrats on economic issues. That’s a huge mistake.
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1588589456051040257?s=20/photo/1 -2
// 1. Deficit down every year under Biden, 2. Deficit by president
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Good news: #G7 countries have established a “coordination mechanism” to help #Ukraine “repair, restore & defend its critical energy & water infrastructure,” the group’s foreign ministers said in a joint statement on Friday following meetings in Münster.
⋙ CNN: G7 establishes “coordination mechanism” to help Ukraine restore energy and water infrastructure https://tinyurl.com/3648dpwh
⭕ 3 Nov 2022
WaPo: Judge rules in favor of assigning monitor to oversee Trump Organization https://tinyurl.com/yckxpbrh “Under Engoron’s ruling, the company and the Trump family are barred from transferring or selling assets without giving two weeks’ notice to the court”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Actually, the judge’s ruling makes the business environment in NY safer and more secure for businesses, by rooting out wrongdoers who benefit from fraudulent behavior and skew the markets for insurance, among other things. New York enacted Blue Sky laws to protect its citizens.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1588313295051784193?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
A puppet judge of the New York Attorney General and other sworn enemies of President Trump and the Republican Party has just issued a ruling never before seen anywhere in America. It is Communism come to our shores.
Businesses will be fleeing New York, which they already are, for other states and other countries. Today’s ridiculous ruling by a politically- motivated, hand-picked judge makes it even more vital for courts in both New York and Florida to do the right thing and stop this
inquisition. We have to fight back against radical tyranny and save our Country!
🐣 RT @duty2warn “Liz Cheney and I are not courageous. … We’re just surrounded by cowards.” – Adam Kinzinger
🧵 RT @ OPolianichev The newly forged myth of Ukrainians as blonde and blue-eyed betrays a profound misconception of what Ukraine is, how Ukrainians view themselves, and how they historically have been viewed in the Tsarist and Soviet Empires. A debunking the fundamentally wrong idea. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1588223801229287425?s=20/photo/1
AP: How Russian soldiers ran a ‘cleansing’ operation in Bucha https://tinyurl.com/3pnjeyzf “This was organized brutality that would be repeated at scale in Russian-occupied territories across Ukraine — a strategy to neutralize resistance and terrorize locals into submission”
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] MFA: In the current complicated and turbulent situation, caused by irresponsible and impudent actions aimed at undermining #Russia’s national security, the most immediate task is to avoid any military clash of #nuclear powers. ¤ Read full statement:
⋙ MID[.]ru: Statement of the Russian Federation on preventing nuclear war https://tinyurl.com/2p9f47au Allows use “exclusively in response to an aggression involving the use of weapons of mass destruction or … when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy”
In implementing its policy on nuclear deterrence Russia is strictly and consistently guided by the tenet that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Russian doctrinal approaches in this sphere are defined with utmost accuracy, pursue solely defensive goals and do not admit of expansive interpretation. These approaches allow for Russia to hypothetically resort to nuclear weapons exclusively in response to an aggression involving the use of weapons of mass destruction or an aggression with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.
⋙ 🐣 This is released at the same time as Russia claims to see such a threat to its existence: UkrainskaPravda: Russia’s Security Council claims “Anglo-Saxons are destroying the Russian ethnos” in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2mr2fyaw
⇈ ⇊
UkrainskaPravda: Russia’s Security Council claims “Anglo-Saxons are destroying the Russian ethnos” in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2mr2fyaw
⋙ 🐣 It’s not just “Anglo Saxons” which doesn’t even describe the UK. It’s all the countries of NATO! ¤ Oh, and there are many people living in “Russia” who are not ethnic Russians.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1588260824971296768?s=20/photo/1
// ethnic groups (languages) of Europe
⋙⋙ 🐣 Ethnic groups of Russia
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1588261913754206208?s=20/photo/1
scdc🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava “The United States has no doubts that the Ukrainian forces have enough forces and means to restore control over the territories on the right bank of the Dnipro River, directly in the city of Kherson”, – said the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
🐣 Although there are polls indicating an increasing number of GOP don’t want to ⬆️ $$ for Ukraine compared to several month¤ ago, bear in mind 🇺🇸 support has increased a LOT since then. ¤ Still the impact of Fox etc and politicization of the war by GOP remains greatly concerning
🧵 RT @Shashj* Western official, with an update on the war on November 3rd. Quite a few useful insights on Russia’s withdrawal of command elements from Kherson right bank, possibility of “operational level” developments in Svatove in east, and playing down of nuclear risk & Belarus front.
// *Defence Editor at @TheEconomist
📌 https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1588169627120590849?s=20
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/5n877v8s
Western official: “We’re seeing a force gradually growing with the arrival of mobilised reservists—but a low quality one likely little suited to complex offensive operations. Above all, the Russians are critically short of munitions.”
Western official on Russian munitions: “somewhere between what they had at start of conflict and what they need to keep for [a] potential NATO conflict … is trade space. And…they have eaten dangerously into that, to a point where they cannot use them casually”
Western official: “they have lots of things in storage. The problem with that is … it has to be fit for purpose. Many of those munitions coming out of storage wouldn’t be passed for use in a Western military environment; they would fail the standards tests.”
Western official expresses confidence that Russian planning to withdraw from Kherson is “well advanced. A large portion of the civilian population has now moved east and Russia has highly likely prioritised a temporary bolstering of force in the area to cover the retreat.”
Western official: “it’s likely that most echelons of command have now withdrawn across the river, leaving demoralised and leaderless men to face Ukrainian assaults.” Calls it “terrible leadership”. Adds that Russian defensive lines on Dnieper right bank being built up.
Western official: “the [Kherson] retreat is going to be presented as an evacuation. So it won’t be presented as a military retreat in that sense. When it does go ahead, we expect another uptick in pointed domestic criticism of Russia’s national leadership.”
Western official: “Rates of losses of sudden [certain?] types of Russian helicopters remain extremely high. They are using an increasingly desperate collection of ageing long range munitions to strike targets at depth…at least some reservists are arriving in a theatre without weapons.”
Western official on Luhansk front. In Donbas, “we’ve seen a reduction in fighting but we haven’t seen a cessation in fighting”. Singles out importance of Svatove: “The developments in Svatove sector have the potential to soon assume operational level of significance.”
🌎 https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1588169645038649346?s=20/photo/1Western official on Russia’s long-standing attack in the Bakhmut direction. Says Russians pushed back a week ago; “it’s in statelmate at the moment…it’s kind of totemic for them they don’t want to give up. And in particular I think for Wagner group, they feel it’s important.”
Official: “support for the war…remains fairly consistent in the Russian leadership group & debate is over the means…we do not see at this stage that debates within the top of the Russian system over the conduct of the war, reflect any serious threats to Putin’s position”
Western official: “in terms of nuclear activity, I’ve seen nothing which gives me cause for concern. In fact, [Russian] MFA has made another statement about the conditions under which nuclear weapons would be used, which … downplay the risks of them being used”
A different Western official: “what we see in their [Russian] public statements is apparently an attempt to de-escalate the nuclear rhetoric which they have previously generated. And that is something which we thoroughly support”. Ref. to this statement:
⋙ 🧵 https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1588169645038649346?s=20Western official on risk of attack by/from Belarus: “I’m not currently worried about…Belarus. The Russian forces which are deployed in Belarus appear to be deployed in the centre of the country away from the borders and, in our judgement, are there to fix Ukrainian forces”
Western official on morale: “we see pockets of desperate morale issues, both command level and from the troops themselves. What is difficult to say, as you piece it all together is, is how how endemic that is to the whole Russian community.” Adds: no sign of mutiny
🧵 RT @mhmck The rashists shelled Ukrainian defenders at Ploshchanka in Luhansk region. This shows the Armed Forces of Ukraine have advanced to within 2 km of the Svatove-Kreminna highway. ¤ I cannot place Суходіл (Sukhodil) in Luhansk region which the GS AFU report said was shelled.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1588043038156550144?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Probably tied to the large explosions late this morning, Melitopol residents are saying that about 300 killed at Russian headquarters today. ¤ Ambulances and cargo 200 trucks have been working there for a few hours. ¤ They say 3 floors of building are destroyed.
🐣 RT @POTUS Let’s be clear about what “changes” Republicans in Congress want to make to Medicare and Social Security. ¤ They want to raise the retirement age, move towards privatization, and put these programs on the chopping block every five years.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NUCLEAR ROULETTE: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant is again disconnected from the national power grid. This dangerous condition requires that the plant’s diesel-powered emergency generators function 24/7 to provide necessary electricity to the plant’s reactor control systems.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1588167516861435905?s=20/photo/1 v
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian source on situation in Kherson “Troops are withdrawn from the right bank of the Dnieper, several formations remain, the bulk are already on the left”
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian source “A zone has been created on the left bank 15 km from the Dnieper, from which people are forcibly evacuated”
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 I am still skeptical as of now. ¤ I will confirm this or deny it in the coming days.
🐣 RT @ @Gerashchenko_en Russian army is the angelic warriors, their war is against the Satanic West, this war is Holy, it is a jihad – Russian TV. ¤ Meanwhile, they kill thousands of people, leaving piles of corpses behind, like in Bucha, Mariupol, Izium. They are going to freeze millions of civilians.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1588118711281541122?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON AXIS /1220 UTC 3 NOV/ Local sources are reporting that RU occupation authorities are now forcing removal of UKR citizens from left (south) bank locations. RU looting of small businesses and solar power units continues. UKR precision strikes hit S-300 battery in stadium.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1588146085616394240?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ukraine_world “During the full-scale aggression, defenders of Ukraine destroyed twice as many russian aircraft than the Soviet Union lost during the 10-year war in Afghanistan – 278 russian aircraft in Ukraine against 118 Soviet aircraft in Afghanistan,” CinC AF of 🇺🇦 Valery Zaluzhnyi reported
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Melitopil media and city mayor report night strikes: «at about 05:50, along Dmitry Dontsov Street, 15/7, three powerful explosions. The top three floors of the premises where the office of the leadership of Russian FSB was located were destroyed.»
⭕ 2 Nov 2022
WaPo, Max Boot: Russia is fighting by the book. The problem is, it’s the wrong book. https://tinyurl.com/yc628eau “Russia is hobbled in fighting this conflict because its generals did not prepare for a protracted war of attrition”
WaPo: Biden warns GOP could set nation on ‘path to chaos’ as democratic system faces strain https://tinyurl.com/aab93nkj
// The president delivered his warning in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol and just days after Paul Pelosi, husband of the speaker, was attacked
NYT Mag, Jim Rautenberg: The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yh54ncdu “The second draft of history” #longread #highlyrec
// 🔊 11/2/2022; Russia’s meddling in Trump-era politics was more directly connected to the current war than previously understood
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYT Untold Hx Ukr 11/2/2022
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Poll: Ukraine’s friendliest countries are Poland, UK, and US; Russia, Belarus, and Hungary perceived as hostile ¤ Infographic: https://tinyurl.com/2p8wcv7a
// Friendly: Poland 98%, UK 94% (70% definitely), US 95% (65% definitely), France 74%, Germany 69%, Turkey 62%, China 18% (2% def hostile), Hungary 33% (13% def hostile), Belarus 7%, Russia 2%
📊 https://zzxzz/EuromaidanPress/status/1587958485026840576?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @nytimes President Biden delivered remarks Wednesday on democracy, political violence and the midterm elections in a televised address. The following is a transcript of his remarks, as recorded by The New York Times.
≣ NYT: Full Transcript of President Biden’s Speech on Democracy https://tinyurl.com/thu78c3p Democracy is on the ballot
// The president warned of escalating threats of political violence after the assault of the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mr. Biden asked Americans to vote in the midterms for representatives who would accept the results.
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln As the country experiences wave after wave of political violence, and with our democratic institutions under threat, @POTUS delivered an urgent message: Our democracy is under threat and must be defended. ¤ Please watch, share, and most importantly, vote on November 8th.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1587998647417020417?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Putin has turned the Russians into a pathetic joke of cruelty. Arguably, he has caused even worse damage to the Russian nation than Stalin. If not as yet, soon he will have done so. Are only Ukrainians standing up for civilization?
🐣 RT @GoncharenkoUa [Ukr MP] The Zaporizhzhia NPP is completely de-energized due to 🇷🇺 shelling! ¤ The last two high-voltage communication lines of the Zaporizhzhya NPP with the 🇺🇦 power system were damaged. At 11:04 p.m., the station went into full blackout mode. All 20 diesel generators were switched on
🐣 RT @ukraine_map The Kherson Bridge was struck by Ukraine overnight🇺🇦
Nova Kakhovka HPP fires occurred near the small bridge crossing 200m from the dam, not at the main building of the power plant
Explosions may have been caused by Ukraine striking the small bridge crossing Dnipro with HIMARS
🧵 RT @Ukraine_map Nova Kakhovka HPP (Nov 2) Major Fires and Explosions Geolocation ¤ Big Fires🔥 at Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant likely occurred (in yellow) near or on the small bridge 200m from the Dam
-Main HPP building in Green
-Fire Photo was taken at the top of the building in Pink
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1587988170368589834?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Democracy matters and must be fought for. A bittersweet moment in American and world history. Good that Biden is saying it, tragic that it needs to be said, shameful that so many Americans won’t care.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden Democracy is more than a form of government. It’s a way of being. A way of seeing the world. ¤ A way that defines who we are, what we believe, and why we do what we do. ¤ Democracy is simply that fundamental.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Kasparov63 I founded @Renew_Democracy in NYC in 2017 when it was clear my new home of the USA was starting down a road similar to the one we had already traveled in Russia. But instead of democracy as weak and alien, here it was taken for granted, abused, even mocked.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON CITY/2 NOV/ UKR Partisans & deeply inserted SOF identified an S-300 SAM complex at the Kherson football stadium. This battery had been modified to bombard civilian areas of Mykolaiv. Provided with targeting data UKR precision strike neutralized the S-300 and its crew.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1587957956431302656?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Another account of chaos among Russia’s mobilised men near Svatove in Luhansk oblast has been published by independent Russian channel TV Rain. A group of mobiks was abandoned by their commander as soon as fighting started and they were accused of desertion when they fled. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1587921460617543680?s=20
🐣 RT @mmpadellan Murder rates are WAY higher in red states than blue states, but sure tell us how you’re going to fix crime.
📋 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1587877079894343680?s=20/photo/1
// 10 states with top murder rates: 9 are GOP
🐣 RT @nytimes President Biden will give a speech on Wednesday about protecting democracy and the threats election deniers pose to voting. It’ll be one of several recent speeches he has made on the issue, and comes at a time of heightened alarm about political violence.
⋙ NYT: Biden to Give Speech Wednesday Night About Threats to Democracy https://tinyurl.com/2f84wy64
// President Biden will talk about democracy and the threats election deniers pose to the voting process, one of several recent speeches about extreme far-right ideology.
🐣 RT @NikkiMcR when they tell me to pony up the $8 cash or lose the check
// “You don’t even know my real name. I’m the fucking lizard king” (from The Office, James Spader as Robert California); tag: #TheBlacklist
🐣 RT @NikkiMcR when they tell me to pony up the $8 cash or lose the check
// “You don’t even know my real name. I’m the fucking lizard king” (from The Office, James Spader as Robert California); tag: #TheBlacklist
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Leading historian, friend of 🇺🇦 @TimothyDSnyder became the ambassador of the fundraising platform @U24_gov_ua & started raising for The Shahed Catcher. ¤ Thank you for the fact that now more people will know not only about the reasons of our struggle, but also how they can help us.
StateDept, Sec of State Anthony Blinken (May): The Administration’s Approach to the People’s Republic of China https://tinyurl.com/yckexc5z
// 5/26/2022; Speech at George Washington University
That’s why we’ve put diplomacy back at the center of American foreign policy, to help us realize the future that Americans and people around the world seek – one where technology is used to lift people up, not suppress them; where trade and commerce support workers, raise incomes, create opportunity; where universal human rights are respected; countries are secure from coercion and aggression, and people, ideas, goods, and capital move freely; and where nations can both forge their own paths and work together effectively in common cause.
To build that future, we must defend and reform “The rules-based international order – the system of laws, agreements, principles, and institutions that the world came together to build after two world wars to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people. ¤ Its founding documents include the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined concepts like self-determination, sovereignty, the peaceful settlement of disputes.” These are not Western constructs. They are reflections of the world’s shared aspirations.,
💙 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov is angry and despondent because Russia is floundering in Ukraine. He lies that NATO started the war against Russia on Feb 17 and airs a multitude of grievances against Joe Biden, Volodymyr Zelensky, Jamie Raskin, Oleg Tinkov, Germany et al.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1587649027205636096?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ukraine_map Several dozen Ukrainian Troops are finishing training in Norway 🇳🇴 on NASAMS Air Defense Systems ¤ The training will end soon and two NASAMS systems will be delivered to Ukraine 🇺🇦 “in the coming days” and will start operating in Early November- US Officials say (NYT)
⋙ 🐣 Six more NASAMS have been ordered for Ukraine. This is the same missile defense system that protects the area around the White House and the Capitol in Washington D.C.
◕ [separate:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1587775412494471169?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @pravda_eng Occupiers build unknown construction near spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant https://tinyurl.com/3mb84szx
🐣 RT @FT Russia agrees to rejoin Ukraine grain export deal
⋙ FinancialTimes: Russia agrees to rejoin Ukraine grain export deal https://tinyurl.com/mr4ak2fd
// Erdoğan says Moscow is returning to agreement intended to forestall food crisis
🐣 RT @NOELreports The Ministry of Defense of Türkiye stated that, despite the threat of Russia, dry cargo under the Turkish flag will continue to export agricultural products from Ukraine through the grain corridor.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nothyphenated 🇹🇷 navy is at least 3-4 times stronger than 🇷🇺 Black Sea fleet (what remains of it) 🇷🇺 cannot afford to attack as a) they’ll be defeated in short time b) 🇹🇷 is one of the few EU countries doing business with 🇷🇺
⋙ 🐣 RT @GeorgeBarwood If Russia attacks a grain ship, they might well find themselves losing all access to the Black Sea, which Turkey controls ( as well as their navy ). Not going to happen, well played Turkey.
💽 MSNBC, EleventhHour: Americans believe crime is way, way up. The stats don’t match that https://tinyurl.com/49pzenvs //➔ Property Crime Rate (top) and Violent Crime Rate (bottom) 1990-2021 (below); Plus 8 of the states with the highest crime rates are Red States
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1587756490944905217?s=20/photo/1
// The GOP is hoping that telling Americans there’s a bad vibe is enough to win the midterms.
🐣 RT @NOELreports The Ministry of Defense of Türkiye stated that, despite the threat of Russia, dry cargo under the Turkish flag will continue to export agricultural products from Ukraine through the grain corridor.
NYT: Russian Military Leaders Discussed Use of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Officials Say https://tinyurl.com/yc7khy6v “President Vladimir V. Putin was not a part of the conversations, which were held against the backdrop of Russia’s intensifying nuclear rhetoric and battlefield setbacks”
// The conversations alarmed the Biden administration because they showed how frustrated Moscow had become over its battlefield setbacks in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Meanwhile, Russian TV says they will bomb nuclear power plants in the near future
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1587736522131853317?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @Tendar I believe that Russians have selected this orange area as their long-term defense line, evicting civilians from their homes and use them for Russian occupational troops. That accomplish several aims. (Thread) #Ukraine #Kherson
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1587726245160271873?s=20/photo/1
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/yckjahde
1.) The defense line is more tenable then the current one. All positions West of the Dnipro River are under constant pressure and Russia cannot sustain the supply lines over the rivers in that sector. Having the defense line on the Eastern bank simplifies the situation.
2.) Besides the obvious that the river poses a natural barrier, when blowing up the dam at Nova Kakhovka the already big obstacle becomes an even more daunting obstacle. Russian troops could focus the defense along a smaller front line, making use of their weak but many troops.
3.) Using house[s] of evicted/deported people could partially solve their bad situation in terms of outdoor gear. Instead of faulty tents, barns or even pigsties, Russian troops have a solid roof, while distributing them makes it harder for Ukrainian artillery.
4.) As governor Vitaly Kim pointed out, putting troops from all over Russia in this area are supposed to be an incentive in terms of “fighting for your home”. The plan is move those invaders there, permanently, which delivers them better living conditions.
5.) Overall the strategy follows the same pattern of all colonial forces: Removing the inhabitants by force or kill them. Replace the void with invaders and make them hold the frontline. All of that aspects are criteria of genocide. In Luhansk and Donetsk already happening.
6.) Last but not least, the whole Russian strategy is to exhaust Ukraine and Western backers. Putin hopes that if he can hold the line long enough that appeasers in the West might take hold of the situation, looking for “peace”.
7.) That been said, Putin just repeats the mistake which he has been doing since February 24. Ukrainian forces will continue the fight until every inch of Ukraine is liberated. Kherson is only a milestone and Zaporizhzhia Oblast is already in the crosshairs. Russia as a state…
… is already severely decimated and desperately needs foreign support and an end of the sanctions. A lot of machinery in Russia is already failing to work thanks to lacking supplies and support and neither China nor India nor anyone else are going to replace that void.
The defense line in my map does not include the flooded areas. As matter of speaking, that flooded area will inherently be a defense line. Here are the projected areas which will be compromised
If Russians blow up the Nova Kakhovka dam then they would flood the occupied cities in the South. Plus, the canal bringing water to Crimea would dry up. #Kherson #NovaKakhovka #Crimea #Ukraine
💽 🌎 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1583201265873432576?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 1 Nov 2022
🐣 RT @letheisslow Russia is asking for additional privileges to return to the grain deal. The privileges Russia wants are guarantees of protection for the Russian warships. Russia uses those warships to attack Ukraine with missiles.
🧵 RT @atrupar Obama is about to deliver a campaign speech in Las Vegas. I’ll be live-clipping it using @SnapStream — the gold standard video service. If your company or organization can use help harnessing the power of moments, click the link below to learn more
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1587639551962611713?s=20
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom “This year, voters would do well to consider not only their immediate discontent,” writes @davidfrum, “but also how their vote will reverberate through the years”
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: Yes, Elections Have Consequences https://tinyurl.com/3mv8ph6j
// And today’s voters hold America’s entire future in their hands.
VOA: Ukraine’s 58th Brigade in the Heart of the Bakhmut Mire https://tinyurl.com/yck6kswn “Bakhmut, in the Donbas, has been the scene of active fighting for the past four months. … [I]t is said to be one of the longest and most lethal battlefields for both sides”
🐣 RT @ @ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/2300 UTC 1 NOV/ RU has launched several frontal attacks along the line of contact, suffering heavy losses with no advance. Indirect fire from RU tanks, mortars, artillery hit Bakhmutske and Bakhmut. UKR UAV controlled artillery directs precision strikes on RU positions.
🌎 https://twitter.com/59vxmwnGcjgvmX0/status/1587629808401362944?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Recently, I have written how Russia’s strategy for Ukraine is evolving (again), as well as the potential impacts of winter. Looking beyond the next few months, what might Russia’s options be for 2023, and what are the vulnerabilities Ukraine can attack? 1/24
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1587601438053920768?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck The Russian fascist invaders announced the forced displacement of Ukrainians from Kakhovka district in Kherson region from November 6. ¤ This is a war crime.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1587544255718891520?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @craigsfire That’s basically what Russia has done forever- resettlement, and then they claim “hey, everyone here is Russian”.
🧵 RT @ bayraktar_1love Russian invaders announced that they would carry out the forced deportation/“evacuation” of the residents of the Kherson region from the Kakhovskyi district.(map of Kakhovkskyi district) /1#Ukraine #Kherson
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1587518404000358400?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Prosecutors Look at Florida Election Protest as a Model for Jan. 6 https://tinyurl.com/2p9emdb8
// The Justice Department is examining ties among the far-right Proud Boys, Roger Stone and others over their roles in 2018 “Stop the Steal” demonstrations.
🐣 RT @atrupar “Hot damn, boy” — Biden in Florida reads holds up Rick Scott’s GOP plan and reads the part that could gut Social Security and Medicare
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1587535594401439744?s=20
🐣 RT @ukraine_world Dmitriy Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council issues new threats, saying that if Ukraine liberates all the occupied territories, it is reason for to use nuclear weapons.
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv ¤ Putin offers to not fire on international grain transport ships if Ukraine promises not to harm Russian battleships that are raining missles all over Ukraine. […]
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IMPORTANT AIR DEFENSE UPGRADE: The NASAMS (National/Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System) is a distributed & networked medium-to-long range surface-to-air missile defense complex. 8 were promised to UKR, 2 have been delivered. They’re needed to help defend UKR cities.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1587441718764380161?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava
• video | It is reported that this is the outskirts of Bakhmut, which is being stormed by 🇷🇺 rushists using “phosphorus”.
• audio | The conversation of a 🇷🇺 Russian chmobyk, in which he talks about the use of prohibited “phosphorus” ammunition against 🇺🇦 Ukrainians
💽 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1587491363767177222?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer MEN IN BOXES: In Kherson, RU is importing pre-fab cement structures to reinforce defensive positions. These ‘pill boxes’ are a throwback to war in a previous century. UKR’s Anti-Tank Guided Missiles and precision strike artillery will turn these cubes into tombs for RU soldiers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tendar Russia is setting up concrete cubicles along the front. ¤ Imagine being holed up in those with a dozen other conscripts. This idea reminds of those concrete pillboxes in Albania, even though those were rounded. But it was equally stupid. #Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1587439646476230657?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @batess ‘Trolling helps show the king has no clothes’: how Ukraine’s army conquered the Twitters. cc @Kama_Kamilia @Official_NAFO @markmetz
⋙ FT: ‘Trolling helps show the king has no clothes’: how Ukraine’s army conquered Twitter https://tinyurl.com/3fazccdv
// The creative team behind the military’s accounts has weaponised humour to win global support
WaPo, Glenn Kessler: The truth about election fraud: It’s rare https://tinyurl.com/2p89uaps
The decentralized system of American elections — where elections are run by more than 8,000 local governments and almost 90 percent of Americans vote on paper ballots, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — make it impossible to steal a nationwide election through voter fraud.
It is true that election results can be manipulated. Politicians, for instance, might draw election district boundaries to make it all but certain that one political party will win. Trump allies sought to undermine the 2020 results with schemes involving fake electors, an effort to block Congress from affirming the outcome. ¤ But that’s different from ballot stuffing, illegal voting and other types of behavior that would directly affect the outcome at the ballot box and have become the obsession of many election deniers. …
The conservative Heritage Foundation maintains a database, dating back to 1979, that it says includes a “sampling” of election-fraud cases brought by prosecutors. “The database is up to 1,384 proven cases and we are following dozens of other prosecutions that are ongoing,” says Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage senior fellow. That’s an average of 32 examples per year that the group has documented.
Since losing the election, Trump has held rallies across the country where he devotes a long section of his speech to repeating debunked claims about the election. Trump’s technique has been to overwhelm his listeners with details — usually irrelevant details — to leave an impression of an election system that is highly suspicious and fraudulent.
But Trump ignores that at least 86 judges, including Trump appointees, rejected at least one post-election lawsuit filed by Trump or his supporters and that they consistently found there was no substantive evidence to support claims of fraud and irregularities. “Calling an election unfair does not make it so,” wrote Trump federal appeals court nominee Stephanos Bibas in one opinion. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Then audit after audit pushed by Trump’s supporters in many battleground states again have failed to show that fraudulent votes were cast. ¤ In Arizona, for instance, a Republican-commissioned review of nearly 2.1 million ballots in Arizona’s largest county actually added to the margin of Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Biden gained 99 votes while Trump lost 261 votes. “Truth is truth and numbers are numbers,” said Karen Fann, the Republican Senate president who commissioned the vote review.
Beyond ground-level claims about dead voters and absentee ballot fraud, Trump and his allies have also sought to bolster their case by citing statistical anomalies that they say show the election was stolen. For instance, they have pointed to suspiciously high turnout in Democratic strongholds, and the failure of Biden to win “bellwether counties” — counties that supposedly vote in alignment with the final result.
In a report for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences, a trio of political scientists in 2021 debunked every one of these statistical claims.
“The common logic behind these claims is that, if the election were fairly conducted, some feature of the observed 2020 election result would be unlikely or impossible. In each case, we find that the purportedly anomalous fact is either not a fact or not anomalous,” wrote Justin Grimmer of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Andrew C. Eggers of the University of Chicago, and Haritz Garro of Stanford.
For instance, statistical analysis showed that bellwether counties in fact had “no special prognostic value” and that Biden’s performance was not much different from the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.…
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski I have been watching Brazil very closely, and listening to the same chaos agents who advised Trump in Nov-Dec 2020 who are now advising Bolsonaro, and have a bad feeling about tonight’s press conference. I hope I’m wrong.
🚫🧵 RT @igorsushko 🚨[thread] Via #Osechkin’s sources: “Important information about #Prigozhin’s plans inside #Russia. Elite members of the Wagner PMC who returned from Mali and the Central African Republic were invited to polygraph questioning,
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1587466832839000064?s=20
// trust?
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko and for the first time in all the years of their mercenary work they were asked about their willingness to participate in special operations on Russian territory and their attitude towards the possible use of firearms and mortars on the streets of #Moscow.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko #WagnerPMC’s security service and instructors are preparing the most experienced fighters for a war inside Russia. […]
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russia is ready to return to “grain deal” and allow bringing grain out of Ukraine if Kyiv guarantees the safety of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, – Russian media
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Bakhmut defenders make history.
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian forces continue to suffer huge losses in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. ¤ Failed frontal assaults are hugely costly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Jeffgoingon57 Why is Bakhmut area so important to Russia?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Finite1871 Putin needs a win, and they’ve been hammering away at Bakhmut for months. It’s the only area where they’re not in retreat.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Koen19935821 Wagner boss needs to keep attacking to get a better seat at the Kremlin table
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Kosacki At this point, it’s probably mostly about pride.
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews 87,000 out of 300,000 called up as part of partial mobilization sent to combat areas – Shoigu
⋙ 🐣 RT @SatyrMagik And still they can barely move the front in Bakhmut and the front keeps moving east in Svatove axis. Russians are throwing more humans at a relentless force that is grinding all that meat down. Let’s accelerate weapons shipments to Ukraine to grind Russian meat at a faster rate.
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ISW: Prigozhin declared that the “children of the elite” of the Russian Federation should go to war and accused the oligarchs of preventing full mobilization.
⭕ 31 Oct 2022 🎃
WaPo: Bolsonaro hasn’t conceded to Lula. Is he following the Trump playbook? https://tinyurl.com/5xkb7kux
🐣 RT @United24media 12 countries will assist Ukraine in the form of energy equipment to restore the energy system, Ukrainian Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba said.
🇮🇱, 🇪🇸, 🇮🇹, 🇱🇹, 🇩🇪, 🇲🇰, 🇵🇱, 🇰🇷, 🇸🇰, 🇸🇮, 🇫🇮, 🇫🇷, will provide Ukraine with 954 units of power equipment.
YahooNews: Grain deal to go on despite Russia’s protestations, Ukraine’s ambassador in Turkey says https://tinyurl.com/ydztezym
🐣 RT @PolandMFA The next video of the #RuZZiaUnmasked series, with Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63, explores Ukraine’s heroic resistance and the message that fighting sends to the world: we need to change. ¤ Democracies must stop the spread of authoritarianism. Russian imperialism must be stopped.
💽 https://twitter.com/PolandMFA/status/1587030713240461312?s=20/photo/1
💙 RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: Capturing the Unique Inspirational Quality of Ukraine’s Fight Against Russia https://tinyurl.com/mtx2zznf “Ukraine fights not for … Western civilization and for the whole world against the most reckless of the major powers of our era”
// If you’re feeling something stirring deep inside your soul when it comes Ukraine’s fight for its freedom against Putin’s Russia, you should and here’s why
Almost by happenstance, I ended up at one of those DC Insider Parties this past weekend, hosted by one prominent scholar and thinker, Shadi Hamid, at the invite by one Ani Chkhikvadze, a journalist. While the details, shenanigans, and gossip of the conversations had at this private party shall remain sacredly private, I was delighted to have a moment of sheer serendipity when I was reviewing some of the work of the two en route to their party. Ani had recently tweeted an article she had penned for the Spectator World during a recent sojourn to Kyiv, while Shadi had recently posted to his Twitter an article of his for The Atlantic from 2017.
… Because, as Ani notes, something special in history and not felt for some time on this scale is happening there.
Ukrainians know full well this is not simply a defensive war for them against an archaically colonialist and imperialist Russia; it is, more than any major conflict for some time, a war of “freedom over slavery,” democracy against autocracy, good versus evil, fought for Europe and the West against genocidal Russian fascism. Thus, Ukraine fights not for just itself, but proudly for Western civilization and for the whole world against the most reckless of the major powers of our era, one that is antithetical to notions of freedom and justice and that seeks to destroy the Western-democracy-led post-World War II international order.
Like Tolkien’s Gondor against Mordor in The Lord of the Rings, Ukraine is a buffer between us and Russia and its fight against Russia benefits and protects the rest of Europe, the West, the world. Like Gondor fighting against Mordor, we see a Ukraine that prizes life and the lives of its people fighting against a Russia that is callously careless and barbarically cruel even to its own soldiers, called often by Ukrainian “orcs” in homage to Tolkien’s world (and, in perhaps the most Russian thing ever, two decades ago, a Russian scientist wrote a new version of the Lord of the Rings in which Mordor and its orcs are heroically fighting against the evil Western imperialists, led by a very different Gandalf).
And plenty outside Ukraine also realize this, hence, not only the tremendous the international governmental support, but the support of thousands of non-Ukrainians coming to fight as volunteers within the Ukrainian military or to tend to Ukraine’s wounded.
[Ani:] The war in Ukraine has given concepts of humanity, democracy, and freedom genuine meaning at a time when in the West many have become sarcastic about them. We find it hard to still believe in the idea of inner honor, the sort that makes you die for your friend. ¤ Orwell explained his decision to join the anti-fascist cause with a characteristically simple phrase: “common decency.” This is what I encountered again and again in Kyiv. Common decency. A desire to stand alongside these people as they face down the threat of oblivion. Amid all the misery that Putin has unleashed on Ukraine, that is an encouraging thought.
When Chkhikvadze quoted Orwell—“common decency”—I teared up, overcome by emotion. And I did the same, again, when reviewing this section to write my piece you are reading now. That Ukraine has brought out within much of the collective West a sense of “humanity, democracy, and freedom”—of the “common decency” in standing up for these things in the face of those who would trample them in pursuit of narrow ideas of imperialistic power exercised over others against their will—and has done so in a way we simply have not felt in any grand sense in a very long time—decades, even—cannot be denied, no matter what the cynics say.
It reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies: Gettysburg, when Lt. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry, discusses the motivations of himself and his men in fighting the U.S. Civil War: “All of us volunteered to fight for the Union, just as you did. Some came mainly because we were bored at home, thought this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came because it was the right thing to do.”
It also reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in all of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, when a despairing Frodo asks Sam near the end of The Two Towers, “What are we holding onto, Sam?” Sam replies: “That there’s good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
[Re: Shadi] … He considers that it is often in stable Western societies where “boredom” permeates politics: nothing too threatening, nothing too existential is coming from the government. This is a boredom, he notes, that is foreign to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members suffering from or fleeing the murderous persecution of General Sisi’s Egyptian dictatorship. Shadi deftly quotes Andrew Sullivan to note that an authoritarian dictatorship can seem like an omnipresence that overwhelms you on a daily basis, invading your very psyche.
For Americans, this means that, in the era of Trump, many are were experiencing something akin (but obviously not fully) to the non-boredom the Egyptians talking to Hamid described; the oppression and anxiety felt generated a level of excitement and purpose to life—at least political life—that has been generally absent in large proportional quantities in the West in recent decades. Some even wanted Trump to win for thrill of the chaos he would create, apart from his politics or agenda. Channeling Fukuyama, Hamid asks us to consider if the end of ideological competition would always only be temporary because without such competition, public intellectual and political life seems far less interesting, and that people would foster some new ideological conflict just to make things exciting again.
Next, Shadi references the late, great Christopher Hitchens as one of the prolific romantics of our era, who clearly felt a constant desire to be connected to humanity through one great struggle or another, to stand up to some great evil …
Near the end of his piece, Hamid pens following phrase that is also the article’s lede: “Knowing what you’re against has a way of clarifying the mind and sharpening the focus.” He concludes his entire piece with the following: “Being in a constant state of alarm, wanting to be alarmed, can be unusually thrilling.”
While Shadi is right, Ani’s piece makes me think how much better it is to be feeling just as strong that you are for something, not just for destroying or stopping another thing, but really for something in a positive sense. America fought two significant wars in recent decades against the brutal Taliban and against Saddam Hussein’s brutal Iraqi regime, its remnants, and other brutal terrorists in Iraq, whether al-Qaeda, ISIS and its precursor, or sectarian elements. But for much of those sad conflicts, it was hard to feel much passion for a lot what we were fighting for: an inept, terribly corrupt Afghan government? A weak Iraqi government riven by sectarianism?
Like Shadi’s article, Ani’s piece certainly makes us aware than an enemy like Russia can inspire unity. But what is the even more powerful takeaway from her eloquent discussion, what is exponentially more inspiring and unifying is a Ukraine itself fighting against an enemy like Russia. Some say “Putin united the West.” I prefer to think, even more so, that Ukraine did.
🐣 RT @traysay “Two hours into their stay in jail, True the Vote posted a call for donations on Truth Social.” ¤ “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32,” the organization posted. “To join us in cause, please donate here.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 Indeed, ‘The truth will make them free’: once they tell the truth to the judge, they’ll be free
⋙ 🐣 RT @Bruno_J_Navarro True the Vote leaders jailed by federal judge for contempt of court ¤ Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were escorted away after refusing to disclose the name of a mystery man who supposedly helped them investigate election software company Konnech.
⋙⋙ TexasVotebeat: Two leaders of True the Vote jailed by federal judge for contempt of court https://tinyurl.com/ycx7mf75
// Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were escorted away after refusing to disclose the name of a mystery man who supposedly helped them investigate election software company Konnech.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 I am very glad to hear it. Engelbrecht is a shameless grifter who has mastered the art of creating hysteria over non-existent voter fraud by minorities. This is not her first rodeo; True The Vote intimidated voters during the Obama presidency as well.
🐣 RT @nowthisnews This brilliant but brutal PSA from 2018 aimed to motivate young people to vote with some reverse psychology
💽 https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1587248808802426880?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC Mika Brzezinski: Republicans have characterized Paul Pelosi’s attack as a deranged, random crime, but in reality, it was the product of years of Republican propaganda and Trump-fueled rhetoric. https://on.msnbc.com/3sJb08K
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1587243161621069824?s=20/photo/1
🐣 This article is a good example of what’s wrong with the @nytimes. The REASONS for Biden’s accusations of “war profiteering” ⬇️ (below) ⬇️ appear halfway through the article, AFTER drivel about how this information might help Biden politically and GOP and oil company counter-claims:
⋙ NYT: Biden Accuses Oil Companies of ‘War Profiteering’ and Threatens Windfall Tax https://tinyurl.com/4wstvtxk “[T]he International Energy Agency has reported that total net income for the world’s oil and gas producers will double this year from last to a record $4 trillion”
// The president has been eager to redirect public anger over gas prices as Democrats try to keep power in Congress in the midterm elections.
Mr. Biden’s statement came just days after the oil giants reported another three months of flush coffers. Exxon Mobil brought in a record of nearly $20 billion in profits for the third quarter of the year, 10 percent higher than the previous quarter and its fourth consecutive quarter of robust earnings. Chevron reported $11.2 billion in profits, just below the record it set the quarter before. The European-based Shell and Total Energies companies similarly reported that profits more than doubled from the same period a year ago.
The five biggest oil companies generated more than $50 billion in profits in the second quarter, and the International Energy Agency has reported that total net income for the world’s oil and gas producers will double this year from last to a record $4 trillion. “Today’s high fossil fuel prices have generated an unprecedented windfall for producers,” the agency said.
A half-dozen of the largest firms earned more in profit over the past six months than in all of last year and more than two and a half times what they earned in the same quarters of 2021, White House officials said. Mr. Biden said if the industry simply earned the same level of profits it has for 20 years, consumers would pay 50 cents less per gallon.
The firms have used their profits in some cases for dividend increases and stock buybacks rather than increased production, which could bring down the price of oil and therefore trim their profits. Exxon Mobil raised its dividend on Friday, citing a commitment to “return excess cash” to shareholders.
🐣 RT @ @JayinKyiv Midget Gargoyle: ” I’m going to fire on grain transport ships”
Biden: “Hold my milk”
On the way to Europe, now.
– Aircraft carrier
– 90 Aircraft (including F-35C’s)
– Submarines
– Battleships
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Russian targeting of power infrastructure in Ukraine has expanded to systematically hit open switchgear associated with hydroelectric power stations and the boilers of thermal power plants, in an attempt to reduce overall resilience, according to the Rybar Telegram channel.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1587174158299004928?s=20
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /31 OCT/Though local sources report that RU troops are constructing defensive positions, preparations for the evacuation of individual units & equipment appear to be ongoing. It is assessed that at least some portion of RU forces on the N bank are to be withdrawn.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1587089364227657730?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer BLACK SEA AUDACITY: C4H10FO2P @markito0171 reports an important development in the Black Sea ‘grain wars’. In defiance of a Russian prohibition, a multi-vessel grain convoy carrying UKR grain has departed Odesa.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1587091664258170880?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @duty2warn ANNOUNCEMENT: WATCH THIS AND SHARE It’s an 11-minute video containing excerpts from our upcoming film #UNTRUTH, with commentary, geared for moderates, conservatives, undecideds, and anyone you know in the middle. Please copy, paste and share link. (more)
💽 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1586413399444885504?s=20
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: DoJ has entered the chat in Arizona.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RobLegare DOJ files statement of interest in Maricopa Co AZ voter monitoring case. ¤ “This case alleges that organized+sometimes armed groups of individuals have engaged in campaigns to surveil, video record,+harass voters…These allegations raise serious concerns of voter intimidation.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RobLegare/status/1587115409127374848?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] This case alleges that organized and sometimes armed groups of individuals have engaged in campaigns to surveil, video record, and harass voters as they exercise their most fundamental right, the right to vote. These allegations raise serious concerns of voter intimidation, which is proscribed under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act. The United States files this Statement of Interest for the limited purpose of aiding the Court’s interpretation of Section 11(b) and to provide illustrative, but by no means exhaustive, examples of Section 11(b)’s appropriate application to protect voters from threats, intimidation, and coercion.
Section 11(b), 52 U.S.C. $ 10307(b), broadly prohibits threats and acts of intimidation and coercion at all stages of the voting process, including voters’ depositing of ballots in a drop box where provided for by state or local law. By the statute’s plain terms, Congress brought within Section 11(b)’s wide ambit both violent and nonviolent conduct that has the prohibited effect of intimidating, threatening, or coercing voters, or attempting to do so. Polling-place conduct, such as private surveillance or investigation, that would ordinarily tend to intimidate voters and has little salutary purpose has long been considered to implicate Section 11(b). And while balancing any prohibition on conduct or potential remedy against an individual’s First Amendment rights can present a fact-intensive inquiry, protecting voters’ right to cast their ballot without the specter of threats, intimidation, or coercion is fully consistent with appropriately crafted limitations on private actors’ conduct.
🐣 RT @ SpencerGuard For god sake will the U.S. send Ukraine ATACMs already?! How many massive Russian terror attacks on Ukrainian civilians will it take to send them what they need to defend themselves? Send tanks, IFVs, planes, ATACMs (a lot of them), air defenses, anything we can! #ArmUkraineNow
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag After yesterday’s landmark Ukrainian drone attack on Sevastopol harbour, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is clearly no longer safe anywhere in Occupied Crimea. Will Putin now be forced to withdraw his navy to Russian waters?
🖼 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1586688902768771072?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenceU On the occasion of Halloween, the russians decided to carry out another act of missile terror.
But tomorrow is All Saints’ Day.
Saint Javelin and Saint HIMARS will subdue the evil spirits.
🐣 RT @NOELreports At this moment 12 grain vessels are heading from Odesa to Istanbul, Türkiye. There are no reports of Russian interference which shows they have no control over the Black Sea. If Turkye wants to allow it, Russia will shut down. Barking dogs don’t bite. ¤ Well done Türkiye and UN!
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1587020273009790976?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Torger78 I have had no luck finding something like this, so I figured I’d just make one myself. Sources: The usual, @TheShipYard2 @GrangerE04117 @CovertShores @KaptainLOMA @oryxspioenkop @UAWeapons Janes and many more.. #OSINT #RussianNavy #BlackSea
◕ https://twitter.com/Torger78/status/1526610798746943491?s=20/photo/1
// chart of ships at Sevastopol
🐣 RT @vcdgf555 Follow-up: A huge thanks to @Torger78 for taking the time to identify the 🇷🇺 Russian Navy ships in the Sevastopol satellite analysis post yesterday!
⋙ 🐣 RT @vcdgf555 🇷🇺 Russian Navy Black Sea Fleet ships at anchor, including 6x Ropucha LSTs, as seen on Planet Labs 0.5m resolution pass over Sevastopol October 28, 2022, at geolocation 44.609794, 33.530668. ¤ Ship positions noted for USV camera angles.5/
🌎 https://twitter.com/vcdgf555/status/1586423789641879553?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol
Twitter, are you grieving
Over blue checks leaving?…
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of verified tweets lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why…
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Twitter you mourn for.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol …h/t Gerard Manley Hopkins
🐣 RT @ @WarintheFuture Kyiv and many other Ukrainian cities are again under attack from a barrage of Russian missiles. Putin cannot beat the Ukrainians on the battlefield, and so resorts to terrorising civilians in their homes. He won’t defeat them this way either!
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Kyiv in blackout again. ¤ Just wanted to remind you guys that all those attacks on critical civilian infrastructure, such as the power grid, is a overt Russian war crime.
⭕ 30 Oct 2022
Dkos: The noose tightens around Svatove, as Russia blows key bridges https://tinyurl.com/3z9a5hwk “if Svatove falls, another major slice of Ukraine is immediately liberated, and opens up the road toward Starobilsk, which would single-handedly liberate the entire NE corner of Ukraine”
🐣 RT @60Minutes “You’re asking me to break my oath and make up something to pull electors and replace electors, which has never been done in the history of the United States.” Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers recounts what he told Rudy Giuliani in 2020. https://cbsn.ws/3NocLls
WaPo: Lula defeats Bolsonaro to win third term as Brazil’s president https://tinyurl.com/2p8p2nen “Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva … pledges to defend democracy, save the Amazon rainforest and bring social justice to Latin America’s largest nation”
🐣 RT @economics Ukraine, Turkey and the UN agreed to have vessels carrying food from Ukrainian ports sail on Monday, even after Russia said it’s withdrawing from a deal to allow safe passage of Ukraine’s grain exports
🐣 RT @AriBerman Obama cites chilling stat from my new article on impact of extreme gerrymandering in Wisconsin: “Democrats have to win statewide vote by 12 points just to get to 50 seats in the assembly, while Republicans could garner a majority with just 44% of votes” https://tinyurl.com/2uex924y
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Obama on gerrymandering in Wisconsin: “Think about any other thing you do in life where 44 percent are on one side, 56 are on the other, and 44 wins. It don’t make sense.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1586489909761679361?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 Wisconsin has Failed:
In the 14 years since 2008, during which GOP legislative and judicial hegemony has taken over WIS,
Its Democratic-run “sister state” of MINNESOTA has seen
● DOUBLE the population growth (.5M vs .25M) and
● A THIRD greater GDP growth (68M vs 43B)
// Statistica
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1586942505005752320?s=20/photo/1
Pop. 2008 2021
MN 5.23 5.71 .48 (mil)
WI 5.63 5.89 .26 (mil)
GDP 2008 2021
MN 277 345 68B
WI 259 303 43B
🐣 RT @MacFarlaneNews Striking
📊 https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1586724383099424771?s=20/photo/1
// CBS Battleground Tracker: “Which is more importsnt?
A functioning democracy: Dem 63%, GOP 29%
A strong economy: Dem 21%, GOP 70%
// likely voters 10/25-28/2022
🐣 RT @TrentTelenko This is an extremely on-point thread on what the Ukrainian winter means for armies with (Ukraine) and without (Russia) functioning non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps. ¤ Check it out👇
⋙ 🧵 RT @MarkHertling Last week, @SpyTalker published a solid piece commenting on how RU’s lack of an NCO Corps were the chief cause of failure in UKR. ¤ It not the only one, but it’s a huge contributor. ¤ We’ll see implications of that as winter approaches ¤ A new [thread] 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1586863830331703296?s=20
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Failed Trump coup plotter gives coup advice to Brazil’s Bolsonaro
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski The organizer of Trump’s DC rally on J6 has thoughts on Brazil.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1586884781844926465?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @alialexander • In Brazil, the MILITARY has the right to insert itself
into an election where there is suspected FRAUD.
We must have an AUDIT NOW!
#StopTheSteal #AuditBrazil
🐣 RT @OxfordDiplomat Because of this man, Lula da Silva, the Amazon exhales a sigh of relief tonight. Yes, lots of work to be done. But for once, thanks to the Brazilians, the world feels that strange feeling of hope, we haven’t felt in a long time #Elecciones
🖼 https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1586852420788883456?s=20/photo/1
// beat Trump-endorsed Bolsonaro
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 1230 UTC 30 OCT/ UKR infantry is reported to have interdicted the P-66 HWY between Svatove and Kremenna. This imperils RU Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS). Fighting continues to the north and south of Kremenna. Ukrainian SEAD missions hit Russian SAM sites.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1586697538039578627?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MAKING HISTORY: UKR’s innovative small, unmanned surface vessels (USVs) conducted naval warfare’s first remotely actuated surface battle. Directed by Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) man-in-the loop control, these USVs can be maneuvered on recon, surveillance and attack missions.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1586812222319337478?s=20p/photo/1
🐣 RT @ NOTE: Though only partially successful, the UKR attack on the RU Black Sea fleet and the Sevastopol roadstead was an epoch making event. This will force the RU navy to divert major resources to secure ships at anchor, and will likely force them to reposition critical assets.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: The White House has BLOCKED the promotion of Gen Piatt. He was one of the generals that DELAYED the national guard on 1/6, AND his text messages from that day were ERASED.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote [3/3/3021] BREAKING: National Guard commander Walker just testified it was General FLYNN and General PIATT that refused to green light guard support to the capitol because of “optics”. General Flynn is michael Flynn’s brother. I’ve been telling about Piatt for weeks. #CapitolRiots
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON CITY /30 OCT/ Twelve HIMARS precision strike munitions targeted barge/ferry operations and the bridge spans of the M-14 HWY, Anatovsky Bridge. UKR Intel has noted the arrival of ‘Rosguard’ and engineering personnel into the city. RU continues preparations for urban combat
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1586679317249007617?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SkyNews It may be NATO sending missiles and tanks to Ukraine, but on social media an information war is being fought by a rowdy band of online comrades called NAFO. Meet the fellas
⋙ SkyNews: Ukraine’s internet army of ‘fellas’ are using dog memes to fight Russian propaganda – and they’ve raised $1m for the army too https://tinyurl.com/23the7x2
// They are NAFO – North Atlantic Fella Organisation – and they’re here to troll Russian politicians and raise money for Ukraine’s armed forces. Meet the fellas
⭕ 29 Oct 2022
🧵 RT @ WarintheFuture More details are emerging about the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in occupied Crimea. Lots more clarity to come in the following days, but a few immediate observations are possible. 1/20 [thread] #Sevastopol
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1586515730820141057?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @maria_drutska What russia’s Black Sea Fleet doing?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews What Fleet?
WaPo Editorial: Ignore Putin’s words. His crimes in Ukraine speak louder https://tinyurl.com/mutuwreu ‘The 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit making a civilian population an object of attack and launching indiscriminate attacks affecting civilians not justified by military necessity’
🐣 RT @maria_drutska What russia’s Black Sea Fleet doing?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews What Fleet?
🐣 RT @stavridisj This may lead the international community to escort the grain shipments in defiance of Russian threats.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JonLemire MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Defense Ministry says the country has moved to suspend the U.N.-brokered grain export deal with Ukraine.
🐣 RT @1Neiln63 Bakhmut must be the most heroically defended position in Europe for over 100 years. The defence by the ZSU has been truly amazing. Wagner are defeated every hour and have not taken this objective for months!!! You guys have my respect and prayers. May god be with you all. 🇺🇦🇬🇧
🐣 📋 RT @Tendar For those interested in numbers.
Ukrainian gains in the last 3 months:
– Kharkiv liberated: 8,700 km²
– Donetsk/Luhansk liberated: 2,800 km²
– Kherson liberated: 1,800 km²
Overall: 13,300 km²
Russian gains in the last 3 months
Overall: 16 km² (Pisky 2 km² and Bakhmut 14 km²)
🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie New HIMARS and new equipment to wipe out Wagner . Wagner now a political priority for UKE and NATO . The hero #UkrainianArmy holding bakhmut will be hero soldiers abs build morale and crush Russian spirits
🐣 RT @TeamPrlosi Thank you for your prayers for my husband and our family. -NP
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TeamPelosi/status/1586528311102013440?s=20/photo/1
Dear Friends,
Sadly, a violent man broke into our family home yesterday morning, demanded to confront me and brutally attacked my husband Paul. Our children, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our Pop. We are grateful for the quick response of law enforcement and emergency services and for the life-saving medical care he is receiving.
Please know that your prayers and warm wishes are a comfort to our family and helping Paul make progress with his recovery. His condition continues to improve.
We are also comforted by these words from the Book of Isaiah: “Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
We thank you for your prayers and warm wishes as well as the work you do to strengthen our Democracy.
Sincerely,
Nancy Pelosi
🐣 RT @ PaulaChertok 🎯🎯@SECupp to @Acosta: Conspiracy theories are a mind-altering drug & we are in an epidemic. It’s metastasized in the electorate. I wish voting was a solution. But voting doesn’t make this absolute cancer go away—b/c Republicans are courting it, giving it & its violence comfort.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ The Grand Jury subpoena the govt served in May 2022 called for production of documents bearing classified markings WHEREVER they are located. Ie it was not limited to MAL even though Trump only produced docs from MAL. So if there are docs elsewhere they shd have been produced.1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Intentional failure to obey a grand jury subpoena by failing to produce docs at MAL or elsewhere is a crime. 18 USC 402. 2/2
🐣 RT @MattPPea To lose 1 flagship is funny, to lose 2 is hilarious
⋙ 🐣 RT @Maks_NAFO_FELLA Information about the damage to the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, which is walking around rus tg channels.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1586410201279873024?s=20/photo/1
// formatting added: ]
[Text:] According to a source at the fleet headquarters,
● the flagship Project 11356P frigate Admiral Makarov, was damaged. Hits by a drone (or several drones) damaged both superstructures of the ship, disabled radar equipment, fire control systems, and communication systems. Watchmen injured.
● Transport ship damaged, possibly half-flooded.
● A boat was sunk, either landing, of the Chamois project, or missile, of the Lightning project.
● The minesweeper “Ivan Golubets” was damaged, the fire continues on it.
● Surface damage was received by a large landing ship,
● [Surface damage to] several auxiliary vessels.
🐣 RT @BillKristol It seems amazingly difficult for the MAGA Right simply to say the following five words: ¤ We are against political violence.
🧵📌 RT @atrupar Obama in Milwaukee says he’s not gonna talk about the Bears or Packers because he wants to keep things upbeat
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1586479808065724419?s=20A/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko holy shit
💽 https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1586493160896749568?s=20/photo/1
// Obama campaigning in Wisconsin against Ron Johnson who wants to slash entitlements: “Do you know why your parents get SocSec? Because the worked for it!”
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava This is how Kremenchuchyna said goodbye to the defender of Ukraine Volodymyr Hora, who died in Kharkiv Oblast back in April. • Eternal tribute to the fallen hero. • The memory of those who gave their lives for freedom will be etched forever. #Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1586246444268199937?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JayInKyiv Hey man, nice shot. ¤ Two Russian ships appear to have been hit in Sevastopol. ¤ The “Ivan Holubets” sustained significant damage and the “Makarov” had its radar systems destroyed. ¤ The Makarov has been raining missiles all over Ukraine since February.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian MoD blamed British specialists for training 🇺🇦 military to prepare them for today’s attack on Sevastopol ¤ They added that the same specialists were guilty of explosions on NS1 and NS2 ¤ Tune into next briefings to find out what else 🇬🇧, 🇺🇸 & combat mosquitoes are guilty of
// NS1 and NS2 = Nordstream gas pipelines
🐣 RT @DarthPutinKGB We are suspending our participation in the grain deal following Ukraine’s attack on Sevastopol that both did not happen and also was repulsed whilst not happening. ¤ I remain a master strategist.
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ With the dismissal of Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin as the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, ugly stories are emerging about his treatment of mobilised soldiers. He’s said to have put his pistol to the head of a lieutenant and threatened to shoot him. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1586488705745047552?s=20
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/5xe44ajr
⋙⋙ 🐣 Terrifying thread. ¤ This is what life without human rights is like: being subject to ignorance and random cruelty in pursuit of an insane dictator’s dreams of conquest ¤ This is why we support Ukraine – to save them (and ourselves) from such an existence
2/ Mediazona reports that on 13 October, Lapin violently confronted Lieutenant Dmitry Vodnev, who withdrew his company from shelling at the village of Kolomyichykha, near Svatove in Luhansk oblast. The back story has emerged from the account of another soldier published by SOTA.
3/ Like many other mobiks, Vodnev’s men were not given a medical examination or combat training after being mobilised into the 423rd Yampolsky motorized rifle regiment around 22 September. They were given only 1 day’s shooting practice at a military camp in Belgorod.
4/ Only a few days later the men were sent to Ukraine to defend a heavily contested section of the front line near Kolomyychikha. The most recent reports as of 26 October indicate that the area is still the scene of heavy fighting and intense shelling.
5/ The Russians had grossly inadequate equipment – another man in the same unit, Nikita Pavlov, reported being given only a damaged, rusty AK-74M that could not be fired. They took shelter in a tractor hangar near Kolomyychikha, arriving on 7 October.
6/ The men filmed their conditions on 11 October. A video shows them living in abject squalor without heat, light, food or water. They complain that they are all sick with respiratory complaints. Pavlov says they foraged from apple trees in the village.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1586488719342637056?s=20/photo/7/ Pavlov describes what subsequently happened: “In the afternoon, massive mortar fire started on us. Our 2nd platoon and 1st platoon lay down in the forest belt, 5th and 6th companies also lay down in the forest belt.
8/ As a result of two hours of shelling there were more than 4 killed and 3 wounded. Also after the shelling, the 5th and 6th companies fled to a school basement. A communications company and a KAMAZ [truck] loaded with ammunition and mines arrived.
9/ We ordered the communications company to lie down in the wooded area. The driver of the second KAMAZ, realising what was going on, quickly drove back.
10/ In the evening of that day fire began to fall on us. The commanders of the communications company ordered us to sit behind a hangar, and as a result of the two-hour bombardment, the second hangar was destroyed and an uncrewed BMP was destroyed.
11/ The next morning we came under heavy fire, which lasted more than four hours. The communications company scattered in panic during the shelling. As a result, more than 6 men were killed and more than 3 were wounded.”
12/ Pavlov’s account is corroborated by a similar account from a soldier in another unit under the 15th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, which held the second line behind the men of the 423rd Regiment. He was able to observe their fate under the Ukrainian bombardment.
13/ “For seven hours they were there – from 12:00 to 19:00 – and bombed with mortars. The major ordered them, as they told me, to hold some hangar. They left there, another company came, and again the major said to occupy that hangar where the [Ukrainian] mortar was shelling
14/ Brilliant stupidity of the commander! Then at 19:00 they started to retreat. We asked them, “Like, who are you, what are you, where are you coming from?”
15/ [They replied], “The village is surrendered, there’s hardly anyone there, those who survived are hiding in the basement in the school, tanks are coming now”. Then there was an artillery bombardment and we followed them.”
16/ The men were advised to leave by a professional soldier, a sergeant, who told them, “If you want to live, then go up the road. There are KAMAZ trucks and tanks there.” They found only one tank, as all the officers had already left on the trucks, and walked to Svatove instead.
17/ Several hours later, late at night, they reached a gas station at the entrance to Svatove – probably the АЗС station on the P07 road just west of the town. They were stopped by soldiers and prevented from going any further. The men were made to sleep on pavements in the open.
Image18/ Pavlov says that “Since there were no officers and commanders, we set ourselves the task of finding the headquarters and asking about further actions.” The commander of the 5th company, Lieutenant Dmitry Vodnev, went to look for officers, but found only military policemen.
19/ The men were not allowed to enter Svatove. After Vodnev told the MPs about the retreat from Kolomyychikha, they informed Colonel General Lapin. He went to the gas station to berate the surviving men – who numbered around 50 – to try to force them to return to the front line.
20/ Pavlov writes: “Colonel General Lapin put a gun to the head of Lieutenant [Vodnev], demanding we go back, and he also threw a lot of insults at us (traitors, deserters and a lot of swear words).” Vodnev was taken away by Lapin’s bodyguards for ‘correction’.
21/ According to Vodnev’s father, the bodyguards “tied [Vodnev’s] hands behind his back, took him somewhere and threw him face down on the ground – but did not beat him.”
22/ His father says: “They began to threaten him, accuse him, they said that he should come back, and insulted him, [Lapin] said: “Damn you and your family.” His assistants filmed with a phone, they said: “We will broadcast it all, show everyone in schools what you are …”
23/ After that, Pavlov says, “they brought [Vodnev] in again to convince us to go back to the front, but he said: “Guys, I can’t do that.” Again we were lined up [parade-style] at the gas station in front of the checkpoint in Svatove.”
24/ “And there they began telling us: ‘You are deserters, you are traitors to the Motherland.” Though they started with saying that we did everything right – we retreated, we saved our lives.
25/ When they realised that we were not going to return to this place and just sit and wait for them to come, they started insulting us.”
26/ A political officer named Colonel Rumyantsev also turned up to try to ‘motivate’ the men. “We asked: “At least give us something to eat and drink”,” Pavlov writes. “To which Colonel Rumyantsev told us that people like us do not deserve to eat, drink or sleep.”
27/ The ‘remotivation’ session ended abruptly when Lapin’s bodyguards spotted a hovering drone. The officers left hastily, leaving the mobilised men under the control of two military police officers who were ordered to execute any man who stepped left or right out of the line.
28/ They did not see Vodnev again; he was taken away back across the Russian border to be imprisoned at the commandant’s office in Valuyki. He is reportedly facing possible charges of ‘sabotaging military training’.
29/ The next morning, after another night which the men spent sleeping in the open air, “Colonel Rumyantsev arrived again in a state of alcoholic intoxication and started speaking in an abusive manner and verbally humiliating us, thus putting pressure on our psyche.
30/ Then in the afternoon he brought food and water. An hour later, Wagner PMC fighters came to us, and also started insulting us (calling us traitors, cowards, deserters).”
31/ The Wagnerites persuaded two of the 423rd Regiment men to sign up with them instead. The remainder were loaded onto two KAMAZs and driven to the Russian border near Belgorod, then taken to an army camp at Alekseevka. They were finally able to contact their relatives.
32/ The men are currently reported to be awaiting a decision on their future. Some have medical conditions that meant they should not have been mobilised at all. Their families are submitting appeals on their behalf, while the men are hoping not to get sent back to Ukraine. /end
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 💯 @BarackObama. Tuning out is not an option. Turnout is the only option. Republicans have siloed their voters in an 🙃 hellscape of fear & smear propaganda to motivate them. But we are the majority—a coalition of diverse Americans who know democracy is hard but fascism is harder.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer USV/UAV ATTACK: @JamWaterhouse has posted this stunning video of this morning’s surface & aerial drone attack on RU’s Sevastopol naval station. This footage, taken from a UKR unmanned surface vessel (USV) shows a RU helicopter attempting to interdict the USV before it can strike.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JamWaterhouse Unbelievable footage from one of the marine drones used in the attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. ¤ (Via Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko) ¤ Full story:
⋙ BBC: ‘Massive’ drone attack on Black Sea Fleet – Russia https://tinyurl.com/yekwcme2
// Ukraine has carried out a “massive” drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, damaging one warship, Russia says.
Nine drones were used, a top official said. Ukraine has not commented. ¤ Without providing evidence, Russia accused British troops of being involved in Saturday’s attack – and in blowing up gas pipelines last month. ¤ In its response, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Russia was “peddling false claims of an epic scale”.
Russia said the ships targeted in Saturday’s attack were involved in the internationally-brokered deal to allow grain exports from Ukrainian ports and hours later announced that it was suspending its participation in it.
The attack comes as Ukrainian troops successfully retake territory occupied by Russian troops since they launched their invasion on 24 February. ¤ Russia has replied by launching large-scale attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, particularly on the country’s energy grid.
Crimea was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 and is extremely symbolic for Russian President Vladimir Putin. ¤ In recent weeks, several attacks have hit the peninsula, where the Russian army has built up a large presence. ¤ Sevastopol is the largest city in the region and home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian soldier in the Donetsk area says that due to lack of food or water, they had to drink from a puddle, meanwhile, their command have everything and go around drunk every day. This is evidenced from the new intercepted call.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1586462588594192384?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Tendar An entire Russian battery of five(!) 2S19 Msta-S SPGs has been wiped out. What a devastating loss for the Russian army. That are 12.5 million USD destroyed in a matter of moments. Not including all the hassle to move those 5 pieces all the way from Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1586436386718351362?s=20/photo/1
// “self-propelled howitzer designed by the Soviet Union”
🐣 RT @wartranslated [10/27] Fresh conflict between Ramzan Kadyrov and General Lapin. Kadyrov posted a long-winded message today accusing Lapin of incompetence, claiming “he is nowhere to be found”. He alleges Lapin was responsible for the breakthrough at Terny, Torske, Yampolivka.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1585744467562496000?s=20/photo/1 -2
Tass: [gg tr] The body of former General Alexander Lapin was found in the Moscow River. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the police are working on the spot.
CNN: Russia suspends its participation in UN-brokered grain export deal with Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yp7pzj3y Russia says Ukraine attacked its Black Sea fleet in Crimea “with the participation of British experts.” The UK says Russia is “peddling false claims of an epic scale”
“Taking into account the act of terrorism committed by the Kyiv regime with the participation of British experts on October 29 this year against the ships of the Black Sea Fleet and civil vessels involved in the security of the ‘grain corridor,’ the Russian side suspends its participation in the implementation of the agreements on the export of agricultural products from the Ukrainian ports,” the Russian defense ministry added in a statement.
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD: I don’t normally share the rantings of the Count of Mostly Crisco, but today’s are noteworthy. First, he’s complaining that DoJ isn’t following its own policy of prohibiting overt investigative steps close to an election. 1/
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1586405002632826880?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The greatest Witch Hunt in American History continues on all fronts, even as the Election rages, an unwritten “NO NO” in Law and Politics. The Document Hoax Case I thought was over based on the fact that the documents were declassified, but more importantly based on the history of past Presidents and the way they were treated. The Clinton “Socks Case” is conclusive, the Presidential Record Act is great & easy to understand, & my Fourth Amendment Rights were violated with the Raid on Mar-a-Lago!
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote He doesn’t realize that investigations DO continue during the blackout period, but not overt investigatory steps like searches, arrests, indictments, etc. Perhaps he’s been subpoenaed for records at other properties? We know DoJ is trying to get more back from him. 2/ […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Now. Let’s look at his other rant today. 10/
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1586405022979350528?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] @realDonaldTrump Can you imagine that I am constantly under investigation for “bullshit,” while Hunter Biden, whose Crimes are MANY, DEEP, fully documented on his Laptop from Hell (and elsewhere!), and often times directly involve his father, Joe, “the Big Guy,” sits back and doesn’t have a care in the World. The U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been told to do NOTHING, other than make a “sweetheart” deal, if even that. There are two sets of “Justice” in the now Communist USA. Our Country is going to HELL!!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Looks like maybe he got some news that Hunter Biden won’t be indicted. Just like Durham, trump’s political pet project prosecutions produced jack shit. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he got some really bad news. Just like I went out on a limb August 8 & tweeted this: END/
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Anyone that has lived through a winter in Ukraine knows how this will go. ¤ I’m guessing 50,000 Russians/month will die just from freezing. ¤ Russian command must already understand this
⋙ 🐣 RT @prtauvers -10 to -30C for at least 2 months
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en General Lapin, allegedly installed by Gerasimov and Shoigu, has been dismissed from all his positions in Russia. ¤ He was systematically attacked by Kadyrov and Prigozhin. ¤ Let the murderers fight and destroy each other.
🐣 RT @ Biz_Ukraine_Mag Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko to West: send blankets and generators or we’ll freeze to death due to Russian bombing of civilian infrastructure
🐣 RT @ CatSE___ApeX___ Starlink earth-station-in-motion ESIM type VSAT phased array antenna made the strikes on Sevastopol possible. ¤ These _large_ vessels could be remotely piloted thanks to sat internet. BVLOS. ¤ $ASTS type technology would revolutionize small drones and aerial drones in the same way
⋙ 🐣 RT @CovertShores ***UPDATE*** ¤ Now beyond any reasonable doubt that the type of surface drones used by #Ukraine to attack Russian Navy in Sevastopol today were same as one previous found near the base. #OSINT [links]
◕ https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1586358192178601984?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @APTeacher1754 Yea this means the attack against Sevastopol was a resounding success.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mrsorokaa Russia says it suspends participation in the UN-brokered grain deal with Ukraine, putting global hunger back on the table.
🐣 RT @mikenov Ukraine war: ‘Massive’ Sevastopol drone attack, Russia on ‘nuclear threshold’, clocks controversy #UkraineRussia
⋙ EuroNews: Ukraine war: Russia pulls out of grain export deal over Crimea drone attack https://tinyurl.com/2ehh5bxw
🐣 RT @maria_drutska ❗️1/2 Ru Ministry of Defence said that russia is suspending its participation in the “grain agreement” after an alleged Ukrainian attack “led by British specialists” on the russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
🐣 RT @RALee85 Ukraine released a video from today’s attack on Sevastopol. It shows a naval drone targeting the Black Sea Fleet’s Admiral Makarov Project 11356 frigate, which Russian sources said was damaged (it replaced the Moskva as the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship).
https://t.me/milinfolive/92614
💽 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1586358375389884417?s=20/photo/1 -2
NavalNews (May 19): Admiral Makarov To Assume The New Flagship Of Russian Black Sea Fleet https://tinyurl.com/4ua45fr6
// 5/13/2022; The Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate (Project 11356) Admiral Makarov is likely to become the new flagship of the Black Sea Fleet after the loss of the cruiser Moskva.
🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en There is still smoke in Sevastopol harbor. ¤ Russians sign these images with their famous “No panic!” and say that trainings are taking place. ¤ Local media report that rescuers are trying to put out fire on one of the ships, as seen through binoculars.
¤ https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1586295139407986693?s=20/photo/1 -3
🐣 RT @ michaelh992 (✓) Several #Ukrainian sources claim the attack against Sevastopol this morning hit one Russian ship or more, including the Admiral Makarov frigate. Would consider this unconfirmed for now
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Sevastopol, damaged frigate Admiral Makarov – Russian media
↥ ↧
Forbes (May): The Russian Frigate ‘Admiral Makarov’ Might Be The Juiciest Target In The Black Sea https://tinyurl.com/2p827pt5
🐣 RT @TelegraphWorld The governor of Sevastopol in Russia-annexed Crimea said the city’s services were on “alert” after an alleged drone attack on the city’s port in the early hours of Saturday morning, but that no “civilian infrastructure” had been damaged
😅 RT @Gerashchenko_en We received exclusive images of night events in Sevastopol harbor. ¤ The information is unofficial and is being verified.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1586283231636516864?s=20/photo/1
// meme: warship being attacked by mosquitos, dolphins
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Cotton in temporarily occupied Sevastopol. According to various sources, the explosions damaged several ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They say that among them is the frigate “Admiral Makarov”, which became the flagship after the loss of the “Moscow” by the Russians.
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Russian media report that there was a “UAV attack” on Sevastopol, Crimea at night
💽 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1586247548376821760?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Explosions in Sevastopol harbor last night. ¤ According to some sources, several Russian warships of the Black Sea Fleet were blown up – including a fregate and a landing ship.
⭕ 28 Oct 2022
KyivIndependent, Illia Ponomarenko: Ukraine has proved that hard choices pay off https://tinyurl.com/2p9azjdz //➔ I would challenge anyone to read this and not understand why we must support Ukraine “as long as it takes” @PramilaJayapal @GOPLeader @RonaldKlain @JakeSullivan46
// 10/28/2022
Editor’s Note: The following is the transcript of the speech given by the Kyiv Independent’s defense reporter Illia Ponomarenko at the annual meeting organized by the Raam Op Rusland think tank, in Amsterdam, on Oct. 25. For republication, reach out to news@kyivindependent.com.
… I am here not to lecture anyone or say, “you must do this and that, you owe us!” or something like that. ¤ I am here to talk about hope and good faith. …
The downing of MH17 was a watershed moment for many people in Ukraine in 2014, as well as for me. It opened a new chapter in the war. It showed us that the barbarity of this may have no limits. …
Today I am a journalist representing my country in the world. Yet, we’re still fighting the same war. Over the last eight years, and especially in the last eight months, unbelievable things have happened. ¤ Mariupol was turned into heaps of ruins. My hometown of Volnovakha was just razed to the ground. The city I’m just about to move to, Bucha, has become an international symbol of mass graves and executions. ¤ And MH17 criminals still haven’t been brought to justice.
As a journalist, I have seen unbelievable things I will never forget. ¤ I’ve seen Kyiv, the heart of the whole nation, standing just two steps away from its downfall before advancing Russian armies. ¤ Soldiers of Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigades were sacrificing themselves to stop the Russian advance into Kyiv near the town of Moschun, despite insane bloodshed.
In late February, in the first five days, we were so close to the downfall! ¤ That would be the end of so many things so precious and dear to us, to my generation: the values of the EuroMaidan Revolution, all the democratic reforms, and the resurrection of modern Ukrainian culture. ¤ The end of our world as we knew it.
And I’ve seen something unbelievable. Ukraine managed to defeat the Russian blitzkrieg, exhaust its power, and reverse the war’s course. ¤ Now we’re not talking about whether Kyiv will fall within 72 hours. We’re talking about whether we can retake Kherson in the next six weeks and what we should do next in this war.
Why are we where we are today, against all expectations? ¤ The guys from my media outlet, the Kyiv Independent, suggested that I write a book about this war. I was thinking — what is this war’s most essential thing, the most important conclusion?
There have been a lot of important things for the military and politics. But I realized that the most essential thing is the moral aspect. ¤ This war has taught me one thing — always act according to the best consciousness in the darkest moment. No matter how hard and scary that would be. It will be hard, but at the end of the day, it will always be the only right solution. ¤ The seemingly easiest way is always wrong. Deals with the devil made out of weakness and desire to sweep the trouble under the rug never end well.
Of course, I’m not discovering anything new. It’s a very basic principle. But in the reality of a catastrophic war, where the normal life for millions of people is collapsing — it’s easier said than done. ¤ But this is the moral choice the Ukrainian nation had to make in this war.
The nation made its choice – and individual people did, too. ¤ On the invasion’s first day, I decided that I have to take care of my mother. I made her leave her city in eastern Ukraine on the eve of the invasion. I had to take her to a safe place in West Ukraine. ¤ My flatmate Ivan has a car. So we managed to get out of Kyiv. The city was in mayhem — tanks, enormous traffic jams, sounds of fighting.
We made it to a small town just on the border with Moldova, 600 kilometers away from Kyiv. ¤ When we arrived, I was so exhausted that I just touched the nearest sofa in the house and got knocked out. ¤ But then in the morning, the question came — what’s next? My friend Ivan was shocked and scared. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, he kept repeating: “Man, I’m not getting back, never, never.” ¤ I was scared, too. Things were not looking good at that point. At best, I could hope to get back to Kyiv only to see the battle for the city — and hopefully, try and flee alive as the city falls.
Meanwhile, on Feb. 25, in Kyiv, the military was giving out thousands of AK rifles. To very regular people, to everyone willing to fight until the bitter end, just in the streets. … It was a desperate act. Everyone expected a major Russian breakthrough into Kyiv from the north.
Ordinary people in Kyiv, just untrained civilians, made a decision to take weapons and fight an invading regular army in their streets. ¤ And me and my friend Ivan, seeing this, also made a decision. ¤ We’re not giving up and we don’t care. ¤ And that was the most correct decision in my life.
And we made it back to the city under attack. ¤ We entered the empty dark streets. Ukrainian air defense systems were trying to intercept incoming Russian missiles – unsuccessfully. ¤ We lived in a flat close to the battlefield of Bucha and Irpin, we shared food, and woke up and fell [asleep] to the sound of artillery. I worked as a Kyiv Independent journalist, and my flatmate was my driver.
This was the Battle of Kyiv. ¤ But it was not only about ordinary people like myself. ¤ I’ve always been quite critical of Volodymyr Zelensky. Before the big invasion, he was rather messy and not serious enough about his job. ¤ But when the darkest hour came, he also had to make a high-ground decision. ¤ His own administration begged him to flee Kyiv before it was too late. Western leaders offered their assistance in evacuation. ¤ But he said no. And he decided to stay in Kyiv, saying, “I need ammo, not a ride.”
This phrase is most probably just a legend. ¤ But nonetheless, you now know Zelensky as a prominent war leader of this century. ¤ Not as yet another “president in exile” good for nothing and making meaningless statements and giving interviews abroad.
And thanks to the national unity in Ukraine, and the armed forces — we are where we are now. And there’s no Russian flag flying over Maidan Square in Kyiv. ¤ And now they are losing ground in Ukraine. ¤ And Vladimir Putin is now thinking about how to stay in the Kremlin, how to avoid a catastrophic defeat in Ukraine. And right now, he’s not thinking about what he wants to swallow next.
Why did this happen? How come they managed to be so wrong about Ukraine? ¤ I often call this war one of the dumbest and most absurd wars in human history. ¤ Indeed, in all seriousness, the leadership of the world’s largest country thought Ukraine would just fall into their hands.
They lied so much that they believed their lies. ¤ They were delusional and they thought nothing will be there to stop them. ¤ The whole system was built on the fact that you have to say what your superiors want to hear from you. ¤ And your superiors also were supposed to be always telling their superiors what they want to hear. It’s the whole way up to the corridors of the Kremlin. ¤ They were blind. The lie blinded them. ¤ They failed to see that Ukraine is not the same old Soviet republic anymore. Over the last 30 years, Ukraine has formed itself as an independent nation.
We have our own identity, our national myth, our tradition, our political system, our own internet memes. We have people ready to fight and die, to stand up and do what needs to be done to save what we love.
But they were also blind about themselves and their might. ¤ They were delusional and they thought nothing would be there to stop them. ¤ The Russian overconfidence was just beyond appalling. ¤ They wanted to easily gain a foothold close in Kyiv at the Hostomel airfield, then get landed in downtown Kyiv. Then simply kill or arrest the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv’s government quarter.
Long advancing convoys were moving along our forests barely protected. ¤ What we ended up seeing in the battlefields of Ukraine was a destitute army, absolutely neglectful about the life of their soldiers. Very primitive and straightforward. ¤ Lacking sophisticated tactics, in many ways equipped worse than the Ukrainian military. ¤ But still, this army is large. The Soviet legacy gave them thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, and munition rounds. They waste their manpower without a second thought.
Russian hordes entered Ukraine from nine directions, having just only 150,000 troops, which was definitely not enough. ¤ The Kremlin repeatedly suggested that hostilities be halted — if Kyiv just surrenders unconditionally.
But General Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, also had a hope. ¤ He knew that the Ukrainian military should let Russia enter deep in the Ukrainian territory, then get bogged down, with their poor logistics derailed, in hard combat. ¤ Russian convoys moving along roads in Ukrainian forests were ambushed by highly-mobile Ukrainian units. In many cases, Ukrainian forces would let Russian tanks pass by, and then attack fuel trucks that followed the heavy armor. ¤ Very soon, Russian tanks stripped of fuel had to stop — ready to be captured intact.
To deal with advancing Russian hordes, the Ukrainian military decentralized the command and control system, and gave more authority to leaders on the ground, who know the situation better. ¤ Ukrainian formations were using the tactics of small and highly mobile units to avoid becoming easy and large targets for Russia. ¤ Ukrainian combat units were much more motivated, flexible, and effective. Because they also had hope, and they knew that nothing is predestined, and that can and will give Russia a fight. ¤ One step after another, this was the path to victory in the Battle of Kyiv.
At some point between May and June, the Ukrainian military had largely run out of old Soviet-standard artillery munition. ¤ Without heavy weaponry, Ukraine wouldn’t stand a chance in the long run. But our military, again, found a way out. Within a very short period of time, it managed to largely switch to using Western-provided 105-mm and 155-mm NATO systems, opening a new page in Ukraine’s military history and drawing a new breath for war.
Right now, Ukraine is suffering from ongoing Russian strikes upon our critical civilian infrastructure. The Kremlin can’t defeat our military on battlefields, so it wants to force us into surrender by stripping us of heating and electricity in winter. ¤ There’s an ongoing battle between Russian missiles, Iranian-made kamikaze drones, on one side, and Ukrainian workers repairing the electricity grid all the time. The Ukrainian public largely supports this campaign — it’s fancy now to save electricity, and abstain from using washing machines during peak hours.
In Podil, the epicenter of fun and leisure in Kyiv, no street lights are on after dark. But Friday night continues. Street musicians play Oasis covers, people dance and hang out — in the dark of the street. ¤ Do you know what our Kyiv Independent guys do during air alert time? ¤ They leave the office and head for a craft beer pub that’s located in a basement. So it’s a shelter — and a bar. ¤ Life and hope always find a way.
Western leaders also had to make this moral choice toward hope and overcoming hardship instead of sweeping it under the rug. ¤ The West has made its way from attempts to “save Putin’s face” and “find a compromise for peace” to this firm support that we’re having now.
We have made our war from getting Javelins and NLAWs for guerrilla resistance under Russian occupation, then to artillery systems for a full-fledged war, now we’re getting air defense facilities. ¤ Over 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers had to die to prove that the Ukrainian cause is worthwhile, that defense aid works, and that Ukraine can and will win this war if the West supports it. ¤ We need more aid, but our confidence in Western support is now as strong as never before.
Just like so many in Ukraine, Western leaders also had to make historic decisions for a historic time and choose the Ukrainian victory over the Russian appeasement. ¤ But we keep hearing voices in the West – why no negotiations? We don’t want to freeze to death in winter or die in a nuclear attack, as Putin threatens. ¤ Why should we care about Ukraine? These voices suggest we go the easiest way — to close one’s eyes on Ukraine in exchange for what seems like forgetting the problem for a while.
Feeding a dictator’s appetite will only encourage his expansion and show that nuclear blackmail and extortion work. And that’s not only Vladimir Putin but also many other rogue regimes in the world. ¤ It will take no time to issue new demands and an even bigger war.
Like I said in the beginning, deals with the devil never work out well. ¤ If we let Putin devour Ukraine, he would get enormous resources of this land — such as even more control of the global food market — and more confidence in his military expansion. ¤ We’re not dealing with reasonable leaders acting out of good faith. ¤ We’re dealing with a mafia that will go on as long as they meet no resistance. They’re failing, and they are trying to discourage the West from helping us. ¤ We don’t have a choice between war and peace. ¤ We have a choice between a shameful deal with the devil that will only make things worse — and helping Ukraine stop the Kremlin now.
Russia now bombs Ukrainian cities, provoking new waves of refugees. In this regard, there’s also a choice. You can say we’re tired and we want this to end — or you can help Ukraine acquire air defenses and protect its cities. ¤ I hope we stay on this path. Helping Ukraine works. If it didn’t, right now I’d be in a mass grave with my hands tied behind my back.
The event’s organizers asked me to have a word or two on if I believe reconciliation between Ukraine and Russia is possible in the future. ¤ We in Ukraine all made our choice — and Russians will also have to, if they want to stay a nation. ¤ They will also face this moral choice of whether they go the easy way, saying “I was just fulfilling orders,” finding excuses, accusing the world of what’s happened — or reassessing their history, their life, their guilt, and changing their country for the better. ¤ If they make it right, in the distant future, maybe, there’ll be a chance for them, too. ¤ So let there be hope and good faith in what we do.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Tonight #Ukraine’s president Zelensky makes a good point. Says “Russia’s mobilized people are so poorly prepared & equipped, so ruthlessly used by the military command,” that (Putin) will soon b forced to announce another unpopular national mobilization [link]
⋙ Zelenskyy [UA]: Russia is trying to make the Kherson region literally an exclusion zone; the world must react to this https://tinyurl.com/2ckay3fk Address by the President of Ukraine: In Kherson, Russians are stripping hospitals of equipment and telling staff to move to Russia
… The occupiers added another challenge – in the occupied territory. Virtually, they are dismantling the entire healthcare system there. The occupiers have decided to close medical institutions in the cities, take away equipment, ambulances – just everything… They put pressure on the doctors who still remained in the occupied areas for them to move to the territory of Russia.
First of all, this concerns the Kherson region. Russia is turning the Kherson region into a zone without civilization, without elementary things available in most countries of the world. Before the arrival of Russia, this region, like all other regions of Ukraine, was completely normal and safe, all social services for people were guaranteed there… Life was guaranteed there.
And now Russia is trying to make the Kherson region literally an exclusion zone. The world must react to this. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, all our representatives inform international organizations and partners about this new escalating step of the occupiers.
And I want to appeal now to all our people in these occupied cities and districts: please do everything to help each other – despite any actions of the occupiers. The Ukrainian flag will return. We will return normal life. But you need to endure this time. The time when even formally the occupiers confirm that they cannot stay on the territory of Ukraine, and therefore they already try to steal medical equipment and enslave medical personnel. …
🐣 RT @khpg In the temporarily occupied Melitopol, the “automatic” citizenship of Russia was declared for all residents after October 30, Mayor Ivan Fedorov wrote. ¤ The mayor believes that the goal of the occupiers is intimidation and forced mobilization of residents.
🐣 RT @f_o_r_Ukraine The mayor of #Melitopol: #Ukrainians who live on the occupied territories of #Zaporizhzhya region will be forcibly made the citizens of #Russia.
🐣 RT @KyivPost⚡️ Mayor of the t.o. Melitopol Fedorov: Russia plans to automatically grant Russian citizenship to the residents of the t.o. parts of Zaporizhya without their consent
🐣 RT @ NoleFan3884 Uh, hate to break it to you @AP but…uh…Ukraine just pushed Wagner and LDNR forces 2km AWAY from Bakhmut. Might wanna fact check next time. Just because Prigozhin says something doesn’t mean it’s true.
🐣 RT @mhmck In Luhansk region, the Svatove-Kreminna highway is under fire control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. –Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Operational Command “East” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
🐣 RT @mhmck Yesterday, the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced the liberation of four settlements on the Lysychans’k-Kreminna-Svatove battlefront. ¤ There are several advances by Ukrainian forces today. ¤ The head of the presidential administration posted “There will be good news soon.”
🐣 RT @wartranslated An audibly distressed Russian soldier is complaining about the retreat in the Mykolaiv direction, in this intercepted call. He says that thousands of people died for this land, and now have to retreat. He wants to extend the contract to kill more Ukrainians.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1586110981281054720?s=20/photo/1
// He says they are going to attack via Belarus
🐣 RT @duty2warn The WaPo reports that one of our leading, and most experienced national security prosecutors has joined the DOJ team overseeing the intensifying investigation into the classified MAL documents. Many legal voices on Twitter have called this “highly significant.”
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Great to expand team to someone with true Criminal trial expertise. And clear sign where this is heading. Ie indictment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Key sign of where this is headed. ¤ David Raskin, highly seasoned federal prosecutor, has joined DOJ team on Trump’s handling of classified docs. ¤ Comes off of his recent success in Espionage case with many similarities @DevlinBarrett @PerryStein @jdawsey1
⋙⋙ WaPo: Top national-security prosecutor joins Trump Mar-a-Lago investigation https://tinyurl.com/58pt7uwt ‘National security law experts say prosecutors appear to have amassed evidence that would meet some of the criteria for bringing charges against the former president’
// National security law experts say prosecutors have amassed evidence that meets some key criteria for charging the former president
National security law experts interviewed by The Washington Post say prosecutors appear to have amassed evidence in the case that would meet some of the criteria for bringing charges against the former president — an unprecedented action that they said likely would only happen if the Justice Department believes it has an extremely strong case.
David Raskin,who served for many years as a senior federal prosecutor in New York City, and more recently has worked as a prosecutor in Kansas City, Mo., has been quietly assisting in the investigation into Trump and his aides, according to the people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.
Raskin is considered one of the most accomplished terrorism prosecutors of his generation, having worked on the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was tried in Virginia as a co-conspirator in the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Raskin was also part of the team that prosecuted Ahmed Ghailani in federal court in Manhattan in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Ghailani was acquitted of most counts but found guilty of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. He is the only Guantánamo Bay detainee to be brought to a U.S. court and tried and convicted. Both Moussaoui and Ghailani received life sentences.
Justice Department officials initially contacted Raskin to consult on the criminal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. But his role has shifted over time to focus more on the investigation involving the former president’s possession and potential mishandling of classified documents, the people familiar with the matter said.
The addition of Raskin to the team handling the Mar-a-Lago probe is another indication of the seriousness with which Justice Department officials view the case and underscores the high stakes for both Trump and those tasked with investigating him. …
There is no other case in history like this,” said Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during the Obama administration. “This is the former president of the United States. This is someone who was the commander in chief, someone who spent four years being briefed every single day on national security issues. It isn’t like any other case, so the steps prosecutors take aren’t going to look the same as any other case.” …
Since the Aug. 8 search, many key pieces of evidence have been described by people close to the matter, and they offer a rough sense of how prosecutors may weigh the “aggravating factors” in Trump’s case — circumstances surrounding an alleged crime that could increase its severity and convince prosecutors to seek charges.
“Classic aggravating factors in a case involving the willful retention of classified documents would include the number of classified documents kept in a place they are not authorized to be,” said David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department national security official. Like the FBI analyst in Kansas City, Trump allegedly had a large volume of classified documents on his property — though 184 of the more than 300 were turned over voluntarily in January in boxes given to Archives officials.
Other potential aggravating factors include the sensitivity of the classified information, and whether there was an effort to conceal documents from investigators, or obstruct the probe. People familiar with the investigation have said a Trump aide told the FBI the former president instructed him to remove boxes from a storage room where classified documents were kept — and that was done after Trump received a subpoena in May for any classified material in his possession. That witness account, from former White House valet Walt Nauta, is buttressed by security-camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that shows boxes being moved after the subpoena, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. …
“From the public facing information thus far, it would seem to me that the Justice Department already has a bevy of aggravating factors and if it otherwise can meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump unlawfully retained classified information, it would be on a sound evidentiary footing to criminally charge him,” Laufman said. “That’s not to say whether ultimately the attorney general in his judgment will find it in the net interests of the department to criminally charge a former president of the United States for the first time in history.” …
It is still likely to be months before a charging decision is made, according to (Brandon] Van Grack [a lawyer in private practice who previously worked classified-mishandling cases as a federal prosecutor], who said he expects prosecutors won’t make any big decisions in the case until after a court-appointed special master completes his review of the 13,000 nonclassified documents seized in the FBI search. Criminal investigators are barred from using these nonclassified documents until after the review is completed, now expected in December. …
Javed Ali, a senior official at the National Security Council during the Trump administration who now teaches at the University of Michigan, said the threshold to potentially charge the former president would be extremely high, leaving prosecutors little room for error. Even if prosecutors could feasibly file multiple charges against Trump, he expects they will only bring charges if they have an ironclad case.
“Because this is so unprecedented, they are going to take it slow,” Ali said. “It’s going to be so explosive. And the last thing you want to do is bring a case to trial that is weak or has holes because then what would be the point?”
🐣 To all the “tough on crime” Republicans tweeting today blaming Dems for crime: @GOP
⋙ ThirdWay (3/15/2022): The Red State Murder Problem https://tinyurl.com/4j592xeb “In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden”
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1586095617029206016?s=20/photo/1
// 2020 data
⋙⋙ ADL: Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2021 https://tinyurl.com/5n6x6925
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaydpauley Also for the “both-siders”, here is the trend since 1994. ¤ Since 2015, Far-right incidents have increased by 377%, Far-left increased by 11%.
◕ https://twitter.com/jaydpauley/status/1526952136147357697?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @juliaioffe For the both-siders out there: left-wing extremists were responsible for 4% of extremist-related killings; the right wing was responsible for 75% https://tinyurl.com/5n6x6925
◕ https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1526944707099738112?s=20/photo/1
⋙ ADL: Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2021 https://tinyurl.com/5n6x6925
🐣 RT @ JoJoFromJerz “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it…” – Kevin McCarthy
The assailant who attacked Paul Pelosi was looking for Nancy. ¤ And he brought a hammer.
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 US new 275 million security package for Ukraine
– HIMARS ammo
– 500 155mm precision guided artillery rounds
– 2000 155mm rounds of remote anti-armor mine systems
– 1300 anti-armor systems
– 125 HUMVEES
– Small arms, 2.7 million ammo rounds
– 4 satellite comm antennas
// Defense Budget
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Andrii, a Warrior from 113th Territorial Guards brigade, comes to his village that was under Russian occupation for six months.@NewVoiceUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1585929279967313923?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Speaker Pelosi’s office says that Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was “violently assaulted” by an assailant who broke into the Pelosi residence early this morning. “The assailant is in custody and the motivation for the attack is under investigation.” Paul Pelosi is in the hospital.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1340 UTC 28 OCT/ RU sources and geolocation data indicate that UKR forces have registered advances in Kherson AO. Forward Edge of Battle Area is approximate.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1585982898955440129?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Russian propagandists are now routinely calling for total war, wiping Ukrainian cities off the map, continuing the destruction of civilian infrastructure, murdering civilians, and even killing Ukrainian children
⋙ KyivIndependent: Kremlin propaganda more aggressive as Russia steps up attacks https://tinyurl.com/2s35bs9z
// Russian propagandists on TV and social media pose as individuals with independent opinions, but act as a coordinated network. The people behind the calls to destroy Ukraine are usually employed by state-owned or pro-Kremlin media. ¤ Often, they spread similar narratives at the same time, implying that they are coordinated.
🐣 RT @ FortuneMagazine Even as Russian missiles continue to pound Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has already lost the war in one crucial respect. ¤ Russia’s oil power is shrinking drastically, probably forever. https://bit.ly/3NgyhbM
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua The United States expects to hand over the NASAMS air defence systems to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in early November, and to train the military on these complexes in the coming weeks, said U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during a briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday.
⋙ 🐣 Yesterday, @Biz_Ukraine_Mag reported on Twitter that “The first two NASAMS air defense systems have arrived in Ukraine and are currently being installed.” ¤ So apparently, that was incorrect.
NYT: A government-connected Putin critic’s flight from Russia raises questions about who is still safe https://tinyurl.com/mrphw4v9 “A day before Ms. Sobchak’s departure, an executive at her media company was arrested and accused of extorting a Russian state firm”
One of the best-known remaining critics of President Vladimir V. Putin in Russia has left the country, shocking many in a nation that has grown accustomed to steadily diminishing dissent. ¤ Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite who has challenged Mr. Putin at the polls while sometimes appearing to accommodate his agenda, entered Lithuania on an Israeli passport, Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, told reporters on Thursday. Videos posted on social media hours earlier had appeared to show Ms. Sobchak, 40, crossing a border. …
Her departure appeared to indicate that even independent voices connected to the government were no longer safe from persecution, a level of suppression last seen in Russia four decades ago.
Ms. Sobchak’s father was Mr. Putin’s political mentor, Anatoly Sobchak, who was once the mayor of St. Petersburg. She assumed an array of often conflicting public personae before becoming one of Russia’s most prominent public affairs commentators. ¤ Over the years, she has frequently criticized Mr. Putin, joining antigovernment protests in 2011 and running against him in the 2018 elections. But many opposition figures, including the jailed politician Alexei Navalny, have accused Ms. Sobchak of being a Kremlin operator, creating a mirage of competition in what is really a one-party system. …
Politico [EU]: Don’t let Russia win, NATO chief warns US https://tinyurl.com/yxhvz77r “A victorious Russia, Stoltenberg said, “will send a message to authoritarian leaders — not only Putin but also China — that by the use of brutal military force they can achieve their goals”
// With Ukraine-skeptical Republicans poised for election gains, Jens Stoltenberg tells POLITICO a Russian victory would ‘send a message to authoritarian leaders — not only Putin but also China.’
⭕ 27 Oct 2022
ABCNews: Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow has no intention of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mvh74w42 //➔ well then; guess Elon misheard Putin about nukes and no Elon Plan is needed anyway
// Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow has no intention of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine
🧵 RT @tomiahonen A few thoughts on Trump likely return to Twitter now that Elon Musk runs this place ¤ Let’s not cry over spilled milk. Twitter is likely going to change & to many Elon’s changes will make Twitter seem worse. But that is life. It is still by far the most powerful platform for us
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1585859619045265408?s=20
🐣 RT @ SpencerGuard I recently rewatched the @netflix documentary “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.” I recommend it! Especially for all the revisionist historians out there on what happened in Ukraine in 2014. There are also a few lessons in it for unarmed protesters #IranRevoIution
🐣 RT @igorsushko As Putin is committing genocide, rapes, and tortures of Ukrainians, President Zelenskyy’s ability to respond to such an asinine question from an Italian journalist in a civil manner is commendable. A true leader.
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1585697774623813633?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @dfrntdrmmr John Fetterman is recovering from a stroke…explain this.
💽 https://twitter.com/dfrntdrmmr/status/1585483530846584832?s=20/photo/1
// Trump flubs Trump misspeaking
🐣 RT @NOELreports Family members of mobilized soldiers of the 55th motorized brigade are complaining about the lack of basic needs like water, bread and say they are given raw potatoes to eat because cooking is not allowed. They also say they only have small arms and one tank without fuel.
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1585556824958418946?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Remember this? Kasherova was talking about the 55th brigade at that time, mobilized defending Svatove. Today, an appeal came because the situation amongst the 55th in Svatove is still chaos. ¤ “Again the Svatovo area. Again, they say, mobilized. Again, they say, without command.” […]
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian soldier in Kherson, callsign “13th”, in his Telegram says there’s a wild sh*t going on in Kherson and people shouldn’t hope it won’t be surrendered. He says there are enemies “everywhere”.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1585667383309602816?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @perlenSpieler apparently conscripting locals for a (ru-friendly) territorial defence resulted in arming partisans.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mary91123008 OMG! Who would have thought that forcibly conscripting & arming Kherson people whose land you invaded might be a bad idea ???
🧵 RT @drg1985 60 years ago today on the 27th October 1962, human life on Earth came the closest it has ever come to a terrible ending. Everyone alive today owes their life to this handsome devil, and most of us don’t even know his name. Let’s change that – a thread
📌 https://twitter.com/drg1985/status/1585524746799796224?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ABCPolitics “Your Honor, I would ask you to show Mr. Head, the same mercy that he showed me on January 6,” former D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone said. “Which in case there’s any question in this courtroom—is none.”
⋙ ABCNews: Former MPD police officer confronts Jan. 6 Capitol attacker at sentencing https://tinyurl.com/t5bzbz6u
// Michael Fanone blamed him for his career loss, 18 months of suffering.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Boris Johnson is considering setting up a new organisation to help support Ukraine and rebuild the country ¤ His friends say could raise millions to reconstruct Ukraine and describe it as a “Marshall plan for Ukraine”, Telegraph writes [link]
⋙ EuromaidanPress: Boris Johnson eyes world stage with ‘Marshall Plan for Ukraine’ https://tinyurl.com/mp76hc3f
// The former PM has set up an office in Westminster from which he hopes to start a foundation to assist the war-torn country
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum This man is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, for the kidnap of children, for torture, rape, cultural destruction and millions of refugees, and he talks about “conservative” values? His only values are those of a criminal thug and serial liar
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimesworld President Putin on Thursday reeled off a familiar litany of criticisms of a “cosmopolitan” Western elite seeking to dominate the rest of the world, using an annual foreign policy speech to try to appeal to conservatives in the United States and Europe. https://nyti.ms/3sDdMfU
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Also, this headline should read, “In bizarre and rambling speech, Putin seeks to cover up war crimes.” Saying he is “seeking to appeal” to anyone makes it sound like this is some kind of normal political campaign, whereas actually this is an unusually sinister propaganda show
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum This man is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, for the kidnap of children, for torture, rape, cultural destruction and millions of refugees, and he talks about “conservative” values? His only values are those of a criminal thug and serial liar
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimesworld President Putin on Thursday reeled off a familiar litany of criticisms of a “cosmopolitan” Western elite seeking to dominate the rest of the world, using an annual foreign policy speech to try to appeal to conservatives in the United States and Europe. https://nyti.ms/3sDdMfU
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote NEW: The economy GREW by a higher-than-expected 2.6% in September, unemployment is its LOWEST in 50 years, and 2022 is on track to be the second best for job growth in HISTORY, second only to 2021. #BidenDeliversAGAIN #VoteBlueForDemocracy #DarkBrandon
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Kyiv’s streets are dark, as are the streets of many other Ukrainian cities, towns and villages. ¤ Together we will walk through this darkness. The most important thing is to preserve the light in our hearts, – @ZelenskyyUa We will win!
Meduza: How an untrained and unarmed ‘platoon’ of new conscripts from Moscow was decimated near Svatove https://tinyurl.com/yckk9xvc “The soldiers … said that they were going to the front without any training, and with weapons that were ‘rusty, stuck, or jammed.‘”
🐣 RT @HarZizn NBC News – Ukrainian troops are holding out against repeated attacks by Russian forces in two eastern towns while those on the southern front are poised to battle for the strategic #Kherson region, which Russia appears to be reinforcing #War_in_Ukraine
🐣 RT @officejjsmart As Russia 🇷🇺 threatens to play with nukes, the US Navy 🇺🇸 successfully tested a hypersonic missile.
🐣 … and, unlike Russia’s, which are dropped from airplanes, the US is developing hypersonic weapons that can be launched from the ground, a ship or a submarine (or dropped from an airplane)
🐣 RT @SecDef 1/3 We just released our National Defense Strategy. @POTUS Biden has stated that we’re living in a decisive decade, one stamped by dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment. The defense strategy we pursue will set our course for decades.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SecDef 2/3 This strategy details the @DeptofDefense’s path forward into that decisive decade — from helping to protect the American people, to promoting global security, to seizing new strategic opportunities, and to realizing and defending our democratic values.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SecDef 3/3 We live in turbulent times. Yet, I am confident that the Department, along with our counterparts throughout the U.S. Government and our Allies and partners around the world, is well positioned to meet the challenges of this decisive decade.
📔 USDeptofDefense: National Defense Strategy https://tinyurl.com/3fv38ydz “We live in turbulent times.” … The (unclassified) National Defense Strategy (NDS) “sets the strategic direction of the Department to support U.S. national security priorities”; Read the NDS:
// “On October 27, 2022, the Department of Defense publicly released our unclassified National Defense Strategy (NDS), a Congressionally-mandated review. This strategy sets the strategic direction of the Department to support U.S. national security priorities”
🐣 RT @TonyHussein4 Thanks President Biden. Latest GDP report shows US economy grew 2.6% from July through September.
Thanks Joe Biden for:
🔹Employers added 263,000 jobs in September
🔹Beating FALSE predictions of a recession
🔹Falling gas prices
🇺🇸 Thanks President Joe Biden.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TonyHussein4/status/1585629704924516352?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “The CBO now projects 7.4% economic growth this year thanks to my Rescue Plan and defeat of COVID. The last time the economy grew at this rate was in 1984, and Ronald Reagan was telling us,”It’s morning in America.”
— President Joe Biden
🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak https://tinyurl.com/3y6fvvku
🔥 Battlefield update:
🔥 Svatove: ¤ Pleasant changes, but no details given
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1585540944086056960?s=20
🔥 Call for peace: ¤ President of 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau visited Moscow, and later forwarded Putin’s call for peace. 🇷🇺 can defend for a month, but 60% of their artillery shells are of 4th and 5th category, which would normally be forbidden to use.
🇷🇺 very well understands lack of perspective, all current military attempts are at improving their negotiations leverage. ¤ Zelensky denied negotiations, he needs to negotiate something and with someone, which is currently not possible.🔥 Israel: ¤ Zelensky announced new level of collaboration with 🇮🇱 Israel, no details on this. ¤ Unlikely weapon shipments, too soon for that. Meanwhile 2 🇮🇷 Iran officers died, related to deliveries of drones to 🇷🇺.
After elections, new 🇮🇱 government will follow long-term interests, which are provided by expert society, which significantly matches current interests.🔥 Dirty bomb: ¤ Problem will probably become silent, just as bio-labs and weaponized birds.
[…] 🇷🇺 sources discussing plan of using Tochka-U rebuilt to look like Iskander and launching radioactive materials at area of Chornobyl NPP. This shows complete lack of creativity🔥 Afghan solders: ¤ Multiple sources reporting 🇦🇫 Afghan solders trained by 🇺🇸 and 🇬🇧 receiving offers from Wagner. Their performance in European winter would be questionable.
Interesting, if they would choose to fight for country, that was trying to conquer 🇦🇫 Afghanistan 30 years ago. Performance of solder depends on morale, skills and equipment, and good morale can outweigh the rest.
Morale of any 🇺🇦 solder is much stronger than morale of any mercenary.
Possibly 1000 mercenaries can capture some village with local advantage, but then it would be hit by HIMARS.🔥 Ukraine victory: ¤ 🇩🇪 Scholz expressed readiness to assist for 10s of years.
Western politicians have already announced that victory contours will be decided by 🇺🇦, their task is only to assist. There won’t be any negotiations with Putin ignoring 🇺🇦.
The following conditions are discussed for 🇺🇦 victory:
– Complete liberation of 🇺🇦 territory to 24th of August, 1991
– Extradition of war criminals
– Reparations
– No Putin🔥 Target planners: ¤ List of 30 🇷🇺 target planners published, however this profession is significantly larger in any military. ¤ Their extradition will be requested for war crimes, if that will be refused, it’s possible they will be met elsewhere. ¤ End of thread
⭕ 26 Oct 2022
WSJ, Robert Zoelick: Russian Cash Can Keep Ukraine Alive This Winter https://tinyurl.com/s5huw5wh “In cooperation with its G-7 allies, the U.S. should begin the process under the international law of transferring the more than $300 billion in frozen Russian reserves to Ukraine”
// There’s precedent for transferring the more than $300 billion in frozen reserves as compensation.
TheHill: Zelensky says Ukraine ‘preparing good news’ in fight against Russia https://tinyurl.com/wv4sswkd “Zelensky said in an address that Ukrainian forces were holding the line and pushing back against Russian troops in key battles”
🐣 RT @chefjoseandres Everyday I’m proud of @WCKitchen team in Ukraine that gets food to the people.. 5km from the frontlines in the Kherson region the WCK team brought food kits, moving in & out quick & safe as possible due to shelling happening. My great people, I’ll join you soon! #ChefsForUkraine
🐣 RT @ukraine_world RU has already lost as much equipment – aircraft & others – as most armies of the world do not have and will never have in service. RU won’t be able to restore these losses. I thank all our fighters for such a gradual & irreversible demilitarization of the enemy, @ZelenskyyUa
YahooNews/Reuters: Blinken says China rejects status quo of Taiwan situation https://tinyurl.com/mt8xd59d “China has also made decisions on exerting more pressure on Taiwan and holding out the possibility of ‘using force to achieve their goals’ if pressure tactics do not work”
🧵 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️ISW: Putin isn’t interested in negotiations, retains territorial ambitions beyond illegally annexed oblasts. ¤ The U.S. think tank says that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s recent statements indicate that Russia “seeks a military victory in Ukraine and regime change in Kyiv.”
📌 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1585487652807131137?s=20
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian propagandists discuss their nuclear military trainings: “there would be Comrade Stalin’s strait in place of North American United States and the Atlantic Ocean in place of Great Britain”.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1585485690673897472?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Trump doesn’t even have the excuse that he’s recovering from a stroke. ¤ “Trump ‘regularly stumbles, slurs and gets confused’, White House official says”
⋙ TheIndependent [UK] (2019): Trump ‘regularly stumbles, slurs and gets confused’, White House official says https://tinyurl.com/28jcd8y9
// 11/8/2019; ‘It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard,’ says anonymous author
⋙ 🐣 RT @JustAMazen Here are some of Trump’s favourite words and 3 of his responses to COVID in 2020. ¤ I typed them out, for MAGAts’ pleasure
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JustAMazen/status/1585464735130075138?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @JosephSabol tfg is a textbook case of #FrontotemporalDementia an umbrella term for a group of brain disorders that primarily affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. These areas of the brain are generally associated with personality, behavior and language.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Powerful. The spark that lit the fire. We see you. Godspeed to the Iranian people. #IranRevolution
⋙ 🐣 RT @ IranReportsNow OMG! ¤ What a tear – jerking sight! ¤ Thousands of people walking to visit #MahsaAmini ‘s tomb on the 40th day of her loss. ¤ Khamenei should be scared of these people, these glorious spectacular people.
💽 https://twitter.com/IranReportsNow/status/1585186730139078657?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 … seems we have a bit of an #IranianMaidan going on
Godspeed 🙏☪️
🐣 RT @Acyn [Senator Lindsey] Graham: Walker changes the entire narrative… We’re a party of racists, Sean, me and you are racist and the party is racist and what happens when the Republican party elects and nominates Walker
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1585447309000810496?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 [Herschel] Walker is racists’ view of most Black men; he lives down to their worst stereotype ¤ It’s also why racists hated Obama: he was too smart, moral, and decent ¤ Read “Billy Budd” by Herman Melville
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder The Satanism theme was prominent in 2014 as a justification for that Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now we find Russian Christian fascism in the Russian Security Council.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: since Putin’s phony “denazification” never made any sense, now Russia’s Security Council is absurdly calling for the “desatanization” of Ukraine. How embarrassing.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584930049480085505?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ElGrecooos [tr] They failed denazification, biolaboratories, NATO generals, Nuclear bomb, dirty bomb… Now that they have passed the game of Bacchus, take it out of the drawer… “HOLY WAR” angels against Satan… Russian SAINTS against EVIL… all this by Diabola Dugin …in front of a full hall of serious idiots
💽 https://twitter.com/ElGrecooos/status/1584974444400824321?s=20&t=A7nIhzGMVB-csoDwsCH9Gw/photo/1
// Alexander Dugin freaking out 😜
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder The Satanism theme was prominent in 2014 as a justification for that Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now we find Russian Christian fascism in the Russian Security Council.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: since Putin’s phony “denazification” never made any sense, now Russia’s Security Council is absurdly calling for the “desatanization” of Ukraine. How embarrassing.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584930049480085505?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC Bob Woodward has covered presidential administrations for half a century. He’s never delivered a public warning like this before.(via @MaddowBlog)
⋙ MSNBC, Steve Benen: Bob Woodward warns Americans: Trump is ‘a threat to democracy’ https://tinyurl.com/mr3chwbe
// After 50 years of reporting, Bob Woodward has never described a politician as a “threat to democracy.” Now, he’s making an exception to his neutrality.
🧵 RT @saitomri NEW: We reviewed more than a thousand pages of Russian military documents left behind in a command bunker in Balakliia, Ukraine. The documents shed new light on Russia’s chaotic retreat from the Kharkiv area in Sept. Thread with some of our findings 1/x
📌 https://twitter.com/saitomri/status/1585228271662166016?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en At this rate we can soon hear from Russian screens that it was USA and NATO that attacked Ukraine, not Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1585303861467938817?s=20/photo/1
// CSTO: Poots calls 🇺🇦 a “client state” of 🇺🇸, biolabs 🦠. says 🇺🇸 has promised 🇺🇦 nuclear ☢️ 🤦🏽♀️
🐣 RT @MFA_Russia 🇷🇺 💬 President #Putin: We can see the 🇺🇸 United States’ real attitude to its client states. ¤ ❌ Ukraine has actually lost its sovereignty and is being directly governed by Washington, which using it as a battering ram against Russia, Belarus, the CSTO and the CIS in general.
// CSTO: The Collective Security Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states. Members: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan; Observer: Serbia; Former: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan
CIS: The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional intergovernmental organization in Eastern Europe and Asia. It was formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 … 9 member states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan Uzbekistan; Associate state: Turkmenistan; Observer state: Mongolia
⋙ 🐣 It is Russia that threatens Ukraine’s sovereign existence, national identity, and territorial integrity. ¤ It is Russia that claims Ukraine does not have a right to exist.
The US, UK, NATO and the EU seek only to help Ukraine maintain its sovereign existence.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1585354692955369472?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky: “Without YOU” speech
🐣 RT @duty2warn Alito said the abortion draft leak made justices “targets.”
No, stripping half the country of civil rights they’ve enjoyed for half a century, after you lied and said you wouldn’t, is what made you a target, Sammy.
You’re not the victim here.
💙 🐣 RT @McFaul The barbarism of Putins war and occupation in Ukraine is absolutely shocking. Do not become numb to it. Do all you can to help stop it.
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Russian appointed head of Kherson administration, stated that in addition to the monuments, Russians also stole / “transported” the corpse of Grigory Potemkin from the Kherson church.
💽 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1585266292545798147?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @maria_avdv The fact that previous Russian allegations were rejected as completely false did not stop Putin and he repeated Moscow’s propaganda narratives about “dirty bomb” at the meeting with heads of security services of CIS countries.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Top Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov endorses Kadyrov’s proclamation that Russia is embroiled in a jihad against Ukraine. He calls it a holy war. Solovyov sighs, moans and angrily ponders whether Russia actually has the nukes, since everything else is in such short supply.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1585315793889538049?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Nothing demonstrates the stark difference between Russian and Ukrainian cultures like Ukraine’s “bath on wheels” which allows soldiers to shower and wash clothes. ¤ Russia would just never even think of such a thing.
💽 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1585214927333007360?s=20&t=0GozA1XNr6e-bmV74WtaSg/photo/1
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag BREAKING: The first two NASAMS air defense systems have arrived in Ukraine and are currently being installed
⋙ 🐣 Finally‼️ NASAMS are the systems that protect the Capitol and the White House in Washington D.C.
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1585327303726616576?s=20&t=0GozA1XNr6e-bmV74WtaSg/photo/1
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Putin again asked President Zelenskyy for negotiations, said the President of Guinea-Bissau, who visited Ukraine today (he met with Putin yesterday) ¤ President Zelenskyy replied that “Putin is ready for negotiations but at the same time, he is hitting our cities with drones.
🧵 RT @ anders_aslund Media need to find a new way to report Kremlin statements, clearly indicating that since the Kremlin has said it, the opposite is probably true. Examples:
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1585290724106702848?s=20&t=OD3h3y7eOvhyXS60zL_PbA
1. Putin says that he is not going to invade Ukraine (before Feb 24).
Translation: Putin says he is going to invade Ukraine.
2. Putin says that Russia complies with international law.
Translation: Putin says that Russia ignores international law.3. Putin says that Russia is not bombing hospitals or civilian installations.
Translation: Putin says that Russia is targeting hospitals and civilian installations.4. Putin accuses Ukraine and the US of developing biological arms in Ukraine.
Translation: Putin is considering using biological arms in Ukraine.5. Putin accuses Ukraine of planning to use a dirty bomb in Ukraine.
Translation: Putin is considering using a dirty bomb in Ukraine.6. Putin states that he has always been open to negotiations about Ukraine.
Truth: Putin has refused to even talk to Zelensky after December 2019.
Translation: Putin is losing & hope somebody else will stop the successful Ukrainian offensive & offer Putin parts of Ukraine.7. Putin denies that he has ever questioned the need for good relations with Ukraine.
Translation: Putin has for the time being given up his hope to annihilate the Ukrainian nation.Usually, Putin just states the opposite of what is true, but his latest statements also indicate that he realizes that he has lost and had better to opt for some minimum achievement. Still, it makes no sense to talk to such a liar & terrorist.
For journalists, the task remains to clarify that every statement from the Kremlin is likely to be a lie. ¤ They should label all Kremlin statements:
“Since this is a statement by the Kremlin, it is likely to be a lie.”
🐣 Wind patterns today would confine most fallout to within Ukraine, if a dirty bomb were set off from the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant https://tinyurl.com/4vw799e6
ABC/AP (10/25): Ukraine alleges Russian dirty bomb deception at nuke plant https://tinyurl.com/mtfvtbdr
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1585312367751352321?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @chuckles_candy As of now surface is towards SE & higher the altitude the more easterly & stronger the wind.
⋙⋙ 🐣 I would expect the Russians to calibrate a blast to go off at an altitude to confine as much of the damage as poss to within Ukraine, while not using a “bomb” that would be beyond Ukr‘s known capabilities ~ so as not to make their false flag even more laughable
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Armenia has banned leading Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan from entering the country. Simonyan is an ethnic Armenian and Russia is supposedly a key Armenian ally. This is a further indication of fraying ties between Moscow and Yerevan
SkyNews [UK]: ‘Ready for anything’: US aircraft carrier crew training for war with Russia but aims to deter threats https://tinyurl.com/5n6j56xr “The commander of the carrier strike group told Sky News his message to Russia is that his men and women ‘are ready for any mission’”
// Sky News sees US pilots take part in NATO exercises in European waters as the alliance’s chief voices new concern about Ukraine after Russia falsely alleged the Ukrainians were planning to use a radioactive “dirty bomb” on their own territory.
The crew of a giant US aircraft carrier in European waters says they are ready to fight Russia if the call comes but their mission is to deter threats and prevent escalation. ¤ The USS George H W Bush is helping to test NATO’s ability to defend itself – a mission that became all the more real in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In the past few days, F18 jets have flown from the carrier in southern Europe all the way out to Lithuania and Poland on the alliance’s eastern edge, close to Russia, operating alongside warplanes from other allied nations and with NATO warships and ground troops. ¤ The commander of the carrier strike group told Sky News his message to Russia is that his men and women “are ready for any mission”. ¤ “We want peace – it’s what everybody wants,” Rear Admiral Dennis Velez said, speaking inside a hangar on board the ship, which holds more than 70 jets, helicopters and other aircraft. “We want the war [in Ukraine] to be over and to bring stability back to the region and have a peaceful and stable Europe – but, for us, we are ready.” ¤ Asked if that meant he was ready for war if necessary, the admiral said: “This ship, this strike group, our allies: we are ready for anything. We demonstrate that every day.”
At least two Russian warships have been watching the action, which forms part of a series of NATO activities, from a safe distance, as have Russian aircraft. ¤ “We have seen them,” said Rear Admiral Velez, speaking on Tuesday as the strike group of the aircraft carrier and escort ships sailed through the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Italy. ¤ As to what was said to the Russians, he answered: “Nothing… They have the same right as we do to operate in international waters, so we just follow international law and the rules of the road.”
The vicinity of Russia’s military and the knowledge that Russian forces are locked in a brutal war with Ukraine – which is not part of NATO but shares borders with members of the alliance – means operating in Europe is no longer just another peacetime training exercise for the more than 5,000-strong crew of US sailors on the carrier.
“It is a real change,” said Lieutenant Cordan Mackenzie, 27, one of the F18 pilots on board. Her call sign is ‘Big Poppa’. ¤ “Most of the time what we are doing, it feels like training, it feels like a game but you come out here and have intel [intelligence] briefings and you fly missions with NATO allies and it really solidifies how real the things that we do in the world are and how important our mission set is: having a presence here in the Adriatic and having the US work with our NATO allies to make sure the world knows we are still a power to be reckoned with.”
She, and her fellow aviators, face the possibility of one day being ordered to fight in air-to-air combat against the Russians should tensions escalate significantly. ¤ It is a type of operation that US, British and other Western pilots did not have to contemplate during the long war in Afghanistan when they were not pitted against a rival air force.
“It is daunting,” said Lieutenant Mackenzie. ¤ “It is one of the things that you just have to rely on your training. Without a doubt, I think US-trained navy pilots are the best in the world… All we do out here is train and get ready for a fight that might come and I think when it comes, pilot to pilot, I hope we are the better man in the box.”
The carrier is taking part in a relatively new NATO series of activities called Neptune, which – unlike longer-planned, more predictable, annual exercises – allows allies to be faster, more flexible and more dynamic with how they test their maritime, air and land capabilities. ¤ This is designed to improve their ability to deter Russia – a task that allies have focused on even more intensely following Vladimir Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
“We have stepped up our readiness, our preparedness and strengthened the way we work together across the alliance to prevent and defend every inch of NATO territory,” Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, told Sky News on a visit to the carrier. ¤ For example, he said this was also only the third time since the end of the Cold War that a US aircraft carrier group has come under NATO command, with all three of those occasions happening as part of Neptune drills in the past year.
The NATO chief also voiced new concern about Ukraine after Russia falsely alleged the Ukrainians were planning to use a radioactive “dirty bomb” on their own territory. The claim could be part of a “false flag” plot by Moscow to launch such an attack and blame Kyiv. s “Russia has accused others of things they intend to do themselves, so we need to monitor closely what Russia now does. And they must know that use of a dirty bomb or a radiological bomb is a serious escalation,” Mr Stoltenberg said.
Asked how NATO would respond to such an attack, he said: “It will be a very serious escalation.” ¤ Allies are also concerned that Vladimir Putin could even resort to a nuclear strike as his forces suffer defeats at the hands of Ukraine’s military, backed by Western weapons. ¤ The head of NATO said: “The likelihood of any use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine remains low, at the same time the consequences are so devastating, so enormous it is a risk we have to take seriously.”
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag “We will cease to exist. They will be no Russian culture, no Russian language, no Russian people.” ¤ Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov on the consequences of defeat in Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1585257565730254848?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 absurd overreaction; to wit: ¤ we still speak English in the United States, we still study Shakespeare and learn about the Magna Carta ¤ we are even free to study Russian literature and enjoy Tchaikovsky (I did/do) ¤ both the US and the UK now value our “special relationship”
🔄 Wikipedia: Patriarch Kirill: KGB affiliation: “According to material from the Soviet archives, Kirill was a KGB agent…. This means he was more than just an informer, … He was an active officer of the organization.” (reported by Forbes 2009) Wikipedia: https://tinyurl.com/y4ckswa3
Wikipedia: Patriarch Kirill: KGB affiliation: Forbes reported on February 20, 2009 that, “Kirill, who was the Metropolitan of Smolensk, succeeds Alexei II who died in December after 18 years as head of the Russian Church. According to material from the Soviet archives, Kirill was a KGB agent (as was Alexei). This means he was more than just an informer, of whom there were millions in the Soviet Union. He was an active officer of the organization. Neither Kirill nor Alexei ever acknowledged or apologized for their ties with the security agencies.”[105] Further reporting from March 7, 2022 from The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison interviewed local Ukrainians for their opinions about Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The response was mostly a pessimistic view of Kirill and his motives towards Ukraine based on his past as a KGB agent …
🐣 RT @wartranslated Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of Ukraine, on the future of the Kherson offensive, rockets attacks, Crimea, and more. A recent interview by Roman Kravet, translated by @Anastasiya1451A
¤ https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1585244503967150081?s=20
⋙ WarTranslated: Kyrylo Budanov: When we return Crimea, the Crimean bridge will cease to exist https://tinyurl.com/y23d2hce
// An interview with Kyrylo Budanov by Roman Kravet, Mon, 24.10.2022, translation by @Anastasiya1451A; tag: Ukraine intelligence service
🐣 RT @ Flash_news_ua Since the beginning of the occupation of the territories of the Zaporizhzhia region, the Russians have identified Melitopol as an administrative center and are fighting among themselves for spheres of influence.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ Flash_news_ua ⚡️A car exploded yesterday in the temporarily occupied Melitopol near the building belonging to the Balytskyi family. The explosion is the result of a war between two clans of the occupation authorities, Melitopol mayor Ivan Fedorov said.
🐣 RT @Easy_Blood Bakhmut is an important transport hub, connected by rail with the occupied part of the Donetsk region. Also, the capture of Bakhmut opens the way to the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration
🐣 RT @ ForeignpolicyWB The Ukrainian army is about 5km away from the strategically important city of #Svatove in the #Luhansk region. #Ukraine #RussiaIsATerroristState #Kherson
🐣 RT @OlenaHalushka russians are trying to bomb us into the stone age.They destroy our critical infrastructure to make Ukraine unlivable. Power blackouts mean no heating, water supplies, sewage, or cooking. russians do this to freeze Ukrainians to death & cause new huge waves of refugees #Kholodomor
🐣 RT @McFaul Ugh.
⋙ 🐣 RT @yarotrof Col-Gen Ramzan Kadyrov declares a “great jihad” after a Ukrainian strike in Kherson killed or inured close to 100 Chechen troops: “We will not be taking these devils prisoner. We will burn them alive. We will not stop. Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, all of Ukraine is Russian territory.”
⭕ 25 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @StateDept .@SecBlinken at the @UN Security Council: Tell President Putin to stop the horror he started. Tell him to stop putting his interests above the interests of the rest of the world, including his own people.
🐣 RT @NOELreports Patriarch Kirill declared Putin a fighter against the Antichrist, against the unipolar world, global universalism, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, so on. We are waiting for Zelensky to be declared Antichrist, last time in history such a move was made was in 1812 against Napoleon
💽 https://twitter.com/vidtranslator/status/1585083429032525824?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @mykhed_o 1. This thread is about the report of the UN Independent International Commission about the russian atrocities and violence in Ukraine. ¤ It is hell. ¤ I focus here only on the cases of rape and violence. ¤ Plese STOP russia.
📌 https://twitter.com/mykhed_o/status/1584867753860558848?s=20
📔 [Report:] UNHR: A/77/533 (10/18): Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3t8ffbnn
🧵 RT @AVindman The Ukraine war is not simply about the survival of Ukraine, it’s also about US security & the future of democracy in the 21st Century. Ukraine success warns-off future authoritarian aggression. While Russia’s success manifests a world where large states prey on smaller states.
📌 https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1584976034235297792?s=20
As a result of Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, U.S. national security is imperiled. This is not the result of Ukraine defending itself or liberating occupied territory, or freeing its people from Russian tyranny. It’s imperiled solely because of Russian aggression.
The Biden admin has done an admirable job of managing the dangers of escalation. Biden’s team has balanced short term risks, such as the possibility of war with NATO, against the imperative for Ukraine to win & Russia to loose. The U.S. must continue to support Ukraine to win!
In the end this war will close with diplomacy. It will end with a negotiated peace. The Biden team knows this. The Biden team also know that Putin is not ready to negotiate and only Ukraine’s victories on the battle field will convince Putin to negotiate.
When Putin is compelled to negotiate & in partnership with Ukraine, under the mantra of nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, the US will facilitate diplomacy. @HouseDemocrats support Ukraine, their views are diametrically opposed to the GOP approach, capitulate to Russia.
⋙ 🐣 Most GOP senators do support Ukraine, as do many in the House, including ranking members of relevant committees. It’s reprehensible for certain MAGA Republicans (and media figures like Tucker Carlson) to be turning support for Ukraine into a partisan issue
🐣 RT @USNATO Supporting Ukraine defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity is the right thing to do because it shows that the world won’t allow any country to wage illegal and unjustified wars at whim.
💽 https://twitter.com/USNATO/status/1584854878983098369?s=20/photo/1
// DefSec Lloyd Austin standing next to Gen Mark Milley and [?] speaks
ABC/AP: Ukraine alleges Russian dirty bomb deception at nuke plant https://tinyurl.com/mtfvtbdr “Energoatom … said Russian forces have carried out secret construction work over the last week at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant”
// Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator says Russian forces have performed secret work at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said Tuesday that Russian forces were performing secret work at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, activity that could shed light on Russia’s claims that the Ukrainian military is preparing a “provocation” involving a radioactive device.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made an unsubstantiated allegation that Ukraine was preparing to launch a so-called dirty bomb. Shoigu leveled the charge over the weekend in calls to his British, French, Turkish and U.S. counterparts. Britain, France and the United States rejected it out of hand as “transparently false.”
Ukraine also dismissed Moscow’s claim as an attempt to distract attention from the Kremlin’s own alleged plans to detonate a dirty bomb, which uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian state enterprise that operates the country’s four nuclear power plants, said Russian forces have carried out secret construction work over the last week at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
Russian officers controlling the area won’t give access to Ukrainian staff running the plant or monitors from the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog that would allow them to see what the Russians are doing, Energoatom said Tuesday in a statement. …
🐣 RT @DEFCONWSALERTS DEFCON 3 [Not US military]
⋙ 🐣 RT @DuryeeVincent Perhaps related to this. The fallout isotopes would be traced to that location, and provide plausible deniability for a Russian dirty bomb. Next step: 101rst Airborne crosses the border for “Humanitarian assistance”, and US sinks the Black Sea Fleet.
⋙⋙ ‼️ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NUCLEAR ROULETTE: UKR sources reveal that RU occupiers of the the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant are conducting ‘clandestine work’ near the areas where spent nuclear fuel assemblies are held. This activity suggests RU forces may be preparing a Radiological Dispersion Device (RDD).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1585076007291129856?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @lucidRobAZ At this point, with all the crazy rhetoric out of Moscow, I think this is almost a certainty. We are at the crossroads of the war, where Putin is backed into a corner, and anything is possible. Very scary times.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Patriarch of Russian Orthodox Church Kirill said that basic values inNational Security Strategy should be expanded to include faith, sacrifice, love for the motherland ¤ Dignity, human rights, and freedoms are borrowed from the West.
⋙ EuromaidanPress: Russian Patriarch offers to expend Russian values to faith, sacrifice, love for motherland https://tinyurl.com/5au55dys
🐣 RT @thenewsoncnbc “The Russians are the ones that control that nuclear facility in Zaporizhzhia, so the Ukrainians wouldn’t really have that much say over what’s happening there,” says @EvelynNFarkas as Ukraine accuses Russia of preparing “terrorist act” at a nuclear power plant.
💽 https://twitter.com/thenewsoncnbc/status/1585050567088504832?s=20/photo/1
// “Biden warns Russia … “
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent CNBC: Ukraine receives 2 NASAMS air defense systems from US. Raytheon Technologies, U.S.-based aerospace and defense conglomerate, has delivered two NASAMS air defense systems due for Ukraine to the U.S. government, its chief executive said on Oct 25.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent “We did just deliver two NASAMS systems. (…) We delivered two of them to the government a couple of weeks ago. They’re being installed in Ukraine today,” CEO Greg Hayes said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Return of Crimea will restore real peace – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ¤ “The Russian potential for aggression will be destroyed to the core when the Ukrainian flag will be back in its rightful place in Crimea,” Zelenskyy said. 📷Getty Images
⋙ EuromaidanPress: Return of Crimea to restore real peace – Zelenskyy https://tinyurl.com/e4u3n4ap
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that real peace, which will end Russia’s war against Ukraine, is possible only after the return of occupied Crimea, European Pravda informed.
“Everything started with it [Crimea]. Its return will mean the revival of true peace. The Russian potential for aggression will be destroyed to the core when the Ukrainian flag will be back in its rightful place in the cities and villages of Crimea. Crimea must be freed from Russia’s use as a bridgehead. Then the world will feel that there will be no more losses, and people will feel that the world is becoming safer,” the president said. “We should make the format of the Crimean platform a starting point for other humanitarian and diplomatic platforms that will contribute to the de-occupation of other territories that were once enslaved – from Transnistria and Abkhazia to the northern territories.”
🐣 RT @DefenseU Message of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to russian soldiers. ¤ We call on everyone who wants to live to surrender.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1585003262184333313?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Internl_Leaks If the occupiers blow up the Kakhovska Hydroelectric Station, the occupied Crimea will remain without water supply for 10-15 years, and possibly forever, said Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov.
🐣 RT @KatStepanenko Prigozhin is increasingly engaging in power play via the information space, unmatched by the disgraced Russian military command. He has reportedly directly told Putin about the failures of Russian commanders in Ukraine, according to the @washingtonpost.
⋙⋙ WaPo: Mercenary chief vented to Putin over Ukraine war bungling https://tinyurl.com/4tmsnx5y
// Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian tycoon behind the mercenary group Wagner, personally told Putin that his military chiefs are mismanaging the war, U.S. officials said
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar “#Prigozhin holds a uniquely advantageous position within the Russian state structure and information space that allows him to expand his constituency in Russia more readily than the disgraced Russian higher military command.” http://isw.pub/UkrWar102422
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: The #Kremlin intensified its information operation to accuse #Ukraine of preparing to conduct a false-flag attack using a dirty bomb on Oct. 24. @TheStudyofWar assesses the Kremlin is unlikely to be preparing an imminent false-flag dirty bomb attack. http://isw.pub/UkrWar102422
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1584729935373283328?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Putin aims to terrorize Ukrainians into surrender by destroying the country’s critical civilian infrastructure. However, these terror tactics are merely strengthening Ukraine’s resolve to defy him and defeat Russia
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: Ukraine defiant as Putin’s terror bombing plunges cities into darkness https://tinyurl.com/2ty9bksw
🐣 RT @McCainInstitute At “Courage in American Leadership: A Conversation with Congresswoman Liz Cheney”, @Liz_Cheney said, “There are so many generations that have sacrificed for this freedom, we cannot be the generation that lets it slip away.” Watch the full event here: https://bit.ly/3CRvTEv
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin does not want to negotiate right now. He wants to conquer the 4 territories of Ukraine he annexed on paper in a ceremony at the Kremlin. Until he is stopped on the battlefield, Putin will not end his invasion. These are the tragic real facts.
🐣 RT @DefenceU When we win this war, history will remember those who stood by our side in our darkest hour; as well as those who openly supported the aggressor. But most of all, it will remember those who stood idly by and pretended they didn’t see a genocide happening in the middle of Europe.
WaPo: Ukrainian forces advance against Russian fighters in Kherson and Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/kd7e9xz3 “Ukraine has been pushing hard for further territorial gains, while Russia this month began a relentless bombing campaign against Ukraine’s energy system”
WaPo: Liberal Democrats withdraw letter to Biden that urged him to rethink Ukraine strategy https://tinyurl.com/3xhvxd99 //➔ unforced error that harms Ukraine: you can’t unring a bell
🐣 RT @anders_aslund The White House stands firm & crystal clear on the war in Ukraine:
John Kirby, NSC spokesman:
1. “It’s clear Mr. Putin is in no mood to negotiate,”
2. “We’re not going to have conversations with Russian leadership without the Ukrainians being represented.” (Bloomberg)
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Nancy Pelosi: “Support for Ukraine is bipartisan, bicameral, that means in the House and in the Senate, and it starts in the White House with our President.”
⋙ KyivPost: Nancy Pelosi Confirms U.S. Support for Ukraine Is “Bipartisan and Will Continue” https://tinyurl.com/ypb9r6sx
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1345 UTC OCT 25 / RU collaborators continue to be evacuated from urban area. RU troops reported to be fortifying city. RU engineers seen to be constructing minefields on the left (south) bank of the Dnipro at Hornostayivka, possibly to defend a crossing point.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1584904838898503680?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/1330 UTC 25 OCT/ UKR Air Defense confirms the downing of a Russian Su-24M Strike fighter.[At present, unconfirmed report locates crash in the Izium axis]. UKR carries out 30 aviation strike missions across all axes of conflict. 9 RU air defense systems hit.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1584898096189755394?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/1330 UTC 25 OCT/ UKR Air Defense confirms the downing of a Russian Su-24M Strike fighter.[At present, unconfirmed report locates crash in the Izium axis]. UKR carries out 30 aviation strike missions across all axes of conflict. 9 RU air defense systems hit.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1584898096189755394?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @StratcomCentre Top Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov calls for the complete destruction of entire Ukrainian cities ¤ Like many other Russian propagandists, he plays a significant role in inciting the war and genocide of Ukrainian people and should face trial. ¤ #StopRussia
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1584851043904806913?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 24 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @Spectre8500 More than 8000 wagner mercenaries reportedly KIA on the Bakhmut front.
🐣 RT @60Minutes “It’s completely and utterly surreal. None of these lies have been sustained to any extent.” Chris Krebs, former CISA director and CBS News contributor, tells @andersoncooper about the 2020 election, which he calls the most secure in American history. https://cbsn.ws/3snQB90
💽 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1584681147543572482?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @OrmeStephan Russia has ALWAYS been a colonial empire – going on 800 years now. ¤ Russia has used genocide as a policy tool hundreds of times. In Georgia, in Chechnya, in Syria, and now Ukraine. ¤ Russia is not interested in peace, this has always been a war of conquest.
🌎 https://twitter.com/OrmeStephan/status/1584704478342975489?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @atrupar i am just catching up on the DeSantis-Crist debate and OMG ¤ Crist: “Yes or no, Ron. Will you serve a full four year term if you’re reelected governor of Florida? It’s not a tough question. It’s a fair question. He won’t tell ya.” ¤ DeSantis: *looks like he’s malfunctioning*
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1584755338699423745?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @DanteAtkins I usually agree with the members of the Progressive Caucus who signed the letter to Biden on Ukraine, but this letter is worse than useless. It will have the opposite of its intended effect. Here’s why: 1/x
📌 https://twitter.com/DanteAtkins/status/1584679432207450114?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @DanteAtkins 2/x far from shortening the war, I view it as a certainty that this letter will make its way to Russian state media within the next day or two as evidence of fracturing solidarity among politicians in Biden’s own party for his support of Ukraine.
⋙ 3/x it will further encourage Putin that his long-term strategy of keeping the war going until US domestic resolve breaks or a Putin-friendly politician wins the presidency is viable, and Russian propaganda media will work overtime to convince the public that it is viable.
⋙ 4/x to further this fracturing, Russia will attempt to continue to disrupt global energy supplies and Ukrainian food exports, because the Progressive Caucus just told Putin that these things were creating domestic pressure in the United States.
⋙ 5/x The letter just told Putin and Lavrov that their strategy is working. They now have incentive to conduct further atrocities in Ukraine, do even more damage to global supply chains, and keep that war machine going as long as they can.
⋙ 6/6 the Progressive Caucus members thought they were trying to shorten the war. But if anything, they just prolonged it It was a baffling, severe foreign policy blunder that risks long-term consequences.
🧵 RT @RALee85 As long as Kyiv continues to receive enough ammunition, Russia will not achieve serious gains on the battlefield. Consequently, Russia’s strategy is focused on deterring further aid from the US/NATO. This letter will likely reinforce Moscow’s view that it has the right strategy.
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1584721381660336128?s=20
⋙ A ceasefire is not in Ukraine’s interests. It would give Russia time to mobilize and train new units, procure UAVs and missiles from Iran, and prepare for another offensive. Russian officials are not signaling that they are ready to end this war.
⋙ The fastest way to end this war is to strengthen Ukraine’s military capabilities to the point where it is clear Russia cannot make further gains and can’t hold the terrain it currently occupies. Otherwise, this war will likely be protracted and end as a result of exhaustion.
⋙ The sentiments in that letter are noble and negotiations will almost certainly play a role in how this war ends, but real negotiations aren’t feasible right now. Success or a stalemate on the battlefield will determine when and how negotiations occur and the likely terms.
⋙ I think US aid will likely continue regardless of the result of the midterms, but US messaging is critical for influencing Moscow’s calculus in Ukraine. If the Kremlin thinks the US is committed to long-term support to Ukraine, it will be more likely to negotiate sooner
🐣 RT @USProgressives Statement from @RepJayapal reaffirming support for Ukraine and clarifying the position of a letter to President Biden ⬇️
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/USProgressives/status/1584687094508974081?s=20/photo/1
[Comments are 🔥]
⋙ 🐣 too late: I’m not a progressive anymore: this is finally the straw that did it; from now on, I’m a “moderate” Dem, a big step for me ¤ your politics alienate people, esp here in the midwest
⋙ 🐣 now jayapal gets to go on a hundred interviews smiling inexplicably and blathering like when she tanked the BBB: she needs to be OFF media until after the election ¤ let the professionals from the Biden admin speak
🐣 RT @attn .@BarackObama has some thoughts for Gen Z about Pete Davidson’s dating life, aliens, and why you should register to vote.
Go to http://vote.org/obama to make sure you’re registered.
💽 https://twitter.com/attn/status/1584560357519024129?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Wagner are learning in Bakhmut that fighting soldiers is different to fighting the unarmed non combatants they are used too.
🐣 RT @Tendar Visual confirmation that that the concrete plant in Bakhmut was liberated. More than 2 months of fighting and dying for Putin’s Wagnerites, and lost in within 48h. #Bakhmut #Ukraine #Donetsk
💽 https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1584555571012784130?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @Devilstower Just two days ago, pro-Russian bloggers claimed that Russia was “marching on Lyman” and showed videos of Russian forces in Donetsk designed to support that claim. But those videos proved to be a month old, and today Ukraine confirmed control over a whole string of locations. …
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/Devilstower/status/1584688756757786624?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Devilstower […] Overall, Ukraine has expanded their control of critical highways for both supplies and movement. They’re positioned to hit Svatove from multiple directions, to pin Russian forces at Kreminna, and to move against weak points anywhere along the highway between the two.
🐣 RT @ PowerVertical I must say that I am VERY disappointed with these 30 members of my party. What on earth are they thinking with so much at stake in Ukraine?!? As a matter of policy and politics, President Biden would be wise to reject this appeal out of hand.
⋙⋙ WaPo: Liberals urge Biden to rethink Ukraine strategy https://tinyurl.com/48e6cxxt
// Democratic lawmakers’ letter calls for direct U.S. talks with Russia
⋙ 🐣 I am as well. All a ceasefire would do is allow Russia to strengthen. ¤ Worse, this treats Ukraine as a non-partner and re-affirms the Russian claim it is at war with the US. ¤ This is naive, irresponsible and disrespectful to Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 […] they‘re not senators, they’re members of the lower house, the 435-seat House of Representatives, members of the leftwing progressive caucus: less than 10% of House membership
⋙ 🐣 […] Pelosi will keep them in line; Biden‘s plan, if the GOP takes the House, is to include about $50B in an Omnibus spending bill and pass it during the lame duck session, to get Ukraine through 2023
🐣 📊 RT @DefenseU Latest poll by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows that 86% of Ukrainians believe that it is necessary to continue the armed resistance, even if russia doesn’t stop shelling Ukrainian cities.
🐣 RT @djtothkopf What percentage of each country should it be obligated to give up to its more aggressive neighbors in exchange to achieve “peace?”
🐣 RT @wartranslated In this latest intercepted call published by GUR, the Russian soldier describes the difference between the supply of the two armies, saying the Russians get nothing compared to Ukrainians, especially drones and effective armour-piercing ammo.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1584645449734328320?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS I asked Timothy Snyder how he views the Russia/Saudi effort to drive up US gas prices. He says it’s inextricably linked to the hope that a GOP Congress might roll back funding for the Ukraine war effort. ¤ We talked about how this is almost a Hail Mary:
⋙ WaPo: Why Putin hopes for a GOP victory, as explained by top Russia expert Timothy Snyder https://tinyurl.com/489x5n7y “We are actually on the verge of winning in Ukraine. We’re also on the verge of a tipping point back toward democratic institutions” ~ Timothy Snyder
We are actually on the verge of winning in Ukraine. We’re also on the verge of a tipping point back toward democratic institutions, and I don’t mean just in the West; I mean around the world. An awful lot hinges on Russia losing and Ukraine winning.
The tipping point can also go the other way. If the Ukrainians hadn’t fought — or if they had already lost — we would have already seen a tipping point where authoritarianism and Putin-style nihilism would be much more popular. ¤ Right now, we have an opportunity for a positive tipping point. We could throw it all away if we do the wrong thing after November. Things could go either extremely well or extremely poorly. …
🚫 🐣 RT @TuliosportsINC Dead #Russian Wagner forces litter the battle field of #Bahkmut, after the #Ukrainians made a localized counter-attack.
💽 https://twitter.com/TuliosportsINC/status/1584570745233231872?s=20/photo/1
// gruesome
🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie Svatove is lost to Russia . Tactical success is first and political success 2nd but new anti air and HIMARS will wipe Wagner out. Ukraine has used more machine gun ammo in bakhmut than any place else in Ukraine #Bakhmut #ukraine #ukrainewar #UkraineWarNews
🐣 RT @anders_aslund EU leaders approved a plan envisaging EUR 18bn in financial support for Ukraine next year. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen instructed EU finance ministers to develop a mechanism for allocating these funds. (Dragon Capital)
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Financing is expected to be disbursed in equal installments of EUR 1.5bn per month, matching the budgetary support pledged by the US for 2023 and covering around half of next year’s projected funding needs estimated at EUR 3-4bn per month. ¤ Excellent!
🧵 ◕ RT @duty2warn The biggest lie is that Republicans are good for the economy. The economy ALWAYS does better under Democrats. ¤ Look it up.
📌 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1584520301156573185?s=20
🐣 RT @AndorraInvestor 🚨JUST ANNOUNCED: AG Merrick Garland & DOJ officials holding a press conference on “significant national security cases addressing malign influence schemes and alleged criminal activity by a nation-state actor in the United States.” Oct. 24 @ 1:30p ET
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AndorraInvestor/status/1584557086884524032?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, Senior Justice
Department Officials to Hold Press Conference on Significant
National Security Matter
****** MEDIA ADVISORY ******
WASHINGTON – This afternoon, U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen, and other Justice Department officials will host a press conference to discuss significant national security cases addressing malign influence schemes and alleged criminal activity by a nation-state actor in the United States.
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer BAKHMUT/1215 UTC 24 OCT/ RU continues heavy bombardment along the Forward Edge of the Battle Area. Indirect fire from tanks, mortars, artillery and RU Close Air Support/Strike Missions hit the settlements of Bakhmutske, Bakhmut.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1584515442844270592?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @phildstewart !! U.S. Justice Department says Attorney General Garland, senior DoJ officials to hold press conference on significant national security matter at 1:30 pm – Reuters
🐣 RT @Liveuamap Russia now just flooding informational space with fakes what Ukraine intends to do:
– to blow up Kakhovska dam
– Both Kakhovska and Dnipro dam
– Dirty nuclear bomb at Kherson
– Blow up all 6 units of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
– dirty bomb+same script as Khan Shaykhun(staged)
🐣 RT @NOELreports Locals in #Tokmak, Zaphorizhia region reported that many dead and wounded Russian soldiers were brought to the hospital at night. There were reports of AFU attacks in the region, targetting warehouses and military bases.
⭕ 23 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost This is what one would expect from a crazy person yelling at a lamppost on a streetcorner. The constant need to attack and spew out nonsense. What is also fascinating is how tired even the cult is getting of his bullshit on Truth Social. A totally pathetic 5600 likes in an hour.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1584420216875778048?s=20/photo/1
// Dominion Voting Machines and election fraud
[Text:] Trump: “60 Minutes” is not a News Show, it is a Democrat propaganda machine. Their story last night on Election Fraud was a JOKE! The evidence is massive, not to even mention that State Legislatures did not grant necessary approvals, the FBI paid people to, essentially, “get Trump,” and then told Facebook and others that the Laptop from Hell was Russian disinformation, when they knew it was not – and much more. Barr, Krebs, and the rest of the RINO Establishment, should be ashamed of themselves!
🐣 📋 RT @2536luis This never gets old 🙏🏼 [child hugging Mom] ¤ 50,000 women serve in the Armed Forces of #Ukraine ¤ 5,000 women are fighting on a frontline ¤ One of the highest in Europe. [hashtags]
💽 https://twitter.com/2536luis/status/1584366043819954177?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenseU [Ukr] #FreedomIsOurReligion
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1584265903230709761?s=20/photo/1
// inspiring music video
WaPo: Forgotten U-2 pilots helped end the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago https://tinyurl.com/yc6jdezx “It was Oct. 25, 1962, and … a U-2 spy [was] taking high-resolution images of nuclear missile sites … about 100 miles from Florida. The world teetered toward total destruction”
// It was Oct. 25, 1962, and the U.S. Air Force captain was piloting a U-2 spy plane on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, taking high-resolution images of nuclear missile sites on the island nation about 100 miles from Florida. The world teetered toward total destruction as tensions escalated between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago this week.
StateDept: Joint Statement on Ukraine by Govts of the US, France, & the UK https://tinyurl.com/2p93pe79 “We all reject Russia’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory.… We further reject any pretext for escalation by Russia”
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “When today 🇷🇺 Minister of Defense organizes a phone carousel & calls foreign ministers with stories about the so-called “dirty” nuclear bomb, everyone understands everything well. Understands who is the source of everything dirty that can be imagined in this war”, – @ZelenskyyUa
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1584280278192619521?s=20/photo/1
(📊) WaPo, EJ Dionne: America’s religious divide isn’t really about religion https://tinyurl.com/3ufb8uer “Religion has long been a stand-in for culture and identity. The fights carried out in its name often have less to do with God or theology than with ways of life”
When politics itself becomes religion, it’s easy to lose track of what an authentically religious voice in public life sounds like. ¤ This explains one of the oddities of our moment. Voters’ religious commitments (or lack thereof) are among the most powerful predictors of how they’ll cast their ballots. Yet actual religious questions mean little or nothing in our public life.
There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the merger of religious conservatism and backlash conservatism. These have been close cousins ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act under Lyndon B. Johnson pushed millions of conservative White Democrats, many of them devout evangelicals, into the Republican Party.
But before the rise of Donald Trump, the two brands of social conservatism had distinct voices. Religious conservatives emphasized abortion, family, old-fashioned values and the rights of the traditional people in an increasingly secular society. Backlash conservatism was harder-edged, more focused on crime, race and immigration. …
[I]t’s increasingly difficult to distinguish backlash politics from the religious kind, partly because of the surge of Christian Nationalism, defined by the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today (which is critical of the idea) as “the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.”
The linkage of backlash and religious conservatism is most obvious in a new front in the culture war focused on public schools: Republicans have simultaneously condemned “critical race theory” and any teaching related to homosexuality or transgender Americans.
Last week, 33 Republican members of Congress introduced a bill modeled after Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, as critics describe it. Their proposal would prohibit the use of federal money “to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10.” A bill being pushed in Idaho would ban drag performances in all public venues.
The mishmash of themes points to one old truth and one new one. Religion has long been a stand-in for culture and identity. The fights carried out in its name often have less to do with God or theology than with ways of life — and, of course, power. No one has understood this better than Trump.
But after being defeated on key issues, the culture warriors have had to plow new ground. The attack on trans people and drag queens reflects a retreat from the battle against same-sex marriage, which is now endorsed by 71 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, including a majority of Republicans. …
This year, it’s Democrats who are voting on abortion, in reaction to the high court. The Pew Research Center found 75 percent of Democratic voters rating abortion as a “very important” issue, compared with 39 percent of Republicans. As a result, Republican candidates might still describe themselves as “pro-life,” but they are increasingly reluctant to say exactly what this means. Severe restrictions were largely theoretical when Roe protected abortion rights.
The most arresting evidence that identity, not faith, is driving politics is the behavior of two of the most devoutly Christian groups in the nation: White evangelicals and Black Protestants. According to Oct. 10-16 data provided to me by Pew, White evangelicals were backing Republican candidates for Congress over Democrats by 75 percent to 13 percent. Black Protestants were voting 70 percent to 4 percent for Democrats. …
🐣 RT @wartranslated Anton Krasovsky, broadcast director at Russia Today, lost self-control today and declared on live TV that Ukrainian children who oppose Russian aggression should be thrown into a rough river or burned in wooden houses alive.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1584306192670633984?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @ProfPaulPoast If Republicans win on November 8, is that bad news for Ukraine? Will the Republicans cut aid to Ukraine? ¤ Both current polling and core political science scholarship suggests “no”. [THREAD]
📌 https://twitter.com/ProfPaulPoast/status/1584155519522000896?s=20
WaPo, Bob Woodward: The Trump Tapes: 20 interviews that show why he is an unparalleled danger https://tinyurl.com/bdd9dpnt “I believe that is Trump’s view of the presidency. Everything is mine. The presidency is mine. It is still mine. The only view that matters is mine”
// “In their totality, these interviews offer an unvarnished portrait of Trump. You hear Trump in his own words, in his own voice, during one of the most consequential years in American history: amid Trump’s first impeachment, the coronavirus pandemic and large racial justice protests”
🐣 RT @RBReich Why do Putin and the Republican Party sound so much alike? Simple: Their culture wars have a similar goal. ¤ Putin, Trump, Carlson, and America’s right seek to manufacture fears of “the other” to distract from where all the wealth and power have gone…all the way to the top.
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ More unhappy mobilised Russian soldiers deployed to Ukraine have spoken out about a chaotic mobilisation that has left them on a front line in eastern Ukraine with no training, no usable weapons, no food, no water, no orders and commanders they feel are lying to them. [1-31]
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1584164368543256577?s=20
// tags: complaining Russian soldiers complaining
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy MFA spox #Zakharova: #US continues pumping more weapons into #Ukraine, spending tens of billions of dollars, which does nothing but drag out the conflict and make it as bloody as possible, which clearly demonstrates that they are not committed to diplomacy.
⋙ 🐣 Negotiate with Zelenskyy, not the US or NATO ~
The US will support Ukraine as long as they want and
“As long as it takes” (Joe Biden)
#NAFO #Fellas
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️The Russians are blocking communication in Kherson in order to “cut off” the Armed Forces from the partisans, reports the press service of the Center of National Resistance. […]
⋙ 🐣 What Starlink doing?
🐣 RT @albus_fawkes [tr] The Ukrainians have not yet even reached the west bank of the Dnieper at Kherson, their offensive in the north-east has stagnated, while the RF is bringing in 300,000 mobilized soldiers, more than doubling their forces.
⋙ 🐣 about Russia’s ‘300,000 soldiers’:
1) recruitment has fallen well short
2) soldiers are ill-equipped and barely trained
3) soldiers are unmotivated and poorly led
4) military leadership has made one mistake after another
= “cannon fodder”
🐣 RT @AliVelshi Inflation is a global problem. And it wasn’t created by Biden.
⋙ 📋 AppleNews/MSNBC: Velshi: Inflation is a global problem. And it wasn’t created by Biden. https://tinyurl.com/2ex889rm “It’s not a uniquely American problem … Over 100 global economies have a much higher inflation rate than the U.S. right now”
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1584150902000140293?s=20/photo/1
// This year’s midterm elections will largely be defined by the economy. In recent polls, Americans say inflation is the most important problem facing the country today. Inflation in America is high, but it’s not a problem that was created by the Biden Administration or the Democrats. It’s not a uniquely American problem, either. Over 100 global economies have a much higher inflation rate than the U.S. right now.
⋙ from chart: Turkey 83.45%, Argentina 83, Netherlands 14.5, UK 10.1, Ger 10, EU 9.9, Spain 8.9, Italy 8.9, Mexico 8.7, US 8.2
// chart via National Statistics Offices
WaPo: Russia removes civilians from Kherson; concern grows over threat to hydroelectric dam https://tinyurl.com/ms4ncb2x “The weekend order for all citizens to immediately leave Kherson is illegal, Ukrainian officials say. It could also cause lasting economic and social damage” ~ ISW
// “according to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank.”
AP: Military think tank: Russia withdraws officers from Kherson https://tinyurl.com/yp8ma9y9 “To delay the Ukrainian counteroffensive as the Russians complete their retreat, Moscow has left newly mobilized, inexperienced forces on the other side of the wide river”
// quote: Institute for the Study of War
🐣 RT @ TheStudyofWar Southern Axis Update: #Russian forces are likely conducting a fighting withdrawal and are continuing to strike #Ukrainian positions in northwestern #Kherson Oblast. https://isw.pub/UkrWar102222
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1583997239394914305?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @stewartj925 ‘Russian forces have started to retreat’ say Ukrainian soldiers entrenched outside Kherson
💽 https://twitter.com/stewartj925/status/1584062410067148800?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 22 Oct 2022
NYT: For Trump’s Backers in Congress, ‘Devil Terms’ Help Rally Voters https://tinyurl.com/28pnayzd
// In vilifying tweets and speeches, G.O.P. lawmakers who contested the election have far outpaced other Republicans and Democrats in fueling polarization.
🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar #Russian Mobilization & Force Generation Update: ISW identified additional reports on October 22 that Russian mobilization has not met force generation goals and will likely continue in alternative forms. https://isw.pub/UkrWar102222
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture In the last 48 hours, reports have emerged of a potential Russian withdrawal from its Dnipro west bank defensive positions. While this may fit General Surovikin’s overall strategy for #Ukraine, it will be difficult to execute successfully. 1/24
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1584043380706660353?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn We predict that when the damage assessment is complete, Trump’s espionage will prove to be the most catastrophic breach of national security in American history. And we will discover he has been passing secrets to the Russians and Saudis, to name two, from Day 1.
🧵 RT @juanhidalgocen [tr] 1/ The Ukrainian army has been gathering forces on the Zaporizhia front for a month. ¤ I wonder: is there any chance that he will launch an offensive on that front? ¤ We all look towards Kherson, but what if the Ukrainians attack from a different front, as they did when they took Kharkov?
📌 https://twitter.com/juanhidalgocen/status/1583388751249649664?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Barracuda According to Russian source Rybar, the Ukrainian Army continues to gather strength on the Zaporozhian front. Russian sources claim that for at least a month, the Ukrainian Army has been gathering strength on the Zaporozhian front.
🌎 https://twitter.com/BarracudaVol1/status/1583236722082533376?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @juanhidalgocen [tr] 2/ If they fail to advance on Kherson, or once the city has fallen, what will be the next target? ¤ An offensive in the Zaporizhia oblast, although it seems complicated, would be a great triumph if it is successful. ¤ The big target would be Melitopol.
🌎 https://twitter.com/juanhidalgocen/status/1583390414064582657?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @juanhidalgocen [tr] 3/ The meaning of this offensive would be twofold:
– On the one hand, trying to split the strip of land controlled by Russia in two, seeking to cut off land communication between Donbas and Crimea.
– On the other hand, take control of the Enerhodar nuclear power plant from the Russians.
🌎 https://twitter.com/juanhidalgocen/status/1583391190384140288?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @juanhidalgocen [tr] 4/ It does not seem logical that they are going to open another front here before taking the city of Kherson and all the land west of the Dnieper. But precisely because of that, because the Russians don’t expect it, it might make sense, if they find the right opportunity.
⋙ 🐣 RT @juanhidalgocen [tr] 5/ In any case, right now the raspútitsa is in full swing, and the vehicles get stuck in the muddy ground. ¤ In a few weeks that mud will freeze, and an interesting window will open before the snowfall, in which we will probably see some important offensive.
🐣 RT @almoud85 Ukraine has for the past 8 weeks been busy destroying Russian artilleries and amo dumps with perfections [sic]. Those helping Ukraine plan their attacks can read Russia, like a text book, because everyone know that Russia’s military strategies haven’t changed since 1933
🐣 RT @StateDept “His move also reveals the lie at the heart of Russia’s purported annexation. If 99% of people in these parts of Ukraine want to be part of Russia, why does President Putin need to impose martial law to control them?” – @SecBlinken on President Putin’s imposing of martial law
💽 https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1583971463161257985?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MarkHertling As I’ve been saying since the start of this war, the key difference is leadership, especially the relatively new Ukrainian professional NCO corps. Imagine thousands of @y_gudymenko compared to the “elected” conscript sergeants of the Russian Army
⋙ 🧵 RT @y_gudymenko My name is Yuriy Gudymenko. I am a Junior Sergeant (Corporal) in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I want to appeal to each and every serviceman of the Belarusian Armed Forces. My address can be accessed in Russian and Belarusian in the Ukrainian media and on my FB page. Thread:
📌 https://twitter.com/y_gudymenko/status/1583778661131751425?s=20
I am not going to lecture you. I don’t want to talk about brotherly nations, nor do I want to remind you of the fact that haven’t ever fought against each other. ¤ I will be straightforward and simple. ¤ If you step on our land — you will die. 2/12
I don’t know how exactly each of your deaths are going to occur. Maybe you’ll die like that Russian paratrooper on whom I’ve tripped in Irpin, early spring of this year, while placing mines. 3/12
I remember him, because I haven’t seen dead Russian soldiers as close before, not looking into binoculars or a scope. He was fully burnt, his uniform baked together with his blackened skin, and one of his legs was eaten to the bone by dogs. 4/12
Maybe, you’ll die exactly like him, betrayed by your command and comrades. ¤ You also may get obliterated by our mines. We have a lot of them, enough for all of you. It’s a quick death — if it’s gonna be an AT mine, that is. 5/12
An anti-personnel mine will most likely leave you bleeding out, unable to survive without modern medical kits and evac systems. ¤ Maybe, your truck will get destroyed by a HIMARS rocket, and you’ll be lucky to die with scattered legs and in horrible pain. 6/12
Maybe, your tank will get destroyed by a Stugna or a Javelin, and you’ll burn alive, just like hundreds of Russian tank crews before you. Though you’ll be counted as missing for a long time, because ammo detonation will certainly turn you into tiny flesh-bone dust. 7/12
A trophy Solntsepyok HFS might as well work out a fire mission on you. Or, maybe, a Grad MLRS. We will watch the video of your death, filmed from a drone, and share it with our friends. ¤ However it will occur – you are going to die. 8/12
Over 60 thousand Russian soldiers could have confirmed my words. But they can’t. There’s bad reception in hell. ¤ You haven’t seen fighting for decades. We’re fighting since 2014. Your weapons are old and obsolete. Our weapons are brand new, made by NATO. 9/12
You’re being pushed into a senseless war on foreign soil, while we’re defending what’s ours. We own the initiative, and your Russian allies are retreating month after month. ¤ You don’t have a single chance. You will die here, near a village you’ve never heard of before. 10/12
I have some Belarusian blood in me. Maybe, this causes me to warn you, instead of gloatingly observing your deaths. ¤ If you’ll arrive to Ukraine, you will die. Surrendering is your only way to survive and return home. ¤ If you don’t do that, you will most certainly die. 11/12
🧵 RT @osint_east If the reports point in the direction of a full withdrawal from Kherson, then the assessment by the milblogger is correct: it will be an immense blow to Russia militarily, politically, and psychologically.
📌 https://twitter.com/osint_east/status/1583975661848657925?s=20
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @RALee85 The Grey Zone channel and Rusich group both think that Russian forces will leave Kherson on the North/West side of the Dnipro. Rusich thinks that better defensives could have been prepared and Grey Zone thinks it will happen soon.
https://t.me/dshrg2/217
https://t.me/grey_zone/15443
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1583946355868696576?s=20/photo/1 -2 [Ru]
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 The Grey Zone channel notes that this would mean abandoning territory that Russia (illegally) annexed. They also are skeptical of the Russian euphoria with the arrival of Geran-2/Shahed-136 loitering munitions that aren’t having a serious effect on the battlefield yet.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Another Russian channel warns of a huge political blow if Russia abandons the other side of the Dnipro, which would be a huge victory for Kyiv and a demoralizing event for Russian forces and society. 3/ https://t.me/dva_majors/4315
⋙ 🐣 RT @osint_east What they outline here is evident of two major points:
First, that Russia will be left in an untenable military position in the whole of the south.
Second: the maximalist goals are dashed, and likely forever.
2/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @osint_east The entirety of the Russia campaign (once revised after Kyiv) is hinged on the consolidation of Novorossiya. The premise of Russian greatness through reunification of those places, and peoples, made this war still worth fighting for (at least as it was ideologically driven). 3/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @osint_east Without that, the sting of it’s incompleteness will be deep and traumatizing for Russia. It cannot be said for certain, but the rolling effects of Kherson’s return to Ukraine may be the largest blow yet to the Russian war effort, and possibly Putin himself. 4/4
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Wagner affiliated Telegram channel says Kherson is lost and that it will be worse than the retreat from Kharkiv as they Russians have no way to get out.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1583915862624735232?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 RT @ffs_geezabrek From another tweet, refering to Kherson and other areas that are being emptied.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ffs_geezabrek/status/1583934053027545089?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “Today is a difficult day. The troops are systematically withdrawn, taking into account possible enemy attacks at the time of withdrawal. Somewhere there were reports of leaving Chkalovo and Charivnoye. Not certainly in that way. Part of the force was indeed withdrawn. There were no fights that would allow us to retreat. Therefore, they simply fix the waste here. Cover sufficient to hold a breakthrough is in place. Berislav today there was an evacuation of the headquarters personnel of various units. Everything is going according to plan and order. Kherson is being actively strengthened. Firing positions and lines. Unfortunately, today there was no opportunity for publications. I participate in all this” 🇷🇺 205th SMR Brigade
🐣 RT @INTobservers No 🇷🇺 panic in Kherson
“I think everyone understands that the situation around Kherson has finally acquired irreversible consequences”
“The situation is to some extent even worse than in comparison with the retreat from the Kharkiv region after the breakthrough to Balakliia”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/INTobservers/status/1583878610343333890?s=20/photo/1 -2
// Source: Greyzone on Telegram
🐣 RT @ivanastradner Hilarious. This should be translated in Russian and posted on Telegram.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ivanastradner/status/1583754163065745409?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Putin is a sleeper CIA agent. He’s destroyed his army, weakened Russia, built up NATO, killed Russian-speakers in the East, brought in Finland and Sweden to NATO, forever bonded Ukrainian language and identity, and created the modern Ukrainian military.
NYT: Using Adoptions, Russia Turns Ukrainian Children Into Spoils of War https://tinyurl.com/4w75se4c “Russian officials have made clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia”
// Thousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia. “I didn’t want to go,” one girl told The New York Times from a foster home near Moscow.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1310 UTC 22 OCT/ UKR reports civilian evacuation of city nearing completion. RU troops preparing positions for urban fight. UKR aviation conducts 16 strike missions across all axes of contact: Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) sorties destroy S-300 battery.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1583813888956825604?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: ‘Barrage’ of Russian missiles target Ukrainian cities; Zelensky urges West to prevent Moscow blowing up dam https://tinyurl.com/mwec5bu3 “”
🐣 RT @Hromadske Russian occupiers remaining in Kherson are changing into civilian clothes and preparing the city for street battles, reports the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to its data, a significant part of the population left Kherson.
⭕ 21 Oct 2022
UkrBusnsNews: Ukraine and the US will create a joint working group to involve American companies in restoring Ukraine’s infrastructure https://tinyurl.com/3kd8exrv
DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Putin’s Last Hope to Win in Ukraine Is a GOP Victory in November https://tinyurl.com/3pmazwut //➔ As US aid has increased, it makes sense that more people would say enough is being spent; but any GOP move to politicize the war is worrying
// Just when Russia on the ropes, Republican leaders are already signaling they’ll cut aid to Ukraine if they win control of Congress.
⋙ 📊 PewResearch: As war in Ukraine continues, Americans’ concerns about it have lessened https://tinyurl.com/5x99tvh4
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1584056668454674432?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ (NBC: With GOP skeptics of Ukraine aid poised to gain seats in Congress, lawmakers look to lock in a huge military assistance package https://tinyurl.com/3thsve2w “The new aid package, which most likely would be part of an omnibus spending bill, could be [in] the range of roughly $50B”
// 10/20/2022; One bipartisan idea would use a funding bill during the lame-duck session to secure a much higher level of military and other assistance.)
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom The United States is facing the greatest danger to its constitutional system since at least the 1950s, if not the *18*50s, and millions of people are like: Yeah, but gas, man
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think that Garland is the guy who really doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to bring criminal prosecutions against a former president of the U.S. but… my gut is, he feels he has to… These are really serious crimes” – @neal_katyal w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1583594137294868480?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Eric at the QAnon conference tonight: “My father finally got a subpoena from the J6 Committee. I told him a minute ago, you have to go testify, because it will be the greatest entertainment. Who wants to pop a beer, make some popcorn, and watch Trump talk about election fraud?”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1583635616339996674?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TonyHussein4 Georgia’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Secretary of State, says Lindsey Graham pressured him to throw out all mail ballots cast in certain counties.
⋙ BI (2020): Georgia’s top election official says Lindsey Graham pressured him to throw out all mail ballots cast in certain counties https://tinyurl.com/5fb2s25x
// 11/16/2020
🐣 RT @mhmck Since October 19, all bodies of the Russian occupation have ceased their activities in Beryslav, Kherson region. ¤ Traitors who collaborated with the Russian occupiers continue to leave the city, along with their families and property.
NYT: ‘It Was Horror’: Ukrainians Share Grim Tales of Russian Occupation https://tinyurl.com/5n8x92e7 “The scale of abuse of the population in eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation is most likely greater than that seen in the spring in Bucha”
// With Russian soldiers pushed out of parts of the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian investigators have been overwhelmed with accounts of detentions, torture and missing relatives, as well as collaboration and property theft.
BusinessInsider (Aug): Year-over-year inflation rates for the G7 countries in July 2022 https://tinyurl.com/f5p5jwvd The US inflation rate is very similar to other G7 countries (and is lower than the EU average)
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1583579874664804352?s=20/photo/1
// 8/23/2022; through end of July
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard God damn that tears me up. Russian terrorism must be stopped. #ArmUkrainaNow
⋙ 🐣 RT @maksymeristavi 66 seconds that shutter my heart in billion pieces.
💽 https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1583420046231339008?s=20/photo/1
// little girl: “I saw a robot … It wanted to kill me”
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: the former president has been officially subpoenaed by the select committee investigating the coup.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1583515721895596032?s=20/photo/1
// tags: Trump subpoena sent to Trump
🐣 RT @maria_avdv Oleg Klokov, reportedly killed last night in attack on pontoon crossing near Antonovskiy Bridge in Kherson, was not an ordinary Russian propagandist, but one of the main, who remained in the shadows, setting up processes. Some point out his close connections with Russian GRU.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski At the QAnon conference today headlined by Eric Trump and Michael Flynn, the speaker says the ‘Angel of Death’ is coming for various govt officials, and God is reinstating Trump to the presidency by the end of the year.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1583514393069113344?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @January6thCmte Pursuant to a unanimous vote, the Select Committee issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump for testimony and records relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation into the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol and its causes.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @January6thCmte In a letter to Mr. Trump, Chair @BennieGThompson and Vice Chair @RepLizCheney underscored Trump’s central role in a deliberate, orchestrated effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of presidential power.
[≣ Letter:] https://tinyurl.com/j6v8bexd
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1583515424360370177?s=20/photo/1 -4
United States House of Representatives Resolution 503 instructs the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (“Select Committee”) to investigate the facts, circumstances, and causes of the January 6th attack and issues relating to the peaceful transfer of power. Pursuant to that directive, we have interviewed more than a thousand witnesses, reviewed over a million documents, conducted public hearings, and vindicated our rights in court against those who have tried to keep relevant information from the Select Committee. As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power. …
You took all of these actions despite the rulings of more than 60 courts rejecting your election fraud claims and other challenges to the legality of the 2020 presidential election, despite having specific and detailed information from the Justice Department and your senior campaign staff informing you that your election claims were false, and despite your obligation as President to ensure that the laws of our nation are faithfully executed. In short, you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. President to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself. The evidence demonstrates that you knew this activity was illegal and unconstitutional, and also knew that your assertions of fraud were false. But, to be clear, even if you now claim that you actually believed your own false election claims, that is not a defense; your subjective belief could not render this conduct justified, excusable, or legal. …
⋙ 🐣 RT @dwright100 18 U.S. Code § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy “If two or more persons…by force…conspire to… prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law…, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property…shall each be fined…or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
🚫 Pravda: Russia and Ukraine get ready for major battle for Kherson amid evacuation of civilians https://tinyurl.com/m6kwkxf “Zelensky does not conceal that Ukraine has plans to blow up the dam” [not true]
// Military experts are closely watching the events unfolding around the city Kherson. A major battle is going to unfold for the city already in the coming days or weeks.
// there are two Pravda’s ~ this is the pro-Ru one
🐣 RT @djrothkopf Why did he steal these particular documents about these particular countries. It was not random. It was not without risk. It was purposeful.
⋙ WaPo: Mar-a-Lago classified papers held U.S. secrets about Iran and China https://tinyurl.com/yyccjabm
// 325 classified, 43 top secret; Iran’s missile program, U.S. intelligence work aimed at China were among the most sensitive material seized by the FBI, people familiar with the matter say
Some of the classified documents recovered by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club included highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China, according to people familiar with the matter. If shared with others, the people said, such information could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world. ¤ At least one of the documents seized by the FBI describes Iran’s missile program, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Other documents described highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China, they said.
Unauthorized disclosures of specific information in the documents would pose multiple risks, experts say. People aiding U.S. intelligence efforts could be endangered, and collection methods could be compromised. In addition, other countries or U.S. adversaries could retaliate against the United States for actions it has taken in secret. ¤ The secret documents about Iran and China are considered among the most sensitive the FBI has recovered to date in its investigation of Trump and his aides for possible mishandling of classified information, obstruction and destruction of government records, the people said.
Some of the most sensitive materials were recovered in the FBI’s court-approved search of Trump’s home on Aug. 8, in which agents seized about 13,000 documents, 103 of them classified and 18 of them top secret, according to court papers. ¤ Those papers were the third batch of classified documents recovered in the course of the investigation. Boxes voluntarily sent from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives and Records Administration earlier this year were found to contain 184 classified documents, 25 of which were marked top secret, according to court records. In June, Trump’s representatives responded to a subpoena by giving investigators 38 additional classified documents. …
🧵 RT @AndrewPerpetua The Russians want people to believe the situation in Bakhmut is hopeless for Ukraine, or that everything is falling apart and the city is on the verge of falling. This is all propaganda.
📌 https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1583476977184346113?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer THANK GERMANY: C4H10FO2P @markito0171 reports that Berlin has supplied RML-4D Multi-Functional Air Surveillance & Target Acquisition Radar Systems to Ukraine. These systems are able to locate 1500 targets at 250km with 360° searches– and share data with air defense assets.
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1583466338701684736?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Reuters BREAKING: Trump’s ex-adviser Steve Bannon gets four months in prison for refusing to cooperate with lawmakers investigating last year’s U.S. Capitol attack https://reut.rs/3DhTrma
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WHY THEY WON’T: Russia claims to have mined the hydro-electric complex at Nova Kakhovka– threatening an epic flood. Here’s why blowing the dam would be Moscow’s biggest mistake of the entire war. With special thanks to @NickDM
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1583451825222868997?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @USAFacts Before you vote this November, get the facts. See what the data says on the issues before deciding on your state’s candidates.
◕ https://twitter.com/USAFacts/status/1580695478580441090?s=20/photo/1
// “Federal spending increased by less than 1% in 2021 after rising 45% in 2020”
⋙ 🐣 RT @David_Charts We’ve got the FY 2022 data.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @David_Charts (10/17) CBO just reported the budget deficit fell 50% in fiscal 2022, Biden’s first budget year. It would have fallen even more except CBO included the $426B in student loans all in this fiscal year.
Revenues +21%
Spend -8% incl. forgiveness /11
https://cbo.gov/publication/58493
◕ https://twitter.com/David_Charts/status/1582127252883394560?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @David_Charts Trump’s policies added about $8.0 trillion to the deficit/debt trajectory he inherited over a decade, while Biden has added about $4.3 trillion. ¤ Recall most of Trump’s tax cuts went to the rich and their corporations; Biden’s did not. 12/
◕ https://twitter.com/David_Charts/status/1582127258604445698?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ wartranslated Russian Wagner group fighters are unpleasantly surprised by the strength of a Ukrainian armoured plate, which they shot at from an AKM and an RPK machine gun, with no penetration observed.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1583380070197972992?s=20/photo/1
// bulletproof vest
🐣 RT @CNNPolitics President Biden says he’s concerned for the future of US aid to Ukraine if Republicans win the House: “They have no sense of American foreign policy” [link]
🐣 RT @RichardHaass What is going on in the UK shows the structural weakness of a parliamentary system. Power is consolidated in the ruling party with few checks and balances other then the character & judgment of the ruling party & its leader…which has largely been missing for some time now.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent “If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of rapid flooding,” the president said in his video address to the European Council. “Hundreds of thousands of people can fall victim to it.”
⋙ KyivIndependent: Ukraine war latest: Zelensky accuses Russia of preparing to blow up dam in Kherson Oblast, causing ‘historic disaster’ https://tinyurl.com/2fabkpkb
⭕ 20 Oct 2022
NBC: With GOP skeptics of Ukraine aid poised to gain seats in Congress, lawmakers look to lock in a huge military assistance package https://tinyurl.com/3thsve2w “The new aid package, which most likely would be part of an omnibus spending bill, could be [in] the range of roughly $50B”
// One bipartisan idea would use a funding bill during the lame-duck session to secure a much higher level of military and other assistance.
🐣 RT @ivanastradner I can’t recommend this article enough as Western media doesn’t pay enough attention to what’s *actually* happening inside Russia. Putin wants to resurrect the Soviet Union, but Mr. Putin may be presiding over his country’s final collapse.
⋙ WSJ, Michael Khodarkovsky: Putin’s War in Ukraine May Destroy Russia https://tinyurl.com/uj2r6de9 “Centuries of pent-up bitterness and frustration over rule by Moscow may spill into a military confrontation and civil war”
// In his attempt to resurrect the Soviet Union, Mr. Putin may be presiding over his country’s final collapse.
Mr. Putin has promised many things, including to make Russia an attractive place to live by 2020. Instead, millions of Russians have left and settled in the West. Russia’s economy remains largely dependent on oil and gas—and gross domestic product per capita income has fallen nearly 60% since 2013. Government efforts to slow demographic decline have failed, and the Kremlin’s military mobilization for its war in Ukraine has pushed more than 300,000 Russians to flee the country. Many of those unable to escape or bribe their way out of the draft are non-Russians from remote and impoverished regions in the east and south. …
There are 21 republics within Russia, each with a titular non-Russian ethnic group. In Soviet times, Moscow drew the territorial boundaries and allowed each its own cultural autonomy. After the U.S.S.R. collapsed in 1991, these small republics demanded genuine administrative and political autonomy. A new democratic Russian government under Boris Yeltsin was prepared to concede as much and signed bilateral treaties with all but one: Chechnya. When the Chechen Republic refused to comply, demanding instead full autonomy, the Yeltsin government sent in troops in what became the First Chechen War (1994-96).
During those few years of democracy, once-forbidden topics came to light. New research revealed that Russia was an expansionist empire bent on subjugating indigenous peoples. Mr. Putin curbed freedom and open discussion after becoming president in 2000. He brutally suppressed Chechen independence aspirations and ordered the celebration of anniversaries that marked indigenous people’s choice to “voluntarily join Russia.” He resolved to undermine the autonomy of indigenous republics, to erase their ethno-territorial borders and to turn them into regular Russian administrative entities. To this end, the Kremlin ordered that instruction in indigenous languages be cut back, and it appointed Russian loyalists to local posts. In July 2017, the Kremlin terminated the last and longest surviving power-sharing treaty, with Tatarstan.
… The Kremlin understands that Russia’s demographic trends are disastrous. The ethnic Russian population has declined precipitously over three decades, while the non-Russian population grew rapidly. According to some estimates, Russia could become a majority-Muslim country by the 2050s. ¤ Mr. Putin is obsessed by the Russian gene, which he labels “special” and “endangered.” He invaded Ukraine in part to increase the Slavic population of Russia by incorporating the Ukrainians, whom he considers “Little Russians.” This attitude, together with Mr. Putin’s aspirations for “Russian world” in which all Russian speakers are united under Moscow’s rule, bears strong resemblance to 1930s Germany. It’s why Moscow has been kidnapping and transferring people—particularly children—from occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia.
Moscow has long considered Russia’s multiethnic character a potential threat to its ideal of a unitary state. With his war in Ukraine, Mr. Putin seems to have found an answer to his Russification efforts: genocide of various non-Russian peoples. Since the early days of its February invasion, Moscow has been disproportionately recruiting and drafting non-Russians, including Tatars from the illegally annexed Crimea region of Ukraine.
… Centuries of pent-up bitterness and frustration over rule by Moscow may spill into a military confrontation and civil war. Given Russia’s current military defeats, this isn’t a distant prospect. If and when that happens, Russia will fall apart as the empire of the czars and Soviet Union did. It would be ironic if the man who wanted to revive the U.S.S.R. instead ushers in the twilight of Russia’s last empire.
CommonDreams: High Gas Prices and Big Oil’s Midterm Scheme in One Easy-to-Understand Tweet https://tinyurl.com/mr2n8j93 “[L]arger corporate profits are behind 53% of the higher prices Americans are facing at gas pumps”: Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA)
// tags: gas prices consumer prices; After raking in billions of dollars in profits and price-gouging Americans for gas and other essentials, the fossil fuel industry aims to “undermine the clean energy agenda to keep us addicted to their product,” warns one climate campaigner.
↥ ↧
EconPolicyInst (Apr): Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation in the consumer sector: Analysis https://tinyurl.com/2s4c67yu “Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins. … This is not normal”
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1583401111423045634?s=20/photo/1
// 4/21/2022; orig: Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?
Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a pronounced acceleration over the 1.8% price growth that characterized the pre-pandemic business cycle of 2007–2019. Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. This is not normal. From 1979 to 2019, profits only contributed about 11% to price growth and labor costs over 60%, as shown in Figure A below. Nonlabor inputs—a decent indicator for supply-chain snarls—are also driving up prices more than usual in the current economic recovery. ¤ (*nonfinancial corporate (NFC) sector—those companies that produce goods and services—of the economy, which makes up roughly 75% of the entire private sector)
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Now everyday citizens who are on a jury are apparently part of the Deep State. And not for nothing, the Durham trial was in Virginia, not DC, where Republican defendants in Watergate and the Special Counsel investigation wanted to be tried. And he lost cause the case was bad.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump says Durham’s trial was rigged.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1583138956207484928?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Trump: The disgraceful judicial system was on full display yet again with the Danchenko Verdict. Durham could not get a fair shake in the Swamp of biased and partisan juries, where you are told that no Republican based or supported case can be won no matter how good it is, & judges that are so biased, unfair and angry that it is literally dangerous to be in court! I was told by many that Durham’s case was a great one but he has ZERO chance of winning in “that Court.” Sorry Justice Robert’s, but so true!
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture In the last few days, an interview given by the new Russian commander in #Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, was reported in the media. Noting that “the situation regarding the special operation is tense”, an assessment of his campaign options going forward is required. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1583256094142476288?s=20
🐣 RT @BSBonner All world leaders should make Russia understand that the terrorist attack on the Kakhovka HPP will be equated to the use of weapons of mass destruction – address by the President of Ukraine — Official website of the President of Ukraine:
⋙ PresidentUA: All world leaders should make Russia understand that the terrorist attack on the Kakhovka HPP will be equated to the use of weapons of mass destruction https://tinyurl.com/bdeumuym Address by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelemskyy
🐣 RT @AP Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said that Ukrainian forces have mounted 15 attacks on Russian military strongholds in the Kherson region, as Russian and Ukrainian troops appeared to be girding for a major battle for the southern port city.
⋙ AP: Russian, Ukrainian troops gird for major battle in Kherson https://tinyurl.com/h682z6y5
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russians mined the dam aggregates of Kakhivska Hydroelectric power plant, – @ZelenskyyUa ¤ “The dam contains about 18 million cubic meters of water. If Russian terrorists blow it up, about 80 settlements, including Kherson, can get flooded”, – the President told European Council.
🐣 RT @LvivJournal Destroyed city of Bakhmut, Eastern Ukraine “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival”Churchill #lviv #kherson
🖼 https://twitter.com/LvivJournal/status/1583208694753288192?/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie Svatove is lost and officers left days ago . UKE is cleaning up conscripts left behind as trained soldiers retreat . They have hundreds of RU POW
🐣 RT @ #Update #Ukraine [tr] Situation of the Eastern Front on 20/21.10 – Zone of #Svatove – According to certain testimonies, there would be internal struggles (“infighting”) in the city of #Svatove between Russian forces
🌎 https://twitter.com/luis021002/status/1583227395582332928?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/2245 UTC 20 OCT/ Sources in Kherson report that RU collaborators, dependents & officials in the occupation government are attempting to flee the city under the cover of darkness. UKR precision strike artillery has struck the pontoon crossing next to the M-14 HWY bridge.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1583225871925583873?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Cirincione I appreciate that @SecBlinken has told Russia the consequences of nuclear use, but he has to say it publicly & often. @AmbDanFried & @brianoftoole expertly detail the likely Western response. All non-nuclear, all devastating.
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: How to respond if Putin goes nuclear? Here are the economic and political options. https://tinyurl.com/yz8yeysd
#NAFO Fellas How-to
🔄 🐣 You go to @Official_NAFO. The pinned tweet is a thread that tells how. ¤ Basically, you make a donation (orgs listed), do a screenshot of the receipt and then make a # FellaRequest. ¤ Think of an idea for your #Fella and one of 100 or so volunteer “forgers” will create it for you
⋙ 🐣 you can use your fella to make memes, but it’s not necessary; to participate, you watch for Russian lies in tweets, then use a hashtag like # Fellas # NAFO # NAFOFellas to call others; many use shared memes to troll the disinfo tweet, or just comment ♡ ૂི•̮͡• ྀ ♡
🐣 RT @BarracudaVol1 So what will the result be? With the fall of Svatove, cities such as Troitske and Starobilsk will also fall. With that, the Ukrainian Army will be able to return to the 24 February northern Luhansk borders.
(📌) 🌎 https://twitter.com/BarracudaVol1/status/1582810377611784192?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports Russian pro-war blogger Anastasia Kashevarova gives some juicy details about the situation in #Svatove. Apparently mobilized have retreated, there is infighting between the local military leadership and there is being lied to family members about the deceased.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1583111046335590400?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “A certain general put a pistol to the head of a certain lieutenant and demanded that the retreating mobilized from Svatovo be sent back to the front line. This general is known to you. You hugged him, gentlemen, lying bloggers. And you continue to lie in your publics, protecting not our soldiers, but the rotten generals. I have hope for Surovikin that he will deal with this. I will give all data and phone numbers. I will give the information that the guy died on October 7, and his mother is given a certificate that he was sent on a business trip on October 14.
🐣 RT @ @Faytuks We have information that Russian terrorists have mined the Kakhovka HPP. The dam of this hydroelectric power station contains about 18 million cubic meters of water. If Russian terrorists blow it up about 80 settlements will be in the flood zone, including Kherson – Zelensky
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer NORDSTREAM SABOTAGE: Video taken of the blast site by @ErikWiman reveals straight-line damage caused by the exterior application of linear shaped charges. This indicates sabotage by Naval Special Warfare Operators, most likely deployed by submarine.
💽 https://youtube.com/watch?v=p2yCqEA435o
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1583057058794180608?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @10DowningStreet In full: Prime Minister @TrussLiz’s resignation statement.
💽 https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1583103047210672128?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba I welcome the EU’s prompt action following my appeal on Monday to impose sanctions on Iran for helping Russia kill Ukrainians and damage our energy infrastructure. In three days, the EU agreed on a set of restrictions which will take effect as soon as today.
🐣 RT @sumlenny Russians kidnapped, tortured for days and finally hanged a 54-y.o. medic and a hobby athlete Tetyana Mudryena from Skadovsk, Kherson region, after she said „Skadovsk is Ukraine“ in a local community. This is what „give territories to Russia“ means. [link Ukr]
🖼 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1583007269062836224?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheOwner04 Joy Reid: “It’s terrifying how many Americans will choose literal fascism, female serfdom, climate collapse and the reversal of everything from SS & Medicare to student loan relief because they think giving the GOP the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices”
🚫 🐣 RT @LogKa11 The reason why Kherson civilians are being evacuated is to protect them from a possible catastrophic flood as there’s potential that Kiev is going to fire missiles at the Kakhovka dam
💽 https://twitter.com/LogKa11/status/1583121466098585602?s=20/photo/1
// pro-Russian pov but good animation of effect of destroying Nova Kakhovka dam; with HIMARS, Ukr has damaged the bridge but not the dam itself
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️ISW: Russia setting stage for false flag operation near Kherson. ¤ The Institute for the Study of War said in its latest update that Russian forces are setting information conditions to conduct a false-flag attack on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant near Kherson.
🐣 RT @DefenceU The kremlin is urging immediate evacuation of our citizens from Kherson to russia. ¤ Urging the same people who stopped tanks with their bare hands, who know the value of democracy, & who live on a beautiful land by the sea, a relocation to Siberia? They are insane.
NYT: U.S. Sees Opportunity for Ukraine to Capitalize on Russian Weakness https://tinyurl.com/59w7t8p6 “Russia possesses two potential strengths: an infusion of troops from the forced mobilization … and an ability to absorb large battlefield losses”
// The next six weeks, before fall mud spreads, could allow Ukraine’s military to press forward in the Donbas and potentially retake Kherson, American officials said. But Russia may not be deterred.
⭕ 19 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @Kinger_DC This is vile. One Russian tyrant trying to erase another Russian tyrants genocide from history. ¤ The Ukrainians will never forget The Holodomor, no matter what the Russians do to downplay it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @A_SHEKH0VTS0V In occupied Mariupol, Russians remove a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor, the colossal genocidal crime perpetrated by the Soviets against the Ukrainian nation. Like grandfathers, like grandsons: #RussianGenocideOfUkrainians
🖼 https://twitter.com/A_SHEKH0VTS0V/status/1582679218277605376?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WINNING: NAFO, the North Atlantic Fella Organization is a grass roots information operation that counters RU propaganda. It succeeds because it utlizes a secret weaapon: humor. Satire is Kryptonite to dictators.
😅 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1583120133916008448?s=20/photo/1
// image: a #Fella sawing the Nordstream pipeline
⋙ NationalInterest: Meet NAFO: The Virtual Army Disarming Russian Disinformation https://tinyurl.com/yw8xmfsa “Russia’s St. Petersburg troll farm is no longer the dominant entity wielding the power of trolling to disseminate narratives about the war”
// NAFO has shed light on new methods for countering state-sponsored disinformation, highlighting the importance of assembling and backing online movements seeking to set the message straight in the cyber world.
★ WaPo: Whites now more likely to die from covid than Blacks: Why the pandemic shifted https://tinyurl.com/5xseh745 “We’re Republicans, and 100 percent believe that it’s each individual’s choice — their freedom” ~ He died of covid on Jan. 23, a month after becoming infected
Dkos: Ukraine update: Evacuation of Kherson underway as Russia prepares to lose a regional capital https://tinyurl.com/4a9bp7rx “[W]hat started as a trickle of Telegram statements hinting at Russian units being reassigned … has turned into a flood of evacuation orders”
📋 ThirdWay (3/15): The Red State Murder Problem https://tinyurl.com/4j592xeb “In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden“
// 3/15/2022
🐣 RT @igorsushko Russian military columns are retreating out of #Kherson thru Kakhovka across Dnipro River further east. At this time unclear if the city is in the process of being completely abandoned. Significant amount of heavy machinery that cannot be transported across the river abandoned.
🌎 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1582902740727959553?s=20/photo/1
Politico: Biden world privately thinks McCarthy could fold on Ukraine aid https://tinyurl.com/5n7mtrkd
// Republicans are poised for big midterm gains but increasingly at odds over approving more aid to Kyiv — which means a new calculus for Biden.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling It appears Putin is taking a page out of the 17th century. He’s now attempting to “dragoon” Ukrainians to fight in the RU Army. ¤ The smart RU expert @jillrussia used the term “dragooning” during @wolfblitzer’s @CNNSitRoom tonight. ¤ What’s that mean? A short historical [thread] 1/12
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1582889829326389249?s=20
🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua Russians openly and proudly admitting they lost the war and have to resort to terrorism in order to slow down the total military defeat they are death spiraling into.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian lawmakers Andrey Gurulyov and Konstantin Dolgov advocate freezing, starving the Ukrainian civilian population, forcing them into exile by making their survival otherwise impossible. State TV host Olga Skabeeva disingenuously claims that Russia simply has no other choice.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1582926857749467137?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Ohio’s Tim Ryan, with a glass of wine, rebrands the Democrats https://tinyurl.com/2sy83j4e “Ryan, 49, is an old-school Labor Democrat — ‘a working-class kid who doesn’t forget where he came from,’ Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told me”
WaPo: Trump signed legal documents that he knew included false voter fraud numbers, judge says https://tinyurl.com/yw5nzmhe “President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” the judge wrote
U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter found that several documents between Trump’s allies must be made public, as they showed that the group participated in a “knowing misrepresentation of voter fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court.”
“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” Carter wrote. “The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.” …
In the Wednesday filing, Carter concluded from the collective documents that Trump’s legal team currently “make clear that President Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings through the courts.”
… Carter wrote, “Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint” with the knowingly inaccurate numbers. Carter also wrote that Trump signed a legal document, under oath, attesting to the court in Georgia that the numbers “are true and correct” to the best of his knowledge. ¤ Carter has ordered Eastman to disclose more than 30 documents sought by the House committee by 2 p.m. on Oct. 28.
🐣 ◕ 📋 RT @RepKatiePorter Bigger corporate profits account for *over half* of the higher prices people are paying.
💽 https://twitter.com/RepKatiePorter/status/1582475617723113472?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AstorAaron Lots of RUS reports (on Telegram and elsewhere) of an imminent major assault toward Kherson. But it has not yet begun. In fact, there looks to be a serious reconnaissance in force on the NE edge of the zone, designed to reveal RUS defense positions. [YouTubelink]
⋙ 🐣 RT @AstorAaron Basically, Ukraine is sending drones to be shot down so they can discover RUS air defenses and destroy them before launching the full attack (including aerial). Prior to this, they gave the impression of a main infantry assault…but left reserves to the west.
🌎 https://twitter.com/AstorAaron/status/1582878268591509505?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RedDevilC3Bravo Ukraine may have forces assembling in Mykolaiv given that it is just northwest of Kherson; if Russia intends to defend and hold Kherson, then Mykolaiv is the logical location for a tactical nuke…if detonated in this area, then the approach to Crimea would be blocked/safe/secure
⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr Today on Russian TV: ¤ Ukraine has a nuclear bomb primed in Mykolaiv which it will detonate and then blame on Russia so that the US has a justification for getting directly involved in the war and launching missiles on Russia ¤ Got all of that?
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1582840182960967680?s=20/photo/1
[ Comments are good: Dr Strangelove ]
📊 Pew (2021): Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory https://tinyurl.com/2p85vu3z Most whites vote GOP but whites are still the majority of Dem voters: In the last midterm election, minority Dem voter turnout fell off from 2016, but white voters showed up; still, the GOP won both houses in 2018
// An examination of the 2020 electorate, based on validated voters
📊 GrinnellPoll (9/27): Health of American Democracy, Economy, Abortion Leading Factors Heading into 2022 Election https://tinyurl.com/mtbt9m7r Not all polls ask how important the health of American democracy is, but when they do, it actually beats than the economy
// Democratic candidates lead generic U.S. House ballot despite low Biden approval rating
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1582846689903198208?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: THREAD: NEW: Judge Carter has found that the CRIME FRAUD exception applies to a NUMBER of additional emails related to trump and Eastman’s efforts to obstruct an official proceeding and lying to the courts. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1582821006749487104?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: anger and disappointment fill the studio, as the viewers are being prepared for the loss of Kherson and other territories. Host Olga Skabeeva bitterly questions why Russia was so wrong in the beginning, believing that Zelensky would run & NATO wouldn’t help.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1582794925304729601?s=/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Transcript: OLGA SKABEEVA: Military correspondent of ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’, our friend and comrade Alexander Kots, joins us live. Sash, we understand everything is difficult in Kherson. What is the basis for our main concerns?
2/ Do we have info, intelligence about Ukrainian forces that have been assembled in a fist over there? How many people, what kind of equipment? What should we get ready for? What do we anticipate? Why did we decide to transport people out of there?
3/ ALEXANDER KOTS: Because we’re caring for their lives, first and foremost. Homes and apartments can be built anew. Residents of Mariupol can attest to that. We remember difficult battles for that city. Today, new neighbourhoods are popping up there.
4/ Here, in the Kherson region, the situation is very hard. During all of these months, the Ukrainian side has been systematically working to cut off our forces from supply routes, in the area of the Nova Kakhova dam and in the area of the Antonovsky Bridge.
5/ Right now, logistics for our forces on the left bank, on the left bank of the Dnipro river, are very complicated. Of course, they are being supplied by using pontoon bridges and ferry crossings
6/ Unfortunately there is no full-fledged connection between the left and the right bank. This creates difficulties for the Russian troops, especially since on the other side of the frontline, we are confronting forces that are quite substantial.
7/ In some frontline areas, the enemy outnumbers our forces 4 to 1.
8/ These are the units that have been trained abroad, including in Britain, according to NATO standards with modern, high-precision weapons like HIMARS and M777 [howitzers] with Excalibur rounds, which use not only coordinates but laser-guided capabilities, as well as …
9/ …AN/TPQ-37 counter artillery radar, which causes a lot of trouble for our artillery. Nonetheless, we’ve been holding back this armada. No one here says we’re planning to surrender Kherson.
10/ We’re likely planning to defend it, it’s likely there will be heavy battles for the city, in the course of which the Ukrainian side won’t hesitate to use any weapons against civilian districts.
11/ We’ve seen this in the past, not only in Mariupol, but also in other cities, like Rubizhne, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, which suffered severe damage from the enemy’s artillery.
12/ The same will certainly happen to Kherson, especially since the commander of the special military operation Surovikin said, it’s possible that prohibited weapons will be used. I believe this might mean the use of chemical munitions or the flooding of the area.
13/ The civilian population is being relocated out of the city to minimise the casualties among civilians. This is a difficult step, but it is totally justified. Right now, it’s important for us to endure.
14/ I don’t want to give anyone any illusions, but we’ll have to persevere, gritting our teeth, through November and, I’m afraid, part of December. There won’t be any good news in the next 2 months, that’s for sure. If we make it through that, there will be a breakthrough.
15/ I honestly don’t doubt that we will make it. Severe territorial losses are likely in those 2 months, but defeat in one battle doesn’t mean losing the war.
16/ VADIM GIGIN: Right now, in the autumn, there is a crisis in our special military operation. Yes, it happens, sometimes crisis happens during war.
17/ SKABEEVA: The issue is that we are truly at war with NATO, it’s not a secret for us, Ukraine or NATO. But why didn’t we prepare for this turn of events when we started our military actions? That is the main question that is up in the air.
18/ Of course, we understand that deliveries are massive. Of course, we see that NATO is determined, but why was this a surprise for us at some point? Why did we think that Zelensky would run off and NATO would not help? That is the open question. /end
🧵 RT @ Reuters A senior Ukrainian official accused Russia of organizing a ‘propaganda show’ in occupied Kherson after Russian-installed officials said they were preparing to defend the city from imminent Ukrainian attack and urged civilians to flee https://reut.rs/3Tx1Pnb
📌 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1582727717123870722?s=20
🐣 RT @sumlenny Russian occupation administration of Kherson spreads these leaflets urging local population to go to Crimea or to Russia „for study and for vacation“. It doesn’t look like this. And yes: it is not „evacuation“, it is kidnapping and deportation before Ukraine liberates the city.
¤ https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1582665404228730880?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie Svatove is Ukraine and you will know it for sure soon
🐣 RT @StevanBolton The cool thing is, whenever Ukraine inevitably takes #Svatove and then #Starobilsk, #Belgorod will basically be useless. All Russian supplies will have to come from the southeast because there won’t be any rail or road links left from Belgorod to any front. It’ll be obsolete :)
🐣 RT @ktgs_neuro Russia gained 100m in a day instead of in a month? Not really momentum. Since the fall of Izyum/Lyman, Bakhmut is strategically worthless. Ukr needs to take Troitske or Starobilsk, Kherson, & Tokmak in Zaporizhzhia & the Ru house of cards will fall
🐣 RT @ ukraine_world “Wherever the occupiers come, only pain, devastation and losses remain. Liberated by our defenders during the counteroffensive in September, the village of Vysokopillia in the Kherson region had 4,000 inhabitants before the war, now only 200 are left.” – @ZelenskyyUa ¤ 📹United24
💽 https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1582669131672788992?s=20/photo/1
MSN/TheWeek: Why Russia — losing everywhere else in Ukraine — is still trying to capture Bakhmut https://tinyurl.com/yxbb2urp “Ukraine’s military seems to believe Russia’s assault there is a barbed lodestone bleeding resources away from more critical fronts” ~ Forbes
Bakhmut, with a prewar population of about 70,000, is a hub of roads and railway lines in a war where control of supply routes has been of critical importance. “Russia likely views seizing Bakhmut as a preliminary to advancing on the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk urban area, which is the most significant population center of Donetsk Oblast held by Ukraine,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense assesses.
“Perhaps Russia’s military is desperate to claim any sort of offensive victory,” Sebastien Roblin writes at Forbes, but it’s certainly true that “pro-Russian bloggers and propagandists excitedly seize on reports of progress toward Bakhmut, emphasizing the rosy news (from their perspective) amidst grim reports coming from all other fronts. On multiple occasions, pro-Russian sources have falsely reported the fall of Bakhmut.” …
“Prigozhin and Wagner-affiliated social media outlets are increasingly commenting on the ineffectiveness of traditional Russian military institutions and societal issues,” and his “narratives have the ingredients to appeal to the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nationalist constituency that has long called for oligarchs to finance supplies for the armed forces, demanded transparency about what is really going on at the front, and criticized Russian higher military institutions for their failures on the frontlines,” ISW writes. “While Prigozhin does not directly oppose or criticize Putin, his growing notoriety within the nationalist community may undermine Putin’s ‘strongman’ appeal by comparison.” …
“Despite the huge strain on Bakhmut’s defenders, Ukraine’s military seems to believe Russia’s assault there is a barbed lodestone bleeding resources away from more critical fronts,” Roblin writes at Forbes. “Some commanders have admitted they’re willing to risk losing the city if it comes at sufficiently heavy cost to Russian forces and tolerable casualties for its own,” and if their effort frees up Ukrainian forces for a successful offensive elsewhere, “it may finally compel Russia’s military to give up its ceaseless assaults, giving Bakhmut’s defenders brief respite.”
🐣 RT @nytimesworld The pro-Russian authorities in the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Kherson said on Wednesday that they would relocate tens of thousands of civilians in advance of a possible counterattack by Ukrainian forces aiming to retake the region’s main city.
⋙ NYT: Ukrainian officials accuse the pro-Russian authorities in Kherson of scaring civilians with an evacuation plan https://tinyurl.com/5fvevawh “Ukrainian officials accused the pro-Russian proxies of scaring civilians with false claims that Ukraine would shell the city“
Ukrainian officials accused the pro-Russian proxies of scaring civilians with false claims that Ukraine would shell the city. Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky, called it “a rather primitive tactic, given that the Armed Forces do not fire at Ukrainian cities — this is done exclusively by Russian terrorists.”
Ukrainian forces have been advancing gradually for weeks on the city of Kherson, the capital of a region that Moscow seized early in the war and has declared part of Russia. On Tuesday, the newly appointed commander of the Russian invasion, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, acknowledged that his army’s grip on Kherson was tenuous and appeared to suggest that a tactical retreat could be necessary, saying in a televised statement that the situation there was “already quite difficult.”
On Wednesday, the Kremlin-installed deputy leader of the region, Kirill Stremousov, insisted that Russian forces were ready to repel any attack. He said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app, that the situation as of Wednesday morning was “unchanged,” but advised civilians to evacuate to the right, or eastern, bank of the Dnipro River.
In an earlier television interview, the pro-Russian leader of Kherson, Volodymyr Saldo, said that he had decided to evacuate up to 60,000 residents because of the threat that Ukraine might breach a hydroelectric dam, causing flooding to villages. The government in Kyiv considers Mr. Saldo and Mr. Stremousov to be traitors.
It was not immediately clear how many residents would heed the calls by the pro-Kremlin officials, or whether the evacuations would be voluntary. Many civilians have already fled the region. Ukraine has also accused Russia of forcibly relocating thousands of civilians to Russian territory since the war began. …
In addition, Ukrainian fighters have staged a series of attacks in Kherson city, destabilizing Russian forces and the proxy authorities, while also making use of long-range artillery supplied by Western allies to target Russian military infrastructure far behind the front lines.
Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military command, said that the recapture of Kherson was “inevitable,” but declined to give a time frame.
Ms. Humeniuk warned that the Russian authorities might be preparing to use civilians as human shields, or be trying to promote the false claim that Ukrainian civilians are afraid of their own country’s troops.
🐣 RT @LouiesMommyFL Russia began moving Ukrainian civilians from the captured city of Kherson to further behind the front lines, a sign of Moscow’s weakening grip on key occupied territories
⋙ WSJ: Russia Moves Ukrainians From Captured Kherson as Moscow’s Grip Weakens https://tinyurl.com/3yev8zfr “Western officials have described the Kremlin’s previous transfers of Ukrainian civilians to Russia or other parts of Ukraine held by Russian forces as possible war crimes”
// Civilians line up for boats to take them into territory more firmly under Russian control
The Kherson region’s Russian-installed leader, Volodymyr Saldo, said on Wednesday that authorities expect to move 50,000 to 60,000 people from the western bank of the river, citing the danger of Ukrainian attacks. A leaflet distributed by Russian-backed officials to people in the city, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, urged civilians to leave the area along a series of suggested routes. “Save your family, leave for the left bank,” the message said in Russian.
He said officials running the occupation would also be pulled out of the city. “All bodies of authorities located in the city, the military-civilian administration, all units, all ministries are also moving to the left bank” of the Dnipro River, Mr. Saldo said. …
Human-rights groups and Western officials have described the Kremlin’s previous transfers of Ukrainian civilians to Russia or other parts of Ukraine held by Russian forces as possible war crimes and some officials say that Moscow is preparing to make such transfers again.
“This is the next step in the invasion of Ukraine. Tens of thousands of people are going to be deported to Russia, which is a violation of international law,” said Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. Lt. Gen. Hodges said retaking Kherson would be a “huge psychological boost” for Ukraine and would move Ukrainian forces closer to a position where they could threaten Russia’s key military infrastructure in Crimea. “This is the only [regional] capital they’ve captured, and it would be liberated.” …
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was working to strengthen the country’s air defenses to counter the threat of drones, in his nightly address to the nation on Tuesday. He also argued that Russia’s reliance on Iranian military assistance “is the Kremlin’s recognition of its military and political bankruptcy.” ¤ “For decades, they’ve been spending billions of dollars on their military-industrial complex, and in the end they went to bow to Tehran to get rather simple drones and missiles,” Mr. Zelensky said.
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw BREAKING: Putin declares martial law in illegally annexed Ukrainian regions ¤ Announcement comes as Ukrainian forces are retaking Russian positions illegally annexed eastern Ukraine, particularly the critical city of Kherson.
⋙ NBCNews: Putin declares martial law in annexed Ukrainian regions https://tinyurl.com/3c9tbyaf
// Announcement comes as Ukrainian forces advance on Russian positions in eastern Ukraine,
🐣 RT @stephengfhall So the Russian backed Kherson authorities have claimed they are moving people from the right bank to the left bank in part over fears Ukraine will shell the Khakhovka Reservoir, break the dam and flood the region. Yet as the map below shows…
🌎 https://twitter.com/stephengfhall/status/1582669562717560832?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @stephengfhall …if this was the reason then the best solution would actually be to put civilians on the right bank as the water would be less likely to flood this area due to the higher ground. It seems that poli
⋙ 🐣 RT @stephengfhall …the leaders of this pseudo-republic want to flee, but can’t justify this action without moving people in order to ‘save’ them.
🐣 RT @ carlbildt As always worth watching @BBCSteveR. Difficult decisions on Kherson? Certainly. But what? The local 🇺🇦population is being evacuated to 🇷🇺. Preparation for a retreat – or for a nuclear strike?
⋙ 🐣 RT @BBCSteveR In today’s #ReadingRussia, how to interpret General Surovikin’s comments on Ukraine? Plus, one Russian paper today says mobilisation is becoming “a social, psychological, economic and, potentially, political problem.”
⭕ 18 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @john_sipher “Those of us who assumed that Trump’s return to private citizenry would reestablish normalcy didn’t anticipate the scope of the misinformation and its capacity to delude so many.”
⋙ WaPo: How the right wing’s delusions went from ‘not normal’ to ‘dangerous’ https://tinyurl.com/4227tu8p Review of Robert Draper’s book: Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost its Mind
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: John Durham Failed Because the ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy Never Happened https://tinyurl.com/5a489cn3 ‘Durham’s total failure is conclusive. It proves the Republican Party’s conspiracy theory was a fever dream’
// Trump’s answer to Robert Mueller was a total face-plant.
The actual events of this period are clear. Trump began exhibiting a suspicious pattern of behavior in relation to Russia. He lavished its dictator with praise, surrounded himself with people who were sympathetic to and/or paid by Moscow, hinted at his own business deals with Russia but defied precedent by refusing to publish his tax returns, and appointed a man who had managed the presidential run of a Russian puppet in another country as his own campaign manager.
… Trump’s ties to Russia made national security officials oppose him. What national security official would be happy about having a president who was in bed with, and creepily submissive to, one of the country’s biggest global enemies?
The Justice Department appointed an inspector general to investigate the FBI’s probe of Trump’s ties to Russia and found that, despite some low-level mistakes, the probe had been adequately predicated. There was no evidence it was directed by Trump’s enemies, undertaken for political reasons, or fundamentally improper in conception.
But Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr refused to accept these findings and instead appointed a special counsel, John Durham, who would be tasked with confirming their conspiracy theory. Durham failed to uncover any conspiracy because it did not exist. He tried to charge Michael Sussmann with lying to the FBI, only for Sussmann to be acquitted. Durham then tried to charge Igor Danchenko with lying to the FBI, only for the jury to acquit him as well. The charges failed because, contrary to Durham’s insinuations, neither man was acting in bad faith. They were both trying, sometimes in a bumbling, Burn After Reading fashion, to pass on to the FBI what they thought they knew about a murky but genuinely unnerving situation.
Some reasons they had to suspect Trump’s relations with Russia turned out to be false. The Steele dossier was a shoddy collection of gossip that many of us considered plausible, if unproven. But that dossier wasn’t the basis for the FBI investigation of Trump, nor was it the basis for the suspicions held by the national security community. Those suspicions existed long before Steele’s gossip became public.
The combination of facts uncovered by the news media and Mueller did not debunk the concerns about Trump’s ties to Russia but instead substantiated them. The most damning single fact Mueller proved was that Moscow had dangled a deal worth several hundred million dollars during the campaign, making Trump vulnerable to both Russian bribery and blackmail (the latter because he was publicly denying any dealings with Russia at the time). But many other surrounding facts supported the pattern: from Trump asking for and then exploiting the Russian hack of Democratic emails to his constant repetition of even the most esoteric pieces of Russian propaganda.
If the national security community’s suspicions about Trump seemed far-fetched, like something out of a spy film, it is because Americans don’t pay close attention to Russia’s efforts to corrupt other governments. In Europe, scandals involving high-level officials bribed or blackmailed by Russian intelligence are routine. Just Tuesday, Germany suspended the head of its cybersecurity agency over alleged links to Russian intelligence. …
I have little doubt that most Republicans actually do believe the conspiracy theory. They reside within an information bubble that excludes all evidence of Trump’s culpability and recirculates endless insinuations of a deep-state witch hunt. They have already pivoted to arguing that the only problem for Durham is that juries and reporters are biased and that the real truth is out there.
They will keep going and going because their culture treats frank internal examination on any subject as heresy. But to the outside world, Durham’s total failure is conclusive. It is why I argued all along that his appointment was a good thing: It would prove the Republican Party’s conspiracy theory was a fever dream. And so it has.
WaPo, Max Boot: Russia is giving a master class in how not to fight a war https://tinyurl.com/5c963sf5 “Russian draftees might as well report straight to the morgue”
The war began Feb. 24 with a pell-mell rush to Kyiv that ended in a 40-mile traffic jam of Russian vehicles. The Russian military showed itself unable to synchronize or supply fast-moving air and ground operations. It never even managed to secure air supremacy — the sine qua non of military effectiveness since roughly 1939. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, proved themselves masters of hit-and-run tactics utilizing portable Western missiles such as the Javelin and Stinger.
By mid-April, Putin had abandoned his ill-fated assault on Kyiv and concentrated his forces in the east. This was the one time when anything went right for the Russians: They managed to use their advantage in artillery to slowly push the Ukrainians out of Luhansk province
But then the Ukrainians started receiving the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and everything changed. The Ukrainians were able to stop the relentless rain of Russian shells by targeting ammunition dumps and command posts. The Russians never adjusted; there is no indication they have taken out a single HIMARS.
In early September, the Russians made another major blunder: Having shifted forces from the east to defend against a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, they were caught unprepared when the Ukrainians launched a surprise attack around Kharkiv. The Ukrainian army liberated thousands of square miles of territory and sent Russian forces reeling.
In desperation, Putin ordered a “partial mobilization” of military manpower on Sept. 21. It has been another fiasco: In all likelihood, more Russian men have fled the country (at least 300,000) than joined the army. The government has been reduced to sending police and soldiers to hunt down potential recruits as if they were an 18th-century press gang.
In early September, the Russians made another major blunder: Having shifted forces from the east to defend against a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, they were caught unprepared when the Ukrainians launched a surprise attack around Kharkiv. The Ukrainian army liberated thousands of square miles of territory and sent Russian forces reeling.
In desperation, Putin ordered a “partial mobilization” of military manpower on Sept. 21. It has been another fiasco: In all likelihood, more Russian men have fled the country (at least 300,000) than joined the army. The government has been reduced to sending police and soldiers to hunt down potential recruits as if they were an 18th-century press gang.
On Oct. 10, following an explosion that heavily damaged the bridge linking Crimea with the Russian mainland, Putin began using missiles and drones to attack Ukrainian cities. On Monday, a swarm of Iranian-made kamikaze drones hit Kyiv. … There is, in fact, virtually no evidence from the past 100 years that terror bombing has been a war-winning tactic. The usual result is to unite the population in defiance of the attackers. …
Unless Putin uses nuclear weapons, there will be sharp limits on how much destruction he can inflict, because Ukrainian air defenses remain operational and are being beefed up with Western systems such as the German IRIS-T. … If Putin grows truly desperate, he might resort to tactical nuclear weapons, but this is a high-risk option that could backfire if it results in a NATO military response.
Unfortunately, despite all of the setbacks that Russia has suffered, there is no indication that Putin is willing to pull back. No doubt he is still hoping that resistance will crumble over the winter. In an attempt to ratchet up the pressure, he is targeting electrical infrastructure in Ukraine and interrupting Russia’s natural gas sales to Europe.
But eight months into the war, there has been no sign of faltering in either Ukraine or the West. The combination of Russian barbarism and Ukrainian military success is keeping the anti-Putin coalition united. The Ukrainian military has shown itself to be far more capable and nimble than the lumbering Russian military, and that won’t change no matter how many conscripts the Kremlin sends to an early grave. No one can say for sure how this war will end — but with each passing day, it looks more likely that Putin won’t be happy with the outcome.
🐣 RT @ nana257online русня: здавайтесь іначє інфраструктурє пізда ¤ українці:
Translated from Ukrainian by
Russian: Surrender otherwise to the infrastructure cunt
Ukrainians:
💽 https://twitter.com/nana257online/status/1582347677487931392?s=20/photo/1
// build small hut
🐣 RT @CaliJournalism According to #Russian Military Intel, #Ukraine is reportedly amassing large numbers of forces to advance through the town of #Berislav and on to the city of #Kherson with massive bombardments expected from #Ukrainian forces.
🐣 RT @ivanastradner Dear fellow conservatives, this is how we should approach Russia. We must win. Putin must lose.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ivanastradner/status/1582556677517082624?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.
Ronald Reagan
🐣 📊 RT @Podolyak_M How should the war end? Listen to Ukrainians.
91% believes that Ukraine categorically must not give away its territories (Gallup poll).
Explain this to the weird adherents of the “peace in exchange for Ukraine’s territory” theory…
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Intelligence chief: Ukraine will win war by next summer. ¤ The Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Directorate Head Kyrylo Budanov said he predicts “significant victories” for Ukraine and that the war “should be over” by next summer.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent “Russia’s loss is inevitable,” Budanov said. “It cannot be stopped, and it will lead to its (Russia’s) destruction.” ¤ He added that, following a Ukrainian victory, a “very serious political process will begin, connected with changes in the current Russian Federation.”
🐣 RT @raging545 Ukrainian forces are tonight bombarding Russian positions in Nova Kakhovka and Berislav in the Kherson region. #Ukraine #Russia #Putin #UkraineWar
🐣 RT @JeffreyToobin The John Durham investigation is a disgrace and a fiasco. Two acquittals at trial in a system where the feds win 95% of their cases. Trump and Barr said Durham would prove the Russia investigation unjustified. He’s proven the opposite.
TheGuardian: Russia’s new Ukraine commander signals civilian evacuation from ‘tense’ Kherson https://tinyurl.com/43v3nnj9 “Kyiv has recently introduced a news blackout in the south of the country, leading to speculations that it was preparing a new major offensive on Kherson”
// Sergei Surovikin says Russia’s defence of occupied southern city ‘not easy’ as Ukraine introduces local news blackout
… The Ukrainian army has sought to pinch off Russian supply lines to Kherson by destroying the two main road bridges across the Dnipro. Kyiv has recently introduced a news blackout in the south of the country, leading to speculations that it was preparing a new major offensive on Kherson. ¤ “When the Ukrainians have a news blackout it means something is going on. They have always done this before when there is a big offensive push on,” Michael Clarke, a former director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told Sky News. ¤ “I am guessing in the next 48-72 hours they might tell us what is happening,” he added.
Shortly after Surovikin’s statements, the Russian-installed head of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said in a video address that people in four towns in the Kherson region were being moved, in anticipation of a “large-scale offensive”. ¤ Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region, echoed the message on Telegram late on Tuesday. “The battle for Kherson will begin in the very near future. The civilian population is advised, if possible, to leave the area of the upcoming fierce hostilities,” he said.
Since Surovikin’s appointment on 8 October, Moscow has unleashed a barrage of cruise missiles and “kamikaze” drones targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure as well as the civilian population. ¤ Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that Moscow’s use of Iranian-made drones was a symbol of the Kremlin’s “military and political bankruptcy”. ¤ “The very fact of Russia’s appeal to Iran for such assistance is the Kremlin’s recognition of its military and political bankruptcy,” Zelenskiy said in his daily address on Tuesday. ¤ “For decades, they spent billions of dollars on their own military industrial complex. And in the end, they bowed down to Tehran in order to secure quite simple drones and missiles.” ¤ But, Zelenskiy added, “strategically, it will not help them anyway. It only further proves to the world that Russia is on the path of defeat and is trying to draw someone else into its accomplices in terror.”
The bombing is often inaccurate and civilians have been killed in residential buildings in Kyiv and other big cities. But enough have got through to cause problems for a power grid already short of generation after the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shut down. ¤ Nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed by Russian attacks since Monday last week – prompting Nato’s secretary general to announce that new counter-drone defences would be delivered within days.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the presidential office, said energy infrastructure and power supply were targeted overnight in an eastern district of Kyiv, where two people were killed, and in the cities of Dnipro and Zhytomyr. ¤ “The situation is critical now across the country because our regions are dependent on one another … it’s necessary for the whole country to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages,” Tymoshenko told Ukrainian television. ¤ Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said member countries would “step up” and deliver more air defences to help stabilise the situation. “Nato will in the coming days deliver counter-drone systems to counter the specific threat of drones, including those from Iran,” he said.
Although there are signs that Moscow is running short on guided missiles, it has acquired up to 2,400 Iranian drones, according to Ukraine, and is using them as cheaper substitutes to hit the energy targets and strike fear into civilians. ¤ Iran denies supplying the drones to Russia, while the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said he did not have any information about their origin. “Russian equipment with Russian names is being used,” Peskov said. ¤ Ukraine, experts and western governments believe the Gerans are rebranded Shahed drones, identifiable by their distinctive delta wing shape and from an examination of fragments recovered from the ground.
A western official, speaking on condition of anonymity in a briefing on Tuesday, said they believed Russia was “pursuing a deliberate strategy of attempting to destroy Ukraine’s electricity network”. ¤ Reuters reported that Iran had promised to provide Russia with surface-to-surface missiles, in addition to more drones, citing two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats. ¤ The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, flew to Washington on Tuesday to discuss how to respond to Iran’s intervention, as officials briefed that a new air defence package for Ukraine was being prepared. ¤ Last week Germany delivered the first of four Iris-T air defence systems it had promised to supply Ukraine, but the US has been wary of strengthening Ukraine’s air force and defences for fear it would be seen as an escalation.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the US House of Representatives, warned on Tuesday that Congress would not “write a blank cheque to Ukraine” if his party wins next month’s midterm elections. ¤ Hours later, however, another senior Republican, Michael McCaul, said that he thought that the Ukrainians should “get what they need” – including longer-range missiles than those the Biden administration has so far been prepared to supply. ¤ Analysts say the mixed messages reflect an internal debate between traditional national security conservatives and the Trumpist wing of the party, where pro-Russian sentiment is much stronger.
🐣 RT @StepanGronk In a late-night address, #Russia’s #Kherson official Kirill Stremousov called for people to “evacuate the city as quickly as possible” and says #Ukraine “will begin an offensive on the city of Kherson very soon” #SlavaUkrainii
🐣 RT @christogrozev For those who missed it: Gen. Surovikin is preparing Russian public opinion for the surrender of Kherson. Excuses, inter alia: “Kyiv may use banned weapons, we can’t afford to expose the population to that…hard decisions must be made…”
[ ⇊ ] https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1582499448306880513?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @jackryan212 [from Russian milbloggers ⇊]
¤ https://twitter.com/jackryan212/status/1582500454377738243?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @Vitosi4ek96 In the purely military calculus, Kherson should’ve been abandoned months ago. Simply too costly to defend. The only reason the Russian army is still there is because Putin made it a symbol of the invasion and surrendering would convey a large defeat.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Galyna_Divakova As someone from Kherson, I am deeply concerned about their statements. Studied opinions regarding the announcements for a few hours tonight, and the smartest explanation is that they scare civilians into evacuation to use them as a shield to safely transfer across Dnipro.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Ecliptic09 It’s the line about banned weapons that is of concern. They could hit the pop. as they withdraw and then blame the UAF. The world won’t believe it but Russians would. And the UAF would be too busy with helping the survivors to pursue.
⋙⋙ 🐣 “Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, China,Cuba, Nicaragua and Syria have called for the use of the mechanism provided for in Article6 of the Biological Weapons Convention in connection with US military biological activities in Ukraine … ”
from a Ru milblogger post above
⋙ 🐣 RT @@kirill_kosenkov Arestovich has an idea about that. He says they going to save many good troops from Kherson under the civilian evaquation ‘umbrella’ to prepare the new attack on Kiev from South and from North (Belarus) simultaneously to initiate negotiations in G20 in November
🐣 RT @JowaWizher Just a thought: ¤ They say they move the civilians and they dress with civilian cloths and withdraw without attrition. ¤ Or they withdraw the army mixed with the civilians. ¤ If I was them that’s the way I would do it
⋙ 🐣 RT @good_uling When Russians talk about someone is going to do bad thing – it’s always means they are going to do this bad thing themselves. Say to use chemical weapon in Kherson right after surrender from there
🐣 RT @christogrozev For those who missed it: Gen. Surovikin is preparing Russian public opinion for the surrender of Kherson. Excuses, inter alia: “Kyiv may use banned weapons, we can’t afford to expose the population to that…hard decisions must be made…”
🐣 This is a relief map of the Kherson City area. The arrow points to the dam at Nova Kakhovka. There’s not much of a gradient here, but you can see the city itself is elevated above the Dnipro River and the flood plain is mainly on the other side to the east (Google maps)
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1582516061995667456?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 my takeaway is there’s no reason to move the civilians out from the city itself to avoid flood waters, so why are they announcing an ”emergency evacuation“?
🐣 This is from an interview with the Russian commander for Ukraine, Army General Surovikin, his first interview on the Russia 24 TV channel: Is this a set-up for a false flag attack? [part of a thread]
🧵 RT @rybar_en ⚡️ The new commander of the joint group of troops in the SMO zone, Army General Surovikin, took his first interview on the Russia 24 TV channel. Important notes: (FWD from Obsessed With War)
📌 https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1582499232904511488?s=20
⋙ 🐣 […] RT @rybar_en – There is information that Kyiv may use prohibited methods of war in the area of Kherson, that they are preparing a missile strike on the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant;
🐣 RT @osint_east ‼️Disinformation ¤ It is highly unlikely #Ukraine has any plan or intent to destroy the dam at Nova Kakhovka. The statement by #Surovikin is cover for evacuating #Kherson in anticipation of an offensive on the city. ¤ It’s urgency may suggest an offensive is imminent. 1/4 https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1582430042004819968
⋙ 🐣 RT @osint_east Surovikin does not communicate any assessment on the implications of an attack on the dam. ¤ The order for evacuation comes at the request of the head of the occupational administration of Kherson, indicating civilian priorities are considered parallel with military ones. 2/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @osint_east Most important, while any *theoretical* flooding would be massive, it would be temporary, and result in the destruction of all supply crossings that Russia controls. ¤ This would also destroy infrastructure Russia would require for recapturing the city, if able to do so. 3/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @osint_east In addition, destruction of the dam would mean draining the Dnieper River up to #Zaporizhzhia, leaving >150km of Russian flank exposed to incursion, and depriving the #ZNPP of coolant source. ¤ There is zero strategic benefit to destroying the dam. ¤ ‼️This is disinformation. 4/4
🐣 RT @Rasputi94096722 Message for reaidents of Kherson
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Rasputi94096722/status/1582441557105741824?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Dear residents of Kherson region!
You all know that Ukraine has declared an all-out, uncompromising war on Russia, on all of us. We all know how hard the Donbass is enduring daily shelling, and how many innocent people are dying from artillery and rocket attacks on peaceful towns. Kyiv is preparing a similar fate for Kherson. The Ukrainian side is accumulating forces for a large-scale offensive. The Russian Federation has formed a military force to repel this oftensive. The battlefield of this confrontation could be our land, the peaceful towns and villages of the Kherson region.
There is an immediate danger of flooding of territories due to planned attempts to destroy the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam and release of water from the cascade of power plants upstream of the Dnieper. In such a situation, I took the difficult but correct decision to announce the organized relocation of the civilian population of Beryslav, Belozersk, Snigiryovka and Aleksandrovsk municipalities to the left bank of the Dnieper.
This decision is prompted by the creation of large-scale defensive fortifications so that any attack can be repelled. There is no place for civilians where the military operates. Let the Russian army carry out its task. Under these conditions, our key task is to save human lives and allow the troops of the Russian Federation to effectively perform their functions in defending the Kherson region. We will take the civilian population to the left bank in an organized, step-by-step manner.
For those residents of the region who decide to move to other regions of Russia, the Russian Government will provide housing certificates. This was specifically announced by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. The relocation and temporary accommodation of residents of Beryslav, Belozersk, Snigiryovka and Aleksandrovsk municipalities will be free of charge, by the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation and the Government of Kherson region. I ask everyone to keep calm and not to listen to alarmists, Kherson region remains under the reliable protection of the Russian army. Our cause is just. We know it and our enemy knows it. And the victory will be ours.
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Something interesting is being discussed in Russian militaristic chats discussing Kherson region. According to some statements, all “state institutions” / (Russian occupational administrations) are transferred to the left bank of the Dnipro. /1
⋙ 🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love According to others, rotation is discussed with a transition to other positions closer to Dnipro and “the beginning of the battle for Kherson”, or even leaving the river to the left bank. ¤ My personal opinion is still very skeptical, I will not believe it until I see it. /2
🐣 RT @yarotrof In other words, Russia’s top general is preparing public opinion for Russia’s armed forces fleeing Kherson. Good.
🐣 RT @yarotrof [WSJ] Surovikin speaks: “Our plans in the city of Kherson will depend on the tactical military situation that is already very uneasy. We will seek to protect the lives of civilians and our service members. We will act in a timely manner, without excluding the most difficult decisions.”
🐣 RT @mjluxmoore [WSJ] Kherson is deporting residents from the right bank of the Dnieper ahead of a Ukrainian advance. Early to tell but after new Russian commander Surovikin’s speech today, signs are increasingly pointing to a Russian withdrawal from the city, and possibly a major Ukrainian victory.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1250 UTC 18 OCT/ UKR launched 22 aviation strikes targeting 18 Russsian troop & logistical concentrations and 3 RU air defense complexes across all axes of contact. UKR air defense interdicted 38 of 43 Iranian-made Shahed-136 suicide drones, an interception rate of 88%.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1582354623100506113?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @RW_dex Interesting statement literally some minutes ago… by the commander of joint Russian forces in Ukraine…. he speaks about a difficult situation in Kherson and “difficult decisions” that will probably have to be made… ¤ Something brewing, since this is coming from the Russians.
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer AIR DEFENSE UPGRADE: The Pentagon revealed that new NASAMS air defense systems will arrive in UKR in the next 3 weeks. NASAMS (National/Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System) is a distributed and networked medium-to- long range surface-to-air missile defense complex
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1582365911717380097?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ukraine_map NASAMS will arrive to Ukraine in about 1 to 3 Weeks (Pentagon) ¤ It will include 2 NASAMS Systems each with at least 8 launchers that will each have 48 missiles to fire
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NASAMS is the first surface-launch application of the ¤ AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile).
🐣 RT @igorsushko 🚨 #WindofChange, the author of #FSBletters has escaped Russia! FSB/Ministry of Defence medical doctor Maria Dmitrieva fled #Russia and requested political asylum in France.
‼️⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko Sergei #Surovikin, Russian army general and Commander of the Aerospace Forces, #Prigozhin, owner of #WagnerPMC, and #Kadyrov are together planning a coup to overthrow Putin according to #WindofChange.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko #WindofChange’s entire family also managed to escape Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Wheeliefine [To me] But note @igorsushko’s update: CORRECTION: #WindofChange, as a growing movement inside the Russian security services, is composed of many individuals working together, and Maria is but one such person. The published #FSBletters were authored by multiple people.
🐣 RT @john_sipher “And therein lies the opportunity for the West…that choice is not to blink, to not merely maintain the pressure against him on all fronts, but to increase it. Putin’s off ramp should not be some face-saving deal…that he will be perceive as weakness…”
⋙ JustSecurity, Douglas London: Addressing Putin’s Nuclear Threat: Thinking Like the Cold War KGB Officer That He Was https://tinyurl.com/4m2ynxue To prevent Putin’s nuclear use, the US and its NATO allies must leave no ambiguity with Putin of the devastating consequences to him
The powerful explosion that crippled Vladimir Putin’s showcase bridge over the Kerch Strait linking Russia and Crimea increased pressure on the cornered Kremlin potentate to do something shocking, as he loses control on the battlefield and inside his royal court. But will he stop at the intensified missile bombardments that are hitting apartments and playgrounds in Kyiv and other civilian infrastructure across Ukraine?
Assessing whether Putin will resort to nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons – a question that took on new resonance as his regime has faltered even before the Kerch bridge attack — is no easy task. Policymakers would do well to remember three fundamentals that guide Putin’s decision-making: 1) he is the product of the 1970’s and 1980’s KGB and stood witness in then-East Germany in 1991, when the world as he knew it ceased to exist; 2) ego, survival, greed, and ambition direct his moral compass; and 3) he has come to believe his own propaganda.
As a Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who spent much of my career pursuing and countering Russian intelligence officers of Putin’s era, and those who would follow, I don’t expect his next steps will be guided by Clausewitz’s strategic military teachings, Sun Tzu’s enlightened pragmatism, or Machiavelli’s guidance for princes. Putin will pay little heed to the limited, practical, battlefield utility of nuclear or chemical weapons, or overly concern himself that prevailing winds might bring the fallout’s enduring harm to his own people. Putin’s logic is simple: It’s all about him, his court’s blind, obsequious obedience, and reasserting control. There are no rules, only consequences, that shape his calculus. In Putin’s mind, the rules of the post-World War II order were designed by an elitist West to restrain and humiliate his country (never mind that his country helped shape and long participated in that order and those rules), negating any obligation he has to respect them, or the words and treaties of his predecessors.
Putin will not look to his own military for counsel. There is no love lost between the Russian leader and his armed forces. A Cold War-era KGB officer, he was indoctrinated with profound mistrust in them. His micromanagement of Russia’s military campaign, disinterest in its catastrophic losses, and reliance instead on the Federal Security Service, or FSB, for his war in Chechnya and initial strategy in Ukraine, reflect this attitude. …
Preserving His Power as Dissent Increases
Indeed, if Putin is like others of his generation and profession — and his behavior suggests that he is — he will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons if he believes doing so is the only means to preserve his power as dissent increases within his own ranks and military options dwindle. For Putin, that translates into curbing Western support for Ukraine and demonstrating strength, control, and invincibility at home.
Even as the Soviet Union disappeared and the Russian Federation grew from its ashes, with dramatic societal and economic changes that altered its citizens’ lives for the better in the initial recovery from the devastating 1998 financial collapse, Russian intelligence officers emerging from the KGB’s demise behaved as if time had stopped in 1991. Their outlook and modus operandi were much the same as it had been during the Cold War. Russian agent recruitment operations still relied on, and indeed preferred, coercion and money to exploit the weaknesses and foibles of prey they believed easily intimidated, morally corrupted by progressive values, and inferior to themselves. Exploitable vulnerabilities and fear, Russian intelligence officers believed, offered better control over reporting sources than ideology.
It’s hardly coincidence. The KGB’s successors in the FSB and Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, were trained by the likes of Putin and his generation. And then Putin, the FSB’s first director, became the head of state and his many former associates, the “siloviki,” ran the country’s government agencies and commercial industries. Is it any wonder that their views and values concerning the treatment of agents would translate into their thoughts on dealing with nations?
To understand Putin, then, requires comprehending the mindset of a predatory intelligence officer. Putin is like a shark who must keep moving to survive. Only in his case, the reason Putin is an object constantly in motion is to outrun his failures, change the narrative in his favor, and keep adversaries at bay. He deals with misfortune by doubling down and redirecting energy into even more sensational initiatives. It is not in his nature to pause, reflect, and thoughtfully adjust to changing circumstances, or be influenced by experts he should respect. Rather, Putin prides himself on the ability to shift on the fly and go it alone, without ever showing weakness, let alone fear. Putin will therefore be inclined to charge ahead with whatever might overshadow his misfortunes and make others forget the burning houses left in his wake. But the more he blusters and threatens, the more we know Putin is struggling, weak, and threatened. A dangerous time, yes, but one that also offers opportunities for the West.
Calculating Losses and Prizes
Putin does not have to win in Ukraine to survive, but he can’t afford to lose. Even were he to suffer the humiliation of losing Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, much of which he controlled for years even before this February’s all-out assault and which he recently claimed to “annex” as Russian territories in sham referendums, Putin can survive that. But he can’t survive losing Crimea, should Ukraine threaten to take it back. For Putin, Crimea is the prize. Its enduring retention played no small part in his decision to initiate this catastrophic adventure. To Putin, Crimea is Russia – hence the enormously expensive venture to connect it to Russia with the Kerch Strait bridge – and its “restoration” is too central to his own legitimacy and narrative.
The Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review remains classified. But reflections offered after its delivery to Congress by brief official statements, analysis, and speculation among arms control experts quoting lawmakers and anonymous sources who have seen the document suggest that the assessment it offers is consistent with those of previous administrations in acknowledging the likelihood that Putin is willing to “escalate to deescalate.” That is, he might be inclined to limited use of lower-yield, tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine to demonstrate that, as he publicly stated, “This is not a bluff.” ¤ But that does not equate to a readiness for his own destruction.
Putin’s threats should be taken seriously. But given how his military has performed in Ukraine, he is not likely to seriously seek a conventional war with NATO that he realizes would end poorly for him. That’s the very reason Russia officially adopted its nuclear first-use policy after the Cold War: in case Russia feels it is losing drastically in a conventional war. Dangerously, though, Putin counts on the West’s lack of stomach to bear such costs themselves and assumes the West would not retaliate in kind, therefore allowing him then to deescalate. Reckless as that might sound to the United States and its allies, it actually reflects Putin’s intelligence officer’s mindset, and that’s where the West must focus – he’s unlikely to act without leaving an escape route; appearances and the image he portrays is a critical component of his actions that allows for false posturing to conceal weakness.
Particularly worrisome is Russian messaging to normalize and justify Putin’s prospective use of a nuclear weapon. He’s certainly considering it; it would, after all, be reasonable to entertain and assess the utility of all the tools at his disposal. And I would not count on what ought to be a more logical aversion – that using nuclear weapons could cause pervasive harm not only to Russia’s people but also to its economy, damage that could include losing China’s support and that of India. The logic that holds that Putin would not risk losing his own extravagant wealth or undermining the country’s economic fortunes that underpin his internal support is our logic, not his. My experience with Russian intelligence officers is that they prize power and position over wealth. The former guarantees the latter.
Moreover, the recent, Saudi-led decision by the OPEC-plus grouping that includes Russia to significantly reduce oil production, thus driving up prices and revenues for these exporters, illustrates how Putin is part of a somewhat reliable consortium of foreign leaders who likewise shun world opinion. The Persian Gulf monarchies in particular welcome cooperation with Russia, as it comes without what they see as patronizing Western political sermons about how they should govern.
Nothing But Predictable and Consistent
This makes Putin dangerous, but not reckless, or even mentally unbalanced, though that is precisely how he would seek to be viewed by fearful and uncertain adversaries. Indeed, Putin has been nothing but predictable and consistent, telegraphing for years his true intentions.
But even the most confident predatory intelligence officer will always allow for an escape route. Intelligence officers are trained to prepare for the worst in realizing their inability to control every variable. And therein lies the opportunity for the West, but one which comes with tough choices. And that choice is not to blink, to not merely maintain the pressure against him on all fronts, but to increase it. Putin’s off ramp should not be some face-saving deal the West must choreograph that he will be perceive as weakness and therefore raise the stakes. Rather, increase the quality and quantity of arms, training, and intelligence support to Ukraine to reclaim their territory and exact an untenable cost for Putin’s campaign; engage with dissident, opposition circles within Russia and extend a lifeboat to opportunists within Putin’s inner circle and those fearful of going down with him; and fortify NATO along Russia’s borders, particularly the Baltic States. But do all this prepared to confront and respond to Putin’s use of weapons of mass destruction, should he choose that path.
Today, Putin’s people are voting with their feet. The embarrassing optics are not lost on him. Neither is the reality of just how poorly Russian forces are faring against a vastly smaller force, though one armed with sophisticated Western weapons and unbreakable resolve. The Ukrainians are fighting what they believe is an existential struggle worth their lives. Russian soldiers are fighting just to survive and go home. If Putin did not know this when he began the campaign, he certainly realizes it now.
Also significant are the fissures growing among his own supporters. I believe there is credibility in rumors that Putin’s critically important ally, FSB Director Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov, is frustrated. How could he not be? Putin has made this career intelligence officer’s primary job of internal security and counterintelligence all the harder and added mightily to the already strained and demoralized FSB’s workload and burden.
In another sign of infighting among Putin’s court, Russian security forces recently arrested Alexey Slobodenyuk, media head for the Wagner mercenary group, which has been fighting for Moscow in Ukraine, as well as in Syria, Libya, and West Africa. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and close Putin ally indicted in the United States for 2016 election meddling, recently admitted that he founded Wagner. And Slobodenyuk’s arrest follows blistering social media attacks against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that Prigozhin reportedly has been behind that reflects the infighting among Putin’s court.
U.S. Strategy for Response
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former CIA Director and retired Army General David Petraeus … explain authoritatively how the United States would likely conventionally escalate in proportional response to deter further use rather than responding in kind. The United States and NATO need not resort to reciprocal nuclear or chemical use to achieve that deterrence goal — that is, to impair Putin’s ability to wage further war and to destabilize his grip on power.
While I appreciate the (albeit uncertain) value of the world coming together to further isolate Russia economically and politically should it use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons – particularly if such use moves China away from Russia — that in and of itself is not going to dissuade Putin. But the prospect that a Western response begins with a conventional campaign that eliminates Putin’s forces in Ukraine would leave the Russian leader politically and militarily vulnerable. Such devastating losses would be felt across Russia and likewise deflate Putin’s veneer of strength, with blame falling squarely on his shoulders rather than unifying the Russian populace in suicidal nationalistic resolve. And Putin’s insiders and most reliable underlings, already fighting rather publicly among themselves, will be opportunistically revisiting their options or at least seeking distance from the Russian leader. After all, like Putin, many of them are siloviki, former intelligence officers who share the Russian leader’s personalized utilitarian perspective.
So the United States and its allies will need to begin working now – and apparently already are – to signal publicly and privately to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons, whether tactical or not, in Ukraine or beyond, would be devastating to him personally. Words alone do little with Putin, so the United States and NATO would necessarily need to begin taking observable actions accompanied by diplomacy, messaging, and covert influence efforts that demonstrate preparations to conventionally destroy Putin’s forces in Ukraine if he resorted to nuclear first use. The challenge would be in doing so without instead validating his narrative of inevitable existential battle with the West, justifying his first use of nuclear weapons, and triggering a wider war between Russia and NATO that escalates into what had been, since the 1990’s at least, the unthinkable.
And that’s the unavoidable danger in high-stakes brinksmanship: a willingness to have one’s bluff called and gambling who blinks first. But to mitigate against Putin’s initiation of such a spiral and ultimately prevent Russian nuclear use, the US and its NATO allies must be prepared to climb that escalatory conventional ladder and respond, leaving no ambiguity with Putin of the consequences. In the event Putin is detected deploying tactical nuclear weapons into theater, this could include moving sufficient NATO combat air power along with Combat Controllers to guide weapons to their targets, other special forces operators, expanded U.S. air defense, and missile capable naval combatants and the like into theater, which would respond to Putin’s nuclear use by destroying his forces in Ukraine. But keeping the engagement localized, not extending even to Crimea, might reduce Putin’s obligation to escalate still further.
The unfortunate reality is that Putin can’t be stopped without significant costs, but allowing him to normalize the use of weapons of mass destruction would start the inevitable clock to a direct and possibly catastrophic US-Russian conflict. It is a strategy that could require yet further investment of American blood and treasure today in requiring Putin to face consequences designed to prevent a full-scale war and potential nuclear escalation, but costs that are necessary to preserve international peace and security in the long term.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrermDEFINITIVELY SABOTAGE: @TpyxaNews posts this video of damage to the Nordstream pipeline. Cracks and linear fractures are consistent with the application of high explosive linear shaped charges placed in contact with the outer skin of the pipe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Footage of the damaged Nord Stream pipe
💽 https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1582329446480367616?s=20/photo/1
🐣 If Putin feels like nuking Kherson Oblast today, the win[d] patterns will take the fallout over Russia and Turkey http://Earth.net https://tinyurl.com/38e5z69y
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1582368966521257985?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ noclador US Senate wants the Pentagon to buy:
• 750,000 XM1128 / XM1123
• 1,000 M777
• 700 (!) M142 HIMARS
• 100,000 GMLRS
• 20,000 Stinger
• 25,000 Javelin
• 30,000 Hellfire
• 36,000 AGM-179
• 1,000 Harpoon
• 800 NSM
• 10,000 Patriot PAC-3
• 6,000 (!) ATACMS
• 20,000 AMRAAM
// Defense budget
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ *Russian troops have a plan to capture Bakhmut, Donetsk region, by the end of October.* ¤ This was announced by Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar on the air of the telethon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @arun_richards by that time the Ukrainians will have taken Svatove further north and maybe even Kreminna. ¤ With that line of cities under their control they can advance to Lysychansk and Severodonetsk while the Orcs in Bakhmut will keep getting shelled from neighboring Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
🐣 RT @CamdenRemainer There’s plenty of visual evidence to show why Russia is sustaining such losses. They’re using WW1 tactics and charging well fortified positions and getting mown down by artillery. Bakhmut has been a meat grinder for months.
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 History is being made in Bakhmut. ¤ Defenders are performing actions which are superhuman.
🐣 RT @UATV_enm🔥💪🏼 #UkrainianArmy destroyed 90% of drones launched into Ukraine yesterday ¤ 💬 Relatively small number of dead & injured, compared to what could have been. Each drone is the equivalent of 40 kg of TNT, – Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky #UkraineRussiaWar #RussiaIsLosing
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Another kind of Russian terrorist attacks: targeting 🇺🇦 energy & critical infrastructure. Since Oct 10, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country. No space left for negotiations with Putin’s regime. @United24media
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1582285715970613248?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 17 Oct 2022
NYT, Anand Giridharadas: The Uncomfortable Truths That Could Yet Defeat Fascism https://tinyurl.com/3zk563dv “[A] tendency toward purism, gatekeeping and homogeneity afflicts sections of the left and threatens its pursuits”
FAS: NATO Steadfast Noon Exercise And Nuclear Modernization in Europe https://tinyurl.com/musn75h9
// new nuclear weapons Europe
🐣 RT @almoud85 Russia is bluffing their way to oblivion. They have no idea just how determined Biden is, not to let them take an inch of Ukrainian territories. Now all Ukrainians needs to do is help counter Russia’s involvement in US elections. Or else things will be really bad after November
🐣 RT @ mhmck The Russian terrorist state is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council. That is why the United Nations is dead and died a long time ago.
AtlanticCouncil, Taras Kuzio: Ukraine has a Russia problem not a Putin problem https://tinyurl.com/yeykxwuz “Ukraine’s leaders appear increasingly confident of victory but they are also under no illusions regarding the future of relations with Russia, regardless of who sits in the Kremlin”
Ukraine’s complete liberation remains an ambitious goal but it is no longer confined to the realms of fantasy. Following a string of stunning counteroffensive advances in September and October, many now believe Ukraine could push Russia back to the front lines of February 24 by the end of this year and return the rest of the country to Ukrainian control by the middle of 2023. …
Vladimir Putin would be highly unlikely to survive the humiliation of a decisive Ukrainian victory. While it is impossible to predict exactly how his reign might end, it is equally hard to imagine the strongman Russian ruler surviving such a disastrous defeat. This is particularly true as the war is widely perceived within Russia as Putin’s personal project.
We can already say with some confidence that if Putin is ousted, his successor will not be a democrat. Modern Russia has no credible national democratic movement and lacks the pluralistic political traditions that made it possible for democracy to take root in post-Soviet Ukraine and the Baltic states. Given the political climate in Russia, any successor would almost certainly be a nationalist figure from within the ranks of the current elite. However, he (and yes, it would inevitably be a “he”) would probably be more pragmatic and therefore less prone to ranting about Ukraine.
In order to escape war guilt and bring sanctions to an end, he would seek to blame everything on Putin. This could help secure breathing space to repair Russia’s battered economy and armed forces. It would also give Ukraine some time to embark on a massive post-war reconstruction drive. At the same time, numerous major obstacles to a sustainable peace settlement would remain. …
Another urgent question will be how to make Russia pay for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. The obvious answer is to use the frozen Russian assets currently held by various Western nations. Work is already underway to create a legal framework for the reallocation of these frozen Russian assets, but this process could take years and will be fiercely contested by the Kremlin. …
Whatever form Ukrainian victory takes, it will not mark the end of the historic confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. Today’s war is part of a grim saga stretching back centuries that is rooted in Russia’s refusal to recognize Ukraine’s right to exist.
Putin himself has frequently claimed that modern Ukrainians are really Russians (“one people”) and has accused Ukraine of being an artificial “anti-Russia” that poses an existential threat to Russian statehood and cannot therefore be tolerated. This genocidal logic is widely embraced in today’s Russia and will not disappear overnight. In reality, it may take decades before a majority of Russians are finally able to accept that Ukraine is a separate and fully independent nation.
Any leader of a post-Putin Russia would almost certainly continue to regard Ukraine as a threat. While they may not necessarily share Putin’s highly emotional obsession with the country, they would likely view Ukraine’s consolidation as a European democracy as a potential catalyst for democratic change inside Russia. In order to prevent this nightmare scenario, they would seek to undermine Ukraine’s economic recovery and derail the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration.
Ukraine’s leaders appear increasingly confident of victory but they are also under no illusions regarding the future of relations with Russia, regardless of who sits in the Kremlin. “Knowing what I know first-hand about the Russians, our victory will not be final,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny told TIME magazine in September. “Our victory will be an opportunity to take a breath and prepare for the next war.”
The current war is merely the latest chapter in Europe’s longest independence struggle. This struggle will only end when Russia finally accepts that Ukraine is a sovereign country and Ukrainians are not Russians.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “Russia is deporting and putting up for adoption thousands of Ukrainian children.” 🤬🤬 Stop the genocide. #ArmUkraineNow to end the war soon. Send #ATACMSforUkraine already. Send them everything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP Russia is deporting and putting up for adoption thousands of Ukrainian children. Some have also been given Russian nationality. https://tinyurl.com/mczh8zwx
// 10/13/2022; An @AP investigation finds the operation is well under way, in violation of the laws of war and a possible marker of genocide.
🐣 RT @rprose Putin spent years racing against Russia’s demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that’s consigning his country’s population to a historic decline
⋙ Bloomberg: Putin’s War Escalation Is Hastening Demographic Crash for Russia https://tinyurl.com/2p9kxxfd
● Population is set for historic decline as fertility rate drops
● Economy also at risk from migration outflows, aging workforce
◕ https://twitter.com/rprose/status/1582225354202107905?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @StateDept .@SecBlinken on Russia: It’s not only an aggression against Ukraine. It is an aggression against the basic principles that are embodied in the @UN charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a whole series of norms and rules that many generations labored to build.
⋙ 🐣 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~
How many of these has Russia trampled on in its war against Ukraine?
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1582155036041568256?s=20/photo/1
💙 Politico Mag: Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin’ https://tinyurl.com/5f6x9f23 “This is a great power conflict, the third … in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before” #MustRead
// Eight months into Russia’s war against Ukraine, POLITICO talks to the Russia analyst about whether Putin’s aims are evolving and what it would take to end the war.
… [Putin is] … the person who puts himself in the corner. … Putin gives himself no way out except to pursue the original goals he had when he went in, which is the dismemberment of Ukraine and Russia annexing its territory. And he’s still trying to adapt his responses to setbacks on the battlefield.
In his mind, I think Putin still thinks he’s got more game to play. His endgame is to go out of this war on his terms. What we’re seeing right now, with the annexations and the big speech that he made on September 30th is very clear. He sees this conflict as a full-on war with the West, and he still is adamant on removing Ukraine from the map and from global affairs. ¤ It’s also clear that he has no intention whatsoever of giving up Donetsk and Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as Crimea, which he’s already taken and already declared as part of Russia for time immemorial.
I think most people have forgotten that he used this term [“New Russia”] in 2014. Back then, the Kremlin triggered the war in Donbas as part of an effort to regain control of the territories of Novorossiya that were first annexed from the Ottoman Empire by Catherine the Great back in the late 18th century.
Q: If Putin wants Ukrainian territory so badly, why is he raining down such destruction on civilian areas and committing so many human rights abuses in occupied areas?
This is punishment, but also perverse redevelopment. You cow people into submission, destroy what they had and all their links to their past and their old lives, and then make them into something new and, thus, yours. Destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. Build New Russia and create Russians. Its brutal but also a hallmark of imperial conquest. …
Look, exactly 100 years before Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, in 1914, the Germans invaded Belgium and France and World War I was fought as a Great Power conflict to eject Germany from Belgium and France. And World War II in Europe, of course, was a refighting territorially of many of the outcomes of World War I.
Part of the problem is that conceptually, people have a hard time with the idea of a world war. It brings all kinds of horrors to mind — the Holocaust and the detonation of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the dawning of the nuclear age. But if you think about it, a world war is a great power conflict over territory which overturns the existing international order and where other states find themselves on different sides of the conflict. It involves economic warfare, information warfare, as well as kinetic war.
We’re in the same situation. Again, Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, exactly 100 years after Germany invaded Belgium and France — and just in the same way that Hitler seized the Sudetenland, annexed Austria and invaded Poland. We’re having a hard time coming to terms with what we’re dealing with here. This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.
Keep in mind that Putin himself has used the language of both world wars. He’s talked about the fact that Ukraine did not exist as a state until after World War I, after the dissolution of the Russian Empire and the creation of the Soviet Union. He has blamed the early Soviets for the formation of what he calls an artificial state. Right from the very beginning, Putin himself has said that he is refighting World War II. So, the hyperbole has come from Vladimir Putin, who has said that he’s reversing all of the outcomes territorially from World War I and also, in effect, World War II and the Cold War. He’s not accepting the territorial configuration of Europe as it currently is. …
I’m sure Putin thought he would have been unassailable with a quick, victorious war. Ukraine would be back in the fold and then probably after that, Belarus. Moldova as well, perhaps. There would have been a reframing of the next phase of Putin as the great czar of a reconstituted “Russkiy mir” or “Russian world.” …
Ukraine has already had a great moral, political and military victory. Russia has not achieved the aims of its special military operation. But I think Putin is obviously hoping that now, with all of the nuclear saber-rattling, threats of nuclear Armageddon, deploying Elon Musk and others to convey his messages, that basically he can take the territory that he’s got and get recognition of that. And then he hopes that he will be able to put pressure back on Ukraine. He’d still like to see the Ukrainian political system crumble away. He’d like to get somebody as leader of Ukraine who is personally loyal to him. Putin hopes that he’ll still prevail, that he’ll find other ways of getting what he wanted when he went across the border in February. …
… I’m sure he feels that he might still get [rid of Zelenskyy]. I mean, everything that he’s doing is an effort to discredit Ukraine and Ukrainians and Zelenskyy. ¤ Ukraine has the right to choose their own leadership. But Putin will try to manipulate this whichever way he can. He’ll keep trying to soften the battlefield beyond Ukraine, keep on trying to poison attitudes internationally against Ukraine.
What Putin is trying to do is to get us to talk about the threat of nuclear war instead of what he is doing in Ukraine. He wants the U.S. and Europe to contemplate, as he says, the risks that we faced during the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Euromissile crisis. He wants us to face the prospect of a great superpower war. His solution is to have secret diplomacy, as we did during Cuban Missile Crisis, and have a direct compromise between the United States and Russia.
But there’s no strategic standoff here. This is pure nuclear blackmail. There can’t be a compromise based on him not setting off a nuclear weapon if we hand over Ukraine. Putin is behaving like a rogue state because, well, he is a rogue state at this point. And he’s being explicit about what he wants. We have to pull all the diplomatic stops out. We have to ensure that he’s not going to have the effect that he wants with this nuclear brinkmanship. …
We’re not in a proxy war with Russia, just like we weren’t in a proxy war with Germany during World War I when we were trying to get German forces out of France and Belgium. It wasn’t a proxy war either when we were trying to get Germany out of Poland and all the other places that it invaded in Europe during World War II. We are trying to help Ukraine liberate itself, having been invaded by Russia.
This whole proxy war debate deprives Ukraine of agency. But, if we talk about Ukraine being part of NATO at this particular moment, it will simply feed into this flawed discussion. It will detract from the essence of what this war is, which is Russia trying to seize Ukrainian territory.
Russia believes NATO is simply a cover for the United States in Europe. I think it should be very clear right now with Finland and Sweden wanting to join that this is not the case at all. Finland and Sweden did not apply to NATO before, they have now because NATO is focused on ensuring common collective security and defense, and Russia has put all of Europe at risk. …
Putin is holding the whole world hostage. We’ve got so many things that we have to deal with. I understand why the Global South is so frustrated with all of this: “While you’re fighting this war in Ukraine over the same kind of territorial disputes you guys have been having for a hundred years now, we’re dying here from disease and climate change. Our countries have flooded. We’re starving and you guys are expecting us to help you solve this?” The United Nations system is breaking down, as [António] Guterres, the secretary-general, has said over and over again. All the alarm bells are going off. And Vladimir Putin is behaving as if it’s the 1780s all over again. …
… [W]e do need international institutions to deal with the magnitude of the problems that we’re facing. It’s ironic that Elon Musk, the man who has been talking about getting us to Mars should be Putin’s messenger for the war in Ukraine, when we’re having a really hard time getting our act together on this planet. But it’s glaringly obvious to ordinary people that we need to do so. Time is not on our side.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer DAD’s ARMY: RU’s mobilization is delivering under-trained, ill-equipped, and badly led civilians directly into combat. Basic military training for a western recruit is six months and training in a Military Occupational Specially (MOS) can be a extra year.
⋙ NYT: ‘Coffins Are Already Coming’: The Toll of Russia’s Chaotic Draft https://tinyurl.com/4w5acztx “Analysts say the Russian military has a glaring lack of cohesive units where infantry, artillery and air power are trained to work together”
// Newly mobilized recruits are already at the front in Ukraine, a growing chorus of reports says, fighting and dying after only days of training.
🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar1/21 #Ukraine must regain certain specific areas currently under #Russian occupation to ensure its long-term security and economic viability. [thread] https://isw.pub/RusCampaignOct16
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1582063835615461376?s=20
⋙ 2/21 #Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against a future #Russian attack requires liberating most of #Kherson and #Zaporizhia Oblasts. Ukraine’s economic health requires liberating the rest of Zaporizhia Oblast and much of #Donetsk and #Luhansk Oblasts.
⋙ 3/21 #Ukraine has every right to fight to liberate all the territory #Russia has illegally seized, particularly in light of the continued atrocities and ethnic cleansing Russia is perpetrating in the areas it occupies.
⋙ 4/21 However, #Ukraine also requires the liberation of the areas mentioned above for purely strategic military and economic reasons. ISW continues to assess that #Putin’s intentions are unlikely to change whether or not a ceasefire or some other settlement occurs.
⋙ 5/21 The #Kremlin would use any suspension of hostilities to consolidate its gains and freeze the frontline in the best configuration #Putin can get to prepare for future coercion and aggression against #Ukraine.
⋙ 6/21 Those seeking enduring peace in Ukraine must resist the temptation to freeze the lines of combat short of #Ukraine’s international borders in ways that set conditions for renewed conflict on #Russia’s terms.
⋙ 7/21 If a ceasefire or any sort of agreement suspends fighting with the #Russians still in possession of their lodgment on the west bank of the #Dnipro River in #Kherson Oblast, the prospects for a renewed Russian offensive in southern #Ukraine would be vastly improved.
⋙ 8/21 If #Ukraine regains control of the entire west bank of the river, on the other hand, the #Russians would likely find ground attacks against southwestern Ukraine extraordinarily difficult.
⋙ 9/21 #Ukraine’s hold on its entire western Black Sea coast will remain tenuous as long as #Russia holds territory in southwestern #Kherson much further north than the 2014 lines.
⋙ 10/21 Tracing defensible lines requires constantly referring to the roughly 25-km maximum effective range of the 152mm artillery system. Planners must assume that #Ukrainian positions within 25 km of #Russian lines may be subject to massive artillery barrages.
⋙ 11/21 Sound military doctrine also teaches that one does not attempt to defend a position by standing on it—reliable defenses must be established well forward of the points or lines that must be held.
⋙ 12/21 The #Dnipro River should not be #Ukraine’s first line of defense, but rather its last. Ukraine must therefore be able to establish and hold positions on the eastern bank of the river.
⋙ 13/21 Consideration of key terrain in eastern #Kherson and western #Zaporizhia Oblasts must integrate security and economic concerns because of the location of the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) at #Enerhodar.
⋙ 14/21 If the #Russians retain control of #Melitopol and the roads running south and east of it, they can and likely will turn it into a major militarized base from which to launch mechanized attacks across the largely flat steppe land to its north and west.
⋙ 15/21 If #Ukraine regains control of #Melitopol, on the other hand, the #Russians would be confined to #Crimea and the narrow and vulnerable road and rail connections across the Perekop Isthmus that separates Crimea from the mainland.
⋙ 16/21 The reconstruction of a viable #Ukrainian economy that does not require large amounts of long-term international financial assistance requires restoring the #Donbas economic region to #Kyiv’s control.
⋙ 17/21 The military requirement for that restoration includes the #Ukrainian liberation of #Mariupol and the road and rail networks north via Volnovakha toward #Donetsk City and to the west toward #Melitopol and #Zaporizhia City.
⋙ 18/21 Similar economic arguments hold for the historically industrial cities of #Donetsk, #Severodonetsk, and #Luhansk.
⋙ 19/21 Allowing #Russia to retain control of these key junctions at Svatove, Starobilsk, and Bilovodsk and the road and rail networks on which they sit would give #Moscow a significant advantage in building up for a renewed invasion from the northeast.
⋙ 20/21 The #Crimean Peninsula, finally, is strategically important for #NATO as well as #Ukraine.
⋙ 21/21 If #Ukraine is to emerge from this war able to defend itself against a future #Russian attack and with a viable economy that does not rely on long-term international financial support, it must liberate almost all its territory.
🐣 RT @TadeuszGiczan … The Belarusian-Ukrainian border is almost entirely covered by the impassable Polesie marshes, the largest wetlands in Europe. The few sections along the roads where the Russians attacked in February have been turned by Ukrainians into the Maginot Line. 15/
🌎 https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1582044592232202249?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AtlanticCouncil “There is no imminent threat from China to take Taiwan militarily,” writes @ACGlobalChina’s @ShirleyMHargis. ¤ Read more reaction to the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress: 🇨🇳➡️ https://bit.ly/3D0FGZ3
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AtlanticCouncil/status/1582056191982964736?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Chairman Xi is not signaling any greater sense of urgency over Taiwan. We see the usual rhetoric that reunification is of the utmost importance, while asserting a long-established policy adhering to the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus. Shirley Marty Hargis ¤ Nonresident Fellow, ¤ Global China Hub
MoscowTimes/AFP: Zelensky Says Situation ‘Most Difficult’ Near Bakhmut in Donetsk https://tinyurl.com/pkyud93p Troops, including prisoners recruited by the Wagner Group, have for been pummelling Bakhmut, a wine-making and salt-mining city with a pre-war pop. of 70,000
🐣 RT @Patrick29098107 Russia’s Yeysk. ¤ A military aircraft just crashed into a huge residential building. ¤ Seems Karma is locating them naturally & everywhere ¤ #Odesa #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #The Kremlin #Kyiv #4Billion #Putin #PutinIsaWarCriminal #Luhansk #Kherson
🐣 RT @mhmck The Russian fascist invaders shelled positions of Ukrainian defenders near Stel’makhivka in Luhansk region. This confirms an advance by Ukrainian forces on temporarily-occupied Svatove. ¤ Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational info at 18:00 on 17 Oct 2022
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1582037524742303744?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie #Svatove has been taken by #UkraineArmy announcement coming soon
🧵 RT @rybar_en ❗️🇷🇺🇺🇦 Situation in the Starobilsk direction [Svatove Kreminna] ¤ As of 16:00 Kyiv Time, October 17, 2022
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1582003257139871744?s=20/photo/1
// Rybar is a Ru milblogger on tg
🐣 RT @juha_remes Bakhmut banzai continues. Wagner keeps sending untrained conscripts in Soviet-style human wave offensives against fortified Ukrainian defensive positions woth predictable results.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/juha_remes/status/1582023849046331393?s=20/photo/1
[MemeText:] IF NOTHING ELSE WORKS, A TOTAL PIG HEADED UNWILLINGNESS TO LOOK FAGTS IN THE FACE WILL SEE US THROUGH
TheAtlantic, Francis Fukuyama: Still the End of History https://tinyurl.com/mr2cvtzz “[L]iberal democracy has endured and come back repeatedly, because the alternatives are so bad”
// Russia China Iran Venezuela; Over the past year, it has become evident that there are key weaknesses at the core of seemingly strong authoritarian states.
Over the past decade, global politics has been heavily shaped by apparently strong states whose leaders are not constrained by law or constitutional checks and balances. Russia and China both have argued that liberal democracy is in long-term decline, and that their brand of muscular authoritarian government is able to act decisively and get things done while their democratic rivals debate, dither, and fail to deliver on their promises. These two countries were the vanguard of a broader authoritarian wave that turned back democratic gains across the globe, from Myanmar to Tunisia to Hungary to El Salvador. Over the past year, though, it has become evident that there are key weaknesses at the core of these strong states.
The weaknesses are of two sorts. First, the concentration of power in the hands of a single leader at the top all but guarantees low-quality decision making, and over time will produce truly catastrophic consequences. Second, the absence of public discussion and debate in “strong” states, and of any mechanism of accountability, means that the leader’s support is shallow, and can erode at a moment’s notice.
Over the years, we have seen huge setbacks to the progress of liberal and democratic institutions, with the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s, or the military coups and oil crises of the 1960s and ’70s. And yet, liberal democracy has endured and come back repeatedly, because the alternatives are so bad. People across varied cultures do not like living under dictatorship, and they value their individual freedom. No authoritarian government presents a society that is, in the long term, more attractive than liberal democracy, and could therefore be considered the goal or endpoint of historical progress. The millions of people voting with their feet—leaving poor, corrupt, or violent countries for life not in Russia, China, or Iran but in the liberal, democratic West—amply demonstrate this.
The philosopher Hegel coined the phrase the end of history to refer to the liberal state’s rise out of the French Revolution as the goal or direction toward which historical progress was trending. For many decades after that, Marxists would borrow from Hegel and assert that the true end of history would be a communist utopia. When I wrote an article in 1989 and a book in 1992 with this phrase in the title, I noted that the Marxist version was clearly wrong and that there didn’t seem to be a higher alternative to liberal democracy. We’ve seen frightening reversals to the progress of liberal democracy over the past 15 years, but setbacks do not mean that the underlying narrative is wrong. None of the proffered alternatives look like they’re doing any better.
The weaknesses of strong states have been on glaring display in Russia. President Vladimir Putin is the sole decision maker; even the former Soviet Union had a Politburo where the party secretary had to vet policy ideas. We saw images of Putin sitting at the end of a long table with his defense and foreign ministers because of his fear of COVID; he was so isolated that he had no idea how strong Ukrainian national identity had become in recent years or how fierce a resistance his invasion would provoke. He similarly got no word of how deeply corruption and incompetence had taken root within his own military, how abysmally the modern weapons he had developed were working, or how poorly trained his own officer corps was. …
Putin’s bad decision making and shallow support has produced one of the biggest strategic blunders in living memory. Far from demonstrating its greatness and recovering its empire, Russia has become a global object of ridicule, and will endure further humiliations at the hands of Ukraine in the coming weeks. The entire Russian military position in the south of Ukraine is likely to collapse, and the Ukrainians have a real chance of liberating the Crimean Peninsula for the first time since 2014. These reversals have triggered a huge amount of finger-pointing in Moscow; the Kremlin is cracking down even harder on dissent. Whether Putin himself will be able to survive a Russian military defeat is an open question. …
The big question mark remains, unfortunately, the United States. Some 30 to 35 percent of its voters continue to believe the false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and the Republican Party has been taken over by Donald Trump’s MAGA followers, who are doing their best to put election deniers in positions of power around the country. This group does not represent a majority of the country but is likely to regain control of at least the House of Representatives this November, and possibly the presidency in 2024. The party’s putative leader, Trump, has fallen deeper and deeper into a conspiracy-fueled madness in which he believes that he could be immediately reinstated as president and that the country should criminally indict his presidential predecessors, including one who is already dead.
There is an intimate connection between the success of strong states abroad and populist politics at home. Politicians such as Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour in France, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy, and of course Trump in the U.S. have all expressed sympathy for Putin. They see in him a model for the kind of strongman rule they would like to exercise in their own country. He, in turn, is hoping that their rise will weaken Western support for Ukraine and save his flailing “special military operation.”
Liberal democracy will not make a comeback unless people are willing to struggle on its behalf. The problem is that many who grow up living in peaceful, prosperous liberal democracies begin to take their form of government for granted. Because they have never experienced an actual tyranny, they imagine that the democratically elected governments under which they live are themselves evil dictatorships conniving to take away their rights, whether that is the European Union or the administration in Washington. But reality has intervened. The Russian invasion of Ukraine constitutes a real dictatorship trying to crush a genuinely free society with rockets and tanks, and may serve to remind the current generation of what is at stake. By resisting Russian imperialism, the Ukrainians are demonstrating the grievous weaknesses that exist at the core of an apparently strong state. They understand the true value of freedom, and are fighting a larger battle on our behalf, a battle that all of us need to join.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russia attacked Ukraine with 42 drones today. ¤ 36 of them were taken down. ¤ About 30 drones were headed for Kyiv, 25 of them taken down, – Internal Affairs Minister Denys Monastyrskyi. ¤ Glory to our Heroes! ¤ Ukraine needs air defense systems and combat planes!
🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov russia and iran unite to spread terror and death. Shahed-136 is just one of their tools, along with Kalibr, Iskander, Kh missiles, Mojaher-6 drones, Fateh-110, Zolfaghar. ¤ Democracies and the brightest minds of the world must come together to repel these attacks and defeat evil.
😅 RT @bayraktar_1love A bit of random chaos, which in Belarusian army is called trainings
💽 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1581916278025261056?s=20/photo/1
// tags: Belarusian training video Belorusian training video
UkrInform: In Kherson region, invaders growing increasingly demoralized – regionaal council https://tinyurl.com/3tnvrhsu Occupiers complain that fresh troops “aren’t willing to fight at all, they do not understand what they are supposed to do there”
⭕ 16 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard For the record. As a student of urban warfare (author of a book on it), there is no way in HELL Russia, even with Belarusian troops (not going to happen, would be the end of Lukashenko), could make an attempt at Kyiv again. That would be a blood bath and epic faliure for Russia.
🐣 RT @SlavaUk30722777 🇺🇦Kids these days in #Ukraine❤️
💽 https://twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1581524429749727233?s=20/photo/1
// children play happily in bomb crater in Kyiv’s children’s playground
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: Tempers fly, as not everybody is happy with the government’s failure to properly equip the troops, leading to proposals to cancel the New Year’s festivities and spend the money on the military. One pundit concludes: “The government sh*t its pants.”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1581832163905146880?s=20/photo/1
PradaUa: Part of ZNPP is under the control of the Kadyrov gang https://tinyurl.com/yscfdeab
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1581830724918788096?s=20&/photo/1
The National Resistance Centre has also reported that Russia is trying to connect ZNPP to its power system as soon as possible.
[Text:] The occupiers are hastily carrying out measures to convert the spent nuclear fuel storage system at the ZNPP to Russian standards, as well as to adapt all nuclear reactors of the ZNPP to use Russian fuel assemblies. Currently, four out of six nuclear reactors of the ZNPP operate using fuel assemblies of the American company Westinghouse Electric Company, which was carried out as part of Ukraine’s independence from Russian raw materials for our NPPs.
💙 🐣 RT @RogersHistory Very cool to show students how borders have changed over time… @TMHistoryIcons
💽 https://twitter.com/RogersHistory/status/1581610302856081410?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AIR DEFENSE: On 14 OCT, a Pentagon brief stated that UKR air defense had successfully intercepted 4 of 4 (100%) of Kalibr cruise missiles launched from the Black Sea. Analysts believe that RU’s precision strike munitions are down to 1/3 of prewar levels. https://tinyurl.com/55amm8sx
↥ ↧
DefenseBrief: Ukraine intercepted all Kalibr missiles Russia launched after Crimea bridge attack, Pentagon https://tinyurl.com/55amm8sx
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress The biggest knit flag of Ukraine was displayed in Chernihiv to celebrate the Day of Defenders of Ukraine on October 14
The flag is 30×20 meters big. 350 people worked on it, using 700 km of yarn in total, which is the distance from Chernihiv to Kherson. https://chernigiv-rada.gov.ua/news/id-54848/
¤ https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1581501689009299456?s=20/photo/1 -3
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Poetry from our Defenders.
My biggest wish is for them and for the whole Ukraine to be safe.
Then we will sit, drink coffee and talk about life.
What did you think of the poem?
📹: zmlchk/TikTok
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1581703759427534849?s=2/photo/1
🐣 RT @J_JHelin Honestly, I have a hard time believing this about the southern front. ¤ Donbas or Oskil, sure, but the Russians have dug in at Kherson for 6 months, and it’s where the remnants of Russia’s competent troops are, and Ukraine is the one on the offensive.
⋙⋙ 🐣 📋 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ Defense Ministry: Russia losing soldiers at ratio of 1 to 6.5 to Ukrainian losses on southern front. ¤ The figure was given by Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, citing Andrii Kovalchuk, commander of the Armed Forces’ Operational Command “South.”
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent According to Kovalchuk, when the losses ratio reaches the “critical” point of 1 to 8, “the enemy forces will disintegrate psychologically.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @keithamccluskey But have overwhelming forces and better weaponry. It’s just degrading them. Most are at 60% or less combat effectiveness. Meaning, it’s already lost for Russia. And their soldiers will either give up or die.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @J_JHelin Oh I’m not saying Russia is in a good situation in Kherson. Absolutely not. Just that the 1:6.5 ratio seems pretty big despite the Russian situation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @keithamccluskey It’s not all for Kherson. And 10k urban assault are moving down into position. Not part of the 60 yet. Russia hasn’t seen anything yet. Many surprises to come.
🐣 RT @vinm300 #Kherson #Belgorod #Ukraine
Alexander Herzen: “Almost all Russian literature is an unremitting indictment of Russian reality”
In the C19th Russian writers described the injustice and cruelty of Russia; the misery and horror
In the C20th Russian writers lived through the Terror
🖼 https://twitter.com/vinm300/status/1581702585119313920?s=20/photo/1
🐣 ♫ Somewhere, #Mylove ¤ Lara’s Theme (from Dr Zhivago)
🎹 https://youtu.be/cuk1cm73cIw
💽 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1581683022918668289?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @anders_aslund The Ukrainian general staff reports that the Russians are looting banks and state institutions in Kherson. Apparently, they are preparing to evacuate altogether.
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Russia says that it is relocating 500 Ukrainian children each day from Kherson to Russian territory. A harrowing admission of war crimes.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BURN RATE: Previously, Indications & Warnings reported that RU had squandered 66% of its precision weapon stocks. @Tendar now reports that Putin’s reduced to begging Tehran for Fateh-110s- which are crummy knock-offs of old Soviet 9K52 Luna-M short range ballistic missiles.
🐣 RT @flater831 That’s the trademark Russian way of fighting: human life having zero value. Including theirs. I listened to a podcast in Czech where it was touched upon that this is a remnant of Byzantine value system. I must look into it sometime. ¤ Either way, that value system mustn’t spread.
🐣 RT @mhmck Russia, Belarus and Iran are at war with Ukraine. ¤ It’s not the World War III of the imagination. It’s the global war that’s real.
⋙ 🐣 Now, if China and India got involved, there might be a problem
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1581670355135270913?s=20/photo/1
// chart military spending by country defense spending by country
🐣 RT @ @ChuckPfarrer A MESSAGE? @HannaLiubakova reports that RU media is making a point of announcing the continuing arrivals of Russian military units in Belarus. ‘Interoperability’ exercises continue between RU and Belarusian troops.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HannaLiubakova The defense ministry keeps informing about Russian soldiers arriving in #Belarus. One of them says on camera: “We arrived from Central Russia, I’m from Moscow. We came to help strengthen the borders so that everyone feels how united the peoples of Belarus and Russia are.” United?
💽 https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1581520401267838976?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ NTarnopolsky #Breaking: After report Iran will send surface-to-surface missiles intended for Russia’s to usr against Ukrainian cities, Israeli minister says: “The time has come for Ukraine to receive military aid from Israel just as has from the USA and NATO countries.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @DrNachmanShai This morning it was reported that Iran is transferring ballistic missiles to Russia. There is no longer any doubt where Israel should stand in this bloody conflict. The time has come for Ukraine to receive military aid as well, just as the USA and NATO countries provide.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/1300 UTC 16 OCT/ UKR forces have consolidated control of the H-26 HWY and the rail line leading to the city of Svatove. RU combat engineers are constructing trench systems west of the P-66 HWY between Svatove and Kremenna, indicating a local shift to defensive operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1581624778267295747?s=20/photo/1
🐣 ♫ Somewhere, #MyLove
(Lara’s Theme from “Dr. Zhivago”)
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1581589907473956864?s=20/photo/1
Somewhere, #Mylove there will be songs to sing
Although the snow covers the hope of spring
Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold
And there are dreams all that your heart can holdSomeday we’ll meet again #Mylove
Someday whenever the spring breaks throughYou’ll come to me out of the long ago
Warm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snow
Lara my own, think of me now and then
God speed #Mylove till you are mine againYou’ll come to me out of the long ago
Warm as the wind soft as the kiss of snow
Till then my sweet think of me now and then
God speed #Mylove ’til you are mine again
⭕ 15 Oct 2022
🧵 RT @MotolkoHelp According to our information, the first echelon with the Russian military of the regional group of troops arrived at Losvida railway station (Vitsebsk region). This is the north of Belarus, the area does not border with Ukraine. 1/5
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/MotolkoHelp/status/1581283996574834694?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov This is what #Russia|-n ine [sic] of defence between Kreminna and Svatove, #Luhansk region, east #Ukraine, looks like. Several lines of trenches and concrete pyramids. ¤ Do they think that it’s still WWI?…
⋙ 🐣 RT @umarian6 Yes, Russia does because they found massive artillery worked in World War 2. They didn’t experience something like Vietnam where US developed whole new ways of fighting, or Desert Storm where the US married those concepts with tech.
🐣 RT @mhmck In Zaporizhzhya region, Ukrainian fire missions destroyed an ammunition depot and inflicted more than 20 casualties on rashist occupiers in the village of Marfopil. ¤ In Tokmak, 10 units of military equipment were destroyed and up to 40 rashist militants were made casualties.1/2
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1581507334622572544?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian strikes caused losses of up to 30 rashists in Polohy. In Kam’yanka-Dniprovs’ka, 7 units of military equipment were destroyed and about 40 rashists were made casualties. –General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 06:00 on 16 Oct 2022,2/2
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1581508160862359552?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ MarkHertling A @Newsweek article with some of my comments that some may find interesting
⋙ Newsweek: Ukraine Morale ‘High’ Amid Kherson Offensive as Russia in Disarray: General https://tinyurl.com/48ac4e8a
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone President Zelensky spoke about the fierce fighting around the town of Bakhmut & other areas of Donetsk region. “A very difficult situation persists in Donetsk region and Luhansk region. The most difficult is the Bakhmut direction, as in the previous days. We hold our positions.”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer TARGET KYIV? Reports from diplomatic and local sources indicate that Tajikistan, Kazakstan and China have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine immediately. On 11 OCT, Reuters reported that Belarus and Russian forces had grouped on UKR’s borders as a ‘defensive measure’.
🧵 RT @Volodymyr_D_ Comparison of Russian and Ukrainian attack schemes: ¤ I decided to compare the offensive of Russia in the spring and the counteroffensive of Ukraine in September in order to understand the reasons for such different results 1/17 #RussiaUkraineWar #kharkivcounteroffensive
📌 https://twitter.com/Volodymyr_D_/status/1581381393581428736?s=20/photo/1
TheDrive: Ukraine Situation Report: Noose Tightens Around Russian-Occupied Kherson https://tinyurl.com/mt2rkkrm “The Russian position in Kherson has reportedly weakened enough to where some western officials believe Kherson could be liberated within the week”
// Ukrainian troops remain focused on cutting off the Russians’ only way out of Kherson as part of its southern offensive.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress The US guided artillery shell M982 Excalibur destroyed Russian equipment near Kherson with one shot after Ukraine’s LelekaUAV found its coordinates ¤ M982 Excalibur can be fired from any NATO standard artillery for 70km with navigation. ¤ Come Back Alive
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1581336635798851585?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @yurapalyanytsia Do you like watermelons? #Fellas #NAFO #WeAreNAFO
💽 https://twitter.com/yurapalyanytsia/status/1581235779254484993?s=20/photo/1
// meme shaky Zaluzhnyi shaking Zaluzhnyi
🐣 RT @Marathon486 Putin is trying to get Erdogan (🇹🇷) freeze 🇷🇺’s territorial gain in 🇺🇦 in exchange for financial benefit to 🇹🇷but 🇹🇷 can’t deliver, especially not in the time frame Putin needs. 🇷🇺’s military is falling apart. I’ll bet 🇺🇦 takes Kherson bf snow really hits (mid-Nov)
🐣 RT @Force_A_Ukraine #Ukraine 🇺🇦/ 🇷🇺 #Russia SAM #IRIST ¤ The German air defense complex IRIST is already operating in the south direction of the front. We should observe in the coming days the effectiveness of the German system against #Russian cruise missiles and #Iranian #drones in #Kherson Oblast
¤ https://twitter.com/Force_A_Ukraine/status/1580963744074543116?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok “It’s as if this wasteland is telling the Kremlin it’s time to leave, but they think there’s more damage left to do before the inevitable happens” Stunning @npwcnn report on steady #Ukraine progress—w/ vital #Starlink—retaking villages near #Kherson utterly devastated by #Russia
⋙ 🐣 RT @npwcnn Ukrainian commanders show video of drone strikes on Russian targets – CNN Video
⋙⋙ 💽 CNN: Ukrainian commanders show video of drone strikes on Russian targets https://tinyurl.com/32ry44c6
// As the weather changes in Ukraine and the battle for Kherson continues, soldiers show CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh how they plan to use bunkers and Elon Musk’s satellite internet to help map out Russian forces.
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Yesterday evening strikes were reported on Russian positions and equipment accumulation in Nova Zburivka, Kherson region. Today confirmation appeared. (46.451408 32.461445) #Ukraine #Kherson
¤ https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1581294483551191040?s=20/photo/1 -3
🐣 RT @anders_aslund The big Ukrainian offensive on Kherson appears to have started, apparently along the Dnipro. ¤ Meanwhile, the Russians try to force Lukashenka to order his troops to attack Ukraine, but Belarusians are likely to rebel & newly mobilized Russian soldiers are just cannon fodder.
🐣 RT @yigittokgoz81 4 jets of the Ukrainian army support the kherson attack (Russia with 1500 fighter jets cannot gain an air superiority against Ukraine with 150 jets, but there are millions of civilians waiting to be bombed unarmed in Syria and Ukraine) #Kherson #russiaisateroriststate #UkraineWar
💽 https://twitter.com/yigittokgoz81/status/1581301401883357184?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @lesiavasylenko [UA MP] Roller coaster week: bombings of #Kyiv and 12 other regions of #Ukraine. Blackouts and power use schedule. Retaking areas of #Kherson region. Resolutions condemning #Russia in @IPUparliament @PACE_News @UN. Feels like surreal dream
🐣 RT @MarkHertling Fascinating contrast. ¤ While Russian recruiters stalk draftees and those already mobilized complain about equipment, sleep on floors, and are even shot by their own when they don’t join the attack, Ukrainian moral remains high as they anticipate liberating Kherson.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ukraine_world Asked about the potential liberation of Kherson, the head of the press service of the 63rd brigade of Ukraine’s Armed Forces bit a watermelon – one of the region’s symbols 🍉🙃 “We cannot comment on Kherson yet, wait for further information from the General Staff.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1581232057799561216?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ albert_hubble Any chance Ua gives them a green corridor like “we won’t shell the bridge for two days if you leave by foot or car”? As an option to not fight all over it? Ua is blasting to get Kherson pretty soon that it almost sounds a little bit unrealistic unless something big happens.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @cbnewswire Not unrealistic. The first NATO trained troops have started coming back. The UAF now has a man advantage, and superior weaponry/intel/morale. If the RUAF wanna fight in the streets, they’ll be outnumbered. I say the RUAF falls back to Kherson city, fights a bit, then surrenders
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Russian proxy Kirill Stremousov is insisting that evacuations to Russia are a “humanitarian trip” for recreation and rehabilitation ¤ They are not a response to Ukraine’s advances in Kherson, which Russia is desperately trying to deny
🐣 RT @trforrus «Russia’s opinion doesn’t matter at all anymore». The Hague creates a special tribunal to try Putin for aggression against Ukraine. [link]
#Kherson #russiaisateroriststate
🐣 RT @GirkinGirkin Херсон, обстановка
💽 https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1581211988570435584?s=20/photo/1
// soldiers in Ru
⋙ 🐣 RT @ll_olo_ll
Translation
– we are servicemen of the 126th brigade from the first days of the SMO performing the task of protecting the Crimea and civilians here, we have been here since the first days. Ukrainian nationalists are currently crushing us with armoured vehicles, drones
1/2
🐣 RT @ll_olo_ll
– thermographic cameras
– new weapons
– we have a lack of mobility, our group lacks elementary, just fast wheels, because the modern war is going on now, we just don’t have time to maneuver somewhere else somewhere
– for 80 people we have 1 BTR left [BTR is an armored personnel carrier]
2/2
🐣 RT @MonitorConflict Messages from both sides, that #Ukraine launch new offensive on #Kherson direction. Result is unclear for now, heavy fighting is ongoing. You can see column of ukr tanks somewhere in Kherson oblast #ukrainecounteroffensive
🐣 RT @ekekobbi Russian sources confirm that Ukrainian forces have launched at multiple sections of the Northern Kherson line their attack. First Russian soldiers surrendering. #Ukraine #Kherson #thefallofputin #getputin #evilputin #Russia #thefallofrussia #FreedomOfRussia #Pahonia
🐣 RT @Kostya_xlopets9 Hello friends around the world, thank you for supporting me and wish me luck. You don’t know how much grateful we are when see y’all support us, I had to use translation when I speak with you guys. Hey #nafo, alot of ukrainians soldiers enjoy with your memes and doggo art too
¤ https://twitter.com/Kostya_xlopets9/status/1581223201958678528?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rybar_en Here, according to our intelligence services, the Ukrainian General Staff has set the goal of taking Svatove by October 17. A strike force of 40,000 people has been assembled in the area.
YahooNews: Ukrainian army advances to Svatove as criticism of mobilization in Russia mounts – ISW https://tinyurl.com/2vfsu5k5 Russians reportedly experiencing “extremely low morale, psychological conditions, high rates of desertion, and the non-execution of combat orders”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SEAD STRIKE: On 15 OCT, UKR announced the destruction of three S-300 surface to air missile complexes in the coastal city of Berdyansk. This Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) mission follows the interdiction of 3 Russian S-300 air defense complexes in Tokmak on 12 OCT.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1581263386683195392?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 If you cannot see that Nazi Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine and has the goal of extinguishing freedom everywhere, God help you. Life is hardly ever this black and white, but this is
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Occupation government: Ukrainian troops launch offensive in Kherson Oblast. ¤ Kirill Stremousov, a deputy head of the Russian illegal occupation government in Kherson Oblast, said that the Ukrainian military is trying to launch an offensive near the village of Dudchany.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent The offensive was also reported by several pro-Kremlin war journalists, including Yevgeny Poddubny and Alexander Kots. Ukraine has not yet confirmed the reports.
🐣 RT @ MikeHirata The Kherson bridges have been closed to tanks for quite a while. So this is further indication of RU tank shortage before they started trying to salvage units from storage. Not sure how long it will take, but RU is not going to be able to hold Crimea.
🐣 RT @MarQs__ Russian sources have been afraid for some time now UA gathering strong forces to Zaporizzia. Attack towards Tokmak and Melitopol wouldn’t surprise them. Russians are now afraid of everything. Kherson attack might be just covering attacks in Luhansk or Zaporizzia.
🐣 RT @NLNick1000 Once they have reached north of Melitopol they have made train traffic impossible towards Kherson, whilst Crimea is already cut off by the Kerch strait bridge. They don’t even need to advance so far south.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NLNick1000/status/1581239332408393728?s=20/photo/1
// Ukraine railroad map
🐣 RT @Daark_web 🇷🇺General #Surovikin:⚓Our soldiers did not deserve to die in urban guerrilla warfare for the simple fact that #NATO wants them to.❗❗Ukraine️ #Kiev #Kherson
⋙ 🐣 1) Ukr avoids urban warfare
2) Ru started the war not NATO
3) they are dying because they‘re green, untrained and ill supplied
4) they don‘t have to die: they can surrender or 🏃
😅 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1581236644333891585?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ aznluvr7 Ukrainians are advancing in Kherson, that’s about Kherson. The 49th CAA is cut off, they will have to surrender, die or learn to swim. ¤ Putin just said no more massive missiles strikes. Code for: I don’t have many left. ¤ Your goose is cooked.
🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Let’s do private diplomacy with the asshole currently shaking down the Pentagon and the ex-Congresswoman who got less than 1% in the presidential primaries. When the right bank of Kherson falls to Kyiv, they’ll be asking Steven Seagal’s endocrinologist to violate the Logan Act.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia, state TV propagandists are brainstorming about cultivating relations with the likes of Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard, in order to further Russia’s interests through “private diplomacy.” Host Vladimir Solovyov proposes Dmitry Medvedev as the intermediary.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1581052534785200129?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @salo_syla (Replying to @Ziva0164 and @GirkinGirkin) This propagandists expects Ukrainian advances on Kherson, Svatove (northern Luhansk region) and Volnovakha (southern Donetsk region) all at the same time.
🐣 RT @UKikaski Unconfirmed: RUS TC chatter indicates the APU has begun an attack towards Mariupol’. If the divide Donestk, it will deny RUS the ability to resupply Kherson by land from the east. If true, this is brilliant as it will divert RUS resources there. #OSINT #UkrainRussiaWar
🌎 https://twitter.com/UKikaski/status/1581223651785183233?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Seems to be reports coming in (Russian sources) that the Ukrainians are trying to move forward again in Kherson. Ukraine security has been so good, Russian sources are probably all we will have for a while—if indeed it’s even happening
⋙ 🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love …heavy fighting in the Kherson region, Russian invaders report…
¤ https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1581192081346732033?s=20/photo/1
// messages by Ru milbloggers on telegram [tr]
⋙ [other comments]
🐣 RT @NOELreports Area of heavy fighting right now. Good things are happening.
Godspeed heroes, we await the news.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1581208175189012480?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FreudGreyskull Rybar’s update on the restarted Kherson offensive.
🌎 https://twitter.com/FreudGreyskull/status/1581210811367796736?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @IamBohhi What weekend doing?
‼️ ⋙ 🐣 RT @JupiterQuirinus Kherson offensive. There goes the weekend!
🐣 RT @wartranslated There’s a slight panic in the Russian channels after the information about Ukrainians starting to move again in Kherson emerged. https://t.me/grey_zone/15315
⭕ 14 Oct 2022
DeptofState: U.S. Security Cooperation with Ukraine FACT SHEET https://tinyurl.com/yc2dj7nu
// BUREAU OF POLITICAL-MILITARY AFFAIRS
🐣 RT @ Kasparov63 It’s a shame we have to keep repeating this basic fact of deterrence, but it seems every time Putin mentions nukes, half the world loses its memory. Concessions and appeasement lead to more violence, not less, over and over.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder All of you who are saying that we have to give in to nuclear blackmail are making nuclear war more likely. Please stop. When you give in to it, you empower dictators to do it again, encourage worldwide nuclear proliferation, and make nuclear war much, much more likely. [link]
🐣 RT @Oleksiireznikov $725M US security assistance package is another result of #Ramstein 6 Meeting. ¤ These weapons and ammo will support our soldiers on the ground and in the sky. ¤ We become stronger. ¤ Ukraine will win.
Thank you @POTUS @SecDef and the American people.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1581268405063012354?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 23RD PACKAGE OF THE US SECURITY ASSISTANCE FOR UKRAINE
Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
23,000 155mm artillery rounds;
500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
5,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems;
5,000 anti-tank weapons;
More than 200 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVS);
Small arms and more than 2,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
Medical supplies.
⇈ ⇊
Reuters: US to send munitions, military vehicles to Ukraine in latest aid package https://tinyurl.com/yp4493tt This package is for $725M of the $3.5B available through mid-Dec; two NASAMS sophisticated anti-aircraft systems are also to be delivered this month under separate funding
// Defense budget
The United States will send munitions and military vehicles to Ukraine as part of a new $725 million security assistance package aimed at bolstering the country’s defense against the Russian invasion, the Defense Department said on Friday. ¤ The package is the first since Russia’s barrage of missiles fired on civilian population centers in Ukraine this week. It will bring the total of U.S. security assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 to more than $17.5 billion.
The contents of the latest package, first reported by Reuters, includes high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs) and precision-guided artillery as well as medical supplies, the Defense Department said in a statement.
President Joe Biden issued a statement delegating the secretary of state “to direct the drawdown of up to $725 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training” to aid Ukraine.
A U.S. official told Reuters the aid package was designed to bolster Ukraine’s ability to beat back Russia in the counter offensive that has yielded large territorial gains in recent weeks. ¤ Separately, Ukraine expects the United States and Germany to deliver sophisticated anti-aircraft systems this month to help it counter attacks by Russian missiles and kamikaze drones, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Friday.
Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allows them to be shipped to Ukraine in the coming days. It allows the United States to transfer defense articles and services from stocks quickly without congressional approval in response to an emergency.
This is the second PDA package of the U.S. government’s 2023 fiscal year which is functioning under a stop-gap funding measure and allows Biden to tap up to $3.7 billion in surplus weapons for transfer to Ukraine through mid-December.
In general, to finance weapons for Ukraine, including the sophisticated anti-aircraft NASAMS systems expected this month, Washington uses funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) to procure weapons from industry, rather than pulling them from existing U.S. weapons stocks. ¤ NASAMS are made by Raytheon Technologies Corp (RTX.N) and Norway’s Kongsberg (KOG.OL).
🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger I’m not overstating: this picture resurrected Trump. @GOPLeader is personally responsible for Trump still being relevant. The shock waves that rolled through the GOP congressmen when it came out was huge. Then they all did a whipped dog impression, and joined.
🖼 https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1581089760931872769?s=20/photo/1
// photo Kevin McCarthy with Trump at Mar-a-Lago
🐣 RT @KrauseForIowa Man bites dog story? Many editorialists have advocated punishing Trump for #J6. But when @WSJ, the stuffy voice of big business, billionaires & trickledown economics, passes sentence on Trump’s ‘dereliction of duty on Jan. 6’, you know his time is up.
⋙ RawStory: Wall Street Journal passes sentence on Trump’s ‘dereliction of duty on Jan. 6’ https://tinyurl.com/3efweuxw
⋙⋙ WSJ Editorial: What the Jan. 6 Hearings Accomplished https://tinyurl.com/2u6p4nf9 “What the committee has accomplished … is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6”
// A subpoena to Trump gets the headlines, but its work is mostly done.
… What the committee has accomplished … is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6. The Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or an intentional strategy, he kept repeating them.
In testimony played Thursday, former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin said that about a week after Joe Biden was declared the winner, “I popped into the Oval just to, like, give the President the headlines and see how he was doing, and he was looking at the TV, and he said, ‘Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?’” Yet Mr. Trump still pressured Mr. Pence to stop the Electoral College count, while calling for a Jan. 6 rally that he tweeted “will be wild!”
That day he riled up the crowd and urged it to march on the Capitol. Mr. Trump allegedly intended to go there himself, if the Secret Service hadn’t refused. Then he watched the riot on TV. Another striking video Thursday was a question the committee put to his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone: “When you were in the dining room in these discussions, was the violence at the Capitol visible on the screen, on the television?” His reply: “Yes.”
Committee members said Thursday they will write a report summarizing their findings. Transcripts of the testimony ought to be released at the same time, so that posterity can see what Mr. Cipollone and others said in full. Ditto for the documents gathered. …
The Jan. 6 committee probably won’t get Mr. Trump under oath, but the evidence of his bad behavior is now so convincing that political accountability hardly requires it.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IT BEGINS: @Peter__Leonard reports that Tajikistan’s president, Emomali Rahmon, dared to demand ‘respect’ from Moscow at the Central Asia-Russia summit. Rahmon said Russia should ‘invest billions’– possibly as the price of continued support. Mr Putin did not seem amused.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Peter__Leonard Tajikistan’s president demands respect from Russian President Vladimir Putin in a remarkable outburst at Central Asia-Russia summit in Astana
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Peter__Leonard Rahmon blames the collapse of the Soviet Union on failure by Moscow to give proper consideration to the interests of the “small republics,” implying that Russia is making the same mistakes all over again
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer DOING HARM: UKR strike fighters carrying NATO-provided AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs) are conducting Suppression of Enemy Air Defense missions. HARM missiles home in on Russian SAM sites- like these two S-300 missile complexes near Tokmak.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1581023284338257920?s=20/photo/1
Newsweek: Underestimating the Threat, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Ordered Up Unarmed Guards https://tinyurl.com/ynj879jy
// 12/31/2021
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko It’s very important that Putin now does not get a halt in hostilities in Ukraine under the disguise of “negotiations” and “ceasefire.” ¤ Even if he suggests that Ukraine gets Kherson for that. ¤ He will use the pause to regroup, regain the lost strength and attack again in March.
🧵 RT @k_sonin President @ZelenskyyUa correctly rejects negotiating with Putin. Still, the reason that Zelenskyy cites – Putin’s a war criminal – is largely irrelevant. What is relevant is that Putin is unable to make any credible commitments, the necessary element of any negotiations. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/k_sonin/status/1580711763196071938?s=20
⋙ 🐣 […] RT @k_sonin So, when someone blames Zelenskyy for unwillingness to negotiate, note that there is no one, on the other side, to negotiate with. The only person who can talk right now, Putin, cannot make firm commitments. To wait until the Russian leadership change is a correct decision. 6/END
🐣 RT @ Sybilla77 I already wrote this a month ago that Russia would withdraw from Kherson and would want to keep the south of Ukraine to the Dnieper line. They were already drawing the borders there. RU troops cannot be allowed to withdraw without losses from Kherson.
🐣 RT @ImAJohnLewisDem Reminder: Don’t fuck with Ukraine. 🇺🇦
💽 https://twitter.com/ImAJohnLewisDem/status/1580344691194662912?s=20/photo/1
// 🎶 music video
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @carlbildt If they were to watch this in the Kremlin 🇷🇺 they might start to understand what they are up against 🇺🇦.
💽 https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1515294443175387139?s=20/photo/1
// 🎶 music video
🐣 RT @franklinleonard The Speaker of the House snapping into a Slim Jim while securing the safety of the House, Senate, and succession of power is the most American thing ever recorded to video.
🐣 RT@RexChapman Nancy Pelosi – with a band of thugs coming to kill her, casually stepping into a Slim Jim, is the best thing ever…
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikeSington “Don’t let anybody know where you are!” Never before seen video: Nancy expresses concern to Mike Pence about his safety, all while Trump was stoking violence against Pence.
💽 https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1580954556497657858?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ CatEyes07666 Thankful to her daughter Alexandra for recording all of this. Her daughter was there with her children to watch how we secure and vote on an election, and then this happened. @RepRaskin’s daughter was there too. @HBO is making a documentary using Alexandra’s videos.
🐣 RT @mhmck The Russian fascist invaders fired several rockets from Bilhorod region (RU) towards Kharkiv region (UA). Most of the rockets seem to have crashed and exploded on Russian territory. ¤ The power station near Luch is on fire and many areas of Bilhorod region are without electricity.
¤ https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1580961139654918151?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jamie_raskin Thank you @StephenAtHome for bringing my pet nickname for these prehistoric Stone Age insurrectionists to life. You and your team are a riot (by which, of course, I mean a normal tourist visit)!
⋙ 🐣 RT @colbertlateshow Meet the Flynnstones! #Colbert
💽 https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/1580739927414824962?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw I’m still amazed this video remained under wraps for so long.
⋙ 🐣 RT @therecount “I hope he comes, I’m going to punch him out … I’m going to punch him out, I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s just-revealed response to the prospect of former President Trump potentially marching to the Capitol on January 6th.
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1580718555540119553?s=20/photo/1
Dkos: Ukraine update: Ukraine approaches strategic Svatove, as Russian Telegram invents phantom wins https://tinyurl.com/3ff2m45y
// [interspersed with Tweets, some containing videos]
Yesterday I noted that Russian Telegram had been hyping up a supposed offensive out of Kreminna, pushing west toward Lyman.s Given Ukrainian advances across that entire front, all the way up to the strategic town of Svatove to the north, an actual successful Russian counterattack would be truly notable. It would mean that Russia had stemmed its losses, rallied its forces, and begun retaking the initiative. But as I also said yesterday, Russian Telegram is only truthful when they’re in blind-panic mode. Unsurprisingly, these Russian advances never happened. As far as I can tell, Russia never even tried. So how do these same propaganda sources explain Ukraine’s control of those towns? Well, there are lots of ways!
Maybe Ukraine counter-counterattacked and pushed the Russians out: But wait, that’s embarrassing, suggesting yet another Russian military defeat. Those sting. Instead, how about Russians voluntarily retreated for the fun of it? ¤ Hmm, retreat isn’t much better. It means they can’t hold their ground against advancing Ukrainian forces. So how about this—Russia isn’t retreating, Those towns are a “gray zone” and, you know, anyone can possibly occupy them at any given moment.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian sources roll their eyes and are like “it’s quiet in that direction.” The real action is up north, at Svatove. Ukrainian forces have been steadily, methodically, pushing closer and closer to this strategic transportation hub. … If you look closely at Svatove, you can see that almost every road in that region runs through Svatove, making it strategically important to both sides. But even more importantly, Svatove opens up the approach to Starobilsk, with almost no natural barriers to slow down a Ukrainian advance (except maybe for rainy season).Every road and railroad in that sparsely populated agricultural steppe region runs through Starobilsk.
That means if Svatove is retaken, a big chunk of Russian-held red territory in the middle of that map above automatically turns Ukrainian yellow. But if Starobilsk is liberated? The That entire Russian presence in the northeast will clear out, cut off from supplies, down to the Luhansk purple on the map. And best of all, that dark line through Starobilsk is Russia’s last functional rail link into Ukraine from its main supply hub at Belgorod, just north of Kharkiv. Once Ukraine cuts that line, Russia’s logistics are truly f’d, and will need to be completely reconfigured toward eastern Ukraine.
Russia, for its part, is rushing its best and its brightest to Svatove’s defense, and some of them aren’t even 60 years old (the guy in the middle, at least): These sad saps were called up from their hometowns, sent to Belgorod, then trucked to Svatove, where they were dumped into flooded trenches they said were “half destroyed, even with weapons lying around, as the guys before us also ran away from there.” They waited in those trenches, under constant Ukrainian mortar fire and without food or water for three days (because why would Russia care about its own), until water came up to their waist. They said screw it and walked down a road thinking they were walking back to Belgorod, until they came across a Ukrainian checkpoint and happily surrendered.
This is what “shaping the battlefield” current looks like for Ukraine—forcing Russian defenders from their entrenched defensive positions, and apparently the rain and Russian incompetence is assisting. Ideally, by the time Ukrainian forces are ready to march on Svatove itself, there won’t be many defenders left. ¤ Russia’s inability to support and train its forces can lead to some … I want to say “hilarious” situations, but people are dying so that feels wrong. On the other hand, come on …
Hitting a buried anti-tank mine? That’s bad luck. You can’t see them. But here, the Russian driver pulled onto the road, with two rows of neatly laid out mines, and didn’t even pause or slow down as he drove over them with the all-too-obvious result. Clearly, no one ever told this driver “those things go boom boom, so don’t drive on them if you see them.” He’s in a war zone, without even the most rudimentary education on what to expect. And yet they put this guy behind the wheel of an armored infantry vehicle, full of comrades in the back!
Stung by criticism in Russian media about the lack of training for the mobilized, their Ministry of Defense staged this Potemkin “training” to pretend otherwise. It’s quite hilarious (and this time, no has died … yet).
[Video caption: Chaos… Russian conscripts “firing” at unknown targets with no clips under their weapons as Russian Defense Ministry Sergei Shoigu visited the training ground of the Western Military District. Weirdly, gun shots can be heard nearby but no actual person is seen firing.]
They are literally pretending to shoot as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu “inspects” the training. (Turns out Shoigu hasn’t been ousted as some rumors suggested.) They superimpose small arms fire over the video to try and complete the illusion, but their clumsy effort pathetically fails. They don’t even care enough to give those trainees empty magazines to make the whole thing more believable! …
Meanwhile, on a more practical level, Russia’s indiscriminate mobilization threatens to bring its country’s educational system to a halt. With all male teachers and administrators hauled away, there are fewer teachers left to educate Russia’s children.
Russia’s diplomatic situation continues to deteriorate. [UN vote] … The four pro-Russian votes are the usual suspects: Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, and Syria. Cuba and Serbia, close Russian allies, couldn’t bring themselves to support Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. The murderous North Korea-style regime in Eritrea, having voted for Russia in previous votes, weirdly abstained. All the nations in the CSTO—Russia’s supposed NATO-style military alliance—abstained in the vote. China and India abstained, both of them having already signaled their unhappiness with the war. ¤ For a country that still insists it is fighting “Nazis” in Ukraine, weird how the entire world doesn’t see it that way, not even most of Russia’s closest friends.
Speaking of Potemkin, remember the day of the attack, how Russia published video of cars and trains crossing the bridge? That was their attempt at a “NICE TRY, UKRAINE!” Yet here we are, six days later, and Russia is still working to restore service. Too bad Ukraine doesn’t have HIMARS to take out that floating crane and finish the job on the clearly weakened rail bridge.
🐣 RT @ABarbashin Meduza reports that Putin is ready to talk but “Crimea is not to be mentioned”, “annexed territories in Donbas to stay in Russia”. ¤ Russia may withdraw from Kherson area. ¤ Smells like Minsk III that would allow Putin to better train and equip mobilized thousands of Russians
⋙ 🐣 RT @judahb42 Only reason Putin is “willing” to withdraw from Kherson is because his army is logistically cut off, and is in danger of collapsing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nzhdecrypto Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson is not born out of good will but a military necessity they are slowly getting the life choked out of them in that sector, and I am sure Minsk 3 is non-starter for the Ukrainians
⋙ 🐣 RT @irgarner “Putin’s ready to talk if he gets Kherson, Kyiv and Berlin.”
Meduza: Why Russia is pushing a return to negotiations https://tinyurl.com/5x8zu23f
// The Kremlin wants to buy time to prepare for a ‘full-scale offensive’ in early 2023, sources say
🐣 RT @chitowngirl1982 Oh. So sad. We’ll miss their hysterics where Ukraine takes Kherson.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JimmySecUK Many people wondered how Igor Girkin (and others) managed to get away with openly criticising the conduct of Russia’s war in Ukraine. ¤ It seems that the Kremlin has had enough of their relative candor – Girkin, Greyzone, Wargonzo etc. are now under criminal investigation.
[TextLink:] [tr] https://twitter.com/Michael_McT1/status/1580955356259184640?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Nine Russian military correspondents and military correspondent projects at once risk falling under a criminal charge for discrediting the RF Armed Forces. These are: Igor Strelkov, Semyon Pegov (WarGonzo), Yuri Podolyaka, VladlenTatarsky, Sergey Mardan, Igor Dimitriev, authors of GreyZone, Rybar and, suddenly, Kristina Potupchik. The content in their tg channels is already being analyzed for fakes, defamation, and other prohibited and punishable things.
According to our information, the statement to Roskomnadzor with the requirement to check the work of the above authors was signed personally by the chief of the general staff. On the part of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the case is being handled by the head of the department for supervision over the implementation of the law on federal security, terrorism, extremism and interethnic relations. The reason is criticism of the Ministry of Defense and its decisions during the NWO.
How long the check will last is not yet known. But if the corpus delicti is collected, and the military correspondents are found quilty, or they will get off with a fine, or they will receive up to three years.
🧵 RT @dim0kq Very interesting statement from @elonmusk re Ukrainian StarLink and how damaging it is for @SpaceX economics. ¤ Being Ukrainian actually in the topic of StarLinks, I want to tell you some based facts re starlinks in Ukraine.
📌 https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456?s=20
🐣 This group of preeminent GOP jurists went through all the stolen election claims, many of which were also rejected by the courts, examined them, and produced a detailed report: Lost, Not Stolen (July)
💙 ⋙🐣📔 Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election https://lostnotstolen.org by John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg, Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell, Theodore B. Olson, Gordon H. Smith
// 7/14/2022
⋙ pdf: http://bit.ly/3caHzaE 72p
// Signatories: Senator John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, The Honorable Michael W. McConnell, The Honorable Theodore B. Olson, Senator Gordon H. Smith
As part of his post-election attempts to retain the presidency, Donald Trump and his supporters filed 64 cases containing 187 counts in the six key battleground states, in addition to utilizing some of the recount and contest procedures available to them under state law. The former president maintains to this day that the 2020 election was stolen and the results fraudulent.
This Report takes a hard look at the very serious charges made by Trump and his supporters. The consequences of a president and a major party candidate making such charges are monumental. If true, our electoral system is in desperate need of repair. If not true, that must be said because such false charges corrode our democracy and leave a significant share of the population doubting the legitimacy of our system, seriously weakening the country. To have 30 percent of the country lack faith in election results based on unsubstantiated claims of a “stolen” election is not sustainable in a democracy, and it discredits the political party making those charges. We hope that setting out the full record in this Report will help restore faith in the reliability of our elections.
🐣📔≣ RT @MikeSington Trump releases 14 page response to Jan 6 Hearings. I read it, so you don’t have to. It’s his usual lies, grievances, & even bragging about crowd size. He still insists the election was “rigged and stolen”, no response to subpoena. If you’re so inclined:
⋙ pdf https://tinyurl.com/y46tb358 14p
// Title: THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!
🐣 RT @petestrzok “A veteran F.B.I. counterintel agent testified…that the Trump Justice Department’s decision in 2020 to release sensitive documents about a bureau informant to a Senate committee examining the bureau’s Russia investigation had damaged national security.”
⋙⋙ NYT: Loss of Steele Dossier Source Damaged National Security, F.B.I. Agent Testifies https://tinyurl.com/ywp743bd
// The agent denounced the exposure by the Trump Justice Department of Igor Danchenko, who was an F.B.I. informant but is now on trial on charges of lying to investigators.
A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent testified on Thursday that the Trump Justice Department’s decision in 2020 to release sensitive documents about a bureau informant to a Senate committee examining the bureau’s Russia investigation had damaged national security.
The agent told jurors at the trial of Igor Danchenko, who is charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about matters related to the anti-Trump Steele dossier, that Mr. Danchenko, a Russia analyst, had provided extraordinary assistance for years as a paid F.B.I. informant.
⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok This doesn’t just hurt the exposed source. It hurts the ability of the FBI to recruit sources far into the future, especially those related to Russia. ¤ That of course was the point. ¤ Shame on Bill Barr. ¤ Shame on FBI leadership for sacrificing sources for political survival.
VOA: UK Defense Ministry: Mercenary Group Fighting for Russia in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yst95bk8 ““Terror must be responded with force at all levels: on the battlefield, with sanctions, and legally.” ~ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Thursday, “Russia is sending thousands of its mobilized men to the front. They have no significant military training, but their command does not need it at all. They expect that the mobilized Russians will be able to survive in the war for at least a few weeks, then they will die, and then new ones will be sent to the front. But during this time, such use by Russian generals of their people as ‘cannon fodder’ makes it possible to create additional pressure on our defenders.”
Zelenskyy said Ukraine would “create a special tribunal for the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine and ensure the operation of a special compensation mechanism so that Russia will bear responsibility for this war at the cost of its assets.” ¤ He said, “Terror must be responded with force at all levels: on the battlefield, with sanctions, and legally.”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/1245 UTC 14 OCT/ UKR airstrikes target troop concentrations. UAV controlled artillery now commands most of the P-66 HWY. UKR conducting offensive ops aimed at Svatove and Kremenna. RU air defense complexes interdicted by Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAAD) sorties.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1580897002833211392?s=20/photo/1
📊📋 EndCitizensUnited (9/19): New NBC News Poll Reaffirms “Threats to Democracy” as Top Issue for Voters https://tinyurl.com/5n86pjxu Most polls don’t ask about this, but when they do, it shows up as a major issue for Democrats
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1580912511372886016?s=20/photo/1
Skeptic, Robert Zubrin: Putin’s Rasputin: Meet Aleksandr Dugin, the Mystical High Priest of Russian Fascism Who Wants to Bring About the End of the World https://tinyurl.com/25kmzft8 “It is against [Dugin’s] program that the courageous protesters in the Maidan took their stand”
// “The following article was originally published in Skeptic magazine 20.2 (2015). It will strike readers, therefore, as all too prescient. We asked Dr. Robert Zubrin to update it this week, in light of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Zubrin’s update follows the article.”
🐣 RT @UkrainianNews24 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sent his best wishes to Ukrainian defenders for the holiday [14 October is a Ukrainian national holiday – Defenders Day – ed.] and stated that Ukraine would definitely win, because it knows why and what it is fighting for in this war.
CNN: Russia is bruised as winter approaches. Can Ukraine land another blow? https://tinyurl.com/2fd3a6uy “The Russians are playing for the whistle – (hoping to) avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in”~ Samir Puri of the Intl Institute for Strategic Studies
Salon, Chauncey DeVega: New research on Trump voters: They’re not the sharpest tools in the box https://tinyurl.com/ydbjw662
// 3/23/2022; Now there’s proof: Trump’s voters lack “cognitive sophistication,” often believe Bible is literal word of God
SciAm (2020): Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences https://tinyurl.com/2uf58zyw “On the whole, … conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity”
// 10/26/2020; Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull
On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. If you had put [William F] Buckley and [Gore] Vidal in a magnetic resonance imaging machine and presented them with identical images, you would likely have seen differences in their brain, especially in the areas that process social and emotional information. The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala, which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is larger in conservatives. … There is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem: Do brains start out processing the world differently or do they become increasingly different as our politics evolve?
🐣 RT @BulwarkOnline “The most difficult part of riding a tiger, as the saying goes, is dismounting—and Donald Trump is riding a tiger of conspiracy-theorizing, apocalypse-chasing, murderous wackos.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Thomas Lacaque: The Right’s Increasing Fringe-ification https://tinyurl.com/y55n2xxh
// … and what it could mean for Trump.
Much of Donald Trump’s most recent rally—his first of 2022—involved speakers saying just what you would expect: The election was stolen. The crowd at this rally was so huge that he must have won the last election. He’s being persecuted. COVID is real but the Democrats are making it worse by discriminating against white people for vaccines and COVID treatment. Everything is rigged against him. Some bombast, some bluster, a never-ending stream of lies. And of course, conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory—the Big Lie, always, but also conspiracies about what happened on January 6th.
Trump allies such as Mike Lindell and Andy Biggs showed up alongside him, and Steve Bannon, of course, took to his webshow to claim the rally would lead to the 2020 election being decertified—something for which, of course, no mechanism exists. Kari Lake, the likely winner of the Arizona GOP’s gubernatorial primary, called for Dr. Anthony Fauci and “anybody who was involved in that corrupt shady, shoddy election of 2020” to be locked up. And Rep. Paul Gosar sent up the QAnon Bat signal: “Can you feel the storm building? It’s America.” The apocalyptic endpoint of QAnon’s conspiracies are where all of their political opponents are arrested and then murdered, and here was the former president surrounding himself with implicit hints and explicit statements of those aims. ¤ As Charlie Sykes summarized on Monday, the rally was a glimpse of the Republican future, and “it looks very much like the past, but even more deplorable. And, frankly duller.”
In some ways, though, the rally may signal a subtle shift in Trump World. The people who turn out for his rallies now are not the same as the Republicans-sick-of-Republican-leadership who turned out in 2016. They have even shifted from the MAGA/KAG crowds of 2020. The fights over Jan. 6th and over vaccination policy have further radicalized them. They are, in some respects, evolving past Trump. And they are tired of hearing the same old thing. Some of the people in the crowd wanted a lot more. …
Trump being replaced by someone else? Trump being played by JFK? Or even, “what a waste of time, same old meaningless shit”? These are people who were recently referring to Donald Trump as literally a descendant of Jesus via Lincoln’s undead son-as-Libyan-prince (don’t ask), and now they’re bored by him. A sect that drinks bleach water in ritual. A sect that thought myriad dead celebrities were in the crowd behind Trump. They are moving on from him. …
None of this means Trump’s support will necessarily fade. If the radicalism of the right feels centrifugal right now, the desire to win elections will soon likely exert a centripetal force instead. If Trump runs in 2024, people will fall in line behind him. ¤ Still, cracks are forming in the enthusiasm around him.
The most difficult part of riding a tiger, as the saying goes, is dismounting—and Donald Trump is riding a tiger of conspiracy-theorizing, apocalypse-chasing, murderous wackos. Some of the most cultish, and perhaps dangerous, people among his supporters are starting to show their impatience with Trump the politician. Trump the symbol is what they want, and if he cannot deliver, they seem to be thinking that maybe he can be replaced.
⭕ 13 Oct 2022 ⚖️🏛
Day 9: October 13, 2022: “Summary and Subpoena”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Follow this thread for video highlights from what is likely to be the final January 6 committee hearing
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1580603168404037635?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel Spouse, as Liz Cheney says they may make criminal referrals: Thank you Liz Cheney, you read my mind. [He had just asked if they could do that.]
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1580606914505080834?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ TomDreisbach [NPR] Here we go: The latest @January6thCmte hearing has started. ¤ NPR’s livestream is available here:
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/TomDreisbach/status/1580605465796304901?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @tomlobianco [YahooNews] “Good afternoon, and may god bless the United States of America,” House Jan 6 Chair Bennie Thompson says in opening statement of #January6thHearings
📌 https://twitter.com/tomlobianco/status/1580605071498174471?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @scottwongDC DAY 9 of the Jan. 6 hearings about to get underway. Follow along on our @NBCNews live blog here for all the updates: https://tinyurl.com/2wf2eyt3
📌 https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/status/1580603641878425602?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 🐣 RT @SethAbramson (📢) LIVE THREAD: This thread is a live-tweet of today’s House January 6 Committee hearing. I’m an attorney, journalist, and historian who has been contacted by the Committee and whose January 6–focused substack, PROOF, the Committee has cited. I hope you will RETWEET and follow.
📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1580574750581018626?s=20
💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Ninth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack https://tinyurl.com/3cb42ubb
// 10/13/2022; The January 6 Committee held its ninth public hearing on the attack of the U.S. Capitol. The committee was expected to show never-seen footage of the riot and witness testimony.
~~~~~~~~~~
WaPo, Michael McFaul: Putin can escalate the war. But it comes with enormous costs https://tinyurl.com/356ms2az “Prior to this week’s airstrikes, Putin recently doubled down on three fronts: mass military mobilization, annexation and threats to use nuclear weapons”
🐣 RT @AP An @AP investigation found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they were not wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda and given them Russian citizenship.
⋙ AP: How Moscow grabs Ukrainian kids and makes them Russians https://tinyurl.com/265r4bw7
WaPo: As morale suffers, Russia and Ukraine fight a war of mental attrition https://tinyurl.com/mr3fj9db “Just two Ukrainian battalions … led the offensive along the western bank of the Dnieper River, pushing the Russians all the way back to the town of Dudchany”
TheGuardian: Russia announces Kherson evacuation, raising fears city will become frontline https://tinyurl.com/yt5wc6ec “Officials in Kyiv have spoken of their hopes of reaching the regional capital of Kherson by Christmas despite Putin’s [claim] that the oblast had been ‘annexed’”
// Deputy PM says residents will be helped to move away from southern Ukrainian region partly occupied by invaders
TheDrive, Howard Altman: Ukraine Situation Report: Gaining Ground In Kherson https://tinyurl.com/2e4he3rx ““Western military officials estimate Ukraine could take Kherson up to the Dnipro as soon as next week,” FT reported”
// There are reports that Russians are starting to evacuate residents of Kherson, an indication that Ukraine’s southern offensive is succeeding.
🐣 RT @PandaKommander From @Blue_Sauron there is geolocated footage of #Ukraine troops on the outskirts of Kuzemivka which puts them in front of the last major town before Svatove. #UkraineWar
🌎 https://twitter.com/PandaKommander/status/1580748607334256640?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @alexanderomeo13 Seems Svatove is first to be liberated than Kreminna.. I think AFU is trying to create some pincer to Kreminna front. If they capture Svatove, the supply lines to Kreminna is totally cut and they can move the forces in P66 highway down to Kreminna
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck The Armed Forces of Ukraine are advancing on temporarily-occupied Svatove, Luhansk region, along two lines of attack.
🌎 https://twitter.com/alexanderomeo13/status/1580746003359334400?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck 10 days after Elon Musk amplified Russian propaganda about Crimea, SpaceX claims it can’t afford to pay for Starlink in Ukraine and asks the Pentagon to pick up the tab. ¤ It is not coincidental the Armed Forces of Ukraine are having success with offensives in Luhansk and Kherson.
CNN: Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for critical satellite services in Ukraine, asks Pentagon to pick up the tab https://tinyurl.com/kzt4sdr2
WaPo: Secret Service knew of Capitol threat more than a week before Jan. 6 https://tinyurl.com/bp95u6bk They knew that “rallygoers were vowing to bring firearms, target the Capitol for a siege and even kill Vice President Mike Pence”
// Newly revealed messages, part of a trove the Jan. 6 committee retrieved from the agency, raise questions about the Secret Service’s handling of intelligence before the insurrection
📋 WaPo: Democrats have never had a better defense against the GOP’s anti-crime canard https://tinyurl.com/muyejzuc “The FBI data showed an estimated increase in murder nationally in 2021 of roughly 4 percent, after a nearly 30 percent increase nationwide from 2019 to 2020.”
What has changed — other than Republicans not even bothering to disguise the racism underlying their attacks — is that crime remains far below historic highs (peaking around 1991). Crime did increase during the coronavirus pandemic, but as Vox reports, the big rise took place under the Trump administration. “The FBI data showed an estimated increase in murder nationally in 2021 of roughly 4 percent, after a nearly 30 percent increase nationwide from 2019 to 2020.” (Figures for 2021 are unclear because of a new reporting system that went into place last year as well as margins of error in estimates. Vox explains the 2021 rate “could have been up 17 percent or down 7 percent, and there is no way to know for sure which is right.”)
🐣 RT @sotiridi #Breaking: The occupied appointed mayor of #Kherson in #Ukraine, urges people to evacuate the city, as Ukrainian troops advances faster to liberate to city of #Russia{n military occupation.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1580663138806288384?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @petestrzok Disappointing and disturbing, particularly when read in conjunction with today’s Jan 6th Committee evidence of all of the advance warning known to federal law enforcement. ¤ An absolutely critical moment for oversight, accountability, and any needed fixes.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1580649397171675136?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC A week after 1/6, a person familiar with FBI operations informed a top bureau manager that “there is…a sizeable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol.” https://tinyurl.com/bdcuwtzj with @ryanjreilly
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Group of Wagner soldiers who were tasked with torturing were captured after they were hiding out in liberated territory. ¤ Operation was carried out by Ukrainian SBU in recently liberated area of Kharkiv oblast.
🐣 RT @January6thCmte BREAKING: The Select Committee unanimously votes to subpoena Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States, to provide evidence as part of the committee’s investigation.
🐣 RT @therecount Secret Service communications from the morning of January 6 show the White House was aware Trump supporters were sending messages online, telling each other to bring weapons and foreshadowing violence: ¤ “Keep your guns hidden.” ¤ “Don’t fuck around, full kits, 180 rounds minimum.”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1580633733220208640?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d “Don’t fuck around, full kits, 180 rounds minimum ….”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1580630932091940864?s=20/photo/1
// examples of text messages Secret Service/FBI received indicating violence was planned for January 6
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING: SCOTUS denies his attempt to reinstate Judge Cannon order Re Special Master. The court had two words for Trump’s petition: DE- NIED.
⋙ 🐣 RT @charlie_savage BREAKING: The Supreme Court has denied Trump’s request to stay part of the 11th Circuit’s decision in the MAL docs case. (Trump had wanted the special master privilege review to look at the documents marked as classified, as Judge Cannon originally ordered.)
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1580634917699956737?s=20/photo/1
[CourtDoc:] (ORDER LIST: 598 U.S.)
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2022
ORDER IN PENDING CASE
22A283 TRUMP, DONALD J. V. UNITED STATES
The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.
// Trump loses bid to have Special Master review “Secret” documents
🐣 RT @ EricHolder Let’s be clear – today’s hearing of the January 6th Committee makes, in essence, a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Today will go down in history: The former president lost at SCOTUS in an espionage case. The same former president will be subpoenaed by congress investigating a coup. The former Vice President’s counsel testified to a grand jury having resolved privilege issues. ¤ Incredible day
🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua NATO is giving Ukraine 100 pieces of drone jamming equipment to help them fight against the Iranian drones. It will become increasingly difficult for Russia to launch attacks with these weapons.
🐣 RT @ petestrzok “Durham’s actions Wed vindicated his critics’ main complaint–that he has used his trials to push a dubious narrative of intentional govt misconduct against Trump, and of a far-reaching conspiracy by Dems to smear Trump, without ever actually charging it.”
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Durham angrily grilled & rebuked his own lead witness after the witness bolstered the defense of Igor Danchenko, who’s on trial for allegedly lying to FBI about Steele dossier sourcing. Durham personally dressed down the witness & slammed the Russia probe
⋙⋙ CNN: Durham rebukes his own witness and slams FBI’s Russia probe after trial setbacks https://tinyurl.com/2s4mjkh9
⋙ 🐣 RT @MontyBoa99 “It’s the shoddy worker who blames his tools.” ¤ Durham made a hash of the fool’s errand that Barr sent him on: a witch hunt to discredit info about #TrumpRussia. ¤ The witch hunt failed, effectively confirming the suspicious nature of the Alfa Bank-Trump Tower servers pipeline.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gartmartin9 Durham is engaging in wildly unethical behavior–he is giving evidence, distorting facts (ask any lawyer, totally improper) and repeatedly trying to go beyond the bounds of the charged conduct. That’s the story here. plain and simple.
🐣 RT @CharlesPfarrer IZIUM/1315 UTC 13 OCT/ UKR intel reports extremely low morale among RU reinforcements, leading to desertions, refusals and even outright mutiny. RU combat engineers are reported to be building a triple line of defensive trenches near the P-66 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1580550163126312962?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️Information appeared on the network that Russian soldiers mobilized near Kherson killed the commander who prevented them from surrendering, – the media report.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua They were transferred to one of the hottest areas of the front without training, equipment and with the order to stand until the end. They tried to negotiate with their commander about leaving, minimal training and receiving equipment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua The commander refused, as a result he was killed and the Armed Forces surrendered.
🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua No, there is not street fighting in Bakhmut. Wagner have not entered the city. They have not captured Ivanhrad. ¤ Wagner briefly took control over Ivanhrad, but a Ukrainian counter attack destroyed them and cleaned the town. It is now 100% Ukrainian. Opytne is 100% Ukrainian.
🌎 https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1580516232368779264?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua There is still fighting near the garbage dump, Wagner has not made any progress there. There is still fighting on the east of the city. ¤ All the statements of street fighting, Wagner breaking through defenses, etc are pure propaganda and do not reflect reality.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BBSz_ Other than fixing UA troops here, why are they so desperate to take Bakhmut..? Even if they manage to enter the city to engage in street fighting, UA is miles better at urban operations and they would loose even more men..
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua Because it is probably the last objective they will ever get a chance at attacking. Bakhmut has been a trap since day 1 and Putin is just dumb enough to fall for it.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie #opytne is a tiny town about 215 acres of land and 40 demolished houses . #WagnerGroup could not even hold it for a day despite losing hundreds of convict soldiers . The #Russians leave the dead to rot or get eaten by stray dogs .
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ MateuszWieloch1 Did Ukraine suffer heavy losses during the liberation of Lyman?
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua Not many, very small number. In that whole offensive Ukraine lost like 2000 killed/wounded and Russia had like 5000 dead plus thousands more wounded.
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @The_Old_Hippie The Russians who died were some of best soldiers Russia had. Hard to replace experienced trained soldiers
🐣 RT @francis_scarr Pro-war blogger Anastasia Kashevarova is outraged by reports of zinc coffins with the bodies of recently mobilised men already returning to Russian cities ¤ “You told us there would be training, that they wouldn’t be sent to the front after a week” [link]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1580497639266975745?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @UkrainianNews24 British intelligence update, as of 13th October 2022
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/UkrainianNews24/status/1580519255203663873?s=20/photo/1
● After retreating around 20km in the north of the Kherson sector in early October, Russian forces are likely attempting to consolidate a new front line west from the village of Mylove.
● Heavy fighting continues along this line, especially at the western end where Ukrainian advances mean Russia’s flank is no longer protected by the Inhulets River. Most of the Russia troops on this front line remain understrength VDV (airborne) units.
● In recent days, the Russian occupation authorities have likely ordered preparation for the evacuation of some civilians from Kherson. It is likely that they anticipate combat extending to the city of Kherson itself.
⭕ 12 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @mhmck Some Russian units, particularly in Donetsk region, are being ordered by senior command to temporarily cease offensive operations. The reason is the low morale of soldiers, many cases of desertion among the recently-mobilized, and widespread refusal to follow combat orders. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 06:00 on 13 October 2022 ¤ 2/2
Politico, Leon Panetta: If Putin Uses Nukes in Ukraine, the U.S. Must Respond with Military Force https://tinyurl.com/y338f23k “Putin cannot be allowed to continue his threats without understanding the full consequences to him and his regime”
// Russia simply cannot be allowed to unleash nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
It is precisely because the use of any nuclear weapon is so unthinkable that Putin cannot be allowed to continue his threats without understanding the full consequences to him and his regime. He says he is “not bluffing.” We cannot afford to “bluff” either.
While the United States and our NATO allies should continue to warn publicly of “catastrophic” consequences of Putin’s reckless nuclear saber rattling, we should be brutally clear to Putin in private: If he makes a reckless decision to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the U.S. will respond with direct military force against Russian troops waging the war in Ukraine, ensuring Putin’s defeat there. … In the Indo-Pacific, President Joe Biden has made clear that U.S. forces will be used to defend Taiwan from an attack from China. The same pledge should apply to Ukraine if Putin makes the decision to use nuclear weapons.
The tide of war has turned, and Putin’s war is failing. He is not just facing setbacks on the battlefield and at home but from those he was relying on for support abroad. President Xi Jinping of China has made clear that he has serious “questions and concerns” about the conduct of the war. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was even more direct when he recently told Putin that “it is no time for war.”
Predictions about war and Putin’s fate are always risky. But the lessons of history cannot be ignored: Nations cannot afford to appease or be intimidated by bullies. The only message tyrants understand is force. The United States, NATO and Ukraine have made clear that they remain unified in opposition to Putin’s aggression. That unity and support is critical to success.
Ukraine’s manpower advantage is growing as well. Putin’s original force of 200,000 was never big enough to sustain the invasion or occupy Ukraine. Russia has suffered heavy losses — by one estimate 70,000 to 80,000 of its soldiers have been killed or wounded. Grieving families in Russia have made it that much more difficult for Putin to mobilize additional recruits. He is reaping the whirlwind of his lies and deceptions.
This is both a dangerous and pivotal moment in Ukraine — dangerous because Putin could well resort to nuclear weapons, but pivotal because success in Ukraine can send a strong message to all democracies that brave fighters and nations can stand up to bullies around the world. This is one of those special moments in history: The U.S. and our allies have a chance to show the importance of global leadership in the 21st century.
🐣 📋 RT @PaulaChertok 90,000! Just staggering losses for Russia. 90k troops in under 8 months. Putin wanted to make history but probably not Guinness book of world record history. And for a vanity war. Just insane that Russians don’t toss his genocidal ass out of the Kremlin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @meduza_en Russia’s “irrecoverable losses” in the war with Ukraine have just become known: according to an FSB source, that figure is 90K. This includes troops who were killed, went missing, died from wounds, or were disabled and cannot return to military service.
⋙ Meduza: Russia’s ‘irrecoverable losses’ in Ukraine: more than 90,000 troops dead, disabled, or AWOL https://tinyurl.com/3rjue76h
🐣 RT @garboguy #Fellas I would love to have President Biden’s car surrounded by different fellas to show the amazing diversity of #NAFO. If you want to join, please respond or send me a DM with your fella.
¤ https://twitter.com/garboguy/status/1579779078399610880?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @garboguy Thanks to all #fellas volunteering to join President Biden! Haven’t laughed this much for a long time, what a wonderful & weird mix of fellas! From a very protective kitty to a raver, a king, a stoned doctor, a Jawa, a Jedi and Indy Jones. President Biden is well protected. #NAFO
¤ https://twitter.com/garboguy/status/1579847213207158785?s=20/photo/1.
⋙ 🐣 RT @garboguy Riding with POTUS take 2. Taking group photos is always chaotic, imagine a rowdy bunch of #fellas! Lots of mucking around. Then another busload arrived, even better. Now got a beauty queen, a fierce lady shooter, a librarian, a hippie ghost (?!), a smurf & many more. #NAFO
¤ https://twitter.com/garboguy/status/1580027147107696640?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @garboguy 3rd and final shot, as chaotic as last time. Luckily a friendly but firm teacher was helping out. Thank you to the amazing forgers for creating #fellas and the father of #NAFO @Kama_Kamilia. Jedis, R2D2, a mountie, a rabbit and two motorbike riders. Lots of fun! #SlavaUkraini
¤ https://twitter.com/garboguy/status/1580211412344836096?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ VictorishB123 RYBAR talking about some kind of massive offensive in the Svatove area.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Solovyev is doubting the rationality of the special military operation (he’s really missing his Italian villa).
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1580288279165161478?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Nekon1074 40.000 🇺🇦 soldiers towards svatove against max. 8.000 🇷🇺 Operation starts:12.10.22 #SlavaUkrainii #UkraineRussianWar #
🐣 RT @WarOsintFella So it begins – Ukraine launches massive counterattack in the Svatove direction
🌎 https://twitter.com/WarOsintFella/status/1580274483512094720?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Timothy Shenk: A Lost Manuscript Shows the Fire Barack Obama Couldn’t Reveal on the Campaign Trail https://tinyurl.com/4mrs3mxc //➔ I wish we could get back to this economic populism actually, and jettison the culture wars
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1580330413935165441?s=20/photo/1
Text: Speaking with a candor he would soon be unable to afford, Mr. Obama directed his fire across the entire political spectrum. He denounced a broken status quo in which cynical Republicans outmaneuvered feckless Democrats in a racialized culture war, leaving most Americans trapped in a system that gave them no real control over their lives. Although his sympathies were clearly with the left, Mr. Obama chided liberals for making do with a “rudderless pragmatism,” and he flayed activists — with the civil rights establishment as his chief example — for asking the judiciary to hand out victories they couldn’t win at the polls. Progressives talked a good game about democracy, but they didn’t really seem to believe in it.
Mr. Obama did. With the right strategy, he argued, Democrats could engineer a political realignment that would begin a new chapter in the country’s history.
🐣 RT @BrianKarem NOW: An ethics complaint has been filed against Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt with the Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
🐣 📋 RT @sotiridi 790.000 Russians is a crazy amount of people…
⋙ 🐣 RT @sotiridi #Breaking: The amount of people who have fled from #Russia, since Russian president Vladimir Putin called for the “partial mobilization” of the military, on September 21st, has reached over 790.000 people, most are men avoiding the “draft” to go to #Ukraine to fight.
⋙⋙ 🐣 That’s in addition to the 120-170K tech workers who left at the outset:
⋙ NYT (4/13): Russian Tech Industry Faces ‘Brain Drain’ as Workers Flee https://tinyurl.com/asjc7ujy
// Since their country invaded Ukraine, Russian tech workers have left by the thousands. They appear intent on rebuilding their lives
🐣 RT @kasparov63 While the UN remains useless at best in things that matter most, this isolation of Russia is not meaningless. The message to Putin’s elites is that there’s no way back with him anymore. Even most reliable puppets and cronies went against him.
🐣 RT @mhmck In the UN General Assembly, 143 countries voted to condemn the fake “referendums” held in Russian-invaded and occupied Ukraine.
Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua and Syria voted against.
India and South Africa abstained, taking the side of the colonial power.
¤ https://twitter.com/1_3Aadz/status/1580301549603287040?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 China also abstained
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin is not being pushed by hawks. Putin IS the hawk! He uses these other voices to socialize his ideas and actions.
🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA 💬Anatoly #Antonov: Now that these new territories are part of Russia, it’s a whole new ball game. 🇺🇦 is attacking 🇷🇺 territory. 🇺🇸 is directly involved in this conflict.
🔗Watch in English “The Great Game” with a special guest – Ambassador Anatoly Antonov: https://tinyurl.com/4scpk6xt
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrerm 2nd ORDER EFFECTS: @bayraktar_1love reports that the wait time for vehicles on the Crimea ferry is now 3-4 days. This strongly implies that there is additional unseen damage to the road deck of the RU bound lanes of the Kerch Bridge. This will further strain RU logistics.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love According to Russian-appointed head of Crimea, waiting at the ferry crossing in Crimea takes about 3-4 days. And there are about 900 trucks in line at the moment. #Ukraine #Crimea
TheGuardian: Ukraine claims gains near Kherson as Nato allies send air defence systems https://tinyurl.com/2p99srks “A senior Nato official claimed that Russia had depleted a significant proportion of its precision-guided ammunition in its invasion”
// Defence minister hails ‘new era’ as Iris-T system arrives from Germany after Russia bombardment of cities
A senior Nato official claimed that Russia had depleted a significant proportion of its precision-guided ammunition in its invasion and that its industry could not produce a number of key types of ammunition and weapon systems due to western sanctions.
🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian defenders are steadily liberating settlements in Beryslav district of Kherson region. The direction of Ukrainian advances suggests the Russian occupiers may be out-manoeuvred at their positions near Mylove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1580248475232481280?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 “10,000 Ukrainian servicemen of the second wave from training in Great Britain are returning back to Ukraine”
🐣 RT @SecDef Before kicking off our agenda, I was very pleased to meet with my good friend and Ukrainian 🇺🇦 counterpart, Minister @oleksiireznikov. This contact group – a gathering of nearly 50 nations – is continued proof the world is united behind you.
💽 https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1580144115672457216?s=20/photo/1
KyivIndependent: Stoltenberg: Air defense to be ‘top priority’ in NATO support for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/3bd43hzr “‘The horrific indiscriminate attacks against Ukrainian cities… demonstrate the urgent need for more air defense for Ukraine,’ said Stoltenberg.”
🐣 RT @NOELreports [Svatove] General Staff reported 🇷🇺 shelled Kovalivka & Pershotravneve. Making it very likely that AFU has presence or even controls them. ¤ Pershotravneve is 99,9% liberated:
➡️ 🇷🇺 sources reported 🇺🇦 troop build up on 05-10
➡️ It has been shelled 4 days in a row now.
Waiting visuals…
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1580157179092344832?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer THE USUAL SUSPECTS: As Putin tries to sell the Kerch truck bomb hypothesis, videos emerge of the ever vigilant FSB ‘arresting UKR saboteurs’. In this Hollywood epic, a RU security operator (without a bomb suit) uses his bare hands to frantically unwrap a supposed Ukrainian IED.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1580195437289832448?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
WaPo: Russia announces detention of 8 people over Crimea bridge blast https://tinyurl.com/363p6ymv “When asked about the allegations, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs told the public broadcaster that the Russian investigation was ‘nonsense’”
🐣 RT @NexthLive [ Kupyansk Front ] Ukraine “quietly” penetrating into Luhansk towards Svatove in massive pincer #ukraine #russia #donbas #Donetsk #Kharkiv #UkraineRussia #Crimea #Kherson #LymanCounteroffensive #Kyiv #Kiev
🌎 https://twitter.com/NexthLive/status/1580080821285048322?s=20g/photo/1
🐣 RT @francis_scarr Vladimir Solovyov speaking at the Moscow Arts Theatre in 2008: ¤ A war against Ukraine would be “the most terrible crime you can think of”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1580066665353519104?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 11 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @andrewsweiss Interesting piece from Moscow-based @vfroloff who puts his emphasis on the need for a resumption of US-Russia backchannel diplomacy.
⋙ 🧵 RT @CarnegieRussia THREAD New piece by longtime Russian foreign policy practitioner/expert Vladimir Frolov (@vfroloff) abt why Putin is resorting to nuclear brinksmanship at the very moment he faces humiliating setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine. 1/7 https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88130 via
@CEIP_Politika
📌 https://twitter.com/CarnegieRussia/status/1580269036566241283?s=20
⇈ ⇊
CarnegiePeace, Vladimir Frolov: Strategic Procrastination: What’s Russia’s Game With Nuclear Signaling? https://tinyurl.com/3msxe2m6 ~ argues that Russia and the U.S. need a back channel to de-escalate nuclear tensions over Ukraine
// Putin has made it clear that the Kremlin hopes to end the “special military operation” as quickly as possible. If Zelensky does not want to stop his counteroffensive and resume talks, then the Kremlin believes it must convince his Western partners to force him.
Moscow desperately needs to stop Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Russian troops are losing their combat effectiveness, barely hanging on to the territory they control, and increasingly being forced to “retreat to more advantageous positions.” It is critical for the Kremlin to avoid obvious military losses: another high-profile failure could result in large-scale destabilization.
The only solution is to stop or suspend hostilities on all fronts. Russia does not have the reserves or resources to change the situation on the battlefield: the partial mobilization is not sufficient to withstand the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and major losses could tear apart the Russian armed forces. …
The Kremlin hopes that the nuclear threat will compel Washington to step in and “freeze” the conflict with Russia’s current territorial gains, though there does not appear to be unanimity among the Russian leadership on whether the conflict should be frozen temporarily, until Russia can regain its strength, or forever.
Moscow has also changed its rhetoric on U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. This is now being referred to as “direct participation in hostilities,” and the Kremlin is warning that it could lead to an inevitable military conflict between the United States and Russia—though all the actions of the Biden administration have been aimed at avoiding such a conflict, and supplying weapons and intelligence was common practice even during the Cold War. …
… Moscow is taking actions that can be interpreted by the United States as boosting the readiness of its nuclear forces: releasing footage of a train carrying the equipment of a Defense Ministry directorate responsible for Russia’s nuclear arsenal; announcing military exercises using Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad; preparing to test a Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile in Novaya Zemlya; closing air space to test-launch a Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile from Plesetsk to Kamchatka; and surfacing the Belgorod nuclear submarine, carrying Poseidon nuclear torpedoes, in neutral waters, where it is sure to be seen.
All of the above are routine exercises, albeit grouped more closely together. Even if the Defense Ministry begins shuttling trains with nuclear warheads back and forth, this is common practice for both Russia and the United States, and might raise the nuclear threat level, but will not faze Biden. Moscow could take a page from the Cuban Missile Crisis playbook and keep escalating the combat readiness of the Strategic Nuclear Forces to its maximum, with bombers armed with nuclear cruise missiles on full alert or even up in the air, and submarines deployed to patrol zones. However, it would be easy to get carried away and make a fatal mistake. ¤ For now, Moscow is not making any extraordinary steps, and the Pentagon is not taking the bait. This means that Washington is not motivated to rush in and stop Kyiv on the battlefield.
Despite the frenzied television coverage, it is unlikely that Moscow is serious about using nuclear weapons. A showcase detonation of a nuclear warhead over Novaya Zemlya, the Black Sea, or the Chernobyl exclusion zone will not scare off Kyiv. What it will do is destroy any remnants of Russia’s reputation as a signatory of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and deprive Moscow of Turkey, India, and China’s amicable neutrality. …
Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, recently said that the U.S. administration has communicated its concerns and warnings about any use of nuclear weapons to the Kremlin “directly, privately, and at very high levels.” He may have been referring to his phone calls with Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yury Ushakov. Yet even that kind of communication is not sufficient. Moscow and Washington need a permanent channel for secret diplomacy to discuss the undiscussable. ¤ In May 2022, the Biden administration informed the Kremlin through an intermediary that it was prepared to create such a back channel. CIA Director William Burns was expected to oversee these communications from the U.S. side. At the time, however, Moscow was not interested.
One key aspect of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that Moscow and Washington initially created a back channel along intelligence lines. Robert Kennedy (then Attorney General and younger brother of President John F. Kennedy) first communicated with Alexander Feklisov, the KGB station chief in Washington. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin only joined the dialogue after the KGB confirmed that Robert Kennedy’s information was accurate and that he was speaking on behalf of the U.S. president. Repeating this back-channel diplomacy feat would be constructive, but following all the diplomatic ousters, there are no good candidates for it left in Moscow and Washington.
🐣 RT @NexthLive [ Kupyansk Front ] Ukraine “quietly” penetrating into Luhansk towards Svatove in massive pincer #ukraine #russia #donbas #Donetsk #Kharkiv #UkraineRussia #Crimea #Kherson #LymanCounteroffensive #Kyiv #Kiev
🌎 https://twitter.com/NexthLive/status/1580080821285048322?s=20g/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck Advancing Ukrainian troops are only 12 km away from temporarily-occupied Svatove in Luhansk region. ¤ This is indicated by the Ukrainian military’s morning report which says Russian fascist invasion forces shelled Ukrainian positions in the area of the village of Kovalivka.
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: THREAD: The DoJ has responded to Donald’s motion to SCOTUS to overturn part of the 11th circuit’s ruling regarding the classified documents in the special master case. Donald wants SCOTUS to rule that the special master can review the classified docs. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1579940828373712896?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/ 2145 UTC 11 OCT/Overhead imagery reveals that RU engineers have established a pontoon bridge across the Inhulets River at Daryivka, replacing the destroyed P-47 HWY bridge. This crossing is vital to transport troops and logistical support to RU units east of the river.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1579947914071527425?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Tuesday. 11 Oct. Putin’s criminal terror campaign against Ukraine will in no way change Russia’s failing Army campaign.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1579948891684106240?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov A new era of air defence has begun in 🇺🇦. IRIS-Ts from 🇩🇪 are already here. 🇺🇸 NASAMS are coming. This is only the beginning. And we need more. No doubt that russia is a terrorist state. ¤ There is a moral imperative to protect the sky over 🇺🇦 in order to save our people.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Apti Alaudinov, the commander of Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen detachment “Akhmat,” tells the new volunteers that they are in Ukraine to fight against gay parades. ¤ Host Olga Skabeeva wishes all of them the best of luck.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579929453584863234?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Nadja72638243 If you don’t understand the relevance for you as an American, Alexander Dugin will explain it to you:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Nadja72638243/status/1579931818497052672?s=20/photo/1 -3
Vice: Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report https://tinyurl.com/593jfn8d well well well
// The world’s richest man spoke directly with Vladimir Putin, Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer wrote.
Elon Musk spoke directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin before tweeting a proposal to end the war in Ukraine that would have seen territory permanently ceded to Russia, it has been claimed. ¤ In a mailout sent to Eurasia Group subscribers, Ian Bremmer wrote that Tesla CEO Musk told him that Putin was “prepared to negotiate,” but only if Crimea remained Russian, if Ukraine accepted a form of permanent neutrality, and Ukraine recognised Russia’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
According to Bremmer, Musk said Putin told him these goals would be accomplished “no matter what,” including the potential of a nuclear strike if Ukraine invaded Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Bremmer wrote that Musk told him that “everything needed to be done to avoid that outcome.”
Last week, Musk posted essentially the same points on Twitter, although he suggested that the referendums in the annexed territories slammed as sham votes by Ukraine and the West be redone under supervision by the United Nations. …
Bremmer wrote that Musk said he had refused a Ukrainian request to activate Starlink in Crimea. According to UK newspaper the Financial Times, Ukrainian forces have reported connectivity issues as they continue their counteroffensive into areas previously held by Russian forces in the east and north-east of the country. Musk responded by criticising the FT’s reporting, saying that what happens on the battlefield is “classified.”
The Ukrainian response to Musk’s Twitter peace proposal was succinct – one diplomat told him to “fuck off,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted his own Twitter poll. …
Meanwhile the Kremlin welcomed Musk’s “positive” proposal to end the war, while his tweets were also cited by Russian state media. ¤ Musk says he is still pro-Ukraine, but just trying to avoid nuclear war. ¤ Tesla and Musk have been contacted for comment.
↥ ↧
Vice: Ukrainian Diplomat Tells Elon Musk to ‘Fuck Off’ With Terrible Idea to End War https://tinyurl.com/yu5zfbwk
// 10/3/2022; Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made fun of the billionaire.
The problem started just after noon on Monday when the billionaire tweeted out a suggestion for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia that would see Ukraine cede annexed territory to Russia. “Redo elections of annexed regions under U.N. supervision. Russia leaves if that is the will of the people. Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). Water supply to Crimea resumed. Ukraine remains neutral,” he tweeted above a simple “yes or no” poll. Russia occupied and annexed Crimea in 2014.
Yes: 40.9%, No: 59.1%
… Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted out his own poll. “Which @elonmusk do you like more? One who supports Ukraine” or “One who supports Russia?” As of this writing, the split is 89% in support of Ukraine with 11% against.
Ukraine: 78.8%, Russia: 21.2%
This is all very stupid. Elon Musk is not an international relations expert and has no grasp of Ukrainian history and its historic and repeated brutalization at the hands of its neighbors. For instance, he once suggested starting a website to rank journalists called Pravda, seemingly unaware that a lauded Ukrainian news organization shares that name. It is doubly stupid because Musk has actually helped Ukraine fight the war by shipping Starlink internet terminals to the country.
Musk loves to insert himself into situations that have nothing to do with him and he throws tantrums when people call him on it. For instance, he once inserted himself into a cave rescue in Thailand and accused one of the rescuers of being a pedophile. Musk’s current pinned tweet is another tweet predicting doom if Russia is not appeased. “Russia is doing partial mobilization. They go to full war mobilization if Crimea is at risk. Death on both sides will be devastating,” he said in the tweet. “Russia has >3 times population of Ukraine, so victory for Ukraine is unlikely in total war. If you care about the people of Ukraine, seek peace.”
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Suddenly, everything is changing. Why? Because Ukraine has successfully defeated Russia & the US under @POTUS has got everything right. This is a crucial point in global affairs. Will democracy & freedom or kleptocracy & dictatorship win? I bet on freedom.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund We all know who the main culprits are: Putin, the Ayatollahs & MBS. At least the two first have to go. That will have to be a domestic process.
⋙⋙ 🐣 not to mention the forces of illiberalism within the US and many Euro countries
please, my fellow 🇺🇸 citizens: VOTE for a democrstic (small ‘d’) future
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Now, it appears folly of any top Russian not to try to oust Putin, because he is likely to drive them all to their death, as Hitler did with so much of his last crew. All his closest men are billionaires. You can buy so much for a billion, notably freedom. Why die for Putin?
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Clearly, US, UK & Ukrainian intelligence have direct links to the inner Putin circle (unlike German & French intelligence). Right now, they should offer them deals to give up Putin & safely depart. The issue is not to punish all culprits but to make sure right prevails.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Meanwhile, the West needs to do two things:
1. Give Ukraine all the arms it needs to win over Russia!
2. Offer Ukraine all the financing it needs to keep the country afloat!
Ukraine defends us all against the barbarian Putin. We must not fail Ukraine.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Germans say the first IRIS-T air defense system is in Ukraine now [link in German]
⋙ 🐣 IRIS-Ts are exactly what they need around Odesa to knocks the clusters of drones being launched from Crimea out of the sky
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1579858020959297536?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @POTUS This morning, I spoke with President Zelenskyy and G7 Leaders about our unwavering commitment to hold Russia accountable for its war and support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
🐣 RT @TetyanaWrites #Ukrainian women: now more than ever we need to gather our creation energy, our witchy energy, and replenish our strength. Remember, we are made of magic and power, and our ancestors are right with us.
🖼 https://twitter.com/TetyanaWrites/status/1579823288632905728?s=20/photo/1
UkrInform/CNN: ICC to probe Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure https://tinyurl.com/yc4zs7tr
// The International Criminal Court intends to investigate Russia’s massive missile attack across Ukrainian cities. ¤ That’s according to Karim Khan, who is a prosecutor with the Intetnational Criminal Court, who spoke with CNN.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Horrific insight into the medieval mindset of the Russian criminal leadership. A religious theme of extermination of “Satanist Ukrainians”. This has become an incredible struggle of survival for the Ukrainian people. Vital we stand with them.
🐣 RT @Juliaioffe So we are, in fact, coming to kill you.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Pavel Gubarev, Russia’s “DPR” figure in Donetsk, states their intent towards Ukrainians: “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”
💽 https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1579824569116155905?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Apex_WW NATO’s Stoltenberg: Ukraine needs lethal weapons, artillery, armoured vehicles, air defense systems and anti-tank weapons
🐣 RT @SergiyKyslytsya A trail of blood is left behind the Russian delegation when it enters the General Assembly; and the hall is filled up with the smell of smoldering human flesh. That’s what we have tolerated too long in Syria, that’s what’s happening today in Ukraine [link fb]
Stars&Stripes/AP: South Korea says it has ability to intercept North’s missiles https://tinyurl.com/3pmrmty7
🐣 🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Putin now desperate to freeze conflict. ¤ No one buying it this time
⋙ 🐣 RT @tashecon Lavrov suggesting if US proposes Biden – Putin summit the Kremlin will consider it. Kremlin speak for we are desperate for peace talks. Typical Putin, escalate before talks.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Biden has promised, to all allies and partners:
‘There will be no meeting ABOUT you WITHOUT you’
Thanks how you earn trust
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en “New reality” term was coined during pandemic – & the thought that we need to adapt to that reality. ¤ It seems many people now perceive & war as another kind of “new reality”, trying to adapt. ¤ Human values remain same – democracy, value of human life. That’s why will win.
🐣 RT @lilygrutcher US Airforce B-2 Spirit equipped with 16 nuclear missiles arrived in Poland.
💽 https://twitter.com/lilygrutcher/status/1579791477567553538?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SimonWDC If the US cuts off military sales to the Saudis it’s no biggie – they can start getting their weapons from Russia! LOL!!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP Sen. Robert Menendez, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is calling for freezing all U.S. cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including arms sales. It’s one of the strongest expressions yet of U.S. anger over Saudi oil-production cuts. https://tinyurl.com/3mw2xtyx
⭕ 10 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @SimonWDC If the US cuts off military sales to the Saudis it’s no biggie – they can start getting their weapons from Russia! LOL!!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP Sen. Robert Menendez, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is calling for freezing all U.S. cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including arms sales. It’s one of the strongest expressions yet of U.S. anger over Saudi oil-production cuts. https://tinyurl.com/3mw2xtyx
WaPo: Ukraine war at a turning point with rapid escalation of conflict https://tinyurl.com/yfzn8fre Despite pleas from Kyiv and some in DC, ‘there are few initial signs that the admin intends to change the relatively lengthy process it uses to decide what weapons to send, and when’
// tags: Defense budget procurement process; Both the nature and tempo of the war have changed in recent weeks, as Ukraine’s forces score victories on the ground and Russia retaliates as Putin is backed into a corner.
For its part, Ukraine has long combined its profuse gratitude for Western weapons aid with demands for stepped up delivery of more, and more sophisticated, supplies. The counteroffensive on the ground brought calls for battle tanks to move into contested territory, which the United States and its allies have been reluctant to send. This week, Kyiv attached new urgency to sophisticated air defense systems.
A Ukrainian official, referring to a list provided by the senior military command, said Ukraine’s priority items include the Patriot surface to air missile system, MIM-23 Hawk missiles, attack drones and NASAMS (National Advance Surface-to-Air Missile Systems) as well as Israeli air defense systems.
Ukraine’s pleas found new resonance in some quarters of Washington after the Monday attacks, with senior Democrats, in particular, demanding that Biden move more quickly to supply Ukraine. “I am horrified by Russia’s depraved and desperate escalation against civilian infrastructure across Ukraine — including in Kyiv,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “I pledge to use all means at my disposal to accelerate support for the people of Ukraine and to starve Russia’s war machine.” … [Slotkin] …
But there was little initial sign that the administration intends to change the relatively lengthy approval process by which it decides what weapons to send to Ukraine, and when. The process includes a U.S. analysis, based on its own reporting of conditions on the battlefield, of what Ukraine needs, a senior U.S. defense official said, and “second, do we have that stuff?”
“Third, do they already know how to use it? If not, what’s our plan to train them? Fourth, how are they going to sustain the stuff? Keep it in the field? Maintain it? Repair it? Spare parts? … If we can’t do those things, who among our allies and partners can do it?” the defense official said.
Once those questions are answered, the request and recommendation is vetted for comment and concerns from other government departments with equities in the decision before going to the White House, where President Biden makes a final determination.
When decision is made, delivery can be made within days for equipment taken from U.S. defense stocks, months if extensive training for use and maintenance is required, or years if particular items need to be manufactured. For example, Biden approved sending the NASAMS air defense system early in the summer, and defense officials have said that two will be shipped this fall, once the systems are ready and training is complete.
An additional six NASAMS, announced by the Pentagon at the end of August, will take years to manufacture. Patriot systems are already in short supply within NATO, and usually travel with their own U.S. or NATO operating teams — a commitment the West is unlikely to make. …
“We certainly understand that we are at a potential inflection point here in the war, on many levels,” the senior Biden administration official said. “That thinking is baked into [our] decision-making. … Ukraine has certainly done better and been more aggressive recently, and Putin is feeling the heat on the battlefield, at home, and overseas. There is no question that is a different set of conditions.” ¤ “But we believe that these changes on the battlefield and in Russia have only validated even more our decision-making process,” the official said.
🐣 RT @kiraincongress One thing is clear: they will not stop. But we will stop them. Together.
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russian television today: celebration of wilful mass murder, calls for genocide.
⋙ 🐣 Even Hitler made efforts to hide his genocidal intentions from the German people:
1) locating the death camps outside of Germany,
2) using cryptic phrases like “Lebensraum“ and “Endlösung”
We have come to a very dark place
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Putin is the worst military strategist of modern history. What did his war crimes today accomplish?
✅ Hardened the resolve of the Ukrainians
✅ Convince & place urgency on countries (U.S. & others) to provide more air defense systems for UKR
✅ Increase international support
🐣 RT @SecBlinken The Kremlin’s strikes in Ukraine today hit non-military targets and killed civilians. They demonstrate again who is in the right and who is in the wrong. To the people of Ukraine: The United States stands with you.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Monday. Putin has perhaps 2000 low yield tactical nuke weapons. They have little viability in the Ukraine conflict. If the Russians cross the nuclear threshold ….I think the economic reaction would be fatal. NATO would enter the war.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Ukraine cannot be intimidated. We united even more instead. Ukraine cannot be stopped. We are convinced even more that terrorists must be neutralized. Now the occupiers are not capable of opposing us on the battlefield already, that is why they resort to this terror- @ZelenskyyUa
⋙ 🐣 RT @Peter_Hardwick Zelensky loves Ukrainians. ¤ Imagine if Putin loved Russians instead of hating Ukrainians, ¤ Russia and the world would be a better place.
💙 ⋙⋙ 🐣 Putin also hates Russians: I suspect he hates himself and is jealous of Zelensky, the true heir to Vladimir the Great, Ruler of the Kievan Rus’, the Rus‘ from whom Russia takes (some say stole) its name
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Ukraine cannot be intimidated. We united even more instead. Ukraine cannot be stopped. We are convinced even more that terrorists must be neutralized. Now the occupiers are not capable of opposing us on the battlefield already, that is why they resort to this terror- @ZelenskyyUa
NYT: India and China, which have refrained from criticizing Russia, call for de-escalation https://tinyurl.com/3me4u3a2 China stated “all countries deserve respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity”; India expressed concern over “targeting of infrastructure and deaths of civilians”
[TweetLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1579654974229078017?s=20
India and China, two powers that have offered Russia some relief in the face of Western sanctions, expressed concern after the deadly missile strikes across Ukraine on Monday and renewed calls for de-escalation and dialogue.
Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, told a press briefing that “all countries deserve respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that “support should be given to all efforts that are conducive to peacefully resolving the crisis.”
Arindam Bagchi, the spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said New Delhi would offer support for efforts to calm the fighting. ¤ “India is deeply concerned at the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, including targeting of infrastructure and deaths of civilians,” Mr. Bagchi said.
As the war in Ukraine has dragged on, President Vladimir V. Putin’s continued aggression has put his remaining allies in a difficult position. China and India have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the Russian leader, even as they have avoided directly condemning his invasion of Ukraine and continued to engage with Moscow economically — especially by purchasing more Russian oil as Europe has moved to reduce its imports.
At a summit in Uzbekistan last month that was meant to be a show of force for Mr. Putin, the Russian leader acknowledged that President Xi Jinping of China had raised “questions and concerns” about the war. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was more public and direct, describing how the war has exacerbated challenges for developing countries. He told Mr. Putin at the summit that their meeting would be “a chance to discuss how we can move forward on the path of peace.”
⋙ 🐣 Before the “referendums,” China made statements about respecting borders and national sovereignty, and has expressed “concerns” to Russia over the war. On the vote to condemn the “annexations” in the UN, they abstained. Here is AlJazeera:
[TweetLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1579662866571198464?s=20
⋙⋙ AlJazeera (10/1): Russia vetoes UN resolution on Ukraine annexation, China abstains https://tinyurl.com/b64my327 “Even Moscow’s close friends China and India chose to abstain rather than vote against the resolution that condemned the Kremlin’s latest actions in Ukraine”
// Resolution called for condemnation of ‘illegal’ referendums in Ukraine and for states to not recognise border changes.
[TweetLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1579662868286681088?s=20
Russia has used its veto at the United Nations Security Council to scuttle a draft resolution that sought to condemn its annexations of Ukrainian territory. ¤ But even Moscow’s close friends China and India chose to abstain rather than vote against the resolution that condemned the Kremlin’s latest actions in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer THE CLOCK’S TICKING: Ukraine is turning the tide against “exhausted” RU forces, the head of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency will say in a speech on tomorrow. Dispite RU’s missile onslaught, Sir Jeremy Fleming will claim RU is running out of ammunition. http://shorturl.at/iFRX4
⋙ BBC: War in Ukraine: Russia’s forces are exhausted, says GCHQ head https://tinyurl.com/vz68hw5t “‘With little effective internal challenge, his decision-making has proved flawed. It’s a high stakes strategy that is leading to strategic errors in judgement’” ~ Sir Jeremy Fleming
// Ukraine is turning the tide against “exhausted” Russian forces, the head of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency will say in a speech on Tuesday.
Despite the missile attacks on targets across Ukraine on Monday, Sir Jeremy Fleming will claim Moscow is running out of ammunition. ¤ He will say President Vladimir Putin’s decision-making has proved “flawed”. ¤ The intelligence chief will also assert that the UK and its allies are at a defining moment when it comes to China.
The director of the intelligence, cyber and security agency will say the costs to Russia of the war in Ukraine – in terms of both people and equipment – are “staggering” as early gains are now reversed. ¤ “We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Sir Jeremy will say in his speech at the annual Royal United Services Institute security lecture.
He will argue that the mobilisation of prisoners and inexperienced men “speaks of a desperate situation” – and will also directly criticise President Putin as isolated and making mistakes. ¤ “With little effective internal challenge, his decision-making has proved flawed. It’s a high stakes strategy that is leading to strategic errors in judgement.”
Sir Jeremy also claims the Russian people are now starting to understand the problems caused by what he describes as Putin’s “war of choice”. ¤ “They’re seeing just how badly Putin has misjudged the situation,” he will say. ¤ “They’re fleeing the draft, realising they can no longer travel. They know their access to modern technologies and external influences will be drastically restricted.” … [China issues] …
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture In the past few hours, we have seen the Russian response to the attack on the Kerch bridge over the weekend. It has responded in two ways. First, a series of missile attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine. Second, command changes. 1/24
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1579612627252449281?s=20
WaPo, David Gerson: Why Anthony Fauci is the greatest public servant I have known https://tinyurl.com/r4emyh59 Fauci’s reputation is “a legacy praised each day by the chorus of millions of breaths that would otherwise be silent. A vast chorus of the nearly lost”
The single most shocking fact to come out of the recent pandemic has been the unfair self-apportionment of pain and death. People in majority-Republican counties experienced 73 more deaths from covid-19 per 100,000 people than those in majority-Democratic counties. There are a variety of explanations. One is certainly the use of high office to discourage the most basic means of self-preservation during a deadly disease outbreak. Imagine if it had been Democratic public authorities encouraging Republican self-victimization. But it was Republican officials who did it — and found it an effective method of self-publicization. …
For Fauci, it has been a professional and moral commitment that politics should stop at the human biome’s edge. This does not imply that scientific experts are perfect. To the contrary, the purpose of the scientific method is to organize failure into deeper insight. But it does mean that scientific truth is not relative — or determined in the political realm. …
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Konstantin Dolgov, former Russian commissioner for human rights, claims that Ukraine’s plumbing and sewer systems are “working to support the war” and therefore are legitimate military targets. He hopes for more strikes and asks: “Are they whining yet? Are they howling yet?”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579578461869731840?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Monday. Putin lashes out with terror attacks on Ukrainian cities. The sabotage on the Kerch bridge a huge political embarrassment. NATO/US clearly need to up level of military support to Ukraine. They need 300 M1 modern tanks and ATACMS missiles.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1579566136064380931?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio NEWS—Senate Foreign Relations Chair Menendez is about to call for an immediate freeze of U.S. cooperation w/ Saudi Arabia. ¤ Menendez has veto power over foreign weapons sales. ¤ “I will not green light any cooperation w/Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position” on Ukraine.
🐣 The Russians can’t win by playing by the rules so, as with the Olympics (and everything else), they cheat.
ICRC: The rules of war, also known as international humanitarian law https://tinyurl.com/266bu3m3
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1601481054585466880?s=20/photo/1
The rules of war, also known as international humanitarian law:
● Protect those who are not fighting, such as civilians, medical personnel or aid workers.
● Protect those who are no longer able to fight, like an injured soldier or a prisoner.
● Prohibit targeting civilians. Doing so is a war crime.
● Recognize the right of civilians to be protected from the dangers of war and receive the help they need. Every possible care must be taken to avoid harming them or their houses, or destroying their means of survival, such as water sources, crops, livestock, etc.
● Mandate that the sick and wounded have a right to be cared for, regardless of whose side they are on.
● Specify that medical workers, medical vehicles and hospitals dedicated to humanitarian work can not be attacked.
● Prohibit torture and degrading treatment of prisoners.
● Specify that detainees must receive food and water and be allowed to communicate with their loved ones.
● Limit the weapons and tactics that can be used in war, to avoid unnecessary suffering.
● Explicitly forbid rape or other forms of sexual violence in the context of armed conflict.
↥ ↧
NPR (2018): The ‘Rules Of War’ Are Being Broken. What Exactly Are They? https://tinyurl.com/49cdv65h
// 6/28/2018; tags: Geneva Conventions ⇈ ⇊
History of the rules of war
Although our modern rules of war can be traced back to ancient civilizations and religions, it was Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, who began the process of codifying these customs into international humanitarian law. In 1864, he helped establish the first Geneva Convention, an international treaty that required armies to care for the sick and wounded on the battlefield. It was adopted by 12 European countries.Over the next 85 years, diplomats debated and adopted additional amendments and treaties to address the treatment of combatants at sea and prisoners of war — not just combatants on battlefields. In 1949, after the horrors of World War II, diplomats gathered again in Geneva to adopt four treaties that reaffirmed and updated the previous treaties and expanded the rules to protect civilians. They’re now collectively known as the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and contain the most important rules of war.
Upholding the rules
Since then, the rules of war have been ratified by 196 states. They protect people who are not fighting in the conflict and curb the brutality of war by setting limits on the weapons and tactics that can be employed. In 2014, for example, the rules helped guarantee safe passage for civilians in South Sudan to flee violence.They’re also used in domestic and international courts to determine if a government or non-governmental militant group is guilty of a war crime. If a warring party is accused of violating international humanitarian law — whether by an individual, group, country or observer — countries are obligated to investigate. The U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for example, helped punish war criminals who committed mass atrocities during the Bosnian war in the 1990s.
The U.N. Security Council, a group of 15 countries at the U.N. charged to maintain international peace and security, may also impose sanctions — like a travel ban or an arms embargo — as an incentive for warring parties to comply with the rules of war. …
As mandated by the Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a special role to play as a guardian of these laws. The ICRC tracks the evolution of warfare and makes recommendations for updates to the rules accordingly. It also participates in U.N. discussions on crises and potential violations to ensure the rules are being upheld.
In addition, the ICRC helps inform the public of the rules of war through videos and social media messaging. This 2-minute film, titled “Why we can’t save her life,” won a Grand Prix award at the Cannes Lions festival in France this month. The film reminds people that hospitals are not a target.
The rules of war
Although there are many rules contained in the Conventions, here are six crucial principles that are relevant to ongoing conflicts. Because the rules themselves often use legal terms, we have paraphrased the language:1. No targeting civilians …
2. No torture or inhumane treatment of detainees …
3. No attacking hospitals and aid workers …
4. Provide safe passage for civilians to flee …
5. Provide access to humanitarian organizations …
6. No unnecessary or excessive loss and suffering …
🐣 RT @MrKovalenko In this video #CrimeanBridge, you can see that the extremely high temperatures of burning oil cisterns damaged the rails & wheels so badly that the integrity of the metal section is under big question. First frost + icing may cause a collapse of this section.
💽 https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1579550128930975744?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @USEmbassyKyiv “These strikes can break neither Ukraine’s spirit nor our resolve to support Ukraine. The United States will continue to provide vital economic, humanitarian, and security assistance so Ukraine can defend itself and take care of its people.” @SecBlinken http://ow.ly/NG8h50L6glb
⋙ 🐣 RT @NedPrice The international community should be outraged and make it clear that President Putin’s behavior is completely unacceptable and barbaric. Now is the time to speak out in support for Ukraine.
⋙⋙ State[.]gov, Anthony Blinken: U.S. Support for Ukraine in the Face of Russian Strikes – United States Department of State https://tinyurl.com/5n6bvsk5
// The Kremlin’s strikes against Ukraine today again place the stakes of Russia’s brutal war into stark relief.
WaPo/Bloomberg, Clara Marques: Putin’s Response to Crimea Bridge Attack Shows How Much It Hurt https://tinyurl.com/5n9y4mm4 “The [bridge] project, the Kremlin spokesman made a point of telling reporters, that the president himself initiated”
// The severe damage done to a symbolic and logistically important link with Russia exposes a leader under pressure from all sides.
Bridges are potent political symbols, and few more so than the 19-kilometer (12-mile) link across the Kerch Strait connecting Russia with annexed Crimea, a feat of engineering riveted with strategic and propaganda significance. When he drove across it in 2018 in a bright orange truck, Russian flags fluttering, Vladimir Putin called it a miracle. It was a project, the Kremlin spokesman made a point of telling reporters, that the president himself initiated. The following year, he came back to inaugurate the rail portion, riding in the train cab for the cameras.
And yet, in the immediate aftermath of a spectacular explosion early on Saturday that badly damaged the bridge, Putin and other senior officials fell silent. Even Moscow’s loudest propagandists — like RT boss Margarita Simonyan, who initially tweeted only a single word — were reticent. Official reaction did not emerge until Sunday, with Putin labelling the explosion a “terrorist attack” in a brief comment. Then, after a start in Zaporizhzhia, air-raid alerts spread across Ukraine; Monday dawned with explosions in the heart of Kyiv.
It’s been an eloquent expression of the frustration and pressure at the top. As Putin struggles to deal with the embarrassment of the bridge attack and other military setbacks, he is also attempting to quell criticism from loud hawkish voices with a demonstration, for the home crowd and the rest, of Russia’s military might — lest anyone forget. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday described widespread retaliatory strikes on energy facilities and on civilian targets, at a time and locations “specially chosen to cause as much damage as possible.”
Kyiv hasn’t explicitly claimed responsibility for the Kerch fireball, but did pointedly issue commemorative stamps, while the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council tweeted footage of the blast alongside Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”
More than a personal blow at Putin, the bridge attack is a strategic and security failure, given how obvious the bridge was as a target, and how emphatically Russian media had reported on the multilayered protection supposedly in place. Even the infamous trained dolphins, a promised protective “dome” and anti-sabotage boats were unable to stop the disruption of a crucial supply line for the armed forces. And it is, as Kyiv has put it, just the beginning — a reminder of just how hard it will be for Moscow to hold the land it has grabbed.
So where was Putin over much of the weekend? Back in July, after all, former president and super-hawk Dmitry Medvedev had threatened a “Judgment Day” response to any attack on Crimea; this is not even the first — an airbase was badly damaged during an attack over the summer. ¤ Silence has long been Putin’s stock reaction to situations he feels are getting out of hand, when a supposedly all-powerful patriarch is unable to find an obvious fix, and stumbles. After the Kursk submarine sank in the first year of his presidency, he went mute for days. …
He’s acted in retaliation, to silence increasingly loud voices like that of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, but also to demonstrate options, including brutal ones like strikes on civilian targets. The specific reference to the bridge blast as an act of “terrorism” is partly about diminishing it, even as state media line up to brush off the actual damage. But just as the explosions in Russian apartment blocks that led to the second Chechen war were used to attempt to legitimize brutality, Putin is attempting to justify an inhuman asymmetric response. Disturbingly, Russia has just appointed Air Force General Sergei Surovikin as commander of its invasion forces in Ukraine, a man who led Russian forces in Syria and has a reputation for ruthlessness. He quickly received an endorsement from Kadyrov, who has also since declared himself “satisfied” with the direction of events in Ukraine.
The delay also tells us, however, that Putin has been caught off guard. Having taken the politically risky decision to go for mobilization, even a partial one, he has found himself humiliated by a Ukrainian force capable of pulling off an attack that as Mick Ryan, strategist and retired major general in the Australian Army, pointed out to me, is challenging both from a security point of view and technically. And Ukraine will learn from it. Kyiv won’t make it easy for Moscow to hold on to the territories it has grabbed.
The Kremlin isn’t quite out of options yet. Tactical nuclear weapons, for all the threats, remain difficult for Moscow to deploy and would likely solve neither Putin’s political nor his strategic and military problems. But he has used other alternatives before. The emphasis on the bridge as a critical infrastructure target suggest that is where Moscow will focus. European energy infrastructure has already come under attack and more is likely to be coming. Ryan suggests retaliation could also include cyberattacks on countries supporting Ukraine and covert sabotage in areas even over the border where foreign aid is being collected. ¤ Yet as he points out and Russia has found, vulnerabilities go both ways.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MAYBE NOT: Moscow’s Pravda reports that Russian political strategist Marat Bashirov believes that attacking NATO satellites with Peresvet laser systems would be a good idea. https://tinyurl.com/3eb762t5
🐣 RT @MIL_STD #NASAMS is the fastest way to build Counter Cruise Missile capability. There should be NATO partners lining up to contribute radars, missiles and financing to send as many systems as they can build over the coming months to years.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NOELreports Ukraine has changed its request for arms to the US after the Russian Federation struck Kiev today, — Foreign Policy. ¤ The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine asked for air defense and NASAMS systems as soon as possible.
↥ ↧
Sundries (9/28): The Pentagon Confirmed That Missile Defense NASAMS Are Not Yet In Ukraine And Gave An Approximate Delivery Date https://tinyurl.com/4zap6nvp The first two will be delivered “within the next two months, or close to that” with six more to follow long-term [Hurry up!]
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1579503591727190017?s=20/photo/1
// diagram of NASAMS
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian channels like one are calling for total genocide of the Ukrainian population and complete destruction of the country. [[link to Telegram]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579475452548509697?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] If what happened today (I mean the strikes on the ukroreich) was a one-time action, and I believe that this was the case, then this will not give the desired effect. The infrastructure of the Nazis must be knocked out non-stop for at least a month. When all electrical substations, bridges, communications and other vital infrastructure are destroyed, then we can talk about any significant success. The enemy must lose any opportunity to have access to modern means of transportation and logistics, as well as life in normal comfortable conditions. Shells should be carried to the front by carts, and wagons should be hauled along the remaining railway tracks by steam locomotives, and electricity and gas should generally become the subject of study only in history textbooks.
🐣 RT @ The_Old_Hippie #Ukraine has been softening #Svatove for weeks . They have taken the high ground and control the P66 supply route . Russians have no place to hide and officers retreating like in Lyman . UKE resupply complete and fresh trained soldiers arrived from EU . Offensive begins
🐣 RT @ivanastradner Please read this thread from another fellow conservative. As someone who’s also working on 🇷🇺 information warfare, I see very similar patterns coming from the Kremlin. Luckily, there are still many conservatives who support 🇺🇦
⋙ 🧵 RT @alexplitsas After time in Ukraine I can confirm Russia is running a strategic influence campaign inside the United States targeting GOP voters before the midterm election in an attempt to undermine support for Ukraine and cutoff weapons and support. Russian propaganda is spreading lies.
📌 https://twitter.com/alexplitsas/status/1579426188136960002?s=20
Their objective is to try and sway a new Congress to cutoff support. Russia is spreading false narratives about money and weapons leaving the country on the black market that isn’t true. If that was happening they wouldn’t be pushing the Russians back in a counteroffensive.
Russia is also spreading nonsense about nazism in Ukraine of which I saw NONE. The Ukrainians need what they have been given and are asking for. Those who are spreading any of those narratives mentioned above are pushing Russian propaganda and undermining national security.
To those who say otherwise, I’m here on the ground and witnessed all of this with my own eyes and ears. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue and Russia is continuing its approach to sow societal discord to undermine our institutions to further its objectives. We can’t let it happen
The Ukrainians are in need or more weapons and support because they are still actively fighting a war to defend their homeland from Russian aggression and war crimes. Every liberated village and town that was occupied by Russians comes with execution and torture of civilians.
I say all of this as a registered Republican, former local party chairman in Connecticut, and former Pentagon official with oversight for information operations. This is incredibly dangerous and we cannot allow Putin to divide us internally as Americans to further his objectives.
I saw hundreds of the thousands of apartment buildings that have been destroyed by Russian rocket and artillery fire. There are too many for this to be an accident. This was purposeful. I spoke to rape and torture victims. Mention Nazis and people look at you like you’re crazy.
The most frustrating part is that these Russian information operations campaigns are still ongoing targeting Americans and very little is being done about. We need to invest in our capabilities to combat this abroad as it’s producing strategic effects for Russia at little cost.
Finally, why this specific American target audience? Polls show GOP is likely to retake the House of Representatives and per the constitution that’s where funding bills originate. It’s meant to make this a partisan issue and stop the support. Russia has mastered this art.
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych on Belarus entering Ukraine: ¤ “There is no offensive in Belarus. There is nothing” ¤ Former Kremlin advisor Sergei Markov predicts that Belarus is entering, and views its trained military and aversion to “Banderites” and Poland as an asset
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Holy shit.. ¤ Here’s what last week’s $1.5Billion gift from Putin to Lukashenko bought. ¤ “The opening of the front against Belarus by Kiev is insane from a military point of view, but the process has begun“ – Lukashenko
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa During a phone call with 🇳🇱 Prime Minister @MinPres, we’ve discussed the increase in defense support for Ukraine and the world’s coordinated response to the new attacks by the Russian Federation. Separately, we’ve focused on the aid in restoring destroyed 🇺🇦 infrastructure.
🐣 RT @@djrothkopf Terror bombings of cities targeting innocent civilians is what Putin does. He requires no excuse. He has been doing it for more than 20 yrs. The big difference now is that Ukraine will fight back and the Russian military will pay a huge price for the war crimes of their leader.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1200 UTC 10 OCT/ UKR air defense downs a RU Su-25 close air support aircraft. UKR intel reports that poorly trained recruits have been hastily integrated into the Russian 127th Rifle Regiment of the 1st Army Corps now operating near Kherson.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1579441907670822912?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenceU [UA] So, russkies, you really think you can compensate for your impotence on the battlefield with missile strikes on peaceful cities? You just don’t get it do you – your terrorist strikes only make us stronger. We are coming after you.
🚫 🐣 RT @ellebal1111 [tr] Powerful explosions in the Rostov, Belgorod and Kursk regions, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are advancing on Melitopol and Kherson
// waiting confirm
🧵 RT @mhmck Russian forces in the north of Luhansk region are panicking:
“In the area of the settlement of Svatove, the enemy blew up railway and road bridge crossings [of the Krasna River].” –General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 06:00 on 10 October 2022
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1579333271774986240?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @XCTVBR [tr] The bridge is one of the strategically most important supply lines towards Kherson. This is of course a military objective.
🌎 https://twitter.com/XCTVBR/status/1579392454666514434?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ Lumieres_mnt “The Crimean bridge is not only a military target, which defines the logistics of supplying our troops not only in Crimea but also those in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions…” – Andrey Kartapolov (Head of State Duma Committee on Defense), 09.10.22
~~~~~~~~~
WaPo: Russia strikes Kyiv and cities across Ukraine after Crimea bridge attack https://tinyurl.com/3n7zcms3 “Putin has been under pressure to up the ante in what the Kremlin calls its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine after a succession of recent battlefield failures”
🐣 RT @ steven_pifer Moscow does not seem to understand that #Russia’s indiscriminate missile attacks on #Ukraine’s cities only hardens resolve of Ukrainians to resist.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenceU
We. Will. Never. Surrender.
We. Will. Fight. ✊🇺🇦
🐣 RT @gorlachenkov This is Kyiv today. Video was published by the President Volodymyr Zelensky.
💽 https://twitter.com/igorlachenkov/status/1579366943110631425?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ INTobservers Zelenskyy: “The morning is difficult. We are dealing with terrorists. Dozens of missiles, Iranian ‘Shaheds’. They have two targets. Energy facilities and people.” ¤ It was reported the other day that a batch of kamikaze drones were delivered to Belarus. #russiaisaterrorisstate
💽 [Tr] https://twitter.com/INTobservers/status/1579396043690868736?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky to country with subtitles
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Map of attacks on infrastructure facilities in Ukraine
🌎 https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1579392520580395009?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ Billbrowder Putin sits at a long table in his bunker. Zelensky goes out in the midst of Russian airstrikes on his city to speak to his people. Says it all. One coward and one hero.
🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov #Ukraine’s culture minister Tkachenko said that today’s #Russia|n missile strikes on central #Kyiv damaged the buildings of the Philharmonic, Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko fine arts museum, and the Taras Shevchenko museum.
#RussiaIsATerroristState
🐣 RT @TsybulskaLiubov Russia, we sing and stay strong no matter how hard you try to kill us. Kyiv subway station right now
💽 https://twitter.com/TsybulskaLiubov/status/1579391465582907392?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @censor_net
‼️ Ранок важкий. Маємо справу з терористами. Десятки ракет та дрони. У них дві мішені – енергообʼєкти та люди, – Зеленський
Translated from Ukrainian by Google:
‼️ The morning is difficult. We are dealing with terrorists. Dozens of missiles and drones. They have two targets – energy facilities and people, – Zelenskyi
💽 https://twitter.com/censor_net/status/1579383308504690688?s=20/photo/1
// 11:08amUkr; middle of street in Kyiv
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR New missiles are coming from the Black Sea. ¤ Explosions reported in Odesa (south UA), than Kryviy Rig (central UA), awaiting in Kyiv soon.
🐣 RT @InUkraineDaily Russian military fired 75 missiles at Ukraine already this morning, 41 of them were shot down by air defense forces, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhnyi reports. #RussiaIsATerroristState
🐣 RT @Ukrainene Massive Russian rocket attack on many cities and towns of Ukraine – and it continues. ¤ A lot of hits on civilian infrastructure. Many places have disruptions with electricity, gas, cell phone connection, Internet. ¤ The scale of destruction and damage done is still unclear.
¤ https://twitter.com/Ukrainene/status/1579381606120558592?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @Ukrainene Massive Russian rocket attack on many cities and towns of Ukraine – and it continues. ¤ A lot of hits on civilian infrastructure. Many places have disruptions with electricity, gas, cell phone connection, Internet. ¤ The scale of destruction and damage done is still unclear.
¤ https://twitter.com/Ukrainene/status/1579381606120558592?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @ukrainewar24 ⚡️ Ukrainian Defense Ministry: #Russian missiles will not succeed in destroying our courage and will. #ArmUkraineNow
🐣 RT @mhmck The airbases in the Russian Federation from which terror attacks were launched must be destroyed.
🐣 RT @juliaioffe Electricity and water are going out all over Ukraine, the the result of massive Russian air strikes all over the country. The commander behind it is the man who flattened Aleppo and gassed Ghouta.
🐣 RT @hdevreij Cities in Ukraine reportedly hit by Russian missiles on Monday morning: Dnipro, Kharkiv, Khmielnitsky, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Obukhiv, Tarnopil, Zaporizja, Zhytomyr.
🐣 RT @ WarMonitor3 Russian forces launched a mass attack on civilian infrastructure around Ukraine this morning hitting very few military targets and wasting a huge amount of missiles.
🐣 RT @NOELreports President Zelensky has reportedly been evacuated to a safe place, from where he will address the nation and respond to a possible ultimatum from Russia – Ukrainian social networks and TG channels.
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Kyiv thermal power plant was hit by multiple Kh-101 missiles
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba [UN] Multiple Russian missile strikes across Ukraine. Putin’s only tactic is terror on peaceful Ukrainian cities, but he will not break Ukraine down. This is also his response to all appeasers who want to talk with him about peace: Putin is a terrorist who talks with missiles.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The Bridge of Glass in the very heart of Kyiv
🔥 💽 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1579368581862940672?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @igorlachenkov Literally right now whole Ukraine is being massively bombed by russian missiles, big cities like Kyiv Dnipro Lviv have been hit with civilian casualties. Also reports of critical infrastructure damage. This is one of the biggest shellings of the whole time #RussiaisATerroistState
// ~9amUkrtime
🐣 RT @andersostlund There will be no end to the barbaric madness as long as Russia is around. The Russian state apparatus needs to be destroyed, the Russian Federation dissolved, Russia demilitarized for this to stop.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The dumbest thing about these Russian attacks is that they achieved absolutely nothing from the military post of view.
No “decision making centers” in Kyiv were hit.
Stupid hatred wiling to senselessly kill as many people as possible.
🐣 RT @Matthew_Kupfer I’ve lived, worked, met with friends, and passed the time in the area of Kyiv that #Russia struck during rush hour today. It’s a peaceful, central place that every Kyivan, every visitor to #Ukraine knows — That, I think, is the reason Russia targeted it.
🐣 RT @rynkrynk This is all over the country. Indiscriminate acts of terrorism all over the country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️ Explosions reported in Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytsky, Dnipro, Lviv, Ternopil. ¤ At least five explosions were heard in central Kyiv in the morning on Oct. 10. “Unfortunately, there are wounded and killed in several places,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
🐣 RT @ petersbeaumont1 Seeing reports coming in from other Ukrainian cities it does look like Russian response to the Kerch bridge explosion now underway in earnest. I thought it might happen last night but they seem to have waited until people are leaving their homes to go to work.
🐣 RT @olliecarroll A senior Ukrainian official just yesterday told me they were expecting nothing good from the combination of Putin and his new commanding officer Surovikin. “A cruel man with a criminal record,” he said. “Surovikin is a butcher.”
🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov [Def] Our courage will never be destroyed by terrorist’s missiles, even when they hit the heart of our capital. Nor will they shake the determination of our allies. The only thing they demolish irriversibly is the future of – a future of a globally despised rogue terrorist state.
⭕ 9 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “The Kerch Strait Bridge attack’s most important consequence, however, will be to accelerate the transformations within Russia’s political and military leadership already under way.” Another terrific essay on the #Ukraine war from @EliotACohen
⋙ TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: Putin’s Regime Faces the Fate of His Kerch Strait Bridge https://tinyurl.com/2c23k9hw
// The attack on the crucial link between Russia and Crimea matters less for its tactical significance and more for what it says about the course of the war.
… The Kerch Strait Bridge attack … inflicted at most a couple of casualties but packed multiple punches. It struck a prime symbol of the project of Russian imperial restoration, an expensive structure designed to link a Crimea reincorporated into Russia with the motherland. It damaged a crucial supply route. It showed that Ukraine could reach deep behind Russian lines to hit, with exquisite precision, a key and extremely well-defended target. It was, above all, a personal as well as a national humiliation: This was Vladimir Putin’s pet construction project, and it was the most unwelcome gift possible on his 70th birthday.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military mobilization is a deeply unpopular botch, as more Russian men flee the country than can be inducted into an army that cannot equip them, cannot train them, and cannot lead them. The Russian military faces threats from a Ukrainian army that can strike in the east (Donbas), the south (Kherson), or even possibly the southeast (Melitopol) wherever it sees the chance. That Ukrainian army is far better led, increasingly better equipped, and better informed thanks to Western support, and has infinitely higher morale. …
Dictatorships built solely on fear and self-interest are brittle things, and in Russia the cracks are showing. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the criminal head of the Wagner Group of mercenaries that does the Kremlin’s bidding, and Ramzan Kadyrov, the no-less-thuggish ruler of Chechnya, have created private armies. They have been open in their view that some generals should be not only cashiered but shot, a stance echoed by the head of the Russian propaganda outlet, RT, Margarita Simonyan. They may very well be preparing the way for their own bids for power. Other armed organizations—the FSB secret police, the GRU (military intelligence), the national guard, and the army itself—might be willing to engage in violence at home and not just abroad. Sooner or later, violent words casually bandied about lead to violent deeds.
Running throughout the open conduits of opinion, primarily on Telegram, is boiling discontent with the military, the conduct of this war, the absurd insistence that it is not a war but a “special technical operation,” the incompetent mobilization, and, by implication, Putin himself. Paranoid by professional training and personal inclination, Putin must now look within as much as he looks without. At the same time, Russian paranoia about the West, a combination of grievance and thwarted desires to restore an imperial state, has created an atmosphere in which measured policy is impossible. …
The Kerch Strait Bridge attack was an awful birthday present for Vladimir Putin. Almost as awful however, was the missing birthday card from China’s Xi Jinping, a symbolic distancing particularly significant in the sorts of systems ruling both countries. Russia is isolated from its neighbors, who are either openly hostile or walking away from its Ukraine enterprise. It is only one more way in which Russian prospects will continue to darken during a winter of destruction and death in Eurasia. A difficult season awaits, lightened only by the heroism and competence of Ukraine, and by the wisdom of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who, when asked by a reporter about an off-ramp for Vladimir Putin, responded succinctly “For Russia to leave Ukraine” and walked off, the ghost of a grim smile on her face.
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture “The Kerch Strait Bridge attack’s most important consequence, however, will be to accelerate the transformations within Russia’s political and military leadership already under way.” Another terrific essay on the #Ukraine war from @EliotACohen
⋙ TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: Putin’s Regime Faces the Fate of His Kerch Strait Bridge https://tinyurl.com/2c23k9hw
// The attack on the crucial link between Russia and Crimea matters less for its tactical significance and more for what it says about the course of the war.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard An amazing part of the battle of Kyiv & saving of Ukraine (Russian strategic goal was regime change, penetrate the capitol) was the battle of Hostomel airport. When I visited Kyiv, I met with one of the UKR SOF officers that led the counter attack/raid on the airport. Heroes!
⋙ 🧵 RT @WarMonitor3 The battles for Hostomel airport on the first days of the war were defining. ¤ I want to remind you that a small national guard unit along with Ukrainian SOF battled for more than 4 hours with only small arms against a whole Russian airborne detachment and 30+ aircraft.
📌 https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1579108310711554058?s=20
🐣 RT @mhmck After the Kerch bridge explosions the invaders are panicking. Russian soldiers flee Crimea to the Russian Federation on the highway through Berdyans’k and Mariupol’. Russian colonists flee Crimea via ferry and the single-lane bridge. Collaborators flee Kherson region to Crimea.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1579288755218763776?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @ErikAukan The Anglo-Saxons are at it again:
🖼 https://twitter.com/ErikAukan/status/1579282437594525697?s=20/photo/1
// medieval tapestry style
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Genocidal scheming on Russian state TV: Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at the MSU urges Russia not to miss the right moment to cause a massive refugee crisis in Europe, exacerbating economic and political tensions by causing a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579279261592354817?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @davidfrum When you hear talk of the alleged danger of “humiliating” the Putin, it’s most often from a talker who is ouching from the humiliation of his/her past cheerleading for Putin. They hope that if western diplomacy rescues Putin from his debacle, it will also redeem them from theirs
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Sunday. 9 August. Putin in a box. Seems to be preparing Russian people for tactical nuclear strikes in Ukraine. It will be the end of him if he does. Illogical. EU/NATO will permanently turn against him. Huge conventional military response.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1579220952038379520?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @dekrunner General, up until now you have been reassuring in your comments Putin would not use nuclear weapons, you seem to have moved from that now, do you think it’s likely he will in his desperation? thank you
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Do not believe Putin will employ a nuke. His threats have become extremely concerning. Now have to gauge his level of desperation.
🐣 📋 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Sunday. Putin slipping into a dark place. Now facing direct rebuke from his inner circle. Massive public opposition…. 400,000 young and old men fled Russia to avoid conscription in his criminal invasion. There can be no winner in a nuclear war.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1579232243486457857?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS/ 2115 UTC 9 OCT/ UKR forces continue to advance against H-26 HWY North of Svatove. UKR units also reported in contact North of Kremenna urban area; possibly cutting the P-66 HWY. RU Air Defense Complex and Electronic Warfare unit reported destroyed.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1579217884626419712?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tarasmi It is also funny that Russian propagandists are confused and in some statements call the Crimean bridge a critical civilian infrastructure, while in others they say that without it it will be difficult to supply the Russian military in southern Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV, they’re drawing parallels between the Crimean bridge, the warship Moskva and Putin, as Russia’s main symbols. They must have forgotten their own lies about Moskva. People are being urged to unite around Putin and march into battle when called.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579168584445886464?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DefenceU Message of Minister of Defence @oleksiireznikov to troops:”You will be remembered as thieves, rapists and murderers. ¤ I will tell you what comes next. ¤ Thousands of russian lads will die. ¤ We guarantee life, safety and justice to all those who refuse to fight immediately.”
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1579151499086761989?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Weekend Update–The attack on the Crimean Bridge and what it might say about Ukrainian intentions. Basically Ukraine is pressing in both East and South simultaneously, to see if they can create a new Russian collapse.
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1579081979991326720?s=20
🐣 RT @OSINTreporting They are the nazis 🤡
⋙ 🐣 RT @Octubre2022 🇷🇺Ryssland 🇺🇦Ukraine #Chechen #Crimea #NordStream #Russia #Chechenia Chechen brothers getting ready to Fight the Nazis!
💽 https://twitter.com/OSINTreporting/status/1579056770890158082?s=20/photo/1
// creepy Nazi style video
RealContextNews, Brian E. Frydenborg: Why Putin Has Doomed Himself with His Ukraine Fiasco https://tinyurl.com/4tm45dmc
// 9/27/2022
🐣 RT @MuKappa The only off ramp for russia is decolonization. ¤ An actual breakup of the federation eliminating moscow’s access to a vast resource base, including people. ¤ The rest of the solutions are just bandaids. ¤ The russian “opposition” is just noise.
🧵 RT @wartranslated [thread] Summary of Arestovych and Feygin daily broadcast for 8 October. This update was provided by Stepan: https://twitter.com/childsacrifice1
🔥 Crimean bridge: 2 parts of the bridge collapsed and the railroad part of the bridge is partially damaged. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1579039589880451076?s=20
the capacity of the bridge has been halved for at least 10-14 days. We now know how the bridge reacts to explosives and it is weaker than the Antonivsky bridge. Arestovich says that the Antonivsky bridge has been hit with 120-140 HIMARS missiles.
🔥 Russian political struggle: ¤ According to some preliminary sources, they wanted to remove Shoygu. Shoygu then assigned Surovikin as the commander of Russian forces. […]
[Arestovich] also said that many people within the Russian establishment are now more worried about internal events than about the war. He says that the explosion may well have been the work of a faction within the Kremlin as opposed to a Ukrainian strike.
This is very good and means that “the end is coming sooner than we all expected” ¤ 🔥 Other versions: ¤ Arestovich says that if it had been a Ukrainian missile strike the explosion would have looked very different. No missile is capable of such a large explosion.
A missile would also have been seen. Boats, underwater barges, and underwater explosions also do not make sense. The army may use this explosion to blame the FSB for the loss of Kherson as a result of logistical difficulties. We will see all this unfold in 2-3 weeks.
A drone or a missile would have been seen and would have not penetrated the formidable air defense net. The appointment of Surovikin is to our advantage, as he manages to even shock Russian generals with his stupid brutality.
🔥 Supply of Russian forces in Kherson: ¤ These forces have been alarmed by this strike as the transport of supplies through the south of occupied Ukraine is very long, difficult, and covered by Ukrainian HIMARS.
As evidence to this point, yesterday something in the railway hub of Ilovaisk was blown up. Even if the railway part of the bridge is operational, the road section also represented a large portion of their supply, including equipment driving unassisted.
⭕ 8 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @StateDept Kherson is Ukraine. Zaporizhzhya is Ukraine. Donetsk is Ukraine. Luhansk is Ukraine. Crimea is Ukraine. #UnitedWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1578731951363567624?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Putin’s CSTO is kaput.
⋙ 🐣 RT @christogrozev Kyrgyzstan cancels at last minute joint military exercises with Russia, Belarus, Armenia and other former Soviet countries that were supposed to bring nearly 7,000 troops and showcase unity with Russia. ¤ Unironically, the exercises were named “Unbreakable Brotherhood 2022”.
🐣 RT @ColbyBadhwar Whether it was an ATACMS strike, or explosive sabotage to the train, the destruction of the #Kerch Bridge is going to have massive implications for Russian logistics. There is now only one railway supplying Russian forces in the west, and its just 34km from Ukrainian lines.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1578600660479901697?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ColbyBadhwar I should add that in the Donetsk sector the Ukrainians are as close as 5km. [to rail at Tokmak] So in order to use this part of the rail network Russia needs to truck or ship supplies to Mariupol and Berdiansk, get on trains, and then make the perilous journey. Not really feasible.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1578627369660608514?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @christogrozev The “dismissals” are certainly not a fact at this stage, but the Wagner-affiliated accounts are clearly pushing for Prigozhin, or at the least, for Prigozhin-affiliated siloviks such as Dyumin, to get the top MoD jobs. Def something to watch out for in the next days/week.
⋙ 🐣 RT @christogrozev Verbatim from Wagner source: “We are abgry at the rotten Kremlin leadership who have turned out not just to be thieves but also militarily incompetent. Prigozhin and Kadyrov enjoy high respect in the army and special services, have their own armies and can take over if they want”
🐣 RT @AnonOpsSE A Russian court has reportedly ordered that Memorial’s office in Moscow “become state property.” The move came hours after the rights group, which was disbanded last year, won the Nobel Peace Prize [link]
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Shoigu and Gerasimov were probably removed from the posts of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation and the head of the General Staff, – ISW.
⋙ 🐣 Here’s the full statement (below). Note they caution that they cannot independently verify this. (These speculations were on Telegram yesterday.)
ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 8 https://tinyurl.com/44ftbkcs
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1579005425936367616?s=20/photo/1
“Milbloggers who favor the Wagner Group claimed that the Kremlin has replaced Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov supposedly with Tula Governor Alexey Dyumin and the deputy commander-in-chief of the ground forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Matovnikov, respectfully.[17] ISW cannot independently verify either of these reports at this time.”
🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 09 October 2022 ¤ Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/GEKR50L5ae9 ¤ 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1578978756932571136?s=20/photo/1
[Text:]
● Early on 08 October 2022, an explosion damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge, the road and rail crossing which links Russian-occupied Crimea and the Krasnodar region of Russia.
● Two of the four carriageways of the roadway have collapsed in several places over a length of approximately 250m. It is almost certain that some vehicle transits via the other two carriageways have resumed, but capacity will be seriously degraded
● The extent of damage to the rail crossing is uncertain, but any serious disruption to its capacity will highly likely have a significant impact on Russia’s already strained ability to sustain its forces in southern Ukraine. The rail crossing was only opened to freight in June 2020, but the line has played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during the invasion.
● This incident will likely touch President Putin closely; it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was his childhood friend Arkady Rotenberg. In recent months, Putin’s former bodyguard, now commander of the Russian National Guard, Viktor Zolatov, has provided public assurances about the security of the bridgehead.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian deputy of Stavropol region Valeriy Chernitsov claims that Russia intends to hit large Ukrainian cities with Sarmat rockets
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1578974285586055168?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MaximusVeritas2 This video is a fake. Notice the “dual gauge” tracks. The Kerch Bridge uses “Soviet Gauge” only.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SamRamani2 A train reportedly passes through the railway portion of the Crimea bridge
💽 https://twitter.com/MaximusVeritas2/status/1578848504776364032?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MaximusVeritas2 See here:
¤ https://twitter.com/MaximusVeritas2/status/1578848508525760518?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MaximusVeritas2 I have no idea whether the Kerch Bridge is capable of rail transit currently. I do know the video above is archive footage of another location.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Joo23303744 That’s true I got a picture here you can see the tracks
¤ https://twitter.com/Joo23303744/status/1578854805304274944?s=20/photo/1
// closer photo
‼️🐣 RT @mhmck “The enemy and his henchmen are fleeing.” –General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information at 06:00 on 9 October 2022 ¤ Russian operatives and local collaborators are fleeing Nova Kakhovka for Crimea and Starobil’s’k for Luhansk.
🐣 RT @SquireDigital No rail connection between Donetsk and Melitopol.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SquireDigital 31/ The Starobilsk rail link may soon be out of service. What is left? ¤ Donbas has three lines to supply that area, but is not connected to Mariupol. ¤ Also Kherson (ferry) is not directly connected with Melitopol. ¤ And ATACMS can disrupt even the long ways by hitting two bridges
🌎 https://twitter.com/SquireDigital/status/1572712134030819330?s=20/photo/1
// railway map; shows no direct rail line from Russia to Kherson/Zaporizhia except Mariupol vis sea
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️ Mayor: Over 6,000 cars fleeing Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast stuck at checkpoint. ¤ Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov said that some cars have been stuck at the checkpoint in Vasylivka, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, for over 10 days awaiting entry into Ukrainian-controlled territory.
🐣 RT @mhmck The Kerch bridge is damaged. Bridges over the Dnipro River are under Ukrainian fire control. ¤ Supply for Russian invaders in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions now must go through Tokmak (rail) and Melitopol’ (highway). ¤ Lacking fuel, Russia lost offensive capability in the south.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1578952706529841152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck The Kerch bridge is damaged. Bridges over the Dnipro River are under Ukrainian fire control. ¤ Supply for Russian invaders in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions now must go through Tokmak (rail) and Melitopol’ (highway). ¤ Lacking fuel, Russia lost offensive capability in the south.
🐣 RT @ TheRickWilson Not subtle.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Marchant: If get all our Secretaries of State elected around the country like this, we take our country back
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1578901123972288513?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Team Putin Wakes Up: We Never Should’ve Laughed at Ukraine. ¤ As the mood shifts and many Russians want the war to end, Russian propagandists try to scare them by airing their grim predictions as to what Moscow’s capitulation would look like.
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Team Putin Wakes Up: We Never Should’ve Laughed at Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/4s5mpbem
// “A war should be waged for real or not at all. Now we don’t have any other options,” Russian state TV host Sergey Mardan said following a series of losses.
😅 RT @JuliaDavisNews Is it a fire sale?
⋙ 🐣 RT @DanRather If you think Putin is winning the war in Ukraine, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Crimea.
⋙⋙ 😅 RT @natsechobbyist It’s a fixer upper.
🐣 RT @TNG512 There has been no insurgency in Crimea in 8 years. In Donbas for the last 8 years there has been an insurgency…against the government in Kyiv. So far it doesn’t look like there has been much serious internal anti-Russian resistance in Kherson or Melitopol either.
⋙ 🐣 Many pro-Ukrainians left Crimea. Many Crimean Tartars were taken to the far reaches of Russia. Large numbers of FSB officers and military and their families and other Russians moved in. Crimea became a luxury vacation spot for the wealthy. ¤ But ~ Crimea remains part of Ukraine.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer UKRAINE’S SECRET WEAPON: The attack on the Kerch Straits Bridge, like the precision hit on Russia’s Saki Naval Air Station before it, bares the hallmarks of the HIMARS + the ATTACMS missile system. The ATTACMS can deliver a 500lb warhead at ranges greater than 300 Km.
¤ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1578928322909966336?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AVindman I’ve been dreaming of this moment.
¤ https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1578777716135849985?s=20/photo/1
// photo of burning bridge
🐣 RT @ BillKristol The national GOP was wavering, but when Herschel Walker proved to be not just a spouse abuser and not just an abortion financer, but also a serial liar, they couldn’t resist going all in.
⋙ 🐣 that’s who they are; the question is, Is that who WE are?
🐣 RT @christogrozev The “dismissals” are certainly not a fact at this stage, but the Wagner-affiliated accounts are clearly pushing for Prigozhin, or at the least, for Prigozhin-affiliated siloviks such as Dyumin, to get the top MoD jobs. Def something to watch out for in the next days/week.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotHiggins This could just be more shit stirring by Prigozhin to get the MoD job, and if that happens that’s a pretty clear indication things in the Russian government are going to hell. […]
🐣 RT @ErikAukan #NAFOmemes #Fellas #memes2022 #Memes #NAFO By popular request, I made one medieval theme with HIMARS.
🖼 https://twitter.com/ErikAukan/status/1578782750219587586?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ SlavaUk30722777 🇺🇦Current Mood in Ukraine=🔥
💽 https://twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1578820800613740544?s=20/photo/1
// female soldiers dancing with weapons
🐣 RT @tomiahonen Agree with Andrew, that looks a lot like was munition that came through road surface from above, and detonated as hit/passed road surface. Vaguely suggests bent steel downwards, consistent with warhead penetrating the steel bridge from above
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewBlankHill This is a hole caused by a munition ‘top Down’s through the road deck. ¤ My guess is a precision guided weapon like a missile or Kamikaze drone. However, to do that much damage, it’s a warhead in the 1500lbs+ zone.
¤ https://twitter.com/AndrewBlankHill/status/1578866949349871616?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @noclador We got our first photo from under the bridge, where I said earlier that we will find the answer:
1) boat – no.
2) truck – very unlucky driver, but very advantageous for Ukraine and russia, as it allows both to deny the use of
3) ATACMS, which punched that hole in the bridge ¤ 1/2
📌 https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1578841265508331520?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @noclador The answer to what destroyed the Kerch bridge is under water… the explosion occurred on this span and broke it. ¤ (Btw. it was definitely not a boat)
⋙ 🐣 RT @noclador when it came vertically down, smashed into the bridge as the fuze was set to delay, then broke the bridge apart and pushed it outwards away, which lifted the span to the West off its pylon. ¤ We can now put all other theories to rest. Ukraine received a second batch of ATACMS. ¤ 2/2
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer REVOLVING DOOR: Putin has appointed Gen. Sergey Surovikin as the new commander of his ‘Special Military Operation’. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov has been fired. Surovikin is the 9th commander of RU’s invasion of Ukraine- few have lasted longer than 30 days.
⋙ TheHill: Russia names army general as commander of all its forces in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yn74ctcx
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava “The aggressor must lose. So be it. So that such wars do not happen again and that the peace is really long-term. Nothing should be left for the invaders. I believe that justice will be restored for our partners as well.” -Zelensky
🧵 RT @MarkHertling Wanna know what it’s like to be a battlefield commander & have a bridge blow up in your area of operations? ¤ Having had that experience, under different circumstances, it is not a good day in Moscow. ¤ A “war story” [thread] that will provide some insight into the Kerch attack. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1578745739416510466?s=20
🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien All the evidence so far does not support the idea that Putin is a crazy strategist who will use nukes as a way of lashing out in his madness, but it does support the idea that he is a truly terrible strategist who is out of his depth.
🐣 RT @osint_east Update: GreyZone now claims that a ‘reshuffling’ is taking place, or has taken place, at the #Russian MoD. ¤ This claim is reported to be linked to a *previous* decision that has been are now accelerated following the #CrimeanBridge attack/explosion. https://t.me/grey_zone/15262
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/osint_east/status/1578794391967531008?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] In connection with the attack carried out by Ukraine on the “Crimean Bridge”, the reshuffle planned for several weeks in the Ministry of Defense, which was supposed to end
next week, was to result in the resignation of Shoigu and Gerasimov.Among the replacements for the positions of Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Defense Ministry, Dyumin, Matovnikov, Yevkurov and Tsalikov were
considered. The main bet was made on the placement: Dyumin- Minister of Defense, Matovnikov – NGSh. Both personalities have good reviews from the officers of the General Staff, in particular the MTR. Tsalikov was removed from the discussion due to lack of managerial and team experience, and was also negatively recommended by the “note” on the line of state security agencies due to questions about the condition and income of both himself and his family.
🐣 RT @ EuromaidanPR Military arrests began in moscow.
A complex of “measures” directed against the military began in the russian capital.
Traffic in the center is blocked.
Units of the operational division named after Dzerzhinsky – the “elite” of the Russian Guard – entered the city.
🐣 RT @mhmck The bridges across the Kerch Strait, Dnipro River and Inhulets’ River are all damaged. The ability of the Russian invaders to supply their armies in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson is curtailed. The temporarily-occupied city of Melitopol’ is a vulnerable choke point for road and rail.
NYT: How Trump Deflected Demands for Documents, Enmeshing Aides https://tinyurl.com/j3ps2xmb ‘I would like you to do us a favor, though’
// The former president exhibited a pattern of dissembling about the material he took from the White House, creating legal risk not just for himself but also some of his lawyers.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews First reactions from top Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1578732189725782016?s=20/1 -3
[Text:] On February 24, they were afraid to stick their nose out into the street. Now they are photographed on the streets of Kyiv against the background of a poster with a burning Crimean bridge. The West applauds the Ukrainian terrorists.
Obviously, the NATO command took part in the development of this sabotage. Everything fits into the plan, which ukroreyh has been implementing since mid-summer. Attacks on warehouses, headquarters, preparation of reserves, transition to active offensive operations. Destruction of transport logistics. Their next steps are also obvious and accurately spelled out by Evgeny Poddubny. The goal is to cut our group. A blow to Kherson and beyond
What is our answer? We have given up the initiative and are now responding to … (?)
What is our plan? All this “game of humanism” is perceived as weakness and is just an excuse to mock us. For the “Western world” we are already villains. It’s better to be afraid than mocked. It’s time to answer. By all means and means. It’s time to remember to advise military school and act decisively and creatively. Not following the enemy’s scenario, but breaking their plans, delivering unexpected strikes in directions where the enemy does not wait. Ukraine must be plunged into dark times. Bridges, dams, railways, thermal power plants and other infrastructure facilities must be destroyed throughout Ukraine. There should be no administrative quarters in both Kyiv and Lvov. And not only. The reaction of the West should not go unanswered. And these are not statements from the Foreign Ministry. Not calling ambassadors and not loud statements. Specific economic measures.
Lenin was right: “The war must be waged for real, or it must not be waged at all. There can be no middle ground here.” And if someone has not yet understood this, then he should be replaced by those who clearly and clearly understand that the Fatherland is in danger. And the orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief must be carried out. Unquestionedly. And definitely.
The country must move to a military footing. ¤ All. ¤ Rate, GKO, Smersh. ¤ Everything for the front. ¤ Everything for Victory.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/1320 UTC 8 OCT/ UKR precision strike munitions have interdicted Russian HQs, as Close Air Support missions continue to target RU troop concentrations on the FEBA. 3 RU Air Defense Complexes destroyed by Suppression of Enemy Air Defense sorties.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1578734138093633536?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KERCH BRIDGE/ DAMAGE ASSESSMENT/ At 0607 Local time, an explosion occurred on a bridge pier supporting road sections of the span linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula. Preliminary BDA indicates precise explosive placement; a UKR Naval Special Warfare op cannot be ruled out.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1578722913951580168?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Well that’s rather an important logistic development
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1578630162085605376?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @dkaleniuk What a great morning! Crimean bridge is following the “Moskva”
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @vitalij_kim
💽 https://twitter.com/vitalij_kim/status/1578605524408754176?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Some possible details.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ukraine_map Crimean Bridge Explosion Details
-The Railway Bridge appears to be seriously damaged
-On the vehicle bridge both lanes of the road partially collapsed and two parts fell into the water
-Russia is setting up a ferry to transport equipment as both bridges are completely unusable
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Seems to indicate that Ukraine is not going to sit back and regroup over the winter. They really want to hit the Russian forces when they are down […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Here it is from @MBielieskov
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MBielieskov Just want to remind that in 1920 military force (RU White Army) which relied solely on Crimea as its base for operations could not sustain fighting for long given limited peninsular resource capacity. Without Crimea bridge whole RU southern front will crumble quickly and easily.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Here why this matters and shows what Ukraine is probably going to do next. There are only two rail networks to reach the southern front. The one through Crimea might now be closed (put an X on that). The only other one is the trunk line north of Melitopol (marked with black line)
🌎 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1578635794151276544?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien That Melitopol line is very close to Ukrainian lines. Here is an adapted @War_Mapper map with the rail line highlighted with a dark line. The Ukrainians cut that line at any one point, and its game over for the Russian army in the south (if the Kerch bridge is out) […]
🌎 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1578635797359898625?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien @nytimes has some early Russian and Ukrainian reactions. Ukrainians making no attempt to deny and a local Russian offician openly blaming Ukraine. Will be interesting to see is Moscow tries to blame some kind of accident as in past embarassing attacks.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1578650020840370176?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ NYT: Explosion Damages Crimea Bridge, Imperiling Russian Supply Route https://tinyurl.com/m844pmze
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Trying to decide if this is important or not. Senior adviser to Zelensky hinting that Kerch Bridge attack is a beginning. Even if the bridge is reparable, taking it out for a week or two could make a big difference if Ukraine is abt to go on the offensive.
‼️ ⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Podolyak_M Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien […] Another map with transport routes the Russians can use, and why the Kerch bridge is so important.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon [🧵] This picture shows what a disaster losing the bridge is for the Russian war effort. That leaves them with only one major land conduit to supply forces in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where they are already retreating in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. [link]
🌎 https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1578655732525764609?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Evidence that there is some kind of coordinated operation happening. Ukrainians also seem to have used HIMARS against a Russian rail depot which runs into the Melitopol line. Trying to shut all Russian rail access to the south at once?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress HIMARS strike destroys train fuel station in Russian-occupied Ilovaisk ¤ Explosions were reported at the key railway hub located 40 km from the battlefront around midnight on 8 October, acc. to local Telegram channels https://tinyurl.com/2e3a9rha
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1578651113745952769?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien It would make sense that Ukraine tries to hit the Russians hard now. The Russian army has been weakened by a summer of battering its head against a wall, and whatever strength Russian conscription will generate is months away. Ukrainian army has spent a summer getting trained…
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien has learned a great deal about how to attack the Russians, is much better equipped than earlier and seems to be in excellent morale. Why wait and let the Russians regroup? The war is trending strongly towards Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Ukraine issuing a stamp already to mark the attack on the Kerch bridge. No more plausible deniability it seems […]
⋙🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien An assessment by a Pro Russian source.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @christogrozev Couldn’t agree more with the analysis of this pro-war Kremlin-subservient war correspondent. A slap in the face like nothing before.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1578684988324982785?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The most stupid thing that can be done now is to start reassuring the country, assuring that nothing terrible has happened. Happened. Yes, the bridge has not collapsed completely, yes, it is subject to restoration, yes, other logistics chains will be involved through the liberated territories. But who will now guarantee their safety?
There are several aspects to what happened. ¤ First, the Khokhols, using typical terrorist tactics, hit the symbol. The Crimean bridge is a symbol of the fact that the peninsula is securely sewn into Mother Russia and nothing will tear it away from it. But, unlike the previous attacks on the Crimea, this informational victory does not turn out to be called language. And that’s why.
Because, secondly, the Crimean bridge in our time is primarily military logistics that supplies our group in the Kherson direction. Moreover, both the automobile branch and, to a greater extent, the railway, which, apparently, was also disabled for some time. Against the backdrop of the already not very prosperous situation near Kherson, the terrorist attack can be considered as the final touch before the storming of the regional center. And then – a trip to Zaporozhye and the Crimea. … @sashakots
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien […] Also worth noting that once again, when given the opportunity to escalate against Ukraine because of a supposed red line being crossed, the Russian government actually tries to act like everything is fine. Nothing to see here.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien In other words, they really really don’t want to escalate to tactical nukes: despite all the Putin apologists claiming he’s all ready to so that so Russia must be given major concessions.
🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger It seems hard to overstate how important and devestating the #Kerch bridge fire/collapse/errant cigarette is to the Russian war effort, will also make stealing washing machines and looting harder. . #SlavaUkraine #nafo
WaPo: Explosion hits Crimean Bridge, damaging Russian supply route to Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2rm2x22v “Putin personally opened the $4 billion bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge … in 2018 — a move intended to symbolize Russia’s ownership of Crimea”
A giant explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge, a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea, in what appeared to be a stunning blow early Saturday morning to a symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to control Ukraine. ¤ The damage to the bridge, which provided a road and rail connection from Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014, marks another serious setback to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine by disrupting a crucial supply route. ¤ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the government had no timeline for repairing the 12-mile bridge.
Putin personally opened the $4 billion bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge because it spans the Kerch Strait between the Black and Azov seas, in 2018 — a move intended to symbolize Russia’s ownership of Crimea. ¤ Russia’s invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 turned out to be a precursor to the invasion Putin launched this year, in which Crimea has been used as a major base of operations for Russian forces. Russia has now claimed to annex four other Ukrainian regions. …
🐣 RT @AlonPinkas @djrothkopf is 100% right on this. China has been grudgingly patient with Putin from the outset but the debacle is too big, the association too expensive and the potential escalation too unpalatable for Chinese interests
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS “For Russia to use nukes would be anathema to China’s need to maintain global stability so it can focus on economic issues pivotal to its own cohesion as a nation…China no more wants Russia to go nuclear in Ukraine than we do.”From @djrothkopf
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Russia and OPEC Are Driving U.S. and China Into an Unlikely Partnership https://tinyurl.com/mryn8vdv
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en One, two, threee!
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1578662916844179456?s=20/photo/1
// Putin countdown 1 2 3 ✛ 🔥
🧵 RT @ ThreshedThought Hmm. Was not expecting this. Time for a ☕️
📌 https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1578620381983711232?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThreshedThought It seems this is part of isolating Russian forces. About two or three nights ago there was a massive Ukrainian bombardment of the rail depot in Tokmak (1). It’s the only rail line that runs east-west there. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThreshedThought And one assumes we are shortly to see (3) an offensive by the Ukr to sever completely and isolate the Russian forces in Crimea and Kherson. There has been lots of chatter from Russian telegram channels about repositioning of Ukr units for this assault.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThreshedThought NB The Ukrainians aren’t going to go near the city of Melitopol I wouldn’t imagine. They only want to sever the Russia supply, not attack a city full of their own civilians. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThreshedThought But they could just sever the rail link at Tokmak (winter is coming and roads become difficult), and then strike somewhere else – anywhere on that long southern front would do to achieve the same effect.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThreshedThought How on earth is Putin going to explain this? It’s just going to supercharge the infighting in Moscow. Can’t wait to see the talk-shows on RTV!
🔥 RT @ RALee85 Another video of the explosion on the Crimean Bridge.
https://t.me/bbbreaking/137610
💽 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1578633576253657089?s=20/photo/1
// actual explosion
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture It is too early to ascertain the method of attack and the range of implications of this attack on the Kerch Bridge. It is certainly a punch in the face for Putin on his birthday. A couple of thoughts however in this short (for me) thread. 1/9
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1578617196661833733?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Osinttechnical Closer look at the collapsed road span of the Crimean bridge
💽 https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1578605334062473216?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @ northstardreamr I don’t know why this is trending yet, or on MSNBC, but HOLY SHlT
Search Kerch Bridge
12 m long
2 tier: rail & auto
$3.61B
2018 road opens
2019–2020 rail opens
Destroyed 7, Oct ’22
Putin announced RU would build a road-rail bridge on 3/19/2014, 1 day after Russia claimed Crimea
⭕ 7 Oct 2022
🌎 NYT: Maps: Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mchazftm “The twin counterstrikes shifted the momentum in the war to Ukraine after months of bloody stalemate and signaled to Western allies its capability to reclaim occupied territory”
// Pressing on two fronts, Ukraine has recaptured more than 1,200 square miles in the past two weeks
🐣 RT @olliecarroll We were not sure Ukraine had the capacity to target the bridge. They appear to be showing they do — but how is another question. Difficult to underestimate the impact of this. This hits at the heart of the Putin legitimacy and competence question. For that reason it’s dangerous.
⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll More images from Kerch bridge. Various conflicting reports at this stage. Some say the bridge was hit with a missile. Others say it was an attack by SF groups. Russian media reporting that a railway cistern carriage exploded. This could be an interesting day ahead…
¤ https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1578595663126069248?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @BBCPaulAdams A former British army explosives expert says “this is a masterpiece of clandestine sabotage.” Importance of this is hard to exaggerate. #KerchBridge
¤ https://twitter.com/BBCPaulAdams/status/1578616695043735552?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @farhanjamil1975 The #Kerch Bridge connecting #Crimea to #Russia was blown up. ¤ The bridge, which is an important representation of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, was also one of Russia’s important supply lines for the Ukraine War.
¤ https://twitter.com/farhanjamil1975/status/1578618073732763648?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar This is the bridge that connects Russia with Crimea. It was inaugurated by Putin just four years ago.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Very clear view of the vehicle portion of the bridge that collapsed and the railway portion on fire.
💽 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1578605975979708416?s=20/photo/1
🔥‼️RT @BrynnTannehill This is huge. Kerch Bridge. Appears 2x Fuel cars on the railroad side of the bridge burning. The vehicle side of the bridge has been at least partially dropped into the water. This leaves Russian occupied Crimea and Kherson logistically isolated.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 It looks like part of the bridge collapsed into the water. https://t.me/ukrnastup/64128
¤ https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1578600549385400320?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @McFaul Wow. No better evidence that Russia is losing its war in Ukraine than this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews State Duma Defense Committee’s head Andrey Kartapolov told a disappointed propagandist Vladimir Solovyov that aside from not having enough uniforms and equipment for its forces, Russia may not have enough munitions to destroy all of Ukraine’s infrastructure.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1578595525548380162?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Anastasiya: @Anastasiya1451A https://tinyurl.com/y8z2rtuj
🔥 Battlefield update ¤ 🇺🇦 army continues to accumulate forces and hit 🇷🇺 positions with artillery.
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/5n8pyjtw
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1578526602001989632?s=20
🐣 RT @mhmck Recognizing the failure of their defence elsewhere in Kherson region, the Russian fascist invaders are attempting to fortify positions in the Beryslav-Nova Kakhovka area with trenches and radar protection. ¤ –Operational Command “South”, Armed Forces of Ukraine, summary for Oct 7
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1578530501820026881?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @yes_i_do_pixels [tr] Since I see that many fellow citizens do not know about my series of works, which I called “Random Ukrainian railway station”, I am publishing it
🖼 https://twitter.com/yes_i_do_pixels/status/1578448823050915840?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “[Putin’s] definitely weakened domestically, he is definitely upset with how his army is performing in Ukraine. He was upset six months ago and he’s probably even more upset today. It has not been going well for a long, long time” – @McFaul w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1578528193979375619?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Kremlin, shifting blame for war failures, axes military commanders https://tinyurl.com/2ad74cvt So far, eight generals have been fired, and Western governments say at least another 10 have been killed in battle
🐣 RT @andersostlund But Putin will probably not leave Kherson, and absolutely not Crimea, and he will also fear making changes that could upset his pillars of power. So the 1917 scenario might be repeated, and we know what happened to the Tsar thereafter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin warns that if Russia does not make major changes soon, no mobilisation waves will help, and the country will repeat the 1917 scenario. Says that in light of this, even (temporarily) leaving Kherson, Melitopol and Crimea is not critical.
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1578401943495614465?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin: losing Beryslav will lead to a threat to Nova Kakhovka, and after Ukrainians cross the river, holding Kherson will become impossible.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1578348418518261761?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin and his bunch of sad f*cks: “If the Svatove-Kreminna are taken, we are screwed”; says Russians have no infantry in the area, and Ukrainians might soon throw them back to 24 February lines.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1578337586527211520?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Longhairleeroy Why destroy Ru economy and military for any part of Ukraine? Why spend billions to attack Ukraine in a losing effort? But why is money even the concern? Why waste so many people and your own future defense in UKr?
⋙ 🐣 📋 RT @CryptoJohn Because of the vast resources under Ukrainian ground. The country has abundant reserves of coal, iron ore, natural gas, manganese, salt, oil, graphite, sulfur, kaolin, titanium, nickel, magnesium, timber, and mercury. Which the Russians want to steal. Ukrainians stand in the way.
// Ukraine natural resources
⋙⋙ 🐣 Map of Ukrainian mineral resources. In addition, they have the largest amount of excellent soil for growing crops of any country in Europe
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1578335456625709056?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 Here is a map showing topsoil quality
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1578336914897539074?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @UKRinSWE Our #Kherson is 🇺🇦. It will never submit to the occupiers and will forever remain Ukrainian. ¤ About the ancient history of the region is in the new issue of «Ukraine Briefly» @United24media
💽 https://twitter.com/UKRinSWE/status/1578327155704205313?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian rights organization Center for Civil Liberties.
🐣 RT @BBCWillVernon Channel One defence analyst Yuri Podolyaka on Russian state TV yesterday: “The battle for Kherson” is essentially already underway, “I understand the strike will be today or tomorrow”.
// Ru milblogger
⭕ 6 Oct 2022
🐣 🖼 RT @ highbrow_nobrow “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ― The Great Gatsby (1925)
x https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1578122931187712031?s=20/photo/1
// photo of Jared and Ivanka
🐣 RT @rybar_en 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Situation on Zaporizhzhya direction as of 3 p.m. Kyiv Time on October 6, 2022. ¤ In the Zaporizhzhia direction the AFU are continuing to accumulate personnel and military equipment for an offensive.
🌎 https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1578021783529103362?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Courtney_7 Holy shit, this could be it ¤ Btw I can’t see 🇺🇦 attacking along the S bank of the reservoir if they’re centre is striking toward Melitopol, they don’t need to, aim for the land link to Crimea and cut supplies and the 🇷🇺 have to flee faster than Ukraine can advance or be cut off
The command of the AFU 65th separate mechanized brigade carried out rotation of personnel at the front line. Another convoy with armored vehicles arrived from Volnyansk station to staff the Dnieper Group of Forces.
Ukrainian formations still intend to conduct an offensive against Russian positions in the Orikhiv and Huliaipole sectors to cut the front line and possibly reach Melitopol and Berdyansk.
For the last few days UAVs of the AFU 44th Artillery Brigade have been actively searching for rear supply facilities of Russian Armed Forces, as well as their air defense systems. Pro-Ukrainian citizens of the Zaporizhzhya region have been assisting them in this effort.
The enemy command pays special attention to counter-battery warfare. There are AN/TPQ-36 and AN/TPQ-50 radars in the vicinity of Stepnohirsk and Maly Shcherbaki, which are integrated into a common control and communication network between units.
🔻Ukrainian leadership, on the wave of success in Kharkiv region and Kryvyi Rih, intends to implement a similar scenario in Zaporizhzhya: strike in several directions at the most vulnerable places, and then throw mobile groups and wedge them into the defensive lines.
Ukrainian recon groups have been actively probing the Russian defense in various parts of the front. Recon UAVs including Bayraktars have been surveilling the line of contact. First and foremost, the AFU are trying to take out anti-aircraft missile systems and ammunition depots.
A tactical landing from the right bank of the Dnieper, where AFU are entrenched, cannot be ruled out. With a full-scale assault in the Zaporizhzhia direction, a landing would open the rear of the Russian grouping in Enerhodar, and gain operational space towards Melitopol.
AFU command gave orders to set up mine barriers and establish strongholds. Ukrainian formations anticipate a potential failure of their plan and are preparing troops to defend Zaporizhzhya city in case of a counterattack by the Russian Armed Forces.
🐣 RT @SergiyKyslytsya Russia State TV: Q: How do we win? What should we do? A: “Russia is what it is, in terms of a nation. We’ll continue to be the way we are. Those who are with us will be fine and the rest we will kill them,” says Yevgueniy Satanovskiy, president of Middle East Institute of Russia
💽 https://twitter.com/SergiyKyslytsya/status/1578129936002547713?s=20/photo/1
// via @JuliaDavisNews’ Russian Media Monitor
🐣 RT @ WarintheFuture Perhaps the most effective strategic military leader of the 21st century so far. We will be studying his #leadership, relations with the President and command philosophy for decades to come. #valeriizaluzhnyi @cinc_afu
⋙ 🐣 RT @CinC_AFU [tr] A struggle continues on our land, the scale of which the world has not seen since the Second World War. We have no right to transfer this war to our children. The enemy must be destroyed here and now. And we can do it. #valeriizaluzhnyi
¤ https://twitter.com/CinC_AFU/status/1578083916296192000?s=20/photo/1
🧵📌 RT @DietmarPichler1 Because of recent wrong assumptions about “separatism”
86% of Ukrainians want to become member of the EU (rating group poll) 79% in Eastern Ukraine, 84% in Southern Ukraine.
Let’s take a look back at 2014, when Ukraine seemed far less united, and get ready for some surprises
📌 ◕ https://twitter.com/DietmarPichler1/status/1578024735623241734?s=20/photo/1
[ lots of data on Ukraine joining the EU and NATO ]
🐣 RT @ bdquinn This is the 2019 parliamentary election. Green is Zelenskyy’s party. Dark blue is the pro-Russia, but not separatist opposition. Zelenskyy ran on a pro-Europe platform. Notice how Kherson and Zaporizhzhia voted for Zelenskyy’s party?
🗳 https://twitter.com/bdquinn/status/1577843642890440705?s=20/photo/1
// 2019 Ukraine election
≣ PresidentUA, Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Since the beginning of October, more than half a thousand square kilometers have been liberated from the Russian occupiers in the Kherson region alone https://tinyurl.com/nhb8pdma address by the President of Ukraine (transcript)
🐣 RT @ RG_Horvath Vladimir Kara-Murza, a brave & tireless opponent of Putinism, has been charged with treason. ¤ Putin is exacting revenge for Kara-Murza’s instigation of the Magnitsky Acts, which made the world a less comfortable place for kleptocrats and their cronies [link Ru]
🐣 RT @Boba12340769066 Russia will stand to the last for Nova Kakhovka. Perhaps even more than for Kherson. Water to the Crimea goes through the North Crimean Canal from Tavriysk (a suburb of N. Kakhovka). They need it to control the flow of water to the Crimea
🌎 https://twitter.com/Boba12340769066/status/1578054054772703240?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Lyla_lilas The liberated village of Mykhailivka in the Kherson region – locals meet the defenders by singing the national anthem of Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/Lyla_lilas/status/1578051558230614017?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jay4_nsa This video shows the Russian POV while retreating from #Lyman. You can see the sheer chaos they faced. #Ukraine️ #Kherson #RussiaIsATerroristState #Russia
🌎 https://twitter.com/jay4_nsa/status/1578048839558242305?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @igorsushko Millions of Ukrainian lives, #Ukraine️ itself, and our own humanity is at stake this November. We must protect our country from #MAGA authoritarianism. The entire world is counting on America yet again. This is our time to shine. #MidTerms
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1578022277395795973?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer FILLING THE PIPE: Tom Marzec-Manser @tmarzecmanser reports that US Liquid Natural Gas exports now exceed Russian supplies to Europe. In the meantime, Moscow continues to sell approximately One Billion dollars worth of energy to world markets– every day.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1578042262260707328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Ukrainian forces hit 5 Russian bases in occupied Kherson overnight.
🐣 RT @DancehallHeat Remember when I said last week I think the entire #Kherson offensive was just a FEINT for the MAIN PRICE which is #Zaporizhzhia and #Melitopol well folks it’s looks like that is EXACTLY what the Ukrainian Forces have been doing. They’ve now SUCCESSFULLY PINNED DOWN #Kherson 🇺🇦🤘
⋙ 🐣 RT @DancehallHeat Which will FREE UP Majority of the ZSU forces for the upcoming and MAIN GOAL of this ENTIRE Southern Counter offensive which is to FREE UP #Zaporizhzhia & #Melitopol regions of Russian Occupiers. Russian forces in #Kherson have EFFECTIVELY been NEUTRALIZED and rendered HELPLESS💀
⋙ 🐣 RT @DancehallHeat I truly that way the Ukrainian plan ALL along and their Ultimate CHECKMATE move and it has all come together just BEAUTIFULLY. Now it’s just a matter of EXECUTING the game plan 🇺🇦💪
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Putin continues his nuclear terrorism. Claiming Ukraine’s nuclear plant (largest in Europe) is his. And now (again) recklessly launching missiles FROM THE PLANT (using a nuclear power plant as a shield) at the city of Zaporizhzhia (at civilians). IAEA arriving today for talks.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ZAPORIZHZHIA NUCLEAR PLANT/ 06 OCT/ In a dangerous escalation, RU troops have fired several surface- to-surface missiles from the interior of the nuclear plant toward the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1578024852854042624?s=20/photo/1.
🐣 RT @ MichaelDFratkin Kidnapping children is genocide.
Are they using them to shield #Crimea ?
Are they clearing them to vaporize #Kherson ?
Are we ready for the use of 1/2 kiloton nuclear weapons by #Putin ?
#UkraineRussiaWar
⋙ 🐣 RT @ MikeFie03379124 Remember this: Russian authorities in Kherson Oblast announced that all schoolchildren will be evacuated to Crimea, to “spend their Autumn holidays”. ¤ You should, you replied to it less than an hour ago.
🐣 RT @andrewsweiss Insane video. Russian-installed puppet deputy head of Kherson oblast suggests Russian Defense Minister Shoigu should have shot himself for ongoing failures on the battlefield #ItsAllGoingAccordingToPlan
⋙ 🐣 RT @temafey #kherson Z boss “Nazis will not pass, they ran into the line of defense, we did not give up Davydiv Brid and dudchany, we regrouped. Yes, there are problems in army in some direction and talantless generals and Shoigu, if he was an officer, he could have shot himself” #Ukraine️
💽 https://twitter.com/temafey/status/1577941087141896192?s=20/photo/1
🚫 🐣 RT @sotiridi #Breaking: Just in – Report that at least up to 2500-3000 #Russian soldiers have surrendered, to the troops of #Ukraine, in the #Kherson Oblast southern region.
// waiting confirmation
🐣 RT @Seveerity Infantry advancing suspected NE Kherson area through a previous battleground. Apocalyptic scenes.. Slava Ukraini! All of Ukraine will be Ukraine! #NAFO #RussiaIsATerroristState
💽 https://twitter.com/Seveerity/status/1578006455088812033?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1315 UTC 6 OCT/ Offensive operations continue. UKR units in contact at the northern urban area of Snihurivka. UKR Air defense interdicts 3 Iranian Shaheed-136 UAVs before they could strike Mykolaiv. UKR conducts 350 fire missions and 7 Close Air Support (CAS) sorties.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1578010010965397504?s=20/photo/1
‼️🐣 RT @vibecounselor UK intelligence: Ukrainian troops push front line in Kherson Oblast by 20 kilometers. ¤ Ukrainian is “making gains along the east bank of the Inhulets River and west bank of the Dnipro River,” threatening Russian groups around Nova Kakhovka, reported the U.K. Defense Ministry.
🐣 RT @ fharris2011 Russia announces it’s kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children
Speechless. ¤ This is a terrible crime
“Kherson children will spend autumn holidays in the best health resorts of Crimea
“Taking into account the numerous requests and wishes of parents” [link]
¤ https://twitter.com/fharris2011/status/1577960943639732226?s=20
🐣 RT @UATV_enm Supporters of the Russian occupiers are fleeing from temporarily occupied settlements of #Kherson and #Luhansk region before the Ukrainian offensive, – @GeneralStaffUA #StandWithUkraine️
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en 500 mobilized Russian men went off the train in Belgorod region and started a protest ¤ They complain they have no helmets, bulletproof vests, medicine, money and even food. ¤ They were only given used rifles. Cannon fodder started guessing they’re considered used as well.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1577943451332747264?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul More evidence of growing disunity among Russia’s ruling elites.
⋙ 🧵 RT @igorsushko #Prigozhin’s propagandist Alexey Slobodenyuk who’s been attacking Shoigu online arrested in #Moscow by SOBR Rosgvardia spetsnaz unit. SOBR are highly loyal to Putin. That this arrest was not made by the FSB, as you’d expect, is indicative of internal power struggle & distrust.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1577797361014669313?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko Slobodenyuk has been operating a dozen Telegram channels for Prigozhin including “Release the Kraken” (282k subscribers) & “Scanner” (150k subscribers) – an “anti-corruption” project which has openly called for murder of Lavrov, Peskov, Volodin, and others. [end]
😅 RT @francis_scarr Some pre-deployment entertainment for newly mobilised soldiers at Yekaterinburg’s military camp No32
♫ https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1577903655373737984?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @ wartranslated Day 224, October 5. Summary of #Arestovych and #Feygin daily broadcast, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak https://tinyurl.com/5casyyu2
🔥 Battlefield update: 🔥 Svatove-Kreminna: 🇺🇦 has taken pause to replenish reserves and then continue very soon
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577930442694598657?s=20
💙 🐣 RT @bioby6 This poll was conducted in the middle of the pro-Russian unrest. Look at Kherson numbers.
📊 https://twitter.com/bioby6/status/1577918965518565377?s=20/photo/1
// “in the middle of the pro-Russian unrest” ¤ So right after the annexation of Crimea
⭕ 5 Oct 2022
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin Crony Says He Drafted Russian ‘Kill List’ of Western Officials https://tinyurl.com/msx4xj8t There are “about 100-200 … directing the process from the other side. They should realize that if push comes to shove, that means the end of them, personally“
// “Those who are with us will be fine, and the rest we will kill,” said one of Vladimir Putin’s most prominent mouthpieces while promoting his idea on Russian state television.
Russia’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine is coming apart at the seams, and top Kremlin propagandists are unraveling right along with it. In the absence of good news from the front, Putin’s regime is promoting other ideas on how to deal with the self-inflicted disaster.
Prominent experts routinely featured on Kremlin-controlled state television roundly reject the mere idea of negotiations, and none of them dare suggest Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine in order to end the war. Instead, they’re doubling down—and proposing to kill leading Westerners in charge of helping Ukraine defend itself from the Russian invasion.
Appearing on the state TV show The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov Tuesday night, Yevgeny Satanovsky—one of Russia’s most prominent pro-Putin propagandists—proposed a deadly solution. Solovyov cut to the chase, asking Satanovsky: “How do we win? How should we react to the Americans? What should Russia do?”
Satanovsky, who serves as the president of Russia’s Institute of the Middle East after heading the Russian Jewish Congress, replied, “Russia is what it is, in terms of a nation. We’ll continue to be the way we are. Those who are with us will be fine, and the rest we will kill… Acting against us is a relatively small group that is in charge of this camp—they are menacing and fear nothing. Since Gorbachev’s time, once we started to play by their rules, they stopped fearing us. This is the main factor.”
Solovyov questioned whether he meant that the approximately 1.5 billion NATO-affiliated people of the world should be massacred. Satanovsky elaborated: “There aren’t 1.5 billion people directing the process from the other side, but about one to two hundred. They should realize that if push comes to shove, that means the end of them, personally… You’re aware that I know these people. I know all of them. I’ve seen them all. Only the understanding that they’re personally facing the end… only that will have an effect on those people.”
📊 Reuters: Three in four Americans say U.S. should support Ukraine despite Russian threats, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows https://tinyurl.com/kyau6xsn
// Nearly three-quarters of Americans say that the United States should continue to support Ukraine, despite Russian threats that it could use nuclear weapons to protect its territory, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday
💙 🐣 RT @bioby6 This poll was conducted in the middle of the pro-Russian unrest. Look at Kherson numbers.
📊 https://twitter.com/bioby6/status/1577918965518565377?s=20/photo/1
// “in the middle of the pro-Russian unrest” ¤ So right after the annexation of Crimea
🐣 RT @matthewamiller The quote that launched a thousand dark Brandon memes.
⋙ 😅 RT @AlexThomp POTUS: “No one fucks with a Biden”
💽 https://twitter.com/AlexThomp/status/1577745181813751810?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump What do you see?
🖼 https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1577858181174370307?s=20/photo/1
// Biden and DeSantis photo
⋙ 😅Joie de Vivre vs Ron de Brood
🐣 RT @francis_scarr Vladimir Solovyov just can’t accept that Ukraine is behind Russia’s military setbacks ¤ He claims that Kyiv is replenishing its forces with foreign mercenaries ¤ “Nato has smelt our blood… They think they can wipe their feet on us”
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1577629348504506370?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @therecount President Biden compliments Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) handling of the Hurricane Ian recovery: “What the governor has done is pretty remarkable so far. … The biggest thing the governor has done … [is] recognized there’s this thing called global warming.”
⋙ 🐣 oh, boy. if there’s one thing DeSantis could have done that’s WORSE than Chris Christie hugging Obama after Hurricane Sandy, being quoted by Biden as having accepted the reality of climate change could well be it
🐣 📊 RT @apmassaro3 This is the map for the Ukrainian independence vote in 1991. Every single region voted for independence, including Crimea. Please stop with this
🌎 https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1577849613050159109?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald It’s not just failure by the Russian invasion force here, but brilliant planning, logistics by Ukraine. Russian top-down command is failing to cope with Ukraine’s initiative-based approach. It’s autocracy vs. democracy on the battlefield – and autocracy is no match for democracy.
🐣 RT @atrupar Thank you, Brandon
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn DeSantis: We were very fortunate to have good coordination with the White House and FEMA.. We got a major disaster declaration approved by the President and we really appreciated that and that basically set off the massive mobilization that we had ready
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1577735255892451328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer HERRITAGE OF DECIET [sic]: Russian General Andrei Kartapolov is the first to comment on the elephant in Moscow’s war room. Subordinates who lie to their superiors, generals who lie to ministers, and Putin’s advisors who dare not speak truth to power. It will take decades to change.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Biz_Ukraine_Mag “We need to stop lying. We have talked about this many times. But somehow the message never reaches individual leaders.” ¤ Russian General Andrei Kartapolov addresses the culture of deceit within the Russia’s Defence Ministry that is crippling Putin’s Ukraine invasion
ScienceMag (2017j: Diverse origin of mitochondrial lineages in Iron Age Black Sea Scythians https://tinyurl.com/2bba4av6 ‘Best known for their nomadic warrior lifestyle, they are also known to have practiced farming, herding, and mastered the art of horseback riding’
// 3/7/2027; Full: The Scythians are best known from ancient Persian, Greek and Assyrian literary sources mainly for their nomadic warrior lifestyle, but they are also known to have actively practiced farming, pastoralism and may have been among the earliest peoples to master the art of horseback riding.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1577806275051651074?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer BURN RATE: Russia has become the largest weapons supplier to Ukraine. 320 tanks have been transfered to UKR by the west– an additional 421 were abandoned by RU and placed into UKR service. IFVs, 210 from the west, 445 from RU, armored vehicles, 40 from the west, and 192 from RU.
⋙ 🐣 not to mention, some of Russia’s most advanced equipment, like its latest tank, the Iranian drones, and it’s best comms equipment has been captured and turned over to the DOD and CIA for study: both for any new ideas and to design counter-measures
🧵 RT @MarkHertling Interestingly, RU State TV now claiming it will take “two months” to get recently mobilized to the front lines in Ukraine.
Great. But will they be able to do anything? No friggin’ way.
RU may be able to train the basics of soldiering in 2 months. ¤ But…. 1/5
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1577667093071273985?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling -You can’t “train” combined arms warfare, especially for large formations, in 2 months
-You can’t “teach” Generals, Colonels and new Sergeants the tenets of leadership in 2 months
-You can’t “fix” a supply system that has been plagued with corruption for years in 2 months. 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling -You can’t “coordinate” tankers, infantry, arty, intel, engineers, air forces & others for battlefield operations in 2 months
-you can’t “counter distrust” soldiers have in RU govt in 2 months
-after 60,000 dead soldiers, you can’t reverse the loss felt by RU mothers & wives 3/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling -you can’t issue equipment, uniforms, ammo, food, supplies, spare parts, that aren’t there (sanctions do work) in 2 months
-you can’t/won’t offer advice to a President who doesn’t listen (and who kills those who offer contrarian recommendations) in 2 months.
There are more…4/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling But suffice to say, any RU State TV commentator or pundit who are saying things will be better – in the winter! – in just 2 months needs to remember just one thing:
You can’t change culture in 2 months.
Doing that takes years, even decades.
Putin will keep losing. 5/5
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Tucker’s new special ‘The End of Men’ features tips from ‘Bro-Scientists’ on how to restore manhood: Raw eggs, sleep on floor, cold showers, and testicle tanning, among other things.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1577622495452184576?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 want a model of what a man should be? check out the Ukrainian armed forces: poets, ballet dancers, athletes, teachers, gay and straight, husbands sons and fathers, protectors, all putting it all on the line ~ alongside many women (20%) ¤ and read “If” by Rudyard Kipling
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1577703166640095233?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky and wife
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Tucker’s new special ‘The End of Men’ features tips from ‘Bro-Scientists’ on how to restore manhood: Raw eggs, sleep on floor, cold showers, and testicle tanning, among other things.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1577622495452184576?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ mhmck Officers have abandoned temporarily-occupied Snihurivka, according to Vitaliy Kim, Head of Mykolaiv Regional State Administration. ¤ Russian troops remaining in Snihurivka will not last long.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1577675590290784256?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS /1500 UTC 5 OCT/ UKR reported to be close to interdicting the important P-66 and H-26 HWYs. Interdiction of P-66 HWY would make RU positions at Kremenna unviable. RU Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) under UKR artillery fire. Ukrainan SOF and Partisans active.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1577679298252636160?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated President of the so-called “russia” says they never did anything bad to Ukrainians, and treated Ukrainians with the utmost respect. //➔ ⁉️
💽 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577672595360694281?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 strange ~ is this a deep fake?
🐣 📋 RT @ChuckPfarrer BURN RATE: BBC’s Russian language service reports that as much of 75% of Russia’s elite GRU [Military Intelligence] 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade were killed, wounded or missing during fighting in Lyman. They were considered among there best of RU’s SOF. https://tinyurl.com/y6e9a39e
🐣 RT @charlesbeckett If this is true, it means simultaneous Ukrainian advances/breakthroughs from the North East, along the Dnipro, and from just North of Kherson. Approx 15-20k Russian troops facing encirclement and being cut off from supplies/reinforcements. That would be catastrophic for Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll Understand Russians continuing to beat hasty retreat in Kherson. Russian military scribblers say Snihurivka, N of Kherson city, now under Ukrainian control. From conversations w Ukrainian sources I have no reason to doubt them. Will be interesting to see where we are by day end
🐣 📋 RT @Dogex100 #DONBASS. wikipedia.
Russophones make a majority of the population in Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine:[30]
Crimea 97% of the population
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast — 72%
Donetsk Oblast — 93%
Luhansk Oblast — 89%
Zaporizhia Oblast — 81%
Odessa Oblast — 85%
Kharkiv Oblast — 74%
⋙ 🐣 Language is not the same as nationality
US citizens speak English, but we’re Americans
It’s baffling to us that Russians think language should define national boundaries
Language is only a single generation deep
🐣 Pentagon: You go to war with army you have now.
Kremlin: You go to war with the army you had in 1946.
🐣 RT @rabeshimself The bridge at Nova Kakhovka (NE of Kherson) is actually a dam, and is the start of the canal that provides 85% of Crimea’s water. If the current Ukrainian advance isn’t stopped, they’re about a day away from having the tap turned off. Will be a huge strategic UA victory.
🧵 RT @Osinttechnical Now why aren’t the Russians targeting Ukrainian forces in Kherson Oblast with their new, shiny, Iranian supplied drones? Their ISR capabilities are, to put it accurately, trash. Shahed-136s rely on targeting data supplied by other platforms to conduct attacks.
📌 https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1577547427275591683?s=20
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture The Ukrainian southern campaign continues to play out. While their forces fix Russian defenders in the south west, the Ukrainians are advancing from the north. Some observations on the Kherson & Kharkiv offensives. 1/20
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1577528519671701504?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 9/ First, the Ukrainians had a broad overall operational design featuring potential operations in the south, north east – and probably elsewhere. However, launching these was not only based on time, but also about when opportunities presented themselves.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 10/ Second, the Ukrainians clearly had both dedicated and situational reserves that they had allocated for planned offensives – and for exploiting opportunities. Creating these required a good appreciation of risk, deception, operational security and logistic stockpiling.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 11/ Third, the Ukrainians have fought a superior recon battle. A senior military officer, during our Kyiv visit, confirmed the Russians were poor at tactical recon. This is an essential part of preventing surprise and recognising enemy weaknesses to exploit.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 13/ Fourth, after nearly 8 months of operations (and 8 years since Russia started this war), Ukraine has several senior commanders who are seasoned strategists and operational artists. They clearly know their enemy well, and know how to balance strategic risk & opportunity.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 14/ And these commanders, including Generals Zaluzhnyi, Syrskiy and Kovalchuk, are adept at guiding their staffs and subordinate commanders through the planning and execution of large scale military operations. This is a rare skill that few military institutions master.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 15/ Fifth, the asymmetry in command philosophies, where Russia centrally controls operations and Ukraine allows more freedom to exploit opportunities through mission command, has been telling.
⭕ 4 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @AmbJohnBolton My new article’s headline is clear– “Putin must go: Now is the time for regime change in Russia.” There is no long-term prospect for achieving America’s critical, long-standing goal of peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia.
⋙ 19fortyfive: John Bolton: Putin Must Go: Now Is The Time For Regime Change In Russia https://tinyurl.com/y3da694a “Washington’s obvious strategic objective is having Russia aligned with the West, a fit candidate for NATO, as we hoped after the Soviet Union’s breakup”
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” President Biden said of Vladimir Putin in March, a month after Russia’s second unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, in remarks the Washington Post called “the most defiant and aggressive speech about Russia by an American president since Ronald Reagan.” Biden’s staff, however, immediately backpedaled, saying, “the president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change.” Later, Biden himself dutifully resiled from regime change. …
Notwithstanding recent Kyiv’s military advances, the West still lacks a shared definition of “victory” in Ukraine. Last week, Putin “annexed” four Ukrainian oblasts, joining Crimea, “annexed” in 2014. The war grinds on, producing high Russian casualties and economic pain. Opposition to Putin is rising, and young men are fleeing the country. Of course, Kyiv’s civilian and military casualties are also high, and its physical destruction is enormous. Hoping to intimidate NATO, Moscow is again rhetorically brandishing nuclear weapons, and has sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines. Europe worries about the coming winter, and everyone worries about the durability of Europe’s resolve. No one predicts a near-term cease-fire or substantive war-ending negotiations, or how to conduct “normal” relations with Putin’s regime thereafter.
… Just to remind, the Kremlin has been doing this to us for many decades. Since we are already accused of subverting the Kremlin, why not return the favor? ¤ Obstacles and uncertainties blocking Russian regime change are substantial, but not insuperable. Defining the “change” is critical, because it must involve far more than simply replacing Putin. Among his inner circle, several potential successors would be worse. The problem is not one man, but the collective leadership constructed over the last two decades. No civilian governmental structure exists to effect change, not even a Politburo like the one that retired Nikita Khrushchev after the Cuban missile crisis. The whole regime must go.
Actually effecting regime change is doubtless the hardest problem, but it does not require foreign military forces. The key is for Russians themselves to exacerbate divisions among those with real authority, the siloviki, the “men of power.” Disagreements and animosities already exist, as in all authoritarian regimes, exploitable as dissidents set their minds to it. Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank outside the Russian White House in 1991 evidenced the fracturing of the Soviet ruling class. Once regime coherence and solidarity shatter, change is possible.
… Obviously, the desired interim outcome is not an outright military government, but a transitional authority that can hold the ring while a new constitution is formed. This stage alone is very risky business, but unavoidable given Russia’s current domestic political structures.
Outsiders can assist in many ways, including augmenting dissidents’ communications internally and with their diaspora, and significantly enhanced programs to transmit information into Russia (complicated by the long decline in US information-statecraft capabilities). Financial support, especially given Russian economic conditions, and not necessarily in large amounts, can also be critical. What Washington says publicly about regime-change should be concerted with the dissidents and other foreign allies. Keeping our actions covert may be impossible, but there is likely no need to ballyhoo them.
Washington’s obvious strategic objective is having Russia aligned with the West, a fit candidate for NATO, as we hoped after the Soviet Union’s breakup. Others may be unhappy about such a new Russia. China can hardly welcome the collapse of a regime that is turning into Beijing’s junior partner, if not an outright satellite. Chinese efforts to support Putin, even militarily, cannot be ruled out.
While Russian regime change may be daunting, America’s goal of a peaceful and secure Europe, episodically pursued goal for over a century, remains central to our national interests. This is no time to be shy.
WaPo: Ukraine hammers Russian forces into retreat on east and south fronts https://tinyurl.com/y6e9a39e ‘Kyiv continued to recapture occupied territory on the same day that Putin and his rubber-stamp parliament sought to formalize their increasingly far-fetched annexation’
Ukraine has been pushing to take back as much of its occupied territory as it can before Russia potentially sends hundreds of thousands of reinforcements to the battlefield, following a recent mobilization effort.
Ukrainian forces pushed ahead dozens of miles into the southern Kherson region, liberating towns and villages in scenes reminiscent of those from mid-September, when they swept into Kharkiv and were greeted by joyful residents who had spent many months under Russian occupation.
On Monday, the spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that “superior tank units” of Ukraine had “wedged in the depth of our defense line” near the villages of Zolota Balka and Oleksandrivka in the Kherson region. …
Regaining control of Kherson, a rich agricultural region whose capital boasts a key port where the Dnieper flows into the Black Sea, is critical for Ukraine. Its capital was the first significant city captured by Russia at the start of its invasion in late February, and its loss would be a severe setback for Russia — strategically crippling for the military and politically humiliating for Putin. ¤ As the only position the Russians hold west of the Dnieper, Kherson is a potential strategic springboard for Russia to launch any future offensive down the Black Sea coast toward the storied port city of Odessa.
The Ukrainian gains in Kherson follow the recapture over the weekend of the strategic transit hub of Lyman, in eastern Donetsk. The Ukrainians have now pushed through Lyman, apparently intent on extending their gains into Luhansk, the region where Russia has maintained its strongest grip.
“All Russian forces withdrew in poor order, suffering high casualties from artillery fire as they attempted to leave,” the Western official said of Lyman, comparing it to Kharkiv. “Then, as you recall, troops received an order to cede the territory,” the official said. “But in Lyman, we think that the Russian troops retreated despite orders to defend and remain.”
“Relinquishing this area is exactly what the Kremlin did not want to happen,” the official said. ¤ As a result, Russian control over the Luhansk region, which was mostly uncontested since June, is now also in jeopardy. …
“I am now being reproached for driving people into depression with my news,” Alexander Kots, a military correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, wrote Tuesday on his Telegram blog, which has more than 600,000 subscribers. “Well, there will be no good news in the near future neither from the Kherson front, nor from now Luhansk.” …
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced Tuesday that more than 200,000 men have been sent to the Russian armed forces in the two weeks since Putin announced the mobilization on Sept. 21. ¤ At the same time, the interior minister in neighboring Kazakhstan, Marat Akhmetzhanov, said that an equivalent number of Russians — about 200,000 — had crossed that country’s border since Sept. 21, most of them fleeing the mobilization …
🐣 RT @CasualArtyFan Apparently, Snihurivka has been abandoned by Russia, meaning the last few settlements in Mykolaiv will soon be liberated. Also, a completely new avenue of approach has been opened to Kherson city itself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CasualArtyFan Snihurivka confirmed liberated just an hour ago. It was the site of protests against the sham referendums recently held by Russia at gunpoint. Looks like the votes have been counted, and Snihurivka is Ukraine 🇺🇦
(Picture from recent protests)
¤ https://twitter.com/CasualArtyFan/status/1577423467133415424?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @general_ben Excellent by @KPisarska . @Kasparov63 said recently in Die Welt…”this is the last winter”. It’s the last winter Russia will be able to cause harm, disruption to Europe. They played their energy card too soon, Germany had time to prepare. Next Winter Europe will be more secure.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNBCMiddleEast If Europe can survive this winter, “we will be completely decoupled from Russia,” Chair of the Warsaw Security Forum @KPisarska tells CNBC’s @_HadleyGamble
⋙⋙ CNBC: Chair of the Warsaw Security Forum: If Europe can survive this winter, “we will be completely decoupled from Russia,” Chair of the Warsaw Security Forum says
💽 https://twitter.com/CNBCMiddleEast/status/1577369771901079552?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture The creativity of the global #NAFO community is endlessly wonderful. It shows how enabling the full range of diverse views – the superpower of democracies – can & must prevail over the dark suppression of authoritarians.@feralcatbath @RoadsideChicory @Meerkat422 @EJPointer
¤ https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1577483857460629504?s=20/photo/1 – 4
🐣 RT @CasualArtyFan Kherson: In the past 72 hours, Ukraine has liberated 2,000+ sq kms in Kherson alone. Ukraine is now in artillery range of the entire Russian army stranded across the river. ¤ The end is near.
🌎 https://twitter.com/CasualArtyFan/status/1577416214191943681?s=20/photo/1
// awaiting confirmation
🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar #Putin’s partial mobilization is having more significant short-term impacts on the Russian domestic context than on the war in #Ukraine, interacting with Russian battlefield failures to exacerbate fractures in the information space that confuse and undermine Putin’s narratives.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1577503148121460741?s=20
🐣 RT @ OSINT_Eye_ The latest ISW map of the #Kherson front. An absolutely outstanding day day for #Ukraine️. ¤ No less than 20 settlements liberated from Russian occupation and an advance that will bring critical Russian positions within Ukrainian artillery range.
🌎 https://twitter.com/OSINT_Eye_/status/1577509045136773121?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes yesterday and overnight increased very slightly with a few more Russian aircraft also active with weather improvements in many areas.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1577509154431766529?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 7. Russian forces continue to show signs of a significant collapse in the making. Around Luhansk and Kherson there are now significant Russian reactive manoeuvres with fractured coordination between units including their elite forces.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 8. Around Kherson there are increasing reports that several Russian units have retreated from the northeastern area after Ukrainian forces out flanked them, breaking through in several positions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 9. Russian units are now moving back in an effort to shorten their front line and improve communications, resupply and defences, but all indications are it’s failing.
🐣 RT @EliotACohen “Give in now, and anyone with nuclear weapons will learn that the secret to success in a negotiation is to froth at the mouth, roll up one’s eyes, and threaten a mushroom cloud.” My latest in @TheAtlantic on Putin’s nuclear threats.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: Russia’s Nuclear Bluster Is a Sign of Panic https://tinyurl.com/33n9r6st “Putin, one must always recall, is a former secret policeman, for whom mind games are always the first and rarely the last resort. … Putin has an opening for the biggest mind game of all”
// Yielding to Putin’s blackmail would be folly.
Putin is making these threats for several reasons. Russia is losing the war in Ukraine and losing it badly. It was routed out of Kyiv in the first phase, its forces were driven from Kharkiv oblast in the second, and its defenses—manned by ill-equipped, demoralized, and badly trained units whose positions have probably been compromised by no-retreat orders from Moscow—are being breached by Ukrainian offensives in the third. The fall of Lyman was but the first disaster; a still bigger blow will occur when the city of Kherson, which may have 10,000 or 20,000 Russian soldiers in it, falls to Ukrainian troops. In the meantime, in the words of the retired Australian general Mick Ryan, Russia’s logistics and command system are being corroded by incessant precision attacks.
Putin, one must always recall, is a former secret policeman, for whom mind games are always the first and rarely the last resort. … Putin has an opening for the biggest mind game of all. Judging by continued and credible reports that the United States and Germany, among others, are withholding some types and quantities of weapons from Ukraine, it’s working. …
To be sure, underlying the Russian threats is a stream of Russian paranoia about the West, which finds expression in all kinds of wild claims about satanism, the abolition of gender, and plans to turn Russians into soulless slaves. To the extent that this paranoia is not purely synthetic, it draws on a deep well of Russian ambivalence about the West—resentment and fear of it, a sense of inferiority toward it, and yet a deep awareness of its allure, which is why even Russia’s current leaders have sent their children west to be educated, their mistresses west to luxuriate, and their billions in loot west to be safe.
To yield to nuclear blackmail, however, would be folly. Give in now, and anyone with nuclear weapons will learn that the secret to success in a negotiation is to froth at the mouth, roll up one’s eyes, and threaten a mushroom cloud. To yield to Putin would be, as Churchill said in a different but not entirely dissimilar context, to take “but the first sip from a bitter cup.” What then to do, and to threaten to do, particularly if Russia does indeed detonate one or more nuclear weapons, either as a signal or against some Ukrainian target?
The West’s economic sanctions arsenal is far from empty. The United States, in particular, has not brought out the biggest weapon of all: unlimited secondary sanctions on anyone doing business with Russia, save under licenses granted by the U.S. Treasury. Nor has it moved yet to confiscate the roughly $300 billion Russia has in accounts held abroad. Use of nuclear weapons by Russia would justify that and more.
Militarily, American air power could take Russia’s dire situation in Ukraine and make it catastrophic. The Russian air force is a negligible factor at this point, as its astonishingly poor performance in Ukraine indicates. Western air forces understand Russian air defenses very well and have long worked on ways to dismantle them; the U.S. and its allies have plenty of air power available in Europe to do so. …
The fight in Ukraine is not, despite what some have said, an existential war for Russia. No one is claiming Russian territory, and no Ukrainian army is going to drive to Moscow. It may very well be an existential fight for Vladimir Putin as a leader and even as a human being, but that is a separate matter. …
The Ukraine war may be approaching its culminating point. All along, the prospect of Russian military collapse has been real: Many wars end with one or more spectacular defeats that dramatically change moods and atmospheres, front lines and governments. Russia’s call-ups are not a mobilization but rather a press-ganging of those too unfortunate or poorly connected to avoid service. Sending men with decrepit weapons and kit and minimal military training into ill-housed and depleted units filled with veterans suffering from post–traumatic stress is a recipe for more crack-ups and many more body bags headed back across the border. It will lead to further failure at the hands of an ever more skillful and victory-inspired Ukrainian military keen on liberation and vengeance for the pillage, torture, kidnapping, and massacre inflicted on its country. The sooner the ultimate shock is delivered and Russian forces shattered and driven from occupied land, the quicker the suffering ends, and the more swiftly the uncertain cloud of nuclear threats dissipates.
Pope John Paul II, who knew the Soviets all too well, repeated incessantly during dark times, “Be not afraid.” We should heed his counsel. And inspired by Ukrainian heroism as well as rational calculation, we should send them more and better weapons and ammunition now.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV: grim predictions that Russia is at least two months away from even attempting to advance. Also, some surprising admissions about how unprepared they were and the magnitude of the losses they’ve experienced in Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1577483753278083072?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @saintjavelin It’s all Kherson’s counteroffensive
💽 https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1577369014502055937?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SilverWolfGM 👀👇🏼🇺🇦🌻 Retreating Russians are making for the Inhulets River as the only defensive line, leaving the Ukrainians the dam/bridge at Nova Kakhovka and getting themselves into a nice big trap around Kherson city.
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The desperation to distract with insane nonsense and his derangement continues to worsen by the hour.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1577392296999256064?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
NARA lost a whole hard drive full of HIGHLY SENSITIVE information from the Clinton White House- more than 100,000 Social Security numbers and addresses, Secret Service and White House operating procedures (EXTREMELY SENSITIVE!), political records, and who knows what else. They left the hard drive in an unsecured location, and didn’t realize it was gone for months some say the data could have filled millions of books, and NARA admitted the material was “personally identifiable,” impacting thousands of White House staffers, visitors, and even one of Al Gore’s daughters. NARA actually had to offer a large (S50,000!) reward to try and get the information back. What else have they “lost*? How can Americans trust a system like this? There is no security at NARA. I want my documents back!
🐣 RT @ DefenceU A torture chamber in Pisky-Radkivski. 2 photos. A gas mask that was put on the head of a victim who was covered with a smoldering rag and buried alive. And a box of gold dental crowns. A mini Auschwitz. How many more will be found in occupied Ukraine? @serhii_bolvinov
¤ https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1577401183492313089?s=20/photo/1
TheAtlantic, Tim Alberta: Bad Losers https://tinyurl.com/2cnbm7xv “The irony is that America’s voting system is far more advanced and secure than it was just two decades ago”
// Election deniers are a threat to democracy. The midterms could be the last chance to stop them.
WaPo: Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in Mar-a-Lago search case https://tinyurl.com/2jaf2xda “The petition was filed with Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency requests from the 11th Circuit. It is likely he will seek a response from the [DOJ]”
// The former president asked the high court to put classified documents back into an independent review being conducted by a federal judge
🐣 RT @SecDef The security assistance to Ukraine 🇺🇦 continues. ¤ Today’s package is tailored to meet Ukraine’s immediate needs, providing more of the systems and equipment the Ukrainians have been using so effectively on the battlefield.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1577374946950529060?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 4, 2022
$625 Million in Security Assistance for Ukraine The Department of Defense (DoD) announces the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance valued at up to $625 million. Capabilities in this package include:
● Four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and associated ammunition;
● 16 155mm Howitzers
● 75.000 155mm artillery rounds;
● 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
● 1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems;
● 16 105mm Howitzers;
● 30,000 120mm mortar rounds;
● 200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles;
● 200.000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
● Obstacle emplacement equipment;
● Claymore antipersonnel munitions.
🐣 RT @jnelsonintc Thermopylae, Agincourt, Kherson. #Legendary #ArtOfWar
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Top pro-Kremlin propagandist is despondent because of Russia’s defeats in Ukraine. He refuses to be cheered up even by Elon Musk’s insertion into the timeline of propaganda. Solovyov advocates for the restoration of the death penalty, because people refuse to shoot themselves.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1577369748517568522?s=20/photo/1
NewsNation: NATO warns of missing Russian nuclear submarine https://tinyurl.com/ejv4fywu “However, U.S. officials monitoring the situation say they have not seen Russia prepare any of its forces for a nuclear strike”
🐣 RT @StevanBolton A few weeks ago, I found a couple good threads on why the Russians would find Svatove indefensible. The same analysts pointed out that Starobilsk is in the same boat: it too is situated in a north-south valley. After it falls, there’s nothing left till the eastern border w/Russia
🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin is worried about Svatove, says the highway between it and Rubizhne might have already been penetrated. This puts at risk the garrisons of both Svatove, and Rubizhne-Kreminna. https://t.me/strelkovii/3431
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577211443845685248?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Fierce fighting continued all day yesterday on the Kherson frontline. The enemy directed their main efforts to the Beryslav direction, advancing in the Dudchany area (most of it was taken by the enemy, our troops retreated, blowing up the reservoir dam) and Davydov Brod, where the situation for our units is also constantly deteriorating. The enemy has superiority in
everything, even using aviation.In the Svatove direction of the Luhansk frontline (from Siversky Donets river to the former border with the Russian Federation), our troops continued retreating. The situation is not completely clear, but there is unverified information that the enemy has already managed to cut the Rubizhne-Svatove highway and, with his advanced groups, is threatening to reach the rear of the Svatove garrison and encircle Kreminna-Rubizhne.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Good lord, Russian front is apparently collapsing in the south. ¤ I just can’t keep up with reports on newly-liberated towns coming every other hour.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Witness a steady diet of upside-down propaganda fed to the Russians: head of RT claims the West is supposedly trying to “colonize & enslave” Russia and other countries. Without a hint of awareness, she unwittingly describes what Russia is doing to Ukraine and why Ukraine resists.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1577332269232136195?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @gnucontrol this is russia
💽 https://twitter.com/gnucontrol/status/1553013653686943744?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/2215 UTC 4 OCT/ UKR has expanded positions on the E bank of the Oskil River. RU Lines of Communication and Supply (LOCS) are now under bombardment. P-66 & H-26 HWYs being interdicted by UAV controlled precision strike artillery.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1577420110796492800?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/ FLASH TRAFFIC/1030 UTC 4 OCT/ At 1000 UTC, developing reports indicate that RU forces have fallen back to shorten their lines S of Novohrednjeve. Partisan reports indicate that RU units are establishing a new defensive line in the vicinity of Mylove.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1577241002439774208?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ATTSELVAGGIA [tr] Ukraine has offered the US control over military targets to receive ATACMS, this is how it wants to convince the Biden administration that they will not use them on Russia. F: 24 канал #Russia #news #4Ottobre #Kherson #Donetsk #Putin #Lyman
🐣 RT @maxseddon An amazing piece of analysis on the top Russian politics telegram channel: annexing Crimea and starting a disastrous war with Ukraine was all part of a trap set by “the masters of strategic construction”! Russia was tricked! And now there’s no way out! [link (Ru)]
⋙ 🐣 RT @C_Norder 32m Translation: [Not posted as a thread, so it’s jumbled]
Geopolitical confrontation: expert analysis. Alexander Zhilin, head of the Center for the Study of Public Applied Problems of National Security, retired colonel, author of the Anatomy of Events telegram channel, talks about the background of the “Ukrainian trap”.
31m
“Krymnash” was the first stage of the “Ukrainian trap” designed for us. The old principle worked: give a little so that you can get everything later. Now it’s already obvious. ¤ I look at everything that is happening in Ukraine and clearly see that we have been set up with a classi [sic]31m
strategic trap. It was obvious, but we, nevertheless, climbed into it ourselves. Why did emotions win over reason? We were strongly motivated to do this back in 2014. ¤ The essence of the “Ukrainian trap” is simple.31m
Russian troops entered Ukraine, fully sharing this illusion: an easy walk ahead and flowers on the armor. They even brought dress uniforms for the forthcoming parade in Kyiv. This is how not very far-sighted bosses train personnel.? All the expert assessments of the Western military leaked to the media kept repeating: Ukraine will not last even a week against Russia. We picked up this misinformation every time and through our media convinced ourselves of this nonsense.
30m
But it was not there. Our fighters were met with fierce fire and Jevelins. Then we were allowed to get bogged down in viscous battles, and then quickly formed a pro-Ukrainian coalition of 54 leading economically developed countries. Enormous military and economic aid went to Ukr.30m
The balance of forces and resources changes daily. The potential of Ukraine due to the supply of high-tech and high-precision weapons is growing, and ours, due to natural losses at the front, sparingly speaking, is not increasing.30m
We are replacing the retired most trained soldiers with mobilized, poorly motivated, and sometimes even demotivated by forced mobilization, practically untrained civilians.
As a result, we have constructed a situation where it is difficult to win,28m
The work done could not but affect the behavior of the fighters on the battlefield. Being pitted, both armies fight furiously. To death! ¤ As a result, an ideal situation has developed for a third party – a strategic planner, when it is he who largely controls the development of [sic]? the situation on the fields of military and political battles and can keep the fire burning at his discretion, throwing logs with support from one side or the other
27m
There is no power way out of this trap. It seems that the Kremlin has already understood this. Hence Kyiv’s insistent invitations to negotiations. ¤ But will the masters of strategic design allow the parties to agree, if the main levers of influence on the situation are in their hands?
🐣 RT @Steve_Sailer There is a lot of talk on Twitter about Ukraine attacking northeast from Lyman toward Svatove and the like. But one thing to keep in mind is that Ukraine’s northeast corner is fairly empty, with only a few cities of any size. The real population centers are southeast of Lyman:
🌎 https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1577169425077178369?s=20/photo/1
// Ukraine population density
RT @GuyPlopsky “The Pentagon’s international affairs chief said Monday that Russia’s new losses in the strategic southern Kherson region are about to spiral into a “major defeat” that would give Ukraine a defensive position amid “hot fighting” expected this winter.”
⋙ DefenseNews: Russian forces poised for ‘major defeat’ in Kherson, says DoD official https://tinyurl.com/4bdyxez2
⭕ 3 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @LvivJournal A group of ruzZian POWs left behind by their commanders. You can see how scared they are (they were properly [sic] fed the narrative of “Ukrainians are merciless Nazis”). Legion “Svoboda Rossii” (russians fighting for Ukraine) should employ them. #lviv #kherson #luhansk #Donetsk
💽 https://twitter.com/LvivJournal/status/1577031332735070209?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Russia’s Small Nuclear Arms: A Risky Option for Putin and Ukraine Alike https://tinyurl.com/5n8hedyk “Of late, Moscow has used its tactical arsenal as a backdrop for threats, bullying and bluster”
// Davy Crockett system; President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has 2,000 small nuclear weapons, but their utility on the battlefield may not be worth the longer-term costs.
🐣 RT @ukraine_map Ukraine is proposing to coordinate with USA 🇺🇸 on all potential targets for ATACMS against Russian Forces in Ukraine 🇺🇦 ¤ If an agreement is reached, then Ukraine will be given ATACMS only to be used on targets that both would sides agree on in advance
KyivPost: Thousands of Russian Troops Contact Ukraine’s “Surrender Hotline” https://tinyurl.com/bdh3aad7 “Russian soldiers calling the hotline are informed of the process for surrendering and reassured they will be treated according to the Geneva Convention”
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone President Zelensky: “Among the dead (Russians) we already see those taken just a week or two ago. People were not trained for combat, they have no experience to fight in such a war. But the Russian command needs people – any kind – to replace the dead.
⋙ PresidentUa: Ukraine appreciates people, saves people – these are fundamental rules for our state – address by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy https://tinyurl.com/bdz6ca56
🧵 RT @JamesSurowiecki New study of almost 600,000 deaths in Ohio and Florida shows that registered Republicans had far higher excess-death rates than registered Democrats during the pandemic, with almost all of the gap coming after vaccines were available.
📌 https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1576916442229837824?s=20
★ ⋙ NBER, J Wallace et al [Yale] (Sep): Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic https://tinyurl.com/4v9wpv5w Post-vacc avail, excess deaths were 153% higher for GOP than Dems; looked at party registration data [FL & OH]
// Working paper, September; looked at party registration; 76% difference after vaccinations became available
ABSTRACT
Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat- leaning counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality data from 2018 to 2021.We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states.
Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats. Post- vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available.
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukrainian SITREP 1. Russian VKS air sorties continue to be operating at all time lows. The few missile strikes yesterday and overnight were mostly land launched with few aircraft operating. Improved weather conditions in the next 24hrs may see an increase again.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1577152804736536577?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 6. We still anticipate further large areas of ground, towns and cities will fall quickly back to Ukraine as elements of the Russian frontlines collapse with morale and severe resupply issues.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 8. The Kremlin has changed another key Commander in Ukraine with Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov redeployed from Syria to be appointed as the new commander of the Western Military District, replacing Zhuravlev.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 9. There are reports of a train usually part of Russias 12th directorate MOD responsible for nuclear weapons logistics/manoeuvres spotted heading towards Ukraine from central Russia, but little evidence this is as yet any indication of any escalation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 10. However, there are also reports and concerns that the Russian K-329 Belgorod Nuclear Submarine with significant Nuclear strike capabilities including Poseidon AUVs has left its White Sea base.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 11. In addition there are reports that NATO has disseminated an urgent intelligence report to all of its members and allies with an alert that Russia is expected to test a nuclear-capable Poseidon AUV, possibly in the Black Sea.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 12. These Russian Poseidon AUVs can deliver nuclear warheads originally designed for the destruction of coastal infrastructure as a second nuclear strike option.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks 13. USAF, RAF and other NATO ISR over the region has not increased on ADS-B or MLAT. Although yesterday we reported a slight reduction in active Naval activity in the Black Sea with some vessels returned to port.
🐣 RT @JoeBlowIdunno12 There’s no Russian chess game here. Kherson is gone given the logistical/tactical situation at the moment. It’s a highly-motivated army backed by NATO & US intel vs a horribly corrupt invading army of demoralized draftees. No matter the outcome, 🇷🇺 military image is shattered.
🐣 RT @Euromaidan Press 🇺🇦forces are succeeding in achieving strategic goals – conducting counteroffensive actions in Kharkiv, Donbas & Kherson directions – Pentagon ¤ Also, the capture of Lyman will significantly affect🇷🇺 ability to move & secure its forces on the front lines. [link]
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Back in they day, misspelling “potato” would end your campaign. Now it takes domestic violence, secret abortions, and your family to call you out on social media. And even that’s not a guarantee.
// re: posts by @ChristianWalk1r, son of Hershel Walker
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @ChristianWalk1r I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. ¤ You’re not a “family man” when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristianWalk1r I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some “moral, Christian, upright man.” You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling A [thread] on recent media stories about US “planning reaction to Putin’s potential use of nuclear weapons.” ¤ While Americans may have concerns about how Ukrainian successes may cause Putin to do more dumb things (use nukes), the US does extensive planning on these (& other) issues. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1577023354263203841?s=20
WaPo: Trump lawyer Alex Cannon refused Trump’s request in February to say all documents were returned https://tinyurl.com/2p87tubj Cannon’s refusal “soured his relationship with Trump,” but Trump found two other lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, to lie for him
// After initial return of 15 boxes, attorney Alex Cannon thought there might be more records at Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the matter said
Cannon’s refusal to declare everything had been returned soured his relationship with Trump, people familiar with the matter said. Cannon, who had worked for the Trump Organization since 2015, was soon cut out of the documents-related discussions, some of the people said, as Trump relied on more pugilistic advisers.
In responding to the May subpoena, other aides to Trump agreed to assert all documents being sought had been returned. Evan Corcoran, who replaced Cannon, told the Justice Department he was handing over all the relevant materials, people familiar with the matter have said. Christina Bobb, another Trump lawyer, signed a document saying she had been advised that Trump’s team had given over all relevant documents after a diligent search.
WaPo: US: Oath Keepers, Rhodes attacked ‘bedrock of democracy’ on Jan. 6 https://tinyurl.com/yc48kz4w US: “Rhodes and four co-defendants that day staged an ‘arsenal’ of firearms in nearby Virginia and several forcibly breached the Capitol with a mob [to thwart] the will of US voters“
// Rhodes’s lawyer decries ‘government overreach,’ saying far-right group only brought arms in case Trump called on militia to help overturn 2020 election
// Full: Rhodes and four co-defendants that day staged an “arsenal” of firearms in nearby Virginia and several forcibly breached the Capitol with a mob to prevent Congress from confirming President Biden’s 2020 election victory, thwarting the will of U.S. voters and elected representatives, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said during opening statements in federal court.
NYT: Three Huge Supreme Court Cases That Could Change America https://tinyurl.com/crsypczb The “independent state legislature theory,” which holds that “state legislatures have the final say over the rules of federal elections,” is an open question in the gerrymandering case
// The justices will soon hear major cases on voting rights, affirmative action and partisan gerrymandering. Here’s a preview.
⋙ 🐣 If SCOTUS rules according to the most literal reading of the Constitution in the gerrymandering case, it would allow a majority to permanently ensconce itself as impossible to vote out, much like in Wisconsin, even if they get fewer votes
USAToday: Ukrainian troops overrun Russian forces, break through lines in recently annexed Kherson https://tinyurl.com/2a33ptaf Russian Defense Ministry spokesman: [W]ith superior tank units … the enemy managed to penetrate into the depths of our defense”
// Full: Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in his daily briefing that “with superior tank units … the enemy managed to penetrate into the depths of our defense.”
🐣 RT @EdmapsCom #Map: The Russian invasion of #Ukraine – Territorial #control in Eastern Ukraine as of October 4, 2022; #war #Russia #Putin #Zelensky #Lyman #Kreminna #Bakhmut #Russianarmy #Ukrainianarmy (High-res version: https://tinyurl.com/3zrez5fj)
🌎 https://twitter.com/EdmapsCom/status/1577089806009761792?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FreeCiviliansUA ⚡️Ukrainian’s Northern Front Attack: Kreminna-Svatove P-66 highway has come under the control of Ukrainian forces. It will be Highway to Hell for the Russians ¤ No one stops Ukrainians in Donbas🇺🇦
https://donorbox.org/freearmyukraine
#WARINUKRAINE #UKRAINEWAR #UKRAINERUSSIAWAR #UKRAINE
🌎 https://twitter.com/FreeCiviliansUA/status/1577025230450479104?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck The Armed Forces of Ukraine have taken control of Dudchany in Beryslav district of Kherson region. ¤ The position of the Russian fascists on the right bank of the Dnipro River is beyond saving for the invaders.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1577035314291359745?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. 3 Oct. Ukrainian forces on the verge of unhinging the entire Russian Army in the east. If they can also cut off and capture the 15,000 troops in the Kherson pocket…. Putin’s criminal invasion may come crashing down.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1576980969122594817?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @anders_aslund A few thoughts on the war in Ukraine:
1. Ukraine had a big breakthrough in Kharkiv oblast on September 10. Lyman might indicate a smaller breakthrough, but it caught GRU spetsnazy.
2. Another breakthrough seems to be under way north of Nova Kakhovka, which could open Kherson.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 3. Ukraine said that September-October would be “hot”. They are, but then 4 months of winter & 2 months of mud follow. Ukraine needs a major breakthrough now, preferably cutting off the land bridge to Crimea. If not, the 6 months of winter & mud might become a stalemate.
⋙⋙ 🐣 From Nova Kakhovka, Ukr will control the water supply to Crimea, a major bargaining chip
⋙⋙ 🐣 There are really just a couple of roads and railroads connecting Kherson Oblast to Crimea, linked by just a few bridges. It’s the eastmost connection that is most vulnerable. Several explosions have already occurred there, likely sabotage:
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1577082100649336832?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 4. The next drama might be financial. As Niall Ferguson has pointed out, Ukraine can’t manage without more EU grant financing. Ukraine needs $5bn/month. The US gives $1.5bn/month in grants, but the EU has given a minimum & as credits. Shape up, EU!
⋙⋙ Bloomberg: Ukraine’s Army Is Winning But Its Economy Is Losing https://tinyurl.com/mr48ddkz
// The US has been generous with military and financial aid, the Europeans less so. But both must step up the effort to keep Kyiv fighting.
🐣 Maybe @ElonMusk should cede #SpaceX to @NASA in exchange for a lifetime supply of #Twinkies
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1577067943648989184?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian source says that the Russian forces are retreating from the occupied northeast of the Kherson area. https://t.me/zastavnyii/1715
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577025997832355840?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Unfortunately, judging from a lot reports, in the Kherson region, the Izyum-Kupyansk catastrophe may well repeat, on one scale or another. Due to communication problems, many of our units are forced to retreat so as not to be surrounded by the enemy. From the northeast, the enemy presses with a large and well-coordinated number of armored vehicles with skillful support of radio suppression. Due to logistical problems and unprepared reserves, the prompt delivery of reinforcements is impossible. For a combination of reasons, I am inclined to assume that in the coming days our troops will be forced to retreat from the north of the Kherson region to the line in Berislav.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /1330 UTC 3 OCT/ The UKR breakthrough on the T-04-03 is confirmed to have reached Dudchny. RU units are now repositioning to meet this thrust. UKR will be quick to take advantage of the withdrawal of RU defenders at any point along the contact line.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1576929045962379264?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FreeUkraine91 NO DOOM. NO PANIC.
⋙ Reuters: Patriarch Kirill, head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, tests positive for COVID https://tinyurl.com/2cc7rvmj
// Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has tested positive for COVID-19, the Church’s press service said on Friday.
🐣 📊 RT @RALee85 Good indication of how mobilization brought the war home for many Russians.
◕ https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1576840566486183938?s=20/photo/1
// Putin Approval; public sentiment
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mike_Eckel new polling from state-funded FOM, conducted Sept. 23-25 (after the mobilization order) and published Sept. 30. Approval/trust in Putin slips [slightly: 5%, from 80% to 75%], and percentage of Russians who say they are “anxious/worried/alarmed” jumps. [35% ➔ 69%]
◕ https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1576838543908818944?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @bougakov Moscow-based sociologist here. Important caveat is that govt-affiliated pollsters have a huge selection bias towards loyalists. Phone-based and at home interviews are perceived as “loyalty tests” and liberal minded Russians avoid participating. The change in trend is very telling
⋙⋙ 🐣 “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Great feed to follow the OathKeepers trial starting today, from NPR’s superb Carrie Johnson.
💙 ⋙ ⚖️ 🧵 RT @johnson_carrie In place at the federal courthouse as we prepare for opening statements in the seditious conspiracy trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and 4 other defendants. All told, the openings could last about four hours, the lawyers told U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last week.
📌 https://twitter.com/johnson_carrie/status/1576922275341012992?s=20
🐣 RT @McFaul First Kadyrov & Prigozhin lambast Russia’s top generals, then the tv propogandists talk about a 30 year war after industrial restructuring, and now 30 [3] dozen deputies don’t show up for the biggest vote of their life — all signs that consensus around this failing war is crumbling
⋙ 🐣 RT @ niktwick The Duma has 450 members, so between 37 and 41 did not bother to vote
🐣 RT @duty2warn “The actual cause of SCOTUS’ historic unpopularity is no secret. Over the past several years, the court has been transformed into a judicial arm of the Republican Party.”—NYT Editorial Board
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn The Roberts Court doctrine: ¤ When you’re shameless you no longer need to worry about the appearance of impropriety. When you have six votes and lifetime tenure, you can trample the Constitution and what are the suckers going to do about it? Ha, ha. SUCKERS! We’re in control now.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “Do we want a senator who believes in democracy…Do we want a senator who tells the truth and is consistent in his core beliefs?…I am both an Ohioan and former legislative director for Republican Rob Portman. I strongly support Democrat Tim Ryan.”
⋙ ColumbusDispatch, Jonathan Petuchowski: Ex-Portman director: Elect Tim Ryan. Deceitful Vance follows Trump’s hate-mongering steps https://tinyurl.com/2p4444kw
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️Such a strange glowing cloud was observed by the residents of the south at night ¤ The fact that it was visible from the Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions is reported by local publications. ¤ 👉 Follow @Flash_news_ua
¤ https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1576812564649951233?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 angels or the ufo’s that have shown up to intervene to prevent nuclear explosions? ~ documented in credible media ~ google it ¤ I was kidding about the angels but the ufo thing has been documented ¤ History[.]com: https://tinyurl.com/453vmm44
🐣 Ukraine has the most good/best quality soil in Europe
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1576910245678305280?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @olliecarroll I’m told the collapse of Russian lines in ne Kherson is a story that is still in progress. Understand Ukraine has moved south by at least 20km since yesterday. “It could be even more interesting by the morning,” a recon soldier tells me.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Even Girkin is getting nervous re. Oskil and Svatove. Admits Russians will only be able to defend for weeks and there’s no guarantee anything will change later. https://t.me/strelkovii/3426
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1576894035306090496?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue pushing our front along the Oskil reservoir towards Svatove. Information was received that the enemy today occupied the urban settlement of Borovaya and the village of Shiykovka. Our troops are withdrawing without a fight, which is caused by the impossibility of successfully defending this vast wooded area with the available forces.
I remind you that in July and August I wrote “let’s wait for October” and I was asked (including on this page): “what do you mean?” So, that’s exactly what I meant. And what will happen further in October. The lost months cannot be returned. A few more weeks will pass, during which we will only be able to defend ourselves and “reduce” in controlled territories, while the reserves being collected now (as part of the mobilisation) will not be read for use. And God forbid that the enemy manages to fully realise the significant advantage that he has now.
🐣 RT @UKRinOSCE There’s wide accepted wisdom, crackdown on human rights&democratic institutions proceeds into aggression. This rule works the other way around. Lost war of aggression gives hope for internal changes. Solution to russian crisis is needed. This’s key for lasting peace in Europe
⋙ 🐣 RT @ukraine_world History shows that a military defeat can lead to democratic reforms in Russia. Why? Watch in our video explainer.
💽 https://twitter.com/UKRinOSCE/status/1576855412129009664?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ UkraineNowMedia 🗣️U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Ukraine was “making progress” in the Kherson region as it continues to resist the Russian invasion, adding that there have been “certain changes in the dynamics of hostilities.”
🐣 RT @TWMCLtd [Tim White] #Russia’s invaders and collaborators in #Kherson are really worried. The “Deputy Head” has been forced to go and record a video message near the Antonivskyi bridge to tell everyone not to panic! ¤ Kirill Stremousov though admits #Ukraine has broken through one part of the region. 💽 [Ru]
🐣 RT @sarahrainsford “And who are we up against?” Solovyov asks, concluding his morose monologue ¤ I’m expecting him to say Nato/the ‘collective West’ etc ¤ But no ¤ “The purest form of Satanism”
⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr Quite a change of tone from Vladimir Solovyov last night ¤ “I’d really like us to attack Kyiv and take it tomorrow, but I’m aware that the partial mobilisation will take time… For a certain period of time, things won’t be easy for us. We shouldn’t be expecting good news”
💽 https://twitter.com/sarahrainsford/status/1576845332746735617?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChrisO_wiki A few days ago, I posted a list of items that newly mobilised Russian troops are being told they need to buy for themselves (including “optional” bulletproof vests and helmets). I commented: “The sellers are going to be gouging the buyers for every ruble they can get.” Well:
¤ https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1576675088321064960?s=20/photo/1
// bullet-proof vest 7K rbl to 135K rbl ➔ 1829% increase
🧵 2014 History: RT @MBielieskov People are fascinated with how skilful UA Forces proved in manoeuvre warfare trying to envelop/cut enemy GLOCs with deep flanking strikes saving cities/lives. This is huge contrast with “RU way of warfare” with slow frontal assaults and almost complete destruction of settlements. [GLOC=ground line of communication]
📌 https://twitter.com/MBielieskov/status/1576818888259817473?s=20.
🐣 RT @AdelinaSfishta [tr.] situation in Ukraine
Yesterday was full of surprises
1. On the Kherson front in the south, the Russian defense was split from the north. The Ukrainian army reached Beryslav. The Russian army did not withdraw, it was surrounded.
2. In the north, on the Luhansk front; The Ukrainian army, attacking Kreminna and Svatova, is advancing successfully.
The Russian regime is devastated
🌎 https://twitter.com/AdelinaSfishta/status/1576820875965640705?s=20/photo/1 -2
// ? I don’t think Ukr AF is in Beryslav
🚫 🐣 RT @bythesfbay Something weird is going on here. It was observed over Kherson, Nikolayev and Dnepropetrovsk regions at night in 🇺🇦 for about two hours.
⋙ 🐣 RT @itpalpalich Что-то странное тут происходит 🤔
💽 https://twitter.com/bythesfbay/status/1576819118753214465?s=20/photo/1
// tr: “Something strange is going on here”
⋙⋙ 🐣 bioweapon? dirty bomb?
// unverified
🐣 📋 RT @ BHeimpel #Kherson Oblast has had a Population of 1.000.000 – and the total number of votes is 664 votes? 🤣🤣👍 #Ukraine #Referendum #russia
¤ https://twitter.com/BHeimpel/status/1576813897868521472?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 2 Oct 2022
🧵 RT @fa_burkhardt I have just read the ruling of Russia’s Constitutional Court approving the annexation treaties of “DNR”/”LNR”, Kherson & Zaporizhzhia. The justification is bonkers, will leave it to lawyers to unpack. But the ruling is interesting because it discloses details of the “treaties.”
📌 https://twitter.com/fa_burkhardt/status/1576550298100781056?s=20
🐣 RT @ MeetThePress EXCLUSIVE: NATO Secretary-General @jensstoltenberg says the best way to respond to Russia’s annexation of territory is to “support Ukraine.”
“That’s the best way to ensure that [Ukraine can liberate] these territories — they are part of Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1576601926606749698?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AP The heads of nine European NATO members on Sunday issued a joint statement backing a path to membership for Ukraine in the U.S.-led security alliance, and called on all 30 NATO nations to ramp up military aid for Kyiv.
⋙ AP: 9 NATO members urge support for Ukraine after annexation https://tinyurl.com/yckzsmpc
🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent⚡️ISW: Russian information space fundamentally changes after defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, Lyman.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent The Institute for the Study of War said in its latest assessment that Russia’s loss of Donetsk Oblast’s Lyman, combined with the Kremlin’s failure to conduct partial mobilization effectively is “fundamentally changing the Russian information space.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Experts say that the Kremlin-sponsored media and milbloggers are criticizing the bureaucratic failures of the partial mobilization and attributing the defeat around Lyman and Kharkiv Oblast to🇷🇺military failures to properly supply and reinforce Russian forces in northern Donbas.
🐣 RT @ RadioFreeTom It’s a small thing given the stakes of this war, but yeah, this should be the final nail in the coffin of academic realism, but it won’t be, even though (if we all get through this) you could write a hundred books about how this is the case that should have ended that theory.
⋙ 🐣 RT @earlducaine The biggest mistake of the ‘realist’ analysis re: the Ukraine war is that it presupposes that countries behave rationally. But what Putin was attempting was not just amoral, it was really, really stupid.
🐣 RT @McFaul Russians, go home. Leave Ukraine. Save yourselves. Don’t die in vein in a senseless war — a vanity project of one man. There will be no glory for you or your family in this war. For your mom and your children, go home. Live, even in jail. Putin will not rule Russian forever.
🐣 RT @ 60Minutes After seeing photos taken across the U.S., showing American support for Ukraine, First Lady Zelenska tells 60 Minutes, “I can really feel the support… It seems to me that normal people understand what evil is and that the attacker is evil.” https://cbsn.ws/3CnOTdD
⋙ 60Minutes: Olena Zelenska reacts to photos of American support for Ukraine
Watch 60 Minutes Sundays on @CBS, or anytime on @paramountplus and https://cbsn.ws/34D1mLY
🐣 RT @tomiahonen [Putin:] Presidential Declaration:
I hereby annex Lyman
This is also the annexation of Izyum, Kyiv & Odesa
I am reannexing Snake Island & declare it an amusement park
I designate the Moskva heretoforth a submarine of the Russian Navy
I also annex Finland, Estonia, Alaska and the moon
🧵 RT @RadioFreeTom The war in #Ukraine is not just about Ukraine: Putin has made it clear that he’s at war with the entire international order created after 1945. After failing in a stupid gamble on imperial conquest, he’s trying to raise the stakes and pit #Russia against the world. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1576727287290019842?s=20
He thinks that by doing so, he’s showing resolve. What he’s actually doing is admitting that he has screwed up so colossally that his only way out is to challenge the entire global system of cooperation that has thwarted him. /2
His attempts to change borders by force were bad enough. But now he’s trying to absorb a neighbor, and he’s decided to declare that the real source of his problems is the way the modern system of international security works. This escalation is his doing, and his alone. /3
There are many Russians – and I am certain, many Russian elites – who want Russia to live in peace with the rest of the world. Only Putin and his cronies are the ones saying that they have no such intentions. He’s now threatening the world and angry the world isn’t caving. /4
He’s lost in Ukraine and the failures are going to keep coming. All of this was set in motion by him, and it’s within his power to stop it all. But the rest of the world is not to blame for refusing to bend to blackmail. We’ve seen that movie already. /5x
🐣 RT @russiansupr Chechen volunteer explains to people why there are no massive uprisings in Russian occupied territories not only in Ukraine but in the Caucasus. #RussiaTerroristState #RussiaUkraineWar
1. 💽 https://twitter.com/russiansupr/status/1576445104805801985?s=20/photo/1
2. 💽 https://twitter.com/russiansupr/status/1576462688066351104?s=20/photo/1
// terrorism on the people by the FSB
🐣 RT @McFaul There’s a lot of bad news in the world today. Iranians and Ukrainians, however, give me hope. They are bending the long arc of history towards justice, freedom, and democracy. I am in awe of their bravery and convictions.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Good lord, they are really having a nightmare day, when even one of the most upbeat of the propagandists tells about a serious operational crisis. https://t.me/boris_rozhin/65913
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1576663984916553729?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] At 23:00, there is a development of a serious operational crisis in the Nikopol direction. In the event of the current trends developing further, the issue of control of communications in the Kryviy Rih direction may become acute, with a repetition of the already familiar reasons that forced the withdrawal from Izyum and Krasny Liman. Let’s see what the [Russian] command in the direction will be able to do in the next 24 hours to stop the consequences of the AFU offensive near Zolotoya Balka. Now there is an intensive work of aviation and artillery on the enemy strike force.
🐣 RT @McFaul Sablin admits that second-rate weapons from the West are better than Russia’s best weapons. He also admits that Russia needs 30 years to win. These are words those losing, not winning. He also shows his complete ignorance of Ukrainian society. I wonder if Putin is watching?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Also in this clip: Dmitry Sablin claims the West occupied Russia in the 1990s and caused apartment bombings [linked to Putin’s rise to power]. You might also be surprised to learn that Belarus is a part of Russia, Belarusian guest was certainly in shock.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Tonight on Russian state TV: the mood is grim, look at their faces. Dmitry Sablin, Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee, admits that Russia desperately needs “to stop and regroup” and is experiencing all sorts of shortages, compared to Ukraine that has it all —and then some.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1576796427409559558?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 ooooo, the West is responsible for Putin’s rise?
stay clear of 🪟 pootsie (and 🫖)
🧵 RT @igorsushko Large number of Russian GRU Spetsnaz operators were killed in Lyman. Unlike the VDV paratroopers etc., these are in fact the elite special forces of Russia. Spread the word – mobilized conscripts should know this & be even more terrified. Good reason for mutiny.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1576775268684812288?s=20
🧵 RT @TheStudyofWar The Russian defeat in #Kharkiv Oblast and #Lyman, combined with the #Kremlin’s failure to conduct partial mobilization effectively and fairly are fundamentally changing the Russian information space. http://isw.pub/RusCampaignOct2
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1576785121948360706?s=20
// will Putin shut down the milbloggers?
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 On MSNBC. MORNING JOE. Monday 3 Oct 9 am ET. Ukraine. If Kherson falls and Putin loses 15,000 of his best troops it will be a political disaster destabilizing the state. He cannot find a way out. The only escalatory tools will be Tac Nukes or CW. Disaster.
WaPo: Zelensky hails advances as open recriminations intensify in Russian media https://tinyurl.com/wtn5wbwa “U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cautioned Russia against following through with any escalatory retaliation linked to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine”
🐣 RT @JoeTrippi Putin has no idea how hard Ukraine will fight to remain free of him. #StandWithUkraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @FerransRichard They will never stop and they will be victorious.
Note: Russian defenses in Kherson collapsing today. ¤ Russian Svatove-Kreminna defensive line in Donbas collapsing today.
It’s a rout. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
🖼 https://twitter.com/FerransRichard/status/1576687175231737856?s=20/photo/1
// meme: small drone in front of aircraft carrier: “Resist”
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Reports are mounting of a Russian collapse on the Kherson front, where approximately 25,000 Russian troops are trapped on the right bank of the Dnipro River with bridges across the river partially destroyed and unable to support military vehicles
🌎 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1576643785609531393?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @albertomura «It’s a victory that they could turn into a cascading series of defeats of Russian forces,” McMaster explained. “This is the encirclement of Lyman, but also the Ukrainians defeated a Russian counterattack and made progress near Kherson”». [link]
🐣 RT @mhmck The Kreminna-Svatove line is collapsing for the Russians. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are advancing to take control of Kreminna, the P-66 highway, and crossings of the Krasna River. ¤ Rashist forces are reported to be fleeing Kreminna, towards Rubizhne and Severodonets’k.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1576667525974495233?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Justin_Ling Zelensky’s office has confirmed the breakthrough. The recaptured settlements are on the edge of the Kherson oblast. (Graphic comes from a pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel.)
🌎 https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/1576692280823451648?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald As Kherson gets exciting, let’s not forget that Ukraine is also pushing the Russians back in both Donetsk Oblast and now Luhansk Oblast. Putin’s now losing ground in three of the four Ukraine oblasts he claimed to have annexed just a couple of days ago.
⋙ 🐣 RT @warnerta Russian propagandists already paint a dire picture of their situation in Kreminna. rybar’s map from 6pm local time shows Ukrainians having advanced in the past day most of the way from the Zherebets river to the highway north from Kreminna.
🌎 https://twitter.com/warnerta/status/1576636028126756864?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @carlbildt It seems to be going badly for the 🇷🇺 forces on the Kherson front as well. Could this become the Stalingrad of Vladimir Putin’s war? He will forbid any retreat, but then defeat comes anyhow.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON / FLASH TRAFFIC / 2230 UTC 2 OCT/ UKR forces have broken though Russian positions and driven down the T-04-03 HWY. Combat reported in the urban areas of the town of Dudchny. This offensive has sent RU units reeling south.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1576703492772990976?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @bishopoforange Ukraine retaking Kherson would end Putin’s war.
No Kherson means no Nova Kakhovka
Which means no control over the Dnipro canal.
So no water to Crimea.
No water in Crimea and it will fall.
The Putins adventurism from 2014 comes to naught.
⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll I’m told the collapse of Russian lines in ne Kherson is a story that is still in progress. Understand Ukraine has moved south by at least 20km since yesterday. “It could be even more interesting by the morning,” a recon soldier tells me.
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Lots of reports currently about Ukrainian advances in #Kherson and #Luhansk. Few have been officially confirmed. However, we can draw a couple of things from these ongoing campaigns. 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1576689911478251520?s=20
🐣 RT @mhmck The Russian line has collapsed in the north of Kherson region. The invaders are retreating to try to hold Dudchany. Advancing Ukrainian troops are chasing to give them no time to dig in.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1576611568942387200?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN/1120 UTC 2 OCT/ RU forces within the Lyman salient have collapsed. RU units that escaped UKR encirclement retreated in disorder. RU sources reveal that at least 500 newly mobilized troops refused orders to fight, and surrendered positions piecemeal during the withdrawal.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1576530172743802880?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @cepa “Europe, America, and everybody who wants to live in a world based on the rule of law, a world that respects human rights and freedoms and has no room for terror, genocide or subjugation of entire nations, has to support Ukraine now.” @oleksiireznikov
⋙ CEPA: War in Ukraine Will Decide World’s Future: Reznikov https://tinyurl.com/ms68kb6x
// 9/28/2022; The winner of the war in Ukraine will design the new international order so the West must ensure victory, Ukraine’s defense minister said.
The settlement and institutions agreed after World War II have failed, and the core values of the democratic world are at stake in the fight for Ukraine, Oleksii Reznikov told the 2022 CEPA Forum as he renewed his appeal for more weapons.
“This is not just our fight, this is a battle for the foundational values of the free world, this is the battle for who gets to dictate the new world order; is it the tyrant, or is it democracy?” he said. “If we fall, every power that aspires to reach its goals through acts of aggression will celebrate Russia’s victory. They are making no secret of that.”
Reznikov, a paratrooper during the Soviet era who was appointed defense minister in November, turned his fire on the United Nations (UN) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), saying they failed to ensure peace and freedom.
“Every institution established after World War II to prevent future wars, the UN, the OSCE and others, have failed,” he said. “Europe, America and everybody who wants to live in a world based on the rule of law, a world that respects human rights and freedoms and has no room for terror, genocide or subjugation of entire nations, has to support Ukraine now.”
The experience of subjugation during the Soviet-era, and attempts by Russia to bring Ukraine back under its “yoke” since independence 32 years ago, have added to his people’s determination to overcome the Kremlin’s dominance, Reznikov said. ¤ “Ukrainians will never surrender again. We have learned our lesson,” he told delegates. “We will never allow another round of repression against the best minds of our nation.”
Giving weapons to Ukraine now will help to deliver security for the West in the future, Reznikov said. ¤ “These weapons will help to strengthen Europe’s, and NATO’s, eastern border,” he said. “The only road to peace is our victory.”
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews The head of the Pentagon congratulated the Armed Forces of Ukraine on liberating Lyman ¤ “We’re very inspired by what we’re seeing now. We think the Ukrainians have done a great job to get in there and start liberating the city,” Austin said.
WaPo, Liz Sly: Russia’s annexation puts world ‘two or three steps away’ from nuclear war https://tinyurl.com/mrx8dvtj “Putin has previously threatened to resort to nuclear weapons if Russia’s goals in Ukraine continue to be thwarted” ~ Can the world accept Russia’s nuclear blackmail?
… The collapse of another Russian front line was greeted by calls for nuclear strikes by some military bloggers and political figures in Russia, including the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin. “More drastic measures should be taken, up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Kadyrov wrote in a comment on his Telegram channel.
In all four regions that Putin said he was annexing — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — Russia only controls part of the territory. Now that the areas being fought over are regarded by Moscow as Russian, it is possible to chart a course of events toward the first use of a nuclear weapon since the 1945 atomic bombing of Japan.
“It’s a low probability event, but it is the most serious case of nuclear brinkmanship since the 1980s” when the Cold War ended, said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “It is a very dangerous situation and it needs to be taken seriously by Western policymakers.”
U.S. and European officials say they are taking the threats seriously. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that there would be “catastrophic consequences” if Russia resorts to the use of nuclear weapons. He refused to specify what those would be but said the precise consequences had been spelled out privately to Russian officials “at very high levels.” ¤ “They well understand what they would face if they went down that dark road,” he said.
European officials say the threats have only strengthened their resolve to support Ukraine. ¤ “No one knows what Putin will decide to do, no one,” said a European Union official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. “But he’s totally in a corner, he’s crazy … and for him there is no way out. The only way out for him is total victory or total defeat and we are working on the latter one. We need Ukraine to win and so we are working to prevent worst case scenarios by helping Ukraine win.” ¤ The goal, the official said, is to give Ukraine the military support it needs to continue to push Russia out of Ukrainian territory, while pressuring Russia politically to agree to a cease-fire and withdrawal, the official said.
And the pressure is working, “slowly,” the official said, to spread awareness in Russia and internationally that the invasion was a mistake. India, which had seemed to side with Russia in the earliest days of the war, has expressed alarm at Putin’s talk of nuclear war and China, ostensibly Russia’s most important ally, has signaled that it is growing uneasy with Putin’s continuing escalations. …
The West had been hoping that Ukrainian successes would force Putin to back down, but instead he is doubling down. “Time and again we are seeing that Vladimir Putin sees this as a big existential war and he’s ready to up the stakes if he is losing on the battlefield,” Gabuev said. …
Although the United States and its European allies have refrained from making direct accusations, few doubt that Russia was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, said the E.U. official. ¤ “I don’t think anyone has doubts. It’s the handwriting of the Kremlin,” he said. “It’s an indication of, ‘look what is coming, look what we are able to do.’ ” …
Despite some wild predictions on Russian news shows that the Kremlin would lash out at a Western capital, with London appearing to be a favored target, it is more likely that Moscow would seek to use one of its smaller, tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield to try to gain advantage over Ukrainian forces, said Gady. ¤ The smallest nuclear weapon in the Russian arsenal delivers an explosion of around 1 kiloton, one fifteenth of the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which would inflict massive destruction but on a more limited area.
Because the war is being fought along a vast, 1,500-mile front line, troops are too thinly spread out for there to be an obvious target whose obliteration would change the course of the war. To make a difference, Russia would have to use several nuclear weapons or alternatively strike a major population center such as Kyiv, either of which would represent a massive escalation, trigger almost certain Western retaliation and turn Russia into a pariah state even with its allies, Gady said.
“From a purely military perspective, nuclear weapons would not solve any of Vladimir Putin’s military problems,” he said. “To change the operational picture one single attack would not be enough and it would also not intimidate Ukraine into surrendering territory. It would cause the opposite, it would double down Western support and I do think there would be a U.S. response.”
That’s why many believe Putin won’t carry out his threats. “Even though Putin is dangerous, he is not suicidal, and those around him aren’t suicidal,” said Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe. ¤ Pentagon officials have said they have seen no actions by Russia that would lead the United States to adjust its nuclear posture.
🐣 RT @guyverhofstadt While Putin talks, Lyman falls… ¤ Reality will return to Russia once Putin himself falls… soon !
⋙ TheGuardian: Ukrainian forces perform victory dance after liberating eastern city of Lyman https://tinyurl.com/buduk6cd
// Troops raise Ukrainian flag in city hours after Putin said area was Russia’s ‘for ever’, with Moscow admitting its forces have retreated
🐣 RT @DefenceHQ Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 2 October 2022 ¤ Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/sy8q50KZ30R
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
● On 1 October 2022 the Russian force in the Donetsk Oblast town of Lyman withdrew in the face of Ukrainian advances. Lyman was likely being defended by undermanned elements of Russia’s Western and Central Military Districts, as well as contingents of voluntarily mobilised reservists. The force probably experienced heavy casualties as it withdrew along the only road out of the town still in Russian hands.
● Operationally, Lyman is important because it commands a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defences. Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman also represents a significant political setback given that it is located within Donetsk Oblast, a region Russia supposedly aimed to ‘liberate and has attempted to illegally annex.
● The withdrawal has led to a further wave of public criticism of Russia’s military leadership by senior officials. Further losses of territory in illegally occupied territories will almost certainly lead to an intensification of this public criticism and increase the pressure on senior commanders.
⭕ 1 Oct 2022
🐣 RT @SecBlinken Moscow’s atrocities and illegitimate attempts at changing Ukraine’s borders by force will never work. I reiterated our steadfast commitment to Ukraine to @DmytroKuleba and underscored our support to strengthen Ukraine militarily & diplomatically so they can defend their homeland.
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian forces are struggling to establish a new line of defence after their defeat around Lyman area. ¤ This is because they do not have the manpower or the communication to do so.
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky defiant as ever in tonight’s address, boasting about Ukraine’s liberation of Lyman and saying the counteroffensive will continue. “There were more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas this week. There will be even more next week.” He also jabs at Putin and military generals.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1576297762592763904?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mhmck The Russians were decisively defeated at Lyman. They’ll attempt to stabilize on the Kreminna-Svatove line but won’t hold out there for long. The Russians made a fatal mistake trying to hold Lyman at all costs and deploying most of their operational reserves to that doomed effort.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1576388224678735872?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @OSINT_Eye_ As Ukrainian forces begin their assault on Kreminna, let’s look at the topography of the area for a moment ¤ The city sits in a valley surrounded on the S, E and W by hills that rise as much as 150 meters above the city. That may not sound like much, but I promise it matters.
🌎 https://twitter.com/OSINT_Eye_/status/1576422083088637952?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 RT @OSINT_Eye_ Ukrainian forces will be approaching primarily from the west, and likely to a lesser extent from the south. This will allow them to take advantage of one, and possibly two of those elevated positions around the city as they attempt to liberate it in the coming days.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Russian State TV starting to fragment. Lyman a disaster for the Russians. The Kherson pocket could lose 15,000 Russian prisoners. The mobilization a disaster. All pressures on Putin criminal action might generate a desperate reaction. He’s unraveling.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Stunned reactions keep coming in with respect to Ukraine reclaiming Lyman. Andrey Gurulyov, former deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district, said he couldn’t explain the defeat. He blamed in on a system of lies, “top to bottom” and was suddenly disconnected.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1576410989104627712?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 They are so close to understanding. If only they tried harder they might realize that the decades of theft from various budgets and contracts are the reason this is happening. The one time corruption is paying off
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag These are the buses that brought the “enthusiastic crowds” to Moscow for Putin’s war rally. As usual, most were state workers obliged by their bosses to attend. In other words, it was a staged farce
💽 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1576136338180837376?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR There is no hope left for the citizens of ruzzia. Popular rapper Ivan Petunin made a final video saying he won’t kill for the Fuhrer or fight his immoral war. Then he jumped to his death from a high-rise building in Krasnodar. And he won’t be the last. [link]
🐣 RT @StevanBolton Good thread on why Russia’s retreat to the Svatove-Kreminna line will fail. Geography was already against them + Russia hasn’t had resources to build real defenses like at Lyman. Ukraine can hit Putin’s disoriented army at any point on this road it chooses to disrupt logistics.
⋙ 🧵 RT @putinsucks69 I found this elevation map, unfortunately it’s not labeled but I’m pretty sure I found the right spot. Anyway, there was speculation they would fall back to the Troitske-Svatove-Kreminna line, but it’s in a valley and it’s a nightmare to defend so idk what they’re going to do.
📌 https://twitter.com/putinsucks69/status/1574597408713019393?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MrDanack My guess, Severodonetsk-Starobilsk-Troitske. It’d probably be too far for the Ukrainians to push Starobilsk right now. Whether the Russians can keep the train running from Troitske to Starobilsk for supply is going to be interesting.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @VictorishB123 I think that line is about right. Problem is, if they lose Troitske they might as well just evacuate Luhansk back to their pre-February 24 defense line. There is really no way to hold it once Troitske is under fire control.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MrDanack Falling back that far would be bad for the Russians as they really need to keep the Ukrainians away from the train lines running west out of Luhansk, or that would be quite a problem for them.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MrDanack Well, I’d prefer the Russians to withdraw to the pre-2014 borders, but I don’t think the Russians could continue the war if the Ukrainians get too close to Luhansk. ¤ The train lines on the SW and NE of it look ‘quite’ important.
🌎 https://twitter.com/MrDanack/status/1573013006572785666?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports Russian reporters write about a possible rollback of defensive lines (red dotted area) to the Svatove-Kreminna P66 highway. They also express a high doubt of stopping the offensive there also.
🐣 RT @ WarMonitor3 Russian positions in Rubizhne, Lysychansk, Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk are being hit hard by Ukrainian artillery.
🐣 RT @monitor_ukraine The Armed Forces of Ukraine did not win the Battle of Lyman by assault. They did it by manoeuvre and by siege through fire control. ¤ This is how Ukrainian defenders will win the Battles of Kreminna and Svatove, which we will see develop rapidly in coming days.
🐣 RT @NOELreports Russians allegedly leaving Kreminna after intense fighting this night. One soldier shouts: “Yes we are scared, but that’s okay because fear is normal and we have to be fearful”.
💽 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1576086585300291584?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EetuSeppnen1 From Russian sources, Lyman is lost. There’s nothing they can do to save kt. Ukraine is moving on right away towards Kreminna. Russian troops are leaving from there, some sources say. It’s all chaos with Russian troops.
🌎 https://twitter.com/EetuSeppnen1/status/1576172293247549440?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports The road between Zarichne-Kreminna is an absolute killzone 😮 later we will find out once the area is clear, but horrific things happening for Russian forces there.
🐣 RT @mhmck The siege of Lyman is now a clean up operation. Russian casualties are high. ¤ Ukrainian forces are advancing to the Kreminna-Svatove line and the P-66 highway. ¤ All of the north of Donetsk oblast will be liberated by the end of the day.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1576234022761472001?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tomaburque Rybar is a Ruzzian blogger, his maps have been accurate in the past 🇺🇦👊🇷🇺💀
💽 https://twitter.com/tomaburque/status/1576229742096752640?s=20/photo/1
// Battle of Lyman animated video
🐣 RT @SecDef Yesterday, I spoke with my good friend and Ukrainian counterpart @oleksiireznikov to condemn Russia’s sham referenda on Ukrainian territory and provide an update on U.S. security assistance, including our most recent commitment of an additional $1.1 billion dollars.
[Readout:] /photo/1 https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1576311996512841729?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ENDLESS BUMMER: Special Kherson Cat @bayraktar_1love provides these photos of a large fire and secondary explosions near the Russian Naval Air Station at Belbek, Crimea. By now, posing on a Black Sea beach with a burning RU airfield in the background is totally normal.
⋙ bayraktar_1love Something reported to be on fire from the direction of Belbek military airport in Crimea. #Ukraine #Crimea
⋙⋙ 🐣 There were reports last night of a US recon drone circling in the Black Sea near there, noted to be ‘highly unusual’; possibly noted something of concern going on; wish I’d kept the tweetlink, but I didn’t @ChuckPfarrer
🧵 RT @KonstantinKisin I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin’s speech. Obviously, that won’t happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible.
📌 https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1575853684852150272?s=20
Substack version: https://tinyurl.com/ycyr26j9
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews After seeing videos of freshly-mobilized Russians—so drunk they could barely stand—many asked me whether it’s for real. Hear it straight from the horse’s mouth: former deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district: “Never in my life have I seen any sober people there.”
💽 [tr]https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1576045751209431040?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian soldier in an encirclement is making a call to his wife.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1576253518377521157?s=20/photo/1.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Russia confirms defeat in Lyman, Donetsk Oblast. ¤ According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Russian troops have pulled out of the strategic city, fearing encirclement. ¤ Russian troops have been occupying Lyman since May.
NYT: In Washington, Putin’s Nuclear Threats Stir Growing Alarm https://tinyurl.com/3samvvpb “For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, top government leaders in Moscow are making explicit nuclear threats and officials in Washington are gaming out scenarios”
// In a gathering Cold War atmosphere, American officials are gaming out responses should Russia resort to battlefield nuclear weapons.
NYT: Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman comes a day after Putin said he was annexing the region. https://tinyurl.com/bdeeesbv “The loss of the rail hub puts additional pressure on the Kremlin, which has been facing blowback at home over its losses on the battlefield”
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky defiant as ever in tonight’s address, boasting about Ukraine’s liberation of Lyman and saying the counteroffensive will continue. “There were more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas this week. There will be even more next week.” He also jabs at Putin and military generals.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1576297762592763904?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @wartranslated Wow. In light of Lyman defeat, Russian z-journalist and blogger Anastasiya Kashevarova goes to telegram to post a long rant asking the right questions because all the other military bloggers have “pu*sied out”. This is being picked up by other channels. https://t.me/akashevarova/5532
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1576306261187907585?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @DefenseU We thank the “Ministry of Defense” of 🇷🇺 for successful cooperation in organizing the “Izyum 2.0” exercise. Almost all russian troops deployed to Lyman were successfully redeployed either into body bags or into 🇺🇦 captivity. We have one question for you: Would you like a repeat?
🐣 RT @Apex_WW Chechen leader Kadyrov: Russia should consider using low yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after Lyman defeat
🐣 RT @Apex_WW Chechen leader Kadyrov: Russia should consider using low yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after Lyman defeat
🚫 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NO PLACE TO RUN: Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en posts this video of a RU column, neutralized by UKR artillery as it attempted to flee the encirclement at Lyman. Scattered about are RU bodies, vehicles & the things they looted from the city. RU’s defeat at Lyman is biblical.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Lyman. Russian convoy was trying to get out of encirclement unsuccessfully, taking their looted things with them.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1576184111953113088?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sidebart Wasted lives it saddens me to the core. I hope the Russians in other parts of Ukraine learn from it that surrender is the safest and best option.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @militarynewsuk2 No escape and refused permission to retreat or give up.
// too graphic
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN /1200 UTC 01 OCT/ RU forces at Lyman are now SURROUNDED. UKR units are in control of the O-0528 HWY and have established a blocking force E of Torske. It is estimated that from 2 to 5 thousand RU troops, plus their armor, artillery & vehicles, are now encircled.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1576179092663042048?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Russian troops encircled in Lyman day after annexation ceremony https://tinyurl.com/4cn2fuk8 Ukrainian forces advanced on the key transport hub overnight
Ukrainian forces said they had surrounded Russian forces in the eastern city of Lyman, pressing their counterattacks in a region that Moscow now claims as its own. Ukrainian forces advanced on the key transport hub overnight even as Russia put on a show of celebrating its annexation of Ukrainian territory with a grand ceremony and a pop concert in Moscow.
The annexation has drawn forceful rebuke from Western countries and the United Nations. Washington responded with new sanctions against military and government officials, while President Biden called Russia’s illegal move a “brazen effort to redraw the borders of its neighbor.” Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
🐣 RT @LvivJournal The inevitable photo gallery of abandoned (and undamaged) tanks. Many ruzZians trapped in the encirclement of Lyman contacted UA forces days ago to negotiate surrender. Yes, days ago. There are T90s that will be sent to USA for inspection.#lviv #kherson #donetsk #luhansk
¤ https://twitter.com/LvivJournal/status/1576139296599220225?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien First ukrainian official Ive seen putting a specific figure on the number of Russian troops trapped in Lyman. 5000.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivPost⚡️Head of the Luhansk Regional Military–Civil Administration Sergiy Haidai: Around 5 thousand Russian soldiers are stuck in #Lyman. ¤ According to him, they asked their commanders to leave the city that has been cut off. The commanders turned down the request.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone If confirmed, it’s fantastic news for #Ukraine. East of Lyman, the town of Kreminna is in the Luhansk region – region Putin claimed is part of Russia 😃. It’s also near the large occupied town of Rubizhne. Russian forces obviously struggling to fend off swift Ukrainian advances.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Russian soldiers declare that their troops have left Kreminna. The video is full of profanity. ¤ 👉 Follow @Flash_news_ua 💽
🧵 RT @tomiahonen My fellow Russians ¤ My quick & easy three day war into Ukraine has now run into its 8th month. We lost the battle of Kyiv, their capital & largest city. As you can see, my war started out tremendously well.. for the Ukrainians #SlavaUkraini #TableBoy #CzarLilliPutin #LilliPutin
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1576106172587053056?s=20
After we lost the battle of Kyiv, we proceeded to lose the battle of Kharkiv too. Kharkiv is their second largest city. After a prolonged battle we lost at Snake Island. Then we lost the battle for Izyum, a town we had seized. As you can tell, this war is going remarkably well
When our army fled Izyum, they left all our heavy weapons there for the Ukrainians to use against us in this war. This is part of my glorious plan. We did the same in our loss at Snake Island. We abandoned all our valuable military gear there too. We’ve gifted Ukraine 500 tanks
We have been eagerly retreating so much since March, that half of the terrain we once held in Ukraine has already been handed back to the Ukrainians. In the words of my pet & sex toy, Donald Trump, I call this unconventional type of military maneouvering: ‘winning’
All of our Russian tanks have turned out to be death traps. Their turrets are prone to explode, with unfortunate results to the tank crews. One tank regiment was so furious about this war, they ran over their own commander with a tank. Rest assured, he was buried with his legs
The largest warship on the Black Sea, our Navy flagship, the mighty missile cruiser Moskva was sunk. And sunk by an enemy who does not operate a navy. The commander of our Navy has been fired. All remaining Russian warships from our naval base at Sevastopol have bravely fled away
We once had the second most powerful air force in the world. Half of it is now permanently grounded into Ukrainian soil. We lost so many warplanes in one day at our airbase in Crimea that our total remaining air force fled Crimea & is now proudly contributing to the war by hiding
We had a battalion of our own troops irradiated by their own commanders. They were ordered to dig trenches into the ground of the Chernobyl nuclear accident & inhaled radioactive dust. These men have lungs that glow in the dark. Some of them might live to see the end of next year
In the first 8 months so far we have lost 59,000 Russian soldiers. That is more than we lost in ten years of our failed war invading Afghanistan, and the two long wars in Chechnya. We’ve lost more soldiers in seven months than the USA lost in the Vietnam War over ten years
We have not just lost warplanes, tanks, ships, and soldiers. We also have lost Generals. So many generals have died, that I have lost count. I believe it is about 15. To help make winning this war even easier, I have myself fired another 7 Generals commanding this war
I cleverly decided to not supply the invasion army with enough war materials. I didn’t bother with things like food, and ordered our soldiers to go rob the locals. This led to a series of war crimes, which resulted in sanctions. Because of sanctions we cannot build modern weapons
The one thing Russia never, ever wanted to happen, was for NATO to expand, especially near our border. And I am proud to report, that thanks to my glorious 3 day war invading & pillaging Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden are now eagerly joining NATO. And Ukraine will join NATO too
At this point the army we have in the Donbas region is totally surrounded in the Lyman pocket & will have to surrender ¤ And in the South, the army defending Kherson is surrounded, out of ammunition & food, with only bridges for escape destroyed by Ukraine & will have to surrender
One third of the men I sent to invade Ukraine have died. Which is why I have decided that the men I send as reinforcements will not be trained properly ¤ As you can see, my 3 day war into Ukraine has been a tremendous success. The next phase in this war will be even more glorious
⋙ 🐣 Thank you! You write the BEST threads. ¤ Is it true about the task commander being run over and the air force flying off? Those I hadn’t heard. ¤ ♡ ૂི•̮͡• ྀ ♡
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @tomiahonen All true. Tank commander lost his legs, was taken to hospital. Later news reported he had died in hospital. Crimean air base (largest in Crimea) was vacated after the surprise rocket attack onto the base destroying about half the planes on ground. Much of Russian AF is grounded
🐣 📊 RT @Partisangirl Imagine alienating a large part of your population by allying with your enemies. Who could have predicted this outcome? #Ukraine ¤ And the poll is conducted by the Kyiv post so they are pro Ukraine source
🌎 https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1576089454611025925?s=20/photo/1
// language poll
⋙ 🐣 1) this is from 2017, before the mass invasion, war crimes and genocide,
2) this asks about language; mother tongue is not the same thing as nationality (my mother tongue is English, but I am American) ~ in fact, many former Russian speakers are switching to speaking Ukrainian
🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua Ukraine says Russia suffered over 500 casualties yesterday. There is no way it is that few. If you hear from any soldier there near Lyman, Russians are getting massacred. Same near Kupyansk. In Chernihivka so many died they had to send multiple trucks to Tokmak to cremate them.
🐣 RT @RomanKalisz1 ISW say Ukraine are likely to capture Lyman in the next 72 hours
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RomanKalisz1/status/1576088556422197248?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Eastern Ukraine: (Vovchansk-Kupyansk-Izyum-Lyman Line)
Ukrainian forces will likely capture or encircle Lyman within the next 72 hours. Russian forces continued to withdraw from positions around Lyman on September 30 as Ukrainian forces continued to envelop Russian troops in the area. [8] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) officials and Russian war correspondents stated that Russian forces still control Lyman but have withdrawn from their positions in Drobysheve (around 6km northwest of Lyman) and Yampil (about 13km southeast of Lyman). [9] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces still control one road from Lyman to Torske, while Ukrainian forces have cut off the Drobysheve-Torske road in the Stavky area. [10] Russian sources also noted the increasing activity of Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage groups on the Svatove-Torske highway northeast of Lyman after reportedly crossing the Zherebets River. [11] Geolocated footage also showed Ukrainian artillery striking withdrawing Russian forces near Torske. [12] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces have crossed the Siverskyi Donets River in Dronivka and are now operating in the forests south of Kreminna. [13] Russian sources uniformly noted that Ukrainian artillery continues to interdict Russian forces’ single remaining egress route on the Kreminna-Torske road. [14]
⭕ 30 Sep 2022
🐣 📊 RT @AlexKokcharov Putin: “No one asked people during the collapse of the Soviet Union where they wanted to live”
People of #Ukraine, December 1991:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
🌎 https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1575978780023136256?s=20/photo/1
// 1991 Ukraine independence referendum
🐣 RT @timelock16 Putin is claiming to annex land still being ferociously fought over. It’s like claiming you won a baseball game in the sixth inning even though the other team has scored more runs. Russia’s 5th Army in Lyman is now completely surrounded by Ukranian troops. What a joke Putin is
🐣 RT @putinsucks69 Certainly Ukraine controls the Dibrova southeast of Lyman near Ozerne, that’s 100%. The one near Kreminna, the situation is murkier. Heavy battles were going on in that area as AFU tried to block reinforcements from getting to Lyman, and also AFU was trying to capture Torske.
🐣 RT @ukraine_map Up to 5,500 Russian Soldiers are trapped in the Lyman Region says Ukraine’s Presidential Advisor
🧵 RT @AndrewPerpetua Update for September 29-30 https://tinyurl.com/mrxbaa9s
📌 https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1576065672592883712?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn The dating app is real and some of the footage is from their own ad. @MeidasTouch just embellished it a bit. #MAGAWrongStuff
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch NEW VIDEO A new dating app for insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists.
💽 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1575983496245698562?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Strong argument. ¤ DOJ asks 11th Circuit for expedited review to quash Judge Cannon’s exercise of jurisdiction/order. ¤ Reason: USG needs access to 11,000 docs to figure out how the classified records were transferred, stored, and who accessed them.👇
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/yc2nfrrz
WaPo, Robyn Dixon: As war fails, Russia’s authoritarian grandmaster backs himself into a corner https://tinyurl.com/4jv7v7fm “Putin delivered another rambling, resentful diatribe, … lashing out fiercely at what he described as a predatory, thieving, lying neocolonial West”
🐣 RT @ WiredwaNGk Meanwhile Russian forces in Lyman face a double envelopment and that will be “NO BUENO” for them. Given the fact they suck at logistics they will not have enough body bags for the outcome.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The noose has been tightened
🌎 https://twitter.com/WiredwaNGk/status/1576020172414267397?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ mastersam2000 Putin won his public stunt in Russia on paper, while 3000 of his military is encircled in Lyman. Since Putin is not allowed retreat the Ukrainian military would gladly oblige by eliminating every one of them, a payback for the massacre of 500 unarmed soldiers in Ilovaisk in 2014
⋙ 🐣 RT @sugarcubedog2 Ukrainians aren’t going to massacre the soldiers they have kettled near Lyman unless the Russians don’t stop fighting. They’ll become POWs.
⋙🐣 RT @JasonSolinsky I don’t think that is what is happening. There is substantial evidence that there are huge casualties tonight as the Lyman pocket collapses. I think Ukraine is using the dark to press its advantage (and thus more quickly bring the encircling forces to the new front).
🐣 RT @PatriciaAlexann For the ppl asking, Why is Lyman important?
⋙ 🐣 RT @MSSpaint If the strategy is to take back the eastern territory, which it is, then,yes, it is decisive. It opens path towards Luhansk while cutting off supply and logistics hub to RU, from Donetsk north to South, depleting RU therefore faciitating UKR advance. Not possible without Lyman.
🐣 RT @McFaul I’ve been writing about Putin’s evil ways since 2000. But even I, before 2/24/22, would have had to admit that Putin had the chance to go down in Russian history as a great leader — the great restorer. He damaged that legacy by invading Ukraine. He threw it away for sure today.
🐣 RT @olgatokariuk Putin in his speech made it clear that Russia is at war with the West. Still, some people in the West continue to believe this war only concerns Ukraine, preach surrender and get scared of Ukrainian advances, while bleeding Ukraine is literally shielding them from this evil
⋙ 🐣 In an evenly divided US Senate, 96 of 100 Senators just voted to increase the funds for Ukraine by an additional $13B. Support is ~80% in polls, with. 45% saying the US should send troops. This will not happen, but it shows the high support in the US.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KenganOisura While I agree with the support they get I do also question the motives of US politicians
🌎 https://twitter.com/KenganOisura/status/1576047385465479168?s=20/photo/1
// mineral resource map
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 there are always opportunities for investment and commerce, but the main reason there is such support is admiration for the heroism of Ukrainians and their determination to become an EU style democracy; in a way, we see in them our better selves
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba By attempting to annex Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Putin tries to grab territories he doesn’t even physically control on the ground. Nothing changes for Ukraine: we continue liberating our land and our people, restoring our territorial integrity.
💙 🐣 RT @EliotACohen One of the marks of goodness: he gets down to look the children in the eye; one of the marks of strength: he keeps his composure, because as a leader he must.
⋙ 🐣 RT @saintjavelin .@ZelenskyyUa giving out posthumous awards to the families of the fallen defenders of Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/1575846639075733505?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul Papers signed in the Kremlin don’t determine who has sovereignty over Ukrainian lands. Ukrainian soldiers marching on Lyman do.
⋙ 🐣 hm, I always thought sovereignty was something deemed implicit like “God given rights” in the Constitution, not something won in battle ¤ otherwise, if Russia wins in battle, it would have earned sovereignty over Ukr; but instead we look to history, culture, even genetics
✅🐣 RT @PolitiFact Russian soldiers haven’t surrendered in the Donetsk province of Ukraine, as one Facebook post claims. [link]
⋙ 🐣 fact-checking real-time OSINT reporting of battles in progress is perhaps not the best use of @PolitiFact’s time: fog of war and all ¤ just check back in a couple of hours
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Nothing to see here. Just a former president of the United States seeking to incite violence against the minority leader of the United States Senate and launching a racist verbal attack on the leader’s wife.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1576002973049798656?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him? In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!
🚫 🐣 RT @Russialibreate Just a reminder that Lyman is till in Russian hands [?] and that the Russians are plannning something big[?] this Russian offensive will encircle the entire Donbas Ukraine army [!]
// pro-Ru; 3 followers; recorded then blocked
🐣 RT @AuldViking For the love of Peter, Paul and Mary and for the 1,036th time since 24 February, I ask you to please allow the professional journalists and the seasoned editors at the wire services of either AP News or Reuters to run-facts-to-ground on the Ukrainian C/O.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @rf_in_the_bush If you don’t want to hear the non-professional reportage get off twitter – at the moment for those who are interested in up to the minute information and willing and able to sift through the rubbish for reality – there is no other source of information. #Kreminna #Lyman #Ukraine
⋙⋙ 🐣 totally agree; it takes experience and skill with using Twitter to glean what’s going on this way; but regular media is slow, overly broad and often politicised ¤ if there are better sources now (assuming you don’t speak Russian or use Telegram), I’m not aware of them
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag VIDEO: Putin discovers that you can force people to attend your pro-war rallies but making them cheer enthusiastically is not so simple
💽 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1575953936401387520?s=20/photo/1
// pro-war rally at Red Square
🐣 RT @nonrev321 Today & tomorrow was/will be a most bloody battle. The battle for Lyman ¤ The russians are putting up a tougher fight than expected. These might be professional troops ¤ russia rushing troops & equipment to this area now, others retreating. Very dynamic & fluid. Night battles
🐣 RT @thomaszickell Military briefing: #Ukraine forces close to encircling Russian troops in key town via @FT ¤ As many as 5,500 #Russian #troops could now be #surrounded in the #Lyman area. ¤ #Military #UkraineRussianWar #UkraineWar #UkraineWillWin
https://on.ft.com/3y6cBIZ
🐣 RT @wartranslated Big channels not admitting this but smaller guys showing that Russians have it very hard at Lyman: “number of corpses is so great…”
🐣 RT @mhmck It’s 1 a.m. in Ukraine and there’s a battle underway on the outskirts of Kreminna, Luhansk region. ¤ Advancing Ukrainian troops are turning the Russian retreat from Lyman, Donetsk region, into a rout.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1575971495435636737?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck Context for the previous video – the Russians retreating from Lyman had no time to disembark/unload before they were engaged in battle near Kreminna. ¤ Note that Ukrainian special operations forces have night vision devices. Rashist militants mostly do not.
⋙ 🐣 RT @loogunda #Kreminna outskirts, Luhansk oblast: Firefight is heard, the (pro-)Russian guy in the video says that “guys” (Russians) accepted battle having no time
⋙ 🐣 RT @ DB4WorldJustice Reckon they are going for Kreminna and Svatove to gain control of the road and rail supply routes to Severodonetsk. A tactical boss move! Ukraine Army will mop up Lyman later, when there’s time to take the POWs into custody. Meanwhile the orcs are camping on an island.
⋙ 🐣 RT @marleydq1 rybar says the complete opposite. stavky is under russian control, the reinforcements arrived and push the ukrainians away from the highway. only very mobile and small ZSU units are harassing the russians.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AngryXennial I think rout is premature, although I can’t refute it either. On many sources I’m seeing conflicting reports, reserves from Russia and Ukraine seem to have been activated but again those reports are also conflicting, I think at this point it needs to play out, the fog is thick
⋙ 🐣 RT @JCTripleC According to @TrentTelenko’s sources, RU committed their limited reserves to enable an escape from Lyman. Regardless of the result, the deployment had weakened the rest of their lines. UKR took advantage of this and punched three holes in the RU line.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @JCTripleC Trent says, “The Russians just committed most of their Luhansk reserves to salvage anything out of Lyman. That S.E. AFU push from Kupyansk is a ‘block Russian supplies going south from Svatove and collapse the whole front’ move..”
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @JCTripleC Now it’s up to how mobile and aggressive UKR’s spearheads are and how much of a fight the mobilized troops can put up. Because if they can’t stop UKR mobile groups advancing into their rear areas, hoo boy.
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Now is not the time for the process of Ukraine’s accession to NATO, – the adviser to the US president, Jake Sullivan. ¤ At the same time, he emphasized that the USA does not give up its support of the “open door” policy for NATO.
⋙ 🐣 Ukraine has shown itself to be the REAL “second best military“ in the world, after the US, and hopefully can join NATO after the end of the current conflict ¤ I don’t think China can be evaluated as their armed forces have not been proven in battle @McFaul @SecDef @oleksiireznikov
🐣 RT @mkraju Biden says leaks from Nord Stream caused by “a deliberate act of sabotage” by Russia, which he accused of “pumping disinformation and lies”
Biden also said that the “U.S. is prepared to defend every single inch of NATO territory” ¤ “Mr. Putin, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying”
⋙ 🐣 I don’t think he went so far as to blame Russia for the pipeline sabotage: he promised an “investigation” ¤ he did deny the US is responsible (as Putin‘s “disinformation and lies” claim)
🐣 When Biden says Russia cannot attack “one inch” of NATO, does that include fallout from even a limited or demonstration nuclear weapon drifting into a NATO country? It’s a serious question. ¤ @POTUS @RonaldKlain @SecBlinken @StateDept @DeptofDefense @SecDef @NATO
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ As promised to @KatiePhang, I added color to my Venn diagram and we’ll be discussing the Special Master and what he is sorting through on her show today!
◕ https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1575872815211118592?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, A Navalny: This is what a post-Putin Russia should look like https://tinyurl.com/6knmb74s ‘Russia must not win this war. Ukraine must be independent. But this is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia does not want to start wars & does not find them attractive’
// Only transforming Russia into a parliamentary republic will prevent future wars.
// Full (above): Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself. ¤ This is correct, but it is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive.
🐣 RT @StateDept .@SecBlinken: The entire process around these sham referenda was a complete farce. The United States does not and will never recognize any of the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it seized by force and now purports to incorporate into Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1575904616084111360?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @warmonitor3 While the Kremlin passes fake annexation laws. Russian forces around Lyman are facing a complete defeat. ¤ Out of touch with reality
🐣 RT @McFaul Papers signed in the Kremlin don’t determine who has sovereignty over Ukrainian lands. Ukrainian soldiers marching on Lyman do.
WaPo: 7 key moments in Putin’s annexation speech https://tinyurl.com/ks4c3pcd ‘I’m rubber. You’re glue’
1. Russia will never give up annexed regions.
2. Ukraine must give in.
3. The West is trying to destroy Russia.
4. The United States, not Russia, poses a nuclear threat.
5. ‘Anglo-Saxons’ sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines.
6. Russia will never recognize LGBT rights. [?]
7. In the words of Ivan Ilyin, Russia’s ‘destiny is my destiny.’
WaPo: Putin illegally proclaims annexation of four Ukrainian regions at Moscow ceremony https://tinyurl.com/5jew558n
😅 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN FALLING: RU sources: /Translation/ “If [Russian] groupings in Lyman are destroyed, [our] occupying units will not have enough strength to organize a defense of Kreminna and Svatove”. ¤ In short: the imminent collapse of the entire front. https://censor.net/en/n3370645
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin mobilized tens of thousands of Russian men…. to flee Russia. Molodets, Mr. Putin.
🐣 This morning on @Morning_Joe, it was reported that @POTUS and @SecBlinken would be announcing SANCTIONS on any country that recognizes Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk or Luhansk Oblasts as separate from Ukraine
🧵 RT @oonuch .@ZelenskyyUa addresses “the peoples of the Caucasus, Siberia and other indigenous peoples of Russia. ¤ Dagestanis do not have to die in a vile and disgraceful war of Russia. Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, Circassians and any other peoples who came under the Russian flag.” 1/4
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/oonuch/status/1575608997897699328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian forces will attempt their breakthrough out of operational encirclement reportedly through Torske. ¤ Russian individual units are holding the town in order for the main forces to be able to withdraw- the escape route is under heavy fire by Ukrainian artillery.
🐣 RT @raging545 GRAPHIC VIDEO recorded supposedly near Lyman showing destroyed Russian armored vehicles and KIA Russian soldiers. These are some of Putin`s best troops #Ukraine #Russia #Putin #Putinswar #Ukrainewar #RussiaInvadedUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/raging545/status/1575797908762660864?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Here’s WarMonitor3 [reverse chron]
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian units have completely withdrawn from Drobysheve they are currently trying to dig in near Lyman heaviest battles continue. ¤ Some units are completely surrounded and are attempting to fight their way out.
● Russian soldiers near Lyman are complaining about a complete lack of combat ready personnel and artillery support.
● Russian forces are attempting to reinforce their forces in Lyman via Zarichne however the area is fully under Ukrainian fire control.
● Yampil is under Ukrainian control🇺🇦
● Russian appointed First Deputy Chairman of the Kherson Regional State Administration for Security was killed by Ukrainian pinpoint strikes yesterday.
● Russian sources are saying Lyman is completely surrounded
“The estuary is surrounded. No conclusions were made on the Kharkov front after the failure. The enemy again did not go head-on at Limane. bypassed the city and simply surrounded”
● “Russian sources say their forces have withdrawn from Yampil”
🐣 RT @NOELreports My assesment on the current situation in and around #Lyman. Yampil is empty, Drobysheve is under AFU, some 🇷🇺 forces are encircled near Drobysheve or already captured and the remaining forces fled to Lyman.
Roads to Kreminna/Terny operationally cut.
Lyman is done for Russia.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1575751405649829888?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @lotti_pascal In Lyman ….tonight is christmas [link to song]
🐣 RT @ furfuzfabunker But don’t worry, the well-trained supersoldier conscripts will teleport to Lyman in no time, and save the day. That’s the masterplan 😬
🐣 RT @Guderian_Xaba RU still might be able to relief their semi-encircled forces in #Lyman area if they will be able to pull more reserves and expand the thin corridor at #Zarichne, which is totally under Ukrainian fire control now. They got some reinforcements yesterday, professionals+mobiks.
🐣 RT @Jarl64473295 Yampol has been abandoned by Russian forces. Lyman is fully encircled. Even Russian telegram channels reporting it. You still trying to convince people that this is not one big disaster again for Russian Army?
🐣 RT @AdinOfCrimea 55 busloads of mobilized to replace potential surrenders and KIA in Lyman.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KremlinTrolls About 3,000 Russian troops are encircled by up to 20,000 Ukrainian troops in Lyman
🐣 RT @DarthPutinKGB Day 219 of my 3 day war. Russian soldiers in strategically important Donbass town of Lyman are *not* surrounded. They have chance to fight Ukrainian army from all directions. ¤ I remain a master strategist.
🐣 RT @Prothean_Reaper Lyman is going to be a massacre of orcs for the ages.
🐣 RT @ Suriyakmaps Current situation in Lyman area:
Two hundred and nineteenth day of combats began with #RussianArmy & #DPR withdrawal from Derylove/Дерилове, Drobysheve/Дробишеве, Yampil/Ямпіль & Stavky/Ставки as #UkrainianArmy began advancing from different axis. [link]
– – – – – – – – – – – ⋙ Russians begin to flee Lyman ~ 3:00amCT, 11:am Kyiv time
🐣 RT @4n4lisis While Ukraine is retaking #Lyman, from tomorrow a new chapter is opening with the activation of the #LendLease aid. ¤ +800 defense contractors are waiting. 🛒🛒🛒🇺🇦
⋙ 🧵 RT @ukraine_world (8/25) What are the upcoming highlights and prospects for the Russo-Ukraine war over the next half year? UkraineWorld spoke to Oleh Zhdanov, military expert, reserve colonel. Key points – in our brief, #UkraineWorldAnalysis 1/11
📌 https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1562698154922762240?s=20
// 8/25/2022
🐣 RT @McFaul To the leaders and citizens from countries who fought so heroically for decolonization and against imperialism, I expect to to hear from you tomorrow after Putin tries to annex territory of a former colony and sovereign nation. Silence or neutrality is not a moral option.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blinova14 Do you know history, Mr McFaul? Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye had been Russia-Russia-Russia until Vladimir Lenin created a Ukrainian SSR in 1920s and incorporated them in the “Ukrainian Soviet Republic”. Never suspected you of being a Lenin admirer.
⋙⋙ 🐣 sure
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1575734351970545664?s=20/photo/1 -4
// Four old Ukraine maps (pre-1900)
⭕ 29 Sep 2022
KyivPost, Anders Aslund: Putin’s End Game in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/5c7wcjfz “October could deliver a tipping point in the war. … The Ukrainian forces are engaged in a broad offensive, while the Russian troops are demoralized and decimated”
🐣 RT @ NNPonomarenko Russian “military journalists”: “Our troops are defending #Lyman surrounded. Encirclement. Reinforcements were cut off and could not come”.
Troops, encircled in the city:
– 20th Combined Arms Army
– BARS (Combat Army Reserve Special)
– Russian puppet troops from Luhansk
🐣 RT @SniperFella “The collapse of the Lyman pocket will likely be highly consequential to the Russian grouping in northern Donetsk and western Luhansk,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a daily update.
⋙ MoscowTimes: Russian Troops Face ‘Imminent Defeat’ in East Ukraine Supply Hub https://tinyurl.com/yjt87ray
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer THE PURGE: Pavel Pchelnikov was the director of Digital Logistics, a subsidiary of Russian Railways. He had been blamed for recent UKR hacks into RU rail systems. Moscow police say Pchelnikov committed ‘suicide’ on the balcony of his Moscow aprtment. https://bit.ly/3y39rpg
🐣 RT @LKaspersky Lyman is a logistics hub Russia needs to expand its invasion. Taking it allows Ukraine to push Russians back to the next logistics hub, maybe Svatove, or Starobilsk. Cut the logistics and bigger cities like Severo-donetsk, Lysychansk and Luhansk cant get supplies and Úkraine wins
🧵 RT @wartranslated Day 218, September 29, Summary of Arestovych and Feygin daily broadcast. This update was provided by @Anastasiya1451A https://tinyurl.com/2p9ybkhu
🔥 Lyman ¤ 🇺🇦 keeps advancing – liberated four more villages, another 2 reported to be under 🇺🇦 control by the Russian sources.
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1575631125455798273?s=20
WaPo: Cannon rules Trump lawyers don’t have to clarify claims on Mar-a-Lago documents https://tinyurl.com/6tw7656k lol
// Special master Raymond Dearie had told Donald Trump’s attorneys lawyers to address whether documents were planted or declassified
🧵 RT @rynkrynk Zelenskyy calls out Russian imperialism and attempts at ethnic cleansing: “The people of Dagestan shouldn’t be dying in this war. The people of Chechnya shouldn’t be dying in this shameful war. The Ignush people and the Buryats shouldn’t be dying in this war. None of the 200
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/rynkrynk/status/1575548623911165952?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The mood of Russia’s top propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov in this clip can be summed up as “Hello darkness, my old friend.” He demands some victories and complains that people are running away from Russia. He also sighs. A lot.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1575550915855392768?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Russians rebel as Putin drafts more people in battle for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/b96nrym “Through angry protests, acts of violence and an exodus of more than 200,000 citizens, Russians are rebelling against the prospect of further escalation of the war”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN / 0200 UTC 29 SEP/ The O-0528 is presently the only line of communication supply for RU units at Lyman. This road is registered by UKR precision strike artillery– negating its use and a path of reinforcement or retreat. UKR forces are reported to have cut the O-0526 HWY.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1575305932590010368?s=20/photo/1
🐣 wow. I think we have our “October surprise” ¤ its name is Ian
#FEMA #HHS #GoodGoverment #Unity #Bipartisanship #Leadership
🐣 RT @POTUS We are getting help to Florida families as they face Hurricane Ian. ¤ I approved the Governor’s request for emergency assistance as soon as I received it. And ahead of the storm, we dispatched FEMA and National Guard to prepare for the storm.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I deployed search and rescue teams along with high-water vehicles and rescue helicopters to help get Hurricane survivors to safety. ¤ And the folks at FEMA pre-positioned millions of liters of water, millions of meals, and hundreds of generators.
🐣 RT @Sean_Breslin More apocalyptic scenes emerging from southwestern Florida, courtesy of the @AP:
🖼 https://twitter.com/Sean_Breslin/status/1575526950978088960?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @Zbychus1 Out of curiosity, why Lyman is so important ? Why there is such concentration of RU military ?
⋙ 🐣 RT @horstengela From podcast “Russia Ukraine War Update” the fall of Lyman will force Russians to A. Reroute supplies, and B. form a line further back. There will be disorder and potential of another collapse as Ru try to re-establish the line.
🐣 RT @ WarMonitor3 There is now many reports of Russian mobilised units being in complete shambles. ¤ Some left without shelter and food others with commanding officers who have limited to non experience. ¤ They won’t last a day in a combat zone some these units.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko A Russian collapse in the Lyman-Yampil sector is almost imminent now. ¤ The pocket is about to be closed off if this is not the case yet. ¤ Russians need to leave before it’s too late, but now it would be hard as Ukraine can target their withdrawal route.
🌎 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1575373667894190080?s=20/photo/1
// 😅 map AARGH OMG LOL
⋙ 🐣 RT @armedpitchforks Just want to be clear to 🇷🇺 mothers about to lose their sons – this was a pointless war, launched by your dictator, with a military weakened and hollowed by corruption and greed, and led by some of the worst military command in modern history. So please don’t blame 🇺🇦.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MrBijl Don’t jinx too much. You remember Bastogne 1944? Stalingrad? Both cities were suppose to fall too. Don’t get me wrong I hope Lyman will fall into Ukraine hands asap, but I hate jinxing.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Stalingrad damaged both of Putin’s parents and clearly traumatized him as well, so he re-creates it …
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ~ F Scott Fitzgerald
🧵 RT @anders_aslund Putin appears remarkably lost in his war in Ukraine. Like Hitler, he seems to command the troops personally (Stalin was smarter). He insists that they stay put in Kherson & Lyman & they are likely to be slaughtered or taken prisoners.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1575392328939962368?s=20
The mobilization is possibly his biggest mistake after having started the war. Now, the whole of Russia is likely to be politically & economically destabilized. Will he survive that? I doubt it.
As if to upset the West, he & his propagandists threaten with nukes all over Ukraine & the West without credibility. He impermissibly blows up the defunct Nord Streams.
Does Putin really think that Germany & France are so weak that they will turn away from the West because of him proving every day that he is a state terrorist? I would rather expect that Western resistance to Putin will solidify. He is too irresponsible to rule any country.
The West needs to shape up:
1. Deliver all the weapons Ukraine needs to defeat Russia asap!
2. The EU needs to catch up with the US in its support of grants to the Ukrainian state budget. 24% inflation is too much.
3. Declare Russia a state terrorist!4. Confiscate the $300 billion of Russian Central Bank reserves in the West and reserve them for Russian war reparations for Ukraine.
5. Demand that Russia returns all the 2.5 million or so Ukrainians that Russia has kidnapped & departed (if the deportees so desire).6. Do not accept to even talk to the war criminals that now rule Russia until they have evacuated all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea!
7. Organize prosecution of all Russian war criminals either in the International Criminal Court in The Hague or in an alternative court.Russia must be defeated & now is the time to do so. The faster it is being done, the better for all (but Putin).
🧵 RT @wartranslated Day 217, September 28. Summary of #Arestovych and #Feygin daily broadcast, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak https://tinyurl.com/4br8wkzw
🔥 Battlefield update: Most battlefield information is from 🇷🇺 sources, as 🇺🇦 does not comment much of their progress.
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1575391781868523522?s=20
🐣 RT @OxanaShevel Reports that putin may not announce annexation quite yet may be related to “🇷🇺 leadership likely failed 2 set information conditions 4 potential defeat of russian forces in #Lyman”. Doesn’t look super-power-y 2 annex territory only 2 promptly lose it – with 000′ of troops 2 boot. [link ISW]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ maximananyev I am struggling to understand what does it mean to “set information conditions”. Is it some military jargon I am supposed to know?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @OxanaShevel I think it means 2 offer some (plausible) justification as to why area was lost/abandoned. Sth like “we executed brilliant strategic retreat from area of low importance blah blah.” Instead troops r reportedly ordered 2 hold 2 Lyman no matter what, but it’s not looking good 4 🇷🇺
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ @maximananyev @OxanaShevel Thanks for clarification! I guess the good old “goodwill gesture” does not work anymore.
⭕ 28 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @TreasChest 🇺🇸 The United States ordered the latest PrSM missiles from Lockheed Martin 54 worth $77.42 million, they will be used for testing. These missiles have a range of about 500 km, and in the future they plan to increase it to 650 km and replace ATACMS with them.
¤ https://twitter.com/TreasChest/status/1575162192457977857?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Ukrainian Foreign legion are taking part in offensives near Lyman alongside their Ukrainian brothers in arms. ¤ People from all over the world are fighting for the freedom of Ukraine. ¤ Big respect
🐣 RT @MSNBC Donald Trump demanded that Senate Republicans reject legislation to prevent future coup attempts. Mitch McConnell decided to ignore him. And he wasn’t alone. -MaddowBlog
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Steve Benen: McConnell snubs Trump, backs bill to prevent future coup schemes https://tinyurl.com/4achsu6n
// Donald Trump demanded that GOP senators reject any effort to reform the Electoral Count Act. Soon after, Mitch McConnell decided to ignore him.
🧵 RT @DavidLarter I think its utterly fascinating how thoroughly Russia has screwed itself. Everyone feared its vaunted information warfare operation only to see it get thoroughly trounced first by US intelligence then by a torrent of Shiba Inu memes.
📌 https://twitter.com/DavidLarter/status/1574761797911220228?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidLarter And that’s been the story of the whole Ukraine invasion: Russia is not as good as they made themselves seem. Its why when Putin says “I’m not bluffing” it has no credibility. His entire cache on the world scene was a bluff that he called on himself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidLarter Ever seen a man call his own bluff? Well if you were watching TV on Feb 23 you did.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidLarter Russian info ops went from being credited with tipping the outcome of a U.S. presidential election to being unable to compete with “What airdefense doing” ¤ It’s truly remarkable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidLarter There is a lesson in this about people who are super badasses online.
😅 RT @SpencerGuard Dang, they got me. Parody/inserted subtitles of Russian TV host drafted. I wish it were true!! “…I don’t want to be cannon fodder…I’m just too old…There are millions of men from ethnic minorities…take my place…Why don’t you go if you’re so brave? Go die in the Donbas.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @R82938886 Solovyov gets drafted and goes crazy.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/R82938886/status/1574865224108220423?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer AIR DEFENSE UPGRADE: UKR has confirmed that it will receive four IRIS-T air defense complexes. The IRIS-T can intercept fast-moving and small targets, missiles, rockets, UAV/drones, and cruise missiles. The missiles are equipped with Infra-red and and active radar.
¤ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1575283431776440320?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Reuters The U.S. will impose economic costs on Moscow in coming days over ‘sham’ referendums held by Russia in occupied regions of Ukraine, the State Department said, as Biden administration officials look to the finance and energy sectors for future sanctions
🐣 Okay, so this $1.1B is for mid- to long-term contracts, not short term (which instead comes from Presidential drawdown authority, another tranch of which will be announced next week); so tbc …
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mike_Eckel .@DeptofDefense announces contents of new $1.1 billion arms package for Ukraine. Includes 18 new HIMARS. 🧐
⋙⋙ DefenseDept: $1.1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2ndhks96
Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced approximately $1.1 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). This USAI package underscores the U.S. commitment to continuing to support Ukraine over the long term. It represents a multi-year investment in critical capabilities to build the enduring strength of Ukraine’s Armed Forces as it continues to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and territory in the face of Russian aggression.
Unlike Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which DoD has continued to leverage to deliver equipment to Ukraine from DoD stocks at a historic pace, USAI is an authority under which the United States procures capabilities from industry. This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine in the mid- and long-term.
Capabilities include:
● 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and associated ammunition;
● 150 Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs);
● 150 Tactical Vehicles to tow weapons;
● 40 trucks and 80 trailers to transport heavy equipment;
● Two radars for Unmanned Aerial Systems;
● 20 multi-mission radars;
● Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems;
● Tactical secure communications systems, surveillance systems, and optics;
● Explosive ordnance disposal equipment;
● Body armor and other field equipment;
● Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.In total, the United States has now committed approximately $16.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021. Since 2014, the United States has committed approximately $19 billion in security assistance to Ukraine more than $16.2 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24.
Through both PDA and USAI, DoD continues to work with Ukraine to meet both its immediate and longer-term security assistance needs. Together with our Allies and partners, our unified efforts will help Ukraine continue to be successful today while building the enduring strength of Ukraine’s forces to ensure the continued freedom and independence of the Ukrainian people.
🐣 RT @TrentTelenko Ouch. The lid on the Lyman “kettle” is about to be slammed shut. ¤ You are looking at a Russian version of the WW2 Falaise Gap being closed here. ¤ The unified national AFU doesn’t have the Western Allies SHAEF generals dithering among themselves to delay this gap’s closing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brucewaynesaunt Yesterday vs today at 15:00h CEST…guess tomorrow the kettle is closed… ¤ source: Google war map
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jjlong495 I am impressed by Russians in Lyman for holding so long. Maybe we should lower expectations.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 they’ve ordered by Putin himself to stay; whether this a a wise tactical move is another matter, esp as Ukr has been able to establish fire control over the only way out, the road to Kreminna
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ODESA /28 SEP/ UKR radars monitor the sortie of a Russian Su-35 naval strike fighter from Crimea. Detected, the Su-35 is forced to fire its Kh-59 missiles from long range. The missiles are interdicted by UKR air defense, and the Su-35 is forced to withdraw.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1575116886563590144?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JimFraserUk 18 more HIMARs. That almost doubles what is currently ruining Russia’s ‘army’. Putin is going to go ape
⋙ 🐣 RT @TpyxaNews The Pentagon officially announced the allocation of a new tranche of military assistance to Ukraine for $1.1 billion ¤ The package includes 18 MLRS HIMARS, 150 off-road vehicles, radars and UAV countermeasure systems
🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien My latest piece for @TheAtlantic just dropped, why a smarter, more diverse and intellectually flexible (woke) army is much better than the hyper masculine, forces that are often seen as the military paradigm.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Phillips O’Brien: What Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand About War https://tinyurl.com/3ap59r9a
// On the modern battlefield, brains and adaptability yield far better results than ruthless brutality does.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals aren’t the only people who think that the more ruthless, hypermasculine, and reflexively brutal an army is, the better it performs on the battlefield. That view also has fans in the United States.
… “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea,” Cruz tweeted sarcastically. The Texas Republican is not alone in trumpeting a Putinesque ideal. Several months earlier, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson had similarly complained about a supposedly “woke” Pentagon, which he likened to the Wesleyan University anthropology department. By promoting diversity and inclusion, he insisted, military leaders were destroying American armed forces, supposedly the last great bastion of merit in the country. More recently, Carlson has complained that America’s armed forces are becoming “more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore,” just as China’s are “more masculine.”
Arguments like these were much easier to make before Putin unleashed his muscle-bound and decidedly unwoke fighting machine on the ostensibly weak Ukrainians, only to see it perform catastrophically. More than seven months into the war, the Ukrainian army continues to grow in strength, confidence, and operational competence, while the Russian army is flailing. Its recent failures raise many questions about the nature of military power. Before Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, many analysts described his military as fast and powerful and predicted that it would “shock and awe” the overmatched defenders. The Ukrainian armed forces were widely assumed to be incapable of fighting the mighty Russians out in the open; their only option, the story went, would be to retreat into their cities and wage a form of guerrilla war against the invaders.
The success of the Ukrainian military over the past few months, along with the evolution of the Ukrainian state itself toward a more tolerant, more liberal norm, reveals what makes a better army in the modern world. Brains mean more than brawn, and adaptability means more than mindless aggression. Openness to new ideas and new equipment, along with the ability to learn quickly, is far more important than a simple desire to kill.
From the moment the Russian military crossed the border, the Ukrainians have outfought it, revealing it to be inflexible and intellectually vapid. Indeed when confronted with a Ukrainian military that was everything it was not—smart, adaptable, and willing to learn—the Russian army could only fall back on slow, massed firepower. The Battle of the Donbas, the war’s longest engagement, which started in late April and is still under way, exposed the Russian army at its worst. For months, it directed the bulk of personnel and equipment toward the center of a battle line running approximately from Izyum to Donetsk. Instead of breaking through Ukrainian lines and sending armored forces streaking forward rapidly, as many analysts had predicted, the Russian army opted to make painfully slow, incremental advances, by simply blasting the area directly in front of it. The plan seemed to be to render the area uninhabitable by Ukrainians, which would allow the Russians to advance intermittently into the vacuum. This was heavy-firepower, low-intelligence warfare on a grand scale, which resulted in strategically meaningless advances secured at the cost of unsustainably high Russian casualties. And in recent weeks, the Ukrainians have retaken much of the territory that Russia managed to seize at the start of the battle—and more.
I struggle to think of another case in the past 100 years when a major military power has performed as poorly against an adversary it was heavily favored to defeat. The supposedly second-strongest army in the world, with its martial spirit, brilliant doctrines, and advanced equipment, was thwarted and is now being pushed back by a Ukrainian military whose prospects most outsiders had dismissed before the war.
The persistence of the Putin-Cruz-Carlson vision of war is surprising, because we have decades, even centuries, of evidence to the contrary. Since the Industrial Revolution, and in many ways before, the ability to run a complex system has been the cornerstone of strategic success. Though much military popular literature likes to stress the human drama of combat—the bravery and sacrifice, the cowardice and atrocity—it is not nearly as important in victory or defeat as many people assume. In state-to-state wars—a category that includes the current Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as broader conflicts such as the two world wars—the side that can most efficiently deploy more effective equipment operated by better-trained personnel has typically emerged victorious.
The combination of education and technology overcame brute force during World War II, when the most militarily skillful and adaptable countries—the United States and the United Kingdom—were able to fight their enemies at a relatively small cost in casualties. The U.K., even though it fought around the world from 1939 to 1945, lost only 384,000 soldiers in combat. The U.S. lost even fewer, suffering approximately 290,000 battle deaths. The German armed forces, by contrast, lost more than 4 million soldiers.
That the British and American armed forces kept their casualties comparatively low is especially notable because they were confronted with an overwhelming majority of German arms, planes, and ammunition. Because of the sickening number of human casualties, the fighting on the Eastern Front between the Nazis and Soviets is widely deemed World War II’s largest engagement, but Germany had to send far more of its war production to fight the British and Americans than it did to fight the U.S.S.R.
The Ukrainians are trying, albeit with far fewer advantages, to do to Russia what the U.S. and the U.K. did to Germany. Ukrainian forces have learned to skillfully use advanced weaponry—in this case NATO-standard systems such as HIMARS and HARM missiles—to neutralize the brute strength of the Russian army. They have accomplished this because Ukrainian society is more flexible, technologically conversant, and willing to learn than the Russian invaders are. They have shown more cleverness and wisdom, and over time that advantage has allowed them to start taking the initiative.
Just as the ability to absorb information is better than lunkhead hypermasculinity in a modern army, diversity and societal integration also bring major advantages. As Ukraine has become more diverse and tolerant, its army has benefited. In contrast with Putin’s homophobic military, the Ukrainian armed forces include LGBTQ soldiers who have incorporated “unicorn” insignia into their uniforms. The valor of these soldiers, and the rallying of the Ukrainian people around a vision of a tolerant and diverse society, have led to an overall increase in Ukrainian support for gay rights—and it underscores the belief that everyone has a role to play in the country’s defense.
The Russian experience could not be more different. Putin has made suppressing gay rights one of the hallmarks of his rule. Determined to capitalize on culture-war tropes of the American right, he has portrayed Russia as a victim of cancel culture. He has retained rigid control over Russian society. While the Ukrainians are opening up, he is clamping down—with what we are now seeing as rather extreme results.
Last week, Putin called for a partial mobilization, which appears to be much broader than was originally announced. Now faced with the prospect of being forced into his army, large numbers of Russian men are desperately trying to get out of the country, and protests and even sabotage have occurred against government authorities. Whether Russian citizens generally view service in Putin’s army as a worthy national endeavor is in doubt. The Ukrainians, conversely, undertook a far more successful conscription at the start of the invasion.
Recent events should banish the idea that the more aggressive killing machine wins the war. Intelligence, technological savvy, and social integration are the assets that matter most on the modern battlefield.
Phillips Payson O’Brien is a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II.
🐣 RT @TetyanaWrites You know why this is clever? Because we are putting the psychological pressure on mothers and wives.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZMiST_Ua ⚡️Ukrainian Ministry of Justice announced a new program that will allow every russian soldier captured by Ukrainian forces to contact their family and relatives for up to 15 minutes every couple of days using Voice over IP, improving their mental health and overall state.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone With the Baltic Sea bubbling, due to gas leaks, #Sweden’s security service has opened a “gross sabotage” investigation regarding the incident at the Nord Stream pipelines, the agency saying that it cannot be ruled out “that a foreign power is behind it.” [link]
VOA: US Urges Americans to Leave Russia Quickly https://tinyurl.com/2p8nnyed The @StateDept warned that dual citizens could be drafted, US citizens should not take part in protests, and that options for leaving are becoming limited
🐣 RT @EHargneux If they leave Lyman it will be saw as another major victory for UA, but if they don’t it will be a major victory for UA
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Russian sources repeated that Ukrainian forces are in Kolodyazi and are “lining up in assault columns from the direction of the settlement of Kolodyazi”
🐣 RT @albir2024 Good morning. The situation in Lyman is changing fast. Some sources say is liberated but it’s not yet confirmed. This could turn up to be the greatest Russian defeat so far.
🐣 RT @EliotHiggins Lyman being recaptured by Ukrainian forces just before Putin’s September 30th speech will be another embarrassment for the Russian government.
🐣 RT @nexta_tv The #US Embassy in #Moscow urged its citizens to leave #Russia immediately. ¤ Earlier, Bulgaria, Poland and Estonia asked their citizens to leave Russia.
🐣 ♫ Do you know the way to Kreminna?
Da da da da da da-da-da dah …
I’ve got lots of friends in Kreminna
Da da da da da da-da-da dah …
♫ Luhansk is a great big oblast
Gonna steal a car and speed away
With half a chance I’ll make it real far
Until a howitzer or HIMARS
⋙ 🐣 BarBQs me and my washing machine
♫ All the orcs that made it to
Da da da da da da-da-da
Finland, Georgia or Kazakhstan
Da da da da da da-da-da dah …
Were the smartest ones, unlike me
♫ Do you know the way to Kreminna?
🐣 📋 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Russians are leaving the country en masse. According to the Associated Press:
– More than 53,000 Russians entered Georgia.
– 98,000 Russians entered Kazakhstan.
– More than 43,000 Russians entered Finland.
👉 Follow @Flash_news_ua
🐣 RT @zuidoki1974 Situation around Lyman right now 🇺🇦🇷🇺. Reportedly the 🇷🇺 started retreating now. Its way too late already and will be very costly for them. But every hour they wait it will even more costly.
Map: JulianRoepcke
🌎 https://twitter.com/zuidoki1974/status/1575051923535073280?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Tryzub2022 Russian bloggers are panicking that Ukrainian forces might liberate Torske today which would be the end of the russian forces who are in Lyman-Yampil. The main supply route runs through Torske.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The possibility of major Russian defeat in the Lyman-Yampil area is now very high
🌎 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1575028962362765312?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 27 Sep 2022
RealContextNews, Brian E. Frydenborg: Why Putin Has Doomed Himself with His Ukraine Fiasco https://tinyurl.com/4tm45dmc
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer Oops, they did it again? – From this, it looks like the Russian front is collapsing, and invasion forces will have to withdraw pronto or face encirclement at Lyman. We MIGHT (hopefully) see Ukraine take back another reasonably big chunk of its territory in the next few days.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN / FLASH TRAFFIC / 2330 UTC 27 SEP / UKR forces reported to have registered advances north of Lyman. RU units are falling back in some disarray. Heavy combat reported at Shandryholove. FEBA within 3.5 Km of critical junction city of Zarichne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1574906328619061248?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Zelensky urges Western nations to act as Russia surges troops https://tinyurl.com/2p8e7tm8 Zelensky “urged world leaders to take ‘preventive’ action as Russia prepares to annex more territory and send hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized forces to the front”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN AXIS/ 2010 27 SEP/ UKR forces are reported to be in contact at Shandryholove. UKR has consolidated gains north of the Lyman urban area, and have engaged RU occupiers within the rail complex at Lyman. Reports from RU and UKR sources has been used in this map.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1574855433151516688?s=20/photo/1
AP (9/21): What’s in the House, Senate bills overhauling Jan. 6 count https://tinyurl.com/4pbsjwjy McConnell just came out in favor of the bipartisan Senate version, which at least 10 GOP Senators also support; the main substantive difference has to do with states certifying elections:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1574862782649999409?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] CERTIFYING ELECTIONS
The House bill would add language to try to prohibit state or local officials from refusing to count valid votes in a presidential election or refusing to certify a legitimate election — an attempt to assuage some lawmakers’ fears that the next presidential candidate will follow Trump’s lead and try to pressure lower-level officials to overturn the results. Presidential candidates could go to court to force such a count. ¤ The Senate bill has no such language
🐣 RT @mkraju News — McConnell comes out in support of the Senate’s bill to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, a bill to make it harder to overturn a presidential election and a response to the Jan. 6 attack. Bill has enough GOP support to pass Senate, likely in the lame-duck session. 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Possibly; sets up the idea that this is “Russia.” More today on Putin’s #nuclear threats coming in @TheAtlantic Daily. Sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/mssdcatj
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ProfSwogger Is this as precursor for nuclear use under the guise of self defense?
⋙ 🐣 so … NATO will not be attacking a Ukr/Ru chimera either ¤ if the point was that ANY mil activity in the Ukr/Ru area would be considered an attack by NATO ~ Pootsie just said such activity would be addressed by counter-terrorist measures ¤ I understood this as Poots walking it back
🐣 RT @Johnyrocket69 No rush for Lyman. Its tying up Russian Forces as intended. Cutting the North off collapsing the entire occupation of the region is the main goal. #Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck The Battle of Lyman ¤ The flag of Ukraine has been raised over Ridkodub in northernmost Donetsk region. The escape route for the rashist garrison in Drobysheve is likely cut off. The road out of Lyman is under Ukrainian fire control all the way to Kreminna.
🐣 RT @putinsucks69 Rybar says the only remaining supply line to Lyman is threatened from multiple directions. Highly likely Lyman will be in a tactical encirclement today, if it isn’t already.
🐣 📋 In the 20 years of the War in Viet Nam (1955-75) 58,280 Americans died
Russia has suffered that close to that many deaths in about 7 months
*(including non-combatants, MIA)
(all deaths, est. 2.5M, all countries)
Wikipedia https://tinyurl.com/2p6692jy
⇈ ⇊
🐣 📋 in 20 yrs in Viet Nam, the US lost just over 58K dead
⋙ 🐣 1955-1975
number of US dead includes non-combatant deaths and MIA
all tolled, ~2.5M died in the Viet Nam War
Source: Wikipedia
⭕ 26 Sep 2022
WaPo: How a QAnon splinter group became a feature of Trump rallies https://tinyurl.com/yc6ns24h “‘Biden is a fraud, he’s an actor,’ said a woman in an ‘I TQLD YOU SO’ T-shirt who declined to give her name. ‘He died in 2019’”
// An offshoot of the extremist movement called Negative48 is thronging Trump political events, causing tensions with the former president’s team
NYT: Two Cities, Two Armies: Pivot Points in the Fight in Ukraine’s East https://tinyurl.com/57kmvprk
// The battle for the critical Donbas region in Ukraine is centered on two strategically important cities: Lyman, held by the Russians, and Bakhmut, held by Ukraine. The fighting over the cities is fierce as both armies race to claim new ground.
Ukraine is pushing hard to reclaim Lyman, a railway juncture that serves as an important supply hub on the western edge of the Donbas. Russian forces control the city, but Ukraine is hoping to use it as a gateway to push farther east and maintain its momentum. ¤ Bakhmut is an entry point to part of the region still held by Ukrainian forces. Capturing it would also give Russia a win after being routed in humiliating fashion in the north. The Russians have been shelling Bakhmut incessantly for the past three months.
The fight for Bakhmut and Lyman comes down to strategic positioning for both sides before the front lines stagnate in the cold weather. If the cities are under Ukrainian control, Kyiv’s forces will be prepared to claw back lost territory in the coming months. Under Russian occupation, and with reinforcements, they will help Russia put Donbas’s two major cities — Kramatorsk and Sloviansk — under increasing threat and more frequent shelling. …
The Donbas, a region roughly the size of New Hampshire, is made up of rolling fields, postage-stamp sized mining towns and hulking plateaus of slag heaps discarded from the area’s constellation of coal mines. In 2014, Russian-backed separatists formed two breakaway republics there, fighting the Ukrainian government for eight years until the Russians launched their invasion in February. …
Unlike in Lyman, where there is a mix of Russian reservists, separatists and regular army forces, the area around Bakhmut is largely controlled by the Wagner Group, an infamous paramilitary force that reports directly to the Kremlin. …
🐣 RT @ RonFilipkowski Calling from jail on the eve of his trial, Oathkeepers leader Stewart Rhodes admits he had sent a letter urging Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare the election invalid, then do a mass declassification “of all the dirty secrets of the elites.”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1574516238004662272?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ gal_suburban One thing people can’t deny is how coordinated they were in their demands and actions. ¤ Rhodes, Flynn, Patel, Ratcliffe, Grenell & the rest wanted everything declassified, voting machines seized and the Insurrection Act declared. ¤ Seditious Conspiracy
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone As U might expect, Putin’s conscripted cannon fodder told, only supplies their uniforms – everything else they’ll have to provide. Including sleeping bags, warm clothing, medical supplies. “Ask your wives, girls, mothers for sanitary pads” to use as tourniquets bandages.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Newly mobilized Russians are told what they need to take to the war. Spoiler – pads and tampons. (English subtitles)
💽 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1574476679539527680?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @psarj “All the army provides you with is uniforms and armor.” ¤ Everything else they have to provide. ¤ This is how they’re getting around their logistics crunch! ¤ Doesn’t make sense to waste RU resources on cannon fodder ¤ Also, don’t look too closely at the armor, it’s packed with cardboard
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes continued yesterday and overnight with an impact on the Kryvyi Rih airport causing damage and disruptions. An impact in Kramatorsk also caused significant damage and casualties.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1574619078051786752?s=20
🧵 RT @wartranslated An update from the Ukrainian military expert Oleg Zhdanov for 26th September 2022. https://tinyurl.com/2p87nw8r
🔥 The past day has been mostly stable, but in some areas, Ukrainians advanced, while in others they were pushed by the Russian forces.
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1574516941401776134?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DeonteFord1 It doesn’t need to. Russia is going to win this war regardless of what the west tries to do.
🐣 RT @ArsenalOfShade Really? Take a look at the 1st forced conscripts got when they were being rushed to the frontline,Their train got eliminated in Luhansk. No wonder “how to break your arm” is the biggest Internet search in Ruska 😅
¤ https://twitter.com/ArsenalOfShade/status/1574599562672500741?s=20/photo/1
// train on fire, likely sabateurs
🐣 📋 RT @Boycott_RU 1/Multinationals’ entities are now obliged to assist the Kremlin’s war mobilization by helping conscript soldiers & provide other assets as asked by the state. Between them, they have at least 700,000 employees and $141 billion in assets, according to @B4Ukraine .
// 251K from US, 124K France, 91K Germany, 34K Swiss, 28K UK, 20K Japan, 15K Greece, 14.5K China, 12K Netherlands
🐣 RT @BrotherNumpsay Simonyan actually references Battleship Potemkin and mutiny. Yikes!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Two of Putin’s top propagandists, head of RT Margarita Simonyan and state TV host Vladimir Solovyov, are aghast at how poorly his “partial mobilization” is going. They worry about the consequences that might follow in the near future. More in my article ⤵️
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1574491958101393411?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin’s Top Cheerleaders Panic Over Russian Army ‘Mutiny’ https://tinyurl.com/yeyvu8nw
// Two of Putin’s most strident supporters are freaking out about the disastrous mass mobilization efforts, which they fear could lead to a major revolt against the war in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog No longer respecting election results isn’t just about messing with elections themselves. It’s about a different kind of governance. ¤ If they do not want your vote to determine who is in power, that means they don’t want to have to use power to try to meet your needs.
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1574583366426443777?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @krides The sausage fest on the Georgian border is getting out of control.
¤ https://twitter.com/krides/status/1574468055710588928?s=20/photo/1
// pressing crowd of hundreds of men at border
WaPo Editorial: Putin’s debacle is breaking his country — and he might pay the price https://tinyurl.com/2ypekrs2 “Putin — the aggressor, the lone reason for this war — has wasted tens of thousands of lives for nothing and now threatens to add more atop a dismal pile of shame”
Like so much else in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senseless and vicious assault on Ukraine, his attempt to mobilize Russian men to fight has turned into a debacle. After months of preserving relative calm about the war among the Russian public — through a combination of propaganda, lies, censorship and harsh punishment of criticism and dissent — Mr. Putin has broken the quiet himself. Thousands of Russian men are running for the exits.
Mr. Putin had announced a “partial mobilization,” saying that “only military reservists, primarily those who served in the armed forces and have specific military occupational specialties and corresponding experience, will be called up.” But in recent days, the call-up has grabbed men with no prior military service, including some who are too old or physically incapable of going to war. Moreover, the burden is falling more heavily on small towns and villages and among ethnic minorities.
Outright protest — and chaos — erupted. In the Irkutsk region, a young man shot the chief recruitment officer at a military enlistment station. In Omsk, social media video showed, fighting broke out between drafted men and the police officers forcing them onto buses. The draftees called on the police to die with them in the trenches. Arson attacks have hit recruitment offices in 16 regions since Mr. Putin’s announcement last Wednesday, nearly twice as many incidents since the Russian president launched the invasion in February. Since the call-up announcement, more than 2,300 people have been arrested for protesting. A traffic jam of 2,300 vehicles backed up at the border crossing between Russia and Georgia as men fled the draft, while many others walked and thousands more fled through Finland and other routes. Almost all flights out have been booked for days.
Behind the upheaval is a deeper fissure. For many years, Mr. Putin maintained what scholar Masha Lipman dubbed a “no-participation pact” with a swath of the Russian public: These people agreed to stay out of politics in exchange for the government not interfering in their daily lives. After the war began, many Russians kept quiet or just tried to ignore it; mass protests did not break out. But the mobilization threatens to destroy this compact. Sociologist Greg Yudin notes that Mr. Putin did not initiate a political mobilization before launching the military one. He says Russians are quickly snapping out of lethargy and asking questions that they hadn’t for a long time. This might weaken Mr. Putin still more. Ukraine and its allies must keep the pressure on.
Once again, Mr. Putin’s lies and absurdities fall before the truth. The “partial mobilization” of reservists turns out to be a desperate grab for canon fodder. The “referendums” in captured territory are a travesty of democracy. The “special military operation” turns out to be a long and painful war. Mr. Putin lashes out at “neo-Nazis,” but his own troops stand accused of the most horrible war crimes.
The darkest truth is that Mr. Putin — the aggressor, the lone reason for this war — has wasted tens of thousands of lives for nothing and now threatens to add more atop a dismal pile of shame.
🐣 RT @FreeCiviliansUA 🛡️According to president Zelensky, Donetsk Oblast is Ukraine’s main priority. He said Ukraine is doing everything to curb Russian activity in this key region http://donorbox.org/freearmyukraine
#WarInUkraine #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineWar #Ukraine
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Participants of the Third Free Nations of Russia Forum called to decolonize, denuclearize “imperial, terrorist” Russian state ¤ As well, they called on northern nations to launch an active fight for liberation, and to avoid the Russian opposition
⋙ EuromaidanPress, Christine Chraibi: National minorities of Russia call to decolonize, denuclearize “imperial, terrorist” Russian state https://tinyurl.com/mrx2n8jv
// Free Nations of Russia Forum; National minorities of the Russian Federation discuss decolonization and reconstruction at the Free Nations Forum in Gdansk.
🌎 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1574579581557817367?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer 30 SEPTEMBER: Putin is scheduled to give his annual address to Federal Assembly. He is expected to give the ‘results’ of the ‘referendums’ in occupied Donbas, Kherson and Zaporozhye. His troubled mobilization might be expanded, and some form of martial law announced.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Putin has unleashed strong currents of dissent with his bungled and violently opposed “partial mobilization”. This is the tactic of 1941 imposed by idiots in 2022. Now all Russian men see the Ukraine military disaster as a threat to their own future.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russians who don’t want to become cannon fodder for the sake of Putin’s imperial ambitions are trying to escape from Russia. It’s becoming increasingly more challenging.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Podolyak_M USSR 2.0… A country at is actively disintegrating until the Iron Curtain finally descends. A perfect illustration of Putin’s conscription.
💽 https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1574426933466652674?s=20/photo/1
// drone video of cars lined up to leave Russia
🐣 RT @McFaul I am pro-Russian. I want to save Russian lives. That’s why I want Putin to stop sending Russians to be killed in a senseless war that has nothing to do with Russian security and everything to do with Putin’s ego. The real anti-Russians are those supporting mass mobilization.
🐣 RT @duty2warn “F*ck the voting, let’s get right to the violence,” – Roger Stone, before the 2020 presidential election. ¤ Wednesday’s Jan 6 Committee hearing will show the video clips and present the context.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Stone said this one day before the 2020 election. He said it in front of a documentary film crew, on video. What he was saying, in effect, is that he had no interest in waiting to tally actual votes before contesting the election results.
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: The Russian Clocks Are All Ticking https://tinyurl.com/ycy3fz9z “There is no way for the poorly supplied and corrupt Russian military to train, house, clothe, and arm 300,000 men anytime soon, and certainly not before winter arrives”
// Putin is running out of time.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN/ 1930 UTC 26 SEP/ Russian sources report that UKR troops are in contact south of the Lyman rail complex. UKR units reported to have cut the O-0526 HWY at Zelena Dolyna and are pressing toward the O-0526 HWY east of Drobysheve.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1574478065396244480?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FreeCiviliansUA ⚡️🛡️ Understand why #Kherson Oblast is so strategic (1)
North Crimean Canal diverts waters from Dnipro River in Kherson. It is a lifeline to Crimea and supplies 85% of its freshwater needs.
https://donorbox.org/freearmyukraine
#WARINUKRAINE #UKRAINEWAR #UKRAINERUSSIAWAR #UKRAINE
🌎 https://twitter.com/FreeCiviliansUA/status/1574471410763927564?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @Cirincione I enjoyed my talk with @jeffpeguescbs @CBSNewsRadio last week. I thought I’d share some of our analysis on Putin, Ukraine and nuclear threats. ¤ You can listen to the podcast here: https://tinyurl.com/3vhxej26
Jeff asks: “Putin makes some pretty alarming threats. Is he desperate?”
📌 https://twitter.com/Cirincione/status/1574474702365638671?s=20
I said, “I believe it shows that he’s losing the war and he knows he’s losing the war. He’s been operating under the idea that a Russian victory was inevitable; that he had superior numbers and material; that he had the superior resources to sustain this occupation of Ukraine.
“The recent Ukrainian counteroffensive both in the south around the city of Kherson and then, to his surprise, in the north around the city of Kharkiv, has shaken those assumptions.That’s why he’s rattling the nuclear saber again. He knows he’s losing.
“He’s concerned that he may not be able to hold his current positions in Ukraine, as Ukrainians continue to advance.He’s trying to scare Ukraine, to scare the West into halting any offensive actions by threatening to escalate to nuclear weapons.
Jeff asks: “But Russia has a powerful military. Why is Putin losing now?’
I said: “Before the war most considered Russia the second most powerful military in the world. As it turns out it’s only the second most powerful military in Ukraine.“Russia is losing for a number of reasons. (1) The war has exposed the effects of its corrupt system. A lot of the equipment isn’t working, a lot of the ammunition and equipment has proved to be defective. (2) It also shows the corruption in the military command structure.
“Many of the general have proved to be completely inept. (3) Russian strategy is very top-down, very controlled when modern warfare requires much more initiative on the battlefield. (4) It really shows the difference between an invading force and an army defending their country.
“Ukrainians have the benefit of superior morale, superior desire. They know what they’re fighting for. They see what happens when their towns are occupied by Russian forces. (5) Ukraine has superior strategic leaders, both in President Zelensky and in the military command.
(6) Finally, they’ve benefited greatly from Western arms that have flowed into Ukraine. The HIMARS, the M777 artillery, the drones, have given Ukraine the ability to strike deep behind Russian lines, disrupting their logistics, their supplies, their command headquarters. END
🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin explains how the only direction where Russians are currently advancing, the Bakhmut direction, is completely pointless since they are being flanked by Ukrainians in the north of the so-called LPR.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1574367403995435008?s=20/photo/1
// “either cretinism or betrayal”
🐣 RT @ NOELreports 🇺🇦 Ukraine does not plan to announce additional mobilization ¤ “We have already created reserves through the territorial defense system. We don’t announce additional mobilization. We have everything, and we are ready for a larger number of Russian troops,” said Mykhailo Podolyak
🐣 📋 RT @mrsorokaa Over 260,000 Russian men have fled the country after Putin launched his mobilization on Sept. 21. ¤ Can you imagine what could have happened if they would actually had the guts to take their country back?
⋙ 🐣 that’s in addition to the 120-170K tech workers who left at the outset
NYTimes: https://tinyurl.com/asjc7ujy
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko If the Kremlin wanted to intimidate the West with this “mobilization,” it’s a total failure. ¤ What’s happening now only exposes the Russian military as even more chaotic, systemically flawed, primitive, and heavy-handed than we expected it to be.
🐣 RT @wartranslated An observation from Aleksandr “we are losing the copter” Sladkov pointing to the lack of accuracy of Russian artillery systems causing overloading of the whole chain including ammunition delivery and storage. As usual, he suggests finding and punishing those guilty.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1574430761826091009?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] WE HAVE A LOT OF ARTILLERY IN THE SMO. GUNS, HOWITZERS, MORTARS. WE PUT OUT A SEA OF FIRE.
The only problem is we’re not shooting accurately. Are the gunners to blame? I do not think so. If, as a quiz, you could tell me the latest systems that we use, I would be grateful. Think about it, and I will help you:“Msta” – commissioned 40 years ago,
“Pion” gun – 42 years ago,
Mortar “Tyulpan” – 56 years ago,
D-30 – 60 years ago,
“Rapira” – 62 years ago,
Mortar 120mm – 63 years ago,
Mortar 82mm – 72 years ago.Yes, experts will say: “Sasha, the West also has old guns, it’s all about the new ammunition.” And they will be right. But then why are we using the old Soviet ammunition? Why, when disposing of ammunition, we first destroyed new ammunition, but never got our hands to the oldest?
No, we have a new (born in 1986) Krasnopol guided projectile. But it is advisable to use it with laser guidance using the Orlan-30 UAV. But there are no Orlan-30’s. It’s so rare you could say we don’t have it. Therefore…
Therefore, if I start writing about artillery reconnaissance and guidance systems, it will become completely vulgar. They know this very well both in the higher ups and below. Don’t blame the gunner, he does the best he can.
Here is the video I posted above. You can see how our gunners hit enemy strongholds. See how many craters are scattered around in the field? If we had accurate artillery systems, then a hundred times fewer shells would be enough. War is costly, and we must thank those due to whom we are forced to load, reload, carry, hide and store, bring to firing positions, load, shoot a thousand times more than we should. Who is guilty? Find and punish them.
🐣 RT @ hugolowell The Guardian: After the Jan. 6 committee identified Roger Stone’s number, they found he called former Proud Boys chair Tarrio before and after the Capitol attack, and former Oath Keepers chief Rhodes on Jan. 19 — as well as Don Jr aide Arthur Schwartz.
🐣 📋 RT @SammyVult % of [Ethnic] Ukrainians in given oblast:
Donetsk – 56.9%
Kherson – 82%
Zaporizhzhia 70%
Kharkov – 70%
Odessa – 62%
[Luhansk 58%]
So Russia can f*ck right off with their grand plan. It´s imperialism, plain and simple.
🧵 RT @jgoldsto 1/Latest updates on Ukraine; still somewhat tentative based on tweets from various sources. It appears that in the last six-eight hours, AFU has made major progress to the north of Lyman, advancing the encirclement of ths critical gateway railhead. This follows a long and costly
📌 https://twitter.com/jgoldsto/status/1574407037282185216?s=20
2/two weeks of fighting over Lyman. The Ru army decided to defend Lyman furiously, pouring in all available experienced troops and attempting several counter-attacks against Ukr forces. Whlie this has delayed Ukr progress, it may end up making loss of Lyman far more costly for
3/costly for Ru in terms of men and equipment lost. Amazing that Ukr, despite considerable losses in the heavy fighting, has been able to maintain its offensive and encircle Lyman from N & S. Critical that Ukr has kept Ru air power at bay. Now if Ukr can take control of Lyman,
4/Ru may not have troops and armor to maintain a fallback defensive line. Way could open for Ukr to retake major portions of Luhank. Meanwhile, in the south, Ru using untrained fresh conscripts to reinforce positions in Kherson. Yet, Ukr keeps taking down bridges and pontoons
5/used to supply Kherson. Keeping up the pressure on logistic supply to Rus forces, Ukr may be able to force Kherson defenders to withdraw or surrender without a major offensive. Encircling Lyman in the East, while starving Kherson in the south, is a remarkable 2-way move by
6/Ukr strategists. If both moves succeed, Russia’s advances since Jan will be sharply reversed; momentum will build for Ukr to recover all occupied territory. While this seems ambitious, must recall that hardened and well-equipped Ukr forces will increasingly be facing untrained
7/Ru conscripts reluctant to fight, armed with old and outmoded equipment. The Kupiansk/Isyum advance, Lyman encirclement, and Kherson logistic isolation may mark the turning points of the war.
🐣 RT @INTobservers According to russian sources, There was a deep breakthrough of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Lyman direction – UA controlled 7 settlements at once and went to the border of the LPR. #Kharkiv #Ukraine️ ¤ We are waiting good news from the general staff
🌎 https://twitter.com/INTobservers/status/1574386224667807744?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @ Da___Wolf A tank is a tank but the balance of tanks in most areas is now in Ukraine’s favour, just because they’ve destroyed and captured so many, and because Russia has so many trapped over the river in Kherson. Lyman and surrounds won’t last long. Then that’s another Russian army gone.
🐣 RT @ NOELreports Russian sources report that AFU 🇺🇦 has reached the borders of Luhansk at the front north of Lyman. ¤ We will wait for further confirmation, but it seems something collapsed 😊👋
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1574380905027850241?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @y_decr Knock, Knock. We are here. ¤ #Lyman #Ukraine
🌎 https://twitter.com/y_decr/status/1574375830859304960?s=20/photo/1
// street-to-street fighting
🐣 RT @CXCarroll Girkin is a monster but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s correct here: the Russian troops being used to go on the offensive are a waste of resources. They should be used to reinforce Lyman which is existential.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin explains how the only direction where Russians are currently advancing, the Bakhmut direction, is completely pointless since they are being flanked by Ukrainians in the north of the so-called LPR.
💽 [tr] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1574367403995435008?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @SquireDigital 35/ Two weeks ago Izium was cut off, the RuAF were killed or are POWs. ¤ It is now groundhog day for Russia in Lyman and/or Svatove. ¤ They had two weeks to organize some rational defense, but instead throw their lives away against the ZSU rocks of Avdiivka, Soledar and Bakhmut.
🐣 RT @ mccaffreyr3 Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine is increasingly becoming a source of domestic bitterness and opposition. The so called partial mobilization has underscored the military disaster facing the Russian Armed Forces. The EU and NATO are coming together in horror.
⭕ 25 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @mhmck The russian fascist invaders have made a fatal decision to defend Lyman at all costs. ¤ The Armed Forces of Ukraine are engaged in offensives to trap the rashists in Lyman and liberate the north of Luhansk region.
🐣 RT @KrauseForIowa With Lyman almost surrounded, it appears that the offensive will shift to Svatove. Possession can block a key supply line from Russia to the deep south of occupied Ukraine. It picks the back door lock on Luhansk. Russians at Lyman will have to eventually surrender. 🌎
UAWire: Russian defense lines collapsing near Lyman under pincer attack of Ukrainian Forces https://tinyurl.com/2p958yb8 If the UA forces can reach Svatove, ‘the entire group of the Russian troops in and near Lyman will be in the operational encirclement’ ~ RU military sources
Russian telegram channels and military propagandists are sounding an alarm because of a difficult situation for the Russian army near Lyman, Donetsk Oblast. The military telegram channel Rybar (one of the largest in Russia) reports that the units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked from Lozove, Lyman district, and broke through the Russian defense lines. Now the Russian troops are facing a threat of encirclement.
Russian military sources claim that if Ukrainian Forces manage to reach Svatove, the entire group of the Russian troops in and near Lyman will be in the operational encirclement.
The Ukrainian Forces, having taken control of the towns Oskil and Rubtsi, are now advancing towards Makiivka in order to encircle the Russian troops in Lyman from the north and move further to Kreminna in the Luhansk People’s Republic, reports Rybar.
According to Rybar, Moscow is sending reinforcements in order to slow down the advance of the Ukraine troops and stabilize the collapsing front.
According to Ukrainian military analyst Bohdan Miroshnikov, the Ukrainian Forces are expanding their foothold north of Lyman. Lozove, Rubtsi, Krymki and Oleksandrivka have been liberated.
“Lozove (Lyman district) is under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Rubtsi, Krymki, Oleksandrivka and all other adjacent settlements too,” said Miroshnikov . According to him, the Ukrainian Forces have also taken control of Korovii Yar and a sweep operation is underway there.
“Our units in this area have advanced even further, so expect news,” Miroshnikov wrote. ¤ He stressed that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have taken a good pace and are moving quite quickly from the Oskil River to Lyman. The Russians have been unable to stop the offensive and stabilize the front.
“In the near future, orcs [Russians] will be in danger in Svatove, with the front line being moved further. In such circumstances, the capture of Lyman and advance to Kreminna will mean that Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and Rubizhne will also return home. Orcs captured them three months ago with great losses,” Miroshnikov said.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR Finally, Ukraine has received one of the world’s best air defense systems from the USA–the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS). Apparently, more of these are on the way to protect UA cities and citizens. Thank you, USA. [link]
🐣 RT @ GirkinGirkin Ушла 144 мсд… аминь…
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SquireDigital/status/1574237643205902337?s=20/photo/1
[Text Tr:] Briefly on the Oskol Front. The enemy continues the offensive with large forces supported by tanks. According to some reports, Redkodub and Novo are under Khokhl. Fighting is underway on the southern outskirts of the Liman. Drobyshevo, Novoselovka, Shandrigolovo are under us, despite the attacks of the enemy. In Prishib, Khokhol deployed an artillery reconnaissance station and is conducting a counter-battery fight Hymars and Excaliburs.
🐣 📋 RT @Gerashchenko_en Why do Russians flee from 🇷🇺?
Why do they ask for shelter & get it from some countries?
Did anyone attack them?
It is reported that 260,000 men left Russia after mobilization was declared.
If all of them came out to protest – there would already be no need for them to leave.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1574137426943025154?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @igorsushko This is what Ukraine is fighting for. To free her people from the tyrant. ✊
⋙ 🐣 RT @sumlenny The Ukrainian army liberates more towns from the Russian occupation.
💽 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1574212959953244161?s=20/photo/1
💽 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1574213635869528064?s=20/photo/1
// people waving to Ukr liberators
🐣 RT @RALee85 The Ukrainian General Staff said that Russia is sending mobilized men without training straight to the front line. https://tinyurl.com/4y97j9am
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1574207027135422464?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] In the city of Sevastopol of the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, about one thousand summonses were handed out to men of draft age. Representatives of the occupying forces assure the mobilized personnel that their service will take place in the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region until the end of the term of the so-called “special operation” ¤ The command of the russian occupying forces directs the new arrivals for the mobilization of servicemen without training to the replenishment of units that have suffered losses, directly to the front line. This significantly affects the decrease in the level of morale and psychological state of enemy servicemen and the quality of their performance of duties.
🐣 RT @DefenceU .@ZelenskyyUa
We will definitely liberate our entire country – from Kherson to the Luhansk region, from Crimea to the Donetsk region. We will not allow the occupier to go unpunished. Every murderer and torturer will be brought to justice for what he did against 🇺🇦. ¤ 📷 72 Brigade
🐣 RT @hdevreij ‘The United States would respond decisively to any Russian use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and has spelled out to Moscow the “catastrophic consequences” it would face, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday.’
⋙ Reuters: U.S. warns Putin of ‘catastrophic’ consequences over nuclear weapons https://tinyurl.com/3watvfxa
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This is a great thread. While I keep pointing out that declassification is irrelevant, it’s only on the context that the docs would still be presidential records and not his. ⬇️
🧵 RT @BVanGrack The Declass Defense [thread]: FPOTUS’s recent stmts that he declassified “everything” and may have done it secretly (“by thinking about it”) merit a review of how a secret declassification order would impact an Espionage Act charge for retaining nat’l defense info (“retention charge”).
📌 https://twitter.com/BVanGrack/status/1574027797512732673?s=20
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYMAN/1430 UTC 25 SEP/ UKR forces have prosecuted a multi-pronged attack to isolate and dislodge RU troops occupying the important rail junction at Lyman. UKR has crossed and cut the O-0527 HWY near Drobysheve. UKR air defense is reported to have downed an Su-34 strike fighter.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1574044588343451653?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JimmySecUK President Zelensky confirms in an interview with CBS News that the first NASAMS advanced air defence system has been delivered to Ukraine. 🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦
🐣 RT @DefenceU We understand that not all russian troops are like this;russia still has remnants of a professional army that #UAarmy hasn’t yet destroyed. ¤ We also know that soon these “soldiers” will be at the front,and with such a love for alcohol,it will be easier for them to die on our land.
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1573997205723222018?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1230 UTC 25 SEP/ Partisans & deeply inserted SOF continue targeting ops. Precision weapons hit Nova Kakhovka and Kherson. A strike against the Play Hotel in Kherson is reported to have killed the RU collaborator Oleksiy Zhuravko. Russian Su-30SM strike fighter shot down.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1574007492367065090?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @ tomiahonen Special Master Thread 1/
So Trump’s gambit of the Special Masterbater went horribly wrong
His Magapuppet judge, Loose Cannon: Come On Aileen, did give Trump the Special Master
And DOJ even accepted 1 of 2 judges Trump nominated for it
What happened and… why this ploy?
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1573950935772139520?s=20
TheGuardian, Peter Pomerantsev: The nuclear threat might change the mood in Russia itself, stoking widespread fear https://tinyurl.com/4z8tmnt4 “Putin has lost control of the military situation. Losing control of propaganda will show that beneath the shiny fascist boots are feet of clay”
// Putin’s propaganda glories in devastation but, like the Nazis, he is sowing the seeds of self-destruction
Do you want Total War?” Goebbels demanded of the Nazi faithful as the Second World War went south for Germany in 1943. He depicted a Reich surrounded by evil Jewish cosmopolitan conspirators bent on its destruction and he advocated for total mobilisation and to embrace a glory-in-death ideology.
Vladimir Putin delivered his own (partial) version last week. As the Ukraine war goes south for Russia, he claimed the defeats are the result of cosmopolitan conspiracies bent on destroying Russia and he had to announce (partial) total mobilisation. He called on Russians’ sense of historical mission and implied Russia was ready to use nuclear weapons. “This isn’t a bluff,” he insisted.
Putin likes to imitate the worst of 20th-century totalitarian propaganda, but does his message work, at home and abroad? Or is Putin starting to make the same propaganda blunders he made on the battlefield? Russian state propaganda drips with the pathos of martyrdom. Russians are meant to love the pain of proving how tough they are, surviving everything from the Gulag to the extreme weather, as compared with the effete west. The propaganda taps incessantly into the myth of the Second World War, in which Russians are described as unique among nations in their readiness to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. On the anniversary of that war, the state organises marches where people carry placards of dead veterans, “the immortal regiment”: death in war brings immortality in the heaven of state propaganda. There’s a suicidal bravura, a “let’s destroy the whole world” implication in the popular catchphrase “What’s the point of the world if there’s no place for Russia in it?”. Putin’s nuclear threats are snarled with relish, as if sadistically summoning the Gods of Total Destruction.
As with the Nazis, rational self-interest is meant to be swallowed up in the community of the state. But look closer and the picture gets more complicated – and vulnerable.
The myth of martyrdom and resilience is suspect. Ukrainians have a genuine tradition of suffering for the cause of national liberation – and success through sacrifice. For centuries, Ukrainian poets and rebels proved themselves ready to bear unjust imprisonment, executions and genocide to fight for their national and linguistic rights. Many of Ukraine’s heroes, such as the poets Taras Shevchenko and Vasyl Stus, suffered Russian prisons and tortures, and their underlying spirit of resilience is being proved on the battlefield.
Russians have indeed been killed en masse, most often by their own state, but, unlike Ukrainians, they do not celebrate their own dissidents. These are hated and damned in state propaganda and by the public at large. Real courage is derided. Instead, mass oppression has resulted in a society that celebrates passive conformism. Bravura is celebrated on the screen, but as a way to compensate for the way society is actually cowed. You are crushed by the state and then compensated with patriotic heroics on television and sadism towards the weakest in your own society and others (in this case, Ukraine).
The great difference with Nazi propaganda is that while the former was geared to action and mobilisation, Putin’s propaganda is geared to demobilisation: sit on the couch, feel strong by watching propaganda and let the Kremlin run things. Beneath the rhetoric of self-sacrifice, Putin’s propaganda has traditionally allowed for self-interest or, at least, self-preservation. You go to war spouting patriotic rhetoric, but really you are in it because it allows for loot and rape. You enjoy the highs of patriotic rhetoric at home, but really your interest is in being allowed to pursue corruption, great and small. Putin’s trick is to dress self-interest in patriotic propaganda. Now those two things are splitting. Going to the front just means pointless death. It’s now clear the “partial” mobilisation is not partial at all; people are being grabbed on the streets and packed off to war. On social media, the sentiment towards mobilisation is highly negative. In polling, even the most pro-Putin Russians are against it. The war in Ukraine was meant to be a movie, not a personal sacrifice.
Putin’s threat of nuclear war may backfire, too. It’s meant to intimidate the west and Ukraine but it can upset his own people more. If there’s one thing Russians fear more than Putin, it’s nuclear war – and now he’s the one bringing it closer. For both the elite and the “ordinary” Russians who I’ve spoken to recently, the calculation is about whether the risk of going against Putin is bigger than the risk of sticking with him. So far, rebelling has seemed the bigger risk; does the nuclear topic change that? Much depends on how the international community reacts. We need to show that the closer he gets to a nuclear threat, the more devastating the reaction will be: military, economic and diplomatic. He will even lose China.
Losing public opinion in Russia is not the same as in a democracy. It doesn’t necessarily lead to protests, let alone losing non-existent elections. But being able to show you can control public opinion, through fear and propaganda, is one of the emblems of tsardom. Putin has lost control of the military situation. Losing control of propaganda will show that beneath the shiny fascist boots are feet of clay. Now stamp on them.
⭕ 24 Sep 2022
NYT, Maureen Dowd: Solo Soulless Saboteurs https://tinyurl.com/2p87vte2 “Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, long entwined, continue on vile parallel paths: They would rather destroy their countries than admit they have lost.”
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, long entwined, continue on vile parallel paths: They would rather destroy their countries than admit they have lost. …
As our ancestors did, the Ukrainians are fighting an abusive overlord, against all odds, for democracy. It’s especially inspiring as a split screen with Trump and his MAGA forces trying to bulldoze democracy and rip away women’s rights. The Ukrainians are battling for a luminous ideal — unlike Trump and Putin, who are smashing a luminous ideal for their own benefit, driven by their dread of being called losers.
Both thugs are getting boxed in, Trump by a bouquet of investigations into his chicanery and Putin by an angry public pushback against his bloody vanity war.
America has its own history of lying itself into wars, in Vietnam and Iraq, for example, and then prolonging the killing of young soldiers as a sop to male politicians’ egos. Now it’s Russia’s turn.
Putin has doubled down on his unprovoked invasion of a neighbor — red-washed as a “special military operation” by the Kremlin. Now he has conscripted 300,000 men to join the front lines, commandeering school buses to drag the men to training camps — a move that sent draft-age men fleeing across the border and flocking to airports, amid tears and howls from women and children. …
Pressured by allies and humiliated by his awful judgment in thinking that swallowing Ukraine would be a cakewalk, Putin seems ever more unhinged. The bodies of critics and oligarchs dying in “accidents” and “suicides” are piling up around him, like a scene in “Goodfellas.” He is ruining countless lives in concentric circles, from former friends, to Russian citizens yanked into a war they don’t believe in, to Ukrainians willing to die for freedom. …
WaPo: With Kalashnikov rifles, Russia drives the staged vote in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/mvcjhxd8 “The speed at which the referendums were announced and carried out … reflect the Kremlin’s tacit acknowledgment of its deteriorating position in Ukraine”
WaPo: Propaganda newspapers show how Russia promoted annexation in Kharkiv https://tinyurl.com/sce63z48 ‘The papers sought to evoke nostalgia for the Soviet era, to turn residents against Ukrainian forces and to promote historical and cultural ties with Russia’
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Putin’s and Lavrov’s irresponsible statements on the possible use of nuclear weapons are absolutely unacceptable. Ukraine won’t give in. We call on all nuclear powers to speak out now and make it clear to Russia that such rhetorics put the world at risk and will not be tolerated.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Just In: Liz Cheney says the Jan. 6 Committee has obtained 800K Secret Service communications (!). Some missing texts are there, some are gone, there are also other forms of comms. Some SS agents were clearly lying (“not forthcoming”) with the Committee. Wednesday is gonna rock!
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Is Putin desperate enough to employ a nuke weapon on UKR or NATO forces? Hard to imagine. The likely outcome catastrophic for Russia. Massive and permanent economic retribution. Likely stunning US/NATO air attacks. Possible strategic exchange.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1573833242393706497?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Now THIS is what Russia really wants—and now ofc has no chance in hell of getting: Lavrov wants Russia to be treated like a superpower. That’s what all that “unipolar-bipolar” “one hegemon world order” is about. Russia wants the respect the USSR once had. But w/o earning it.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1573819472397279233?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “The future of the world order is being decided today,” he said, adding: “The question is whether or not this is going to be the kind of order with one hegemon at the head of it, making everyone else live according to their notorious rules, of benefit to that hegemon only. Or are we going to have a democratic, fair world.”
🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump’s merger partner in taking Truth Social public (DWAC) has lost 85% of its market value, making it one of Trump’s most successful business ventures ever.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukraine has requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on Russia’s sham referendums in the occupied territories
⋙ 🐣 RT @OlegNikolenko_ Ukraine has requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on Russia’s sham referendums in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Russia must be held accountable for its further attempts to change Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders in a violation of the UN Charter
🐣 📋 RT @POTUS Congressional Republicans can talk all they want about spending. ¤ Their tax bill added $2 trillion to the deficit. ¤ My economic plan isn’t just paid for, it’ll reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions.
🐣 📊 RT @duty2warn Biden’s approval rating has increased to between 45% and 49% on recent Emerson, Politico, Morning Consul, and McLaughlin polls, up considerably on each. […]
🐣 RT @duty2warn Inhale, hold breath: Keep the House. Add 2+ seats to the Senate. Indict Trump. Codify Roe. Pass voting rights. Expand the Court. Put Trump on trial. Ban assault weapons. Pass immigration reform. Convict Trump. Protect Medicare and SS. Make DC, PR states. Sentence Trump. Exhale.
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. The Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east continues to advance east and southeast expanding its access across the Oskil river whilst consolidating its regained positions in many areas and securing resupply lines.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1573531577811841024?s=20
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/1320 UTC 24 SEP/ Yesterday, UKR Partisans and Signals Intelligence Intelligence identified the HQ of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division in Svatove. A precision strike was directed on the building during a staff meeting, severely wounding Major General Oleg Tsokov.
⭕ 23 Sep 2022
TheGuardian: Putin needs nothing short of a miracle to avoid a devastating defeat in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/229byh9t After going all in, it’s hard to see how defeat wouldn’t signal the end of the regime: The open question: how deep does the rot in the armed forces go?
// Troops melting away and Russians fleeing abroad to avoid mobilisation doesn’t augur well for Putin’s latest gamble
🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea are Ukraine. No sham “referenda” will change that.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. If Putin opens the nuclear option he has no comprehension of the reaction of NATO/US forces. Almost sure to result at a minimum in massive conventional air attack on the Russian Armed Forces. Irrational. Would destroy Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1573418168789311489?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ukrainewar24 ⚡️US will never recognize Ukrainian territory as anything other than part of #Ukraine, says @POTUS in a statement. #UkraineRussiaWar
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ukrainewar24/status/1573426494528970756?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The United States will never recognize Ukrainian territory as anything other than part of Ukraine. Russia’s referenda are a sham – a false pretext to try to annex parts of Ukraine by force in flagrant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter. We will work with our allies and partners to impose additional swift and severe economic costs on Russia. The United States stands with our partners around the world – and with every nation that respects the core tenets of the UN charter – in rejecting whatever fabricated outcomes Russia will announce. We will continue to support the Ukrainian people and provide them with security assistance to help them defend themselves as they courageously resist Russia’s invasion.
DefenseOne, Elisabeth Braw: Putin’s War, and His Rule, Are In Trouble https://tinyurl.com/2jhcfcax “Putin’s problem goes far beyond the ugliness of war. Russia’s men are showing the world that Putin’s ‘partial mobilization’ demonstrates that they don’t believe in his war”
// Russia’s mobilization is an epic disaster. Can it become a movement against the regime?
🐣 RT @MarkHertling A declarative statement by a UN commission that has been obvious since February: War Crimes Have Been Committed in Ukraine.
⋙ NYT: U.N. experts find that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine. https://tinyurl.com/yc68tuva
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava “Putin’s current behavior reminds me of Hitler, who in the last days of the Third Reich drilled boys and old men for the Wehrmacht. Ironically, Putin is doing what the Nazis did,” -Ben Hodges.
// Frederick Benjamin “Ben” Hodges III is a retired United States Army officer who served as commanding general, United States Army Europe. He is currently the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Wikipedia
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews If Putin hoped that his invasion of Ukraine would conceal the way himself and his cronies have plundered Russia’s resources, it’s backfiring quite spectacularly and revealing some glaring shortcomings. More in my recent article ⤵️
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1572973369628446721?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s state TV mouthpieces insist that rich Russian oligarchs should pitch in to help save his failing invasion of Ukraine ¤ The Kremlin’s cronies are now demanding that Russians “who are fattened up” help fuel Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war.
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Team Putin Begs Rich Russians to Help Save His Failing War https://tinyurl.com/3m23afye
// The Kremlin’s cronies are now demanding that Russians “who are fattened up” help fuel Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war.
🐣 RT @RepLizCheney The 1/6 hearings have shown that Trump knew his effort to overturn the election was illegal & unconstitutional. He did it anyway. Trump’s conduct was illegal under existing law and would be under our new bill, too. Our bill also prevents other future efforts to steal elections.
🐣 RT @Klitschko Well, why don’t we hold our own referendum? A world referendum . “Do you want Russia to leave the territory of Ukraine immediately?
Yes: 96.7%
No: 3.3%
Votes: 23,876
📊 https://twitter.com/Klitschko/status/1573291689678176258?s=20
🐣 RT @caslernoel Trump met Putin 5x as POTUS, & each time he kept what was said a secret. During his campaign in ’16 he sought & received Russia’s help, his son in law set-up backchannels w/Kremlin. When he left office he stole top secret docs & Putin invaded Ukraine. Probably all a coincidence.
🐣 RT @ Kasparov63 Bingo. I wrote long ago that using democratic terms like elections and presidency, or even polls and popularity, for what happens in dictatorships like Putin’s Russia is a disaster. They exploit this insufficient vocabulary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kateryna_Kruk I think it is wrong for media to use word referendum when describing what russia is doing on occupied territories. There should be another concept or word that don’t have legitimizing connotation.
⋙⋙ 🐣 .@TimothyDSnyder suggested “media show”
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Russia is forcing occupied people to “vote” to become Putin’s human shields in a war he’s losing. That’s why his militants have holding these sham referendums now. He’s desperate to scare the West from helping Ukraine defend its country and take back its territory. It won’t work.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Can this be called “voting”?? Russia-installed “election commissioners” accompanied by heavily armed militants go door-to-door to homes of people living under military occupation to collect “ballots.”
Russia’s sham referendums are a grotesque perversion of a free & fair election.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Mobile “referendum”. It is always more convenient to vote when two soldiers with machine guns are knocking at your apartment. Zaporizhzhia region
💽 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1573333979490824192?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1230 UTC 23 SEP/ UKR Suppression of Air Defense (SEAD) sorties hit 15 RU SAM sites, allowing UKR to double the number of close air strikes to 41. UKR air defense detected, tracked and interdicted a drone swarm attack of Iranian-made Shaheed-136 UCAVs on the M-14 HWY axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1573289215718264832?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @StateDept .@POTUS: Let’s stand together to again declare the unmistakable resolve that nations of the world are united still, that we stand for the values of the @un Charter. We can do this — we have to do it — for ourselves and for our future, for humankind. #UNGA
💽 https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1573250823882215426?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @iamabofh The USA has lasted 246 years now. Various other governments have lasted 60-80 years after independence from Britain. What would be the expected time any such would last, given the admittedly universal factors that article discusses? Complacence in power, senescence and decline.
🐣 RT @DON__WYOMING Russia depends on trains to supply their troops, since they do not have enough trucks to supply their army & the separatists. Lyman is not only a rail hub, but also a road hub. Take that away, and Russia will have to take the long way around to supply their people by truck.
🐣 RT @ @officejjsmart 🇺🇸 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken: ¤ “If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine.”
💽 https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1573233360000155648?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NOELreports Situation this morning in Lyman per RU reports: ¤ AFU 🇺🇦 enters the rear of the Russian garrison in Lyman from the north and also gained a foothold in Karpivka. ¤ In Drobesheve outskirts there is a 🇷🇺 BARS-13 detachment surrounded that was supposed to support the BARS-16 in Lyman.
🌎 https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1573228797511729152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov #Ukraine’s president @ZelenskyyUa: #Russia’s decision on mobilisation is a frank admission that their regular army, which has been prepared for decades to take over a foreign country, did not withstand and crumbled.
🐣 UN Charter, Article 2, paragraph 4: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
🐣 RT @RF_OSCE #Lukashevich: The #NATO countries, led by the #US and #UK , have ceased to hide their main goal – to weaken, divide and destroy #Russia #Ukraine is used as a tool for the destruction of Russian statehood
⋙ 🐣 bullshit. ¤ the only goal is to ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, in keeping with the UN charter
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 On MSNBC. Friday. 23 Sept. 2pm ET. YASMIN VOSSOUGHIAN. Putin’s police dragging in ethnic minorities, convicts, protesters, prior service to feed into his failed war on Ukraine. The boys of the elites are running for the exits. This RU infantry won’t fight.
⭕ 22 Sep 2022
🐣 UN Charter, Article 2, paragraph 4: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
🐣 RT @SecBlinken Today at the @UN Security Council, we called on Russia to end its war of aggression. We will support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes, as they bravely defend their country and its freedom, and we will hold Russia accountable for its atrocities.
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Rossiya-1 propagandist Vladimir Solovyov is leading the Russian state media chorus calling for Ukraine’s obliteration: ¤ “Ukraine existed for 31 years. So it won’t exist anymore- Who Cares?”
⋙ 🐣 [1934 Map] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1573212693154369536?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 1685 … https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1573218360078520320?s=20/photo/1
// old maps old Ukraine maps
🐣 RT @john_sipher “The outcome in Ukraine will set the rules for the 21st century. If Putin’s extortion succeeds…Chinese leaders see that the United States and its allies can be cowed by a nuclear threat, they will act with greater boldness.”
⋙⋙ WaPo, David Ignatius: To confront Putin, Biden should study the Cuban missile crisis https://tinyurl.com/4bpy85v5
⋙ 🐣 Khrushchev was more reasonable; for all his blustering, he really didn’t want the world to end ¤ Putin is trapped in delusions of Russia’s past greatness ¤ I don’t think the Cuban Missile Crisis offers lessons for us now
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews There was palpable frustration in the Russian media that many in the West misunderstood what Putin said—he was threatening the West, not Ukraine, with nuclear strikes. And so, droves of propagandists have been sent out to tell the West: push us into a corner and everybody dies.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1573107219633438721?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Thorman_Lungie There’s no corner. Russia is not being attacked. They’re not suffering aggression from the West. They attacked another nation & they can *stop that* at ANY time. The only holdup is their false pride. They choose to do evil. All that follows thusly is on their own responsibility.
WaPo: U.S. has sent private warnings to Russia against using a nuclear weapon https://tinyurl.com/pcdrbm6u Russia has threatened the use of “‘any Russian weapon, including strategic nuclear ones and those using new principles,’ a reference to hypersonic weapons”
// The Biden administration has been sending messages to Moscow about the grave consequences that would follow the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine
🐣 RT @tomiahonen Donald Trump claims to have been even thinking
Priebus: Trump’s an idiot
McMaster: a dope
Mnuchin: an idiot
Cohn: dumb as shit
Kelly: unhinged & an idiot
Mattis: 5th grader
Barr: detached from reality
Roger Stone: greatest mistake
Bannon: 11yo child
Tillerson: a fucking moron
🐣 📊 RT @JoeNBC Headlines from Marquette poll (9/7-14):
Biden approval at 45%
Trump approval at 34%
Only 30% support Roe overturned
90% for exceptions on rape/incest
67% say Trump took top secret docs
Police & FBI most trusted institutions
Biden tops Trump & DeSantis
https://tinyurl.com/529ahj2s
🧵 RT @nataliabugayova 1/ Putin’s partial mobilization order is an acknowledgment that Russia is failing to accomplish its objectives in Ukraine, I tell @IamAmnaNawaz. We discussed the impact of Putin’s decision on the battlefield, its domestic implications, and the likelihood of escalation.
📌 https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1572995102435336192?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @NewsHour [PBS] Putin said more manpower is needed to win a war not just against Ukraine, but against its western backers. @nataliabugayova joined @IamAmnaNawaz to discuss. https://to.pbs.org/3f47hPz
🐣 RT @Andrew__Roth “It’s not a partial mobilisation, it’s a 100% mobilisation.” Midnight summons, vodka-fueled farewells, and showdowns at the draft centers. Russia says it’s recruiting 300,000 but the real number could be 3x higher.
TheGuardian: ‘It’s a 100% mobilisation’: day one of Russia’s drive to build its army https://tinyurl.com/h72c9xa6
// Reports ethnic minorities may be disproportionately affected while protesters in Moscow drafted on arrest
🐣 RT @MarkHertling What’s called “supportive influence.” A great leadership approach.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky appeals to Russians in his eve address. “55k Russian soldiers died in this war in six months. Tens of thousands are wounded and maimed. Want more? No? Then protest. Fight back. Run away or surrender to Ukrainian captivity. These are your options if you want to survive.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1573026951832702976?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @b_nishanov Everything I’ve seen on this mobilization so far points to Yakutia, Saha, Buryatia, Dagestan, Chechnya being mobilized in disproportionately large numbers. If this bears out, no question this is a systematic effort to deploy Russia’s ethnic minorities as cannon fodder.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer RIGHT ON TIME: Deeply inserted Ukrainian SOF and Partisans provide up-to-the-minute targeting data for deep strike munitions. @AndrewPerpetua posts this video of the arrival of a train load of RU armor arriving in Donetsk city. Minutes later, they’re hit by UKR artillery.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua A train full of t-62 tanks rolled up to the train station in Yasinovataya, next to Donetsk city, and then moments later the station exploded.
💽 https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1573012679953981440?s=20/photo/1
🚫 🐣 RT @lesiavasylenko #russia continues to breach the @UN Charter. Today leaders from #USA to #China recognized need to reform the UN Security Council and expel 🇷🇺 from it. #unrussiaUN is really picking up I must say
// China? need confirmation
🐣 RT @mhmck Putin directs battles like Hitler did. He’s just as bad. ¤ Little Vova is a brutal thug, not a competent general. He’s all attack, no manoeuvre, and to hell with casualties. ¤ Russian fascist invaders have been attacking Bakhmut for months with no result other than huge losses.
WaPo: Dearie asks Trump lawyers whether they believe FBI lied about seized documents https://tinyurl.com/39x9t67v //➔ looks like he watched Hannity 😅
// Order by Mar-a-Lago special master is the first time Donald Trump’s attorneys have been asked to confirm or deny his claims in court
Trump has said on social media and in television interviews that the FBI planted items when they searched his Mar-A-Lago residence and private club on Aug. 8. He also claimed to have declassified documents found in that search that were marked classified and were highly sensitive. His lawyers have not made similar assertions in court, however, instead saying they have not reviewed the seized materials and are unable to confirm whether the government’s inventory list is accurate.
Dearie’s order, in essence, demands that Trump’s lawyers back up their client’s claims. “The submission shall be Plaintiff’s final opportunity to raise any factual dispute as to completeness and accuracy of the Detailed Property Inventory,” he wrote. At a hearing Tuesday, Dearie pressed Trump’s lawyers to take a position on whether the classified documents were, as Trump has said, declassified, but they demurred.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING: Dearie’s order means business. No more pussy-footing around. Third day of the rule of law holding Donald Trump to account.
🐣 RT @NormEisen NEW: Judge Dearie has issued his first order, and it’s a doozy ¤ It pushes the ball up the court fast & forces Trump to articulate the basis for his ridiculous claims for the return of each doc under Rule 41(g) ¤ He’s gonna be hopping mad
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/bdhttvve
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/ 1214 UTC 22 SEP/ RU sources indicate that their counter-attacks have been rebuffed by UKR forces west of the P-66 HWY. Within the last 24 Hrs, UKR has consolidated holdings North of Yarova. Lyman isolated by UKR crossings of the Donets.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1572916590152417280?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russia is undertaking a media exercise regarding Russian-occupied Ukraine, which its propagandists call “referendums” on annexation by Russia. People elsewhere are struggling to characterize this action. I am going to propose “obscenity” and “element of war crime.” 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1572988432212963329?s=20
⋙ The point that people make about these media exercises is that it would be illegal to hold referendums during an armed conflict and under the threat of the use of force. This is of course true. 2/
⋙ But yes, the fictions provided in the media exercise will be implausible. And deliberately so. The way Russian propaganda works is to tell a lie that everyone knows is a lie, and then to show by force that there is no alternative to living as though the lie were true. 12/
⋙ When Russia claims that huge majorities of Ukrainians want to join Russia, they are claiming that Ukrainians like death pits, that Ukrainians like rape, that Ukrainians like torture, that Ukrainians like deportation, that Ukrainians like to have their cities obliterated. 18/
⋙ That is why the ongoing Russian media exercise (“referendums”) are an obscenity. The Russians are, in effect, claiming that Ukrainians want to celebrate their own ongoing genocide. 20/
⋙ The Russian media exercise (“referendums”) should therefore be understood as an element of Russian war crimes, and as nothing more. 21/21
😅 RT @DefenseU [Ukr] We continue to rely on russia for the provision of weapons while we await those that will be provided as part of the Lend-Lease program.
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1572947574016933888?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @duty2warn Judge Cannon has now issued a NEW order, reflective of the 11th Circuit’s order, and implementing it. The 100 documents with classified markings have been officially removed from the Special Master’s review process, allowing DOJ to resume using them in its criminal investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn And of course, the removal of the 100 documents with classified markings from the Special Master’s review process not only allows DOJ to resume using them in its criminal investigation, but it allows them to resume using them in their national security review as well.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn We’re not attorneys but we’ve heard others comment that Judge Cannon’s modification of her order eliminates any chance of relief potentially coming the Supreme Court. The stay is moot since she’s eliminated the stayed portion from her order, with her new order.
🐣 RT @McFaul “Over the long run, the exodus of tens of thousands of Russian high-tech workers triggered by Putin’s war also will further diminish Russia’s military industrial base. Moving forward, the West should do more to facilitate a massive Russian brain drain.” 1/ THREAD
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “Democratic countries should make it easier to accept Russian immigrants with technological expertise through a variety of residency and economic incentives.” 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ “Europe and the United States must also make it easier for political and media opponents to Putin’s regime to immigrate, to help further divide Putin from the Russian people.” 3/ END [link]
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/ 1250 UTC 22 SEP/ On 22 SEP, Ukrainian Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions continued, with the destruction of 15 additional Russian air defense complexes. These SEAD missions have allowed UKR to double the number of close air sorties to 41 missions.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1572931640372133888?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 21 Sep 2022
🧵 RT @NTenzer Quick #thread on #Putin’s speech.
1 We in the West need to stop buying into the rhetoric about #redlines and the nuclear threat.
I reminded him yesterday on a program: he has been using this rhetoric for many years. 1/13
📌 https://twitter.com/NTenzer/status/1572521472199102465?s=20
To buy into it is to give up—with consequences for other countries elsewhere.
Not coincidentally, this is also a narrative picked up by Putin’s propagandists in the West who push for a negotiated solution, peace talks, not arming #Ukraine, no trial for Putin, etc.2/13This narrative is what the Kremlin expects. Always keep in mind whose game you are playing and be ruthless to those who relay it.
More than time to throw this Putin #redline narrative in the trash. 3/132 This speech applies to the territories that #Russia has illegally annexed: #Crimea, tomorrow those in which the masquerade of referendums will be held. I recalled yesterday the lack of reaction to the beautiful Ukrainian strikes against Russian base in #Crimea.4/13
In a previous thread, I reminded that we must stop giving a specificity to Crimea among the Ukrainian territories. It is Ukrainian like the rest. The Allies must help Ukraine to reclaim it too.
It’s not optional.5/13⋙ 🐣 RT @NTenzer Sep 18 Some consider Crimea a side issue. No, in terms of law #CrimeaIsUkraine and Western leaders must be consistent with their statements on Crimea’s territorial integrity. It comprehends Crimea. ¤ Full stop.
3 Partial mobilization cannot work. Even if reservists are theoretically better trained than new recruits, they cannot be said to be well trained… We have seen this with the regular army, whose debacle has surprised (quite) everyone.6/13
More than 50,000 Russian soldiers died and probably more than 150,000 were wounded and unable to fight.
They are cannon fodder, nothing more. This confirms a point that I often made: Putin’s goal is not power, greatness, but pure destruction—of others and of his own people.7/13I stand with the Ukrainian civilians and soldiers, monstrously massacred by the Russians. Every day I not only think of them, but I ask that we, the Allies, do more to save them.
It’s our major failure and our guilt before history.
I mourn them as if they were my own.8/13No one can rejoice over the death of Russian soldiers and Ukrainians do not. The Ukrainians are defending themselves, that’s all.
(And never forget the war crimes perpetrated by the Russian soldiers. They are responsible and the guilty ones will be brought to court).9/13But you, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, fiancées of Russian soldiers, are you so insensitive, cowardly or stupid to see that Putin takes away your children, your brothers, your loves?
What are you doing?
Give up your passivity and fatalism at last!
Your guilt, too. 10/13Putin has clearly named the West and NATO as his enemies—which is hardly new.
But the West and NATO have not attacked anyone. They are defending our principles, our values, our security.
When #Ukraine is attacked, we are all attacked.
Just propagandists blame the West. 11/13Today, we must win this war quickly—very quickly, massively increase our deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, all weapons, with no restriction.
Not only #Ukraine must win, but #Russia must lose.
As long as Putin remains in power, there won’t be peace in the world.
Take action! 12/13Let’s not let a miserable criminal against humanity and his henchmen threaten us! This regime must be destroyed, also for the sake of #Russia.
To say it again and again:
This is our war.
We are at war. 13/13
🐣 RT @warmonitor3 A clear shift in power dynamic today. ¤ More significant than people think.
🐣 RT @warmonitor3 “After the referendums, an attack on the liberated territories will become an attack on Russia”
Oooo scary 😂
🐣 RT @warmonitor3 “I have to mobilize all my men and bring the nuclear threat to the table in my 3 day war.
I remain a master strategist.”
😂😂😂😂😂😂
WaPo Editorial: Putin is getting desperate. Ukraine and the West must keep the pressure on. https://tinyurl.com/3s2hj8cc “The only thing worse than failing to prepare for Mr. Putin to carry out his threats would be to be cowed by them”
🐣 RT @SMcspankerson Putin is now blaming the West for what he calls “nuclear blackmail,’ saying NATO nations are the ones who made nuclear threats. In addition to a few of the Duma, more citizens & members of the Politburo are publicly speaking out against him [link]
⋙ 🐣 both the US and NATO have “no first strike” policies; no one is making nuclear threats against Russia, but no one accepts his fake referendums either
Trump thinks he can wave a wand and declassify documents; Putin thinks he can wave a wand and change Russia‘s borders
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ LATEST TRUMP DEFENSE: he clicked his heels together three times while thinking about the docs: and said there’s no place like MAL, there’s no place like….and next thing he knew the docs were in MAL.
⋙ 🐣 RT @angieslife & then posted on his social media his plan to get outta dodge…
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/angieslife/status/1572788129328930820?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 🐣 RT @AskDonaldTrump [TS] Many people asking about the horrible, racist attacks on the Trump Org by NY AG Letitia James. Terrible TV, full of NOTHING BUT LIES. Just look at that green army surplus tent she’s wearing and the three ghosts standing behind her. ALL FAKE! Horrible. Her despicable attacks on my children WILL NOT STAND!!! We will find someplace else to do business. Hungary looks VERY GOOD as both a business HQ and as exciting new vacation destination for MAGA!!!
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Putin plays with fire moving the global discourse into nuclear threats. There can be no strategic victory in nuclear conflict. His language is irresponsible. Destabilizing. If he employs a tactical nuke against UKR -war would escalate catastrophically.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1572768362740215808?s=20/photo/1
Defense[.]gov: Conflict With a Nuclear-Capable Peer Possible, Says Stratcom Commander https://tinyurl.com/27x3mnp2 “In defending the homeland, combatant commanders will need to act quickly against an opponent in all domains: land, sea, air, space and cyberspace, he said”
// Navy Adm. Charles “Chas” A. Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command
🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger By the way, any target within Russia that contributes to the war is fair game, by the law of armed conflict. ¤ There is no escalation possible by a country fighting for survival… they are trying to simply remain existing. Anyone claiming Ukraine is escalating should stop
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Putin has lost the strategic war in Ukraine he initiated. Now the question is how to bring the war to a stable conclusion. The objective must be bloodying the Russian forces until they refuse to fight. Putin will consider going “full Stalin.”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Omg he’s actually invoking the Secret Telepathic Unilateral Preemptive Irreversible Declassification (S.T.U.P.I.D.) defense
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney ! TRUMP to Hannity on declassifying documents: ¤ There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it. If you’re the president of the United states, you can declasify … **even by thinking about it**”
🐣 RT @neal_katyal It’s really hard to lose an appeal more decisively than Trump just did. ¤ This criminal investigation now goes forward with the imprimatur and blessing of the US Court of Appeals, and their explanation of how important this investigation is. […]
🐣 RT @duty2warn TO TRUMP SUPPORTERS: That uncomfortable awkwardness you’ve been feeling lately that you can’t quite describe, nor seem to be able to blame on anything in particular – that’s called cognitive dissonance. You feel it because – pay attention – you feel it because you’ve been played.
BBC: Ukraine war: Zelensky calls for ‘just punishment’ for Russia https://tinyurl.com/7xbba4r8
// Russia must face “just punishment” over its invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has told the UN General Assembly in New York.
🐣 RT @duty2warn TODAY’S PHRASE: NARCISSISTIC COLLAPSE[:] Narcissistic collapse happens when someone with narcissistic personality disorder can no longer uphold their grandiose self-image and feels threatened, exposed, belittled, made fun of, and targeted, ALONG WITH a total absence of validation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tracygee_ What happens when they reach this?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn He’s clearly moving more to the fringe elements of his cult, believing they’re more wont to be unpredictable. But I’m not sure that’s it entirely, he also could be embracing the fringe because their support is unwavering. The last rally was very fringe, but also half empty.
🐣 RT @KatiePhang JUST IN: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals GRANTS the DOJ’s Motion for Partial Stay Relief.
⋙ CourtDoc: https://tinyurl.com/yckt5mpr
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 In reversing Judge Cannon’s horrific ruling, the appeal court states what was obvious to everyone (other than Judge Cannon):
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1572734795951575040?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “‘it is self evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in ‘exceptionally grave damage to the national security,’ the three-judge panel from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stated. “Ascertaining that necessarily involves reviewing the documents, determining who had access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised.”
🐣 RT @TristanSnell BREAKING: DOJ wins at 11th Circuit, staying Judge Cannon’s order as to the 100 classified documents. ¤ DOJ now gets back full access to the classified documents and can use them for criminal investigation and national security review.
🐣 #Kharkiv oblast escaped a fake Russian “referendum” by about two weeks. All that matters is success on the battlefield. They might as well declare a fakerendum in Kyiv or Lviv! #NAFOfellas
NYT: President Biden said Russia “shamelessly violated” the core tenets of the UN by invading Ukraine and urged continued international solidarity with Ukraine: “We will stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression, period.” https://nyti.ms/3BBlcEs
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum These are not the actions of a president sure of his support and confident of his army. On Putin’s strange, delayed speech:
⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The Kremlin Must Be in Crisis https://tinyurl.com/2vt5mztu “Support for Putin is eroding—abroad, at home, and in the army. Everything else he says and does right now is nothing more than an attempt to halt that decline”
// Putin’s erratic actions are not those of a secure leader.
In part, the crisis stems from Putin’s fears that he will lose whatever counts as his international support. No ideology holds together the global autocrats’ club, and no sentiment does either. As long as they believed Russia really had the second largest army in the world, as long as Putin seemed destined to stay in power indefinitely, then the leaders of China, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, along with the strongmen running India and Turkey, were happy to tolerate his company.
But Putin’s supposedly inevitable military victory is in jeopardy. His army looks weak. Western sanctions make problems not just for him but his trading partners, and their tolerance is receding. At a summit in Uzbekistan last week, he was snubbed by a series of Central Asian leaders. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told him that “today’s era is not an era of war,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his “concerns” as well. On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told PBS that he had urged Putin to end the war: “The lands which were invaded will be returned to Ukraine.” And those lands, he made clear, should include Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, following a sham referendum much like the ones it now plans to stage in other parts of occupied Ukraine.
But while losing support abroad is bad, losing support at home is worse, and there are some signs of that too. Putin might not care much about the Russian liberals and exiles who oppose the war, but he may worry (and should worry) about people who are supposed to be on his side—people such as Alla Pugacheva, a Soviet-era pop star who has millions of mainstream followers and has recently proclaimed both her patriotism and her opposition to the war. Putin may also worry about the disappointed, pro-war nationalist bloggers, active on social media, who have been criticizing the conduct of the war for some time. “Mobilization is, let’s put it bluntly, our only chance to avoid a crushing defeat,” one of them recently wrote. No one has stopped or arrested these critics, perhaps because they have protectors high up inside the security services, or perhaps because they are connected to the heavily armed mercenaries who are now doing much of the important fighting in Ukraine. If their loyalty isn’t assured, then Putin isn’t secure either.
Now events have forced Putin to change his language, but it seems there are limits. Thus he speaks not of a true mass mobilization—which would involve conscripting young men in enormous numbers—but of partial mobilization: no students, no general call-up, just the activation of reservists with past military experience. Supposedly Russia has 300,000 such people, though it’s not clear how many of them are actually fit to fight or whether there are enough weapons and gear for them either. Presumably, if better equipment were available, it would already be on the battlefield.
Finally, and perhaps most important, the speech and a series of legal changes announced yesterday reflect a crisis inside the military. In truth, the Russian army faces not just a logistical emergency or some tactical problems but also a collapse in morale. That’s why Putin needs more soldiers, and that’s why, as in Stalin’s time, the Russian state has now defined “voluntary surrender” as a crime: Under a law approved by the Russian Parliament yesterday, you can be sent to prison for up to 10 years. If you desert your guard post in Donetsk or Kherson (or change into civilian clothes and run away, as some Russian soldiers have done in the past few weeks). The state has also decreed new penalties for mutiny—“using violence against a superior”—and stealing while in uniform. If the Russian army were a reliable, enthusiastic, dedicated fighting force, then the state would not need to declare harsh punishments for deserters, looters, and mutineers. But it is not.
Over the next few days, the bogus referenda will gather headlines, and the nuclear threats will create fear, as they were designed to do. But we should understand these attempts at blackmail and intimidation as a part of the deeper story told by this delayed speech: Support for Putin is eroding—abroad, at home, and in the army. Everything else he says and does right now is nothing more than an attempt to halt that decline.
🐣 RT @olliecarroll Ukraine’s commander in chief Zaluzhny defiant after today’s news: “The Ukrainian army will exterminate every occupant, voluntary or mobilised. A full-scale war did not frighten us. We united & met the enemy with distinction. Mobilization in Russia is confirmation of that.
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba The only appropriate response to Putin’s belligerent threats is to double down on supporting Ukraine. More sanctions on Russia. More weapons to Ukraine. More solidarity with Ukrainians. More businesses pulling out of Russia. More determination to hold Russia accountable.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone President Biden: A permanent member of UN Security Council, 🇷🇺, invaded its neighbour & “shamelessly violated” core tenets of UN charter. Putin’s attempting to “erase a sovereign state from the map.” Called 🇷🇺 “sham” referendums an “extremely significant violation of UN charter”.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Today at UN General Assembly: President Biden said “Russia’s war is about extinguishing #Ukraine’s right to exist as a state. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe – that should make your blood run cold.”
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw The criminal referrals to IRS and DOJ may be among most significant implications of today’s action.👇
Recall: Scheme to which Allen Weisselberg (longtime Trump Org CFO) recently pleaded guilty included federal tax crimes. ¤ Many have been waiting for a fed criminal tax probe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter BREAKING | NBC News: NY AG Letitia James is referring the results of her investigation into former president Trump, his children, and corporation to the IRS Criminal Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for possible criminal prosecution
WaPo: Donald Trump, 3 of his children sued for business fraud by New York AG https://tinyurl.com/2ypmpnrv NY AG Letitia James filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing former president Donald Trump of manipulating property valuations to deceive financial institutions
// Lawsuit alleges $250 million fraud, seeks to bar the Trumps from serving as executives of any company operating in New York
⋙ CourtDoc: The 222-page civil complaint https://tinyurl.com/mrxtdhep
😅 RT @MaryLTrump Well, then.
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer DRAFT EVASION: Sotiri Dimpinoudis @sotiridi now reports that the line of Russian cars attempting to enter Finland is now 35 kilometers long, and lengthening by the hour. [link]
NYT: The lawsuit accuses the former president of profiting from a ‘staggering’ fraud. https://tinyurl.com/38yhmypd
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Note Alan Weisselberg guilty plea last month in NYC Manhattan DA case is cited as proof of this new NY AG civil case; another fallout from that important guilty plea.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ The “art of the steal” is what NY AG says occurred here.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski The Trump suit reveals what we’ve known all along from numerous sources and reports. Trump is a con man playing a shell game to fake his wealth to banks and investors who bankrolled his steady stream of failed business ventures. He is not, nor has he ever been, a billionaire
🐣 RT @MarkSZaidEsq Another domino has been added to the list that could potentially fall.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter BREAKING | NBC News: NY AG Letitia James is referring the results of her investigation into former president Trump, his children, and corporation to the IRS Criminal Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for possible criminal prosecution.
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder 1/8. Putin’s speech demonstrates that Russia is losing. Given casualties and desertions, Putin wants bodies in occupied Ukraine to defend against Ukrainian counter-offensives. That’s pretty much it.
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1572573842115301378?s=20
2/8. It’s not just Russian forces in Ukraine that are in retreat. Putin himself is clearly afraid. He’s done something he plainly didn’t want to do. Announcing mobilization shows he fears his fascist rivals more than he fears the Russian public.
3/8. Russian protests are announced for tonight (this afternoon US time). Maybe they will happen, though it’s very tough. The main reaction will be that men flee the country (happened today) and hide.
4/8. Russian contract soldiers now required to stay indefinitely on the front will be further demoralized. I expect a slow burn of anger about this that will not improve Russia’s fighting capacity.
5/8. The Ukrainians factored all of this in a long time ago. Their reaction has been calm to non-existent. At most noting that this will be hard on a Russian demographic that has suffered a lot already and suggestions that surrendering makes more sense for Russians than fighting.
6/8. Oh and there was the Russian announcement of a social media exercise these next few days in which numbers will be invented to show how much Russian occupation is desired and loved in Ukraine.
7/8. And finally – the fact that Putin’s speech was not held when scheduled and that it had to be recorded suggests disorder and perhaps illness in the Kremlin. I for one interpret Putin’s distress as a symptom of a lost war, but not as some force that will end it.
8/8. The war is over when the Ukrainians win.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling Putin’s announced mobilization of 300,000 “reservists” was jaw-dropping to me this morning, but not for the reason some might suspect. ¤ Why? Because know how Russian soldiers are trained, in basic training & in their units. ¤ A brief [thread] on some fun facts. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1572571676524838915?s=20
During 2 visits to RU, I saw basic & unit training. It was awful. Familiarization versus qualification on rifles, rudimentary first aid, very few simulations to conserve resources, and…most importantly…horrible leadership by “drill sergeants.” 7/
BTW, Ukraine’s army has taken the US model to heart after receiving training from US personnel in both individual and unit training techniques since 2014. ¤ The establishment of JMTG-U by US Army, Europe was instrumental in that. Heres a link to that. 10/
https://eucom.mil/topic/jmtg-uBut I digress… ¤ The issue is the Russian army is poorly led & poorly trained. That starts in basic training, and doesn’t get better during the RU soldier’s time in uniform. ¤ Mobilizing 300k “reservists” (after failing with depleted conventional forces, rag-tag militias…11/
…recruiting prisoners & using paramilitaries like the Wagner group) will be extremely difficult. ¤ And placing “newbies” on a front line that has been mauled, has low morale & who don’t want to be portends more RU disaster. ¤ Jaw-dropping. A new sign of RU weakness 12/12
🐣 RT @stavridisj Putin speech is a trifecta of mistakes born of desperation. Mobilizing reservists, conducting fake referenda in conquered territories, and once again rattling the nuclear saber is not a sign of strength but desperation
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin has announced the immediate “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens and threatened: “those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction.”
🐣 RT @McFaul Russias army has been terrorizing Ukrainian non-combatants throughout this war. Putin upped the ante today threatening to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. The US and allies must respond by designating Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MORALE IS A FACTOR: The Russian Duma is preparing a bill that would stiffen soldiers’ prison terms for desertion, evading service by ‘simulating illness’ and insubordination. It would also make voluntary surrender punishable with 10 years behind bars. http://shorturl.at/bjqs8
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1215 UTC 21 SEP/ UKR Gen’l Staff reported 21 close air sorties had interdicted RU targets. UKR air defense (AD) claimed 4 Russian UAVs. On 20 SEP, there were reports that an Iranian supplied Shaheed-136 UCAV was downed on the M-14 HWY axis. 2 RU SAM complexes destroyed.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1572561733063151617?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ mbk_center Putin announces ‘partial mobilisation’,threatening nuclear retaliation: ‘I’m not bluffing’
His speech “Do you want total war?” will go down in history as either the beginning of his end,or the beginning of the world’s end
We must unite to stop this madman-if only for our own sake
😅 RT @GlastnostGone BREAKING: Live footage from Moscow: Russian military recruitment detachments are already hunting for the unfortunate 300,000 reservists. Today Putin said he wants them to die for him in #Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1572522129769529344?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv Sham referenda and mobilization are signs of weakness, of Russian failure. The United States will never recognize Russia’s claim to purportedly annexed Ukrainian territory, and we will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Putin Calls Up More Troops as His War Effort Falters https://tinyurl.com/ypwjm9r6 “The speech was an apparent attempt to reassert his authority over an increasingly chaotic war that has undermined his leadership both at home and on the global stage.”
// In a rare address to the nation, the Russian president railed against the West for providing Ukraine with arms and made a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons. Russia’s defense minister put the number of new call-ups at 300,000.
⭕ 20 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Dearie to Trump: you are the plaintiff, you have the burden of proof, you have set forth no evidence that the docs are not classified, whereas the govt has set out proof they are. So unless you overcome that proof, you are not getting classified docs returned to you. Case closed.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s important to look at Trump’s arguments in the Mar-a-Lago case as an extension of the Big Lie that led to 1/6…The throughline between them is that Trump continues to assert that he has equal presidential power to the current…president”- @AshaRangappa_ w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1572352498916294657?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ lilygrutcher Wow. US Department of Justice asked Congress to legalize the transfer of at least $ 300 billion frozen Russian assets to Ukraine in response to the announced “referendums”.
🧵 RT @JohnWDean It seems Trump’s lawyers are trying to protect his lie that he declassified all the Mar A Largo documents. GOP does not want him to declare until after 11/08 so he needs the lie. He feels (rightly) he won’t be indicted until after the midterms. After the midterms he will declare!
📌 https://twitter.com/JohnWDean/status/1572361510600724482?s=20
As a POTUS candidate he is not only the center of attention but he can claim any indictment is a political act to keep him out of the Oval Office. Running for POTUS is his best defense from going to jail. Who knows, he might convince one or more juror! If he wins…. No. He won’t!
Trump will be indicted in a RICO action in GA, and federally for Obstruction of Justice (at minimum) for his theft of classified information, plus Seditious Conspiracy and Conspiracy to Defraud (at minimum) for Jan 6th. In short, he should face three criminal cases BEFORE 2024!
He believes he can use the dictators ploy of mounting riots if the government comes after him, and some of his followers will comply so there will be violence. But law enforcement, the national guard and the US military will prevail. AND Trump will earn added criminal charges!
Trump and GOP enablers are an evil that must be addressed for what it is doing to our nation. The way to deal with it is stay informed for only fools want what Trump is offering.
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin’s wants you to believe that he wasnt really trying to win his war in Ukraine for the last half year, but now he’s going to really try. Dont believe the spin. He went all in — overextended– from the very beginning. After some quick battle wins, he’s been losing ever since.
🐣 RT @AnaCabrera Special Master to Trump lawyers: “If the government gives me prima facia evidence that they are classified documents, and you don’t advance any claim of declassification, I’m left with a prima facia case of classified documents, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it,”
🐣 RT @ @suzibitch1 … I just read that Trump’s Lawyers didn’t expect Judge Dearie to question why they went out of their way to take the case 75 miles to Judge Cannon instead of the appropriate jurisdiction. May MAGA be sweating bullets.🤨😱😫
🐣 RT @TheTweetOfJohn “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” said Dearie, the “special master” picked by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to vet Trump’s effort to reclaim the materials taken by federal investigators.
⋙ Politico: Special Master expresses skepticism with Trump team’s assertions https://tinyurl.com/6yvsuwkp
// Judge Raymond Dearie pushed Trump’s lawyers repeatedly for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence.
NYT: Trump Was Warned Late Last Year of Potential Legal Peril Over Documents https://tinyurl.com/4a8kfr4y “The lawyer, Eric Herschmann, sought to impress upon Mr. Trump the seriousness of the issue and the potential for investigations and legal exposure”
// A former White House lawyer sought to impress on him the need to return material he had taken with him upon leaving office.
🐣 RT @McFaul Smart thread by @k_sonin —
⋙ 🧵 RT @k_sonin Frankly, on the today’s news on new mobilization laws and referenda on the occupied territories – this is much ado about nothing. For six months, Putin does whatever it takes to win the war, constantly seeking any ways to escalate. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/k_sonin/status/1572229092245901318?s=20
To inflict the maximum pain and win the war, Russian troops massively targeted civilians and employed all possible military means on the frontiers. On the home front, they have started a mass mobilization campaign months ago, offering 10 times the average wages to volunteers. 2/
This mobilization campaign failed and there are no reasons to believe that the stick will work where the carrot failed that spectacularly. No reason to think that the conscripted army will do any better (in fact, it will be much worse). 3/
The same about referenda. By the Russian official position, these are already independent states. This changes nothing in the world’s attitude towards their status as parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia. If in Russia they are called “parts of Russia”, who cares? 4/
And no, this does not create a pretext for Putin to use nuclear weapons as he does not need, and does not care, about pretexts. He will use nukes if he thinks that this gives him military advantage. 5/
So, the stronger is the Ukrainian army, the better weapons they have, the more territorial control they gain, the lower are the chances that Putin uses nukes. This is what matters, not the marginal changes in his mobilization efforts. 6/END
🧵 RT @ MarkHertling Let me get this straight:
1. Russia thought their “special operation” would last 3 days.
2. After 2 months of fighting with Spetsnaz, Airborne & 190+ BTGs, they achieved NONE of their Strategic, Operational or Tactical Objectives.
3. Based on #2, they decided to shift… 1/8
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1572295602590912513?s=20
…their main effort to the Donbas, where they expended 70+% of their precision munitions hitting civilian targets, while failing to gain any significant military objectives.
4. Then, Putin announced RUF would secure Luhans’k & Donetsk by 15 September.
5. RU “mobilized”…2/… the LPR & DPR militias, “recruited” prisoners, “drafted” locals, asked for soldiers from other countries & brought in the Wagner Group to execute #4.
6. But, after announcing & then delaying the Kherson referendum & under threat of a UKR offensive in Kherson…3/…RU generals shifted effort from Donbas to Kherson due to threat of a UKR offensive.
7. After RU shifted forces as described in #6, UA instead conducted a Kharkiv offensive, gaining the equivalent of the land mass of Rhode Island & Delaware while capturing a…4/Brigades worth of Russian tanks & BMPs and killing hundreds of RU soldiers.
8. Though now “paused” in Kharkiv, UA continues to execute attacks in Kherson, is slowly gaining ground in Donetsk, while threatening Melitopol. 5/9. While this is happening, ships from the RU Navy – the “pride of the Black Sea” – are repositioning from their base in Sevastopol into the Azov for “security reasons” & RU subs are launching Kalibr missiles at UKR infrastructure. 6/
And – here’s my point – after all of this, Putin’s response is to INCREASE punishment for deserters & execute a partial mobilization of 18-60 year old men (who didn’t get much training the first time around & who will serve as “cannon meat”) and continue this madness? 7/
If this is an accurate summary of the last 210 days, Putin – and his supporters, generals & Army – will surely go down in history. ¤ But not in a good way. 8/8
🐣 RT @kajakallas The occupiers’ playbook in action. As #Russia moves ahead with fake referenda in occupied territories of #Ukraine, let me say it loud and clear: ¤ We will never recognize this. ¤ Ukraine has every right to take back its territory. Donbas, Crimea, Kherson = it’s all Ukraine. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @ kajakallas Russia keeps using blackmail and illegally tries to take what doesn’t belong to it. ¤ Actions like this will have the opposite effect and rally our support to Ukraine. More military aid, more sanctions against the agressor, holding Russia accountable for its crimes. 2/2
WaPo: Russia moves toward annexing Ukraine regions in a major escalation https://tinyurl.com/58rf43ex “Such votes, which are illegal under Ukrainian and international law, have been widely derided in advance by Western officials as a sham”
// The Kremlin’s puppet authorities in occupied areas declared plans for staged referendums to approve joining Russia
🐣 RT @world_Breaking2 #BREAKING: NATO will consider upcoming referendums in Kherson, Zaporozhye, Lugansk and Donetsk regions on joining Russia as ILLEGITIMATE -Secretary General of Nato #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar
🐣 #Fellas need to remember that the #Referendums are themselves Russian propaganda: using a mindtrick to claim that parts of Ukraine Russia has NOT won were magically won anyway and claiming they are part of Russia #NAFOfellas
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko With those shit show “referenda” in occupied Ukrainian regions, Russia admits — it can’t win. ¤ It has run out of offensive capability, and its current position is dead end at best. ¤ The “mobilization” will only give it some barely trained cannon fodder… in several months.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en The so-called “referendums” won’t stop Ukrainian Army’s offensive and complete liberation of Ukrainian territory. ¤ No one in the world will recognize them.
🐣 RT @MattPPea What are the going to use in this new war which is not being used in the current one?
⋙ 🐣 so far, signing up to fight has been “voluntary”; this would be more like a draft (with ways $ out for the privileged) ¤ hard to say whether they can equip additional troops; more cannon fodder ¤ they’re increasing punishments for desertion, surrendering and disobeying orders
WaPo, Max Boot: Putin is reeling. Now is the time to help Ukraine win https://tinyurl.com/5dy6zwxp “Putin is reeling. Now is the time for the Ukrainians to press their advantage. Seize the moment. Don’t give the Russians time to reset and recover.”
[W]hile Russia is down, it is not yet out. More than 150,000 people have been freed from Russia’s yoke in recent weeks, but an additional 1.2 million Ukrainians still live under brutal occupation. Russia continues to occupy roughly 20 percent of Ukraine, and Ukraine will require more Western military equipment to finish liberating its soil. Ukraine desperately wants higher-end weapons systems such as F-16 fighter jets, Gray Eagle drones, Patriot air defense missile batteries, longer-range missiles, and main battle tanks such as the German Leopard 2 or the American M1 Abrams.
Even though the Ukrainian armed forces have shown they can rapidly assimilate sophisticated Western systems such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), the United States and its allies are still reluctant to provide the weapons that Kyiv is asking for. The essential reason, once all the excuses are stripped away, is that we are still deterred by threats of Russian retaliation. Indeed, the worse Putin does, the more scared we seem to get. Undersecretary of Defense Colin H. Kahl just put out a statement claiming: “Ukraine’s success on the battlefield could cause Russia to feel backed into a corner, and that is something we must remain mindful of.”
This seems, to me, a fundamental misreading of the moment. Putin is reeling. Now is the time for the Ukrainians to press their advantage. Seize the moment. Don’t give the Russians time to reset and recover. Given the pitiful performance of the Russian military, Putin should be more scared of us than we are of him.
In the end, the surest way to avoid the destabilizing economic and strategic consequences of a continuing conflict is to shorten the war by helping Ukraine win it — and that will likely require the relaxation of some of our self-imposed restrictions on the provision of higher-end weapons systems.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney Trump has 3 immediate problems with Dearie:
1) He sets a fast deadline that vets all the records by Oct. 7
2) He asks Trump for details of what he claims to have declassified
3) He suggests Reinhart might have to preside over 4th amendment suit
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Indeed. Judge Dearie could end up burying Trump. Stay tuned.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Life 101: Be careful what you wish for.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney TO RECAP: Trump demanded a special master and won. He asked for Raymond Dearie and won. Now his legal team is upset that Dearie is asking for evidence of what he claims to have declassified and is setting aggressive deadlines.
⋙⋙⋙ Politico: Trump discovers he’s not in Cannon-land anymore https://tinyurl.com/2sv55kju
// The ex-president’s team of lawyers will get their first audience before new judicial bodies and judges on Tuesday.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Here’s a behavioral truth about Trump: Whenever he takes a defensive tact that’s odd or unexplained, it’s because the truth is worse than what we know. Let’s say he shared classified docs with foreign powers. To suggest he declassified them might help him avoid charges of treason
🐣 RT @robreiner Be careful what you wish for. Donald Trump’s Special Master is asking for proof that Trump actually declassified the documents he stole. His lawyers are arguing he can’t reveal that because it could hurt him if he’s Indicted. So sad.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1215 UTC 20 SEP/ Over the last 24 hrs, UKR Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions destroyed 5 Russian air defense complexes. With RU Air Defense impacted, UKR conducted 15 Close Air Support missions against RU troop concentrations in the Kherson AO.
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield I haven’t done a Twitter Book Report for a while, so here we go. ¤ I finished reading Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, @Timodc’s tell-all mea culpa. ¤ The book opens with a splash:
📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1571995824229593088?s=20
// Tim Miller Why We Did It
🐣 Everytime bipartisan groups of legislators have come close to solving immigration, the GOP has walked out. Why? Solving the issue would take it away as a xenophobia boogey-man
🐣 RT @DmytroKoluba Sham ‘referendums’ will not change anything. Neither will any hybrid ‘mobilization’. Russia has been and remains an aggressor illegally occupying parts of Ukrainian land. Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Russia’s proxies in temporarily occupied Melitopol and Kherson are also reportedly preparing for “pseudo-referendums.” [link]
⋙ 🐣 half of the populations have fled, some have been kidnapped, the rest are under occupation ¤ in no rational way can these “referendums” be seen by the world as anything but fraudulent, a travesty ¤ Putin’s desperation is showing
⭕ 19 Sep 2022
DemocracyDocket: U.S. Reps. Lofgren and Cheney Introduce Bill to Reform the Electoral Count Act https://tinyurl.com/2s39wbh2
🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ Trump letter to Dearie is absurd.
1. if you want to argue the docs were declassified and are personal and shd be returned, you need to aver you declassified the docs.
2. the letter saying that wd give up a trial defense is wrong: classification is irrelevant to any trial.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote NEW: The DoJ has sent a letter to Special Master Judge Dearie about the document review saying “Master WILL NOT review the documents with classification markings. If the 11th circuit does NOT stay their review, DoJ will propose a way forward.”
⋙ CourtDoc: Re: Proposed Agenda Items for Preliminary Conference (Donald Trump v USA) https://tinyurl.com/2p8edt8x
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The DOJ also attached a protective order they plan to file tomorrow with Judge Cannon. It says no one can use these documents for ANYTHING other than this case, AND it says the classified docs aren’t covered because the appeal for a stay is still with the 11th circuit.
YahooNews: Russian soldiers caught between Ukraines Armed Forces and right bank of Dnipro River seek ways to surrender Operational Command Pivden (South) https://tinyurl.com/mr3hfakx
⋙ EuromaidanPress: Russian units in south of Ukraine trying to surrender https://tinyurl.com/48u4cdmx
The units of Russian occupiers in the Kherson Oblast are trying to surrender because they are “wedged between the [Ukrainian] defense forces and the right bank,” the head of the joint press center of Operational Command “South” Nataliia Humeniuk reported on the air of the telethon.
Ukraine offered the Russian occupiers a way out either to transition under the auspices of international humanitarian law or returning to Russia.
🐣 RT @BenDoBrown Heavy damage seen in Ukraine’s east in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, location: 48.599, 38.057. H/T @foofighters95 for geolocation
💽 https://twitter.com/BenDoBrown/status/1571675213347303424?s=20/photo/1
// surreal video
🐣 RT @vtchakarova All eyes on Lyman that helped Russian troops to consolidate their position in Donbas and secure supply lines, and then Lysychansk. Zelenskiy’s advisor Arestovich said that the capture of Lyman could accelerate the liberation of the entire Donbas. Map via ISW #Ukraine #geopolitics
🌎 https://twitter.com/vtchakarova/status/1571726014404874241?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 18 Sep 2022
‼️🐣 RT @disclosetv JUST IN – Biden: American troops would defend Taiwan if invaded by China.
// 60 Minutes
Newsweek: Top U.S. General Urges ‘High’ Alert Due to Concern Over What Putin May Do https://tinyurl.com/bd4324f3 “The war is not going too well for Russia right now,” Milley said. “…In the conduct of war, you just don’t know with a high degree of certainty what will happen next”
NBCNews Poll: Abortion, Trump boost midterm prospects for Democrats https://tinyurl.com/4d762cze Trump’s favorability has fallen to 32%; Biden’s has risen to 45%
// Trump fav 32%, Biden fav 45%; Republicans maintain significant advantages on economy, crime and immigration in the latest NBC News national poll.
The improvement for Biden has come primarily from core parts of the Democratic base, including women (who went from 47% approve in August to 52% approve in this survey), Latinos (from 40% to 48%) and voters 18-34 (from 36% to 48%).
NBC News poll shows where the midterm ‘persuadables’ live: These voters could decide the midterms https://tinyurl.com/4z8hdk69
// In the outer suburbs, voters are split when it comes to approval of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, investigations into former President Trump and other issues.
Persudables: Urban Core 21%, Urban Ring 23%, Outer Surburbs 43%, Rural 12%
🐣 RT @MikeSington New poll (NBC News): Just when he thinks he’s going to run again, Trump’s favorability rating sinks to 16-month low of 34%. Turns out people don’t like lying, fraud, grifting, bullying, stealing, incompetence, and criminal activity after all.
🐣 RT @fellarific Excellent work #Fellas #NAFOexpansion is non negotiable. Excellent work extracting the data @NovelSci
⋙ 🐣 RT @NovelSci When I charted NAFO tweets on a dual axis with the tweets containing keywords from the disinfo claim, they sure look related. Again, it will take time and many, many studies to know for sure. But Ukraine doesn’t have time. I feel comfortable saying NAFO is helping Ukraine.
◕ https://twitter.com/fellarific/status/1571639871470702592?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @BrianMannADK Any time we talk about American democracy without factoring in the structural bias against highly urban, diverse, progressive states, we are getting the story wrong. https://nyti.ms/3Ul6SbN
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BrianMannADK/status/1571548003575398400?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The Senate today is split 50-50 between the two parties. But the 50 Democratic senators effectively represent 186 million Americans, while the 50 Republican senators effectively represent 145 million. To win Senate control, Democrats need to win substantially more than half of the nationwide votes in Senate elections.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM/2115 UTC 18 SEP/ The cutting of the P-66 HWY has curtailed maneuver options for RU forces. Situation of the roads, and continued use of UKR precision strike munitions, have largely negated what would be the advantage of Russia’s interior lines of communication & supply.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1571608421375377409?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DreamsPirate Here is the video from DW where they cover #NAFO
.💽 https://twitter.com/DreamsPirate/status/1571525823336747008?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture There is a lot going on in #Ukraine at the moment. The macro story is that Russia appears to have lost the initiative at every level. But there is also an interesting story to be told about Ukrainian campaign planning. 1/24
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1571563669783474177?s=20
2/ The Ukrainian offensive in the north east is continuing to exploit a bumbling and incoherent Russian defensive scheme to the east of Kharkiv. Thousands of square kilometres of Ukrainian territory have been recaptured, and many towns and their inhabitants have been liberated. [map]
3/ Even the Oskil Rver defensive line, rapidly established by the Russians, appears to be crumbling. Deception and operational art have been central to Ukrainian preparations for their achieving surprise against the Russians in this new phase of the war.
4/ Deception. That it was able to exploit this opportunity indicates that Ukraine had an excellent plan to deceive Russian overhead collection assets as well as their tactical reconnaissance and surveillance.
5/ As one military interlocutor in Kyiv confirmed, Russian tactical reconnaissance in the east of Ukraine has been poor. It has generally consisted of ‘advance to contact’ with infantry and armour, rather than through the use of dedicated air and ground reconnaissance assets.
6/ This means that the environment is ripe for tactical and even operational surprise, something the Ukrainians clearly recognised in their planing for the Kharkiv offensive.
7/ Operational Design. While the Russian focus was primarily on its operations to defend its holdings in the south, and conduct small scale attacks in the Donbas, #Ukraine planned and launched an operation in the north.
8/ This is not to say that Ukraine’s operations in the south were a feint. They were not, and this was recently confirmed to me by a senior Ukrainian military planner during my visit to Kyiv. The north & south are mutually supporting offensives in a larger operational design.
9/ Operational design is an important component of military professionalism. Through good operational design, military commanders and their staffs’ sequence and orchestrate tactical goals and actions to meet desired strategic and political outcomes.
10/ Ironically, it was the Russians in the early 20th who were early advocates for such operational thinking about military operations. This is not obvious with the current Russian military performance, which has demonstrated historic levels of incompetence and stupidity. [map]
12/ The Ukrainians will have carefully wargamed the best times to conduct their offensives. It would have been based on intelligence on Russian defensive dispositions, the location and quantities of Russian forces held in reserve, as well as logistics and key supply routes.
13/ What might this mean for the moving days or weeks?
14/ First, the concurrent Ukrainian offensives have totally compromised the Russian operations in the Donbas. It compromises Russian supply routes and introduces a larger psychological issue with Russian soldiers and commanders fighting in the east. [map]
15/ Second, it will be difficult for the Russians to continue to fight in the east without responding to the threat that Ukraine now poses to their rear areas and logistics. This problem will only get worse if the Ukrainians are able to continue their advance across the Oskil.
16/ To respond, the Russians will have to reorient their forces in the east, and possibly pull troops from the south. This effectively kills any Russian offensive capability across the east and south
15/ Second, it will be difficult for the Russians to continue to fight in the east without responding to the threat that Ukraine now poses to their rear areas and logistics. This problem will only get worse if the Ukrainians are able to continue their advance across the Oskil.
16/ To respond, the Russians will have to reorient their forces in the east, and possibly pull troops from the south. This effectively kills any Russian offensive capability across the east and south
17/ It also creates other opportunities for Ukraine. Because of a Russian reinforcement ‘shell game’, it is possible that we could see cascading Russian tactical withdrawals and failures in various regions as a consequence.
18/ This, and the resulting losses in equipment and personnel, compromises Russia’s capacity to dictate the pace and location of operations henceforth. The Ukrainians have seized the initiative in this war.
19/ Having surprised the Russians, the Ukrainians have generated shock among Russian troops and commanders. This period of shock is generally a productive time for those on the offensive.
20/ It during this period of shock when Ukraine can seize the most ground, and destroy the largest number of enemy troops. And it is exactly what they are doing. The Ukrainians, using mission command, are operating inside the Russian tactical and operational decision loops.
21/ While like all offensives, exhaustion and outrunning supply lines will eventually slow the Ukrainian advance, this one probably has a little way to go. The Ukrainians seem to sense the potential for a larger Russian collapse in the east.
22/ Not only has this been a stunning feat of arms, it has answered the question many of us posed several months ago about Ukrainian offensive capacity. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have demonstrated emphatically in the last few weeks their offensive mindset and capability.
23/ We will be studying this campaign for decades into the future. But for now, we need to ensure the west continues to provide the equipment and munitions for this campaign, and for those that will inevitably follow. End.
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 24/ Thank you to the following whose images I used in this thread: @UAWeapons @War_Mapper @DefenceU @IAPonomarenko @TheStudyofWar @criticalthreats
🐣 RT @Conquerors1011 The Russians may have decided not to defend this area [pink], despite Russian President Vladimir #Putin’s repeated declarations that the purpose of the “special military operation” is to “liberate” #Donetsk and #Luhansk Oblasts. 2/
🌎 https://twitter.com/Conquerors1011/status/1571506433891438592?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @warnerta A very strong point from ISW: Russia continues to throw resources at trying to take Bakhmut even as Ukraine shapes in the NE for another major offensive that could undermine months of Russian slow gains in central Luhansk. Why the roboticism? I think it’s Potemkin-style command.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: #Russian forces continue to conduct meaningless offensive operations around #Donetsk City and #Bakhmut instead of focusing on defending against #Ukrainian counteroffensives that continue to advance. ¤ Our latest with @criticalthreats: [link]
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1571319365076938752?s=20/photo/1 -4
🧵 RT @tomiahonen Let Trump Be Trump Thread 1/ ¤ The Former Guy held a Magarally in Ohio yesterday. He is moving ever closer to genuine Nazi rallies. Do we care? Actually yes we do. It is the Republicans who are terrified. If you support US democracy in general or Team Blue, we say ¤ #LetTrumpBeTrump
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1571550436833763329?s=20
🧵 RT @wartranslated An interesting exchange occurred today between three large Russian military reporters (and fighters), Rybar (800k), Voennyi Osvedomytel (450k+) and GREY Zone Wagner page (311k), discussing the potential withdrawal of Russians from the Kherson region.
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1571573817671049223?s=20
TeriKanefield[.]com: Judge Cannon and the Future of Democracy https://tinyurl.com/msw54s9h “Whether democracy survives in America depends on us and what we are willing to do” Judge Cannon is a minor player: “When indictments come down, things will get a lot worse”
// Link to “To-Do List”: https://terikanefield.com/things-to-do/
[T]wo weeks after the FBI executed a search on Mar-a-Lago, Trump filed a lawsuit demanding a special master to review the seized documents. He put forward the outlandish claim that he had the right to possess the seized documents—a mindboggling claim given that most of the documents seized by the FBI were government documents, which, by law, must be housed in the National Archives. Moreover, about 100 of them were classified. Some of the documents were so sensitive that some FBI counterintelligence officers needed special clearance to view them. ¤ The DOJ filed a motion for a temporary stay pending appeal for those 100 documents. For more, see last week’s post.
Here are some highlights from Judge Cannon’s order denying the DOJ’s request:
● She ordered the special master to “prioritize” the 100 documents marked classified.
● She emphasized that she is not stopping a national security review of these documents.
● She rejected the idea that documents marked classified could not possibly be covered by executive privilege.… Here is how Judge Cannon explains her order: Because Trump is a former president, she wants a neutral third party to double-check what the DOJ is doing. She says the special master is just checking to make sure (1) none of the documents are Trump’s personal property, (2) none are covered by attorney-client privilege, and (3) none are covered by executive privilege. …
No surprise, the day after she rejected the DOJ’s motion for a partial stay, the DOJ filed a similar motion in the 11th Circuit (Court of Appeals). It’s a good idea to first file the motion in the district court, and then, when that gets rejected, go up to the appellate court. The motion (which you can read here) was written for public consumption. It’s clear and lays out facts that are devastating to Trump.
It opens with a bang: “The district court has entered an unprecedented order enjoining the Executive Branch’s use of its own highly classified records in a criminal investigation with direct implications for national security.” ¤ The DOJ disagrees with the entire order, but they are seeking to stay, “only the portions of the order causing the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public. . . ” They’re (wisely) limiting what they are asking for.
The DOJ points out the absurdity of Cannon’s order as applies to classified documents.
● The special master was supposed to consider claims for the return of personal property, but it’s impossible for government documents marked classified to be Trump’s personal property.
● The special master is also to consider attorney-client privilege, but classified documents cannot have any claims of attorney-client privilege.
● Finally, the special master is supposed to evaluate claims of executive privilege, but sensitive government secrets cannot be protected by executive privilege, and neither Trump nor the court explained how Trump can assert executive privilege against the executive branch. (They didn’t explain it because it makes no sense. Executive privilege is a separation of powers thing.)
● Her order forces the executive branch to show highly sensitive government secrets to Trump’s lawyers.The DOJ also complains about Cannon’s lack of clarity in what they can and can’t do with the 100 docs. Because what they can’t do isn’t clear, they run the risk of being in contempt if the court later says they overstepped.
One of the most devastating parts of the DOJ’s motion is the part that sets out the history of the case since Trump left office. The pattern went like this:
● Trump said he had no government documents
● The DOJ developed evidence that he had documents
● Trump relented and handed over a bunch of documents and said he didn’t have any more
● The DOJ developed evidence that he still had documents
● Trump handed more over and said that was it, he didn’t have any others.
● After Trump’s lawyer signed an affidavit swearing that Trump had no more documents, the FBI developed evidence that he had more documents, searched, and found 11,000 government documents including 100 marked classified.… Here’s what’s particularly devastating: During the extended process in which the government tried to get the documents back, Trump never tried to assert privilege. He never said, “I have them, but I have the right to possess them.” He said, “I have no government documents and I have no documents marked classified.” (He obviously didn’t expect them to come in and search.) ¤ After the search in August turned up classified documents, he changed his story to “I had the right to possess them under the Presidential Records Act” and “they may be privileged.”
Let’s game out some scenarios.
Best case scenarios:
● The 11th Circuit grants the temporary stay and Judge Dearie is so efficient (and refuses to expose the highly sensitive documents to Trump’s lawyer) that the entire matter is concluded and the remainder of the documents are back with the DOJ within a month or two.
● The 11th Circuit does not grant the temporary stay, but Judge Dearie keeps the top secret documents under wraps and manages to get the crucial documents back to the DOJ within a reasonable time.Bad case scenario:
● The 11th Circuit does not grant the temporary stay, Judge Cannon starts rejecting Dearie’s reasonable orders, and everything gets tied up on appeal for many months.
Worst case scenario:
● Trump successfully claims privilege over some of the classified documents and the DOJ is unable to use these documents in its criminal investigation against Trump. (Notice charges can still be brought against Trump because there’s plenty of other evidence of violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction statutes.)
Even if Cannon is completely off her rocker, I can’t see the higher courts and the Supreme Court going along with this. After all, the judges appointed by Trump refused to hand him the election by going along with his bogus election claims. While he was president, they denied his claim that he had absolute immunity. Last year, when he tried to assert executive privilege over nonclassified documents to keep them out of the hands of Congress, he lost in the courts.
I just can’t see higher courts saying, “Sure, Trump can make off with top secret US documents and then keep them from the FBI by claiming privilege.” For a sense of how dangerous this would be, consider how likely it is that he is still stashing documents somewhere else. The courts are not going to give him the green light to do with these documents whatever he wants in clear violation of the law. … …
We are not even at the stage of criminal proceedings. This is just a lawsuit in which Trump is trying to keep evidence away from the prosecutors. I have no doubt from the way the DOJ is writing these motions that Trump is the target of multiple investigations for serious crimes. When indictments come down, things will get a lot worse. Trump defenders are going to try to defend him, and there are a lot of them. If an election were held right now, I can assure you that at least 40% of the voters would vote for him to return to the White House. ¤ Prepare yourselves.
Whether democracy survives in America depends on us and what we are willing to do. The outcome of the 2022 elections will tell us a lot more about what the next few years will look like than anything Judge Cannon does.
WaPo: How the St. Javelin meme raised a million dollars for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/49e6ufkr Once a mere internet meme, St Javelin has blossomed into to a charity business earning money for the Ukraine war effort
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent General Staff: Russian units lost half of their troops when retreating from Kharkiv Oblast. ¤ According to Ukraine’s General Staff, some units of the Russian army lost “more than 50% of their personnel and more than 200 pieces of equipment” when retreating from Kharkiv Oblast.
🐣 RT @ europe4future 207 days and 🇹🇷 is moving in direction of #SCO😭 @TheStudyofWar reports 🇺🇦 continues its counter-offensive without meaningful defensive maneuvers from 🇷🇺, leaving most of the 🇷🇺-occupied parts of Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts vulnerable. @ZelenskyyUa said “Crimea will return to 🇺🇦”
// SCO=China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
🐣 RT @mhmck Closing in on temporarily-occupied Lyman, Ukrainian defenders liberated Yarova, Shchurove and Dibrova on September 17. ¤ The Armed Forces of Ukraine expanded their foothold in Luhansk region from Bilohorivka to contest for control of Zolotarivka and Verkhn’okam’yanka.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1571374031546486787?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 17 Sep 2022
NYT, David Leonhardt: ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy https://tinyurl.com/3eh23jv6
🐣 RT @tribelaw Like my former student Merrick Garland, “I wanted to repay my country for taking my family in when they had nowhere else to go. I wanted to repay the debt my family owes this country for our very lives.” That motivates everything I do.
⋙ NYT: As Trump Inquiry Heats Up, Garland Says Divisions Imperil the Rule of Law https://tinyurl.com/472jmaxk “There is not one rule [of law] for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor” ~ AG Garland
// Addressing new citizens on Ellis Island, the attorney general emphasized that all Americans are equal under the law.
An emotional Attorney General Merrick B. Garland addressed new citizens on Saturday at Ellis Island, the site of his family’s American origin story, and warned that the country had become dangerously divided by political factionalism, which has imperiled the democracy and the rule of law. …
During a 10-minute speech in which he repeatedly stopped to collect himself, the attorney general recounted the tale of his grandmother’s flight from antisemitism in what is now Belarus before World War II, and the narrow escape to New York made by his wife’s mother, who fled Austria after Nazis annexed the country in 1938.
“My family story is what motivated me to choose a career in public service,” said the typically stoic attorney general, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. “I wanted to repay my country for taking my family in when they had nowhere else to go. I wanted to repay the debt my family owes this country for our very lives.”
Everything Mr. Garland says these days is parsed for deeper meaning — and prosecutorial clues — as the Justice Department plunges ahead with sprawling, open-ended investigations into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies. The attorney general often uses public appearances to address Mr. Trump and Trumpism in veiled but unmistakable terms, decrying division and vowing to hold “the powerful” accountable for crimes they commit.
But Saturday’s speech came at a critical moment, as Mr. Garland commits to an inquiry into possible criminality by a former president who remains a political force, and has repeatedly attacked Mr. Garland, his department and the F.B.I.
Mr. Trump has claimed that he continues to enjoy executive privilege as a former president, despite legal precedent to the contrary, throughout his battle with the Justice Department over his retention of highly classified documents. Mr. Garland has rejected that argument, and the department in its court filings has pushed back against the idea that the former president deserves protections not afforded to other citizens who are under federal scrutiny.
“The protection of law — the rule of law — is the foundation of our system of government,” said Mr. Garland, a slight, upright figure standing under the soaring barrel vault in the immigration museum’s great hall, which served as the point of entry for millions of immigrants from 1892 to 1954.
“The rule of law means that the law treats each of us alike: There is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor,” he said, adding that the rule of law “is fragile, it demands constant effort and vigilance.” ¤ It was incumbent on all Americans, he said, to “do what is right, even if that means doing what is difficult.”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “Asked whether Mr. Trump had ‘committed any serious federal crimes,’ 62 percent of independent voters said they believed he had, and 53 percent said he had threatened American democracy …. ¤ “Republican candidates appear to be aware of such sentiments ….”
⋙ 🐣 RT @MichaelCBender The question of how to handle Mr. Trump has so bedeviled some Republican candidates for Senate that they have held private meetings about the best way to field the inevitable calls from his team. ¤ More here, w/ @maggieNYT:
⋙⋙⋙ 📊 NYT: Rally With Trump? Some G.O.P. Candidates Aren’t Thrilled About It. https://tinyurl.com/2fc24v37
// Whether he is invited or not, the former president keeps holding rallies in battleground states. It reflects an awkward dance as Republican candidates try to win over general-election voters; NYT/Siena College Poll (9/6-14): https://tinyurl.com/2p9d7xyx
Polls suggest these controversies could be taking a toll. Among independent voters, 60 percent said they had an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump, compared with 37 percent who had a favorable view [-27%], according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week. President Biden was also underwater among these key voters, but by a far smaller margin of eight percentage points
Asked whether Mr. Trump had “committed any serious federal crimes,” 62 percent of independent voters said they believed he had, and 53 percent said he had threatened American democracy with his actions after the 2020 election.
Republican candidates appear to be aware of such sentiments, backing away from Mr. Trump’s fixation on the 2020 election. While he has said that election fraud is the most important issue in the midterms, polls show that voters are far more worried about economic issues and abortion rights.
WaPo: ‘Look, these are our boys’: Ukrainian troops drive Russian tanks on new front line https://tinyurl.com/bd2hy66j ‘The front line is now a river, the Oskil, that runs through the middle of the eastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk, which the Russians had used as a transport hub’
🐣 📋 RT @yellowpaiges 13% of republicans are MAGA.. republicans are 24% of registered voters. They aren’t as big as media portrays them. Did you see all the empty seats
🐣 RT @ @MeidasTouch. After reposting a photo of himself wearing a ‘Q’ symbol this week, Donald Trump is now all-in on QAnon at his rallies. ¤ Tonight, as he played the QAnon WWG1WGA theme song, his followers raised their arms and held up their pointer fingers towards him in a QAnon salute.
🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian defenders have a confident foothold in Luhansk region. Armed Forces of Ukraine have liberated Bilohorivka on the Siverskyi Donets River and contest for control of Zolotarivka and Verkhn’okam’yanka. The rashists are falling back on temporarily-occupied Lysychans’k
🐣 RT @kyledcheney JUST IN: Appeals court sets a Tuesday deadline for Trump to respond to DOJ’s motion for partial stay of Judge Cannon’s order
// response due by noon 9/20
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney We don’t yet know which three-judge panel is taking this up but that’s a pretty expedited response time that nearly coincides with the special master’s first conference with the parties in Brooklyn.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @weissbry18 The DOJ wants to keep reviewing the 100 classified documents it retrieved from Trump. “Judge” Cannon said they can’t. DOJ asked her to reconsider. She said no. So DOJ has to convince 11th Circuit appeals court that “Judge” Cannon is wrong and they can keep reviewing the docs.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @thelibbiegrant …and the rapid response and quick heading from the 11th Circuit *seems* to suggest they understand how urgent this matter is to national security, which *seems* to suggest they won’t be inclined to side with trump, but we’ll see.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @threedogdays Tight turnaround for appellee suggests 11th Circuit is taking seriously the urgency DOJ stated: “because the government and the public will suffer irreparable injury absent a stay, the United States respectfully asks that the Court act on this motion as soon as practicable.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @iamacruz Courts usually give a lot more time to respond. This is fast!
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @judicialmermaid This is a big deal, considering originally the time frame was to be responded by 10/7/22. Moving it up to Tuesday tells me they understand this is a matter of National dire consequences. I’m finally breathing a sigh of relief. 🙏🇺🇸
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 what were the “national dire consequences”? that evidence would be tainted or forever tied up in disputes over DOJ’s inability to meet Cannon’s impossible demands? sorry: I’ve looked for a long article on this but the closest I’ve found are Twitter threads
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @judicialmermaid The consequences are our sources & methods being exposed to foreign adversaries, our own “informants” being put in peril, and our foreign allies withholding information from us because we have failed to keep “secrets” secure. Cannon has put the entire Nation in grave danger.
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 people have talked about balance of power issues; I assume then that is because Cannon is not respecting th right of the Executive branch to be able to decide what is secret or, in fact, whether there is one president or two (?)
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @judicialmermaid That is part of it, yes. She has also noted that because DT is a FPOTUS, he deserves special treatment. There is no legal basis to support that assertion. She also does not understand how the FBI/DOJ are part of Exec Branch and the Intelligence Community (IC). She is extremely 1/
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @judicialmermaid under qualified for being a Fed Judge and not knowing this basic fact of our legal system. A person cannot exert exec privilege against the Exec Branch when they 1. Are no longer part of it and 2. The actual Executive has not waived theirs to that said person. /2
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 agree: unless their object is so totally corrupt that they appeal all the way to SCOTUS ¤ hard to believe it would prevail there, but this Court keeps surprising
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DSRacer In all seriousness, what are they going to argue?
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ lisa_smith40 Same thing they already did: the Special Master is supposed to determine if the docs are actually classified and/or TFG’s personal papers (not subject to PRA). They’ll claim that lifting Cannon’s stay will let DOJ read & act on what might be personal (therefore acting illegally).
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @bonescarfer What’s the point of this other than for Trump to get to say “Uh-uh! I don’t wanna!”? Didn’t Cannon already reject the motion for a partial stay?
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Soaps_Hope She’s not the final say. This is a higher court.
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JgRestore The final say will be clearance Thomas since he is the Supreme Court Justice assigned to this circuit when the court is not in term
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 and @nytimes said that (Trump’s team) ‘has a justice on board’ so then it goes to full SCOTUS, right? and they decide if Nixon v Archives was wrongly decided as Cannon said at the outset
lemme guess: 5/4
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977)
⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JgRestore It would go to Clarence Thomas directly. He could reject it or make a ruling on it. If the DoJ wants to do a full scotus hearing, they have to wait to see if the court will take it up this upcoming term and issue the decision next Summer
🐣 RT @general_ben Putin’s week: 1st Guards Tank Army destroyed, 101-7 at UNGA vote vs Russian bid to block Zelensky video address, Moscow Ferris Wheel broke down first day, humiliation at the hands of his “friends” in Samarkand, viral video of Wagner recruiting convicts, Izium murders exposed.
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump begins his rally speech in Youngstown by trying to take credit for Ohio State football
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1571284553490210825?s=20
// Trump rally
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar […] Trump’s rally in Youngstown, Ohio, ends with the dramatic music playing. Strange vibes.
⋙ 🐣 you can argue any of these points rationally but it’s not about reason or argument; it’s about tribal belonging; the incantation reminds me of church when I was a kid: we recited/intoned litanies ¤ no question that MAGA has replaced the role of relition in these people‘s lives
WaPo: Ukrainian strikes into Russia’s border towns compound Putin’s troubles https://tinyurl.com/3yuftvut “Kyiv has assured U.S. officials that donated weapons would not be used to strike targets inside Russia proper”
That Russian citizens are starting to seriously feel the impact of the war directly is another new source of pressure on Putin, who returned home this weekend from a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan where he faced a remarkable public rebuke by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and questions about the war from Chinese President Xi Jinping. ¤ In a stunning public rebuke, Modi told Putin that “today’s era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this.” That followed an acknowledgment by Putin that he had heard “concerns and questions” about the war from the Chinese president.
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost He [Trump] is so terrified of what is coming—its amazing how he can’t help himself and has to post these stream of consciousness deranged & delusional rants which get more bizarre every day. ¤ The random capitalization he always includes is so bizarre.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1571214806346244096?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] I have great lawyers and legal teams, working closely together, to guard against the Greatest Witch Hunt of all times. Many lawyers want to come on board. Prosecutorial misconduct and Weaponization, the likes of which has never been seen before, is taking place at many different Radical left Democrat levels. I don’t know how much more our Country will be willing to withstand? We are living in a very angry and troubled failing Nation. We are, indeed, a Nation in decline!!!
⭕ 16 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Imagine being fired and walking out the door with priceless company possessions. You don’t return them, lie about it, and when you are caught and the items are seized, you sue seeking return of the items. The judge doesn’t throw the book at you. And you are still free. ¤ You=Trump
🐣 RT @tribelaw And, of course, DOJ filed its appeal of Cannon’s lawless refusal to stay her intrusion into the Executive Branch last night. It totally crushed her decision. Left it in tatters. Killed it. The appeals panel in Atlanta will have to agree. Will it? Who knows?
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ This ⬇️ is not getting enough attention. Ongoing insurrection by Trump and undermining the rule of law. Making Garland’s eventual discretionary decision whether to indict Trump easier and easier.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JaxAlemany Trump Called In to a Pro-January 6 Rally at the DC Jail
and said that prisoners inside the jail were “being treated very, very unfairly.”
⋙⋙ Washingtonian (9/14): Trump Called in to a Pro-January 6 Rally at the DC Jail https://tinyurl.com/3yzwwnyz
// The former President said the January 6 prisoners in the jail were “being treated very, very unfairly.”
🐣 RT @ EleMongelli⚡THE HAGUE, 16 September 2022. Denmark files a declaration of intervention under Article 63 of the #ICJ Statute in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (#Ukraine v. #Russia).
[Letter:] https://twitter.com/EleMongelli/status/1570831619568857088?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING::THREAD::There are a LOT of breaking stories in the latest NYT piece that just dropped. First, trump lawyers told Herschmann to invoke sweeping executive privilege with the DoJ stating they have a “chief judge” in their pocket that will rule in their favor. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1570933677810659330?s=20
⋙ NYT: Trump’s Team of Lawyers Marked by Infighting and Possible Legal Troubles of Its Own https://tinyurl.com/723ea4hr
// Several of the former president’s lawyers are under scrutiny by federal investigators amid squabbling over competence.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Dearie’s first act. Moving this along.
[CourtDoc:] https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1570884411989852160?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @OccupyDemocrats BREAKING NEWS: The Special Master overseeing the top secret documents stolen by Trump drops bombshell, orders Trump’s lawyers to immediately come to his courtroom in New York for an urgent hearing. RT IF YOU THINK THAT TRUMP MUST BE CRIMINALLY CHARGED!
🧵 RT @rgoodlaw Excellent DOJ brief petitioning court of appeals.
Core truth, important throughout: “Plaintiff has no right to the ‘return’ of records with classification markings, which are not his property.”
Plus a powerful explanation of urgent national security injury from her order. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1570952308019826688?s=20
WaPo: Justice Dept. appeals judge’s rulings on classified material in Mar-a-Lago case https://tinyurl.com/mwm4u433
// The Friday night filing asks a higher court to intercede against parts of the decision to appoint a special master to review documents seized from Trump’s club.
The new filing from the Justice Department notes that it disagrees with that decision but for the time being is asking the appeals court to intercede on two parts of Cannon’s ruling — one barring criminal investigators from using the seized material while the special master does his work, and another allowing the special master to review the roughly 100 classified documents seized as well as the nonclassified material.
The government filing asks for a stay of “only the portions of the order causing the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public,” calling the scope of their request “modest but critically important.” ¤ It’s unclear how long the special master review, or the appeals, might take, but the new filing asks the appeals court to rule on their request for a stay “as soon as practicable.”
Dearie, 78, was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan (R) after serving as a U.S. attorney. Fellow lawyers and colleagues in Brooklyn federal court describe him as an exemplary jurist who is well suited to the job of special master, having previously served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees sensitive national security cases.
The appeals court filing also argues that the very premise of Cannon’s order, as it relates to the classified material, makes little sense because classified documents are by definition the property of the government, not a former president or a private club.
Trump “has no claim for the return of those records, which belong to the government and were seized in a court-authorized search. The records are not subject to any possible claim of personal attorney-client privilege,” prosecutors wrote, adding that Trump has cited no legal authority “suggesting that a former President could successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent the Executive Branch from reviewing its own records.”
The Justice Department contends that Cannon’s instruction for intelligence officials to continue their risk assessment of the Mar-a-Lago case, while criminal investigators could not use that same material in their work, is highly impractical because the two tasks are “inextricably intertwined.” … “It also irreparably harms the government by enjoining critical steps of an ongoing criminal investigation and needlessly compelling disclosure of highly sensitive records, including to” Trump’s lawyers. …
Similar arguments did not sway Cannon, who repeatedly expressed skepticism about the Justice Department claims, even on the question of whether the roughly 100 documents at the core of the case were classified. In her ruling Thursday, she rejected the argument that her decision will cause serious harm to the national security investigation. Evenhanded application of legal rules “does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice,” the judge wrote. ¤ Cannon, a Trump appointee [was] confirmed by the U.S. Senate just days after Trump lost his bid for re-election … …
That [second] search, officials said, turned up roughly 100 more classified documents, including some that were at the highest level of classification. ¤ Two weeks after that search, Trump’s lawyers filed court papers seeking the appointment of a special master to review the seized material and hold aside any documents covered by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
Executive privilege is a loosely defined legal concept meant to safeguard the privacy of presidential communications from other branches of government, but in this case Trump’s legal team has suggested the former president can invoke it against the current executive branch.
The government’s appeals argument also tries to demolish the suggestion that Trump may have declassified the material while he was president, noting that his legal team has never claimed he did so at any point in the long months of negotiating the return of the documents, and since the raid has only suggested he might have or could have declassified them. ¤ In buying that reasoning, Judge Cannon “erred in granting extraordinary relief based on unsubstantiated possibilities,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Margarita Simonyan said: “It may take 3 months, 3 years or 30 years, so be it. What other choice do we have?”
Solovyov replied: “Our other choice? Reduce the whole world to dust. Just not yet.”
Smiling, Simonyan replied, “And we will go to heaven.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Head of RT Margarita Simonyan Belts Out Old Soviet Song in Cringey Push for More Troops ¤ To terrorize the audiences into volunteering to join the fight, Simonyan claimed that the West wants to enslave Russians and turn them into “yahoos.”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Putin Crony Belts Out Song in Cringey Push for More Russian Troops https://tinyurl.com/mdrsvw6d
// The Kremlin’s mouthpieces are desperate for more cannon fodder in Ukraine, and it’s leading to some terrifying—and awkward—TV moments.
Reuters: Exclusive: Zelenskiy accuses Russia of war crimes, sees no early end to war https://tinyurl.com/32wn7urc
🐣 RT @ukraine_map 10 Most Impactful Weapons ¤ USA provided Ukraine 🇺🇦
1. 16 HIMARS
2. 8,500 Javelins
3. HARM Anti-Radar Missiles
4. 2,000 Excalibur Rounds
5. 1,400 Stingers
6. 126 M777 Howitzers
7. 500+ Armored Vehicles
8. 1,400 Kamikaze Drones
9. 50 Counter Artillery Radars
10. Laser Guided Rockets
🐣 RT @petestrzok Agreed. Over 20 years of working with prosecutors on cases involving classified information, I have never – ever – seen anything like it. ¤ Courts have been universally and appropriately deferential to the executive’s determinations concerning classified info. ¤ Until Judge Cannon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade The most outrageous statement in the court’s order is her rejection of the government’s assertion that documents with classified markings are, in fact, classified. She reaches this conclusion despite an unrefuted affidavit from the head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.
EuromaidanPress: Russia’s wae is speeding up the Ukrainization of Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yhzmtk8z
// Ukrainian language use skyrockets amid Russian invasion
[Summary:] Following the Russian invasion, 41% of Russian-speakers in Ukraine have switched to either fully or partially speaking the Ukrainian language. This trend is especially prominent in the southeast, where the Ukrainians Putin claims await liberation by Russian troops have started attending language courses to make the jump quicker. Ukrainian is gradually becoming the language of prestige and business, reversing a centuries-long trend of Russification as an imperial tool.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING: this judge… [Thread, but not linked]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZoeTillman NOW: Judge Aileen Cannon has denied DOJ’s request to carve out docs with classified markings from her order halting the use of seized materials in the criminal probe and has appointed NY federal judge Raymond Dearie to serve as special master. More to come
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/fmkm338u
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Judge Cannon is a partisan hack: she says it is “disputed” that the documents are classified, but Trump never said in court he declassified them and submitted NO evidence, so the only evidence before her is that they are and are so marked. She really is totally in the tank here.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ As @tribelaw has noted, Cannon at the end of her decision directly says Trump is entitled to more process than anyone else — she says her decision is impacted by “the position formerly held by plaintiff.” ¤ So much for the rule of law and her sworn oath of office.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ And her Special Master Order is a study in stupidity: she divides the world into Presidential Records and personal records, but there are likely a host of govt records that are not presidential records (e.g. agency records). She makes no provision for those. So infuriating.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Literally the only thing DOJ won is not paying for the cost of the Special Master, but as that is a sitting federal judge that cost is likely to be negligible even if he can charge for certain expenses.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ One telling little nugget is Cannon snidely noting that the only leaks she knows about are AFTER the search was done, to the press, glibly dismissing DOJ’s concern that the docs or the info in them may have been disseminated in the past 18 months.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Another “brilliant” Cannon point: Trump could not be expected to “concretize” his position on the documents as he has not seen the seized docs – without the court ever saying he had them at MAL and in his friggin office for 18 months!
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ I thought she would take the off-ramp DOJ provided her; I was wrong. This latest decision is both a stupid and profoundly partisan piece of work. ¤ Judge Dearie is jumping into this snake pit, and hopefully can right this ship quickly (to mix metaphors poorly).
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ The only good news is because Cannon is not doing her job and is subcontracting to another federal judge, DOJ will be able to deal with Dearie and have some sanity imposed.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ So 💯⬇️
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Acyn Conway: This ruling is absolutely a disgrace. And I don’t think it’s going to take very much to overturn it. Barr told The New York Times that the original motion by Trump’s lawyers was a crock of shit, a crock of shit. This opinion is worse than that..
💽 https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1570575240593567745?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Cannon’s Special Master order fails to give any guidance as to how to evaluate docs marked classified; it only deals with att-client issues and unclassified docs. So she never deals with plaintiff seeing docs marked classified.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ So great to be on with this group on a night like tonight.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheLastWord “Outrageous and stupid, frankly.” ¤ Joining @Lawrence tonight, @AWeissmann_, @neal_katyal, and @BradMossEsq blasted the ruling by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon appointing a special master to review documents the FBI seized from Trump. #LastWord
💽 https://twitter.com/TheLastWord/status/1570601425440309248?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @TheLastWord Legal experts @neal_katyal, @AWeissmann_ and @BradMossEsq join @Lawrence to discuss why a Trump-appointed judge’s ruling that classified docs seized from Donald Trump’s Florida home are not classified is “the end of the rule of law.” https://on.msnbc.com/3xsLJT4
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ You don’t have to take it from me: we have Lawrence Tribe on our side. And to be clear, this is not just disagreeing with Cannon on a law point; this is a fundamental violation of her oath of office and distortion of the rule of law. ⬇️
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw I’m always relieved when @AWeissmann_ emphasizes the same thing I do: Cannon is openly trashing the principle that all are equal before the law. Not in her court, they’re not!
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ “I know it looks like a duck, walks like a duck & quacks like a duck, and defendant submits an affidavit it’s a duck, and plaintiff does not dispute it’s a duck, but I say there is a factual dispute whether it’s a duck.” ¤ Judge Aileen Cannon
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Love ⬇️❤️
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d Also, the duck is wearing a big red-bordered sign that says, in big bold red capital letters, “THIS IS A DUCK.” ¤ And we have PHOTOGRAPHS of the duck and the red sign.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Thank goodness Judge Cannon is a 🐓and subcontracted her work to another federal Judge so she can have him be the fall guy in ruling against Trump as she seeks to keep her injudicious hands clean.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ exactly ⬇️ Vanity Gupta to the rescue! You were born for this moment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NikkiFried Just got off the phone with the @WhiteHouse. I’m asking the @TheJusticeDept to investigate Ron DeSantis’ political human trafficking. [thread]
🚫 🐣 RT @igorsushko 🚨#Russia budgeting for additional 134,000 soldier deaths:
RU Finance Ministry is asking for supplementary 271.5 billion RUB for 2022 & 724.1 billion RUB for 2023 for KIA soldier family payouts. 7.4 million RUB for each dead soldier. This budget anticipates 134k more KIA payouts.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1570818740044075010?s=20/photo/1
// never sure if I should trust this guy
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Here’s what I’d say to the Chief Justice, @Lawrence: There’s a compelling array of evidence that this Court has been captured by right-wing special interests – and that is the problem.
💽 https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1570854460028747776?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald Ukraine has to get air defenses as soon as possible. Defeated on the ground, Russia will strike more civilian targets in Ukraine from the air. There should also be an immediate sanctions response – Putin shouldn’t be able to get away with making such threats unpunished. 💽
🐣 RT @sarahrainsford So neither China nor India are in favour of Putin’s war ¤ Russian troops have retreated from parts of eastern Ukraine with staggering haste, leaving evidence of more war crimes ¤ But Putin today said: ‘The plan is not subject to adjustment. We’re in no hurry…there’s no changes’
⋙ 🐣 RT @maryilyushina Wow. Indian PM Narendra Modi directly tells Putin that now is not the time for war in a stunning public accusation. “I know that today’s era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this,” Modi said.
⋙⋙ 🐣 In fact, they’ve changed goals several times. Today he only cited protecting the Donbas(!). Next phase: 1) replace regular troops with Prighozin’s “private army” and 2) bomb infrastructure everywhere
🐣 RT @nytimes President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Friday threatened to escalate his war in Ukraine, even as he declared that the “main goal” of his invasion was limited to taking control of the Donbas region in the country’s east.
⋙ NYT: Putin threatens to escalate war after Russian forces deliver what he called ‘warning strikes.’ https://tinyurl.com/bd8ftu9r “His comments came after two days of meetings with Asian leaders showed that his war had strained Russia’s relationships”
⋙ 🐣 RT @milsma Hang on. Washington Post had this an hour ago.
⋙⋙⋙ https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1570807557203103750?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 The @nytimes article covers the press conference at the END of the regional meeting Putin was at with Xi and Modi, who both were harsh on him; so afterwards he went back to his normal threatening self, even after they failed to support him. He’s incorrigible.
🐣 RT @tribelaw I’m not sure what’s gained by our piling on, and I’ve already tweeted a lot about what dangerous garbage I think Judge Cannon threw at the nation in her ruling denying even a limited stay, but let me say it again: No honest and competent legal analyst could have ruled as she did.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnWDean George Conway perfectly summed up Judge Cannon’s ruling: a crock of shit. This judge is so out of her league. George is correct is saying what he has never said publicly: she should not be on a federal bench! This is the work of Leo Leonard, and Mitchell McConnell!
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Conway: This ruling is absolutely a disgrace. And I don’t think it’s going to take very much to overturn it. Barr told The New York Times that the original motion by Trump’s lawyers was a crock of shit, a crock of shit. This opinion is worse than that..
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1570570377486647296?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: The Justice Dept.’s Jan. 6 investigation is looking at … everything https://tinyurl.com/3yuam2zh “It strikes me that they’re going after a very, very large group of people, and … are going to make all of the charging decisions toward the end” ~ former prosecutor
// New batch of subpoenas spell out three general areas of interest as investigators seek sweeping range of information
The new batch of subpoenas point to three main areas of Justice Department interest, distinct but related:
● the effort to replace valid Biden electors with unearned, pro-Trump electors before the formal congressional tally of the 2020 election outcome on Jan. 6, 2021
● the rally that preceded the riot that day
● the fundraising and spending of the Save America political action committee, an entity that raised more than $100 million in the wake of the 2020 election, largely based on appeals to mount pro-Trump legal challenges to election results.
DailyBeast: Putin’s Allies Are Now Slamming the War Right to His Face https://tinyurl.com/yckm48k3 “The public rebuke from Modi comes just a day after Putin held a key face-to-face meeting with Chinese Pres Xi Jinping, during which Putin acknowledged publicly that Xi has ‘concerns’”
// Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made clear to Vladimir Putin in a meeting that he is not confident in Russia’s decisions about the war in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Putin’s clearly under pressure & will be fearing a growing backlash at home. He’s now doing his usual deflection trick, of blaming others for his self-inflicted crimes. So please keep pilling on the pressure #Ukraine & make Russia’s Z rated midget sweat.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russia will do everything so that conflict in 🇺🇦 finishes ASAP but Kyiv refuses negotiations, – Putin during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister ¤ Will he now nominate himself for the Nobel Peace prize?
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1570775711174242304?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi: Today the world should see what the Russian army left behind. More than 400 graves in the forest near Izium. Russia has already become the largest source of terrorism in the world. No other terrorist force leaves behind so many deaths.
💽 https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1570794898001113089?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @DarthPutinKGB Day 205 of my 3 day war. I dreamed I was being chased naked thru a field of sunflowers by a pack of cartoon dogs funded by CIA while Xi kept calling me “incompetent loser”. ¤ I remain a master strategist.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Judge Cannon says: “[T]here has been no actual suggestion by the Government of any identifiable emergency or imminent disclosure of classified information arising from Plaintiff’s allegedly unlawful retention of the seized property.” ¤ Fact check: WTF?
🐣 RT @ DmytroKuleba I welcome @Europarl_EN resolution on human rights violations, forced deportation of Ukrainians and forced adoption of Ukrainian children in Russia. It clearly states that the latter is a violation of the UN Genocide Convention. Russia commits genocide and must be held to account.
TheInsider: Democracy as a weapon. How Political Reforms Helped Ukraine Prepare for War https://tinyurl.com/374bt8yd “The Kremlin’s perception of Ukraine as a ‘failed state,’ was one of the reasons for the attempted blitzkrieg in February 2022, and then led to its failure”
NYT, Nataliya Gumenyuk: The World Now Has a Vision of Ukrainian Victory https://tinyurl.com/49pzr3uu ‘The counteroffensive in the country’s northeast seems to have taken the Russian troops by surprise. They fled, leaving behind hundreds of vehicles, ammunition and documents’
🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: The German government says it is taking control of Russian oil giant Rosneft’s subsidiary in Germany, citing the need to ensure continued operations at three oil refineries in the country. [link:] https://tinyurl.com/2p88pb64
📊 Politico, Ivo Daalder [EU]: Putin’s NATO bungle https://tinyurl.com/nhhunbzx “Russia’s actions have only cemented American support for NATO. It has helped strengthen and unify the military alliance itself — hardly the outcome Putin sought”: Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll
// Russia’s actions have unwittingly cemented American support for both Europe and the Alliance, bolstering transatlantic solidarity.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had high hopes for the invasion of his western neighbor earlier this year — he was going to bring all of Ukraine back into Russia’s fold; he was going to expand Russia’s influence throughout Eastern and Central Europe; he was going to fracture, if not force, the collapse of NATO. ¤ In short, the Russian president was going to regain everything Russia had lost when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and reverse what he saw as “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.”
But Putin’s hopes have been brutally crushed, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may well turn out to be the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 21st century — at least as far as Russia is concerned. ¤ Far from capturing Ukraine in a matter of weeks, Russia is now clearly on the defensive. … Far from fracturing, NATO and the West as a whole have responded to the war with remarkable unity of effort. Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world. …
Meanwhile, attitudes toward Russia have shifted dramatically, undergirding the strong and unified opposition to Moscow and its policies. That change is perhaps most notable in the U.S., where a new survey released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows strong support for Europe and NATO.
Europe’s importance to Americans is also underscored by their view of NATO. In fact, the American public is now more committed to the Atlantic Alliance than in any time since our polling began nearly 50 years ago. Four in five Americans now want to either maintain (62 percent) or increase (19 percent) U.S. commitment to NATO. And while Democrats are most committed (at 90 percent), so are three-quarters of Republicans and Independents.
Since earlier this year, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has substantially increased commitment to NATO, deploying about 25 percent more troops, aircraft, mechanized vehicles and naval vessels, many far forward in the east. ¤ Americans greatly favor such a long-term presence in Europe, with two out three supporting long-term bases in Germany (68 percent), the Baltic states (65 percent), and Poland (62 percent). In the case of Germany and Poland, those numbers are up by nearly 60 percent when compared to a decade ago.
With U.S. support for NATO and European security at a historic high, many might ask how sustainable this support will be over the longer term. … But public opinion tends to be far less fickle than many assume. Indeed, support for NATO among Americans has risen steadily over the past decade — though less so among Republicans. It’s one of the few issues on which large majorities, on both sides of the aisle, can agree — not only now, but also when Trump was in office. ¤ Russia’s actions have only cemented American support for NATO. It has helped strengthen and unify the military alliance itself — hardly the outcome Putin sought.
⭕ 15 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer RAN AWAY: The 1st Guards’ Tank Army was crushed and scattered at Izium. This rare Russian R-149MA1 vehicle provided Command, Control & Communications (C3) at the brigade/regiment level. Its crew (and the Regimental commander) bailed out, leaving an intelligence bonanza behind.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ UAWeapons #Ukraine: Another R-149MA1 command vehicle and BTR-82A APC [390] seen captured by Ukrainian forces in #Kharkiv Oblast, along with a supply truck. The other vehicles appear to have been seen before.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1570762120371015682?s=20/photo/1
WaPo Editorial: The E.U. must punish Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian leader https://tinyurl.com/yf7982w5 The European Union is preparing to cut off Hungary from the billions of dollars in aid on which his regime depends. “Better late than never.”
WaPo: Georgia 2020 election inquiry may lead to prison sentences, prosecutor says https://tinyurl.com/2bbswx88 “‘A decision is going to have to be made,’ [Fulton County DA Fani T. Willis] said on whether to seek Trump’s testimony, ‘and I imagine it’s going to be made late this fall’”
// Fulton County district attorney says her team has received allegations that serious crimes were committed
🐣 RT @ McFaul I said “badass” (to describe @ZelenskyyUa) on @KatyTurNBC
@KatyOnMSNBC today. Sorry.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KatyOnMSNBC “Nobody likes losers, and he’s losing now in Ukraine.” @McFaul talks to @KatyTurNBC about the meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, and China’s concerns about Ukraine
💽 https://twitter.com/KatyOnMSNBC/status/1570506198692265985?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder As Ukraine re-establishes control over de-occupied territories, authorities once again have to chronicle Russian atrocities: torture facilities (everywhere), mass graves (Izyum), the absence of men (Horlivka). Russia’s war was genocidal in conception and is genocidal in practice.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling Warning: This will NOT be a popular thread. I anticipate a high degree of pushback from those who follow me. ¤ But…I thought it might be useful to provide some thoughts as to why the US may be “rebuffing” the request to provide ATACMS to Ukraine. 1/15 [CNN link]
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1570619239572344833?s=20
USDeptDefense: $600 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2ytuzj7s “In total, the United States has committed approximately $15.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration”; Includes ⬇️
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1570644003821064192?s=20/photo/1
// Defense budget
[Text:] Capabilities in this package include:
Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
36,000 105mm artillery rounds;
1,000 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
Four counter-artillery radars;
Four trucks and eight trailers to transport heavy equipment;
Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems;
Mine clearing equipment;
Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
Demolition munitions and equipment;
Small arms and ammunition;
Night vision devices, cold weather gear, and other field equipment
🐣 RT @Archer83Able Tajikistan is using heavy military equipment in clashes at the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, the Border Service of the State Committee for National Security of Kyrgyzstan claims. (TASS)
⋙ 🐣 Both are members of CSTO, the Russian version of NATO, ie supposedly Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are allies. Plus, Kazakhstan has recently announced it plans to leave CSTO and China has cautioned Russian not to try to prevent this. “First gradually, then suddenly”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @justartsndstuff “There are decades where weeks happen, and there are weeks where decades happen”
🐣 RT @McFaul This is remarkable. Xi is not supporting Putin. No weapons, no ammo, no chips, no real words of solidarity. Just a willingness to buy Russian energy at very discounted prices.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon Putin tells Xi Jinping that Russia “understands your questions and concerns” about Ukraine. Does that mean… China has some?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @EulerID Xi was hoping for the quick 72-hour Russian victory promised by Putin just before the invasion. It didn’t happen because Ukrainians fought back. The whole world witnessed Russia is a paper tiger. China revised Taiwan plans. The Chinese are disappointed.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KrauseForIowa My take? China will not attack Taiwan u til it figures out how badly wounded its Russian ally is. Who wants to start something that big knowing that your key ally could disintegrate at any time.
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: THREAD: In quite possibly the dumbest ruling I’ve ever read, Judge Cannon has denied the DoJ motion to stay part of her ruling (though I’m not surprised. I expected her to do this.) 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1570564890104057859?s=20
🐣 RT @djrothkopf We are quickly heading for a test of our judiciary unlike any in the past–one that not only raises fundamental Constitutional principles but will reveal whether an ideological divide in our court system will lead to a profound threat to our national security.
🧵 RT @pravda_eng American historian @TimothyDSnyder: #Russia calls itself a democracy, but it’s obviously not
⋙ UkrPravda_Eng: Timothy Snyder: Russia calls itself a democracy, but it’s obviously not https://tinyurl.com/2w46ph34
📌 https://twitter.com/pravda_eng/status/1570361418385428483?s=20
🐣 RT @jamescrabtree “After Heritage Action, the organization’s political wing, opposed the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill in May, 2 of the foundation’s top Russia analysts resigned. Since then, 3 senior members of Heritage’s Asia team, a defense budget analyst & a trade analyst have all departed.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshrogin A conservative think tank turns away from Reagan and toward Trump [link] by me @PostOpinions
⋙⋙ WaPo: A conservative think tank turns away from Reagan and toward Trump https://tinyurl.com/2s35nffh
‼️ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney BREAKING: Judge CANNON has denied DOJ’s motion for a partial stay and has appointed Raymond DEARIE as special master.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney On DOJ’s claims about the classified docs: “The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion.”
[CourtDoc:] https://tinyurl.com/y4kkeju
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @emptywheel Aileen Cannon is dictating to the Executive that they do not own Executive documents. ¤ Radical
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1570550005798244352?s=20
🐣 RT @MarkRid89403375 The Russian Foreign Ministry threatened Washington with a response to the supply of longer-range missiles to Ukraine ¤ “If the United States decides to supply Kyiv with longer-range missiles, they will cross the red line and become a direct party to the conflict”
NYT, David Leonhardt: The Right’s Violence Problem https://tinyurl.com/5n7xuujc //➔ From 2012-2021, 75% of murders based on political hate were right-wing; 20% were Islamic; 4% were left-wing
Source: Anti-Defamation League
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1570519698974048256?s=20/photo/1
// 5/17/2022; The Buffalo killings are part of a pattern: Most extremist violence in the U.S. comes from the political right.
🐣 RT @McFaul Contrast the very tepid rhetorical, economic, and military support for Putin & Russia from the SCO with the overwhelming support for Zelensky & Ukraine from NATO & the EU. Democratic solidarity is much more valuable than autocratic solidarity.
🧵 RT @sumlenny As the Ukrainian army liberates more territories, the Ukrainians find two things that are always present where the Russians stayed: 1) torture chambers; 2) feces all over the places. The latter belongs to the Russian army’s tradition, described already by Tolstoi himself. THREAD:
📌 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1509911168483311623?s=20
🐣 RT @ maxseddon Putin tells Xi Jinping that Russia “understands your questions and concerns” about Ukraine. Does that mean… China has some?
🐣 RT @mhmck The horrors of Izyum are worse than the horrors of Bucha. When Mariupol is liberated, the horrors revealed there will be many times worse. ¤ Russians commit genocide against the Ukrainian people. There is no limit to their savagery. Not enough is being done to stop them.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ If Cannon were going to agree with DOJ’s filing, ya think she could’ve done so already, even if she notes she will write a formal opinion later setting forth her reasons, which is often done. What she is doing now is holding up the national security review needlessly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Her only job is to help him delay. She doesn’t care about having her rulings overturned or her “legacy”. She has one job and I think she’ll continue to do it. We’ll know soon!
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. The Ukrainian counteroffensive continues to consolidate across the Kharkiv Oblast. President Zelenskyy visited liberated regions announcing the Ukrainian flag would again fly above all areas Russia has occupied, including Crimea.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1570279328570822663?s=20
🧵 RT @KatStepanenko In our recent report at @TheStudyofWar, we assessed that Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is being established as the face of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine. https://tinyurl.com/yu5e9k2n A thread 1/7
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @yarotrof For the first time, a video emerges of a recruitment talk for Wagner by Prigozhin in a Russian prison camp. Absolutely bonkers. “Nobody goes back behind bars. If you serve six months, you are free. If you arrive in Ukraine and decide it’s not for you, we execute you.”
📌 https://twitter.com/KatStepanenko/status/1570481923675377664?s=20
🐣 RT @KatStepanenko Prigozhin’s persona is likely aimed to pay lip service to milbloggers’ requested operational changes following the defeat around Kharkiv Oblast to regain their support given that the Wagner Group has been able to make some incremental gains in Donetsk Oblast. 2/7
⋙ The Kremlin and Russian state media have been adopting milbloggers’ criticism that the Russian Defense Ministry has been setting Russian forces for failure, likely establishing the MoD the responsible party for the Russian defeat around Kharkiv Oblast. 3/7
⋙ Simultaneously, milbloggers have increased their discourse about Prigozhin and Wagner Group’s competency during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with some even calling for the replacement for Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu with Prigozhin. 4/7
⋙ Prigozhin gave prisoner recruitment speech, which some milbloggers deemed as a “Stalinist” recruitment approach. Such approach likely appeals to mibloggers who had been calling for more frontline reinforcements to continue to Putin’s war. 5/7
⋙ Prigozhin allegedly met with some milbloggers, which indicates that the Kremlin is attempting to address milbloggers’ months-long complaints that the Russian Defense Ministry did not hear their criticism highlighting the ineffectiveness of Russian higher command. 6/7
⋙ Prigozhin is Putin’s close confidant, and his developing relationship with milbloggers may help retain milblogger support for the Kremlin’s war effort while scapegoating Shoigu and the Russian Defense Ministry for the defeat around Kharkiv Oblast. 7/7
🐣 RT @HannaLiubakova President @ZelenskyyUa recorded part of his address in Russian for the 🇷🇺 military: “You are weaklings at war with civilians. The scoundrels who, having escaped from the battlefield, try to harm from far away. You’ll remain terrorists, of whom their grandchildren will be ashamed”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom MAGA world seems less angry about immigration and more pissed that DeSantis’s expensive and hateful stunt of sending people to an off-season island didn’t own the libs, who instead did the Christian thing and took in the strangers and made sure they had food and shelter
📊 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: White conservative Christians ignore their real problem: A fleeing flock https://tinyurl.com/3ya2zexm “The data does … show that ‘an association of Christianity with conservative politics has driven many liberals away from the faith,’ according to Pew”
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1570478178342260736?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
📊 PewResearch: How U.S. religious composition has changed in recent decades https://tinyurl.com/2szhc2wm Increase in “Unaffiliated”: assn with conservative politics, clergy scandals, declining births, intermarriage are all theorized to be behind the abandonment of Christianity
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1570476865764065280?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: As Ukraine advances, Putin backs further into a corner https://tinyurl.com/388rkuwa “What we are seeing around Kharkiv is the psychological breaking point of certain Russian forces,” said Gen. H.R. McMaster,former White House national security adviser
Russian President Vladimir Putin now faces a narrower, more stark set of options in litigating the war of his choosing. For months, Putin has clung to fictions of inevitable triumph over Ukraine’s “artificial” state and peddled contradictory storylines to his countrymen — that the war they are waging is an existential battle for Russia’s future and yet also a mere “special operation” that the Kremlin has well at hand. The edifice of Putin’s propaganda has started to crumble, and he finds himself in a scenario where he cannot countenance defeat nor pursue a decisive victory.
Ultranationalist radicals close to the Kremlin are grousing over the defeats in Kharkiv and calling for drastic measures, including even a general mobilization of the Russian public. “In a sign of the pressure on Putin from pro-war hard-liners for tougher action, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a longtime Putin ally, on Wednesday called for martial law and mandatory military mobilization, moves so far ruled out by the Kremlin,” noted my colleague Robyn Dixon.
“Putin certainly has the will to continue this war, but he has been largely operating under the illusion that the Russian military was winning and would eventually win,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at Arlington-based Center for Naval Analyses, to my colleagues. Once that illusion is dispelled, the political costs may rise for the entrenched autocrat.
🐣 📊 RT @Flash_news_ua Most Ukrainians are not ready to give territory to Russia to end the war, says a new poll of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
◕ https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1570431957623783427?s=20/photo/1
// In Ukr, but ~82-87% oppose
🐣 RT @stavridisj A “scorched earth” policy which plunges Ukraine into “darkness” is also known as a “massive war crime.” This course of action would almost certainly draw NATO into the fight with a no-fly zone. Bad idea Vladimir
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian State Media Threatens Scorched Earth Response to Bitter Defeats in Ukraine: “We need to scale up our strikes against critical infrastructure… so that Ukraine is plunged into darkness… By December, 20 million residents of Ukraine should flee…”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Team Putin Threatens Maniacal Response to Bitter War Losses https://tinyurl.com/2s732wch
// Vladimir Putin’s mouthpieces are threatening to unleash “real hell” after a slew of staggering failures in the war.
🐣 RT @nexta_tv Zelenskyy: “History is written by people, never by savages”
Ukrainian president turned to the Russian military ¤ “Striking non-military targets, in fact hitting hundreds of thousands civilians, is another reason why #Russia will lose. And not just this war, but history itself.”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/ 1345 UTC 15 SEP / Ukrainian air defense in the Kherson AO has been active and effective. UKR confirms that its MANPADS and air defense complexes shot down three Russian Su-25 ground attack aircraft, and an Su-24M fighter bomber. Kiselyvka captured on on M-14 HWY axis.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1570407076089810949?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 14 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @BulwarkOnline “Truthfully I kind of bristle every time I see, when I hear, people say it’s all about the Western technology…there are so many other complexities involved.” @MarkHertling joins @SykesCharlie on The Bulwark Podcast to talk the war and the Russian Army: https://tinyurl.com/4m7nyakr
🔊 https://twitter.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1570172299482959872?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @olliecarroll Zelensky directed part of nightly message to Russians + strikes on civilian infrastructure. Speaking in Russian, he said history made by humans, not subhumans. “You are fighting with civilians. You are weaklings. Scoundrels who fled the battleground to throw things in from afar”
💽 https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1570263235458396161?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Historic leadership. Will take his place in the history books with greats like Washington, Churchill. He rose to the needs of his country. A role model, a communicator, an example or what right looks like even in modern times. /photo/1
// Zelenskyy in Izium with troops
KyivIndependent, Illia Ponomarenko: With successful Kharkiv operation, Ukraine turns the war in its favor https://tinyurl.com/5y8jdxsd “[W]hat happened in early September in the east of Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast may ascend in history as the Miracle on the Oskil River”
Ukraine’s offensive operation has done more than liberate most of Kharkiv Oblast, as Ukrainian units approach the Russian border. ¤ It has exceeded the most optimistic of expectations and rendered one of Russia’s strongest military groupings disorganized and combat ineffective.
The battle is an operational success and is bound to have long-lasting consequences for Russia. ¤ The loss of Kupiansk and Izium, the two transportation hubs, pulls the plug on Russia’s chances of seizing the entire eastern region of Donbas, comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
The collapse also jeopardized Russian defenses in northern Donetsk Oblast, paving the way for new successful attacks by Ukrainian forces in the east.
The war’s third phase opens with Ukraine regaining the initiative. ¤ Experts say Ukraine has turned the war’s tide in its favor, while Russia’s power will likely continue to decline in the coming months. …
Ukraine’s military persuaded the Russian command that Kherson would be its counter-offensive’s primary, and likely only, axis. Indeed, experts doubted Ukraine had enough weaponry and hardware for a successful major strike at one frontline section, let alone two or more. ¤ Ukraine has performed well in this battle with operational security (OPSEC), keeping its adversary poorly informed regarding its planned maneuvers and capabilities. ¤ And when the time came, many of Russia’s best combat formations ended up isolated in Kherson, with all bridges crossing the Dnipro River ruined as their backs were turned. … …
“Ukraine has turned the tide of this war in its favor,” said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based defense think tank, in its Sept. 12 report. ¤ “Kyiv will likely increasingly dictate the location and nature of the major fighting, and Russia will find itself increasingly responding inadequately to growing Ukrainian physical and psychological pressure in successive military campaigns unless Moscow finds some way to regain the initiative.” …
🐣 RT @NoLieWithBTC Holy. Shit. Republicans’ newly-introduced national abortion ban would put doctors in prison for up to 5 years, force women to undergo extremely invasive transvaginal ultrasounds, and keep in place statewide bans that force rape victims to give birth.
⋙ Slate, Mark Stern: The Perverse, Potentially Lethal Consequences of Lindsey Graham’s Federal Abortion Ban https://tinyurl.com/3ya4dnb3
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Elena Kagan to her colleagues: You’re why the Supreme Court has lost legitimacy https://tinyurl.com/4ywyw7sx “Judges create legitimacy problems for themselves when … it looks like they’re an extension of the political process” ~ Justice Kagan
On Monday, she let loose a burst of refreshing clarity during a talk at Temple Emanu-El in New York. “Judges create legitimacy problems for themselves … when they instead stray into places where it looks like they’re an extension of the political process or when they’re imposing their own personal preferences,” she said. She added that the public has a right to expect that “changes in personnel don’t send the entire legal system up for grabs.”
[Kagan] identifies the primary catalyst for the court’s present crisis: the gutting of precedent by the newest justices. The dissent in Dobbs made plain the absence of any objective rationale for dispensing with nearly 50 years of precedent on abortion rights. As she and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.” They continued, “Stare decisis, this Court has often said, ‘contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process’ by ensuring that decisions are ‘founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals.’ … Today, the proclivities of individuals rule. The Court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law.” …
[I]f “we’ve got the votes” is the controlling sentiment, then it follows that the justices should be treated like politicians with binding ethics rules, term limits and greater transparency (on decisions to recuse themselves from cases, for example).
Dobbs is not the only reason for the court’s plunge in credibility. The right-wing justices’ rewriting of voting rights law (Brnovich v. DNC), their assault on the administrative state (West Virginia v. EPA), their inconsistent application of state power (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen) and their thumb-on-the-scale treatment of the Establishment Clause (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Carson v. Makin) have all taken their toll. So has the majority’s manipulation of the shadow docket and partisan screeds by right-wing justices in public settings.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Jeffrey Clark confirms he’s under federal criminal investigation for conspiracy, false statements, and obstruction in the 1/6 probe. He confirmed this in a report issued in the DC bar investigation over his law license. [link cnn]
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /2230 UTC 14 SEP/ UKR forces on the M-14 HWY axis have liberated the town of Kiselyvka. In the last 36 hours, UKR has sortied more than 25 close air support missions in Kherson oblast. Partisans report RU will attempt to ferry pontooned supplies to Kherson tonight.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1570179965869756418?s=20/photo/1
ACAEW: Inflation around the world https://tinyurl.com/y9tzfrrb Causes listed:
1) Emergence from pandemic (recovery of demand with erratic supply availability);
2) Russian invasion of Ukraine: ● Grain export markets, ● Russian gas/oil markets
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1570186957719801858?s=20/photo/1
// 5/26/2022
Inflation has increased rapidly over the last year as the world has emerged from the pandemic. A recovery in demand combined with constraints in supply and transportation has driven prices, with myriad factors at play. These include the effects of lockdowns in China (the world’s largest supplier of goods), the devastation caused by the Russian invasion in Ukraine (a major food exporter to Europe, the Middle East and Africa), and the economic sanctions imposed on Russia (one of the world’s largest suppliers of oil and gas).
💙 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Whew!! Jamie Raskin just said it all! 🔥
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1570114793129877509?s=20/photo/1
// awesome rant on women’s rights, freedom, Ukraine, inflation
🔄 💙 🐣 This looks like a close-to-original source for the claim about the liberation of Kyselivka, noting its proximity to Chornobaivka, with Samoilenko as source. The article is linked, but I don’t know Ukrainian. Thoughts? @Defmon3 @warmonitor3
⋙ 🐣 RT @hwag_ucmc 🔴In the #Kherson Region, the Ukrainian Armed Forces de-occupied the village of #Kyselivka. Today, the only settlement that separates the Ukrainian military from Kherson is #Chornobaivka. – Samoilenko, head of the regional council, Suspilne reports https://tinyurl.com/yywyade6
[TweetLink:] https://twitter.com/hwag_ucmc/status/1570132397852692480?s=20
🐣 RT @jimsciutto New: Ukrainian forces have retaken a town just north of occupied Kherson, says city council member. Oleksandr Samoilenko told Ukrainian television the town of Kyselivka was liberated and “occupiers are panicking, and the local population is in a state of expectation.”
🧵 RT @andersostlund The West spent 30 years trying to be friends with Russia but Russia rejected all attempts. The conclusion can only be that we need to hermetically seal Russia off from the rest of the world. Sanction anybody who loads a ship or plane bound for Russia, close all the land borders.
📌 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1570113072898908165?s=20
🐣 RT @ DefMon3 This is what it looks like further up just above the dam gates. There are clear signs of explosions, this is a result of the russian missile attack. ¤ They have absolutely no regard for the safety of civilians. They are terrorists.
Source: https://t.me/mortisaeterna/1470?single
🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov In this video from #Russia, oligarch Prigozhin, who is close to Putin and runs the Wagner private military company, is pitching to prison inmates, trying to recruit them for his PMC to deploy in the #war against #Ukraine:
💽 https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1570088045545771009?s=20/photo/1
[Tr:] He counts paragraphs on murder/robbery ok, sexual offenses “mistakes happen”, drug offenses only if no dependency/consumption was involved. Conclude an anecdote of how 30 hired crooks “cleaned” a UA trench with knives. [very loosely translated]2v2
🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov In this video from #Russia, oligarch Prigozhin, who is close to Putin and runs the Wagner private military company, is pitching to prison inmates, trying to recruit them for his PMC to deploy in the #war against #Ukraine: 💽
🐣 RT @TWMCLtd Following strikes by #Russia in #KryvyiRih there are now fears of both water shortages & floods in #Ukraine’s 7th largest city. ¤ Locals report the river has already risen by 3 metres in an hour. ¤ Engineers are already on site trying to repair the damage. ¤ #RussiaIsATerroristState
🐣 RT @MarkRid89403375 President Zelenskyy — Counteroffensive in north-east has confirmed once again: Ukrainians are waiting for 🇺🇦 Army. 6 months of 🇷🇺 occupation of Balakliya, Kharkiv region: darkness, murders, lack of humanitarian aid. Barbarians don’t value human life
🐣 RT @MarkRid89403375 A true leader has confidence, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. They do not set out to be a leader, but become one by the equality of their actions and the integrity of their intentions.
¤ https://twitter.com/MarkRid89403375/status/1570072061602562048?s=20&t=8qITNV4qYmyWaA2mgbqc4g/photo/1
// Zelenskyy with troops, Izium, Odesa, Mykolaiv
🐣 RT @ElbridgeColby “China will not change its willingness to develop ties with Russia, because that is determined by geopolitical dynamics,” said Yun Sun. “If Russia wins, China will gain a powerful ally. Even if Russia loses, it will likely become a vassal of China.”
⋙ WSJ: China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin Seek to Counter West in First In-Person Meeting Since Ukraine War Began https://tinyurl.com/3peh3s94
// Two leaders are expected to discuss a new gas pipeline as Moscow faces setbacks on battlefield and economic pressure
🐣 RT @UkrainePicture Today, in Izium, liberated by Ukrainian paratroopers, the flag of Ukraine was raised ¤ For this, President of Ukraine #VolodymyrZelensky arrived in Izyum. #UkraineNews
¤ https://twitter.com/UkrainePicture/status/1570072467946852352?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #coup #1wayTrainRideRUS #coup #Ukraine #RussianArmyMutiny #1pageAssessUKRWar SEP 14 Update. We have reached that stage: coup rumors, assassination attempt chatter and what not. Heard the noise post APR RUS army rout from Kyiv. It surfaces again. Been a bad month for the mad tsar.
🖼 https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1570058213273522176?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @🐣 RT @igorsushko 🚨 Rumors that Putin’s motorcade of armored vehicles was attacked. An ambulance blocked the lead car while another vehicle drove around the motorcade and dropped an explosive on the vehicle carrying Putin. All information surrounding the unsuccessful attack has been classified.
🐣 RT @ngumenyuk My recent on the counter-offense. I asked what was happening in a liberated village: “The Ukrainian soldiers who came were almost hurt, that’s how hard people hugged them; almost crushed them in their arms.”
⋙ TheGuardian, Nataliya Gumenyuk: Ukrainians are joyful as the Russian occupiers flee, but we must be wary of an ambush https://tinyurl.com/mpp9wv2h
… For the moment, the focus should be on the liberated regions. When the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions were freed in March, the task was to bring back normal life as soon as possible: to rebuild, restore energy, gas and water supplies, and restore connection to the internet. A week after the fighting around Kyiv, the cities of Bucha and Irpin were full of people returning home.
Now, the residents in the newly regained territories have been advised to evacuate – they were not allowed to do so by the Russians during the occupation. Too many houses have been destroyed; the newly liberated villages are the new frontline, and they are without gas, water and light – but also without Russians. Zelenskiy’s recent address turned this scene into a slogan for the latest stage of the war. Ukraine will happily live without gas and electricity, so long as the Russians are gone. “Without you” is the new motto. …
📊 🔊 the1a.org: Iuliia Mendel on the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s president, and the latest counteroffensive https://tinyurl.com/3txfxjh9 “A recent poll found that 91 percent of Ukrainians approve of President Zelenskyy’s performance during the war”
🐣 RT @tomiahonen Peter [Strzok] makes vital point about these phones seized by FBI of #Trumpomobsters. FBI cannot seize a phone without a court-ordered search warrant. They have to convice a judge, they KNOW that phone has evidence of a crime ¤ Wait. There is more: ..that the FBI cannot get any other way
⋙ 🐣 RT @tomiahonen So the FBI has to KNOW (probable cause) there is evidence on that given phone – AND that the FBI cannot get the evidence any other way ¤ So almost certainly each of them has been under wiretap. FBI has any evidence collected by wiretap, of criming. And now need to take the phone
⋙ 🐣 RT @tomiahonen The most likely reason is, that these #Trumpomobsters have used a messaging service that is encrypted. And now FBI collects their phones ¤ If they kept the incriminating messages: guilty ¤ If they deleted ANY message that FBI has seen from the other party – is AWARENESS OF GUILT
🐣 RT @ WarMonitor3 “There will be great news tomorrow ¤ We are keeping calm ¤ We are waiting”
🐣 RT @ tomaburque There will be books written about this war and how precision guided weapons leveled the field and allowed a much smaller force to win ~ When every shot is a bullseye, you don’t need as many 🇺🇸🇺🇦👊🇷🇺💀
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 President Zelensky In Izyum
¤ https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1569991475571613696?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @KBurgerDirven Prospects for further liberation by Ukrainian Armed Forces 🇺🇦 in the coming weeks:
1. Northern part of Luhansk region.
2. The mousetrap in Kherson region.
3. South to Azov Sea incl Melitopol Berdyansk to close overland connection from Crimea to Russia. 1/
📌🌎s https://twitter.com/KBurgerDirven/status/1569946331820576768?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The liberation of north of Luhansk region has begun. Ukrainian defenders retook Bilohorivka and crossed Siverskyi Donets River. An offensive develops to flank the Russian troops. Ukrainian partisans raise flags in several towns. Most Russian troops left Svatove and Starobilsk. 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ West/Kherson: Russian soldiers on the right bank of the Dnipro River are trapped. They have been abandoned by their commanders. The river crossings have been cut. They are running out of supplies and ammunition. The Russian position is hopeless. Surrender or death. Mousetrap 3/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ South: RU invaders flee Melitopol, Zaporizhzhya region, to Crimea. UKrainian partisans are active in Melitopol and Berdyansk and the Ukrainian army is advancing slowly from the north. When the UA army reaches Azov Sea the connection from Crimea to Russia by land is cut off. 4/
🧵 RT @HeliosRunner 1/ #ГУРінформує !! Military units of the Russian Federation cancel sending units to Ukraine due to mass refusal of personnel to participate in combat ¤ In parts and connections that are in the territory of the Russian Federation, scheduled shipments of personnel to Ukraine are
📌 https://twitter.com/HeliosRunner/status/1569970714198904833?s=20
// Russian hordes described; somewhat racist; def creepy
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 2/ canceled. The reason is a mass refusal to participate in combat. ¤ Soldiers of 5 separate tank brigade of the 36th Army (Ulan-Ude), who write reports on discharge due to refusal to continue participating in combat in Ukraine, are dismissed from service without taking into
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 3/ account any benefits (service years – one year for three, status a veteran & so on). The personal staff of the brigade, which is in Ukraine, are granted vacations exclusively on family circumstances (death of close relatives). ¤ At the same time, in the units participating in
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 4/ the war against Ukraine, there is a catastrophic shortage of personnel. In order to “solve the problem”, the command of the occupation forces decided to significantly reduce the time for the rehab of the military after injuries and injuries. The wounded in hospitals purposely
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 5/ simplify diagnoses, do not conduct previously planned operations and offer to return to the war to Ukraine. Doctors are “recommended” to grant permission for scheduled surgical interventions only after the end of the war or with the direct permission of the wounded commander.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 6/ It is a known case when after a rupture of the drum intersection of the ear and a contusion, the soldier was discharged from the hospital in 3 days. The official diagnosis is “otitis”. It is recommended not to get an ear cold. At that, the surgical intervention was denied.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 7/ Currently, the invaders are trying to strengthen their grouping under temporarily occupied #Kherson at the expense of “available reserves”. 4 btgs of the so-called “kadyrív” r planned for this purpose. But these units are currently significantly understaffed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 8/ Most personnel are not even Chechens, but mercenaries from the poorest regions of the Russian Federation. ¤ so i guess the “ultimate killers” are not so ready to come to fight right now… ¤ the word is out.. couple months ago.. they still believe in it.. now they know…
🤢 https://twitter.com/HeliosRunner/status/1569973737553858560?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 9/ so I guess we will have to wait to see about Hordes of Chinese, north Koreans, Sudanese, Syrians, etc etc ¤ if on one hand people now fear too much about useless death & on the other one their gvt (like China) hopes for a quick stop of this war.. we might never ever see them…
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald It’s simply immoral to suggest that any of Ukraine’s people be left under the rule of fascist Russia “for the sake of peace.” There can be little doubt that these are only the first of yet more savage atrocities that will be uncovered as Ukraine expels Russia’s invasion forces.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ OrlaGuerin “The Russians made sure everyone could hear the screams” – accounts of brutality and the killing of civilians emerge in areas in Kharkiv province newly liberated by #Ukraine. Our report from the city of Balakliya ¤ with @goktay @marianaMatveic1 @Wburema
💽 https://twitter.com/OrlaGuerin/status/1569944069295542272?s=20/photo/1
// Moving BBC video: Ukr discover Ru torture chamber
🐣 RT @Heroiam_Slava The military units of the Russian Federation are canceling the dispatch of units to Ukraine due to the mass refusal of personnel to participate in combat operations, GUR informs. /photo/1
🐣 RT @RANDCorporation #TruthDecay—the diminishing role of facts and analysis in public life—poses a serious threat to democracy. ¤ RAND researchers saw an opportunity to attack this problem at its roots, by improving media literacy among middle schoolers. [link]
🐣 RT @RexHuppke Lindsey Graham began explaining his federal abortion ban legislation by saying: “I picked 15 weeks…” ¤ Watching a man say “I picked” as it relates to legislation controlling women’s reproductive rights was about the most on-brand Republican move I’ve seen ¤ Vote, folks.
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡The only ones surprised by the speed of the Ukrainian military offensive in the Kharkiv region were soldiers of the Russian army, General Pat Ryder, Pentagon Press Secretary says.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua “The effectiveness of the Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv was not a surprise for the USA. According to the data that the Pentagon has regarding the response of the Russian occupiers, it may have come as a surprise to the Russians,” says the press secretary of the Pentagon
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua During the briefing, Ryder also noted that the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kharkiv region forced a significant part of the Russian units to withdraw across the border into Russia
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. The Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv Oblast continues to re-secure major roads, towns and settlements as it consolidates into liberated areas and salvages large amounts of abandoned Russian weapons and vehicles.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1569921677563412480?s=20
⭕ 13 Sep 2022
AtlanticCouncil, Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Ukrainian victory shatters Russia’s reputation as a military superpower https://tinyurl.com/4de5nfry “[T]he Russian military suffers from endemic corruption, low morale, and poor leadership, with individual initiative in short supply”
The stunning success of Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive has exposed the rotten reality behind Russia’s reputation as a military superpower. More than six months since the onset of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion, it is now obvious that his army is in fact a deeply flawed institution that bears almost no resemblance to the immaculate fighting force of Red Square parades and Kremlin propaganda. Instead, the Russian military suffers from endemic corruption, low morale, and poor leadership, with individual initiative in short supply and commanders deeply reluctant to accept personal responsibility. Last week’s disastrous defeat in northeastern Ukraine will only worsen the situation, with officers gripped by fear as Moscow seeks scapegoats for what is shaping up to be one of the most shameful military defeats in Russian history.
The scale of Ukraine’s recent victory has stunned the entire world, but perhaps nobody was as surprised as the Russians themselves. Naturally, the Kremlin sought to suppress news of the counteroffensive, but the speed of events and the sheer scale of the collapse meant that details of the unfolding disaster could not be completely censored despite the best efforts of the authorities. …
… From now on, fear will shape every single decision made by Russian commanders in Ukraine. This will not be fear of losing precious lives or damaging Russia’s national interests; it will be a very personal fear of retribution from a vindictive hierarchy seeking culprits to blame for the rapidly declining fortunes of the Russian army. ¤ This reaction speaks volumes about the dysfunctional leadership culture within the Russian military, where fear of failure has been the dominant instinct since Soviet times and can arguably be traced all the way back to the czarist era. With the hunt now underway for guilty parties, nobody will want to take responsibility for decisions that could lead to further defeats. Instead, officers at every level will seek to act as loyal cogs in the system while forcing those higher up the chain of command to issue orders.
While the Ukrainian military has undergone a radical transformation away from Soviet traditions in recent years and has embraced NATO-style reforms that hand the initiative to individual units and commanders in the field, the Russian army remains a rigid fighting machine hamstrung by top-down decision-making and totally unsuited to the rigors of modern warfare. Today’s Russian commanders continue to seek inspiration primarily from the military achievements of the Red Army during World War II. It is therefore no surprise that they find themselves being consistently outmaneuvered by a far more mobile and quick-witted enemy.
… According to official figures, Russia had the world’s third-largest annual defense budget, at more than sixty billion dollars. Moscow was expert at staging impressive training exercises, while the Kremlin also invested heavily in prestige events that reinforced the impression of a mighty military. ¤ It is now clear that Western observers made the mistake of confusing quantity for quality. While most analysis focused on the number of troops, tanks, missiles, and planes, these figures were misleading and offered no real indication of combat readiness. Nor was Russian data entirely accurate. Thousands of Russian tanks turned out to be partially stripped and incapacitated, while hundreds of missiles have fallen short of their targets since the start of the Ukraine invasion. Corrupt practices appear to have artificially inflated the size of the Russian military while drastically undermining its fighting potential.
The Russian military’s difficulties in Ukraine have also served to highlight the limitations of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule. The invasion force assembled in early 2022 was woefully inadequate for the task at hand, but Putin’s personal obsession with the destruction of Ukraine meant that nobody dared to warn him of the dangers. Instead, Putin’s blind faith in the invincibility of the Russian army and his unhinged insistence on Ukraine’s illegitimacy were allowed to prevail over more sober military judgments. After all, how can a superpower lose to a country that does not exist? Like so many dictators before him, Putin fell victim to his own propaganda. His commanders were simply too scared to contradict him. …
As the true state of the Russian military becomes impossible to deny, international faith in a Ukrainian victory is growing visibly. … ¤ In the coming months, much will depend on the continued flow of weapons to Ukraine. The country’s leaders are requesting tanks and fighter jets as well as more artillery, ammunition, and armored transports in order to force Russia out of Ukraine entirely. This support cannot be taken for granted, but at present it looks likely that arms deliveries will continue to expand, both in terms of the types and quantities of weapons being delivered. With the myth of Russia’s military superpower status now shattered, the way is open for the democratic world to arm Ukraine for a decisive victory that will secure peace in Europe and bring Putin’s imperial ambitions to an end.
WaPo, Robyn Dixon: Putin, tone deaf and isolated, pursues war ‘goals’ and refuses to lose https://tinyurl.com/2whwkt68
NYT: In Reclaimed Towns, Ukrainians Recount a Frantic Russian Retreat https://nyti.ms/3BEncwJ “[S]oldiers ran for whatever transport they could, leaving behind ammunition and weapons along with personal items in apartments where they had quartered”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IT BEGINS: Even pro-Kremlin telegraph channels are now blasting RU military leadership, and Putin personally, for the failure of his ‘Special Military Operation’. Having fired 6 commanding generals, Putin is now running out of people to blame.
⋙ DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Moscow Officials Urge Putin to GTFO: ‘Everything Went Wrong’ https://bit.ly/3RINjZb
// Their plea came as Putin’s deranged “special military operation” next door took a spectacular nosedive
More and more Russian officials are urging Vladimir Putin to get the hell out of the Kremlin as Moscow suffered another series of humiliating defeats in Ukraine this weekend.
Just one day after several municipal deputies in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg called on the State Duma to try the Russian leader for treason, their colleagues in Moscow joined in and demanded he step down because his views are “hopelessly outdated.”
The open letter to Putin from municipal deputies in the Russian capital’s Lomonosovsky district started out by seemingly trying to let him down gently, telling him he had “good reforms” in his first term and part of his second. ¤ But then, “everything went wrong,” the deputies said. ¤ “The rhetoric that you and your subordinates use has been riddled with intolerance and aggression for a long time, which in the end effectively threw our country back into the Cold War era. Russia has again begun to be feared and hated, we are once again threatening the whole world with nuclear weapons,” the letter read. ¤ “We ask you to relieve yourself of your post due to the fact that your views and your governance model are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential,” the deputies said in closing.
Though they made no mention of the war against Ukraine, their plea came as Putin’s deranged “special military operation” next door took a spectacular nosedive, with thousands of Russian forces fleeing as Ukraine’s military launched a series of surprise counter-offensives and reclaimed nearly 400 square miles of territory in a matter of days.
Even as Russian defense officials sought to play down the mass surrender as nothing more than a strategic maneuver, it was clearly not perceived that way even by many of Putin’s most loyal cronies. ¤ The same Russian propagandists who’d spent the first six months of the war thumping their chests about a supposedly “inevitable victory” suddenly changed their tune.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT who’d repeatedly called for Moscow to mercilessly obliterate Ukraine, suddenly posted a sentimental screed on Twitter calling for unity between the two nations. ¤ “In this situation, the best picture of the future is the overall picture of the past. Our shared past, recent. When everyone was together, when there was Victory Day, when there was a parade, when both Russian and Ukrainian were taught,” she wrote, waxing nostalgic over a time when “wonderful songs were sung both in one language and the other.”
Even the pro-Kremlin Telegram channels run by Russian military bloggers had a dramatic change of tune as Ukraine claimed new wins Saturday: They began to openly blast military leadership—and Putin personally—for the embarrassing failures. ¤ “Stalin, as much of a vampire as he was, never stooped to this and said how we lost nothing and there are no problems,” wrote one pro-Kremlin blogger. “For him, those who cowardly run away and ‘withdraw troops’ were the alarmists.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Rapid loss of territory in Ukraine reveals spent Russian military https://wapo.st/3Uay396 “The result is an opportunity for Ukrainian forces, which despite significant losses of their own, are hoping to make more territorial gains before winter”
// Troop and logistics issues plus equipment losses could limit Vladimir Putin to defending the territory he already holds
Moscow’s rapid loss of more than 2,300 square miles of territory in northeastern Ukraine has raised the prospect that the Russian military is spent as an offensive force for the foreseeable future, which could limit Russian President Vladimir Putin to defending the Ukrainian territory he already holds while leaving him open to additional defeats, according to military analysts.
The situation is a sobering reality for Putin, whose forces barreled into Ukraine on Feb. 24 on a mission to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country but retreated from Kyiv just over five weeks later to concentrate on expanding control over Ukraine’s east through artillery warfare. As Ukrainian forces roll back those eastern gains, Putin faces obstacles in replenishing the battered ranks and degraded equipment of his military to any degree that would allow Russia to again take the initiative on the battlefield.
The result is an opportunity for Ukrainian forces, which despite significant losses of their own, are hoping to make more territorial gains before winter conditions harden battle lines. Further gains by Ukraine — particularly around the southern city of Kherson — would deal additional blows to Russian morale and increase pressure on Putin, who is already facing calls by hard-line Russians to announce a general mobilization that could be politically toxic for his regime.
The rapid collapse of the Russian front around Kharkiv in recent days “reflects the structural problems with manpower and low morale in an overstretched Russian military,” said Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst at Virginia-based research group CNA. ¤ “The Russian military’s approach is fundamentally unsustainable,” Kofman said. “Russian forces face exhaustion, retention problems and a steady degradation of combat effectiveness.” …
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the Russian military had reached what military theorist Carl von Clausewitz called the “culminating point,” or the moment when an attacking force can no longer proceed. Hodges said Ukrainian forces helped bring that about. …
Ukraine’s Western partners will continue to send weapons and intelligence to Kyiv to enable Ukrainian forces to keep up the pressure, Hodges said, but it will still be a challenge to maintain the operation with fuel, ammunition and rested personnel without losing momentum. Having so many external partners should help Kyiv, he said. ¤ “The Russians not only have manpower problems and will-to-fight problems, they don’t really have any friends,” Hodges said. “Iranian drones aren’t going to move the needle at all. I am very skeptical of reports of North Korean artillery ammunition coming in and making a difference.”
The Ukrainian military’s focus will probably shift to Kherson, the occupied city in Ukraine’s south, where Russian forces are defending a vulnerable swath of territory on the eastern side of the Dnieper River. Russia has moved elite units into the area to defend the position, which will make the fight difficult for the Ukrainians, analysts said.
“The next thing that Russia will want to do is make sure things don’t collapse in Kherson,” said Dara Massicot, a Russian military analyst at the Rand Corp. “I think it would be very difficult for them to recover from two rapid collapses in succession.” ¤ Massicot said the mounting pressure on Moscow, with separatist proxy fighters starting to mutiny and Russian military units retreating in some cases before engaging in combat, traces back to “the very abusive way that Russia has managed its fighting force.” … …
The Ukrainian offensive “also revealed that the organizational structure of the 1st Tank Army was completely broken due to a large number of casualties and prolonged participation in hostilities,” Leviev said, adding that losing these two formations is “a serious loss for the Russian army.” ¤ Russia’s 1st Guards Tank Army is considered an elite force, “allocated for the defense of Moscow, and intended to lead counterattacks in the case of a war with NATO,” the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday in its daily intelligence update. ¤ But CIT said the tank army has suffered massive losses since February, forcing the Russian Defense Ministry to swap service members between various units. … “Russia doesn’t have the capacity anymore to regain the positions it lost to Ukraine,” Leviev added, but CIT noted that Russia may still prove able to defend its existing positions around Kherson.
The failures on the battlefield have caused problems for Putin among hard-liners at home. ¤ Disgruntled by the way Russia is faring in Ukraine, pro-war Telegram bloggers who boast a huge following, state media figures and even some officials have come out with rare criticism of Putin’s decision to not launch a general mobilization and attempt to portray the war as a limited operation. …
Even if Putin were to take the political risk of a general mobilization, it would take months to train and equip new soldiers and many of Russia’s battlefield woes would remain unsolved. ¤ “I have some questions about whether the system can even comply at this point with a mobilization order,” [Dara Massicot, a Russian military analyst at the Rand Corp] said. “Who is going to train or who is going to lead these people? You are going to be relying on reserve officers. What equipment are you going to use?”
🐣 RT @petestrzok At this point FBI may have more cell phones than a Verizon store
Rudy Giuliani
Victoria Toensing
Michael McDonald
Scott Perry
John Eastman
Jeff Clark
Boris Epshteyn
Mike Roman
Mike Lindell
The FBI can’t seize any of them without probable cause they contain evidence of a crime.
🐣 📋 RT @Heroiam_Slava Truly a lend-lease – Trophies of ZSU 🇺🇦 ¤ From August 29, the date when our Army began its offensive on the right bank of the Kherson region, to September 12, it was visually confirmed that the Russians lost 442 pieces of equipment!
◕ https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1569922707885625344?s=20/photo/1
🐣 📋 RT @washingtonpost Russia has secretly funneled at least $300 million to foreign political parties and candidates in more than two dozen countries since 2014 in an attempt to shape political events beyond its borders, according to a new U.S. intelligence review. https://wapo.st/3BCY21u
‼️🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer IZIUM AXIS: /0300 YTC 14 SEP/ UKR has yet to release figures on the number of RU prisoners taken, but at lease [sic] one unit, the 1st Guards Tank Army has been rendered hors de combat, defeated and disarmed, this unit numbers more than 10K men. The extent of this defeat is epic.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1569889497403510785?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @mhmck The Russian fascist invaders are fleeing Melitopol’, Zaporizhzhya region – heading for temporarily-occupied Crimea, Ukraine. The rashists in Melitopol’ have suffered repeated attacks by Ukrainian artillery and partisans. ¤ Ukrainian defenders are advancing from the north.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1569789322794270722?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck It is likely that the convoy moving out of Melitopol’ consists of families of Russian occupiers and local collaborators. This happened some time ago from Tokmak. Now the exodus has spread south. ¤ We will soon see more invaders and colonists fleeing Crimea as panic spreads.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @defmon3 It’s very likely this is PSYOPS. But the statement is from the mayor of Melitopol. ¤ “The occupiers ran from Melitopol towards the temporarily occupied Crimea. Columns of military equipment have already been recorded at the checkpoint in Chongar. https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/560
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1569765122234617857?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] The occupiers ran from Melitopol towards the temporarily occupied Crimea. Columns of military equipment have already been recorded at the checkpoint in Chongar. This was expected – the rapid Ukrainian offensive leaves them no chance.
In order to remove the stolen goods from the Zaporizhzhia region, the soldiers of the “second army of the world” are already breaking into garages and stealing civilian cars. ¤ Car owners should secure their transport in advance. After all, it may happen that “asvabaditiels” will be evacuating on it.
🧵 RT @SamBendett 1/ QUICK THREAD on the Russian government’s (new/another) plan through 2030, developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade to boost Russian electronics and microelectronics. Main points below: https://bit.ly/3eCigzq
📌 https://twitter.com/SamBendett/status/1569772561277353985?s=20
⋙ 🐣 📋 Good luck to them: Fortune (Aug 20): Russia’s young, educated tech and creative class are fleeing in droves. It could mean bad news for the already-faltering economy https://bit.ly/3QEJ9A7 “Over 3.8M Russians left from Jan to Mar this year, according to the FSA’s own estimates”
// Inside title: We realized that there’s no way we can return’: Russia’s best and brightest are leaving the country in record numbers. 6 young Russians explain why they left
⋙ 🐣 Meanwhile: SciAm (Aug 2): Nearly $53 Billion in Federal Funding Could Revive the U.S. Computer Chip Industry https://bit.ly/3DjFEfz The CHIPS and Science Act aims to support domestic semiconductor production, new high-tech jobs and scientific research—even NASA
Reuters: Putin and Xi to discuss Ukraine and Taiwan, Kremlin says https://reut.rs/3BDwE3t
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi: It is very important that together with our troops, with our flag, ordinary normal life enters the de-occupied territory. ¤ As an example, in Balaklia, in Hrakovo, pensions have already started to be issued immediately after five months.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ Volodymyr Zelenskyi: As of this time, stabilization measures have been completed in areas with a total area of more than 4,000 square kilometers, stabilization is still ongoing in approximately the same liberated territory.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Police finds Russian ‘torture chambers’ in liberated Balakliia. ¤ According to the Deputy Police Chief of Kharkiv Oblast Serhii Bolvinov, during the occupation of Balakliia, Kharkiv Oblast, Russians were holding at least 40 people captive at the same time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent According to witnesses, they were tortured in different ways,” Bolvinov said, adding that the “easiest” torture was with an electric shock. ¤ According to Bolvinov, Russians were searching for Ukrainian war veterans and volunteers who helped the Ukrainian army.
🐣 RT @MarkHertling For those geeking out on military terminology:
1. Ukraine’s operation in Kharkiv is a “terrain-oriented attack.” The force orients on key terrain objectives needed for future missions.
2. The operation in Kherson is a “force-oriented attack.” The focus in on the enemy force.
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua ⚡️ “The occupiers ran from Melitopol towards the temporarily occupied Crimea”, – the mayor of the city, Ivan Fedorov. ¤ According to him, convoys of military equipment have already been recorded at the checkpoint in Chongar.
🐣 RT @iaeaorg Ukrainian engineers have made further headway in repairing vital power infrastructure in vicinity of #Zaporizhzhya NPP, providing plant w/ renewed access to a third back-up power line. This means all three back-up power lines to #ZNPP have been restored. https://bit.ly/3RF6tis
⋙ 🐣 RT @iaeaorg Despite these developments, IAEA DG @RafaelMGrossi again stressed that the nuclear safety and security situation at #ZNPP remained precarious. Though no shelling at or near the plant in recent days, it was still occurring in the wider area.
⋙ 🐣 RT @iaeaorg Separately today, as part of continuing IAEA-led support for nuclear safety and security in #Ukraine, DG @RafaelMGrossi said a second major assistance shipment had arrived in the country, including radiation monitoring and personal protective equipment.
🐣 RT @AndriyYermak The Russians can’t understand that their blackmail causes only a grin in the civilized world. And what the ZSU is doing is the best recipe against blackmail.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndriyYermak Security guarantees for 🇺🇦 are exactly what is in the interests of our state. And the Russians should leave the 🇺🇦 territory immediately and prepare themselves to a retribution for all the crimes they’ve committed.
🐣 RT @McFaul Russian nationalists are not calling for Putin to be overthrown. They are calling for Putin to expand the war. And don’t be fooled. These are not “independent” voices on Russian state media channels. They are trying to lay the predicate for more war & more terrorism, not less.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul The good tsar and bad boyars is an old tradition in Russia.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Document on security guarantees for Ukraine presented in Kyiv. ¤ Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen presented the first document with recommendations on international security guarantees for Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Ukraine’s guarantors are expected to include the US, the UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, and other countries.
🐣 RT @ dhbreiding “No one can stop this war, … Neither [Putin], nor Zelensky and not the West can end this war. This war can end only with the defeat of one of the sides. For us [Russia], this defeat may prove fatal. We should understand that it might lead to the disintegration of the country.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Even the most war-happy Putin loyalists on Russian TV are now pushing for the recognition of “serious defeats” Russia has suffered in Ukraine: “Where was our damn reconnaissance? All of their heads should be laying on Putin’s desk, hacked off at the base.”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Kremlin TV Airs Call for Russia to Admit ‘Serious Defeat’ https://bit.ly/3qyJLfU
// Even the most war-happy Putin loyalists are now pushing for the recognition of recent “failures” Russia has suffered in Ukraine.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @spdbump “Croesus then sent messengers to Delphi with the following question:
Should he go to war with the Persians?
The Delphic Oracle replied as follows:
If Croesus goes to war, he will destroy a great empire.”
[Comments]
🧵 RT @TetyanaWrites Some fun legends about #Ukrainian women, now that you see how vocal and fearless we can be. 🇺🇦💥
Traditionally, the eldest and experienced women were in the head of “Rada” (Council) and managed the community life while the men had to protect the land. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/TetyanaWrites/status/1516061858876243971?s=20/photo/1 -3
// legends of Ukrainian women
So, in contrast to the patriarchal systems in many other countries, where the last word in the family always remains behind the man, in a Ukrainian family, this right belonged to the eldest woman in the family. ¤ In Ukraine (unlike Russia) not very often did it exist /2
the stereotype of “a drinking husband” who beat his wife (altho every culture might have some of this, sadly). On the contrary, when a “drunk” Ukrainian husband returned home from the tavern, he /3
“lowered his forelock,” because he knew that his wife would probably slap him. ¤ In Ukraine, witchcraft has always been perceived as a manifestation of extraordinary abilities and wisdom. ¤ The attractiveness of witches make them especially dangerous for men because /4
“the one who sees her once, will fall in love to death [”?]. Ukrainians have never been frightened by witches and often ask them for help in desperate situations. ¤ The ancient Ukrainian symbol of Beregynia (means “a defender“) is the image of a woman who protects /5
family, clan, nation. She is depicted with her hands up – a symbolic gesture of protection and blessing. It is a sacred feminine image, which is also the central symbol of the Ukrainian national revival. Cossacks /6
believed that only the mother’s blessing could protect them in a war battle. Women in Ukrainian culture have always personified not only home comfort but also the preservation of spiritual values. In the ancient images of Beregynia, /7
her raised upwards hands are ended with horses’ heads or she is depicted among the riders which emphasizes her active position of women in Ukrainian society. Beregynia protects from danger for the entire nation, and was a guardian and teacher of culture. /8
Ukrainian women have always been, and will always be, the protectors of new generations of activists and storytellers. Never underestimate us. We will always persevere with fire, strength, and grace. #Ukraine️ #StandWithUkraine️ 🇺🇦💥🇺🇦💥🇺🇦
🐣 RT @Porter_Anderson Media: @MarkHertling: “This was all about a solid maneuver plan, deception, advanced weapons, use of intelligence, leadership, and morale … Having said all those things, there’s still a lot of fighting to go. Do not count me in with those saying this is going to be over soon.”
🐣 📋 RT @ProjectLincoln The total number of women registering to vote in KS, PA, OH, OK, FL, NC, ID, AL, NM, and ME rose by 35% this summer. ¤ Women will lead the charge in fighting back against the MAGA autocratic movement in November.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw “NARA’s staff recently informed the [House Oversight] Committee that the agency is not certain whether all presidential records are in its custody” (in Aug 24 phone call). ¤ House Oversight Committee alerts to “serious risk” Trump “may still be retaining” sensitive govt records.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1569688277501808643?s=20/photo/1 -4
🐣 RT @ Igor_from_Kyiv_ Don’t forget what price freedom is given🇺🇦 ¤ Let them slander the truth, let them hate love, let them kill life – the truth will triumph, love will win, life will rise!
🖼 💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1569686628016209922?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer ROAD CLOSED? Jason Jay Smart @officejjsmart reports that friends in Moscow have texted that: “The Ring Road around Moscow is closed by the National Guard”. And that, ” [he] hasn’t seen anything like this since the 1991 coup”. Developing.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1569684401134632963?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @KvotheTheArcane Sometimes I get bored and just re-sun Downfall now.
💽 https://twitter.com/KvotheTheArcane/status/1567176788589019137?s=20/photo/1
// Ukrainian version of Downfall, Ukrainian version
🐣 RT @shaunwalker7 “Throughout August, at the behest of Ukrainians, U.S. officials stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces” ¤ “Together Britain, the US and Ukraine conducted an assessment of the new plan, trying to war game it once more.“
⋙ NYT: The Critical Moment Behind Ukraine’s Rapid Advance https://nyti.ms/3xjMVbw “Ukraine needed to demonstrate that this was not going to become just another frozen conflict, and that it could retake territory, for the morale of its people and to shore up support of the West.”
… Instead of one large offensive, the Ukrainian military proposed two. One, in Kherson, would most likely take days or weeks before any dramatic results because of the concentration of Russian troops. The other was planned for near Kharkiv. ¤ Together Britain, the United States and Ukraine conducted an assessment of the new plan, trying to war game it once more. This time officials from the three countries agreed it would work — and give Mr. Zelensky what he wanted: a big, clear victory. ¤ But the plan, according to an officer on the general staff in Kyiv, depended entirely on the size and pace of additional military aid from the United States.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that had used older Soviet weapons, exhausted most of its own ammunition. Learning how to use new weapons systems in the middle of the war is difficult. But so far the risky move has proved successful. More than 800,000 rounds of 155-millimeter artillery shells, for instance, have been sent to Kyiv, helping fuel its current offensives. The United States alone has committed more than $14.5 billion in military aid since the war started in February.
Before the counteroffensive, Ukraine’s armed forces sent the United States a detailed list of weapons they needed to make the plan successful, according to the Ukrainian officer.
Specific weapons, like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, are having an outsize effect on the battlefield. The satellite-guided rockets fired by these launch vehicles, called GMLRS, each contain a warhead with 200 pounds of explosives and have been used in recent weeks by Ukrainian forces to destroy more than 400 Russian arms depots, command posts and other targets, American officials said.
More recently, Ukrainian forces have put American-supplied HARM air-launched missiles on Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets, which no air force had ever done. The missiles have been particularly effective in destroying Russian radars.
“We are seeing real and measurable gains from Ukraine in the use of these systems,” General Milley said last week in Germany at a meeting of 50 countries that are helping Ukraine with military and humanitarian aid. “They’re having great difficulty resupplying their forces and replacing their combat losses.”
Ukrainian and American officials said the now weekly or biweekly Pentagon announcements of new shipments of weapons and munitions from American stockpiles have given Kyiv’s senior commanders the confidence to plan complex simultaneous offensives. …
As Ukrainian soldiers moved into areas in the northeast over the weekend, Russian forces crumbled. In some places around Kharkiv, Russian troops just walked away from the battle, leaving behind equipment and ammunition, according to U.S. defense officials.
The Kherson attack was never a feint or a diversion, according to people briefed on the plan. And it has succeeded in forcing Moscow to delay sham votes on whether parts of the Kherson region want to join Russia. But, as expected, the counteroffensive is moving more slowly given the much higher number of Russian forces there compared with Kharkiv. …
Russia has been weakened. By failing to detect Ukraine’s buildup around Kharkiv, the Russian military has demonstrated incompetence and shown that it lacks solid intelligence. Its command and control have been decimated and it is having trouble supplying its troops, giving Ukraine an opening in the coming weeks, U.S. officials said.
While Ukraine may have an opportunity to recapture more territory in the east, U.S. and Ukrainian officials say the south is the most important theater of the war. ¤ “Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are likely potential objectives,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a defense research institute. “We might see further Ukrainian Army operations to achieve breakthroughs there in the future.”
The plan that emerged from the midsummer discussions relied heavily on U.S. intelligence and high-tech weaponry. But American officials insist that credit for the offensive lies fully with Mr. Zelensky and the Ukrainian military, which led a relatively small force in Kharkiv to an outsize victory. ¤ “No one is spiking the football yet,” Mr. Kahl said. But, he added: “I think it really demonstrates to the world that the Ukrainians are capable of conducting complex, offensive operations.”
🐣 RT @ jftaveira1993 .@djrothkopf: “Russia is still the largest country in the world, with more nuclear weapons than anyone. And yet, remarkably, despite all that, #Putin’s disaster in #Ukraine may well leave #Russia as little more than a dangerous middleweight power.”
⋙ DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: What Happens to Russia After It Loses? https://bit.ly/3L8BF7k
// In the aftermath of Putin’s catastrophic war on Ukraine, Russia will never be the same.
🐣 RT @francis_scarr Russian state TV presenter Artyom Sheynin has been pushing the line that Russia is now fighting Nato in Ukraine ¤ As “evidence” he shows a video posted by @MalcolmNance, adding ironically: “Look at this Ukrainian! I think he’s from a small village in Ternopil Region”
💽 https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1569614814330163204?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @marie_cast We need Ukraine in the EU. As @TimothyDSnyder writes: “Those who took democracy for granted were sleepwalking toward tyranny. The Ukrainian resistance is the wake-up call.”
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Ukrainian forces have seized even more territory from Russia as they continue their counter-offensive. #Ukraine’s president Zelensky said troops have now retaken more than 6,000 sq km (2,317 sq miles) from Russian control in September, in east & the south. [link]
🐣 RT @mjluxmoore An absolute meltdown on Russian state TV this week. One political talk-show after another, after weeks of triumphalism, is now engaging in a sort of soul-searching denialism. Many commentators blaming everyone but Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr Last night Sergei Mikheyev urged Russia’s military bloggers to stop exaggerating the scale of the Kharkiv Reg withdrawal ¤ But moments later he was lamenting that Moscow’s military restructuring (begun in 2008) had failed because its authors had “watched too many Hollywood films”
💽 https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1569587195350249472?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️UK intelligence: prestigious Russian army unit severely degraded in Kharkiv counteroffensive. ¤ Russia’s 1st Guards Tank Army – designated to protect Moscow in case of attack and lead counterattacks against NATO countries – took part in the chaotic retreat from Kharkiv Oblast.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent The losses suffered by the 1st Guards Tank Army, along with other units in Russia’s Western Military District, will “take years to rebuild”, says the U.K.’s Defense Intelligence said in its daily briefing.
🐣 RT @WarintheFuture [Zelenskyy:] “From the beginning of September until today, our warriors have already liberated more than 6,000 square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine – in the east and south. The movement of our troops continues.” [link]
⭕ 12 Sep 2022
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Statement to Russia after their attack on Kharkiv power station:
Do you still think that we are “one people?”
Do you still think you can scare us, break us, force us to make concessions?
Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand who we are? What we stand for? What we are all about?Read my lips:
Without gas or without you? Without you.
Without light or without you? Without you.
Without water or without you? Without you.
Without food or without you? Without you.Cold, hunger darkness and thirst are not as frightening
and deadly for us as our “friendship and brotherhood”But history will put everything in its place. And we will be
WITH gas, light, water and food …
… and WITHOUT YOU!Source: https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/3203
CNN: https://tinyurl.com/3fjrtpbb
Tweet: https://twitter.com/Tigergilly/status/1584629649338150912?s=20/photo/1
// 9/12/2022WaPo: Intelligence points to potential turning point in Ukraine war https://wapo.st/3xGzXor “For all their shortcomings, the Russians still have the capability to regroup and hit back hard, some officials cautioned”
// Whether Ukraine’s gains are permanent, Western intelligence officials said, depends on Russia’s next moves, especially whether President Vladimir Putin orders up reinforcements🐣 RT @sentdefender Ukrainian and Western Intelligence is reporting that Russian Military Command has not recently deployed any additional Battalion Tactical Groups into Ukraine and seems to have suspended all further Combat Deployments into the Country.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer DEEP STRIKE: Major explosions rocked the RU air station at Taganrog, followed by a number of secondaries & fires. Russian AWACs, including the including the newest A-100 platforms, are forward deployed at Taganrog. This strike will negatively affect RU air defense in the region.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1569427642482302977?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tomiahonen Remember, if Bill Barr flipped on Trump (and I believe he did immediately after he left the administration in Dec 2020) – he would need to confess everything. INCLUDING this corrupt pressure of SDNY to stop investigating Trump. Barr would need to testify against Trump in this
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Senate Judiciary will investigate FPOTUS and the Barr justice department for pressuring the SDNY.
⋙⋙ NYT: Senate to Investigate Charge That Trump Meddled in Prosecutor’s Office https://nyti.ms/3Dggnmp
// The allegations of political motivation are in a new book by the former U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman.🐣 RT @katka_cseh A sad milestone: the European Parliament, the democratically elected voice of 450 million EU citizens is set to eject Hungary from the group of democracies. ¤ The first step of tackling a problem is recognizing there is one.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/katka_cseh/status/1569396042591764483?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Igor_from_Kyiv_ They sent slaves to fight free people
💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1569348149164081160?s=20/photo/1😅 RT @SergiyKyslytsya Exclusive video footage of russian troops “regrouping” as part of a “controlled withdrawal”. The innovative way of the “regrouping” supposedly support peskov’s statement of today that russia will continue its “military intervention” in Ukraine “until the objectives are achieved”
💽 https://twitter.com/SergiyKyslytsya/status/1569350490256805888?s=20/photo/1
// chickens fleeing🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Honestly, even the mafia isn’t this obvious
⋙ 😅 RT @prchovanec “You’re telling me everyone here got a subpoena?”
¤ https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/1569485156263628805?s=20/photo/1
// Trump meeting with collaborators on his Washington D.C. golf course (no golf clubs)🐣 RT @mhmck The liberation of the north of Luhansk region has begun. Ukrainian defenders retook Bilohorivka and crossed the Siverskyi Donets River. ¤ An offensive is developing to flank Russian forces. The undefended P-66 highway is key. Most Russian forces abandoned Svatove and Starobil’s’k.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1569537464989016064?s=20/photo/1🧵 😅 RT @tomiahonen [Parody Putin:] My fellow Russians ¤ My quick & easy three day war into Ukraine has now run for 7 months. We lost the battle of Kyiv, their capital & largest city. Then we lost the battle of Kharkiv too, their second largest city. Just yesterday we lost the battle for Izyum, a town we had seized
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1569434620197834752?s=20🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent⚡️General Staff: Russia stops sending new units to Ukraine. ¤ Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces said on Sept. 12. that Russia’s military command has suspended sending new units to Ukraine, and that a large number of volunteers are also refusing to fight in Russia’s army
WaPo: Ukraine extends battlefield gains as Kremlin reels from setback https://wapo.st/3RWG2ED “[T]he stunning counteroffensive that pushed Russia into a messy retreat boosted optimism at home and abroad over a potential turning point in the war”
NYT: Justice Dept. Issues 40 Subpoenas in a Week, Expanding Its Jan. 6 Inquiry https://nyti.ms/3B5INga seized phones from Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel for Trump’s legal efforts, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations
// It also seized the phones of two top Trump advisers, a sign of an escalating investigation two months before the midterm elections.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FLASH TRAFFIC /KHERSON 1500/ UTC 12 SEP/ Breaking information from the UKR General Staff reports that RU units on the N bank of the Dnieper are presently negotiating the surrender of their positions and weapons. It is unknown if this a localized or a general capitulation.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1569338519302148101?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivPost MUST READ: Jason J Smart @officejjsmart of the Kyiv Post interviews Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63 about Putin’s likely next moves following the Kharkiv – Izium offensive.
⋙ KyivPost: Exclusive Interview with Chess Champ and Russian Opposition Leader Garry Kasparov https://bit.ly/3RGGKGC
.JS: Then what’s next?
GK: Basically, the war is lost. If you look at all of the objectives that Putin set for the war, all of them have failed. All of them. So, continuing the war is the only way for Putin to stay in power. He wants to create extra chaos in the free world hoping that a new window will open for him. It’s really just a protracted agony. It is cynical and stupid, but Putin is willing to put thousands of civilians into graves in the months to come before the whole of Ukraine is liberated, if that will allow him to maintain power.JS: What do you propose the West do now?
GK: We believe that the free world must do everything to help Ukraine win. There’s no other solution: Unconditional victory of Ukraine – and the unconditional defeat of Putin.The only chance to defeat Putin’s fascism is to raise the Ukrainian flag in Sevastopol, Crimea. That’s the top priority for anyone who wants to see our planet safe from Putin’s existential threat of destruction.
We believe that Europe should demonstrate its resolve by banning Russian tourism all together – total ban on Russian tourists.
At the same time, we believe that those Russians who wish to leave Putin’s “North Korea,” as we jokingly call it, and who wish to come to “South Korea” and the free world, should be given this opportunity if they sign a decree simple that the war is criminal, Putin’s regime is illegitimate, and that Ukraine is whole. We are seeking a combined approach.
We hope that friendly governments will understand and that’s why we are already talking to a number of governments about this. There’s likely around 100,000 Russians who are ready to completely cut all ties with Putin’s Russia. …
🐣 RT @stavridisj Despite enthusiasm for the Ukrainian offensive, we need to remember Putin still has cards to play… Chemical weapons, amphibious assault, attacks on critical infrastructure like water, assistance from other pariah state like North Korea. This one is far from over
⋙ 🐣 RT @stavridisj Ukrainian offensive in the north and east is accelerating. Russian morale is weakened and Putin will have a hard time reestablishing dominance. Is this a pivot in the war? Quite possibly. https://on.msnbc.com/3BzdbB3 via @msnbc🐣 RT @DefMon3 They need those units to defend the kremlin.
“The military command of the Russian Federation suspends the sending of new, already formed units to the territory of Ukraine.” – GSUA
.[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1569348204197453825?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Newest piece for @TheAtlantic, how the Ukrainian triumph in Kharkiv was anything but sudden and what it means about how Ukraine is waging this war (very intelligently).
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, Phillips O’Brien: Ukraine Pulled Off a Masterstroke https://bit.ly/3d6XVSt
// Ukrainian leaders announced one counteroffensive against Russia—but had another in the works.… The stunningly swift advance of Ukrainian forces, which started around September 1 and sped up soon after, has easily been the most dramatic—and for Ukraine and its supporters, the most uplifting—episode of the war since the current Russian invasion began on February 24. In a few days the Ukrainians liberated about as much territory as Russia had captured in a few months, while causing the disintegration of Russian forces around Izium, Kupyansk, and other logistically vital cities. From the outside, Ukraine appears to have changed the whole complexion of the war.
This stunning Ukrainian advance was anything but sudden. It resulted from a patient military buildup, excellent operational security, and, maybe most important, the diversion of some of the Russian army’s most powerful units from Kharkiv Oblast itself. The overall planning by the Ukrainian government and armed forces worked well on so many levels that it produced one of the greatest military-strategy successes since 1945.
Only a week ago, the most important engagement for Ukraine appeared to be the battle for Kherson. For months, President Volodymyr Zelensky, his senior aides, and other Ukrainian sources had publicly proclaimed the goal of liberating the politically and strategically important southern city and the rest of the Russian-controlled territory on the west bank of the Dnipro River.
In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin—who seemed to agree that the city was the highest priority—did exactly what the Ukrainians hoped: He rushed forces to the area. Evidence exists that some well-armed Russian units were redeployed there from the Russian-occupied Donbas in the east.
… As Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov admitted Saturday, Ukraine’s generals had been planning to launch two campaigns simultaneously. If the Kherson offensive was designed to grind down Russian forces by drawing them in and then confronting them head-on, the Kharkiv Oblast offensive had greater territorial ambitions. Ukraine hoped to retake the city of Kupyansk. The Russians were using this road-and-rail hub to get supplies to Izium, a base for their operations in the Donbas.
In retrospect, both offensives were possible only because of a ghastly summer of attritional warfare in that region. Since April the Ukrainians have suffered horrifying losses in that region but have inflicted even larger ones on the enemy. … Ukraine, which has been conscripting soldiers since Putin started this war, has amassed an army larger than the Russian invasion force. Russian officials, meanwhile, are terrified of upsetting their populace and have avoided conscription—to the point of deploying mercenaries and sourcing soldiers from prisons and mental hospitals. So when Putin took the Ukrainians’ bait in Kherson, a shrinking Russian army moved forces away from the area that Ukraine wanted to attack and toward an area where Ukraine was waging a war of attrition.
The Ukrainians wrote a script, and the Russians played their assigned role. Unlike Kherson, where the invaders had massed forces and set up a multilayered defense, Kharkiv Oblast was thinly protected by the Russian forces. The Ukrainians were thus easily able to break Russian lines, which seem to have been held by poorly motivated and trained forces, and streak deep behind them. …
Though the war is far from over and Russia can find new ways to punish Ukraine, collapsing Russian forces have not only been pushed back; in abandoning their former headquarters in Izium, they also left behind large stores of equipment and ammunition that the Ukrainians can now use against them. Even if the Russians stabilize the line in the coming days, they will be in a far worse position than they were on September 1. Building on months of careful efforts to both prepare Ukrainian forces and waste Russian ones, Ukraine has achieved a strategic masterstroke that military scholars will study for decades to come.
🐣 RT @ DefenceU [Ukr DOD] It is official: Vysokopillya, Novovoznesenske, Bilohirka, Myrolyubivka and Sukhyj Stavok have been liberated. The occupiers are preparing to “regroup” in the Kherson region as well. As in Kharkiv, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are helping them with this.
🚫 🐣 RT @HeliosRunner 1/ IMPORTANT NEWS ! following the recent update (read down below after the announcement) of Command South regarding the recent progress of Ukr army today in lots of different area in the #Kherson Oblast ¤ Nataliya Humenyuk, the head of press center of command “South” just said :
⋙ 🐣 RT @HeliosRunner 2/ “The Russians are trying to negotiate the terms of how they will lay down their arms and come under the auspices of international humanitarian law” ¤ IF true, the entire area of #Kherson could collapse as entire Ru forces could “give up” within ddays!! ¤ Please share !!! #Ukraine
// unconfirmed🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Meanwhile, down south …Ukrainian authorities claim that around 200 square miles of territory has been recaptured in the southern Kherson region in the past two weeks, including Vysokopillia, Novovoznesenske, Bilohirka, Myroliubivka and Sukhyi Stavok.
⋙ CNN: Ukraine says 500 square kilometers of territory retaken in southern Kherson region https://cnn.it/3d4TN5E🐣 RT @McFaul This is a fascinating discussion, both because of what Nadezhdin says, but also others. Remember, it’s on a channel 100% controlled by Putin. If you want to get a sense of panic in Moscow right now, watch.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @shaunwalker7 Russian chat shows always had the “NATO shill guest” who said relatively sensible things and could then be torn down by the others. ¤ But Boris Nadezhdin here speaking some dangerous truths, you wonder if he might simply get arrested soon.
💽 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1569307707680911361?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald Excellent dissection of Russia’s Blyatskrieg. The Russian army is rotten to the corps
⋙ 🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ What are the reasons for Russia’s Blyatskrieg – its rapid collapse east of Kharkiv – and why might Napoleon Bonaparte have known some of the answers? Here’s a [thread] exploring some possible deeper reasons for Ukraine’s stunning successes in recent days
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1569087890466144261?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @ 2/ Without detracting in any way from the heroism of Ukraine’s defenders, it’s clear that there’s been a massive moral collapse among Russia’s forces in Kharkiv oblast. They’ve surrended towns with barely a fight and abandoned vast quantities of equipment. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 3/ In 1808, Napoleon wrote: “In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.” (More pithily expressed as “In war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.”)
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 4/ With that in mind, over the past couple of months I’ve been covering Russian soldiers’ experiences of the war in several threads (see below), using published intercepted phone calls and personal accounts from soldiers and their relatives. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 5/ Such insights reveal that the Russian army is not in a happy place, even before its latest setbacks. Morale is low, training is poor, food is awful, equipment is inadequate, welfare and training is neglected, and commanders are seen as dishonest, uncaring and incompetent.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 6/ These factors have already led thousands of Russian soldiers to quit their contracts and return to Russia (which they can do, as they have that right in what’s still officially a peacetime establishment – it’s a ‘special military operation’, not a war). Let’s review.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 7/ GOALS: Most of those in the first wave on 24 February didn’t know they were going to be invading Ukraine, and many didn’t even know they had crossed the border before people started shooting at them. Large numbers deserted almost immediately.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 8/ Putin’s propaganda about ‘denazifying and demilitarising’ Ukraine seems to have attracted mixed responses. Some believed it, others – especially after interactions with Ukrainian civilians – realised it was a lie. 💽
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 9/ Russia’s goals have been shifting, confused and unclear, particularly after it became apparent that overthrowing the Kyiv government was not going to happen. Knowing why you’re fighting is fundamental to military success.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 10/ MOTIVATION: “A man does not have himself killed for a half pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.” – Napoleon again. ¤ It’s been very apparent from Russian soldiers’ accounts that personal motivation is lacking.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 11/ The Russian army is disproportionally manned by people from people from poorer regions and lower socioeconomic groups (especially non-Russian ethnic minorities) who see military service as a means of economic or social advancement. But most didn’t join to fight wars.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 12/ With the exception of Chechnya, Russia’s military interventions have had few or relatively light casualties (Transnistria, Abkhazia, Bosnia, Crimea, Donbas 2014, South Ossetia, Syria, Kazakhstan). Military service was very compatible with staying alive – an important factor.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 13/ This equation changes very substantially in a war with very high casualties (and the Ukraine war, on present trends, is likely to be one of the deadliest globally in the last 200 years). Serving now has a high probability of death or injury, and a certainty of much misery.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 14/ Evidence from intercepted calls and personal accounts shows that heavy casualties have, unsurprisingly, been very demotivating for Russian soldiers, some of whom have experienced their entire units being wiped out.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 15/ EQUIPMENT: A constant complaint has been the lack and poor quality of equipment. Tanks reportedly arrived from depots without vital equipment (or even working engines), ammunition was scarce, first-aid kits were basic and decades out of date, body armour wasn’t supplied.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 16/ For example, the former paratrooper Pavel Filatyev – a member of an elite unit – says that he was sent to Ukraine with a broken machine gun which he had to fix himself, and wasn’t given any body armour or infantry gear, which he had to find himself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 17/ Many Russian soldiers have had to buy their own equipment – even the latest military radios – at their own expense on Avito, Russia’s equivalent of eBay, where it was likely being sold by corrupt military depot personnel who had stolen it from Russian army supplie
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 18/ Equipment losses in the field have been immense. Soldiers have spoken of motorised brigades losing most of their armour, bases being wiped out by HIMARS strikes, even their own boots and uniforms falling apart – with little or no replenishment due to poor logistics.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 19/ Troops from the LNR/DNR puppet republics have been given even worse equipment, such as World War II helmets, 1898-pattern Moisin-Nagent rifles and no body armour, while simultaneously being starved of supplies by the Russian army in retaliation for disagreements.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 20/ FOOD: Speaking of starvation, soldiers on both the northern and southern fronts rapidly ran out of food after the invasion. Before the attack on Kyiv they were given only 3 days’ worth of food, leading to near-starving soldiers looting supplies from Ukrainian civilians.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 21/ Logistical breakdowns in the south led to soldiers surviving on one ration pack per person every two days, then running out entirely. The products of food kitchens were so bad they were inedible and rejected even by hungry soldiers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 22/ Resupply was hampered by severe corruption in the Russian supply chain. One soldier reported: “conscripts who were delivering [food] to our unit in Ukraine stole from it three crates of canned meat and sold it in our unit for 70 rubles each.” Packages from home were stolen.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 23/ Relatedly, conditions in the field have reportedly been terrible. Soldiers reported not even being given spades to dig trenches and shelters. They’ve suffered frostbite and plagues of mosquitoes while living in abject squalor. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 24/ Perhaps most infamously, apparently unbriefed Russian troops dug themselves into trenches and dugouts in Chernobyl’s Red Forest, the most radioactive area on the planet. They were subsequently reported to have been taken to hospital suffering from radiation exposure.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 25/ Soldiers have reported that frontline medical treatment has been severely deficient, with medics lacking even basics like usable tourniquets and bandages, and with no evacuation. It’s likely that many injured Russians have simply bled to death from entirely survivable wounds.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 26/ LACK OF TRAINING: Many soldiers speak of almost farcically low levels of pre-war training. One went “to shooting practice four times, where each time I fired 6 rounds”. At the start of the invasion, some were assigned to weapons systems that they’d never used before.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 27/ Training activities were often faked for the benefit of senior officers. One soldier said: “We would arrive at a firing range and stand with a rifle pointed at the target. And as soon you’re photographed, you are free to go.” Medical exercises consisted of posed photoshoots.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 28/ This kind of fakery has been reported not only in ordinary infantry divisions, but even in elite forces such as Russia’s paratroop brigades (the VDV) – suggesting that it’s common practice across the entire army.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 29/ MISTREATMENT: Russia’s soldiers in Ukraine work under contracts – under the current peacetime rules, they can quit at any time if they follow certain procedures. But contract soldiers have reported increasingly severe mistreatment as manpower shortages bite
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 30/ While thousands have reportedly managed to leave, many have reported the Russian army obstructing them through putting up bureaucratic obstacles or worse. Some have reportedly been imprisoned and beaten to persuade them to return to the front. 💽
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 31/ Contracts are only supposed to run for a year at a time. Soldiers have reported not being allowed to leave even when their contracts have expired, at which point they are not even legally being employed. Others have reported not being paid.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 32/ Soldiers should also be rotated off the front line regularly – the extract below from John Keegan’s classic ‘The Face of Battle’ explains why. But Russia’s undermanned invasion has meant increasingly exhausted troops staying on the front line for 6 months or more.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 33/ In contrast with Ukraine, which has much greater manpower (thanks to national mobilisation and a formal state of war), Russia simply doesn’t have the reserves to allow its exhausted and demoralised soldiers time to rest and recuperate in safety. This has led to mass mutinies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 34/ BAD LEADERSHIP: A seemingly universal complaint is the poor quality of leadership in senior ranks. As Pavel Filatyev puts it, “the top doesn’t give a shit about us, they demonstrate in every possible way that we are inhumans for them, we are just like cattle.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 35/ Filatyev, like other soldiers, is scathing about the cowardice and dishonesty of commanders, who they say stay in bunkers while they order their men into suicidal assaults. They reportedly inflate their troop numbers and submit fake reports of success to their superiors.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 36/ Soldiers report brutal confrontations between senior commanders and their men, including threats and physical violence. One reported his unit’s political officer firing into the ground at the men’s feet. Another soldier held a grenade in a general’s face and pulled the pin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 37/ Captured and injured Russian soldiers are reported to have been killed by their own side to prevent the Ukrainians capturing them. One soldier reported that Russian soldiers being led into captivity by Ukrainians were deliberately hit with a Russian anti-tank guided missile.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 38/ In one very recent instance, the Ukrainian army reported its drone operators seeing Russian troops shooting other Russian soldiers who were escaping from Ukrainian artillery fire – perhaps an example of Stalin-era blocking tactics being revived. 💽
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 39/ Others have reported Russian commanders shooting their wounded (see video below) to keep them out of Ukrainian hands. While this likely isn’t typical, the fact that it has apparently happened at all speaks volumes about Russian senior officer culture.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 40/ All of these problems are likely to have cumulatively eroded the Russian army’s willingness to fight. They’re not simply the result of individual bad decisions, nor even of Putin’s mistakes, but of an entire military system that has rotted and corrupted into ineffectiveness.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 41/ @paulkrugman describes what’s happened as “Dornbusch’s Law in action … the inevitable crisis takes longer to come than you can imagine, but when it does come it happens faster than you can imagine.” This crisis has been brewing for decades. It’s not over yet. /end🐣 RT @EHunterChristie This thread, by the Foreign Minister of Lithuania, is essential reading. A fellow NATO and EU Ally, Lithuania has a depth of expertise and know-how on how to deal with Russia that is absent in Western Europe. ¤We must unite in being firm and uncompromising towards Moscow.
⋙ 🧵 RT @GLandsbergis Putin’s genocidal plan to wipe Ukraine off the map has failed. He is in no position to negotiate. The war must end with his unconditional surrender.
📌 https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1568932265031520257?s=20⭕ 11 Sep 2022
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: It’s Time to Prepare for a Ukrainian Victory https://bit.ly/3QBGfMB “The possibility of instability in Russia, a nuclear power, terrifies many. But it may now be unavoidable”
// The liberation of Russian-occupied territory might bring down Vladimir Putin.WSJ: Ukraine’s Rout of Russian Forces Poses Challenge of How to Exploit Gains https://on.wsj.com/3Dg10u8
// Kyiv’s latest offensive has returned more than 1,000 square miles to Ukrainian control, says military chiefNewsweek: Cold, Hunger and Darkness in Ukraine ‘Not as Terrible’ as Russia: Zelensky https://bit.ly/3L69OEQ “There are 90 days ahead which will decide more than 30 years of Ukraine’s independence. 90 days that will decide more than all the years of the existence of the [EU]”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed his nation Sunday night after reports of Russia firing upon civilian energy structures to take out power in communities. Zelensky said the “terrorist acts” were deliberate as the 200-day war curves into the winter season
Even through the impenetrable darkness, Ukraine and the civilized world clearly see these terrorist acts,” Zelensky said through his Telegram account. “Deliberate and cynical missile strikes on civilian critical infrastructure. No military facilities. Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were cut off. In Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Sumy there are partial problems with power.”
Zelensky shared this Telegram video of the alleged attack.
Zelensky just one day earlier said Ukraine’s 30-plus years of independence will come down to 90 days of harsh winter in the region.
“There are 90 days ahead, which will decide more than 30 years of Ukraine’s independence. 90 days that will decide more than all the years of the existence of the European Union. Winter will determine our future.”
On Sunday night, the Ukrainian president said his nation will prevail with or without food, gas or water, but that it would certainly be without Russia.
“Read lips: Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you.
“This is the most difficult winter for the whole world. Russia is doing everything in 90 days of this winter to break the resistance of Ukraine, the resistance of Europe and the resistance of the world. Because this is what Russia hopes for, this is its last argument,” Zelensky said.
Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as terrible and deadly for us as your “friendship and brotherhood.”
Zelensky particularly calls upon his nation’s allies to do their best efforts in providing air defense against Russian strikes on businesses and infrastructure that provide heating sources to Ukrainian people.
The targets of Russian missiles can and will be enterprises and infrastructure that provide people with heat and electricity,” Zelensky said. “We already export electricity to our neighbors, which helps replace dirty Russian energy resources, and we can easily increase exports to at least two and a half gigawatts, and later even more… But for this, the Russian military needs to withdraw from the territory of the Zaporizhia NPP. This fundamental European interest now, at this time before winter.”
Russia began building troops along Ukraine’s northern and western borders in late January, and they began attacking Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, there have been heavy casualties on both sides. That includes Ukrainian civilians, foreign fighters, Ukrainian military and more than 52,600 Russians.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent According to Ukrainian intelligence, Russian Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov, who had commanded Russia’s intervention in Syria and was appointed commander of the Western Military District on Aug. 26, was removed from command.
Newsweek: Putin Faces Backlash From Russian Bloggers Amid Retreat: ‘Horrible Failure’ https://bit.ly/3d7sxU2 Pro-Russia blogger Yuri Podolyaka admitted on Telegram that losses were “large” and “cannot be ignored,” describing Saturday as “the most difficult day of this war”
🐣 RT @ SpaghettiKozak Russia’s mad about NAFO because they invested so heavily in a professional troll factory and similar influence ops, only to find themselves confronted and defeated by something they can’t understand- people who actually believe in something and coming together of their free will.
🐣 RT @iamjeamy [Replying to @GirkinGirkin]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/iamjeamy/status/1569177616275365889?s=20/photo/1
// English translation of Situation Report posted by @GirkinGirkin][Text:] “The Russian Armed Forces continued to retreat from the Kharkov region, in a number of cases there was a loss of controllability of the troops, there are facts of the l[?] abandonment of military equipment, problems with the evacuation of the wounded. Ours are fixed on the eastern bank of the river. Oskol. The section of the front runs along the border of the Belgorod region, due to the high risk of enemy DRGs entering, the arrived units of the Russian Armed Forces took up defensive positions for the purpose of military cover. ¤ Several attacks on Krasny Liman were repulsed.
By nightfall, rocket attacks began on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine, which indicates the
adoption of an appropriate political decision, which the military had been waiting for 7 months. As a result, power outages were recorded in Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Odessa regions, in Kremenchug (Poltava region). There have been reports of an imbalance in the energy system of Ukraine. At the same time, night strikes are not enough to blackout the country.The Armed Forces of Ukraine are pulling up reserves to the Ugledar sector of the front, there are signs of preparations for an offensive, the risk of an attemnt to beak through to the south
On the Kherson sector, from Vysokopolye the enemy drove us out of another village. From the Kharkov direction, data are coming in about a large number of Polish mercenaries On the territory occupied by the enemy, the identification of persons who can be accused of cooperation with Russia continues.
1[?] There is evidence that against the backdrop or the success or the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the countries of the West will strengthen military-technical support for Ukraine. ¤ Summary compiled by: Two majors
🐣 RT @ Osinttechnical Russian air defenses have absolutely faced degradation in the face of continued Ukrainian attacks, allowing Ukrainian assets to contest the airspace over portions of the frontline. The Russian Air Force was noticeably absent in Kharkiv Oblast over the last week.
🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel Russia is threatening from the Black Sea with 14 warships, among which 4 surface missile carriers equipped with 26 Kalibras, and has activated the presence of 4 large landing ships.
🧵 RT @KathyGirouard What we know […]
– Trump landed at Dulles tonight
– Quickly deplaned alone wearing what looks like golf shoes, an open collar shirt and brown jacket
– Immediately entered an SUV
– license plates are USG
– plates possibly DHS
@AndrewFeinberg @gtconway3d
¤ https://twitter.com/KathyGirouard/status/1569146777147961344?s=20/photo/1
// [lightly edited]🐣 RT @Russiaconflict The counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region went much better than expected, – ukranian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Life comes at you fast: pundits on Russian TV realize that their military is failing and their country is in trouble. They are starting to play the blame game. Some of them finally understand that their genocidal denial of the Ukrainian identity isn’t working in Russia’s favor.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1569070513909022720?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @natsechobbyist Their expressions are forlorn. You can smell the desperation.
[See full comments]🐣 RT @Russiaconflict BREAKING: The leadership of the western grouping of the Russian Armed Forces has been removed from command after only 17 days in his post. Reasons. in the comments
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @Russiaconflict Zelensky’s powerful address tonight directly to Russia’s Putin. [text reformatted]
💽 https://twitter.com/Russiaconflict/status/1569149142022164481?s=20/photo/1Do you still think that you can scare us, break us, make us make concessions? You really did not understand anything? Don’t understand who we are? What are we for? What are we talking about? …
Without gas or without you? without you
Without light or without you? without you
Without water or without you? without you
Without food or without you? without you
Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your “friendship and brotherhood”.
But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food.. and WITHOUT you! – zelensky.NYT: Russia’s Retreat in Ukraine Pokes Holes in Putin’s Projection of Force https://nyti.ms/3REV5mM //➔ “Second Greatest Army in the World” has become an expression of derision on Twitter, as Russians abandon tanks, guns, and stockpiles of ammunition—even their uniforms—and run
// Russia’s military setbacks may be weakening President Vladimir V. Putin’s reputation at home as a savvy geopolitical strategist.NYT: Ukraine Routs Russian Forces in Northeast, Forcing a Retreat https://nyti.ms/3RZWVyt “[T]he speed of Ukraine’s advances over the weekend in the northeast — an area used by Russia as a stronghold — has muted the gung-ho bluster of Kremlin cheerleaders”
// Russia acknowledged that it had lost nearly all of the northern region of Kharkiv after a blitzkrieg thrust by Ukrainian fightersWaPo: White House alarm rises over Europe as Putin threatens energy supply https://wapo.st/3Di1Fvg “Since March, U.S. firms have delivered 30 billion cubic meters [of natural gas] to Europe — more than twice the amount over the same period of time last year”
// Biden aides have redoubled efforts to increase natural gas exports across the Atlantic but see few obvious solutionsWaPo: Amid Ukraine’s startling gains, liberated villages describe Russian troops dropping rifles and fleeing https://wapo.st/3BzGAeA ‘Half fled in vehicles in the first hours of the offensive. Those stranded grew desperate, calling unit commanders for someone to come get them’
In a forceful statement to Russia on Sunday night, Zelensky insisted the invaders would be expelled. “Read my lips,” he said. “Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you. Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your ‘friendship and brotherhood.’ ”
🐣 RT @wartranslated Girkin comments on the rumoured concentration of forces at the Vuhledar direction (says Uglegorks but I think it’s a typo?), says it makes sense and can lead to similar results as in Kharkiv Oblast.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1568941542227808257?s=20/photo/1-2🐣 RT @TarasBerezovets Russia is not only a state sponsor of terrorism. Russia is also a state sponsor of cowardice. Russia lost the ground in the battle of Kharkiv region and suffered the humiliation before the eyes of the world. And what it does: Russia attacks the infrastructure, causing blackout.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Today marks 200 days on the war calendar.
200 days of suffering, pain, losses.
200 days of bravery, heroism, fighting.
200 days we live for one goal and crave one goal – Victory!
🎥: SoldiersOfUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1568936084930981890?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 On his Telegram, Kremlin chief propagandist, Soloviev, called for the execution of Russian commanders who allowed the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region 🤷♀️
🐣 RT @christogrozev Several Ukrainian cities report power outages, apparently as a result of vengeful Russian shelling at civilian infrastructure after the debacle in the last few days. Russian militant/nationalist channels are ecstatic, “we should have done that at the start of the war”
🐣 RT @EliotACohen I believe it was Moshe Dayan who said that every enemy soldier fleeing the battlefield carries with him a deadly germ of infectious panic. We may be seeing this in Ukraine as well. If so, a broader process of Russian collapse may be under way. 1/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotACohen Way, way too much of Western military analysis has focused on the tangibles – the things you can count. In the end, the things you can’t count – courage or fear, cohesion or distrust, leadership or its absence – matter just as much and some times more. 2/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotACohen When the Ukraine war settles down students of war and military organizations need to reflect on why our judgments about the intangibles were not faulty so much as often absent. But in the meanwhile….3/4
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliotACohen Cheer on the Ukrainian forces liberating their territory, celebrate the defeat of a cruel invader, resolve to support Ukraine to the end of the battle and in reconstruction — and keep the guns, ammo and intel flowing. @PhillipsPOBrien @WarintheFuture @CSIS @SAISHopkins. 4/4🐣 RT @TarasBerezovets The much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said
💙 ⋙⋙ TheGuardian: Ukraine’s southern offensive ‘was designed to trick Russia’ https://bit.ly/3L5iFXm
// Exclusive: Russian forces wrong-footed by attack in Kharkiv region after preparing for offensive in the south“[It] was a big special disinformation operation,” said Taras Berezovets, a former national security adviser turned press officer for the Bohun brigade of Ukraine’s special forces. ¤ “[Russia] thought it would be in the south and moved their equipment. Then, instead of the south, the offensive happened where they least expected, and this caused them to panic and flee.”
On 29 August, Ukraine’s southern command announced that the long-anticipated offensive in the Kherson region had begun. But soldiers on the Kherson frontline said at the time that they saw no evidence of said offensive or that the active battles taking place were a reaction to an attempted Russian offensive several days earlier.
For the past two weeks, Ukrainian forces in the south took several villages – no small feat given the reported strength of Russian positions and one which nevertheless resulted in injuries. ¤
But the gains were not remarkably different from the steady but limited progress Ukrainian forces had been making in the Kherson region over July and August. ¤ And yet, the capture of these tiny Kherson villages, with populations of a few thousands, suddenly became big international news.Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, had insisted on a “regime of silence” and temporarily banned journalists from visiting the frontlines in Kherson. ¤ But Berezovets said the media stir around the southern offensive was a coordinated disinformation campaign by Ukraine, targeted at Russian forces, that had been building for several months. ¤ It was successful in provoking Russia to move equipment and personnel to the southern front, including partly from Kharkiv region, said Berezovets. ¤ “Meanwhile [our] guys in Kharkiv were given the best of western weapons, mostly American,” he said.
Part of the special operation involved rooting out informants in Ukrainian-controlled parts of Kharkiv to stop them passing information about Ukraine’s preparations to the Russians, said a military source with knowledge of the operation. ¤ “The [informants] were almost completely cleaned up. They mostly comprised normal Ukrainian civilians but there were some Russian agents undercover as Ukrainian civilians,” said the source. “The Russians had no idea what was going on.” ¤ Russia’s defence ministry has confirmed the retreat, describing it as a regroup. It says it has retreated from Izium and the town of to “bolster efforts” on the Donetsk front. …
In a video address late on Friday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian forces had liberated more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region. ¤ A local resident of Izium, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the Ukrainian troops had entered the city. Before that, “Russian occupying forces were rapidly withdrawing, leaving ammunition and equipment behind”.
Ukraine’s retake of Izium could be its most significant success in pushing back the Russians since the beginning of the invasion. ¤ By capturing the nearby town of Kupiansk, Ukrainian forces have managed to cut off the supply lines for the Russian formations in control of the Izium area,” said Serhiy Kuzan, a military expert at the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center. …
With Ukrainian operations also continuing in Kherson, the Russian defensive front is under pressure on both its northern and southern flanks,” it said. ¤ “We are actually surprised by how poorly the Russians have retreated,” said Kuzan. “Retreat is part of the art of war. When we retreated, we made sure they suffered losses as they advanced and we did to so to ensure that they only advanced 1, 2, 3 kilometres. ¤ “They were so confident that they didn’t prepare their defences,” he added. “This has shown that the only advantage they have is in the number of artillery pieces and heavy equipment. So all we need is the same amount.”
😅 RT @DarthPutinKGB Looking back, I should known it would be disaster as soon as Trump said it was “genius move”.
🐣 RT @fellaraktar What we saw yesterday was impressive. What we are seeing today feels monumental. As the scale of ruSSia’s defeat becomes clear, Putlers life expectancy is plummeting by the minute. ¤ As a westerner I just want to say Thankyou Ukraine, we are forever in your debt. ¤ SLAVA UKRAINI!!
🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua⚡️Putin is ordering Russian state corporations and oligarchs to create private military companies (PMCs), – journalist Hrysto Grozev says, citing his own sources.
⋙🐣 RT @christogrozev He says it’s all because of corruption and incompetence in the army (“the mercenaries were scammed of their pay”). But is again very optimistic, says each government corporation and oligarch are told to set up their own PMC for “new stage in October”.🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Zelensky’s 9/11 message: ¤ “Facing missile attacks daily, Ukraine knows well what terrorism is and sincerely sympathizes with the American people. Terrorism is an evil that has no place in the modern world!”
🐣 RT @MarkRid89403375 📽️ created by @PolandMFA showing what has happened during these 200 days of #RussianUkrainewar ¤ Ukrainians express deep gratitude to the people of Poland for all-around support for #Ukraine in difficult times.#StandWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/MarkRid89403375/status/1568921309823860738?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @GirkinGurkin [tr] [Situation Report]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KatushiLI/status/1568916136514682881?s=20/photo/1 -2🧵 RT @RealCynicalFox The Collapse: ¤ Conventional warfare is rare in the modern era, even rarer is when a portion of one army effectively collapses. That is currently the situation facing Russian forces between Kupyansk & Lyman. The situation is highly fluid & only those UAF personnel at the 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/RealCynicalFox/status/1568692488931532801?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @RealCynicalFox fore of this advance will know for certain what the extent of the advance is. As it stands, despite some increased Russian resistance in areas not impacted by the immediate breakthrough, the Russian forces have not reestablished a coherent defensive line. 2/ […]🐣 RT @vorobyov Gen. Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s Cmmdr-in-Chief of Armed Forces: “in the Kharkiv direction, we have started to move not only towards the South and the East but also to the North. There are 50 km left till the state border”. ¤ An unambiguous message, for sure.
🧵 RT @warinthefuture The last 48 hours have seen some stunning battlefield developments in #Ukraine. Ukrainian operations in the northeast continue to exploit its penetration of Russian defences. 1/18
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1568838599705243648?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @warinthefuture 2/ There is much that remains unclear about these offensives. But #Ukraine clearly achieved surprise against the Russians in the #Kharkiv region. Deception has been central to all Ukrainian preparations for this phase of the war.
ISW 🌎 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1568838604423843842?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 11/ The shift in the momentum of the war will have big impacts on the influence battle in Europe as well as China. In Europe, it will reinforce the case for ongoing military and economic support to #Ukraine despite Russia’s ‘energy warfare’.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 12/ In China, this is a huge embarrassment for Xi in the lead up to the 16 October Party Congress. Not only has he shackled himself to a loser (Putin), but his ‘decline of the west’ narrative is again challenged. And support for defending #Taiwan is probably growing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 15/ The Russians, while not beaten, are in real trouble. Because of this, we should watch for some unexpected reaction from Putin. He (unlike some of his senior military officers) has shown no signs of believing the invasion is in trouble.🐣 RT @Militarylandnet
🗺️🇺🇦#Kharkiv Offensive Sep 11 11:00:
– UA troops liberated Vasylenkove, Artemivka in the north
– UA entered Izium, there was minimal resistance.
– UA liberated Velyka Komyshuvakha in the south
– RU abandoning their positions in Kharkiv Oblast.
#UkraineRussiaWar
🌎 https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1568891888572272640?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @USAmbKyiv [Bridget Brink] Encouraged and inspired by the gains made by Ukrainians fighting for their future.
🐣 RT @olex_scherba This schmo’s name is Gazmanov. He is one Putin’s favorite schmos. Today he was supposed to give concert in the occupied Izyum titled “Russia is here forever”. It’s “postponed indefinitely” now. ¤ By the way, his son Filip (25) lives in the UK. Forever too? #StandWithUkraine
🐣 RT @Igor_from_Kyiv_ the occupiers fled so fast that they left all their military equipment .. a small lend-lease from the Russian occupiers
💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1568886014982389763?s=20/photo/1💙 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Warriors of the 92nd Mechanized Brigade found an army electrician’s “Manual for taking over the world” in Russian positions near Balakliia, Kharkiv Oblast. ¤ All the notes were made by hand. ¤ Straightaway we can see the power of the Russian army.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1568840008001327104?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 “second greatest army in the world” 🤔🐣 RT @UkrainePicture Zaporozhye NPP is completely shut down – Energoatom The only working 6th power unit, which fed the station, will be transferred to a cold state. #UkraineNews
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews There are heavy battles for Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk and Rubizhne ¤ There was information that the Russians are trying to buy time for the militants to take their belongings out of Lugansk. We are waiting for confirmation from the General Staff.
⭕ 10 Sep 2022
RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: Russian Army Collapses—and Revolution Near-Certain as Russia Loses War: When/Where Harder to Predict https://tinyurl.com/22ne4v5r ‘Russian failures were the almost natural outcomes of years … of one man running the show’
// Losing this badly will help wake up millions of Russians to some level of reality, and they will blame Putin. It is doubtful that the Russian military will keep fighting under these conditions for much longer.🧵 RT @AVindman Thoughts on Russia-Ukraine War. ¤ Military: Ukraine’s forces have routed Russians in the Kharkiv operational area (that’s not a premature conclusion). The Russians are unlikely to conduct a successful counterattack let alone an offensive. They have neither the forces or equipment.
📌 https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1568730010399145984?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman … Routs are infectious. We’re likely to see spread at least to the Donetsk/Luhansk operational direction & there’s still a very effective offensive unfolding in Kherson. We’ll know in the next week or so. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman Again, when faced w/ resolve, resistance, determined defense & force he [Putin] will blink. ¤ He will not escalate. ¤ This is a another lesson for U.S. & western policymakers. Failure to deter enables/emboldens Putin & other authoritarians. Resolute defense of interests is the answer.🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger Ever notice that Ukraine’s officers look like regular nice people and Russias officers look like you found them under a bridge?
⋙ 🧵 RT @saintjavelin One of the brilliant architects of the successful counteroffensive operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the east of Ukraine is the commander of the Ground Forces, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi.
📌 https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1568256502481432577?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @saintjavelin […] Source: Ukrainian political expert Oleksandr Holobytskyi💙 RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: Russian Army Collapses—and Revolution—Near-Certain as Russia Loses War: When/Where Harder to Predict https://bit.ly/3QOo4U9
// Losing this badly will help wake up millions of Russians to some level of reality, and they will blame Putin. It is doubtful that the Russian military will keep fighting under these conditions for much longer.When this war began, I barely slept for weeks. What I and most others understood to essentially be the second most powerful military on earth had finally brought the hammer down on Ukraine, and was clearly going for regime change and who knows how much outright conquest (a lot; even before February 24, I noted it was clear Russian President Vladimir Putin was determined to have Ukraine at best be a vassal and at worst be annexed by Russia as part of a growing tsarist-like Empire). I was afraid that at any point in time, Kyiv would be turned into Grozny/Aleppo, killing thousands and thousands of civilians in the process, or that we’d find Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dead, string up on a lamp post or shot in the head by assassins.
I thought Ukraine might put up a decent if brief fight, but that there was very little hope for fending off the Russians, and my dread was all consuming.
But then, even very early on, it was clear that Russia was taking horrific, historic casualties (as I pointed out, in not even two weeks, apparently more than U.S. forces suffered in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined). It was clear the Russian soldiers were not being well-led. It was clear that their logistics were terrible. It was clear that Russian troops did not have enough food or water. It was clear that their communications were not secure and their combined arms coordination was poor. It was clear that they did not have enough troops to take, let alone occupy, Kyiv. It was clear they did not maintain their vehicles well. It was clear they had no answer to or defense against Javelin and other anti-tank missiles. And then, starting in late March, there was that spectacular collapse of Russian forces on the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy fronts. Not long after, the sinking of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva (I am likely the only person who predicted in an article that it would be sunk), made it clear it could not defend against anti-ship missiles (and once you understood that, it was only logical that Crimea would be in play, as I noted in April).
What we were witnessing, in the social media age in an unprecedented way in its ultradocumentation, was one of the most thrilling upsets in military history, and it was only just getting started. It was the most surprising, remarkable thing I have witnessed in my entire adult life.
… The truly sad part is that Russia has already lost, but much fighting and death happens in war when the result is essentially a foregone conclusion, from the ending of World War II to the ending of the U.S. Civil War to the Vietnam War, and sometimes the worst battles happen close to the end. …
Thus, the main hope I have is that Russian forces will just get tired of fighting and dying for lies and nothing more, will start refusing to fight in Putin’s disaster of a war, and, that, much like Russian units that mutinied against Tsar Nicholas II’s regime in 1917, will turn around and march on Moscow to end the war by ending the rule of a tyrant—as has been my hope since early March—or, that someone in the Kremlin will do a truly patriotic duty and we will have an announcement that Putin has died peacefully in his sleep. …
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukrainian concept artist Denys Tsiperko, who creates characters for Marvel, has posted illustrations of Azovstal heroes defending Mariupol steel plant from the Russian invaders. ¤ Reminder – Azovstal warriors are still held captive by Russia. 📷Denys Tsiperko #StandWithUkraine
🖼 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1568826109906624514?s=20/photo/1 -4🚫 🐣 RT @igorsushko #PANIC: #Ukraine’s General Staff report that Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division are in a panic due to encirclement with all supply lines cut off in #Kharkiv region. ¤ This Division has 6 regiments and 2 battalions. A typical division has 10k-20k soldiers.
// unconfirmed🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews On Russian state TV, Rodion Miroshnik, the so-called “Ambassador” of LPR— Russia’s faux “Republic” in occupied Ukraine—claims that Ukraine no longer exists. He says that what used to be Ukraine is now just an English-speaking tribe, full of foreigners, fighting against Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1568748943567110152?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews On state TV, Zakhar Prilepin talks about some of Russia’s miscalculations during its invasion of Ukraine, including the Kremlin’s assumption that it would be welcomed by Ukrainians. Prilepin also tells the audience that they’re constitutionally obligated to support Russia’s wars.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1568727504805937152?s=20/photo/1WaPo: Russian troops in big retreat as Ukrainian offensive advances in Kharkiv area https://wapo.st/3quMZkM Ukraine “has cut enemy supply lines, revealed disarray in the Russians’ ranks, … forced occupying authorities to flee and infuriated Kremlin boosters”
The stunning rout of Russian forces by Ukraine’s flash counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region does not, on its own, signal a decisive shift in the war to Ukraine’s advantage. ¤ Russia still occupies extensive Ukrainian territory, including the cities of Mariupol, Melitopol and Kherson, and Russian troops still control Putin’s coveted “land bridge” to Crimea, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014. … But the Ukrainian campaign has cut enemy supply lines, revealed disarray in the Russians’ ranks, electrified Ukrainians, forced occupying authorities to flee and infuriated Kremlin boosters.
“A major defeat,” Igor Girkin, a hard-line former commander of separatists in Ukraine, lamented in a pro-Russian military Telegram channel. ¤ Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said his country was still far from claiming any triumph. “A sign of victory for me will be boarding a plane in Kharkiv and landing in Mariupol,” Reznikov said in a speech Saturday at a conference in Kyiv.
🧵 RT @EHunterChristie 1-7 ¤ The trends favour Ukraine ¤ Prior to the current Ukrainian offensives, some deep trends were already moving in Ukraine’s favour:
📌 https://twitter.com/EHunterChristie/status/1568756891815411712?s=20💙 🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ UTW – Operational Update: ZSU Counter Offensive in the Donbas, 04-10 Sep. The ZSU is engaged in what may likely become the most stunningly successful counteroffensive since the IDFs OPERATION GAZELLE during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. #ukrainecounteroffensive #UkraineWillWin
📌 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1568737425597386752?s=20🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua “These days, the Russian army is showing its best, showing its back. And, after all, it is a good choice for them to run away. There is no place for the occupiers in Ukraine and there will be no place” – the president said.
🐣 RT @ Igor_from_Kyiv_ Russia is faced with people who are fighting for their freedom, life, children, country. Not for the sake of money and nasty ambitions of the bloody Russian government. Our heroes fight for truth and freedom. Russians die for Putin and fascism. And so Ukraine will win! 🇺🇦
💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1568682205848780805?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @anneapplebaum The Ukrainian defense minister, Reznikov, on a panel with @radeksikorski, today. Agreed on definition of victory: Russia leaves all of Ukraine, pays reparations. World holds war crimes trials.
🐣 RT @ MiekeTweeting Reuters Headline: The swift fall of Izium in Kharkiv province was Moscow’s worst defeat since its troops were forced back from Kyiv in March, and could prove a turning point in the war, with thousands of Russian soldiers abandoning ammunition stockpiles.🌻
🧵 RT @EHunterChristie Amazed, like so many others, with the pace of positive news from the front. Europe owes an enormous debt of gratitude and respect to the heroic defenders of Ukraine. There is still plenty of work ahead, and every success will, we hope, be secured and leveraged for more.
📌 https://twitter.com/EHunterChristie/status/1568618024130977796?s=20Over the coming weeks and months, NATO, EU, and other free nations must redouble their support to Kyiv.
Our common cause must be:
1- full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty within Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders
2- transformation of the UAF into a fully-equipped high-precision force, able to deter Russia for decades to come
3- full reconstruction of Ukraine…… including reparation payments to be seized from Russia
4- the bringing to justice of all Russian decision-makers and executioners linked to the crime of aggression, to war crimes, to crimes against humanity
5- the return of all Ukrainian deportees and hostages to Ukraine
6- containment, aiming at minimising Russia’s future ability to harm its neighbours
7- a parallel project of re-education of the Russian state, making future economic ties with the free world conditional on the approval of an Allied Control Commission for the Russian state
8- inside our nations, the launch of an #OperationCleanHands to rid our political and business elites from tainted and corrupt pro-Kremlin elements
Justice will come. Justice will be done.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/ 1630 UTC 10 SEP/ With the recent success of the Kharkiv offensive, the world’s attention had shifted from Kherson. UKR troops are reported to have made advances N and S of the M-14 HWY axis. UKR reports 35 close air support sorties in the Kherson AO.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568623220961550336?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Does anyone seriously think the Russians can regenerate the force needed to come back and retake these territories? Theyve lost most of the best soldiers and equipment. Any new force will be more poorly trained and equipped.
⋙ 🐣 no, I don’t; I worry the bombing, however, won’t stop, or that Putin will do something crazy (nuclear) ¤ I think the US should allow the use of HIMARS to take out artillery etc bombing Ukr civilians
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien The Ukrainian Army, otoh, is getting more and better advanced systems, better training, and will be arguably the most combat experienced force in the world. No way the Russians can retake this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ IsaacGolino If full mobilization were to happen today, it would take weeks for units to be formed, equipped, and and arrive at the front. At that point Putin would be asking his army to go in any take parts of Ukraine a second or third time. And for what? Seem like too much.💙 🧵 RT @ 🐣 RT @Igor_from_Kyiv_ The Cossacks are coming! The occupiers will be expelled from our land. Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine✌️🇺🇦
📌 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1568556145496694792?s=20
// nice thread🐣 RT @McFaul For months, I’ve attended elite discussions where worries about softening support for Ukraine are expressed because of Putin’s threats to cut off energy. Maybe we elites are underestimating how pissed off people can get when being blackmailed? Encouraging numbers out of Germany.
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @RugeBoris We should expect lots of turbulence across Europe over the next months given Mr. Putin’s weaponization of energy. But right now, according to a new poll a full 70% in #Germany are in favor of supporting #Ukraine despite high energy prices 🇺🇦🇩🇪🇺🇦🐣 RT @RALee85 “A Ukrainian military intelligence source says that the success of the offensive was contingent on American-supplied harm…missiles…It also relied on surface-to-air systems that threatened Russian aircraft: Ukrainian sources single out Germany’s Gepard” https://econ.st/3Dj32ts
A Ukrainian military intelligence source says that the success of the offensive was contingent on American-supplied HARM anti-radiation missiles, which home in on the emissions of Russian air-defence radar and other equipment. It also relied on surface-to-air svstems that threatened Russian aircraft: Ukrainian sources single out Germany’s Gepard, a set of anti-aircraft guns on tracks. This threat left Russia reluctant to deploy air power; when it did, it suffered losses. Unconfirmed reports suggest that at least one Russian fighter jet and two helicopters were downed during Ukraine’s operation. Russian aircraft have reportedly struggled to distinguish between Russian and Ukrainian units in the pell-mell of fighting, with frontlines shifting rapidly. ¤ “They are blind, and we see everything,” claims the Ukrainian official. …
🐣 RT @ IntelArrow Based on multiple reports, majority of the evacuated Russian forces are converging towards the city of Svatove, which is 30 km away from the current Ukrainian positions (as of yesterday). ¤ We will see if they will try to launch a counteroffensive from there soon.
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews President Zelenskyy: The issues of freedom, security and choice, the role of truth in politics and diplomacy were discussed today with Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder. I shared my memories of the beginning of the full-scale invasion and the Normandy Four meeting of 2019.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TpyxaNews The U.S. historian plans to use parts of our conversation in his new book. I am grateful that even more people will know about Ukraine and our struggle for independence!🐣 RT @AdmiralWarspite It gets better and better. Officials in the city of Volchans’k are suggesting that Russian and Ukrainian military have met to discuss surrender of that city to the UAF. This city is right by the Russian border and was a major entry point for the supply lines cut in last 2 days.
🌎 https://twitter.com/AdmiralWarspite/status/1568633611116756992?s=20/photo/1 -3🐣 RT @Noel_dotsol Now Russians are fleeing not only from the cities occupied after February 24, 2022, but also from the cities occupied since 2014, – Serhiy Gaidai, chairman of the Lugansk OVA. ¤ 🔥👀
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard Just in case you are still not informed. Ukraine has launched the greatest counteroffensive since World War II. Ukraine has regained/liberated over 1,000 km of land & cities. Ukraine is winning. Ukraine is defeating Russia (once thought to be the second most powerful military)!
🐣 RT @McFaul To all of those helping the world watch in real time the Russian retreat in Ukraine right now, thank you for your reporting and posts. Deeply appreciate your work.
🐣 RT @dpatrikarakos Amid all the celebration we must remember that the situation is still grave. #Kharkiv is still being bombed intensely – and RU forces increased their bombing overnight.
🐣 RT @AdmiralWarspite Multiple reports on Telegram of UAF entering Kremennaya. The Russian collapse is happening so quick it seems even the social news networks are struggling to keep up. As ever though, we await pictures.
🐣 RT @IntelCrab An entire 6 months of Russian territorial gains erased in 4 days…
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Lysychansk residents already noticed Ukrainian Army in the outskirts of the town. ¤ During the night Ukrainian flag was raised over Kreminna. ¤ Russians and collaborants leave the territory of Luhansk region in large numbers, – head of Luhansk military administration Serhii Haidai.
⋙⋙ 🐣 will this mean they bomb the cities more than before, now that Ru Armed Forces have left and pro-Russian partisans are leaving?
⋙⋙ 🐣 I wish Biden would allow HIMARS to take out artillery inside Ru that are bombing civilians ¤ HIMARS are so precise, they could do this to prevent Eastern Ukr from being “mariopulized”🐣 RT @nolanwpeterson ‘Rout’ ¤ Noun: A disorderly retreat of defeated troops. ¤ Synonyms: overwhelming defeat, beating, debacle, drubbing, disaster, embarrassment, thrashing, whipping, clobbering.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Chess is only a military metaphor, but I do know the difference between a “retreat” and a “regrouping”! Glory to Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar NEW: #Ukrainian forces have captured an estimated 2,500 square kilometers in #Kharkiv Oblast in the Kharkiv area counteroffensive as of September 9. /1
The latest with @criticalthreats: https://iswresearch.org
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1568456177922736129?s=20/photo/1 -4🐣 RT @TrentTelenko This is another Russian “Goodwill Gesture.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Faytuks #UPDATE: I can’t believe what I am seeing. The russian miliary is actually leaving Volchansk to: “save the lives of the population, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation decided to leave our city” – Deputy says https://t.me/mig41
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1568613232486621186?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Yes, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are actually leaving Volchansk, which is already bordering on the border ¤ United Russia Deputy Yevgeny Yevtushenko announced the transfer of headquarters from Volchansk to Belgorod ¤ “To save the lives of the population, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation decided to leave our city. ¤ Kursk, Yakutsk, Vladivostok and St. Petersburg, until the situation in the city stabilizes. The units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will definitely return all Russian lands in the Kharkiv region under their control”
⋙ 🐣 Telegram MIG ¤ Volchansk publics write that the Russian army is leaving the city – the country UA. ¤ If, under the thunder of the Moscow salute, the Armed Forces of Ukraine remove the installation of the border pillarBeing much maligned on Twitter:
ForeignPolicy, Samuel Charap and Scott Boston (Jan 21): The West’s Weapons Won’t Make Any Difference to Ukraine https://bit.ly/3d4qYGk
// 1/21/2022; U.S. military equipment wouldn’t realistically help Ukrainians—or intimidate Putin; By Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, and Scott Boston, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp.🐣 RT @michaelh992 #Russia’s Ministry of Defense finally mentions the current debacle in Eastern #Ukraine saying that a “decision was made to regroup Russian troops stationed in Balakliya and Izyum” and transfer those troops to the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic ¤ (translated statement)
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1568605179594903553?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian military reporter group Rybar in tears, begging the Russian Ministry of Attack to start telling truth. ¤ Could you imagine this level of panic just a few months ago? https://t.me/rybar/38565
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1568579775966466049?s=20/photo/1-2[Text:] Dear representatives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Employees of the Department of Information and Mass Communications. Servicemen of the 5th Main Operational Directorate. Duty shift of the Center for Rapid Response to Information Security Threats.
We know that you are reading us. ¤ We know that the Rybar Telegram channel, the Gray Zone channels, the Milltary Informant, Andrey Medvedev, Starshe Eddy, Povyornutie Na Voyne, Pis’ma Yaroslava of the Kyiv regime sitting on the salary of the Ukrainian information-psychological operations centre. ¤ We know that we are all on your blacklists because we are the most inconvenient for you. Because we are not in line with the party. We understand and accept this. It is normal that outside-of-the-system critics are not considered and you pretend that they do not exist [it is true that this has become normal in the current configuration of the system].
But let’s be frank: now is not the moment when you can be silent and not say anything. Now is not the moment when you can arrange an information vacuum and work with some kind of hybrid methods, bringing information to the population in doses and tiny streams. ¤ We ask you: please take the information situation at the front into your own hands.No need to act on the principle of “prohibit and say nothing.” This is very detrimental to the cause.
🐣 RT @wartranslated Russian military reporter group Rybar in tears, begging the Russian Ministry of Attack to start telling truth. ¤ Could you imagine this level of panic just a few months ago? https://t.me/rybar/38565
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1568579775966466049?s=20/photo/1-2🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FLASH TRAFFIC / KHARKIV / 1300 UTC 10 SEP/ History will record the UKR Kharkiv operation as one of the most daring and successful counter-offensives of the 21st century. UKR has seized the important transportation hub of Kupiansk, with RU forces retreating in disarray.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568578726513852417?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DrewPavlou The Kharkiv Miracle: Ukrainian forces seize almost 3,000 sq km in a lightning offensive, completely routing Russian forces. Russian reinforcements never arrive as Putin the master strategist sent tens of thousands of Russian troops to practice war drills with China.
🌎 https://twitter.com/DrewPavlou/status/1568587989282099201?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JSharp1436 🌍🇪🇺✊🇺🇦🇲🇩🇬🇪🌏🇦🇫🇲🇲🇭🇰🇹🇼
ℹAt a meeting in #Prague Sept.9, 🇺🇸@SecDef Lloyd Austin reconfirms 🇺🇸 support for #Ukraine will continue for “as long as it takes” ¤ Austin also commended the progress Ukrainian troops have made recently in both #Kherson and #Kharkiv
✊#StandWithUkraine🇺🇦
🌎#UnitedWithUkraine🇺🇦🐣 RT @DrOmarAshour #Kherson to #Kharkiv counteroffensive is looking more and more like a combined-arms “upper-cut” a la the “left-hook” of General Shwartzkof in Iraq. This time it is the smaller defender outflanking, outfighting, out-manoeuvring a much bigger aggressor. #Ukraine
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Mariia_Zolkina As of Sept.9, #UAarmy has recaptured 2500 sq. km in #Kharkiv region. @TheStudyofWar map illustrates this rapid offensive and destruction of #Russia’s defense. 🇷🇺 forces in Izyum are in operational encirclement. #UkraineWillWin
🌎 https://twitter.com/Mariia_Zolkina/status/1568483937600798720?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua The United States, the G7 and the EU ban Russian oil shipments, reports the U.S. Treasury Department. ¤ Crude oil transportation will cease on December 5 this year, and oil products – on February 5, 2023.
[Letter:] https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1568507528199159808?s=20/photo/1
// this is about capping the price🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Ukraine’s Def Min Oleksii Reznikov @oleksiireznikov: ¤ “I am convinced that a few more successes at the front in the form of certain, albeit insignificant, but victories, and the Russian troops will flee” [link]
🐣 RT @OlivierBinda This is what Ukrainians worked for the past 6 months. Tying the enemy, bleeding him day after day. At Kyv & Kharkiv, at Mariupol, at Mykoilav, at Severodonetsk, at Bahkmut… ¤ All this blood, all these lives were sacrificed so that THIS would happen.
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko I can’t believe my eyes. ¤ Izium retaken, Lyman retaken (Svyatohirsk likely too) ¤ The Russian front sector in the northeast is collapsing by hours.
// map: Izium and Lyman circled [See comments]
🌎 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1568549025728569344?s=20/photo/1🔄 🐣 RT @WBearpJr You can also support the people of Ukraine by donating to Ukrainian groups on the ground…saving Ukrainian lives every day
@georgian_legion
@saintjavelin
@LegionOfFellas
@WCKitchen
@UkraineAidOps
@belwarriors🐣 RT @Spatanbld There is the fear that Russia will bring in more forces. The problem with that is that is the foundational strategy by Russia is heavy arty followed by armor. ¤ Arty is now scarce and coming from N Korea and armor is scarcer. Dipping into older and older equipment.
🐣 RT @andersostlund “Manhunt”. The Russians are really being routed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @StateOfUkraine Russian forces are fleeing Lyman (east of Izium) as Ukrainian forces enter the city. Scattered Russian soldiers (apparently some dressed as civilians) are desperately trying to escape east to the Luhansk region. In some areas the Ukrainian offensive is now a manhunt.🐣 RT @Spatanbld Let’s not forget…
Ukr strategy was helped by the most advanced war strategy and simulation by those evil US guys.
Having all the data in real time from US satellites makes ALL the difference in knowing were the enemy is vulnerable and exploitable.
SLAVA UKRAINI🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko The Kharkiv miracle
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Of course, what’s now happening is about truly masterful recon, command, control, op sec, the concentration of force, initiative, morale, accuracy etc etc.
But the result is so stunning that I just can’t help but try to give this historic event a romantic name :))🐣 RT @ChakhoyanAndrew Colossus with Feet of Clay – is what Soviet Union has become in the ‘80s. ¤ russia is no different. I’m not predicting it’s immediate collapse, but when it comes it’ll come fast. ¤ #russia has revealed its true – fascist – nature to the world. It’s ultimate demise is inevitable
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews We will remember the deed of each hero. Because you provide us with peace, defend our country, and do priceless feats.
We will always be grateful. And we will show our gratitude in actions, in support. We will prove that we are worthy of your efforts.🐣 RT @apmassaro3 Ukraine is deterring an invasion of Taiwan
🐣 RT @vtchakarova Putin, the “realist” understood the 21st century very well, but failed to adapt state, society and army to it. He steered Russia from the “biggest geopolitical catastrophe” in the 20th century to probably the final & complete dissolution of the Russian empire in the 21st century.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ulrichspeck Putin, the “realist”, fails to understand the 21st century.🐣 RT @matejcuchna Oh, there was a global plan, but it got blown up and burnt down on the roads to Kyiv, sunk to the bottom of the Black Sea and now it’s being trampled East of Kharkiv. It’s just… glorious!
🐣 RT @leonidragozin Girkin/Strelkov says Kharkiv retreat is Mukden – a battle in the Russo-Japanese war which the Russians lost and then lost the war. ¤ DNR propagandist Bezsonov says it is Narva – a battle Russia lost but won the war later. ¤ Pessimist is a well-informed optimist, they say.
🐣 RT @roos42890879 Kharkiv is a combined arms offensive, those are swift and focused on gaining land. ¤ Kherson is a motti, focused on trapping enemies. Finishing a motti off is slow and done by letting it mellow without resources, breaking it up and slowly crushing it pieace by piece.
🐣 RT @OAlexanderDK Wow, even Russian propagandist Andrey Rudenko is having an absolute crisis of confidence in the Russian military this morning.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1568512140213878784?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙ 🐣 RT @OAlexanderDK Alexander Kots is also not only playing off the retreat and loss of ground as the right thing, but also stating that NATO military forces and PMC forces from Academi (which actually recently change named again to Constellis) are to blame for the Ukrainian advance.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1568516005043011586?s=20/photo/1 -2⭕ 9 Sep 2022
Politico Mag, Aziz Huq: The Ominous Debate Over ‘Trump Judges’ https://tinyurl.com/mr4htnje “With so much money sloshing around, skepticism about what’s law and what’s politics is foreseeable”
// A fight over a special master in Trump’s documents case underscores how fragile an independent judiciary really is.🐣 RT @Flash_news_ua The United States, the G7 and the EU ban Russian oil shipments, reports the U.S. Treasury Department. ¤ Crude oil transportation will cease on December 5 this year, and oil products – on February 5, 2023.
[Letter:] https://twitter.com/Flash_news_ua/status/1568507528199159808?s=20/photo/1
// this is about capping the price🐣 RT @ EmmanuelleChaze 🇺🇦 While the world is mostly looking away, these soldiers taking part to the Kharkiv counteroffensive accomplish what many thought would take months, years, or wouldn’t happen at all. ¤ Never underestimate the determination of Ukrainians to defend, and retake their homeland.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Militarylandnet 📽️🇺🇦 Ukrainian soldiers hours prior to the #Kharkiv offensive, singing the anthem
💽 https://twitter.com/EmmanuelleChaze/status/1568465822854660097?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Watch this roundup of clips, featuring panicked Kremlin propagandists on several state TV programs, discussing impressive gains by Ukraine’s Armed Forces in reclaiming control over Ukrainian territory. More in my article
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1568310989149605888?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Faced with Ukraine’s mounting counteroffensive, which is rapidly achieving impressive gains, concerned Russian propagandists say their forces are battling an “enormous horde,” armed with the best Western weaponry and swimming in foreign specialists.
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Team Putin Admits Their Worst Case Scenario Is Coming True https://bit.ly/3Qzso9B
// In the face of major new setbacks in the war, Vladimir Putin’s cronies are now confessing that “mistakes” were made—and they’re getting “worried.”🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 CIA Chief Burns: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks like a FAILURE. ¤ “Not only has the weakness of the Russian military been exposed, but there is going to be long-term damage done to the Russian economy and to generations of Russians as a result of this.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Now that is going to burn (no pun intended) Putin and Russian intelligence services hearing this from the CIA Chief and I am here to watch their meltdown [link]🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Reading about Ukrainian operations around Kharkiv, I am struck yet again by the reality that the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II is taking place because a not-very-bright mid-level KGB guy thought he could recreate an empire that’s already failed at least twice.
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture The last 48 hours have seen quite a lot happening in #Ukraine. While the southern offensive continues, the Ukrainian operations around Kharkiv have achieved a significant penetration of Russian defences on the Kupiansk-Izium axis. What might this mean? 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1568390526734598145?s=20🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian defenders are driving south into Izyum district of Kharkiv region and are less than 20 km from joining UA forces in Slov’yans’k district of Donetsk region. ¤ Rashist occupiers are fleeing Svyatohirs’k and Lyman and going to the east. They aren’t reinforcing Izyum.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1568351539592404992?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The statement came in the form of a request to the State Duma, asserting that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine led to a massive loss of life, turned countless Russian men into disabled veterans, hurt the economy & fast-tracked NATO’s eastward expansion.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Police pursue local Russian lawmakers who urged charging Putin with treason and removing him from office. ¤ A local police station told the lawmakers they were facing legal charges “due to actions aimed at discrediting the current Russian government.”
⋙⋙ WaPo: Police pursue local Russian lawmakers who urged charging Putin with treason https://wapo.st/3TZiEYV🐣 RT @JavanshirValiye NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg:”Ukrainian forces were able to stop Moscow’s offensive in the Donbass, strike at the Russian rear and retake territory,Literally over the past few days, we have seen further progress both in the south in the Kherson in- in the Kharkiv region.”
🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko If Ukraine is capable of moving out and isolating Melitopol as well now, the Russian war is absolutely done.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHARKIV/ 2300 UTC 9 SEP/ Late reports on 9 SEP indicate that some UKR task units have engaged Russian armor within the city limits of Izium. At present, UKR artillery commands the only road entering or leaving Izium, the 0-211437. This will seal the urban battle space.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568373140480221184?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @flashman_andy The US was clearly joining in on the Kharkiv fun when they talked about war gaming the Kherson offensive. Very deliberately said they told Ukraine to pull back and limit scope of attack to Kherson. It’s been weeks of subterfuge and misdirection. Caught Russian forces off balance
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump presented his Russia hoax theory to a court. It went poorly. https://wapo.st/3xbNYKy “The judge made very clear that he understood Trump’s suit for what it obviously is … a ‘political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him’”
The judge made very clear that he understood Trump’s suit for what it obviously is. ¤ “At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm,” he wrote. “ … instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”
The appropriate forum is cable news or Truth Social. You can’t simply pluck a mushroom off a rotting log and transplant it onto a table and expect it to thrive. It needs the right environment, one in which credulity and fealty are abundant.
UAWire: Russia announces evacuation from Izyum and Kupyansk amid rapid advance of Ukrainian Forces in Kharkiv region https://bit.ly/3qntGtH
🐣 RT @DonLew87 WHOA! Trump filed a baseless lawsuit v. Hillary Clinton, ex-FBI Agent Peter Strzok et al in Florida. Back in April, Trump tried to get the assigned judge kicked off the case. The judge said no & basically accused Trump of judge-shopping. For what judge? Yup, Aileen Cannon ⬇️ /1
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/DonLew87/status/1568233958134915072?s=20/photo/1[Text:] I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020. Despite the odds, this case landed with me instead. And when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns. See, e.g., […]
TheDailyBeast, Shan Wu: The Justice Dept. Just Eviscerated the Trump-Appointed Judge in the Mar-a-Lago Case https://bit.ly/3BqwegS DOJ: The “real potential irreparable harm [is] the risk … to the government and public from delaying the criminal investigation in this case”
// In its appeal after Judge Aileen Cannon ordered a special master and banned the DOJ from reviewing the classified docs seized from Trump, the DOJ turned her case against her.🐣 RT @NormEisen BREAKING: now it’s official. DOJ is appealing the atrocious order stopping the criminal investigation & appointing a special master ¤ This goes with DOJ‘s filing yesterday requesting a stay pending appeal ¤ If Judge Cannon won’t give them the stay they will get it from the 11 Cir. /photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw This is one helluva rant. Listen and enjoy. Having threatened to sue #TheLincolnProject, Donald deserves every bit of it, and it’s great that @TheRickWilson is up to giving it to him. Good for you, Rick. Keep at it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Donald Trump is “Truthing” that he’s going to sue @ProjectLincoln. I have words for him.
💽 😅 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1567893032023769088?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @MattFoulger I hope one day we learn how much of this Kharkiv offensive was planned in conjunction with the Kherson campaign and how much of it was opportunistic. Must be a bit of both but I’d love to hear how it all came together.
AtlanticCouncil, Janusz Bugajski: Russia may not survive Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine https://bit.ly/3d5XQyj “The approaching rupture of the Russian Federation will be the third phase of imperial collapse following the unraveling of the Soviet bloc”
// book: Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture🐣 RT @petestrzok Trump’s lawsuit against me and many others just dismissed. The Court had some things to say.
[Court Doc:] https://bit.ly/3Rz5ssb🐣 RT @MeidasTouch This Trump lawsuit was just laughed out of court. Alina Habba was the attorney and was absolutely eviscerated by the judge. The judge also called out Trump for trying to ‘judge-shop’ the case to none other than… Judge Aileen Cannon! The judge also hinted at possible sanctions. [link]
🐣 RT @charlie_savage I am hard-pressed to recall ever reading a judicial opinion that is more scourging than how the judge wrapped up his dismissal of Trump’s lawsuit. It’s like the “I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul” clip from “Billy Madison.”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1568253251782410242?s=20/photo/1
// Judge response to Trump suit against Hillary Clinton et al🐣 RT @Tribelaw Those pesky EMPTY ENVELOPES marked “classified” or “top secret” should make it tough for anyone, not least Judge Cannon herself, to get a good night’s sleep as long as her order bars FBI experts from using any of the material seized at Mar-a-Lago in their criminal investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @hugolowell The Guardian: Barring FBI from using the classified docs “could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored”, DOJ said – suggesting more classified material might be unaccounted for.🐣 RT @ wartranslated Igor Girkin – Ukrainians will continue advancing aiming to strike approaching Russian reserves during the march. Russians may be forced to abandon Izyum very soon. ¤ https://t.me/strelkovii/3192
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1568201294418001923?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @AdmiralWarspite Plain for all to see, glad the IAEA had the balls to report the truth and squarely blame the aggressor side. However, as with all other international organizations post Feb 24, 2022 – they are now powerless to do anything about it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Reuters: Draft IAEA board resolution urges Russia to leave Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. ¤ A draft resolution prepared ahead of the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting next week condemns Russia’s “persistent violent actions against nuclear facilities in Ukraine,” reports Reuters.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer FLASH TRAFFIC/ KHARKIV /1440 UTC 9 SEP/ UKR forces have reached the Oskil River south of the important transport and rail center of Kupiansk. RU units are in increasing disarray with the capture of RU Lieutenant General Andrei Sychevoi, who was the frontal commander.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568243180394483713?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Axios JUST IN: A judge threw out Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, saying that he’s “seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him.” ¤ “And this Court is not the appropriate forum.”
⋙ Axios: Judge throws out Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton https://bit.ly/3eGfo4s
⋙⋙ [Court Doc:] https://bit.ly/3RvhAKF🐣 RT @tomishonen Enjoy the moment, my dear Tweeps ¤ This is the ‘brain fucker’ (his own words!) the mind rapist and alleged human being Steve Bannon, in cuffs. Perp walk baby! ¤ This moment is coming to ALL Trumpomobsters. One by one they’ll go down. Also remember Tom Barrack trial is starting now
¤ https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1568236096303022080?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua This whole front collapsed. It is gone. Kupyansk will be liberated, Izyum will be liberated, Russia lost it all. Now it is a question of how many Russians can escape, how many will die trying, and how many will surrender. [link]
🐣 RT @Mariia_Zolkina 🇺🇦 breakthrough in #Kharkiv region is the fastest assault that has taken place since 24.02. #Russia’s army hasn’t broken any 🇺🇦 defense line in such a rapid way. This a momentum of change, proving that strategic initiative is being re-captured by 🇺🇦. #RussiaIsATerroristState
⋙ 🐣 @Auriandra impressive that Ukr can launch two counterattacks of such different character in Kherson and Kharkiv, coordinated into an effective overall strategy ~ agile, determined, and smart🐣 RT @ HerrDr8 [Replying to @WarMonitor3] #OperationKupcake #2MagicBridgesUkraine #1PageAssessUKRWar #ORCLossRate #Ukraine One punter’s take on the advance SE of Kharkiv: “Operation Kupcake”. SEP 9 update.ORCs lacking effective reserves (they be busy on Kherson front) and UKR going full Sherman/Stonewall/BHLiddellHart.wm
😅🌎 https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1568214280209666049?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mhmck If they haven’t already, Russian commanders will abandon their troops in Izyum. That’s the way the rashist horde works. ¤ The invaders will make an attempt to defend Kup’yans’k, then fall back to Vovchans’k, then leave Kharkiv region altogether and fall back to Belgorod.
🐣 📋 RT @vchorashniy Russian Ministry of Finance confirms 48,759 Russian soldiers KIA. This doesn’t include Russian MIA or Donetsk & Luhansk “Republic” conscriptions. The report is from 28 August – BEFORE the Kherson and Kharkiv counteroffensives opened. Ukraine has NOT been inflating the numbers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mbk_center A leaked letter from the Russian Finance Ministry says that as of 28.8., 361.4 billion rubles have been paid to the families of the deceased
For each fallen soldier,it’s 7.4 million rubles‼️ In total,this gives 48,759 confirmed dead ¤ Missing and DPR + LLR soldiers are not counted /photo/1🐣 RT @ NATSEC09⚡️Ukrainian forces are likely to liberate Kupiansk, Kharkiv region, within the next 72 hours, seriously disrupting supply routes for Russians in eastern Ukraine — Institute for the Study of War (ISW)
🌎 https://twitter.com/NATSEC09/status/1568193641620938752?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ThomasVLinge #Ukraine : this pro-Russian map illustrates the extant of the Ukrainian push eastwards in #Kharkiv. ¤ It looks like the Ukrainians managed to reach the Oskil river, placing them between #Kupyansk and #Izyum.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ThomasVLinge/status/1568188191294869506?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @warminitor3 Ukrainian Kharkiv Counteroffensive Map: 08/09/2022 Ukrainian forces have liberated 20+ villages in a spearhead operation and are fighting in the settlements just west of Kup’yans’k.
🌎 https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1567988834918350855?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Throughout the Russian invasion of #Ukraine, I have watched and written about Russian #strategy in the war. In this thread, given ongoing Ukrainian offensives, I examine whether Russia has ceded the initiative to Ukraine. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1568116583100481539?s=20⭕ 8 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ¤ ⚡️US to intensify efforts to reform UN Security Council due to Russia’s war. ¤ Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said the U.S. will push for reforms within the Security Council, including its veto rule. She noted that since 2009, Russia has cast 26 vetos.
⋙ 🐣 Ukraine lost a higher percent of its citizens in WW2 than did Russia
⋙⋙ 🐣 Here’s the source: ¤ Wikipedia: https://bit.ly/3LgBnuw ¤ Of the former Soviet Republics, only Belorussia lost a larger share of its population.
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1568116844187291651?s=20/photo/1🚫🐣 RT @ berkoff_ryan Putin and the Russian military will be a laughingstock if the Kharkiv front collapses. There are murmurings of discontent, a possible coup in Russia against Putin, and talk of bringing treason charges against him. NATO expanded eastward, Donbas was not liberated, high casualties
// no source🐣 RT @Kasparov63 What I called “the axis of autocracy” in 2006, referring at the time to Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. It shifts, but the key is that dictatorships stick together, learning from and supporting one another.
⋙ 🧵 RT @WilliamYang120 By @joshrogin: “…, Russian President Vladimir Putin is devoting considerable time and energy to fostering a new axis of autocrats that is bringing Moscow into ever tighter collaboration with #China, North Korea and Iran.”
⋙⋙ WaPo, Josh Rogin: Putin is trying to build a new axis of autocrats https://wapo.st/3BonMP7
📌 https://twitter.com/WilliamYang120/status/1568035980661374976?s=20🧵 RT @WilliamYang120 By @joshrogin: “…, Russian President Vladimir Putin is devoting considerable time and energy to fostering a new axis of autocrats that is bringing Moscow into ever tighter collaboration with #China, North Korea and Iran.”
⋙ WaPo, Josh Rogin: Putin is trying to build a new axis of autocrats https://wapo.st/3BonMP7
📌 https://twitter.com/WilliamYang120/status/1568035980661374976?s=20🐣 RT @andersostlund It has shocked me too. Ukraine and Ukrainians have been continuously underestimated.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua It shocks me that there are people who supposedly work in ”intelligence” or “geopolitics” on any level who actually believed Russia would win a war with Ukraine. It is baffling to me. Complete ignorance of the Ukrainian people. There was never any chance of that happening.🐣 RT @komarnyckyj T[h]e stab in the back myth is inevitable and one reason why Russia needs to be utterly defeated and broken into its colonies. We do not want Strelkov to reprise Ludendorff’s role with a potential Hitler in fact several waiting in the wings.
⋙ 🐣 RT @letheisslow Russian Telegram channels continue screaming for a nuclear blast, obliteration of the Ukrainian cities, and “hits of the decision-making centers.” They are still waiting for the advent of a mythical “real” Russian military.🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ The new DOJ brief and attached FBI declaration – as well as the taint team motion to unseal its prior filing on the taint review process – are A+ filings; well-written, legally cogent and supported, and strategically 100% dead on. Will help any appeal to have this in the record.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ Nerd point re new DOJ filing: DOJ dropped reference to the PRA, recognizing it doesn’t govern a host of docs that are likely at issue here (eg docs from agencies are NOT presidential records); & there is better law for proposition that classified docs belong solely to the USgovt.🐣 RT @00a03d Although many presidents met with Queen Elizabeth, Barack Obama was the only President invited by the Queen to return after he left office. She reportedly regarded him as a pillar of integrity – a man of stability, decency, and rectitude.
🖼 https://twitter.com/00a03d/status/1567968066612637697?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ DOJ used the big crayons to spell out for Judge Cannon why Trump has no right to review of classified docs. Trump:
-does not own govt classified records
-has no right to have government records returned
-docs don’t contain attorney-client privilege info between Trump and attys.🐣 RT @atrupar if i have this straight, Trump’s line now is that the FBI planted classified documents in his house, but also he declassified them. or something.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1567993870125830145?s=20/photo/1[Text:] ….They leak, lie, plant fake evidence, allow the spying on my campaign, deceive the FISA Court, RAID and Break-Into my home, lose documents, and then they ask me, as the 45th President of the United States, to trust them. Look at the I.G. Reports on Comey, McCabe, and others. Things are safer in the middle of Central Park!
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump isn’t happy about DOJ appealing his favorite judge.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1567978380573945856?s=20/photo/1[Text:] So now the FBI & Biden Department of “Justice” leakers are going to spend Millions of Dollars, & vast amounts of Time & Energy, + to appeal the Order on the “Raid of Mar-a-Lago Document Hoax,” by a brilliant and courageous Judge whose words of wisdom rang true throughout our Nation, instead of fighting the record setting corruption and crime that is taking place right before their very eyes. They SPIED on my Campaign, lied to FISA COURT, told Facebook “quiet,” preside over worst CRIME WAVE ever!!
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder 1/3. “Putin’s propaganda machine, like the rest of his regime, is funded by revenue from oil and gas exports. The current Russian order, in other words, depends for its existence on a world that has not made the transition to sustainable energy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder 2/3. “Russia’s war on Ukraine can be understood as a kind of preview of what uncontrolled climate change will look like:
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder 3/3. “petulant wars waged by mendacious hydrocarbon oligarchs, racial violence instead of the pursuit of human survival via technology, shortages and famine in much of the world, and catastrophe in parts of the global South.”
⋙⋙ ForeignAffairs: Ukraine Holds the Future https://fam.ag/3D7yWsV
// The War Between Democracy and Nihilism🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/0130 UTC 9 SEP/ UKR continues to identify and strike logistical & ammo depots on the S bank of the Dnieper. Often Partisans identify ammunition and fuel convoys as they arrive at crossing points; these depots are rapidly interdicted by UKR precision strike artillery.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568046415863074816?s=20/photo/1
// Kherson front🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MORALE IS A FACTOR: “Soldiers” of the puppet Luhansk People’s Republic confront an officer about the conditions of their service and complaints that “officers loot everything”. Count on it: such troops will not stand and fight. Putin’s allies will soon scatter to the wind.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ VolodyaTretyak Very chaotic conversation, but we could hear some interesting things. “LNR” soldiers are not satisfied that:
– they fight for 7 months without rotation;
– officership loot everything.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568051711071117312?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @harrylitman The DOJ filing is devastating on several of the errors in Cannon’s opinion. It will tie both the judge and Trump in knots. Here are a few of the highlights.
1. She held that there could potentially be some interest for Trump in executive privilege materials.That was far-fetched
📌 https://twitter.com/harrylitman/status/1568019616395558912?s=20⋙ on its own, but 100% untenable under the circumstances, which is that Biden has waived and there’s a special need for the evidence in a pending criminal investigation. That’s the Nixon case, and he Supreme Court itself already has made that clear re Trump in Thompson.
⋙ she whiffed on it completely but the DOJ brief makes it unavoidable: “although this Court suggested that Plaintiff might be able to assert executive privilege as to some of the seized records, Supreme Court precedent makes clear that any possible assertion of privilege
⋙ would be overcome by the government’s “demonstrated, specific need” for that evidence. United States v. Nixon. That point a) unassailable and b) completely blows out of the water any need for a special master to analyze executive privilege (which would be completely amorphous).
⋙ 2. Her opinion totally misunderstood the separation of powers issue, confusing the case with ones involving Congress, not the Exec Branch. DOJ clobbers her: “it would be especially unwarranted to prohibit that review and use while authorizing other personnel
⋙ in the Executive Branch to review and use the same info.”
3. The opinion shows a profound misunderstanding of the way that counter-intelligence and criminal reviews are integrated, as a result of which impossible to tell the DOJ to just stand down on the criminal side.
⋙ So, “The Intelligence Community’s review and assessment cannot be readily segregated from the DOJ and FBI’s activities in connection with the ongoing criminal investigation & uncertainty regarding the bounds of the Court’s order and its implications for the activities of the FBI
⋙ has caused the Intelligence Community, in consultation with DOJ, to pause temporarily this critically important work.” They have to do that lest the criminal investigation wind up being undermined. I.e. She is causing irreparable harm to national security now.
⋙ 4. She made the same ham-handed gambit at least 3 times, holding that b/c Trump has some interest in the few A-C materials, that suffices for standing,for showing of irreparable injury, and for showing likelihood of success as to the whole kit and caboodle. Wrong.
⋙ “even if Plaintiff has made “a colorable showing of a right to possess at least some of the seized property” sufficient to establish his standing to request that a special master. . .he categorically cannot make that showing with respect to documents marked as classified.”
⋙ Now all this was obviously wrong on Monday when she wrote it, so can’t just expect the scales to fall from her eyes. But she has been pilloried on all sides, and DOJ is now tagging her w/ a harm to the national interest that she can’t possibly rebut. And they are intelligently
⋙ seeking just a modification of the stay for now.
The most important point is she will be forced to re-consider and defend if she can (and she can’t cogently) her implicit ruling that Trump has a potential possessory interest in the public docs. If she backs away from that🧵 RT @ KofmanMichael Brief thoughts on UA Kharkiv offensive. It appears ambitious, intended to envelop Izyum and try to trap Russian forces there. Likely seeking to interdict ground lines of communication at Kupyansk. The Oskil river east of Izyum makes the pocket vulnerable for RU forces. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1567982819770798080?s=20🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer. TAKEN: Yesterday, videos featured a RU officer captured on the Kharkiv front. He was assumed to be a local commander– he was, in fact, Lieutenant General Andrei Sychevoi, General in command RU’s “West” Group. Sychevoi is the most senior Russian officer captured since WW II.
¤ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1568035564452024321?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @GlasnostGone #Ukraine’s president Zelensky famously said – I need ammo, not a ride (to safety). Meanwhile leaving their Russian flags behind, Russian soldiers scream – I NEED A RIDE, NOT AMMO. Liberated large town of Balakliya in northeastern Kharkiv region.
💽 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1567959217662984192?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING – I sense a White Flag being raised here by Cannon, who-to extend the metaphor-may hold her fire on the 100 documents. She is seeing if Trump will just agree to DOJ proposal; she does not have to say she was wrong; and she avoids the embarrassment of losing on appeal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney UPDATE: Judge Cannon has issued an order asking the parties to consider, in Friday’s filings, DOJ’s views about the 100 classified documents retrieved from Mar-aLago
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1568033246209884161?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] PAPERLESS ORDER: In formulating the proposed order of appointment to be filed tomorrow, which shall include the special master’s schedule and order of operations, the parties are instructed to consider Defendant’s position as to the approximately 100 documents discussed in the Motion for Partial Stay 69 Signed by Judge Aileen M. Cannon on 9/8/2022. (dsy) (Entered: 09/08/2022)WaPo: Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned over the U.K. for 70 years, dies at 96 https://wapo.st/3RqRMiW
// The monarch was a constant and reassuring figure as she helped lead her country through a period of radical shifts in the latter half of the 20th century.🧵 RT @ISW #Kharkiv Update:¤ #Ukrainian forces advanced at least 20km deep into #Russian-controlled territory north of #Izyum toward #Kupyansk and recaptured about 400 square kilometers on September 6-7. /1
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1567707899186802688?s=20/photo/1⭕ 7 Sep 2022
🚫 🐣 RT @GirkinGirkin [Tr] “The beginning of a catastrophe you understand is a matter of a couple of days.”*
(*) From a telegram to Headquarters, sent on September 13 on behalf of the command of the Southwestern Front and signed by the chief of staff of the front, Major General Vasily Ivanovich Tupikov
// no idea how authentic this is @GirkinGirkin is sopposedly Igor Girkin
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @HickPhilistine [Replying to @GirkinGirkin]
[TextLink Tr:] https://twitter.com/HickPhilistine/status/1567718440257060864?s=20/photo/1
// panicked message to @GirkinGirkin; spacing added
[ Comments: 13 Sept “It’s a link to 1942, means that UAF is going to repeat the operation Fredericus”; “1941, the encirclement of Soviet troops in the Kyiv region” ~ comments][Text Tr:] Risk of catastrophe near Izyum. Opponent by reports from the field comes it and along the line Shevchenko-Kupyansk, and not only on Kunya. If he manages to take Kupyansk, then he will be able to successfully advance south along the P79 road, covering himself from the left flank with a reservoir on the river. Oskol. At the same time, the Izyum group is completely cut off from the rest of the RF Armed Forces. Our troops will not be able to escape to the neighboring coast of Oskol. There are only two bridges, in Gorokhovatka and Senkovo, they are easy to destroy with the HIMARS MLRS. And our main reserves are far away, and it is simply unrealistic to transfer them quickly to the area needed for the counteroffensive within a reasonable time. The RF Armed Forces, in theory, have one “Road of Life” – through the settlement. Shard to the east. But for it, in a few hours, battles with the APU grouping from the Valley may begin. If those troops that are now available north of the Shevchenkovo-Kupyansk road do not perform a miracle in a couple of days, and if the Armed Forces of Ukraine have enough strength to complete the operation, and if the grouping that is now launching an attack from the Valley can cut the Oskol road – Yatskovka, then Russia will face the most heavy military defeat after the defeat near Kharkov in the winter of 1943. Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov are one step away from an unthinkable achievement – the strategic defeat of the RF Armed Forces by a deliberately weaker enemy with almost no aviation, and with their own aviation. No, actually there are still chances Banal stubborn resistance on the ground can buy time to maneuver reserves. But he may not be allowed to. Ukrainians may not have enough strength for such maneuver. But for now it’s enough. It is possible that they provide a blow applied to the north, and the main one on Kunya, to the south. But that doesn’t change much.
I wonder if they will report this to V. Putin? Most likely not today. Today he will still be in control.RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: Why Is Russia Losing on 3 Fronts? Math (the Short Answer) https://bit.ly/3BntIYP
// In moving troops from stronger positions in Ukraine’s east to weaker positions in the country’s south, Russia exposed those troops to more danger in the south while making its eastern positions more vulnerable to counterattack, with predictable results playing out now🐣 RT @DmitryOpines We are witnessing the deflation of a staggering, unshakeable hubris: ¤ That Russian leaders could neglect leadership and logistics, brutalise troops, steal endlessly and ubiquitously… yet still remain an unstoppable fighting force because 77 years ago the Red Army took Berlin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated I’ve been waiting for 12 years for someone to beat the shit out of the Russian army and their fake grandeur. I still can’t believe this is finally happening.🐣 RT @ thedailybeast More than 370 people in the Oath Keepers’ records are believed to work in law enforcement, including as police chiefs and sheriffs, while an additional 100 are thought to be serving in the military.
⋙ DailyBeast/AP: Leaked Oath Keepers Member List Includes Cops, Soldiers, and Elected Officials https://bit.ly/3LaBKYp🐣 RT @andersostlund Now that General Zaluzhnyi has admitted the strike on Saki was made with long range weapons and not a special forces action the Crimean Bridge seems like a well chosen next target.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenseU [Ukr DOD] The weather forecast says it is going to be very hot in Crimea. ¤ It’s time for the rus invaders to prepare for a swim. It takes a lot of strength to swim to Sochi or Yeysk. ¤ BTW the Guinness Book of World Records may include a new record for the longest open water swim.🐣 RT @will_doran In a rare move, the group of all 50 states’ Supreme Court chief justices wrote to SCOTUS, urging them to shoot down the argument NC Republican lawmakers are making–that there should be no checks and balances for election laws–in their “Independent State Legislature” case #ncpol
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/will_doran/status/1567576239602339841?s=20/photo/1[Text:] The Conference files briefs amicus curiae only when critical interests of the state courts are at stake. This case involves the authority of state courts to interpret and review the constitutionality of state laws regulating the time, place, and manner of federal elections, and this Court’s resolution may determine the constraints, if any, that the U.S. Constitution places on such state-court review. The Conference has a strong interest in the States’ sovereign right to determine the structure of their state governments, including the authority of state courts and the role of state constitutions within that structure. …
🐣 RT @POTUS Barack and Michelle helped lift the American people’s burden of fear with the blessing of hope. ¤ That’s the gift of the Obama presidency to history. And it’s a gift I felt personally. It was my honor to unveil their White House portraits today.
¤ https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1567640240533168130?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @McFaul Xi so far has made the decision that he doesn’t want to get dragged into Putins invasion of Ukraine. Xi is not sending chips, ammo, weapons, etc. just profiting from lower than market prices for Russian energy. Let’s see if Putin can change his mind in Samarkand. I doubt it.
🐣 RT @MthrSuperiorBen Fun fact: ¤ Spock himself has links to Ukraine. He was born in Boston to Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, which is in present-day Ukraine. His parents left Iziaslav separately: his Dad walked over the border into Poland while his Mom and Grandma hid under bales of hay in a wagon.
¤ https://twitter.com/MthrSuperiorBen/status/1567658339563372544?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en President @zelenskyy congratulated intelligence officers on Military Intelligence Service Day in Ukraine. ¤ He thanked for important results near Kyiv, on Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, in Kharkiv, Donbas, Mariupol, defending Azovstal, in other directions as well as behind enemy lines.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1567585412675260416?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Ukraine’s military appears to have launched an unexpected counteroffensive in northern Kharkiv Oblast while keeping up its southern campaign centered around the city of Kherson.
⋙ KyivIndependent: Ukraine reportedly liberates Kharkiv Oblast settlements in its second recent counteroffensive effort https://bit.ly/3D965oc🐣 RT @McFaul Putin claims that Ukraine is not a separate nation or identity. And yet few have done more to consolidate Ukraine as a united nation and strong identity than Putin.
🐣 RT @SecDef Just landed at @RamsteinAirBase in Germany, where tomorrow I’ll host the next in person Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting. These dozens of nations coming together to meet in person is proof of the world’s unwavering commitment to our Ukrainian friends.
🐣 RT @OriginalRamayan ‘This week we’ve good news from the Kharkiv region. Probably, you all have already seen reports about the activity of 🇺🇦 defenders. And I think every citizen feels proud of our warriors. It is a well-deserved pride, a right feeling.’ ~Zelenskyy ¤ 💪🏼🇺🇦💪🏼
🐣 RT @ABlackPolitical A New Mexico judge just removed disgraced January 6 rioter and Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin from his elected position as a county commissioner for his role in the US Capitol attack.
⋙ 🐣 curious to see SCOTUS find anything but the “original meaning” in this act
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1567450946430435333?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection
“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”‼️ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer PUTIN’S FIZZLE: Cutting Europe’s gas supply has been Putin’s threat of choice– with consumers dreading extortionate prices for winter heating. But with US another supplies now flooding in– the price of Nat Gas just dropped 37%. Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv reports.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JayinKyiv With the US and others now flooding gas into Europe, even Putin’s “nuclear option” didn’t work. ¤ EU gas price now down -37% from 2 weeks ago. It’s over.
◕ https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1567087612485111811?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @RALee85 According to the Russian Starshe Eddy channel, not only is Balakliya encircled but Ukrainian forces appear to have taken Volokhiv Yar over night. They think Ukraine will try to push towards Kupyansk.
// Action around Kharkiv yesterday; links to Vets only site; text atts in Ru
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1567395435685216256?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @ Another Russian Telegram channel says that Ukraine increased the intensity of missiles strikes, particularly HIMARS, over the past week on Izyum, Kupyansk, and other areas. They say Ukraine has been preparing for the offensive for at least a month. 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Another Russian channel says “don’t expect good news today” before saying Russian units there are below 50% manning levels while the staff are bloated. Two Rosgvardia detachments have been fighting for more than a day encircled near Volokhiv Yar. 3/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Vladlen Tatarsky says he trusts the info from the Starshe Eddy and Zapiski Veteran channels who are both involved in the fighting in the Kharkiv-Izyum direction. He says the two encircled Rosgvardia units are SOBR from Samara and Bashkiria. 4/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Another Ru account says they are only fighting at partial strength and that the Russian state must be fully mobilized. They question why capabilities are being shown at Vostok 2022 when Russian soldiers lack artillery and aviation. “We have a long and difficult fight ahead of us” [5/]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ [Link to Ru channel; asks for phone] 6/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ [Link to ⇊]
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ Interestingly, a number of Russian Telegram channels have been talking about a Ukrainian buildup in Kharkiv over the past month, but it appears Ukraine may still have achieved surprise today
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @ This was Putin, Shoigu, and Gerasimov at Vostok 2022 yesterday as Ukraine launched its offensive in the Balakliya area. 8/
💽 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1567407664883277835?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Tatarsky tells Rosgvardia troops to learn how to call for fire before deploying and how to use AGS grenade launchers, ATGM, and SPG-9. A reminder that they aren’t trained for conventional war. 9/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Another Russian Channel questions why battalion and company commanders didn’t see the offensive coming and prepare and that they shouldn’t have made a public warning if higher ignored them. They suggest senior officers are incompetent and ignored Intel.10/⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisO_wiki [Replying to @RALee85] Translation: The Khokhols [Ukrainians] managed to take the northern road to Kupyansk at least under fire control. At night there were battles near Volkhov Yar, and it is quite possible that the enemy managed to knock us out of it. /1
⋙⋙⋙⋙🐣 RT @JJanegle Khokhol: A derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians. Khokhol literally means a sheaf or tuft of cereal stalks and is derived from an old Slavic word. As a term used to describe Ukrainians, it may have originally referred to the customary tufts of hair worn by Cossacks, oseledtsi”. /photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisO_wiki Balakleya is in an operational encirclement, the AFU will continue to develop success and it is likely that they will try to reach Kupyansk, cutting off both Balakleya and Izyum. They have the strength to do so, as amateur bloggers have repeatedly written. /2
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisO_wiki Let’s see how the Russian General Staff responds and what level of operational art it will demonstrate. Well, ordinary soldiers and officers of the Izyum front continue to fight, as they did for the previous six months of the war. /end⭕ 6 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @ vonderleyen There can be no business as usual with Russia. ¤ We propose to fully suspend the EU Visa Facilitation Agreement and not to recognise Russian passports issued in occupied regions. ¤ Visa facilitation is a token of trust, which Russia’s war of aggression has completely shattered
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Dobbs makes all the difference. Both sides know it. https://wapo.st/3D4qWJg “This is a moment to throw old political assumptions out the window and to consider that Democrats could buck historic trends this cycle.” ~ TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier #abortion
Afflicted by a combination of arrogance, insularity and shortsightedness, political analysts for months prematurely declared that Republicans would sail into power on a red wave, that abortion would be a nonissue and that President Biden would drag down his party. Just as they entirely missed the rise of MAGA voters in 2016 (only to then fixate on Rust Belt diners for the next four years), their prognostication appears to have gone haywire again.
Few analysts have captured the political effect of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning the right to abortion as well as TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier. “In my 28 years analyzing elections, I’ve never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics: Women are registering to vote in numbers I’ve never witnessed,” he wrote for the New York Times. “I’ve run out of superlatives to describe how different this moment is. … This is a moment to throw old political assumptions out the window and to consider that Democrats could buck historic trends this cycle.”
A recent Wall Street Journal poll provides a snapshot: “60% of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 55% in March.” When it comes to which party voters trust on abortion, “48% said Democrats, 27% Republicans, 16% said neither and 6% said both equally. A total of 41% of independents said they trust Democrats most to handle abortion policy, compared with 18% who said Republicans were best.”
🐣 RT @Jose_Pagliery Yesterday, a South Florida federal judge issued a bizarre ruling halting the FBI’s investigation of Trump. She went out of her way to help him. @thedailybeast
took a look at how Trump has been trying to get this judge for a while.
⋙ DailyBeast, Jose Pagliery: Trump Went Judge Shopping and It Paid Off in Mar-a-Lago Case https://bit.ly/3x1L3E9
Trump got the judge he wanted in the Mar-a-Lago case: One he appointed. And she just gave him the first decision he wanted.🐣 RT @MilesTaylorUSA Donald Trump had the Chernobyl of presidencies. We will be dealing with the fallout for decades.
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Putin’s 3-day invasion of Ukraine is going so much “according to plan” that after almost 200 days he is now recruiting soldiers in Russian prisons, begging Iran for drones, and buying ammunition from North Korea
🧵 RT @NoahBookbinder BREAKING: A huge victory. @CREWcrew represented residents suing to disqualify from office under the 14th amendment a New Mexico county commissioner who participated in the January 6 insurrection. Today a court ordered Couy Griffin removed from office.
📌 https://twitter.com/NoahBookbinder/status/1567172073461522434?s=20
⋙ CREW: Judge removes Griffin from office for engaging in the January 6 insurrection https://bit.ly/3RpPL6w🐣 RT @McFaul Striking to me that Putin has to buy weapons and ammo from North Korea because Xi won’t sell him stuff. Some “alliance.”
WaPo: Material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities seized at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago https://wapo.st/3etZ0UT //➔ think such information might be valuable to that country’s enemies?
// Some seized documents were so closely held, only the president, a Cabinet-level or near-Cabinet level official could authorize others to know━━━━━━━▼ Surprise attack
🧵 🌎 RT @MarkHertling Reports indicate Zelenskyy will announce tonight (Ukraine time) that UA is executing operations in Kharkiv Oblast. ¤ This confirms RU inability to maneuver forces between theater locations & within their force’s defensive “stance” to counter Ukrainian offensive actions. ¤ Why? 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1567180051057082368?s=20As noted from the start of the RU illegal invasion, intel indicated RU had aligned a force estimated in size of 190,000 troops around UKR’s ~1400 mile border, with a plan of attack along 9 main axes. ¤ A large part of that force was in the north & it was decimated. 2/
In phase 2 (starting in April), RU shifted their northern forces to the eastern Donbas to try to achiever more limited objectives. ¤ Remember, there was a shoddy attempt to “regenerate” the forces for that second offensive…they rushed it, and UA kept up the pressure. 3/
Yesterday, UAF proclaimed they had reached the level where 50,000 RU soldiers are “casualties.” Not sure if those are killed, wounded, captured, deserted…but if close to the truth, that’s 1/3 of the original RU force ¤ Most were likely fighting forces, not support troops. 4/
After successful Donbas defense, Zelenskyy & Gen Zaluzhnyi saw an opportunity to shift forces to southern Ukraine. ¤ Very smart move, since it was difficult for a depleted & immobile RU force to move to counter. ¤ Plus, UKR has interior lines, easier for shifting. 5/
Add to that, UA has reinforced their forces with new soldiers, new equipment. Plus, they are resisting in areas where RU is trying to defending. ¤ RU is nursing wounds, bearing loss of combat capabilities (people & equipment), have bad leaders. 6/
UA defense & small-scale counterattacks in Donbas along w/ recent deliberate attacks in Kherson (destroying RU logistics, bridges & ammo dumps) has generated a commander’s favorite ally: momentum! 7/
Russia’s additional problems:
-a massively depleted force with few reinforcements
-hard to move/maneuver
-active UKR resistance + more capable & precision UKR conventional force (with good targeting)
-hampered supply lines + dysfunctional logistics
-crush of sanctions 8/If I were Ukraine’s field commander, here are my questions:
-Can we continue Donetz defense (all indications, yes).
-Are actions in Kherson Oblast achieving objectives (yes)
-If we attack toward Kharkiv will it draw RU forces away from Donbas & increase pressure (likely) 9/I have no insight into Gen Zaluzhnyi’s thinking, but he’s a good commander. ¤ He’s likely considering these things…knowing a move on Kharkiv is bold & risky. ¤ My guess: we’ll see continued offensive in Kherson, continued active defense in Donetsk, smaller Kharkiv offensive 10/
🐣 RT @ @GlasnostGone If #Ukraine’s launched an offensive of some kind in Kharkiv region, this will be another master stroke of military genius. Putin’s medieval 🇷🇺 no longer dictates what happens in 🇺🇦. Its bedraggled forces are on the defensive & for many, it’s a defence of their bloodstained lives.
x https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1567169483889934347?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Leshchenkos Tonight there is going to be a great news from President Zelenskyy on counteroffensive operation in Kharkiv region.
// bio: “Advisor of President Zelensky’s chief of staff. Deputy head of supervisory board of Ukrainian railways. Former MP. Anticorruption Activist and Journalist”🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien If the Ukrainians have achieved operational surprise around Kharkiv, will demonstrate just how the Russian military is In disarray. I assumed through all the different monitoring devices (from satellites, to UAVs to cyber and more) that such operational surprise would be…
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Almost impossible. Plus it’s right over the border from Russia. If the Russians missed this, their military is in worse shape than expected. Also a really good·Also a really good sign that Ukraine has its security in the best possible shape.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Had some reports that the Russians did have an idea that the Ukrainians were going to attack in [Kharkiv] and just couldn’t respond. If so, that’s a disarray of a different kind and shows the inflexibility in the Russian military🐣 RT @ mhmck Today, Ukrainian defenders are making some territorial gains over the Russian fascist invaders in every region along the battlefront: Mykolayiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk.
🐣 RT @NikaMelkozerova As Armed Forces of Ukraine storm Russian occupied Balakalia in Kharkiv Oblast, Russian military reporters are crying: we thought main strike would be in Kherson. Aaah we got f.cked hard!”
🐣 RT @mhmck I created a new map for the battlefront in Kharkiv region between the Pechenihy reservoir and the Izyum pine forests. ¤ The red line for the battlefront is indicative only. “Grey zone” settlements are steadily becoming Ukrainian-controlled, such as Verbivka today.
🌎 https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1567161383854252035?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @wartranslated There’s a rumoured advance of Ukrainian forces in Balakleya in Kharkiv Oblast, and the Russians are practically in shock from what I can see.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @TarasBerezovets So, Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv has begun. Keep our fingers crossed.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 There is some interesting development happening on the Kharkiv frontline. ¤ Godspeed to the warriors of Ukraine🔥😉
━━━━━━━▲
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES 1/ President Biden has offered a compromise to tens of millions of Republican voters who don’t want to abandon democracy. He has said let’s work together and destroy the MAGA movement. That is the compromise. It is necessary. It must be crushed to save America.
📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1567128357258596353?s=20⋙ 2/ Trump’s rhetoric is becoming more overtly extreme and is filled with promises of violence and revenge. He means every word. The Political coverage is filled with stories about fascists like @JDVance1 and @bgmasters trying to soften their anti woman extremism in time for Nov
⋙ 3/ The American people must end this madness. The American people must rise up against the coward politicians who have gone off the rails and vandalized the American Republic to sate Trump and protect themselves from his ire. The fall campaign is underway and the choice is here
4/ Donald Trump is deranged, addled and depraved. He is unfit, disgraced and incompetent. He leads a minority faction that is beyond belligerent. They are teeming with menace. Enough. What they stand for is the worst cause since the last stand of Jim Crow and the Confederacy.
⋙ 5/ The American way of life is utterly dependent on the American people picking their leaders in fair elections. The lies about the election results by MAGA extremists and Trump parrots have poisoned faith and belief in AmerIcan democracy and convinced millions of susceptible
⋙ 6/ suckers that they live in an occupied dystopia that is plotting against them in a massive conspiracy that only Trump and his loyal team of patriots can stop. It leaves the overwhelming majority slack jawed while the Trump minority led by some of the worst politicians in our
⋙ 7/ history stoke the most feeble among them with crude masturbatory fantasies about Civil War, race war, religious war, the end times and a thousand other permutations of apocalyptic idiocy. Around all of the teeming madness is a level of grift and corruption that beggars belief.
⋙ 8/ America has endured great crisis-is in its history. Perhaps what is different about this one is the staggering investment on the part of so many in insisting that what is clearly happening isn’t at all. The great national gaslighting rolls along for now. Time to stop it cold🐣 RT 📊 @SimonWDC Biden’s job approval has improved dramatically in recent weeks, moving up 10 points from -18.7 to -8.7. ¤ He is at now 44% approval. This is a BFD. 2/
◕ https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1567121151779897345?s=20/photo/1
// 538 poll average, likely or registered voters🐣 RT @MarkHertling Recall last February’s assessment predicted “about six months needed” for sanctions to affect Russia. ¤ August 24 was the 6 month date. ¤ Indicators: need for nKPR ammo, drones from Iran, T62 tank callup, 60% failure rate of precision missiles, Nord Stream extortion….
⋙ 🐣 RT @EU_Commission We have mobilised our economic might like never before. ¤ Our far-reaching sanctions are causing colossal damage to the Kremlin’s ability to wage war. And the damage will only grow over time. ¤ Putin himself has admitted it. ¤ #StandWithUkraine🐣 RT @GlasnostGone No ones happy in Mordor. Typically #Putin’s disguising his bullet proof vest under the bulky military jacket. Tries in vain to see anything good happening through the binoculars & ignores Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu & chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov.
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlbildt Would anyone describe this is a happy and confident trio? Putin obviously doesn’t even want to talk with the commander of the armed forces.
💽 https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1567091333986140161?s=20/photo/1
// very sullen group taking seats🐣 RT @mhmck Today, Ukrainian defenders are making some territorial gains over the Russian fascist invaders in every region along the battlefront: Mykolayiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk.
🐣 RT @hrvatina1989 What Russia has achieved: 1. Finland and Sweden in NATO 2. Lost major European customers for energy forever 3. Pariah of the world 4. Economy in toilet 🚽 5. 50k+ dead Orcs and counting. 6. Ukraine armed to the teeth forever. 7. Known for genocide. #Kherson #SlavaUkraini 🇺🇦
⭕ 5 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @wartranslated ¤ Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Stepan: https://twitter.com/childsacrifice1
// war update
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1566934770399019010?s=20🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian Gazprom published a video “Winter will be big” where company turns off gas flow & ice age begins in Europe. ¤ Do they really think they can kill thousands of Ukrainians, capture territories of another country, and Europe will look the other way, afraid of gas blackmail?
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1566904072766095363?s=20/photo/1
// Gazprom video🐣 RT @tribelaw Yup. Totally lousy opinion. Utterly lawless. But 6 of the 11 judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals are Trump appointees rather like District Court Judge Cannon. Sadly, that tells you more than the learned analysis by @neal_katyal does. Sigh.
⋙ 🧵 RT @neal_katyal This special master opinion is so bad it’s hard to know where to begin: 1. She says Biden hasn’t weighed in on whether docs protected by Exec Privilege. Nonsense. The archives letter (which DOJ submitted to the Judge) makes it clear current President thinks none of this … ¤ is privileged. Archivist says it is “not a close” question
📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1566906085365235712?s=20⋙ 2. Judge enjoins the entire investigation because some of the material might be subject to Executive Privilege. But Executive Priv isn’t some post-presidential privilege that allows Presidents to keep documents after ¤ they leave office. At most, it simply means these are Executive documents that must be returned to the archives. It doesn’t in any way shape or form mean they can’t be used in a criminal prosecution about stolen docs…
⋙ 3. She says the “reputational” harm to Trump justifies a special master. That’s insane–every crim deft has reputational harm. Are we now going to have special masters in every crim investigation?
⋙ 4. She says the Special Master should screen materials for exec privilege, without ever once explaining what specific material is subject to exec priv, particularly when the incumbent President rejects the assertion. How is the Master supposed to figure that intricate Q out?
⋙ 5. She says that because some tiny percentage of materials might be privileged, the entire investigation over all the materials has to stop. That’s a bazooka when one needs at most a scalpel.
⋙ 6. She tries to enjoin the Exec Branch from using these materials in an investigation, but the govt has already reviewed all the materials. It makes no sense.
⋙ 7. She says Trump suffers irreparable harm in interim, but the only harm she isolates is he won’t have the docs back during the investig. That’s not irreparable, he can get them back later &if they are improperly used to bring an indictment, he can move to dismiss the indictment
⋙ 8. Her analysis of standing is terrible. Trump wouldn’t own these docs anyway, so why does he get a Master over them? If there is some marginal claim to some attorney client docs, that handful of material can be separately dealt with–you don’t enjoin the entire investig for that
⋙ 9. Her jurisdictional analysis is similarly awful. She let Trump forum shop for a judge, instead of letting the magistrate judge evaluate these claims. The appearances here are tragic.
⋙ That’s just a few of many more problems. Frankly, any of my first year law students would have written a better opinion.🐣 RT @rgoodlaw I spoke to the New York Times: ¤ “Judge Cannon had a reasonable path she could have taken—to appoint a special master to review documents for attorney-client privilege and allow the criminal investigation to continue … Instead, she chose a radical path.”
⋙ NYT, Charlie Savage: ‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry https://nyti.ms/3wX6oOI
// A ruling by a judge appointed by former President Donald J. Trump surprised specialists and could slow the documents investigation.[Judge Aileen M Cannon] granted the arbiter, known as a special master, broad powers that extended beyond filtering materials that were potentially subject to attorney-client privilege to also include executive privilege.
A specialist in separation of powers, Peter M. Shane, who is also a law professor at N.Y.U., said there was no basis for Judge Cannon to expand a special master’s authority to screen materials that were also potentially subject to executive privilege. That tool is normally thought of as protecting internal executive branch deliberations from disclosure to outsiders like Congress. ¤ “The opinion seems oblivious to the nature of executive privilege,” he said.
The department had argued that even if a special master were appointed, there would be no legal basis for that person to examine issues of executive privilege. It cited a 1977 Supreme Court case involving the papers of former President Richard M. Nixon, who had tried to use executive privilege to shield them even though the sitting president disagreed. ¤ But Judge Cannon wrote that she was not convinced and believed the Justice Department’s stance “arguably overstates the law.” In that case, she said, the Supreme Court also stated that former presidents retained some residual power to invoke executive privilege. ¤ The Supreme Court also said the incumbent officeholder is in the best position to assess such issues. But Judge Cannon wrote that the justices had not “ruled out the possibility” that a former president could ever prevail over the current one. …
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Judicial branch enjoining exec branch pursuing a criminal investigation is a serious abuse; and although she claims not to enjoin ODNI (although not clear why not that too), in fact her order will interfere with that review as well (e.g. who touched/had access to the docs).
⋙ 🧵 RT @OrinKerr I know it’s un-Twitter-like to ask a genuine Q, not try to score points, but a Q. I understand how a court can enjoin further execution of a warrant. But does a federal court have authority to enjoin executive branch “use” of seized materials for “investigative purposes”?
📌 https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1566858604644143104?s=20🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/1340 UTC 5 SEP/ UKR continues to expand a bridgehead across the Ingulets River, east of Snihurivka. Exploiting this breakthrough, advanced units of the UKR army are reported to have taken the village of Bezimenne.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1566782359764074498?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mhmck Putin taking personal control of the army is as foolish and ineffective as Hitler was when he did the same thing. ¤ The Russian dictator ordered his commanders to hold Kherson at all costs and take full control of Donetsk by September 15 – impossible, crazy objectives.
🐣 RT @RevChrisMcM Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling predicts a Russian surrender in Kherson. What a development that would be.
⋙ Newsweek: Putin Forces ‘Confused’ by Ukraine Strikes, Headed for Surrender: General https://bit.ly/3KNXfOa🐣 RT @gtconway3d Correct. Irreparable injury means injury that can’t be corrected later. Here, if documents are his, he can get them back. If they are the government’s, he is not harmed. If illegally seized material is used to charge him, he can move to dismiss the indictment or to exclude.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman she finds no adequate remedy at law b/c “Trump wd have no legal means of seeking the return of his property FOR THE TIME BEING and no knowledge of when other relief might become available.” That is NOT what no adequate remedy at law means — all his remedies are down the line.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ gtconway3d These are perfectly sufficient remedies to correct any potential harm he could suffer. And to the extent he has already suffered harm by the DOJ already having reviewed the materials, the dispute is moot.🐣 RT @J oyceWhiteVance This is a very important point. If DOJ subsequently finds more documents marked classified under Trump’s control in other locations, in violation of this subpoena, the kinds of factors that influence a decision about whether to prosecute in records cases go off the charts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw In its most recently disclosed filing, the Justice Department makes a large point out of the fact that the grand jury subpoena demanded all documents with classified markings in Trump’s custody or control. NOT JUST FLORIDA [link to court doc]
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 2. The Justice Department is also suggesting that – even on its own terms – Trump lawyers’ claim that the former president was responsive to the subpoena falls short, because the subpoena was not geographically limited.🐣 RT @phildstewart (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Monday approved a new foreign policy doctrine based around the concept of a “Russian World”, a notion that conservative ideologues have used to justify intervention abroad in support of Russian-speakers.
🐣 RT @MarkSZaidEsq Can’t wait to cite this opinion in our many classified cases challenging Executive Branch decisions! ¤ Anyone like to guess how many other federal judges will follow suit? @BradMossEsq @AndrewBakaj
⋙ 🧵 RT @ryanjreilly NEW: Judge grants Trump’s special master request to review “personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.” ¤ The executive privilege review component is a doozy, expect more from DOJ on this.
📌 https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1566816274344251395?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanjreilly “the Court is not convinced that similar concerns with respect to executive privilege should be disregarded in the manner suggested by the Government.” […]🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Expert on fascism here 👇🏽
⋙ 🐣 RT @jasonintrator Once you have the courts you can pretty much do whatever you want.🐣 RT @officejjsmart Wow! Igor Strelkov (Girkin 🇷🇺) was a BIG figure in the ‘14 invasion of 🇺🇦:
• 🇺🇦 AF created a powerful artillery group
• All crossings of 🇷🇺 AF have been destroyed
• Ingulets expanded and breakthrough near river
• 🇷🇺 AF surrendered Lyubomirovka
• 🇷🇺 doesn’t have enough infantry
[TextLink [Ru]:] https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1566398428933939200?s=20/photo/1
[TextLink [Eng]:] https://twitter.com/r_evolutie/status/1566519591123156992?s=20/photo/1[Text (Tr):] At the same time it is too early to talk about overcoming the operational crisis of our defense on this front. Because:
1) [T]he enemy managed to create a powerful artillery grouping (primarily a missile grouping), capable of fighting our artillery units on an equal footing and tangibly supporting their attacking combined-arms formations;
2) The main thing is that the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to destroy ALL stationary crossings to the point of impossibility of moving even light military equipment over them (yesterday, an armored car “Tiger* failed while trying to cross the bridge in Kherson), and they also inflict constant strikes on engineering crossings pontoon ferries. This creates significant difficulties in supplying our Zadneprovskaya grouping, which will increase as the accumulated stocks of ammunition and equipment are exhausted:
3) The Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to expand their bridgehead on the southern bank of the Ingulets River and will now certainly accumulate forces for a further offensive in the direction of Berislav – threatening to cut our grouping and surround its western part in the Davydov Brod – Vysokopole – Lyubimovka area.
It is impossible to allow this for the Rf Armed Forces but it will not work to eliminate the threat without a powerful counterattack. And for a counterattack, the most important thing is sorely lacking – infantry. Since neither superiority in aviation nor in artillery will in itself defeat the enemy, not to mention his defeat and the elimination of a dangerous bridgehead.
P.S. They just confirmed the surrender of Blagodatovka, and also – on Nikolaev direction – Lyubomirovka / Red Banner (north of Ternovy Pod) and another (an hour and a half ago) because hit by “Haymers” on a military crossing.
🐣 RT @ PaulaChertok Trump-appointed Judge Cannon just proved Republicans have eroded another pillar of democracy—an independent judiciary. Giving Trump a special master is wrong, absurd & dangerous. Esp. since Bush v Gore, the GOP pack the courts for power they know they can’t get at the ballot box.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq This is Cannon making a special exception to the case law just for Trump. Criminal defense lawyers will be salivating over this analysis but every other judge will reject using it because this is meant for Trump and Trump alone.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1566824114194681858?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @duty2warn Judge Cannon never should have taken this case, from out of the hands of the magistrate judge. She knows Trump’s lawyers picked her because she’d been a Trumpist. She had no jurisdiction here. She tried to navigate a middle ground, but there really was none. She’s a coward.
🐣 RT @harrylitman Ironic: Trump faces “an unquantifiable personal harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information [ie med docs, tax correspondence] to the public.” So we need to shut down a criminal investigation driven by risk of disclosure of national security material
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Kherson-The headquarters of the Russian FSB unit, which guarded the ballot warehouse, was destroyed. The exact number of killed and wounded is being clarified. Survivors and wounded are urgently evacuated in the direction of occupied Crimea.
🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar The #Ukrainian counteroffensive is making verifiable progress in the south and the east. Ukrainian forces are advancing along several axes in western #Kherson Oblast and have secured territory across the Siverskyi Donets River in #Donetsk Oblast
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1566625317631950848?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @BradMossEsq This ruling is ridiculous and will be immediately appealed by DOJ.
1) the standing argument makes no sense with respect to any executive privilege invocations and Cannon barely addresses it.
2) is Trump arguing every classified document is subject to executive privilege?
‼️ ⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEWS: Judge Cannon has granted Trump’s request for a special master to review attorney client and executive privilege — she also says her order will not stop the intelligence community review of the records. Unclear how that’s going to work.
⋙⋙ [Court Doc:] https://bit.ly/3KNRv7a 24pTheExpress [UK]: Putin facing army capitulation as troops ‘riot’ and refuse to fight on Kherson front https://bit.ly/3KLafEp
// VLADIMIR PUTIN is facing a major rebellion by his troops on the southern front, as Ukraine’s counteroffensive gathers pace.Last Monday, Kyiv confirmed it had launched its eagerly awaited counterattack in the south. Ukraine’s army made rapid early gains in their original push, breaking through Russian lines in several directions towards Kherson. Over the weekend, the army made further progress, managing to cross the Inhulets River and capture Blahodativka, located just 42 miles from Kherson city.
Now, reports have emerged that Russian troops from the 127th regiment are “rioting” and refusing to fight. ¤ In an update posted to its Facebook page on Sunday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine wrote: “In the area of the settlement of Kherson, servicemen of the 127th regiment of the 1st army corps rioted and wrote a letter refusing to participate in hostilities. ¤ “It is known that one of the reasons is unsatisfactory all-round support: in the advanced positions, the personnel of this regiment was left even without water.” s They added: “Some of the servicemen were taken away by enemy counterintelligence representatives, their further fate is unknown.”
Putin is also facing another potential rebellion from angry troops recruited from the occupied Donbas region. ¤ Soldiers of the 2nd Army Corps from the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic are complaining that they are not receiving the same treatment as their Russian counterparts. ¤ In particular, they claim they are not receiving the same allowances or medical care as other Russian units.
Ukraine’s General Staff noted: “Once again, servicemen of the 2nd Army Corps note the discrimination of their status in comparison with the Russian military. ¤ “The personnel of the units of the said army corps do not receive certain declared allowances, unlike Russian troops in other military units. ¤ “In addition, there is no quality medical care.” “All this significantly affects the deterioration of the moral and psychological state of the personnel.”
Ukraine’s President acknowledged in his Sunday night address to the nation that Ukraine’s army is making progress in its southern campaign. ¤ Volodymyr Zelensky told the nation that the armed services were pathing the way for the liberation of “all our lands and all our people”. ¤ He said: “These steps can be heard. And everyone can see that the occupiers have already started fleeing Crimea. ¤ “This is the right choice for all of them.” ¤ It comes as the Kremlin signalled on Sunday that Putin might be looking for a way out of the war.
🐣 RT @HughMurnaghan1 (Replying to @michaelh992) Kherson in 2022 is a replay of Singapore in 1942. ¤ The Russians, trying to hold an outpost of Empire, are being outthought & outfought by a nimbler opponent that their political & military leaders have consistently underestimated. ¤ Like Singapore, the collapse & defeat will be…
⋙ 🐣 RT @HughMurnaghan1 …both sudden & overwhelming, & will be a cause of some humiliation. ¤ This time, though, the might & wealth of the Free World is not on the side of those losing this battle, so the chances of similar recovery & winning of the war are remote. ¤ The Empire will, however, fall.🐣 RT @GalileoArms Quite silent in the channels 🇷🇺 about the offensive 🇺🇦 in Kherson for 2 days.
Has something happened that you don’t like?
The first few days they were all very euphoric talking about the absolute Ukrainian failure and that nothing was happening…..‼️ 🐣 RT @ Flash43191300 ⚡️ “This is not according to plan,” – deputy Konstantin Zatulin for the first time on federal TV said that the so-called “special operation” does not reach the goals.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Flash43191300 «The fact that we say that we are waiting for a blow in the other direction means that six months after the start of the special military operation we do not rule out that Ukraine can strike. This is a disturbing sign that we are not achieving in time the goals we have set.»⭕ 4 Sep 2022
🐣 RT @mackookc What a load of BS! Another slimy effort to grab twitter headlines after the disastrous Kherson offensive! Ukrainian PR is no better than Kremlin’s own, they’re all full of it!
⋙ 🐣 oh, how many residents of Mariopul did Russians kill then? who’s in all the mass graves and under acres of crosses? who’s under the buildings being bulldozed and cemented over? ¤ oh ~ and which picture of Mariopul do you prefer, the one above or this one:
#NAFO
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1566686115586867201?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @svitlanax People from the occupied #Kherson are reporting that the #Bucha scenario has begun unfolding in the city.
⋙ 🐣 Russians should understand that, unlike Bucha, there will be no escaping; they are (about to be) surrounded; so they will be held to account🐣 RT @Tribelaw In addition to his loftier aims, “Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later. And now his party has nowhere to hide.” Bazinga!
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: Biden Laid the Trap. Trump Walked Into It. https://bit.ly/3wW4IFw
// At his Pennsylvania rally, the former president gave exactly the narcissistic display his Democratic nemesis tried to provoke.This was not Trump’s first 2022 rally speech. He spoke in Arizona in July. But this one was different: so extreme, strident, and ugly—and so obviously provoked by Biden’s speech that this was what led local news: “Donald Trump Blasts Philadelphia, President Biden During Rally for Doug Mastriano, Dr. Oz in Wilkes-Barre.” …
Trump spoke at length about the FBI search of his house for stolen government documents. He lashed out at the FBI, attacking the bureau and the Department of Justice as “vicious monsters.” He complained about the FBI searching his closets for stolen government documents, inadvertently reminding everyone that the FBI had actually found stolen government documents in his closet—and in his bathroom too. Trump called Biden an “enemy of the state.” He abused his party’s leader in the U.S. Senate as someone who “should be ashamed.” He claimed to have won the popular vote in the state of Pennsylvania, which, in fact, he lost by more than 80,000 votes. …
On and on it went, in a protracted display of narcissistic injury that was exactly the behavior that Biden’s Philadelphia speech had been designed to elicit. …
Every day since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago has brought new proof that Trump still dominates the Republican Party. He has extracted support even from would-be rivals like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—rituals of submission within a party hierarchy that respects only acts of domination. …
Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later. And now his party has nowhere to hide. Trump has overwritten his name on every Republican line of every ballot in 2022. ¤ Biden dangled the bait. Trump took it—and put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.
🐣 📋 RT @ IlvesToomas The Russians killed more people in Mariupol than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. ¤ And then are offended at being called Orcs or by a mild tightening of visa policy. ¤ Some Western European leaders might also contemplate the first sentence above.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag This photo shows Mariupol in January 2022. Within weeks, the invading Russian army would transform this Ukrainian winter wonderland into a city of the dead. Putin’s troops killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol, making it one of the worst war crimes of the 21st century
🖼 https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1566490450298654721?s=20/photo/1
// Mariupol at Christmas 2021🐣 RT @AS7404542949 [tr] Retired American Lieutenant General Ben Hodges has hinted that the Russian Federation may cease to exist in the form in which it is now. A veteran of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan spoke about the need to “de-imperialize” Russia.
⋙ 🐣 here’s the link:
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @general_ben I think that US war-aims for this conflict should include “de-imperialization” of Russia. It seems to me that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Russian Federation as it looks today. We need to be prepared for this…we were not prepared for the end of the USSR. twitter.com/AgendaGeorgia/…
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AgendaGeorgia Former US Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker on Sunday said Russia’s “imperialist wars” against its neighbours had not started in Ukraine but had “happened” in Georgia, and “we can’t forget that Russia is still in Georgia”
[ See comments ]
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “Russia must decide whether it wants to continue to live in angry isolation, but Washington can remind Moscow that other options are available if Russia shows a genuine interest in correcting its destructive and self-destructive proclivities.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Dmitri Alperovitch and Sergey Radchenko: Another Russia Is Possible https://fam.ag/3D6fGf8
// 8/29/2022; The Kremlin Will Eventually Tire of Its Reliance on China
⋙ 🐣 what? – like another “Reset” button? ¤ if there’s one thing we should have learned by now it’s this: Russia Can’t Be Trusted ¤ the purported “russian empire” needs to decolonize – like every other colonial power did post-WW2🐣 RT @uawarinfo China took hostage russia’s $100 billion reserve, – The Moscow Times ¤ The russian government has invested 17% of its own gold and currency reserves in yuan, but now it is forced to admit that it is simply impossible to withdraw funds from Chinese assets.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @uawarinfo [Tr] The Russians will understand that Putin with his stupid war pushed Europe and the USA to cut all relations with Russia and that he placed the Russian balls in the hands of the Chinese 😱 Believe me they will miss us 😂🐣 RT @OARichardEngel Even war has rules. ¤ But in Ukraine, Russia has been accused of shocking war crimes. ¤ Join @RichardEngel on the ground in Ukraine and hear first-hand accounts from the victims of Russia’s atrocities. ¤ “Ukraine: The Search for Justice” airs Friday, Sept. 9th at 10pmET on @MSNBC
🐣 RT @mhmck The Russian fascist invaders have taken millions of Ukrainians by force into the Russian Federation. Because of this gross crime against humanity the war cannot end merely by the defeat of the rashist army and liberation of Ukraine. All captives must be rescued and returned home.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling While it’s not on the news, I’m watching the current fight in Kherson (and the renewed fight in the Donbas). ¤ The “Kherson pocket” (a smaller version of the WWII “Falaise Pocket” I mentioned a few weeks ago) is not a large “counteroffensive,” but it is interesting. 1/16
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1566602361681977345?s=20🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Trump mastery of inciting his base–“It was not just my home that was raided last month. It was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I’ve been fighting for.”–is why DOJ has to be at its very best now. ¤ No fear, no delay, no mistakes, & beyond reproach (Caeser’s wife).
🐣 RT @ PaulLahticks Fixed it. #TrumpRally
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulLahticks/status/1566275754035273730?s=20/photo/1
// Hitler speaks at Trump rallyNYT: How Russia Uses Low Tech in Its High-Tech Weapons https://nyti.ms/3RafhwB “[I]f you can’t keep up, steal the tech and do your best with it”
// Investigators who examined the electronics in Russia’s newest cruise missiles and attack helicopters were surprised to find decades-old technology reused from earlier models.🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Donald Trump is a danger to democracy and a threat to national security. And while the latest info from DOJ points to criminal exposure, there is perhaps a bigger question: Why did he go to such extreme lengths to conceal possession of highly classified documents? Read more ⬇️
⋙ 🐣 RT @NYDailyNews OPINION | Democratic congressional nominee Dan Goldman lays out feds’ likely case against Trump ¤ @danielsgoldman list at at least three investigations closing in on the former president. https://trib.al/T7AnOXb🐣 This is an odd statement coming from the most unreliable “partner” there is
⋙ 🐣 RT @ RussianEmbassy FM Sergey #Lavrov: If unfriendly countries curtailed the extent of our ties drastically, we will not knock on their doors. ¤ I have explained that we have drawn a fundamental conclusion that the #West is unreliable as a partner.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald The Kremlin now sending overt signals that it wants to negotiate: The aim is to “freeze” the conflict with the present territorial gains for Russia, so that more territory can be taken once Russia regains military strength. Ukraine understands this, but will the West fall for it?
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv 🤡Peskov: Putin is ready to negotiate with President of #Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy on how the “special operation” will be terminated and the observance not of conditions, but of Russia’s interests.🧵 RT @wartranslated GREY ZONE “Wagner Group” channel recaps Ukrainian assault, dismisses amphibious landing claims. ¤ They accuse Russian artillery and aviation of inaction in this direction which leads to Ukrainians continuing their advance. ¤ Basically, GREY ZONE is the new Girkin.
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1566442334811787264?s=20⭕ 3 Sep 2022
🧵 RT @atrupar hard to imagine why Trump is mad at the FBI
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1566213235551903751?s=20/photo/1
// Trump Rally in Wilkes Barre PA🧵 RT @SethAbramson Donald Trump just called Joe Biden an “enemy of the state” at his rally. ¤ He did this in the first 120 seconds of his speech. ¤ I assume the U.S. Secret Service will investigate?
📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1566210661658595328?s=20🧵 RT @djrothkopf Blaming the media is one of the laziest arguments you’ll find on Twitter. Which is saying something because Twitter was, it seems, designed from the ground up to be the birthplace of lazy arguments, a museum of lazy arguments and the final resting place for most lazy arguments.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1566023866140557312?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf But it is hard not to read an article like this one in the New York Times and not be triggered on many levels including but not limited to disgust, contempt and profound concern for its approach, content and execution.🐣 RT @EllenDibble 5 of the empty Classified folders were in the storage room; 43 were in his desk, or by his desk. Anyway, why didn’t he throw them out? Tempting fate? I think Avril’s skills will out where the dox went sooner than a truth comes out of Trump.
🐣 RT @andersostlund That awkward moment when it takes a while before you realize it’s mockery.
⋙ 😅 RT @JayinKyiv Russian recruitment ad
💽 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1566268660343357441?s=20/photo/1WaPo: Biden’s stark warning: The U.S. is threatened by its own citizens https://wapo.st/3eoHEc0
// Other presidents have warned of external menaces like Russia or Islamic terrorism. Biden’s speech was striking in identifying a danger within.🐣 RT @Sky_Lee_1 Yes Trump has stolen items from time at the White House displayed at his new club “45 Wine and Whiskey”in Trump Tower. ¤ Of course he has stolen folder marked classified along with other items taken on display. [Chris Hayes video ⇊]
💽 https://twitter.com/Sky_Lee_1/status/1566088042020048896?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Sky_Lee_1 Source🔽
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @allinwithchris Tucked in the lobby of Trump Tower is “45 Wine and Whiskey.” At this Hard Rock Cafe knockoff, visitors can enjoy walls plastered with Trump presidential memorabilia that was likely snuck out of the White House—including a folder marked “classified.” https://on.msnbc.com/3wSyP0y😅 RT @saintjavelin HIMARS has proven itself in Ukraine, but now it’s taking on the biggest stage in American television. ¤ HIMARS Got Talent
💽 https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1565763731199610880?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @ReallyActivist Thread. 1/ What happened to CNN? ¤ I worked there for 18 years. ¤ This is what happened. ¤ Everyone wants to know why CNN is shifting. ¤ Let me explain why. ¤ What Fox News gets that MSNBC and CNN don’t get… ¤ Each quarter, the Cable Operators release their subscriber base.
📌 https://twitter.com/ReallyActivist/status/1566112660118069248?s=20
⋙ 🐣 Something I think is missed is the fact that 52% of young adults now live with their parents: live “off” them to an extent. That means a lot of the stuff bought by such households is by/for those young people. Are they watching tv? Maybe. But their parents buy stuff FOR them [chart Pew Research]
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1566185891038728194?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JohnWDean Trump whataboutism re Hillary doesn’t work. None Of ‘Her Emails’ Were Classified? Zero. Trump’s Administration cleared her – TWICE! Trump’s theft of highly classified docs has no parallel. He must be held accountable!
💙 🔄 ⋙ NationalMemo, Joe Conason: How Many Of ‘Her Emails’ Were Classified? Actually, Zero https://bit.ly/3D0f3nt
⋙ 🐣 [Hillary’s emails in a nutshell]
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1566178022163714048?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 but– but– but– [butter emails]
😅 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1566176324389142528?s=20/photo/1… As more and more evidence of the former president’s reckless and potentially criminal misconduct comes to light, he and his defenders keep pointing to “her emails.” They insist that because the Justice Department declined prosecution of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after a long and thorough probe of how she handled allegedly classified information, there should be no investigation, let alone indictment or conviction of Trump.
But while we don’t yet know the extent or nature of Trump’s abuse of classified documents, we can determine how many were found by investigators, after exhaustive searches, among Clinton’s thousands of State Department emails. ¤ The accurate and definitive answer is zero – although few if any news outlets have informed the public of that startling fact. Moreover, it is a fact that the Trump administration itself confirmed three years ago.
In the recent coverage that references her emails, former FBI Director James Comey is sometimes quoted as saying that of the 33,000 Clinton emails examined by bureau investigators, three had classification markings. That’s less than one-hundredth of one percent, and not worth comparing to Trump’s malfeasance anyway, but it’s still false — apparently meant to bolster Comey’s absurd claim that other Clinton emails were “classified” although never marked as such.
Those three State Department documents were “call sheets,” innocuous memos reminding Clinton to make scheduled phone calls. During her FBI interview, investigators showed her one of those memos, reminding her to place a condolence call to the president of Malawi–not exactly a top secret matter. As Comey himself later admitted, any classification marking on that sheet had been wrongly applied.
In short, the three supposedly classified documents attributed to her emails were barely even confidential, let alone secret or subject to the sanctions of the Espionage Act. …
Again, the overarching absurdity of the State Department and FBI investigations lay in the fact that nearly all of the documents at issue had been classified retroactively – meaning they had carried no markings identifying them as such when Clinton handled them. Comey’s assertion that documents can somehow be deemed inherently secret, without proper markings or any classification history whatsoever, is extremely dangerous and hostile to the concept of open democratic governance. It is an idea that should never have been entertained by a free press.
Nobody in their right mind would hold Clinton, or any official, to be culpable under those circumstances. ¤ The same cannot be said for Trump in the current documents scandal, as must be obvious to anyone who has seen that photograph of the folders, clearly marked “TOP SECRET,” strewn around his office floor at Mar-a-Lago, or the folders emptied of their contents, who knows where.
Despite the hysterical accusations that persist to this day, Hillary Clinton was repeatedly judged to be innocent of jeopardizing national security, including twice by the Trump administration. It now appears frighteningly obvious that Donald Trump is not nearly so innocent. …
🐣 RTAWeissmann_ Just In: FLA Special Master hearing transcript. Happy Labor Day weekend
⋙ ≣ Transcript: https://bit.ly/3AEmXQI
For Trump: Kise, Trusty, Corcoran, Halligan
For Gov: Bratt, Gonzalez, Edelstein, Brill; For Gov (filter team) Benjamin, LaCosta🐣 RT @tribelaw I think @JohnJHarwood was the best of the CNN journalists. Pushing him out, as Chris Licht, CNN’s new CEO has done, shows that CNN is on a scary new path. We don’t need a #FoxNews light. One dishonest cable network is more than enough.
🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine 🇺🇦 #Ukraine has a long history of resistance and fighting for #Freedom. Cossack warriors have been fighting with the enemy’s neighborhood for centuries. This is why Ukraine is so skillful in combat today.
💽 https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1565983385092345856?s=20/photo/1⭕ 2 Sep 2022
YahooNews: Losing Kherson would be devastating to Russia and could threaten Putin’s rule, expert says https://yhoo.it/3qdfqDK “There’s panic spreading in occupied Crimea; Russian citizens are fleeing the peninsula; there’s panic in Belgorod,” Reiterovych said
NYT: Trump Embraces Conspiracy Theories He Only Winked at Before https://nyti.ms/3cQixhD “His winks and nods to the far right became enthusiastic endorsements, and his flirtations with convoluted conspiratorial ideas became more overt”
// The former president’s activity on his social network, Truth Social, openly promotes far-right and conspiratorial ideas that are usually confined to corners of the internet.📊 WaPo, Philip Bump: Figuring out how many ‘MAGA Republicans’ there actually are https://wapo.st/3wSJbgG
// various pollsThe Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has walked through what Biden said and the context in which he said it, both on Thursday and last week, when he used the label “semi-fascism” to describe that group’s worldview. But what if we went one step further, trying to assign an actual numeric value to the group Biden is describing? It’s not “half the country” as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and others have insisted. But how much of the country is it? ¤ We’ll start with Biden’s description of the group.
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. … They promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at it as patriots.”
Those who reject the election results
19% of GOP Adults (15% of Americans)
Support for candidates who reject the election results
11% of Adults (8% of Americans) ~ GOP ✛ leaners
14% of Adults (11% of Americans) ~ GOP onlySupport for rioters taking over Capitol
7% of Adults (6% of Americans)
Support for the political use of violence
20% of Adults (15% of US) ~ GOP ✛ leaners
11% of Adults (9% of US) ~ GOP only (excl leaners)Again, we can’t assume that these percentages all overlap. But we get a consistent picture. Over and over, about 10 percent of the population (plus or minus a few percentage points) expresses the sort of view that Biden articulated: Republican or Republican-leaning and in favor of the positions he associated with “MAGA.” ¤ If one agrees with Biden that this group poses a threat to American democracy, it is reassuring that it constitutes a tenth of the public — and not, as Biden’s detractors had it — half
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ Bri4Change1
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Bri4Change1/status/1566127214101516288?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “MAGA” Republicans are tiny subset of all Republicans (~25%) & even smaller subset of all Americans (~6-9%)
6% of Americans support Jan 6 insurrectionist
8% of Americans “like” election denying candidates
9% of Americans support political violence
Source: http://www.wapo.st/3AKP6FF🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ NEW DC govt filing Re Trump case. Confirms grand jury is out of DC which may become important as people speculate about where Trump NARA indictment wd be brought. Also references MAL not being only location looked at. ¤ Unusual for DOJ NSD to do case solo: assume others on it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ZoeTillman In its recent filing in FL in the fight over Trump’s request for a special master re: Mar-a-Lago seized docs, DOJ noted they’d gotten permission to disclose info about grand jury subpoenas. Closing that particular loop, the DC federal court unsealed that order today:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1565910727982039040?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @tomiahonen As January 6th Committee hearings resume now in September… remember they only had PART of Mark Meadows’s texts. Now they get the parts that reveal the crimes ¤ Expect it to be bad, that Mark DECIDED TO HIDE those messages. But now has flipped against Trump & released them
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn *** JUST IN *** CNN reports that within a week of the FBI search of former MAL, Mark Meadows handed over more texts and emails to the National Archives that he had not previously turned over from his time in the administration.🧵 RT @jennycohn1 If we are really going to be honest, the Religious Right declared war on American democracy long ago. The Free Congress Foundation founded by Paul Weyrich published this in a training manual in 2001. 1/ https://bit.ly/3ek7j5F
📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1565512295286878208?s=20
// Paul Weyrich Heritage Foundation ALEC🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer UKRAINE’S ACE IN THE HOLE: CRIMEA’S WATER: A recent Ukraine precision strike took out a pumping unit at the dam complex at Nova Kakhovka. This was a not so subtle reminder that Ukraine controls the water supply to Russian occupied Crimea.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1565841850493276162?s=20/photo/1TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Biden Gambles That ‘We the People’ Still Exist https://bit.ly/3RvT1wN
// Countering Trump’s antidemocratic movement isn’t a normal political challenge.🐣 RT @ rgoodlaw Good point: NARA has said some classified docs returned in January were “unfoldered.” (@Tierney_Megan @KatieBoLillis) ¤ So those that match empty folders: ¤ Could be (criminal) evidence of Trump handling docs, but less counterintell concern of missing docs
⋙ CNN: Mar-a-Lago search inventory shows documents marked as classified mixed with clothes, gifts, press clippings https://cnn.it/3cMsDAk🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski When Trump was at his lowest point, defeated, out of the WH, condemned by many Rs in the aftermath of J6, it was McCarthy’s supreme act of cowardice that resuscitated him when he traveled to MAL to kiss the ring. One of the most destructive acts of personal ambition in history.
⋙ 🐣 [text] RT @GOPLeader Instead of trying to bring our country together to solve the MANY problems he has created, President Biden has chosen to divide, demean, and disparage his fellow Americans- simply because they disagree with his policies. Mr. President: you owe millions of Americans an apology.🐣 RT @NoLieWithBTC The party that put a massive banner over their stage that said “WE ARE ALL DOMESTIC TERRORISTS” less than a month ago is really upset today about being called a threat to America.
💽 https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1565686503627403264?s=20/photo/1
// stage at CPAC🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Here’s why I think the Biden speech was genius. The GOP is trying to break free from Donald (RNC, Coulter, Ingraham, Mitch, Shapiro, Alex Jones, all backing off.) This Biden speech unified the GOP under Donald and tied its name to his with a cord of steel (h/t Schiff)
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg Sad!
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1565814890585067520?s=20/photo/1[Text:] 🐣 RT @real [TS] Bill Barr had “no guts,” and got “no glory.” He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats – “Please, please, please don’t impeach me,” he supposedly said. Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast • Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!
🐣 RT @atrupar “The facts are starting to show that they [the DOJ] were being jerked around. And so, how long do they wait?” — Bill Barr on Fox News
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1565759610803425282?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: this is actually a stunning revelation. This is the newly unsealed more detailed inventory.
¤ https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1565710675531337728?s=20/photo/1
// “43 empty folders with “CLASSIFIED” Banners; 28 empty folders marked “Return to Staff SecretaryMilitary Aide”AFSC (2020): Trump’s attacks on the legal immigration system explained https://bit.ly/3wMlTJt Trump made 470✛ changes to the LEGAL immigration system; Biden has been able to reverse some of them, but the damage to the system – and to America’s reputation – may be permanent
ElectionLawBlog: Electoral Count Reform Act picks up its 10th Republican, 8th Democratic co-sponsor in the Senate https://bit.ly/3ekdshV This means the proposed act can survive a filibuster “Senator Roger Wicker predicted earlier this year and such a bill could get 80 votes”
🐣 RT @McFaul Polling inside Russia these days is fraught with complexities to identify true preferences. And yet still, this number is striking. War fatigue in Russia is real.
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @ Flash43191300 ⚡️According to a new poll by the Levada Center, 48% of Russians support the continuation of the war. In May, this indicator reached 72%.🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Normally, on Fox, Newsmax and OAN every day I watch hosts and guests call Democrats marxists who hate America, steal elections, recruit kids for sex trafficking, and want to impose a communist dictatorship. Today, I’m watching them call Biden divisive.
😅 RT @owillis NYTimes/CNN 1941: In what was billed as a response to the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt made a partisan attack against fascism, refusing to extend an olive branch to the domestic right-wing America First movement who has sided with Hitler.
🐣 RT @GlasnostGone Russian forces suffered “significant losses” in the southern Kherson region following #Ukraine’s counteroffensive launched this week. I think very soon we’ll be able to disclose more positive news,” – Natalia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for 🇺🇦 southern military
⋙ CNN [EU]: Ukraine claims Russia has suffered “significant losses” in south https://cnn.it/3RaqxZL
// Russian forces have suffered “significant losses” in the southern region of Kherson following the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched earlier this week, Ukraine’s military said Friday.“The enemy suffers quite significant losses — losses in manpower have gone from tens to hundreds. Equipment also burns. […] Therefore, our successes are quite convincing, and I think very soon we will be able to disclose more positive news,” said Natalia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military in the south. ¤ “We continue to destroy the enemy in terms of its logistics, capabilities, capacities. Ammunition warehouses explode, pontoon crossings explode. It means that the enemy’s logistics and transport connections are undermined to such an extent that they cannot raise reserves.”
Operational Command South claimed that a range of targets had been struck, including a ferry crossing. ¤ “Our air forces carried out 18 strikes on command and support posts, warehouses with ammunition and fuel and lubricants, as well as logistics and transport facilities,” it said.
According to Operational Command South, three important bridges across the Dnipro river— Antonivskyi, Kakhovskyi and Dariivskyi — are ongoing targets. ¤ Ukrainian forces have been trying to prevent Russian troops from resupplying their units north of the river, essentially cutting off Russian defensive positions. ¤ However, Russian forces continue to shell more than a dozen Ukrainian settlements behind a front line that runs roughly along Kherson’s northern border. ¤ There has been little indication of territory changing hands in the area.
🧵 RT @ tomiahonen Understand what Duty TW is saying. This is true. Let me show you how exceptional it is that we even know of THESE crimes..
⋙ RT @duty2warn
Donald Trump has done many terrible things that we know about. But the things he did that we don’t yet know about yet are likely to be worse.
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1565584053193015297?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Donald Trump has done many terrible things that we know about. But the things he did that we don’t yet know about yet are likely to be worse.🐣 RT @tomiahonen On January 6th crimes of Trump – largest criminal conspiracy in US history – the rioter prison sentences now getting real, as the worse perps get sentenced. This ex cop attacked other cops hitting one with a flagpole. Goes to prison for 10 years
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP A retired New York Police Department officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol in the Jan. 6 riot. ¤ Thomas Webster used a flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off Donald Trump supporters. [link]⭕ 1 Sep 2022
≣ NYT: Full Transcript of President Biden’s Speech in Philadelphia https://nyti.ms/3B6wyjF
// Soul of America speech; The president described what he viewed as threats to democracy, which he said stemmed from the actions of former President Donald J. Trump and “MAGA forces.”🐣 RT @WhiteHouse MAGA Republican elected officials refuse to accept the results of free and fair elections. ¤ 147 Congressional Republicans voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
¤ https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1565493522886807558?s=20/photo/1Meduza: The fog of war: Military analyst Rob Lee on Ukraine’s push to liberate Kherson and Russia’s manpower problem https://bit.ly/3KGJO2E Interview with Military OSINT analyst Rob Lee (@RALee85), a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (@FPRI)
Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive to recover territories in the southern Kherson region is now underway, but the situation at the front remains under wraps. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has barred journalists from reporting in front-line areas and has urged the press “not to question the actions of the command and not to serve as additional tools in the hands of Russian propaganda.” (Russian state media claimed that the counteroffensive had failed before it had even begun.) In this context, one of the only ways to assess the situation on the ground is to sift through and verify bits and pieces of open-source information. Military analyst Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), has been meticulously gathering operational data ever since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February. Meduza sat down with Rob Lee to talk about Ukraine’s push to liberate the Kherson region from Russian occupation. WaPo: In fiercely contested Kherson, Ukraine pushes to retake occupied lands https://wapo.st/3q3Z0gD Kherson is the only regional capital to fall to the Russians in the first weeks of fighting. It borders Russia-occupied Crimea, at the mouth of the Dniepro River and the Black Sea.
TheBulwark, William Saletan: “Semi-Fascism”: The Shoe Fits https://bit.ly/3wPnuyc “Trump’s cult has many fascist elements: “paranoia, fantastic lies, anti-intellectualism, a mythologized national past, selective appeals to law and order, and propaganda about enemies of the state”
// Republicans’ hypocritical reaction to President Biden’s use of the F-word.🧵 RT @Kasparov63 I’m glad to hear Biden plainly address the need for Americans to wake up to the importance of institutions and the rule of law. Calling out Trump and his followers is politics too, but it’s democratic politics. Fomenting insurrection and denying elections is not.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1565501486582452224?s=20⋙ I founded @Renew_Democracy in 2017 because it was clear America, a beacon for me and so many others behind the Iron Curtain and elsewhere, had taken its democracy for granted for too long. It was unprepared for direct assaults on its norms, laws, and institutions.
⋙ Talking about these things explicitly is important, but it’s not enough. They must be defended, promoted, their essential nature taught and made apparent. Otherwise their abuse becomes another partisan weapon, a downward spiral of illiberal civil warfare.
⋙ Mixing politics and the democratic mechanisms of politics is explosive. It’s the difference between saying your opponents are wrong in what they want and saying they are enemies who should not be allowed to speak.
⋙ Biden’s speech crossed that line itself, and unnecessarily, as it normalizes the practice. But there is a clear and present danger in Trumpist conspiracies & attacks on the cornerstones of the rule of law, and calling them out is important. Dismissing them as absurd failed.🧵 RT @atrupar Biden begins his speech in Philadelphia: “Equality & democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. So tonight, I come to this place where it all began to speak as plainly as I can to the nation… Trump & the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1565491853402808320?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien For those wondering why the Ukrainian advance seems slow, I want to say it’s not. It’s unprecedented. The Ukrainians are trying to advance without air supremacy and tactical air support (the prerequisite for almos all successful offensive campaigns since 1939 or even 1918)
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Moreover they are attempting to advance into an enemy with a lot of equipment. The fact that they are doing this in and of itself is notable in modern war. Neither the US or USSR/Russia has attempted anything similar with success for almost a century.
⋙⋙ [comments]🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “Just by the fact that Russia has acknowledge the fact Ukrainian have conducted a counter attack is a big deal,” Another great talk with @TimesRadio If Ukraine takes Kherson they will seize the initiative in the war. [link]
🐣 RT @ vinm300 The Orcs have 25,000 defending a 100 mile front.
That is a quarter of a football stadium of demoralised Orcs, spread thinner than Gulag soup.
Ukraine has announced they have air superiority.
God bless the USA and Ukraine.🐣 RT @aNdr0iz 🇺🇦🔥👊 The clearest video I have come across so far of the #Antonovsky bridge after receiving 🚀 HIMARS accurate missiles 🙂 ¤ #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineWar #antonovskybridge
💽 https://twitter.com/aNdr0iz/status/1564815652065628160?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @dima_strakovsky It’s the battle for Crimea – whoever controls Kherson, controls the water flowing south. I don’t think loosing Crimea is an option for Russia. Agree that it’s gonna get brutal. A little too painful to watch.
WaPo: Biden names Trump as he warns that equality and democracy are ‘under assault’ https://wapo.st/3R9rUYX “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic,” Biden said in Philadelphia
NYT: Biden will say that Trump-led extremism is a direct threat to America. https://nyti.ms/3QaIR3V “In several recent speeches, Mr. Biden has replaced his usual calls for unity with sharp condemnations of ‘MAGA extremists,’ saying Republicans have embraced ‘semi-fascism’”
🐣 RT @tribelaw Judge Cannon might discover that there’s just no way for her to draft an injunction with an accompanying opinion that could possibly withstand appeal — even to the conservative Eleventh Circuit. We’ll just have to stay tuned.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney DOJ warned that if Cannon decided to block access to the documents, she would have to issue an injunction, complete with a formal process explaining her reasoning (which DOJ could/would presumably appeal)
⋙⋙ Politico: Judge considers temporary limit on DOJ access to Trump documents https://politi.co/3B6V6tS
// Government lawyers argue in hearing that there’s ‘evidence of three significant federal crimes’ but judge may allow special review🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski In new interview, Trump says he met with J6ers recently and is “financially supporting” some of them. Then says if he wins re-election he will be “looking very strongly at full pardons” for all J6 defendants, “with an apology” from the govt.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1565356176161873922?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ BREAKING: Judge to issue written ruling, not ruling from the bench orally. If Judge did not order DOJ to stop any review, that is a very good sign for DOJ.
🐣 RT @OccamsTazer getting real fucking tired of hearing “raided Trump’s home.” ¤ it’s a FUCKING RESORT HOTEL & GOLF COURSE! Not a secure location! ¤ Literally anyone can pay enough $$ & walk through the place. ¤ Fucking Kid Rock—Kid Fucking Rock—was talking about Trump showing him the document stash.
↥ ↧
RawStory, Sarah Burris (Mar 2022): Kid Rock feared Trump was showing him classified maps about North Korea https://bit.ly/3Bgb4SJ
// 3/22/2022🐣 RT @ JoyceWhiteVance 1/2 There is no call in number for interested citizens to listen to the hearing Judge Cannon will hold this afternoon on Trump’s request for a special master. & there are no cameras in federal courts. We deserve more transparency into the proceedings of the judicial branch.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ JoyceWhiteVance 2/2 The Chief Justice should promptly develop rules to permit cameras in fed’l courts but even w/out that, the pandemic demonstrated how easy it is to let people to listen in. The courts work for us & they should embrace transparency to promote confidence in them.📊 WSJ Poll: Democratic Midterm Prospects Improve as Races Heat Up, WSJ Poll Finds https://on.wsj.com/3RJ2wsX
90% plan to vote ✛7% will probably vote
45% Biden approval
50/44% Biden v Trump
Top Issues:
16% Economy
13% Abortion
11% Inflation
7% Immigration
6% Anti-rightwing
5% Democracy
// Independent voters, a key to victory in competitive general elections, are now tilting toward Democrats
⋙ Detailed poll results: https://on.wsj.com/3TxBiqM🐣 RT @McFaul What? Again?
⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon The chairman of the board of Lukoil, Russia’s biggest privately held oil producer and one of the few Russian companies to criticize the invasion of Ukraine, has died after falling out of a hospital window, Interfax reports https://interfax.ru/moscow/860208🧵 RT @ lhsingapura 1. I think this Ukrainian offensive will cumulate in 3 to 5 weeks, if it goes to plan. It’s not going to be a 3 to 5 day fight — it will be a mutual slug festival with lots of deaths. Oleksiy Arestovych said in a recent interview there will be “no quick success in Kherson”
📌 https://twitter.com/lhsingapura/status/1565250281817849856?s=20🐣 RT @ CoD4Easy The main battle is in the Donbass. If Ukraine is trying stuff in Kherson it means it’s a political move not a military move. Zenlenski regime is playing for time and is prepared to sacrifice the lives of it’s men to see if something turns up,
⋙ 🐣 Kherson is a strategic move, not political; Ukr needs to push Ru at least east of the Dnipro, to protect Mykolaiv Odesa and Moldova; ideally they take all of Kherson Oblast, cutting off Crimea ¤ they only need to keep Kharkiv safe and hold Ru in East (for now)⏳ RT @WarMonitor3 ⏳ Timeline 9/1/2022 (>1000 likes)
// ⏳= Reverse chronological: (Individual tweets, not a thread)//➔ Glory to the heroes of Ukraine
//➔ Ukrainian forces reportedly hit a Russian FSB base in a police station in occupied Kherson tonight.
//➔ Russian forces have just launched missiles in the direction of Mykolaiv ¤ Take Cover!!!! 💽
//➔ Ukrainian airforce has just carried out airstrikes on Russian accumulation points in occupied Kherson.
//➔ ⋙ Locals report Ukrainian aircraft activity.
//➔ Russian aerospace is also reported to be active about 30 minutes ago several fighters were seen heading north from Kherson city area.
//➔ Take a moment to remember the Ukrainians soldiers that have made the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. ¤ Most of these soldiers held their positions and fought fiercely to the end. ¤ Bravery is hard to come by- but not in Ukraine.
//➔ Russian Spetsnaz are known to change their armbands and uniforms to Ukrainian colours and camo patterns. ¤ However what they don’t realise is that Ukrainian forces change between colours
//➔ Wagner PMC are reportedly recruiting prisoners in Russian prisons to send to Ukraine. ¤ It is also reported they are looking for primarily “robbers and murderers”
//➔ Is anyone having issues with seeing my tweets? ¤ Was told some people are being unfollowed or cannot see when I post…
//➔ Received some humbling messages from people in occupied territories In Ukraine. ¤ I do this for you guys! Keep safe and strong guys.
//➔ Columns of Russian equipment pass the Crimean bridge everyday.
//➔ List of Russian Divisions and Regiments deployed to Kherson Frontline /photo/1
//➔ Ukrainian anti-aircraft fighters shot down a Russian guided missile in the Kherson region this evening
//➔ Planning on doing a recap of: ¤ Battle of Mariupol ¤ Battle of Kyiv ¤ Is there an interest for this?
//➔ And of course there may be another battle of Mariupol in the future. ¤ Time will tell…
//➔ “A group of Russian soldiers raised white flags somewhere in the Kurakhove area, Donetsk region.”
//➔ Ukrainian forces hit Russian base in Nova Kakhovka /photo/1
//➔ Near Donetsk- Russian forces tried to improve their tactical position in the direction of the settlements of Pervomaiske, Nevelske, and Opytne, they were unsuccessful, suffered losses, and withdrew
//➔ There is information Ukrainian forces made some small gains on the Donetsk frontline pushing Russian forces back slightly in two areas.
//➔ “There is a lot of panicked Russians in the Kharkiv direction. We are not talking about details yet.” ¤ 👀
//➔ “The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation received an order from Putin to completely capture the administrative borders of the Donetsk region”
//➔ Russias Defence Ministry claims to have destroyed 44 HIMARS. ¤ Only 20 were supplied…
//➔ Guess they are counting the wooden decoys 😂😂😂
//➔ Accidents happen /photo/1
//➔ Big explosions are reported in Melitopol
//➔ Explosions are reported in Nova Kakhovka
//➔ Explosions in the Antonovsky Bridge direction(Occupied Kherson) /photo/1
//➔ Nearly 2000 Russian tanks have been destroyed in Ukraine. You tell me who is winning 😂
//➔ Fighting continues on the low ground of Yakovlivka. ¤ Russian forces attempted to storm the high ground with no success.
//➔ Russian Armour columns seen around Mariupol possibly heading out. /photo/1
//➔ Russian forces are still stuck in the Knauf plant in Soledar.
//➔ IAEA mission has arrived to the Zaporizhzhia NPP
//➔ Vysokopillya (Kherson) is contested
//➔ Ukrainian air force continues to work. ¤ Russian fighter jets are unable to challenge air superiority.
//➔ IAEA said that the arrival of the mission at the Zaporizhzhia NPP was delayed by three hours.
//➔ ⋙ It is very clear Russia is doing everything it can to disrupt the visit to the Zaporizhzhia NPP
//➔ Would like to thank my NAFO friends ¤ I will buy you all a beer in liberated Mariupol one day!
//➔ It is reported that Davydiv Brid became contested. ¤ (Unconfirmed)
//➔ Clear evidence of Russian war crimes. ¤ Using civilian infrastructure to hide military equipment in a combat zone /photo/1
//➔ The head of the board of directors of Russian oil company Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, died after falling out of the window of the Central Clinical Hospital” ¤ Not suspicious at all…━━━━━━━▼ Hillary’s Emails (Again)
WaPo, Aaron Blake: What about Clinton’s emails? How Trump’s document controversy differs https://wapo.st/3RvuyrL
● willful mishandling
● intentional misconduct
● indications of disloyalty to US
● efforts to obstruct justice
Comey: “We do not see those things here.”
// Republicans have complained that Trump could face legal jeopardy when Clinton was never charged. But applying the ‘Clinton standard’ reveals key differences.In explaining his agency’s recommendation not to prosecute, Comey cited the lack of four elements that he said had been present “in some combination” in previous prosecutions involving removal or mishandling of classified information:
● “Clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information.”
● “Vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct.”
● “Indications of disloyalty to the United States.”
● “Efforts to obstruct justice.”
Comey concluded: “We do not see those things here.” Thus Clinton was not charged.💙 ABCNews: No, the FBI’s Trump investigation is not just like the Hillary Clinton email probe. Here’s why https://abcn.ws/3ADtYRL “There was no evidence that the senders or former Secretary Clinton believed or were aware at the time that the emails contained classified information”
// A review of government documents suggests there are key differences.Prosecutors determined that the evidence and facts of Clinton’s case showed “a lack of intent to communicate classified information on unclassified systems,” especially since “[n]one of the emails Clinton received were properly marked to inform her of the classified status of the information,” and investigators found evidence that Clinton and her aides “worded emails carefully in an attempt to ‘talk around’ classified information,” according to the inspector general’s report. ¤ “There was no evidence that the senders or former Secretary Clinton believed or were aware at the time that the emails contained classified information,” prosecutors concluded, according to the inspector general.
“There was no evidence that the senders or former Secretary Clinton believed or were aware at the time that the emails contained classified information,” prosecutors concluded, according to the inspector general
.🐣 RT @MSNBC Hillary Clinton didn’t take physical documents. She didn’t ignore pleas for cooperation. She didn’t store highly sensitive secrets at a private club that had an unfortunate habit of letting foreign spies walk around. (via @MaddowBlog)
⋙ MSNBC MaddowBlog, Steve Benen: What Republicans refuse to grasp about the ‘Clinton standard’ https://on.msnbc.com/3pY7eqP
// For those who don’t care about factual details, the GOP’s “Clinton standard” framing may very well have superficial appeal. But it’s still ridiculous.
━━━━━━━▲⭕ 31 Aug 2022
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin Cronies Threaten ‘Hundreds’ of American Coffins on Live TV https://bit.ly/3RrWqgo
// Moscow’s mouthpieces are now resorting to direct threats of terrorism against Americans as a way to “force” the U.S. to rethink its position on Vladimir Putin’s war.… Experts on state-controlled television are now pondering whether American support for Ukraine would only change if “dozens or hundreds” of caskets draped in U.S. flags started arriving from all over the world.
During Tuesday’s broadcast of the television show The Meeting Place, hosts and panelists discussed Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive. While the Ukrainian will to defend their homeland is undeniable, the Kremlin’s mouthpieces are firmly convinced that it could be overcome—if only Americans would get out of the way. With former U.S. President Donald Trump no longer in office, convincing Washington to see things Russia’s way is not an option. As a result, Russian propagandists are now suggesting persuasion through violence.
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin ‘Failed In This War,’ We’ll Likely Not ‘See Him Recovering’: Ex-US Ambassador
⋙ 📋 IBTimes, Danielle Ong: Putin ‘Failed In This War,’ We’ll Likely Not ‘See Him Recovering’: Ex-US Ambassador https://bit.ly/3TJl1iLFormer U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, which marked its 188th day Monday, is failing. ¤ Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, McFaul said that Putin “failed” to meet any of the “strategic objectives” he meant to accomplish in the war, adding that he is unlikely to recover from the mistakes made during the invasion.
“Remember, six months ago, he said he was going to unite Ukrainians and Russians because Ukrainians are just Russians with accents. He failed at that. He failed at denazification. He failed at demilitarization. He failed to take the capital of Kyiv,” McFaul said. “And now he’s just fighting in Donetsk and in Kherson. So, on the strategic level, I think he’s failed in this war. I don’t see him recovering.” …
McFaul is not the first foreign policy expert to suggest that Putin’s war in Ukraine is failing. Earlier this month, former NATO leader James Stavridis said he believes Putin is aware but refuses to admit that he made a “grave mistake” invading Ukraine. He added that Putin would likely continue to push the narrative that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine by NATO.
More than 150,000 Russian troops gathered along the Ukrainian border prior to the Feb. 24 invasion. Recent estimates from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine stated that the Russian army so far endured as many as 47,100 deaths in the war. On the other hand, the Pentagon had said on Aug. 8 that Russia may have suffered as many as 80,000 casualties – meaning deaths or injuries – in its war against Ukraine.
🐣 RT @TheAtlantic “Almost nobody in history has ever had such a profound impact on his era, while at the same time understanding so little about it,” @anneapplebaum writes of Mikhail Gorbachev.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Gorbachev Never Realized What He Set in Motion https://bit.ly/3cyNRl8 ‘Having lived much of his life atop the Soviet nomenklatura, he never understood the depth of cynicism in his own country or the depth of anger in the occupied Soviet states’
// Almost nobody has ever had such a profound impact on an era, while understanding so little about it.CREW: Apple and Google should ban Truth Social https://bit.ly/3QdWzTG “Following the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, … conspiracy theories and violent posts on the app became more abundant. … [Users] made posts rallying people to prepare for combat”
🐣 RT @neal_katyal This language from DOJ’s filing last night makes clear this is NOT just about recovering stolen documents, it’s an active criminal investigation. And while it doesn’t come out and say it, the target is one Donald J. Trump.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1565031946966777856?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Plaintiff states that “It|here is no criminal enforcement mechanism or penalty” in the Presidential Records Act, and then suggests that DOJ may have “recognize[d] that deficiency, and then decide{d] to re-categorize this case as relating to national security materials[ ]simply to manufacture a basis to seek a search warrant” and may have “mischaracterize[d] the types of documents it sought.” D.E. 1 at 12. These accusations are belied by the statutes cited in the government’s search warrant, which make clear that this investigation is not simply about efforts to recover improperly retained Presidential records. Moreover, 18 U.S.C. $ 2071 criminalizes the concealment or removal of government records, including Presidential records.
🐣 RT @nexta_tv Lavrov hinted to the Moldovans that their country is next on the list to invade. ¤ He promised “to do everything to protect the Russian-speaking population of #Moldova and Transnistria.”
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NUCLEAR ROULETTE: Russia claims that a ‘suicide drone’ struck the administration building of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The attack came only hours after armed RU troops refused permission for an IAEA inspection team to enter the facility.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1565159104166985729?s=20/photo/1CNN: Trump tells court that classified material should have been expected in presidential records found at Mar-a-Lago https://cnn.it/3ecNNIb … and also tweeted (“truthed”?) that anyway he’d declassified them (although the court filing avoided making this claim)
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD :: TRUMP RESPONSE :: Never have I seen such an exquisite legal work product with such masterful use of relevant case law, presented thoughtfully and plainly while addressing the legal questions at hand. Then trumps lawyers responded to it. 😳 1/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote […] [Court Filing:] https://bit.ly/3Rm2K9D
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1565165605753217024?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ DavidPenington2 Trapped by ambition. Odessa & Transnistria were core goals of Putin’s overall scheme. A bridge too far (Mykolaiv). Giving up Kherson & pulling back to the East bank of the Dnipro would amount to abandoning the goal of control of the Black Sea Coast & integrating Transnistria.
NBC: Mary Peltola defeats Sarah Palin in special election to become first Native American representing Alaska in Congress, NBC News projects https://nbcnews.to/3cANJS1
// The results come more than two weeks after the state used ranked-choice voting to determine which candidate would finish out the term of GOP Rep. Don Young, who died in March.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON: A US Gov’t briefing confirmed that Ukrainian forces are making progress in their Kherson offensive. HIMARS is making its effects felt; UKR Partisans and SOF have been providing targeting data for the timely interdiction of Russian ammo depots & troop concentrations.
🐣 RT @ WarMonitor3 Russian soldiers account of Kherson region ¤ Posted on his social media ¤ “The situation is extremely difficult, the bridges across the Dnieper do not function, in fact, the grouping of our direction is now cut off from constant supply there are losses”
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Kakhovka Operational Group: “There are virtually no large bridges left in Kherson Oblast for Russians to use. The bridges have been destroyed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, thanks to the effective use of HIMARS missile systems; only pedestrian crossings remain.”
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent CNN: US conducted ‘war games’ with Kyiv before Kherson counteroffensive. ¤ The U.S. suggested keeping the offensive limited in geography to avoid overextension along the extensive front line, CNN reported citing multiple U.S., Ukrainian, and Western officials.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent To achieve better results, Ukrainian forces engaged in analytical exercises that were intended to better understand what force levels Ukraine would need to muster to be successful in different scenarios.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Initially, Ukraine planned for a larger assault but decided to focus only on the southern front for the time being.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent CNN: US conducted ‘war games’ with Kyiv before Kherson counteroffensive. ¤ The U.S. suggested keeping the offensive limited in geography to avoid overextension along the extensive front line, CNN reported citing multiple U.S., Ukrainian, and Western officials.
🧵 RT @RonFilipkowski Since this typically-deceptive clip is now getting circulated all over right-wing social media, let me again serve as the unpaid rapid-reaction team for the Dems and point out she didn’t say everyone who VOTED FOR Trump, she said people in the MAGA movement.
📌 [TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1565067888721108994?s=20/photo/1
⋙ [Text:] @thejcoop Karine Jean-Pierre says that people who voted for Donald Trump are “a threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.“
⋙⋙ 🐣 Similar to Hillary Clinton being accused of calling ALL Trump supporters “deplorable.” She said “half” ~ which is about right
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to make this distinction. Many of us have and continue to work extremely hard every day to try and win over the hearts and minds of millions of moderate Rs and Indys who voted for Trump but are disgusted by J6, classified docs, their MAGA nominees, etc.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Biden is also working hard to make this distinction, giving Trump voters the opportunity to pick a side between whether they are MAGA or “Moderate.” ¤ He is trying to create a new coalition of mod GOP, Indies and Dems (exc some extreme, eg “defund the police” & pronoun types)🐣 RT @RichardHaass Most people date the Cold War’s end as 11/9/1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. For many of us in the Bush41 administration, the true end to the Cold War came months later with Mikhail Gorbachev’s willingness to work closely with the US to oppose Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.
⋙ 🐣 I was pregnant in July 1990. I remember the joy I felt, thinking “My son will be born into a world of peace.” Then Saddam invaded, starting a new period of war. The “world of peace” lasted only a few weeks.🐣 RT @duty2warn You want a one-tweet summary of the DOJ filing? Try this: The documents were unmistakably marked. Never declassified. Trump took them. He resisted attempts to recover them. He delayed. He obstructed. His lawyers obstructed. He concealed. He crimed. And – he got caught red-handed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn It needs this second tweet: The recovered docs were disorganized. They had been moved. And above all – the documents are not his, they belong to us. He made no arguments prior to the warrant and filed no actions. Every “excuse” has been debunked. He lied, lied, and lied some more🐣 RT @jaspar “When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.” https://bit.ly/3AuZzVy by @sheridan_kate
◕ https://twitter.com/jaspar/status/1564960916260675584?s=20/photo/1
// drop in US life expectancy🐣 RT @atrupar Trump is on one again this morning on Truth Social. You have to be immersed in the culture of right-wing conspiracy theories to even have a clue about much of what he’s trying to say.
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1564976195917185029?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @BillKristol “Gorbachev was the indispensable man. Without him, the Soviet Union probably falls–eventually. But maybe it isn’t bloodless…When the system began to teeter, Gorbachev was the guy controlling all of the guns. He refused to use them.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Jonathan Last: The Accidental Great Man https://bit.ly/3cxCrhw
// Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t die a hero. He lived long enough to become the villain🧵 RT @DaveKeating BREAKING: EU foreign ministers have just agreed to fully suspend the union’s 2007 visa facilitation agreement with 🇷🇺 #Russia, announces 🇪🇺 foreign affairs chief @JosepBorrellF in Prague. ¤ He says Russians entering neighboring EU states present a “security risk”
📌 https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1564967965837205506?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @DaveKeating Borrell says this common EU approach ending visa facilitation will prevent #Russians from engaging in Schengen “visa shopping”. ¤ “We have seen many Russians travelling to 🇪🇺 for leisure and shopping as if no war was raging in #Ukraine. This cannot be business as usual.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @DaveKeating Borrell: “This [compromise] will allow visas to be granted on an individual basis after a thorough assessment of each individual case and especially specific groups of people.” ¤ “We don’t want to cut ourselves off from those Russians who are against the war in #Ukraine”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Czech FM Jan Lipavsky (🇪🇺 Council presidency) says member states bordering Russia can take national measures at their borders to restrict Russians entering. ¤ But, ‘in accordance with the Schengen code’ (which means they have to honor a visa granted by a different EU country.)WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s loony rants should remind the GOP his nomination would be disastrous https://wapo.st/3cCFqFh “Years of sycophancy or silence, years of building a right-wing media cocoon … may prevent the party from engaging in rudimentary self-preservation”
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Key take aways: Trump and two of his attorneys are in big trouble for obstruction of justice; and proof of Trump knowledge got stronger: classified docs all over, including his office and with personal items, and deliberately withheld. Legal arguments compelling.
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING :: THREAD :: my thoughts on the DoJ filing in response to Donald wanting a special master, wanting “his” stuff back, and wanting DoJ to stop going through “his” stuff. Right off the bat, “notwithstanding baseless accusations,”DoJ says no, and even then, no. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1564871602499596288?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote First, Donald has NO STANDING to seek relief over PRESIDENTIAL records because THEY DONT BELONG TO HIM. No need to paraphrase that. And as I have said, the court lacks jurisdiction here. 2/
⋙ Summary of Argument
Plaintiff’s motion to appoint a special master, enjoin further review of seized materials, and require the return of seized items fails for multiple, independent reasons. As an initial matter, the former President lacks standing to seek judicial relief or oversight as to Presidential records because those records do not belong to him. The Presidential Records Act makes clear that “It]he United States” has “complete ownership, possession, and control” of them. 44 U.S.C.S 2202. Furthermore, this Court lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment challenges to the validity of the search warrant and his arguments for returning or suppressing the materials seized. For those reasons and others, Plaintiff has shown no basis for the Court to grant injunctive relief. Plaintiff is not likely to succeed on the merits; he will suffer no injury absent an injunction–let alone an irreparable injury; and the harms to the government and the public would far outweigh any benefit to Plaintiff. …⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Page 9 is Here is where we learn that evidence showed he still had classified stuff, so they issued a subpoena. The trump rep said they did a “diligent search”, and signed a letter saying “this is the last of it”, and then WOULDN’T LET the DoJ check the boxes to make sure. 3/
⋙ After producing the Redweld, counsel for the former President represented that all the records that had come from the White House were stored in one locatton-a storage room .. the Premises (hereinafter, the “Storage Room”), and the boxes of records in the Storage Room were “the remaining, reposttory” of records from the White House. Counsel further represented that there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched. As the former President’s filins indicates, the FBI agents and DOJ attorney were permitted to visit the storage room. Sc D.E. 1 at 5.6. Critically, however, the former President s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel trom opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room. giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classificatior markings remained.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Then DoJ found out that there were STILL documents at MAL (and I’m intrigued as to how they found out. My guess is USSS), and that there was obstruction of justice with the response to the subpoena, so they got a warrant. 4/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote They point out that DoJ got 38 documents back from the subpoena in June, but then seized twice as many during the search, and they were in places other than storage including his desk. And that’s where they call out the passport bullshit 5/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The search warrant allowed them to seize all the “stuff” mixed in with the classified documents. That “stuff” proves intent because trump had to know they were there. Specifically in his desk with his passports. The passports tie him to the documents. 6/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote One of my fave quotes: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many docs with classification markings as the “diligent search” that they had WEEKS to perform calls into serious question the June 3 certification & casts doubt on the extent of cooperation.” 7/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote That means Bobb and Corcoran are now witnesses and should definitely withdraw as counsel and get their own lawyers, because they were either acting on their own, or under the direction of Donald, and obstruction carries a 20 year max sentence. 8/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote And since most special masters look for atty client stuff and not executive privilege, our privilege team already completed that work. Just one of the many reasons the appointment of a special master should be denied. 9/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Also, you can’t get injunctive relief (you can’t stop us from looking through the stuff) because you don’t meet the four criteria to get it. 10/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote First, no way you’ll succeed on the merits. Next, you won’t suffer harm because these DONT BELONG TO YOU. Besides, you waited 2 weeks so your harm can’t be that bad. Third, the government will suffer more harm than you b/c were investigating and conducting a risk assessment 11/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote And fourth, an injunction is adverse to public interest because the public has more interest in a national security risk assessment and a criminal investigation than it does in you getting shit back that doesn’t belong to you. 12/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote So for all those reasons, a special master is stupid, but if you DO appoint one, we have some conditions. Everyone needs to submit a list of candidates by 9/7. They should only look at the stuff our privilege team determined was atty-client privileged. 13/
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote If they DO review classified stuff, they need to already have a TS/SCI clearance, and everything has to be done by September 30th. 14/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ And finally, here is the damning photo of just some of the classified material seized in august AFTER y’all lied about fully responding to the May subpoena. I go over all this on Wednesday’s @dailybeanspod as well. END/ /photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote SOURCE https://bit.ly/3CMgHcs⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote If you cross reference this list with the list of classified document types found in the January boxes, you get what was found in June and August, along with what they haven’t found yet.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1564874272564056064?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Any and all documents or writings in the custody or control of Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings, including but not limited to the following: Top Secret, Secret, Confidential, Top Secret/SI-G/NOFORN/ORCON, Top Secret/SI G/NOFORN, Top Secret/HCS-O/NOFORN/ORCON, Top Secret/HCS-O/NOFORN, Top Secret/HCS-P/NOFORN/ORCON, Top Secret/HCS-P/NOFORN, Top Secret/TK/NOFORN/ORCON, Top Secret/TK/NOFORN, Secret/NOFORN, Confidential/NOFORN, TS, TS/SAP, TS/SI-G/NF/OC, TS/SI-G/NF, TS/HCS-O/NF/OC, TS/HCS-O/NF, TS/HCS-P/NF/OC, TS/HCS-P/NF, TS HCS-P/SI-G, TS/HCS-P/SU/TK, TS/TK/NF/OC, TS/TK/NF, S/NF, S/FRD, S/NATO, S/SI, C, and C/NF.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests https://nyti.ms/3R1G3qQ
// The filing by the Justice Department paints the clearest picture to date of its efforts to retrieve documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Justice Dept. says Trump team may have hidden or moved classified papers https://wapo.st/3e9A8l8
// Prosecutors’ filing suggests Trump advisers misled officials trying to recover sensitive papers; photo shows papers marked “Top Secret” spread out on the floor.⭕ 30 Aug 2022
NBC: DOJ says special master in Trump case would harm national security interests https://nbcnews.to/3Tp8mkR ‘The DOJ said that some of the documents were so sensitive & classified that FBI agents & DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them’
// The Justice Department’s filing came in response to a motion from Donald Trump for a third party to review the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.🧵 RT @Tom_Winter NEW: The Justice Department asserts in a filing that some of the documents seized from Mar-A-Lago were so sensitive and classified that in some instances the FBI agents and DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them.
📌 https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1564821787250249729?s=20🧵 RT @WarintheFuturenThe situation with the Ukrainian #offensive in the south remains unclear. That said, we know enough about both sides – and from the history of such operations – to propose a few areas that are likely to determine success or failure in the coming weeks. 1/23 (Art: Rado Javor)
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1564801982900015104?s=20🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield Okay, I’ve got it. Here we go. The government’s response to Trump’s motion for judicial oversight and additional relief. ¤ The open with: Trump lacks standing and even if he had standing, he wouldn’t be entitled to the relief he seeks.
📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1564821646115872768?s=20
≣CourtFiling: [pdf] https://bit.ly/3wHyCwX 36p🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Okay. I’ve read the filing. Lots of significant new info I’ll thread about in the morning, but page 9 really stood out to me: that trump lawyers would not let the DoJ check the storage.
🧵 RT @BradMossEsq I have read the entire Government filing. I spend all day, every day, litigating against the Government, so some of this is familiar stuff to see. This particular brief is very well-done. ¤ Here are the highlights:
1) The facts. NARA negotiated in 2021 for the missing […]
📌 https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1564825192865611777?s=20– – – – – – – – – – – > Court Filing drops
😅 RT @ProjectLincoln Elves, nuclear codes, and the dangers of global… cooling? Just another week in the Republican Party.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1564772585539309576?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer KHERSON: Ukraine’s offensive in the south is expanding. Official UKR sources report that fighting has spread to nearly all parts of the Russian occupied Oblast. Local RU forces face logis tical challenges and are cut off from reinforcements.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivPost BREAKING There is “heavy fighting” in “almost the entire territory” of the southern Ukrainian region of #Kherson occupied by Russian troops, Ukraine’s presidency said.
⋙⋙ KyivPost: Heavy Fighting in ‘Almost Entire Territory of Kherson’: Ukraine Presidency https://bit.ly/3e6q24n🐣 RT @ @Gerashchenko_en Mikhail Gorbachev, last USSR president, died at age 91.
🧵 RT @tomiahonen My Dearest Vladimir ¤ How’s your war going in Ukraine? Did I misunderstand? Wasn’t it supposed to last 3 days. It’s been over 6 months
I’m miserable. Karl Rove says I’m guilty of espionage. Ingraham abandons me. Chris Christie says I was wrong. Ronna has stopped paying my lawyers
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1564691710126555137?s=20🐣 🐣 RT @ JayinKyiv Kherson, Russians on the run.
💽 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1564264919125696514?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ Anonymousurgent ⚠️⚠️ I have attained video I cannot wait for everyone to see!!!!!
I cannot post yet per Zelensky’s request about the current situations but friends
It IS GREAT NEWS!!!!!! ¤ GREAT NEWS!!!!!! 🇺🇦Slava Ukraine 🇺🇦🔱🇺🇦🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: It appears Merrick Garland is girding the DoJ loins for potentially politically-charged cases by tightening restrictions on employee participation in partisan campaign activity through the midterms. This is an excellent proactive step to preserve the integrity of DoJ.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1564664032749006850?s=20&t=THsNmCFsaG-u_j1TBGE4-Any/photo/1🐣 RT @McFaul Hard to think of a single person who altered the course of history more in a positive direction than Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev.
// Gorbachev died today🐣 RT @atrupar Donald Trump is having a total meltdown on Truth Social this morning. All of these posts are from just the last few hours.
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1564617652471054338?s=20/photo/1
// truly crazy🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer YOU’RE FIRED? @wartranslated reports on a meeting between Putin and Viktor Zolotov, Commander of Rosgvardia, RU’s National Guard. Putin has appointed, and fired, 6 generals so far in his ’Special Military Operation’. From the took on Putin’s face, General Zolotov might be next.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wartranslated Rosgvardia head Viktor “My grandchildren are studying in England, so what?” Zolotov rambles incoherently telling Putin about full support of the population in “liberated” territories.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1564611255905697810?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SkinnerPm Dear America. It’s the guns. Trust me. Or don’t. But trust your dying neighbors. It’s the guns.
🚫 WaPo: Ukraine lures Russian missiles with decoys of U.S. rocket system https://wapo.st/3Rk3b3M
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /1345 UTC 30 AUG / Information continues to evolve. Sources indicate that a multi-pronged UKR attack is developing on multiple axes of advance. UKR continues to interdict crossings of the Dnieper, making reinforcement, resupply or withdrawl difficult for RU commanders.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1564609158955016199?s=20;photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NOTE: Indications & Warnings is observing OPSEC in its reports. The positions of UKR tactical units are never revealed. Reportage on RU units and battle status is based on RU Telegram channels and communications intercepts. RU is self reporting order of battle information.🧵 RT @Mike_Eckel Senior U.S. @DeptofDefense officials commenting on Ukraine fighting; lots of questions about reported Kherson counteroffensive: “Are they on the offensive? I think they are. Is this a counteroffensive? I don’t know.”
📌 https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1564502869608435717?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @RFERL “If they want to survive — it’s time for the Russian military to run away. Go home,” the Ukrainian president said. “Ukraine is taking back its own.”
⋙ RFE/RL: Zelenskiy Tells Russians To ‘Go Home’ As Ukrainian Forces Press Offensive in South https://bit.ly/3Q23kaK⏳ RT @WarMonitor3 Timeline 8/30/2022
// ⏳= Reverse chronological: (Individual tweets, not a thread); each tweet >1K Likes//➔ Kherson-Heavy battles continue into the night across three directions mainly.
//➔ “On the first day of the Russian defence of Kherson, they fired so many artillery rounds their barrels were overheating and now are experiencing catastrophic failures.”
//➔ ⋙ They can barely get logistics over the river. ¤ I don’t see them being able to bring new barrels over anytime soon.
//➔ ⋙⋙ Although I don’t think they care about accuracy😂
//➔ Remember the war in Ukraine rages. ¤ Make sure to keep bringing this subject up with local representatives and friends and family! ¤ Ukraine needs weapons to defend itself still!
//➔ Russians ORLAN 10 is possibly the worst reconnaissance asset ever
//➔ Sometimes you have to make a move to hide your other move. 😉
//➔ Mikhail Gorbachev Former President of the Soviet Union has reportedly died.
//➔ Everywhere else in the world ¤ “Have a good day” ¤ In Ukraine ¤ “Happy hunting”
//➔ Russian forces were spotted moving several convoys of equipment directly north from Chernobaevka Kherson region.
//➔ Wagner social media groups claim Russian forces “retreat under heavy pressure” in some areas on the southern frontline. ¤ Surprising coming from them
//➔ Shared by GREY ZONE, this post claims that Russians in the South had to retreat under heavy pressure, and they are having issues with requesting artillery and aviation support. Also dismisses any official Russian claims about Ukrainian losses. https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1564684341376057345?s=20/1 -2
//➔ Russian forces attempted to build a pontoon in a secret location near L’vove their attempts were seen by satellite imagery and today one of their pontoon barges were hit.
//➔ I have never seen occupied Kherson be hit this much… ¤ Indication of something 😉
//➔ Clearly Ukrainian MLRS systems HIMARS and M270S are working constantly hitting positions across the whole of occupied Kherson.
//➔ Ukrainian forces conducted another strike on the Antonovsky bridge just now 💽
//➔ Ukrainian forces reportedly hit Russian positions near Kherson prison
//➔ Ukrainian forces liberated the settlement of Ol’hyne North East Kherson Frontline ¤ This information was confirmed by general staff reports of shelling.
//➔ Russian aviation continues to operate heavily on the Kherson frontline. ¤ Good thing their accuracy is terrible 😂
//➔ Ukrainian forces hit Russian depot in occupied Beryslav. 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
//➔ Ukrainian forces hit Darivskyi Bridge in Kherson region again. ¤ Russian forces are truly cut off now
//➔ Ukrainian forces hit Russian ammunition depot in occupied Tavriisk ¤ The cookout continues
//➔ Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions in Nova Kakhovka again.
//➔ Ukrainian forces continue to advance south of the Inhulets river. ¤ Heavy fighting continues
//➔ Hunger riots take place in Mariupol ¤ Russian forces continue to not provide basic needs to civilians
//➔ Respect to the brave men and women in occupied territories sharing information with the armed forces of Ukraine. ¤ Not all heroes are in battle!
//➔ Yesterday Ukrainian forces launched a big assault towards Kyselivka and reportedly liberated the town. ¤ They were then counterattacked by Russians and were pushed back again fighting continues. ¤ This information is more than 24 hours old.
//➔ Ukrainian forces targeted the Antonovsky Bridge again just now. ¤ They are targeting the pontoon bridge /photo/1
//➔ Russian forces overnight in Kherson reportedly lost ¤ 159 eliminated Russians and 60 destroyed units of enemy equipment.
//➔ “During the night, Ukrainian bombers carried out 2 strikes on the areas of concentration of Russians in the area of Kiselyvka and Kostyrka”
//➔ Russian soldiers near a checkpoint in Vasylivka fired at a convoy of people evacuating to Zaporizhzhia.
//➔ For reference ¤ List of commonly referred to Russian Military Vehicles ⋙ (thread]
//➔ Poland will more than double military spending next year, to as much as $29 billion
//➔ Several Russian train echelons are heading from Crimea to Kherson
//➔ Russian assaults on Avdiivka are all repelled. ¤ After the announcement of their big offensive west of Donetsk they have made minimal progress in any area.
//➔ Vysokopillya is reported to be liberated by Ukrainian forces ¤ (Unconfirmed)
//➔ Russian forces managed to respond to at least one attack in Kherson. ¤ In certain areas they are very well prepared
//➔ The next weeks will be telling to see if Ukrainian counterattacks in Kherson region have the longevity they need.
//➔ Ukrainian command did a very good job of tricking Russians on the first day. ¤ Lets see if they can do it again…
//➔ Ukrainian warriors in Soledar continue to hold all Russian assaults. ¤ They are real heroes all of them
//➔ Ukrainian forces hit Russian positions in Nova Kakhovka again /photo/1
//➔ Ukrainian soldiers currently training abroad with American M119A3 105mm howitzers. /photo/1
//➔ “The Russians spent at least 10 expensive “Calibers” on strikes against wooden mock-ups, which were mistaken, in particular, for advanced American HIMARS missile systems. ”
//➔ From occupied Nova Kakhovka ¤ “Also in Novaya Kakhovka tonight, the orcs massively took away from local cars, explaining this by the fact that they have a huge number of wounded and have nothing to take them out ”
//➔ Remnants of Russian headquarters hit today in occupied Kherson /photo/1
//➔ Convoys of Russian troops were seen rushing out of Kherson towards the frontlines today early morning.
//➔ Iran handed over 2 types of combat drones to Russia on August 19 ¤ This is their attempt to hunt HIMARS
//➔ Russian base was hit and destroyed in Kherson centre in the morning
//➔ In Melitopol Russian FSB base was blown up by Partisans last night.
//➔ Russian appointed “Head of Kherson occupation Police” was hit by car bomb this morning
//➔ Russian appointed “head of Kherson” Stremousov fled to Voronezh Russia.⭕ 29 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /0200 UTC 30 AUG/ UKR forces are maintaining a coordinated offensive along a broad front West of Kherson. UKR task units south of the M-14 HWY are said to have advanced as far as Tomnya Balka. RU telegram channels report that local occupation forces are in disarray.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1564432849574535168?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @DawggChilly Hey I like your posts but what about the whole keep it dark thing
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer Hi Chilly. You’ll note that I have never posted the location of a UKR unit. And currently my posts are informed by traffic sent by RU sources. They are self reporting their own positions. Maps reflect battlefield data 12-24 hours old, and of no tactical utility to the enemy.🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Commanding?! The Putin power structure is dedicated to commanding money into its pockets. A few regional leaders had to work, but on a national level, it’s 95% mafia looting. Trying to actually do something, like run the military or economy, is hopeless.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Shoigu removed from command of troops in Ukraine – British Ministry of Defense.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 If it weren’t for Ukraine’s allies self-deterring and limiting weapons supply, and Ukraine’s need to be cautious around civilian areas (caution not shared by Russian forces), Russia would have been swept out of Ukraine by now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Ukrainians are fighting for their land, people, and freedom. Russians for what? Mercenaries for money, conscripts out of ignorance and fear. They don’t want to die for Putin’s delusions of conquest. They retreat as soon as Ukr weapons can reach them.🐣 “Razzists” a combination of Russian/racist/Nazi/“Z” sign
“Orcs” are named after a race of goblins in Lord of the Rings
“Vatniks” are Russians who have swallowed Putin’s views on Ukraine
“Tankies” are Russians who buy into Stalinism/communism
“Katsap” ethnic slur (“billy goat”)
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1564485005765664768?s=20🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Russia’s top story. Nothing to see in Kherson. All is well and their ‘incredible’ military that are fleeing like rats will protect the area. When Russia denies it we know it’s opposite
¤ https://twitter.com/OlgaNYC1211/status/1564446603955654658?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @BrimberryJay And yet the telegram channels of numerous Wagner Group fighters (actually known for speaking the truth as opposed to the “official take”) are saying that the Russian defense is in disarray and the first line of Russian defenses has failed in numerous areas on the Kherson front.
🐣 RT @OHareNY 🚨🚨 URGENT & CRITICAL: Armed Forces of Ukraine are requesting that everyone go dark on posting any information, videos, photos, with regards to the Battle for Kherson. Operation Security is critical. Please spread this message across all social media channels🚨🚨
🐣 RT @alphacentauriii Zelenskiy tells Russian forces to flee as Ukraine counteroffensive begins in Kherson ¤ President vows to push Russia’s military back to the border as advisers claim Ukrainian troops have breached frontline in several places
⋙ TheGuardian: Zelenskiy tells Russian forces to flee as Ukraine counteroffensive begins in Kherson https://bit.ly/3RlzC1K
// President vows to push Russia’s military back to the border as advisers claim Ukrainian troops have breached frontline in several places🐣 RT @ReaganConserv83 From all accounts on the ground following the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Kherson Offensive for UKR seems to be going well. No specifics due to a requested blackout by UKR but seems to be an offensive from the Black Sea coast all the way to Central South UKR. #SlavaUkraini
🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer Zelenskyy tonight: “If they want to survive, it is time for the Russian military to flee. Go home…If they do not listen to me, they will deal with our defenders, who will not stop until they liberate everything that belongs to Ukraine.” ¤ Says they’re taking Crimea back, too.
🔊 RT @ MriyaReport 💥🇺🇦 Now on @MriyaReport – discussing the #Kherson counteroffensive with
@ChuckPfarrer
@SpencerGuard
@TrentTelenko
@CraigM_Regan
@domenpresern
@GJStathakis
@mykkuzmin
@Teoyaomiquu
@JimFraserUk
Join us on the space!
[link] https://twitter.com/MeanMotionMedia/status/1564363410913083399?s=20🐣 RT @SpencerGuard While it is clear a Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson is happening, recent reports say Putin has fired 6 more top generals, sidelined his Defense Minister, and is directly commanding the Ukraine war. That is a great recipe for failure. #SlavaUkraini
⋙ DailyMail: Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu ‘is side-lined by Putin – with commanders briefing Vladimir directly – and is routinely ridiculed by his own soldiers’, British military reveals https://bit.ly/3pWgn3c
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Ditchcrosser The very person who triggered the debacle with a gigantic strategic blunder assumes full commmand. Way to go, Russia.🐣 RT @ElyWBlack #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 #Kherson #GoHome
💙 💽 https://twitter.com/ElyWBlack/status/1564357960884797440?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky to Ukraine🐣 RT @AlanAbdo13The movement in Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region continues. Meanwhile, 4 BCs, 2 bases and 1 CP were destroyed in the city
💽 https://twitter.com/AlanAbdo13/status/1564357062661906434?s=20/photo/1NYT, Katie Benner: Document Inquiry Poses Unparalleled Test for Justice Dept. https://nyti.ms/3pVgMCY
// What had started as an effort to retrieve national security documents has now been transformed into one of the most challenging and complicated criminal investigations in recent memory.🐣 RT @ saintjavelin #Kherson right now. Keep calm and trust in @DefenceU🙏
💽 https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1564342030251311107?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer//FLASH TRAFFIC// KHERSON / 1500 UTC 29 AUG/ Sources indicate that Ukrainian forces have opened a broad based offensive against Kherson.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1564266450113675265?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @atrupar this is truly bonkers
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1564299019194605568?s=20/photo/1[TS Text:] 🐣 RT @real So now it comes out, conclusively, that the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing that, if they didn’t, “Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election.” This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in our Country. REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!
🐣 RT @esq_mike Front page CNN: “Yes, (Ukrainian forces) have started the offensive actions in several directions on the South front towards liberating the occupied territories,” Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Operational Command South, told CNN,
⋙ CNN, Jim Sciutto: Ukrainian forces begin ‘shaping’ battlefield for counteroffensive, senior US officials say https://cnn.it/3e6vJiPExpress [UK]: Entire Russian tank unit SUBMERGED in muddy water after failed river crossing – new images https://bit.ly/3wCRX2j
// 5/18/2022; SIX Russian tanks have been pictured submerged in muddy water after a “failed river crossing” in eastern Ukraine.🐣 RT @ aging545 Russian Igor “Strelkov” Girkin confirms Ukrainian offensive in Kherson region, all bridges are disabled, Russian forces evacuation,Ukrainian HIMARS strike on Berislav & Nova Kakhovka & Ukrainian attacks on Donetsk, Makeevka, Yasinovataya, Gorlovka #Ukraine #Russia #Putin
🐣 RT @ NelBluDipinto [Tr] The Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south, in the Kherson Oblast, seems to have begun. ¤ According to the Southern Command of the Ukrainian army, the Russian first line of defense gave way in three places and the Ukrainian troops took positions abandoned by the Russians.
🐣 RT @1982Javichu [Tr] There were powerful artillery attacks on enemy positions throughout the territory of the occupied Kherson region This is the announcement of what we have been waiting for since spring: this is the beginning of the end of occupation of the Kherson region”. Source UKR South C.
🐣 RT @Spleenlancien2 Ukrainian Freedom Song (Anarchist Song,)
🎶 Free song beckons the Cossack,
And the horse sings: “Igo-go.”
And he probably knows the trick
What yago spun. 🎶
¤ https://youtu.be/meiEsMdIVjA⏳ RT @WarMonitor3 Today marks 8 years since Russia, despite the agreement and waving the white flags, attacked Ukrainian military retreating from the besieged Illovaysk.
// ⏳= Reverse chronological: (Individual tweets, not a thread)//➔ Have a nice evening 👏
//➔ Reminder- Russian forces have not advance in Kharkiv region for more then 2 months.
//➔ Battles south of Bakhmut continue around three settlements. ¤ Ukrainian defenders hold their positions
//➔ Battles in Kherson region continue into the night in 7 key locations. 🌎
//➔ American RQ-4B Global Hawk “FORTE 10” ¤ Is still circling just south of Crimea ¤ They are constantly watching
//➔ It is reported that Russian conscripts fled when the attacks were launched near the Inhulets leaving the Russian paratroopers to defend on their own 😂
//➔ I am just reporting on what has happened. ¤ No operational information is given. ¤ Just history not future
//➔ ⋙ I would never report on current plans or operational information keep this in mind. ¤ All information I am releasing is confirmed to be fine to release.
//➔ ⋙⋙ Of course I will report all I want about what Russian forces are doing and what they are going to do 😂
//➔ Ukrainian forces are still pounding Russian positions in Nova Kakhovka. ¤ Big explosions are heard often
//➔ Explosions are reported in the Belgorod region Russia.
//➔ Im offering swimming lessons by the Dnipro river for Russian soldiers…
//➔ Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated Zolota Balka in Kherson region [unconfirmed now, of course]
//➔ It has become clear that Russian forces are still flying in a small amount of logistical capabilities into Kherson. ¤ The best way to solve this is with a stinger
//➔ Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated Zolota Balka in Kherson region.
//➔ Russian logistics are being flown into Kherson. ¤ I should of known…
//➔ Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated Zolota Balka in Kherson region.
//➔ Would you believe Russian forces are still parking planes at Kherson Airport…
//➔ Russian forces are looking for alternative places for their pontoon bridges. ¤ Good thing they are being watched😂 every move
//➔ Ternovi Pody was liberated in Kherson region reportedly. ¤ (Unconfirmed)
//➔ Russian forces have launched a large amount of missiles from Crimea just now! ¤ Listen to air raid sirens take cover!
//➔ Explosions in occupied Kherson ¤ Russian positions are getting pounded all night. 💽
//➔ More explosions are heard in Nova Kakhovka ¤ Nova Kakhovka has not been hit like this before at any point of the war…
//➔ 5 separate times now explosions are reported
//➔ Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov reports on explosions in the city.
//➔ “After a original breakthrough progress afterwards would be slow and steady to break their defences” ¤ Agreed 100 percent
//➔ Im trying to put out only confirmed information. ¤ There is so much information I am receiving it takes time to understand what is true and what is not. Russian forces are looking for alternative places for their pontoon bridges. Good thing they are being watched 😂 every move
//➔ Ukrainian forces also liberated 2 settlements across the Inhulets river after a massive breakthrough.s Heaviest fighting continues and control of several settlements is unclear at the moment.
//➔ Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated settlements of: ¤ Dmytrivka ¤ Arkhanhel’s’ke ¤ Pravdyne ¤ Claims of liberations west of Kherson city are premature however fighting continues.
//➔ The offensive in Kherson is not massive. ¤ We wait and see as I said… ¤ Maybe other areas are also vulnerable…
//➔ Russian Ka-52, Mi-28, Mi-8 helicopters are flying from Crimea to Kherson right now. ¤ Someone give them a surprise
//➔ The Russian aircraft are seen on this video continuing their journey north. 💽
//➔ On Kherson ¤ “Two villages near Kherson and two near Vysokopillia came under our control”
//➔ The operation began at night with a massive shelling of Russian forward positions and rear.
//➔ What the air defence doing?
//➔ Russian strategy: ¤ Shell everything to the ground ¤ Runs out of shells “Blyat”
//➔ “Ukrainian troops took back 4 villages in the south from Russian occupation”
//➔ Occupied Nova Kakhovka massive detonation of ammunition 💽
//➔ Russian ammunition depot in Beryslav Kherson was reportedly hit. ¤ The detonation of ammunition is reported
//➔ Ukrainian forces continue to launch strikes on Russian positions all over occupied Kherson. ¤ Russian A.D activity is reported all over occupied territory.
//➔ “The White House received information about the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the south of Ukraine, but does not want to comment on specific Ukrainian military operations.”
//➔ White House-“regardless of the size, scale and scope of the latest counteroffensive, the Ukrainians have already affected Russia’s military potential.”
//➔ Explosions in Nova Kakhovka reported. ¤ Ukrainian artillery is pounding Russian positions all night.
//➔ Here is my take on what happened on the southern frontline today ¤ Ukrainian forces launched assaults in three key areas- the one with the most success is across the Inhulets other areas fighting continues defence is stubborn. ¤ It is unclear still if the attacks have longevity
//➔ Ukrainian counteroffensives also started south of Zaporizhzhia. ¤ These counteroffensives if successful will be slow progress so don’t expect anything massive immediately. ¤ The main areas which need to have success is North east if they can break that they are in a good spot.
//➔ Expectations are high. ¤ Let’s remember these are real people fighting for their country and many will fall In the process. ¤ War is not a game- Frontlines change but people move them!
//➔ These soldiers have families and loved ones. ¤ They are human
//➔ Ukrainian commanders are playing the worlds most tense chess game.
//➔ Russian forces are intimidating the workers at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to ask the specialists from the IAEA, to leave the Russian military at the NPP for “security” purposes.
//➔ In Occupied Askania Nova(Kherson region) explosions are heard. ¤ Russian air defence is also noted to be active.
//➔ Antonovsky Bridge was targeted again my Ukrainian forces. ¤ Targeting the pontoon bridge /photo/1
//➔ Pontoon bridge was hit reportedly (Unconfirmed)
//➔ North East Of Kherson Ukrainian operations are continuing into the night. ¤ Ukrainian forces are pushing hard in this direction.
//➔ “The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation confirmed the counteroffensive of Ukrainian forces in the south.”
//➔ Antonovsky bridge is being hit again now. ¤ 2 strikes have been conducted in the space of 20 minutes.
//➔ Russian forces have been reinforcing the Kherson frontline for months. ¤ These fortified positions take time to remove.
//➔ In particular a lot of concrete bunkers have been put in place.
//➔ Ukrainian forces hit occupied Berdyansk Kherson region.
//➔ Early reports suggest impacts in the Antonovsky bridge direction
//➔ Ukrainian forces are all making gains on the Zaporizhzhia frontline in some areas I won’t specify yet. ¤ Remember they said “Southern offensive”
//➔ Explosions reported in occupied Kherson right now
//➔ “Lots of explosions be careful”
//➔ Russian air defences are reportedly being activated in several locations in occupied Kherson
//➔ On Kherson ¤ “We provoked the Russian troops into mass redeployment. Now the largest grouping of about 25 thousand is concentrated on the right bank and we have closed it.”
//➔ On Kherson ¤ “Now we are slowly and systematically reducing the combat capability of this group until they run away or start to surrender.”
//➔ American RQ-4 Global Hawk is circling just south of Crimea.
//➔ British RC-135W Rivet Joint is also circling closer to Kherson direction.
//➔ Russian assaults on Zaitseve were repelled
//➔ Photo from Kherson region. /photo/1
//➔ Russian assaults east of Bakhmut are still stuck near the Т1302-М03 intersection. ¤ Fighting continues
//➔ In Soledar fighting continues Russian advances west of Knauf plant are all repelled.
//➔ Russian forces renewed assaults on Ivano-Dar’ivka today(East of Siversk) all their attacks were repelled.
//➔ Russian forces attempted assaults in the directions of Dolyna and Bohorodychne they were repelled and retreated.
//➔ Russian forces attempted assaults in the directions of Dolyna and Bohorodychne they were repelled and retreated.
//➔ Now think about it. ¤ No logistics ¤ No escape ¤ Very bad situation to be in for Russian units
//➔ Summary of events I can talk about: ¤ Currently there is offensives in three main directions.
The one that is most reported about it across the Inhulets where Ukrainian forces have gained a deep foothold into occupied territory. ¤ Heaviest of fighting continues.
//➔ Kherson-I want to emphasise that it is too early to tell if the offensives will have the success it is looking for. ¤ But for now a good start definitely.
//➔ Pravdyne(Kherson) is fully in Ukrainian control
//➔ Russian response to breakthrough on the Inhulets bridgehead. ¤ “The enemy is trying to break through to the village of Bruskinskoe – on the Berislav-Davydov Brod highway in the depths of our defense.”
//➔ It is reported Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian defences near Davydiv Brid and are attempting to liberate several settlements.
//➔ ⋙ This was also mentioned by Girkin several times.
//➔ Ukrainian forces have stuck more Russian positions in occupied Nova Kakhovka just now
//➔ There is success north east of Kherson frontline!
//➔ Russian forces continue to attempt to finish the pontoon across the Dnipro river. ¤ Unfortunately for them this is a futile effort that only ends with one result. 🔥
//➔ Explosions are heard in the centre of occupied Melitopol.
//➔ Kodema is still in Ukrainian control
//➔ [Tr] Glory to Ukraine
//➔ Near Kherson all bridges over Dnipro are now disabled
//➔ Ukrainian HIMARS and M270s continue to hit Russian forward positions all across the Kherson frontline.
//➔ Ukrainian forces have hit Russian positions in Melitopol. ¤ 4 powerful explosions are reported.
//➔ “The Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to gain a foothold and create a foothold in one of the broken sections. ”
//➔ Ukrainian breakthroughs in Kherson are now confirmed. ¤ 3 directions
//➔ It’s unclear if these attacks have longevity yet. ¤ It’s a waiting game to see what happens.
//➔ There is a significant increase in fighting reported across the Inhulets river. ¤ This time Ukrainian forces are on the offensive with artillery and armour support. ¤ The fighting in this area has been very back and forth recently.
//➔ Residents of the Kherson region were urged to stay in safe places, stock up on food and water, and prepare first-aid kits
//➔ Near Soledar heaviest fighting continues in the settlement of Yakovlivka battles are undecided.@
//➔”In the Kherson region the Russian military flee from Tomarino” ¤ (Unconfirmed)
//➔ Photos of a reported impact on a facility at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. ¤ Just 430 feet from a reactor. /photo/1
//➔ Packing their belongings and equipment 😂 /photo/1
//➔”blyad we are going for a swim”
//➔ The Russian military evacuated its military hospital from occupied Melitopol
//➔ One of the objectives of the announcements in Kherson direction was to cause chaos. ¤ And Chaos it has caused😂
//➔ Just to be clear an offensive operation is ongoing. ¤ However the way it has been announced has been purposely done for the reason stated above.
//➔ Russian sources also report “strengthen active operations in a number of areas.”
//➔ The sounds of explosions are heard in occupied Kherson
//➔ It is reported Russian air defences in Kherson region are degraded.
(Unconfirmed)
//➔ Attention! PVS for special forces unit has just reached the frontline. Thanks to everyone that donated and @AlexBondODUA @necyrylfor making it possible. Special forces unit send regards to the WarMonitor account and everyone that donated!
//➔ There is increased activity of Ukrainian forces along three main stretches of the Kherson frontline.
//➔ Head of temporarily occupied Nova Kakhovka confirms evacuation
//➔ It is reported the main Ukrainian counteroffensive is coming from the Kryvyi Rih direction. ¤ This aligns with other reports
//➔ Fear is spreading ¤ Just as predicted
//➔ Ukrainian airforce activity Is reported in Kherson region ¤ (Unconfirmed)
//➔ Several videos are now coming out of abandoned Russian positions in Kherson region. ¤ It is not clear if they are old or not however they look legitimate
//➔”If it’s a psyop, then it’s a really good one I must admit.” ¤ Agreed
//➔ South of Bakhmut heavy fighting continues around Zaitseve.
//➔”Our breakthrough is already significant” ¤ 👀
//➔ Reports of Battles for Kherson centre are false.
//➔ Clashing with Partisans is possible
//➔ Russian pontoon barge of the Dnipro river is now 2/3rds done. ¤ 630m have been built 360m left.
//➔ Just a reminder ¤ Russian forces across the river in Kherson only have a pontoon barge to escape from. ¤ They also only have a pontoon barge to supply them…
//➔ Sukhyi Stavok is confirmed liberated.
//➔ Kherson counteroffensive confirmed from three frontline sources. ¤ It is not mentioned if it will be successful but it had definitely started
//➔ Im reporting on what I am told. ¤ I cannot confirm it with my eyes😂
//➔ Ukrainian forces have begun “shaping” operations in S. Ukraine to prepare the battlefield for a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive- US intelligence officials
//➔ “I am informed that the demand for inflatable boats and mattresses has increased sharply on the right bank of the Dnieper.” 😂😂😂😂😂😂
//➔ “The first line of defence of Russians on the Kherson Front has been broken”
//➔ This is a very vague statement from officials. ¤ I have an idea of where this would be but again I wait for further confirmation.
//➔ There is some reports from Russian soldiers on social media that they have sustained big losses. ¤ There is also hints at a breakthrough. ¤ Something to take into account…
//➔ This is going to be a long day😂
//➔ In the temporarily occupied Kherson region, explosions and shots are heard.
//➔ Very unconfirmed reports of the liberation of Sukhy Stavok Kherson region.
//➔ “Operations are ongoing but it is unclear if it will formulate into a bigger offensive” ¤ For now this is the rhetoric you should go with!
//➔ I would like to point out that PSY ops from either side are in play constantly.
If there is indeed a big counteroffensive you will see me post about it.
//➔ I am currently speaking to several people to confirm the information.
Only available information will be posted for the safety of the defenders.
//➔ Fighting continues across the Inhulets river.
//➔ Fighting continues around Pisky
//➔ What is known in the Kherson region at the moment🔥
Berislav. Getting into the machine plant, where Rusnya was based;
//➔ Hitting a post near the Mayachansky crossing of the North Crimean Canal ¤ Hit in the crossing in the Berislav region ¤ Gavrilovka, Berislavsky district ¤ All hit🔥
//➔ I still wait for confirmation from friends fighting in the area.
I have received some confirmation but not enough to be sure.
//➔”The Armed Forces of Ukraine launched offensive operations in many directions in the south of Ukraine”
//➔ Something is happening on the Kherson frontline more explosions reported amongst other things. ¤ I wait for confirmation
//➔ There is unconfirmed reports of a retreat in certain areas. ¤ I will say again this is extremely unconfirmed.🐣 RT @MAURICI23722752 The Russian newspaper http://Gazeta.Ru also confirming the evacuation of Nova Kakhovka. This city is 50km north of the city of Kherson, which indicates that the Ukrainian offensive in the region is either coming from the north or is even much broader than previously thought [link]
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 One of the objectives of the announcements in Kherson direction was to cause chaos. ¤ And Chaos it has caused 😅
🐣 RT @Faytuks Ukrainian sources sharing this map from the Kherson frontline.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1564221218106089480?s=20/photo/1
// extensive: arrows along the entire front west of Kherson ➔ Nova Kakhovka🐣 RT @MarkRid89403375 Russian state affiliated media reporting a mass evacuation was ordered in Russian controlled Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast. #Ukraine
🐣 RT @cathy39637692 In Kherson Oblast, the Armed Forces cut off the occupiers from military communication with Crimea ¤ The operative group of troops “Kakhovka” informs that HIMARS destroyed almost all large bridges – Antonivsky railway bridge, road bridge and Novokakhovsky bridge.
🐣 RT @Igor_from_Kyiv_ Every day we fight for our freedom, life, independence. We are on our God-given land. And no fascists and occupiers will change this. The truth is with us.#Ukraine️ #UkraineRussiaWar #Ukrainian #StopRussianAggression
💙 💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1563932291092684800?s=20/photo/1
💙 💽 https://twitter.com/Igor_from_Kyiv_/status/1564200957004627968?s=20/photo/1
// music video🧵 RT @jimsciutto Scoop: Ukrainian forces have begun “shaping” operations in S. Ukraine to prepare the battlefield for a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive, two senior US officials briefed on the intel tell me. US believes the long-anticipated counteroffensive will include air & ground ops. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1564206149783650304?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto 2/ Shaping operations are standard military practice prior to an offensive and involve striking weapons systems, command and control, ammunition depots and other targets to prepare the battlefield for planned advances.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto 3/ The plans come as Russia’s war in Ukraine has passed its six-month mark, with US assessments indicating that Russia has been able to deploy fewer units to the frontlines than initially thought, according to a senior US official.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto 4/ The official said many of the existing units — which Russia organizes into Battlefield Tactical Groups, or BTGs, comprising infantry, tanks, artillery and air defense — are deploying below strength, some even at half their normal manpower.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto 5/ Ukraine indicated Monday the actions were underway. “Ukrainian armed forces have started the offensive actions in several directions on the South front towards liberating the occupied territories,” Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for UKR’s Operational Command South, told CNN.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto 6/ She added: “All the details will be available after the operation is fulfilled.”🐣 RT @BarracudaVol1 A Russian soldier from the Kherson front line: they are shooting from everything they have and now they have a lot, time is not in our favor, we need to radically change the strategy. The risk of losing Kherson is great. We have a lot of loss. Ru/photo/1
🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine BREAKING: #Ukraine military has breached the #Russia first line of defense near #Kherson, according to a spokesperson for Operational Command South. They believe there’s a real chance to liberate its occupied territories, considering the very successful use of Western weapons.
🐣 RT @Krma4Karma ⚡️🇺🇦⚡️Ukraine has broken through the Russian lines near Kherson City 👇
⋙ 🐣 RT @StratcomCentre The Armed Forces of Ukraine have breached the occupiers’ first line of defence near Kherson. They believe that Ukraine has a real chance to get back its occupied territories, especially considering the very successful use of Western weapons by the Ukrainian army.🐣 RT @HromadskeUA [Tr] The Armed Forces of Ukraine broke through the first line of defense in the Kherson Region, reports the Operational Group of Forces “Kakhovka”. ¤ “The 109th regiment of the DPR withdrew from its positions in the Kherson region, the Russian paratroopers supporting them fled the battlefield,” the group reports
💽 https://twitter.com/HromadskeUA/status/1564189308633993216?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Conflicts BREAKING: Reports Ukraine has begun a significant counteroffensive against Russian positions in the occupied Kherson region this morning.
🐣 RT @WarMonitor3 Something is happening on the Kherson frontline more explosions reported amongst other things. ¤ I wait for confirmation
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Something very serious is definitely happening in the Kherson direction. I do not remember such an intense flow of information about explosions and attacks on Russian positions during the entire war. There are also serious reports about a counteroffensive operations.
🔄 🐣 .@JoeNBC @MorningMika @Morning_Joe
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1564003219063308293?s=20
// Hillary’s emails in a nutshell🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️UK intelligence: Russian defense minister ‘side-lined’ within Russian leadership. ¤ The U.K. Defense Ministry said in its latest update that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is being “side-lined,” with Russian operational commanders briefing Putin on the course of the war
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1564168200903950337?s=20/photo/1
// UK Defence Report[Text:] Recent independent Russian media reports have claimed that due to the operational commanders briefing President Putin directly on the course of the war.
Russian officers and soldiers with first-hand experience of the war probably routinely ridicule Shoigu for his ineffectual and out-of-touch leadership as Russian progress has stalled. Shoigu has likely long struggled to overcome his reputation as lacking substantive military experience, as he spent most of his career in the construction sector and the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
🐣 RT @leonidragozin In a bout of depression, Kremlin war propagandist, former neo-nazi Dmitry Steshin laments that ordinary Russians are ready to return Donbas to Ukraine in exchange for normal life and that blood and soil means nothing to them. Predicts that it is their last peaceful summer. [TextLink: Ru]
⭕ 28 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Something very serious is definitely happening in the Kherson direction. I do not remember such an intense flow of information about explosions and attacks on Russian positions during the entire war. There are also serious reports about a counteroffensive operations.
🔄 🐣 .@JoeNBC @MorningMika @Morning_Joe
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1564003219063308293?s=20
// Hillary’s emails in a nutshell🧵 RT @ OPolianichev The history of colonial warfare knows numerous examples of atrocities unparalleled in the history of “conventional” wars within Europe itself. One of them was the use of skulls as military trophies. Tsarist Russia was no exception to the rule. An important [thread] 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1563871700835606528?s=20
[…]
💙 ⋙ 🧵 RT @OPolianichev One of the most ominous things in Putin’s 2021 article on the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” was the description of Ukraine as “anti-Russia.” So far, nobody has traced the origins of this term. A [thread] on the rhetoric that paved the way for the Russian invasion. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1563146619486232576?s=20🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The law applies to Trump like it does to everyone else & I’m confident DOJ will make prosecutive decisions based on the law & the facts, not Trump’s veiled threats. ¤ That’s the point of living in a rule of law country. A strongman can’t hold us hostage with threats of violence.
🐣 RT @ harrylitman Well done piece and important for many reasons. Adding to pile: 1) exec priv was Trump’s arg to stonewall; and 2) if it had shred of validity, the NARA letter would have been wrong. No Special Master is needed but the bigger point is exec priv claim can’t get off ground.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw We generally do not publish on Sundays, but did today. ¤ This important article gets to the core of Trump’s request for a Special Master to keep “executive privilege” docs from FBI. ¤ A great expert @mls1776 analytically decimates that idea.
⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Michael Stern: Assessing Trump’s Claim of ‘Executive Privilege’ on FBI Access to MAL Docs https://bit.ly/3ATDyRI “NARA was not only justified in denying Trump’s assertion of executive privilege. It really had no choice in the matter”
[…]
⋙ 🐣 RT @SisterUnity How can you claim executive privilege if you are no longer the executive?
⋙⋙ 🐣 you can under the Presidential Records Act, unless the incumbent president needs the information; the claim is the FBI needs it as well as the Intel Community; both are part of the Exec Branch. so Trump is trumped
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 it’s a bit more complicated than that; but the main point is: the info is critical to the Exec Branch performing its functions: 1) investigating crimes, and 2) seeing if national security was compromised🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russians shelled occupied Energodar, Zaporizhzhia last night – 🇺🇦President’s Office ¤ “They are trying to blackmail the world. They fire at Nikopol, Marhanets and imitate a [Ukrainian] return fire at Enerhodar, although they fire on their own,” he wrote.
https://t.me/ermaka2022/1201🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi1 Using fake ID and posing as a European heiress, Russian speaking woman made multiple trips in and out of Mar-a-Lago: Federal authorities investigating Ukrainian immigrant who posed as a Rothschild, rubbed elbows with Trump and his allies at Mar-a-Lago
⋙ Post-Gazette: Inventing Anna: The tale of a fake heiress, Mar-a-Lago and an FBI investigation https://bit.ly/3QbFnOF A Russian-speaking immigrant, made several trips into Mar-a-Lago posing as a member of the Rothschild family & golfing w Trump & Lindsey Graham🐣 RT @iaeaorg This week, DG @rafaelmgrossi leads the IAEA Support & Assistance Mission to #Zaporizhzhya (ISAMZ) to:
🔹Assess physical damage
🔹Determine functionality of safety & security systems
🔹Evaluate staff conditions
🔹Perform urgent safeguards activities
👉https://bit.ly/3pPfdWX
⋙ 🐣 RT @rafaelmgrossi The day has come, @IAEAorg’s Support and Assistance Mission to #Zaporizhzhya (ISAMZ) is now on its way. We must protect the safety and security of #Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility. Proud to lead this mission which will be in #ZNPP later this week.🐣 RT @ItsBorys For so many years, russian propagandists, trolls and tankies had a powerful effect on the narrative about Ukraine ¤ That’s why it’s so genuinely fulfilling to watch their heads explode now while internet dogs just dunk on them over and over and over again
⋙ SMH: NAFO, the furry fellas taking a bite out of Russia’s info war machine https://bit.ly/3wybPn1
// SydneyMorningHerald😅 RT @letheisslow Here is a comprehensive guide explaining the origins of #NAFO.
◕ https://twitter.com/letheisslow/status/1563966547315539971?s=20/photo/1
// chart of conspiracy theoriesNYT: Trump’s Legal Team Scrambles to Find an Argument https://nyti.ms/3AwhICE “[T]he legal arguments put forth by his team sometimes strike lawyers not involved in the case as more about setting a political narrative than about dealing with the possibility of a federal prosecution”
// The lawyers representing the former president in the investigation into his handling of classified documents have tried out an array of defenses as they seek to hold off the Justice Department.🐣 RT @DefenceU [UA] We usually express gratitude to our international partners for the security assistance. But today we want to give a shout-out to a unique entity – North Atlantic Fellas Organization #NAFO.
Thanks for your fierce fight against kremlin’s propaganda &trolls.
We salute you, fellas!
😅 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1563851548643426304?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NUCLEAR ROULETTE: RU artillery is reported to have hit residential buildings in the town of Enerhodar, home to the plant’s technicians & administrators. Video from the scene shows vehicles on fire near apartment buildings. These fires were burning out of control at last report.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1563989020790628354?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost The man is dangerously insane and so scared. My god. He really is falling apart in the last 30 minutes, even for him. He has this unique & incredible need to show his off the charts fear and terror of what is happening in the most unhinged way possible.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1564022228777242625?s=20/photo/1[Text:] 🐣 RT [TS] @realDonald Trump The DOJ and FBI are practicing Election Interference at the highest and most dishonest level our Country has ever seen before, both in the Midterms, and the 2024 Presidential Election. They allowed spying on my campaign (and did nothing!), told Facebook and the Media that the Laptop from Hell was “Russian Disinformation” (it wasn’t!), and now they don’t want anyone to read the words and meaning of the very important Presidential Records Act, under which I did nothing wrong, BUT THEY DID – RAID!
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg A US senator is all but threatening violence if the ex-president he’s pledged his fealty to gets prosecuted for crimes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Graham says there will be riots in the streets if Trump is prosecuted
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1564029020995469312?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AmoneyResists We’ve watched Trump wage war on:
—Our free press
—Our democracy
—Our judiciary
—Our intelligence agencies
—Our department of justice
—Our Congress
—Our military
—Our global reputation/standing
—Our national security
—Our public health
—Our elections
—Our 🌏
But never Putin━━━━━━━▼ Old Ukraine Maps:
🐣 RT @OksanaLviv2 Map of South_RU (Ukrainian) dialects and colloquials published in 1871, St. Petersburg by”Typography and Chromo-Lithography of A. Transhel”.Compiled by Ukrainian ethnographers of the 19c Pavlo Platonovych Chubynskyi (1839–1884) & Kostyantyn Petrovych Mikhalchuk (1841–1914)
🌎 https://twitter.com/OksanaLviv2/status/1563945364553703431?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @OksanaLviv2 Please note that Ukrainian is only referred to in the notes: UA language was official prohibited by RU Imperial edicts. The authors mentioned three UA colloquial dialects in the notes: Ukrainian (Central and SE UA), Poleshian (N UA on the border with BLR) and Red-Ruthenian (W UA)🐣 RT @OksanaLviv2 In 1918 Ukrainian Republic announced that it was separating from Russia and becoming an independent state. To tell the world about the new country, a colorful infographic poster was published in Bucharest, which tells about UA history, language and economy in English and French
🌎 https://twitter.com/OksanaLviv2/status/1563941374004690946?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @OksanaLviv2 Ukraine’s history of most of the 20c is a tragic story of survival:consecutive waves of conquests, genocides, artificial famines, state-lead repressions/assimilations. This map and info published in 1918 might be of interest to you. UA population at the time was 50mln(>42mln now)
⋙ 🐣 I’ve read “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder. It’s heart-wrenching. My daughter-in-law is from Krasnik near Lublin and my paternal grandmother was from Southeast Poland as well. The history of this borderland is full of tragedy. I’m glad Poland has been so welcoming to refugees
🐣 RT @Pegase68052945 it reminds of this map
🌎 https://twitter.com/Pegase68052945/status/1563600124533948416?s=20/photo/1
// La République UKRAÏNIENNE (1914)🐣 RT @Real_Zaphod Ukraine could be entitled to the entire Krasnodar region…
🌎 https://twitter.com/Real_Zaphod/status/1563247024991916033?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 can you see a date for that map?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @OksanaLviv2 1934 – one of the ethnographical maps published by Volodymyr Kubiyovych *Кубійович В. Етнографічна карта України і сумежних країв / В. Кубійович, М. Кулицький. – 1 : 5 000 000. – Львів : Літ. Унія, [1934]
━━━━━━━▲WaPo, Marc Fisher: Is the United States headed for civil war? https://wapo.st/3Tn3vQX
// Fighting words and extremism are on the rise. We are not yet in ‘Turner Diaries’ territory, but that doesn’t mean the country will avoid violent conflict.My Comment: Our political geography both cuts in favor and against civil war. Blue and Red states are dispersed awkwardly across the country, in a way that makes an easy division into two regions difficult. On the other hand, there is the urban/rural divide. The cities may not have as many guns (though that’s not clear), but they account for an overwhelming share of GDP and production. If rural areas don’t want to feed the cities, the cities can import wheat and corn. Red states can turn into Afghanistan.
That aside, if Biden and the Democrats can hold onto the levers of power, there’s a chance the “MAGA Republicans,” as Biden calls them, will come to their senses, especially if Trump implodes. They are seeing, as Jan 6 rioters are tried and imprisoned, that the Wheels of Justice still turn, and Trump-induced mass delusion has been just one huge cosplay. Go back to watching fantasy tv instead of turning our national experience into a kaleidoscopic nightmare.
🐣 RT @McFaul Disgusting. I hope all self-described “realists” watch this video, and then try to explain again to us how this war is just a defensive/preemptive/rational/logical “special military operation” aimed at stopping NATO expansion & has nothing to do with imperial ideas & identities.
⋙ 🧵 RT @den_kazansky Russian mercenary Igor Mangushev (Bereg) made a performance with the skull of a Ukrainian soldier killed near Azovstal. ¤ In his speech, Mangushev said that Russia is at war with the Ukrainian idea, so all Ukrainians must be killed. ¤ Still think trading with Russia is a good idea?
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1563768765036146689?s=20/photo/1⭕ 27 Aug 2022
🐣 📋 RT @POTUS All the talk about the deficit from the same folks that gave an unpaid-for $2 trillion tax cut to the wealthy and big corporations. It makes you laugh. ¤ Under my Administration, the deficit is on track to come down by more than $1 trillion this year.
📋 WaPo: Truth Social faces financial peril as worry about Trump’s future grows https://wapo.st/3Re1GEe “The company has seen its stock price plunge nearly 75 percent since its March peak and reported in a filing last week that it had lost $6.5 million in the first half of the year”
// Payment disputes and a dwindling audience have fueled doubts about the former president’s Twitter clone… Trump, the site’s most popular user, has fewer than 4 million followers, and the site’s most active trending topics, including #DefundTheFBI, have shown only a few thousand people posting to them in recent days, data from the site shows. For comparison, Twitter says it has about 37 million people in the U.S. actively using the site every day. …
… [I]n the days since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Truth Social’s viewership has slowed, according to traffic estimates from Similarweb, an online analytics firm. Its U.S. audience has tumbled to about 300,000 views per day, down from nearly 1.5 million on the day of its launch.
While the site’s reputation suffered after its February launch was marred by fake accounts, a long wait list and other technical glitches, that time also marked the peak of the site’s online popularity, the estimates show.
🐣 RT @New_Narrative Gallup: The latest improvement in Biden’s overall approval rating puts him in better standing before midterm elections than five of his predecessors over the past 40 years – Reagan in 1982, Clinton in 1994, Bush in 2006, Obama in 2014 and Trump in 2018.
⋙ 📊 Gallup: Biden’s Job Rating Rises to 44%, Highest in a Year https://bit.ly/3CCVlhE🐣 RT @Chris_D_Steele The killing of Dugina in Russia’s looking increasingly like the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. If so, it’s a false flag op by an FSB faction, blamed on Putin’s enemies and designed to whip up nationalist fervour in support of military escalation (in Chechnya then, Ukraine now).
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ The most obvious reason that a Special Master is unnecessary in Trump’s case is that as far as unclassified presidential records are concerned, DOJ is not concerned with their *contents* (which is what EP protects), they are concerned with their *unlawful removal and retention*
WaPo: Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives https://wapo.st/3pS71oQ “Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in refusing to turn over documents, at times suggesting that the records are his and should not be given back to the Archives”
// The agency has been hit with a wave of threats and vitriol since the FBI retrieved scores of classified records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club🐣 RT @PoliticoEurope The Ukrainian government has begun carrying out a “mandatory evacuation” of nearly 750,000 people in areas of the country where the fighting is fiercest in what is being described as “the biggest movement of people” in the country’s history.
⋙ Politico [EU]: ‘The biggest movement in the history’ — Ukraine evacuates the front line https://politi.co/3Req0pw
// Under criticism from rights groups, Kyiv hopes to relocate 750,000 people away from the fighting.🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Donald Trump gave a highly incriminating interview to Lou Dobbs in which he said he can take whatever documents he wants. He should really heed Karl Rove’s advice and remain silent.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1563608461765918721?s=20/photo/1
🔄 ⋙ 🐣 NationalArchives: The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978 (44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209) https://bit.ly/3TqkvpI
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1563650370588606469?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @ BradMossEsq A preview of likely points in DOJ’s response to Judge Cannon re the Special Master.
1) there is no such thing as a SM for classified documents
2) there is no such thing as a SM for Executive Privilege documents
3) even if there was, it would all be in camera and ex parte.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ BradMossEsq This is a temporary victory for Trump’s team. It is not an injunction. The filter team has been doing its work for two weeks already. And this order goes out of its way to say this doesn’t mean she will ultimately appoint a Special Master.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarcACaputo Federal judge just issued her preliminary order intending to appoint a special master that Trump sought to review the documents seized in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1563637421270523904?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 📊 RT @MorePerfectUS UPDATE: New poll shows overwhelming support for a Michigan ballot initiative that would enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution. ¤ The measure would override a 90-year-old state law that makes abortion a felony even in cases of rape or incest.
// Yes, override 67%, No 24%, 9% Undecided (EPIC-MRA | AUG. 18-23 | 600 RESPONDENTS | +,-4%)🐣 RT @BreakingNews [NBC] The Director of National Intelligence said the agency will conduct a damage assessment of the boxes of documents that were seized from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, in a letter to congressional lawmakers obtained by @NBCNews.
⋙ NBC: Intel officials will assess ‘risk to national security’ from documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago https://nbcnews.to/3AvK3sC
// In a letter to lawmakers, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said her office is conducting a damage assessment of the documents recovered from the former president’s Florida club Aug. 8.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, which oversees the CIA, the National Security Agency and 16 other agencies, will “lead an Intelligence Community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents,” director Avril Haines wrote in the letter, dated Friday.
The DNI and Department of Justice are “working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered during the search,” Haines added, and both teams will coordinate closely to ensure the assessment doesn’t interfere with DOJ’s ongoing criminal investigation.
The letter, first reported by Politico, was addressed to House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and House Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who had both asked for a security damage assessment days after the FBI searched Trump’s Florida club on Aug. 8. The Senate intelligence committee has also asked for a damage assessment as well as further details about the substances of the documents but is yet to receive any.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund US Republicans have to clarify their stand. Are they for Putin/Trump or for the USA? To claim to be both for Trump and the USA is not credible. @tedcruz @MarshaBlackburn @marcorubio @RonJohnsonWI
💙 🧵 RT @tomiahonen Affidavit Day Thread 1/ ¤ So we had fun with Affidavit Day. Now let’s do a Thread of what we learned, and where we now stand, on the largest espionage case in US history, in fact Trump’s theft of US secrets is one of largest in world, of all time #TrumpStoleClassifiedDocuments
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1563514729284321280?s=20🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg I’m pretty sure the former president just confirmed the theory that fear of FBI leakers in SDNY was the reason James Comey sent that October letter re the Weiner laptop and admitted that the letter got him elected.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1563596673406074880?s=20/photo/1[Trump Text:] When are the great Agents, and others, in the FBI going to say “we aren’t going to take it anymore,” much as they did when James Comey read off a list of all of Crooked Hillary Clinton’s crimes, only to say that no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute. The wonderful people of the FBI went absolutely “nuts,” so Comey had to backtrack and do a FAKE INVESTIGATION in order to keep them at bay. The end result, we won in 2016 (and did MUCH better in 2020!). But now the “Left” has lost their minds!!!
WaPo: Truth Social faces financial peril as worry about Trump’s future grows https://wapo.st/3Re1GEe
// Payment disputes and a dwindling audience have fueled doubts about the former president’s Twitter clone🧵 RT @highbrow_nobrow Known Timeline:
1. 7/31/2019: Trump spoke with Putin (NYT)
2. 8/3/2019: Trump issued a request for a list of top US spies (The Daily Beast)
3. 10/5/2021: “CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants”. (NYT)
4. 8/26/2022: Documents at MAL Could Compromise Human Intel (NYT) 1/5
📌 🖼 https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1563549407299383304?s=20/photo/1⭕ 26 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @MilesTaylorUSA My take: Trump will probably be indicted for this.
🧵 RT @djrothkopf Trump has always had a deeply troubling relationship with the US intelligence community. At his initial briefings as president, he was uninterested in key revelations and instead used the meeting to press officials for a public denunciation of the Steele dossier.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1563492477109092352?s=20⋙ Days later, immediately after taking office, he gave a highly political speech at CIA headquarters that, in the view of former DNI Gen. James Clapper and many others, “desecrated” the memorial to former CIA employees.
⋙ He regularly discounted Intelligence Community views, particularly on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 elections and the threat they posed to future election security. He revealed classified information to Russian officials in the Oval Office.
⋙ He released classified information via the Internet. He insisted people including his family be given security clearances when it was urged by professionals that not happen. He publicly threw the US IC under the bus during his Helsinki press conference after his mtg w/Putin.
⋙ He forced out senior intelligence officials who he felt were insufficiently loyal to him and replaced them with unqualified political hacks he felt he could manipulate and use to protect him from IC revelations that he saw as threatening.
⋙ He used the classification process to keep politically damaging information (like notes of the Ukraine blackmail phonemail) from the public view. And as we now know, he stole and improperly handled massive number of highly classified documents.
⋙ We still don’t know how many. We still don’t know why. We just know that doing what he did was not simply an act of ignoring the law, it directly put at risk US intelligence assets and US national security. This is not a story about documents.
⋙ It is a story about a man with years of proven contempt for our intelligence community and disregard for their well-being and that of the country violating the law in ways that could profoundly compromise our security and threaten the lives of individuals who were serving the US.
⋙ We have never seen such behavior from a senior US government official, much less a president. And we are only speaking of what we know. Why was he so threatened by the intelligence community all along? Why did he feel they knew things about him that could be damaging?
⋙ Was it just consciousness of guilt due to his active solicitation of the support of a foreign enemy during the 2016 election? Was it more than that? What is it we don’t know? What did he seek classified that he should not have? What secrets went missing before this point?
⋙ What were the consequences of the apparently voracious appetite for secrets his son-in-law Jared Kushner had? Why was he so actively interested in them? What were Trump’s motives in taking secrets and obstructing the USG efforts to have them returned?
⋙ What happened to the documents while they were in Trump’s custody? Do we have all the documents back? Were there documents stored at places other than Mar-a-Lago? What did he get his lackeys to do when they ran the IC? What were his plans for them were he to be reelected?
⋙ These are not “political” questions. These are questions that must be answered to understand what damage Trump and his inner circle may have done to our intelligence community, our intelligence assets worldwide, their safety and our security.
⋙ What we do is this: The same man who undertook this assault on US intelligence, led an attempted coup against the US government, attacked our allies, sought to gut NATO, sought to empower our enemies. This is not hyperbole, not speculation.
⋙ This is the reality of the Trump presidency. It must be seen for what it was and the man at the center of it must be seen for who he was and is–one of the greatest, most pernicious threats to US national security we have ever seen.🐣 RT @HelenKennedy Fox anchor: they could have just asked for the docs back
Rove: “My sense is they were asking for a year and a half, and why he was holding on to these materials when he had no legal authority to do so under the Presidential Records Act is beyond me.”🐣 RT @OliviaTroye Thinking about the intel officers, sources & their families who are watching this unfold knowing their lives may be at risk if the classified info was compromised. The affidavit is a testament to Trump’s ongoing contempt for our nat’l security community & disregard for the law.
🐣 RT @SIfill_ A nightmare. Yes. This is what we should be talking about. What we must confront.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok “Last year, a top-secret memo sent to every C.I.A. station around the world, warned about troubling numbers of informants being captured or killed” ¤ Trump Inquiry Fueled in Part by Concern Over Human Intelligence Sources in Documents Trump Improperly Took
⋙⋙ NYT: Classified Material on Human Intelligence Sources Helped Trigger Alarm https://nyti.ms/3KnfhGZ
// Documents related to the work of clandestine sources are some of the most sensitive and protected in the government. F.B.I. agents found some in boxes retrieved from Donald J. Trump’s home.NYT Editorial: Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law https://nyti.ms/3ctkAs0
NYT, Andrew Weissmann: We Knew the Justice Department Case Was Righteous. This Affidavit Confirms It. https://nyti.ms/3cmtTtN Trump had files marked HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN and SI: the Crown Jewels of the national security community
An agent who reviewed that earlier material saw documents marked with “the following compartments/dissemination controls: HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN and SI.” ¤
The markings for top-secret and sensitive compartmented information indicate the highest level of security we have. Those levels protect what is rightly described as the crown jewel of the national security community.DailyBeast, Brad Moss: It’s Over: Trump Will Be Indicted https://bit.ly/3Cze1yu
// There is little left for the Justice Department to do but decide whether to wait until after the midterms to formally seek the indictment from the grand jury.(1) Trump was in unauthorized possession of national defense information, namely properly marked classified documents.
(2) He was put on notice by the U.S. Government that he was not permitted to retain those documents at Mar-a-Lago.
(3) He continued to maintain possession of the documents (and allegedly undertook efforts to conceal them in different places throughout the property) up until the FBI finally executed a search warrant earlier this month.🐣 RT @Acyn Weissmann: When I read this today, my big overarching takeaway is.. that the former President is going to be prosecuted
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1563263204033122304?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Sorry @Redistrict, but I am stealing the line. ¤ I have seen enough, folks. Donald Trump will be indicted in the classified documents matter. I’m placing my marker.
🧵 RT @ MuellerSheWrote BREAKING :: THREAD :: AFFIDAVIT
184 CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS
67 CONFIDENTIAL
92 SECRET
25 TOP SECRET
HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, SI 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1563217633800966144?s=20
// docs recovered from first 15 boxes turned over in Jan 2022
⇈ ⇊ ⋙ [Classification Abbreviations]
⋙ HCS = HUMINT Control System = a sensitive compartmented information (SCI) control system designed to protect intelligence information from clandestine human sources. 2/
⋙ FISA = Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act = a dissemination control designed to protect intelligence information derived from the collection of information authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or “FISC.” 3/
⋙ ORCON = Originator Controlled = This marking indicates that dissemination beyond pre-approved U.S. entities requires ORIGINATOR APPROVAL. 4/
⋙ NOFORN = NOT RELEASABLE to foreign nationals/governments/non-US Citizens. Information that may not be released in any form to foreign governments, foreign nationals, foreign organizations, or non U.S. citizens without permission of the originator.5/
⋙ SI = Special Intelligence = an SCI control system designed to protect technical and intelligence information derived from MONITORING OF FOREIGN COMMUNICATIONS SIGNALS [SIGINT?] by other than the intended recipients. 6/ […]🐣 RT @MarkWarner It appears, based on the affidavit unsealed this morning, that among the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were some of our most sensitive intelligence – which is one reason the Senate Intelligence Committee has requested, on a bipartisan basis, a damage assessment… 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkWarner … of any national security threat posed by the mishandling of this information. ¤ The Department of Justice investigation must be allowed to proceed without interference. 2/2
// chair Senate Intel CommitteeNYT: Documents at Mar-a-Lago Could Compromise Human Intelligence Sources, Affidavit Says https://nyti.ms/3cmNDNV
// The search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home was spurred by the discovery that he had kept classified material related to the use of human sources in intelligence gathering.Politico: Trump Mar–a-Lago affidavit reveals ‘handwritten notes,’ highly classified material led to warrant request https://politi.co/3pLc3na
// Records the FBI obtained from Trump’s Florida home in advance of the Aug. 8 search bore indications they contained human source intelligence.≣ CourtDoc [Unsealed]: AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION UNDER RULE 41 FOR A WARRANT TO SEARCH AND SEIZE https://politi.co/3CA42t1
// redacted affadavit for search warrant for search of Mar-a-Lago; ~21p of 38p redacted
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @kyledcheney 184 docs were found containing classified information in the first 15 boxes, including 25 marked top secret.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney Kash PATEL gets a mention in the affidavit.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney DOJ also explains the reason it asked Trump to lock his storage room — and it wasn’t as benign as Trump and his allies have described.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEW: DOJ revealed Friday that it is protecting a “significant number of civilian witnesses” by keeping aspects of its Mar-a-Lago search under seal. ¤ Materials at Mar-a-Lago included extraordinarily sensitive classified/defense info.😅 RT @tomishonen MY WAY Frank Sinatra
And now, indictments near
And so I face humiliation
Voters, I’ll say it clear
To Vladimir, I sold our nation
I’ve told, my lies they hear
I’ve conned on Fox, the Maga airwave
And more, much more than this
I tricked you
My way
#WorstPresidentEver⭕ 25 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @GOPChairwomanJoe Biden has still not said a word to mark one year since his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal
⋙ 🐣 RT @rhonda_harbison
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/rhonda_harbison/status/1562981473887535104?s=20/photo/1
// Trump on Afghanistan withdrawal[Text:] April 18, 2021
Statement by Donald J. Trump,
45th President of the United States of AmericaI wish Joe Biden wouldn’t use September 11th as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons. First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long. I made early withdraw possible by already pulling much of our billions of dollars of equipment out and, more importantly, reducing our military presence to less than 2,000 troops from the 16,000 level that was there (likewise in Iraq, and zero troops in Syria except for the area where we KEPT THE OIL). Secondly, September 11th represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost. Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.
🐣 RT @19120101new #UkraineWar #Crimea #UkraineRussiaWar #Ukraine #Russia #kherson #乌克兰 #俄罗斯 #烏克蘭 #俄羅斯 #kyiv #Київ #Україна 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦 🇺🇦
💽 https://twitter.com/19120101new/status/1563036940362219520?s=20/photo/1
// patriotic videoSalon: “That’s not what our report said”: Ex-Mueller prosecutor says Barr’s Trump memo is “legally wrong” https://bit.ly/3QQg0mD
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on Wednesday pushed back on a newly released Justice Department memo explaining the decision not to charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction in special counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation.
Weissmann, who served as a lead prosecutor on Mueller’s team and successfully convicted former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, disputed the memo’s arguments and pushed back on the claim that Mueller’s investigation found no evidence of an underlying crime.
“That’s not what our report said,” Weissmann told MSNBC. “It said that there’s evidence. It’s just that we didn’t think there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. So, the sort of upshot is I can understand why the department fought long and hard not to have this see the light of day and it’s quite a shocking document.” ¤ Weissmann added that the DOJ reasoning is also “dead wrong.”
“That is legally wrong,” he said. “Our report actually addresses that… and this memo simply does not successfully, at least in my view, address the legal precedents, and it is not the case that you cannot be guilty of obstruction if you didn’t commit the underlying crime.” ¤ Weissmann called the memo a “doozy” and zeroed in on a specific passage of the memo urging Barr to make a decision. …
Weissmann added that the memo appeared to show why Barr did not consult Mueller on whether the president committed a crime. ¤ “We now know clearly from his memo that he did not send it back to Mueller — who reported to him — was because he knew exactly what the answer would be,” Weissmann said. “Because it says in black and white that this memo could be read to conclude that the president committed obstruction.”
Other legal experts also criticized the DOJ’s arguments. Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer and the co-founder of CREW, called the memo “garbage.” ¤ “NO wonder a series of judges have slammed Barr for dishonesty in connection with all this,” he tweeted. “Anyone else woulda been prosecuted. Barr should be disciplined.”
CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement that the memo takes a “breathtakingly generous view of the law and facts” and “twists the facts and law to benefit Trump.” ¤ “The memo is not just wrong; it is dangerous coming from a usually respected office at the Department of Justice,” he said. “It is clear why Barr did not want the public to see it.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw This Barr/Engel/O’Callaghan memo is utterly absurd. It should be repudiated ASAP, by OLC if the occasion arises.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Key “reasoning” of Barr/Engel/O’Callaghan memo: if you successfully obstruct an investigation, you cannot be charged with obstruction as you were not charged with the crime under investigation. ¤ Future defendants will have a field day with this memo unless DOJ repudiates it soon.
🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite Future defendants are going to offer the OLC memo that concludes Trump didn’t commit obstruction as evidence they shouldn’t be prosecuted. The lawyers who signed the memo contorted themselves so badly to exonerate Trump that under their standard, clear obstruction gets a pass.
↥ ↧
WaPo, Randall Eliason: Newly released memo to Barr was just cover for exonerating Trump https://wapo.st/3PKPNV6 “Merrick Garland’s Justice Department could still take an independent look — and potentially prosecute — but time is running out”… As Mueller noted in his report, the prospect of charging a president with obstruction raises difficult issues. But this newly released memo is not a serious attempt to grapple with those issues. It’s a whitewash — a failed effort to provide legal cover for Barr’s foregone conclusion exonerating the president. And as the statute of limitations clock continues to tick away, we still don’t have an honest assessment from the Justice Department regarding Trump and obstruction.
Mueller infamously declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on this question, based on the long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. In the memo, dated two days after Mueller sent his 400-plus page report to Barr, senior Justice Department officials Steven A. Engel and Edward O’Callaghan urge Barr to make that judgment himself and declare there was insufficient evidence of obstruction. Barr did just that in a misleading letter to Congress released that same day.
… They argue … obstruction charges [would be] inappropriate, because it would be unusual to prosecute someone for obstruction when there was no underlying criminal offense. … ¤ [P]eople obstruct investigations for all kinds of reasons — including that the results might be politically damaging or embarrassing — even if they don’t fear criminal liability.
But the bigger flaw in this argument is that the obstruction itself might be the reason there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. According to this memo, if you are good at obstruction and succeed in thwarting the investigation, you get a free pass not only for the underlying conduct but also for the obstruction itself. That is not the law.
Engel and O’Callaghan also claim Mueller had a flawed view of obstruction because he believed that otherwise lawful acts — such as firing the FBI director — could constitute obstruction if done with corrupt intent. They argue this is incorrect, and that obstruction charges could not properly be based on conduct that is “lawful on its face.”
Wrong again. Obstruction charges often apply when otherwise lawful acts are done with the corrupt intent to obstruct. If I shred my personal files because my office is cluttered, that is perfectly lawful. If I shred those files because they have been subpoenaed by a grand jury, that same conduct is now obstruction of justice, based on my corrupt intent.
The memo also suggests Trump’s actions were not obstruction because they were motivated by his belief that the Mueller investigation was unfair and was interfering with his governing agenda. No doubt all public officials under investigation feel the same way. But that is no defense. Just as believing he won the election would not justify Trump unleashing a mob on the Capitol, being unhappy about the Mueller investigation would not justify obstructing that investigation.
But the strongest evidence of the memo’s true purpose is its suggestion that Barr himself decide the obstruction question. Engel and O’Callaghan argue it would be contrary to DOJ policy to leave that question unresolved. But if that were truly the concern, the best solution was obvious: Barr could have ordered Mueller to make that call. … Barr’s failure to ask Mueller for his view and decision to claim that role for himself suggests he knew he would not like Mueller’s answer.
Before he was even appointed as attorney general, Barr wrote an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department arguing that Mueller’s obstruction theories were “fatally misconceived.” There was never any doubt about where Barr was going to come down on the obstruction question, and the flimsy analysis in this memo does nothing to further illuminate the issue. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department could still take an independent look — and potentially prosecute — but time is running out.
🐣 RT @harrylitman It’s not his style, so you can’t say he did it on purpose; but Merrick Garland has been like an Akido master or a matador to Trump’s bull: while remaining passive and completely by the book, he and the DOJ have totally outmaneuvered Trump and now are seeing all his lies revealed
🔄 🐣 RT @JamesLBruno Here’s a list of 871 cases of sexual crimes committed by Republican/conservative operatives in recent years. (Not sure the source, but the cases appear genuine.) https://bit.ly/3QQUX3d
🐣 RT @visegrad24 This is what Russian state TV is telling 150 million Russians day in, day out. ¤ They are openly calling for war crimes against the Ukrainian nation and attacks on other European states.
💽 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1562877790009315328?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @atrupar Biden campaigning in Maryland on stakes of the 2022 midterms: “The survival of our planet is on the ballot.”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1562949477337481217?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣[…] RT @atrupar This is a really strong speech from Biden — a nice mix of touting his accomplishments and owning the cons
⋙ 🐣[…] RT @atrupar Biden winds down his speech in Maryland: “In this moment, those of you who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we must be stronger, more determined, & more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are to destroying America”🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln “If your dreams of returning to normalcy, sanity, and comfort rest with DeSantis and his like, it’s time to wake the hell up.” Lincoln Project co-founder @TheRickWilson writes about the dead end dreams of a Trump-free future for the GOP in a new op-ed:
⋙ LincolnProject, Rick Wilson: Back Into The Matrix https://bit.ly/3PSuaCn “2024 won’t be a policy fight between competing ideologies. It will be a duel to the death over whether Trumpist authoritarianism or the American Republic dies”In the world of Washington consultants and the gentry conservative media, business went on more or less as usual, with nothing to worry about except the occasional deaths of 500,000 Americans in a pandemic, a violent uprising, the wholesale emergence of government by tweet, and policy set by madhouse conspiracy theories.
They stared at the utter disappearance of a conservative political party based on the rule of law, individual liberty, the Constitution, personal responsibility, fiscal probity, and a robust foreign policy. Somehow, they believed this was a lacuna, not a transformation. And, catastrophically, they dreamed they could control what it became.
Instead of recoiling in horror, they looked at the unwashed, uneducated, and unhinged base of Trump’s red-hat army and decided they would milk them financially through a spectacular scam called WinRed and build what one staggeringly foolish GOP insider called “A permanent governing majority” on the backs of people who quite clearly were ready to burn the government to the ground on January 6, 2021 and who today talk glibly about slaughtering FBI agents. …
If your dreams of returning to normalcy, sanity, and comfort rest with DeSantis and his like, it’s time to wake the hell up. ¤ Elite Republicans’ isolation from and ignorance of the MAGA base is, even now, definitional to their delusion. They certainly don’t watch the media sewer that tells Republican voters Trump won and the election was stolen. They laugh off the daily agitprop sales pitch that millions accept blindly; that only Trump stands between America and a tidal wave of godless transexual illegal immigrant groomer Antifa caravans coming for their children, and that Joe Biden is somehow both a globalist socialist mastermind and a doddering Alzheimer’s patient. …
2024 won’t be a policy fight between competing ideologies. It will be a duel to the death over whether Trumpist authoritarianism or the American Republic dies. Imagining a younger, safer, Trump-lite will save them from the destruction Trump will wreak on this nation is both arrogant and utterly irresponsible.
Washington’s gentry conservatives, Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch, and the DC consultocracy will imagine they’ll get something better from the field, but Trump’s protean nature in the GOP will lead them to endorse and support a man who came close to destroying the Republic less than two years ago.,
🐣 RT @JoeBiden In 2020, 81 million Americans voted to save our democracy. ¤ That’s why Donald Trump isn’t just a former president. He’s a defeated former president. ¤ Now, you need to vote to save democracy again.
🐣 RT @justinbaragona CNN reports that Trump began taking legal advice from Tom Fitton of right-wing activist group Judicial Watch shortly after he first returned the 15 boxes to the National Archives in January — and that Fitton told him he shouldn’t have turned over any docs in the first place.
⋙ 🐣 RT @justinbaragona It should be noted that Tom Fitton is very much NOT a lawyer, despite being the president of Judicial Watch. ¤ He was, however, the third worst purveyor of misinformation about the 2020 election.
⋙⋙ 📋 JustSecurity: Researchers Release Comprehensive Twitter Dataset of False Claims About The 2020 Election https://bit.ly/3PR3vFO
// 6/15/2022🐣 RT @PeterAlexander President Biden condemns MAGA at DNC fundraiser: “What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the the entire philosophy that underpins the – I’m going to say something – it’s like semi-fascism.”
WaPo: Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant is cut off energy grid https://wapo.st/3dLSCb0 The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) itself is operating on a backup generator, but electricity to the service area is down; the plant provides 1/5th of Ukraine’s energy
🐣 RT @gtconway3d This is like John Gotti tweeting “RICO!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real [TS] PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT!NYT (3/23/2022): U.S. Makes Contingency Plans in Case Russia Uses Its Most Powerful Weapons https://nyti.ms/3wGuSMO Groups in the Biden Admin and NATO have been gaming out scenarios and working out responses for months, almost all of it in secret
⭕ 24 Aug 2022
WaPo: Judge blocks part of Idaho’s abortion law from taking effect https://wapo.st/3ALHlAF “The Biden administration on Wednesday scored its first legal victory since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,” citing a federal law that ensures emergency care
// Ruling says doctors can’t be punished for terminating pregnancies that pose significant health risks🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Everyone who has ever had a top secret clearance with SCI access understands that they would be in prison if they’d done what Trump did. And continues to do.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WagnerTonight “I had a top secret clearance. I was an Army officer. If I had done what [Trump] did I would have been in jail. 100 percent.” @PatRyanUC calls out “traitorous” Donald Trump and talks about the “guardrails of democracy” with @alexwagner
💽 https://twitter.com/WagnerTonight/status/1562624521131110400?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Future defendants are going to offer the OLC memo that concludes Trump didn’t commit obstruction as evidence they shouldn’t be prosecuted. The lawyers who signed the memo contorted themselves so badly to exonerate Trump that under their standard, clear obstruction gets a pass.
🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ Ok I’m taking a tweet break for a while or I am going to soon have to resort to simply using ^]^%]%[!?&@&! to describe the Barr/Engel/O’Callahan whitewash memo.
WaPo: Justice Dept. memo to not charge Trump in Russia probe released https://wapo.st/3QR4SWm
// A federal appeals panel ordered the release of the 2019 memo in response to a lawsuit by a watchdog group🐣 RT @natasha367b Mariupol 1 year ago: 😢
⋙ 🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Mariupol. Celebrating Ukrainian Independence day on 24th August 2021. ¤ Mariupol is Ukraine! We will fight for our Victory. And we will restore Mariupol.
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1562545178941874176?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress How long has Ukraine been fighting for independence? Not 6 months, not eight years, and not even a century. Via @United24media
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1562575488240992256?s=20w/photo/1EuromaidanPress (2021): Forced migration in Crimea as part of Russia’s “hybrid strategy” https://bit.ly/3KqBQe0 “Since 2014, Russia has been employing traditional Soviet resettlement practices and forcibly changing the demographic composition of the population in Crimea”
// 3/30/2021🐣 RT @atrupar Biden: “There is plenty of deficit reduction to pay for the program … I will never apologize for helping working Americans … especially not to the same folks who voted for a $2 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthiest Americans.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Biden: “I ran for office to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. Because when we do that, everybody does better … That’s what today’s announcement is about. It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people a fair shot.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 my take is this is incredibly fair: we were able to help our kids out with college because we could afford to ¤ one of the reasons I’m a Democrat is I want to make things fairer for people who can‘t afford to ¤ ”there but for the grace of God go I” ¤ thank you, @POTUS!@duty2warn Now that we’ve finally seen the “secret memo” Barr used to undercut the Mueller Report, twist the facts, and mutilate the law to protect Trump, I feel like … I don’t know how I feel, because as obnoxious as that memo is to read, I already knew IT, or something like it, existed.
🐣 RT @Reuters 🇺🇦 As Ukraine commemorates 31 years of independence, here’s a look at how Volodymyr Zelenskiy became an unlikely wartime leader six months into the Russian invasion
💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1562545282809749505?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @bneeditor Agree US will keep supplying ukr. Agree ukr will keep fighting as long as supplied. Agree if goes frozen the get Guerilla war against occupied territories. ¤ Don’t think eu resolve anywhere near that strong. Don’t think you can push Russia out now (maybe in Kherson) it’s a mess
⋙ 🐣 The US and Euro countries like Poland and the Baltics will continue to press the rest of EU/NATO. I think things will begin to improve after this winter. Biden admin, Congress, and 80% of Americans solidly support UkraineRealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: A Brief History of Russian and Soviet Genocides, Mass Deportations, and Other Atrocities in Ukraine https://bit.ly/3QMycND
// 8/25/2022; War crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and mass killings carried out by their eastern neighbor are nothing new for Ukrainians; while not comprehensive, this brief outline focuses on what is most currently relevant from a series of horrors visited upon Ukraine, Putin’s latest round only continuing a long tradition of tsarist/Soviet oppression, brutality, and/or mass murder in Ukraine going back centuries.💙 🧵 RT @NoahBookbinder BREAKING: After years of fighting and @CREWcrew’s recent appeals court win, the Department of Justice released the legal memo former AG Bill Barr relied on to say there was no basis to charge Donald Trump with obstruction of justice. And it’s a doozy.
⋙⋙ CREW: CREW gets secret Barr memo on Trump obstruction https://bit.ly/3wsVsIy
📌 https://twitter.com/NoahBookbinder/status/1562543993367379969?s=20🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD: BARR MEMO: in summary, this newly-released memo by Barr and friends about Donald obstructing the Mueller probe relies on prosecutorial discretion based on legal falsehoods. A complete whitewash of the crimes committed by Donald 1/ [att]
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1562538580576051201?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote First, they argue that you can’t charge obstruction if there’s no underlying crime they’re trying to obstruct. That’s patently false. It would be like saying if I hid evidence from cops about an attempted crime, that’s totally cool. It’s not. 2/ [att]
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote They also argue that because people didn’t go along with his obstruction that it’s not obstruction. ALSO false. That would be like if I told the getaway driver to blow up the bank and they didn’t, I’m off the hook. 3/ [att]
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote NEXT, Barr argues that Donald telling McGahn to deny press reports isn’t obstruction because trump honestly believed the press lied. No discussion about the fact that the didn’t. Ridiculous. 4/ [att]
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Also, they argue that this would be a rare case so they wouldn’t be able to obtain and maintain a conviction, and that charging him would mean we could charge anyone who breaks the law. Uh, yeah. They also ADMIT there doesn’t have to be an underlying crime. 5/ [att]
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote It is OF NOTE that Garland could have appealed to the full circuit or SCOTUS and asked for a stay pending appeal, but he DID NOT. Nor did he carry Barr’s “atty-client” privilege banner, nor did he make additional arguments for keeping it sealed. END/🐣 RT @SecDef Today is Ukraine’s 🇺🇦 Independence Day, and the United States is underscoreing its long-term commitment to that independence with its single biggest tranche of security assistance yet — nearly $3 billion under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. ¤ Here’s what’s included:
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1562498261336072192?s=20A/photo/1[Text:] Nearly $3 Billion in Security Assistance for Ukraine
The Department of Defense (DoD) announces approximately $3 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). Capabilities in this package include:● Six additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) with additional munitions for NASAMS:
● Up to 245,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition:
● Up to 65,000 rounds of 120mm mortarammunition:
● Up to 24 counter-artillery radars;
● Puma Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and support equipment for Scan Eagle AS systems;
● VAMPIRE Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems;
● Laser-guided rocket systems;
● Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.🐣 RT @Reuters WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT – Six months ago today Russian forces rolled across Ukraine’s borders in the largest military invasion in Europe on President Vladimir Putin’s orders. Since then, scores [100s of 1000s!] of people have been killed and millions have fled https://reut.rs/3AjrF6i
💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1562511306736934912?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] Defence Minister #Shoigu: #Ukraine has been chosen as an instrument of hybrid warfare against #Russia.
🐣 whatever “choice” was made was based on Russia’s DECISION to commit an unprovoked, hideous war of aggression and genocide on a peace-loving sovereign nation ¤ INFAMY will be Russia’s eternal legacy ¤ 🌻 Slava Ukraini 🌻🐣 RT @CMC_NATO On this 🇺🇦 Independence Day, we salute the courage of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They have fundamentally changed modern warfare & outmaneuver their opponent time & time again.
#Ukraine can win this war & emerge victorious from the quagmire.
Slava Ukraini! #StandwithUkraine🧵 RT @StevenBeschloss You know as the criminal vise tightens, Trump will intensify what he knows best: grievance, persecution, endless excuses, blaming others. With that in mind, I share with you my summary of the ridiculous crying of the rich boy who was given everything. 1/18 [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/StevenBeschloss/status/1562277579536535554?s=20🐣 RT @ RonFilipkowski Navarro is asked who he expects to be in Trump’s Cabinet in a 2nd term: He says Judge Jeanine for AG, Stephen Miller in charge of the border, Robt O’Brien for Sect of State, Kash Patel, and he “guarantees” that Michael Flynn will have whatever job he chooses.
🐣 RT @mfa_russia 🕯 On August 23, 1942, over 1000 Nazi bombers annihilated the city of #Stalingrad in the most inhumane conventional bombing, killing 40’000+ civilians.
Although devastating, it failed to put a dent in the unbending will of the Soviet people.
🟥 In the end, Victory was Ours!🐣 RT @StratComUA A trailer of a documentary currently in production, directed by Artem Litvinenko and co-produced by the Ukrainian Centre for Defence Strategies. Release is planned for fall this year. #StandWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1557793973447675904?s=20/photo/1💙🐣 RT @mattia_n
“We Ukrainians already know what will come next.
We will win.
There will be new cities.
There will be new dreams.
There will be a new story.
There will be, there’s no doubt.”
Happy Independence day, my dear Ukraine! 💙💛
💽 https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1562350954984382465?s=20/photo/1⭕ 23 Aug 2022
WaPo: FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search followed months of resistance, delay by Trump https://wapo.st/3AJrhQ0 Has it finally come time to dump that bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head? @MaryLTrump
WaPo, Robin Givhan: Fauci carried all our angst and anger with patience and decency https://wapo.st/3KjpfZK ‘Fauci has dealt with a host of virologic menaces, but it may be that none have been quite so confounding as disinformation, as the demonization of intelligent inquiry’
🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar […] Additional headlines from tonight’s report:
– Russian officials may have conducted a false flag event in Donetsk City on August 23 to justify attacks against Ukrainian government buildings on August 24, Ukrainian Independence Day.
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1562267671743299584?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar – Russian authorities are deploying security forces to Luhansk Oblast likely in response to waning support for the war and growing unwillingness to fight among Luhansk residents. 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar – Russian authorities’ deployment of Rosgvardia elements to security duties in occupied Luhansk Oblast diverts these forces from operations elsewhere in Ukraine, likely contributing to the broader Russian failure to translate limited tactical gains into operational successes. 3/
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar – Unverifiable sources reported that axis commanders in Ukraine are reporting directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, bypassing both the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov in the chain of command. 4/🐣 RT @bayraktar_1love Tokmak, Zaporozhye region, presumably strike on a Russian base.
💽 https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1562198747517333504?s=20/photo/1
// for comments🐣 RT @aryasolokha ‘Ukraine is the heart of Europe…‘
Volodymyr Zelensky
🇺🇦 #Ukraine #Europe#Kyiv
¤ https://twitter.com/aryasolokha/status/1562276535976935426?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DefenceU [UA] Yellow and blue combined are the most beautiful colours in nature. Fascinated by this beauty, our children grow up realising that these are the colours of their Flag. These are the colours our soldiers are ready to give their lives for, because these are the colours of freedom.
🖼 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1562107337262989312?s=20/photo/1💙 🧵 RT @SpencerGuard Some terms to clarify. I’ve heard “shaping operations” in the news lately. It is indeed what Ukraine is doing in many areas. But let’s clarify the terms. Both “deep area” and “shaping operations.” [thread]
📌 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1562091878589161472?s=20🐣 RT @JakeLahut The Fetterman campaign is out with a letter signed by 100+ Pennsylvania doctors calling out Oz for his “ever eaten a vegetable in his life” comments: #PAsen
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/JakeLahut/status/1562187754934603776?s=20/photo/1
// promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin🐣 RT @na_intel Putin vs Zelensky.
💽 https://twitter.com/na_intel/status/1562257934909935616?s=20/photo/1
// Zelensky v Putin being greeted: Ze: “Go f––– yourself”🐣 RT @CJTFOIR These @CENTCOM-conducted strikes were a proportionate & deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation & minimize the risk of casualties. They were necessary to protect & defend our forces & deter future attacks by Iran-backed groups like those conducted Aug. 15.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CENTCOM Statement Regarding Precision Strikes in Syria https://bit.ly/3AEyRLz
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1562262581783498752?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @TheStudyofWar The forcible transfer of children from one group to another “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 6/
RealContextNews: Brian Frydenborg: Ukrainian Prudence Meets Russian Limitations: Explaining the Current Pace and Nature of Russia’s War on Ukraine https://bit.ly/3CJ2FZ9
// The factors explaining why things are now happening the way they are happening… Yet plenty of experts and reporters seem puzzled, as massive formations of Ukrainian forces not pouring into Kherson city and forcefully pushing the Russian lines back mean, from their perspective, there must not be any real Ukrainian counteroffensive or that it is stalled. But Ukraine is not basing the timing of its operations to satisfy the impatience of itchy Twitter fingers of reporters and analysts who find it easier to tweet, write, and comment about heavy “action,” and it seems many takes on the war in the south are missing the bigger picture.
Contrary to such views, the offensive is very much underway, with Ukraine simply taking a prudent, risk-averse strategy while it can still easily hit Russian targets far behind the front lines. Unlike Russia, Ukraine actually highly values the lives of its soldiers, a major factor in morale, as Ukrainian soldiers can count on their commanders to not throw their lives away carelessly or needlessly, unlike the clear, callous indifference that permeates Russian command (which I have detailed before). And the very nature of the conflict is now defined by Russia’s inability to produce anything but marginally successful advances (if any progress at all) and Ukraine’s purposeful approach to strike Russian targets one-by-one with precision, distance weapons while keeping its own forces as much out of harm’s way as it can where it can. …
[W]while some analysts have seen this as weakness or inability on the part of Ukraine, it seems more likely that Ukraine knows it has a big comparative advantage with its ability to strike precisely at a distance with superior Western technology and that it is content to keep weakening Russia’s positions and logistics—keep baiting it to send more resources into bad satiation for Russia—as long as Russia keeps presenting juicy targets, targets that, if taken out methodically and patiently by Ukraine before any general infantry-led assault, will mean less resistance from Russia and fewer casualties for Ukraine. Ukraine is biding its time while increasing its capabilities and all while continuing to degrade Russia’s capabilities. This is what is called “good generalship” in a war, and it can easily lead to both a large part of Kherson west/north of the Dnipro River and, eventually, Crimea being cut off from other Russian-controlled sectors and from each other. The fall of both to Ukrainian forces could follow and also open Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas to come under this Ukrainian counteroffensive in a way that could more or less end the war, as I have argued before.
Ukraine’s prudence is meeting Russia’s limitations, and this prudence will carry the day with more Ukrainian soldiers alive at the end than without it, than with a more rushed general assault that would occur with still more Russian targets Ukraine could have taken out before that assault. Contrary to what some think, Ukraine knows what it’s doing and is still in the driver’s seat of this war thar Russia started and is now clearly losing.
🐣 📊 RT @LizSly NEW: US public opinion remains strongly behind for Ukraine: 80 percent support sanctions, 76 percent support welcoming Ukrainian refugees, 72 percent support sending weapons. @ChicagoCouncil poll [link]
⋙ ChicagoCouncil: Americans Show Few Signs of “Ukraine Fatigue” https://bit.ly/3wsPNSN
// 8/18/2022
⋙⋙ 🐣 In our polarized country, such high levels of agreement on anything are exceedingly rare ¤ The sacrifices Ukrainians are willing to pay for freedom and democracy have made us look at our own shortcomings ¤ (The poll also indicated 38% would like for the US to send troops)🐣 RT @ChristopherJM 🇺🇦’Happy anniversary, Ukraine: Here’s $3 billion.’ via @alexbward
⋙ Politico, Alexander Ward: Happy anniversary, Ukraine: Here’s $3 billion https://politi.co/3PM830mPresident JOE BIDEN is giving Ukraine quite the Independence Day gift: $3 billion in security assistance, signaling the United States is committed to the war for the long haul.
It’s the biggest one-time package to date in the six-month-old war, far exceeding the $1 billion delivery earlier this August. Some, though, are reserving their judgment until the official announcement on Wednesday. “We will have to see what’s in it,” said retired Gen. PHILIP BREEDLOVE, the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Two people familiar with the package confirmed it’s coming together ahead of tomorrow’s rollout. Earlier today, the Associated Press’ LOLITA BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported “[t]he money will fund contracts for drones, weapons and other equipment that may not see the battlefront for a year or two.” And CNN’s NATASHA BERTRAND tweeted that “Western air defense capabilities & a large quantity of ammunition” will also feature in the transfer.
But since the money is coming from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), and not the Presidential Drawdown Authority, the weapons won’t make it to Ukraine for a while. That’s because they won’t come from current U.S. military stockpiles and instead will come from defense contractors fulfilling orders.
Congress typically allocates several hundred million dollars to the Pentagon-run account annually. But lawmakers just supersized the fund, granting a whopping $6 billion as part of a $40 billion emergency Ukraine aid package that passed in May.
A Pentagon document seen by POLITICO showed that, as of Aug. 1, only $1.8 billion of the $6.3 billion appropriated to USAI had been used, leaving a delta of $4.5 billion to play with. Which means the $3 billion will eat up a sizable chunk of the remaining funds.
The news comes as Ukraine and Russia have fought to a stalemate as the harshest weather fast approaches. “Winter is coming. And it will be hard. And what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills. And a battle of logistics,” NATO Secretary General JENS STOLTENBERG dramatically said Tuesday.
🐣 RT @stavridisj My candidate to start Alexander Dugin’s car this week…
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Top Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov (who boasts of not being sanctioned by the U.S.) self-identifies as a terrorist, describing what he would like for the Russian Armed Forces to do in Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/stavridisj/status/1562207000045490176?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ MFA_Ukraine #StandForFreedom 🇺🇦 flies all over the world. ¤ Where people live for #Freedom. And where they die for it. ¤ #StandWithUkraine 💙💛 We chose Freedom and we fight for it!
💽 https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1562006933791543296?s=20/photo/1
// video for Ukraine Independence Day🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer PAYBACK: Ukraine’s attacks on Crimea stunned the world. Less well remembered is the fact that in the last six months, Russia has fired 750 missiles from Crimea at Ukraine. 675 of those Russian missiles hit civilian targets.
🧵 RT @atrupar Fauci on Fox News about if his retirement is timed to avoid the possibility of Republican investigations: “Not at all. Not even a little bit. I have nothing to hide.”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1562169778978099201?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Fauci on Fox News: “I think we need to make sure that your listeners understand I didn’t shut down anything.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Fauci on Fox: “I think the people who criticize me should talk about their own reluctance to promote vaccination. That’s the point that I would make.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Fauci: “If somebody says that hydroxychloroquine works and is the miracle cure and I say it’s not, then I’m the bad guy to some people, when in fact it never did work and it doesn’t work now.”🐣 RT @ officejjsmart 🇷🇺’s National Republican Army (NRA), views “war against Ukraine 🇺🇦 as illegal. The NRA unequivocally and fully supports Ukrainian sovereignty, including for Crimea and the Donbas.” ¤ Ilya Ponomarev @iponomarev tells the @KyivPost in an EXCLUSIVE interview.
💙 ⋙ KyivPost: Exclusive interview: Russia’s NRA Begins Activism https://bit.ly/3T5tIU9‼️ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️ Russia says over 1,000 children from Mariupol ‘adopted’ in its remote cities. ¤ The local authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar said that over 1,000 Ukrainian children from the occupied city of Mariupol “have found new families” in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, and Altai Krai.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer INCOMING: TJ @te3ej closely monitors RU military radio signals; traffic analysis of 9128 and 6642 Kilohertz indicates that Russian strategic bombers are in flight. This signals pattern usually precedes a cruise missile strike.
⋙ 🐣 RT @te3ej Russian Air Force strategic bomber Morse code net active on Aircraft freqquencies 9128 Kilohertz CW and 6642 Kilohertz CW, 1824 UTC.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer NO PLACE TO HIDE: Mykhailo Fedorov @FedorovMykhailo commends the +350K Ukrainian patriots who have posted real time intelligence on RU military troops, hardware and logistics. This geo-spatial information permits the rapid targeting of Russian assets.
⋙ @FedorovMykhailo 353K brave citizens sent reports on movement of Russian military troops & hardware in eVorog chat bot. Here you can see pretty large column of 🇷🇺 vehicles & weapons on temporary occupied territories of Ukraine. Such videos are realtime civil intelligence, using to attack enemy.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer DELIVERY: The US is expected to announce an additional 3 Billion dollar package of military aid to Ukraine. This tranche will include more ammo for the HIMARS system, as well as additional units of the highly effective ATTACMS surface to surface missile.
¤ Himars: https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1562140110786895875?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Reuters: U.S. to announce $3 billion in new military aid for Ukraine -official https://reut.rs/3pFoUao🧵 RT @HeliosRunner 1/ Operational situation update regarding the #russian_invasion in #Ukraine on August 23, 2022. ¤ Last report of the day – no major changes today – ¤ small skirmishes in the outskirts of villages. ¤ Major Ru attacks have all failed. couple fights ongoing
#UkraineMap #UkraineRussianWar
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/HeliosRunner/status/1562145031565316106?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HeliosRunner 5/ Ru apparently have consolidated their gain in some villages, in the south near #Kherson, but nothing more. i’ll try to take time to explain more about all the fuzz of pro russians there. ¤ they are going nowhere. just pushing bc of Putin will.🐣 RT @SecBlinken In my remarks to the Crimea Platform Summit, I urged the international community to keep raising the costs and pressure on President Putin and his enablers until all Russian troops leave Ukraine. Crimea is Ukraine. That was our position in 2014, and it remains in 2022.
💽 https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1562104111125897218?s=20/photo/1AP: US to send $3B in aid to Ukraine as war hits 6 months https://bit.ly/3PDR2W0 “In addition to providing longer-term assistance that Ukraine can use for … defense needs, the new package is intended to reassure Ukrainian officials that the US intends to keep up its support”
As Russia’s war on Ukraine drags on, U.S. security assistance is shifting to a longer-term campaign that will likely keep more American military troops in Europe into the future, including imminent plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the package is expected to be announced Wednesday, the day the war hits the six-month mark and Ukraine celebrates its independence day. The money will fund contracts for drones, weapons and other equipment that may not see the battlefront for a year or two, they said. …
Unlike most previous packages, the new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense posture, according to officials familiar with the matter. Earlier shipments, most of them done under Presidential Drawdown Authority, have focused on Ukraine’s more immediate needs for weapons and ammunition and involved materiel that the Pentagon already has in stock that can be shipped in short order.
In addition to providing longer-term assistance that Ukraine can use for potential future defense needs, the new package is intended to reassure Ukrainian officials that the United States intends to keep up its support, regardless of the day-to-day back and forth of the conflict, the officials said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted the more extended focus Tuesday as he reaffirmed the alliance’s support for the conflict-torn country. ¤ “Winter is coming, and it will be hard, and what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills, and a battle of logistics. Therefore we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term, so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at a virtual conference about Crimea, organized by Ukraine. …
To date, the U.S. has provided about $10.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including 19 packages of weapons taken directly from Defense Department stocks since August 2021. …
🐣 RT @vonderleyen Today we honour the victims of totalitarian regimes. ¤ We are inspired by those who stood up to injustice then and we support those who do it today, as the horrors of war are back in Europe. ¤ Ukrainians are giving their lives to protect the values on which our Union is built.
🐣 RT @ AshaRangappa_ 300 classified documents. Intel from the CIA (HUMINT), NSA (SIGINT), FBI (CI cases, possibly ongoing). Unknown people accessing and moving from one location to another. Concealed them and lied about it. ¤ Trump’s defenders understand that this is going to get WAY worse, right?
Politico, Kyle Cheney: Archives warned in May of national security damage from Trump’s classified Mar-a-Lago docs, letter shows https://politi.co/3wjtz5J
// In the letter, posted on a Trump-aligned journalist’s website, NARA pushed back on Trump’s privilege claims.The National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified material — including “special access program materials,” some of the most highly classified secrets in government — in 15 boxes recovered from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January, according to correspondence between the National Archivist and his legal team.
The May 10 letter — posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump’s authorized authorized liaisons to the National Archives to review papers from his presidency — showed that NARA and federal investigators had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by the warehousing of these documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as by Trump’s resistance to sharing them with the FBI.
💙❤️ 🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Interesting article because its a Ukrainian defence official from southern command commenting publicly on Ukrainian strategy (I think this is the 3rd or 4th time Ukrainian officials have spoken on this. Southern offensive is underway, its just people need to redefine ‘offensive’
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1561976867409780742?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NewVoiceUkraine Ukraine’s military is “systematically and methodically” carrying out a counter-offensive in the south.
⋙⋙⋙ NewVoiceOfUkraine: Ukrainian military shares details of counter-offensive in south of Ukraine https://bit.ly/3AgqBQv
// Ukraine’s military is “systematically and methodically” carrying out a counter-offensive in the south, the head of the joint coordination press-center of the Southern Defense Forces, Nataliya Gumenyuk, said on national TV on Aug. 22. ¤ “If everyone expected that they would see how troops rise up and march through the steppes of Kherson Oblast, too bad,” said Gumenyuk. “Because in the conditions of modern warfare, the counter-offensive looks different. Basically, it’s the depletion of the enemy’s forces.” ¤ According to her, Ukrainian tactics include the destruction of ammunition depots, command posts, and attacks on strongholds where enemy weapons and equipment are concentrated. ¤ “This significantly affects the morale of the invaders,” Gumenyuk added. …
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien The growth in the power of defensive firepower means that this offensive will not be one of AFV attacks, breaking through lines, encirclements, etc (at least at first). Its a campaign to degrade Russian forces to such a degree that an attack can succeed later.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien The offensive actually started weeks ago with the start of a sustained campaign against Russian ability to maintain and reinforce its troops in the region. A number of us have been trying to explain this phenomenon, thought I might bring them together.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien @WarintheFuture calls this corrosion in this thread that has aged extremely well. [🧵 link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien @MarkHertling has referred to selective Ukrainian offensives in this incise article [🧵 link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien @general_ben has referred to systemic logistic attacks in this great interview [🧵 link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien @IAPonomarenko imagines how the degradation campaign could force the Russians out of Kherson. [🧵 link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien I did my attempt with this thread on what I termed Ukrainian accelerated attritional warfare. [🧵 link]
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien The Ukrainian offensive should not be conceived of as an offensive in a modern combined arms manor. Its basically a form of accelerated attritional warfare. What they have done is tried to tempt the Russians into sending forces into an area where its easier for Ukr to do this
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1556177363938967552?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipsPOBrien And the Russians have obliged. So my guess is that the Ukrainians will not rush forward in Kherson over the next week–they will take advantage of the fact that the Russians are giving them much easier targets to hit from a safer Ukr perspective.
⋙⋙ 🐣 thank you for pulling together these various threads together in one place; I’ve been encountering them in my Twitter wanderings but having then collected under your insightful umbrella is super helpful⭕ 22 Aug 2022
🧵 RT @PowerVertical [Brian Whitmore] A Ukrainian victory against Russia will be a paradigm-shifting event for European security – similar to what occurred in 1989. In fact, it could be something of a 1989 redux. 1/6
📌 https://twitter.com/PowerVertical/status/1561909180239433728?s=20⋙ Just as a weakening of Soviet power in the late 1980s led to the fall of pro-Soviet regimes across the former Warsaw Pact, today, the weakening of Russian power will likely have repercussions across the former Soviet space. 2/6
⋙ The fallout would be felt in Russian clients like Belarus, where Alyaksasndr Lukashenka’s grip on power may not survive the defeat of his patron in Moscow. A Ukrainian victory could very well lead to a free Belarus. 3/6
⋙ The fallout will also be felt in countries struggling to free themselves from Moscow’s influence like Georgia and Moldova, weakening the influence Moscow is able to wield through oligarchic structures. 4/6
⋙ Ukrainians are fighting not just for their own sovereignty and independence, but also for the second liberation of Eastern Europe, finishing the process that began in 1989. 5/6
⋙ And finally, the West needs to prepare itself to manage this potential contingency. We still need to get there and this is, of course, by no means guaranteed. But we should not succumb to a failure of imagination on this. 6/6
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @k_klompenhouwer Interesting thread. Thank you. This scenario – 1989 redux – might also be what the Moscow ruling elite fears the most and is fighting to contain/avoid, next to saving the kleptocratic system of unrestricted plunder of the riches of its own country. @CatherineBelton @Billbrowder🐣 📋 RT @WarInUkraine22 374 children were killed during full-scale war in Ukraine. 723 were injured, Office of General Prosecutor reports.
#russiaisaterorriststate🐣 RT @marceelias Our country faces an enormous problem this November. Republican officials at all levels are bought into the Big Lie and will refuse to accurately certify elections. This is why we fight in court and this is why we must win.
💽 https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1561913187846479873?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Chuckpfarrer USEFUL NO MORE: Aleksandr Dugin narrowly escaped a car bomb that killed his daughter. Nothing happens in Russia with Putin’s approval. The bombing should remind Dugin that Putin will not stand criticism from the right or left– and that a dead ideologue is as good as a live one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimesworld Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian ultranationalist whose daughter was killed in a car bombing near Moscow on Saturday, called for revenge against Ukraine and for Russia to push on in its invasion. Ukraine has denied involvement in the attack.
⋙⋙ NYT: Dugina’s father, an ultranationalist, calls for Russia to punish Ukraine for her death. https://nyti.ms/3wpA4nr🐣 RT @Chuckpfarrer WAR ON CITIES: @ChristopherJM reports that the US Embassy in Kyiv has issued a warning that Russia will accelerate strikes against UKR’s infrastructure and gov’t buildings. A recent study revealed that >90% of Russia’s munitions are expended against civilian targets in Ukraine. [link]
🐣 RT @duty2warn Dr. Fauci: “What has impeded a proper response to a public health challenge is something that goes well beyond public health. It’s a complete distortion of reality. A world where untruths have become normalized.” #Maddow
NYT: Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago https://nyti.ms/3pDy1bI
// The National Archives found more than 150 sensitive documents when it got a first batch of material from the former president in January, helping to explain the Justice Department’s urgent response.🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Let’s be clear: the creepy billionaire interests behind the massive dark-money machine would rather hold power in the smoking ruins of American democracy than live in a healthy democracy where they can’t sell their terrible ideas to a public that doesn’t want them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse That’s why they captured the Supreme Court (using loads of dark money): a captured Supreme Court can do things for them that the public hates. And their Court minions are doing just that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse It’s just a pity that the Republican Party is willing to hire itself out to this operation in return for unlimited dark-money election artillery.🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump issues a statement about his “major motion” filed today, where he is “strongly asserting” his rights, and claiming again that evidence was planted.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1561834147118727170?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the
United States of America,
Re: Break-In of Mar-a-LagoWe have just filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida strongly asserting my rights, including under the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, regarding the unnecessary, unwarranted, and unAmerican Break-In by dozens of FBI agents, and others, of my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.
They demanded that the security cameras be turned off, a request we rightfully denied. They prevented my attorneys from observing what was being taken in the raid, saying “absolutely not.” They took documents covered by attorney-client and executive privilege, which is not allowed. They took my passports. They even brought a “safe cracker” and successfully broke into my personal safe, which revealed……nothing!
We are now demanding that the Department of “Justice” be instructed to immediately STOP the review of documents illegally seized from my home. ALL documents have been previously declassified. We are demanding the appointment of a SPECIAL MASTER to oversee the handling of the materials taken in the raid.
We are further demanding that the DOJ be forced to turn over a REAL, without “plants” inventory of my property that was taken and disclose where that property is now located. We are demanding that all items wrongfully taken from my home be IMMEDIATELY
returned.🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The Kremlin’s mouthpieces blame Ukraine, Estonia and the UK for Daria Dugina’s death, trying to use it to mobilize the population into what they call an existential battle with the West: “Prepare the bomb shelters… The time of peace has come to an end.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Punishment Time: Car Bomb Sends Russia Into Peak Menace Mode https://bit.ly/3wn7WSa
// One thing is clear: The car bomb that killed the daughter of a notorious Putin ally will mark a sinister turning point for Russia.🐣 RT @Geekstoy […] I think the real Kherson counter offensive has been well underway for over a month already. ¤ Can’t see them rushing troops in anytime soon. Just see them using incredibly smart tactics to eventually cause the Russians to pull back over the Dnipro River.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer MOSCOW HIT: Jason Jay Smart @officejjsmart reports the Russian FSB has made an “arrest” in the bombing of Darya Dugina. Russian media repots that the suspect, Natalia Vovk, was helpfully carrying her ‘Azov Batallion ID’ when she was taken into custody.
⋙ 🐣 RT @officejjsmart 🇷🇺 worried about Dugin hit:
🇷🇺 Government press has accused 🇬🇪[Georgian] Special Forces, and now the Russian press’ favorite boogeyman:Azov Batallion. The theory NOT floated by 🇷🇺 press is National Republican Army. 🇷🇺 FSB would never admit they’re losing control of 🇷🇺, or have no idea who did it.🐣 RT @ RFERL Both sides in the war have been extremely cautious in revealing any casualty figures since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
⋙ 📋 RFE/RL: Kyiv Says Almost 9,000 Ukrainian Soldiers Have Been Killed In Its War With Russia https://bit.ly/3pEcnUN🐣 RT @MarkHertling A combinied summary in @newsweek of what I said in a twitter feed and on @CNN on Sunday morning. ¤ Russia Now on ‘Defense,’ Ukraine Can ‘Pick Where They Attack’: Hertling – Newsweek – https://goo.gl/alerts/XxtrD9 #GoogleAlerts
⋙ Newsweek: Russia Now on ‘Defense,’ Ukraine Can ‘Pick Where They Attack’: Hertling https://bit.ly/3ABFiPs🧵 📋 RT @ChristopherJM 🇺🇦 New official Ukrainian casualty figures: 9,000 soldiers have been killed since Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, reported Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhny.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1561688802309160960?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM To put the new casualty numbers provided today by Zaluzhny in perspective: Around 4,400 Ukrainian troops were killed fighting Russian forces over 8 years, between April 2014 and Feb 2022. This is double that in just 6 months.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM One caveat: Zaluzhny, who revealed the new casualty number at the Defenders. Roll Call forum in Kyiv, did not specify whether it refers to all branches of the Ukrainian defense (ie Army, Nat Guard, territorial defense, etc) or only Armed Forces service members. via @UKRINFORM
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zaluzhny made sure to emphasize these are not just numbers but people. 9,000 Ukrainian defenders — sons, daughters, fathers, mothers… — is a huge loss. ¤ He also said Ukraine’s defenders on the frontlines “are in constant hell” and live with the “smell of death nearby everyday.” […]🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 On MSNBC. Monday. 22 August. 10 am ET. JOSE DIAZ-BALART. Ukraine six months into the Putin criminal invasion strikes back with a terrible vengeance. Huge Russian losses of equipment and casualties. A brutal RU attack targeting UKR civilians. NATO united.
⭕ 21 Aug 2022
📊 NBC News Poll: 57% of voters say investigations into Trump should continue https://nbcnews.to/3pAEHY1 58% disapprove of overturning Roe v Wade; 21% cite threats to democracy as the most important issue, more than cost of living (16%)
🐣 📋 RT @matthewroche Crimea voted in a referendum to separate from the USSR with Ukraine (1991) ¤ Russian Federation accepted Ukraine’s 1991 borders both in the 91 Belovezhskaya Pushcha accords and 94 Budapest Memorandum that finalized Ukraine as a non-nuclear weapons state.
🐣 It’s incorrect to say Crimea has “always” been Russian; it’s been Turkish, Ukrainian, independent, part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth etc; in this volatile part of Europe, the 70yr period from 1954 until now is a long stretch
🐣 RT @WDMills1992 I feel like part of our consistent overestimation of Russian power is just due to the Mercator projection. #Maps
🌎 https://twitter.com/WDMills1992/status/1561412901516230657?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Nature: This animated map shows the true size of each country https://go.nature.com/3Kb79Ju
// 8/12/2019; Everything is relative.😅 RT @JoJoFromJerz @RandyRainbow parody: Yesterday
💽 https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1560305670452297728?s=20/photo/1WaPo: Car explosion kills daughter of key Putin ally Alexander Dugin, Russia says https://wapo.st/3pAvKxY “The driver, identified by the committee as ‘journalist and political scientist Daria Dugina,’ died at the scene”; the bomb may have been meant for her father; she was 29
⭕ 20 Aug 2022
WSJ: Drone Hits Headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea https://on.wsj.com/3CoevaK “The incident follows a series of explosions and possible acts of sabotage that have exposed the peninsula’s vulnerability”
// Incident highlights Russia’s vulnerability in an area that has served as a stronghold for its occupation of Ukraine’s south coastNYT: As Attacks Mount in Crimea, Kremlin Faces Rising Domestic Pressures https://nyti.ms/3c7xED2
// With the drumbeat of Ukrainian strikes inside Russian-held territory, the visceral reality of war is becoming increasingly apparent to Russians.🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This will have a major impact on Putin. Expect to see some major geopolitical fallout from this, depending on who is behind the assassination.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman It appears like the daughter of Putin’s philosophical inspiration, the vile Nazi Alexander Dugin, was assassinated in Moscow tonight. She was a top Russian propagandist sanctioned by most Western countries. Dugin himself was reportedly supposed to be in the car but was not.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman “Holy shit if true” moment
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TadeuszGiczan Wow, Alexander Dugin’s daughter Darya has reportedly been killed in a car explosion. Her Land Cruiser Prado exploded near the village of Bolshiye Vyazyomy. According to preliminary reports, she died on the spot.
💽 https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1561098991382589440?s=20/photo/1RFERL: Moscow Accused Of Reshaping Annexed Crimea’s Demographics https://bit.ly/3QTvfKW “247,000 Russians have moved to Crimea since annexation. At the same time, about 140,000 people have left, mostly Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars”; forced resettlement is a war crime
“The population of the peninsula according to the Ukrainian census of 2001 was 2.4 million, of which about 60 percent were ethnic Russians, 24 percent were Ukrainians, and 10 percent were Crimean Tatars”
🐣 RT @nitrogen122 Well if you consider Donbass Kherson and Zaporizhzhia shit then sure they are doing shit. Also they dont really need to assimilate alot since Ukr and Rus have an almost identical culture since they used to be the same nation until abt 30 years ago.
⋙ 🐣 prior to 1990, Ukraine was a Soviet Socialist Republic, as was Russia. Both were part of the USSR. Ukraine has been independent of Russia many times, and is older by centuries. Russia even gets its name from the Kyivian Rus’; Ukraine’s culture has long been intertwined w Europe’s🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Putin is stuck. The Russian Army is starting to crumble.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1560830445532508160?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @MarkHertling Informally engaging w/ MBA students & healthcare professionals over the last few days, I often hear “what’s going on in Ukraine.” ¤ Here’s a summary [thread] of what has happened in the last 6 months, what’s happening now, & some things I’m watching. 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1561042285214810112?s=20⭕ 19 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @McFaul If Putin wins in Ukraine, he emboldens autocrats all over the world. If Ukrainians defeat Putin, they will embolden democrats all over the world. The stakes of this war are global.
🐣 RT @chunkled ¤ Hi. ¤ I love you. ¤ (sound up)
💽 https://twitter.com/chunkled/status/1560643568854876161?s=20/photo/1
// Biden dancing to record of accomplishmentsUSDeptOfDefense (DOD): $775 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine https://bit.ly/3Tg4h2n “In total, the United States has committed approximately $10.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration”
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1560785547655774209?s=20/photo/1
[Text:]● Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
● 16 105mm Howitzers and 36,000 105mm artillery rounds;
● 15 Scan Eagle Unmanned Aerial Systems;
● 40 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles with mine rollers;
● Additional High-speed Anti-radiation missiles;
● 50 Armored High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV);
● 1,500 Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;
● 1,000 Javelin anti-armor systems;
● 2,000 anti-armor rounds;
● Mine clearing equipment and systems;
● Demolition munitions;
● Tactical secure communications systems;
● Night vision devices, thermal imagery systems, optics, and laser rangefinders★ NAMS: Menopause.org: The 2022 hormone therapy position statement of The North American Menopause Society https://bit.ly/3QD7Spk “Hormone therapy does not need to be routinely discontinued in women aged older than 60 or 65 years.”
// 5/2/2022; See pages 19 (“Key Points”) to page 20WaPo: Court orders release of DOJ memo on Trump obstruction in Mueller probe https://wapo.st/3QABP9j The Trump DOJ said the Mueller investigation found no evidence to charge Trump with obstruction, but he lied; a memo Barr cited to support his claim will now be released
🐣 RT @tribelaw “BIDEN has delivered the largest economic recovery plan since ROOSEVELT, the largest infrastructure plan since EISENHOWER, the most judges confirmed since KENNEDY, the second largest health care bill since JOHNSON, and the largest climate change bill in history.” — @WHCOS Klain
💙 WaPo: Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed https://wapo.st/3dGMIbo “The directions came from senior officers of a unit [of the FSB]: ensure the decapitation of the Ukrainian government and oversee the installation of a pro-Russian regime”
In the final days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security service began sending cryptic instructions to informants in Kyiv. Pack up and get out of the capital, the Kremlin collaborators were told, but leave behind the keys to your homes.
The directions came from senior officers in a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) with a prosaic name — the Department of Operational Information — but an ominous assignment: ensure the decapitation of the Ukrainian government and oversee the installation of a pro-Russian regime.
The messages were a measure of the confidence in that audacious plan. So certain were FSB operatives that they would soon control the levers of power in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian and Western security officials, that they spent the waning days before the war arranging safe houses or accommodations in informants’ apartments and other locations for the planned influx of personnel. …
And yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The humiliations of Russia’s military have largely overshadowed the failures of the FSB and other intelligence agencies. But in some ways, these have been even more incomprehensible and consequential, officials said, underpinning nearly every Kremlin war decision.
“The Russians were wrong by a mile,” said a senior U.S. official with regular access to classified intelligence on Russia and its security services. “They set up an entire war effort to seize strategic objectives that were beyond their means,” the official said. “Russia’s mistake was really fundamental and strategic.” …
Extensive polls conducted for the FSB show that large segments of Ukraine’s population were prepared to resist Russian encroachment, and that any expectation that Russian forces would be greeted as liberators was unfounded. Even so, officials said, the FSB continued to feed the Kremlin rosy assessments that Ukraine’s masses would welcome the arrival of Russia’s military and the restoration of Moscow-friendly rule. …
Adhering to these erroneous assumptions, officials said, the FSB championed a war plan premised on the idea that a lightning assault on Kyiv would topple the government in a matter of days. Zelensky would be dead, captured or in exile, creating a political vacuum for FSB agents to fill.
Instead, FSB operatives who at one point had reached the outskirts of Kyiv had to retreat alongside Russian forces, Ukrainian security officials said. Rather than presiding over the formation of a new government in Kyiv, officials said, the FSB now faces difficult questions in Moscow about what its long history of operations against Ukraine — and the large sums that financed them — accomplished. …
“If your security services put such a high priority on understanding Ukraine, and your military plan is based on that understanding, how could they have gotten it so wrong?” said William B. Taylor Jr., who twice served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, including in an acting capacity in 2019. “How could they have assumed the Ukrainians wouldn’t fight, that President Zelensky would not resist so valiantly? The disconnect has to be somewhere between the FSB and the very top.”
Several senior SBU officers have been charged with treason. Among them is the former head of the agency’s directorate in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, who was accused of ordering subordinates to abandon their posts as Russian forces flooded the region. …
Zelensky’s decision to oust [childhood friend] Bakanov as SBU director after Kulinich’s arrest was driven by exasperation with his failure to “cleanse” the agency of Russia sympathizers, said Andriy Smirnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office. “Six months into the war,” he said, “we continue to uncover loads of these people.” …
Overall, Ukraine has detained more than 800 people suspected of aiding Russia through reconnaissance or sabotage, according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. Authorities have also moved against suspected “agents of influence” in government, parliament and politics.
Chief among them is Medvedchuk, the opposition party chairman who has such close ties to Putin that the Russian leader is the godfather of his youngest daughter. Ukrainian officials described Medvedchuk, 68, as a savvy political operator who harbored ambitions of high office himself and probably would have served as puppet-master to any regime installed by the Kremlin. …
U.S. spy agencies were prescient on Putin’s intentions but underestimated Ukraine’s ability to withstand the onslaught — an error that contributed to the United States’ initial hesitation to send heavy and sophisticated weapons.
Ukraine’s services appear to have read too much into signs that Russian forces were ill-prepared for full-scale combat, resisting Western warnings of an invasion that came within miles of the capital.
Russia’s intelligence breakdowns in Ukraine seem more systemic, its work marred by unreliable sources, disincentives to deliver hard truths to the Kremlin, and an endemic bias that matched Putin’s contemptuous attitude toward the country.
The FSB fueled this dynamic, officials said, with assessments packaged to please the Kremlin and with sources who had their own reasons — political and financial — for encouraging a Russian takedown of the Kyiv government. …
In recent years, Medvedchuk appeared to use his business empire to lay the groundwork for a Russian move against Kyiv. His TV stations routinely bashed Zelensky and aired pro-Russian propaganda, including discredited claims that the United States had biolabs in the country to help Ukraine develop biological weapons. His companies, which included a stake in an oil refinery in southern Russia, served as a conduit for money that flowed to pro-Russian forces and backed plots to destabilize the Kyiv government, officials said. …
“We can see it playing out now in Mariupol, Melitopol, Kherson” and other cities that have fallen to Russian forces, a Ukrainian intelligence official said. FSB officials swoop in to implement a version of the blueprint the agency originally had for Kyiv.
“The aim is political control, economic control, control over criminal groups — all spheres of activity on seized territory,” the intelligence official said. “The final aim is to install a pro-Russian power.” …
🐣 RT @joewein Less than 300 km east of ZNPP begins south Russia which (like Ukraine) has the famous Black Soils, the best soils in Europe. ¤ Russian nuclear terrorism will not only threaten the lives and health of millions in both countries but also a crucial bread basket of the world.
⋙ 🐣 RT @stavridisj Somebody should tell them that Mother Russia is downwind from Zaporizhzhia. Plus their “protective suits” probably work as well as their tanks.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russia’s state TV: top propagandist accuses Ukraine of shelling Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, threatens the U.S. and NATO and says that the Russian military will continue the fighting even in the event of radioactive contamination: “They have protective suits.”
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1560391855468077058?s=20/photo/1⭕ 18 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @Reuters Russia calls U.N. idea to demilitarise Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant unacceptable http://reut.rs/3AvoHwF
🐣 RT @StateDept @StateDeptSpox: The United States remains deeply concerned about Russia’s military takeover and continued control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. @iaeaorg must be given access to ZNPP as soon as possible to help ensure the safety and security of the plant.
🐣 RT @OriginalRamayan ‘If now the world lacks the strength and determination to protect one nuclear plant, it means that the world loses. Loses to terrorists. Gives in to nuclear blackmail. And this may be a precedent that other terrorists will see.’ ~Zelenskyy
🐣 RT @votevets Letting us know that they’ll break their oath to the Constitution before ever taking it. The dangers of another January 6th are very much alive.
⋙ WaPo, Amy Gardner: Election deniers march toward power in key 2024 battlegrounds https://wapo.st/3dCdhyg
// GOP nominees who dispute the 2020 results could be positioned to play a critical role in the next presidential election🧵 RT @ VolodyaTretyak Russian and Ukrainian languages. [Thread] As a Ukrainian, one of the most often questions people asked me before the war was about the language. Is Russian and Ukrainian the same? How do you know Russian? Are they similar?
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1560220027340587013?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en “Negotiations with Russia are possible only if Russian troops leave illegally occupied Ukrainian territory,” – @ZelenskyyUa said after meeting with @RTErdogan and @antonioguterres
MSN/BI: Trump aides think a family member informed on him to the FBI because agents knew where to find a specific leather case, report says https://bit.ly/3wfUqiV “Agents appeared to have specific information about what to look for”
🐣 RT @ alexbward NEW: The Biden administration approves of Ukraine attacking Russian targets in Crimea. ¤ “Any target they choose to pursue on sovereign Ukrainian soil is by definition self defense,” a SAO said. “Crimea is Ukraine.” [Politico link]
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CORRUPTION: A UK Defense Intel reports that the heavy losses in Russian tanks is, in part, due to failure properly employ adequate Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA). In many cases ERA blocks were found to have been filled with rubber, not explosive. Shoddy manufacture is suspected.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer Astounding, and another deadly symptom of the gangrenous corruption of Putin’s military. [Link to UKDef report]
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1560234793798930435?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski The day he has feared for many years is almost here, and all he can do is whine, cry, incite and rage. I’ve said for a year and a half that Fulton would charge him and would be the first to finally hold him accountable. Because this time, his not-so “perfect call” is on tape.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1560211059524378625?s=20/photo/1NYT, Oleg Kashin: Who Will Get Rid of Putin? The Answer Is Grim. https://nyti.ms/3Cfdsdh Historically, only defeat in war has broken through the Russian system of control & corruption. “If Ukraine manages to inflict heavy losses on Russian forces, a similar process could unfold”
⭕ 17 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @tbonier Wow. I’ve been sharing data showing a huge surge in women registering to vote since the 6/24 Dobbs decision. I just started to look at some age and party breakdowns of those new registrants, and the numbers are jaw-dropping.
⋙ 🐣📋 RT @tbonier Starting in PA, where women have accounted for >56% of new registrants in that time period. Those women new registrants are 62%D to 15% R and 54% are under the age of 25. Compare that to men new registrants at 41% <25 and 43% D, 28% R. ↥ ↧ 🐣 📋 RT @tbonier Here are the states with the biggest gender gap among new registrants since the Dobbs decision was handed down. This isn't just a blue state phenomena. In fact, it is more pronounced in states where choice is more at risk, or has been eliminated by the decision. ◕ https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1559897880042868736?s=20/photo/1 🐣 RT @RepsAgainstTrump Make no mistake about it: When Trump gets indicted, there will be lots of violence on the streets by his supporters. Violent attacks on the FBI, DOJ, and other government targets. We should be prepared for it. ¤ And, of course, it shouldn't deter the DOJ from making this decision TheHill: US must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late https://bit.ly/3PBuDIS “The war in Ukraine has reached a decisive moment and that vital U.S. interests are at stake” ~ signed by 20 national security experts… By providing aid sufficient to produce a stalemate, but not enough to roll back Russian territorial gains, the Biden administration may be unintentionally seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. Out of an over-abundance of caution about provoking Russian escalation (conventional as well as nuclear), we are in effect ceding the initiative to Russian President Vladimir Putin and reducing the pressure on Moscow to halt its aggression and get serious about negotiations.Moscow’s imperialist war against the people of Ukraine is not just a moral outrage — a campaign of genocide aimed at erasing the Ukrainian nation from the map — but a clear danger to U.S. security and prosperity.
American principles and interests demand the strongest possible response, one sufficient to force the Russians as much as possible back to pre-February lines and to impose costs heavy enough to deter Russia from invading a third time. With Russian forces struggling to regroup in the east and stave off Ukrainian efforts to retake Kherson in the south, now is the time for Ukraine’s allies to pull out all the stops by providing Ukraine the means it needs to prevail. Dragging out the conflict through so-called strategic pauses will do nothing but allow Putin to regroup, recover and inflict more damage in Ukraine and beyond. …
With the necessary weapons and economic aid, Ukraine can defeat Russia. ¤ If it succeeds, our soldiers are less likely to have to risk their lives protecting U.S. treaty allies whom Russia also threatens.
What does defeat for Putin look like? The survival of Ukraine as a secure, independent, and economically viable country. That means a Ukraine with defensible borders that include Odesa and a substantial portion of the Black Sea coast, as well as a strong, well-armed military and a real end to hostilities. That should ideally include the return to Ukrainian control of all territories seized since Feb. 24 and, ultimately, the lands stolen in 2014, including Crimea. Such a peace is only possible when Putin realizes he is soundly defeated and can no longer achieve his objectives of dominating Ukraine or any other nation by force.
Moscow’s plan now is to make as many gains on the battlefield as possible; to conduct sham referendums in the newly occupied Ukrainian territory as a prelude to their annexation; to undermine unity in the West’s support for Ukraine by cutting off gas supplies going into the winter; and to blockade Ukrainian ports to produce destabilizing food shortages in the Global South designed to blow back on the West. For all of these purposes, Moscow needs time. Which means the United States and its allies must keep the pressure on Moscow.
The Biden administration should move more quickly and strategically, in meeting Ukrainian requests for weapons systems. And when it decides to send more advanced weapons, like HIMARS artillery, it should send them in larger quantities that maximize their impact on the battlefield.
Ukraine needs long-range fires to disrupt the Russian offensive, including Russian resupply, fuel, and ammunition stocks. That means the U.S. should send ATACMS munitions, fired by HIMARS with the 300km range necessary to strike Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including occupied Crimea. And Ukraine needs constant resupply of ammunition and spare parts for artillery platforms supplied from various countries, some of which are not interchangeable. These systems are constantly in use, which makes maintenance and spare parts resupply critical. How and where these tasks are accomplished and the logistics infrastructure to quickly get the equipment back where it can be of greatest use can also make a huge difference.
Beyond this, Ukraine needs more short- and medium-range air defense to counter Russian air and missile attacks. An increasing problem is the need to deploy adequate countermeasures to hamper the growing prevalence of Russian-produced drones and new ones it is trying to procure from Iran.
The administration has been reluctant thus far to take such decisive steps for fear of provoking Russia, or as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently said at the Aspen Security Forum, “to avoid World War Three.” Putin and other senior Russian officials have at numerous points in the run-up to and following Moscow’s Feb. 24 offensive reminded the West of the dangers of nuclear war. But the U.S. is also a nuclear power, and it is a strategic mistake to suggest that nuclear deterrence no longer works. Nuclear deterrence still works.
It is to Putin’s advantage to threaten nuclear war, but not to initiate it. And we have seen the Kremlin make nuclear threats that proved hollow — for instance in connection with Finland and Sweden joining NATO. If we allow Putin to intimidate us from providing the weapons Ukraine needs to stop Russian revisionism, what happens when he waves his nuclear wand over the Baltic states? And why would the administration assume that Putin would not dare do that with Estonia or Poland if the tactic worked for him in Ukraine?
The stakes are clear for us, our allies, and Ukraine. We should not fool ourselves. We may think that each day we delay providing Ukraine the weapons it needs to win, we are avoiding a confrontation with the Kremlin. To the contrary, we are merely increasing the probability that we will face that danger on less favorable grounds. The smart and prudent move is to stop Putin’s aggressive designs in Ukraine, and to do so now, when it will make a difference.
General Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.); 17th Supreme Allied Commander Europe and distinguished professor, Sam Nunn School, Georgia Institute of Technology
Debra Cagan, former State and Defense Department official; distinguished energy fellow, Transatlantic Leadership Network
General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark, 12th Supreme Allied Commander Europe; senior fellow, UCLA Burkle Center
Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, former under secretary of state for global affairs
Ambassador Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Finland and Turkey; former under secretary of defense for policy
Dr. Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia; executive director, McCain Institute
Ambassador Daniel Fried, former assistant secretary of state for Europe; Weiser Family distinguished fellow, Atlantic Council
Ambassador John Herbst, former Ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan; senior director, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council
Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ben Hodges, former commanding general, US Army Europe
Ambassador John Kornblum, former ambassador to Germany
David Kramer, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor
Jan Lodal, former principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy; distinguished fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council
Robert McConnell, former assistant attorney general; co-founder, US-Ukraine Foundation
Ambassador Stephen Sestanovich, former ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union; senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations;professor, Columbia University
John Sipher, former officer and chief of station, CIA Clandestine Service; nonresident senior fellow, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council
Ambassador William Taylor, former ambassador to Ukraine
Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, former NATO deputy secretary general; former assistant secretary of defense; former ambassador to Russia and NATO
Ambassador Kurt Volker, former ambassador to NATO; former special representative for Ukraine negotiations; distinguished fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine
🐣 RT @GenMhayden I agree. And I was the CIA Director
⋙ 🐣 RT @EdwardGLuce I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.
⋙⋙ 🐣 closest thing I’ve come across in US history were the Salem Witch trials: mass psychosis. ¤ and I was an American Studies major
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1560060559038586882?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 or Jonestown
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 or or the David Koresh and the Branch DavidiansNYT: Walensky, Citing Botched Pandemic Response, Calls for CDC Reorganization https://nyti.ms/3pnmQnv ‘The CDC has been under fire since the outset of the pandemic. It bent to political pressure from the Trump White House to alter key public health guidance or withhold it’
// Among other flaws, public guidance during the coronavirus pandemic was “confusing and overwhelming,” the agency said.The C.D.C. has been under fire since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic two and a half years ago. It bent to political pressure from the Trump White House to alter key public health guidance or withhold it from the public — decisions that cost it a measure of public trust that experts say it still has not recaptured. It also made its own serious errors, including deploying a faulty Covid-19 test that set back the nation’s efforts to curtail spread of the virus. …
She outlined in broad terms how she hopes to transform operations by emphasizing public health needs, especially with a quicker response to emergencies like infectious disease outbreaks. One of her top priorities is to deliver clear, concise messages about public health threats, in plain language that can be grasped without sifting through voluminous pages on a website.
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Weapons were the focus of my call with @SecBlinken: we coordinated further supplies from the U.S. and partners. Military aid to Ukraine shortens the war and remains the best investment in the long-term security of Europe and the world. Grateful for the unfaltering U.S. support.
⋙ 🐣 I hope @SecBlinken was fully responsive to all your requests and even went beyond them, as Congress and the American people fully support
Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦
@POTUS @SecDef🐣 RT @gorsushko 🚨 #RUSSIA: Putin’s fascist regime started covert Military-Industrial complex #mobilization. Round-the-clock work schedules have been introduced. Those refusing to work double shifts are simply issued 50% of their salary. (Pictured: #Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works)
⋙ 🐣 what do they do when they need sanctioned components like microchips and machined parts from abroad, esp when so many tech and engineering people have left? ¤ Biden said early on the US is increasing defense production, and there’s also the Defense Prod Act as an option🐣 RT @McFaul After six months of fighting in Ukraine, who would have predicted that the Russian army would have achieved so little?
⋙ 🐣 … and been so depleted and humiliated in the eyes of the world🐣 RT @cpoliticditto I can’t imagine why seasoned lawyers wouldn’t want to work for free and then get disbarred
⋙ WaPo: Trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers — but he keeps hearing ‘No’ https://wapo.st/3dDnc6A
// The former president’s current legal team includes a Florida insurance lawyer who’s never had a federal case, a past general counsel for a parking-garage company and a former host at far-right One America News🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom As I keep saying, democracy in America will become a patchwork: States that count votes, observe the rule of law and the Constitution, and states that won’t.
🐣 RT @therecount [Today] “It’s certainly the most important challenge our nation has faced in recent history and maybe since the Civil War.”— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on the fight to save American democracy in the face of attacks from Donald Trump and his allies
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1559926931302359040?s=20/photo/1🐣 The GOP is no longer conservative. It’s sole motivator is tax cuts for the rich. But that’s not popular. To get voters, they energized social causes (pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant); when that wasn’t enough, they’ve turned against democracy itself and embraced a dictator
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1559858102408822784?s=20/photo/1
// Trump portrait🧵 RT @andersostlund Fascinating how many people wait for the Kherson offensive to start. The battle of the South of Ukraine already started. Maybe the starting point was when Zelensky stated it would happen or when the first bridge over the Dnipro was attacked, but started it has.
📌 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1559836184720859137?s=20⭕ 16 Aug 2022
💽 ≣Newsweek: Liz Cheney’s Concession Speech as Congresswoman Ousted in Wyoming https://bit.ly/3PuWoCL
// 8/16/2022We really are in God’s country. And it’s wonderful to welcome so many here. I want to say first of all, a special thanks to every member of Team Cheney, who is here in the audience, and to tell you our work is far from over.
Among the many, many blessings that we have as Americans, and as individuals and as human beings, the blessing of your family is surely the most important. And so I want to thank all my family and pay a special tribute to those who are here with us tonight. My mom and dad, Dick and Lynne Cheney, and my husband Phil, and four of our five kids are here—Katie and Gracie and Philip and Richard are all here tonight. Elizabeth is starting law school today, so we’ll have another generation carrying on dedication to the Constitution and to our freedom.
A little over a year ago, I received a note from a Gold Star father. He said to me, ‘Standing up for truth honors all who gave all,’ and I have thought of his words every single day since then. I’ve thought of them because they are a reminder of how we must all conduct ourselves. We must conduct ourselves in a way that is worthy of the men and women who wear the uniform of this nation. And in particular, of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice.
This is not a game. Every one of us must be committed to the eternal defense of this miraculous experiment called America and at the heart of our democratic process—our elections. They are the foundational principle of our Constitution.
A few years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take.
No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect, and I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty. Our republic relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office to accept honorably the outcome of elections. And tonight, Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary. She won. I called her to concede the race. This primary election is over but now the real work begins.
The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all. Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our Union and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history. Speaking at Gettysburg of the great task remaining before us, Lincoln said, ‘That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.’
As we meet here tonight that remains our greatest and most important task. Most of world history is a story of violent conflict of servitude and suffering. Most people in most places have not lived in freedom. Our American freedom is a providential departure from history. We are the exception. We have been given the gift of freedom by God and our founding fathers. It is said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That’s true, but only if we make it bend.
Today, our highest duty is to bend the arc of history to preserve our nation and its blessings to ensure that freedom will not perish, to protect the very foundations of this constitutional republic. Never in our nation’s 246 years have we seen what we saw on January 6. Like so many Americans, I assumed that the violence and the chaos of that day would have prompted a united response, a recognition that this was a line that must never be crossed. A tragic chapter in our nation’s history, to be studied by historians to ensure that it can never happen again.
But instead, major elements of my party still vehemently defend those who caused it. At the heart of the attack on January 6 is a willingness to embrace dangerous conspiracies that attack the very core premise of our nation. That lawful elections reviewed by the courts when necessary, and certified by the states and Electoral College, determined who serves as president.
If we do not condemn the conspiracies and the lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct, and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same.
Today, as we meet here, there are Republican candidates for governor who deny the outcome of the 2020 election, and who may refuse to certify future elections if they oppose the results. We have candidates for secretary of state who may refuse to report the actual results of the popular vote in future elections. And we have candidates for Congress, including here in Wyoming, who refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and suggest that states decertify their results.
Our nation is barreling, once again, towards crisis, lawlessness and violence. No American should support election deniers for any position of genuine responsibility, where their refusal to follow the rule of law will corrupt our future.
Our nation is young in the history of mankind and yet we’re the oldest democracy in the world. Our survival is not guaranteed. History has shown us over and over again how poisonous lies destroyed three nations. Over the last several months, in the January 6 hearings, the American people have watched dozens of Republicans, including the most senior officials working for President Trump in the White House, the Justice Department and on his campaign—people who served President Trump loyally—testify that they all told him the election was not stolen or rigged and there was no massive fraud. That’s why President Trump and others invent excuses, pretexts for people not to watch the hearings at all. But no citizen of this republic is a bystander. All of us have an obligation to understand what actually happened. We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
To believe Donald Trump’s election lies, you must believe that dozens of federal and state courts who ruled against him, including many judges he appointed, were all corrupted and biased, that all manner of crazy conspiracy theories stole our election from us and that Donald Trump actually remains president today. As of last week, you must also believe that 30 career FBI agents, who have spent their lives working to serve our country, abandoned their honor and their oath and went to Mar-a-Lago, not to perform a lawful search or address a national security threat, but instead with a secret plan to plant fake incriminating documents in the boxes they seized. This is yet another insidious lie.
Donald Trump knows that voicing these conspiracies will provoke violence and threats of violence. This happened on January 6, and it’s now happening again. It is entirely foreseeable that the violence will escalate further, yet he and others continue purposely to feed the danger. Today, our federal law enforcement is being threatened, a federal judge is being threatened. Fresh threats of violence arise everywhere. And despite knowing all of this, Donald Trump recently released the names of the FBI agents involved in the search. That was purposeful and malicious. No patriotic American should use these threats or be intimidated by them. Our great nation must not be ruled by a mob provoked over social media.
Our duty as citizens of this republic is not only to defend the freedom that’s been handed down to us. We also have an obligation to learn from the actions of those who came before, to the stories of grit and perseverance of the brave men and women who built and saved this union. In the lives of these great Americans, we find inspiration and purpose.
In May of 1864, after years of war and a string of reluctant Union generals, Ulysses S. Grant met General Lee’s forces at the Battle of the Wilderness. In two days of heavy fighting, the Union suffered over 17,000 casualties. At the end of that battle, General Grant faced a choice. Most assumed he would do what previous Union generals had done and retreat. On the evening of May 7, Grant began to move. As the fires of the battle still smoldered, Grant rode to the head of the column. He rode to the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road. And there, as the men of his army watched and waited, instead of turning north back towards Washington and safety, Grant turns his horse south toward Richmond and the heart of Lee’s army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory. Lincoln and Grant and all who fought in our nation’s tragic Civil War, including my own great-great-grandfathers, saved our Union. Their courage saved freedom. And if we listen closely, they are speaking to us down the generations. We must not idly squander what so many have fought and died for.
America has meant so much to so many because we are the best hope of freedom on earth. Last week in Laramie, a gentleman came up to me with tears in his eyes. ‘I’m not an American,’ he said, ‘But my children are. I grew up in Brazil. I know how fragile freedom is, and we must not lose it here.’ A few days ago, here in Jackson, a woman told me that her grandparents had survived Auschwitz. They found refuge in America. She said she was afraid that she had nowhere to go if freedom died here.
Ladies and gentlemen, freedom must not and will not die here. ¤ We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face and about what is required to defeat it. I have said since January 6, that I will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office.
This is a fight for all of us together. I’m a conservative Republican. I believe deeply in the principles and the ideals on which my party was founded. I love its history. And I love what our party has stood for. But I love my country more.
So, I ask you tonight to join me. As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together—Republicans, Democrats and independents—against those who would destroy our republic. They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom. There is no greater power on this earth. And with God’s help, we will prevail. Thank you all. God bless you. God bless Wyoming. God bless the United States of America.
WaPo: An interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky https://wapo.st/3SQme7c “Some of our people left, but most of them stayed here, they fought for their homes. And as cynical as it may sound, those are the people who stopped everything”
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski REPUBLICAN PARTY
Born – March 20, 1854, Ripon, WI
Died – August 16, 2022, Jackson, WY🧵 RT @WarintheFuture It nearly 6 months since the Russian invasion of #Ukraine began. Today, I explore Ukraine’s potential counteroffensive in the south, and the considerations for planning and conducting such a large-scale campaign. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1559718565808185344?s=20🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrerBEST INFORMATION: Jomini of the West @JominiW is the best source of battle-space information on Ukraine. This is his battle map of 16 AUG.
💙 ⋙ 🧵📌 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukrainian TVD, Day 159-172. The first half of August has seen an emerging shift in the strategic initiative moving decidedly away from the Russia to that of Ukraine. With fall fast approaching the next several weeks may prove as critical as the early days of the war. #Ukraine
🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1559710631774781445?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Kylegriffin1 The Lincoln Project on Liz Cheney’s primary loss:
“Tonight, the nation marks the end of the Republican Party. What remains shares the name and branding of the traditional GOP, but is in fact an authoritarian nationalist cult dedicated only to Donald Trump.”🧵 RT @ Cirincione This solid reporting from @washingtonpost decisively and definitively crushes the argument that Putin was provoked into invading Ukraines by the West. US knew for months of his plans to occupy Ukraine. A convincing refutation of Mearsheimer & Co.
📌 https://twitter.com/Cirincione/status/1559666748709900289?s=20
⋙ WaPo: Road to war: U.S. struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion https://wapo.st/3Qx4rAk🐣 RT @AccountableGOP .@Liz_Cheney: “Those of us across the board—Republicans, Democrats, and independents—who believe deeply in freedom and who care about the Constitution and the future of the country, I think, have an obligation to put that above party.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559635032339251201?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @atrupar Schumer before Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act: “For anyone who thought Washington was broken and couldn’t do big things, Democrats have shown real change is possible.”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1559628327215824896?s=20/photo/1NYT, Nona Aronowitz: I Still Believe in the Power of Sexual Freedom https://nyti.ms/3w8PNHD “What those early feminists understood is that sex had a role to play in helping women to break free from the various stereotypes — prude, slut, girlfriend, wife — that so dismayed them”
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost 🚨🚨BREAKING from NYT: Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, the White House counsel and his deputy under Trump, were interviewed by the F.B.I. in connection with boxes of sensitive documents that were stored at Mr. Trump’s residence in Florida after he left office
🐣 RT @Robert4787 U.S. intelligence constantly worried about how #Trump keeps government secrets after in 2017 he revealed #topsecret information about an Islamic State plot to a group of Russian visitors, including the foreign minister, that the US received from #Israel.
⋙ Vice, Greg Walters: A Brief History of Mar-a-Lago’s Infamously Bad Security https://bit.ly/3PAVgOk
// So who the hell else could have been rummaging through all those files before the FBI got there?🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ One full week since the search was executed by DOJ and publicized by Trump, and Trump has still not said a word of explanation as to why he took the documents, why he did not return them all, and what he was doing with them for over 18 months.
🐣 RT @Visegrad24 Poland fought a total of 18 wars with Moscow.
Every single time Poland fought side by side with Ukraine, the Russians lost.
That is why Poland and Ukraine stand together today, just as they did then.
For our freedom and yours…🐣 RT @tomishonen Trump: I know the best people
Campaign chairman Manafort: Convicted
National Security advisor Flynn: Convicted
Personal attorney Michael Cohen: Convicted
Personal attorney Giuliani: Criminal target
Chief Strategist Bannon: Convicted
Personal accountant Weisselberg: Pleads guiltyWaPo, George Conway: Trump didn’t take the cookies. Nope. Never. Why ask? https://wapo.st/3QqYB3u “It’s my cookie jar, so any cookies in the jar are mine. In fact, I had a Standing Order that any cookies in the jar automatically became mine when they went into the jar”
🐣 RT @BillKristol “Over the last year, one of the most extraordinary performances of civic grit in American history has played out before our eyes: Liz Cheney’s demonstration of principled constitutionalism…It is worth taking a moment to recognize what she has done.”
⋙ TheBulwark, James Banner: Liz Cheney’s Staunch Constitutionalism https://bit.ly/3piHy81
// Even those who disagree with her policy views ought to acknowledge her bravery.⭕ 15 Aug 2022
WaPo, Dana Milbank: That red wave is looking more like a ripple. Here’s why. https://wapo.st/3w62ti8 “Donald Trump is back on the ballot”
Lawfare, Jeh Johnson: Thoughts on the Mar-a-Lago Search and the President’s Classification and Declassification Authority https://bit.ly/3dB3bNW “Nothing short of laughable”
[T]he defense asserted by Trump’s team—that while in office Trump issued “standing orders” that any “documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them”—is nothing short of laughable. It’s a little like saying that the speed limit on the New Jersey Turnpike is whatever speed the governor chooses to drive at in any given moment.
As Jack Goldsmith noted in another context for Lawfare in 2017, in the first year of the Trump presidency, “[t]he current conundrum highlights again how very deeply our system of government depends on the People electing a President who is generally reasonable, prudent, and responsible.”
In 2016 the American people engaged in a dangerous experiment: electing to the powerful office of the presidency a man with virtually no public office experience, no understanding of the Constitution or history, no respect for law, no moral compass, possessed only of autocratic impulses and a thirst for power for the sake of power. With the violent events of Jan. 6, 2021 and each new facet of the many investigations surrounding Trump, we continue to pay the price for that experiment. ¤ In my opinion, whether our democracy recovers fully from this experiment remains an open question.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski When you’ve lost Laura Ingraham: “Trump’s been a friend of mine for 25 years. But, you know we’ll see whether that’s what the country wants. The country I think is so exhausted .. maybe it’s time to turn the page.”
⋙ TheHill: Laura Ingraham: Voters might say it’s ‘time to turn the page’ on Trump https://bit.ly/3AoCt49
// Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday said Americans might be ready “to turn the page” on former President Trump as he decides whether to run for president a third time.🐣 RT @marceelias The most important news story of the day.👇
“A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment” WaPo: Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal https://wapo.st/3Qvs4ta “‘The breach is way beyond what we thought,’ said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, … ‘The scope of it is mind-blowing’”🐣 RT @Tom_Winter NBC News: Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is expected to plead guilty to criminal charges tied to his indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as soon as this Thursday at 9am, according to two people familiar with the matter and a public court filing
🐣 RT @gtconway3d morons rea
⋙ 🐣 RT @cspan President Trump: “I thought it was a terrible thing when she ripped up the speech. First of all, it’s an official document. You’re not allowed. It’s illegal what she did. She broke the law.”
💽 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1559292533200535554?s=20/photo/1
// Pelosi ripping up Trump’s speech🐣 RT @DonLew87 BOOM! There’s been speculation that perhaps the DOJ just wanted to get back the sensitive documents. But in the DOJ motion today to keep the probable cause affidavit sealed, this excerpt suggests there’s lots more to it. That a criminal investigation is ongoing & ppl are talking.
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/DonLew87/status/1559282669497843719?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Disclosure at this juncture of the affidavit supporting probable cause would, by contrast, cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation. As the Court is aware from its review of the affidavit, it contains, among other critically important and detailed investigative facts: highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government; specific investigative techniques; and information required by law to be kept under seal pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e). If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps. In addition, information about witnesses is particularly sensitive given the high-profile nature of this matter and the risk that the revelation of witness identities would impact their willingness to cooperate with the investigation. Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations. The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential for harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or improperly.
🐣 RT @ ChuckPfarrer ZAPORIZHZHIA NUCLEAR PLANT: Ukraine and Russia blame each other for shelling that has caused fires in the vicinity. Moldovan Civil Defense authorities have imported anti-radiation pills for distribution to civilians in the event of a nuclear incident. https://bit.ly/3JVVazj
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1559290706732138497?s=20/photo/1NYT: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target of Trump Election Investigation in Georgia https://nyti.ms/3JUMGse
// Rudolph W. Giuliani, as former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.⭕ 14 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @ KellyO .@AmbJohnBolton tells me and @NBCNews “I think that claim is almost certainly a lie,” on Trump standing declassify order “Nobody briefed me or informed me that this policy or order was in effect. I was never aware of anything even remotely approximating that policy.”
// on general declassification by Yrump🐣 RT @MarkHertling A few days I did an overview of classified documents. This one provides MUCH more intricate details that most on cable news have no clue about. But this is detailed and spot on!!
⋙ 🧵 RT @OfficeBob “This week in Trumpland has been wild. So I thought I’d put my FSO hat back on and talk about document classification. This is a long one. ¤ A sitting president cannot wave his magic wand and declare something declassified. ” ¤ 2/
📌 https://twitter.com/OfficeBob/status/1558957818925154304?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @OfficeBob […] “I have had people jailed for far, far less than what the FBI recovered at Mar-a-Lago. I’ve fired employees for taking a single Confidential document out of my facility by accident. Because at the end of the day, it’s MY document and MY ass on the line in an audit. ” 23/
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @OfficeBob “Put Trump in prison.”NYT: Congress Is Shooting for the Moon, and Getting Close https://nyti.ms/3ppKwHz “For the past two years, lawmakers have paid workmanlike attention to a series of bipartisan bills on things that have been on the country’s to-do list for years”
// Alt Title: The Most Productive Dysfunctional Congress Ever
// For a gridlocked capital, Washington has been amazingly productive.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer SAKI AIRFIELD STRIKE: The Washington Post was the first to publish the erroneous claim that the Saki airfield strike was carried out by a UKR Special Operation Force. Craters, and explosive placement are wholly inconsistent with a daylight commando raid. A Navy SEAL explains.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1558772392608120834?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @lyndastraffin Mary Trump may hold the key to taking Donald Trump down. I’m hoping a woman deals the final blow.🤞🏻 #DemVoice1 #FreshResists #TruBlue
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/lyndastraffin/status/1558641406822031360?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] “I hear people say that Republicans areafraid of Donald Trump – no thev’re not. THEY ARE HIM. They are sticking with the guy who gives them permission to be their worst selves.”– Mary Trump🐣 RT @jilevin On Jan 6th, Trump sent an armed mob to the Capitol.
He refused repeated requests to call it off – for over 187 deadly minutes.
Trump and MAGA extremists’ attacks on democracy are ongoing.
We must hold them accountable. Jan6Justice
CAP 💽 https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1558844910651990020?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @jilevin Retirees pay more in income taxes so that billionaires won’t have to pay their fair share
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1558707764112904193?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] 📋 In 1984 I lowered the top income tax rate from 70% to 28%. ¤ Then I imposed the first ever income tax on social security benefits to make up for it. (Ronald Reagan)
⋙ 🐣 RT @lindaflarson Is this really true? Do you have a good source? Why is this the first time I’m learning about this?
⋙⋙ 🐣 Yes. Then it was raised to 40% under Clinton, cut again by Bush2, raised to 39% under Obama, cut under Trump (see a pattern?) [Source: Statistica]
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1558844939475238912?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 The first big cut after WW2 was actually under Kennedy who said ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,’ but after Reagan, inequality surged, wages stagnated and the wealth of the uber-wealthy took off ¤ People debate what happened. I am happy Congress just passed a tax on stock buybacks🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes continued yesterday and overnight, but remain far more subdued than the usual trend with still no obvious sign of any retaliatory strike for the Crimean Saki airbase attacks earlier this week.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1558685209033248773?s=20⭕ 13 Aug 2022
WaPo, EJ Dionne: The week that was: Trump screams. Biden governs. https://wapo.st/3vZGNEj “It was a debate over what democratic government should be doing for citizens, not a spectacle orchestrated by one terribly needy man”
Whatever else they were doing, the voters who put Biden into the presidency in 2020 were seeking something closer to a functional, normal democracy. This was the opposite of what we had when Trump rampaged around the White House, obsessed only with himself, his image and the attention-grabbing havoc he could wreak. ¤ That normality means Biden does not grab the headlines, particularly on cable news and social media, the way Trump still can. No one who runs for president lacks ego, but Biden is a fundamentally decent man who has spent his life thinking about what legislation he could pass, which problems he might start solving, and how he could tilt the economic playing field a bit more toward the kinds of people he grew up with in Scranton, Pa., and Delaware. ¤ And this is the month Biden finally came into his own.
Only history and future elections can decide the matter, but Biden may go down as achieving something like Ronald Reagan did, but in reverse. His time in office is altering the nation’s assumptions about government and its role in our economic life. ¤ This process began long before his election, after the financial collapse of 2008 underscored the limits of deregulation. But the two major bipartisan bills Biden signed — for infrastructure and for investments in semiconductors, science and technology — brought home how even many Republicans now acknowledge that large-scale federal investments are required to make a market economy work and that government can push it in useful directions.
Biden didn’t do this alone, and the past month was also when Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) came into his own as a negotiator, facilitator and dealmaker. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), presiding over one of the narrowest partisan majorities in history, showed yet again why she is the most consequential House leader of the modern era. ¤ Notice something here: Whether you support everything Biden, Schumer and Pelosi did or not, it was all about workaday government as we understood it before Trump brought his destructive psychosis to the center of our politics.
Notice something here: Whether you support everything Biden, Schumer and Pelosi did or not, it was all about workaday government as we understood it before Trump brought his destructive psychosis to the center of our politics. ¤ If there were dramas, they were about substantive disagreements between center and left over what should be in a bill, how fast change should happen, which problems took priority. It was a debate over what democratic government should be doing for citizens, not a spectacle orchestrated by one terribly needy man. …
Joe Biden will never seize the public stage the way Trump does. He will never galvanize mobs, inspire frenzied loyalty — or encourage his supporters to embrace and defend lies. That happens to be why Biden was elected. At the end of a consequential week, those who voted for him can feel pretty good about themselves.
WaPo, Perry Stein: The Trump search warrant focuses on classified information. What you need to know https://wapo.st/3poYlGd
// FBI agents took 11 sets of classified documents, several marked ‘top secret’ from the Mar-a-Lago ClubWhen a federal magistrate judge unsealed on Friday the court-authorized warrant used to search former president Donald Trump’s home, he also made public an inventory list of all the items taken in the high-profile raid. ¤ The unprecedented search was related to an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents, including material related to nuclear weapons, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The inventory of 28 seized items provides a glimpse of what was still being kept at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida residence and private beach club, more than a year after the National Archives and Records Agency began trying to retrieve presidential records improperly taken from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency. It offers few details. …
FBI agents recouped four sets of “top-secret” documents, three sets of “confidential” documents and three sets of “secret” documents from Mar-a-Lago, according to the list of items seized in the raid and unsealed by a judge on Friday. Another set of documents was labeled “Various classified TS/SCI documents,” a reference to “top-secret” and “Sensitive Compartmented Information.” …
Can a president legally remove declassified information from the White House? ¤ No, according to security experts. There are other laws that protect the country’s most sensitive secrets beyond how it is classified. For example, according to Aftergood, some of the intelligence and documents related to nuclear weapons can’t be declassified by the president. Aftergood said such information is protected by a different law, the Atomic Energy Act.
Another law — called “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” — states it is illegal to remove documents related to national security from their proper place if it could risk the security of the country, no matter the classification level of the information. ¤ “The classification is just one piece of the picture,” Aftergood said. There are other protections in the law that can make disclosure or unauthorized retention problematic or even criminal.
Removing certain property and documents from the White House would also violate the Presidential Records Act, which requires presidents to preserve official records during their time in office. The act says that records from a presidency are public property and do not belong to the president or the White House team. Violating the records act would be a civil, not a criminal, offense.
Speaking of violations, what laws did the warrant say may have been broken? ¤ The warrant lists the codes of three U.S. laws that may have been violated. That does not mean all of them were broken, however, or that these are the only laws that could have been violated in connection with the FBI’s investigation. The laws pertain to destruction or moving of government documents and carry criminal penalties.
Section 793 — “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” — is known as the Espionage Act. It’s a broad law, and violating it does not necessarily mean that someone committed espionage. The law states it is illegal to remove documents or records related to national security from their proper place if it could risk the security of the country. ¤ “It’s almost a misnomer, because when people hear ‘espionage,’ they think the classic definition of espionage spying,” Ali said. “But here it does not have anything to do with that, as far as we know. This may not be the cloak and dagger type of espionage.”
The second, Section 1519 — “Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy” — criminalizes the destruction or hiding of documents to obstruct an investigation. The warrant does not detail which investigation the removal of these documents could be obstructing. It carries a prison sentence of no more than 20 years.
And the third, Section 2071 — “Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally” — makes illegal the willful theft or destruction of any government document. Every offense of this act could carry a sentence of up to three years of prison. A person convicted of violating this section is barred from holding federal office, according to the law.
WaPo Editorial: Green shoots of governability poke through a scorched political landscape https://wapo.st/3SOkYS8 “The key was to tune out the Twitterverse and engage in old-fashioned give and take, through negotiations across party lines and, sometimes, within them”
In Washington, the smart money is always on political and legislative gridlock. And lately, experts have taken to warning — all too plausibly — of far worse. Just the other day, President Biden met with a group of historians who told him of parallels between contemporary threats to democracy and the unstable periods just before the Civil War and during the 1920s and ’30s, which saw the rise of Hitler and Stalin. Perhaps it’s just some irrational late-summer exuberance, but we’d like to argue the other side: that the national cup is half full, at least regarding the United States’ basic ability to conduct public business. As a midterm election approaches, green shoots of governability are poking through the surface of what is otherwise a scorched political landscape.
Specifically, the 117th Congress has compiled a significant legislative record since it convened on Jan. 3, 2021. Albeit narrowly divided between Republicans and Democrats in the House and split three ways in the Senate — the third “party” being a de facto micro-group made up of Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — Congress has rebounded from the mob attack of Jan. 6 and gotten things done. Since March 2021, lawmakers have passed: a $1.9 trillion plan to help the economy recover from the covid pandemic; an infrastructure package with $550 billion in new spending on roads, bridges, ports and the like; a plan to repair the Postal Service’s balance sheet; a long-overdue anti-lynching law named for Emmett Till; a modest but meaningful gun safety law; a $280 billion bill, the Chips Act, to bolster scientific research and domestic semiconductor production; and the tax-climate-health plan known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the House Friday.
Especially remarkable is that some of the measures — postal reform, infrastructure, anti-lynching, Chips and gun safety — enjoyed bipartisan support. That was true also of repeated measures providing military and economic support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and NATO membership for Finland and Sweden. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell got Senate confirmation to a second four-year term on a bipartisan basis. A bipartisan Senate group has made progress on Electoral Count Act reform, and there is a decent chance that vital measure will pass before this Congress ends. The Respect for Marriage Act to protect same-sex marriages from any possible adverse Supreme Court rulings is struggling to hit the 60-vote threshold in the Senate but might do so, given that it passed the House with 47 Republican votes. There was no federal default; the debt limit was raised enough to last through this year because Democrats agreed to a special procedure that let Senate Republicans who had been obstructing the bill save face. –
[F]or all the often justified despair over political dysfunction — and over institutions, such as the Senate filibuster, that make legislating such a slog — Congress produced incremental progress. The key was to tune out the Twitterverse and engage in old-fashioned give and take, through negotiations across party lines and, sometimes, within them. Given the backlog of unmet social, economic and environmental needs, incremental progress is frustratingly, well, incremental. And yet it has the advantage of probably being the sort of progress voters actually had in mind when they elected a divided Congress — and a relatively moderate president with long experience as a senator, Joe Biden — in November 2020.
Radical ideologies, such as the 1930s-vintage totalitarianism that the historians discussed with Mr. Biden, hold out the seductive — inevitably false — hope of redemption through upheaval. Democracy, by contrast, offers change with stability. Both at home and abroad, doubt grows that the system can still deliver on that more modest, but infinitely more humane, promise. All the more reason to take note of — and succor from — evidence that it can.
WaPo: Trump’s secrets: How a records dispute led the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago https://wapo.st/3SPbaal tick tick ⏳
// Donald Trump was huddled with lawyers in New York on an unrelated investigation when they learned FBI agents had arrived in Palm Beach, Fla., with a warrant, authorized to search for any and all evidence a crime had been committed.🐣 RT @ general_ben Ukrainian Soldiers are the most innovative and tech-savvy Soldiers of any country I’ve ever met. Our Soldiers learned from them. They showed me our counter fire radar was even better than I realized. They will continue to outpace the Russians until final victory.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IlvesToomas This is cool. Ukrainian ingenuity and innovation is why the mindless slugs and low-brow thugs are losing so badly.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ Gerashchenko_en Ukrainian soldiers show the weapon that they made from the captured Russian military equipment. ¤ The infantrymen did all the design and construction work on their own. The system has already been tested and is now being used in the combat zone
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1558181068154478595?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Porter_Anderson Media: @gtconway3d to @Acosta: “The shortest distance between #Trump and an orange jumpsuit is this investigation with the documents. We haven’t heard a rational defense. That’s why, in #Bannon’s phrase, they’re flooding the zone with excrement. Because they’ve got nothing else.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance My favorite part is where Trump has someone reach out to Merrick Garland & expects a response like Garland is Bill Barr or Jeff Sessions 😂😂😂
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe So looks like Trump’s lawyers lied—in writing—to the DOJ. Amazing scoop by @maggieNYT and @GlennThrush
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Lawyer Told Justice Dept. That Classified Material Had Been Returned https://nyti.ms/3QjjoGa
// The lawyer signed a statement in June that all documents marked as classified and held in boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago had been given back. The search at the former president’s home on Monday turned up more.The existence of the signed declaration, which has not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Mr. Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators about the material. And it could help explain why a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction was cited by the department as one basis for seeking the warrant used to carry out the daylong search of the former president’s home on Monday, an extraordinary step that generated political shock waves. ¤ It also helps to further explain the sequence of events that prompted the Justice Department’s decision to conduct the search after months in which it had tried to resolve the matter through discussions with Mr. Trump and his team.
Shortly before Mr. Garland made the announcement, a person close to Mr. Trump reached out to a Justice Department official to pass along a message from the former president to the attorney general. Mr. Trump wanted Mr. Garland to know that he had been checking in with people around the country and found them to be enraged by the search. ¤ “The country is on fire” was the message that Mr. Trump wanted conveyed, according to a person familiar with the exchange. “What can I do to reduce the heat?”
🚫🐣 RT @ Thom_Hartmann Newsweek reports that the documents Trump stole include payroll records for US spies. ¤ Exactly the kind of thing for which Putin or Saudi Arabia would pay the Trump family billions. ¤ Was there a bidding war the Saudis won with their $2 billion to Jared?
⋙ Newsweek: Exclusive: Trump Raid Documents Could Reveal Informants on U.S. Payroll https://bit.ly/3du9bs2
// Hartmann may be extrapolating🐣 RT @ JayinKyiv Is Ukraine about to pull off the greatest military heist in history? ¤ Russian forces in Kherson are now cut off, bridges have been blown so that men can retreat across river BUT not with their vehicles and heavy weapons. ¤ Now Ukraine just hit a big Russian ammo depot there.
🌎 https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1558475280221671425?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JayinKyiv Putin probably didn’t expect to be the one that REALLY arms Ukraine.🐣 RT @CREWcrew This week in Trump, a review:
● There were no classified documents, the FBI must have planted them
● Everyone takes classified documents now and again
● I took a bunch of classified documents, but I secretly unclassified them🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom If you just want to give in to the doom and spend the weekend with nuclear war, I have just the thing for you in @TheAtlantic Daily today.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Trump’s Vault of Secrets https://bit.ly/3zWqJVi
// What was in the boxes, and why does it matter?
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1558270961618755587?s=20/photo/1[Text:] P.S. I hate ending the week with doom and gloom about nuclear issues, but if you really want to fall down the rabbit hole of despair, I have just the thing for you. In 1984, the BBC made a movie about nuclear war called Threads. The ambiguous title refers to the slender and fragile connections, both physical and psychological, that bind human civilization together.)
This was the British version of the American TV movie event The Day After, and although The Day After is a fine movie with Hollywood production values, the BBC and director Mick Jackson made a smaller but more terrifying film that follows a young woman from a few months before a massive nuclear exchange (when she learns she is pregnant) to 13 years after. The script relied on experts (two of them my professors, from back when I was studying such things) for the scenario and its aftermath, including explanatory voice-overs that lend the movie a docudrama feel, and it is so accurate that I assign it as required viewing in my nuclear-weapons class at Harvard Extension School. Be warned, however, that the film contains some deeply disturbing and graphic images. I don’t recommend watching it alone. — Tom
⋙ 🐣 RT @MacMargi I watched it on Tom’s recommendation and it was so much more horrifying than “The day after” which was plenty scary-Threads doesn’t stop- it carries you through the ruination of the next toxic generation-basically, if you are reckless enough to use nukes there is no turning back.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ObserverTx From all the comments, here is your nuclear dystopian movie lineup for the weekend:
The Day After
Testament
Threads
When the wind blows
Just to add a little levity to nuclear annihilation, I am adding: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.🐣 RT @duty2warn Here’s our summary of all polls:
56% of Americans believe 2 + 2 = 4.
36% of Americans believe 2 +2 = whatever Trump says it is.
8% of Americans are undecided.🐣 RT @ @RickPetree The latest Trump dodge (“I telepathically declassified everything at the last minute”) is so patently ridiculous, and so unlikely to affect the course of events, that I urge people to waste NO time in discussing it, refuting it, etc.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HCandler It wasn’t exactly telepathically. This is verified documentation of Trump orbicly declassifying 110% of every document he ever saw, heard of, or wished he’d heard of. Bigly.
😅 🌀 https://twitter.com/HCandler/status/1558460963334103042?s=20/photo/1
// flashing Saudi orb gif🐣 RT @natsechobbyistSome good news! All gas, no brakes! Let’s keep talking and make sure people #VOTE
🐣 📊 RT @ katiebparis
Across race and education, Fox poll shows women shifting towards Democrats.
Since May:
Women + 7D
White women + 8D
Nonwhite women +10D
White college women +8D
White no college women + 8D
Suburban women (reminder: we are diverse!) +9D
https://fxn.ws/3zTVDO2🐣 RT @CREWcrew A couple years ago, the Trump Administration sent Jared Kushner to Saudi Arabia along with Tom Barrack, who was trying to get them American nuclear technology. You may have missed it then, but you should read this now:
⋙ CREW (2019): Kushner, Barrack, Perry and plenty of ethics problems attend Saudi conference https://bit.ly/3SRXHPo
// 10/29/2019🐣 RT @ fred_guttenberg .POTUS just had the most consequential and successful month of any President in the history of this country. While law enforcement will hold the former guy accountable, we must get out and VOTE because of what the President @JoeBiden is doing now!!!
⋙ MSN/NBC: Republicans are rallying around Trump following the FBI raid. That’s good news for Biden. https://bit.ly/3bZjhAy🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I am more convinced than ever, now that we know obstruction was on the warrant, that Trump was panicking about hiding stuff that could implicate him in something big.
🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 13 August 2022 ¤ Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/x6ZU50KjfIi ¤ 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
● The two primary road bridges giving access to the pocket of Russian occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast are now probably out of use for the purposes of substantial military resupply.
● On 10 August 2022, Ukrainian precision strikes likely rendered the road crossing of the Dnipro River at Nova Kakhovka unusable for heavy military vehicles. In recent days, Russia has only succeeded in making superficial repairs to the damaged Antonivsky road bridge which likely remains structurally undermined. Last week, the main rail bridge near Kherson was also further damaged. Since late July 2022, Russia has been using a pontoon ferry near the railway bridge as its main military resupply route.
● Even if Russia manages to make significant repairs to the bridges, they will remain a key vulnerability. Ground resupply for the several thousand Russian troops on the west bank is almost certainly reliant on just two pontoon ferry crossing points. With their supply chain constrained, the size of any stockpiles Russia has managed to establish on the west bank is likely to be a key factor in the force’s endurance.
🐣 RT @McFaul In invading Ukraine, Putin tried to (1) unite the alleged “one nation” of Russians & Ukrainians, (2) de-Nazify Ukraine/overthrow Zelensky (3) capture Kyiv & Kharkiv, (4) stop NATO expansion, (5) demilitarize Ukraine. He has failed so far to achieve all 5 of these objectives.
⭕ 12 Aug 2022
TheAtlantic, Mark Leibovich: Liz Cheney, the Republican From the State of Reality https://bit.ly/3QKfmGw “Even in defeat, Cheney could emerge from Wyoming tough and unencumbered enough to serve as a one-woman wrecking ball against Trump”
// She isn’t really fighting to keep her seat in Congress. She’s fighting Donald Trump.NYT, Glenn Thrush: Takeaways From the Unsealed Warrant for the Search of Trump’s Home https://nyti.ms/3bOXb3X “Prosecutors cited Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 793, better known as the Espionage Act”
● The Justice Department is investigating violations of the Espionage Act.
● The big question: Why did Mr. Trump hoard government documents?
● Merrick Garland had the right to remain silent. Not anymore.🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: Putin’s mouthpieces on state TV are taunting America about “Top Secret” documents sought during the raid of Trump’s estate, which they claim had to do with the newest nuclear weapons developed by the US and gleefully imply that Moscow already got to see them.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1558289365004128264?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ BarbMcQuade Brilliant tactical move by DOJ on selecting statutes for the search. None of the crimes cited require the documents to be classified. Any claim by Trump that he declassified the documents is irrelevant. …
⋙ NYT: Files Seized From Trump Are Part of Espionage Act Inquiry https://nyti.ms/3C0oq6h
// The materials included some marked as top secret and meant to be viewed only in secure government facilities, according to a copy of the warrant.WaPo Editorial: A disaster is looming at a huge Ukrainian nuclear power plant https://wapo.st/3dsUBAO “At Zaporizhzhia, it is a few minutes before midnight. A disaster must be averted”
🐣 RT @susanmcp1 Spot on from the imitable @MollyJongFast: “Perhaps the secret of the Biden presidency is that the moment all looks darkest, the moment he’s left for dead, he rises like a phoenix from the ashes and does a pretty good job of getting stuff passed.”
⋙ TheAtlantic, Molly Jong-Fast: Joe Biden Is Not a Victim of His Presidency https://bit.ly/3BZQhn7
// The “Dark Brandon” meme understands the secret of Biden: The moment all looks darkest, he rises from the ashes.━━━━━━━▼
🔄 Title 18 of the United States Code is the main criminal code of the federal government of the United States. The Title deals with federal crimes and criminal procedure.
Statutes: 18 U.S. Code § 793, § 1519, § 207118 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information ‼️
“Section 793 applies to activities such as gathering, transmitting to an unauthorized person, or losing, information pertaining to the national defense, and to conspiracies to commit such offenses.” https://bit.ly/3C3td71
Cornell (Detailed): https://bit.ly/3QCWKsb18 U.S. Code § 1519 – Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Cornell: https://bit.ly/3Pnk10f18 U.S. Code § 2071 – Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Cornell: https://bit.ly/3uDK8ZS━━━━━━━▲
🧵 RT @steve_vladeck Pulling a bunch of threads together, the fact that the search warrant was based on §§ 793, 1519, and 2071, but *not* 1924, suggests that DOJ was worried about affirmative *misuse* of materials in President Trump’s possession — and not just that he was wrongfully *retaining* them.
📌 https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1558208876239114242?s=20WaPo, Max Boot: Republicans went crazy over the Trump search. Now they look idiotic. https://wapo.st/3SXXoCC “Anyone else caught with top-secret documents — and suspected of obstructing justice and violating the Espionage Act — would probably be in federal custody by now”
The more we learn about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, the sillier — and more sinister — the overcaffeinated Republican defenses of former president Donald Trump look. ¤ A genius-level spinmeister, Trump set the tone with a Monday evening statement announcing: “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
That description allowed his followers to imagine a scene straight out of a Hollywood action picture, with agents in FBI jackets busting down the doors and holding the former president and first lady at gunpoint while they ransacked the premises. Although Trump’s team had a copy of the search warrant, he gave no hint of why the FBI might have been there, claiming, “It is … an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
His followers — which means pretty much the whole of the Republican Party — took up the cry based on no more information than that. Fox News host Mark Levin called the search “the worst attack on this republic in modern history, period.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called it “corrupt & an abuse of power.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) compared the FBI to “the Gestapo.” Not to be outdone, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Whackadoodle) said the FBI was the “American Stasi,” and compared its agents to wolves “who want to eat you.” “Today is war,” declared Steven Crowder, a podcaster with a YouTube audience of 5.6 million people. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted “DEFUND THE FBI!” Former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, among many others, suggested that the FBI and the Justice Department (“essentially lawless criminal organizations”) might have planted evidence.
Only now, as Paul Harvey used to say, are we hearing the rest of the story — and what has been reported so far bears no relation to the persecution fantasies of Trump and his cult followers. On Thursday evening, The Post reported that FBI agents were searching for highly classified documents relating to nuclear weapons and signals intelligence — two of the most sensitive areas in the entire U.S. government. Months ago, Trump received a subpoena for documents, and the Justice Department was not convinced that he had complied with it.
Trump at first claimed “Nuclear weapons is a hoax, just like Russia,” even though his 2016 campaign’s collusion with Russia was well-documented, and then all but admitted he had done it by alleging (falsely) that “President Barack Hussein Obama” took nuclear documents. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the FBI removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret.
The New York Times, meanwhile, reported that the search was conducted by FBI agents “intentionally not wearing the blue wind breakers emblazoned with the agency’s logo usually worn during searches.” The club was closed, and Trump was not there. He was in New York, where he would plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination more than 400 times during a deposition with the New York attorney general. But according to Trump’s lawyer, Trump and his family were able to watch the entire search on Mar-a-Lago’s closed-circuit security cameras. So much for the crackpot claim that the FBI could have planted evidence!
This new information turns the Trump narrative — that he is being treated worse than anyone ever in all of U.S. history — on its head. Imagine what would have happened to a lower-level government employee who was suspected of taking highly classified documents without authorization. I very much doubt that the FBI would have dealt with such a person as gently as they dealt with Trump. Anyone else caught with top-secret documents — and suspected of obstructing justice and violating the Espionage Act — would probably be in federal custody by now. Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor, was sentenced to more than five years in prison for leaking documents relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election a whole lot less sensitive than the ones Trump is suspected of taking.
The right now appears to be in disarray. The ex-president’s old story has been rendered “inoperative,” as Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler used to say, and they need a new one.
But the damage has been done. The right’s hysterical, hyperbolic reaction has weaponized their unhinged followers. On Thursday, an armed man died in a standoff with police after trying to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office. The gunman was evidently a prolific contributor on Trump’s Truth Social site. After the FBI search, a user with his name wrote that this was a “call to arms” and “we must respond with force.”
This should be a gut check moment for responsible Republicans — if any are left — to step back and take a deep breath before more violence erupts. But sadly, most Republicans don’t seem to care what furies they have unleashed in their devotion to the principle that their supreme leader must remain above the law.
NYT: The seized documents were part of an inquiry into violation of the Espionage Act and two other laws. https://nyti.ms/3QrqvMP “Federal agents who executed the warrant did so to investigate potential crimes associated with violations of the Espionage Act”
Federal agents who executed the warrant did so to investigate potential crimes associated with violations of the Espionage Act, which outlaws the unauthorized retention of national security information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary; a federal law that makes it a crime to destroy or conceal a document to obstruct a government investigation; and another statute associated with unlawful removal of government materials.
Of the three criminal laws cited in the search warrant, one stood out as raising new questions: Section 1519 of Title 18 of the United States Code. While the other two laws clearly apply to a basic situation where someone has taken or retained certain government documents that do not belong to him, Section 1519 is an obstruction law. It applies to document crimes undertaken “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter” within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies. That raises the question: What do investigators suspect that Trump, by hoarding the documents, was trying to impede?
WaPo: Agents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago seized 11 sets of classified documents, unsealed filing shows https://wapo.st/3C3gAZm ‘underscores deep concern among government officials about information they thought could … potentially fall into the wrong hands’
// The search warrant lists potential crimes including mishandling defense information and destruction of recordsThe warrant said it is seeking all “physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of three potential crimes, including a part of the Espionage Act outlawing gathering, transmitting, or losing national defense information.” The warrant also cites destruction of records and concealment or mutilation of government material. The contents of the warrant and the inventory were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
🐣 RT @JaxAlemany .@USNatArchives responds to Trump’s unsubstantial statement:
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/JaxAlemany/status/1558151577751490561?s=20/photo/1[Text:] August 12, 2022, statement ¤ The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama Presidential records when President Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA). NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama Presidential records in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area. As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of hisAdministration.
🐣 RT @ BillKristol What Mitch McConnell & Respectable Republicans could say today:
We will do everything we can to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination. ¤ If he nonetheless gets the nomination, we will support the Democratic nominee or field an independent Republican in the general election.🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Keep in mind, this was likely obtained FOR the WSJ from trump allies or lawyers to get out ahead of the story. The WSJ does NOT provide a copy of the actual documents. We don’t know what wasn’t reported here.
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: FBI Recovered Eleven Sets of Classified Documents in Trump Search, Inventory Shows https://on.wsj.com/3Plpm87 No specificity as to the content of any of the Secret and Top Secret documents (some were “compartmentalized”)
// Trump allies claim the former president declassified the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago
2) WSJ: FBI Recovered Eleven Sets of Classified Documents in Trump Search, Inventory Shows https://on.wsj.com/3Plpm87 Scope: ‘all storage rooms and all other rooms or areas used or available to be used by [Trump] and his staff & in which boxes or documents could be stored’
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1558151533270794245?s=20/photo/1[Text:] FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a list of items removed from the property shows. Also included in the list was information about the “President of France,” according to the three-page list. The list is contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the premises which was granted by a federal magistrate judge in Florida.
The list includes references to one set of documents marked as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” an abbreviation that refers to top-secret/sensitive compartmented information. It also says agents collected four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents. The list didn’t provide any more details about the substance of the documents.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that the president used his authority to declassify the material before he left office. While a president has the power to declassify documents, there are federal regulations that lay out a process for doing so.
🐣 RT @ BillKristol Trump basically acknowledging he had classified documents pertaining to nuclear weapons or programs at Mar-a-Lago.
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1558129428617650176?s=20/photo/1[Text:] August 12, 2022 – ¤ Statement by Donald J. Trump, ¤ 45th President of the United States of America
President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Notice how no one says “it’s totally implausible that Trump would remove classified documents from the White House because he has too much integrity to do that.” Not even his Republican claque.
🐣 📊 RT @ ianbremmer % of americans who think immigration is a good thing for the country, by age group
18-34: 83% (!)
35-54: 76%
55+: 57%
-gallup🐣 RT @ JonFlan Schiff called out the orange menace for the clear and present danger Trump represents…
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch It’s a good time to revisit Adam Schiff’s words: “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.” h/t @DavidPepper
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1557897610773442560?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ZaleskiLuke It’s not that complicated—Trump refuses to obey the law and play by the rules and whenever he gets caught he insists rules aren’t rules and laws aren’t laws and the people enforcing them are just part of a giant conspiracy against him and what he’s done is fine and they’re guilty
😅 RT @djrothkopf Supreme Court will rule that since nuclear weapons did not exist at the time the Constitution was written that a.) there can be no prohibition against presidents keeping documents about them at their beach house and b.) the 2d amendment guarantees everyone the right to have one.
🐣 RT @duty2warn ANY behavioral psychologist familiar with Trump’s narcissism and sociopathy would read this and consider it an admission of guilt.
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1558064700121763840?s=20/photo/1[Text:] 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Mueller investigation was a Hoax, and much more. Same sleazy people involved. Why wouldn’t the FBI allow the inspection of areas at Mar-a-Lago with our lawyer’s, or others, present. Made them wait outside in the heat, wouldn’t let them get even close – said “ABSOLUTELY NOT.” Planting information anyone? Reminds me of a Christofer Steele Dossier!
😅 RT @mmpadellan donald trump: nuclear thief, seller of secrets, thrower of ketchup, choker of necks, grabber of p*ssy, dodger of drafts, insulter of veterans, inciter of insurrections, loser of elections, sharpie of hurricanes, worst of presidents
🐣 RT @HC_Richardson Yeah, my gut says this is it. This was the game plan all along.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuddLegum FLASHBACK (FEBRUARY 2019): “Whistleblowers Raise Grave Concerns with Trump Administration’s Efforts to Transfer Sensitive Nuclear Technology to Saudi Arabia” [Report: https://bit.ly/3peFOfV%5D
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1557889064929468416?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Whistleblowers Raise Grave Concerns with Trump Administration’s Efforts to Transfer Sensitive Nuclear Technology to Saudi Arabia
Prepared for Chairman Elijah E. Cummings
Interim Staff Report, Committee on Oversight and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives
February 2019
oversight.house.gov🧵 RT @tomiahonen My first ‘serious’ reaction to the nuclear bombshell news about #TraitorTrump ¤ This opens my 6th path. Yes. This will now be the 6th certain path to take Trump to prison for life (each separate & certain convictions) ¤ Is POSSIBLY his most serious crime. Could face death penalty
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1558001998049513474?s=20⋙ We will know much more after we see the search warrant. Hopefully we see it today or early next week. If this is the subject matter, and Trump initially said yes release it, I believe judge will ok to unseal it, even if Trump suddenly says no no no, I do not want it unsealed
⋙ Why Path 6? Conviction? This is why ‘certain’ and ‘life sentence’ ¤ Trump was CAUGHT holding government docs including top secret docs earlier this year, when National Archives retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-A-Lago. We know THAT crime HAPPENED ¤ But it gets FAR WORSE
⋙ We just found out Thursday, that Department of Justice had sent a subpoena for these (nuclear) top secret documents in June – and Trump had ignored that subpoena ¤ It makes Trump’s SUBSEQUENT CRIME of hiding stolen government documents DELIBERATE ¤ He is now certain to be convicted
⋙ PLEASE NOTE TIMING ¤ The June subpoena was sent when DOJ knew Trump was HIDING documents. So LIKELY that someone has flipped between February 2022 & June 2022. Timing would fit Mark Meadows. Tail end timing would also barely fit Don Jr. Ivanka & Jared had already flipped last year
⋙ When Mar-A-Lago was searched we did not know which was the department who wrote the search warrant. We know now (from DOJ filing yesterday): ¤ Espionage ¤ And WaPo said those were nuclear secret documents. That means potential death sentence, certainly federal Life In Prison.
⋙ And the ridiculous Saudi golf tournament? That is a bribe in open sight. I am confident (but not certain) the timing involves secret documents and was bribe by Saudi paid to Trump to pay to receive or see or copy those documents. Trump would be SELLING our nuclear secrets
⋙ I want to make distinction here ¤ If Trump took top secret nuclear documents & refused to return them, but hid them in his home – that is life in prison ¤ If Trump sold them, or tried to sell them, or took a bribe even just to show them, then he faces up to death penalty
⋙ Part of the above is speculation by me. Part we know. We will know MUCH MORE once we see the search warrant ¤ I will then write our Path 6 for you, and we start to track this path to take Trump to prison for life⭕ 11 Aug 2022
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD. Unpacking the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C., Chapter 36. We are concerned here with Section 793 — Gathering, Transmitting, or Losing Defense Information. Pardon me while I pour myself a drink
📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1557912596484952069?s=20NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Trapped in Trump, Trump, Trump https://bit.ly/3AgRuoE ‘With the GOP still in thrall to its defeated former President, the achievements of Biden … are subordinate to the country’s larger crisis: the collapse of the GOP into a cult of personality’
// The ex-President’s “Hell Week” overshadows Biden’s best week yet.“Consider the developments of the past week or so. Gas prices are dropping, with the national average falling below four dollars a gallon for the first time in months. Inflation might be peaking, and unemployment remains vanishingly low. The Senate passed a sweeping bill to address climate change and health care, less than two weeks after the bill, the Biden Administration’s top priority, experienced an unlikely resurrection. President Joe Biden, finally recovered from covid and emerging from more than two weeks in quarantine, also signed bipartisan legislation to invest tens of billions of dollars into scientific research to aid veterans suffering from exposure to burn pits, and accepted the proposed accession of Finland and Sweden to nato. The President also announced the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, perhaps the world’s most wanted terrorist, after a two-decade manhunt”
🐣 📊 RT @anneapplebaum 98% of Ukrainians think they will win the war. 91% approve of Zelensky. 64% want to return to the 1991 borders, another 14% want to return to the February 24 borders. Just in case you were wondering what *they* think is happening, and should happen. https://bit.ly/3QB1ej1
🧵 RT @US_STRATCOM “Russia’s escalating rhetoric against NATO & the US shows they’re trying to exploit a perceived deterrence gap: a threshold below which they mistakenly believe they may be able to employ nuclear weapons” ¤ “Make no mistake – we’re ready” ¤ -Adm. Richard, USSTRATCOM commander ¤ (1/7)
📌 https://twitter.com/US_STRATCOM/status/1557763572960215042?s=20WaPo: FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say https://wapo.st/3bPqhjy It’s not know whether the agents found what they were looking for or what kinds of documents were involved
// Attorney General Merrick Garland wouldn’t discuss the search but said he personally signed off on asking a judge to approve it🐣 RT @ hugolowell Breaking via Washington Post: Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.
🐣 Note: Documents on nuclear weapons could be anything, none of them good, but there’s still a huge variety of things it could mean. ¤ We really need to get the list of what the FBI actually found, not just what they were looking for. Please don’t jump to conclusions.
🐣 RT @ RonFilipkowski
MAGA Tuesday – We demand Merrick Garland immediately unseal the affidavit and tell the American people the grounds for the search warrant!
MAGA Friday – Unsealing the warrant is improper and just designed to damage Trump politically to keep him from running for office!🐣 RT @ MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: HAHAHA: “Trump allies are discussing the possibility of challenging the Justice Department’s motion to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. They have contacted outside lawyers about helping them, according to a person briefed on the discussions.” @ktbenner
🐣 RT @ tribelaw So by 3 pm Friday Aug 12, Trump must put 🆙 or 🤫 🤐 zip it
⋙ 🐣 RT @SeamusHughes Newly filed order puts the deadline to tomorrow afternoon on whether President Trump would like to weigh in on keeping the search warrant sealed
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/SeamusHughes/status/1557820430303612939?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @highbrow_nobrow 🚨Jay Bratt, the chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section, appears on the brief to unseal the search warrant used in the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. https://bit.ly/3JP7WQ3
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1557815276988686338?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Another courtesy to Trump: He has the option to weigh in on whether to unseal the affidavit (which would lay out the probable cause for the search), and whether it would affect his privacy interests. ¤ Trump court, meet ball 😂
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Keep in mind that Trump loves an information vacuum, because it allows him to create his own narrative. Let’s see if he’s willing to acquiesce and let the public see exactly WHY the FBI had to conduct a search🐣 RT @ MuellerSheWrote WOW. Garland is sick of your shit! What a remarkable statement. He just called Donald’s bluff. If Donald won’t release the warrant, DOJ WILL. They’ve filed a motion as only a judge can unseal the warrant.
🐣 RT @cnnbrk Attorney General Merrick Garland says the DOJ has filed a motion requesting the Trump warrant and property receipt be unsealed. https://cnn.it/3de1tly
Reuters: U.N. chief urges demilitarized zone around Ukraine nuclear power plant https://reut.rs/3PlMAei
⭕ 10 Aug 2022
WaPo (8/10): In the Ukraine war, a battle for the nation’s mineral and energy wealth https://wapo.st/3qgHENW “Ukraine is widely known as an agricultural powerhouse. But as a raw-material mother lode, it’s home to 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals and metals”
WaPo, EJ Dionne: The GOP makes its choice: Trump, yes. Rule of law, no. https://wapo.st/3JNsVmD “[T]he principle at work here seems to be that the law should be invoked only against political enemies, never allies”
🐣 RT @SWinstonWolkoff @TishJames has signaled she may seek the dissolution of Trumps business itself under New York’s so-called corporate death penalty-a law that allows the AG to seek to dissolve businesses that operate “in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner.”
⋙ BusinessInsider: Donald Trump repeatedly pleaded the Fifth on Wednesday — but that won’t stop NY AG Letitia James from coming for his business https://bit.ly/3JK7D9p
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sandibachom She went after the NRA like this. Remember Tish shared all resources with Vance. When Weisselberg was indicted they both did the perp walk. She has the taxes, Deutsche bank records. Cushman Wakefield and years of GJ testimony. She’s going to shut him down🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu 10 August – Kremlin Insider: Putin rejects Patrushev’s Security Council experts’ report predicting losses in Kherson and Zaporozhe. Patrushev falls in line. https://bit.ly/3SSPkTE
🐣 RT @McFaul Historians privately warn Biden that America’s democracy is teetering
⋙ WaPo: Historians privately warn Biden that America’s democracy is teetering https://wapo.st/3QcAt4y
// When Biden met with historians last week at the White House, they compared the threat facing America to the pre-Civil War era and to pro-fascist movements before World War II🐣 RT @thedailybeast Trump has been a multi-faceted national security threat since he arrived on the national stage.
⋙ DailyBeast: David Rothkopf: The FBI’s Search of Mar-a-Lago Is a Reminder That Trump Has Always Been a National Security Threat https://bit.ly/3QBKDeR
// The former president was the most dangerous person in the world when he held power, and he never had respect for the rule of law.🐣 RT @ AWeissmann_ Key questions for Trump and Republicans to answer: Why did Trump steal a boatload of govt documents, why did he lie about having returned them all, and what did he do or plan to do with them?
🐣 RT @ brianschatz 1) FBI shouldn’t make the same mistake that Comey made in over explaining. 2) I don’t think we should defund the FBI. 3) Trump is under no obligation to keep the contents of the search warrant secret. 4) Talking about this in electoral terms is gross. 5) No one is above the law.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING! SUBPOENAS! Boy, DoJ is really pushing up to that 90 days from the election. Maybe they’re thinking 60.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost 🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: Federal investigators served subpoenas to several House and Senate Republican offices in the Pennsylvania Capitol. ¤ The information being requested centered around U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, & the effort to seek alternate electors to overturn the 2020 election🐣 RT @GenMhayden I am. It’s very good.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling I’m not an intel analyst, but it doesn’t look good.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Satellite images of the bombed Russian airbase in occupied Crimea following yesterday’s audacious Ukrainian attack reveal a scene of devastation
¤ https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1557485051306295298?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Nerugui20 This post is approved by #NAFO and the #Fellas
¤ https://twitter.com/Nerugui20/status/1557520993463287809?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ AshaRangappa_ Can we say this louder for the folks in the back? TRUMP DOES NOT HOLD A SECURITY CLEARANCE
⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok That goes away the moment their successor is sworn in. By tradition, incumbent Presidents extend access to classified info, as needed, to their successors. Notably, Biden did not, citing Trump’s “erratic behavior.”
⋙⋙ CNN: Biden says Trump should no longer receive classified intelligence briefings https://cnn.it/3oV1lre 4/
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AnotherLibtard Thanks for your explanation on Ari Melber. Now, I understand what this is about. Biden did not extend a security clearance to Trump (citing Trump’s erratic behavior). Trump lost his security clearance the minute he left office. He was a possessor of stolen goods. Got it. Thanks.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Technically correct. But I think another, deeper problem was that Trump could not grasp that certain (most?) things he received as president (like his “love letters“ from Kim Jong Un) were not his personally but they belonged to the State, to The People.🐣 RT @DmytroNatalukha The blue dots are apartments and other residential property put on sale by their #Russian owners in the last couple of days in #Crimea
Estate agents report that these properties are mainly owned by people employed in the #FSB ¤ They know we will come and take back what’s ours 🇺🇦✌️
🌎 https://twitter.com/DmytroNatalukha/status/1501967048229937153?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @hugolowell New: NY AG — “Attorney General Letitia James took part in the deposition during which Mr Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Attorney General James will pursue the facts and the law wherever they may lead. Our investigation continues.”
😅 RT @ProjectLincoln You really can’t trust anyone, Donald.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1557481553524953088?s=20/photo/1
// The Lincoln Project paranoia video🧵 RT @ @ChrisO_wiki 1/ This is a continuation of my earlier thread linked below, concerning a leaked archive of complaints made to the Russian military prosecutor’s office concerning Russian soldiers’ involvement in the Ukraine war.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1557469084622721026?s=20
⋙ 🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ @the_ins_ru has obtained an archive of complaints made to the Russian military prosecutor’s office, which provides some very interesting insights from various perspectives into the experiences of Russian soldiers in the Ukraine war. Here’s a [thread] highlighting some of them.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1557445770860605441?s=20🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Zelensky: Russian occupiers already know it’s time to leave Kherson. ¤ Addressing residents in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine’s south, President Zelensky said “no matter what the occupiers promise, their only option at best is to escape, that is if they can in time.”
🐣 RT @1_h8ful [Tr] Hey Russians, now it’s here! Behind every door, behind every tree, on every field, on every river, on #Krim, in #Kherson, in #Mariupol, everywhere. Racists, expect them!
💽 https://twitter.com/1_h8ful/status/1557468003591143425?s=20/photo/1
// decapitation video: Welcome to hell; woman wearing wreath🐣 RT @IlvesToomas The ballistic response — from the top of the Kremlin leadership to opposition figures — just to the *idea* of ending tourist visas for Russian passports, suggests there is finally something the EU can do that actually bothers the regime. ¤ Visas are a privilege. Not a right.
🐣 RT @Mikel_Jollett So Republicans are really going to run on, “Fuck veterans, fuck diabetics, the President is above the law, and 10 year old rape victims should be forced to carry babies to term.”
🐣 RT @bfry1981 As Biden takes out al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri, see climate/tax/inflation bill pass, sees China chip bill passed, gas prices go down, & Dem chances in midterms rise (all while fighting off COVID), my reminder of how badly media does him & Democrats
⋙ RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth https://bit.ly/3SFFJPS🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ FYI the reason Trump GOP are trying to push the “FBI planting evidence” story is that they are trying to get ahead of how sensitive the docs Trump was hiding and the million dollar follow up question: Why the hell would he take such documents and what did he plan to do with them?
🔆 This❗️⋙ Newsweek: Exclusive: An Informer Told the FBI What Docs Trump Was Hiding, and Where https://bit.ly/3vUKWtm
✅ WaPo, Glen Kessler: Fact-checking Trump’s new campaign-style video https://wapo.st/3vVj4Fn
Claims: 2 True, 6 Misleading, 10 False⭕ 9 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON/0200 UTC 10 AUG/ UKR Air Force utilized HARM missiles to destroy four S-300 anti-air complexes near Nova Kakhovka. It is assessed that this interdiction helped to facilitate the strike on Crimea by preventing RU early warning radars from tracking the launch of ACTACMs.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1557182534651346944?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ @iaeaorg Shelling incident on 6 Aug near dry spent fuel storage facility at #Zaporizhzya NPP caused damage, but available radiation measurements show normal levels at the site, #Ukraine has said. IAEA experts assessed there was no immediate threat to nuclear safety https://bit.ly/3SFt5Ag
⋙ 🐣 RT @iaeaorg Virtually all 7 indispensable nuclear safety & security pillars have now been breached, @RafaelMGrossi said, reiterating grave concern: “All military action jeopardising nuclear safety and security must stop.” Again stressed need for an IAEA expert mission to go to the plant asapWaPo: Mar-a-Lago search appears focused on whether Trump, aides withheld items https://wapo.st/3zCIoBa “Trump resisted handing over some of the boxes for months, … and believed that many of the items were his personally and did not belong to the government”
// A lawyer for Donald Trump said agents seized about a dozen boxes on Monday, months after 15 boxes of items were returnedIn the months before the FBI’s dramatic move to execute a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s Florida home — and open his safe to look for items — federal authorities grew increasingly concerned that Trump or his lawyers and aides had not, in fact, returned all the documents and other material that were government property, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Officials became suspicious that when Trump gave back items to the National Archives about seven months ago, either the former president or people close to him held on to key records — despite a Justice Department investigation into the handling of 15 boxes of material sent to the former president’s private club and residence in the waning days of his administration.
Over months of discussions on the subject, some officials also came to suspect Trump’s representatives were not truthful at times, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for Trump said the agents who brought the court-approved warrant to Mar-a-Lago a day earlier took about 12 more boxes after conducting their search.
People familiar with the investigation said that Justice Department and FBI officials traveled to Mar-a-Lago this spring, a meeting first reported by CNN. The officials spoke to Trump’s representatives, inspected the storage space where documents were held and expressed concern that the former president or people close to him still had items that should be in government custody, these people said.
By that point, officials at the National Archives had been aggressively contacting to people in Trump’s orbit to demand the return of documents they believed were covered by the Presidential Records Act …
Bobb said the Justice Department officials commented that they did not believe the storage unit was properly secured, so Trump officials added a lock to the facility. When FBI agents searched the property Monday, Bobb added, they broke through the lock that had been added to the door.
The FBI removed about a dozen boxes that had been stored in the basement storage area, she said. Bobb did not share the search warrant left by agents but said that it indicated agents were investigating possible violations of laws dealing with the handling of classified material and the Presidential Records Act. … After Monday’s search, lawyers close to Trump sought advice or recommendations of criminal defense lawyers who could represent Trump, said a person familiar with the lawyers. According to this person, the lawyers said the warrant was related to allegations that classified information was retained by Trump. …
One person familiar with the investigation said agents were conducting a court-authorized search as part of a long-running examination into why documents — some of them top-secret — were taken to the former president’s private club and residence instead of shipped to the National Archives and Records Administration when Trump left office. The Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.
Trump resisted handing over some of the boxes for months, some people close to the president said, and believed that many of the items were his personally and did not belong to the government. He eventually agreed to hand over some of the documents, “giving them what he believed they were entitled to,” in the words of one adviser.
⇈ ⇊
WaPo (Mar): Some records taken by Trump are so sensitive they may not be described in public https://wapo.st/33RkmXa
// 2/25/2022; The revelations come as a letter Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney suggests she is broadening a House probe into the breadth of potential records act violations under Trump🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer WARNING SHOT: The likely use of a US provided MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) against the RU Naval Air Station at Saki, Crimea sends a stark warning to Moscow. The Black Sea base at Sevastopol might also be in range.
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1557038987914760194?s=20/photo/1
[Text:] This morning’s attack on the air base at Saki sends Moscow a stark warning. The Russian naval base at Sevastopol might also become a target, changing the balance of power in the Black Sea.🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Energoatom described possible scenarios of aftermath in case of explosions on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Up to 30,000 km² would be unlivable & up to 2 mln km² would be contaminated. Turkey and Crimea – under direct threat, up to 2 million people might have to be evacuated.
🐣 RT @POTUS The CHIPS and Science Bill ensures that the United States leads the world in industries of the future, from quantum computing and artificial intelligence to vaccines for cancer and cures for HIV.
🐣 Biden Accomplishments
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1557055233511022596?s=20/photo/1Biden Accomplishments:
● COVID-19 Rescue Package (vaccine roll-out; $1400 checks, enhanced benefits)
● Bipartisan Infrastructure Act
● CHIPS and Science Act (technology future, competition with China)
● Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (first gun safety legislation in 30 years)
● Vets PACT Act (medical coverage for toxin exposure while in service)
● Extricated US from “endless war” in Afghanistan
● Killed head of Al Queda, proving United States’ “over-the-horizon” capability
● Re-invigorated NATO (added Sweden ✛ Finland); and strengthened other alliances
● Military and humanitarian support for Ukraine
● Most diverse cabinet in history
● SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed
● Pro-active measures to support abortion access (multiple directives and resources)
● Gas prices falling steadily; biggest monthly drop in inflation in history in July
● 800✛ indictments for January 6th riot, including for seditious conspiracy
● January 6th Committee ✛ DOJ investigation into Trump and associates
● Inflation Reduction: a) climate (will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030)
● Inflation Reduction: b) drug prices (Medicare only, for now)
● Inflation Reduction: c) 15% minimum tax on corporations; tax on stock buy-backs
● Inflation Reduction: d) funds IRS to find high income tax avoiders
● Lowest Unemployment Rate in 50 years (3.5%)
● 9 million jobs added (matching pre-pandemic levels)🐣 RT @mmpadellan HUGE NEWS: The House Ways and Means Committee can NOW acquire trump’s tax returns from the IRS, according to a ruling from the DC Court of Appeals.
🐣 RT @BillKristol
Imagine that.
Imagine the rule of law.
Imagine equality under the law.
Imagine applying the law equally to a big shot like a former president.
Imagine the American republic working as it should.
It’s beyond the MAGA imagination.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepStefanik If the FBI can raid a U.S. President, imagine what they can do to you.🐣 RT @tracy_walder This is the squad who executed the search warrants. I worked on the counterintelligence squad.
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/tracy_walder/status/1557007307183357952?s=20/photo/1[Text:] Counterintelligence and Export Control Section
The Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) supervises the investigation and prosecution of cases affecting national security, foreign relations, and the export of military and strategic commodities and technology. The Section has executive responsibility for authorizing the prosecution of cases under criminal statutes relating to espionage, sabotage, neutrality, and atomic energy. It provides legal advice to U.S. Attorney’s Offices and investigative agencies on all matters within its area of responsibility, which includes 88 federal statutes affecting national security. It also coordinates criminal cases involving the application of the Classified Information Procedures Act. In addition, the Section administers and enforces the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 and related disclosure statutes.⋙ 🐣 RT @ @pallavianflew A•lot•is coming2a head here, but 1 basic fact is ineluctably clear: pathological narcissism doesn’t “understand” traitorousness, 4it’s only preoccupation is w/ loyalty&/or fealty from others inward. IOW, no document—not even a sacred 1—could ever mean anything2such a1. Hence💸
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer CRIMEA: More on a series of large explosions & fires at the SAKI airbase in RU occupied Crimea. Though a massive accident or sabotage could have been the cause- it would appear increasingly likely that a UKR MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) attack has taken place.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 Video of the explosions at Saki Airbase in Crimea. https://t.me/shot_shot/42503
💽 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1556996656079507456?s=20/photo/1
// Others think it/they were HARMS missiles🐣 RT @StratcomCentre The AFU have destroyed a RU warehouse in Genichesk area, the most remote part of #Kherson oblast, previously unreachable by UKR artillery. The munitions were detonating for >1.5 hours. Another illustration of Ukraine’s effective use of weapons provided!
⋙ Spravdi [UA]: Weapons under control. Eight points to prove that Western weapons are in good hands in Ukraine https://bit.ly/3vMZN8X ‘Accusations against Ukraine surrounding the alleged misuse of weapons are absolutely groundless, but at the same time very dangerous’Hyped-up scandals surrounding the alleged misuse of weapons obtained from Western partners in Ukraine have recently appeared not only in Russian propaganda, but also in the Western information field. ¤ The accusations against Ukraine are absolutely groundless, but at the same time very dangerous. They can really influence the audiences of the countries whose help is so necessary.
Western weapons are currently critical for Ukraine’s ability to effectively resist invaders. Kyiv understands this and tries to build a trusting relationship with its partners. Moscow understands it just as well and tries to undermine this trust. ¤ The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security cites eight arguments why weapons in Ukraine are truly under reliable control and are properly used, and all alarmist messages are harmful and groundless.
1. There is reliable information about the use of weapons and military equipment provided to Ukraine — it is available to the responsible government structures of Ukraine and partner states. …
3. Representatives of all partner countries have been officially invited to Ukraine to monitor the use of weapons. A convenient format of cooperation is coordinated with every partner.
4. The leading partners have appointed designated officials responsible for the control of the use of weapons. In August, Garrick M. Harmon, an attaché for army and defence issues, started working at the US Embassy in Kyiv. He is also responsible for monitoring the use of military aid. … Before his Ukraine assignment, Brigadier General Harmon led the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command (USASAC), the agency responsible for international military assistance and arms delivery programs.
5. Ukraine is introducing NATO’s LOGFAS military logistics management system. Ukraine will keep records of weapons, machinery and other military equipment the same way the USA does. …
8. The White House, the US Department of Defence, and the governments of European countries that supply Ukraine with weapons did not voice public claims against Ukraine and did not express doubts about its use of weapons.🐣 RT @MollyJongFast Yeah, this seems not great
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @oneunderscore__ When the pro-Trump influencers are talking like this — and not just anonymous posters on TheDonald — we’re in very different territory.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @scrowder Tomorrow is war. Sleep well.
⋙ 🐣 the press should report on this with the same degree of alarm with which they reported the overturning of Roe v Wade (i.e. not much) ¤ the overturning of Roe v Wade had a direct impact on hundreds of millions of people; Trump being required to surrender stuff he stole, no biggie🐣 RT @ general_ben [Ben Hodges] Russia’s logistics system is exhausted. Can’t replace systems and parts, transport overstretched…signs of the impending total collapse of Russian forces. Sanctions are working. Send UKR what it needs and maintain pressure on Kremlin. This could be over by the end of the year.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BalmforthTom MOSCOW, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Russian airlines, including state-controlled Aeroflot, are stripping jetliners to secure spare parts they can no longer buy abroad because of Western sanctions, four industry sources told Reuters.NYT: F.B.I. Searches Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Residence in Florida https://nyti.ms/3SNeBP4 “‘Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves,’ he said, according to Breitbart”
🐣 RT @UkraineNewsLive 🔥For three days, new anti-radar missiles of the Armed Forces of #Ukraine destroyed 17 air defense systems of the invaders! ¤ AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radar Missile) is a high-speed anti-radar missile.
Range: 150 km! #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineWillWin #UkraineRussianWar🐣 RT @edwardstrngr This, clearly, is good. But it is not churlish to question whether there is a coordinated programme across Western nations to ramp up associated production to sustain such aid over time. That demonstration of strategic intent would undermine Putin’s narrative of Western ennui. [Re: @SecGen’s announcement of $1B Drawdown]
⋙ 🐣 The US Defense budget was increased by $42B to aid Ukraine and NATO FY 2022; Congress increased significantly the amount Biden requested. Biden has promised Zelenskyy to be there “as long as it takes.” 1/2
⋙⋙ 🐣 Biden Admin has met with arms suppliers to assure production flows down the line. Arms come from existing stockpiles, which (of course) Pentagon wants to replenish with NextGen weapons. Also, US backfills weapons NATO Partners send to Ukr. And then there’s Lend-Lease. 2/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidGr47426099 Well the question answers itself, doesn’t it? Hell no there isn’t. Germany is weak and fearful for its profits and the French are open to status quo ante, so want Ukraine to negotiate land for peace. Thank God Almighty for the strength and determination of the USA.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Germany struggles with its role and its past, but for whatever ennui they are going through, Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Scand are full of enthusiasm. NATO/EU Leadership are fully on-board.🐣 RT @ Helpful_Hand_SA💡 #Russia has temporarily closed inspections of facilities with #nuclear weapons under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty due to the actions of the #UnitedStates, the #Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
💽 Newsweek: Donald Trump Releases Video Slamming Biden’s America as FBI Raid Mar-a-Lago https://bit.ly/3bMzVTX
🐣 RT @OliviaTroye Trump’s comments about the raid at Mar-a-Lago were calculated—purposely painting himself as a martyr to undermine the FBI & DOJ—all while signaling a call to arms to his supporters. Fox News & many in the GOP are emboldening it. Far-right social media is buzzing w/ violence.
⭕ 8 Aug 2022
🐣 I’m just realizing ~
What MAGAs call The Deep State, Dems call The Rule of Law
What MAGAs call Law and Order, Dems call Authoritarianism (or Fascism)🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss Question also why Trump was motivated to both steal and refuse to return classified documents. Was it a tool to blackmail people? Was it to make money by selling them to America’s enemies? What?
🐣 RT @ @oneunderscore__ [Ben Collins] Trump’s statement on the Mar-A-Lago raid contains a fun instance of Trump getting high on his own disinfo supply. ¤ He mentions Hillary Clinton “acid washing 33,000 E-mails.” In reality, an IT guy used an app called BleachBit. ¤ In Trumpworld, she poured literal acid on the emails.
🐣 RT @WSJ As many as 80,000 Russian troops have been wounded or killed in less than six months of fighting in Ukraine, the Pentagon said Monday, the first time the U.S. military announced its estimates of the toll of the invasion on Russia
⋙ 📋 WSJ: As Many as 80,000 Russian Troops Hurt or Killed in Ukraine, Pentagon Says https://on.wsj.com/3SBUzqI
/ U.S. estimate comes as Biden administration plans to give Ukraine another $1 billion of weapons and military equipment.🐣 I think the best thing Dems can do the next few days is be calm on Twitter. Offer information in place of snark. We should be celebrating our recent accomplishments, but there will be time for that. We know what anger and despair feel like. Be kind to humans.
🐣 RT @SecDef We just announced our single largest Ukrainian security assistance package to date. ¤ $1 Billion worth of ammunition, weapons, and equipment — the types of which the Ukrainian people are using so effectively to defend their country.
[TextLink]: https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1556725028661723139?s=20/photo/1August 8, 2022
$1 Billion in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
Capabilities in this package include equipment the Ukrainians are using effectively to defend their country:
● Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
● 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition;
● 20 120mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120mm mortar ammunition;
● Munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
● 1.000 Javelin and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems;
● 50 armored medical treatment vehicles;
● Claymore anti-personnel munitions:
● C-4 explosives, demolition munitions, and demolition equipment;
● Medical supplies, to include first aid kits, bandages, monitors, and other equipment.
To meet its evolving battlefield requirements, the United States will continue to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities.🐣 RT @BillKristol Why are Trumpists upset? The search warrant was approved by a judge not Joe Biden. But if nothing incriminating is found, Trump won’t be indicted, or if indicted of course wouldn’t be convicted by a jury of his peers. Trump supporters are upset because they suspect…he’s guilty.
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer HIMARS DEADLY PUNCH: Sources indicate that the US may soon send MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine. These weapons will permit UKR to hit high value Russian targets at ranges in excess of 190 mi (300 km).
◕ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1556719195970326533?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ neal_katyal Today is the 48th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation. It’s a perfect day to remember that even Nixon had the good sense not to commit further crimes as he left the White House in disgrace.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 For those who live where the law exists only to serve the powerful and oppress the rest–as I did in the USSR and Putin’s Russia–the dictum that no one is above the law is nearly awe-inspiring.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Kari Lake issues a statement that apparently she will have Arizona secede from the Union if elected Governor.
¤ https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1556814563642953728?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tribelaw Biggest inflation drop ever!
⋙ 🐣 RT @WHCOS It’s biggest drop ever.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CNBCnow BREAKING: New York Fed survey of consumer inflation expectations registers its biggest drop ever https://cnb.cx/3P1i3m0
💽 https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1556662847161131008?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @GOPLeader: You say you’ve “seen enough.” Did you see the classified and unclassified documents that the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago? No. So you have no idea what you are talking about. Stop making stuff up. You are the leader of the minority party. Do better.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GOPLeader Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1556807790433271809?s=20/photo/1[Text:] I’ve seen enough. ¤ The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization. ¤ When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned. ¤ Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.
⋙ 🐣 Bad boys ¤ Bad boys ¤ Whatcha gonna do ¤ When they come for You?
TheIndependent [UK]: Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort admits sharing info with Russians https://bit.ly/3ddipIX
// Mr Manafort has previously denied sharing polling data with suspected Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: three sources have told @maggieNYT this IS about the 15 boxes of top secret documents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the FBI #TrumpRaid has to do with the 15 boxes of top secret documents donald stole from the White House.🐣 RT @KatiePhang A search warrant is issued when there is probable cause that evidence of a crime is located in a particular place/location. ¤ The NY Times reporting that this search relates to the boxes of confidential documents that Trump improperly took to Mar-A-Lago last year.
⋙ 🐣 RT @@KatiePhang Some eye-opening analysis from @marceelias:
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @marceelias The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.
TextLink: https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1556794749377454080?s=20/photo/1
Text: 18 U.S. Code § 2071 – Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally […]
… (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.😅 RT @gilbertjasono Endless line of FBI agents filing out of Mar-A-Lago each carrying a toilet
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Presidential Records Act of 1978 was passed in response to Nixon’s effort to take his Presidential tapes and papers with him to California, where they were in danger of being destroyed.
😅 RT @tomiahonen GREEN EGGS & KETCHUP ¤ Dr Seuss
I don’t like ham or eggs so green
I don’t like Marjorie Traitor-Greene
I don’t like Trump the former guy
His home raided by FBI
I don’t like Florida when it rains
Nor Trump’s walls with ketchup stains
I don’t like any maga guy
But I do love the FBI🐣 RT @atrupar Trump personally picked the current FBI director
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home raided by FBI in unprecedented move https://politi.co/3SEAorS
// At issue is the former president’s handling of materials taken from the White House to his Florida estate. Law enforcement remains hush about it.‼️🐣 RT @kyledcheney BREAKING: Trump confirms, the FBI has raided Mar-a-Lago.
[TextLink:] https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1556775612920074240?s=20/photo/1August 8, 2022
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate where oneratives hrake into the Democrat National Committen? Here in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.😅 RT @maggieNYT On the left is a White House toilet, the word “qualified” and a capital I visible. On the left, a toilet from a Trump trip overseas
🖼 https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1556581777006813184?s=20/photo/1
// notes Trump flushed down the toilet (or tried to)
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Under the presidential records act, documents generated by and sent to presidents are to be preserved by the office. Trump’s habit of ripping paper that had to be taped back up was known; his habit of discarding them was not🐣 RT @CarlosLozadaWP
“You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
“Which generals?” Kelly asked.
“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.
⋙ NewYorker: Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals https://bit.ly/3zJ0rpg Book excerpt from “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian major-general Valeriy Vasilyev, current garrison commander at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant: “Either Russian land or a burnt desert will be here”, – says Ukrainian National Atomic Company Energoatom. ¤ Nuclear blackmail for the whole world.
🐣 RT @AndrewPerpetua Russians complaining about the situation in Kherson. No food, no water, every time supplies are destroyed it takes a long time to recover them, the local people hate them and relay their positions to ZSU, and likely the whole area will have to be abandoned. Text Block [Ru]: https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1556607935199027201?s=20&t=hLB0-lY7xzL8IuhXvAkgUA/photo/1
🐣 RT @StratcomCentre The Centre for Strategic Communication has learned that Amnesty International researchers were operating on the occupied territories, including filtration camps and jails, and thus, some of the interviews conducted for the notorious recent report may have been conducted there.1/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @StratcomCentre Sometimes a “correct” interview was the only chance to go through filtration and leave the occupied territories. In addition, materials collected during research by independent journalists and volunteers sometimes were subject to verification by FSB. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @StratcomCentre This means that information obtained from witnesses on the ground may have been obtained under significant pressure and should have never been used as “evidence” in a report of this scale and significance. 3/3
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Flash43191300⚡️Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demands that the American television and radio company CBS News conduct an internal investigation due to the publication of misinformation that only 30% of the weapons supplied by Ukraine’s allies end up at the front.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Welcome first step, but it is not enough. You have misled a huge audience by sharing unsubstantiated claims and damaging trust in supplies of vital military aid to a nation resisting aggression and genocide. There should be an internal investigation into who enabled this and why.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CBSNews We removed a tweet promoting our recent doc, “Arming Ukraine,” which quoted the founder of the nonprofit Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman’s assessment in late April that only around 30% of aid was reaching the front lines in Ukraine.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1556543102713733121?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ Text: The new CBS Reports documentary, “Arming Ukraine, explores why much of the billions of dollars of military aid that the U.S. is sending to Ukraine doesn’t make it to the front lines: “Like 30% of it reaches its final destination.” Stream now: cbsn.ws/30V6hz5
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JimmySecUK [8/6] I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Ukraine with the Ukrainian military. I’ve also written extensively about Western military aid to Ukraine. ¤ It’s pretty clear to me that Amnesty Interational’s @DRovera is either horribly misinformed or deliberately lying about Western aid.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JimmySecUK And this is the second time in a week that Amnesty International have been caught spreading pro-Russian propaganda – something is terribly, terribly wrong inside that organisation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JimmySecUK Pretty interesting perspective from independent journalist Neil Hauer on Amnesty International’s Donatella Rovera’s motivations in Ukraine…👇
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NeilPHauer ✓ Donatella stayed in the same hotel as us for several days in Kramatorsk in May. It was quite clear from conversations that she had an agenda already – to be contrarian and ‘well akshually Ukraine is just as bad’ before she even began her fieldwork there.CBSNews: Why military aid in Ukraine may not always get to the front lines https://cbsn.ws/3Qn3FWa
// updated 8/7/2022⭕ 7 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @BarackObama The Inflation Reduction Act that just passed the Senate is a major accomplishment. Not only will it reduce inflation and lower the cost of prescription drugs – it also happens to be the most consequential piece of climate legislation in American history.
⋙ NYT: What’s in the Climate, Tax and Health Care Package https://nyti.ms/3oZEFIY
// The bill includes billions in tax credits for the production of renewable energy, drug-pricing reforms and a boost for the I.R.S.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarackObama Thanks to President Biden and Democrats in Congress, people’s bills will get smaller, their lives will get longer, and we’ll have a real shot at avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. That’s something Democrats everywhere can and should be proud of.
⋙⋙🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR The Armed Forces of Ukraine hit Antonivsky bridge again. The bridge is on fire now, witnesses say. HIMARS help also to hit Daryivsky bridge, Nova Kahovka bridge and 3 more targets in Kherson region. #RussiaUkraineWar
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer PRECISION STRIKE: This evening HIMARS again engaged the M-14 HWY Antonovsky bridge in Kherson. The north and south parts of the span were targeted. Sources provided this photo of a secondary fire on the span. The RU 42nd Army remains dependent on a pontoon ferry for supplies.
🐣 RT @CoreyJohnston8 The entire Donbas region is populated by ethnic Russians you moron.
⋙ 🐣 📋 RT @CFL68 You might want to check the census. Holy shit. Did you never even bother with the actual facts? It’s 38%. 58% Crimea. 25% Kharkiv. 14% Kherson.
// % ethnic Russians🐣 RT @Politics_PR [Saddler] Senate Republicans Just Lost The Midterm By Killing The Insulin Cap https://bit.ly/3PkQlAZ
🐣 RT @adrianpetriw The Battle of #Kherson could be a turning point not only in this war, but in history. A Russian defeat/withdrawal from the only major city they’ve successfully occupied (a vital one at that) would cause major ripples throughout their military, special services, and government.
⋙ 🐣 RT @adrianpetriw A Ukrainian victory won’t be easy, but the world must do everything to make it a reality. The future of the region, of democracy, of fascism and the international order may be decided in the next few weeks in a city most of you have never heard of.SofRep: Russia Uses Ineffective Radar Deflectors on Non-Radar-Guided US HIMARS Rocket Launcher https://bit.ly/3oYaamT Oops
🐣 RT @mhmckI don’t know how long it will take but Ukraine will win the battle against the Russian fascist invaders on the right bank of the Dnipro in Kherson and Mykolayiv regions. ¤ Why? Ukraine maintains fire control over logistics points and transport arteries of the occupied territories.
🐣 RT @mhmck As a battle commander, Putin is an idiot. Thank goodness for that. ¤ Little Vova is pulling combat-capable troops away from where they were most likely to succeed – Izyum, Lyman and Lysychans’k – to where they’re certain to fail: the right bank of the Dnipro in Kherson region.
🐣 RT @AMC_Assistant BBCNewsnight: “They’re positioning their own assets”
Former CIA Director David Petraeus tells #Newsnight that the Ukrainian strategy for taking back Kherson will aim to “cut off Russian forces” amid high casualties on both sides
💽 https://twitter.com/AMC_Assistant/status/1552791032378662913?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @PostOpinions “Fascism might flourish more in this century than it did in the previous one,” @GeorgeWill writes.
⋙ WaPo, George Will: Putin is doing his best to out-fascist Mussolini https://wapo.st/3SxC6eH
// The destroyer of Italy’s parliamentary democracy has a political descendant occupying the Kremlin today.Mussolini was an unimposing 5 feet 6 inches tall — 2 inches shorter than Adolf Hitler, 2 inches taller than Francisco Franco — but was fascism: pure energy in search of occasions for aggression. As a fascist, he had no precursors; he was, however, a precursor of the performative masculinity of the bare-chested, judo-practicing, stallion-riding Vladimir Putin.
An essay in last week’s Economist establishes that Putinism is fascism: a simmering stew of grievances and resentments (about post-Soviet diminishment) expressed in the rhetoric of victimhood. Putin’s regime relies on violence wielded by the state and by state-tolerated assault brigades akin to Mussolini’s militias. Mussolini’s cult of personality was bound up with restoring the grandeur that was the Roman Empire — or at least tormenting Ethiopia. The cult of Putin the strong man promises the restoration of a supposed golden age that ended with the Soviet Union’s ignominious collapse.
WaPo, Christopher Buckley: Tracing the Republican Party’s devolution to one man: Newt Gingrich https://wapo.st/3dcJbRA “The baton that Reagan passed to a new generation became a truncheon in Gingrich’s hands”; Review of “The Destructionists” by Dana Milbank
🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Sunday update–again little map change, but important shift to the south and west (Kherson) and what that means. Ukraine and the strategy of telegraphing intentions (or not).
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1556177332217548801?s=20⋙ […] I think the Ukrainians are doing this not because they are about to launch some large, combined arms, armor assault (I think such attacks are very difficult in this war). I think they are doing it because they view the Kherson front as a far better area for them…
⋙ …to keep doing what they have been doing in the Donbas–only better. Its far safer for them to operate their ranged forces and ground forces in Kherson as opposed to the Donbas. In the latter they were in a salient pushed into Russian lines and close to Russia itself.
⋙ In Kherson the Russians are exposed, pushed forward, and the Ukrainians can operate from their interior more easily. Moreover, the supply issue for the Russians is far trickier with rivers where bridges can be severed and only a few heavy rail lines.
⋙ The Ukrainian offensive should not be conceived of as an offensive in a modern combined arms manor. Its basically a form of accelerated attritional warfare. What they have done is tried to tempt the Russians into sending forces into an area where its easier for Ukr to do this
⋙ And the Russians have obliged. So my guess is that the Ukrainians will not rush forward in Kherson over the next week–they will take advantage of the fact that the Russians are giving them much easier targets to hit from a safer Ukr perspective.🐣 RT @carlbildt Obvious that there has been and is major turmoil in the 🇷🇺 military command structures. Apart from losses inflicted by 🇺🇦 action, this would reflect dissatisfaction by the 🇷🇺 leadership with the military performance. [UK Report ⇊]
[TextBlock:] https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1556192787019751424?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell] Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes continued yesterday and overnight, but at a much more limited rate. The south and southeast were mostly targeted, but missiles also impacted the Kharkiv region in the east.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1556146512744161280?s=20⭕ 6 Aug 2022
🐣 RT @OriginalRamayan ‘Despite the fact that the 🇷🇺 shelling of the nuclear plant is one of the most dangerous crimes against Ukrainians & all Europeans, against the right to life of every person, for some reason there is no report or even a simple notification from Amnesty Intl about it.’ ¤ ~Zelenskyy
💽 https://twitter.com/OriginalRamayan/status/1556047771605540866?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Animation of frontline changes since April shows Russia’s grinding advances in South-East Ukraine ¤ West is sending Ukraine just enough weapons to not allow Russia to defeat Ukraine. However, it’s not enough for Ukraine’s victory, says @MBielieskov
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1556121466831257601?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @MarkHertling It’s unfortunate, but I’m just now seeing this magnificent by my friend @warinthefuture. ¤ MG (ret) Ryan provides comments on changes in RU’s warfighting approach…and this is a keeper/must read. ¤ Hoping Mick doesn’t mind, but I’d like to add a few thoughts. ¤ A new [thread] 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1556001608764358656?s=20⋙ […] Yes, RU has reassessed & changed strategic (as well as operational & tactical) approaches throughout. ¤ And, results of battles do reshape political objectives. ¤ And, as MG Ryan implies, Ukraine’s military approach has been replete with courage, discipline & effectiveness… 9/
⋙ However, I’d say (please bear w/ me) what armies will study in the future & what may give us indicators of what will happen in phase 3 is based on 3 things:
1. Clausewitzian principles
2. Failure of RU military to adapt
3. Ability of UKR military to execute & transform 10/
⋙ Clausewitz warned armies must understand:
1) Friction (“countless minor incidents a commander can never foresee that combine to lower the general level of a force’s performance”).
2) Chance (“…makes everything in war uncertain & interferes with the course of events”)…11/
⋙ …and finally,
3) Fog (“War is the realm of uncertainty; 3/4s of the factors on which actions in war are based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”
These 3 are equally present on both sides. They are on every battlefield, usually when least expected. 12/
⋙ Clausewitz notes that strong will, preparation of the forces, support of the people and the government (and allies) may help counter the effect of these factors. ¤ This is where I believe UKR continues to hold the advantage. 13/ ◕
⋙ Which brings us to #2: RU’s inability to adapt. ¤ Russia’s force depletion is significant. The sanctions are hindering their economy and their ability to repair or rebuild their army…at least in the near term. ¤ Putin is increasingly a pariah. 14/ [link]
⋙ The estimate of RU dead & wounded varies, but low & high end estimations of RU soldiers killed are staggering for 5+months of fighting. ¤ Russia is forcing volunteer battalion & reports indicate their battalion tactical groups are way understrength.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @WhereIsRussia DEVELOPING: Russia forms another strike force near Ukraine. ¤ In response to the heavy losses amongst the officer class, #Russia is hastily promoting inexperienced junior soldiers to create a new separate army corps. ¤ #Ukraine️ #UkraineRussiaWar
⋙ RU would like to adapt, but as stated previously their command structure, force & reserve organization, leadership ability, supply systems and national leadership will find adaptation difficult in the short or long term. 16/
⋙ So what about the UA ability to continue to execute & transform? so As @WarintheFuture said, they have executed magnificently.
In Phase 1 (Feb-Apr) they executed a masterful & doctrinally-correct, infantry-centric, *active defense* on multiple axis in a target-rich environment 17/
⋙ The UA & territorial defense actions N. of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolayiv & numerous other places will be studied by ALL armies of the world in the future. ¤ The use of dismounted infantry w/ precision AT weapons (Javelin), various UAS, & soviet weapons was brilliant. 18/
⋙ In Phase 2 (Apr-Jul), their combined doctrinally-sound *deliberative defense*, *hasty attack*, & eventual *counterfire operations* were brilliant in the Donbas…in the battles near Izyum, Slov’yans’k and Syeverondonets’k. ¤ The rapid integration of HIMARS was impressive.19/
⋙ Now, President Z directed new battles in the south…likely in Kherson. ¤ (BTW, for US audiences…when “Kherson” is mentioned, it means the entire Kherson “Oblast” (Oblast=province/state). ¤ Kherson is = to our state of Maryland; Kherson City is 1/2 the size of Baltimore. 20/
⋙ What would a battle in Kherson Oblast look like? ¤ Again, our friend @IAPonomarenko has provided us a preview: 21/
⋙⋙ KyivIndependent (7/19): What would a Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kherson look like? https://bit.ly/3Qmzsqk
⋙ While this article provides good info, it doesn’t list the operational/strategic damage to the RU force (capturing the territory that borders Crimea to the S; trapping several thousand Russians in the Mykolayivs’ka Oblast to the W; blocking the supply lines from the E)…22/
⋙ It also doesn’t state the further adaptation the UA must make to execute this offensive:
-combine active forces w/ territorial defense & resistance
-conduct combined arms attacks w/ tanks, inf, arty
-conduct insurgency operations against RU political offices
-shift logistics 23/
⋙ For the UA to conduct *deliberate attacks* mixed with relatively untrained territorials & resistance forces will be hard. ¤ There’s much more training & preparation for combined arms deliberate attacks than were required in the two previous phases. 24/
⋙ Key to this fight will be movement, maneuver, precision fires, artillery (and air) support, speed & effectiveness of logistics, good command and control. ¤ It may take a while & it will be bloody…but UA is prepared for this fight. 25/25🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Yale’s Sonnenfeld breaks down myths surrounding the strength of Russia’s economy https://cnb.cx/3d9w83F (Russia headed for economic oblivion. Likely that Putin’s economy will collapse in less than 24 months.)
⋙ 💽 CNBC: Yale’s Sonnenfeld breaks down myths surrounding the strength of Russia’s economy https://cnb.cx/3A3joo5🐣 RT @FridaGhitis TexasMonthly editor on Trump at CPAC: Trump’s rhetoric is significantly more extreme…This might be most frightening speech I’ve ever heard. Full-on, unapologetic fascism. Trump has either been reading Mein Kampf or having someone read it to him.”
⋙ RawStory: Trump rambles for 108 minutes in CPAC speech filled with ‘unapologetic fascism’: report https://bit.ly/3JI6Q8PFormer President Donald Trump spoke for nearly two hours in his closing address at the CPAC summit in Dallas. ¤ In Trump’s view, America has been destroyed in the 18 months since he left office, with out-of-control crime, inflation, and oddly enough unemployment, which Trump estimates to be three times the official number. …
“This is no time for complacency,” Trump warned. “We have to seize this opportunity to deal with the radical left socialist lunatic fascists. We have to hit them very, very hard. It has to be a crippling defeat.”
He went on to complain about Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) for supporting the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed a procedural vote after Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote while Trump was speaking, resulting in harsh words for GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). ¤ “But McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country, even more so than crazy Nancy Pelosi, and something has to be done,” Trump urged.
Trump said Biden “surrendered our strength and our everything [in Afghanistan], they surrendered our dignity.” ¤ Michael Hardy, senior editor at the Texas Monthly, was one of the local journalists covering the speech. He said that line had “echoes of the Nazi ‘stab in the back theory’ of losing WW1.”
Trump then described crime in “Democrat-run (sic) cities” in very dark terms. ¤ “The streets of our Democrat-run cities are drenched in the blood of innocent victims,” Trump claimed. “Bullets are killing little beautiful little children who never had a chance. Car jackers lay in wait like predators.” ¤ Hardy described that as “some literal blood-and-soil rhetoric.”
And Trump went on saying “we need to courage to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done,” which Hardy said “is a rallying cry for street violence and worse.” ¤ Trump went on to call for a military takeover of San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Portland.
“Trump’s rhetoric is significantly more extreme than even a few years ago,” Hardy said. “This might be most frightening speech I’ve ever heard. Full-on, unapologetic fascism. Trump has either been reading Mein Kampf or having someone read it to him.”
Trump repeated his lies about election fraud and teased a 2024 presidential comeback. ¤ Former RNC official Tim Miller said, “I know everyone in the DC GOP is just hoping Trump will die but it’s impossible to watch this CPAC speech and not come to the conclusion that he’s going to run and be very hard to beat in a primary. Sorry to be the bearer of bad weekend news.”
⭕ 5 Aug 2022
🧵 RT @defmon3 I have done a new assessment of force RuAF distribution along the active frontline. I have come up with up to 120 BTGs in total including PMC and pro-ru militants. ¤ …
Troop distribution is still ongoing, so this will probably change.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1555513448506736640?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @wartranslated A collection of intercepted calls published by Ukrainian SBU and GUR in the last week. Discussing a variety of topics from white phosphorus use, to drugged commanders and generally poorly state of affairs. ¤ Read on website or follow the [thread] below:
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1555662841536995328?s=20🐣 RT @euronews 🇺🇦 Watch as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounces a report by Amnesty International, which states that Ukraine’s military has endangered civilians by placing bases and weapons in residential areas as it fends off Russia’s invasion. #UkraineRussia
💽 https://twitter.com/euronews/status/1555482683509280770?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @MrKovalenko After @ZelenskyyUa recently dismissed the chief of Security Service (his childhood friend) Ivan Bakanov, we found out about the capture & indictment of the next top-ranked Russian mole: former deputy head of Intel. Dept of #Ukraine MoD Gen. Major Viacheslav Onisko. [Thread⬇️]
📌 https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1555624407292383233?s=20
// tags: treason spies🐣 RT @FissionableF The potential Melitopol’ push from the North is the most exciting. That southern peninsula puts them in range to cut the Crimean bridge and blockage the entire Kherson/Crimean territories. Zero supplies for 50+ BTGs, it would result in a routing.
🌎 https://twitter.com/FissionableF/status/1555572796402462722?s=20/photo/1🚫🧵 RT @tomiahonen beneath shadow of biggest bombshell news of the month, Alex Jones’s total messaging history for past 2 years handed to opposing attorneys – is this – the DETAIL behind weird instance, that Trump team is leaking to CNN that Trump will be indicted ¤ Trump is TALKING WITH MEADOWS
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1555439449512845317?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ […] We do not KNOW that Mark Meadows has flipped, but all the evidence is CONSISTENT with him having flipped ¤ The Trump ATTORNEYS think Mark Meadows has flipped or is negotiating with Feds about a flip. THAT is the relevance of the CNN story ¤ If Meadows flips, it is ‘Game Over’
// not sure this will pan out🐣 RT @noclador The more I look at the Kherson front and Ukraine’s repeated announcements of an upcoming “Kherson offensive”… the more I get the feeling Ukraine is pulling an Austerlitz on the russians: ¤ Kherson being the right wing and Melitopol being the Pratzen Heights.1/2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DefMon3 85 Shelling locations by GSUA
🌎 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1555242121774391298?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 Molochna River goes from Melitopol to Tokmak. Tokmak is ~20mi to the Dnipro. Looks muddy, swamp
⋙ 🐣 RT @noclador So far the russians are repeating the exact same errors that doomed them at Austerlitz… including a river without bridges to their back and impassable water to their South… ¤ If the Ukrainians do indeed pull an Austerlitz on the russians then this war will be over.2/2
[…]
🐣 RT @
🌎 https://twitter.com/TuiteroMartin/status/1555317406385545218?s=20/photo/1
// Kherson and Austerlitz overlaid: basically: move in behind Russians at Melitopol🐣 RT @hdevreij Amnesty: http://bit.ly/3oTOoR0 [“Overview”]
TextLink: https://twitter.com/hdevreij/status/1555432685740466176?s=20/photo/1Text: Russia began an all-out invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, carrying out extensive military operations marked by war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law. Using indiscriminate weapons such as cluster munitions in populated areas, including in cities such as Kharkiv and Chernihiv, Russian forces have killed civilians and demolished residential structures, including apartment blocks. The hardest-hit city of all has been Mariupol, where relentless Russian attacks have left many areas in ruins. In Bucha and other towns northwest
of Kyiv, Russian soldiers have extrajudicially executed civilians and looted civilian property. More than 14 million people have been uprooted by the conflict, with close to six million fleeing to neighbouring countries as refugees. Sexual crimes have been reported.There are reports that Ukrainian forces have operated out of residential areas, drawing Russian fire there and endangering the civilian population. There is also compelling evidence to indicate that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have mistreated prisoners of war.
The conflict has driven a rise in food and fuel prices around the world. According to the World Food Program acute hunger could impact an additional up to 47 million people globally, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has warned of “imminent famine and starvation in more places around the world.
🐣 RT @PaulNiland What I’ve seen @AgnesCallamard. ¤ Top journalists in Ukraine like @olgatokariuk and @mrsorokaa criticising the substance and methods used in the report.
Former US Ambassador @steven_pifer and UK weapons expert @JimmySecUK questioning the premise.
Not a mob. Not trolls.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AgnesCallamard Ukrainian and Russian social media mobs and trolls: they are all at it today attacking @amnesty investigations. This is called war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation. This wont dent our impartiality and wont change the facts.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AgnesCallamard @amnesty has documented tirelessly Russia aggression, war crimes in Ukraine: Today we report on Ukraine tactics endangering civilians. To those who attack us alleging biases against Ukraine, I say: check our work. We stand by all victims. Impartially [link]⭕ 4 Aug 2022
WaPo, Michael McFaul: ‘Realists’ have it wrong: Putin, not Zelensky, is the one who can end the war. https://wapo.st/3Qhn5M6 “If Russia is allowed to forcibly annex neighboring territory, what would stop other countries from doing the same?”
Substack, Diane Francis: Russia’s Suicide https://bit.ly/3BJclly “Russia is a commodity-based economy run by a dictator as a war machine. Since he took power, 11 million Russians have left. … Putin destroys Russia. His plan for conquest and control was flawed from the beginning”
Russia is a commodity-based economy run by a dictator as a war machine. Since he took power, 11 million Russians have left. Attempts at manufacturing or technology have been abysmal failures. With Western help, Russia by 2021 was the world’s leading exporter of natural gas followed by the United States — a pre-eminence that will never return. Now as Putin attempts to peddle his petroleum and LNG outside Europe, his companies find this is a tough sell. As one expert wrote: “Its isolation from the West has devastated Russia’s strategic hand in negotiating with China and India, notoriously price-conscious buyers who retain close ties to other major commodity exporters.” Notably, the price of Russian crude oil recently fell from a premium of $1.50 a barrel over benchmark price to a discount of $25.80 a barrel, said Bloomberg.
Putin destroys Russia. His plan for conquest and control was flawed from the beginning. He belongs in a dock at The Hague, not in a palace or in charge of a country with a nuclear arsenal. He resurrected the Cold War and got America’s attention. He weaponized trade with a scheme to place all his export eggs in one basket – Europe — then hold it hostage and force it to accept whatever peace deal he wanted to offer on Ukraine. Instead, he united and strengthened NATO whose members back Ukraine. The only option for Europe and the world is to defeat Putin.
🧵 RT @TrentTelenko Alright boys and girls, we are going to to have a Truck – Train logistical & Intel thread starting with this incredibly silly Russian operational security fail in the picture below, (h/t @ChrisO_wiki). Which confirms a operational pattern prediction of mine in May 2022.
📌 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1554931707257786368?s=20DailyBeast: FBI Admits It Got 4,500 Tips on Brett Kavanaugh—Then Punted Them to Trump Team https://bit.ly/3QoY7L4
// “This long-delayed answer confirms how badly we were spun by Director Wray and the FBI in the Kavanaugh background investigation and hearing,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said.🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Democrats, Sinema reach deal on new taxes in Inflation Reduction Act https://wapo.st/3daL01m Despite changes to the tax provisions intended to assuage Sinema, Schumer said the bill would still reduce the deficit by $300B
// The agreement led Sinema to offer her support for the measure after days of silence.🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 BREAKING: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema just announced that she’s signed off on Democrats’ climate, tax and health care legislation after securing a handful of changes.
🐣 RT @RexChapman Dick Cheney on Donald Trump: ¤ “He’s a coward.”
💽 https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1555278639377285121?s=20/photo/1🐣 Essay Question: ¤ In light of our current polarization, what is the difference between “law and order” and “the rule of law”? ¤ Discuss.
🐣 RT @defendukraini The next weeks will be key. ¤ #Kherson #Sevastopol #SlavaUkraini!
⋙ 🐣 RT @TrentTelenko It looks like August 4th 2022 is another bad day for the Black Sea Fleet.
📌 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1555316311969898498?s=20
¤ See below 👇
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @CovertShores ***BREAKING*** ¤ Videos of another important naval action(s) off Crimea today. ¤ Possibly #Ukraine hit a #Russian ship in north of Crimea (dark smoke). ¤ Then Russian patrol ship near Sevastopol in second images, unclear what is going on ¤ Awaiting further clarity
📌 https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1555245450491478016?s=20🧵 RT @igorsushko My translation of the Aug 5 #FSBletters from #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Subjects: How corruption has turned into an unstoppable beast threatening to swallow the military whole. Origin of the Russian #PhantomUnits
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1555353740869132288?s=20🐣 RT @AgnesCallamard Ukrainian and Russian social media mobs and trolls: they are all at it today attacking @amnesty investigations. This is called war propaganda, disinformation, misinformation. This wont dent our impartiality and wont change the facts.
⋙ 🐣 “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim” – Elie Wiesel🐣 RT @markiank Great thread, important takeaway that @amnesty has ignored the topics of occupied Kherson, shelled-daily Mykolaiv, or the 2nd largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv, which cannot just be evacuated. What are they to do when the shelling happens from the territory of Russia?
⋙ 🧵 RT @xenasolo So @amnesty decided to release a little piece which at best misrepresents, and at worst directly attacks Ukrainian army. Now, @amnesty is a free organisation of a free world where one is totally free to be a russian asset if one wishes. However, let’s clarify a couple of things.
📌 https://twitter.com/xenasolo/status/1555167248679157763?s=20/photo/1
[ThreadReader:] https://bit.ly/3oSt8Lu💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: The GOP is sick. It didn’t start with Trump — and won’t end with him. https://wapo.st/3P4ABBD Adapted from “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party” by Dana Milbank
// This essay was adapted from “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party” by Dana Milbank. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday. All rights reserved.🧵 RT @theoverview_ “Ukraine and Russia are pouring forces to the south ahead of The Battle of Kherson the could change the course of the war”
#Russia #Empire #ColonialWar vs #Ukraine #Europe
📌 https://twitter.com/theoverview_/status/1555115771092602880?s=20
// news compilation on war💙🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak for 3 August, Day 161. …
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1555105414030757891?s=20🐣 📋 RT @GlastnostGone Russia can’t hold #Ukraine back. This year’s grain & oilseed harvest expected to be larger than initially predicted — 65 to 67 million tonnes instead of 60 million tonnes previously forecast. 16 more ships are waiting their turn to leave Black Sea ports [link]
⭕ 3 Aug 2022
WestPoint, William Casey Biggerstaff: The Defense Production Act: Assessing the Ukraine Arms Shortage https://bit.ly/3vMzvDQ “[T]he problem is a lack of available parts and materials, an increasingly globalized supply chain, and aging weapon systems”
NYT: Giuliani Is Unlikely to Face Criminal Charges in Lobbying Inquiry https://nyti.ms/3SrL1hN This probe has to do with Giuliani’s going to Ukraine to look for “dirt” on Joe Biden (“awful but lawful”); It’s unrelated to his representing Trump around the time of the 2020 election
// A federal investigation into Donald Trump’s former lawyer over his work in Ukraine during the 2020 campaign is winding down with no indictment expected.
// tags: Rudy Giuliani Dmitry Firtash Lev Parnas Igor Fruman (Yermak Yermack) Marie Yovanovitch Yuriy Lutsenko Volodymyr Zelenskiy Burisma Joe Biden Hunter Biden🚫 YahooNews/UkrPravda: The Armed Forces explain why Russians in Kherson Oblast are doomed: explosions inbound https://yhoo.it/3zws2dj
// several typo-type errorssurprised they’d give away so much🧵 RT @SenWhitehouse There is a sinister, strategic link between the Big Lie and threats to our election workers. Let’s break it down.
💽 📌 https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1554962804871929859?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Andrew_Desiderio Wow. Sen. Cotton is going after Sen. Hawley, though not by name, for voting to allow North Macedonia into NATO in 2019 but now opposing Finland/Sweden. ¤ “It would be strange indeed,” Cotton says. “I would love the hear the defense of such a curious vote.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Andrew_Desiderio Cotton began by saying Finland and Sweden are perhaps NATO’s strongest additions since the alliance’s inception — far better than, he argued, North Macedonia and Montenegro were.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Andrew_Desiderio Full quote from Cotton, aimed at Hawley: “It would be strange indeed for any senator who voted to allow Montenegro or North Macedonia into NATO to turn around and deny membership to Finland and Sweden. I would love to hear the defense of such a curious vote.” #2024🐣 RT @duty2warn On a day when Navarro was sued by DOJ, Philbin was subpoenaed by DOJ, Alex Jones perjured himself in open court, NATO was expanded, and Biden issued an Exec Order to aid patients traveling for abortion (not needed in Kansas), Elise Stefanik tweeted about the baby formula crisis.
🐣 RT @AmbDanFried The overwhelming (95-1) vote suggests continued broad US support for NATO and the Free World.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AtlanticCouncil 🚨 NEW 🚨 — The US Senate just voted 95–1 to ratify #Sweden and #Finland’s membership in NATO. ¤ Once all current allies complete ratification, @NATO will have thirty-two members.
🇦🇱🇧🇪🇧🇬🇨🇦🇭🇷🇨🇿🇩🇰🇪🇪🇫🇮🇫🇷🇩🇪🇬🇷🇭🇺🇮🇸🇮🇹🇱🇻🇱🇹🇱🇺🇲🇪🇳🇱🇲🇰🇳🇴🇵🇱🇵🇹🇷🇴🇸🇰🇸🇮🇪🇸🇸🇪🇹🇷🇬🇧🇺🇸
#StrongerWithAllies🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote “You don’t call in the White House Counsel and the Deputy White House Counsel unless you’re looking squarely at Donald Trump.” – @PreetBharara on CNN
🐣 RT @ Flash43191300 1/2⚡️The International Atomic Energy Agency admits that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was captured by the Russian military, іs “out of control.” Communication with workers is now unstable, – IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in an interview.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Flash43191300 2/2 He noted that after the seizure of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, all the principles of nuclear safety were violated.🐣 RT @IvoHDaalder Overwhelming, bipartisan support in the US Senate right now to approve Finland and Sweden joining NATO. In these divided, polarized times, there continues to be strong, united support for the 73-year old Alliance.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IvoHDaalder 95-1 final Senate vote in favor of Finland and Sweden joining NATO!
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @briantylercohen NEW: The Senate has approved Finland and Sweden’s membership in NATO by a vote of 95-1-1.
Rand Paul (R) voted PRESENT.
Josh Hawley (R) voted NO.🧵 RT @AndrewPerpetua My daily update! #urkdailyupdate […]
💽 📌 https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1555017926243225600?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DJPaul8008 1/3 Kherson: Russian army is finding conditions very hard. Their supply lines cut, their soldiers are being decimated in combat. If you want to know why the Ukrainian government ordered the retaking of Kherson so publicly, I am now certain it was to get the exact response from
⋙ 🐣 RT @DJPaul8008 2/ Russia that we have seen. Send reinforcements into an area they can’t hold, extend their supply lines so far from help that it’s impossible react. If it goes the way of Ukraine, and it’s looking like it. We will see the total collapse of Russian forces in Ukraine. […]🐣 RT @bpolitics [Bloomberg] Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who holds a crucial vote, is seeking to preserve a tax break for investment managers and minimize a tax increase on large corporations in the economic package Democrats want to pass as soon as this week
⋙ Bloomberg: Sinema Seeks to Keep Private Equity Break, Curb Corporate Tax http://bloom.bg/3d5BRao
// Manchin has insisted that carried interest remain in bill. Sinema requests could shrink taxes by more than $100 billion🐣 📊 RT @matthewdowd some data from latest YouGov/Economist national poll: Dems have 9 point generic ballot lead among Independents; Dems rate Liz Cheney 55/20 fav/unfav; GOP rates Cheney 16/63 fav/unfav; Dems rate Sinema 23/37 while GOP rates her 27/24. Cheney more popular than Dem Senator
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewdowd 69% of GOP voters don’t think Biden legitimately won 2020 Presidential election. That is the dominate belief of Republicans. Unreal.🐣 RT @frontlinepbs Our colleagues at @worldchannel have compiled a list of documentaries examining the events leading to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine & the impact the war has had on Ukrainians. Watch the films, including FRONTLINE’s documentaries, here:
⋙ WorldChannel: Russia’s War on Ukraine: Documentaries to Watch http://bit.ly/3OZuCOu
// documentaries on Ukraine, mostly on PBS🐣 RT @AVindman Women don’t enjoy having fewer rights. Sorry you had to find out this way, Republicans.
🐣 RT @POTUS Today I’ll sign a second Executive Order to address the reproductive health care crisis since Roe was overturned. ¤ It will support women traveling for abortion care, ensure providers comply with the law when women require medical care, and advance maternal health research.
WaPo: Sen. Johnson suggests ending Medicare, Social Security as mandatory spending programs https://tinyurl.com/mrxn6fhw
🐣 RT @casternoel What are the odds Alex Jones texted Bernie Kerik, Rudy, or Roger Stone in the Trump war room on January 6th? I’ll put some mob-laundered money on it for sure, there’s some real flop sweat going down in Chez Trump right now, bet on it. @GOP
🧵 RT @SpencerGuard Thoughts on the situation in Ukraine and the battle of Kherson that began weeks ago. Ukraine is poised to achieve the biggest operational victory since the Battles of Kyiv (IMO the only decisive/strategic victory), Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, &others.1/14
📌 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1554879631349600256?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @ Ukrainian strategy can be summarized by “avoiding the enemy’s strengths.” Defend where needed & allow Russians to die against Ukrainian forces or attack through long range precision strikes (artillery/HIMARS) that allow Ukraine to avoid costly attritional close battles. 5/14
⋙ 🐣 RT @ HIMARS and other fires isolate Russian forces West of the Dnipro. This has included taking out key bridges, road intersections, ammunition supplies, command & control sites. Prevent/constrain the Russian forces from being resupplied, reinforced, or having a withdrawal option. 12/
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I do see Ukraine retaking Kherson, where Russia is weak at the moment. This will be a major win in claiming the initiative, international information campaign & maintaining support for Ukraine. But Russia maintains strength in the Donbas. Major fights still to come. 13/14
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Bottom line. Yes, Russia is in running out of steam and capability, but it is still a major threat and Ukraine will not be able to achieve their goals without massive amounts of western weapons and support, more than the amounts flowing or promised to arrive today. 14/14🐣 RT @CharlotteAlter New Monmouth poll: Americans prefer Dems control Congress 50%-43%
Plus some very interesting shifts in what voters think is “most important” for their vote
Since 2018:
Immigration -9pts
Health care -14
Guns +4
Abortion +8
Economy +5🐣 RT @mehdirhasan Surely this should define the GOP going into November?
⋙ 🐣 RT @HeartlandSignal NEW: On the The Regular Joe Show, Sen. Ron. Johnson (R-WI) argues for eliminating entitlements: “Social Security and Medicare, if you qualify, you just get it no matter what the cost… We ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated.”
💽 https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1554606259596320770?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @fred_guttenberg I want to say as loudly as possible @POTUS @JoeBiden is having the most consequential Presidency in generations. Anyone who wastes time looking beyond the next election is wasting time. Run on the successes of this administration and on protecting freedom. That is how you win.
🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder Just a reminder that @CREWcrew has tracked credible allegations that Donald Trump has committed at least 48 criminal offenses. 48. He must be held accountable. He cannot be allowed to hold office again.
⋙ CREW: President Trump’s staggering record of uncharged criminal misconduct https://tinyurl.com/bdzkdbkw
// 3/1/2022💙 RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: How Ukraine War Will Likely Go Rest of 2022, or, Kherson: The Beginning of the End for Russia https://tinyurl.com/2p9465kw
// It’s possible Ukraine can push Russia out entirely (including from Crimea & the Donbas) in the coming months; here’s how that would most likely go down. If my last piece focused on the “why” Ukraine will win, this one focuses on the “how.”🐣 Kansas is Deep Red
Kansas hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president in >50 years
Kansas hasn’t voted for a Democrat for senator >50 years
Joe Biden got 41% of the vote in Kansas
◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1554793864971558916?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
⋙ 🐣 RT @kjhealy What happens when the dog catches the car.
// chart: Should abortion rights be removed in Kansas? 41% Yes, 59% No
◕ https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/1554758532544827397?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @duty2warn Mark Finchem, who has identified himself as a member of the Oath Keepers, has won the Republican nomination for Arizona Secretary of State. An election denier is one step closer to controlling elections in a swing state.
🧵 RT @wartranslated Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych for the evening 2 August, kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak
Link: https://tinyurl.com/2p8hy5d4
Battlefield update: Bakhmut:
🇷🇺 concentrated forces near Kodeme-Travneve-Hladosove, situation complicated for 🇺🇦.
📌 https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1554756199849107458?s=20⭕ 2 Aug 2022
TheDrive: Ukraine Situation Report: US Sending More Rockets As HIMARS Achieves ‘Rock Star’ Status https://bit.ly/3Qo3rxY “This new aid deal is a significant contribution that will keep ammunition for weapons that are, by all accounts, having a profound impact on the battlefield”
// U.S.-supplied rocket artillery systems gain a cult pop-culture following in Ukraine as they are used to pound Russian positions.AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson: Putin’s entire Ukraine invasion hinges on the coming Battle of Kherson http://bit.ly/3Qib0WZ
🐣 RT @AVindman Too many talk about US decline. Way too many want an isolationist disengaged America. But look at the last ~24 hours. The US provided Ukraine $500 million in critical military aid, killed the #1 terrorist off in Afghanistan & girded democracy in Taiwan. No one else could do that.
🐣 RT @JaneMayerNYer Who’s targeting Sens. Manchin & Sinema to tank the last-chance climate bill? Billionaire Charles Koch’s machine, natch.
⋙ CNBC: Koch network pressures Sens. Manchin, Sinema to oppose $739 billion tax-and-spending bill http://cnb.cx/3zVTm69
● Americans for Prosperity, which is part of the larger Koch network, launched two ads on Saturday on its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.
● The ads specifically call out Manchin and Sinema, encouraging the senators to oppose the legislation.
● The legislation is a pared-down version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which failed earlier this year after Manchin and Sinema opposed key elements of the bill.🐣 RT @PaulBegala Tonight’s result in Kansas is one of the biggest political stories of the year. If the GOP can’t sell their anti-women b.s. in Kansas, they can’t sell it anywhere.
WaPo: Kansans reject amendment aimed at restricting abortion rights 60% to 40% https://tinyurl.com/7ezcunxe “Abortion rights advocates pointed to their resounding win here as evidence that Americans are angry about the efforts to roll back women’s rights”
WaPo, David Ignatius: Zawahiri’s death shows U.S. focus even two decades after 9/11 https://tinyurl.com/2xbha22y “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.” ~ President Biden
🔲 💽 🐣 RT @FrontlinePBS As the war enters its sixth month, FRONTLINE’s “Ukraine: Life Under Russia’s Attack” is a powerful portrait of how the people of Kharkiv are trying to make the most of an uncertain future, while living under daily threat. STREAM NOW or watch on @PBS 10/9c: https://to.pbs.org/3zzbse3
🐣 RT @imillhiser Man, if liberal democracy somehow prevails in the United States because Sam Alito gave us all a taste of the alternative and we collectively spat it out, I will be so very proud of my country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kabir_here “No” on Kansas abortion amendment outpacing Biden’s performance in counties across state — currently about 145K votes counted
◕ https://twitter.com/kabir_here/status/1554637332929822723?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom They followed the Stringer Bell rule, and it will be literally impossible to reconstruct the Trump presidency, especially the final year. Which is just how the mafia he ran wanted it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ktumulty Given what we are learning about their handling of records, I’m wondering whether there can ever be a Trump Presidential Library in anything close to the traditional sense as a place where scholars come to research a presidency. @BeschlossDC🐣 RT @RubenGallego You feel that? That’s called the tide turning.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Redistrict [Wasserman] I’ve seen enough: in a huge victory for the pro-choice side, the Kansas constitutional amendment to remove protections of abortion rights fails.🐣 RT @BillKristol The KS abortion referendum seems to be driving high turnout in general. What’s more, some voters seem to have come out just to vote on the referendum, since there seem to be fewer total votes in the two gubernatorial primaries. Indicator of salience of the abortion issue in Nov.?
🐣 RT @BillKristol In KS, there was high turnout and lopsided NO wins in urban and suburban Topeka and Wichita. But my sense from eyeballing the county numbers is that YES also underperformed (while still winning) in some deep red and rural areas. There are some pro-choice R voters in red counties.
🐣 RT @McFaul The faster Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ends, the sooner Ukrainians can begin the enormous task of reconstruction. The only way Putin ends his invasion is if his army can no longer advance. To stop Russia’s advance, Ukraine needs more and better weapons. It’s that simple.
💙🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukrainian TVD, Day 148-158. The last 10-days of July saw the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation (SVRF) offensive in northern Donetsk stall while the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) make incremental gains in Kherson as they prepare for a counteroffensive. #UkraineRussianWar
🌎📌 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1554647160804851712?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @POTUS Tonight, Kansans used their voices to protect women’s right to choose and access reproductive health care. ¤ It’s an important victory for Kansas, but also for every American who believes that women should be able to make their own health decisions without government interference.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Kansans reject amendment aimed at restricting abortion rights 60% to 40% https://tinyurl.com/7ezcunxe “Abortion rights advocates pointed to their resounding win here as evidence that Americans are angry about the efforts to roll back women’s rights”
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en 35% of Russians believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth (back in 2007, 28% believed that), – results of a poll run by a state polling agency. ¤ Now that is scary, especially in relation to Russia having nuclear weapons.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en An employee of the Russian embassy in Washington stomps on sunflowers that two little girls brought over there as a reminder of Russian aggression against Ukraine. ¤ Source: @OMarkarova, Ukrainian Ambassador in the United States.
🐣 RT @mhmck Attacks by the Russian fascist invaders in Ukraine are diminishing in strength and agility. Russian military commanders use their own soldiers as cannon fodder, attacking well-fortified Ukrainian positions repetitively in frontal assaults. They have little to no success.
🐣 RT @sanderhamburger There is something odd about Ukraine Armed Forces advertising for weeks on end that it is planning and organizing to retake Kherson. Did the allied forces in the spring of 1944 advertise weeks before DDay they were planning to retake Normandy? #Ukraine #UkraineWar 1
⋙ 🐣 RT @sanderhamburger No, the allied forces did everything they could to divert the German forces from Normandy and make it look like they were landing in Calais. I think the same is happening here. I think UAF has gone out of their way to make rus forces believe a retaking of Kherson is imminent. 2
⋙ 🐣 RT @sanderhamburger This has resulted of rus army poring into the Kherson region leaving Donbas weakend. The Kherson region is however a huge trap for rus army, especially if the UAF would destroy the Dnjepr dam, cutting them off from supplies and leaving them open for UA bombardment destruction 3
⋙ 🐣 RT @sanderhamburgerIf the UAF could pull this trap this noose, and I strongly believe they can, off it would be the second biggest catastrophe for the rus army after the Kyiv disaster. It would end 20,000 rus troops in Kherson. 4 #Ukraine #UkraineWar‼️ 🐣 RT @ @KyivPost #Ukrainians have started receiving leaflets from the 🇺🇦Army with instructions on what to do during the liberation of #Kherson. The citizens are advised to store food and water for at least a week, charge their phones and power banks, and more. #UkraineWar
🐣 RT @KingLutherQ The Wagner group assassinated politicians, murdered journalists, raped women, castrated a POW for fun. And lately, they murdered 30 #Azov POWs using rockets. ¤ @POTUS 🇺🇸, please give #Ukraine 300 km #HIMARS ammunition, so they can serve justice to the Wagner group. #Kherson #NATO
🐣 RT @Flash43191300⚡ Russians in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were able to distribute their passports only to 1% of the population, reports the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
🐣 📋 RT @IuliiaMendel The Pentagon announces an additional $550M security assistance package for Ukraine. It includes 75,000 rounds of ammunition and an undisclosed amount of additional HIMARS ammunition. In total, the US has committed ~ $8.8B in security assistance to 🇺🇦since the Biden administration
🐣 RT @MarkRid89403375 “If #Ukraine does not stand up to #Putin’s imperial plans, #Poland and the Baltic states will face further expansion of #Russia’s sphere of influence in Central Europe”, warns #Polish President Andrzej #Duda. #UkraineWar #UkraineRussianWar
⭕ 1 Aug 2022
★ ResearchGate, Penny Spikins [UYork] (Aug 2022) : The Evolutionary Basis for Human Tolerance – Physiological Responses https://tinyurl.com/8yam2ryv “Genetic evidence suggests that particular hormones that play an important role in affecting capacities for tolerance”
⋙ 🐣 in brief, over the last 300,000 years, changes took place in the endocrine system which facilitated more openness to other groups, more curiosity, less fear and aggression; fascism appeals to the older way of organizing social groups into “us” and “them”
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Evolve Tolerance Aug 2022
// tags: oxytocin testosterone cortisol evolutionT]he motivations and willingness to extend social relationships outside of familiar kin and community members seem to have still been largely lacking until after around 300,000 years ago.
The formation of new collaborative social alliances will have depended, firstly, on individuals being friendly enough to enable encoun- ters, rather than being fearful or aggressive, and, secondly, on their being open to treating less-familiar individuals a lot like family members, even though their habits, behaviour or ideas may have seemed foreign.
15. Genetic evidence suggests that particular hormones that play an important role in affecting capacities for tolerance include those associated with stress reactivity, such as cortisol, those associated with changes in motivations towards aggression or competition, such as androgens, those associated with reward-seeking behaviour, such as dopamine, and those associated with social bonding, such as oxytocin, vasopressin and beta endorphins
17-18. We know that variations in testosterone influence human social behaviour, so it only makes sense to conclude that changes in testosterone pathways over time would also change social behaviours on a larger scale. Tendencies in humans to collaborate or compete with strangers in economic games. show a relationship with individual variations in testosterone levels, for example. Those who tend to be most collaborative tend to have lower levels of testosterone than those who are more likely to adopt a selfish strategy. … Those with typically tolerant and collaborative personalities are also associated with lower levels of testosterone than individuals who display traits of narcissism such as extreme selfishness and self-centredness. Moreover, in an evolutionary context, reduced levels of testosterone are associated with increased levels of paternal care in species such as social carnivores. We might reasonably expect selection pressures on testosterone to have been significant in changes in the balance of competition or collaboration in human evolution.
21. The effects of testosterone on social behaviour are far more complex than they might immediately appear. Testosterone can promote parochial altruism and generosity on behalf of one’s own group, whilst also promoting out-group aggression, for example. … Social norms play an important role in mediating how testosterone affects aggression in chimpanzees as well as humans, for example. Within different chimpanzee groups, there are notable differences in attitudes to other groups, particularly being influenced by the role of females.
24. Evolutionary reductions in stress reactivity can constrain fearful reactions and so promote approach behaviour. Reduced stress reactivity may be more important in changes in tolerance in domestic dogs than any changes in androgens, for example. Cortisol levels are a key element to tameness in domesticated species, and cortisol levels are three to five times lower in ‘tame’ domesticated foxes than in wild ones. … Reductions in cortisol are also key to tolerance in humans. Studies show that human aggression has no simple relationship to testosterone but also appears to be mediated by stress reactivity through cortisol.
.27. Dopamine influences whether novelty and risk are perceived as pleasurable, and so plays a particularly significant role in adolescent novelty seeking and risk-taking. Changes in dopamine with sexual maturity play a key role in motivating mobility to maintain mating networks in social animals, for example. … It is changes in dopamine and reward-seeking behaviour that allow individuals to overcome their reluctance to associate with members of other groups in the context of mating.
32. The role of oxytocin in intergroup collaboration is rather more complicated. Given a long evolutionary history as a motivator of nurturance behaviour in mammalian mothers, oxytocin provokes both nurturance of the young and their defence, including defensive aggression. … Competitive aggression may be motivated by testosterone; however, oxytocin is implicated in what we might better see as emotional commitments and motiva- tions to defend vulnerable young. … Certain gene variants (G allele of a common variant (rs53576)) confer advantages in interpreting social cues, empathising with others and building trust. Individuals with these genes are in many ways more prosocial (Dannlowski et al. 2016). They are better able to read emotions from facial expressions. and to build stronger and more trusting and supportive relationships as adults than those with the A allele. However, such potential advantages come at a price. In situations in which there is a lack of parental warmth, individuals with the socially sensitive G allele are more susceptible to depression (McQuaid et al. 2013), and other mental health conditions (Dannlowski et al. 2016), and they suffer more in conditions of social isolation.
37. [Conclusion] Changes in genetics and anatomy in the recent evolutionary past, after 300,000 years ago, argue that being more tolerant was increasingly important during this period. Changes in neuroendocrine pathways are likely to have played a key role in shaping both changes in approach and avoidance behaviours. Such changes bring both advantages and disadvantages, however. Whilst tolerance brought with it capacities to approach unfamiliar individuals and things, increased openness to new experiences, and increased social sensitivity, it also brought emotional vulnerabilities (discussed in Chapter 5).
🐣 RT @duty2warn Violent Jan 6th insurrectionist Guy Reffitt was sentenced to 7 1/4 years in federal prison for his role in the attack. There was no “terrorist enhancement,” but it was still the longest Jan. 6 sentence yet. Reffitt’s daughter told press that in comparison, Trump should get life.
🐣 RT @TrentTelenko This is a major sign of an army without an NCO Corps. ¤ Russian Army trash middens like this attract Ukranian Drone surveillance & artillery strikes. ¤ It is a Russian Army problem that can’t be fixed w/o long service NCO leadership the Russian state sees as a political threat👇
💽 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1554157825877753862?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SkinnerPm As someone who worked with a bunch of people in the early & mid-2000’s to find & end AQ’s then-leadership, especially Al-Zawahiri, I can say the world is a better place now that he isn’t here. Doesn’t solve all the problems but it sure does solve the al-Zawahiri problem. Good
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I’m thinking of Darren LaBonte and Sharif Ali, and Elizabeth Hanson, Jennifer Matthews, Scott Michael Roberson, Dane Clark Paresi, Jeremy Wise, and Harold Brown Jr, who all died going after al-Zawahiri in December 2009.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I didn’t know, ¤ how I’d react when al-Zawahiri was finally killed, having spent so much time so far away, like so many others, trying find those responsible for 9/11. ¤ Now I know, ¤ I’m in my yard looking at flowers & feeling just sad at the losses of so many. ¤ Because I always knew🐣 RT @officejjsmart Putin hides the war from Russians: ¤ For every 1 Muscovite killed, there are 87 Dagestanis (a Muslim minority from near Georgia), 275 Buryats (a Buddhist, Mongolian minority from Siberia), & 350 are Tuvans (a Buddhist, Turkic minority from Siberia). ¤ Ethnic Russians are few.
◕ https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1554239177570615297?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Acosta CNN: The United States has killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike.
¤ https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1554226881305755650?s=20/photo/1
// Wanted Poster
⋙ From Comments:
🌀 https://twitter.com/realrobertomara/status/1554227964052586496?s=20/photo/1
// Biden in yellow convertible
🌀 https://twitter.com/Peter1971/status/1554228538135511041?s=20/photo/1
// Biden pumping iron
🌀 https://twitter.com/WillResistAdmin/status/1554229942975483904?s=20/photo/1
// Biden with eagle rising🐣 RT @Acosta CNN: The United States has killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike.
¤ https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1554226881305755650?s=20/photo/1
// Wanted PosterWaPo: First Jan. 6 defendant convicted at trial receives longest sentence of 7 years https://tinyurl.com/47whjbv9 “Guy Reffitt was a recruiter for the Texas Three Percenters who was found guilty of coming armed to the riot … and leading a mob that broke in to the U.S. Capitol”
// Guy Reffitt was a recruiter for the Texas Three Percenters who was found guilty of coming armed to the riot, threatening his children and leading a mob that broke in to the U.S. Capitol🐣 RT @UBounat [Tr] The CEO of the 1st grain exporter in #ukraine was killed in the bombing of Mykolaiv last night. Probably not by chance, the #russie wanting to make him pay for his audacity to denounce grain thefts in Kherson and to organize the logistics via Danube [link]
💙 🐣 RT @HerrDr8 #UkraineUnderAttack #UkraineWar #1pageAssessUKRWar UKR (and NATO) have attacked RUS strategic will through indirect approach since the first weekend of the war (seizing RUS FX reserves), expanding NATO & info war space (crowd sourcing of info related to daily RUS war crime).
≣ https://twitter.com/HerrDr8/status/1554054784805650432?s=20/photo/1
// daily newsletter🐣 RT @DefenseU .@OfficialSting: “The war in Ukraine is an absurdity based upon a lie. If we swallow that lie, the lie will eat us.” ¤ Thank you for your words of wisdom and truth, Sir. ¤ P.S. It seems that the russians don’t love their children at all. But we love ours. ¤ #stoprussianlies
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Back in May, I examined Ukraine’s military strategy in a thread that I informally called ‘The Ukrainians are Masters of 21st Century War”. Today, an update on the Ukrainian approach – the “strategy of corrosion”. 1/25
🌎 📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1553973368809918464?s=20/photo/1⭕ 31 Jul 2022
★ WaPo: At last, an easier way to prepare for a colonoscopy https://tinyurl.com/mu762wrb
// The prep remains perhaps the biggest impediment to screening. That’s why the approval last year of a pill-based option is welcome news.
🐣 RT @SergiyKyslytsya French satellite giant broadcast Russian channel’s call for ‘2m Ukrainians to be destroyed’, repeatedly denied existence of Ukraine, called for public executions of Ukrainian defenders. Eutelsat chief executive Eva Bernke defends company’s Russian business
⋙ BizCast: French satellite giant broadcasts Russian channel’s call to ‘destroy 2m Ukrainians’ https://tinyurl.com/3kzb6pfp
// Vladimir Putin regularly gives interviews to Russia’s Rossiya-1 TV channel – Sputnik / Mikhail Klimentev / Kremlin🐣 RT @ @CecilieHolter This is the undeniable truth, @NTenzer Unfortunately and worryingly, the lack of morality, urgency & fierce, united response is partly due to years of 🇷🇺 meddling and interests in some of the bigger EU countries we desperately need to get onboard to help end this war! 🇪🇺asleep!
⋙ 🐣 RT @NTenzer Regularly, I feel compelled to repeat: Western gov bear a heavy responsibility, which amounts to guilt, in these tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths, civilian & military. ¤ We should have intervened directly. ¤ Today, any delay in the delivery of decisive arms increases this guilt. [link]WSJ, Stephen Fidler and Daniel Michaels: War With Russia Enters New Phase as Ukraine Readies Southern Counterblow https://tinyurl.com/4e4aeexf “Kherson is an important strategic objective as the largest population center occupied by the Russians and the first city to fall”
// Ukrainian offensive to reclaim key port city could be pivot in conflict, with success reinforcing support for Kyiv’s fight in parts of the West🐣 RT @WarMonito3 Russian forces have moved over 800+ pieces of equipment towards Kherson in past days. Most came over the dam
🧵 RT @MIL_STD [Air Power] Lots of comparisons b/w #HIMARS, M270 & other systems in terms of munitions, range, & magazine that often ignore the role of the HIMARS C-130 deployability requirement. It is not dependent on strategic airlift and that was one of reasons behind its development vs a wheeled M270.
📌 https://twitter.com/MIL_STD/status/1548305039470448643?s=20🐣 I’ve seen enough battle death announcement photos to notice big differences. These are for field officers who have been killed in the last week. On the left, Russian. On the right, Ukrainian. The Ukrainans are pictured more informally and lifelike.
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1553943475279855618?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 For the Ukrainian photos, you really feel a loss. I’ve seen wedding photos, photos with pets, something unique about their life, like posed with a book of poetry they wrote. The greater the joy, the greater the sense of tragedy you feel
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1553945470786994177?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @J_Jaraczewski Tim Anderson, 🇦🇺 who made a journey from human rights activism, prison, academia, antisemitism and carrying water for the Assad regime, pictured here losing it over a bunch of fellas. #NAFO will go down in history as one of the most successful counter-disinformation campaigns.
📌 https://twitter.com/J_Jaraczewski/status/1553626162743726080?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @timand2037 There is a troll army, funded by #NATO intel, usefully identified by the #NAFO tag and little dogs (dogs of war). They repeat set themes of #NATO expansion, crushing of #Russia and #China, etc. Just block them.
¤ https://twitter.com/J_Jaraczewski/status/1553626162743726080?s=20/photo/1UkrInform: Russia’s special train of over 40 cars destroyed with HIMARS in Kherson Region https://tinyurl.com/yckzvxyv The train was carrying Russian troops, military equipment and ammunition from Crimea to Kherson; it was destroyed at Brylivka Station
🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki 1/ Why do Russian soldiers break on the Ukranian battlefield? This third [thread] in a series looks at at how their personal experiences of war have prompted some Russian contract soldiers to refuse orders, resign from their contracts and try to go home.
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1553833316578631681?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @Jack_Watling Seen a few takes recently arguing that Russian weapons don’t work well. Having spent time inside a number of Russian manufactured systems I thought I’d address why I think there is often a gap between Russian weapons on paper versus their performance in the field. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/Jack_Watling/status/1553745899871952897?s=20😅 RT @IAPonomarenko This is so fun to read now.
January 2022: “No point providing Ukraine with weapons, their military will quickly collapse, Russia is an advanced superpower, Ukraine has no chances, so better look for a “diplomatic solution” (that is, just surrender now).
Brilliant expertise.
¤ https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1553656542226006017?s=20/photo/1
// article by Rand Corp authors🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Sunday update in Ukraine, what seems to be happening when little is changing on the map. On the surface this week, like the last 4, has been one of an almost static warfare. Almost no change on the map in the Donbas or Kherson fronts (a village here or there, thats it).
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1553653161273040896?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @ This lack of movement has been at a large cost to the Russians (Pentagon says ‘gigantic’–see below where I mention how Pentagon views campaign) and Russia shows little sign of generating the kind of sustained combat power to resume sustained atttack. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Map didnt change much in the Kherson region this week, but something did finally occur. There was a noticeable decrease in fire activity, which means the destruction of Russian depots there (which started about 10 days after Donbas) is having the same effect.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ This is not surprising, but shows that the methodical Ukrainian logistics campaign against depots, bridges and command/control is paying dividends. Russian firepower advantage is waning.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Overall another sign of why the Ukrainians arent taking any risks in Kherson. The trends of the war are Russia using weaker, older systems and struggling to generate new forces, Ukraine getting better systems. Just means that a dramatic change in the war might take a while longer⭕ 30 Jul 2022
💙 RealContextNews, Brian Frydenborg: Russia’s Defeat in Ukraine May Take Some Time, But It’s Coming and Sooner Than You Think https://tinyurl.com/4atsnzsp “[A]s well-known Russia expert Fiona Hill notes, time is not on Russia’s side”
// … as the quality, capability, outfitting, and morale of Russian troops decrease”🐣 RT @jonstewart The PACT Act is a stand alone bill. The PACT Act has no spending unrelated to Veteran’s Health and Benefits. There is no “Pork”. There is no budget maneuver that then allows Dems to backfill w whatever they want…but as a registered Liberal Piece of Shit…don’t take my word.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Another slaughter, this time of helpless prisoners as Putin’s trolls boast about it. Every Ukrainian death at this point was preventable. Sullivan & US still talking to Lavrov while Putin keeps killing. Send all the weapons now.
🐣 RT @DefenceHQ [UK] The Kremlin is growing desperate.
Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers and is using Soviet-era weapons.
Their outdated missiles are killing and injuring innocent Ukrainians.
Russia won’t win this unjust war.
The UK continues to #StandWithUkraine🐣 RT @AndriyYermak RF is a terrorist country. Their MFA employees call themselves diplomats and say in public that some people deserve to be executed by hanging. It’s sheer barbarity and savagery, not diplomacy. ¤ RF is a state sponsor of terrorism. There is more than enough evidence to see it.
⭕ 29 Jul 2022
🧵 RT @jonstewart Ah dearest Theodore. I do appreciate you and @JesseBWatters trying to rally the forces of misinformation to try and kill more vets…but not tonite sweetie. I’ll go slow cuz I know you only went to Princeton and Harvard…
📌 https://twitter.com/jonstewart/status/1553207434386317312?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @tedcruz .@jonstewart you’re wrong here. The bill gives a $400B blank check—separate from vets care—for unrelated pork that will supercharge inflation. I support the PACT Act & the $679.4B it would dedicate to vets. It’s ppl trying to use PACT to shovel more pork who are exploiting vets. [💽]
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonstewart Show everyone where in the Pact Act is this 400 billion dollars blank check or unrelated spending that was added/snuck in…OR show section 805 c of the actual bill that explicitly states what the Toxic Exposure Fund can be used for. Next
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonstewart Show everyone what was added/snuck into the Pact Act that YOU voted for on June 16, that made you change to No in July. Be specific. Or were you for the bill before you were against it Senator Kerry…I mean Cruz. Next
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonstewart No one is playing politics with the Pact Act but you, Toomey and your band of merry monsters. Stop fucking around and pass the bill you already had passed. Thank you for coming to my TedCruz talk.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonstewart This isn’t a game. Real people’s lives hang in the balance…people that fought for your life. The PACT act you voted for, then inexplicably shot down is the same one Senators Tester and Moran posted online in MAY. Which you read cuz yer shmart.💙 🧵 RT @ @coolservativ [tr] 1/n Everyone is staring spellbound at southern Ukraine near #Kherson, where a Ukrainian offensive has been expected for a long time. With this short update I’ll take a look there as well. ¤ Initially, however, the focus is on the Izyum region, which is very surprising.
📌 https://twitter.com/coolservativ/status/1553088492254765059?s=20NYT: Blinken Resists Push to Label Russia a Terrorist State https://tinyurl.com/3vf3zdw3 ‘Blinken’s hand may be forced, however. A group of House Democrats on Thursday filed a new measure which would end-run the State Department and add Russia to the US terror sponsor list’
// The Biden administration is wary of making the designation despite strong calls from Congress and pleas from Ukraine.Mr. Blinken’s hand may be forced, however. While the Senate resolution was merely a call to action with no legal force, a group of House Democrats on Thursday filed a new measure which, if passed by Congress and signed into law, would end-run the State Department and add Russia to the U.S. terror sponsor list.
A State Department finding that Russia is a state sponsor of terror — a label that agency officials refer to as the “nuclear option” — would result in more sanctions on Russia’s battered economy, including penalties on countries that do business with Moscow. It would also waive traditional legal barriers that prevent private citizens from suing foreign governments for damages, potentially including the families of American volunteers killed or injured while fighting Russia in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @ @ChristopherJM Zelensky: Russian attack on Olenivka detention center is a deliberate war crime and mass murder of Ukrainian POWs. ¤ “Every occupier who abuses Ukrainians, who tortures and kills, should know that there will be retribution for this.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky said there’s enough evidence to show this was a premeditated crime. “There should be clear legal recognition of Russia as a terrorist state. Russia has proven with numerous terrorist attacks that it is the biggest source of terrorism in the world today. This is a fact.”🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🔥#Ukraine Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba: No one should be fooled. Whatever they may say, #Russia remains focused on war and aims to ruin #Ukraine and shatter the West. Putin will not stop until he is stopped & Russia suffers a major battleground defeat.
⋙ NYT, Dmytro Kuleba: I’m Ukraine’s Foreign Minister. Putin Must Be Stopped. https://tinyurl.com/ercpzyzm “Military assistance to Ukraine is not charity. It is a necessary investment in Europe’s long-term security”… Ukraine, the United States and our European allies need to speak to Mr. Putin in his language: the language of force. Practically, this means strengthening Ukraine militarily, by speeding up deliveries of advanced artillery pieces and armored vehicles, and economically with additional financial assistance. Sanctions should be increased, too, targeting Russian exports, banning its banks and restricting its access to maritime trade. Some might cavil at the price of such support. But the alternative, of an emboldened Mr. Putin, is much worse.
I am deeply grateful to the United States, and personally to my friend and counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for all the security and other assistance the country has provided. I am equally grateful to all our partners in Europe and around the world who are standing with Ukraine in this difficult time.
Yet I want to be clear: Military assistance to Ukraine is not charity. It is a necessary investment in Europe’s long-term security. The Ukrainian Army will emerge out of this conflict — Europe’s largest land war since 1945 — as one of the continent’s most capable military forces. After repelling Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian military will devote itself to safeguarding the security and stability of Europe, protecting democracy from any authoritarian encroachment. …
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum “The Kremlin has built a cult of personality around Mr Putin and a cult of the dead around the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Mr Putin’s regime yearns to restore a lost golden age and for Russia to be purged by healing violence.” ¤ from
⋙ Economist: Vladimir Putin is in thrall to a distinctive brand of Russian fascism https://tinyurl.com/2s3n39bh
// That is why his country is such a threat to Ukraine, the West and his own people🐣 RT @RALee85 It seems the purpose of Russian diplomacy at the moment is to encourage more NATO arms deliveries to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en There are two possible reasons why Russian diplomats say things like this:
1. They think they can get away with it.
2. They have gone mad.
“All of the above” is also possible. ¤ World must realize this is addressed to them, not Ukraine.
No, they will not get away with it.
[Text Link] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1553298701585612802?s=20/photo/1[Text:] UK © @RussianEmbassy [UK] #Azov militants deserve execution, but death not by firing squad but by hanging, because they’re not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death.
A married couple from #Mariupol tell how they were shelled by forces from #Azovstal. #StopNaziUkraine youtu.be/GRdcWfpqn3E🐣 RT @SergiyKyslytsya [Amb to UN] It’s time to say it clear & loud to russia, “You are here because we let you be here for reasons proven to be wrong. We tolerate your presence to remind you daily that you’ll be held accountable for war crimes & Soviet seat in the Council won’t help escape punishment you deserve”
🐣 RT @FukuyamaFrancis Right on!
⋙ 😅 RT @@na_intel This is Russia.
💽 https://twitter.com/na_intel/status/1553043679656435715?s=20/photo/1
// satire🧵 RT @Cicke69 Great thread addressing little known facts about Donbass urban agglomeration and henceforth slower advance of #Russian and #DPR troops … ¤ by @SlavyangradES (@zastavnyii acc on T) 1/
// self-congratulatory pro-Russian thread, but useful maps
🌎 📌 https://twitter.com/Cicke69/status/1553113698222444545?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The time will come and #Kharkov, #Nikolayev, #Zaporozhye, and #Odessa will also return to their native harbor. In our opinion, they will be able to do this much faster than the other #Russian cities, which were mistakenly separated from their Russian homeland.by Gleb Bazov14/14
⋙⋙ 🐣 The population has fled;; the cities are bombed out. Russia does not have the ability to rebuild ~ its own technical people has fled and Putin’s vision iid backward-looking, not forward-looking. Will those who fled the fighting return to live under Putin repression? No. Dream on
⋙⋙ 🐣 Not Odesa, Mickolaiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv; possibly not Crimea. ¤ Everything Putin touches dies. Russia is a third-rate country with nukes. GDP 1/40th of the West. No truth, no hope, no happiness. All it has to offer Ukraine is death and misery. That’s why they fight.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent⚡️Intelligence: Russia’s Wagner Group behind attack on Olenivka penal colony. ¤ According to Ukraine’s Intelligence, the attack was ordered by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Russian-controlled private military Wagner Group and wasn’t coordinated with Russia’s military command
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Russia has committed another petrifying war crime by shelling a correctional facility in the occupied Olenivka where it held Ukrainian POWs. I call on all partners to strongly condemn this brutal violation of international humanitarian law and recognize Russia a terrorist state.
🐣 RT @DMokryk The barrack in which dozens of 🇺🇦 Azov POWs were killed not only wasn’t hit by a HIMARS (as 🇷🇺 is claiming), but most likely wasn’t bombed from outside at all. ¤ More and more evidence, including a📞intercept by @ServiceSsu, points at an explosion inside the barrack, set up by 🇷🇺.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Russian propaganda says Ukraine killed POWs from Azovstal, killed our own heroes. They say we shoot ourselves.
So do we kill our civilians and children ourselves? Castrate ourselves? Rape ourselves? Rob ourselves?
How much more proof is necessary to prove Russia is a terrorist?NYT Editorial: Russia Is Making Heaps of Money From Oil, but There Is a Way to Stop That https://tinyurl.com/49aus7u6 A “buyers’ cartel” would establish a maximum price members would pay for Russian oil, but enough countries would have to join to make it work
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent US official: Over 75,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since Feb. 24. ¤ Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin told CNN that the U.S. estimates that over 75,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded. “Over 80% of their land forces are bogged down, and they’re tired.”
// 40,500 killed per Ukr DOD🐣 RT @olgatokariuk 5 people killed in Mykolayiv as a result of Russian strikes on a bus stop this morning. Mykolayiv, an important city on the way to Odesa from occupied Kherson, is a target of constant Russian strikes and shelling. Mykolayiv and Kharkiv are two 🇺🇦 big cities suffering the most now
⭕ 28 Jul 2022
🐣 📊 RT @Politics_Polls
Generic Congressional Ballot:
Democrats 44% (+4)
Republicans 40%
.@Suffolk_U/@USATODAY, 1,000 RV, 7/22-25 https://tinyurl.com/32h5kjhc💙 ThreadReader, @samagreene The recent essay by Charap & Shapiro urging NATO-#Russia talks is important. But it is also wrong — because, in my view, it confuses the concepts of national security and regime security. ¤ (A 🧵, in case you couldn’t tell.)
TR Link: https://tinyurl.com/4sx7y4uw
TwiiterLink: https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/1552817342337486849?s=20
⋙ 🐣 I couldn’t agree more. I hope you write a response directly to the Times. Putin’s paranoia & nostalgic worldview, magnified by the isolation of the pandemic & being surrounded by sycophants and fantasists, has brought Russia to a dark place we must comprehend before “talking”🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Bremmer adds to the “Ukraine can’t win” chorus in his Eurasia Group newsletter. This is the self-fulfilling defeatist line pushed by the Kremlin & its allies lately. “We’d love to help, but UKR can’t win.” No. It’s a choice, a moral and practical one about the world you want.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ianbremmer that’s an incorrect characterization of the newsletter. i wrote ukraine is losing but russia is losing (much) more. ¤ putin is the big loser here. ¤ it’s not even close.🐣 RT @casternoel It’s becoming pretty apparent how vast the conspiracy was on Jan 6th, from the Secret Service agents that were Trump toadies, to the DHS & members of Congress. That was a straight-up coup attempt. It was only the mediocrity of MAGA that made it fail. Lock them all up. @GOP
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote There’s no way the DHS OIG isn’t in on this cover up
🐣 RT @JoshManning23 Those two were DEEP in the planning. Now the ice is breaking!
⋙ 🐣 RT @washingtonpost Text messages for former President Trump’s acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, according to people briefed on the matter and internal emails.
⋙⋙ WaPo: Jan. 6 texts missing for Trump Homeland Security’s Wolf and Cuccinelli https://tinyurl.com/mr4b438z
// DHS watchdog was alerted in February to unavailable records of top officials, but did nothing to alert or investigateThe news of their missing records set off a firestorm because the texts could have corroborated the account of a former White House aide describing the president’s state of mind on January 6. In one case, the aide, Cassidy Hutchinson said a top official told her that Trump had tried to attack a senior Secret Service agent who refused to take the president to the Capitol with his supporters marching there.
In a nearly identical scenario to that of the DHS leaders’ texts, the Secret Service alerted Cuffari’s office seven months ago, in December 2021, that the agency had deleted thousands of agents’ and employees’ text messages in an agency-wide reset of government phones. [IG] Cuffari’s office did not notify Congress until mid-July, despite multiple congressional committees’ pending requests for these records.
The telephone and text communications of Wolf and Cuccinelli in the days leading up to Jan. 6 could have shed considerable light on Trump’s actions and plans. In the weeks before the attack on the Capitol, Trump had been pressuring both men to help him claim the 2020 election results were rigged and even to seize voting machines in key swing states to try to “re-run” the election.
“It is extremely troubling that the issue of deleted text messages related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol is not limited to the Secret Service, but also includes Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, who were running DHS at the time,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement. ¤ “It appears the DHS Inspector General has known about these deleted texts for months but failed to notify Congress,” Thompson said. “If the Inspector General had informed Congress, we may have been able to get better records from Senior administration officials regarding one of the most tragic days in our democracy’s history.”
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Russia for years has had a program paying Russians abroad to move home. In some 20 years a stunning five moved back from Estonia. Five. ¤ Unless I am mistaken, after some months/years, three wanted to come back to Estonia
⋙ 🐣 RT @fatimatlis State-controlled Telegram channels won’t stop bragging about this video. Not sure who is the creator. But wow, just watch it. If the Russians didn’t promote it, I’d think this was a satire. Why do they think this could attract foreigners to move to Russia? “Winter is coming.”
💽 https://twitter.com/fatimatlis/status/1552750007408885760?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Letting Putin crush Ukraine and murder thousands of innocents in a European war of conquest will redefine the world order. So would stopping him. We choose by action or inaction which world we want to live in.
¤ https://twitter.com/ZhiZhuWeb/status/1552764259381157889?s=20/photo/1
// poster🐣 RT @KyivIndependent US Senate on July 28 unanimously approved resolution calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate Russia state sponsor of terrorism. ¤ The resolution calls out Russia for its actions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine and its support for the Wagner Group.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Some impacts of the designation here. Bottom line: Russia will not longer be a sovereign government once the designation is made.
⋙ ⋙ 🧵 RT @igorsushko Is Putin’s Russia a state-sponsor of terrorism? Please read and share the following context, background, and especially the legal 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 far & wide. Proper designation of Russia per U.S. law is now more important than ever.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1540059528833576960?s=20
// 6/23/2022💙 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Defense cannot be treated as escalation. Defining it as such is Putin’s framing and defeatist. Putin will escalate against weakness, as he always does, not strength. He will shout about nukes as long as it works.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Dr_M_Davis Thought provoking thread by @Kasparov63 much of which I agree with. The challenge as I see it is that somehow the West needs to assist Ukraine to decisively and comprehensively defeat Russia without the war escalating to global thermonuclear war.
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture “Instead of pressing its advantages to promote democracy and prosperity, the free world has instead played down to its adversaries’ level.” A good thread on the current, and unsustainable, approach of democracies in dealing with aggressive authoritarian regimes, from @Kasparov63
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1552818038461739008?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @@Kasparov63 Instead of pressing its advantages to promote democracy and prosperity, the free world has instead played down to its adversaries’ level. Failed engagement, proportionate response, weak talk in the face of violence.
⋙ The West could have saved tens of thousands of lives, food and energy crises, & $1 trillion by intervening immediately to defend Ukraine 8 years ago. Even now, the most powerful military force in history is self-deterring so as not to overwhelm Putin’s pathetic forces.
⋙ As I’ve said countless times, Putin is a poker player, a bluffer. He can’t believe his luck in having opponents who keep folding their cards against his weak hand. You can understand how he’s grown so ambitious.
⋙ NATO nations could obliterate Russia’s invading forces in Ukraine. They could provide weapons Ukraine needs to reclaim its sovereign territory. They choose not to. Every day they choose this as Ukrainians die for them. Putin sees this and believes he will outlast them again.
⋙ As he has for over two decades, and as dictators always think, Putin believes that if you had the strength to stop him, you would. Every concession, every negotiation, is a sign to him that you are too weak to do so. So he bluffs & escalates until stopped.
⋙ To the autocrat, using power is the first recourse, the fastest and most efficient path. If you have it, you use it. This is what the West didn’t understand about Putin–or about the new generation of populist, would-be autocrats in their midst.🐣 RT @BillKristol It’s increasingly clear that for today’s American conservatives, Viktor Orban’s frank and vocal illiberalism, bigotry, and demagoguery are not obstacles to their admiration for him. They’re the reasons for the admiration.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard I just watched the video showing Russian soldiers cutting off the genitalia of Ukrainian POWs. How do you unsee that? WTF are we waiting on to halt this evil? Stop incrementally sending weapons, we all know they need- 100 MLRS, all types of rounds, ATACMs, tanks, etc, send it! 🤬
💙 🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine On July 28, we mark the Day of #Ukrainian Statehood to celebrate our thousand-year-long history, deep and ancient roots and close connections with European countries. ¤ Today we dive into our deep and rich history to remind ourselves and the world #WhatWeAreFightingFor
💽 https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1552573037521797120?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Two years ago on this day, Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania established the Lublin Triangle. Three freedom-loving European nations, we have stood together for centuries, and keep shaping our future together. Our statement with @GLandsbergis and @RauZbigniew: https://bit.ly/3zgfK8C
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 It will be a divisive and dangerous decision by DOJ whether to prosecute the obvious criminal actions by a lawless Trump. He openly incited the 6 January assault on Congress. This was a direct attempt to seize the government in violation of the Constitution.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Do we really want Department of Justice not to prosecute a politician who deserves it just because someone suspects indictment might cause divisions in our society? ¤ It’s not Attorney General’s job to play political forecaster — just to pursue justice, which is difficult enough.💙 🐣 RT @DefenceU @ZelenskyyUa “We will become not a new legend of heroic resistance, but a state of winners… The multimillion-strong nation-hero which is worthy of living, worthy of winning and which will teach others in the world how to defend themselves and how to win.” #FightLikeUkrainians
ReutersInvestigates: The Enemy Within https://tinyurl.com/mu45fwjm Long before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin was building a network of secret agents to smooth its path
// Long before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin was building a network of secret agents to smooth its path. A Reuters investigation shows the infiltration went far deeper than has been acknowledged.… The fall of Chornobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, stands out as an anomaly in the five-month old war: a successful blitzkrieg operation in a conflict marked elsewhere by a brutal and halting advance by Russian troops and grinding resistance by Ukraine. ¤ Now a Reuters investigation has found that Russia’s success at Chornobyl was no accident, but part of a long-standing Kremlin operation to infiltrate the Ukrainian state with secret agents.
Five people with knowledge of the Kremlin’s preparations said war planners around President Vladimir Putin believed that, aided by these agents, Russia would require only a small military force and a few days to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration to quit, flee or capitulate. …
“Apart from the external enemy, we unfortunately have an internal enemy, and this enemy is no less dangerous,” the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said in an interview. ¤ At the time of the invasion, Danilov said, Russia had agents in the Ukrainian defence, security and law enforcement sectors. He declined to give names but said such traitors needed to be “neutralised” at all costs.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation is conducting a probe into whether the National Guard acted unlawfully by surrendering its weapons to an enemy, a local official told Reuters. The State Bureau of Investigation didn’t comment. The National Guard defended the actions of its unit at the plant, pointing to the risks of conflict at a nuclear site.
Though Russia captured Chornobyl, its plan to take power in Kyiv failed. In many cases, the sleeper agents Moscow had installed failed to do their job, according to multiple sources in Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine Security Council Secretary Danilov said the agents and their handlers believed Ukraine was weak, which was “a total misconception.” … ¤ Putin now finds himself in a protracted, full-scale war, fighting for every inch of territory at huge cost.
But the Russian intelligence infiltration did succeed in one way: It has sown mistrust inside Ukraine and laid bare the shortcomings of Ukraine’s near 30,000-strong Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, which shares a complicated history with Russia, and is now tasked with hunting down traitors and collaborators.
This internal Ukrainian turmoil burst into partial view on July 17. In a video address to the nation, President Zelenskiy suspended SBU head Ivan Bakanov, whom he has known for years, citing the large number of SBU staff suspected of treason. Ukrainian law enforcement sources told Reuters that some SBU staff recounted in conversation with them that they were unable to reach Bakanov for several days after Russia invaded, adding to a sense of chaos in Kyiv. Bakanov didn’t respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Zelenskiy also said 651 cases of alleged treason and collaboration have been opened against individuals involved in law enforcement and in the prosecutor’s office. More than 60 officials from the SBU and the prosecutor general’s office are working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied zones, Zelenskiy added. …
For Russia’s war planners, seizing Chornobyl was just a stepping stone to the main objective: taking control of the Ukrainian national government in Kyiv. There, too, the Kremlin expected that undercover agents in positions of power would play a crucial part, according to four sources with knowledge of the plan.
Yuriy Lutsenko, who served as Ukraine’s prosecutor general from 2016 until 2019, revealed to Reuters that at the time he left the role “hundreds” of Defence Ministry employees were under surveillance, approved by his office, because they were suspected of ties to the Russian state. Lutsenko said he believed there were similar numbers of suspected spies in other ministries.
Russia’s war planners were also counting on other allies to help in the takeover, five sources said. ¤ One of the most visible loyalists was Viktor Medvedchuk, a leader of Ukraine’s Opposition Platform – For Life party. Putin is god-father to one of Medvedchuk’s children. Since 2014, Medvedchuk has been a vocal opponent of the popular protests that called for closer ties to the European Union. … Medvedchuk was detained on April 12, Zelenskiy announced that day. Zelenskiy immediately posted pictures of him handcuffed, in Ukrainian military fatigues and looking bedraggled. Medvedchuk has since been in detention.
Another key figure, according to three sources familiar with the Russian plans, was Oleg Tsaryov, a square-jawed 52-year-old former member of Ukraine’s parliament. He was picked by Kremlin invasion planners to lead the new interim government they planned to install, these sources said. Their comments are the first confirmation from within Russia of U.S. intelligence assessments, reported by the Financial Times earlier this year, that Moscow was considering putting Tsaryov in a leadership role in a puppet government in Kyiv.
Tsaryov has been under Ukrainian and U.S. sanctions since 2014, when, after a bid to win election as Ukrainian president collapsed, he headed up a body called “Novorossiya,” or New Russia. The group pushed the idea of turning southeastern Ukraine into a separate pro-Russian statelet. By the start of this year, he was in Russian-annexed Crimea, where he owns two hotels. ¤ In the early hours of Feb. 24, at the start of the invasion, Tsaryov told his more than 200,000 Telegram followers he had crossed into Kyiv-controlled territory. “I’m in Ukraine. Kyiv will be free from fascists.”
But Zelenskiy did not capitulate. Any expectations in Moscow that he would flee Kyiv or negotiate a deal that would cede to Russia’s demands soon evaporated. In the weeks that followed, Ukrainian forces halted Russian troops’ advance on Kyiv. ¤ Tsaryov never made it to the capital. On June 10, he posted an advertisement to his Telegram followers for his seaside hotel in Crimea, where a one-night stay costs 1,500 roubles ($28) per person per night. Tsaryov is now spending his time in Crimea with visits to Moscow, according to his social media posts. …
One stark incident that fuelled the tensions in Kyiv’s power corridors related to the death in early March of Denys Kirieiev, a former bank executive, several sources said. He was a member of the Ukrainian delegation that took part in short-lived talks with Russian negotiators on the Ukraine-Belarus border, starting on Feb. 28. A photograph showed Kirieiev sitting alongside Ukrainian officials at the negotiating table. ¤ An advisor to the Zelenskiy administration said, in an online interview, that officers from the SBU shot Kirieiev while trying to arrest him as a Russian spy.
But Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Agency said Kirieiev was its employee and intelligence officer, and that he died a hero while conducting an unspecified special assignment defending Ukraine. A source close to the Ukrainian military told Reuters that Kirieiev was indeed a spy working for Ukraine. He had access to the highest levels of the Russian leadership, this source said, and was feeding back valuable information on invasion plans and other matters to his handlers in Kyiv.
On July 17, in a video address to the nation, President Zelenskiy suspended Bakanov, whom he has known for years, citing the large number of SBU staff suspected of treason. Bakanov didn’t respond to questions from Reuters.
Amid the chaos early in the war, Bakanov, then the head of the SBU, left Kyiv for at least three days after the Russian invasion, according to three people in Ukrainian law enforcement. Two of these people said some SBU staff recounted they were unable to reach Bakanov for several days after Russia invaded. In suspending Bakanov on July 17, Zelenskiy cited an article in Ukraine’s Armed Forces statute, under which servicemen can be relieved of their duties for improper conduct leading to casualties or a threat of casualties.
Zelenskiy, in his speech, stressed the toll Russian infiltration was taking on his embattled country by speaking of the numerous officials who have been accused of betraying Ukraine. “Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state … poses very serious questions to the relevant leaders,” Zelenskiy said. ¤ “Each of these questions will receive a proper answer.” … …
🐣 RT @SecBlinken My call with Foreign Minister Lavrov will not be a negotiation about Ukraine. Any negotiation regarding Ukraine is for its government and people to determine. As we’ve said from the beginning, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.
🐣 RT @ BillKristol “Pence helped transform the GOP from a party into a cult, and cults don’t behave the way normal political parties do. Pence’s gamble that he will get credit from the base for his loyal service to the leader is foolhardy. He is at the mercy of the leader.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Mona Charen: Mike Pence Sold His Soul for Nothing https://tinyurl.com/25tk67yn
// He was honorable on January 6th, but not before or after.🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Today Ukraine celebrates the day of statehood, remembering ancestors who fought for it. ¤ “We never take weapons first but if somebody attacks our home we stay till the last breath,” Zelenskyy said, mentioning Ukrainian ancestry of Rus, Kozak state, Ukraine’s Republic & founders.
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1552564694086459392?s=20/photo/1
// history video🐣 RT @HeliosRunner Medvedev claims this was made by “western” intel of some sort -not citing sources of course- fits 2 purposes : Telling #Kyiv that Poland & Romania r not real friends & they just want to see Ukr die by faking helps, & also pounding the idea that it is a done deal for East & south.
🌎 https://twitter.com/HeliosRunner/status/1552563727420928000?s=20/photo/1 -2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Kyivindependent Russia’s Medvedev publishes map of divided Ukraine. ¤ Russia’s Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev published a map where Ukraine is divided into parts, with the biggest one belonging to Russia, and smaller ones to Poland and Romania.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Kyivindependent On the map published by Medvedev, only Kyiv Oblast is labeled as Ukraine. Medvedev made an unsupported claim that this map was created by some Western analysts, but he did not name them.
⋙ VividMaps: The Ukraine-Russia war conflict is explained in maps https://tinyurl.com/346f468n I’m no expert in the history or politics, but it looks like the main outline of Ukraine was pretty much settled by the end of the Second World War
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1552572128888758273?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mhmck Massive missile strike from Belarus. At least 20 missiles were fired at civilian infrastructure in Zhytomyr, Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. ¤ Ukraine’s peer democracies forbid Ukrainian defenders from striking targets in Belarus and refuse to do anything about the attacks themselves.
🐣 RT @StratcomCentre According to the most recent KIIS social poll, 84% of Ukrainians are opposed to any and all territorial concessions to Russia, and are prepared to endure resulting risks and difficulties. #StandWithUkraine
📊 https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1552531044192108550?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DefenceHQ Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 28 July 2022 Find out more about the UK government’s response: http://ow.ly/Ux0s50K60lw
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 [Text:]● Ukraine’s counter-offensive in Kherson is gathering momentum. Their forces have highly likely established a bridgehead south of the Ingulets River, which forms the northern boundary of Russian-occupied Kherson.
● Ukraine has used its new long range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges across the Dnipro River which Russia relies upon to supply the areas under its control. One of these, the 1,000 metre long Antonivsky bridge near Kherson city, was damaged last week. Ukraine struck it again on 27 July 2022 and it is highly likely that the crossing is now unusable.
● Russia’s 49th Army is stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro River and now looks highly vulnerable. Similarly, Kherson city, the most politically significant population centre occupied by Russia, is now virtually cut off from the other occupied territories. Its loss would severely undermine Russia’s attempts to paint the occupation as a success.⭕ 27 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @na_intel Russian Minister of Defense spoke for the first time about how he sees the future: “soon there will be the Soviet Union again and we will again live in peace.”
It’s hard to believe to my ears. At least we know their goal
💽 https://twitter.com/na_intel/status/1552355133224353793?s=20/photo/1DredgeWire (7/27): US becomes world’s largest LNG exporter https://bit.ly/3QmDfE4 “Most U.S. LNG exports went to the EU and the UK from January through May, accounting for 71%, or 8.2 Bcf/d, of the total U.S. LNG exports”; not a long-term answer but should help this winter
↥ ↧
PowerMag (3/30): U.S. Agrees to Ramp Up LNG Exports to Europe https://bit.ly/3P5P0xu The “Task Force on Energy Security” between the US & the EU will work “to ensure energy security for Ukraine“ and end the EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, while moving to renewablesThe measures are part of strategic energy cooperation between the U.S. and EU under a joint “Task Force on Energy Security,” which President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled on March 25. According to the White House, the joint task force will work “to ensure energy security for Ukraine and the EU in preparation for next winter and the following one, while supporting the EU’s goal to end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels.”
😅 RT @GlasnostGone This cat is part of #Ukraine’s ninja kitty battalion. Highly trained, they give the impression that they’re chilled and not a threat. But without warning, they’ll spring into action and viscously nibble anything foolish enough to pass by.
💽 https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1552330986234544128?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “We were briefed that over 75,000 Russians have either been killed or wounded [in Ukraine], which is huge…over 80% of their land forces are bogged down, and they’re tired,” @RepSlotkin told @MZanona re: classified briefing House members just got from Biden admin officials.
🐣 RT @McFaul The latest statements from Lavrov and Shoigu make very clear that Putin’s war aims in Ukraine extend well beyond Donbas. Giving Putin another chunk of Ukraine will not produce lasting peace. Only stopping Putin on the battlefield will.
NYRB, Ian Bassin and Erica Newland: The Attorney General’s Choice https://tinyurl.com/msvetpwz Justice must be blind with regard to any political reaction to a decision to prosecute if the facts and the law so demand. AG Garland “could not have better articulated his proper role”
// Merrick Garland’s job in weighing a Trump indictment is not to heal the nation.To be absolutely clear, out of respect for the attorney general’s independence, the president should not tell him what to do or lean on him in any way. But the attorney general’s jurisdiction is also more limited than some, like Goldsmith, have proposed. In cases like Trump’s, where the federal principles clearly counsel for prosecution, if the attorney general determines that the former president’s “conduct constitutes a federal offense, and that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction,” then he must indict. Any other decision would usurp not only the president’s pardon power but also his authority to decide that the public good is not served by pardoning Trump.
In a speech one year after the attack on the Capitol, Attorney General Garland said this: “The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law—whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.” He could not have better articulated his proper role
NYT: Is Trump in Legal Peril? This Ex-Prosecutor Would Know https://tinyurl.com/2p8rhz28 Shoulf DOJ look away if prosecuting Trump would result in civil disruption?
// One of the last federal prosecutors to lead an investigation into Donald Trump discussed the challenges of bringing charges against him in the Jan. 6 case.🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON / 1200 UTC 27 JUL/ UKR precision artillery is targeting road and rail connections in and around Kherson. Informed by local partisans and embedded Ukrainian SOF, these attacks are intended to isolate Russian troops prior to UKR’s coming offensive.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1552256560554020864?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivIndependent General Staff: Russia shoots down own helicopter in friendly fire in Kherson. ¤ The Russian military shot down their own Kamov Ka-52 helicopter in Kherson Oblast when attempting to attack Ukrainian units, reported the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
🐣 📊 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Poll: 84% of Ukrainians are against peace with Russia if it involves territorial concessions. ¤ According to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) survey published on July 27, only 10% of Ukrainians are ready for some territorial concessions.
🐣 RT @john_sipher “Does Sullivan really believe that Putin will launch World War III if the United States supplies rockets with a range of about 180 miles but will hold off as long as we’re supplying only rockets with a range of about 50 miles?”
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: The U.S. is a lot stronger than Russia. We should act like it. https://tinyurl.com/mr3dwhky… A Ukrainian battalion commander told The Post that since the HIMARS strikes began, Russian shelling has been “10 times less.” Another Ukrainian officer told the Wall Street Journal: “It was hell over here. Now, it’s like paradise. Super quiet. Everything changed when we got the HIMARS.” President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukrainian fatalities are down from between 100 and 200 a day to 30 a day.
If Ukraine is able to fight back so effectively with only 12 HIMARS (soon to be 16), imagine what it could do with dozens more and, better still, Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which use the same platform but have nearly quadruple the range. These rocket systems should be supplemented by Western tanks and fighter aircraft. If the West were to supply all these weapons, Ukraine could mount a counteroffensive to take back lost land in the south and east and help end the war.
The Biden administration is slowly supplying more HIMARS and, for the first time, is even discussing the provision of Western fighter aircraft (after nixing a Polish plan to send MiG-29s in March). But ATACMS appear to be off the table because, as national security adviser Jake Sullivan explained last week, the administration does not want to head “down the road towards a third world war.” Ukraine isn’t even allowed to use its HIMARS to end the shelling of its second-largest city, Kharkiv, because the Russian artillery batteries are located on Russian soil.
This strategic calculus makes no sense. Does Sullivan really believe that Putin will launch World War III if the United States supplies rockets with a range of about 180 miles but will hold off as long as we’re supplying only rockets with a range of about 50 miles? Or that the provision of HIMARS, NASAMS air-defense systems, 155mm howitzers, Phoenix Ghost drones, Javelins and Stingers isn’t too provocative — but fighter aircraft and tanks would be?
President Biden is right not to send U.S. forces into direct combat with the Russians, but everything else should be fair game, from ATACMS to F-16s to Abrams tanks. The Soviets didn’t hesitate to supply North Korea and North Vietnam with fighter aircraft to shoot down U.S. warplanes. (Soviet pilots even flew for North Korea.) Why shouldn’t we return the favor? …
The United States matches Russia in nuclear forces and far exceeds it in conventional capabilities. Biden is in a far stronger position than Putin, but he is acting as if he were weaker. Stop letting Putin deter us from doing everything we can to aid Ukraine. Putin should be more afraid of us than we are of him.
The war has already proved costly to Russia: It has lost about 1,000 tanks, and roughly 60,000 soldiers have been killed or wounded. There won’t be much left of the Russian military if the Ukrainians are armed with lots more HIMARs and ATACMS, along with tanks and fighter aircraft. The fourth phase of the war could prove decisive — but only if the United States finally makes a commitment to help Ukraine win.
💙 🐣 RT @natasha367b Russian media confirms that the Antonovskiy bridge near Kherson is heavily damaged and closed to traffic. (Also spelled Antonivsky and in several other ways.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @360tv [tr] The Antonovsky bridge across the Dnieper in Kherson was damaged after a night attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the deputy head of the VGA said. ¤ It has now been closed to traffic.
¤ https://twitter.com/natasha367b/status/1552164256900079616?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @walter_report The moment Antonivskyy bridge in #Kherson was put on 🎯 @HIMARStime ¤ The third girder/deck slab of that bridge is no more (closest one to the right bank of Dnipro river).
💽 https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1552053586552651776?s=20/photo/1⭕ 26 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile in Russia: decorated propagandists and prominent pundits ponder the best ways to cause unrest and global turmoil. They plot interfering in elections all over the world, including the home turf of their most hated enemy—the United States. Watch:
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1552150996742184961?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews We’ll Set the World on Fire ¤ Moscow is convinced that Trump would have allowed Russia to take Ukraine without a fight and they are desperate to help him back into power. ¤ ‘WE CAN DO IT’ [voting motto]
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin’s Pals Admit New Plan to Tamper with U.S. Elections: https://tinyurl.com/3ykdesuh
// Moscow is convinced that Trump would have allowed Russia to take Ukraine without a fight and they are desperate to help him back into power.🐣 RT @fools_n_kings Show us a map, show us where this bridge is, where Kherson city is, and show us how exactly Ukraine needs this bridge to take Kherson
⋙ 🐣 Russians are trapped. Two other bridges have also been compromised. Over the last 2 weeks, Ukr has taken out many of their ammo depots, command posts and anti-aircraft batteries. They need ammo, soldiers and equipment and it all had to come over that bridge
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1552175294311796736?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 The bridge is in the red circle. The Dniepr River is about ¼ mile wide at Kherson. There aren’t a lot of bridges. The next one is 36 miles north at Nova Khakova and it’s been bombed too. Across the river is Russian-held territory.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @fools_n_kings Yeah and even to get to Nova Khakovka they need to cross the Inhulets River to the northeast of Kherson, and the crossings there are degraded. So they’re creating two pockets of isolated Russians, one in and around Kherson, and the other north of the Inhulets and Dniepr Rivers💙 🐣 RT @PoIygamist007
But honestly, get out of Kherson, my Congolese volunteer. Or they will sweep up what’s left of that BBC with a broom.
HIMARS be coming.
Tonight might be the night. Your life is worth more than a clean late model Lada.
Maybe not a brand new white Lada.
Hmmm… 🧮🧐
💽 https://twitter.com/PoIygamist007/status/1552122151355813888?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Reminds me of this by a Ukrainian artist
🖼 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1552127531515535360?s=20/photo/1
// video of missiles streaking and artwork of missiles in the sky turning into dragons🐣 RT @AdmiralWarspite 6:15am in Ukraine, I was hopping for an update on the Antonovsky Bridge by now but Telegram channels are dead. I did hear stories of the Russians cutting mobile and internet networks in Kherson last night after the attack so maybe that has something to do with it.
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Ukraine is stepping up its strikes on the Antonovskiy bridge ¤ While Ukraine does not appear inclined to destroy bridges, the Kyiv Post says it is destroyed and Ukrainian forces are trying to isolate Russian personnel in Kherson
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @KyivPost Pending official confirmation: the Russian-held Antonivsʹkyy Bridge next to Kherson has been reportedly destroyed by the #Ukrainian #army. #HIMARSoCLOCK.🐣 RT @krides Enough ATACMS and F16s win the war. Let’s get it over with.
🐣 RT @mhmck Give Ukrainians any weapon and they will use it wisely and effectively against the Russian terrorists. Well-armed Ukrainians will save our lives.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok DOJ’s criminal probe into Trump’s #Jan6 #coup has two investigative tracks that could ultimately lead to “additional scrutiny” of Trump.
1/ #seditious #conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct a government proceeding
2/ #fraud tied to fake electors scheme & pressure on DOJ & states [ ⋙ and Pence! ]
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok The Justice Department IS investigating Trump’s actions as part of its #Jan6 CRIMINAL probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Justice Dept. investigating Trump’s actions in Jan. 6 criminal probe https://tinyurl.com/bdhhzndn There are two main tracks the investigation could take: 1) Seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct, and 2) Fraud (fake electors scheme)
// People familiar with the probe said investigators are examining the former president’s conversations and have seized phone records of top aidesProsecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.
In addition, Justice Department investigators in April received phone records of key officials and aides in the Trump administration, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to two people familiar with the matter. That effort is another indicator of how expansive the Jan. 6 probe had become, well before the high-profile, televised House hearings in June and July on the subject.
The Washington Post and other news organizations have previously written that the Justice Department is examining the conduct of Eastman, Giuliani and others in Trump’s orbit. But the degree of prosecutors’ interest in Trump’s actions has not been previously reported, nor has the review of senior Trump aides’ phone records.
The revelations raise the stakes of an already politically fraught probe involving a former president, still central to his party’s fortunes, who has survived previous investigations and two impeachments. Long before the Jan. 6 investigation, Trump spent years railing against the Justice Department and the FBI; the investigation moving closer to him will probably intensify that antagonism.
Federal criminal investigations are by design opaque, and probes involving political figures are among the most closely held secrets at the Justice Department. Many end without criminal charges. The lack of observable investigative activity involving Trump and his White House for more than a year after the Jan. 6 attack has fueled criticism, particularly from the left, that the Justice Department is not pursuing the case aggressively enough.
In trying to understand how and why Trump partisans and lawyers sought to change the outcome of the election, one person familiar with the probe said, investigators also want to understand, at a minimum, what Trump told his lawyers and senior officials to do. Any investigation surrounding the effort to undo the results of the election must navigate complex issues of First Amendment-protected political activity and when or whether a person’s speech could become part of an alleged conspiracy in support of a coup.
Many elements of the sprawling Jan. 6 criminal investigation have remained under wraps. But in recent weeks the public pace of the work has increased, with a fresh round of subpoenas, search warrants and interviews. Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, and lawyer, Greg Jacob, appeared before the grand jury in downtown Washington in recent days, according to the people familiar with the investigation.
The Justice Department efforts are separate from the inquiry underway by the House committee, which has sought to portray Trump as responsible for inciting the Capitol riot and for being derelict in his duty for refusing to stop it. Both Short and Jacob have testified before the committee, telling lawmakers that Pence resisted Trump’s attempts to enlist him in the cause. …
The Justice Department probe began amid the smoke, blood and chaos at the Capitol and has led to criminal charges against more than 840 individuals, expanding to include an examination of events that occurred elsewhere in the days and weeks before the attack — including at the White House, in state capitols and at a D.C. hotel.
There are two principal tracks of the investigation that could ultimately lead to additional scrutiny of Trump, two people familiar with the situation said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The first centers on seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct a government proceeding, the type of charges already filed against individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and on two leaders of far-right groups, Stewart Rhodes and Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who did not breach the Capitol but were allegedly involved in planning the day’s events.
The second involves potential fraud associated with the false-electors scheme or with pressure Trump and his allies allegedly put on the Justice Department and others to falsely claim that the election was rigged and votes were fraudulently cast. ¤ Recent subpoenas obtained by The Post show that two Arizona state legislators were ordered to turn over communications with “any member, employee, or agent of Donald J. Trump or any organization advocating in favor of the 2020 re-election of Donald J. Trump, including ‘Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.’ ”
No former president has ever been charged with a crime in the country’s history. In cases when investigators found evidence suggesting a president engaged in criminal conduct, as with Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton, investigators and successive administrations concluded it was better to grant immunity or forgo prosecution. One goal was to avoid appearing to use government power to punish political enemies and assure the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed that the Jan. 6 investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead and said that no one is exempt or above scrutiny, while refusing to divulge information outside of court filings.
Garland told NBC News in a Tuesday interview that the department pursues justice “without fear or favor. We intend to hold everyone, anyone, who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6th, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable — that’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”
The Jan. 6 investigation is by some measures the largest ever undertaken by the Justice Department. While investigators in nearly every part of the country have been involved, the lion’s share of the work is being done by three offices: the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, and the criminal and national security divisions at department headquarters. …
🧵 RT @PaulaChertok 🐣 RT @ 💥”There was no order”—Trump’s own Defense Secretary testified that Trump NEVER ordered Nat’l Guard troops for #Jan6. Pathetic liar Trump claims he did & Pelosi rejected it. And the GOP & GOP propaganda media shamelessly blame Dems for Trump’s terrorist attack/coup/insurrection
📌 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1552071371496120320?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 💥“prosecutors have asked…detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers & advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states”[Text:] The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election: and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake elec- tors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the ex-
tent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.NYT: Emails Shed Light on Trump Fake Electors Plan https://tinyurl.com/4hhwu5a7
// Full Title: ‘Kind of Wild/Creative’: Emails Shed Light on Trump Fake Electors Plan
// Previously undisclosed communications among Trump campaign aides and outside advisers provide new insight into their efforts to overturn the election in the weeks leading to Jan. 6.NYT, Peter Wehner: What in the World Happened to Elise Stefanik? https://tinyurl.com/yeykyuvd “[Her] story … mirrors that of so many other Republicans. … A commitment to ethical conduct, a devotion to the common good and fidelity to truth appear to have no intrinsic worth to them”
Looking at what happened with Ms. Stefanik is sad and disturbing because people who know her say she knows better. She was willing to be shaped by circumstances, even when circumstances drove her to ugly places and to embrace conspiracy theories. Contrast this with Ms. Cheney, who was stripped of her position in the Republican leadership and replaced by Ms. Stefanik. Ms. Cheney represents the people of Wyoming on many issues that are important to them, but she drew a line when it came to a fundamental attack on our democracy. She wouldn’t cross that line. Ms. Stefanik did.
Ms. Stefanik’s story is important in part because it mirrors that of so many other Republicans. They, like Ms. Stefanik, are opportunists, living completely in the moment, shifting their personas to advance their immediate political self-interests. A commitment to ethical conduct, a devotion to the common good and fidelity to truth appear to have no intrinsic worth to them. These qualities are mere instrumentalities, used when helpful but discarded when inconvenient.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: A repulsive new breed of Trumpist candidates poses a fresh threat https://tinyurl.com/bde4jw69 “They combine phony pieties about lawful and civil order with craven fealty to Trump’s lawlessness and his bid for utter impunity”
… They cast themselves as tough on law and order while embracing the most pernicious aspects of Trump’s effort to persuade millions to give up on the rule of law and democracy, and to remain above accountability for his attempt to destroy our legal and political order at its foundations.
The “rule of law” involves certain hallmarks: equality before the law, stable political and legal institutions, a commitment to accountability and no special treatment for the very powerful. These candidates are making an utter mockery of such notions: They combine phony pieties about lawful and civil order with craven fealty to Trump’s lawlessness and his bid for utter impunity, and to the undisguised authoritarian nature of his movement. …
The essence of that ethos is to detach the aim of law and order from any rooted conception of the rule of law by unabashedly casting aside ideals of neutrality, equal institutional treatment and freedom from political interference, and flaunting this as a selling point.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: More Republicans are dumping Trump. But the GOP still imperils democracy. https://tinyurl.com/yc2xa6c3 “[A]n increasing segment of Republicans … are nervous that having led an insurrection might be a disadvantage for the presidential nominee in 2024”
No one can say the House Jan. 6 select committee has had no effect on the right wing. In reaction to the committee’s hearings, the right-wing editorial boards of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal (both Rupert Murdoch publications) have decided Donald Trump is a menace to America. The New York Post rejected him as a 2024 candidate, and the Journal said Trump “utterly failed” to perform his duties as chief executive. ¤ They — like many GOP donors and an increasing segment of Republicans — have become disgusted with the drama and are nervous that having led an insurrection might be a disadvantage for the presidential nominee in 2024. …
Certainly, dumping a compulsive liar, authoritarian narcissist and possible defendant in multiple criminal cases could be a plus for Republicans. But it’s not a panacea. The two most dangerous features of Trumpism are very much alive and dominate the GOP.
First, the party has inarguably turned antidemocratic. It wants fewer voters. It wants partisan control of election administration. Many “mainstream” Republicans still leave open the possibility they would have refused to certify Joe Biden’s victory. And state parties continue to drum out of their ranks 2020 truth-tellers such as Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers. Remember: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) was the only Republican senator willing to debate a national voting rights bill, including a reinstatement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Second, the Republican Party has gone all-in when it comes to White Christian nationalism, insisting the state use its power to impose reactionary religious views. …
Indeed, it’s arguably more important for Republican politicians to be warriors for Christian nationalism and generators of racial grievance than Trump apologists. Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas continue to build their brands around fear-mongering against critical race theory, anti-immigrant animus and attacks on LGBTQ families. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, put out a multi-part plan strewn with talking points on abortion, LGBTQ Americans and race with ample references to Christianity, including a declaration that “the nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated.” More than 70 percent of House Republicans voted against a bill that would protect gay marriage.
So while it’s true that some Republicans are moving on from Trump, his two legacies — authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism — still dominate the GOP. The threat to pluralistic democracy remains.
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en What is the most difficult for you personally at war?” – I was asked during my visit to the US. I answered honestly – the feeling that children are at danger. – Olena Zelenska ¤ The First Lady Olena Zelenska on the cover of Vogue ¤ Photo by @annieleibovitz https://tinyurl.com/yff43k8p
🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en A fascinating piece about perhaps the most legendary battle of this war – the siege of Mariupol Azovstal plant during which 3,000 🇺🇦fighters had been resisting a vastly larger 🇷🇺force for 80 days. About the tremendous heroism and unbearable horror.
⋙ NYT: Last Stand at Azovstal: Inside the Siege That Shaped the Ukraine War https://tinyurl.com/y9vcpenj “‘You realize that your friends are dead, they are lying here next to you. And on the other hand, you’re walking and you rejoice, you are happy because you survived’”
// 7/24-5/2022; For 80 days, at a sprawling steelworks, a relentless Russian assault met unyielding Ukrainian resistance. This is how it was for those who fought, and for those trapped beneath the battlefield.UkraineToday: ‘Crippling’ Western sanctions are hitting Russia much harder that Putin is letting on, say Yale economists https://tinyurl.com/j4t6y8rf
// Business retreats and sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy, say a group of Yale University economists and business experts led by Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld🧵 RT @WarintheFuture As we seen the unfolding Ukrainian operations in southern Ukraine, it is worth pondering, what happens when Ukraine takes back the south? 1/21
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1551873063272136706?s=20🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Putin’s gas war against Europe is a direct continuation of his war on Ukraine. Wherever he can bring harm, he will. He will use every dependence Europe has on Russia to ruin the normal life of every European family. The only way is to hit back hard and get rid of any dependence.
⭕ 25 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @rolandebrown “Humiliated people can struggle to imagine a future as they play out old traumas over and over. We won’t let you emerge into a future, the Kremlin seems to be saying to Ukrainians; we want you stuck in the past we can’t overcome.”
NYT, Peter Pomerantsev: Ukraine Is the Next Act in Putin’s Empire of Humiliation https://tinyurl.com/3b44ka7k “[T]heKremlin seems to be saying to Ukrainians; we want you stuck in the past we can’t overcome
// There seems to be nothing in Russia’s mainstream discourse that takes responsibility for the past and imagines a different path forward.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Ukraine’s military destroys Russian command post, ammunition depot in southern Ukraine. ¤ Ukraine’s Operational Command “South” reported that they killed 48 Russian troops and destroyed 4 tanks, a howitzer, a self-propelled artillery system, and 6 armored and military vehicles.
TheTelegraph [UK]: Himars have ‘changed everything’: weapons destroy 50 Russian ammunition depots in one month https://tinyurl.com/3a8pa2fn
// Ukraine strikes three bridges across the Dnieper in Kremlin-occupied Kherson in recent days using US-supplied missile launchers🐣 RT @mhmck What Russian imperialists and their Western apologists have in common is they deny Ukrainians agency. They see the Ukrainian people as acted upon rather than acting. They tell Ukrainians how to frame reality rather than listening to Ukrainians express their experience of it.
🐣 RT @nexta_tv Fighters of the #Ukrainian Armed Forces have completely eliminated five #Russian armies out of 10 existing ones during the war, states National Security and Defence adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of #Ukraine, Oleksiy Arestovich.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling A strong & accurate comment by Ukraine DefMin Reznikov. ¤ Interestingly, I read several articles in major newspapers this weekend – all written by journalist – implying “We must give UKRAINE more HIMARs.” ¤ There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems. 1/11
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1551668596803358724?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Minister: HIMARS destroyed about 50 Russian ammunition depots in Ukraine. ¤ Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov was referring to U.S.-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. “Our gunners use HIMARS very precisely – they work like a surgeon with a scalpel,” he said on July 25.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Ukraine originally asked for MLSR. We provided HIMARS for several reasons.
The M142 HIMARS is a fast-moving wheeled vehicle that travels 60mph+ on roads, 30mph (or so) on rough terrain.
The M270 MLRS is a tracked vehicle designed to keep up w/ tanks on rough terrain. Slower. 2/ […]🐣 RT @PaulaChertok It’s just astounding that Republicans are running as Christian Nationalists. It’s not just the Marjorie Taylor Greene wing. The entire Republican Party opposes women’s rights, gay rights and voting rights. We have to elect more Democrats and marginalize this fascism while we can.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Republicans are *open extremists. MTG openly embraces Christian Nationalism—which is both racist & fascist. Most GOP are rolling back women’s rights now. JD Vance in Ohio wants women to stay in violent marriages!! We need to elect Democrats like @TimRyan & shut out this insanity.🐣 RT @mhmck Keeping the legacy of Holodomor-denier Walter Duranty alive, the New York Times appointed pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine demagogue Andrew Kramer to head its Kyiv bureau. ¤ Kramer’s insufferable imperial condescension is about to be inflicted on the long-suffering Ukrainian people.
⋙ 🐣 “insufferable imperial condescension” — sounds like he’ll fit right in at the Times🐣 RT @therecount Pres. Biden to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement conference: ¤ “Donald Trump lacked the courage to act [on January 6th] … You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1551683685367386112?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @UROCKlive1 This is a good start, but they’ve missed a few. ¤ Amazing that Fox is willing to admit how Russian propagandists they pay.
// Ukraine’s list of “Russian propagandists” includes: Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, John Miersheimer, Glenn Greenwald; seen on Fox🐣 RT @hugolowell NEW: Jan. 6 committee member Elaine Luria releases unseen video of depositions and exhibits showing Trump crossed out line in prepared remarks on 1/7 that he would call on DOJ to prosecute Capitol attack rioters — via @RepElaineLuria:
💽 https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1551571605121339392?s=20/photo/1Reuters: Ukraine says it has destroyed 50 Russian ammunition depots using HIMARS https://tinyurl.com/2u35bu44
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski When you’ve lost ‘Fox & Friends.’
Textlink: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1551682913229590528?s=20/photo/1[Trump Text:] @foxandfriends just really botched my poll numbers, no doubt on purpose. That show has been terrible – gone to the “dark side.” They quickly quote the big Turning Point Poll victory of almost 60 points over the number two Republican, and then hammer me with outliers. Actually, almost all polls have me leading all Republicans & Biden BY A LOT. RINO Paul Ryan, one of the weakest and worst Speakers EVER, must be running the place. Anyway, thank you to Turning Point, the crowd & “love” was AMAZING!
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ Court seizes part of Kyiv shopping mall co-owned by Putin allies. ¤ The mall near Kyiv’s Shulyavska metro station is co-owned by Alexei Miller, CEO of Russian gas giant Gazprom, and Yury Kovalchuk, a banker and Putin ally, Yevropeiska Pravda reported, citing its sources.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Another co-owner is Alexander Fokin, a member of the Russian parliament.🐣 RT @ @ChristopherJM 👀 @ItsBorys and @saintjavelin’s path from meme t-shirt seller to big crowdfunding org to partnering with Ukraine’s president to help build a drone army is pretty incredible. And it’s merely one of many impressive initiatives aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. […]
¤ https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1551674812669612033?s=20🐣 RT @walter_report File this one under: “no shit”.
¤ https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1551679740905283584?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @SamuelSokol Lavrov says Russian aim is to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky [link]
🐣 RT @walter_report Secret bio weapon facilities? Ukrainians are big meanies who make fun of Putin? Shall we take bets on their next excuse?🐣 RT @bfry1981 It’s not about NATO. It’s about Russia’s centuries’ old ambition to dominate and subjugate Ukraine, before NATO or even the United States existed.
🧵 RT @RALee85 Russia’s ultimate goal in this war is to end an independent Ukraine/Ukrainian identity separate from Russia’s, or to weaken it as much as possible if the former isn’t possible. That goal has not changed and Russia will keep seeking to achieve it unless stopped on the battlefield.
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1551662628136706048?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sapinker A bold idea: NATO offers to withdraw nukes from Europe (militarily useless, ineffective deterrents as we’ve just seen, & recklessly dangerous) in return for ending the invasion. Putin gets a “win” which costs us nothing worth having.
⋙⋙⋙ TheHill: Nuclear strategy and ending the war in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/j5urm9ay
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 There is nothing wrong with negotiations, but Russian officials haven’t indicated they’re interested in serious negotiations while they think Russia can improve its position on the battlefield (at least since March). Here is what Lavrov said yesterday. 2/
¤ https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1551666971581812737?s=20/photo/1[Text:] KYIV, Ukraine – Russia’s top diplomat said Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime;” expressing the Kremlin’s war aims in some of the bluntest terms yet as its forces pummel the country with artillery barrages and airstrikes.
The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to
resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports –something that would help ease global food shortages – under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend.“We are determined to help the people of eastern Ukraine to liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime,” Lavrov said at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy’s government.
Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east, Lavrov said: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The starting point to ending this war is by shaping the military balance of power so that Russia cannot make further advances. That can be done through arms deliveries, training, and other support for Ukraine. NATO concessions at this point would only be counterproductive. 3/
MilitaryLand: Invasion Day 152 – Summary https://tinyurl.com/yh2ahuuh Excellent maps. Touch map to ENLARGE. ¤ Example: Kherson Front:
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1551672307051028480?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @bykerboyo If Russia holds a referendum in Kherson’s incorporation, any attack on it will receive a nuclear response. Pretty sure 2 million plus deaths in Kyiv will cause Zelensky, if he survived, to take pause.
⋙ 🐣 WaPo (7/21): “U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned Tuesday that Moscow is preparing ‘sham’ referendums to annex more of Ukraine, moves he called ‘premeditated, illegal and illegitimate.’” https://tinyurl.com/2p9fyyhy
⋙ 🐣 no one buys this; the US has already said any referendum is illegal; NATO does not acknowledge lands claimed by conquest ¤ Putin can dream on that he can wave a magic wand and things will magically change; the only thing that will go *poof* is him
⋙ 🐣 RT @warrensbuffet2 Pretty sure Russia declared Donetsk is “Russian” and it’s getting f’in pounded daily by HiMARS, where’s the nukes comrade?NYT: Ukrainians gather forces near Kherson, preparing for a counteroffensive. https://tinyurl.com/ytfp5zb5
🐣 RT @Gibwuzhere Well, in about a month or so, we’ll know who’s right. The Russian channels on Telegraph are bordering on panic about the HIMARS strikes on ammo dumps. If UA can make substantial gains around Kherson by end Sept, guess that will prove the point.
// part of exchange🧵 RT @UnqualWarlord Why is Kherson so important? A thread:
📌 https://twitter.com/UnqualWarlord/status/1551597251096715265?s=20🧵 RT @MacaesBruno The Human Rights Watch report show the whole of Kherson has become a concentration camp. Indiscriminate murder, rape and unimaginably cruel torture used against civilians
📌 https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1551526849544601600?s=20WaPo: Ukraine wants more ‘game-changer’ HIMARS. The U.S. says it’s complicated. https://tinyurl.com/3dzkfbxa For Ukraine, the decision process is “like in a computer game. … The problem with real life is that you can’t die multiple times before you get to the next level”
// The agile, precision-launch rocket systems are helping Ukraine fend off Russian artillery attacks🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en Ukrainian Warriors tell who’s waiting for them at home and what they will do after Victory. ¤ They are so grounded and sincere. Honored to call them my fellow Ukrainians. ¤ English subtitles
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1551477605039218689?s=20/photo/1CSIS (5/23): What Does $40 Billion in Aid to Ukraine Buy? https://tinyurl.com/a63wet5t The package contains $19 billion of near-term military aid, including military equipment, training, salaries, etc.; the rest is for humanitarian aid, NATO, etc; for current Fiscal Year, ending 9/30
// 5/23/2022AirForceMag (7/15): As Ukrainian Pilot Training Passes House NDAA, Legislators Work to Overcome Roadblocks https://tinyurl.com/476tters
🧵 RT @TCG_CrisisRisks [Cavell Group] Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes continue to be launched from the land, sea and air with multiple launches yesterday and overnight. Most impacts were reported in the south and southeast.
📌 https://twitter.com/TCG_CrisisRisks/status/1551433589643808768?s=2011. North of Kherson Ukrainian forces continued to make progress yesterday, but we are refraining from circulating details of operations here due to OPSEC. The same applies closer to Kherson City where several Ukrainian operations are underway.
12. Ukrainian HIMARS continues to strike targets in and around Kherson including Russian military command centres, communications and infrastructure, including strategic bridges and roads. Similar strikes also occurred in other occupied regions and with increasing success.
13. Advanced Ukrainian weapons and increasing Russian losses, including Senior Commanders, is now significantly degrading many units and is seemingly slowing Russian operations in numerous regions.
14. The speed at which Russian forces can regenerate these units and with what skills and experience will likely impact the next phase and course of their invasion. Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kherson will be pivotal to this too.⭕ 24 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer KHERSON /1200 UTC 24 JUL/ A UKR offensive is underway with the object of liberating Kherson. As the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) advances, UKR artillery will target RU defensive concentrations as well as RU nodes of logistics and Command, Control & Communications (C3).
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1551172648117456896?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en 5 months of war. ¤ I would like to believe that we changed during this time, united around true values: peace, kindness, life, love, help. We became more mindful. We got stronger. ¤ I know I will soon write here – it’s been 5 months since we’ve won! ¤ Thank you for being with us! 🇺🇦
🖼 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1551170746994593794?s=20/photo/1WaPo: Ukraine wants more ‘game-changer’ HIMARS. The U.S. says it’s complicated. https://tinyurl.com/3dzkfbxa For Ukraine, the decision process is “like in a computer game. … The problem with real life is that you can’t die multiple times before you get to the next level”
// The agile, precision-launch rocket systems are helping Ukraine fend off Russian artillery attacks in the east🐣 RT @mhmck The Ukrainian offensive against the Russian fascist invaders is going well in the south. I find it difficult to chronicle without violating operational security and putting Ukrainian soldiers at risk. But attacks in depth on enemy logistics are bearing fruit. Ukraine will win.
🐣 RT @DAlperovitch Former DNR defense minister Girkin:
– RU offensives have stalled due to severe manpower shortages, which can’t be compensated without partial mobilization
– UKR strikes on Kherson bridges will challenge resupplies to RU forces. Pontoon bridges aren’t sufficient to replace them💙 MoscowTimes: Ukraine’s Kherson to Be ‘Liberated’ From Russia By September – Official https://tinyurl.com/2p99vnmp “[S]trikes on two key bridges in the region, as well as attacks on Russian arms depots and command posts were part of preparatory work for a ground offensive”
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1551400554319978496?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @4lisaguerrero These clips of Liz Cheney this morning are 🔥. And importantly, this is likely the first time many of the Fox News viewers have heard these facts
⋙ 🧵📌 RT @atrupar Liz Cheney on Fox News in response to Baier’s question about if the J6 committee is investigating Pelosi and the Capitol Police: “What we aren’t gonna do, Bret, is blame the Capitol Police, blame those in law enforcement, for Donald Trump’s armed mob that he sent to the Capitol”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1551206342110625792?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ManSalouh Russia. The Ukrainian army has already made a plan for [Kherson’s] liberation, has begun to hit important targets, including bridges, supply lines, S300 defense system, ammunition & arms depots & the command posts.
🐣 RT @nytimes Vladimir Putin casts himself as the leader of a global movement against domination by the U.S. and its allies. On Sunday, his top diplomat brought that message to Africa, hoping to turn hunger and social strife across the continent to Russia’s advantage.
⋙ NYT: Russia Tells Famine-Fearing Africa It’s Not to Blame for Food Shortage https://tinyurl.com/r2rsmw3w
// Badly needed grain has been piling up in Ukrainian ports since Moscow invaded, but Russia’s top diplomat is in Africa saying the West is to blame.🐣 RT @Euan_MacDonald With Russians spotted assembling troop/fuel convoy in Krasnodarskiy Krai, perhaps to move to Kherson via Crimea, this is an interesting hypothesis.
⋙ 💙 🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien Sunday update, the shift in focus is to the west (Kherson Front) as Ukraine is preparing the ground for a counteroffensive and Russian attempts to continue to move forward in the Donbas are petering out. Ukrainian strategy, Bleed them in the Donbas, Defeat them in Kherson.
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1551095330674016256?s=20🐣 RT @Reevellp Russian media reporting Ukraine has hit the bridge by the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam and another bridge over the Ingulets river. They are 2 of the only 3 crossing points for Russia to supply Kherson. A local official says the Kakhovskaya bridge is damaged- the dam itself not.
⭕ 23 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @ibileoloro The USA recently colonized Ukraine. Zelensky better behave.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CKikila Classic Muscovite Chauvinist response, can’t even acknowledge Ukrainian agency and sovereignty. ¤ It’s always some big boogieman that controls everything, because god forbid the Ukrainians don’t want to live as serfs under Moscow’s yoke.
🐣 RT @ibileoloro What sovereignty? A country who’s GDP is $150 Billion and Debt is $128 Billion? A country where corruption stole it’s national security budget to the extent that it now begs for bullets.. A failed state! What sovereignty rights does a failed state have other than subordination.
🐣 Germany, France, the UK & the rest of Europe were in the same situation at the end of ww2; so the US helped out with the Marshall Plan; capitalism went to work and now they thrive. Same deal will happen for a rebuilt, thriving and *sovereign*Ukraine.💙 🐣 .@jakejsullivan I’m disappointed in your statement that providing ATACMS would lead to ww3; why is Russia bombing Ukraine from deep inside Russia not as bad? ¤ You can trust Ukraine not to use them to bomb Russia. Ukraine is doing our fighting for us. Give them what they need now!
🐣 RT @igorsushko Ukrainian children are being indoctrinated by force into “#Putin’s Youth” in occupied Kherson and other regions in #Ukraine. Source: Ukrainian Military Intelligence.s 21% of Ukraine is occupied by fascist Russia, 126,610 km2: equivalent to Austria & Netherlands combined.
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas A major military defeat for Russia in Ukraine will be devastating for Putin’s genius reputation at home. As well as for Lavrov’s ridiculous braggadocio on incorporating Kherson. ¤ Don’t let them get away with it. [link]
🐣 RT @SamsonMwandara [Text:] “🇷🇺 only agreed for the ports to be used as a grain shipment not to hide western weapons in the Port warehouses, the western dictators are crying a lot through their fake media’s coz the target was their new weapons which was arrived in Ukraine from Poland and Norway two day’s ago”
⋙ 🐣 RT @TJtradesTA That’s false lol. I’m sure there’s weapons stored in Odessa to bring to Kherson, but looking at the map the rocket did not hit anything weapon related lol. Red square is where the rockets landed. Pink is grain terminals, which was likely the target.
🌎 https://twitter.com/TJtradesTA/status/1551035508066852864?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Richie3Kelly What, Ukraine liberating forces haven’t entered the city yet? ¤ If they don’t hurry up, soon there won’t be any Ukraine nationals left in Kherson to liberate 🙄
⋙ 🐣 why would they want urban warfare? they are trying to force Ru out by blowing up their munitions and limiting their escape routes ¤ “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle” — Sun Tzu🧵 RT @walter_report Walter Report has stopped hosting our 24/7 Twitter Space on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rest assured WR is steadfast in its commitment to victory for Ukraine as we enter a new phase. Here’s a with a look back on how we got started, what we’ve accomplished & what’s next. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1550947004003471361?s=20KyivIndependent, Illia Ponomarenko: Why is Russia so vulnerable to HIMARS in Ukraine? https://tinyurl.com/4jsjzhur “The Russian military has held on to the outdated Soviet approach of having a hyper-centralized command and control system” that is no match for the agile HIMARS
Within just weeks, a few HIMARSs have managed to strip Russia of the majority, if not all of, its most considerable ammunition and fuel depots in Donbas and Ukraine’s occupied south. ¤ With almost every nightfall, videos of massive detonations at Russian depots in Kherson Oblast or Donbas pop up on social media. ¤ The situation has even prompted Russian military bloggers to openly raise alarm about escalating munitions hunger, as Russian artillery supremacy was the key behind its incremental advances in Donbas.
As part of their expanding hit list, HIMARS were reportedly used to target Russia’s 20th Motorized Infantry Brigade headquarters, with the brigade commander Colonel Aleksey Gorobets and two other senior commanders killed on July 12. ¤ The rockets have also successfully targeted a Repellent-1 on July 18 in Nova Kakhovka and a Podlet K1 in Lazurne, critical Russian air defense radars in Kherson Oblast. Moreover, HIMARS were used in a series of strikes upon the Antonivsky Bridge near Kherson, which rendered a key Russian supply line temporarily unusable on July 20.
Russia also appears to be incapable of quickly de-concentrating its depots, which could save its munitions in the occupied parts of Ukraine. The Russian military has held on to the outdated Soviet approach of having a hyper-centralized command and control system that doesn’t allow for much initiative from medium- and low-rank leaders. … Russian military bloggers have admitted that switching to a more flexible system would take months or even years, which is not a viable solution during the ongoing war.
The high-precision M30/M31 GMLRS rockets used by Ukrainian HIMARS have an effective range of some 85 kilometers. Therefore, locating their depots beyond this dangerous effective range would be the answer to the problem. But by pulling them back, Russia is also greatly complicating its already very problematic logistics. ¤ Russian trucks would have to make it 90 or 100, or even 120 kilometers, to bring supplies to frontline units from dumps instead of the more usual 20 or 30 kilometers. This would take much more time, fuel, and even more manual labor. … But Russia’s military keeps running short of trucks, and truck drivers were killed in huge numbers during Russia’s early offensive deep inside Ukraine. According to the open source project Oryx documenting Russian war losses, the Russian military has lost at least 1,254 supply trucks and fuel tankers.
Even if they are eventually relocated farther away from the front line, Russian depots would still be threatened by Ukrainian Tochka-U missiles, which have already swept off some of Russia’s most giant ammo dumps in Donbas, such as the one in the city of Khrustalniy (formerly Krasniy Luch) in Luhansk Oblast on June 18. ¤ Should Ukraine be finally provided with 300-kilometer ATACMS missiles, the situation will become even more complicated for Russia. …
During a Pentagon briefing on July 20, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, confirmed that Russia had not destroyed a single HIMARS provided to Ukraine. The top general also reiterated that the Ukrainian military had been “very effective” at using them against Russia. ¤ A HIMARS is indeed a challenging target for today’s Russian military. ¤ Fast and very mobile, they take their positions deeper in the Ukrainian-controlled rear, where Russia still has a rather weak situational awareness and where they are very hard to spot and kill immediately, even with high-precision weapons. According to experts polled by the Kyiv Independent, the only realistic chance for Russia to destroy the HIMARS is to strike when a Ukrainian crew fails to leave its position quickly, or when it exposes its location.
The Russian air force could also be a serious threat. But as these last months of war have demonstrated, Russian attack aircraft have been cautious about going any deeper into Ukrainian-controlled territory, mainly due to strong air defense and the abundance of man-portable anti-aircraft systems (MANPADS), including those provided by the West.
Even advanced Russian air defense systems find it hard or impossible to intercept incoming HIMARS rockets. ¤ Russia’s much-advertised S-400 or Pantsir-S1 air defense systems, which have been deployed in occupied Ukraine, have not been effective at stopping them over the last few weeks. Russia’s S-300 or S-400 systems are supposed to be able to successfully intercept medium- and long-range aerodynamic (cruise missiles) or ballistic targets. ¤ But the problem is that HIMARS’ rockets are very hard to notice on time.
HIMARS M30/M31 GMLRS rockets strike their targets at the speed of Mach 2.5, or nearly 3,062.6 kilometers per hour. Therefore, when they have to reach a target 80 kilometers away, they spend some 94 seconds in the air before they hit their target. But they also fly at altitudes far lower than any cruise or ballistic missile, giving Russian air defense little time to notice them and react. ¤ This means Ukrainian-operated HIMARSs continue delivering strikes anywhere they can reach. ¤ Especially when the Ukrainian military overcharges Russian air defenses with barrages of Tochka-U, Uragan, or Smerch rounds — and then shoots a full salvo of HIMARS to get a guaranteed hit.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling It’s been a while since I’ve provided thoughts on Ukraine (again, due to work/travel), but perhaps it’s time for a new thread on Ukraine. ¤ I’ll start with a few comments on this terrific interview of a defense official reported by @nickschifrin of @Pbs ¤ A [thread] 1/20 [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1550871729362587648?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 5. There’s been rumors of Ukraine getting ATACMS long-range missiles; and this week GEN Brown “teased” delivery of western jet to UKR. I’d bet neither will happen soon. ¤ Rather, that’s long term planning, indicative of US assisting UA to build a new future force structure.19/
⋙⋙ 🐣 It does seems unfair not to provide ATACMSs to Ukraine for fear they’ll be used to strike Russia when daily Russia is striking civilians in Ukraine from inside Russia. ¤ Surely the Ukrainians will comply with limitations on their use imposed by Washington🐣 RT @michaeldweiss ATACMS don’t just have a longer range. They’re about four times more powerful than the munitions currently supplied to Ukrainian HIMARS. One strike with an ATACMS, for instance, would destroy the Antonovskiy Bridge in Kherson Ukraine has been hitting for days now with HIMARS.
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Less than 24 hours after I wrote this, Odesa was struck by Russian missiles. This is what “deals” with Putin always achieve, more violence. Ukrainians are being slaughtered every day, every hour, and appeasers still talk about deals.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1550886038620569600?s=20
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Now a deal for grain export, after Russia has been destroying and stealing Ukrainian food for months. Why make deals instead of kicking the Russian fleet out of the Black Sea? Stop giving in to blackmail. Stop acting like Russia will keep its word or make concessions.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1550532843289227265?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Russia fires missiles from a safe distance, and from ships & subs. Instead of providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs to strike back and end the slaughter, occupation, and war, the US measures out Ukrainian blood by the kilometer.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Right on time, State Dept’s Sullivan came out to say that while the US supports Ukraine, weapons with 300km range is a magical line that would cause WWIII if crossed. It’s absurd and barely better than Kremlin saber-rattling.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent US not prepared to provide Ukraine with ATACMS. ¤ In a briefing on July 22, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that U.S. President Joe Biden is not prepared to provide Ukraine with ATACMS, surface-to-surface missiles with a range of over 300 kilometers.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Sullivan noted that, while providing the necessary resources to support and defend Ukraine remains a key goal of the U.S., another key goal is to “ensure we do not end up in a circumstance where we’re heading down the road towards a third world war.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Where do these limits come from? Is the US still talking to the Kremlin, still letting Putin deter them even now? After Bucha? With Russian missiles raining down on civilian centers? Sullivan & the rest should check history books to see how people like them end up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Putin will continue to invade and kill, to try to starve millions, to ratchet up the price of energy around the world. Instead of uniting to stop him immediately, with all the weapons Ukraine needs, the allies still negotiate and mitigate with a war criminal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 As I said months ago, years ago, the only way to end this war is for Ukraine to achieve victory on their terms. To destroy and expel Putin’s war machine. He will never negotiate in a real way unless faced with total defeat. Everything else is a delay, a charade, a humiliation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Germany, the US, and the rest are still afraid of Ukraine winning. They prefer their beloved “negotiated outcomes” where Ukraine is slowly destroyed and Putin’s murder & torture take place more quietly, out of the headlines. Blood on their hands.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Putin has made outlandish bluffs from the start, about NATO expansion, jets and artillery. Instead he attacks when he sees weakness, as the attack on Odesa today. Give Ukraine what it needs, the range and firepower to defend its sovereign territory. They are fighting for you.TheGuardian: Kherson’s secret art society produces searing visions of life under Russian occupation https://tinyurl.com/s5w84frn
// Painters, playwrights and photographers have defied the threat of arrest in southern Ukrainian city to share their experiences⭕ 22 Jul 2022
📔 HRW: Ukraine: Torture, Disappearances in Occupied South https://tinyurl.com/8c4k3jf6
// Apparent War Crimes by Russian Forces in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia Regions🐣 RT @john_sipher “Russia sought to gain access, develop relationships and, in varying ways, gather information from and convey disinformation to men who later had direct access to the Oval Office and the president. Each one…had been bought, suckered or seduced by Russia.”
⇈ ⇊
WaPo, Peter Strzok: In one Oval Office meeting, a triple Russian threat https://tinyurl.com/4s9sern7 “The tiny group … was made up of not one, not two, but three people who’d had direct contact with employees or sanctioned or convicted agents of the Russian government”
// Peter Strzok is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and former deputy of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. He is the author of “Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump.”
// A midnight rendezvous with Trump posed a national security risk, says former FBI counterintelligence deputy Peter StrzokLate on the night of Dec. 18, 2020, a small group of people sat in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, loser of the previous month’s presidential election. White House advisers and campaign staff had repeatedly told him he’d lost — as witness after witness appearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol affirmed — and every lawsuit challenging the outcome had gone against him. Regardless, this meeting’s participants were there to explore a range of extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, options to keep Trump in power, including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines extralegally and deploying the National Guard to rerun the election. …
It was a counterintelligence risk of the highest order. ¤ Consider that the tiny group in the Oval Office that night was made up of not one, not two, but three people who’d had direct contact with employees or sanctioned or convicted agents of the Russian government: Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne. At a moment of grave national peril for the United States, this was an astonishing intelligence achievement for Russia. Giuliani, Flynn and Byrne had all been likely targets of Russian information collection. Russia sought to gain access, develop relationships and, in varying ways, gather information from and convey disinformation to men who later had direct access to the Oval Office and the president. Each one, whether he knew it or not, had been bought, suckered or seduced by Russia.
Take Giuliani first. During repeated travel to Ukraine, Giuliani again and again interacted with Russian intelligence agents, including Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian parliament described by the U.S. government as “an active Russian agent for over a decade.” The Washington Post has reported that the contact reportedly raised such alarm within the U.S. intelligence community that agencies took the extraordinary step of warning the Trump White House that the president’s personal attorney was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Then there’s Flynn. Just two months before he joined Trump’s campaign in February 2016, Russia Today, now a registered agent of the Russian government that dispenses propaganda, paid him to attend its anniversary celebration in Moscow and seated him next to Vladimir Putin. Weeks into his tenure as national security adviser, Flynn resigned and was later convicted of lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak relating to a variety of topics, including Russian interference in the 2016 elections. I was one of two FBI agents he pleaded guilty to lying to.
And then there was Byrne, “the Overstock person — I didn’t even know who this guy was,” as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who crashed the meeting, described him. Byrne had engaged in a years-long intimate relationship with now-convicted Russian agent Maria Butina. Butina admitted to conspiring with a Russian government official to clandestinely act in the United States at the direction of Russia. (Byrne has claimed that I and other senior FBI leaders directed him to sleep with Butina. That allegation is false, at least as it applies to me; I had not heard of Byrne until he made those claims.) While secretly working for Russia in this country, Butina’s targets included the National Rifle Association, Republican Party officials and the Trump campaign. After she was deported to Russia at the end of her prison sentence, Byrne “made a gift to Maria out of a desire to let her land on her feet and restart her life in Russia,” he told Business Insider in an email. Butina proceeded to hound Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, visiting him in prison at the behest of RT, Navalny’s team said, while he was on a hunger strike; wore clothing marked with a Z while urging support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and successfully ran for a seat in the Duma, Russia’s parliament. …
Of course, the counterintelligence elephant in the room sat on the other side of the Resolute Desk during that Dec. 18 meeting. ¤ Trump’s numerous counterintelligence vulnerabilities — undisclosed financial entanglements; believing Russian intelligence agencies ahead of his own; odd pro-Russian views of NATO allies — are catalogued in the report of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a Senate report, and countless books and articles. (I opened the FBI’s investigation into allegations that the Russian government sought to privately offer election assistance to Trump’s presidential campaign and later was on Mueller’s team for the first two months of his two-year investigation.)
As if intelligence gathered through relationships and physical interactions weren’t enough, what might Russia have collected through technical means? What did Giuliani, Flynn and Byrne say on their cellphone calls? What did they text? Email? What electronic devices did they bring onto the White House grounds when they arrived unannounced, and were any brought into the Oval Office or the “Yellow Oval” in the president’s private residence? …
… In early 2019, Russian politician Dmitry Rogozin observed, “I think that America is actually engulfed by its second civil war now.” The Jan. 6 committee’s revelations about the depth and complexity of the attack on our democracy cause one to wonder whether this thought is more than Russian bluster. Thanks to their intelligence-gathering activities, by the end of 2020, the Russians may have had a far clearer window than most Americans into one of the greatest internal threats to our democracy thus far. As a result of the ongoing efforts of Giuliani, Flynn and Byrne, they may already have ringside seats to the next.
🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Black Sea OTMO, Day 124-148. The Russian blockade of Odesa has been severely degraded as UAF air, artillery, & UCAV pressure (notably the introduction of improved anti-ship missile capabilities like the Harpoon) has loosened the Russian grip on sea lanes of the NW Black Sea.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1550642258508234753?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JominiW 6/ I have made correction to yesterday’s graphics, they contained several typos. Please reference these versions, sorry of the confusion. Tomorrow’s update will focus on air operations.
🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1550642263952429056?s=20/photo/1 -4🐣 RT @djrothkopf Since mid-May, Joe Biden has undertaken one of the most intensive foreign policy marathons in recent in memory. I had a one-on-one conversation with National Security Advisor @JakeSullivan46 to discuss what was accomplished, why & where it leads.
⋙ DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: What Comes Next After Biden’s Foreign Policy Marathon https://tinyurl.com/49cztk7v “[M]any Americans have missed out on the significance of what President Biden has accomplished in just nine weeks”
// In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan talks about Biden’s recent Middle East trip and the challenges that lie ahead.The president’s foreign policy blitz has come in the midst of numerous crises, both at home and abroad. Inflation, a right-wing activist Supreme Court, and an opposition party in which many are still more inclined to disbelieve the results of the 2020 election than to accept he is the legitimately elected President of the United States. Then there’s the intransigence of a senator in his own party—Joe Manchin—who stymies Biden’s agenda at every turn. Oh, and now the president has COVID. ¤ Amid all that, however, many Americans have missed out on the significance of what President Biden has accomplished in just nine weeks. …
“You’d be hard-pressed to find another president operating at this pace—and all this in an election year,” said U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. “When you think of the stakes involved with China, Russia, Ukraine, NATO expansion, ensuring affordable energy and food supplies, Israel’s integration with the region, shoring up security partnerships, and major issues of geopolitics—to do all those things in nine weeks and to see how much better off the U.S. is at the end of it whether in terms of short-term or long-term trends, it is hard to argue, especially for anyone who has watched him in action, that he has slowed down or been hindered by domestic politics.”
“We have fully entered the post-post-Cold War era,” says Sullivan. “And whether we like it or not we are going to have to move with speed and substance everywhere to reshape what comes next. The next decade—the 2020s—will be decisive. …
WaPo, Monica Hesse: Liz Cheney understood the assignment https://tinyurl.com/5n7k9z7x
// She never lost sight of a fact Republicans couldn’t comprehend: The hearings aren’t about spanking Trump. They’re about saving America.🐣 RT @OriginalRamayan ‘And I want to thank all our soldiers who cleared Snake Island from the enemy, defend Odesa and Mykolaiv, gradually advance in Kherson region, liberating our territory. I’m thankful to all of you who proves every day: Russia will not win this war.’ ~Zelenskyy
💽 https://twitter.com/OriginalRamayan/status/1550589937472372737?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @ThreshedThought Time for a little update thread on Ukraine. ¤ We are at a very interesting point. ¤ A [thread] [on Kherson] […]
📌 https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1550450333545123841?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @ Over the last fortnight or so, the Ukrainians have been hitting Command and Control posts up to the 70km range of the new systems (headquarters, communications sites, air defence radars etc.). ¤ This dislocates a military force.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ This sort of range means that generally speaking they are hitting Brigade and Divisional HQs rather than company and battalion ones. ¤ In a war you keep the more valuable things further from a front line to protect them. Longer range artillery upsets this calculation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Secondly, the Ukrainians have been hitting supply dumps. I’m sure we’ve all seen the videos and photos on twitter. ¤ Judging by the size of those fires they were brigade, divisional and corps level supply dumps – which are predominantly fuel and ammo.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ And specifically for the Russians and the way that they conduct war – it means a lot of artillery ammunition.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ This has meant that the Russians have had to move all of these supply dumps back beyond the range of the new Ukrainian artillery. ¤ And this has one very simple effect.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The Russians now have to transport all those supplies, say, 100km rather than 30km. ¤ And if you have the same amount of lorries it means you can only bring up 1/3 of the supplies that you could before you had to move your supply dumps. ¤ And what does that mean?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ It means that Russia, who rely on a very artillery heavy way of fighting war (and artillery is the most logistics intensive thing ever), can probably no longer get enough supplies up to the front line to conduct offensives; they can probably only defend on the Kherson front now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ And, I guess as the cherry on the cake, the Ukrainians have started hitting the bridges over the river Dnipro that connect Kherson to the other side of the river. ¤ In other words, the bridges to the Russian force’s rear.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ There are only two of them. And they haven’t destroyed them yet, they’ve just cratered them making them unsuitable for heavy logistics. ¤ But if I were a Russian soldier in Kherson I would be pretty scared right now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The way to get an enemy force to collapse is to hit their command and control, hit their logistics, and then start playing games with their minds.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I would be watching Kherson very closely over the next ten days. ¤ I think we might be about to see another Russian ‘goodwill’ gesture as they pull out of Kherson 😂 ¤ ENDS⋙ 🐣 RT @ Doesn’t end. Seems this was happening as I was typing my thread
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR Ukraine refuses the enemy’s request for a green corridor for thousands of soldiers to exit Kherson region. Ukraine demands their surrender of troops and equipment otherwise they will be eradicated. [link]⋙🐣 RT @PedroMCosta78 This is it. This is the turning point. Might take time, but it’s downhill for them, now. ¤ An exhausted army full of bullshitted conscripts, firing SA missiles against land targets to hit nothing but civilians, aided by traitors and the corrupt. Severodonetsk was well played.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PedroMCosta78 A thing that never ceases to amaze me is people thinking that Russia could ever win. ¤ For Putin and his Babushkas, waging war against the ‘kokhols’ is an internal affair, but they fail to grasp that no matter what happens, with or without NATO weapons, they will lose.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PedroMCosta78 They will lose because the Ukranians want not only what is theirs but something better. ¤ They are tired of corruption, of being bullshitted into poverty and ignorance by a regime that has nothing to offer but vain images of the past that never was – but yet they are stuck in.🐣 RT @ Wow; more than 100 high value targets taken out by Ukraine: you can see why General Milley was talking about the impact of the Ukrainians using the HIMARS and other systems so effectively. That has to be hurting the Russians badly
⋙ 🐣 RT @idrees.ali@thomsonreuters.com The United States believes Ukraine has taken out more than 100 “high value” Russian targets like command pots and ammunition depots, a senior U.S. defense official says.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Ukraine’s richest man doesn’t want to be called an oligarch anymore. For that, he’s ready to publicly distance himself from politics and relinquish his sway over the domestic media market.
⋙ KyivIndependent: Rinat Akhmetov trades media licenses for clean slate https://tinyurl.com/2p8f63pb💙 YahooNews, Michael Weiss: US will send Ukraine more HIMARS launchers, weaponry that is taking a toll on Russian forces https://tinyurl.com/2jr6p4en Ukraine has used HIMARS so effectively, consideration is being given to supplying them with longer-range ATACMS missiles
TheHill: Biden administration rolls out $270 million Ukraine weapons package https://tinyurl.com/4z8rdshn Included are 4 more HIMARS, bringing the total to 16, hundreds of tactical drones, as well as artillery ammunition and anti-armor vehicles
// The U.S. has committed $8.2 billion in security assistance since the beginning of the Biden administration, of which $2.6 billion has been provided
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @nexta_tv #Ukraine will receive four more HIMARS MLRS and 580 Phoenix Ghost attack and reconnaissance drones from the United States. Also, the new $270 million aid package will include 36,000 shells and anti-tank weapons. The decree was signed by President Joe Biden.NYT: Ukraine and Russia Reach Grain Deal https://tinyurl.com/yckr43cn ‘The breakthrough, aimed at bringing down soaring grain prices and alleviating a mounting global hunger crisis, comes after months of talks and was brokered with the help of the United Nations and Turkey’
🐣 RT @McFaul Ukraine’s army attacks “high value” targets. Russia’s army attacks Ukrainian civilians.
⋙ 🐣 RT @idreesali114 The United States believes Ukraine has taken out more than 100 “high value” Russian targets like command pots and ammunition depots, a senior U.S. defense official says.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @idreesali114 The U.S. official adds that Russia is taking hundreds of casualties a day. The fatalities include “thousands” of lieutenants and captains and hundreds of Russian colonels.🐣 RT @VoteVets The world’s worst dictators all understood that purging the ranks of civil service and bureaucracy, and replacing them with loyalists, was how to maintain power without end.
⋙ Axios, Jonathan Swan: A radical plan for Trump’s second term https://tinyurl.com/5cbbputc
// Allies want to empower him to purge potentially thousands of civil servants.🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukrainian TVD, Day 124-148. Late June to mid-July has seen a host of developments throughout the Ukrainian Theater of Military Action. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) have managed to secure the Luhansk Oblast but struggle to produce results on other fronts.
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1550308087155810305?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DeptOfDefense .@SecDef: As we have seen time and again over these past months of war, Ukrainian forces are frustrating Moscow’s combat objectives. And they are defending their democracy and their homeland with bravery, resolve, and valor.
💽 https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/1550477964449554433?s=20/photo/1
// Text: “Putin has consistently underestimated the power of a free people fighting to defend their homeland and the will of the international community to stand with them.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, July 21, 2022🐣 RT @atrupar emo Trump
⋙ 🐣 RT @real [TS] I had an election Rigged and Stolen from me, and our Country. The USA is going to Hell. Am I supposed to be happy?🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Cong Cheney is a principled public servant of great courage. An example of devotion to the Constitution. A great VP nomination for the Democratic ticket in 2024. A bipartisan ticket. Will give many disgusted Republicans a banner to rally behind.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Liz Cheney, per an interview reported in NYT: “I believe this is the most important thing I’ve ever done professionally and maybe the most important thing I ever do. I don’t look at it through a political lens – people need to understand how dangerous and unfit for office he is.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn With Committee chair Bennie Thompson recovering from Covid, Cheney takes over the gavel in tonight’s hearing. ¤ More here:
⋙ NYT: Liz Cheney, Front and Center in the Jan. 6 Hearings, Pursues a Mission https://tinyurl.com/2hwr42yt🐣 RT @January6thCmte The Select Committee obtained never-before-seen footage of the President recording an address to the nation on January 7th. ¤ One day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, Trump still couldn’t say the election was over.
💽 https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1550450467506896898?s=20/photo/1⭕ 21 Jul 2022 ⚖️🏛
Day 8: July 21, 2022: “Dereliction of Duty”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Liz Cheney begins the January 6 committee’s primetime July 21 hearing by announcing more hearings are coming in September
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1550272235709296640?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ECMcLaughlin Livetweet of tonight’s 1/6 hearing will be right here.
⬇️⬇️⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/1550260159783378944?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MollyJongFast Letsssssssss gooooo
📌 https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1550270058752102400?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🔲 RT @MaryLTrump Join me and @JohnFugelsang @NormOrnstein @cmclymer @AdamParkhomenko @jentaub @georgehahn @BrianKarem @WajahatAli watching the hearings NOW
📌 https://twitter.com/MaryLTrump/status/1550272287772798976?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Eighth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack https://tinyurl.com/36ea45sh
// 7/21/2022; “For the weeks between the November election and January 6, Donald Trump was a force to be reckoned with,” said January 6 Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), later adding, “and then he stopped. For 187 minutes on January 6th, this man of unbridled destructive energy could not be moved.” His remarks came as he delivered his opening statement during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is the eighth in a series of public hearings – after months of closed-door investigations – detailing the committee findings on the January 6 attack. The chair went on to say if there is no accountability for January 6th, “I fear that we will not overcome the ongoing threat to our democracy.” During her closing testimony, Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) touched on the former president’s supporters, saying, “he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. And on January 6th, Donald Trump turned their love of country … ”~~~~~~~~~~
💙 WaPo: Trump ‘chose not to act’ as mob terrorized the Capitol, panel shows https://tinyurl.com/388kfuau “Amid Trump’s inaction, Pence stepped in and gave orders to the military to clear the Capitol and stop the violence, according to Gen. Mark A. Milley”
// The prime-time hearing of the Jan. 6 committee revealed that the president resisted using the word ‘peaceful’ in a tweet even as his vice president’s Secret Service agents feared for their lives
💙 WaPo: Trump ‘chose not to act’ as mob stormed Capitol, committee says https://tinyurl.com/3eyvud82
// Live Updates💙 NYT: Jan. 6 Live Updates: 187 Minutes of Violence, and a President Who ‘Betrayed His Oath’ https://tinyurl.com/yxrkwm4e
// The House panel makes its case that former President Donald J. Trump chose to allow his supporters to assault the Capitol. One former aide said he gave a “green light” to violence.💙 MSNBC Jan. 6 hearings: Day 8 details Trump’s refusal to stop Capitol riot https://tinyurl.com/2waj6bdp
// Follow along for live updates and analysis as the House Jan. 6 select committee reveals findings from its investigation into the Capitol attack.NYT: We Are Retired Generals and Admirals. Trump’s Actions on Jan. 6 Were a Dereliction of Duty. https://tinyurl.com/ycztssf2 “The president’s dereliction of duty on Jan. 6 tested the integrity of this historic principle as never before, endangering American lives and our democracy”
// “this historic principle” = civilian control of militaryNYT: A Jan. 6 Mystery: Why Did It Take So Long to Deploy the National Guard? https://tinyurl.com/2p9fyp7e //➔ “It took more than four hours from the time the Capitol Police chief made the call for backup to when the DC National Guard troops arrived.” The reasons are complicated
🐣 RT @RepKinzinger We the people must demand more of our politicians and ourselves. Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters. If we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, this great experiment of our shining beacon on a hill, will not endure.
🐣 RT @nowthisnews The Jan 6 committee revealed audio from Steve Bannon prior to the 2020 election that shows ‘Donald Trump’s plan to falsely claim victory … no matter what the facts actually were, was premeditated’
💽 https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1550312382928490496?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @therecount “Yesterday is a hard word for me.” ¤ The 1/6 committee reveals outtakes of Donald Trump filming his speech on January 7th, where he gets frustrated and slams the lectern multiple times.
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1550307254427172864?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @benjaminwittes A thousand years from now, that Josh Hawley video will still be an awesome tribute to the Yale Law School.
🐣 RT @jilevin It can’t be stressed enough—the attack on our democracy did not end on January 6th. MAGA Republicans are running for office and those same Republicans are willing to break the law and incite violence to steal power. Jan6Justice
💽 https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1550100039577518082?s=20/photo/1🔄 🐣 📋 RT @RepDonBeyer The past week:
– 209 House Republicans vote against abortion rights
– 205 House Republicans vote against protecting interstate travel for reproductive care
– 195 House Republicans vote against protecting contraception access
– 157 House Republicans vote against marriage equality🐣 RT @JoshMankiewicz One of the best political ads I’ve ever seen:
💽 https://twitter.com/JoshMankiewicz/status/1549939949658468354?s=20/photo/1
// #WizardOfLies ¤ Thanks to you we were able to play a major role in electing Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia. We have huge plans for Pennsylvania but we can’t do it without you. Chip in at the link in this video! ¤ From MeidasTouch.com💙 🐣 RT @RinainDC I am a Republican woman who believes in the right to choose, the right to same-sex marriage, and banning assault weapons. ¤ There are millions of women like me ready to elect pro-democracy candidates in November.
🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger What was he doing while the Capitol was under siege? See for yourself. Donald Trump is a disgrace to America.
💽 https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1550105983732555781?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tribelaw Before getting too excited about the Senate’s rushed ECA reforms, please check out @NormEisen’s sober and sensible notes about how sorely lacking this effort is. Those who are cheering this stab at fixing the ECA better look at the details before hopping onto this bandwagon.
⋙ 🧵 RT @NormEisen 1/x Do we need Electoral Count Act reform? Of course & I have long said so
⋙⋙ WaPo, Wertheimer and Norm Eisen: Fixing the Electoral Count Act is no substitute for real election reform https://tinyurl.com/2s3dwxak
// It might be bipartisan, but it would be a distraction
I’ve reviewed the Senate proposals & have thoughts. Here’s a thread in my personal capacity. This is a first reaction so please say so if you disagree w/ any of the following.
📌 https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1550142945621430276?s=20
🐣 RT @NormEisen 2/x While the Senate’s conceptual ECA changes are thoughtful, on balance the execution of these changes seems on first read to be lacking. They may create greater uncertainty in counting process & are vulnerable to manipulation. As the saying goes, the devil’s in the details💙 🐣 RT @bella12600
-Unemp 3.6%
-9M new jobs
-6.2B student debt relief
-American Rescue Plan
-First gun law in 30yrs
-Confirmed 70+ judges
-Strongest NATO alliance
-New Infrastructure bill
-New Supreme Court Justice
-Secured $1.5B from MX
-Reduce deficit in 2022 by $1.7T
-$1400 for every taxpayer
// Biden/Dems💙 🐣 RT @NickKnudsenUS Republicans want to:
– Outlaw abortion nationwide
– End Medicare & Social Security
– Put a gun in every hand
– Outlaw same-sex marriage
– Outlaw contraception
– Let politicians decide election outcomes
– End the separation of church & state
That’s literally their platform.🐣 RT @VP Our Administration has issued guidance to 60,000 pharmacies reaffirming that any retail pharmacy that receives federal financial assistance must not discriminate in fulfilling prescriptions—including contraception and other prescription medications for reproductive health care.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq They’re now voting against a right to contraception. That’ll play well in attack ads.
🐣 RT @briantylercohen This November, if you cast a vote for a Republican, you’re voting to take away contraception, end same-sex marriage, and force 10-year-old rape victims to give birth.
‼️🐣 RT @duty2warn Just In: The House has voted to guarantee rights to contraceptives. The vote was 228 to 195. All 195 nays were Republicans, while 8 voted yes – Cheney, Kinzinger, Nancy Mace, Fred Upton, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Maria Salazar. Two voted “present.”
⋙ 🐣 Unbelievable! For the first time, I think Dems may be able to hold the House. The ads just write themselves @TheDemocrats @DCCC @harrisonjaime @TeamPelosiNYT: Liz Cheney, Front and Center in the Jan. 6 Hearings, Pursues a Mission https://tinyurl.com/vfzxrrex
// “I believe this is the most important thing I’ve ever done professionally,” she said, “and maybe the most important thing I ever do.”NYT: Jan. 6 Panel to Sum Up Its Case Against Trump: Dereliction of Duty https://tinyurl.com/26vkzy34
// In a hearing aimed at putting a capstone on the public sessions thus far, two military veterans will make the case that Mr. Trump neglected his presidential duties when he refused to call off the mob.━━━━━━━▼ Military Budget Ukraine 💰
(Trying to understand all these numbers)USDeptOfState (7/22): U.S. Security Cooperation with Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/yc2dj7nu I’ve seen some wildly off statements about US support for and assistance to Ukraine, so I’m posting this; att: is direct assistance, but addtl sources are described at link, eg 3rd party transfers
¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1552561160225947649?s=20/photo/1 -2
// 7/22/2022TheHill: Biden administration rolls out $270 million Ukraine weapons package https://tinyurl.com/4z8rdshn Included are 4 more HIMARS, bringing total to 16, and hundreds of tactical drones.
// 7/22/2022; The U.S. has committed $8.2 billion in security assistance since the beginning of the Biden administration, of which $2.6 billion has been provided📋 SIPRI: World military expenditure passes $2 trillion for first time https://tinyurl.com/5fufhuc6
2021 Estimated Defense Expenditure:
$801B United States
$324B Other NATO (via NATO)
$ 66B Russia
// tags: Defense budget, Defense spending; NATO link: https://tinyurl.com/2p8nk2tw📋 US DeptofDefense: Fact Sheet on U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine (July 2022) https://tinyurl.com/298p2ntv “This includes the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance [of] up to $50M, as well as $770M in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USA) funds”
// Undated
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1550063017186009089?s=20/photo/1 -3CSIS (5/23): What Does $40 Billion in Aid to Ukraine Buy? https://tinyurl.com/a63wet5t The package contains $19 billion of near-term military aid, including military equipment, training, salaries, etc.; the rest is for humanitarian aid, NATO, etc; for current Fiscal Year, ending 9/30/2022
// 5/23/2022📋 DefenseNews (Mar 11): Congress passes budget with defense boost, $13.6B in Ukraine aid https://tinyurl.com/yrtwce7k Biden initially requested $6.4B but “the special fund grew steadily over the last two weeks amid Ukraine’s battlefield gains against Russia & pressure from lawmakers”
// 3/11/2022
⋙ 🐣 The federal fiscal year ends 9/30, so this money is to be drawn down by then. Additional funds are allocated through the State Dept.
━━━━━━━▲⭕ 20 Jul 2022
≣ SusanCollins: Senators Introduce Reforms to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 https://bit.ly/3SyifMw
CBS: New memo suggests no charges for former President Donald Trump before midterms https://tinyurl.com/mvxxp2us @tribelaw’s 7/20 CBS interview on AG Merrick Garland’s assurance that nothing will stop DOJ from indicting Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election
// A new memo from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland suggests there will not be a federal indictment for former President Donald Trump, pertaining to his conduct on Jan. 6, before the November midterms. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, joins “Red and Blue” to discuss the memo.NBC: In Harvard study of Jan. 6 rioters, top motivation is clear: Trump https://tinyurl.com/ycx86rez “The most common responses focused on former President Donald Trump and his lies about the election”
// The study, which was shared with NBC News ahead of its publication, logged and analyzed the motives of 417 Capitol rioters, all of whom have been charged in relation to Jan. 6.WaPo: Secret Service watchdog knew in February that texts had been purged https://tinyurl.com/bdzxfs95
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom The emergence of my former party as a menace to democracy has made me rethink a lot of things, but honestly, I was rethinking some of them even before Trump. My @TheAtlantic newsletter today.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Confessions of a Conservative Apostate https://tinyurl.com/bdefbkan
// What does it mean to be a conservative now?… I have a bookshelf in my home office where I have gathered the second thoughts of a lot of conservative authors who have broken with the GOP, including Charlie Sykes, Max Boot, Stuart Stevens, Jack Pitney, and Rick Wilson, among others. I’ve been thinking about it again while plowing through new books by people like Tim Miller and my Atlantic colleague Mark Leibovich.
… In almost every democracy, the “right” and the “left” are part of a legitimate dialogue about government. Differences between the right and the left are meaningful and important. ¤ I have written, in bits and pieces, about what I think—at least for me—constitutes a conservative temperament, including ideas about human nature, the role of government, civic virtue, and the balance between freedom and responsibility. ¤ The fact remains, however, that many of us are now in a coalition with an array of groups to our left. Among our former comrades on the right, this makes us apostates, defectors, heretics.
Still, we cannot make a permanent home with our temporary liberal roommates: We don’t like the panties on the curtain rod, and they don’t like the notes we leave on the pillow. And yet, here we are, because none of the issues that would normally matter between right and left matter as much as the future of democracy. A conservative who cares about the future of the constitutional order must face the reality that the Republican Party has become a menace to the Constitution and our system of government.
What I am “conserving,” by being a conservative, is our political order and the future freedom to argue and advocate within that order. This is why, for the duration of this national emergency (one that began in 2017 and is not over yet), I approach policies and politicians with two questions that—again, for now—override my policy preferences:
1. Does this issue strengthen or weaken the Republicans as they continue to advocate for sedition and authoritarianism?
2. Does this political figure caucus with the Republicans? Will he or she vote to make Kevin McCarthy the speaker of the House and Mitch McConnell the majority leader of the Senate?The practical effect here is that I will root for GOP defeats on policy even where I might otherwise agree with them. The institutional Republican Party must be weakened enough so that it can’t carry out the larger project of undermining our elections and curtailing our rights as citizens.
Put another way, it does no good to support small Republican wins on policy if the cumulative effect is to strengthen the party so that it is larger and more cohesive when it makes another run at destroying the Constitution. Politics is an ugly business; strategy requires some painful decisions. I believe we are in an existential political crisis, and I intend to act accordingly. (I wish some of my liberal friends would do the same, as I have argued here.) …
As I got older, I took many things more seriously, including reckoning with my Christian faith. I understand the necessity of killing in wartime—every summer I teach a course on war that includes the “just war” tradition—but I can no longer accept the state executing people in my name. I have already written about how I have come to my position that abortion, while a tragedy, must remain legal and a decision women have to make for themselves. I have studied nuclear weapons long enough now to become—like Ronald Reagan, no less—a nuclear abolitionist.
I make more money now than I did when I was young. I still don’t like paying taxes, but as I get older I have decided that punitively making life hard for other people doesn’t solve anything. No one in a country as rich as ours should be sweating the cost of routine medical care and life-saving drugs. I once opposed the Affordable Care Act, and I’m still not a fan of creating gigundous entitlement programs administered by a clunky and wasteful bureaucracy. But writing checks to my church or giving to pet shelters isn’t a substitute for government action when people are dying preventable deaths. So let’s fight about taxes—but let’s make sure people get their insulin, too.
On other issues, I have not changed my views. I still find arguments about affirmative action to be too much about race and sex and not enough about class. But when faced with the quiet-part-out-loud racism of people on the right, from Trump to Tucker Carlson, the rest of us should be talking about racial equality in ways that are not despicable. …
I’ve also been thinking about something Charlie Sykes said in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Charlie asked how he, a pro-life stalwart, could now be so concerned about finally getting what pro-lifers have wanted for 50 years with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The answer, as he wrote in June, is that he simply does not trust today’s Republicans to act in a humane or responsible manner. Neither do I. ¤ In fact, I do not trust the GOP to enact conservative policies in any but the most repressive and cruel fashion. I do not trust that their goal is limited government; I believe their goal is limited democracy, and specifically, limited only to themselves and people who think as they do.
Are the Democrats any better? Of course they are. I have never been shy about noting the totalitarian streak on the American left, but the Democrats have not been captured by their fringe. More to the point, they are not institutionally capable of implementing the plans of their young-Stalinist wing. (Let’s face it: On most days, the Democrats couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.) And they are led by Joe Biden, a fundamentally decent man. I disagree with many leading Democrats, but I do not think they are delusional authoritarians, and for now, that’s a lot.
The conservatives, in any case, have become completely un-conservative. The traditional conservative emphasis on law and order and on limited government has not held the GOP’s theocratic-nutball wing in check. The same people who decried the growth of executive power now worship a sociopathic real-estate con man as a demigod. The party that prided itself on its national-security cred is now voting against admitting Sweden and Finland into NATO like some early–20th century isolationist know-nothings. …
Am I a defector? From the GOP, yes. My ultimate loyalty, however, is to the Constitution. Especially in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, I now regard every elected and appointed seat held by a Republican as a possible vote for autocracy, and every Republican victory, no matter how small, as one more advantage for a party whose litmus test for membership is accepting Donald Trump’s lies and whose platform seems to be that the next free and fair American election will be the last free and fair American election.
I’ll never be at home in my current coalition. That’s the nature of politics. But if joining with Democrats to stop an authoritarian takeover of the United States means that I have to grit my teeth and endure silly arguments about student loans and preferred politically correct terms, so be it. One of the things conservatives believe in—or this one does, anyway—is that human nature, immutable and indomitable, can fix most of our problems, and that after doing enough dumb things we’ll come to good solutions.
But to find those solutions, we need to maintain a system of constitutional freedoms under the rule of law. If we lose that, the rest is meaningless
.🐣 ⇈ great article; I’ve always been a Democrat, but as the party has moved to the left on culture wars matters, my favorite thinkers have become #NeverTrumpers; just a dalliance, I’m sure, but that’s where I find the crispest case made for the need to save American democracy
🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: A bipartisan Senate group has proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act, which Donald Trump tried to exploit to overturn the election in Congress. The changes aim to guarantee a peaceful transition of power and prevent a repeat of Jan. 6. https://nyti.ms/3yScYX7
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Garland showed remarkable patience for uninformed speculation about perceived DOJ inaction. He vowed to “hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election,” and agreed even a former president is not above the law. He gets it.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @cspan Attorney General Merrick Garland on January 6th investigation: “We do not do our investigations in public. This is the most wide-ranging investigation and the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into…We have to get this right.”
💽 https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1549826196719935488?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tribelaw WI GOP Assembly Speaker says Trump called him within the last week trying to get him to overturn the 2020 election. As recently as this past week! The former guy is incorrigible. This helps prove he fully intended to undo his loss, not just to argue he had won.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress This animation was based on real drawings and stories of children who experienced war in Ukraine. It is dedicated to Mariupol and all temporarily occupied cities and villages. [link]
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1549948024125792257?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AccountableGOP Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump WH aide, lost his mind after his interview with the @January6thCmte yesterday. ¤ He accused the committee of being “anti-white” and referred to his female colleagues who spoke out against Trump as “thots and hoes.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1549889767927697408?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @AccountableGOP There’s even more unhinged commentary from former Trump WH aide Garrett Ziegler. ¤ He says that he isn’t a “fame f*g” and compares his livestream to @benshapiro’s who he says is “selling solar yarmulkes” on his show.
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1549922091243290624?s=20/photo/1NYT: New Findings Detail Trump Plan to Use Census for Partisan Gain https://tinyurl.com/3xm9dxuz
// A new trove of memos and emails suggest that the plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census aimed to cause an undercount that would favor Republicans.[T]he Trump administration aimed to exclude noncitizens from the count to influence congressional apportionment that would benefit the Republican Party, the report concluded, and … senior officials used a false pretext to build a legal case for asking all residents of the United States whether they were American citizens.
Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had said in congressional testimony that the government decided to add the question because it required more accurate data on citizenship to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the Supreme Court in June 2019 ruled that the rationale “appears to have been contrived,” and a week later the Trump administration abandoned its quest to ask about citizenship in the 2020 census. …
Every 10 years, the federal government conducts a census to count all people in the country. Everyone is counted without exception, whether they are adults or children, citizens or noncitizens. ¤ The count is used to allocate funds to federal programs. It also has a significant impact on the nation’s politics, because it is used to apportion representation in Congress, the Electoral College and within state legislatures.
Adding the citizenship question would have meant asking every member of every household in the country about their citizenship status. ¤ The United States is home to some 22 million people who are not citizens but are in the country legally. Among them are green-card holders, professionals on work visas and foreign students. About 11 million are undocumented. …
Experts predicted that the citizenship question would have intimidated immigrants — both legal and undocumented — into shunning the census, resulting in an undercount of several million that would most likely have undermined Democrats, by shifting political power from diverse, urban areas to rural ones. ¤ Evidence filed in lawsuits against adding the citizenship question suggested that partisan gain was at least a factor, and most likely its main objective. The new findings seem to confirm this was the case. …
WaPo: Trump’s choices escalated tensions and set U.S. on path to Jan. 6, panel finds https://tinyurl.com/28ey4ynj
// Across seven hearings, the panel’s findings have illustrated how the president repeatedly escalated tensions following his election defeatDonald Trump had already been told by his campaign manager, his top campaign lawyer and his lead data analyst that he had lost the presidential election when he was visited by his attorney general on Dec. 1, 2020.
William P. Barr was a steadfast Trump ally. But in the Oval Office that afternoon, he had no solace to offer the president. He told Trump that claims of 2020 voter fraud were “complete nonsense,” “crazy stuff,” “a grave disservice to the country,” he later recounted. They were “bullshit.” ¤ In an interview with the Associated Press that day, he offered the country the same conclusion, though in less profane terms: The Justice Department had found no evidence sufficient to overturn Joe Biden’s election win.
Trump could have accepted what Barr later termed “reality.” ¤ But inside the White House, the AP story was met with presidential fury. Sitting inside the ornate West Wing dining room, Trump threw his lunch, shattering a porcelain dish and leaving ketchup dripping down the wall.
‼️ … [S]tark conclusion: It was Donald Trump himself who repeatedly set the nation on the path to violence in the weeks after he lost reelection. ¤ At each moment when Trump could have soothed an agitated nation, he escalated tensions instead … At each moment when longtime loyal advisers offered their view that his election loss was real, he refused to listen and found newcomers and outsiders willing to tell him otherwise. ¤ On at least 15 different occasions, the president barreled over those who told him to accept his loss and instead took actions that sought to circumvent the democratic process and set the nation on the path to violence, according to the committee’s evidence.
The committee, which interviewed more than 1,000 people in all, has not limited its inquiry to the president, unveiling new information about the cast of characters who enabled some of Trump’s darkest impulses following the election. …
[ Detailed ⏳]
● ‘You see what I deal with?’ [cockamamie schemes]
● A showdown with Justice
● The vice president’s choice
● ‘I’ll be there with you’⭕ 19 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @ Ukrainian forces have struck and seriously damaged a bridge that is key for supplying Russian troops in southern Ukraine. An official in the Russia-controlled Kherson region said the Ukrainian military struck the bridge with missiles, making 11 hits.
⋙ AP: Ukrainian forces strike key bridge in Russian-occupied south https://tinyurl.com/2xwutbchKirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Moscow-backed temporary administration for the Russia-controlled southern Kherson region, said the Ukrainian military struck the Antonivskyi Bridge, which crosses the Dnipro River, with missiles Wednesday, scoring 11 hits.
He said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency that the bridge sustained serious damage but it wasn’t closed for traffic. ¤ “The bridge is in poor condition now,” Stremousov said, according to Interfax. “The bridge wasn’t closed, traffic across it is still continuing, but the situation is serious.”
The 1.4-kilometer (0.9-mile) bridge is the main crossing across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region, and if it’s made unusable it would be hard for the Russian military to keep supplying its forces in the region amid repeated Ukrainian attacks. Stremousov said that the Ukrainian forces used the U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to strike the bridge, adding that some of them were intercepted by Russian air defenses.
🐣 RT @maksymeristavi the ukrainian resistance to russian fascism is led by a brilliant, defiant and new generation of young ukrainians. #UkrainianSpaces features the rising star of ukrainian journalism @lapatina_ [links]
⋙ 🐣 RT @maksymeristavi in ukraine russia faces one of the most brilliant generations of young ukrainians it has ever had ¤ @lapatina_ for #ukrainianspaces ¤ check episode in full: ¤ http://ukrianianspaces.com
TextLink: https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1549291909004369920?s=20/photo/1“JUST GOING INTO UKRAINIAN CIVIL SOCIETY. JUST TAPPING INTO THAT ON SOCIAL MEDIA. YOU’RE GOING TO SEE SO MUCH TALENT. SO MANY AMAZING ARTISTS. JOURNALISTS. PEOPLE PUSHING VERY IMPORTANT NARRATIVES, WRITING ABOUT HISTORY. WRITING ABOUT CULTURE”
– Anastasia Lapatina, Ukrainian journalist.🐣 RT @duty2warn This CANNOT possibly be clearer!!! Deputy AG Lisa Monaco said that DOJ’s investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results won’t be deterred even if the former president declares his intention to run again. (more)
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn “We’re going to continue to do our job, to follow the facts wherever they go, no matter where they lead, no matter to what level,” Monaco said today at a cybersecurity conference in NY. “We’re going to continue to investigate what was fundamentally an attack on our democracy.”🐣 RT @JoeNBC The 15 point drop in support for Republicans among seniors is telling.
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @dellavolpe News from @cnn poll isn’t more of same re Biden, it’s erosion of Republican support in generic ballot IN THIS ENVIRONMENT.
RV
May 42D – 49R
July 46D – 46R
Women
May 46D – 44R
July 51D – 40R
Independents
May 33D – 41R
July 36D – 39R
65+
May 37D – 62R
July 49D – 47R🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Last Friday, I had the pleasure of catching up for lunch with a colleague who is also an ethicist. While our discussion was broad ranging, we kept returning to the notion of good and evil, and the idea of ‘just wars’ in relation to #Ukraine. 1/22
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1549534019015938048?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 19/ The war in Ukraine provides us with the clearest example since WW2 of a war of good versus evil. The appalling, systemic and sickening acts of the Russian Army – sanctioned by a Russian government – should be a clarion call for nations in the West.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WarintheFuture 20/ We have a moral obligation to help Ukraine win this war as quickly as possible. After all, if we aren’t willing to do all we can to help Ukraine defeat Russia and end large-scale breaches of international law and human decency, what are we willing to defend? End.
⇈ ⇊
SydneyMorningHerald, Mick Ryan: A ‘just war’: West has a moral obligation to help defeat Russia https://tinyurl.com/yc3jzsfd💙 🧵 RT @StrictlyChristo Trump didn’t call off his mob until 4:17 p.m. on Jan 6. Why did he do it then? He didn’t do it because he thought it was the right thing to do. ¤ He did it because he had just received the message that Mike Pence had usurped his authority and called out the National Guard (thread)
📌 https://twitter.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1549287954735984640?s=20
ThreadReader: https://tinyurl.com/4jw2fxst
🔄 💙 ⏳ Wikipedia: Timeline of the 2021 United States Capitol attack https://tinyurl.com/3mckdxxu🐣 RT @duty2warn One word that’ll surface at the next hearing is “gleeful.” Because Trump IS a sadist. He savored the insurrection. People don’t fathom how deeply Trump is driven by sadism. There are no offsets to his impulses, no caring emotion. He enjoys chaos, takes glee from others’ suffering
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn He is — The Joker.🐣 RT @tribelaw Here’s what people have been looking for: It’s as close to a promise as DOJ ever gets: ¤ Trump can run, but he can’t hide. ¤ Deputy AG Monaco speaks for AG Garland on this. They won’t let optics stop them. Nor will they let politics lead them to indict.
🐣 RT @maddow DOJ Says Probe of Trump’s Jan. 6 Role Will Continue If He Declares 2024 Run – Bloomberg
⋙ Bloomberg: DOJ Says Probe of Trump’s Jan. 6 Role Will Continue If He Declares 2024 Run https://tinyurl.com/a4wtacnt
The Justice Department’s investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results won’t be deterred if the former …🐣 RT @john_sipher Whoever leaked this is in a world of trouble.
⋙ […] YahooNews: Russia Says It’s Losing Because Ukraine Has Experimental Mutant Troops Created in Secret Biolabs https://tinyurl.com/mrxvufec⭕ 18 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq I know folks are up in arms over the @maddow scoop but chill. The Barr memo did nothing but require higher level approval to start investigations. The Garland memo just incorporated that and reminded personnel of that as the election nears. ¤ Neither memo prevents an indictment.
💙 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Can I just say it out loud? It’s not going to be fine. ¤ It’s not fine now. ¤ It’s never been fine. ¤ And there’s not going to be any moment in the near future where someone is going to swoop in and make it all fine. ¤ Shit is absolutely hitting the fan and folks deserve better.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Get yourself in community with people who are invested in mutual survival. Do it sooner rather than later. ¤ No one is coming to save democracy. No one is coming to save us. It is going to get really fucking bumpy before this year is up. It already is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Do your very best to not numb out or be misled or dissociate. ¤ Deal with the fact that democracy is collapsing. ¤ Organize for your survival, for a better future, and to push back however you can.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin And read up on long term mutual aid strategies. ¤ We’re all going to need each other. That starts with telling the truth and getting organized for working outside of systems in local communities where we live to sustain eachother through very dark times. ¤ Invest in love and truth
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin We are all we’ve got.🐣 RT @JonFlan Garland – no better than Barr. He’s done nothing to bring to justice Trump & his traitorous conspirators for 1 year & some number of months, Maddow has uncovered he’s not going to do anything until after the upcoming election. Fire Garland. We can’t do worse.
⋙ 🐣 it’s worse than you say: the Barr guidance that Garland extends seems to imbue protection from prosecution to Trump AND his minions until after the 2024election, unless Garland can personally be persuaded otherwise🐣 Below is the relevant part of the Feb 5, 2020 Barr guidance https://tinyurl.com/yfr6eby7 on opening cases on politicians. He likely drafted these to protect Trump and they were to sunset after the 2020 elections, but Garland ‘un-sunsetted’ them in his May 25, 2022 memo:
// Garland’s May 25, 2022 memo: https://tinyurl.com/3s7auu3y
Text!ink: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1549238351030517760?s=20/photo/1No investigation (including any preliminary investigation) may be opened or initiated by the Department or any of its law enforcement agencies:
1. Of a Declared candidate for president or vice president, a presidential campaign, or a senior presidential campaign staff’ member or advisor’ absent prior (i) written notification to and consultation with the Assistant Attorney(s) General and U.S. Attorney(s) with jurisdiction over the matter and (ii) written approval of the Attorney General, through the Deputy Attorney General;
2. Of a Declared candidate for U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives, or his or her campaign, absent prior written notification to and consultation with the Assistant Attorney(s) General and U.S. Attorney(s) with jurisdiction over the matter;
3. Relating to illegal contributions, donations, or expenditures by foreign nationals to a presidential or congressional campaign absent prior written notification to the Assistant Attorney(s) General and U.S. Attorney(s) with jurisdiction over the matter.
Department law enforcement agencies are directed to adopt appropriate internal policies and procedures to ensure that the agency head reviews and approves any matter covered by this memorandum before the matter is presented to Department leadership for consultation or approval.
🐣 RT ⇈ @MuellerSheWrote No. That’s NOT WHAT IT SAYS. It says you can’t open a probe or indict someone for the purpose of impacting an election, and if you want to open a probe into a declared candidate, you need clearance first.
⋙ 🐣 most people assume that when prosecutors bring a case to Garland for clearance, the answer will be “no”🐣 RT @WajahatAli Merrick Garland is a centrist institutionalist. He is behaving exactly like we thought he would. He’s not the right person for the moment but sadly it’s all we have right now.
🐣 RT @DavidPepper He absolutely will. ¤ It would be an injustice of historic proportions along with an incredibly dangerous precedent. ¤ “Institutionalism” is dangerous if it undermines the ultimate institution of democracy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss If Merrick Garland hides behind the institutional concern about not appearing partisan and lets Trump slip away by declaring himself a presidential candidate, he will do serious harm to rule of law and the principle no one is above the law.🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES .@maddow’s scoop is astonishing. Biden should fire Garland & replace him with an AG who will enforce the law, and not bend to politics and concerns around reputation. This is a “get out of jail” card for Trump. Unacceptable. ¤ I wrote about this last week: [link]
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Barr’s 2020 guidance was a bad-faith policy intended to further insinuate that the 2016 investigation into Russian interference was improperly predicated. The whole thing is now Barr (and Trump’s) checkmate on Garland. There should have been a Special Counsel appointed last year
⋙ 🧵📌 RT @MaddowBlog NEW: May 25, 2022 Merrick Garland memo to DOJ on “election year sensitivities” doubles down on Barr’s policy against investigating candidates without approval.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1549207391182667777?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @BesclossDC President Lincoln wrote the dawdling General George McClellan in April 1862, “It is indispensable to you that you strike a blow….I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now….But you must act.”
⋙ 🐣 McClellan ended up running against Lincoln: Lincoln thought McC would win and was very concerned McC would end the war on terms more favorable to the South than Lincoln would have liked🐣 RT @LarrySabato Gov. Youngkin’s New Appointee to the VA Board of Historic Resources Says Robert E. Lee Was a “Morally Fine Human Being”; “Secession Was NOT Treason”; the North’s “Invasion” of the South Was “just like we see Russia invading Ukraine” via @bluevirginia
⋙ 🔊 BlueVirginia: Audio: https://tinyurl.com/2xj5u5wx🐣 RT @tribelaw To AG Garland: ¤ Mr. Trump is counting on your concerns about not “appearing” political when he makes clear his belief that you wouldn’t dare approve his indictment once he announces. ¤ You MUST prove him wrong. ¤ Make him a TARGET now. No time to lose.
🐣 Looks like Garland has immunized Trump ~ and everyone who climbs on his 🤡 car ~ until 2025
🐣 RT @tribelaw Alan Simpson has it right. A “vicious animal who has poisoned our democracy.” That’s Trump, all right.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Retired Wyoming GOP Senator Alan Simpson called the twice-impeached, disgraced former president a “vicious animal who has poisoned our democracy.” ¤ #MangoMussolini ¤ https://tinyurl.com/2x2ddz27‼️ 🧵📌 RT @ECMcLaughlin .@Maddow is breaking a memo from Garland that basically makes clear that there will be no indictments before the midterms due to DOJ policy. ¤ I’m seething.
📌 https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/1549201557006139392?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin AND IT CITES A BARR MEMO. ¤ I am disgusted. Disgusted.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin So if Trump declares he’s running, garland has now extended Barr’s guidance that you can’t investigate a candidate or anyone working for a candidate without an express authorization from the AG JESUS CHRIST.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin The memo was issued in May, before the 1/6 hearings started. GARBAGE. TRASH.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Every system is failing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin I have been saying for MONTHS that the delay made no sense. Now we know why.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin The other thing about this is that once he announces, he will not be indicted. ¤ Garland is going to let him off.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin It almost doesn’t matter if he wins in 2024 at this point because Garland’s absolute failure has emboldened every criminal and fascist in the GOP. ¤ They’re all going to go for it, and if they win, America is done.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Bullshit. “No one is above the law” is bullshit.🐣 Looks like Garland has immunized Trump ~ and everyone who climbs on his 🤡 car ~ until 2025
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: RASKIN: Hours after “the tweet”, Kelly Meggs declared an alliance among the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, an FL 3%ers. Within hours, Tarrio launched the encrypted chat MOSD. They worked with trump allies INCLUDING FLYNN. #January6thHearings
🐣 RT @mkraju As the House is moving forward on legislation to codify contraception rights and same-sex marriage, Durbin said the Senate should do the same. ¤ Durbin said that he thinks they could get 60 votes on these issues
🐣 RT @lindsemcpherson The big takeaway from Pelosi’s latest Dear Colleague letter: “The short time between now and November will be intense.”
TextLink: https://twitter.com/lindsemcpherson/status/1549167602290855936?s=20/photo/1Text: Dear Democratic Colleague, June’s actions of the Supreme Court have had a devastating impact on our country – and have informed our Congressional agenda. This is exacerbated by the ongoing epidemic of gun violence across the country. We should take pride in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which the President proudly signed into law, as well as the Active Shooter Alert Act, which the House passed last week. It is beyond explanation that 168 Republicans voted “no” to save lives by implementing an AMBER Alert-style system to inform families when a gunman opens fire in their neighborhood. At the same time, our Caucus knows that more must be done: respecting the overwhelming wish of the Caucus, the House is advancing the Assault Weapons Ban, which will be marked up this week in the Judiciary Committee.
Last Friday, the House passed two important bills to protect a woman’s right to reproductive freedom: one to make the protections of Roe v. Wade once again the law of the land, and one to defend the right to travel across state lines for reproductive freedom. Again, more needs to be done.This week, the House will pass two more bills to protect freedom in our nation, as extremist Justices and lawmakers take aim at more of our basic rights.Our Right to Contraception Act will preserve the essential protections found in Griswold v. Connecticut. Our Respect for Marriage Act – which, proudly, is bipartisan and bicameral – will defend the right to marry whomever you love, as found in Obergefell v. Hodges and Loving v. Virginia.
As we address these matters of life and death, we are constantly striving to bring a COMPETES bill to the Floor as well as address the new developments on the Reconciliation bill. In both cases, we must accept the good and continue our negotiations for more. Thanks to our Committee Chairs, we are prepared to continuing our work to meet the kitchen table needs of America’s hard-working families. The health provisions of a potential Reconciliation package are essential, as we must act to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. It is of the highest priority for House Democrats that we continue our fight to save the planet For The Children, as this is an issue of health, jobs, security and values. I express appreciation to President Biden for his leadership in all these areas. ¤ The short time between now and November will be intense. Our success, as always, will depend on a unified Democratic House Caucus.
🧵 RT @petestrzok Take a moment to think about the staggering counterintelligence issues in the crazy Dec 18, 2020 WH meeting. A thread. ¤ In the Oval Office, people advocated Trump illegitimately hold on to power, including using the military to seize voting machines. ¤ That group included: (/1)
📌 https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1548315766767792128?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok Mike Flynn, who who was paid by an organ of Russian state media to travel to Moscow to attend a dinner where he was seated next to Putin. ¤ Flynn later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian Ambassador about election interference. (/2)
⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok Patrick Byrne, one of several men once in an intimate relationship with convicted Russian agent Marina Butina. ¤ Byrne gave money to Butina after her return to Russia, where she ran for the Duma, hounded Navalny, and supported the invasion of Ukraine. (/3) [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok Rudy Giuliani, who repeatedly met with and took info from sanctioned Russian agents like Andrii Derkach, despite USIC warnings to the White House in 2019 that Trump’s personal lawyer “was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence” (/4) [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok So in this tiny meeting in the Oval Office where options to upend US democracy were advanced to the President of the United States, there were not one, not two, but three people directly linked to sanctioned and convicted agents of the Russian government. (/5)
⋙ 🐣 RT @petestrzok While I doubt Russia planned it, their efforts to gain access to Trump’s inner sanctum succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. ¤ And it demonstrates just how successful seemingly amateurish intelligence activity can be. (6/end)🐣 RT @TheDeadDistrict Map of the destroyed 🇷🇺 Ammo Stortages (AS) and Bases (B).
Donetsk:
12.07. Donetsk. 3 AS
13.07. Gorlovka. AS
13.07. Makiivka. AS
16.07. Chistyakove. B
Luhansk:
17.07. Alchevsk.B
15.07, 17.07, Kadiivka. 2 AS
11.07, 13.07. Luhansk. AS
16.07. Skargivka. AS
Kherson region:
11.07, 13.07, 15.07, 16.07. Chernobaivka 4 AS
11.07. Kherson AS&HQ
12.07, 14.07. Nova Kakhovka AS & B
11.07. Tavriysk AS & HQ
12.07. The village of Charivne. AS
13.07. Chaplinka AS
14.07. Radensk AS
15.07. New Mayachka. B
15.07. Daryevka. B
17.07. Azure. B
Zaporizhia region:
11.07. Tokmak. AS
12.07. Melitopol district. B
Mykolaiv Oblast:
14.07, 15.07. Snigurivka. AS and HQ
🌎 https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1549114818111627270?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ReutersWorld Putin: West cannot isolate Russia and send it back in time http://reut.rs/3IKuFw8
⋙ 🐣 Also Putin: ‘That’s OUR job!’🐣 📋 RT @RALee85 The Wagner-linked RSOTM channel posted about HIMARS, which they said are successfully striking “very important” targets. They say that Russian claims that HIMARS have been stolen or destroyed are fiction and that there would be greater evidence if true. https://t.me/grey_zone/14362 [link to Russ docs]
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 They claim that Ukraine has at least 12 and up to 16 HIMARS launchers in Ukraine (I think it is just 12), including 6 in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (2 in the Kryvyi Rih and 4 in Zaporizhzhia direction), 2 in Kharkiv, and 4 in Mykolaiv. 2/⭕ 17 Jul 2022
YahooNews/NewVoiceofUkraine: Military expert explains why it’s important for Ukraine to liberate Nova Kakhovka https://tinyurl.com/2p8d58cx Without it, “Russia’s so-called ‘special operation’ will lose its ‘political, military, economic meaning’”
🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 How can a CNN special on Bannon have zero mention of Russia, fascist Dugin, Russia funding and providing logistical support of the populist leaders via Malofeev that Bannon works with and props up? That is ridiculous
⋙ 🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Literally Bannon is doing exactly what Russian intel via cutouts have always pursued. Implode countries, destroy democracy, give rise to fascist autocrats. He is pushing Dugins ideology not to mention they held a meeting in Italy where he was going to open fascist academy
⋙ 🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 I am shaking my head. I want my 49 minutes back🧵 RT @gal_suburban I don’t have time to break out everything I have dug up. ¤ So here’s a thread I’ll add to w/items OSINT may want or investigators may need. ¤ I have a spreadsheet w/ >600 items, most of it I’ve archived. It’s all been sent to @January6thCmte’s tip-line.
📌 https://twitter.com/gal_suburban/status/1548506925720948736?s=20WaPo: Committee has ‘filled in the blanks’ on Trump’s Jan. 6 activities, Kinzinger says https://tinyurl.com/kkzfvy33
Former president Donald Trump did “nothing” to stop the riot at the Capitol as it was unfolding on Jan. 6, 2021, and new witnesses will fill in the gaps in Trump’s activities that day when the House select committee investigating the attack holds its next hearing, members of the bipartisan panel said Sunday.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who is scheduled to lead the prime-time hearing on Thursday, said the session “is going to open people’s eyes in a big way” as they examine Trump’s actions in detail over the hours the Capitol was overrun by a mob seeking to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college win. ¤ “We have filled in the blanks,” Kinzinger said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. Trump “didn’t do very much but gleefully watch television during this time frame.”
🐣 RT @duty2warn Just In: The Jan 6 Committee expects to receive the erased Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, by Tuesday. Investigators gave the Secret Service until Tuesday to turn over documents, and Zoe Lofgren says she expects to receive them on time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Anthony Guglielmi, spokesperson for the Secret Service, said data on some phones was lost but none of the text messages being sought was permanently deleted. He insisted the Secret Service would respond “swiftly” to the Committee’s subpoena. More here:
⋙⋙ NBC: Jan. 6 panel expects to get Secret Service texts by Tuesday, says new witnesses will appear in next hearing https://tinyurl.com/mrxbxmye
// Thursday’s public hearing will focus on what the panel is calling the crucial “187 minutes” — the time it took for Trump to urge his supporters to leave the Capitol after the attack began.💙 🧵 RT @leonidvolkov Putin’s next (and final) battle.
(This thread went viral in Russian so I decided to publish an English version as well)
A long thread about what, in my opinion, is Putin’s strategy right now, and the last gamble he is making to break Ukraine’s resistance.
[Bio: Chief of Staff Alexei Navalny; founder of the Internet Defense Society // Chief of staff for Alexey Navalny]
1/26
📌 https://twitter.com/leonidvolkov/status/1548697349676998656?s=20⋙ As we remember, XXI century warfare consists of more than just field battles. On the battlefield, Putin’s army has shown everything it can do. And it didn’t impress. The only tactic Russia now has left at its disposal is the scorched earth tactic, based on artillery superiority.
2/26
⋙ An AFU fortified area gets subjected to destructive shelling. Then Russian MoD sends in “Wagnerians” or “DPR militia”, whom they do not consider people and do not include in casualty count; if there is return fire, they retreat and the shelling continues until AFU has to leave.
3/26
⋙ This approach allows them to slowly advance and avoid significant losses in the regular army (which had lost 30-50% of its personnel in the first months of the war), but now the HIMARS are dramatically changing the balance of power, leveling Russia’s artillery superiority.
4/26
⋙ That’s why Putin now eagerly craves a ceasefire. Not only to draw up reserves and give the troops a breather (which Ukraine will do as well), but primarily to secure the status quo.
5/26
⋙ A truce would mean drawing a demarcation line on the map, which would determine political reality for years to come — there’s nothing more permanent than the temporary. And once this truce is established, the “bad peace is better than good war” party will win in Europe.
6/26
⋙ Politicians will tell the voters the good news: we’ve managed to stop the war and the flow of refugees, fuel prices are going down. These immediate consequences of the truce will be immediately capitalized by European politicians and turned into votes in the coming elections
7/26
⋙ As for the deferred consequences, the fact that Putin won’t go anywhere, and will once again gather strength and anger for the next deadly and bloody attack in a few years…
8/26
⋙…vast areas of Ukraine will remain under occupation, millions of their inhabitants will be displaced, and the evil will stay unpunished…
Well, in case of a conflict freeze, all that will be left for future generations of politicians to deal with, right?
9/26
⋙ Right now Ukraine enjoys considerable (albeit insufficient and not unconditional) support from the West. But if a “bad peace” prevails, the situation will change radically. Resuming hostilities when European voters have already breathed a sigh of relief that the war is over…
10/26
⋙… will be infinitely more difficult politically. An attempt to de-occupy Kherson or Izium will be perceived very differently by Western society. “Everything has just calmed down, and now they’re shooting again,” is what many European voters will be thinking.
11/26
⋙ I’m sure they understand all this well in Kyiv; but so do they in Moscow. Putin’s next big gamble in the Ukrainian war is a special operation to force a cease-fire, which would formalize the annexation, providing a several-year pause to prepare for the next phase of the war.
12/26
⋙ So how is Putin planning to achieve the truce he so desperately needs? ¤ We saw it already in June: blackmail. Putin understands that Ukraine will not agree to any kind of truce. Public opinion in Ukraine absolutely unambiguously demands that Zelenskyy continue to fight.
13/26
⋙ Ukraine’s Achilles’ heel is its dependence on the West. The war has destroyed much of its economy, and there’s nothing left to fight with apart from Western armament. Kyiv can’t cope without European support right now – and this creates opportunities for blackmail.
14/26
⋙ Putin’s message in June was simple: “Dear Scholz, Macron, Draghi, it’s either you force Zelenskyy to accept peace or I starve North Africa, you get millions of new refugees in Europe, and your governments get taken over by right-wing radicals (which I’ll finance myself)”
15/26
⋙ It was convincing, but it didn’t help. When European leaders went to Kyiv in June, many wrote: “They’re coming to press Zelensky into concessions”. They also had a powerful lever in their hands in the form of the EU candidate status.
16/26
⋙ The experts were wrong to think ill of the European leaders, however – Putin’s hunger blackmail did not work, values and principles prevailed. ¤ But as we know, Putin has two allies. And since General Hunger failed, Field Marshal Cold will now be sent to the front lines.
17/26
⋙ If Putin has learned one thing during his 22 years in power, that’s the thing: if you cannot deal with Western politicians directly, you need to work with their electorate. They depend on public opinion too (and this is their strength, which Putin considers a weakness).
18/26
⋙ Winter is coming. This makes it possible to play the gas card with maximum efficiency in the coming months. This is what Putin will do — he will try to scare the Europeans with the prospect of freezing to death in their homes this winter.
19/26
⋙ To do this, he will use all the agents and resources he has accumulated over the years: corrupt politicians and journalists, marginal parties and “experts” who will say profoundly: “Of course we pity Ukraine, but we have to do what Putin wants so that Europe doesn’t freeze…”
20/26
⋙ What can we do about it all?
1. Forewarned is forearmed. Don’t be fooled. Europe may have a difficult winter ahead of it (although its dependence of households on Russian gas should not be exaggerated)
21/26
⋙ But this is the necessary price of the past eight years of indifference and inaction. We must get through this winter: if we give in now and cave in to Putin’s conditions, then in 6-8 years Europe will almost certainly face another winter, the nuclear one.
22/26
⋙ 2. Ukraine’s window of opportunity to de-occupy Kherson and other territories is rather small: the closer to winter, the more important factor will be gas blackmail (obviously, Ukraine is well aware of this, and is preparing for a counterattack at a rapid pace).
23/26
⋙ Serious military achievements are needed not only in and of themselves, but also to handle the public opinion in Europe: to make the public believe in the possibility of a Ukrainian victory and be ready to grit their teeth and endure.
24/26
⋙ 3. Remember that it’s not by choice that Putin resorts to hunger and cold blackmail. His military gamble has failed. Putin is rapidly losing support inside Russia. He also realizes that he has only 2-3 months to secure a ceasefire on favorable terms.
25/26
⋙ These will probably be the most difficult 2-3 months, but then Putin will lose. He has already lost, of course, but it is now necessary to crush him, not to let him crawl away. To withstand his final blow.
26/26🧵 RT @MarkHertling Having now read this most recent @usosce summary report 3 times yesterday and again once this morning, I’ve tried to wrap my head around Russian military actions in Ukraine. ¤ I can’t. With each read, there’s more disgust. ¤ A [thread] on war crimes. 1/12
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1548704887906701314?s=20🧵 RT @capitolhunters Some key points as we head into J6 hearings. The Capitol attack was 1) coordinated, 2) meant to be fast, and 3) derailed by a rapid police response that produced key delays. Watch here as democracy is saved by DC bike cops: momentum shifts after the first terrifying minutes. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1535027665337569290?s=20/photo/1
// 6/9/2022🐣 [To @SkinnerPm] My favorite Paul Simon song. One of my favorite songs period. ¤ I’ve posted the lyrics many times, long before I knew how true they would become
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1548580605901897729?s=20/photo/1
// American Tune by Paul Simon⭕ 16 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @RBReich Thanks to the filibuster, 41 Senate Republicans representing just 21% of the country are blocking abortion rights, clean energy, health care, and basic investments supported by the vast majority of Americans. This is not how democracy is supposed to work.
TheAtlantic, Nataliya Gumenyuk: Russia’s Invasion Is Making Ukraine More Democratic https://tinyurl.com/f8kh6fpj
// What were once perceived to be weaknesses are turning out to be advantages.🐣 RT @dominowski Ol’ Chuck slipped past his minders and spilled the beans. He’s pretty much limited to appearances in tightly controlled, stage-managed situations, lest he be seen as doddering and incomprehensible … or worse, truthful.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MichelleMousta1 Grassley has some explaining to do. Preferably under oath. @ChuckGrassley
Text Link: https://twitter.com/MichelleMousta1/status/1548425916962852878?s=20/photo/1Text: 🐣 RT @RollCall NEW: low Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the Senate president pro tempore, says he and not Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the certification of Electoral College votes, since “we don’t expect him to be there.”
7:06 AM 1/5/21 Hootsuite🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: Justice Department Steps Up Jan. 6 Probe of Those in Trump’s Orbit https://tinyurl.com/2vypybkj “DOJ commits more resources to pursue evidence of criminal involvement as House hearings reveal activities of Trump and his circle before and during Capitol attack”
Text: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1548298395080466438?s=20/photo/1 -2
// experienced prosecutor from Maryland, Thomas Windom⭕ 15 Jul 2022
MSNBC, Steve Benen: Another Trump lawyer publicly turns against his former client https://tinyurl.com/mryd3ua9
// Ty Cobb represented Donald Trump during the Russia scandal. He now sees the former president as “a disaster for the Republican Party.”🚫 Politico: Republicans wince as their Ukrainian-born colleague thrashes Zelenskyy https://tinyurl.com/2p89p4pm
// too sensitive; Victoria Spartz took the GOP mantle on aiding Kyiv back in the spring. Now, her fellow lawmakers worry she’s undermining the effort.WSJ: Chinese Firms Are Selling Russia Goods Its Military Needs to Keep Fighting in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/2p8fht37
// Rising exports of microchips, aluminum oxide, other dual-use items undermine Western push to stall Russian war effort🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Summary: We’ve invaded Ukraine and killed people for no reason, but we can’t leave, because that would be to admit that we’ve killed people for no reason, so we have to stay and continue killing people for no reason.
¤ https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1548082306266435588?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @SvobodaRadio [tr]”Can the president say tomorrow: that’s it, I’ve decided to stop the operation? Maybe. But what will we succeed? Our state, like a beaten dog, will have to leave?” ¤ Journalists of the “Donbass Realities” project received an audio recording of the meeting. Commander of the 41st Army of the Russian Federation with the families of soldiers🧵 RT @kyledcheney NEWS: DOJ says its internal opinions about ‘absolute immunity’ from congressional subpoenas do NOT apply to former top aides to former presidents, like Mark Meadows. However a “qualified” immunity does apply, DOJ says for the first time.
📌 Text: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1548068974155296769?s=20/photo/1💙 🔄 🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs We’ve compiled some of our best essays on how the war in Ukraine began, how it is playing out, and how it could transform the global order. Start reading here:
⋙ ForeignAffairs: How to Understand the Crisis in Ukraine https://tinyurl.com/358m8uyx
// The origins of the war and what comes next🐣 RT @renato_mariotti This is significant news. It is alarming that the DHS Inspector General believes that the Secret Service has not been cooperative with his investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amandacarpenter Major updates to this story!
1) Secret Service did NOT conduct an after-action review after Jan. 6
2) The IG said the Secret Service has not been fully cooperative with its investigation.
3) The IG went to DHS Sec “more than once” about the problems before going to Congress
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AnnieGrayerCNN SCOOP: DHS inspector general met with all 9 members of the Jan 6 committee today about Secret Service erasing text messages from the day of the riot and the day before. W/ @ryanobles @ZcohenCNN
⋙⋙⋙ CNN: DHS inspector general told Jan. 6 panel he went to Mayorkas about Secret Service cooperation https://tinyurl.com/2bwtn854‼️ 🐣 📋 RT @JaneLytv Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said Russia launched “17,314 strikes on civilian targets, and a little more than 300 hits on military targets.” ¤ A jaw-dropping ratio.
¤ https://twitter.com/JaneLytv/status/1548054403013259265?s=20
⋙ UkrInform: Ministry of Internal Affairs: Russia strikes hit nearly 300 military targets, 17,300 civilian ones https://tinyurl.com/36abcm3h🧵RT @djrothkopf Biden’s trip to the Mideast was a very risky, complicated diplomatic mission that he undertook because he felt it was important and despite the fact he was unlikely to score big points for it at home. So far, at every step of the way, he has handled it with great deftness.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1548035699605090305?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf He has been direct. He has acknowledged the complexity of key relationships. He has sought to advance US interests and has done so effectively. Honestly, it is hard to think of a recent instance of a president handling more complex, fraught personal diplomacy more effectively.🐣 What MBS ordered done to Jamal Khashoggi was inexcusable and I hope he learned his lesson. ¤ But was Khashoggi really the kind of person who would want the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Europe’s economy, and a US election (and all that entails) to hinge on his death?
⭕ 14 Jul 2022
WaPo, Fareed Zakaria: Forget pronouns. Democrats need to become the party of building things. http://tinyurl.com/4pd489z2 “Republicans are clever at weaponizing the words of a few left-wing Democrats and branding them as the face of the party”
WaPo, Philip Bump: We have reached the apex of election-fraud debunking http://tinyurl.com/yc5xe7d2 Dour
// For what little good that will do[M]illions of people believe that the election was stolen. So how might they be dissuaded? Perhaps a robust articulation of all of the claims about fraud that have been raised to date? A delineation of the dozens of lawsuits filed in the wake of the election and how they were adjudicated? An explanation of specific clusters of claims, such as the “audit” of votes in Arizona?
The source for any such analysis, of course, would need to be some entity of unimpeachable agnosticism toward Trump. A group of Republicans, for example, willing to consider the claims made by Trump and his allies and assess them objectively. Anything less, after all, would be trivial to cast as inherently biased.
On Thursday, an analysis that checked nearly all of those boxes emerged. A group of Republican staffers and officials with robust partisan credentials released a 70-plus-page report walking through precisely the considerations above: the lawsuits, the evidence, the audits. Its conclusion is as unsparing as it is unsurprising.
“For this Report, we examined every count of every case brought in these six battleground states,” its executive summary reads. “We conclude that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case.”
The focus on the lawsuits is important in part because the authors — a group that “has worked in Republican politics, been appointed to office by Republicans, or is otherwise associated with the Party,” the report notes — emphasize the importance of challenging election results in a timely fashion. The campaign tried to do so and was unsuccessful. What’s more, no evidence has emerged since the post-election window of legal challenges to bolster any of the claims the Trump campaign and its allies alleged in court.
“Even now, twenty months after the election, a period in which Trump’s supporters have been energetically scouring every nook and cranny for proof that the election was stolen, they come up empty,” the report notes. …
Those who believe Trump’s claims that the election was stolen are participants in a torrid love affair with the idea. There’s no dissuading, no telling them that their partner is toxic, dishonest and deceptive. Over time, one hopes, their feelings will simply fade and, while they’ll always harbor positive feelings toward the idea that election was stolen, they’ll move on. Perhaps even trust another election in the future. ¤ Their parents sitting them down and scolding them, however gently, won’t do the trick.
🐣 RT @CBSEveningNews The Jan. 6 committee is preparing for a primetime hearing focusing on former President Trump and the evidence that he interfered with their investigation. This comes as new details show some Secret Service members erased text messages from January 5th and 6th, according to DHS.
💽 https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1547715021899063296?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Completely unhinged and totally terrified. Belongs in a rubber room.
Text Link: https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1547651143542550531?s=20/photo/1Text: When is the never ending Unselect Committee going to discuss the fact that Crazy Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000-20,000 soldiers (or National Guard) 3 days before January 6th? When are they going to discuss the MASSIVE ELECTION FRAUD that singularly led to the big turnout of people in D.C. The Kangaroo Court, and the Fake News Media, want to stay as far away from these two topics as possible. WITCH HUNT!
🐣 RT @CNN The US Secret Service erased text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, shortly after they were requested by oversight officials investigating the agency’s response to the US Capitol riot https://cnn.it/3ASeyea
TheAtlantic, Ayer, Gerson & Aftergut: The DOJ Must Prosecute Trump http://bit.ly/3ATAg1k
// By Donald Ayer, Stuart Gerson, and Dennis Aftergut; The January 6 committee has provided overwhelming evidence that the former president was not some bit player along for a ride, but the central driver of a nefarious plot.
// About the authors: Donald Ayer served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush. Stuart M. Gerson served as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice from 1989 to 1993 and as acting attorney General in 1993. He is a member of the firm at Epstein Becker Green. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and former Chief Assistant City Attorney in San Francisco, currently Of Counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.The evidence is now overwhelming that Donald Trump was the driving force behind a massive criminal conspiracy to interfere with the official January 6 congressional proceeding and to defraud the United States of a fair election outcome.
The evidence is clearer and more robust than we as former federal prosecutors—two of us as Department of Justice officials in Republican administrations—thought possible before the hearings began. Trump was not just a willing beneficiary of a complex plot in which others played most of the primary roles. While in office, he himself was the principal actor in nearly all of its phases, personally executing key parts of most of its elements and aware of or involved in its worst features, including the use of violence on Capitol Hill. Most remarkably, he did so over vehement objections raised at every turn, even by his sycophantic and loyal handpicked team. This was Trump’s project all along. … [E]ach hearing has sharpened our understanding that Donald Trump himself is the one who made it happen. … The damage to America’s future that would be inflicted by giving him a pass far outweighs the risks of prosecuting him.
First, contrary to speculation that Trump may have genuinely believed he won the election, and thus in his own mind was seeking rough justice in trying to change the outcome, the committee has demonstrated repeatedly that he knew beyond all doubt that he had lost fair and square. Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr told the president that claims of widespread voter fraud were “bullshit.” Numerous reinforcements of that message were delivered by many others, including Barr’s successor, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen; former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue; and multiple Trump-campaign officials.
Second, Trump’s involvement in carrying out the scheme was systematic, expansive, and extraordinarily personal. As if to illustrate how personal his intervention was (and is), Republican Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair and the representative from Wyoming, dropped a bombshell at the end of Tuesday’s hearing: Sometime since the previous hearing on June 28, Trump himself had contacted a witness, something that his lawyers certainly could have told him could easily lead to charges of witness tampering. Cheney announced that the committee has notified the Justice Department of Trump’s latest misconduct.
The committee’s previous hearings showed that in the months after the 2020 election, Trump himself—not some aide or lawyer or other ally—tried to interfere with the state vote-counting processes. Among the most memorable incidents was his 67-minute January 2 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger asking him to “find” 11,780 nonexistent votes, creating a Trump win. …
… After he failed in mid-December to persuade Bill Barr to assert election fraud, Trump called Rosen, Barr’s successor, nearly every day in the same pursuit. And when this effort too failed, at a White House meeting on January 3, he undertook to replace Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a second-tier DOJ official whom Trump had spoken with personally and found more compliant. This effort failed only when Donoghue and Rosen told Trump that the entire department’s leadership would resign if Clark were installed.
Crucial to the whole plot, of course, was the unlawful scheme to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into rejecting or delaying the electoral count. Multiple witnesses testified about being present to hear Trump’s “heated” call with Pence on the morning of January 6. One witness said that Trump called Pence a “wimp.” Ivanka Trump testified that she had never previously heard her father treat Pence that way, and she told another witness that Trump had used the “P-word” to denigrate the vice president’s manhood. ¤ Ample evidence has also shown Trump well knew that Pence could not properly do as Trump urged. Mike Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, testified that Trump was present at a January 4 White House meeting where John Eastman admitted the unlawfulness of his and Trump’s plan to have the vice president not certify the electoral count two days later.
A third significant point for prosecutors is that the hearings have put into sharp focus Trump’s personal involvement and advance knowledge of the dangerous circumstances surrounding the January 6 insurrection. Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the principal aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that she overheard Trump complain just before his January 6 speech on the Ellipse that supporters were not being allowed into the security area for his speech while armed, and thus were staying outside. She recalled Trump asking to have the magnetometers removed, saying that he did not care if attendees were armed, because “they’re not here to hurt me.”
Hutchinson also testified that Trump expected to go to the Capitol after his speech and was angry when the Secret Service denied his request to do so, testimony that others have corroborated. He wanted to be part of and lead an armed mob aimed, at minimum, at intimidating Congress and Mike Pence. That is significant evidence demonstrating criminal intent in connection with the crime of inciting an insurrection. Told that the mob had threatened to hang the vice president, Trump apparently responded that he “deserves” it.
Finally, the committee has persuasively established that Trump continued to facilitate the insurrection, even after he returned to the White House once the Secret Service refused to take him to Capitol Hill. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley testified that during the violence, Pence called him to request the National Guard to restore order; Trump made no such call. In fact, Trump did nothing for more than three hours to quell the insurrectionists. ¤ To the contrary, Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews testified that by tweeting that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” to overturn the election, Trump was “pouring gasoline on the fire.”
[A]t Tuesday’s hearing, the committee focused attention on Trump’s December 19 tweet inviting his supporters to a “big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” He added, “Be there, will be wild!” The committee showed evidence of communications among the militant Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters hours after the tweet demonstrating that it was the signal that prompted previously unaligned groups to cooperate in developing military-style operational tactics for the violent Capitol invasion.
In assessing the importance and priority to be given to a DOJ decision to prosecute, the Justice Department Manual lists three factors with special relevance here: “the nature and seriousness of the offense,” “the deterrent effect of the prosecution,” and “the person’s culpability in connection with the offense.”
On the first point, it is hard to imagine an offense that would more urgently call for criminal accountability by federal prosecution than a concerted and nearly successful effort to overthrow the result of a presidential election. It is an offense against the entire nation, by which Trump sought to reverse a 235-year-old constitutional tradition of presidential power transferring lawfully and peacefully. …
Nor can there be any doubt about the crucial need to deter future attempts to overthrow the government. For the past 18 months, and presently, Trump himself and his supporters have been engaged in concerted efforts across the country to prepare for a similar, but better-planned, effort to overcome the minority status of Trump’s support and put him back in the White House. …
As many have pointed out, deterrence requires that the quest for accountability succeed in achieving a conviction before a jury … In the case of a person who has made a career out of escaping the consequences of his misconduct, this is no small issue for the attorney general to take into account. … But as former prosecutors, we have faith that the evidence of personal culpability is so overwhelming that the case can be made to the satisfaction of such a jury. … Bottom line: Given what is at stake, even with the risk of a hung jury—leaving room for a second trial—there is no realistic alternative but to go forward.
Any argument that Donald Trump lacked provable criminal intent is contradicted by the facts elicited by the January 6 committee. And the tradition of not prosecuting a former president must yield to the manifest need to protect our constitutional form of government and to ensure that the violent effort to overthrow it is never repeated.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This new report by a highly distinguished group of conservatives leaves no doubt that not even a single precinct in America was flawed by fraud. Find it at http://lostnotstolen.org.
⋙ PRNewsWire: New Report from Prominent Conservatives Reaffirms Trump’s Loss and Warns of Danger to Democracy from Baseless Claims of Fraud http://prn.to/3O8jbDZ
💙 📔 ⋙⋙ Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election https://lostnotstolen.org
⋙⋙⋙ pdf: http://bit.ly/3caHzaE 72p
// Signatories: Senator John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, The Honorable Michael W. McConnell, The Honorable Theodore B. Olson, Senator Gordon H. SmithAs part of his post-election attempts to retain the presidency, Donald Trump and his supporters filed 64 cases containing 187 counts in the six key battleground states, in addition to utilizing some of the recount and contest procedures available to them under state law. The former president maintains to this day that the 2020 election was stolen and the results fraudulent.
This Report takes a hard look at the very serious charges made by Trump and his supporters. The consequences of a president and a major party candidate making such charges are monumental. If true, our electoral system is in desperate need of repair. If not true, that must be said because such false charges corrode our democracy and leave a significant share of the population doubting the legitimacy of our system, seriously weakening the country. To have 30 percent of the country lack faith in election results based on unsubstantiated claims of a “stolen” election is not sustainable in a democracy, and it discredits the political party making those charges. We hope that setting out the full record in this Report will help restore faith in the reliability of our elections.
🧵 RT @mdmitri91 Summary of the daily livestream with Aleksey Arestovych, kindly brought to you by Atis: https://twitter.com/savaadaak. ¤ Text version: http://bit.ly/3cdBg6i
Battlefield update: ¤ Kharkiv: 🇷🇺 attempting to move west from Kozacha Lopan on Svitlichne. Attempt at Dementiivka got repelled.
📌 https://twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1547493721368940544?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 … M142 HIMARS:
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Last 24 hours destroyed warehouses in Donetsk (2x), Nova Khakovka (again), Kirovsky District, Kherson district and more. Air defense missile supplies hit in Luhansk area, when damaged those missiles can fly somewhere 1-3km.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 A battalion or brigade stationed nearby reportedly also damaged in secondary explosions. ¤ Last week over 50 hits, all successful. Intercepted calls and other communications are near panic – huge losses, and no idea what to do. ¤ It is game-changing weapon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Since 2008, 🇷🇺 has spent billions $ to improve their army, yet 10 vehicles can change everything. It should never happen to any military, it shows how much corruption is happening to build fake army. ¤ Discussions for obtaining 300km ATACMS missiles.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 […] Estimated over 50k solders and other 🇷🇺 personnel killed, additional 22k from LNR/DNR killed. Total losses approaching 100k. What for?
Poll – 🇷🇺 citizens don’t want to finance 🇷🇺 army [link]:
63.4% won’t help, 8.4% would help with 10% of their income.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 55% called victory senseless.
45% feeling increased anxiety, depression and bad mood.
Poll shows, that mobilization can’t be done, can’t even escalate.
🇷🇺 emergency meeting: ¤ Emergency meeting to be held on 15th of July.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Anything that 🇷🇺 can do now, will be 30 times weaker than in 24th February. Meanwhile 🇺🇦 is 100 times better prepared, better weapons. Most likely firing some officials, social-economical changes, asking citizens to tighten belts, possibly blaming and/or firing government.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 🇷🇺 has understood, it has lost, possibly now taking measures of after war. Some officials might think, that they can hold onto Luhansk and Donetsk districts, use them as leverage in negotiations. It’s largest wave since April, when 🇷🇺 trying to negotiate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 […] 🇷🇺 army had advantage in artillery and armored vehicles. Artillery advantage is now solved, 🇺🇦 needs more armored vehicles. When 🇺🇦 has enough armored vehicles, it will be ready for offensive. Until then 🇺🇦 is wearing out 🇷🇺 on built up defense.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 […] 🇷🇺 started to dig trenches near Antonovskiy Bridge in Kherson. It looks like Kherson is already lost in 🇷🇺 minds.
🇧🇾 Belarus: ¤ Again rumors on possible plan to kill Lukashenka, and replace with someone controlled by Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Highly unlikely, as 🇧🇾 would not be able to attack then due to internal politics and riots. Problems would start, if 🇷🇺 army would enter 🇧🇾, but 🇷🇺 doesn’t have enough army. In mobilization drill, 90% refused to arrive in war commissariat. […]⭕ 13 Jul 2022
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The significance of the new Steve Bannon tape http://wapo.st/3Rx5dhN
// It’s not news that President Donald Trump aimed to prematurely declare victory on election night. But the tape fills out the picture of how Trumpworld might have viewed the utility of that — by causing a “firestorm.”On the tape, Bannon acknowledged something emphasized in the Axios story and elsewhere: that it was quite possible that Trump would be ahead on election night because his voters were more likely to vote in person, and more Democratic-heavy mail ballots are often counted later — something dubbed the “red mirage.” He came out and admitted that Trump would seek to exploit this misleading setup.
“More of our people vote early, that count; theirs vote in mail,” Bannon said. “And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage. And Trump’s going to take advantage of that. That’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself a winner.” ¤ Bannon then predicted with apparent glee that this would set off a “firestorm.” ¤ “We’re going to have antifa crazy, the media crazy, the courts are crazy,” he said. “And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting s— out. ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’ ” …
In an interview with Showtime’s “The Circus” released in early October — about a month before these other comments — Bannon predicted that there would be such uncertainty that Congress would be forced to decide the election. Bannon couched it in terms of Democrats supposedly seeking to overturn the election by counting mail ballots that he described as “uncertified,” but even that framing suggested that this supposed uncertainty could well be manufactured. And the practical effect was him predicting a situation much like the one Trump would ultimately gun for on Jan. 6. …
So in total, Bannon predicted Trump’s premature victory declaration, which came true. He predicted that all hell would break loose on Jan. 6, which came true. He predicted that uncertainty about election results spurred by a bunch of lawsuits would force Congress to decide the election, which wound up essentially being Trump’s plan. And he suggested that unrest was perhaps desirable and/or could be of some utility in all of this, which evidence suggests Trump might well have agreed with on Jan. 6.
We don’t know just how much coordination there was between Trump and Bannon, though the Jan. 6 committee noted Tuesday that the two men spoke at least twice Jan. 5, including before Bannon’s prediction about Jan. 6. It’s certainly possible Bannon was engaging in guesswork. But it also seems possible that he was privy to some of the strategizing about what was to come.
The Jan. 6 committee has focused on proving that Trump was repeatedly told his wild voter-fraud claims were false, in the service of proving he acted corruptly in seeking to overturn the election. What Bannon was saying publicly was that Trump was going to do all of this regardless of the actual results, which suggests that indeed the details really didn’t matter to Trump. If that stemmed from talks with Trump and his team, that would drive home the corruptness. ¤ Whether Bannon testifies or not, that’s a significant piece of the puzzle.
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Russia’s War Against Ukraine Has Turned Into Terrorism http://tinyurl.com/2p8zew6p
// The Russian military isn’t just bombing civilians. It’s also targeting the laws and values that protect human rights.🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Russian state TV… “we will go all the way to Warsaw.” We will “kill all the Ukrainian government leaders without trial.” These apparently intelligent and educated spokespeople are rabid. Ignorant. Dangerous rhetoric. Putin leads Russian criminal behavior.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that Russia’s war is not against the Ukrainian people, but against their government. Propagandists on state TV continued that train of thought, urging Russia’s military to kill the entire Ukrainian government, including President Zelensky.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1547075331156221952?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ashenthorn I think Meadows is their key witness and has been for some time now. I think that some time shortly after the criminal referral, he changed his mind and decided to fully cooperate and that Liz Cheney teased it in her final remarks yesterday. It’s just a theory though.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I feel like there’s no way that wouldn’t have leaked🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln The founding fathers warned us, as @RepRaskin reminded us yesterday, that tyrannical rulers begin as demagogues. If we do not defend our democracy and our freedom from them with everything we have, we will be responsible for its demise.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1547280282973310976?s=20/photo/1🧵 Yesterday’s @January6thCmte hearing focused on how Trump’s tweet, sent in the wee hours of 12/19/2020, was a rallying cry calling the Trump faithful to Washington D.C. on 1/6/2021. But little attention has been paid to the first half of the tweet. Here’s the full tweet:
📌 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547216175540617217?s=20/photo/1Tweet: Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud ‘more than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump washex.am/3nwaBCe. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there will be wild!
🐣 Trump’s tweet begins with a claim that Peter Navarro has released a “a great report” proving it was “statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election” with a link to a 12/17/2021 Washington Examiner article http://washex.am/3nwaBCe.
🐣 A link inside the Washington Examiner article takes you to the 36-page report by Peter Navarro:
BannonsWarRoom, Peter Navarro (12/14/2020): THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION: Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities [pdf] http://bit.ly/3uEVxYL 36p🐣 First of all, the report was published several days before Trump’s tweet on 12/14/2020 at the website for Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” clearly not a mainstream media outlet. Written by Peter Navarro, it is also dubbed “The Navarro Report.”
Cover: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547129285277876226?s=20/photo/1🐣 The report is professional-looking. It uses complete sentences, charts and footnotes. It, however, is essentially a rehashing of the arguments made in the 60✛ lawsuits brought by Giuliani and crew ~ without immediately mentioning the court cases were lost (1 win, 60 loses).
🐣 Content-wise, it’s full of fan favorite conspiracy theories, coming pretty close to the “Jewish space lasers”:
Text link: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547129291669905413?s=20/photo/1Text: Much has been made about the shadowy genesis of a company called Dominion which provides voting machines and equipment to 28 states.110 According to critics, Dominion’s roots may be traced to an effort by the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to rig his sham elections.111 Dominion is also alleged to have ties to the Clinton Foundation,112 while the Smartmatic software used in the Dominion machines is alleged to have links to the shadowy anti-Trump globalist financier George Soros.113
🐣 The imprimatur of a professional report carries a lot of water. The mere claim made by Trump that the report shows it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost (even though that is neither the report’s claim nor its approach) sounds compelling.
🐣 The report shows this chart many times and goes down the list of claims, citing “examples” from each state, without indication of the countervailing evidence that resulted in the court cases being lost 60 to 1.
Chart: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547129297110024199?s=20/photo/1🐣 Instead it blames the GOP and the courts for not ‘being on the team.’ They SHOULD have stood ruled in favor of the Trump team failure to do so means they “failed the American people” and “pose a great risk to the American Republic.”
Text Link: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547129301081985025?s=20/photo/1Text: While Democrat Party government officials cheated and gamed the electoral process across all six battleground states, many Republican government officials – from governors and state legislators to judges – did little or nothing to stand in their way.
Consider that the Republican Party controls both chambers of the State Legislatures in five of the six battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.145 These State Legislatures clearly have both the power and the opportunity to investigate the six dimensions of election irregularities presented in this report. Yet, wilting under intense political pressure, these politicians have failed in their Constitutional duties and responsibilities to do so – and thereby failed both their states and this nation as well as their party.
The same can be said for the Republican governors in two of the six battleground states – Arizona and Georgia. Both Arizona’s Doug Ducey and Georgia’s Brian Kemp have cowered in their Governor’s mansions and effectively sat on their hands while their states have wallowed in election irregularities.
The judicial branch of the American government should be the final backstop for the kind of issues examined in this report. Yet both our State courts and Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have failed the American people in refusing to properly adjudicate the election irregularities that have come before them. Their failures likewise pose a great risk to the American Republic.
🐣 It’s unlikely many of those who were compelled to attend the January 6th rally by Trump’s tweet went to either the Washington Examiner article or followed the link to Navarro’s report on Bannon’s website.
Trump Tweet: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547129304877830146?s=20/photo/1
🐣 What mattered was Trump’s claim that a report proved it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost the election ~ which the report didn’t do. The report re-stated the claims Trump’s “outside” legal team made and blamed the RINOS and the courts for not accepting them.
Drawing: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1547129308690497536?s=20/photo/1⭕ 12 Jul 2022 ⚖️🏛
Day 7: July 12, 2022: “Assembling the Mob”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Liz Cheney begins the July 12 hearing of the January 6 committee with this: “President Trump is a 76 year old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1546906042927353857?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE: Jan. 6 Committee holds seventh public hearing, focused on the role far-right extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers played in Capitol attack. Get expert analysis in real-time on our live blog http://msnbc.com/jan6hearings
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1546903393297465344?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel And we’re off! ¤ “We settle our differences at the ballot box.” ¤ [Note: I’m going to break off at 2 to cover some live hearings.]
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1546903190574071808?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Pat Cipollone agreed that Donald Trump should have conceded the election at some point and time (at least, apparently on December 14 when Electoral College met).b
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1546909222935445509?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ECMcLaughlin Live tweet of today’s January 6th hearing is right here. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/1546902951687467008?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Seventh Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3P2quy5
// 7/12/2022; January 6 Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said that former President Trump “tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” and that the matter has been reported to the Justice Department. The revelation came as Rep. Cheney delivered her closing statement during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is the seventh in a series of hearings – after months of closed-door investigations – detailing the committee findings on the January 6 attack. Testifying before the committee was Jason Van Tatenhove, the former spokesperson for the extremist group the Oath Keepers, who said the group is a “violent militia” and “the best illustration for what the Oath Keepers are happened January 6th when we saw that stacked military formation going up the stairs of our Capitol.” Also testifying was Stephen Ayres, who pled guilty to breaching the U.S. Capitol.~~~~~~~~~~
💙 NYT: Tears, Screaming and Insults: Inside an ‘Unhinged’ Meeting to Keep Trump in Power http://nyti.ms/3z1SpbS
// Even by the standards of the Trump White House, a meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, that was highlighted Tuesday by the Jan. 6 committee was extreme.The meeting lasted for more than six hours, past midnight, and devolved into shouting that could be heard outside the room. Participants hurled insults and nearly came to blows. Some people left in tears. ¤ Even by the standards of the Trump White House, where people screamed at one another and President Donald J. Trump screamed at them, the Dec. 18, 2020, meeting became known as an “unhinged” event — and an inflection point in Mr. Trump’s desperate efforts to remain in power after he had lost the election.
“It got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there,” Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, told the committee in videotaped testimony. “I mean, you got people walking in — it was late at night, it had been a long day. And what they were proposing, I thought was nuts.” ¤ The proposal, to have the president direct the secretary of defense to seize voting machines to examine for fraud and also to appoint a special counsel to potentially charge people with crimes, had been hatched by three outside advisers: Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign who promoted conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig the voting machines; Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser Mr. Trump fired in his first weeks in office; and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com.
On the other side were Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel; Mr. Herschmann; and Derek Lyons, the White House staff secretary. ¤ The arguing began soon after Ms. Powell and her two companions were let into the White House by a junior aide and wandered to the Oval Office without an appointment. ¤ They were there alone with Mr. Trump for about 15 minutes before other officials were alerted to their presence. Mr. Cipollone recounted receiving an urgent call from a staff member to get to the Oval Office.
Ms. Powell, in her videotaped interview, described Mr. Trump as “very interested in hearing” what she and her two cohorts had to say, things that “apparently nobody else had bothered to inform him of.”
Mr. Herschmann said he was flabbergasted by what he was hearing. ¤ “And I was asking, like, are you claiming the Democrats were working with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans and whomever else? And at one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world and who was communicating with whom via the machines. And some comment about, like, Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet.”
When the White House officials pointed out to Ms. Powell that she had lost dozens of lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election, she replied, “Well, the judges are corrupt.”
“I’m like, everyone?” Mr. Herschmann testified. “Every single case that you’ve done in the country that you guys lost? Every one of them is corrupt? Even the ones we appointed?”
Ms. Powell testified that Mr. Trump’s White House advisers “showed nothing but contempt and disdain for the president.”The plan, the White House advisers learned, was for Ms. Powell to become the special counsel. This did not go over well. ¤ “I don’t think Sidney Powell would say that I thought it was a good idea to appoint her special counsel,” Mr. Cipollone testified. “I didn’t think she should be appointed anything.”
Mr. Cipollone also testified that he was alarmed by the insistence of Ms. Powell and the others that there had been election fraud when there was no evidence. “When other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is, what is it? At some point, you have to put up or shut up. That was my view.” ¤ Mr. Herschmann described a particularly intense moment. “Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and everything, kept on standing up and standing around and screaming at me. At a certain point, I had it with him, so I yelled back, ‘Either come over or sit your f-ing ass back down.’”
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, could hear the shouting from outside the Oval Office. She texted a deputy chief of staff, Anthony M. Ornato, that the West Wing was “UNHINGED.” …
Finally, the group ended up in the White House residence. ¤ Ms. Powell believed that she had been appointed special counsel, something that Mr. Trump declared he wanted, including that she should have a security clearance, which other aides opposed. She testified that others said that even if that happened, they would ignore her. She said she would have “fired” them on the spot for such insubordination. ¤ Mr. Trump, she said, told her something to the effect of: “You see what I deal with? I deal with this all the time.”
Eventually Mr. Trump backed down and rejected the outside advisers’ proposal. But early the next morning, Dec. 19, he posted to Twitter urging his supporters to arrive at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the day that a joint session of Congress was set to certify the Electoral College results. ¤ “Be there, will be wild!” he wrote.
💙 WaPo: ‘Unhinged’: The White House meeting that preceded Trump’s ‘will be wild’ tweet http://wapo.st/3axZ3gG
Late on a Friday night about six weeks after Donald Trump lost his reelection, a fistfight nearly broke out in the White House between the president’s fired national security adviser and a top White House aide.
A motley crew of unofficial Trump advisers had talked their way into the Oval Office and an audience with the president of the United States to argue the election had been stolen by shadowy foreign powers — perhaps remotely via Nest thermostats.
For hours, the group tried to persuade Trump to take extraordinary, potentially illegal action to ignore the election results and try to stay in power. And for hours, some of Trump’s actual White House advisers tried to persuade him that those ideas were, in the words of one lawyer who participated, “nuts.”
There was shouting, insults and profanity, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Herschmann said he nearly came to blows with Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser who was part of the Trump’s group of impromptu visitors.
“Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter and everything. … At a certain point I had it with him,” Herschmann recalled in taped testimony that played at a Tuesday hearing. “So, I yelled back: Either come over, or sit your effing ass back down.” …
The wild session — during which Trump weighed seizing voting machines from key counties, deploying the National Guard to potentially rerun the election or appointing lawyer Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election — had been widely reported in past accounts of Trump’s final weeks in office. ¤ But the committee, at its seventh public hearing on Tuesday, brought forward powerful and vivid personal testimony from six different participants — both those who wanted the president to act and those begging him not to do so — weaving them together in a video montage that intercut voices from both sides.
Even for a White House known for its unconventional chaos, the Dec. 18, 2020, meeting was an extraordinary moment, demonstrating how Trump invited fringe players advocating radical action into his inner sanctum, as he searched for a way to remain in office despite losing an election. ¤ “The west wing is UNHINGED,” declared Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in a text message sent as the meeting unfolded.
It took place four days after the electoral college met and, confirming the popular vote in key states, formally elected Joe Biden the next president. The committee showed clips of testimony demonstrating that Trump was told by everyone from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to Attorney General William P. Barr to Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia — a lawyer and son of a deceased conservative Supreme Court justice — that there was no longer a legal path for him to remain in office, and it was time to concede.
Yet somehow, the delegation that included Flynn and Powell prevailed on a junior staffer to escort them into one of the country’s most secure facilities, where the group met for a time with Trump alone before any White House staffer even realized they were in the building.
Testifying to the committee via remote video, wearing oversized glasses and an animal print top, and sipping periodically from a can of Diet Dr Pepper, Powell — who had filed several unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the election — wryly explained that Trump’s aides came running when they realized what was happening. ¤ “I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land-speed record,” she said, referring to the White House counsel.
For his part, Cipollone testified that he got a call that he needed to be in the Oval Office and rushed into the room. There, he spotted Flynn and Powell and another man he did not recognize. ¤ “I walked in, I looked at him and I said, ‘Who are you?’” said Cipollone, in one of a number of clips played by the committee of testimony given by Cipollone last week, after months of negotiations. ¤ The man was Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the discount furniture outlet Overstock.com, who was helping to organize and fund Powell and Flynn’s efforts. (¤)
Cipollone told the committee he was chagrined. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. And so I didn’t understand how they had gotten in,” he testified. ¤ Cipollone was joined by other White House aides including Herschmann and staff secretary Derek Lyons, and the group listened as Flynn, Powell, Byrne and another lawyer working with Powell named Emily Newman assured Trump the election had been stolen. Meadows arrived eventually. Trump at times called other campaign aides and placed them on speaker phone.
“At one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world, and who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment about, like, Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet,” Herschmann recalled.
The group recommended that Trump sign an executive order — they had brought a draft — that would appoint Powell as special counsel and instruct the Defense Department to seize voting machines, testimony showed.
But, according to Cipollone, the group was unable to answer one key question from Trump’s White House advisers. ¤ “We were pushing back and asking one simple question as a general matter: Where is the evidence?” he recounted.
According to Cipollone, Powell and the others reacted with anger, suggesting that even asking the question was a sign that Trump’s White House team was insufficiently loyal to him. The committee emphasized the point by then showing a clip of Powell. ¤ “If it had been me sitting in his chair, I would have fired all of them that night and had them escorted out of the building,” she testified.
Three people familiar with the hours-long session told The Washington Post that the committee’s presentation captured the broad outlines of the meeting. They each spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the private meeting. ¤ “The only thing that they didn’t quite capture was how loud and how profane it was. It was literally people just screaming and swearing and yelling at each other for hours,” one person said. …
By the end, after midnight, Powell testified that she believed that Trump had agreed to name her special counsel and extend her top secret clearance. Cipollone declined to explain to the committee what Trump said in the meeting but insisted no paperwork was ever filed to complete the appointment. Regardless, Lyons said Trump came away convinced the outsiders were working to keep him in office, as he desired. The meeting ended as it had started, Lyons testified: “Sidney Powell was fighting, Mike Flynn was fighting. They were looking for avenues that would enable it would result in President Trump remaining President Trump for a second term.” …
The White House aides might have been relieved to bring the meeting to a close. But at 1:42 a.m., Trump made clear which side in the debate had won his heart. ¤ “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” he tweeted. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump, and Trump alone, turned Jan. 6 into a debacle for our democracy http://tinyurl.com/587e5eh9
It was Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone, who summoned and loosed the mob that sacked the Capitol, threatened Congress and the vice president and imperiled our democracy. That is the powerful message that emerged from Tuesday’s televised hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee. And these hearings make clear just how dangerous it would be for the former president to be elected again. …
On the night of Dec. 18, 2020, witnesses told the committee, Trump presided over a rancorous, hours-long screaming match between the Crazy and Normal camps that ended after midnight with no real resolution. At 1:42 a.m. that night, Trump embarked on a third, radically different course of action: He posted the infamous tweet telling supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, ending it with what MAGA extremists understood as a call to arms: “Be there, will be wild!” …
A former member of the Oath Keepers militia group and a onetime sympathizer who joined the Capitol mob told the committee what happened next. Trump’s Jan. 6 tweets galvanized not just random MAGA acolytes but also more-established violent groups. And some leaders of the insurrection somehow learned in advance that Trump would call on the crowd to march on the Capitol. …
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson The most shocking thing is that we almost lost our constitutional republic and our democratic system to this troupe of skells, loons, degenerates, and fourth rate hustlers. ¤ We didn’t even get a quality set of supervillains trying to destroy America.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This guy is so fucked.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Navarro: The reason why I think the Pence is guilty of treason to at least Trump and perhaps in this country is that he acted on the basis of a flawed legal opinion
💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1546655959413624836?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tomiahonen With 15th Russian General, Major General Nasbulin dead now after a MLRS rocket strike on his headquarters in the war in Ukraine, I am posting link to this Thread I wrote last month about the deading of Russian Generals in Ukraine
⋙ 🧵 RT @tomiahonen Deaded Generals [6/6] Thread 1/ ¤ Let’s kill some Generals. NO, Twitter, no! I was not threatening any Russian Generals, no. I meant, let’s discuss this sudden outbreak of DGS, Dead Generals Syndrome, in a Thread. By some counts between 13 and 15 Generals have already died in Ukraine
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1533793120676106241?s=20🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Imagine how many over the decades pushed that Russia has a mighty military. They are cruel and ruthless but definitely do not meet the qualifications of a strategic military. No one ever factored in the mass corruption and how much is stolen from every contract and agency
⭕ 11 Jul 2022
NYT: Hutchinson Testimony Jolts Justice Dept. to Discuss Trump’s Conduct More Openly http://nyti.ms/3yuV6S1 “Mr. Garland’s message has always been clear: The Justice Department investigates crimes, not people”
// A key witness’s account helped accelerate a shift in the agency’s inquiry: Overt talk about Mr. Trump and his behavior had been rare, except as a motive for the actions of others.For the past year and a half, the Justice Department has approached former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results with a follow-the-evidence strategy that to critics appeared to border on paralysis — and that limited discussions of his role, even inside the department.
Then came Cassidy Hutchinson. ¤ The electrifying public testimony delivered last month to the House Jan. 6 panel by Ms. Hutchinson, a former White House aide who was witness to many key moments, jolted top Justice Department officials into discussing the topic of Mr. Trump more directly, at times in the presence of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
In conversations at the department the day after Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance, some of which included Ms. Monaco, officials talked about the pressure that the testimony created to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s potential criminal culpability and whether he intended to break the law.
Ms. Hutchinson’s disclosures seemed to have opened a path to broaching the most sensitive topic of all: Mr. Trump’s own actions ahead of the attack.
Department officials have said Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony did not alter their investigative strategy to methodically work their way from lower-level actors up to higher rungs of power. “The only pressure I feel, and the only pressure that our line prosecutors feel, is to do the right thing,” Mr. Garland said this spring. …On Monday, Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor in the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, sharply criticized Mr. Garland’s “bottom up” investigative approach in a guest essay in The New York Times, saying the department should instead work from Mr. Trump’s speech to supporters on the Ellipse outward.
But Mr. Garland’s message has always been clear: The Justice Department investigates crimes, not people. …
On the day he took office, March 11, 2021, Mr. Garland sat through a detailed briefing on the status of the investigation delivered by Michael R. Sherwin, the head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington who was overseeing the inquiry. Mr. Sherwin presented Mr. Garland with a strategy that included four teams of prosecutors, labeled A through D: “Team B,” already staffed by 15 lawyers, had begun looking into “public influencers and officials” linked to the attack, according to a copy of a memo shared with The New York Times.
Mr. Garland listened intently and thanked Mr. Sherwin for his hard work under difficult circumstances, according to people familiar with the exchange. ¤ Mr. Sherwin, who had been appointed by Mr. Trump, then appeared on “60 Minutes” and suggested the inquiry should target the highest levels of government — naming names. “Maybe the president is culpable for those actions,” he said, infuriating the department’s new leadership. ¤ Within six weeks, he had returned home to Miami, and Mr. Garland’s team took over.
Mr. Garland’s appointees have struggled with many of the same thorny questions about the scope of the investigation as their predecessors did. They were uncertain they could show that the nonviolent activity to thwart the peaceful transfer of power violated criminal law, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
Those concerns seem to have faded, with prosecutors pursuing the investigation into the alternative elector plan, and Mr. Clark’s actions.
While there has never been a prohibition, formal or otherwise, against discussing Mr. Trump, top department officials then and now made clear that prosecutors should be focused on the evidentiary road in front of them, not to a road map leading to Mr. Trump.
Until recently, that entailed tightly steering discussion to the details of specific cases being developed — rioters, midlevel ringleaders or Trump associates involved in the state electors scheme, according to current and former officials — not to speculative ones.
🐣 @Victoria_Spartz If you have issues with US aid to Ukr or concerns about Yermak, the proper way to raise them at this delicate moment in diplomacy, is w the State Dept or Admin, not all over rw media. Yermak is a known quantity and investigating him will only help Dems, not GOP
WaPo: Jan. 6 hearing expected to focus on link between militants, White House http://wapo.st/3Po2N2X
// The committee’s seventh public hearing is due to feature testimony from a former Oath Keeper and delve into origins of a Trump tweet.
.bq
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection plans to hold its seventh public hearing on Tuesday, with an expected focus on the ways in which former president Donald Trump and his allies summoned far-right militant groups to Washington as he grew increasingly desperate to hold on to power.The hearing is likely to drill down on the period after states cast their electoral college votes on Dec. 14, 2020, action that confirmed Joe Biden’s victory. Trump, the committee is expected to argue, then shifted his focus to using the date of the congressional counting of the votes, Jan. 6, 2021, to block a peaceful transfer of power.
A committee aide said on a conference call with reporters Monday that the hearing will lay out the way that far-right militant groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others took cues from the former president and his allies. Particular attention will be paid to his Dec. 19, 2020, posting on Twitter: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted. “Be there, will be wild!”
🐣 RT @apmassaro3 The Russian army is less a military and more a force of wanton destruction, terror, theft, rape, and murder
🐣 RT @CNN National security adviser Jake Sullivan says the US has information indicating that Iran is preparing to supply Russia with drones — including weapons-capable drones — and begin training Russian forces on how to operate them as early as later this month
⋙ CNN: White House says Iran is preparing to supply Russia with weapons-capable drones http://cnn.it/3AJCkce🐣 RT @RepRaskin When he sent this tweet, Trump became the first president in American history to call for a protest against the peaceful transfer of power. ¤ At tomorrow’s hearing, America will see how it mobilized dangerous extremists & white nationalist groups to come armed to “Stop the Steal.” Text Block:
¤ https://twitter.com/RepRaskin/status/1546632527024164864?s=20/photo/1
// Text (12/17/2020): Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud ‘more than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump washex.am/3nwaBCe. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!
⋙ DCExaminer: Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud ‘more than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump http://washex.am/3nwaBCe
⋙⋙ BannonsWarRoom, Peter Navarro: THE IMMACULATE DECEPTION: Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities [pdf] http://bit.ly/3uEVxYL 36pMuch has been made about the shadowy genesis of a company called Dominion which provides voting machines and equipment to 28 states.110 According to critics, Dominion’s roots may be traced to an effort by the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to rig his sham elections.111 Dominion is also alleged to have ties to the Clinton Foundation,112 while the Smartmatic software used in the Dominion machines is alleged to have links to the shadowy anti-Trump globalist financier George Soros.113
🧵 RT @saintjavelin Saint Olha of Kiyv: One badass bitch you do not want to mess with. ¤ She has a revenge story worthy of Game of Thrones or The Northman. Today is the blessed feast of Saint Olha, so we decided to make a thread about what a badass bitch she was:
📌 https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1546572610393227265?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ameliamroberts1 Been dying to know her story ever since @ZelenskyyUa gave @SpeakerPelosi the medal🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ UPDATED COUP CHART with additions (including some special requests). Use it to follow along in the hearings. Once everything and everyone on this chart gets mentioned, you win bingo
🖼 ◕ https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1546580407096934402?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ I explained the overall plot in this thread so you can match it up with the picture (and am realizing I missed a state in my chart )
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD. Since there’s so much [waves hands everywhere] crazy coming up all of a sudden, let me break down the theory of how the overturning of the election was supposed to go down:
📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1482384084433313795?s=20🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer THE PERILS OF MICRO-MANAGEMENT: @mdmitri91 has translated an influential RU mil-blogger who laments his command system- that so fears decentralization and initiative that it won’t disperse its ammunition supplies. UKR has shown it knows how to deal with these ‘lucrative’ targets.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Decently influential Russian commentator Dmitriyev (100k+ telegram followers) on why suggested solutions to Ukrainian missile strikes are fruitless. ¤ He believes “decentralisation” of powers that comes with distributing ammunitions is contrary to Russia’s army and gov-t nature. [Text atts:]
¤ https://twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1546256088324005890?s=20/photo/1 -2💙 NYT, Andrew Weissmann: Merrick Garland Should Investigate Trump’s 2020 Election Schemes as a ‘Hub and Spoke’ Conspiracy http://nyti.ms/3NYbeRF
The tenacious work of the Jan. 6 committee has transformed how we think about the Jan. 6 rebellion. It should also transform the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Before the hearings, federal agents and prosecutors were performing a classic “bottom up” criminal investigation of the Jan. 6 rioters, which means prosecuting the lowest-ranking members of a conspiracy, flipping people as it proceeds and following the evidence as high as it goes. It was what I did at the Justice Department for investigations of the Genovese and Colombo crime families, Enron and Volkswagen as well as for my part in the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election led by the special counsel Robert Mueller.
But that is actually the wrong approach for investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. That approach sees the attack on the Capitol as a single event — an isolated riot, separate from other efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the election.
The hearings should inspire the Justice Department to rethink its approach: A myopic focus on the Jan. 6 riot is not the way to proceed if you are trying to follow the facts where they lead and to hold people “at any level” criminally accountable, as Attorney General Merrick Garland promised.
The evidence gathered in the hearings describes a multiprong conspiracy — what prosecutors term a hub and spoke conspiracy — in which the Ellipse speech by President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were just one “spoke” of a grander scheme.
This broader approach would avoid the thorny debate that has emerged as to whether Mr. Trump could be criminally culpable for inciting the riot during his Ellipse speech or if, on the contrary, his speech is protected under the First Amendment and the evidence too ambiguous to justify the extraordinary step of indicting a former president. Building a criminal case that looks solely at the riot itself is far more complex legally and factually for those who weren’t at or in the Capitol. These challenges of the current bottom-up approach have led to criticism of the slow pace of the narrow Justice Department approach.
Instead, what the hearings have revealed is evidence of a plot orchestrated by Mr. Trump and his allies in the White House and elsewhere — including players from the Mueller investigation like Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani as well as new players like Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman. The “spoke” of the Jan. 6 riot should be seen and investigated simultaneously with the other “spokes”: orchestrating fake electors in key states, pressuring state officials like those in Georgia to find new votes, plotting to behead the leadership of the Justice Department to promote a lackey who would further the conspiracy by announcing a spurious investigation into election fraud, and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to violate the law.
Investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection in the context of the other means by which Mr. Trump appears to have sought to undermine the transfer of power serves to strengthen any future case by presenting the complete evidence of the perpetrators’ actions and intent. And it undermines possible defenses.
For instance, the evidence that Mr. Trump lied in a statement about Mr. Pence’s agreeing that he had the power to reject electors undermines the defense that Mr. Trump was acting in good faith and honestly believed he had won the election. And Mr. Trump’s conduct in the White House after his speech at the Ellipse and during the Jan. 6 attack, which includes remarks, reported from testimony by the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, in which Mr. Trump condoned the chants calling for hanging of the vice president of the United States, is strong evidence of his intent for a plan to upend a democratic election.
There are signs that the department, spurred on by the committee, has begun to look into some of these other “spokes.” Unsurprisingly, the “spoke” involving the Justice Department itself has attracted acute interest. Recently, federal agents conducted a search of the home of Mr. Clark, whom Mr. Trump considered elevating to be acting head of the Justice Department, and seized the phone of Mr. Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on efforts to overturn the election.
But other signs are not so encouraging: Department prosecutors were reportedly surprised by the testimony of Ms. Hutchinson. That is not a sign of a robust investigation into the facts. The department has more tools than Congress does to learn the truth. It could have interviewed Ms. Hutchinson long ago, as well as many others whose evidence is relevant — indeed, Ms. Hutchinson alone provided investigators numerous leads to pursue.
For those who do not voluntarily cooperate with a Justice Department investigation, prosecutors can serve grand jury subpoenas and obtain their testimony under oath, subject to criminal penalties like perjury — just as Georgia state prosecutors are doing. And people can be given immunity to compel their testimony if they validly assert the Fifth Amendment. Obtaining grand-jury testimony is indispensable; it forestalls witnesses from credibly claiming later that they had not made certain statements in an interview or that an interview report is inaccurate (or worse).
I have been involved in numerous high-profile investigations that engendered significant congressional interest, and what I have seen in this inquiry is not typical behavior from the Justice Department. Usually, department prosecutors and agents don’t want Congress jumping ahead of their investigation, and they work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. The department wants to interview witnesses first, and prosecutors make sure that targets are fully truthful about their own potential wrongdoing and that their testimony is corroborated; use tools to flip recalcitrant witnesses; and build a case without revealing evidence to other prospective witnesses — efforts that can falter if Congress is conducting private and public interviews that may inadvertently undermine the strongest possible criminal case.
Department lawyers and congressional committees usually work collegially to avoid these issues, something that can happen when Congress has faith in the diligence and resolve of the Justice Department. That does not appear to be happening here. We have seen the unusual public filing of a letter from Justice Department leadership seeking access to committee evidence, something largely unnecessary if it had already obtained that evidence. And the fact that the letter was sent is a clear sign of a breakdown in the relationship between the two branches, something I did not see even during high-profile investigations like Enron and the Mueller investigation.
The American public is entitled to a thorough, fearless, competent and fair criminal investigation. That is still possible, and what facts that investigation reveals, and what prosecutorial decisions are made thereafter, will surely be subject to debate. But until we pursue all leads, that debate will be truly academic, to the detriment of our democracy.
Andrew Weissmann (@AWeissmann_), a former Justice Department prosecutor and senior prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, is a professor of practice at the New York University School of Law and the author of “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation.”
🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPR believes this attack means war with the USA (wants to build a Russian paradise). Text Block:
¤ https://twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1546605973934153728?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mdmitri91 Pro-Russian bloggers and commentators reacting to the Nova Kakhovka HIMARS strike.
⋙ WarTranslated, Dmitri Masinski: Russians react to Nova Kakhovka explosion http://bit.ly/3yX1VgBTheAtlantic, Thomas Wolf and Ethan Herenstein: The Case That Could Blow Up American Election Law http://bit.ly/3c4jh1Y
// A radical and baseless legal theory could upend the country’s most essential democratic process.🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump promises to go Full Dictator if given the chance. Believe him!
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Donald Trump has never been more brazen with his fascist agenda. He now says one of his biggest regrets was not taking over ‘Democrat cities’ by force and is promising he won’t make that mistake again if given the opportunity. None of this is normal.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1546219303686483968?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @berkfran There is no question that Trump has been and continues to be a “clear and present danger” to national security. No concerns for possible “unrest” can justify @TheJusticeDept @FBI not dealing with the declared threat.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CAPAction Conservative Judge Michael Luttig: ¤ “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1537525919929204739?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @stengel Remember, there’s a kind of deception built into the very high right track/wrong track numbers. Republicans are opposed to Dem direction, but Dems in part think country is headed in wrong direction because of Republican efforts to undermine our freedoms. [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @billingsinmd Thank you, Mr. Stengel, for pointing this out. I suggest this significantly distorts this question. Poor polling to not phrase the question accurately and just as poor journalism for not pointing out this distortion.⭕ 10 Jul 2022
NYT, Aquilino Gonell: I Was Betrayed by President Trump http://nyti.ms/3yYeqsl “I was shocked to hear Ms. Hutchinson explain the extent to which former President Donald Trump incited the people who almost killed me”
🧵 RT @LauraWalkerKC Jan 6th: While gathered in a private suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, an Oath Keeper member says he heard their leader, Stewart Rhodes, repeatedly urge the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep him in power.
⋙ AP: Trump associates’ ties to extremists probed by Jan. 6 panel http://bit.ly/3Iuj0RZ
📌 https://twitter.com/LauraWalkerKC/status/1546356519733714944?s=20🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: THREAD: late night DoJ 🔥🔥🔥SCORCHER🔥🔥🔥 just filed in the Bannon case. The filing is a motion to prevent Bannon from submitting his new “cooperation” offer to the committee as evidence in his contempt trial. FIRST: DoJ says too little too late. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1546363193982738435?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @nytimes Several states run by Democrats are pushing for stiffer rules on the spread of false information, while Republican-run states are pushing for fewer rules. In this deeply polarized era, even the fight for truth breaks along partisan lines.
⋙ NYT: The Fight Over Truth Also Has a Red State, Blue State Divide http://nyti.ms/3Ir1MVR
// Several states run by Democrats are pushing for stiffer rules on the spread of false information, while Republican-run states are pushing for fewer rules.To fight disinformation, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would force social media companies to divulge their process for removing false, hateful or extremist material from their platforms. Texas lawmakers, by contrast, want to ban the largest of the companies — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — from removing posts because of political points of view. ¤ In Washington, the state attorney general persuaded a court to fine a nonprofit and its lawyer $28,000 for filing a baseless legal challenge to the 2020 governor’s race. In Alabama, lawmakers want to allow people to seek financial damages from social media platforms that shut down their accounts for having posted false content.
In the absence of significant action on disinformation at the federal level, officials in state after state are taking aim at the sources of disinformation and the platforms that propagate them — only they are doing so from starkly divergent ideological positions. In this deeply polarized era, even the fight for truth breaks along partisan lines.
The result has been a cacophony of state bills and legal maneuvers that could reinforce information bubbles in a nation increasingly divided over a variety of issues — including abortion, guns, the environment — and along geographic lines. ¤ The result has been a cacophony of state bills and legal maneuvers that could reinforce information bubbles in a nation increasingly divided over a variety of issues — including abortion, guns, the environment — and along geographic lines.
The midterm elections in November are driving much of the activity on the state level. In red states, the focus has been on protecting conservative voices on social media, including those spreading baseless claims of widespread electoral fraud. ¤ In blue states, lawmakers have tried to force the same companies to do more to stop the spread of conspiracy theories and other harmful information about a broad range of topics, including voting rights and Covid-19.
“We should not stand by and just throw up our hands and say that this is an impossible beast that is just going to take over our democracy,” Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said in an interview. ¤ Calling disinformation a “nuclear weapon” threatening the country’s democratic foundations, he supports legislation that would make it a crime to spread lies about elections. He praised the $28,000 fine levied against the advocacy group that challenged the integrity of the state’s vote in 2020. ¤ “We ought to be creatively looking for potential ways to reduce its impact,” he said, referring to disinformation.
The biggest hurdle to new regulations — regardless of the party pushing them — is the First Amendment. Lobbyists for the social media companies say that, while they seek to moderate content, the government should not be in the business of dictating how that’s done. …
🐣 RT @marceelias The Court will either empower the likes of Eastman and Trump or it will stand behind the dozens of state court judges who protected our elections in those 28 cases. These are the stakes when the Court considers Moore v. Harper next term.
⋙ DemocracyDocket: A Dangerous Theory Will Have Its Day in the U.S. Supreme Court http://bit.ly/3AxzoPH ‘This is how democracy ends, this is how democracy ends / Not with a bang but a ________’ is up to us. (Apologies the R. Frost)WaPo: Biden’s Saudi trip captures competing demands of rights agenda, ‘great power’ contest http://wapo.st/3NXyJdt //➔ Do Americans care more about gas prices and Russia’s war against Ukraine than they do about MBS’s human rights abuses? Biden reads the room
📊 WaPo: Candidate challenges, primary scars have GOP worried about Senate chances http://wapo.st/3Iqyu9Q Weaknesses in GOP candidates endorsed by Trump are increasing the possibility Dems can hold the Senate and possibly pick up some governorships
// Four months from Election Day, Republicans are struggling in several of the marquee races in the fight for control of the upper chamber🚫 🧵 RT @igorsushko 🚨My translation of the July 7th #FSBletters from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to @Vlad_Osechkin. Subject: Kremlin plan to annihilate Belarusian army in Ukraine and seize #Belarus itself as a result, turn #Lukashenko into hostage-puppet. Please share far & wide.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1546245350972727296?s=20
// uncertain reliability🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Reluctantly I now believe that DOJ should bring an indictment against Trump for his criminal actions directing an attempt to violently overthrow a legitimate election and seize office in violation of the Constitution. There will be violence sadly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump NEW: Chuck Todd suggests Americans can’t ‘handle’ a Trump prosecution, saying it would be “too harsh for the country.” ¤ Thoughts?🧵 RT @MarkHertling After several weeks of travel, I was going to do an update thread on Ukraine today. ¤ But the below conversation on Fox News, AFN & what’s shown on military bases – shared with @RadioFreeTom – is an opportunity to share some facts…and some thoughts. A [thread] 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1546170423494180866?s=20🐣 RT @mdmitri91 FSB Colonel and War in Donbass participant Igor Girkin publishes areas of recent Ukrainian missile strikes and asks when is the Russian command planning to start fighting in “full force”. He asked for maximum repost which we fully respect and carry out.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1546159073304920065?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ GOP Rep. Kinzinger tells @GStephanopoulos that “in about 10 years, there’s not going to have been a single Trump supporter that exists anywhere in the country.” ¤ “It’s like Nixon. There were a lot of people that supported Nixon until he was out of office.” https://abcn.ws/3RgImH4
◕ https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1546145540500496384?s=20/photo/1
// Nixon popularity🐣 RT @SimonWDC Some gas math:
1/20/21 – $2.40 a gallon
1/1/22 – $3.22
6/16/22 – $5.03
7/10/22 – $4.68, down 35 cents in last 3 weeks
69% of the increase in gas prices came from Putin.
Refusal of Rs to acknowledge benefits his war against the Ukraine and the West, betrays our natl interest.
◕ https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1546138395369431045?s=20/photo/1🐣 Democrats, led by jerks like @ElieNYC, are engaging in in political malpractice. Biden should ‘stand with his people‘? He is. He is doing what he can. Dems have 48 votes right now, not 51. He supports breaking the filibuster, but we need to unite and GOTV, not rabble rouse
⭕ 9 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @cdkang76 69% of Democrats support Supreme Court expansion — seems like the mainstream of the Democratic Party to me.
⋙ 📊 Navigator Poll: Two-Thirds Support Codifying Abortion Rights as Court Favorability Continues Decline http://bit.ly/3Phy1c9WaPo: Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia http://wapo.st/3O0SW1X US diplomacy returns to the Middle East after four years of the Trumpian ham-handedness that destroyed the nuclear deal and chose sides instead of encouraging stability and cooperation; detailed
🐣 RT @MarkHertling “We are all Constitutional first responders.” I like that phrase.
⋙ 🐣 RT @therecount Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on his friendship with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): ¤ “I told Liz I can’t wait to going back to disagreeing with her about everything. But right now, we are in a constitutional emergency, and we are all constitutional first responders.”
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1545399652513730561?s=20&t=EE38A-qehNLS73rMhZLNCQ/photo/1🐣 RT @visegrad24 Russia issued a final warning on the Kaliningrad embargo yesterday, with the Spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova saying: ¤ “If the situation will not return to normal in the coming days, Russia will take harsh measures against Lithuania and the European Union.”
🧵😅 RT @tomiahonen So as the Biglier Trumpian Bible foretold, in the Book of Barr, that when the Italian satellites align with the Jewish space-based lasers… then the #PatsyBaloney cometh. On that glorious day, we greatly rejoice the Pat Cipollone ¤ And all manner of legalistic miracles will occur
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1545911255977836549?s=20PsychToday, Joe Navarro: When the Narcissist Fails http://bit.ly/3ayZDdY
// 7/26/2020; malignant narcissism; A cautionary examination of how narcissists react to failure.🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump’s attorney said yesterday that if they could get 3 states legislatures to pass these resolutions, then a 2023 GOP Congress could take this up, overturn the 2020 election, and reinstate Trump. Now this from her client.
¤ Text Block: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1545833501651619840?s=20/photo/1[Trump:] …Other States are looking at, and studying, the amazing Wisconsin Supreme Court decision declaring Ballot Boxes ILLEGAL, and that decision includes the 2020 Presidential Election. Speaker Robin Vos has a decision to make! Does Wisconsin RECLAIM the Electors, turn over the Election to the actual winner (by a lot!), or sit back and do nothing as our Country continues to go to HELL? Brave American Patriots already have a Resolution on the Floor!
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Seems apparent Trump is freeing up Bannon to testify because he will lie under oath to protect him, and he knows it.
⋙ 🐣 Bannon is more dangerous than Trump. He is satanic. He can weave a web of lies so seductive people don’t know what’s happening; his venom is paralyzing. He’s a nihilist who just wants to ‘burn it all down.’ ¤ ✛ If he’s not called to testify, Trump can say, “See, it’s so unfair!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Epinnoia TFG did the same trick in the Mueller probe. Mueller basically called him out for it – saying that the obstruction was actually effective in preventing Justice from getting to the actual truth. They cancel out testimony with false testimony – making it impossible to move forward.🐣 RT @duty2warn We’ve tweeted for years that Trump’s GREATEST fear is humiliation. At his core, are feelings of inadequacy, and a desperate quest for legitimacy. His whole life has been a concoction of secrets and lies. The Committee is exposing him as a fraud. For him, this is total humiliation
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn To be clear, he IS afraid of criminal indictment too, but feels he can fight and extend process indefinitely IF he still has organized support AND narrative. The Committee is eroding BOTH. Mary Trump yesterday: “To say Donald is terrified is accurate and also an understatement.”🐣 RT @dfriedman33 “The panel did not press him to either corroborate or contradict the details of explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson…”
⋙ NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Questions Cipollone on Pardons and Trump’s Election Claims http://nyti.ms/3nQutC3
// Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, appeared before the House committee investigating the Capitol attack for roughly eight hours on Friday.⭕ 8 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I refuse to give in to the despair. At least today. ¤ My last @TheAtlantic Daily (for now):
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: America Endures http://bit.ly/3NOGTF2 “Rational and decent citizens are still a significant majority in the United States of America”
// We’re capable of recovering what is best in us.… If you feel like the world is spinning out of control, you’re not alone. ¤ I have been trying to think about what connects many of these stories. It’s easy to say—and I know, because I’ve said it—that America and other democracies are falling prey to a kind of mass psychosis. Many Americans are becoming unhinged, unmoored from reality, unable to process even the tiniest bit of information if it conflicts with their biases. A few days ago, Mitt Romney wrote in The Atlantic that the problem of denial affects us all. He’s right. I feel it too; I sometimes do not check myself fast enough when shuffling new information into the pigeonholes of my priors.
Confirmation bias is normal human behavior. What’s not normal is the emergence of a populist madness on the American right that counts on the intimidation of the sensible many by the delusional few. This development threatens to turn a great republic into little more than a collection of unthinking and dangerous reflexes, its citizens like a school of fish aimlessly darting back and forth as they are lured by bait or chased by predators.
This, I think, is the link that binds so many recent events, including the January 6 insurrection, the callous and even reckless decisions of the Supreme Court, the Illinois massacre, even the Ukraine war. At almost every turn, democracy and basic human decency are under siege because a paranoid and rage-blinded mob will shout down and sometimes go as far as threatening the rest of us. Ordinary citizens, overwhelmed and exhausted, soon turn away from public spaces.
In a different time in America, almost every story this month would have been an immense scandal or upheaval in and of itself. The Russian army invading a nation in Central Europe while brandishing its nuclear weapons at NATO would have been an ongoing national crisis that once would have unified America and its two parties. A mass shooting at a July 4 parade would have shocked our national conscience and moved us to look closely not only at our ridiculous gun laws but at a society that seems to produce an endless stream of violent young losers. Talk of stopping women from crossing state borders by turning the United States into a giant version of East Berlin with a pregnancy-testing Checkpoint Charlie on every highway would have provoked outrage on both the right and the left.
Most important, an attack on the U.S. Capitol aimed at the overthrow of an American election, instigated and cheered on by a sitting president, would have been a national trauma that would have made Watergate look like a comic opera. And yet, a violent insurrection seems to barely register with some Americans—while others actively continue to support it, and still others believe it was a “false flag” operation by the left or by operatives of the U.S. government.
I started by asking you to forgive me if I’ve cast a pall over your optimism about America, and here I am, doing it again.
So let me try to leave you with some of the good news. Rational and decent citizens are still a significant majority in the United States of America. Cynical Republican officials might cower in fear of the small clutch of their own extremist primary voters, but on many issues—including Ukraine, abortion, and gun control—a durable majority across both parties is in favor of doing what’s right, what’s humane, and what’s sensible.
And that means America endures. Yes, American democracy is on the ropes, and the destruction of our constitutional system is still possible if enough of the unhinged minority votes and enough of the rational majority does not. The Constitution was not designed to withstand a frontal assault from its own citizens and elected officials; it relies on shared norms and values about essential things like basic human and legal rights.
That means it’s up to us to assert those norms and values in everything we do in our daily life. It means that citizens of good will must hold their ground, calmly and without reacting to the many bad-faith provocations thrown at them. It means linking arms with people with whom we disagree about almost everything, so long as we agree on the Constitution and our rights as citizens. And that means, more than anything else, voting in great numbers together as a coalition. We must, as John Adams encouraged us in 1765, “dare to read, think, speak and write.”
🧵 RT @HeliosRunner 1/ 8 Juillet 2022 – Gen staff report – ¤ no major changes on the frontline but Russian are slighltly moving forward in some & same areas. but it’s in process so i’ll wait the end of the day to complete a gen Map if consolidated.
📌 https://twitter.com/HeliosRunner/status/1545315937372573699?s=20🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LONG RANGE PAIN: As part of an expanded $400M military aid pkg, the US is sending 4 more HIMARS precision strike MLRS to Ukraine. Friend & colleague @HeliosRunner has posted some of the guided projectiles included. RU troops can run– but they’ll have nowhere to hide.
¤ https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1545731690773024768?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump says he endorsed Oz because he was nice to him, said nice things about him, had him on his show, and “he said I’m a very healthy specimen, which I like.”
CNN: Oath Keeper members brought explosives to DC area around January 6 and had a ‘death list,’ prosecutors say http://cnn.it/3NUXuH6
The Justice Department released new details Friday evening of the alleged extensive planning by the Oath Keepers to prepare for violence in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, including lessons to conduct “hasty ambushes,” a “death list” of Georgia election officials and attempts to acquire homemade firearms.
Prosecutors will attempt to prove that nine Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy – Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, Thomas Caldwell, and Edward Vallejo – extensively prepared for violence and plotted to stop Joe Biden from assuming the presidency. ¤ All nine have pleaded not guilty and have denied allegations of preparing for or participating in violence on January 6. CNN has reached out to their attorneys for comment.
The Justice Department has also secured at least seven cooperation agreements from members of the Oath Keepers, three of whom pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. A number of the cooperators are named in the new filing and had close contacts with the Oath Keepers heading to trial. …
Prosecutors have previously said that the group set up a so-called quick reaction force, or QRF, outside of Washington, DC, stocked with firearms and a months’ worth of food. But prosecutors now allege that at least one Oath Keeper transported explosives, including military ordinance grenades, to the QRF.
Through their investigation into the group, the government says it seized two illegal short barrel firearms, grenades and discovered bomb making recipes while conducting search warrants on the homes of several Oath Keepers. Another member, according to the filing, tried to have someone build multiple rifles prior to Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
According to the government, on the evening of January 6, Rhodes became suspicious that law enforcement was looking to arrest him so he fled from a restaurant and “took a number of steps to avoid detection” – like tossing his phone and “divvying up thousands of dollars’ worth of firearms and related equipment across four vehicles.” …
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Zoe Lofgren says Cipollone did NOT invoke any 5th amendment privilege. She’s not answering about executive or atty-client privilege, but did say “we were able to get all the questions we were able to get answered.”
🐣 RT @VolodymyrDotCom With today’s assassination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, some may be concerned about Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s assassination. “Someone asked me whether he’ll die as a hero -or- as a martyr. “As a man,” I replied. He is the standard of what a man should be, and why he’s so admired.
🐣 RT @tomiahonen Understand what a disaster day this is for Trump (ignoring Patsy Balony, Pat Cipollone day). Bannon’s lunatic attorney Robert & Abbott Costello just admitted to court that he is a witness to crimes. He was part of witness tampering – with Giuliani – for Trump re Michael Cohen
🐣 RT @judgeluttig Professor Laurence H. Tribe and I understand the perilous consequences for American democracy of the Supreme Court’s embrace of the so-called “independent state legislature” theory exactly the same way. In a word, the theory itself is unconstitutional.
⋙ LATimes, Lawrence Tribe and Dennis Aftergut: The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule http://lat.ms/3InEIXX
// 7/5/2022; If the court’s conservatives adopt the independent state legislature theory, they would be making up law to create an outcome of one-party rule.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: SCOTUS Tribe 7-5-2022
⋙ 🐣 With conservative icon @JudgeLuttig agreeing with liberal @tribelaw, you get a good sense of how outrageous the “independent state legislature” theory is, and four justices (already) appear ready to embrace it. This is 🚨alarming. Literalism gone mad.🐣 RT @duty2warn Pat Cipollone STILL testifying, 7 hours and counting. Reports that fresh coffee was just delivered. Pleading the 5th takes no time at all. Invoking privilege takes no time. You know what DOES take time? Answering questions with answers that create new questions. Tick tock, Donald
NBCNews: Ex-Trump White House counsel Cipollone is being ‘cooperative’ with Jan. 6 committee http://nbcnews.to/3yRUUgT
//. The panel has called Pat Cipollone a critical witness who repeatedly raised legal concerns about Trump’s activities on Jan. 6 and in the days preceding it.🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Putin must be stopped. Not compromised with, not hosted or called. Stopped. He wants to expand his murder spree to millions of hungry people around the world and rewarding this brutal blackmail will only lead to more of it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag The world’s breadbasket in flames: Russia is deliberately setting fire to Ukraine’s grain fields. This follows similar targeted airstrikes on Ukrainian grain storage facilities. Putin is openly weaponizing global hunger in his war of annihilation against Ukraine
¤ https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1545369044915818496?s=20/photo/1🐣 📊 RT @MarshallCohen Fascinating numbers from new Monmouth poll.
“Should members of Congress who assisted the planners of January 6th be removed from office?”
Among all Americans: 66% yes, 26% no
Among independents: 65% yes, 27% no
Among Republicans: 48% no, 36% yes
Among Democrats: 94% yes, 5% no🐣 RT @duty2warn David Brooks: “We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote NEW: FBI director Wray tells CNN “January 6 was a reflection of a broader phenomenon that too many people can take their grievances and manifest them into violence. We’re gonna follow the facts no matter who likes it, and if there are charges, the public will see that.”
🐣 RT @PoliticsVerse Another day, another Truth Social meltdown 😂😂
Text Block: https://twitter.com/PoliticsVerse/status/1545146085278208002?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @real I did NOTHING wrong in Georgia, but others did. They CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election, and those are the ones that should be investigated (and prosecuted)! Letter to follow.
🐣 RT @real BOTH of my phone calls to Georgia were PERFECT. I had an absolute right to make them &, in fact, the story on the one call was given a retraction, or apology, by the Washington Post because they were given terribly false information about it, & when they heard the actual call, they realized that their story was wrong. Thank you to the W.P. I, as does anyone else (just look at the Democrats!), have the absolute right to challenge the results of an election. This one, CORRUPT, RIGGED, and STOLEN!🐣 RT @TaraSetmayer “Can I put my pants on first?”
Former Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark’s response to an early morning raid by the feds… ¤ …probably not how Clark imagined his career would end when he volunteered to do Trump’s bidding in the coup attempt. ¤ As @TheRickWilson Golden Rule says #ETTD
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski One day Jeff Clark was going to be Trump’s AG and help him overthrow our democracy. Now he’s having his house searched to gather more evidence of his crimes.
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1545430949986553857?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JackDetsch This will bring Ukraine to 12 U.S.-provided HIMARs.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JackDetsch NEW: Biden administration rolls out another weapons package for Ukraine worth $400 million, including four new HIMARs systems. ¤ The U.S. has now provided $7.3 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full scale invasion on Feb. 24.🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Biden Signs Executive Order Safeguarding Abortion Access ¤ POTUS condemned extremist SCOTUS Dobbs ruling as driven by raw political power—NOT the Constitution or history—freezing the practice of medicine in the 19th Century. He urged voting for pro-choice senators to codify Roe.
🐣 RT @kdnerak33 I’m less concerned about Kavanaugh needing to use the back door of a restaurant than I am about women needing to resort to back-alley abortions.
≣ WhiteHouse: FACT SHEET: President Biden to Sign Executive Order Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services http://bit.ly/3AERkYO
🐣 RT @AmySiskind Biden signs order to help safeguard abortion rights. Order will expand access to “medication abortion;” ensure women have access to emergency medical care, family planning services, and contraception; and convene pro-bono attorneys. ¤ Thank you @POTUS.
🐣 📋 RT @jimsciutto Gun deaths, 2018
Japan: 9
US: 39,740🐣 RT @tomiahonen ‘Tis but a flesh wound! I’ve had worse ¤ What are you going to do? Bleed on me?
¤ https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1545414136405917699?s=20/photo/1
// Monty Python knight
⋙ 🐣 RT @andrewmichta Putin’s latest rant is more fitting for a street thug than a leader of what he claims is still a great power. Primitive propaganda intended to intimidate Western democracies. We must call his bluff. Let’s have the courage to help UKR win. #StandWithUkraine
⋙⋙ RFERL: Putin Says Russia Hasn’t Even Started In Ukraine As He Dares West To Try To Defeat Russia On Battlefield http://bit.ly/3uzM0C7🐣 RT @tribelaw Leading historical societies conclude that the “misrepresentations” in Dobbs “are now enshrined in a text that becomes authoritative for legal reference and citation in the future.” But scholars and lawyers should agree never to cite this fake “history.”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1545388449548713985?s=20/photo/1Text: “The OAH and AHA consider it imperative that historical evidence and argument be presented according to high standards of historical scholarship. The court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson does not meet those standards and has therefore established a flawed and troubling precedent”
⋙ AHA: History, the Supreme Court, and Dobbs v. Jackson: Joint Statement from the AHA and the OAH (July 2022) http://bit.ly/3OUYb4C
The American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians have jointly issued a statement expressing dismay that the US Supreme Court “declined to take seriously the historical claims of our [amicus curiae] brief” in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. “Instead, the court adopted a flawed interpretation of abortion criminalization that has been pressed by anti-abortion advocates for more than thirty years. … These misrepresentations are now enshrined in a text that becomes authoritative for legal reference and citation in the future. The court’s decision erodes fundamental rights and has the potential to exacerbate historic injustices and deepen inequalities in our country.”
To date, 16 organizations have signed onto the statement.WaPo: Shinzo Abe, former Japanese leader, is assassinated by gunman http://wapo.st/3NSZVdB
⭕ 7 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian propagandists plot to provoke unrest in the US, harming us in every way they can. They pine for Trump’s return and point out that—despite his looks & other causes for criticism—he is their best option. State TV host exclaims, “Trump, Trump, Trump!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Just when you thought the Kremlin’s love affair with Trump could not get any more nauseating, it’s cringier than ever: “We’ll wait for Trump. He’s a beaut!” ¤ Russia’s main goal towards the US is simple: “In every way we can do them harm, we should do it.”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin World’s Lovefest With ‘Beaut’ Trump Gets Cringier Than Ever http://bit.ly/3bZjymV
// Just when you thought Russia’s love affair with the former U.S. president could not get any more nauseating.🐣 RT @McFaul The Supreme Court is out of step with the majority of Americans and the majority of democratic Europe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ianbremmer eu parliament votes 324-155 to condemn us supreme court overturning roe v wade🐣 RT @TrumpsTaxes Wow.
“It’s like a sh*tshow on a train in the middle of a wreck.”
“A campaign’s worst nightmare.”
“Just not mentally stable.”
“He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true.”
And those are quotes from people WORKING for Herschel Walker.
⋙ DailyBeast, Roger Sollenberger: Herschel Walker Lied About His Secret Kids to His Own Campaign http://bit.ly/3Rjonrn
// Herschel Walker’s campaign said he had never tried to hide his children. He did—to his own campaign even.🐣 RT @CREWcrew Why on earth is there a 7 hour and 37 minute gap in White House call records from January 6th? And why on earth don’t we have more answers about it yet?
🧵 RT @SenWhitehouse I’ve been trying to draw attention to the Supreme Court’s downward spiral for years. Yes, the Court is in shambles, but we can fortify it against corruption if we address the root causes. Here’s how we start ->
📌 https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1545178507235545090?s=20🐣 RT @McFaul Important piece by @RHFontaine — Why Russia Must Fail in Ukraine
⋙ NationalInterest, Richard Fontaine: Why Russia Must Fail in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3OVdxpK
// The immediate goal was to limit the damage to international order posed by Russian aggression. Now a more ambitious opening presents itself.🐣 RT @hugolowell NEW: Jan. 6 investigators are examining whether Trump had advance knowledge of the Capitol attack — Cassidy Hutchinson raised the prospect Trump might have learned the plans for the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers thru Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. @GuardianUS
⋙ TheGuardian: Trump’s possible ties to far-right militias to be focus of next January 6 hearing http://bit.ly/3OLDFU5
// Capitol attack panel expected to examine links between Trump and the extremist groups in closer detail at seventh public hearingTheAtlantic, Mark Leibovich: The Most Pathetic Men in America http://bit.ly/3IjF4yV “2024 does indeed resemble a genuinely fateful ‘time for choosing,’ to use the old Ronald Reagan phrase. Trump could really win”
// Why Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, and so many other cowards in Congress are still doing Trump’s bidding.[T]he guests who stood out for me most were Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy and the busybody senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham. I would sometimes see them around the lobby or steakhouse or function rooms, skipping from table to table and getting thanked for all the wonderful things they were doing to help our president. They had long been among the most supplicant super-careerists ever to play in a city known for the breed, and proved themselves to be essential lapdogs in Trump’s kennel. …
Trump said and did obviously awful and dangerous things—racist and cruel and achingly dumb and downright evil things. But on top of that, he is a uniquely tiresome individual, easily the sorest loser, the most prodigious liar, and the most interminable victim ever to occupy the White House. He is, quite possibly, the biggest crybaby ever to toddle across history’s stage, from his inaugural-crowd hemorrhage on day one right down to his bitter, ketchup-flinging end. Seriously, what public figure in the history of the world comes close? I’m genuinely asking.
Bottom line, Trump is an extremely tedious dude to have had in our face for seven years and running. My former New York Times colleague David Brooks wrote it best: “We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”
Better objects of our scrutiny—and far more compelling to me—are the slavishly devoted Republicans whom Trump drew to his side. It’s been said before, but can never be emphasized enough: Without the complicity of the Republican Party, Donald Trump would be just a glorified geriatric Fox-watching golfer. I’ve interviewed scores of these collaborators, trying to understand why they did what they did and how they could live with it. These were the McCarthys and the Grahams and all the other busy parasitic suck-ups who made the Trump era work for them, who humored and indulged him all the way down to the last, exhausted strains of American democracy.
The GOP’s shame, ongoing, is underscored by the handful of brave Republicans willing to speak the truth about Trump in public, before the January 6 committee and on the panel itself. The question now is whether they have any hope of wresting some admirable remnant of their party back from Trump’s abyss before he wins the Republican nomination for president in 2024 or, yes, winds up back in the White House. …
In retrospect, This Town reads like a comedy of manners. The revolving door between Congress and K Street, top Treasury officials selling out to Goldman—oh, the horror! Or, alternatively, who cares? We have such bigger issues today than feckless opportunists pregaming the Correspondents’ Dinner at Cafe Milano. People now toss around phrases like fundamental threat to democracy and civil war, and they don’t necessarily sound overheated. Deference to power in service to ambition has always been a Washington hallmark, but Trump has made the price of that submission so much higher.
… On various occasions I have asked them [McCarthy and Graham], in so many words, how they could sidle up to Trump like they have. The answer, basically, is that they did it because it was the savviest course; because it was best for them. If Trump had one well-developed intuition, it was his ability to sniff out weakness in people—and, I suppose, in major political parties. Nearly all elected Republicans in Washington needed Trump’s blessing, and voters, to remain there. People like McCarthy and Graham benefited a great deal from making it work with Trump, or “managing the relationship,” as they say. … …
[T]he gap between the public adoration expressed by Trump’s Republican lickspittles and the mocking contempt they voiced for him in private could be gaping. This was never more apparent, or maddening, as in the weeks after the 2020 election. “For all but just a handful of members, if you put them on truth serum, they knew that the election was fully legitimate and that Donald Trump was a joke,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, told me last year. “The vast majority of people get the joke. I think Kevin McCarthy gets the joke. Lindsey gets the joke. The problem is that the joke isn’t even funny anymore.” The truth serum is not exactly flowing, either. … …
Exactly eight days later, McCarthy followed him to Mar-a-Lago. Trump felt that McCarthy had not been “nice” to him on January 6, when the minority leader called the president to nudge him about those annoying supporters of his who kept pillaging through the Capitol with nooses and clubs. Not civil! “The relationship,” McCarthy determined, required some tending to. … McCarthy’s visit set off a parade of ring-kissing pilgrimages. Graham headed down to Florida again and again, so often that his host couldn’t help but marvel. …
“McCarthy started all of that,” Liz Cheney told me last summer. She’d had no advance warning of McCarthy’s visit to Palm Beach, and was stunned when she saw the photos. She confronted McCarthy: Why? She told me he explained that “the Republican Party was changing, and they all had to adapt. It was no longer the party of Dick Cheney.” This did not go over well.
“When we look back, Kevin’s trip to Mar-a-Lago will, I think, turn out to be a key moment,” Cheney told me when we talked again this April. It would, she said, go down as one of the most shameful episodes in one of the country’s most shameful chapters. More than anyone, McCarthy ensured that the Republican Party would remain stuck in its 2020 post-election purgatory, still working to placate America’s neediest man.
Cheney, for her part, said she absolutely does care about the “legacy” question. “This is about being able to tell your kids that you stood up and did the right thing,” she told me last summer in Wyoming. In recent months, she has grown markedly uninhibited about expressing her dim view of her Republican colleagues. When commiserating with friends, Cheney sometimes invokes one of her idols, the historical biographer David McCullough, who has said that a great blessing of his work is that he gets to spend his days with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and all of the other Founding Fathers. Cheney laments that she is not so lucky: “I have to spend my days with Kevin McCarthy.”
It remains astonishing to me that, after everything we’ve been through with Trump and everything we’re still learning, he remains anything but radioactive in his party. My mind roils with thought experiments of what else Republicans could tolerate from him: What if Mike Pence had been hanged? One would hope it would have been disqualifying, but who knows? Right now, the two most likely people to be sworn into office on January 20, 2025, are Joe Biden and Donald Trump (requisite “to be sure” here about all the variables—age, health, jail sentence, etc.). Best-case scenario: Trump loses, his inevitable attempt to cheat the result is unsuccessful, and no one dies this time. And then America sails off again into the future with 109-year-old Joe Biden at the helm. Sigh.
Presidential candidates are always declaring that “the most important election of our lifetime” is at hand. In fact, this is usually true only for the person running. From here, though, 2024 does indeed resemble a genuinely fateful “time for choosing,” to use the old Ronald Reagan phrase. Trump could really win. In private, pretty much every serious Republican I know would agree that this would be a terrifying outcome. But in public, of course, it’s still a lot of “I will support the nominee.” Or, as Graham said flatly, “I hope President Trump runs again.” True-believer types like Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado go even further; she declared recently that God himself had “anointed” Trump to be president. This, admittedly, might make him tough to beat.
… Cheney has become one of the most admired leaders in America. She recently delivered speeches at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, receiving standing ovations in both venues and a Profile in Courage Award in the latter. ¤ When I interviewed Cheney last summer, we talked about the nature of “existential threats” to America. Her father, the divisive former Vice President Dick Cheney, was always attuned to the enemies who might unleash doomsday scenarios (Russia during the Cold War, al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein after September 11). Liz Cheney, who spent years studying and working in countries with autocratic regimes in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, has made it clear that she believes the primary existential threat to America today resides within her own political party. …
Did McCarthy want Trump to run? His look got even dirtier. “I think it’s a long way away,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s gonna happen prior to that.” ¤ McCarthy will not be winning any Profile in Courage Award anytime soon. In fairness, that could make him a good fit for the cowardly caucus he is so eager to lead. ¤ Soon enough, 2024 will not be a long way away, and Trump is well positioned to claim his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination. Again, Trump will do as he pleases and take what he can take. Because really, who’s going to stop him?
🐣 RT @DemocracyDocket “The Court will either empower the likes of Eastman and Trump or it will stand behind the dozens of state court judges who protected our elections in those 28 cases. These are the stakes when the Court considers Moore v. Harper next term.”
⋙ DemocracyDocket, Marc Elias: A Dangerous Theory Will Have Its Day in the U.S. Supreme Court http://bit.ly/3AxzoPHDemocracy has always relied on the judiciary for protection. Left unchecked by the courts, politicians too often tilt the electoral playing field in their favor. History shows that without judicial intervention states will enact discriminatory congressional districts, require literacy tests to vote and prevent members of the military from participating in their elections.
The attacks on our democracy are growing more frequent and more pernicious. Lies are turning into laws as Republican state legislatures are enacting new voter suppression laws to combat fraud that does not exist. Election deniers are being recruited to work and even run our state and local elections. Legal theories to deny the right to vote and subvert election results have moved from the extreme fringe toward the mainstream. …
🐣 RT @BlackKnight10k Boris Johnson could still be Prime Minister if only Mike Pence has the courage to do what needs to be done.
Express [UK]: Boris Johnson RESIGNS: Prime Minister to quit TODAY but bids to STAY in office for months http://bit.ly/3ABk3xE “He is expected to give a resignation speech … this morning in which he will pledge to remain as a caretaker Prime Minister until the autumn” uh oh
// BORIS JOHNSON is to quit as Prime Minister after his own MPs left him with no choice but to stand down.⭕ 6 Jul 2022
💙 Vox, Zach Besuchamp: How conservatism conquered America — and corrupted itself https://tinyurl.com/yss6mxzm
// The past month’s conservative victories were decades in the making. Three books about the right reveal what it cost the movement🐣 RT @McFaul First, Putin should stop his barbaric war in Ukraine. Then, Putin’s Russia should pay to rebuild Ukraine.
🐣 Srsly, @ZelenskyyUa should start charging people for photo ops
🐣 RT @visegrad24 Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the Russian Parliament, says that USA should remember that Alaska was Russian and the Russian Federation can start “reclaiming” it. ¤ “Let America always remember: there’s a part of Russia’s territory over there (…) we have something to reclaim too”
🌎 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1544818030340816897?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Love this. Flopsweat central, scared shitless by not knowing how much Cipollone will reveal.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1544908161370361856?s=20/photo/1[Trump:] Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a “lawyer” for the Country, may some day be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress, or even a fair and reasonable Committee, to reveal the inner secrets of foreign policy or other important matters. So bad for the USA!
🐣 RT @ReutersWorld Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone to testify before Jan. 6 panel -reports http://reut.rs/3aoXjGE
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Give Biden a break http://wapo.st/3bOMLAN I totally agree.
🧵 RT @tomiahonen Flippathon Thread 1/ ¤ Las Vegas oddsmakers have issued fresh odds for all the potential flippers in the nation’s biggest picnick, patriotism, insurrection, terrorism & hanging party hosted by the Republicans in Washington DC. Our beloved tradition: Grand Flippathon ¤ #Flippathon
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1544634707316465664?s=20🧵 RT @ArmUkraineNow “You should not look for logic in the actions of terrorists. The Russian army does not take any breaks. It has one task – to take people’s lives, to intimidate people – so that even a few days without an air alarm already feel like part of the terror.” – #Ukraine Pres. Zelenskyy
📌 https://twitter.com/ArmUkraineNow/status/1544570090560954368?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ArmUkraineNow “Our task is to hold on, to take care of ourselves, including our emotions, to help the country’s defense as much as possible, to protect the state, as much as it will be necessary for our victory.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ArmUkraineNow “It is difficult to fight this. My voice, the voice of our society is not enough for this, we need the voice of a united Europe.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ArmUkraineNow “As long as Europe understands that this is not a war in Ukraine, but a war in Europe, and we are the fence that protects Europe with our lives — that’s how long we will be able to hold on, and there will be a chance to defeat Russia”🐣 People live in the times they live in. Learn about those times before you judge them by yours
⭕ 5 Jul 2022
Vox, Zach Beauchamp: How conservatism conquered America — and corrupted itself http://bit.ly/3ImUmTB “What America faces now is a conservatism unbounded”
// The past month’s conservative victories were decades in the making. Three books about the right reveal what it cost the movement.🐣 RT @Caliban37073 When the night falls over Ukraine, a new, non-indigenous species leaves its lair. A relentless predator, hunting it’s vatnik prey from far away – it’s the American HIMARS!
¤ https://twitter.com/Caliban37073/status/1544431467505254403?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @stavridisj Careful, Putin. Your desperation is showing as your orthodox nation “hires” Muslim Chechens (who say they are fighting a jihad for Islam) for the fight against fellow orthodox nation Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Now take a look at this one:
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Chechen parliament speaker Magomed Daudov says that first and foremost, Chechen battalions in Ukraine are fighting a jihad to defend Islam. ¤ Daudov says that unless Putin stops them, they will keep going until they reach Berlin.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1544361566082109445?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tomiahonen On Fulton County Georgia subpoena set to Giuliani, #LeningradLindsey Graham, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis etc ¤ That is yet another (state) crime of Trump related to Jan 6th. He is the final criminal = mafia boss who will be tried, also in this crime. So this is early process yet
🐣 RT @tomiahonen In case you missed it, I did an update to our Jan 6th Trumpomobster math. This is the Trumpomath that gives status of various Republican Picnick Masters (= domestic terrorists) like Giuliani, Sen Lindsey Graham, Roger Stone, General Flynn, Gym Jordan, Don Jr etc.. Enjoy
⋙ 🧵 RT @tomiahonen With news of Fulton Georgia Grand Jury subpoena set going to Rudy Giuliani, Sen #LeningradLindsey Lindsey Graham, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis etc, we need to update our Trumpomath ¤ I am adding a new numerical notation for Grand Jury criminal subpoena to the Jan 6th Trumpomobsters
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1544445380628291585?s=20
⋙⋙ So far after 5 hearings: [combined list]
Rudy Giuliani 1,2,3,4,6
Steve Bannon 1,4
Roger Stone 1,2,
General Mike Flynn 1,2
Erik Prince
Don Jr 1,2,4,6
Alex Jones 1 ¤
Mark Meadows 1,2,3
Ginny Thomas
Sen Ron Johnson 1,3,6
Sen Graham 4,5
Rep Qevin McCoward 1
Rep Perry 1,3
Rep Gosar 1,3
Rep Gym Jordan 1,3 ¤
Rep Mo Brooks 1,3
Rep Biggs 1,3
John Eastman 1,2,3,4
Sidney Powell 1
Jenna Ellis 1,4
Trump 1,4,6 [expected]
~~~~~~~~~~
1 = evidence against
2 = pleaded 5th
3 = begged for Pardon
4 = Grand Jury subpoena
5 = apparent flip
6 = confessed🐣 RT @harrylitman Giuliani portrayed as ringleader of overall effort in the papers filed by DA Willis to secure his testimony along w/ 6 members of Trump inner circle.And unlike federal system, targets can be forced to testify in GA. Looking forward to discussing on @Morning_Joe at 7:30 AM ET Wed
🐣 RT @grantstern Subpoenaed by a Georgia grand jury today:
Lindsey Graham
Rudy Giuliani
John Eastman
Cleta Mitchell
Kenneth Chesbro
Jenna Ellis
Quaking in his boots in Florida today:
Donald J. TrumpWaPo: Georgia grand jury subpoenas Sen. Graham, Giuliani and Trump legal team http://wapo.st/3aiqFpS
// The subpoenas, which arise from an investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, relate to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] President #Putin: #Russia will continue to create a more #democratic and just world where the rights of all peoples are guaranteed and mankind’s cultural and civilizational diversity is preserved.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov Putin’s Russia is no democracy – it is a repressive authoritarian state which imprisons its political opponents and restricts human rights of its citizens. The Russian government routinely violates Russian constitution and laws. Putin’s Russia has NOTHING to offer to the world.🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: The 30 NATO allies have signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland amid Russia’s war in Ukraine now in its fifth month.[link]
🐣 This is the best fact-checking website I know. It is objective and thorough. You might be interested in what it has to say:
⋙ FactCheck.org: The Facts on ‘De-Nazifying’ Ukraine http://bit.ly/3aeCEVD🐣 These are the 3 books:
1. The Third Reich by Thomas Childers
2. Hitler’s First 100 Days by Peter Fritsche
3. Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder⭕ 4 Jul 2022
NYT: In Putin’s Russia, the Arrests Are Spreading Quickly and Widely http://nyti.ms/3P7za5Q “The flurry of arrests across the country in recent days has signaled that the Kremlin is intent on tightening the noose around Russian society even further”
// One by one, Russians deemed insufficiently patriotic are being snatched up by security forces as the Kremlin tightens the noose.The flurry of arrests across the country in recent days has signaled that the Kremlin is intent on tightening the noose around Russian society even further. It appears to be a manifestation of President Putin’s declaration in the early weeks of his war in Ukraine that Russia needed to cleanse itself of pro-Western “scum and traitors,” and it is creating an unmistakable chill.
None of the targets of the recent crackdown was an outspoken Kremlin critic; many of the loudest Putin opponents who chose to stay in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, like the politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, were already in jail. But each of the recent crackdown targets represented an outward-looking Russia that Mr. Putin increasingly describes as an existential threat. And the ways they were taken into custody appeared designed to make waves.
Mr. Putin has said as much himself. In the speech in March in which he railed about the traitors in Russia’s midst, he called out those who physically reside in Russia but live in the West “in their thoughts, in their slave-like consciousness.” ¤ He is also increasingly asserting that truly patriotic Russians must be committed to living and working in Russia. He told an economic conference in St. Petersburg last month that “real, solid success and a feeling of dignity and self-respect only occurs when you tie your future and your children’s future to your Motherland.”
TheGuardian: Fox and friends face billion-dollar US lawsuits http://bit.ly/3OMgGIt ‘In the months after the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories were repeated around the clock’
// Rightwing networks Fox News, OAN and Newsmax could be found liable over election fraud claims🧵 RT @bctallis There’s been a lot said about @TimothyDSnyder’s devastating takedown of Jurgen #Habermas perspective on #Ukraine & #Russia which is, sadly, representative of a major strand of discourse in #Germany that also impacts 🇩🇪policy & positioning.I want to highlight a few things
📌 https://twitter.com/bctallis/status/1543706011743256578?s=20⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Jürgen Habermas, regarded as the greatest political philosopher in Europe, has written a text on its major contemporary crisis, the war in Ukraine. His thesis has directed German discourse away from realities of the past and possibilities of the present. [link]
[…]
⋙ All of this is to say how utterly fed up so many people INSIDE & OUTSIDE Germany are with the endless navel-gazing & smug advocacy for faux ‘peace’ while Ukrainians are dying in a very real war unleashed on them by an authoritarian power that will only be stopped by force. So …
⋙ Please, stop the introverted debate & get real about helping #Ukraine. Now.
Divorce that side of the equation from the other, much needed discussion about #Germany’s own future direction.
Yes there are related questions, but that can be smartly dealt with that. ST, MT, LT …
⋙ & #Habermas, please just stop now. #Germany needs a nationally proud, heroic society capable of acting as a force for good.
No one needs your #Westsplaining, endless debate, historical errors & facilitation of cynicism. We’ve had enough for a lifetime, let alone wartime. /END.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Excellent thread, bravo! No, the rest of the West will not confuse heroism with nazism. Nazism was a nationalist movement, not a heroic one. Providing tangible support to Ukraine supports the rule-based international effort to contain precisely such nationalisms (i.e. Russia’s).🐣 RT @USMC “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” – John F. Kennedy
Happy Birthday America! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
💽 https://twitter.com/USMC/status/1543942918490259457?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @MaxBoot We should expand the House and Supreme Court and end the Senate filibuster, whose use has dramatically expanded in recent years, creating a de facto supermajority requirement that gives a small minority of the population a veto over all legislation.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Don’t venerate or vilify the Founders. Vindicate their radical vision. http://wapo.st/3NLLibD⭕ 3 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @lilygrutcher Wow. ¤ Lithuania starts dismantling railway tracks to Russian-occupied Kaliningrad.
🧵 RT @AdamKinzinger 1) When your friends say this committee isn’t fair, maybe remind them that those testifying are all republicans, appointed by trump. That Kevin McCarthy got a fair deal in a split commission, but then took his ball and went home. When the committee was then formed…
📌 https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1543744267268538368?s=20🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYSYCHANSK / 1700 UTC 3 JUL / UKR now in broad retreat from Lysychansk. RU units are maneuvering skillfully against retreating UKR forces. Oil facility at Vovchoirvik has been captured. UKR likely to establish defensive position at Siversk. Situation is critical.
🌎 https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1543632783087640577?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer LYSYCHANSK AXIS: RU units are are now ascendant. Though UKR is conducting a steady retrograde operation, the salient from Siversk to Lysychansk is predicted to collapse within the next 24-36 hours. It is critical that UKR forces regroup to a new defensive position in Siversk.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Fireblade577 At Siversk they are down in a valley where the Russians can rain artillery down on them. The river itself is not much of an obstacle either at 10-15 m width. Better to retreat to the next ridge 10km West of Siversk
🌎 https://twitter.com/Fireblade577/status/1543652413508202496?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @djrothkopf On this July 4, I think of all the progress the US has made & the struggles we have endured & am convinced that ultimately those who seek to undo that progress & steal that democracy for which we struggled will be defeated.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1543691146194550785?s=20🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “The West needs to understand exactly how Ukraine can win, and then support us accordingly.” Read Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba on Ukraine’s path to victory in the war with Russia.
⋙ ForeignAffairs: How Ukraine Will Win Kyiv’s Theory of Victory http://fam.ag/3IcvTQE
// 6/27/2022NYT: New Insights Into Trump’s State of Mind on Jan. 6 Chip Away at Doubts http://nyti.ms/3IeTWOI “Hutchinson’s account [of] Jan. 6 provided the building blocks for a possible prosecution by demonstrating that he and his advisers understood they were playing with fire”
// by Peter Baker; Former President Donald J. Trump has weathered scandals by keeping his intentions under wraps, but recent testimony paints a stark portrait of a man willing to do almost anything to hang onto🐣 RT @SkinnerPm social media sure has shown how badly we overestimated the power of reason and facts. For centuries we’ve fooled ourselves that The Age of Reason was our inevitable destination instead of a detour. Anyway, let’s get some more guns cuz there’s been some more gun violence.
🐣 RT @krides [tr] The [Russian] empire uses assimilated Ukrainians from Green Wedge, Yellow Wedge, Kuban, Belgorod Region, Rostiv Region as cannon fodder to kill Ukrainians who have not yet been assimilated. ¤ Ukrainians from the territories occupied even in this war are forcibly mobilized and become cannon fodder.
x https://twitter.com/krides/status/1543515838086619136?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ [Eng] The empire is using assimilated Ukrainians from Green Ukraine, Yellow Ukraine, Kuban, Bilhorod and Rostiv regions as cannon fodder to kill unassimilated Ukrainians. ¤ Ukrainians from territories occupied during even the current war are forcefully mobilized, becoming cannon fodder.
⋙ 🐣 RT @krides Ethnic Ukrainians can be found where the red is on these maps.
🌎 https://twitter.com/krides/status/1543524897552535553?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙ 🐣 RT @krides […] I’m not saying Ukraine should return these lands* (god forbid actually, it’s been compromised as much as Karelia). ¤ I’m saying that this is what the Russians have been doing for a very long time. This war is no different from all the previous ones. It’s what the empire does.
⋙ 🐣 RT @krides By the way, the Ukrainian settlement of the Far East is the stuff of legends. ¤ If you can get your hands on a copy of Tiger Trappers by Ivan Bagriany, make sure to read it: it’s one of my favorite adventure novels ever.
// history; *I think he means that ‘these lands should be returned to Ukraine’🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Agree. US must get off the dime and immediately crash out a bigger, modern deep fires capability. US military stocks need to be drawn down where feasible to get MLRS and the ATACMS missiles into UKR.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaxBoot The Biden administration slow roll of Ukraine’s request for more HIMARS is inexplicable and inexcusable. What better purpose could these weapons possibly serve at this time? Are they more useful in a US depot or on the Ukrainian battlefield?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul If 4 HIMARS are helping Ukraine so effectively in their fight with Russia in the Battle of Donbas, wouldn’t 40 help them even more? or 400? ¤ “Advanced U.S. Arms Make a Mark in Ukraine War, Officials Say”
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: Advanced U.S. Arms Make a Mark in Ukraine War, Officials Say http://nyti.ms/3nxUbeo
// 7/1/2022; The powerful and highly mobile weapons systems, which can fire guided rockets with a range of 40 miles, are desperately needed in the battle for eastern Ukraine.
↥ ↧
🐣 @McFaul @MaxBoot @mccaffrey you have cred; make calls, write a letter, write an oped in the Post; get others on board, if possible ¤ four more HiMARS are to be delivered mid-July; EU countries are sending at least 6 “similar” systems ¤ it’s possible some of the delay is training⭕ 2 Jul 2022
🐣 RT @Lincoln_Party_ The ‘independent state legislature theory’ is just one more instance of MAGA testing our constitutional framework for vulnerabilities and weaknesses like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
WaPo Editorial: We can no longer avoid a criminal investigation into Donald Trump http://wapo.st/3R3kKWm “The Justice Department has investigative powers that the Jan. 6 committee does not, and there are critical questions that remain unanswered”
The committee heard June 28 from Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top Trump White House aide. Ms. Hutchinson said that Mr. Trump instructed his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to talk to conservative provocateur Roger Stone the night before the Capitol attack. Mr. Stone was photographed on Jan. 6 with members of the far-right Oath Keepers organization, multiple members of which were allegedly involved in the assault. She said that she heard mention of the Oath Keepers and the fringe Proud Boys group during the run-up to Jan. 6, when Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was around.
Ms. Hutchinson also testified that Mr. Meadows sought to attend a Jan. 5 “war room” that included Mr. Giuliani, former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon and other extremists. She said Mr. Meadows relented after she protested that the White House chief of staff should not be involved, but that he said he would dial in to the meetings. ¤ This testimony underscores questions about precisely what Mr. Trump and his senior staff knew about what would unfold the next day.
Ms. Hutchinson testified that, on Jan. 6 itself, Mr. Trump was told that the crowd that he had assembled was armed. He nevertheless urged the mob to march on the Capitol, fight and show strength — and, according to Ms. Hutchinson and by his own admission, Mr. Trump wanted to accompany them.
The public needs more information. That requires the committee to hear from more witnesses, which in turn requires the Justice Department to prosecute those, such as Mr. Meadows, who have defied committee subpoenas. It also means the department should examine seriously concerns that Trump allies are trying to influence Jan. 6 committee witnesses.
And, yes, the department should conduct a criminal investigation of Mr. Trump himself. Attorney General Merrick Garland appears to be treating this prospect with a high degree of care, and appropriately so. A new administration prosecuting a former president of the opposite party would set a perilous precedent; one need only look at the long record of failed democracies abroad, in which new leaders tried those they deposed, to see the danger. Prosecuting Mr. Trump also risks helping him politically. ¤ On the other hand, if Mr. Trump is clearly, unquestionably guilty of committing a serious crime — not just arguably so — the department might have little choice. Central to our system of justice is the principle that no one is above the law.
The Justice Department has investigative powers that the Jan. 6 committee does not, and there are critical questions that remain unanswered. Mr. Garland should have no higher priority than using these powers to investigate all of those involved in one of the darkest days in American history.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Important not to miss this story, especially for those who say sanctions on Russia aren’t working. It’s a slow process, but Putin is running out of material, time, and excuses. Next comes labor, and Russians will have to choose between Putin and peace.
⋙ 🧵 RT @ISW The Kremlin proposed an amendment to federal laws on Russian Armed Forces supply matters to the Russian State Duma on June 30 introducing “special measures in the economic sphere” obliging Russian businesses (regardless of ownership) to supply Russian special military operations.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1543203169383194625?s=20🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russia has a hunger plan. Vladimir Putin is preparing to starve much of the developing world as the next stage in his war in Europe. 1/16
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1543326437742198784?s=20🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] President #Putin: Some states are not ready to accept losing their supremacy on the intl stage, and they are striving to preserve the unjust unipolar model under the guise of what they call a “rules-based order” and other questionable concepts.
⋙ 🐣 The world is not unipolar, but multipolar: the US/Canada/UK, China, EU ~ all live under the “rules-based intl order,” crafted after WW2, based on sovereign states and human rights. Only rogue states, like North Korea and other authoritarian regimes like Russia prefer autocracyNYT, Mara Gay: The Republican War on Sex http://nyti.ms/3yAhoTC “This movement has relegated the women of this country to second-class citizenship, stripped us of autonomy over our own bodies and denied us essential health care”
// In the America where I came of age, I was told my life was worth more than my ability to have babies. And my sexuality was nothing to be ashamed of.🐣 RT @doug24 Next up from the extreme fight club otherwise known as the right-wing majority on the #SCOTUS – the same crew that’s been pummeling #reproductive rights, #gun control and #environmental regulation – is a case that puts #democracy itself in its crosshairs:
⋙ Vox, Ian Millhiser: A new Supreme Court case is the biggest threat to US democracy since January 6 http://bit.ly/3bH0c5F At issue is whether federal judges, state judges, state governors or other state officials have power to constrain state legislatures on elections
// Moore v. Harper is a grave threat to US democracy, and the fate of that democracy probably comes down to Amy Coney Barrett.Moore involves the “independent state legislature doctrine,” a theory that the Supreme Court has rejected many times over the course of more than a century — but that started to gain steam after Republican appointees gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court at the end of the Trump administration.
Under the strongest form of this doctrine, all state constitutional provisions that constrain state lawmakers’ ability to skew federal elections would cease to function. State courts would lose their power to strike down anti-democratic state laws, such as a gerrymander that violates the state constitution or a law that tosses out ballots for arbitrary reasons. And state governors, who ordinarily have the power to veto new state election laws, would lose that power.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch described this approach in a 2020 concurring opinion in a case concerning the deadline for casting mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, “the Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”
Four justices — Gorsuch, plus Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh — have all endorsed some version of this independent state legislature doctrine. Meanwhile, four other justices, the three liberal justices plus Chief Justice John Roberts, have signaled that they will not overrule the Court’s many precedents rejecting this doctrine.
NYT: Spurred by the Supreme Court, a Nation Divides Along a Red-Blue Axis http://nyti.ms/3ukbOlM “For some people, the divides have grown so deep and so personal that they have felt compelled to pick up and move from one America to the other”
// On abortion, climate change, guns and much more, two Americas — one liberal, one conservative — are moving in opposite directions.The most immediate breaking point is on abortion, as about half the country will soon limit or ban the procedure while the other half expands or reinforces access to reproductive rights. But the ideological fault lines extend far beyond that one topic, to climate change, gun control and L.G.B.T.Q. and voting rights.
On each of those issues, the country’s Northeast and West Coast are moving in the opposite direction from its midsection and Southeast — with a few exceptions, like the islands of liberalism in Illinois and Colorado, and New Hampshire’s streak of conservatism.
Even where public opinion is more mixed, like in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, the Republican grip on state legislatures has ensured that policies in those states conform with those of the reddest states in the union, rather than strike a middle ground.
The tearing at the seams has been accelerated by the six-vote conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which has embraced a muscular states-rights federalism. In the past 10 days the court has erased the constitutional right to an abortion, narrowed the federal government’s ability to regulate climate-warming pollution and blocked liberal states and cities from barring most of their citizens from carrying concealed guns outside of their homes.
“They’ve produced this Balkanized house divided, and we’re only beginning to see how bad that will be,” said David Blight, a Yale historian who specializes in the era of American history that led to the Civil War.
Historians have struggled to find a parallel moment, raising the 19th-century fracturing over slavery; the clashes between the executive branch and the Supreme Court in the New Deal era of the 1930s; the fierce battles over civil rights during Reconstruction and in the 1950s and early 1960s; and the rise of armed, violent groups like the Weather Underground in the late ’60s.
For some people, the divides have grown so deep and so personal that they have felt compelled to pick up and move from one America to the other. ¤ Many conservatives have taken to social media to express thanks over leaving high-tax, highly regulated blue states for red states with smaller government and, now, laws prohibiting abortion.
Others have transited the American rift in the opposite direction. ¤ “I did everything I could to put my mouth where my money was, to bridge the divide with my own actions,” said Howard Garrett, a Black, gay 29-year-old from Franklin, Tenn., who ran for alderman in recent years, organized the town’s first Juneteenth celebration and worked on L.G.B.T.Q. outreach to local schools, only to be greeted with harassment and death threats. ¤ Mr. Garrett moved to Washington, D.C., last year. “People were just sick in their heart,” he said, “and that was something you can’t change.” …
Jake Grumbach, a University of Washington political scientist who began studying the fragmentation of the nation more than a decade ago, said America was living through a “hyper-drive of state-based dissolution,” but he cautioned against looking regionally, instead locating the fault line between cities and their suburbs on one side and rural areas on the other. A voter in Milwaukee and one in rural Wisconsin, he said, are as different ideologically as one in Oklahoma and one in New York City.
However, gerrymandering and restrictions on voting access in Republican states have given conservatives a greater institutional advantage than the edge Democrats have in more liberal states, Mr. Grumbach said. He pointed to a gerrymandered legislative map in New York that was blocked and to similar maps that have gone forward in Louisiana, Ohio and Florida. …
🐣 RT @alfonslopeztena Roe v Wade: Women travelling for abortions will be protected by the federal government, that would also ensure access to abortion pills in states where it was prohibited
⋙ BBC: Roe v Wade: Women travelling for abortions will be protected – Biden http://bbc.in/3nysja3
// The US president warns some US states will attempt to arrest women crossing state lines for access.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent CNN: US believes Russia does not have sufficient forces to control Kherson Oblast. ¤ U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the Kremlin “faces rising partisan activity in southern Ukraine,” posing a challenge to Russia’s attempts to control the region.
🐣 RT @tomiahonen In court documents Oath Keepers testify that Trump intention was to invoke the Insurrection Act & somehow through it, create a ‘federal militia’ out of the Oath Keepers to become a private army loyal only to Trump ¤ This is LITERALLY the Hitler Nazi cookbook that created Gestapo [link]
⭕ 1 Jul 2022
FT, Gideon Rachman: Trump 2024 is a threat to Europe’s security http://on.ft.com/3Iixpkk
// The January 6 hearings show how deeply unstable the US political system remains, with clear implications for allies🐣 RT @Osinttechnical Ukrainian HIMARS in the east, photos from @washingtonpost “We actually have six,” said this system’s chief, whose call sign is Kuzya. “We just haven’t had a chance to add the other three yet.” ¤ Attacks are conducted at nighttime, when the units can quickly shoot and scoot.
¤ https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1543054588407840770?s=20
// tag: we have six HIMARSWSJ: New U.S. Guided Rockets Strengthen Ukraine’s Hand Against Russia http://on.wsj.com/3uHbTjN “Ukrainian soldiers operating Himars say they have doubled their reach into Russian-held territory with greater precision and less risk to themselves”
// Himars can reach twice as far behind enemy lines; ‘a stick in the wheel’ of Moscow’s war effort🐣 RT @DefenceU russia is the threat to the whole civilised world.
⋙ 🐣 💽 RT @DeptOfDefense .@SecDef: Russia’s premeditated malice and baseless aggression against Ukraine poses the greatest threat to European security since the end of World War II. And Putin’s war of choice threatens more than just the sovereignty of Ukraine.🐣 ◕ RT @JillWineBanks This is a great chart, reflecting reality during #Watergate– and trend now in terms of Americans who think Trump should be indicted. Truth and facts matter.
¤ https://twitter.com/JillWineBanks/status/1543092726828339203?s=20/photo/1
// Gallup Chart: How Watergate Changed Public Opinion of Richard Nixon, timeline🐣 RT @laurenpeikoff .@BeschlossDC on SCOTUS deciding to take up the case on state authority over elections: “There’s a possibility that we may have seen our last fair and free presidential election.” 💽
🐣 RT @VolodymyrDotCom “The US gave a new support package for Ukraine today, which includes very powerful NASAMS systems. An anti-aircraft missile complex that will significantly strengthen our air defense. In total, this package is worth 820 million dollars.” [link]
😅 RT @gtconway3d well, this settles it 🤣
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikeSington No more blurry images from a far away camera. Here’s the Secret Service surveillance video from INSIDE Trump’s presidential SUV as he was leaving the rally on January 6.
💽 https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1542949840908275712?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tribelaw The Jan. 6 coup attempt failed, but the Supreme Court has succeeded this term in trashing the Constitution without firing a shot. ¤ The justices simply made key planks of the Republican Party platform the supreme law of the land. ¤ Why? ¤ Because they had the votes.
💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Marc Elias: SCOTUS taking up election case ‘should worry everyone who cares’ about voting http://on.msnbc.com/3bDpfXr
// Founder of Democracy Docket Marc Elias reacts to the Supreme Court taking up a case that could change states’ power to set federal election rules🐣 RT @CalltoActivism BREAKING: Trump’s fundraising has PLUMMETED over the last two months, with him reporting a paltry $19,000 in May and June COMBINED after raising $9 million in March and April. Good.
🧵 RT @hunterw Back in April, a law enforcement source told me that they heard DC Metropolitan Police officers affiliated with the presidential motorcade share a story of Trump demanding to be drive to the Capitol and getting into an altercation with Secret Service on January 6.
📌 https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/1542946668794023936?s=20
↥ ↧
CNN: Accounts of Trump angrily demanding to go to Capitol on January 6 circulated in Secret Service over past year http://cnn.it/3yahjo9🐣 RT @MikeSington Little closer and brighter. Can you see Trump lunge forward inside the SUV? #January6th
💽 https://twitter.com/cwebbonline/status/1542657263910850561?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @danielsgoldman I prosecuted mob bosses and the tactics used by the Trump Criminal Enterprise are frighteningly similar. DOJ must consider RICO charges to capture all of the criminal conduct, including textbook witness tampering against Cassidy Hutchinson.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw This is deadly serious. Combining the power of a (former) presidency with its tentacles of violent thugs to frighten witnesses into silence while an insurrection and an attempted coup are under investigation spells fascism on the march. [link]TheAtlantic, Phillips O’Brien: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Changes What We Know About State Power http://bit.ly/3yyo18K “The Ukrainians have shown a national wherewithal that has made any idea of a Russian conquest of the whole country, Putin’s original goal, laughable”
// Kyiv’s success against Moscow forces us to reexamine our assumptions about what it means to be powerful.… The Russia-Ukraine war is now cutting through much of the nonsense that dominated the discussion of international power politics, posing particular challenges to blasé assumptions about what makes a state powerful, and what makes a country’s leadership effective. …
The best place to start is the widespread notion going into the war that we were witnessing a clash between a great power controlled by an experienced, savvy—some even said brilliant—leader and a small state weakened by national division and led by a second-rate former comedian. This great power–small power dynamic was accepted practically universally among a group of scholars and analysts who have proclaimed themselves “realists.”
… To Kissinger, it has been important that the United States treat Russia as a “great power” and that it accepted Moscow’s claim to have a special interest in Ukraine. ¤ Academics, too, subscribe to this notion. In lectures, media appearances, and articles in the months before the invasion, well-known figures such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt described the Russia-Ukraine relationship as operating in the well-worn great power–small power framework. In this analysis, Putin was the clever strategist with a strong grasp on what he wanted, while the Ukrainians were weak, and it would be better for the world if their status was determined by the strong. Russia was, in Mearsheimer’s view, one of only “three great powers” in the world, and Putin was a rationalist, just wanting to secure a buffer state on his border, something Ukraine would have to deal with. Meanwhile, as Walt put it, Ukraine would have to accept the oppression and subjugation of its people to Russian interests because “great-power war is worse and brings much more suffering.” Other analysts, such as Samuel Charap, even believed that Russia was so strong, and would crush a weak Ukraine so easily, that the West should provide no support for Kyiv, because it would all be wasted when the Russian steamroller attacked.
This all sounded eminently reasonable, but then Russia invaded Ukraine and the great power–small power dichotomy was revealed to be the opposite of realism. The fundamental problem was that Russia was exposed at the start as not a “great” power at all. Having sent in almost all of its frontline military units, the Russian army has seized only 20 percent of Ukraine—a far cry from its initial efforts to take Kyiv and subjugate the entire country—and is suffering horrific losses in casualties and equipment. It’s already desperately trying to regenerate its forces by finding soldiers wherever it can, even allowing citizens as old as 49 to enlist, while throwing more and more older, second-rate equipment into the fight.
Russian strength has shown itself to be so overrated that it gives us an opportunity to rethink what makes a power “great.” Going into the war, Russia’s military capabilities—including a large nuclear stockpile and what was thought to be one of the biggest and most-advanced armed forces in the world—were pointed to as the reason for its strength. What this war might be showing us, however, is that a military is only as strong as the society, economy, and political structure that assembled it. In this case, Russia was nowhere near a great power, but in fact a deeply flawed, in many ways weakening, state.
From this point of view, indeed, it can be seen as a power in relatively steep decline. Its economy is about the tenth largest in the world, comparable to Brazil’s, but even that masks how remarkably unproductive it is, basing most of its wealth on extracting and selling natural resources, rather than on producing anything advanced. When it comes to technology and innovation, Russia would hardly rank in the top 50 most important countries in the world.
Moreover, the Russian leadership, and most obviously its president—hailed in many quarters as a canny operator—has shown itself to be the head of a disastrously constructed state that fed misperceptions, stifled real debate, and allowed one man to launch this disaster. It’s odd that this is a lesson that we need to learn again and again: Dictatorial regimes tend to decompose the longer they stay in power, because appealing to the source of power becomes a higher priority to officials in all echelons of the state than simply doing a good job. Putin’s state fed his delusions and created an inefficient military, hobbled by corruption and inefficiency.
We must also reevaluate our understanding of the more basic notions of morale and psychological commitment. One of the most surprising things to analysts who perceived Ukraine as a small power, and Russia as a great one, is that the Ukrainian military and people have resisted with extraordinary tenacity while Russian military behavior points toward serious issues with motivation and commitment. The Ukrainians have shown a national wherewithal that has made any idea of a Russian conquest of the whole country, Putin’s original goal, laughable.
We have much to thank the Ukrainians for, but to some extent, one of the most important things they have done is force us to reexamine many of our assumptions about national power and the balance between states.
… Militaries, perhaps, should be seen more as creations of the underlying economic, technological, and political characteristics of a country. Military power still matters hugely, but in this view reflects its creators, rather than superseding them. A weak, relatively backward, and uninventive economy will struggle to operate a modern military, even if that military has what are considered advanced weapons.
Further, we need to be careful about praising the ability of authoritarian or dictatorial states to wage war. In times of peace, such states can seem decisive and the possessors of well-thought-out plans, but their systemic weaknesses in crushing dissent and encouraging deceptions that appeal to the throne can lead to strategic disasters in both how wars start and how they are conducted. Finally, national power has a basis in commitment and identity that cannot be overlooked.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not been a situation in which a great power assaulted a smaller neighbor. It’s an example of a large, deeply flawed power invading a smaller, but very committed one. …
🐣 RT @AlexKhrebet Putin’s pocket dictator Lukashenka threatens to invade the former Soviet countries: 🇱🇹🇱🇻🇪🇪🇲🇩🇦🇿🇬🇪🇦🇲🇰🇿🇰🇬🇹🇯🇺🇿🇹🇲 “Post-Soviet countries should get closer to the Union State of Russia and Belarus, if, of course, they want to preserve sovereignty and independence,” he said.
🐣 📋 RT @Spoonamore The 50 @GOP Sen. rep 38% of the US Population. but chose 66% of #SCOTUS. 50 @TheDemocrats Sen. rep 62% + chose 33%. #America is not a #democracy, nor even working #republic anymore. We live in an emerging #Christian #Fascism which is growing quickly within a host built for it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NormOrnstein [2018] I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: by 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent. Unsettling to say the least🐣 📊 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Poll: 90% of Ukrainians support integration with EU. ¤ According to a recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 73% of Ukrainians say they want Ukraine to join NATO. The survey was conducted on May 2-11.
¤ https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1542794973321596929?s=20
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Poll: 97% of Ukrainians trust Armed Forces. ¤ According to a recent poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 85% of the polled Ukrainians trust President Volodymyr Zelensky. The survey was conducted on May 2-11.⭕ 30 Jun 2022
🧵 RT @BrynnTannehill SCOTUS has opened Pandora’s box. They’ve reverted to an extreme “states’ rights” position that allows red states to end civil rights and oversight of corporations. Blue states like CA are going to try to drive the market with sanctuary laws and their own regs. 1/n
📌 https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1542523019700015106?s=20
// civil war?🐣 RT @monacharen We’ve reached the hush money phase. That’s where your contributions went folks. Trump’s PAC gave $1 million to Meadows’ non-profit weeks after House formed January 6 committee – CNNPolitics
⋙ CNN: Trump’s PAC gave $1 million to Meadows’ non-profit weeks after House formed January 6 committee http://cnn.it/3ucb0PR🐣 RT @Investingcom ⚠️BREAKING: ¤ *U.S. CORE PCE INFLATION RISES 4.7% IN MAY, LOWEST ANNUAL INCREASE SINCE NOVEMBER 2021 🇺🇸🇺🇸
WaPo, George Conway and Randall Eliason: Hutchinson’s testimony shatters any Trump defense of no criminal intent http://wapo.st/3a9VXPR Trump “can no longer plausibly claim — if he ever could — that this was just a peaceful protest gone bad”
NYT: Supreme Court to Hear Case on State Legislatures’ Power Over Elections http://nyti.ms/3ugWrKS
// The case, about a North Carolina voting map, has the potential to amplify the influence of state lawmakers over federal elections.◕ NYT: Think U.S. gas prices are high? Here’s how far $40 goes around the world. http://nyti.ms/3AkfAiY … So … It’s not Biden’s fault?
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1542761943752114177?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @EricHolder The latest example of Republicans desperately trying to undermine our democracy. The independent state legislature theory is a truly fringe legal theory based on a willful misinterpretation of our Constitution that has been rejected by the Court before. A real test for THIS Court http://bit.ly/3NDZS4V
“The independent state legislature theory is a fringe legal theory based on a willful misinterpretation of the Constitution, and it is at odds with basic tenets of American government, including the separation of powers. The goal of those embracing this radical theory is clear: to give control over our elections to extreme Republican state legislatures that are dominated by anti-democracy politicians who perpetuate and facilitate the Big Lie. It should not be lost on the public that this is a desperate attempt to delegitimize the lawful decisions of neutral arbiters state justices of both political parties who have provided a check against extreme laws enacted by gerrymandered Republican legislatures – all because Republicans did not like the end result. As shocking as this is, it is also unfortunately not surprising. The same political party that has called for the impeachment of state supreme court justices for holding them to account is now attacking the independence of state courts through the nation’s highest tribunal. All of this underscores the fact that every election matters, and it is incumbent upon all of us to protect the true independence of the judiciary, which is critical to our democracy.” ~ ERIC H. HOLDER, JR.
🐣 RT @EricHolder The latest example of Republicans desperately trying to undermine our democracy. The independent state legislature theory is a truly fringe legal theory based on a willful misinterpretation of our Constitution that has been rejected by the Court before. A real test for THIS Court [link]
🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger After the attempted coup, this cannot happen. ¤ Supreme Court to hear case on GOP ‘independent legislature’ theory that could radically reshape elections – POLITICO
⋙ Politico: Supreme Court to hear case on GOP ‘independent legislature’ theory that could radically reshape elections http://politi.co/3yxfrqZ
// The case stems from the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision this year to throw out the Republican-drawn congressional map for gerrymandering.Vox: A new Supreme Court case is the biggest threat to US democracy since January 6 http://bit.ly/3bH0c5F
// SCOTUS; Moore v. Harper is a grave threat to US democracy, and the fate of that democracy probably comes down to Amy Coney Barrett.🐣 RT @tribelaw This must be done, Senators. The filibuster is antidemocratic enough without using it to block measures designed to restore women to the first-class citizenship the overthrow of Roe v Wade stripped from them by sheer fiat.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff President Biden just endorsed changing the filibuster to protect Roe v. Wade. ¤ I wholeheartedly agree. ¤ Senators, you have the support of your party, your president, and the American people. ¤ What are you waiting for?🐣 RT @stuartmcphail5 So the President is just going to be appointed by a majority of state legislatures, themselves gerrymandered into unassailable oligarchies?
🐣 RT @ImSpeaking13 The 13th amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. Demanding that a woman maintain an unwanted pregnancy places her in a state of involuntary servitude, and puts her under state control to perform involuntary labor. This is a clear violation of the 13th Amendment.
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Hey Supreme Court Justices, what was that some of you solemnly told the U.S. Senate about stare decisis and respect for precedent?
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Terrible for our children to grow up in a society where nominees for Supreme Court — of all people! — con the U.S. Senate in confirmation hearings and the American people with empty buzzwords they don’t mean, like “stare decisis” and “respect for precedent.”
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC We are watching Trump’s Revenge.🐣 RT @PaulaChertock 🚨Let’s understand what’s happening. Republicans have gamed our democracy to move a radical right-wing agenda. They couldn’t do it by winning elections, so installed a Supreme Court to do—or rather undo—everything—civil rights, separation of church & state, regulation by experts.
🧵 RT @5thCircAppeals Today marks the end of what is surely one of the worst terms in #SCOTUS history. Guns and prayer and abortion got most of the attention. But that’s not all the Court did. Here are just some of the Court’s bad decisions:1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/5thCircAppeals/status/1542522257511026689?s=20🐣 RT @steve_vladeck I’m hard-pressed to think of a more momentous Term in the Supreme Court’s history. Ever. ¤ Maybe there have been individual decisions that were more important, but the number of significant, paradigm-shifting rulings, and all in the *same* direction, really has no precedent IMHO.
🐣 RT @marceelias Congress must enact comprehensive voting rights and anti-subversion legislation before it’s too late.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HC_Richardson The Supreme Court has gone rogue. We are in a full-blown Constitutional crisis. Congress must act. And we must pressure Congress to act, while it still can. #TheMajority🐣 RT @BrennanCenter BREAKING: The Supreme Court agreed to hear Moore v Harper, an appeal advocating for extreme interpretation of the Constitution that could make it easier for state legislatures to suppress the vote, draw unfair election districts, enable partisan interference in ballot counting.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Run out of words to describe this court, but, among other things, it’s now a threat to the planet.
🐣 RT @POTUS We have to codify Roe v. Wade into law. ¤ And as I said this morning: If the filibuster gets in the way, then we need to make an exception to get it done.
🐣 RT @JohnBerman JUST NOW: “Cassidy said there’s more I want to share with the committee a couple months ago, I put her in touch with Cong. Cheney, she got a new lawyer and that’s how this testimony came about.” ¤ NEW info from @Alyssafarah on Cassidy Hutchinson timeline
💽 https://twitter.com/JohnBerman/status/1542476596417888261?s=20/photo/1
// on CNN🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer SCOTUS this week:
– Only states can regulate abortion
– States can’t regulate firearms
– The Environmental Protection Agency can’t protect the environment
– States have power over Indian Country
– Miranda rights aren’t *really* necessary
What an unmitigated disaster.⭕ 29 Jun 2022
NYT: After Rapes by Russian Soldiers, a Painful Quest for Justice http://nyti.ms/3NDgc6j
// Women who were attacked in a village near Kyiv yearn for justice. “I want them to be punished,” said one victim. But Ukrainian officials face daunting challenges in prosecuting such crimes.NYT, Maggie Haberman: Liz Cheney calls Trump ‘a domestic threat that we have never faced before.’ http://nyti.ms/3yvYa1u
// In a forceful speech, the congresswoman also denounced Republican leaders who had “made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.”📊 MorningConsult/Politico Tracking Poll http://bit.ly/3a3cS6x (6/24-26/2022; 2004 RegVoters)
● 65% of Reg Voters believe that “Donald Trump claimed that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent without evidence” (47% def agree, 18% prob agree) (26% disagree)
Yes, definitely: 47%
Yes, probably: 18%
No, probably not: 10%
No, definitely not: 16%
No opinion: 9%🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb: ¤ “There are many damning facts” (referencing Hutchinson’s testimony Trump knew his supporters were armed, riled them up, concurred in chanting to hang Pence). ¤ If that “isn’t insurrection, I don’t know what is.”
⋙ CNN: Former prosecutors say blockbuster January 6 testimony increases Trump’s criminal exposure http://cnn.it/3AgbGY9🐣 RT @lukebroadwater Key moments for which Cipollone was in the room, per witnesses:
-Trump exploring seizing voting machines
-False DOJ letter proposal he condemned as “murder-suicide pact”
-Barr offering to resign after concluding fraud claims were false
-Trump endorsing chant of “Hang Mike Pence”YahooNews, Michael Isikoff: Filmmaker who gave footage to Jan. 6 committee: Trump is ‘dangerous,’ living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’ http://yhoo.it/3NrFBzv
“Donald Trump is not a rational player. I mean, he just isn’t,” Alex Holder said in an interview with the Yahoo News podcast, “Skullduggery.” “You can’t have a conversation with him in the same way that you can have a conversation with most other people. He is somebody that lives in a different reality.”
Holder says his footage, and his own interviews with Trump, show the former president actually believes his assertions about voter fraud affecting the outcome of the election even though there is no evidence to back up his claims. And, he added, in the days before Jan. 6, 2021, the then president was “absolutely” convinced there was going to be violence that day. ¤ “It was so obvious. This was his last hurrah,” Holder said. “He had this — obviously had this — ridiculous idea that intervening in this ceremonial process of certifying these results could somehow prevent President Biden being inaugurated.”
TheAtlantic, Paul Wehner: A Withering Indictment of the Entire GOP http://bit.ly/3Ra44g7
// Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony was damning. If anyone was surprised, they shouldn’t have been.The portrait painted yesterday at the January 6 hearing by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, wasn’t simply of a criminal president, but of a seditious madman. ¤ Even Republican members of Congress who have long supported Donald Trump told reporters, anonymously, that Hutchinson’s testimony was “worse than they imagined.” They were “stunned” and “left speechless.” ¤ If they were, they shouldn’t have been.
According to Hutchinson, the president of the United States knew that his supporters attending the January 6 rally near the White House were armed—and he still wanted security removed from the area and the crowd to march to the Capitol. “I overheard the president say something to the effect of ‘I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-ing mags [magnetometers] away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here,’” Hutchinson said. Not long after that, Trump told the crowd that stormed the Capitol, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Hutchinson also said she heard a conversation between White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Meadows: “I remember Pat saying something to the effect of ‘Mark, we need to do something more. They’re literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung.’ And Mark had responded something to the effect of ‘You heard him, Pat; he thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.’” Shortly after that, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”
Hutchinson also said that Trump shattered a porcelain plate after learning that then–Attorney General Bill Barr said he’d found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election; on other occasions, Trump flipped tablecloths “to let all the contents at the table go onto the floor and likely break or go everywhere.” And at the end of the hearing, Representative Liz Cheney raised the prospect of witness tampering, quoting from witnesses who had been the targets of Mafia-style intimidation tactics.
Perhaps the case against Trump presented by the January 6 committee and previous Trump loyalists—by now so overwhelming as to be unquestionable—will cause some members of Congress, academics, and “public intellectuals” in the right-wing infrastructure to distance themselves from Trump. Of course, until now Trump has crossed no ethical line, has shattered no norm that caused them to say “Enough!” Instead we’ve heard whataboutism and strained-to-the-breaking-point excuses. …
Every Trump supporter has his story to tell, his defense to offer, his reasons why he did what he did. Massive cognitive dissonance—in this case individuals and a political party that have historically championed law and order, “traditional values,” high ethical ideals, moral leadership in political leaders, and a healthy civic and political culture defending at every turn a person who was indecent, cruel, vindictive, demagogic, unstable, and ultimately deranged—can produce some very creative justifications.
No matter; the die is cast when it comes to the Trump presidency and those who made it possible. The events of January 6 were, in their own twisted way, a fitting denouement for the Trump presidency. It was so obvious, for so long, that this wouldn’t end well. Trump was the primary architect of the attack on the citadel of American democracy. But he had a lot of help along the way.
Hutchinson’s testimony was a withering indictment of America’s 45th president. But it was also, if less directly, an indictment of his party, his supporters, his acolytes, those who went silent and those who spoke up on his behalf. He and they are ever twinned.
🐣 RT @harrylitman And so they should. But testimony yesterday — and the explanation that Ornato, who ran detail, is a complete Trump loyalist— puts in relief Pence’s insistence not to let SS spirit him away from Capitol on 1/6. He must have felt they might be in on coup.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterAlexander 🚨 A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.🐣 RT @hugolowell Just incredible that this Trump-Secret Service altercation story is distracting from the major news that Trump knowingly told armed supporters to march on the Capitol — and Meadows spoke to Stone and Flynn the night before January 6. And then wanted a pardon.
🐣 RT @MSNBC 40 feet. That’s the distance that separated then-VP Pence from a violent angry mob at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. ¤ But there may have been a threat much closer, @FrankFigliuzzi1 writes.
MSNBC, Frank Figliuzzi: Mike Pence feared for his life on Jan. 6. Americans deserve to understand why. http://on.msnbc.com/3I50P5s
// The Jan. 6 committee owes Americans clarification of exactly how realistic Mike Pence’s fear of Trump was during the hours of the insurrection.🐣 RT @djrothkopf To me what stands out from yesterday is this: Trump knew the crowd was armed and nonetheless wanted to lead it to the Hill. At the same time, he was actively trying to intimidate Pence & Congress to reject legitimate electoral votes. He was actively leading the insurrection.
🧵 RT @BradMossEsq I can’t believe I have to do this but since so many in Trump apology land are doing their best to undermine Hutchinson’s testimony let’s revisit what she testified to that was from firsthand observations and is not disputed.
📌 https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1542130107048988672?s=201) The White House had intelligence that the 1/6 crowd was armed. People going through the Mags had been armed and the weapons were confiscated. Other people with more serious weaponry were staying outside the security bubble to avoid losing their weapons.
2) Meadows is told the crowd is armed. He doesn’t care.
3) Trump is told the crowd is armed. He doesn’t care.
4) Trump gets so made [sic] that the Mags are thinning his crowd “shot” he demands USSS back down and let everyone in. When told they can’t because of safety concerns tied to the weapons, he says he doesn’t care b/c the attendees aren’t there to hurt him.
5) Trump was clear before the speech he wanted to go to the Hill and march with the crowd. Staff told him over and over he could not do it and promised the Hill he wouldn’t. He told the 1/6 crowd anyway he was going to march with them, and USSS started making preparations to clear a path. Again, this is despite his awareness the crowd was armed, up to and including AR-15s.
6) After the speech, Trump is told they’re not marching with the crowd. Trump is pissed. He planned to march.That’s it. That’s the criminal argument. He was aware the crowd was armed, he planned to lead them to the Hill anyway with the intent to prevent certification. That’s the criminal case right there. And none of that is being disputed by USSS. ¤ Whether Trump grabbed the damn steering wheel or assaulted Engle is sooooo not the point. That was the one bit of hearsay Hutchinson included that is now being seized on by Fox and the likes of @ggreenwald to cast aspersions on the entirety of Hutchinson’s testimony. It was a wild anecodte, NOT the main testimony. ¤ Enough with the damn gaslighting. /end
NYT, Thomas Edsall: Democrats Are Having a Purity Test Problem at Exactly the Wrong Time http://nyti.ms/3OQUDA8 “[D]isputes over diversity, equity and inclusion — over doctrine, language and strategies — have paralyzed much of the left advocacy and nonprofit sector”
// Also: “It has become too easy for people to conflate disagreements about issues with matters of identity”Grim’s assessment resonated across the internet and was quickly followed by Molly Redden’s June 17 HuffPost account, “Inside the A.C.L.U.’s Post-Trump Reckoning”; Jon Gabriel’s article in the Arizona Republic on June 18, “Who needs a right-wing plot when progressives are busy eating themselves alive?”; Zack Colman’s June 19 Politico column “Justice or overreach? As crucial test looms, Big Greens are under fire”; and John Harris’s June 23 Politico essay, “The Left Goes to War with Itself.”
According to Grim (and these other reports), disputes over diversity, equity and inclusion — over doctrine, language and strategies — have paralyzed much of the left advocacy and nonprofit sector.
In recent months I’ve had the chance to talk to several presidents and executive directors of established left-leaning centers and groups. They all tell versions of the same story:
[William Galston:] Around 2015, something changed. The young people they were hiring were focused on issues of race, gender, and identity as never before, and they were impatient with — even scornful of — what they regarded as the timid incrementalism of the organizations’ leaders. They wanted equity (as they defined it) immediately. They were acutely sensitive to what they saw as microaggressions, including the use of terms to identify different groups that they regarded as out of date and insulting. They were prickly, quick to take offense and to see malign motives rather than inadvertent mistakes. …
[Declines being identified:] The fundamental problem, he wrote, is “the presence in every progressive organization of a small but very vocal fringe that views every problem as a sin.” This hyper-moralization of internal disputes spills over into real-world, but otherwise routine disagreements, he continued: “It has become too easy for people to conflate disagreements about issues with matters of identity.”
🐣 RT @KyivPost President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced US reinforcements of NATO forces in Europe, saying the alliance is needed more today “than it ever has been.” Read more on our website.
⋙ KyivPost/AFP: Biden announces US military air, sea, land reinforcements in Europe http://bit.ly/3QVwjPn🐣 RT @DefenceU Through unbearable pain and sorrow, we will walk our path to irreversible victory. ¤ Art by Serhii Pertsev
🖼 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1542089944642064386?s=20/photo/1⭕ 28 Jun 2022 ⚖️🏛
Day 6: June 28, 2022: “Cassidy Hutchinson”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar we’re underway with the special June 28 hearing of the January 6 committee. Yes, Fox News is taking it live.
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1541829781385248771?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: The Jan. 6 committee holds a last-minute public hearing at 1pm ET today, which will include testimony from a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Follow along as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1541789726960750593?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Wow! On January 2 Rudy told Cassidy Hutchinson Trump and team were going to the Capitol on the 6th. Cassidy asked her boss about it and he said “There’s a lot going on Cass. Things might get real real bad.” ¤ She said today, “That was the first moment I remember feeling scared.”
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1541834209265963012?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel This woman is 26. She’s about to provide really damaging testimony about one of the most dangerous men in America.
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1541829534248566784?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @lrozen J6 hearing starting, featuring Cassidy Hutchinson, former special assistant to Trump and aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows
📌 https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1541829799169122308?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Sixth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3bp657u
// 6/28/2022; Cassidy Hutchinson, former senior aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified that President Trump said, “You know, I don’t even care that they have weapons. They aren’t here to hurt me.” Her testimony came during the January 6 Committee hearing on the investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. This is the sixth in a series of hearings – after months of closed-door investigations – detailing the committee findings on the January 6 attack. Ms. Hutchinson shared her experiences of the days leading up to and after the attack, including President Trump’s alleged altercation with Secret Service in the back of the presidential limo because the Secret Service refused the president’s demands to go to the Capitol after his rally speech.~~~~~~~~~~
WaPo Editorial: Jan. 6 testimony shows that Donald Trump is unhinged. Voters must listen. http://wapo.st/3OxJrZh
… But the reality of having a megalomaniac in the White House — and how close Mr. Trump brought the democratic system to the precipice — was shown in horrifyingly vivid detail on Tuesday, when Cassidy Hutchinson, a top Trump White House aide, appeared under oath before the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack in which Trump supporters attempted to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Her account of the president’s behavior in the days leading up to and during that violent assault on Congress, as it went about its constitutional duty of counting electoral votes, will stand in history as some of the most damning testimony ever heard about any U.S. leader.
Mr. Trump not only knew his supporters were armed, she said, but also demanded that magnetometers be removed from his rally at the Ellipse, where he urged them to descend upon the Capitol. She explained how he had wanted to join them there, and was so infuriated when told he couldn’t that he attempted to grab the wheel of the presidential limousine and lunged at the agent who headed his Secret Service detail. As the rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Mr. Trump commented that his vice president, who had refused to bend under pressure to illegally throw out electoral ballots, deserved to be targeted, according to what Ms. Hutchinson said she heard from people who were present when the president expressed that sentiment.
… The consequences of re-empowering an unhinged personality, after he has faced no serious consequences for literally trying to overthrow the democratic order, would last forever. ¤ Politicians Americans elect in 2022 will be in place to enable — or stop — another coup attempt in 2024. Many Republican candidates have signaled their willingness to abet more sedition.
The nation needs a broad coalition built around a single interest: protecting democracy. That means Democrats must look beyond ideological purity tests and focus on offering an agenda with the broadest possible appeal; those Republicans of goodwill who still remain must find the political courage to buck the radical election deniers in their ranks and make their chief priority the promotion of pro-democracy candidates and policies. That starts with passing critical election reforms through the Senate and bolstering the democratic system against another Trumpian attack. ¤ Americans must snap out of their complacency. The stakes are higher — and time is shorter — than they realize.
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: Cassidy Hutchinson could read the ketchup on the wall http://wapo.st/3yvWC7F “If Meadows, more than twice Hutchinson’s age, had even half of her courage, the country would be in a much better place”
[…] We all knew Trump fomented violence on Jan. 6, but here was evidence he was violent himself (allegations Trump denied Tuesday on his social media platform). Hutchinson filled in the details in vivid answers to questions posed by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chair, seated 30 feet away on the dais.
People on the Mall with AR-15s, Glock pistols and other weapons on Jan. 6 were avoiding Trump’s rally on the Ellipse because their weapons would have been confiscated by the Secret Service at the magnetometers, or mags, where entrants were scanned. But Trump wanted them in his rally, she testified, and said “something to the effect of, ‘You know, I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
Hutchinson had everything to lose by defying Team Trump’s pressure for her to remain silent. (After her testimony, the committee also revealed incidents of apparent witness tampering it had discovered.) Her courage should shame her big-name former colleagues who are refusing to cooperate. She had worked in the White House little more than a year, and before that she had been a White House and Capitol Hill intern, but her testimony displayed a sense of patriotism that eludes so many older Trump loyalists.
“As a staffer that works to always represent the administration to the best of my ability and to showcase the good things that he had done for the country, I remember feeling frustrated, disappointed, and really it felt personal,” she said of her reaction to Jan. 6. “As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.” … If Meadows, more than twice Hutchinson’s age, had even half of her courage, the country would be in a much better place.
🐣 RT @johnson_carrie Just in: Cassidy Hutchinson’s attorneys, Jody Hunt and William Jordan of Alston & Bird, issue this statement
¤ Text Link: https://twitter.com/johnson_carrie/status/1541882566059368453?s=20/photo/1Text: Ms. Hutchinson is justifiably proud of her service to the country as a Special Assistant to the President. While she did not seek out the attention accompanying her testimony today, she believes that it was her duty and responsibility to provide the Committee with her truthful and candid observations of the events surrounding January 6. Ms. Hutchinson believes that January 6 was a horrific day for the country, and it is vital to the future of our democracy that it not be repeated.
🧵 RT @tomiahonen Related to Cassidy Hutchinson testimony ¤ Imagine her in a criminal trial. What a powerful witness ¤ She did not plead fifth. If DOJ asks her to testify she will. My guess: She flipped & has already told this all to DOJ. And she told the truth, even as a Trumpista & conservative
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1542086045277331457?s=20
⋙ 🧵 RT @tomiahonen Hutchinson Hearing Thread 1/ ¤ That was some stunning testimony at January 6th surprise hearing at short notice. Witness was Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to Mark Meadows the White House Chief of Staff, the second most powerful person in any administration. Let’s do Thread..
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1542072835111264256?s=20⋙ Hutchinson Hearing Thread 2/ ¤ There were bombshells & on-the-record first hand testimony. We heard that Trump knew beforehand that the mob would be armed. When some of his supporters brought weapons to his rally, Trump demanded the metal detectors (magnetometers, mags) be removed
⋙ Hutchinson Hearing Thread 3/ ¤ We all heard Trump promise to march with his mob to the Capitol, but because Trump’s words have no correlation to reality, we never knew up to this testimony, if that had been Trump’s intention. Now we know. Trump had PLANNED to go to Capitol
⋙ Hutchinson Hearing Thread 4/ ¤ We also learned that Trump had been told BEFORE his Speech on January 6th, that attempting to march with the armed mob to the Capitol would be a CRIME, by Patsy Palone – Pat Cipollone the White House Legal Counsel. Yet Trump tried it anyway.
⋙ Hutchinson Hearing Thread 5/ ¤ Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Mark Meadows had been coordinating BEFOREHAND with Roger Stone & Giuliani at the ‘War Room’ in Willard Hotel including a phone call on Jan 5th (The FBI has these phone records of course). Meadows will fry for this [See photo]
⋙ Hutchinson Hearing Thread 6/ ¤ We learned that Mark Meadows had begged Trump for a Presidential pardon, which goes to his clear awareness of guilt about Jan 6th. Also that Giuliani had begged for a pardon for explicitly January 6th crimes.
⋙ Hutchinson Hearing Thread 7/ ¤ And finally, true to form, we learned from Jan 6th vice chair, Rep Liz Cheney that they have evidence of Trumpmobsters attempting to intimidate witnesses. We’ve seen this movie also before. Roger Stone & Giuliani did this quite regularly🐣 RT @POTUS Congratulations to Finland, Sweden, and Turkey on signing a trilateral memorandum – a crucial step towards a NATO invite to Finland and Sweden, which will strengthen our Alliance and bolster our collective security – and a great way to begin the Summit.
🐣 RT @harrylitman Holy crap — at Trump’s command, Meadows calls Stone and Flynn the night of 1/5. ¤ and Meadows was planning to go to the war room w/ Giuliani et al in Willard that evening. ¤ this is the first concrete link going from Trump/Meadows to the insurrectionists. a bridge conspiracy.
🐣 RT @girlsreallyrule Hutchinson testifies that Mark Meadows wanted to go to the “War Room” at the Willard Hotel Rudy Giuliani and his associates would be having a meeting the night of Jan. 5 and she says she told Meadows she didn’t think that would be “appropriate.”
💽 https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1541852739575189505?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump wanted to personally lead the attack on the Capitol. Can you imagine the imagery?
😅 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1541970373561950208?s=20/photo/1
// check comments🐣 RT @nytimes NATO is set to announce that it will significantly increase allied forces on “standby” in case of conflict to 300,000 from 40,000, according to its secretary-general.
⋙ NYT: NATO will sharply increase the number of troops it keeps on standby. http://nyti.ms/3OvKTLTWaPo, Ruth Marcus: An aide shatters the Trump White House’s code of silence http://wapo.st/3y51FKC
An out-of-control president lunging for the wheel of his limousine to have it take him to the Capitol on Jan. 6, insisting that he did not care whether his armed supporters were subjected to security screening because “they’re not here to hurt me.” An ineffectual, overwhelmed White House chief of staff who understood that “things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6” — and did nothing to prevent it. An alarmed White House counsel who warned of the president’s inaction, “Something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood’s going to be on [his] f—ing hands.”
Never in American history has there been a portrayal of a president so unfit for office or so willing to betray his oath in a desperate bid to retain power. Never have so many people in such positions of immense authority stayed so shamefully silent for so long about the horrifying behavior they witnessed, on Jan. 6, 2021, and before.
And never has the nation witnessed the drama of a staffer so young, composed and resolute describe witnessing a constitutional disaster that she was unable to prevent — “a bad car accident that was about to happen, where you can’t stop it but you want to do something.”
In an administration of enablers, in a crowd of sycophants unwilling even now to stand up to Donald Trump and speak publicly about his unhinged conduct, 25-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, a former assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, emerged from obscurity Tuesday, an unlikely — and lonely — truth-teller.
Hutchinson was the perfect witness to testify to the dereliction of duty she observed in the final days of the Trump White House, a Trump believer turned reluctant informant. Her GOP bona fides, including internships for House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), could not have been more impeccable, nor her demeanor — calm and sorrowful — more convincing. She was John Dean in a white blazer and diamond necklace, reciting a similarly damning cavalcade of facts.
She had literally cleaned up after the president — helping the White House valet scrub ketchup off the wall after he threw a plate in fury over his attorney general’s conclusion that voter fraud had not caused his election loss. But her breaking point arrived on Jan. 6 — and in the end, she was willing to abandon the code of complicit silence that still prevails among too many of her former colleagues. … “As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
If there were adults in the room with Hutchinson, barely out of college, their greater experience did not manifest itself: She was the one who demonstrated the maturity to warn Meadows against going to the Willard hotel war room where Trump allies were plotting to keep the president in office; to press him to call Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as the rioters breached the Capitol; to try to do something, anything, to stop the impending carnage.
“I said, ‘Hey, are you watching the TV, chief? The rioters are getting really close,’ ” Hutchinson told Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s vice chair. “ ‘Have you talked to the president?’ He said, ‘No, he wants to be alone right now.’ ”
To listen to Hutchinson was to hear the disappointment of a staffer recognizing the limitations of her principal. “I remember thinking in that moment, Mark needs to snap out of this, and I don’t know how to snap him out of this,” she testified. “He needs to care.” ¤ While Meadows angled for a presidential pardon in the aftermath of the insurrection, Hutchinson has stepped up to fulfill her duty as a citizen. Let Trump deny her account, as he quickly did, and deride her as a “total phony” with a “fake story.” Anyone who watched Hutchinson can judge her credibility for themselves. She is an American heroine describing a decidedly unheroic moment. …
MSNBC, Hayes Brown: Why Cassidy Hutchinson’s Jan. 6 testimony blew the roof off Trump’s defense http://on.msnbc.com/3boVjy3
// The former-White House aide showed that Trump was not only aware of potential violence, he was encouraging it.NYT, Peter Baker: A President Untethered http://nyti.ms/3y1D1e2 “The president that emerged from her account was volatile, violent and vicious, single-minded in his quest to overturn an election he lost no matter what anyone told him”
// In the final, frenzied days of his administration, Donald J. Trump’s behavior turned increasingly volatile as he smashed dishware and lunged at his own Secret Service agent, according to testimony.The president that emerged from her account was volatile, violent and vicious, single-minded in his quest to overturn an election he lost no matter what anyone told him, anxious to head to the Capitol to personally disrupt the constitutional process that would finalize his defeat, dismissive of warnings that his actions could lead to disaster and thoroughly unbothered by the prospect of sending to Congress a mob of supporters that he knew included people armed with deadly weapons.
A president who liked to describe himself as a “very stable genius” was anything but that as Ms. Hutchinson observed in those final, frenzied days of his time in office. Hers was not a description that surprised many of those who worked for Mr. Trump and had seen him up close in the preceding four years, or for that matter, many who had known him in the decades that preceded his life in politics. But hearing her recount it all under oath, on live television, brought home how much Mr. Trump and his White House spiraled in its perilous last chapter.
WaPo, Amber Phillips: All the bombshells Cassidy Hutchinson dropped about Trump and Jan. 6 http://wapo.st/3bF3jeJ
🐣 RT @January6thCmte Today’s testimony makes clear that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol with the armed mob, despite warnings not to do so from his advisors. ¤ When the Secret Service ruled out the possibility, the former President erupted in anger in the Suburban he was riding in.
💽 https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1541868218922541058?s=20/photo/1
// video of SUV with arms moving🐣 RT @washingtonpost Here are some of Cassidy Hutchinson’s most stunning revelations from her explosive testimony Tuesday about former president Donald Trump and the activity inside the West Wing on Jan. 6, 2021.
💽 https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1541904753281605634?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @maggieNYT Multiple Trump advisers were blunt that there are legal implications for the former president out of the hearing today
⋙ NYT: Trump Aides Watch Testimony and Brace for Damage http://nyti.ms/3bB5Y97
// A “stunning two hours” raises fears of political and legal consequences for the former president.🐣 RT @CarolLeonnig Sources tell me: @SecretService agents dispute that Donald Trump assaulted any agent or tried to grab the steering wheel on Jan 6 . They agree Trump was furious about not being abel to go to Capitol with his supporters. They offer to testify under oath. https://twitter.com/CarolLeonnig/status/1541931078184845312?s=20
🧵 RT @renato_mariotti THREAD: What is the legal significance of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony? Does it make a prosecution of Trump more likely?
📌 https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1541867974130339841?s=20⋙ 8/ Testimony that Trump said he didn’t “f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me” and that they would be going to the Capitol later is precisely the sort of “smoking gun” evidence needed to prove that the person speaking meant to incite imminent violence.
⋙ 9/ The DOJ will understandably be concerned that the Supreme Court (particularly the current court) would find that Trump’s speech was constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. But this evidence should be enough to make them consider an incitement prosecution.
⋙ 14/ But episodes like wrestling the steering wheel show that Trump **wanted** to be at the Capitol and would have been have been there if he wasn’t kept from doing so. He wanted to be there, hands on, for the attack itself. ¤ That sheds a powerful light on his state of mind.
⋙ 17/ Hutchison’s testimony is a game changer. Until now, what I saw was potential narrow criminal charges against crooked lawyers. Now it looks like an (otherwise unlikely) incitement prosecution is possible, and there may be the “smoking gun” needed for an obstruction charge.
⋙ 18/ The committee was smart to lock in public testimony from Hutchinson when they had the chance, given the (potentially unlawful) pressure against her to change her tune. ¤ They have to hope that others follow in her footsteps. But they already have much of what they need. /end🐣 RT @MickMulvaney I think I just figured out why we are having an unannounced hearing: if the President knew the protesters had weapons, and still encouraged them to go to the Capitol, that is a serious problem. ¤ Things just got a lot more interesting.
🐣 RT @atrupar when you’re definitely not mad
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1541902841496870913?s=20/photo/1
// Trump scrolling on TS🐣 RT @PaulaChertok The only thing crazier than a raging Trump lunging at the Secret Service is all the complicit Republicans who knowingly enabled and emboldened a stochastic terrorist to occupy the WH for 4 years. And stayed silent even after his full character revealed itself in a deadly coup.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Today’s testimony makes clear that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol with the armed mob, despite warnings not to do so from his advisors. ¤ When the Secret Service ruled out the possibility, the former President erupted in anger in the Suburban he was riding in.
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1541870192300462080?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AccountableGOP Testify under oath.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Her Fake story that I tried to grab the steering wheel of the White House Limousine in order to steer it to the Capitol Building is “sick” and fraudulent, very much like the Unselect Committee itself – Wouldn’t even have been possible to do such a ridiculous thing. Her story of me throwing food is also false….andwhy would SHE have to clean up, I hardly knew who she was?🐣 RT @TheRickWilson There has never in my lifetime been a Congressional hearing more damning to a President. Never. ¤ This makes Watergate’s darkest moments look like a bridge club meeting.
🐣 RT @harrylitman Don’t want this to get lost in the avalanche of huge revelations. This is the first possible link b/t insurrectionists and highest reaches of WH, inc Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman Holy crap — at Trump’s command, Meadows calls Stone and Flynn the night of 1/5. ¤ and Meadows was planning to go to the war room w/ Giuliani et al in Willard that evening. ¤ this is the first concrete link going from Trump/Meadows to the insurrectionists. a bridge conspiracy.🐣 RT @atrupar in Truth Social, Trump dismisses Hutchinson as something akin to a coffee boy https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1541846662729142275?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I hardly know who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson, is, other than I heard very negative things about her (a total phony and “leaker”), and when she requested to go with certain others of the team to Florida after my having served a full term in office, I personally
turned her request down. Why did she want to go with us if she felt we were so terrible? I understand that she was very upset and angry that I didn’t want her to go, or be a member of the team. She is bad news!🐣 RT @kendilanianNBC To recap: The two key architects of the Trump election plot have now been the subject of court-ordered searches as part of a criminal investigation. That is a huge deal.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs The West needs to resist the temptation to regard the Russian war in Ukraine as an aberration rather than a trend, warn @IvoHDaalder and @JamesMLindsay. Washington must forge deeper ties with other democracies to revitalize a rules-based order.
⋙ ForeignAffairs: Last Best Hope http://fam.ag/3yjTj2b “As U.S. President Joe Biden said in Warsaw in March, the West now faces ‘a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force’”
// Jul-Aug; The West has a final chance to build a better world order.WaPo: Biden heads to NATO summit on support for Ukraine, alliance strategy http://wapo.st/3AdN2Yb “The meeting comes a day after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the number of alliance forces kept at a high readiness level will increase sharply”
⭕ 27 Jun 2022
Reuters: Politics trumps business in Truth Social’s war on Big Tech http://reut.rs/3AhLg8i “Two people central to the company’s founding, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, are both former castmates on ‘The Apprentice’” ~ and then, of course, there’s Devin Nunes 🐮
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM After today’s deadly missile attacks in Ukraine, Zelensky says “the Russian state has become the largest terrorist organization in the world. And this is a fact.” He tells the international community that doing any business with Russia “means giving money to terrorists.”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ What to watch out for tomorrow wrt Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony: Can she tie Trump, Meadows and/or members of Congress to foreknowledge or even an intention for violence to occur on Jan. 6 in order to pressure Pence. If so, it brings them into crosshairs of seditious conspiracy
🐣 RT @thedailybeast Alex Holder, the Jan. 6 documentary filmmaker, said in an interview that Eric Trump felt that violence would be justified: “He felt that it was… fair game in that it… was sort of the equivalent on the other side of the political discourse.” [link]
🐣 SCOTUS: 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤦♂️😳😳😳
19fortyfive.com: America Is Giving NASAMS Air Defenses To Ukraine: Russia’s Air Force Beware? http://bit.ly/3ymTFpU NASAMS = National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System [technical]
🐣 We’re going to end up with a SCOTUS whose rulings Blue States end-run and ignore via prosecutorial discretion; already happening. I look forward to the day you can go to the HHS site to order abortion pills or visit your nearest Indian Reservation or military base for an abortion
🐣 📊 RT @pewresearch A median of 85% across 18 countries express an unfavorable opinion of Russia, with majorities in most nations saying they have a very unfavorable opinion. https://pewrsr.ch/3zVFMzV
¤ https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/1541560265786916865?s=20/photo/1🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Abruptly Sets Tuesday Hearing on ‘Recently Obtained Evidence’ http://nyti.ms/3NmTleV The hearing is scheduled for 1pm ET
// The committee, which had planned at least two additional hearings next month, had not been scheduled to meet this week.CNN: John Eastman searched and had phone seized by federal agents last week, he says http://cnn.it/3OL56wV
🐣 RT @G7 #G7 Leaders Statement: We solemnly condemn the abominable attack on a shopping mall in #Kremenchuk. We will not rest until Russia ends its cruel and senseless war on Ukraine. #G7GER Text Block:
¤ https://twitter.com/G7/status/1541521305283039233?s=20/photo/1“G7 Leaders Statement on the missile attack on a shopping mall in Kremenchuck
We, the Leaders of the G7, solemnly condemn the abominable attack on a shopping mall in Kremenchuk. We stand united with Ukraine in mourning the innocent,victims of this brutal attack. Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime. Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account.Today, we underlined our unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian aggression, an unjustified war of choice that has been raging for 124 days. Will will continue to provide financial, humanitarian as well as military support for Ukraine, for as long as it takes. We will not rest until Russia ends its cruel and senseless war on Ukraine.”🌎 🐣 Haplogroups identify migrating groups and migration patterns among native populations. Ukrainians are Eastern European (paternal haplogroup R1a). Russia includes a minority of R1a along with peoples of numerous other haplogroups. http://bit.ly/3NuHFXA Wikimedia Commons
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1541540292507193344?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 The Big Picture: Dominant Haplogroups in Native Populations
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1541540297749970951?s=20/photo/1🌎 WaPo (2015): How Ukraine became Ukraine, in 7 maps http://wapo.st/3xWQS5h
// 3/9/2015⭕ 26 Jun 2022
WSJ: In Ukraine’s South, Counterattacks Offer Kyiv Hope for Turning Back Russia http://on.wsj.com/3Aa3FEm “Kherson was the first major city to fall in the Russian invasion and it remains a linchpin of Russia’s occupation of southern Ukraine”
// Ukraine is looking to recapture a city crucial for its economy and stop Russian designs on advancing to the doorstep of Europe. ‘We need Kherson back.’CNN: US to announce purchase of medium- to long-range surface-to-air missile defense system for Ukraine http://cnn.it/3A6PyPO “can quickly identify, engage and destroy current and evolving enemy aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicle or emerging cruise missile threats”
In response to requests by Ukrainian forces, other military assistance is also likely to be announced this week, including additional artillery ammunition and counter-battery radars. Ukrainian officials have asked for the missile defense system, known as a NASAMS system, given the weapons can hit targets more than 100 miles away, though the Ukrainian forces will likely need to be trained on the systems, a source said.
The system, known as NASAMS (Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System), “system provides the air defender with a tailorable, state-of-the-art defense system that can maximize their ability to quickly identify, engage and destroy current and evolving enemy aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicle or emerging cruise missile threats” [GlobalSecurity http://bit.ly/39U4177%5D
💙🧵 RT @RadioFreeTom The thing about resentment as a force in politics is that there is nothing you can do about it. You can try to be respectful, you can try to compromise. It won’t matter. Because it’s not about any of that. It’s about the itching sense of inferiority in the other guy. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1541223909617451008?s=20‼️⋙ Bloomberg: Russia Defaults on Foreign Debt for First Time Since 1918 http://bloom.bg/3OKfUvm
// Russia defaulted on its foreign-currency sovereign debt for the first time in a century, the culmination of ever-tougher Western sanctions🐣 RT @MikeSington After losing all of his top generals and commanders in the war with Ukraine, Putin calls General Pavel out of retirement to lead the Russian invasion. He weighs nearly 300 pounds now, intelligence officials say Putin is “scraping the bottom of the barrel”.
¤ https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1541063372220731392?s=20/photo/1
// comments🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 These are the angry voices of a desperate Putin. Utter military nonsense from a beleaguered second tier economic and military power. Torpedo oil tankers in Dutch ports… really? Use tac nukes against the EU? These rants should horrify the Russian people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Andrey Gurulyov, State Duma deputy, former deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district, discussed how to best attack the West, while also purging internal opposition & hunting them down abroad. Fellow propagandist warned I would use those quotes, but he kept talking.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1541035666187980800?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @BillKristol All Americans, asked about what law they’d like in their state:
32%: abortion should be legal in all cases
32%: abortion should be legal in most cases
27%: abortion should be illegal in most cases
9%: abortion should be illegal in all cases.
⋙ 📊 CBS News poll: Americans react to overturning of Roe v. Wade — most disapprove, call it step backward http://cbsn.ws/3QOezFz (6/22-24/2022 n=2,265 Adults)⭕ 25 Jun 2022
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HHS: Know Your Rights: Reproductive Health Care http://bit.ly/3OFU6Bk
🐣 RT @OccupyDemocrats BREAKING NEWS: Over 80 of America’s top elected prosecutors defy the Supreme Court, announce that they will not prosecute any woman for having an abortion because it would “run counter” to their oaths of office and “make a mockery of justice.” RT TO THANK THE 80 PROSECUTORS!
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Nothing is guaranteed. Our Constitution is the oldest and shortest legal document guiding the political affairs of a sovereign state. It only lives when the majority of Americans grant it legitimacy. We could lose our democracy by 2024. Thirty months. Vote.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Jenna_BlumWhen I was doing a book tour in Germany in 2017, a German police detective who was a child during Hitler’s regime said to me, “be very careful. Democracy disappears by inches and then quickly.” I believed him then and we are watching it now.WaPo, Max Boot: The Supreme Court rulings represent the tyranny of the minority http://wapo.st/3xV6pT9
In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton warned that giving small states like Rhode Island or Delaware “equal weight in the scale of power” with large states like “Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York” violated the precepts of “justice” and “common-sense.” “The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller,” he predicted, arguing that such a system contradicts “the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.”
Hamilton’s nightmare has become the reality of 21st-century America. We are living under minoritarian tyranny, with smaller states imposing their views on the larger through their disproportionate sway in the Senate and the electoral college — and therefore on the Supreme Court. To take but one example: Twenty-one states with fewer total people than California have 42 Senate seats. This undemocratic, unjust system has produced the new Supreme Court rulings on gun control and abortion.
So, if the Supreme Court is going to be a forum for legislating, shouldn’t it respect the views of two-thirds of the country? But our perverse political system has allowed a militant, right-wing minority to hijack the law. As an Economist correspondent points out, “5 of the 6 conservative Supreme Court justices were appointed by a Republican Senate majority that won fewer votes than the Democrats” and “3 of the 6 were nominated by a president who also won a minority of the popular vote.”
The situation is actually even more inequitable: In all likelihood, Roe would not have been overturned if then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had not broken with precedent by refusing to grant President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, a vote in 2016. McConnell brazenly held the seat open for President Donald Trump to fill. Now Trump’s appointee, Neil M. Gorsuch, is part of the five-justice majority that has overturned Roe. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined with the other five justices to uphold the Mississippi abortion law but not to overrule Roe.)
Public faith in the Supreme Court is down to a historic low of 25 percent, and there’s a good reason why it keeps eroding. We are experiencing what the Founders feared: a crisis of governmental legitimacy brought about by minoritarian tyranny. And it could soon get a whole lot worse. In his concurring opinion in the abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas called on the court to overturn popular precedents upholding a right to contraception, same-sex relationships and marriage equality. So much for Hamilton’s hope that “the sense of the majority should prevail.”
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: The Supreme Court radicals’ new precedent: Maximum chaos http://wapo.st/3u1VDcO “After decades of crocodile tears over imagined ‘judicial activism,’ the conservative supermajority has shed all judicial modesty and embraced radicalism”
In their opinion Thursday morning forcing New York and other densely populated states to allow more handguns in public, the conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that medieval law imposing arms restrictions — specifically, the 1328 Statute of Northampton — “has little bearing on the Second Amendment” because it was “enacted … more than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution.”
Yet in their ruling Friday morning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, setting women’s rights back half a century (and cracking the door to banning same-sex marriage and contraception), the conservative justices, led by Samuel Alito (who was also in the guns majority) and joined by Thomas, argued precisely the opposite. They justified abortion bans by citing, among others, “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise.” That was written circa 1250 and referred to monsters, duels, burning at the stake — and to women as property, “inferior” to men.
The right-wing majority’s selective application of history reveals the larger fraud in this pair of landmark rulings: Their reasoning is not legal but political, not principled but partisan.
Still, there is a commonality to the rulings. Both decisions foment maximum chaos and were delivered with flagrant disregard for the instability and disorder they will cause. ¤ The high court was meant to be the guarantor of law and order. But the conservative justices, intoxicated by their supermajority, have abandoned their solemn duty to promote stability in the law and are actively spreading real-world disruption.
Even Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the gun ruling, scolded fellow conservatives for blithely overturning the Roe v. Wade super-precedent. … The majority’s “dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary,” he said, “a serious jolt to the legal system” that could have been avoided with a narrower decision that would have been “markedly less unsettling.”
Alito, in his (characteristically) sneering opinion in the abortion case, dismissed Roberts as unprincipled and public opinion as an “extraneous” concern. He likewise dismissed the pain the ruling would cause, writing that “this Court is ill-equipped to assess ‘generalized assertions about the national psyche.’ ” He washed his hands of answering the “empirical question” of “the effect of the abortion right … on the lives of women.”
The liberals described the bedlam to come, with suddenly unanswered legal questions about rape, incest, threats to a mother’s life, interstate travel for abortion, morning-after pills, IUDs, in vitro fertilization. “The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment,” they wrote.
Thomas’s gun ruling was much the same, 63 pages of a cherry-picked history of gun laws, with no concern for the real-life effect of allowing millions of people to carry handguns, with virtually no restriction, in the streets of New York or Los Angeles. Breyer, writing for the same liberal justices in dissent, upbraided the conservative majority for unleashing more guns “without considering the state’s compelling interest in preventing gun violence and protecting the safety of its citizens, and without considering the potentially deadly consequences of its decision.”
Alito added a concurring opinion to express contempt for Breyer’s points about gun violence, saying “it is hard to see what legitimate purpose can possibly be served” by his mentions of mass shootings and growing firearm mayhem. ¤ The radicals have cast off any pretense of judicial restraint. Now the chaos begins.
WaPo: GOP governors in four blue states pledge to uphold right to seek abortion http://wapo.st/3y19zF8 Massachusetts: Charlie Baker; Maryland: Larry Hogan; New Hampshire: Chris Sununu; and Vermont: Phil Scott
🐣 RT @OlegZemliansky yesterday we liberate ANOTHER 5 small villages near Kherson and Zaparojye /// i’ll wait no worries XDDD
💽 https://twitter.com/OlegZemliansky/status/1540823843635347457?s=20/photo/1
// “How it started / How it’s going”★ Politico Mag: 18 Ways the Supreme Court Just Changed America http://politi.co/3xN0oHW A smorgasbord of opinions. #Longread 1/2
● 1/2 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1540790102825246720?s=20/photo/1 Liz:
● 2/2 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1540790106755403776?s=20/photo/1⭕ 24 Jun 2022
🐣 RT @BadgerLiberal Living in a Red state is bad for your health, income and quality of life
⋙ TheAtlantic, Ronald Brownstein: America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good http://bit.ly/3R9TjKI
// 6/24/2022; The great “convergence” of the mid-20th century may have been an anomaly.It may be time to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. That’s the provocative conclusion of Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions and the chair of the Analyst Institute, a collaborative of progressive groups that studies elections. In a private newsletter that he writes for a small group of activists, Podhorzer recently laid out a detailed case for thinking of the two blocs as fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space.
“When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of Red and Blue people,” Podhorzer writes. “But in truth, we have never been one nation. We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.”
… The differences among states in the Donald Trump era, he writes, are “very similar, both geographically and culturally, to the divides between the Union and the Confederacy. And those dividing lines were largely set at the nation’s founding, when slave states and free states forged an uneasy alliance to become ‘one nation.’”
WhiteHouse: FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Actions In Light of SCOTUS Decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization http://bit.ly/3acj6Bg
● Freedom to travel state-to-state
● Access to preventive health care like contraception and medication abortionWaPo, Ruth Marcus: The radical majority’s damage to the Supreme Court cannot be undone http://wapo.st/3ynJ8Le “Neither law nor facts nor attitudes have provided any new reasons to reach a different result than Roe and Casey did. All that has changed is this Court” ~ Dissent
NYT Editorial: The Ruling Overturning Roe Is an Insult to Women and the Judicial System http://nyti.ms/3bzjni4 “[T]he majority on this Supreme Court has demonstrated its disregard for precedent, public opinion and the court’s own legitimacy in the eyes of the American people”…
🐣 RT @ Putin’s war in Ukraine has disrupted agricultural trade worldwide and created a hunger crisis in the developing world, Carlisle Ford Runge and Robbin S. Johnson write. What can the United States and its partners do to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe?
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Carlisle Ford Runge and Robbin S. Johnson: How America Can Feed the World http://fam.ag/3bulfby
// To Prevent a Global Food Crisis, Expand the Lend-Lease Program🐣 RT @brhodes The thing about originalism is that it wasn’t a thing for like 200 years. It was popularized in the 70s and 80s to criminalize abortion, let people have guns, and generally push right wing politics. Which kind of shows how full of shit it is.
🐣 RT @LaBoomer68 ‘Justices overturning #RoeVWade claimed in hearings it was settled law of land. They knew if they were honest they wouldn’t get the job so they lied – which I think is #Perjury. But how would I know? I’m not a #SupremeCourtJustice, I’m not a good enough liar.’ ~~ #StephenColbert https://twitter.com/LaBoomer68/status/1540369087741792258?s=20/photo/1
★ NBCNews: Birth control restrictions could follow abortion bans, experts say http://nbcnews.to/39TbeEo
● ”Conception” is not a medical term
● Pregnancy=fertilization✛implantation
● 30% of pregnancies end spontaneously AFTER fertilization
● Pill, IUDs, Plan B ONLY prevent implantation
// States trying to limit abortion from the moment of conception could also try to restrict access to Plan B and IUDs, according to legal experts.★ YahooNews: Private reproduction decisions like IVF and contraception could be at risk now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, experts say yhoo.it/3HPkypB Entire fields like in vitro fertilization and medical genomics could be at risk from “personhood” bills
★ NewYorker, Jia Talentino: We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe v. Wade. We’re Going Somewhere Worse http://bit.ly/3bsSw6Y “We are entering an era not just of unsafe abortions but of the widespread criminalization of pregnancy”
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1540608654268895234?s=20/photo/1★ Motherly: ACOG condemns Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade http://bit.ly/3QL3aGy The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) “has reiterated that access to safe abortion is an essential component to women’s health care”
🐣 RT @NEJM The just-announced U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization represents a stunning reversal of precedent that inserts government into the personal lives and health care of Americans.
★ ⋙ NEJM Editorial: Lawmakers v. The Scientific Realities of Human Reproduction https://nej.md/3Aa5cKe🐣 RT @VolodymyrDotCom “When we respect ourselves we will be respected by others. Do not rejoice at a slap in the face of Moscow, but be proud of applause for Ukraine. And that’s why I want to see us in one family. Let it inspire you. We deserved it. Realized it. Smile, please.” [link]
// VZe evening speech💙 🐣 RT @SkinnerPm Home. I’m weary. Not tired. I’m weary. Of people who don’t care about anything but ugly. Of politicians who fundraise instead of legislate. Of ugly voters instead of beautiful rights. But I’ll keep on keeping on. That’s the only real path. Because the other path is madness.
🐣 RT @jrovner Merrick Garland makes clear DOJ’s position that states cannot ban the abortion pill: “the FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”
🐣 RT @ianbremmer americans on overturning roe v. wade
cnn/srrs (jan 2022):
69% oppose
30% support
gallup (june 2021):
58% oppose
32% support
pew (aug 2019):
70% oppose
28% support🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Whatever you think about abortion rights, today is a sad day for the Rule of Law. The religious zealots have dismantled the wall between church and state.
YahooNews (6/17): Global gas prices: These countries are facing more pain than the U.S. http://yhoo.it/3bwowHG
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1540387514447446020?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @neal_katyal Justice Thomas concurs, saying overruling Roe isn’t enough. “For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” That’s right to privacy, contraception, marriage equality,etc
🔄 Important Court Cases
● Legalized Abortion: Roe v Wade
● Changes to Roe v Wade: Planned Parenthood v Casey
● Overturns Roe v Wade: Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization● Contraception: Griswold v Connecticut
● Homosexuality: Lawrence v Texas
● Gay Marriage: Obergefell v Hodges● Legalized Jim Crow: Plessy v Ferguson
● Ended Segregation: Brown v Board of Education
● Legalized Interracial Marriage: Loving v Virginia🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Now please tell us again what you solemnly told U.S. Senators in your Supreme Court confirmation hearings about stare decisis.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Guice54907918 This is what they said.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Guice54907918/status/1540341033237618688?s=20/photo/1
● “Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court.” – Samuel Alito
● “That’s the law of the land. I accept the law of the land.” – Neil Gorsuch
● “It’s settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court” – Bret Kavanaugh
● “Roe vs. Wade clearly held that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy” – Amy Coney Barrett
// Roe v Wade🐣 RT @BarackObama Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarackObama Across the country, states have already passed bills restricting choice. If you’re looking for ways to respond, @PPFA, @USOWomen, and many other groups have been sounding the alarm on this issue for years—and will continue to be on the front lines of this fight. https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1540340648972279813?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarackObama For more than a month, we’ve known this day was coming—but that doesn’t make it any less devastating. Here are my thoughts from when we first saw the draft ruling:
⋙⋙ Medium, Barack Obama: My Statement with Michelle on the Draft Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade http://bit.ly/3QNDgBMGuttmacher (Apr): 26 States Are Certain or Likely to Ban Abortion Without Roe: Here’s Which Ones and Why http://bit.ly/39QzMhq
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Security Service says Russia’s intelligence recruited Ukrainian MP Derkach. ¤ According to the Security Service, Andrii Derkach received funds from the GRU to create private security structures that Russia planned to use to capture Ukraine.
⋙ https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1540326669935906818?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @IuliiaMendel The Security service of Ukraine said that MP Derkach was recruited by Russian intelligence. This is the same MP who met Giuliani. Derkach’s father worked for the KGB and he himself is under US sanctions⭕ 23 Jun 2022 ⚖️🏛
Day 5: June 23, 2022: “Department of Justice”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Cheney begins the fifth January 6 committee hearing by saying a focus will be an unsigned draft letter Trump and Jeffrey Clark wanted the DOJ to send to Georgia officials citing known lies to urge them to convene a special session to approve a fake set of electors
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1540050703128862721?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: The fifth public hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee begins at 3pm ET. Follow along as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1540018644121427968?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 😆 RT @emptywheel Spouse, listening to his first bit of the Jan6 hearings, of Liz Cheney’s promise we’ll hear about what Trump did on 1/6: Is that called foreshadowing? ¤ Me, lit PhD: She’s making herself the omniscient narrator.
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1540049823365218306?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Fifth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3tX3gkK
// 6/23/2022; The January 6 Committee holds a fifth public hearing on the alleged pressure campaign by Trump administration officials on the Justice Department to help overturn the 2020 election results.~~~~~~~~~~
🐣 RT @sciam The claim that gun ownership stops crime is common in the U.S., and that belief drives laws that make it easy to own and keep firearms. But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes. Far less research shows that guns help.
⋙ SciAm (2017): More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows http://bit.ly/3QZToAy
// 10/2/2017; More firearms do not keep people safe, hard numbers show. Why do so many Americans believe the opposite?WaPo, George Will: The Supreme Court’s gun ruling is a serious misfire http://wapo.st/3Nlff23 Rather than concern itself with balancing the right to bear arms with public safety, the court’s ruling dismissed public safety “as irrelevant to the framers”
The Second Amendment is the only one in the Bill of Rights with a preamble: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The amendment was 217 years old before the court held that it protected the gun rights of individuals, irrespective of membership in a militia.
The 2008 case affirmed the right of individuals to “keep” an operative firearm in the home for self-defense. What, however, about the right to “bear” firearms outside the home? The 2008 court insisted that this right is, like other constitutional rights, “not unlimited,” and is compatible with “longstanding regulatory measures,” such as forbidding firearms in sensitive places.
But in an amicus brief supporting New York, former federal appellate judge (on the 4th Circuit) J. Michael Luttig demonstrated that, regarding the public carrying of loaded guns, there is an American tradition even older than the nation of striking a “delicate balance between the Second Amendment’s twin concerns for self-defense and public safety.”
The court’s ruling, however, does not treat those as “twin,” meaning equal, concerns. ¤ Indeed, it treats the second, public safety, as irrelevant to the framers: This concern was unnecessary to consider because the first concern, self-defense, was sufficient justification for the amendment. On Thursday, the court effectively removed from public debate the essentially legislative choice of balancing the competing values of self-defense and public safety. …
Today, most states, including almost all that filed briefs supporting New York, have multiple restrictions forbidding concealed carry at schools, government buildings, bars, amusement parks, churches, athletic events, polling places, etc. On Thursday, the court perhaps did not invalidate most such restrictions, but it condemned itself to years of judicial hairsplitting in search of a principle about balancing judgments. ¤ Finally, Luttig wrote: “Many [Jan. 6, 2021] riot defendants” have said they knew the District of Columbia’s restrictions on concealed carry “and accordingly left their guns at home.” This “may well have prevented a massacre that day.”
🐣 RT @noclador Excellent video! ¤ First you see russian rocket fire hit mostly landscape. Then come GMLRS M31 series missiles hitting buildings with pin point precision. ¤ That’s the difference between WWII tech and 21st Century tech.
⋙ 🐣 RT @revishvilig Clear difference betweeen MLRS Grad/Uaragan and American HIMARS
💽 https://twitter.com/revishvilig/status/1540264761329274883?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @muellershewrote The coup included outreach to DHS, DoD, DoJ, Congress, SCOTUS, White House officials, State Election Officials, State lawmakers, and Italy. And Venezuela.
🧵 RT @igorsushko Is Putin’s Russia a state-sponsor of terrorism? Please read and share the following context, background, and especially the legal 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 far & wide. Proper designation of Russia per U.S. law is now more important than ever. ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1540059528833576960?s=20NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Outlines Trump’s Bid to Coerce Justice Dept. Officials http://nyti.ms/39Sc4Bp
🐣 RT @DailyKosTrends The objective was always their slowing down and degrading Russian forces, as Ukraine continues its counterattack in the Kherson sector. US HIMARS weapons have arrived, and additional materiel has been allocated to Ukraine.
🌎 https://twitter.com/DailyKosTrends/status/1540237256425881600?s=20/photo/1💙 🧵 RT @NormOrnstein We now have a Supreme Court that is moving every aspect of our society in a radical direction, blowing up any reasonable reading of the Constitution to fit its radical ideological and partisan views. It spits on the actions of legislatures and preempts the other branches. 1
📌 https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1539990695796260865?s=20
⋙ The Framers did not expect the judiciary to be the dominant branch of government. The Court has justices jammed onto the bench by violations of fundamental norms, dishonest in their confirmations and untethered to any precedent. Congress can curtail its jurisdiction and more. 2
⋙ The Alito Court, with the regular connivance of a Chief Justice who lied himself in his confirmation hearing about precedent and calling balls and strikes with Citizens United, has lost its fundamental legitimacy. This is a genuine crisis for the country. Another one! 3
⋙ It also suggests an ominous harbinger. If Republicans move to manipulate electoral votes in 2024, it is very likely the Alito Court will let them get away with it, using the radical interpretation that state courts have no role in enforcing state constitutions or laws. 4
⋙ That state legislatures are supreme and unlimited in choosing electors. We are moving closer and closer to a version of Hungary, but with the elements of a Wild West added in.🐣 “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” ~ Preamble https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1540231696347500545?s=20/photo/1
Newsweek: Ukraine Warns Russia of Massive Missile Strikes After U.S. Rockets Arrive http://bit.ly/3A1Ezap
‼️ 🐣 RT @igorsushko 🧵 🚨 #MOBILIZATION: From Osechkin’s source: Commands of the Southern and Western Military Districts in #Russia elevated the level of combat readiness and began to carry out mobilization activities jointly with the FSB, Rosgvardia, and the Interior Ministry.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1540202798070919169?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko […] Any way you look at it, general mobilization in Russia will mark the end of the first chapter of this war. Everything will be different in Russia going forward. Forthcoming consequences cannot be overstated. ¤ Appropriate title of the next chapter: “Chaos”😅 RT @Ukroblogger Russia deploys a new class of SAMs (Surface-to-Air Missiles): SOM (Self-Own Missile, or Special Operation Missile). #Ukraine #Alchevsk #RussianUkrainianWar #RussiaUkraineWar #RussiaUkraine #RussianInvasion #RussianArmy #UkraineWar #UkraineRussianWar #StandWithUkraine #StopRussia
💽 https://twitter.com/Ukroblogger/status/1540203266440577024?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @harrylitman Jeff Clark and John Eastman have this week become very dangerous figures for Mark Meadows and Donald Trump. They have the information and the motivation: Trump played them both for ambitious stooges.
🐣 RT @brhodes Hard to overstate how little respect Trump and his circle had for the United States of America, its laws and traditions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brhodes MAGA weaponizes phony patriotism and xenophobia while trying to destroy everything that actually is supposed to make America great
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JaneMayerNYer The Center for Renewing America – Jeffrey Clark’s employer- is a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute- run by Mark Meadows, Cleta Mitchell, Jim DeMint, and funded in part by Trump’s leadership PAC. [link]🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse SCOTUS gun decision is out and gave the gun lobby just what it paid for when its dark money stacked the Court.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Remember that the theory the NRA-supported justices have embraced was described by a former Supreme Court Chief Justice as a “fraud on the public.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 It’s time to unstack the Court. Add two justices. ¤ But first we need to add two senators.🐣 RT @LincolnsBible Fred Trump was a business front for the Genovese crime family. ¤ Make sense now?
📌 https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/1540120614538645504?s=20
// see Comments🐣 RT @TeamPelosi We take an oath to protect and defend people. That means government must make our communities safer. ¤ The Supreme Court was wrong to reject precedent and increase the threat of gun violence in our communities — but thanks to survivors, Congress is acting to #EndGunViolence. -NP
🐣 RT @harrylitman Top Trump quote of the hearing has to be “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen.” But for 2nd place I’m voting for “what do I have to lose” by appointing Clark. It didn’t/couldn’t even occur to him that he was threatening the Const.
🐣 RT @VolodymyrDotCom To be honest, there won’t be another extraordinary leader like Volodymyr Zelenskyy in my lifetime because I haven’t seen one until he came along. He has united the entire civilized world! https://twitter.com/VolodymyrDotCom/status/1540064960793001987?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Philip Bump: The conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election spanned the country http://wapo.st/3Nk1KzP “Trump was the spark to the effort to steal a second term in office. The resulting wildfire ran throughout the Republican Party and the country“
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump and his crackpots brought us to the brink of ‘losing it all’ http://wapo.st/3xIJFpm “No amount of reason would separate Trump from his debunked ‘arsenal of allegations,’ as Donoghue put it”
… Two weeks of hearings by the select committee have made clear that the insurrection itself was but a manifestation of a much larger plot by Trump to overturn the election by any means necessary: violence, martial law, seizing voting machines, fake electors, intimidating state officials, harassing election workers, drafting meritless lawsuits — and a contemplated putsch at the Justice Department.
Though many in the Trump administration admirably (if not quite heroically) resisted his illegality, Trump was aided in his depredations by a seemingly limitless supply of crackpots willing to do his bidding. There were Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani (‘nuff said), Sidney (“The Kracken”) Powell (Trump wanted her to be appointed as an independent counsel investigating election fraud) and John Eastman, who knew his cockamamie scheme to overturn the election was illegal. ¤ And then there was Clark, who met secretly with Trump to plan their coup-within-a-coup at Justice. (Federal agents searched Clark’s Virginia home on Wednesday in a related probe.)
Screwballs enabled Trump in Congress, as well. There was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), whose chief of staff tried to deliver a slate of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence. And there was Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who championed Clark for the attorney general job. According to testimony released by the committee Thursday, Perry was among those seeking presidential pardons for their actions, along with Reps. Mo Brooks (Ala.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Louie Gohmert (R-Tex), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and possibly Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Trump apparently considered blanket pardons for lawmakers and staff involved in the insurrection. At one point, Trump, frustrated that DOJ officials weren’t backing up his lies, urged them: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
At the center of it all was the crackpot-in-chief, whom Attorney General Bill Barr belatedly realized was “detached from reality.” He manipulated the government to back his election lies in ways that had been unimaginable. Donoghue testified Thursday about how Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows repeatedly insisted that DOJ investigate a YouTube-driven conspiracy theory claiming the CIA and MI6 worked with an Italian satellite company to erase Trump votes. Donoghue called it was “pure insanity,” “patently absurd” and “debunked.” Not satisfied with that answer, Trump’s White House secured the help of Pentagon official Kash Patel and acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, who reached out to an official in Italy to probe the bogus claim.
No amount of reason would separate Trump from his debunked “arsenal of allegations,” as Donoghue put it. Ninety minutes after the Jan. 3 White House meeting in which Trump nearly triggered mass resignations, Donoghue’s cellphone rang. “It was the president,” he testified, “and he had information about a truck supposedly full of shredded ballots in Georgia.”
🐣 RT @nytimesworld It may be years before Ukraine joins the European Union, but in taking the first step in that direction, the E.U. sent a powerful message of solidarity to Kyiv and a rebuke to Moscow.
⋙ NYT: First Step Toward Ukraine Joining E.U. Signals Solidarity Amid War http://nyti.ms/3NjZB7f
// As Russia’s brutal offensive squeezes defenders in eastern Ukraine, Europe’s leaders, in a rebuke to Moscow, made a move they would have rejected before🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Ukraine will prevail. Europe will prevail. ¤ Today marks the beginning of a long journey that we will walk together. ¤ The Ukrainian people belong to the European family. Ukraine’s future is with the EU. ¤ We stand together for peace. ¤ My message with @JosepBorrellF
💽 https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1540040696362680322?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @PaulaChertok ICYMI Trump thought his coup was a done deal by Jan.3, when the White House actually began referring to Jeffrey Clark as Acting Attorney General, replacing Jeffrey Rosen who refused to bend to Trump’s pressure to have DOJ launder election fraud lies, triggering fake elector plot.
[Screenshot:] https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1540134438331219968?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ktbenner The fact that the WH had begun referring to Clark as the acting attorney general on the afternoon of Jan. 3 should give us pause. The WH and Trump also knew that Clark was ready to send that letter to Georgia. That’s how close US came to seeing an election thrown into utter chaos
🐣 RT @Matthew_Kupfer Lots of revelations today, but this is 🤯 ¤ “Then-Secretary of Defense Chris Miller even contacted a counterpart in Rome, at the White House’s request, to investigate a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites had changed votes from Trump to Joe Biden.”
⋙ CNN: 5 takeaways from the fifth day of January 6 hearings http://cnn.it/3Oz7BCZ
1. Select committee has the goods on GOP congressional pardons
2. Inside a December 2020 Oval Office meeting
3. Italian satellites and seizing voting machines: White House pushes conspiracy theory
4. A toned-down hearing featured vivid description of Trump’s pressure campaign
5. Shocking raid of Clark home preceded hearing😅 RT @ianbremmer truth stranger than fiction
💽 https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1540121161530572800?s=20/photo/1
// clip of Zelensky from Servant of the People about getting wrong call from Angela Merkel saying Ukraine has been admitted to the EU🐣 RT @tomiahonen GOP = Get Our Pardons
Mo Brooks AL
Matt Gaetz FL
Andy Biggs AZ
Gym Jordan OH
Louie Gohmert TX
Scott Perry PA
Marjorie Three Names GA
#Pardons #GOP #GetOurPardons #GOP2022 #GOP2024 #Jan6Hearings🐣 RT @josh_wingrove Biden on the Supreme Court gun ruling today: “This ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/josh_wingrove/status/1540000415047090177?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The phrase that kept coming to my mind is the ‘depth of depravity.’ I keep thinking…he could not go lower than this. And then every hearing I see that we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. This is a man who cares about nothing but himself. Nothing” – @clairecmc w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1540097478921527296?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ Donoghue to Trump on Trump’s plan to put the unqualified and incompetent Jeffrey Clark in charge of DOJ: “It’s impossible, it’s absurd, it’s not going to happen and it’s going to fail.”
CNN: Feds search home of Jeffrey Clark, former DOJ official who pushed Trump’s false election fraud claims http://cnn.it/39JWR5y
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade After being told repeatedly that there was no election fraud, Trump told DOJ leaders, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican Congressmen.” ¤ Aren’t we done here?
WaPo: E.U. leaders make Ukraine a candidate for membership http://wapo.st/3yfSGYx
🐣 RT @RepKinzinger As our witnesses shared today, Jeff Clark’s letter would have had grave constitutional, political & social ramifications for the country—using the DOJ to change the outcome of the 2020 election by ignoring millions of votes in states where Joe Biden won, starting with Georgia.
Letter: https://twitter.com/RepKinzinger/status/1540092219813761032?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Zelensky on Ukraine’s EU candidate status: “It’s a victory. Now, we will defeat the enemy, rebuild Ukraine, become a EU member state, and then – we will finally rest.” https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1540063797116899334?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov HIMARS have arrived to Ukraine. ¤ Thank you to my 🇺🇲 colleague and friend @SecDef Lloyd J. Austin III for these powerful tools! ¤ Summer will be hot for russian occupiers. And the last one for some of them. https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1539931757621006336?s=20/photo/1
NYT: G.O.P. Testimony at Jan. 6 Panel Exposes a Party Torn Between Truth and Trump http://nyti.ms/3zYggdI
// A Democratic-run committee relies on Republican witnesses to build the case against the former president — in searing detail.JAMA, D Grossman et al [UCSF]: The Impending Crisis of Access to Safe Abortion Care in the US http://bit.ly/3OnBkhM “Clinicians will bear witness to this adversity and should be vocal advocates against state laws that interfere with medical care”; ➡️ LIST of RESOURCES
⭕ 22 Jun 2022
WaPo: Jan. 6 probe expands with fresh subpoenas in multiple states http://wapo.st/3nbtzj6
// Recipients of subpoenas include a state party chairman as officials probe deeper into pro-Trump efforts to use invalid electors to thwart Joe Biden’s 2020 victory🐣 RT @atrupar it’s honestly obscene that a large swath of the Republican Party (if not the majority) was complicit in an attempt to end democracy for a racist gameshow host less than 2 yrs ago & we’re headed into the midterms talking about how gas prices/inflation are the demise of Democrats
🐣 RT @carlbildt The 🇷🇺 air and missile strikes in 🇺🇦 aren’t random. The pattern of them is clear: destroy the industry and the infrastructure. 264 enterprises, 270 bridges and 22 oil depots have been destroyed in addition to 45 million m2 of residential space. And strikes are continuing daily.
🐣 RT @January6thCmte Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers’ journal from December 4, 2020: “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived desire toward deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God’s will…” https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1539644190799192065?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar How Save America PAC spent $250m raised for the fake election fund
– More than $200k to Trump hotels
– Over $8k/month for Stephen Miller’s salary
– $10k/month to Parscale Strategy
– $10k/month to PR firm that represented Bannon
– Still has $107m on hand [link]🐣 RT @MarshallCohen 📊 New Quinnipiac poll of Americans:
46% think Trump committed a crime
59% say Trump is responsible for 1/6 attack
64% think Capitol attack was planned
58% are following 1/6 committee
45% are less likely to vote for election denier
77% say domestic extremism > foreign extremism🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine 🇺🇦FM @DmytroKuleba for @ForeignAffairs: ❝To avoid growing weary of the war and falling for misleading narratives, the West needs to understand exactly how Ukraine can win, and then support us accordingly.
⭕ 21 Jun 2022 ⚖️🏛
Day 4: June 21, 2022: “Fake Electors”
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Bennie Thompson begins the fourth January 6 hearing by saying: “The lie hasn’t gone away. It’s corrupting our democratic institutions. People who believe that lie are now seeking positions of public trust.”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1539295123107991554?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @kyledcheney NEW: Trump’s plan to seize power on Jan. 6 depended on state legislatures adopting alternate electors. He leaned heavily on state and local officials to do that while his team of lawyers — Eastman et al — developed a fringe legal theory to back the push.
📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1539201863702261760?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Joining @MaryLTrump for today’s January 6 hearing, Live now
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1539289189920948224?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: Day 4 of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s public hearings begins at 1pm ET. Follow along for live updates as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1539262716677918721?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Fourth Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3OhikBF President Trump’s Campaign to Influence Vice President Pence
// 6/21/2022; The January 6 Committee held its fourth public hearing to outline findings after a year of investigating the Capitol attack in 2021.~~~~~~~~~~
🐣 RT @nytimes The Jan. 6 committee sought on Tuesday to show that Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud were a significant threat to the U.S. election system and democracy itself — putting sharp focus on the pressure officials faced to overturn the 2020 results. https://nyti.ms/3n8VqRc
// “If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that anytime they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?” – Representative Adam Schiff, Jan. 6 committee🐣 RT @nytimes Rusty Bowers, a Republican and Arizona’s House speaker, described the pressure campaign he faced to overturn his state’s 2020 election results. “I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to,” he wrote in a journal entry that he read to the Jan. 6 panel.
⋙ NYT: ‘I took an oath,’ Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, says of rejecting efforts to overturn the election. http://nyti.ms/nyti.ms/3bhKwpo“I said, ‘I want the names. Do you have the names of the supposedly dead or fraudulent voters?’” Mr. Bowers said. “She said, ‘Yes.’” ¤ Nothing was produced. Eventually, he recalled, Mr. Giuliani said, “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”
Mr. Bowers also recalled speaking to Mr. Trump, making clear to the president that he “wouldn’t do anything illegal for him,” as one questioner, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, said. Nonetheless, another lawyer advising Mr. Trump, John Eastman, called Mr. Bowers in early January and urged him to schedule a legislative vote to “decertify the electors, because we had plenary authority to do so.”
Mr. Eastman, Mr. Bowers testified, said that he should “just do it and let the courts figure it all out.” ¤ Mr. Bowers again rejected the push, saying, “I took an oath — for me to take that, to do what you do would be counter to my oath.”
Finally, he testified, there was a call from another Trump supporter, Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, when the Electoral College vote was to be confirmed by a joint session of Congress. Mr. Biggs, he said, pushed him again to undo the state’s certification of its electors for Mr. Biden.
“We have no legal pathway” to “execute such a request,” Mr. Bowers recalled saying. He also recalled his reaction when he learned that Trump advisers pushed ahead with a scheme to put forward slates of “alternate” electors. “I thought of the book, ‘The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,’” Mr. Bowers said.
Mr. Bowers’s personal journal contained an entry in which he said, “I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.” He was invited to read it into the testimony.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Those ignoring the Jan. 6 revelations are guaranteeing more violence http://wapo.st/3zRiuLP “Trump couldn’t have happened if Fox News and Republican elites hadn’t normalized his threats to democratic traditions”
We didn’t arrive at this precarious moment solely because of Trump. Trump couldn’t have happened if Fox News and Republican elites hadn’t normalized his threats to democratic traditions. Now they continue to do so with their breezy dismissal of the breathtaking revelations of the Jan. 6 hearings.
The conservative elites surely know we are moving toward instability and violence. Yet rather than grapple with the threat, they excuse Trump’s lawlessness once more by resorting to tribalism: There’s nothing new here. The needle isn’t moving. ¤ This has been the Fox News refrain from the start of its brownout coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings. “This isn’t going to move … the needle one bit,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha said on air before the hearings began. “Democrats are toast in the midterms.”
The pendulum of history is swinging toward the autocratic, at home and abroad, and Republican elites are nattering about “the needle” of short-term partisan gain. ¤ It’s reductive, and reckless. Top former Trump advisers detailed how the former president knew he had lost the election but perpetrated an illegal coup attempt. As legendary conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig testified: “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
VOA: US Attorney General Visits Ukraine to Support War Crimes Prosecutions http://bit.ly/3Qxe3M5 “Garland met with Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who is spearheading the investigation of what Kyiv says are 16,000 reported war crimes since Russia invaded”
NYT: Linchpin of Ukrainian Defiance, a Southern City Endures Russian Barrage http://nyti.ms/39MjmXd “Since the war began, Russian forces have pummeled Mykolaiv, frustrated by their failure to capture it and advance west toward Odesa. But the city’s resistance has hardened”
// Without its Black Sea coast, a landlocked Ukraine would struggle. Mykolaiv is determined that won’t happen.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Institute for the Study of War: Reshuffling of Russian military command structure may indicate ‘ongoing dysfunction.’ ¤ The think tank reported that potential “drastic rotations” in the Russian military may constitute a purge of senior officers blamed for failures in Ukraine.
WaPo: How Russia’s vaunted cyber capabilities were frustrated in Ukraine http://wapo.st/3yaKhFN ‘A partnership of the world’s biggest technology companies, US and NATO intelligence agencies, and Ukraine’s hackers largely foiled the Kremlin’s brazen internet hacking operations’
// Big Tech, Western intelligence and a homegrown army of Ukrainian hackers pull off one of the biggest surprises of the war.🐣 RT @real [TS] The highly partisan Unselects are trying to create a FAKE narrative, for whatever reason but only with evil intention, that “He (me) knew he lost the Election.” This is completely false. I felt the Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, have from the very beginning, & have only gotten stronger in that belief with time & large amounts of additional evidence and proof. In my mind I have, & HAVE HAD, NO QUESTION, and MANY people would be willing to so attest, but the Unselects don’t want to hear them ……
🐣 RT @duty2warn For clarity: Donald Trump is a gangster, grifter and fraud. Meadows & Flynn are traitors. JFK Jr is dead. Fox News is NOT news. SCOTUS is politicized. GOP is radicalized. McConnell’s an obstructionist. Bannon’s a destructionist. Rudy’s a souse. Ginni’s nuts. DeJoy deserves deJail
💙 Politico [EU]: The Rashists from Mordor vs. the Tractor Troops: Ukraine’s new language of war http://politi.co/3HSTpSI
// vocabulary list; An English-language guide to Ukrainian slang.🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “[The Jan. 6th panel has] made facts more attractive than fantasy. Golly day, right? I didn’t know that was possible, right? I mean, how do you do that? You do that by having compelling characters in the play” – @RepRiggleman w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 NYT: Jan. 6 panel reveals evidence that Trump was directly involved in a plan to put forward fake electors. http://nyti.ms/3xJ78H0 “[T]he House committee revealed at a hearing that highlighted the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election results”
// Donald J. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors, the House committee revealed at a hearing that highlighted the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election results.NYT: Panel Ties Trump to Fake Elector Plan, Mapping His Attack on Democracy http://nyti.ms/3tPY9CE
// The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack showed how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Rusty Bowers proves to be the Jan. 6 committee’s most compelling witness yet http://wapo.st/3HJTPuh “He recalled asking Trump and Giuliani at least twice during a call after the election for proof of [fraud]. Bowers said he ‘never’ received such information”
[Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R)] was asked to hold a “committee” to hear the supposed evidence; he refused, adding that he didn’t want to be used as a “pawn.” The purpose of such a committee, he said, would be to replace Biden electors with Trump electors. “You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath, when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it,” he testified telling Giuliani. “This is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me.” He added that such an action would also be a violation of his faith and described in moving terms the threats of violence he received and the angry mobs that assembled outside his home.”
⭕ 20 Jun 2022
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: Texas Republicans want to secede? Good riddance. http://wapo.st/3N4Uo2Z Welcome to the ‘Confederate Theocracy of Texas.’ Yee-haw‼️
WaPo: Trump campaign documents show advisers knew fake-elector plan was baseless http://wapo.st/3O32zOF
// A review of emails and memos shows that lawyers advising the former president knew the plan was baseless but pursued it anywayThe convening of the electoral college on Dec. 14, 2020, was supposed to mark the end of the wild, extended presidential election that year. ¤ But when the day arrived, a strange thing happened. In seven swing states won by Joe Biden, when the Democrat’s electors assembled to formally elect him president, Trump supporters showed up, too, ready to declare that their man had actually won. …
At the time, the gatherings seemed a slapdash, desperate attempt to mimic President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede. ¤ But internal campaign emails and memos reveal that the convening of the fake electors was apparently a much more concerted strategy, intended to give Vice President Mike Pence a reason to declare that the outcome of the election was somehow in doubt on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was to preside over the congressional counting of the electoral college votes. ¤ The documents show that Trump’s team pushed ahead and urged the electors to meet — then pressured Pence to cite the alternate Trump slates — even as various Trump lawyers acknowledged privately that they did not have legal validity and the gatherings had not been in compliance with state laws.
In a public hearing Thursday, the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 explored the end of the story — the pressure campaign directed at Pence to accept the Trump electors as somehow legitimate. ¤ Committee members have said Tuesday’s hearing will focus on what came before that, how the elector scheme was organized and the ways Trump pressured officials in swing states to go along with his false claims that Biden had lost.
“We’ll show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” committee member Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’ll also, again, show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme. And we’ll show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn’t go along with this plan to either call legislatures back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden.” …
Just four days later, however, Eastman wrote to other Trump advisers that he believed Pence could indeed recognize the Trump electors on Jan. 6, apparently despite their lack of state legislative certification. “The fact that we have multiple slates of electors demonstrate the uncertainty of either. That should be enough,” he wrote. …
The emails show that some Trump advisers began strategizing just days after the election about how to construct a legal argument for advancing their own electors, even though laws in every state hold that electors are determined by the certified vote of the people. ¤ In particular, they started mulling whether state legislatures, which in a number of key states were controlled by the GOP, could appoint Trump electors even if the certified results showed that Biden won. …
The notion that state legislatures could choose electors in defiance of voters would be a radical one in modern American history. But the documents show that Trump strategists quickly began to pursue the theory, especially as lawyers for the campaign and allied groups racked up losses in court cases that they had urged judges to hear expeditiously, before the electors could meet.
Their idea was that state legislatures could step in if the election had been marred by massive fraud or illegality. The Trump campaign pushed the fraud narrative even though the president and other top officials were told over and over, even by allies, that there was no evidence to support it, committee evidence and testimony have shown. …
By Nov. 28, Eastman had penned a seven-page memo titled “The Constitutional Authority of State Legislatures to Choose Electors.” Internal emails show that a copy was sent to White House staffers, with a cover note that read, “For POTUS.” Another copy was circulated to members of the Arizona House of Representatives by a member who added that it would take only “courage to act.” …
Already, Trump advisers were considering how they might attempt to use the alternate elector slates to derail Biden’s win at the joint session of Congress in January. Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump legal adviser, argued in an internal memo that Jan. 6 — not Dec. 14 — was the “hard deadline” for winning the election, particularly if Trump’s electors met and declared him the victor in December. … Still, as the day approached, Chesebro seemed concerned about whether Trump electors could meet a set of state laws that govern how the electoral college process works. … He concluded that the plan was “unproblematic” in Arizona and Wisconsin, “slightly problematic” in Michigan, and “somewhat dicey” in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The Trump campaign had instructed them in advance to tell no one of the plan — not even Capitol security guards. … On the ground, Trump electors have said they believed they were gathering just in case their actions were later ratified by a court or a legislature. …
In the weeks before and after the real electors met, Trump and his advisers engaged in a frenzied effort to arm-twist state legislators into validating their electors. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, for instance, testified publicly to lawmakers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, urging them to act. Tuesday’s hearing will also focus on those efforts, committee members have said, featuring live testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his colleague Gabriel Sterling and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R).
But as that strategy to get legislative sign-off broke down, the campaign appeared to settle on the idea that the existence of the rival slates was enough to give Pence room to act. ¤ By Jan. 3, Eastman was circulating a memo that argued Pence should cite the bogus electors as legitimate. Citing what he claimed were problems with how the vote was conducted, he wrote, “There are thus dual slates of electors from 7 states.”
“The lesson that we’re seeing is that the people who drank all the Kool-Aid, they become increasingly unhinged and untethered to reality as the process unfolded,” Foley said. “They just doubled down and then tripled down, and spun more and more off into their own delusional world.” ¤ Ultimately, Pence refused to recognize the Trump elector slates, earning him the president’s anger and making him a target of the mob that ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Four days later, after Congress confirmed Biden’s win and Trump prepared to leave office, Eastman received an email demanding to know what had happened. ¤ “Tell us in layman’s language, what the heck happened with the dual electors? Please?” read the email, which was from a person whose name is redacted in a version released publicly. ¤ In his response, Eastman admitted the facts: The electors never had legal standing. ¤ “No legislature certified them [because governors refused to call them into session], so they had no authority,” he wrote. ¤ “Alas,” he concluded.
🧵 RT @MarkHertling I’ve been hesitant to write a [thread] on the current tactical situation & what might happen next. But @DAlperovitch’s view of potential outcomes (RT below) cause me to weigh in.His view is plausible, but I don’t believe it accurately portrays the current situation. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1539043835719962628?s=20🐣 RT @nexta_tv Politico named the most dangerous place on earth right now ¤ The ‘Suwałki Gap’ from Belarus to Kaliningrad, where the border of Poland and Lithuania now passes is the most dangerous place because of the threat of a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. Politico: http://politi.co/39IyyVy
🌎 https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1538999178701021186?s=20/photo/1WaPo, Max Boot: This isn’t just Ukraine’s war. It’s our war, too. Act accordingly. http://wapo.st/3zQgNy0 “Russia didn’t just attack one country. It attacked the very foundation of the rules-based international order the United States and its allies have been building since 1945”
Russia didn’t just attack one country. It attacked the very foundation of the rules-based international order the United States and its allies have been building since 1945. If Russia gets away with its aggression, that will send a signal to dictators around the world that they can do what they want and that the West is too weak to stop them. Look for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to set his sights on the NATO-member Baltic republics, which, like Ukraine, were part of the Russian Empire at various times in history. Look for China to set its sights on Taiwan. An attack on either the Baltics or Taiwan would be likely to draw the United States into a conflict that could easily spiral into World War III.
The best way to keep the peace is to help Ukraine throw back the Russian invaders with devastating losses. That would send a powerful message not only to Putin but also to every tinhorn dictator on the planet: Don’t mess with the West. But that’s not what we are doing. We are providing the Ukrainians with just enough weaponry to avoid defeat — but not enough to win. The Ukrainians are outgunned 10 to 1 in artillery in the critical battle being fought in the eastern Donbas region. That’s unacceptable.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Texas’s new secessionist platform exposes a big GOP scam http://wapo.st/3HFQWL7 “The new platform … is a veritable piñata bursting with far-right extremist fantasies.” On, and the only Real Texan seems to be a Rural Texan when it comes to voting rights
The new platform, which thousands of GOP activists in Texas agreed to at the state party convention over the weekend, is a veritable piñata bursting with far-right extremist fantasies. It states that Texas retains the right to secede from the United States and urges the Texas legislature to reaffirm this.
It describes homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It flatly declares that no validation of transgender identity is legitimate. It dismisses all gun regulations as a violation of “God given rights,” and sharply rebukes Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) for pursuing a bipartisan gun-safety package that’s extraordinarily modest.
Texas Republicans still do not appear reassured about the “integrity” of their elections. They’re still warning of impending fraud. They’re still claiming voting in urban centers should raise heightened suspicions. And they want radically expanded legislative authority to impose further restrictions, even (or perhaps especially?) ones that fall disproportionately on minorities. …
All this should also illustrate what an epic scam it is when Republicans claim restrictions on voting are necessary to ensure “confidence” in “election integrity.” A Post analysis found that dozens of GOP candidates across the country who cite “election integrity” as a key goal also happen to be the ones lying that the 2020 election was stolen. What a spectacular coincidence!
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Russia destroyed Chechnya, physically, culturally, politically. Now the plan is the same for Ukraine
⋙ TheAtlantic, Neil Hauer: Russia Has a Plan for Ukraine. It Looks Like Chechnya. http://bit.ly/3HFOaFH
// Putin’s template is simple: flatten cities, install satraps, rule by fear.🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski New long-form profile of Desantis. His college baseball teammate: “Ron is the most selfish person I’ve ever interacted with. He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I’m speaking for others – he was the biggest dick we knew.”
⋙ NewYorker, Dexter Filkins: Can Ron DeSantis Displace Donald Trump as the G.O.P.’s Combatant-in-Chief? http://bit.ly/3bbDtP2
// A fervent opponent of mask mandates and “woke” ideology, the Florida governor channels the same rage as the former President, but with greater discipline🐣 Best Twitter res map I have of Ukraine
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1538971258573967365?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @sentdefender The Russian Federation is threatening War with Lithuania due to the Country’s recent halt in Food and other Resource Shipments by Rail/Road to the Enclave of Kaliningrad, the Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stated that the Russian Military is preparing “Retaliatory Measures”.
🌎 https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1538875943527370753?s=20/photo/1
// “Suwalki gap”🐣 RT @mhmck Due to significant losses, soldiers in some units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have very low morale. They’re looking to avoid combat. This is especially true of the 1st Army Corps, adversely affecting Russian military power around Kherson, Mykolayiv and Popasna.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operational information as of 18:00 on 20 June 2022 ¤ The 1st Army Corps is falsely called the “people’s militia” of the Donetsk People’s Republic (so-called) but it is an armed formation of the Russian Federation.ForeignAffairs, Fiona Hill: The Kremlin’s Strange Victory ~ How Putin Exploits American Dysfunction and Fuels American Decline http://fam.ag/3QBRaXA “Putin has weaponized social media … undermining social cohesion and eroding Americans’ sense of a shared purpose’
// Nov/Dec 2021🐣 .@lucanne88 Re: Nuland coup: I’ve been reading. I found this article which I think captures your view: Salon, Medea Benjamin et al (2021): Who is Victoria Nuland? A really bad idea as a key player in Biden’s foreign policy team http://bit.ly/3y5Ob2z
🐣 .@lucanne88 This shorter article addresses some of the points in the first: BitterWinter, Massimo Introvigne (4/18): Warrant for an Invasion: The Myth of the “American Coups” in Ukraine. Did the U.S. Organize Euromaidan? http://bit.ly/3N4G7mP
🐣 .@lucanne88 It may come down to how one sees history as unfolding. Is it the result of power brokers manipulating pawns? Or do groups of like-minded people with common aspirations band together to demand change? “That to secure these rights, govts are instituted among men” etc
🐣 [Re: Japan] .@lucanne88 The decision to 💥 is a grave one. The US tried to blunt Japan’s imperial ambitions in China/SE Asia and had taken a number of escalating steps to do so, and may have been looking to enter the war, but Japan’s attack was disproportionate (& in the long-run counter-productive)Salon, Medea Benjamin et al (2021): Who is Victoria Nuland? A really bad idea as a key player in Biden’s foreign policy team http://bit.ly/3y5Ob2z
// 1/19/2021; A Cold War true believer who sabotaged Obama’s foreign policy, Nuland is a huge risk at the State DepartmentBitterWinter, Massimo Introvigne (4/18): Warrant for an Invasion: The Myth of the “American Coups” in Ukraine. Did the U.S. Organize Euromaidan? http://bit.ly/3N4G7mP
// 4/18/2022; A false Russian theory argues that Euromaidan was organized by the United States through Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.🐣 [Re: Japan] .@lucanne88 The decision to 💥 is a grave one. The US tried to blunt Japan’s imperial ambitions in China/SE Asia and had taken a number of escalating steps to do so, and may have been looking to enter the war, but Japan’s attack was disproportionate (& in the long-run counter-productive)
🐣 It’s odd how Putin and Lavrov extol Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy without having absorbed any of their lessons. As for Tchaikovsky, who they also praise as an icon of Russian culture, are they aware he was gay?
🐣 RT @Peter_PM_Marton An article with much in the way of logistical details regarding the use of HIMARS. It tells me it might make more sense to use the few systems Ukraine will get around Kherson.
💙 ⋙ Dkos, Kos: Ukraine Update: Not enough? Here’s the challenge of moving even four HIMARS http://bit.ly/3bgxqJb
// I both love and hate Ukrainian aid announcements from the Pentagon. Here’s the latest: High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and ammunition;🐣 RT @McFaul What is your point? Because we had annexation in the past, we just need to learn to accept it again now? Same with imperialism? Same with colonialism? Same with dictatorship in Europe? How about slavery? Because the past was bad we must just accept bad things now? I disagree.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GerardAraud Most of History is against international law…
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Annexation is against international law. Invading a country without cause is against international law.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RT Russia doesn’t care about ‘eyes of the West’ – Lavrov ¤ Moscow cares about international law, not what the West thinks, its foreign minister has told BBC ¤ https://on.rt.com/by2a
⋙ 🐣 Putin has declared Russia-ness is at odds with ithe “rules-based international order” and is ready to drag the world back to the 1940s ~ or worse. ¤ “Civilization is hideously fragile…there’s not much between us & the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish” – CP Snow🐣 RT @McFaul Great interview @BBCSteveR.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BBCSteveR “Russia isn’t squeaky clean. Russia is what it is & we’re not ashamed of showing who we are.” In an exclusive interview, I question Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Producers @BBCWillVernon @LizaShuvalova Cameras @AntonChicherov @LizaVereykina
💽 https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1537481465528832002?s=20/photo/1⭕ 19 Jun 2022
🚫 IBC [UK]: British soldiers must get ready to fight Russia in Third World War, army chief warns http://bit.ly/3OhDKOK
// =alarmist; The new head of the British Army’s told his troops they must prepare to fight the Russian army in a potential World War Three.📊 🐣 RT @hugolowell ABC News/Ipsos Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe former President Donald Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack
⋙ 🐣 RT @hugolowell ABC News/Ipsos Poll: Among self-described independents, 62% think Trump should be charged and 61% think he bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility.WaPo Editorial: Fix the electoral count law now, before Trump tries to exploit it again http://wapo.st/3xBwsyI “Americans went most of their history without having to worry seriously about arcane electoral college procedures. … The country no longer has that luxury”
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Thanks, Kevin McCarthy, for making the Jan. 6 hearings worthwhile http://wapo.st/3y2g3EQ “In an astonishingly foolish decision, McCarthy withdrew all his appointees to the committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rejected two of his five nominees”
NYT: What Hundreds of Photos of Weapons Reveal About Russia’s Brutal War Strategy http://nyti.ms/3tIBPdZ //➔ Russia is a terrorist state
Reflecting a shockingly barbaric and old-fashioned wartime strategy, Russian forces have pummeled Ukrainian cities and towns with a barrage of rockets and other munitions, most of which can be considered relatively crude relics of the Cold War, and many of which have been banned widely under international treaties, according to a New York Times analysis.
The attacks have made repeated and widespread use of weapons that kill, maim and destroy indiscriminately — a potential violation of international humanitarian law. These strikes have left civilians — including children — dead and injured, and they have left critical infrastructure, like schools and homes, a shambles.
The Times examined more than 1,000 pictures taken by its own photojournalists and wire-service photographers working on the ground in Ukraine, as well as visual evidence presented by Ukrainian government and military agencies. Times journalists identified and categorized more than 450 instances in which weapons or groups of weapons were found in Ukraine. All told, there were more than 2,000 identifiable munitions, a vast majority of which were unguided.
The magnitude of the evidence collected and cataloged by The Times shows that the use of these kinds of weapons by Russia has not been limited or anomalous. In fact, it has formed the backbone of the country’s strategy for war since the beginning of the invasion.
Of the weapons identified by The Times, more than 210 were types that have been widely banned under international treaties. All but a handful were cluster munitions, including their submunitions, which can pose a grave risk to civilians for decades after war has ended. More than 330 other weapons appeared to have been used on or near civilian structures.
Because of the difficulties in getting comprehensive information in wartime, these tallies are undercounts. Some of the weapons identified may have been fired by Ukrainian forces in an effort to defend themselves against the invasion, but evidence points to far greater use by Russian forces.
Customary international humanitarian laws and treaties — including the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their protocols — demand that the driving principle in war be military necessity, which mandates all combatants direct their actions toward legitimate military targets. The law requires a balance between a military mission and humanity. Combatants must not carry out attacks that are disproportionate, where the expected civilian harm is clearly excessive, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to the direct and concrete military advantage that would be anticipated. Combatants must consider distinction, that attacks are directed only toward lawful targets and people and are not applied indiscriminately. And they must not use weapons calculated to inflict unnecessary suffering.
“The Russians have violated every single one of those principles almost daily,” said Mike Newton, a Vanderbilt University law professor who frequently supports efforts to prosecute war crimes all over the world. ¤ “The law of war is far more demanding than the rule of simple expediency and convenience,” Professor Newton said. “Just because I have a weapon doesn’t mean I can use it.”
⭕ 18 Jun 2022
Reuters: Kaliningrad sanctions to take effect, Lithuania says http://reut.rs/3xIKSga “Lithuanian authorities said a ban on the transit through their territory to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad of goods that are subject to EU sanctions was to take effect from Saturday.”
// The EU sanctions list notably includes coal, metals, construction materials and advanced technology, and Alikhanov said the ban would cover around 50% of the items that Kaliningrad imports.🧵 RT @ThreshedThought [Dr Mike Martin] Donbas and Kherson: a tale of two fronts [TR:] http://bit.ly/3xYRXd1
📌 https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1538237864202452995?s=20TheGuardian, Shaun Walker: Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska on being Russia’s target No 2: ‘When you see their crimes, maybe they really are capable of anything’ http://bit.ly/3y1u7yb
// Her husband Volodymyr Zelenskiy is leading his nation’s resistance to Putin’s invasion – and her family is under threat. In a rare interview, she reveals the toll of sudden warFT: Russia’s once-richest man, now one of its most prominent dissidents, believes regime change will happen — but only by force http://on.ft.com/3n0IPzu
// Mikhail Khodorkovsky: ‘Putin has embarked on a route that is going to lead to his demise’🐣 RT @JoeTrippi Read this thread from a patriot who loves America
⋙ 🧵📌 RT @judgeluttig […] if I were chiseling words in stone that day, it was imperative that I chisel the exact words that I would want to be chiseled in stone, were I chiseling words in stone for history. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/judgeluttig/status/1538266525462929408?s=20🧵 RT @ 1- When we marvel or roll our eyes at Trump supporters, we’re often asking the wrong question. Instead of asking: “How can they believe this nonsense?” Better we ask: “What do they get out of being part of Trumpism that makes them so willing to suppress reasoned thought?”
📌 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1538300419864088576?s=20💽 WaPo, Aaron Blake: All the Jan. 6 evidence that Trump and Co. knew their plot was corrupt http://wapo.st/3MWHPqw
● Evidence Trump’s team knew their plot was illegal
● Evidence they were told their election claims were bogus⭕ 17 Jun 2022
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom He’s telling you right up front yet again that he’ll burn the Constitution if you give him the chance.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski [Trump] Today: “I never called Mike Pence a wimp. Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic. But just like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike did not have the courage to act.”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1537963693136236545?s=20/photo/1WaPo: It wasn’t just Proud Boys. Interconnected extremists converged on Jan. 6. http://wapo.st/3mZa9hf The Capitol defendants “are not normal. They are not ‘everyday,’ ‘ordinary’ or ‘mainstream.’ They are part of a supercontagion”
// These were no ‘everyday Americans’ but conduits for the easy flow of dangerous ideasOver the past several months, my team has been collecting data on the backgrounds of the Capitol defendants in an attempt to verify these claims of their normalness. After poring through thousands of pages of court documents and scouring their social media pages, I have reached a different conclusion: They are not normal. They are not “everyday,” “ordinary” or “mainstream.” They are part of a supercontagion.
NYT, Robert Draper: The Watergate Hearings, 50 Years Ago: Truth Was Not Up for Debate http://nyti.ms/3Qul8wR
// On the anniversary of the June 17, 1972, break-in, alumni of the hearings gather for a reunion. They had it easier than the Jan. 6 committee, they say.NYT: A Day After a Portrait of Pence in Danger, Trump Attacks Him Again http://nyti.ms/3tJDEHD
// In a speech, Donald J. Trump was undeterred by the Jan. 6 House committee’s account of how his rioting supporters menaced the vice president, and the panel’s dismantling of many of his election lies.🐣 How the Proud Boys Breached the Capitol
⋙ NYT: Video: How the Proud Boys Breached the Capitol on Jan. 6 https://nyti.ms/3HA5snS via @nytvideo
// A Times investigation of court documents, text messages and hundreds of videos shows how the Proud Boys coordinated …
💽 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1537929553229713408?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Otpor17 Excellent @nytimes investigation showing how the Proud Boys coordinated to instigate multiple crucial breaches of the Capitol on #January6th #January6thCommitteeHearings https://twitter.com/Otpor17/status/1537883721100996609?s=20/photo/1
⋙ NYT: How the Proud Boys Breached the Capitol on Jan. 6: Rile Up the Normies http://nyti.ms/3tEOAGr
// A Times investigation of court documents, text messages and hundreds of videos shows how the Proud Boys coordinated to instigate multiple breaches of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.⭕ 16 Jun 2022 ⚖️🏛
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go. Day 3 of the January 6 Committee hearing ¤ Focus today is on the pressure campaign on VP Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “We are fortunate for Mr. Pence’s courage” says Chair Bennie Thompson. ¤ “But the danger hasn’t receded.” ¤ 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1537481664821174278?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar The third January 6 hearing gets underway with a clip of Greg Jacob, former counsel to Pence, telling the committee that John Eastman admitted in front of Trump on January 4, 2021, that the pressure campaign against Pence violated the law
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1537483292886601729?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @MSNBC LIVE BLOG: The House Jan. 6 committee returns today for a third public hearing focused on VP Pence. Follow along as we break down key moments.
📌 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1537449714676793345?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Third Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/3xx77WC President Trump’s Campaign to Influence Vice President Pence
// 6/16/2022; The January 6 Committee held its third public hearing focusing on former President Trump’s efforts to convince former Vice President Pence to not certify the 2020 election results.~~~~~~~~~~
🐣 RT @tribelaw On 1/5 Trump publicly claimed Pence had agreed with him that Pence on 1/6 could legally overturn Biden’s election. But Pence had repeatedly told Trump the opposite! Trump’s lie about what Pence had said predictably got the mob on 1/6 to see Pence as a traitor they wanted to kill.
🐣 RT @DineshDSouza The claim that “Trump knew he lost the 2020 election” is the preposterous foundation of the #January6th hearings. So what if underlings TOLD him that? Trump didn’t BELIEVE them. If there’s one thing Trump was sure of—and still is—it’s that he won the 2020 election. (He did.)
⋙ 🐣 Your theory is not just analytically unsound, but it is brand new and could not have contributed to Trump’s “belief” he won. He lost all but one of 64 lawsuits which were the purported basis of any belief of his. He had no LEGAL basis to upend the transition of power.🐣 RT @BeschlossDC January 6 hearings are making clear that this was a diabolical plot to fix the 2020 election against the will of American voters, and that plot was managed by Trump. ¤ No President has ever done anything like this.
💙 🐣 RT @SadieMaeTN 💥 WATCH the onslaught of pressure from Donald Trump and his supporters that VP Mike Pence faced, publicly and privately, to get him to overturn the election. #Jan6Justice #ONEV1 #DemVoice1 #wtpBLUE
💽 https://twitter.com/SadieMaeTN/status/1537587303589085184?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @tribelaw People ask why Pence waited till 1/6 to make clear that he wouldn’t break the law to keep Trump in office beyond 1/20. My hunch: Only when @judgeluttig finally told Pence he had no power to do what Trump demanded was the jig finally up. Until then, I’ll bet he’d not grown a spine
💙 🐣 RT @tribelaw Given the facts then known to Trump — and now known to the millions who viewed the 6/18 hearing — that tweet can most reasonably be seen as an attempt to get the violent crowd to seek out and even kill VP Pence. Can you imagine a world in which that’s even imaginable?
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s 2:24 pm tweet on 1/6/21 calling Pence a coward is in retrospect the smoking gun.WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump put Pence in more danger than we knew http://wapo.st/3mWuWlO “Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) revealed in the hearing that ‘a confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance’”
🐣 RT @harrylitman Lots of Trump lawyers have had lots of bad days — Giuliani license suspended, Powell under DOJ investigation for fraud, Ellis totally unmasked — and hopefully there will be more to come. But I don’t think any Trump lawyer has had as bad a day as John Eastman had today.
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump put Pence in more danger than we knew http://wapo.st/3mWuWlO “Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) revealed in the hearing that ‘a confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance’”
🐣 RT @gtcoway3d I just wrote this about how we’re going to be learning a lot soon from the Jan. 6 committee about the 25th amendment and Trump’s mental instability, and about why this matters for the future.
⋙ WaPo, George Conway III: Jan. 6 hearings point up critical role of the 25th Amendment http://wapo.st/3xZTDEi
// With a single sheet of paper, the vice president and Cabinet could have sidelined Trump for good.🐣 RT @January6thCmte “Vice President Pence understood that his oath of office was more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.”- Vice Chair @RepLizCheney
🐣 RT @harrylitman Trump on 1/5: “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” A bald lie, but also a sinister maneuver to twist the knife on him publicly and make him look like a coward the next day.
🐣 RT @therecount Former Pence counsel Greg Jacob testifies that John Eastman eventually admitted the Supreme Court would have ruled 9-0 against Pence blocking the election certification.
💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1537500222414364672?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @RobertMaguire_ Aguilar: You wrote that the efforts by Trump to overturn the election were ‘the most reckless, insidious and calamitous failures in both legal and political judgment in American history.’ What did you mean by that?
Luttig: Exactly what I said, congressman🐣 RT @RepLizCheney An honorable man receiving the information and advice that Mr. Trump received from his campaign experts and his staff – a man who loved his country more than himself – would have conceded this election. ¤ We know that a number of his closest aides urged him to do so.
💽 https://twitter.com/RepLizCheney/status/1537527923284103169?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @harrylitman This scheme, among the 7, may seem a little dry and lawyerly to many — although there is pretty high drama and dastardliness in Trump’s many-pronged pressure campaign–but for lawyers this is maybe the most breathtaking and offensive, b/c it’s a straight up constitutional coup
🐣 RT @muellershewrote NEW: DoJ says a confidential informant from the proud boys told them that had the proud boys found Mike Pence, they would have killed him. #January6thCommitteeHearings
🐣 RT @harrylitman Not clear if you could convict him of attempted murder of the Vice President but not clear you couldn’t. This has to be the darkest moment in Presidential history.
🐣 RT @tribelaw DOJ’s urgent request today for the J6 committee immediately to turn over all transcripts must be complied with at once. That request makes clear that “others” high in Trump’s government are already being actively investigated by DOJ. Wonder who those “others” might be?
NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Says Trump Knew Plan to Overturn Election Was Illegal http://nyti.ms/3zDhfzH
// A top lawyer for Vice President Mike Pence said President Trump was told Mr. Pence couldn’t obstruct the certification of the 2020 election. Another witness said such an action would have been “tantamount to a revolution.”🐣 RT @therecount Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) quotes from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book “Peril,” describing what Trump reportedly said to VP Pence when Pence refused to overturn the 2020 election result: ¤ “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.
🐣 RT @harrylitman “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Judge Luttig kills the Eastman plan/Greenbay sweep dead. Testifies there is “no support in either the Constitution or the laws of the US..to count alternative slates of electors.”
🐣 RT @BrianKarem It is obvious how pained Judge Luttig is as he testifies. ¤ Here is a man who keenly understands the ramifications of Jan. 6 and is horrified by it. https://twitter.com/BrianKarem/status/1537490596025229318?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @leahmcelrath “I actually think there is a fair chance we could completely lose our constitutional democracy for a couple of decades if we make bad decisions…I have never before been as worried about the structure of our democratic form of government.” ~ @BillClinton
⋙ 💽 Deadline: Bill Clinton Tells James Corden He Has “Never Before Been As Worried” That U.S. Will Lose Its Constitutional Democracy — Watch http://bit.ly/3xUUbem🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🔥🔥 Reading Luttig’s statement & I’m so grateful he doesn’t tiptoe around the crisis. The conservative judge says #Jan6 was a battle in Trump & GOP’s ongoing war on democracy & America. He uses “war” 21x on just p1 ! He says they lied knowingly, to cling to power. #Jan6thHearings Text Block: https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1537450711625060355?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Statement: J Michael Luttig before The United States House Select Committee on the January 6, 2021: Attack on the United States Capitol Washington, D.C., June 16, 2022
⋙⋙ Full statement via the Bulwark: “The hour is late. God is watching us” http://bit.ly/39ypGBJ ⋙ See under Entire Articles: Luttig Jan6Cmte 6-16-2022Honorable Members of the House Select Committee —
A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.
America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other – over our democracy.
January 6 was but the next, foreseeable battle in a war that had been raging in America for years, though that day was the most consequential battle of that war even to date. In fact, January 6 was a separate war unto itself, a war for America’s democracy, a war irresponsibly instigated and prosecuted by the former president, his political party allies, and his supporters. Both wars are raging to this day.
A peaceful end to these wars is desperately needed. The war for our democracy could lead to the peaceful end to the war for America’s cultural heart and soul. But if a peaceful end to the war for America’s democracy is not achievable, there is little chance for a peaceful end to that war. The settlement of this war over our democracy is necessary to the settlement of any war that will ever come to America, whether from her shores or to her shores. Though disinclined for the moment, as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war.
Like our war from a distant time, these twin wars are “testing whether this] nation or any nation … so conceived in Liberty … can long endure.” We must hope that January 6 was the final battle of at least the deadly war for America’s democracy. …
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Head of Zelenskyy’s Office Andriy Yermak conveyed to the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania a full package of sanctions proposals against Russia, prepared by the McFaul-Yermak group. He added “it’s necessary to work on gas embargo” https://t.me/ermaka2022/747
🐣 RT @thehill Bill Clinton: “Fair chance” US could “completely lose” its democratic system https://trib.al/mp92tnr
😅 RT @duty2warn “The Thomas Coup Affair:”
A former Thomas clerk, John Eastman, and current Thomas spouse, planned the false elector scam, and it’s all in writing. Thomas never recuses and always rules in favor of the insurrectionists
The coup call is coming from inside the court.⭕ 15 Jun 2022
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This is a full blown constitutional crisis now. Trump’s counsel had inside knowledge of SCOTUS debates and Ginni Thomas appears to be the leaker.
⋙⋙ 🐣 and the “secret sauce” to making it all work was to promote/stoke the idea there would be violence on Jan 6th ~ to spur the ‘weak-spined’ justices to take up the Wisconsin challenge ¤ this is awfully hare-brained, really
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman There is nothing about this situation that reads as “separate but equal” branches of government.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT SCOOP: Eastman relayed in previously undisclosed email that he had awareness of a debate among SCOTUS judges about whether to listen to an election case
↧ ↧
NYT: Trump Lawyer (John Eastman) Cited ‘Heated Fight’ Among Justices Over Election Suits http://nyti.ms/3mSF4fa ¤ Let me guess: ¤ Clarence Thomas ➔ Ginni Thomas ➔ John Eastman ?
// In an email weeks after the election, another lawyer advising the Trump campaign responded that the prospect of “‘wild’ chaos” on Jan. 6 could lead the Supreme Court to take up a case.A lawyer advising President Donald J. Trump claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the president’s efforts to overturn his defeat at the polls, two people briefed on the email said.
The lawyer, John Eastman, made the statement in a Dec. 24, 2020, exchange with a pro-Trump lawyer and Trump campaign officials over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin.
“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Mr. Eastman wrote, according to the people briefed on the contents of the email. Referring to the process by which at least four justices are needed to take up a case, he added, “For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.”
The pro-Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, replied that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”
Their exchange took place five days after Mr. Trump issued a call for his supporters to attend a “protest” at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress would certify the electoral vote count confirming Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. “Be there. Will be wild!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.Mr. Chesebro’s comment about the justices being more open to hearing a case if they fear chaos was striking for its link to the potential for the kind of mob scene that materialized at the Capitol weeks later.
And Mr. Eastman’s email, if taken at face value, raised the question of how he would have known about internal tension among the justices about dealing with election cases. Mr. Eastman had been a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.
The committee is also reviewing emails between Mr. Eastman and Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas. Ms. Thomas was an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump and in the period after Election Day sent a barrage of text messages to the Trump White House urging efforts to reverse the outcome and supported a variety of efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office. …
Mr. Chesebro then replied, according to the people briefed on the exchange: “I don’t have the personal insight that John has into the four justices likely to be most upset about what is happening in the various states, who might want to intervene, so I should make it clear that I don’t discount John’s estimate.”
He went on that he agreed that “getting this on file gives more ammo to the justices fighting for the court to intervene.”
“I think the odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way,” he said. “Though that factor could go against us on the merits. Easiest way to quell chaos would be to rule against us — our side would accept that result as legitimate.”
Mr. Chesebro concluded: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. A campaign that believes it really won the election would file a petition as long as it’s plausible and the resource constraints aren’t too great.”
In the weeks after the election, Mr. Chesebro wrote a string of memos supporting a plan to send so-called alternate electors to Congress for the certification. A little more than two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Chesebro sent a memo to James Troupis, another lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, laying out a plan to name pro-Trump electors in the state, which was won by Mr. Biden.
Mr. Chesebro also sent a Dec. 13, 2020, email to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer who was by then leading the legal efforts to overturn the election results. In it, he encouraged Mr. Pence to “firmly take the position that he, and he alone, is charged with the constitutional responsibility not just to open the votes, but to count them — including making judgments about what to do if there are conflicting votes.”
That idea took root with Mr. Trump, who engaged in a lengthy effort to convince Mr. Pence that he could block or delay the congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
The House committee’s hearing on Thursday is set to feature testimony from J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who advised Mr. Pence that Mr. Trump’s push for the vice president to unilaterally decide to invalidate election results was unconstitutional, and that he should not go along with the plan.
Also scheduled to appear is Greg Jacob, Mr. Pence’s top White House lawyer, who has provided the committee with crucial evidence about the role played by Mr. Eastman, who conceded during an email exchange with Mr. Jacob that his plan to overturn the election was in “violation” of federal law.
The committee is also expected to play video from an interview it recorded with Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short. A day before the mob violence, Mr. Short grew so concerned about Mr. Trump’s actions that he presented a warning to a Secret Service agent: The president was going to publicly turn against the vice president, and there could be a security risk to Mr. Pence because of it.
The committee is not expected to display any of the new emails it received involving Ms. Thomas on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the presentation.
Ms. Thomas, known as Ginni, is a conservative political activist who became a close ally of Mr. Trump during his presidency. After he lost the election, she sent a series of messages to Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Arizona lawmakers and others pushing for the election to be overturned.
NBCNews: Court document in Proud Boys case laid out plan to occupy Capitol buildings on Jan. 6 http://nbcnews.to/3Qo1WRi
// “The goal is to ensure there is an entry point for the masses to rush the building,” states the nine-page document, titled “1776 Returns.”WaPo, Greg Sargent: The ugly truth about the right-wing grift machine has been revealed http://wapo.st/3xv8fKi “For decades, the peddling of hallucinatory tales of impending doom aimed at conservatives has overlapped with the crassest of money-grabbing schemes”
WaPo: Ginni Thomas corresponded with John Eastman, sources in Jan. 6 House investigation say http://wapo.st/3b5q8ri
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Decoding Liz Cheney’s big hint about John Eastman — and Donald Trump http://wapo.st/3Odh7ec “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re gonna need it.”
Trump’s pressure on Pence to abuse his role as president of the Senate by delaying the election’s conclusion is the key that unlocks this whole scandal. Eastman concocted a bogus legal justification for Pence to secure this delay, which would allow states to revisit the voting, find it fraudulent and certify sham electors for Trump, overturning his loss.
But also critical is that Trump was told this would be illegal on Pence’s part. What’s more, Trump appears to have been told his pressure on Pence to do that might also be illegal. ¤ What do we know about this part of the story? We know Pence’s counsel drafted a memo forcefully informing Trump that if Pence carried out his scheme, he’d be in violation of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how Congress counts presidential electors. ¤ Which means Trump was told he was pressing Pence to violate his official duty and to break the law. Yet Trump kept doing so, including on Jan. 6, when he hammered Pence again in a phone call and then whipped up the mob to put still more pressure on Pence to carry out the dirty deed.
On whether Trump was told his act of bringing that pressure might also be illegal, recall that the select committee has obtained relevant texts between Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. In them, Hannity suggested he had inside knowledge of White House conversations about whether Trump’s pressure on Pence was legal. ¤ Hannity even seemed to suggest the whole White House counsel’s office might quit over this.
So does the committee have more evidence that Trump or his top advisers were informed pressuring Pence violated the law? ¤ Cheney sure seemed to hint as much. So what laws might be implicated here? ¤ A federal judge recently declared that Trump’s pressure on Pence might have violated two laws. One prohibits obstruction of an official proceeding (the count of electors). The other bars conspiracy to defraud the United States (Trump and Eastman may have conspired to disrupt that count).
If Trump had been told pressuring Pence was illegal, it could buttress the case that Trump violated either of these statutes. It could constitute more evidence that Trump did one or both those things corruptly, says Randall Eliason, a white collar crime specialist.
“Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding require the government to prove corrupt or wrongful intent,” Eliason told me. “This is one more piece.” ¤ In other words, if Trump were informed pressuring Pence had put him on shaky legal ground, yet he continued doing so anyway, it could disarm the argument that Trump simply believed he’d won the election and that he was merely exercising his legal options in response.
Eliason cautioned that this would represent one piece of a broader effort to prove Trump’s corrupt intent throughout. Other pieces include strong evidence that Trump knew he’d lost yet tried to overturn the results anyway, and that Trump pressured the Justice Department to manufacture fake evidence of widespread voter fraud, to create a pretext for the whole scheme. ¤ In this narrative, Eliason said, Trump pressuring Pence would constitute “one of a number of incidents that tend to show his state of mind.”
We still don’t know if Trump or his co-conspirators will ever face a criminal investigation relating to Jan. 6. But Cheney just dropped a big hint about the case the committee will make against both Eastman and Trump. “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer,” indeed.
↥ ↧
⋙ Politico (6/11): Pence-world’s final takedown of Trump’s Jan. 6 bid to remain in power revealed in his lawyer’s memo http://politi.co/3NXkA0C “And thanks to your bullsh!t we are now under siege”
// 6/11/2022; Top adviser told the then-vice president that the courts would likely not support him if he gave in to Trump’s pressure to delay certifying electoral votes.⭕ 14 Jun 2022
WaPo, David Ignatius: In Ukraine, is the balance tipping in Moscow’s favor? Not yet. http://wapo.st/3xT0jni “Biden needs to demonstrate … that he is truly prepared to deliver on his promise to give Ukraine ‘the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression’”
💙 ⚖️ 🐣 RT @kaitlancollins Eric Herschmann, the White House attorney who defended Trump in impeachment trial, told John Eastman on Jan. 7, “I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: get a great f—ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”
⋙ 💽 🐣 RT @January6thCmte A message from Vice Chair @RepLizCheney about Thursday’s hearing. https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1536815728208355330?s=20/photo/1NYT, Neal Katyal: The Future Criminal Case Against Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/3tBg1RE “If an incumbent president can use the machinery of government to orchestrate a way to throw our votes out, the foundations of our democracy will have crumbled”
🐣 RT @RonWyden The United States cannot value Saudi oil more highly than the blood of Fallon Smart and Jamal Khashoggi. Embracing authoritarians only makes us more vulnerable to the whims of tyrants who will always prioritize unfettered power above international rule of law or American justice.
⋙ 🐣 but at the moment, Ukrainians are dying at a rate of 100-200 a day and certain EU countries are weakening in their resolve to cut off Russian oil; I despise MBS, but I despise Putin and his genocidal war more🐣 RT @BillKristol Why did the lessons of Watergate mostly hold for 40 years? It’s not just that Nixon was forced to resign. It’s that his agents were punished. Government officials saw they could go to jail. That’s why the lack (so far) of accountability for the Trump attempted coup is dangerous.
🐣 RT @BillBrowder This is extremely worrying. When Sergei Magnitsky’s mother went to Butryka prison to bring him food, this was exactly what they told her. We all know what happened after. Let’s pray it isn’t the case for Alexei Navalny
⋙ 🐣 RT @thedailybeast “There is no such convict here. We do not know where Alexei is now and what colony they are taking him to,” Alexei Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said https://trib.al/z3p3fIjWaPo: More than 100 GOP primary winners back Trump’s false fraud claims http://wapo.st/3mN5FKA The rot runs deep: “Trump’s demand that fellow Republicans embrace the cause of election denialism has become a price of admission in most Republican primaries”
// A Washington Post analysis shows the former president’s election denialism has become a price of admission in many Republican primaries
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1536754463360311296?s=20/photo/1💙 ⚖️ WaPo: Inside the explosive Oval Office confrontation three days before Jan. 6 http://wapo.st/3HkDtIu Jan 3,2021: the day the entire DOJ Leadership threatened to resign
// Jeffrey Clark, a mid-level Justice Department official, wanted Trump to name him attorney general in a plan aimed at potentially overturning the election⭕ 13 Jun 2022 ⚖️🏛
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go. Day 2 of the January 6th Committee Hearings gaveled in late at 10:46 am EDT. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1536359652514213888?s=20💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @ The second January 6 hearing begins with Liz Cheney talking about how Trump listened to advice from “an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1536361664601374721?s=20💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: Second Hearing on Investigation of Capitol Attack http://bit.ly/39jgMrH
// The “Big Lie”; The House committee looking into the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol held its second hearing with witness testimony to make public the committee’s findings after a year of investigations.~~~~~~~~~~
WaPo: Trump’s inner circle warned him election fraud claims were false http://wapo.st/3zBenU0
// A parade of top advisers — including the former president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — told investigators that Trump ignored their adviceWaPo: 4 takeaways from the second Jan. 6 committee hearing http://wapo.st/3mL0yuu
1. Trump was told, but he didn’t care
2. More evidence that almost everyone knew Trump had lost
3. Giuliani’s time in the barrel
4. A new crime floatedWaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump disbanded ‘Team Normal’ — and brought in woozy Rudy http://wapo.st/3aZTmYR
NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Tracks How Trump Created and Spread Election Lies http://nyti.ms/3xLs00r
// In its second hearing this month, the committee showed how the former president ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.NYT: Jan. 6 Hearing: Barr Says Trump Was ‘Detached From Reality’ http://nyti.ms/39ksKRL
// On the second day of the hearing, William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said in a recorded deposition that claims of widespread electoral fraud were nonsense. As the hearing closed, Rep. Zoe Lofgren said Mr. Trump used lies about fraud as a fund-raising tool.NYT: A Jan. 6 panel member says Trump raising money off bogus election claims was ‘the big rip-off.’ http://nyti.ms/3NT6xcK
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, wrapped up Monday’s session by laying out how Mr. Trump’s campaign, a related political action committee and his allies raised $250 million by claiming they were fighting widespread election fraud at a time when they knew there was none.
“Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for, so not only was there the big lie, there was the big rip-off,” Ms. Lofgren said. “Donors deserve to know where their funds are really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”
.
🐣 RT @nytimes The one big theme on the second day of the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings was that Donald Trump was told repeatedly that his “big lie” about a fraudulent election was baseless — but he made the fake claim on election night anyway. Here are some takeaways.
⋙ NYT: 4 takeaways from Day 2 of the Jan. 6 hearings. http://nyti.ms/3zA6XAh
● Trump was described as ‘detached from reality’ after the election.
● Two groups surrounded Trump: ‘Team Normal’ vs. ‘Rudy’s Team.’
● A picture emerges of election night at the White House.
● Millions of dollars were sent to a nonexistent ‘Election Defense Fund,’ the committee said.NYT: The Fractious Night That Began Trump’s Bid to Overturn the Election http://nyti.ms/39uPZZl “Mr. Trump told Mr. Miller, Mr. Stepien and the rest that they were being weak and were wrong … Mr. Giuliani was the only one that night who told the president what he wanted to hear”
// Donald J. Trump’s advisers urged him not to declare victory on election night in 2020. He listened to the one who told him what he wanted to hear.🐣 RT @nytimes The Jan. 6 committee said that Donald Trump’s campaign, a related political action committee and his allies raised $250 million by claiming they were fighting widespread election fraud at a time when they knew there was none. https://nyti.ms/3xrjvav
💽 https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1536496158402613248?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @peterbakernyt “Those who knew better about the election and told Trump he had lost were pushed away or chose to abandon the field, leaving Trump to…Giuliani and the progressively more absurd counsel he offered. It was “Team Normal” versus “Rudy’s team.” @sbg1
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Bill Barr Calls “Bullshit” on Trump’s Election Lies http://bit.ly/3MPg17x
// On the second day of public hearings on the January 6th attack, the former Attorney General and other members of Trump’s inner circle revealed the extent of their hypocrisy.🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is a powerful part of the willful blindness argument. Trump is told by his AG that stories about Detroit & Atlanta don’t amount to voter fraud. He doesn’t reconsider or even stop to check. He just forges ahead & lies to the American people, willfully blind of the truth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sarahposner Next day, Lofgren says, Trump went out *the next day* and reiterated the false claims.🐣 RT @cultexpert A lot of people are beginning to wake up. I strongly recommend asking questions respectfully and gently. Hold back the urge to say, “I told you so” or “Why didn’t you trust me when I told you Trump was a crook!” Allow people their process. Be loving!
🐣 RT @SpanbergerVA07 Election integrity means telling the truth about the results of an election. ¤ The devastating testimony today from fmr Trump admin officials at the #Jan6Hearings made clear that the President and his inner circle knew there was not widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election.
🐣 RT @aroseblush A Malignant Narcissist can never lose. ‘Loser’ doesn’t exist in their minds. It’s probably the worst word you can call someone who suffers from this psychosis.
🤡 Donald didn’t want to look ‘like a loser’ — and it put the nation in crisis 🤡
⋙ RawStory: Former Trump official: Donald didn’t want to look ‘like a loser’ — and it put the nation in crisis http://bit.ly/3NNREbq💙 TheHill: Trump releases 12-page response to Jan. 6 hearing http://bit.ly/3xPsyDK
⋙ Document: [pdf] http://bit.ly/3OgNHMu 12p… The truth is that Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. in massive numbers (but seldom revealed by the press), on January 6th, 2021, to hold their elected officials accountable for the obvious signs of criminal activity throughout the Election. Those who are supposed to be public servants are using the power of government against the people who entrusted them with the power. We’ve been betrayed.
Since the Unselect Committee refuses to allow their political opponents to participate in the hearings, the public likely won’t hear from the many patriots who contradict the lies being broadcast – at least not in these hearings. This is all a ridiculous and treasonous attempt to cover up the fact that Democrats rigged the Election and are siphoning Americans’ freedoms and power for their own benefit.
Without the ability to have political, legal, or witness representation from conservatives in this Kangaroo Court, it’s up to American patriots to arm themselves with the information. This hearing isn’t about January 6th, it’s about November 3rd, and here’s what happened. … [See below]
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WaPo, Philip Bump (5/11/2022): ‘2000 Mules’ offers the least convincing election-fraud theory yet http://wapo.st/3tzVFbu “It’s useful … to be blunt: Every part of the calculus that D’Souza uses to show that Trump really won is nonsense, as he himself inadvertently makes clear”
// 5/11/2022 (Updated 5/17/2022)It’s useful here to be blunt: Every part of the calculus that D’Souza uses to show that Trump really won is nonsense, as he himself inadvertently makes clear. ¤ First, it depends on True the Vote’s “mule” estimates being accurate, which for the reasons stated above should not be assumed. Second, it weirdly relies on the average number of drop box visits per “mule” instead of just a total number of visits, which one would think True the Vote could provide. Third, it assumes that those votes are invalid or would not otherwise have been cast, which is not a defensible assumption. (In fact, speaking at a legislative hearing in Wisconsin in March, Engelbrecht noted that “we’re not suggesting that the ballots that were cast were illegal ballots.”) And fourth, it relies on True the Vote’s estimate that each drop box visit included the drop of five ballots on average.
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TheBulwark, Amanda Carpenter (5/17): Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules Is a Hilarious Mockumentary http://bit.ly/
// 5/17/2022; A tour de force exploring the limits of how many suckers there are willing to pay for fantasy.2000 Mules doesn’t survive the most basic fact-checks to support its most important claims. See them here, here, here, and here. But, let’s stipulate that the film’s purpose isn’t really to present facts. Because if it were true that D’Souza had rock-solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in his possession, would a true patriot like him be selling that evidence for $29.99 per download? Bwahahaha. (In defense of D’Souza, that $29.99 was only the premium VOD price. This week he dropped it to $19.99 to buy or just $14.99 to rent. Or you can get the movie free by purchasing an annual subscription to his Rumble channel!) ¤ It’s better to view the film as a performance piece, a comedic triumph where the joke is on the rubes gullible enough to give D’Souza their money. …
The movie draws heavy suspicions about people who dropped off ballots early in the morning, wore gloves to drop off ballots, and took photos of drop boxes. All this is drummed up as proof of nefarious activity captured on surveillance video. Coupled with the True the Vote’s geotracking data, the viewer is led to believe these were the “mules” making repeat trips to unnamed non-profit offices to collect ballots and “traffick” them to drop boxes. One problem: They have no video showing these individuals making repeat trips to said non-profits or drop locations, or evidence they were paid to do so. Also, one of the so-called “mules” presented in the film has already been investigated by Georgia officials and no evidence of wrongdoing was found. ¤ No matter. Engelbrecht and Phillips make their presentation to the group and the guys jump on the clips accordingly. What Salem wants, Salem gets.[…]
🐣 RT @BillKristol Trump wasn’t “detached from reality.” He was trying to engineer a coup. [link]
WSJ (11/6/2020): Trump Fundraising for Legal Challenges Would Also Pay Down Debt http://on.wsj.com/3aSCO4T //➔ different emails have different disclaimers: 50% recount fund/50% campaign debt; another 60% campaign debt/40% RNC
http://on.wsj.com/3aSCO4T http://bit.ly/39pK5ZD
🔆 This❗️⋙ Salon (2020): Fine print on Trump legal challenge fundraising emails says money will be used to pay campaign debt http://bit.ly/39pK5ZD Some say 60% will go to pay campaign debt and 40% will go to the RNC [which may in turn share $$ w Trump, if I recall correctly]💙 🐣 RT @MSNBC Mike Pence’s team put together a 10-page memo disproving Trump’s biggest lie (via @MaddowBlog)
⋙ ≣ Politico (6/10): Pence team couldn’t verify Trump campaign’s election fraud claims, new memo shows http://politi.co/39nf7Bw //➔ faulty document after page 4!
// In a previously unseen memo obtained by POLITICO, the former vice president’s legal team called most of the fraud allegations minor and unverifiable.💽 MSNBC, Steve Benen: Why it matters that Trump’s ‘Election Defense Fund’ didn’t exist http://on.msnbc.com/3zxDxCU
// After his defeat, Donald Trump urged his supporters to contribute to an Election Defense Fund. The trouble is, there was no actual Election Defense Fund.🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln ICYMI: The Lincoln Project’s takeaways from the January 6th Committee Hearing that took place today.
⋙ LincolnProject: Key January 6th Committee Hearing Takeaways ~ June 13 http://bit.ly/3mL45ZD🐣 RT @kyledcheney And guess what: Merrick Garland said today that he and his prosecutors will be watching all the hearings — and we know they plan to scour the transcripts when those come out in September. He doesn’t need the committee to hand-deliver him a letter.
⋙ Politico: Attorney General Merrick Garland said he’ll watch the Jan. 6 hearings in full. Less clear? Whether the Justice Department is exploring potential criminal culpability of Donald Trump. http://politi.co/3xOrGiH
// Garland also voiced support for the new bipartisan gun reform framework.📊 Medium, Charles Franklin (2018): Nixon, Watergate and Partisan Opinion http://bit.ly/2PrRxFb Approval of Nixon did not fall below 50% among Republicans during his presidency
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1536499303019167753?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @dfriedman33 Trump was not led astray by an inebriated adviser. He was following a preexisting plan. He intentionally undermined confidence in the election because he wanted to retain power.
⋙ MotherJones, DanFriedman: Don’t Be Distracted by “Intoxicated” Rudy Giuliani http://bit.ly/3NQZj8O
// Trump “knew he lost,” and he already had a plan to steal the election.📊 TheHill: Most in new poll support legal action against elected officials who attempt to overturn election results http://bit.ly/3xsVcJm 69% of respondents thought that an elected official’s attempt to overturn election results was “definitely” (52%) or “probably” (17%) a crime
// Politico/Morning Consult Poll (n=2005 reg; 9/10-12/2022) http://politi.co/3Qmmx8L🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff His campaign manager knew he lost.
His attorney general knew he lost.
His top advisers knew he lost.
His legal team knew he lost.
His daughter knew he lost. ¤
And Trump knew it too.🐣 RT @ZcohenCNN Rep. Zoe Lofgren tells @jaketapper that Kimberly Guilfoyle was paid $60,000 for introducing her fiancé Donald Trump Jr at Jan 6 rally that immediately preceded the Capitol riot. ¤ “It’s a grift,” Lofgren said in an interview w/ CNN. Declined to comment on potential crime.
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield The hearing opened with testimony that Rudy Giuliani was drunk when he gave Trump the advice to prematurely declare victory on election night. ¤ The hearing closes with a reminder that Rudy Giuliani is being disbarred. 🔥
🐣 RT @emptywheel Here’s the part of the hearing that detailed Trump’s Big Fraud Monetizing The Big Lie http://bit.ly/3HmFNyw
🐣 RT @cspan .@RepZoeLofgren on former President Trump: “It’s clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what he said. Now it’s for someone else to decide whether that’s criminal or not.”
// stopped leaving hearing🐣 RT @harrylitman 22 federal judges appointed by Rs, several by Trump, rejected Trump claims. 11 lawyers referred for discipline.
🐣 RT @ananavarro It’s simply amazing how many people around Trump, including Barr, other Cabinet Secretaries, and Senior White House staff, knew Trump was completely off-his rocker, paranoid, delusional and making insane claims, putting the country in danger AND they didn’t invoke 25th Amendment.
🐣 📋 RT @marceelias Trump and his allies lost 64 and won 1.
// court cases🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Wow! The Jan 6 committee exposes how the Big Lie was also the Big Grift. Trump fundraised for an ‘Election Defense Fund’ that didn’t exist, raised more than $250 million, and never used it to pursue his claims about the election.
💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1536391226462810116?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AnnieGrayerCNN Rep. Zoe Lofgren told me “YES,” 1/6 panel has found evidence that Donald Trump and members of his family have personally benefiting from donations that were advertised as going towards election fraud claims. ¤ Trump campaign raised approx $250 mil off election lies, committee says
💙 🐣 📋 RT @tribelaw Today’s testimony opens a new possibility: charging Trump not only with seditious conspiracy (18 USC 2384), inciting insurrection (2383), defrauding the US (371) & obstructing a congressional proceeding (1505) but also wire fraud (18 USC 1343): fleecing ordinary citizens of $$$$$
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🐣 RT @tribelaw So it turns out that there was plenty of fraud in the 2020 election, but it wasn’t VOTER fraud. ¤ No, it was WIRE fraud though Trump’s scheme to raise millions of dollars from gullible supporters by claiming the election was stolen. ¤ Penalty? Up to 20 yrs. under 18 USC sec 1343🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Bill Stepien’s critically important words: ¤ “I told him (Trump)” about how early votes always favor the Republican candidates & the later counting of the mail-in votes favor Democrats – the so called “red mirage.” Trump knew about it and he went right out to the cameras & lied.
🐣 RT @LincolnProject Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and Rep. Kevin McCarthy tried to school Trump on mail-in voting and how important it was during the 2020 election, but Trump had “already made up his mind.”#January6thHearings
🐣 RT @muellershewrote Now we’re getting into the fundraising. Trump sent millions of fundraising emails and messages after the election. Sometimes [no:$]25 per day. Even when knowing the fraud claims were false. Many were for the “election defense fund” WHICH DID NOT EXIST. #January6thCommitteeHearings
🐣 RT @JaneMayerNYer So important that the J6 Committee showed that The Big Lie was really The Big Grift. $250 MILLION was made by Trump off this toxic lie- and tons more by others who piled on.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 One point the Jan. 6 Committee makes clear: The hundreds of millions of dollars that the Trump campaign raised off their voter fraud lies did NOT go to the campaign’s legal effort.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Every single witness we saw in the first hour was either a Trump employee or Trump appointee. So much for this being a “partisan” investigation.
🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer “He (Trump) was the weak element on the Republican ticket” – Bill Barr ¤ That’s gonna sting.
🐣 Both Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt and (earlier) Georgia Secy of State Raffensperger said the reason Trump lost was because people who voted for down-ticket GOP candidates didn’t vote for Trump
WaPo, Max Boot: We can’t let Ukraine lose. It needs a lot more aid, starting with artillery. http://wapo.st/3zD7jpG “Ukraine has millions of volunteers willing to risk death to defend their homeland. What it doesn’t have is enough weapons” @POTUS @SecBlinken @SecDef
NYT, Linda Kinstler: Russia’s Missiles Are Burning the History of Ukraine’s Babyn Yar Ravine http://nyti.ms/3b115WD
🐣 RT @ Latest @thedailybeast: Zelensky and advisers say they don’t want to cede territory to Russia—but Zelensky admits he’ll have to return to a negotiation table one day. ¤ But Ukrainians might not stand for that—and it may be the end of his political career.
⋙ DailyBeast: Judgment Day Is Coming for Zelensky http://bit.ly/3aNT9HY
// The most grueling decision of the war in Ukraine could spell the end of the president’s political career.⭕ 12 Jun 2022
🐣 RT @hugolowell WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack said Sunday they uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
🐣 RT @saletan On CNN, @LHSummers says this year’s rise in gas prices is “driven by the geopolitical developments around Ukraine. It’s hypocrisy in the extreme when people … say we need to stand strongly with Ukraine, and then blame the administration for the fact that gas prices are higher
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln We can argue about gas prices and baby formula shortage, but if the republic falls at the hands of authoritarian violence we won’t have a country we recognize any longer. @TheRickWilson explains the significance of the #January6Hearings.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1536049576783888388?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @muellershewrote Wow! BJ Pak. He’s the US Attorney from Georgia who resigned amid the trump pressure.
⋙ 🐣 RT @hugolowell Just in: Jan. 6 committee announces witnesses for second hearing tomorrow at 10a ET:
— Ex-Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien
— Ex-Fox News Political Editor Chris Stirewalt
— Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg
— Ex-US Attorney BJay Pak
— Ex-Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Jan 5, 2021. Text Block: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1536110518582255616?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @rollcall NEW: lowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the Senate president pro tempore, says he and not Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the certification of Electoral College votes, since “we don’t expect him to be there.”⭕ 11 Jun 2022
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder Russia has a hunger plan. Vladimir Putin is preparing to starve much of the developing world as the next stage in his war in Europe. 1/16
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1535617894045868033?s=20🧵 RT @sumlenny THREAD Let’s start a long thread about how Russian book market prepared Russians for a full-scale war against Ukraine, NATO, the West, and promoted stalinism and nazism, and how this was ignored by the West. Keep seat belts fasten, you will see a lot of nasty things here.
📌 https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1535582101621420032?s=20
// heavily illustrated⋙ One of the first indicators of Russia preparing for a full-scale turn to dictatorship and a global war was the mass production of books about cool sides of Stalin and Stalinism and about upcoming war against the West. These books appeared on Russian bookshelves in early 2010s /2
⋙ The appearance was so massive that it could not be a coincidence on a book market which was under a strict control of secret police FSB. “Be proud, not sorry! Truth about Stalin Age” “Stalinist’s Handbook”, “Stalin’s Repressions: A Great Lie” and “Beria: Best XX Cent Manager” /3
⋙ The wave of stalinist books was so massive, that in 2011 a grass-root initiative “Stop Publishing Stalinists Books” emerged with a call for publishing houses to stop. It was ignored of course. /4
⋙ The idea to create authoritarian and militarist mood through bookstores was brilliant. In 2015, I visited Moscow’s central bookstore “Biblio-Globus”, and that what were the goods welcoming you just after the doors: military uniforms, accessories, and books about Stalin and war /5
⋙ This was the prelude. Soon after, Kremlin has started to publish what they called “battle fantastic”. Mass-produced low-quality books about Russian military superiority in all possible conflicts. The whole book series appeared. Here: “Battlefield Ukraine series” “Ukraine on Fire”
⋙ The idea to create authoritarian and militarist mood through bookstores was brilliant. In 2015, I visited Moscow’s central bookstore “Biblio-Globus”, and that what were the goods welcoming you just after the doors: military uniforms, accessories, and books about Stalin and war /5⋙ This was the prelude. Soon after, Kremlin has started to publish what they called “battle fantastic”. Mass-produced low-quality books about Russian military superiority in all possible conflicts. The whole book series appeared. Here: “Battlefield Ukraine series” “Ukraine on Fire”
⋙ The whole series is playing with the same idea: Ukrainian “nazis” need to be destroyed. Covers were like created on drugs. Here: “Wild Field: On Ukraine’s Ruins” – a “DNR” tank smashes what can be identified as “Ukrainian Azov Nationalist Mercedes SUV”.
⋙ Russian history-rewriting genre of “battle fantastic” has its name “popadantsy” (time-travellers, literally: “appearers”). Inspired by the Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee” and Harrison’s “The Ethical Engineer”, Russians opened a golden mine of stories how to make Russia GREEEAT /
⋙ The basic Russian trauma is that RU was treated unfair and taken its power and place as the only world super power. This is what you learn at school. Russians were conquered by Mongols and lost 300 years of development. Queen Elisabeth denied marriage to Ivan the Terrible /13
⋙ Look at this final scene of a cult Russian movie “Forward, Gardemarines!” Brave Russian officers know, that the battle at Groß-Jägersdorf (1757) is won by Russians, they can capture Friedrich of Prussia and win the war. But a stupid general orders retreat:
⋙ This is the culmination of the 1995 movie, which was one of the most popular in Russia back than. The narrator’s voice says, the victory was “stolen”, and even Russians took Berlin later, that victory “was stolen again”. Effectively, this was one of “back-stab-theory” movies. /13
⋙ There are tons of myths of “stolen victories” and “betrayed Russia”. My school teacher told us, Alaska was not sold to the US, but rented out for 100 yrs, and the US broke the contract. Nazis in 1920s told about one “betrayal” in 1914, Russians were fed with tons of such lies /14
⋙ So, back to our books case. How do you want to serve this fundamental hate towards the treacherous West, and help Russia win? Easy! Send you partiots to the past to correct it and to win the future! Yes, in Russia they have this book genre, and it goes very good: “Popadantsy” /⋙ Let us start with easy reading ¤ “Tsar from the future”: a guy wakes up in a body of Russian Nicolas II emperor, prevents Russian revolution, defeats Great Britain, and conquers Istanbul with modern weapons.
“Russia Arise!” Popadantsy in bodies of Nicolas II and Alexander III /16
⋙ The “Comrade Hitler” is the 2nd book by the same author, after his “Comrade Führer. Blitzkrieg Triumph”. Info: “It hits all records of political un-correctness! Will (Hitler) crash Britain with successful landing operation? Will Führer prevent fratricide war against the USSR?”/21
⋙ Or look here: “Assault for the Future!” (note burning London + US tank on the cover). Info:”(Nazi)Germany joins Eurasian Union. Atlantic Democratic Union starts WW3. USSR is against the HELL! Russian-German brotherhood against the star-striped plague and for world liberation!”/22
⋙ I promised you nasty staff? “The Son of the Reich”. Info: “The USSR must again defeat a treacherous attack by The Entente. Red Army and Wehrmacht fight together against the New World Order. British pilots bomb cities and refugees”. Well, this is not quite Popadantsy but tasty /23
⋙ One cannot mention even 1% of all these books, so many were published. Sometimes they mixed genres: like here: a “Novorossiya pilot” awakes in a body of Josef Stalin’s son Vassily, a war pilot, and wins the war, revealing a Western agent Khrushchov, saving Stalinism /24
⋙ Or here: “Lieutenant from the Future: GRU against Banderites”, a Popadanets with a face of RU MoD Shoigu burns down Lwiw and arrests Ukrainian politicians Turchinov and Yatseniuk.
Or “For Motherland! For Putin!” – Russian modern tanks storm Berlin in 1945. /25⋙ Effectively, each of these books is about revanchism wet dreams. Like this “Medal for the City named Washington”. It is actually an interesting title. Those who are not familiar with Soviet and Russian revanchism, will not identify it, but it is a great story, read further /26
⋙ In 1945-46, Soviet composer Blanter and poet Isakovsky wrote a song “Enemies have burnt down his hut”, describing a terror of a Soviet soldier who has lost his family, and his medal “For taking Budapest” cannot help him in his suffering /27
⋙ The song was semi-banned because of its anti-war narrative and later known under “Medal for Budapest” name, but in the later Soviet Union it was transformed in a revanchist song “Medal for Washington”, praising future defeat of the US, and it suited Putin: /28
⋙ The latest version was modified with verses of humiliation of Barack and Michele Obama, and ended with the words “Now we need to go to liberate Alaska”. Note the picture from the US produced computer game World in Conflict, Russians love so much. /29⋙ Well, now you may tell me “ok, but it is just some jokes on social networks”. No, it is the state-run propaganda, from books to TV. They just played all registers: from academia to jokes and anecdotes /30
⋙ Already in 2010, a mocking song about nuclear + chemical attack on the US (“the earth is still scorching where Washington used to be”) was performed on Russian TV. Look at the happy audience reaction. The song (with other words) comes from a child cartoon /31
⋙”ICBMs are slowly flying away, don’t expect to see them again. We are sorry about (your fate) the US, and Europe is the next” – is the start of this song. You may see the full text under the link (there are different versions, longer and shorter): /32
⋙ In 2010, “We are from the Future 2” followed: the same guys go to a music festival in Lviv, Ukraine, and find out Ukrainian nationalists wear Nazi uniforms there. They all get teleported to 1941, where Ukrainians reborn, fight UPA and start to love Russia
⋙ Same 2010, “The Fog” movie was produced: a unit of Russian conscripts insult WW2 vets and get teleported to 1941, where they have to fight for their life against Wehrmacht. (You know the pattern: they reborn, start to love Russia and return as good boys):
⋙ In 2012, “The Fog 2” was produced, with the same principle: Russian not-so-patriotic youngsters celebrate May 9 Victory Day with a costume party, insult the history, get teleported, blahblahblah⋙ You see the pattern: movies were produced by state media companies with state money in 2008-2012. It was a state-run program of creating a hyper-militarised mood and forcing young generation to feel the WW2 has never ended, and this generation HAS TO FIGHT IT TO THE BLOODY END.
⋙ It was not about a “fun adventure” anymore, it was about a dirty duty you owe your country. This was a state-run program of indoctrination under the slogan “you will have to fight a world war like your ancestors, and if you don’t you die”🧵 RT @anders_aslund Putin’s 22-year reign has seen a steady decline in his goals for his country. ¤ 1. In 2000, he wanted Russia to reach Portugal’s level of GDP per capita, but today Portugal’s GDP per capita in current USD is twice as high as Russia’s. No economic growth since 2014 & none coming.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1535527629738102784?s=20
⋙ 2. In his first term, 2000-2003, Putin also spoke about rule of law & other systemic reforms. Since 2003, he has dismantled all & instead imposed a strict FSB dictatorship.
⋙ 3. All along, Putin has spoken about scientific and technical development in an increasingly Soviet fashion. As then, it has become liturgy rather than support of innovations. Scientists and entrepreneurs flee to the West.
⋙ 4. Recently, Putin has primarily talked about the need for demographic development, but as everything else he touches it stagnates at best.
⋙ 5. After everything Putin has tried to do for Russia has failed because of his dictatorship, his only ambition is the old Peter I imperialism: ¤ Gain more land! Spread the Russian autocracy! ¤ As Brezhnev would say, extensive rather than intensive development.
⋙ 6. After Putin has failed also as imperialist, after his madman assault on Ukraine, it will be high time for him to be ousted. This should be the Western policy objective.🐣 RT @eugene_finkel This obsession with Peter and royal sobriquets is morally outrageous but analytically revealing. He is wanbabe Great, will have no issues being remembered as Terrible but will avoid going down in history as Vladimir the Mad. We should act accordingly.
⋙ CNN: Restoration of empire is the endgame for Russia’s Vladimir Putin http://cnn.it/39lxaI9
// Reading Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mind is rarely a straightforward task, but on occasion the Kremlin leader makes it easy. ¤ Such was the case on Thursday, when Putin met with a group of young Russian entrepreneurs. Anyone looking for clues as to what Putin’s endgame for Ukraine might be should read the transcript, helpfully released here in English.⭕ 10 Jun 2022
🧵 RT @anderswonders ‘#Kherson has become what I would call a laboratory of horrors’, Mr Carpenter the Head of the US mission to the OSCE said today. It indeed has. Kherson was not the first (Crimea and ORDLO came first under the Russian yoke). What’s so specifically bad about my city, then?
📌 https://twitter.com/anderswonders/status/1535401324233248771?s=20🐣 RT @BrianDeeseNEC In March, President Biden made a firm commitment to the people of Europe that, in light of Putin weaponizing his energy supply, the United States would step up and help reduce European dependence on Russian natural gas. ¤ And that’s what we’ve done. (1/3)
⋙ 🐣 ◕ RT @BrianDeeseNEC In the first four months of this year, U.S. LNG exports to Europe have tripled year-over-year. ¤ The share going to Europe has gone from 1/3 to 3/4, while overall exports have grown 20%. ¤ As a result, the U.S. is now the source of nearly 50% of Europe’s LNG imports. (2/3) https://twitter.com/BrianDeeseNEC/status/1535333242810863619?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @BrianDeeseNEC The US-EU partnership hasn’t been stronger. As we reduce our near-term dependence on Russian natural gas, we’re also reducing our dependence on natural gas entirely. ¤ Accelerating the shift to clean energy is the best thing we can do to achieve true energy security. ¤ (3/3)🐣 RT @AdrianaHamu There’s less and less pretence about what’s going on. In general, I loathe the lying. But there’s something rather more terrifying about the embrace of further aggression.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s pet propagandists readily embraced his speech about taking back historical territories. They jumped on the bandwagon with gusto, comparing their empire to the Golden Horde and North Korea. Insatiable invaders with nukes. More in my latest article ⤵️
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1535410185623281667?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s state TV puppets have dropped all pretense that Russia is a law-abiding nation: ¤ “Delightful! Now we understand future plans of the Russian state: we’ll be returning and fortifying [territories].” ¤ “We are the natural heirs of the Golden Horde.”
⋙⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Kremlin Cronies Say Putin Is Ready to Go Full Kim Jong Un http://bit.ly/3aVJMpS
// Putin’s puppets have dropped all pretense that Russia is a law-abiding nation, threatening to unleash chaos and emulate the unhinged nuclear threats of North Korea.🐣 RT @Cyberdefensecom When Putin says he will retake what is “historically his” – and restore the Russian “borders” – I present you a map of Russia 1914. @cepa #RussiaUkraineWar #RussianUkrainianWar 🌎 https://twitter.com/Cyberdefensecom/status/1535209862451298304?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Brilliant! Kyiv just brilliantly highlighted Russia’s age-old motive for genocide in Ukraine. Moscow appropriated Ukraine’s origin story as its own. Now Putin, like prior aggressive and corrupt Russian tyrants, sees annihilating Ukraine as a solution to Russia’s identity crisis.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mhmck Kyiv was founded in 482. ¤ In 1147, the Grand Duke of Kyiv and ruler of the Kyivan Rus’, Yuriy Dolhoruky, issued a decree founding Moscow. ¤ In 2022, Kyiv City Council rescinded this decree, saying it was due to a “historical misunderstanding.” ¤ Moscow no longer exists. Text Block: https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1535261709463592961?s=20/photo/1⚖️ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok #Jan6 Cmte: Trump Had 7-Part Plan To Overturn Election, Stay in Power (COUP)
1. Spread false election claims
2. Planned to replace Acting AG
3. Pressured VP Pence
4. Pressured state officials
5. Instructed state officials to lie
6. Summoned mob
7. Ignored pleas to stop violence⚖️ 🐣 RT @harrylitman My pick for the 5 biggest new reveals from the hearing: ¤ 5.Ivanka knows he lost; 4.Jared sees threats to resign as “whining”; 3.Congress Members sought pardons; 2. Trump:”Mob doing what they should be doing,” & 1. “maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence deserves it.”
⭕ 9 Jun 2022 ⚖️🏛
💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go ¤ The first public hearing of the January 6th Committee. Chair Thompson begins with his personal history and says each committee member has one thing in common “we swore the same oath . . to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1535050380429516801?s=20/photo/1💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @atrupar Bennie Thompson begins January 6 hearing: “I’m from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try to justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1535050790720634891?s=20/photo/1💙 ⚖️ 💽 CSPAN: First Open Testimony Before January 6 Committee http://bit.ly/3zynEvU
// After months of closed door investigations, the House January 6 Committee held its first hearing with public testimony about what transpired-and why-during the assault on the U.S. Capitol.~~~~~~~~~~
💙 ⚖️ 🐣 RT @January6thCmte Today we revealed unseen footage of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, shared testimony from senior Trump administration and campaign officials, and previewed the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @January6thCmte This is only just the beginning. ¤ In the weeks to come, we’ll continue to investigate & unveil our initial findings about those responsible for the January 6th attack. ¤ We have spent months conducting a serious, bipartisan investigation to give Americans the answers they deserve.🐣 RT @peterbakernyt In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined tonight in a cavernous congressional hearing room where the future of democracy felt on the line.
⚖️ ⋙ NYT: Trump Is Depicted as a Would-Be Autocrat Seeking to Hang Onto Power at All Costs http://nyti.ms/3NDMgb1
// As the Jan. 6 committee outlined during its prime-time hearing, Donald J. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election.⚖️ 🐣 WaPo, Amber Phillips: 6 takeaways from the Jan. 6 committee’s first prime-time hearing http://wapo.st/3Q76s6J
⚖️ 🐣 RT @muellershewrote The committee has connected trump to the Flynn/Powell legal group to the tweet on December 19th to the Proud Boys and the attack on the Capitol. They have it. THEY HAVE IT. #January6thHearings
⚖️ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman We may be watching chilling video and wrenching testimony, but Donald Trump should be seeing handcuffs.
⚖️ 🐣 RT @elliotcwilliams Jared Kushner dismissing White House lawyers’ threats to resign as “whining” is what happens when people from outside government who don’t respect it come in and try to run it like a business.
💙 ⚖️ Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, spoke directly to her GOP colleagues during the hearing on the Jan. 6 attack: “I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AP/status/1535084654973394949?s=20/photo/1💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES That was the most compelling Congressional hearing I have ever seen. ¤ That is how America will see it. ¤ Congress may be mistrusted but the Select Committee will not be. s The Members will become iconic. ¤ Americans love a trial drama and this was brilliantly done.
📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1535084002989719576?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES 2/ All of the vandals, liars and MAGA extremists will be flushed out in a coherent story that people can understand. Those people are Americans and they like America. The facts and the presentation are going to hit MAGA like a Neptune missile piercing a Russian hull.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES 3/ There must be such amazing insanity swirling about Trump right now. He is surrounded by a pack of yes men and women, losers and nuts. Even they know he is going to bleed out. Every MAGA Congress member who begged for a pardon should be expelled.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES 4/ Tonight was different. Tonight, the truth prevailed in America for the first time in a long time. Tonight there was a coherent message and story. Tonight, no amount of Trump, Tucker or Fox bullshit could smother the truth. It will be told and it will be heard. goodnight Trump🐣 RT @frontlinepbs “It’s unimaginable to me … that any person in America would not favor an investigation of Jan. 6.” Read & watch an interview with J. Michael Luttig, who counseled Mike Pence’s team before the Capitol attack, ahead of his Jan. 6 committee appearance.
⋙ ▧ 🔊 PBS Frontline: The Frontline Interview: J. Michael Luttig http://to.pbs.org/3NHiFNC
// transcript, audio🐣 RT @BillKristol None dare call it fascism
⋙ 🐣 RT @ehananoki Carl Paladino, whose House bid is backed by third-ranked House GOPer Elise Stefanik, said on radio last year that Hitler is “the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status/1534904409339076608?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @RepKinzinger This is what happened on January 6th. The world watched as a violent mob attacked the @uscapitol; unleashing their rage on our frontline defenders. It was an insurrection—& it’s a moment in our history that we must ensure can never happen again.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters Ahead of today’s opening of the U.S. Capitol riot hearings, here’s a look at the key events from January 6, 2021, when former President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn his election defeat https://reut.rs/3trADeX
💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1534905214905774080?s=20/photo/1💙 ⚖️ 🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Before January 6, it was easy to dismiss the worst-case scenarios of democratic breakdown as the product of alarmist commentators or disgruntled former officials. But the writing was on the wall for years, @PippaN15 writes.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Pippa Norris: It Happened in America http://fam.ag/3zp3UuJ
// Democratic Backsliding Shouldn’t Have Come as a Surprise🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump now says what happened on J6 was “not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our country to Make America Great Again.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1534909172793462785?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @lukebroadwater Remember how two days after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr. sent texts to Mark Meadows w/ plans for how his dad could stay in power? ¤ Those plans came from Steve Bannon, per source. ¤ That & other new reporting in “Jan. 6: The Story So Far” out this AM
💙 ⚖️ ⋙ NYT: Jan. 6: The Story So Far http://nyti.ms/3Q9eJXHThe story so far has been pieced together through the prosecutions of rioters, the early stages of a broader Justice Department investigation, the work of the House select committee examining the attack and its origins, and the work of journalists.
At its heart is a grievance-filled, insecure president, unable to face the fact of his defeat, working with a cabal of loyalists in and out of government to pursue an evolving plan that unfolded in successive chapters, each in effect taking aim at a pillar of democracy.
There was a failed legal strategy that clogged the courts with fantastical conspiracy theories. It was followed by a plot to twist the Justice Department into backing Mr. Trump’s repeated lie that the election had been rigged and stolen from him, and consideration of proposals that he direct the military or the Homeland Security Department to seize voting machines.
Those were followed by a strong-armed attempt to subvert the Electoral College process and bludgeon Mr. Pence into taking part, all leading to the violent effort to keep Congress from formally affirming Mr. Trump’s loss on Jan. 6.
Taken as a whole, the narrative that has emerged — elements of which the House select committee on Jan. 6 will begin setting out on Thursday evening in the first of a series of hearings — is as chilling as it is audacious. …
💙 ⚖️ NYT: Jan. 6 Hearings Will Put Trump at the Center of Plot That Resulted in Capitol Riot http://nyti.ms/39jjE7U “Committee aides say the evidence will show that Mr. Trump was at the center of a ‘coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election’”
// The House panel investigating the attack will lead off its public sessions with video testimony from people close to the former president, and footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys.Committee aides say the evidence will show that Mr. Trump was at the center of a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election” that resulted in a mob of his supporters storming the halls of Congress and disrupting the official electoral count that is a pivotal step in the peaceful transfer of U.S. presidential power.
The 8 p.m. prime-time hearing is the first in a series of six planned for this month, during which the panel will lay out for Americans the full magnitude and significance of Mr. Trump’s systematic drive to invalidate the 2020 election and remain in power. …
The opening hearing will feature live testimony from a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys during the storming of the building, and a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who was injured as rioters breached barricades and stormed in. ¤ The committee also plans to present what aides called a small but “meaningful” portion of the recorded interviews its investigators conducted with more than 1,000 witnesses, including senior Trump White House officials, campaign officials and Mr. Trump’s own family members. …
The session will kick off an ambitious effort by the committee, formed last July after Republicans blocked the creation of a nonpartisan commission to investigate the attack, to lay out for Americans the full story of an unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy that led to a deadly riot, an impeachment and a crisis of confidence in the political system that continues to reverberate. …
Other hearings are expected to focus on various aspects of the committee’s investigation, including Mr. Trump’s promotion of the lie that the election had been stolen, despite being told his claims were false; his attempts to misuse the Justice Department to help him cling to power; a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.; the way the mob was assembled, and how it descended on Washington D.C. on Jan. 6; and the fact that Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence for more than three hours while the assault was underway. …
⭕ 8 Jun 2022
⚖️ 🐣 RT @TomJChicago Trump badgered his conspirators to do the coup. He was the beneficiary. He’s attached to:
-“Alternate Electors” plot
-Eastman’s stop the count plot
-Clark at DOJ plot
-GA extortion & vote grab plot
-J6 violence to remove Pence & cancel electoral count
He’s finally in quicksand.⚖️ NYT: How to Watch the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings http://nyti.ms/3xADg0M
// The first of several upcoming hearings by the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol will be held on Thursday evening.🐣 RT @AccountableGOP NEW AD AIRING TODAY: It’s time to learn the truth about the Capitol attack.
💽 https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1534535325804122113?s=20/photo/1⭕ 7 Jun 2022 🎂
⚖️ 🐣 RT @HawaiiDelilah “Dr. Eastman’s actions in these few weeks indicate that his and President Trump’s pressure campaign to stop the electoral count did not end with Vice President Pence — it targeted every tier of federal and state elected officials.”
⋙ Politico: Judge sends another trove of Eastman emails to Jan. 6 committee http://politi.co/3MBxr7s
// The ruling is another victory for the Jan. 6 select committee.WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Don’t give up on Merrick Garland quite yet http://wapo.st/3zlyDsr Trump’s “pursuit of power by any means necessary — including endorsing and acceding to violence — is probative of criminal intent” – Brookings Institution guide to the Jan. 6 hearings
↥ ↧
💙 ⚖️ 📔 Brookings: Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality https://brook.gs/3msAPa2 by Norman Eisen, Donald Ayer, Joshua Perry, Noah Bookbinder, and E. Danya Perry🐣 RT @djrothkopf I’m kind of surprised at the amount of outrage that Fox will not cover the Jan 6 hearings. Fox was actively part of the coup attempt. They were the principal element in selling the “big lie.” They were the primary tool Trump used to mobilize the attack on our democracy.
⋙🐣 RT @djrothkopf I very much hope that the January 6th Committee…and frankly DoJ…both call out Fox’s role in the insurrection and the serial fraud of the Big Lie and, where possible, hold them accountable. We need to be crystal clear: No Fox, no Trump. No Fox, no coup.💙 ⚖️ WaPo Editorial: Ignore the GOP spin. The nation still hasn’t reckoned with Jan. 6. http://wapo.st/3ayeIMG “Jan. 6 happened because Trump and his allies tried to hack the electoral college, generating cockamamie legal arguments to justify what would have [been] a coup”
💙 ⚖️ 🐣 RT @RickPetree What’s about to be uncorked is orders of magnitude worse than Watergate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RickPetree This paper is from March 1974. History should repeat itself in the Trump investigation. @RepAdamSchiff @POTUS @HouseDemocrats @SenateDems @January6thCmte @TheJusticeDept https://twitter.com/RickPetree/status/1534324796531658753?s=20/photo/1⚖️ 🐣 RT @RepRaskin This week, @January6thCmte starts sharing evidence of the chilling inside plan to overturn the 2020 election and block the constitutional transfer of power. America will see footage and records we have documenting the dangerous extremist assault on our constitutional order.
⚖️ WaPo: Trump call Jan. 6 to ‘walk down to the Capitol’ prompted Secret Service scramble http://wapo.st/3MqQscD
// Agency’s actions are part of Jan. 6 committee probe into Trump’s role in inciting the violent attack⭕ 6 Jun 2022
⚖️ 🐣 RT @jsralton NEW: #ProudBoys leader Enrique Tarrio & four key lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy. ¤ The domestic extremist org now joins the #OathKeepers in being hit with this rare & serious charge. ¤ By @hsu_spencer
⋙ WaPo: Proud Boys leader Tarrio, 4 top lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy in widening Jan. 6 case http://wapo.st/3zhgGeN
// An indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in D.C. makes the Proud Boys the second far-right group whose members face the rare charge in the January 2021 Capitol attack, following the Oath Keepers and its founder Stewart Rhodes.Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, longtime chairman of the extremist group Proud Boys, was indicted on a new federal charge of seditious conspiracy with four top lieutenants on Monday. The charges expand the Justice Department’s allegations of an organized plot to unleash political violence to prevent the confirmation of President Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Tarrio, 38, was not in Washington that day, but allegedly guided the group’s activities from nearby Maryland as Proud Boys members engaged in the earliest and most aggressive attacks to confront and overwhelm police at several critical points on restricted Capitol grounds. One co-defendant, Dominic Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., broke through the first window of the building at 2:13 p.m. with a stolen police riot shield, authorities said.
A new 10-count superseding indictment returned Monday morning charges Tarrio, Pezzola and three other existing co-defendants — Ethan Nordean, of Seattle, Joe Biggs, of the Daytona Beach area, and Zachary Rehl, of Philadelphia — with coordinating travel to Washington and the movements of the group around the Capitol that day. The group is also accused of plotting to foment a riot and storm Congress, action that eventually forced the evacuation of lawmakers meeting to confirm the 2020 election results.
Federal prosecutors previously leveled the historically rare charge of seditious conspiracy for the first time in the Jan. 6 attack against the founder and leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, and 10 associates. Since filing the charges in January, a year after the mob violence, two of Rhodes’s co-defendants and one other Oath Keeper member have pleaded guilty to the charge and are cooperating with the Justice Department: Joshua James, 34, of Alabama, Brian Ulrich, 44, of Georgia, and William Todd Wilson, 44, of North Carolina.
But the new charges show that prosecutors are pulling together a wider picture of organization within extremist groups that shared overlapping if not common goals.At the same time, the deepening criminal investigation has exposed hints of coordination among groups, even as the FBI and Justice Department are expanding their probe into the ranks of former president Donald Trump’s political orbit. The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is expected to shine a spotlight on such connections in public hearings beginning Thursday.
⚖️ 🐣 RT @jsralton NEW: #ProudBoys leader Enrique Tarrio & four key lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy. ¤ The domestic extremist org now joins the #OathKeepers in being hit with this rare & serious charge. ¤ By @hsu_spencer
⋙ WaPo: Proud Boys leader Tarrio, 4 top lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy in widening Jan. 6 case http://wapo.st/3zhgGeN
// An indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in D.C. makes the Proud Boys the second far-right group whose members face the rare charge in the January 2021 Capitol attack, following the Oath Keepers and its founder Stewart Rhodes.🐣 RT @ISW “The Kremlin has gambled big on a maximal effort to achieve a minimal goal: capturing Severodonetsk.” It’s debatable if its capture “truly would be worth the cost for the Russians—especially if it means risking their hold on Kherson.” @daxe in @Forbes:
⋙ Forbes: Ukrainian Troops Counterattack In The South And East http://bit.ly/3MnPOwu
// Inasmuch as capturing Severodonetsk has become the Kremlin’s biggest near-term goal in Ukraine, the Ukrainian counteroffensive could spell disaster.🧵 RT @tomiahonen Deaded Generals Thread 1/ ¤ Let’s kill some Generals. NO, Twitter, no! I was not threatening any Russian Generals, no. I meant, let’s discuss this sudden outbreak of DGS, Dead Generals Syndrome, in a Thread. By some counts between 13 and 15 Generals have already died in Ukraine
📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1533793120676106241?s=20
⋙ 📋 🐣 RT @tomiahonen Deaded Generals Thread 2/ ¤ For context. In WW2, USA had a military nearly 100 times larger than what Russia now sent to Ukraine. USA fought in Asia against Japan + in Africa & Europe against Germany & Italy. & lost 4 Generals in 4 years of war. Russia lost 14 Generals in 14 weeks […]💙 🐣 My mother’s first husband died on D-Day. My father was on his way to Japan when the first atomic bomb was dropped. I’ve long been aware of the precariousness of life, the sacrifices of heroes and innocents. ¤ героям слава!
// “Glory to Heroes!”🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine FM @DmytroKuleba to @GLOBSEC: “It is Ukraine and the people of Ukraine who will define this war’s aims. We are fighting a just defensive war against invaders who came to our land to literally annihilate us, deprive us of our identity and our right to exist. ¤ #ArmUkraineNow
⭕ 5 Jun 2022
⚖️ WaPo, Max Boot: This is no time to hesitate in Ukraine http://wapo.st/3zi4kmq So far so good but Ukraine needs more and better artillery systems, air defense systems and fighter jets. The Powell Doctrine: When the US uses force, it should do so with the will and might to win
🐣 RT @McFaul If Putin wants to avoid further humiliation, save face, and take an off-ramp, he should end his invasion of Ukraine today. Continuing to fight will produce further humiliation, fewer opportunities for saving face, and worse off-ramps.
🐣 By 1959, the Ukrainian share of the population of Kherson was 63%; Russian 29%. 90%+ from Kherson Oblast voted for Ukrainian independence in 1/1991. (Wikipedia) http://bit.ly/3avPQFe
🧵 RT @TrentTelenko ↥↧ The bottom line is that the Russo-Ukrainian War will be going increasingly pear shaped for the Putin Regime because of its shortage of trained infantry. ¤ 10% of 700,000 active troops is 70,000 infantry. ¤ Russia has taken 79,000 casualties with 80% being infantry. ¤ 21/
📌 https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1533491433575002113?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TrentTelenko You should be looking for more #Severodonetsk type successful Ukrainian infantry counter attacks in the near future. ¤ 22/End🐣 RT @McFaul This! @k_sonin has it exactly right.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @k_sonin No one can humiliate Russia more than Putin did by invading Ukraine. He destroyed the Russian army’s reputation as a victor over nazis, made Russia an international pariah, and jeopardized its future. Defeating Putin will give Russia a chance to start a revival.🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Cheney isn’t one to make vague threats. I’m increasingly of the mind that when she accused Trump of crimes, she wasn’t being metaphorical & when Jamie Raskin said the hearings would “blow the roof off the House” he was expressing his actual view on how the hearings would proceed.
💙 ⚖️ ⋙ 🐣 RT @hugolowell New: Jan. 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney tells @costareports in an interview on CBS Mornings that she believes January 6 was a conspiracy: “I do. It is extremely broad. It’s extremely well-organized. It’s really chilling.”🧵 RT @anders_aslund For about two months, the fronts in Ukraine have moved minimally. Many talk about a stalemate & some foresee that Ukraine will have to give up the territories that Russia captured in the first week of the war & still keep. I don’t think so. Russia is likely to lose.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1533437714850258944?s=20⭕ 4 Jun 2022
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WaPo Editorial: John Durham’s probe of the Trump investigations has flopped http://wapo.st/3NnzAov “But [convictions] are tangential to the broader purpose and effect of Mr. Durham’s probe, which has … enabled right-wing agitators to erode trust in the FBI for political gain”Though Mr. Durham attacked the inspector general for his conclusion — a shocking move that tarnished his professional reputation — he has so far provided no persuasive rebuttal to these findings. That is because there is none. Mr. Trump’s own 2016 campaign manager had ties to Russians close to the regime of Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin clearly sought to help Mr. Trump win the election. Mr. Trump himself publicly asked Russia to hack Ms. Clinton’s emails and displayed bizarre affection for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. These and many other facts justified the FBI’s Russia investigation. Meanwhile, the FBI did nothing to create an “October surprise” to hurt Mr. Trump; it was only after the election that key details about the Russia investigation emerged publicly.
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 ↥↧ Macron is worried about Putin facing defeat, but it’s exactly what Putin and all Russians must face before Russia can join the civilized world. No more delusions of empire. Only then can Russia be a real nation, not a mafia front and a gas station with nukes.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1533192039885680642?s=20⚖️ 🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski The walls are closing in on him, justice is coming, and all he can do these days is alternately rage and whine to his sycophantic cultists. Text Block: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1533255045491326977?s=20/photo/1
🚫⋙ 🐣 RT @real Wow! Peter Navarro, our brilliant Harvard educated White House Trade Official who was by far the toughest advocate for Tariffs, Taxes & powerful Regulations on China, was just handcuffed, shackled, and put into prison because he didn’t obey the orders of + the Unselect Committee of political THUGS, many of whom were invoived with Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the Mueller Report Scam and, of course, the now fully debunked RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA Con. They’ve gone CRAZY!!!🧵 RT @Gerashchenko_en 1/5 Western views about the outcome of war in 🇺🇦 differ. Pessimism, then a surge of optimism and pessimism again. Now, with 🇷🇺 occupying 20% of 🇺🇦, and heavy battles on #Donbas there are talks ny some politicians in the West about ending the war with concessions of 🇺🇦 territory.
📌 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1533135683660947456?s=20🐣 🌎 RT @ChuckPfarrer SEVERODONETSK / 1630 UTC 04 JUN/ Having determined to take the city, RU inadvisedly committed to a costly urban fight. Choosing to make a defensive stand in highly favorable urban terrain, UKR appears now to have lured RU forces into a fruitless diversion of men and materiel. https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1533125756536094722?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Zelensky urges US mayors to cut ties with Russian cities: ‘Don’t let the murderers call you their brothers and sisters.’ ¤ In an address to the US Conference of Mayors, Zelensky urged them to cut “brotherhood” ties with Russian cities and help reconstruct Ukraine after the war.
🐣 RT @DmitryOpines In addition to sticking close to Russian troops to negate air and artillery advantages, it looks like Ukraine is trying to exploit Russian weaknesses in communication, coordination and leadership. ¤ The Russian Army just isn’t built for chaotic battlefields.
⋙ 🐣 🌎 RT @ChuckPfarrer SEVERODONETSK /2115 UTC 03 JUN/ Sources indicate UKR advances E of Bohdan Lishina St, w/ a possible breakthrough in the industrial area north of the P-66 HWY. UKR tactics of maintaining close contact with RU forces has negated RU air and artillery superiority. Developing. https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1532831905271488520?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder It is senseless to shelter Putin from the sense that he is losing. He will figure that out for himself, and he will act to protect himself. 1/17
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1533099435269447681?s=20⚖️ 🐣 RT @JoeNBC An important reminder of how:
1. Barr & Trump stooges lied about Obama illegally unmasking Flynn. Barr admitted it’s false,
2. Same Trump stooges lied about Hillary spying on Trump. We now know it never happened.
3. Lied when attacking FBI. Disgraceful.
⋙ WaPo, Dana Milbank: Bill Barr’s reign of innuendo — unmasked http://wapo.st/3Miah5GA jury deliberated for just six hours before reaching a unanimous verdict acquitting former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, leaving the Barr-appointed special prosecutor John Durham with essentially nothing to show for his years-long attempt to find wrongdoing by the FBI and the Clinton campaign in the Trump-Russia probe. …
Barr made space for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to predict “one of the biggest political scandals in American history”; for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) to proclaim a scandal “bigger than Watergate”; for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to claim there was a “smoking gun found”; for Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) to declare “a threat to democracy itself”; and for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to allege that Obama officials “were unmasking anyone and everyone so that they could leak information to a press that was willing to take that illegal information.”
Now we know Trump’s DOJ, in its own words, had “not found evidence” of inappropriate unmasking. And we see Durham’s claim of wrongdoing in the Russia probe ending in swift acquittal.
Barr, unmasked, now claims the federal jurors in Durham’s failed case violated their oaths by following political biases. “A D.C. jury,” he said, “is a very favorable jury for anyone named Clinton and the Clinton campaign. Those are the facts of life. … There are two standards of the law, and we have had to struggle with that.”
So, now, Barr is trying to discredit the centuries-old American jury system. It’s just one more “story” he tells to replace the rule of law with the reign of innuendo.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC How long will DOJ allow an investigation to proceed when Barr admits he only started it to virtue signal to Trump conspiracy theorists, freaks, and weirdos? Barr says convictions don’t matter? He just wants Durham to spread mush on pleadings and leak them to Trumpy news outlets.
⭕ 3 Jun 2022
⚖️ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 I was always amused that Navarro gave a cute nickname to his criminal conduct: the Green Bay Sweep. If I rob a bank but I label my conduct “the Tom Brady accelerated withdraw” I still, you know, committed a crime. Navarro’s done. Let’s Hope he flips on Trump, Meadows & company.
⚖️ NBCNews: Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro indicted on contempt of Congress charges http://nbcnews.to/3mcuuiL
// The charges stem from his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent One hundred days ago Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, leaving cities destroyed, thousands dead and millions seeking refuge.
⋙ 🖼 KyivIndependent: 100 days of Russia’s war in photos http://bit.ly/3NWttHl
// Refugees fleeing war zone Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched on Feb. 24, has caused the largest migration crisis of the 21st century …DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: How Biden Can Help Ukraine Win the Long War http://bit.ly/3GR0u5M “Of all the world’s leaders, by far the most important in maintaining the resolve to support Ukraine until … Kyiv chooses, from a position of strength, to negotiate, is Joe Biden.”
// Here are the six things the U.S. must do to fulfill its policy that the war ends on Ukraine’s terms—not Russia’s.⭕ 2 Jun 2022
WaPo Editorial: The Trump census sabotage campaign might have backfired http://wapo.st/3GLSFy4 The count may have deprived red states FL and TX of seats and added seats to blue states MN and RI
💙 ⚖️ WaPo: John Dean, Watergate’s golden boy, is back in the spotlight 50 years later http://wapo.st/3Q9YBFw “Fifty years after the Watergate break-in, Dean is the star of ‘Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal,’ a new CNN speciaon the conspiracy and corruption that took down Nixon”
// Dean stars in a new CNN series on the Watergate break-in and aftermath 🐣 RT @mccaffrey3d NBC NEWS NOW (Streaming) 2 June 2022. UKR fighting in the Donbas under heavy Russian artillery fire. Suffering significant casualties. Russians have fired 2500 cruise missiles into UKR cities. Critical that we accelerate and increase weapons delivery.Newsweek: Exclusive: Putin Treated for Cancer in April, U.S. Intelligence Report Says http://bit.ly/3GNw4Ry
⚖️ 🐣 RT @January6thCmte 🗓️ Thursday, June 9th at 8:00pm ¤ The Select Committee will hold a hearing to provide the American people with a summary of our findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
🐣 RT @john_sipher “In a way, Durham has provided a valuable service. His inability to uncover evidence of a hoax confirms that Trump’s denials and diversions have been the real hoax all along.”
⋙ MotherJones: How John Durham’s Probe Has Exposed Trump’s Russia Con http://bit.ly/3m6ylhk
// His three-year investigation has so far shown the only hoax was orchestrated by the former president.🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky today on the consequences of Russia’s invasion: 20% of Ukraine’s territory, almost 125,000 sq km, is under Russian control. About 300,000 sq km are contaminated with mines and UXO. Almost 12 million people have been internally displaced, more than 5 million fled abroad.
⚖️ CNN Exclusive: Republicans who texted Meadows with urgent pleas on January 6 say Trump could have stopped the violence http://cnn.it/3NfYOF5 “CNN obtained the 2,319 text messages that Meadows selectively handed over to the January 6 committee in December”
🐣 RT @FSIStanford It is in America’s interest for #Ukraine to emerge from this war as a sovereign democracy in charge of its own foreign policy, militarily strong, territorially secure, and economically viable. ¤ @McFaul | @LarryDiamond | @FukuyamaFrancis | @steven_pifer
⋙ TheHill 36 experts agree: Stay the course in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3NM9mf2🐣 ◕ RT @nicolodeon3559 red line is when the ban on ar-15s was lifted https://twitter.com/nicolodeon3559/status/1531420487091355648?s=20/photo/1
// “Indiscriminate killings of multiple victims in a public place, since 1982” ; tags: automated rifles AK47 AR15 mass shootings school shootings gun control🐣 RT @ChristopherJM New @USAmbKyiv Bridget Brink presented her credentials to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today at Kyiv’s St. Sofia Cathedral. She’s the first American ambassador here since Marie Yovanovitch was recalled by Trump three years ago.
🐣 RT @a_anusauskas It is UNBELIEVABLE but 🇹🇷 just agreed to give the Bayraktar that 🇱🇹gathered money for, ❗️FOR FREE❗️. It is amazing! For the gathered money we will buy the needed ammunition for the Bayraktar and the rest of money will also go for support of 🇺🇦. Thank you Türkiye! 🇹🇷🇱🇹🇺🇦
🧵 RT @OliverBullough I just got asked onto @TimesRadio (which was nice) to talk about this article. ¤ It is a near-perfect example of the kind of gimmick that UK politicians have chucked out over the last few months, like chaff behind a Mi-8. 1/n [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/OliverBullough/status/1532273369118392322?s=20
// Oligarchs’ money won’t cover war damage and getting to it will be challenging⭕ 1 Jun 2022
MoscowTimes, Lucian Kim: Russia Isolated in Its Postimperial Phantasm http://bit.ly/3tebFzS
Vladimir Putin’s blitzkrieg in Ukraine was supposed to be a stroke of strategic genius: in one fell swoop, a resurgent Russia would redraw the map of Europe, reducing Ukraine to a demilitarized zone in the Kremlin’s cordon sanitaire against the West. NATO, at long last, would be stopped in its tracks and put in its place. ¤ Not without reason is Putin often called a master tactician but poor strategist. Only now he is searching for something he can sell as a tactical victory.
In more than three months of fierce fighting, Russia has failed to take Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, or its second city, Kharkiv. Seizing the port of Mariupol has come at the cost of leveling the city. Evidence of atrocities committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians is mounting by the day. The toll in human lives already runs into the tens of thousands, with countless more damaged irreparably.
From a strategic point of view, Putin’s attack on Ukraine has thrown back Russia to its weakest position since World War II. ¤ Ukrainians have shown they are ready to fight and die, and that they will never accept a Russian puppet regime. In a best-case scenario for the Kremlin, Russia ends up controlling swaths of eastern Ukraine, including a land corridor from Russia to Crimea, allowing Russian forces to continue threatening Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline and the country’s center.
Yet even this state of play would hardly improve the Kremlin’s hand compared to what it was before the February invasion, when Russia already occupied Crimea and had the Ukrainians tied down in a low-level war in the eastern part of the country. Strategically speaking, the status quo ante was favorable to Russia, since the simmering conflict was draining Ukraine’s scarce resources and hobbling its aspirations to join the European Union and NATO. Germany and France, signatories to the stalled Minsk agreements-based peace process, were uninterested in inflaming tensions with Russia over Ukraine — as was the United States. After taking office, President Biden tried to patch up relations with Moscow so that he could focus on his main foreign policy priority, China. Biden held a summit with Putin, refused to give Ukraine any clearer guidance on NATO membership, and ignored calls to sanction Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. …
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Everywhere the Ukrainians liberate an area from Russian occupation, they find Russian atrocity. This is one reason Ukrainians fight for their land: so as not to abandon their people to rape, deportation, and murder.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ngumenyuk Working in Kherson region, and South,talking to the people from liberated villages I feel like saying: there is nothing worst that the Russian occupation.Even shelling isn’t so devastation.On the photo – the house in a small village where local men were tortured, one killed https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1532142790024495104?s=20/photo/1💙 ⚖️ 🧵 RT @kyledcheney NEW: Remember when a judge determined that one of John EASTMAN’s emails was subject to the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney-client privilege? ¤ That document — a Dec. 13, 2020 memo to Rudy Giuliani — was just made public in new court filings. Read it:
📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1531997906634432514?s=20
⋙ Politico: Read the Trump-world legal memo that a judge ruled was likely part of a criminal effort to overturn the election. http://politi.co/3NND3MW
// An attorney sketched out a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
⋙⋙ Court document [pdf] http://bit.ly/3zaU1AE 6p
// Letter from Chesebro to Giuliani🐣 RT @tvtoront[o] 😔 60-100 Ukrainian servicemen are being killed every day, and another 500 are being wounded. That is how we keep our defensive lines, President Volodymyr Zelensky informed to American television Newsmax.
⭕ 31 May 2022
🧵 RT @TutorLarissaUA Since the beginning of the RU-UA war, many people have changed their attitude towards russian language. ¤ It became the aggressor’s language now and only few people want to learn it. ¤ Don’t you think so?
📌 https://twitter.com/TutorLarissaUA/status/1531654753553371136?s=20DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Top Russian Military Brass Caught Venting: ‘You’re Fucked, Putin—Motherfucker!’ http://bit.ly/38YSrqV “The pair’s expletive-laced venting session has surfaced as Western intelligence reports more and more mutiny by Russian troops on the battlefield”
// Two high-ranking Russian officers have been caught blasting Moscow’s failures in Ukraine and railing against military leadership, according to a new report.🐣 RT @Lcars24 The Republican Party has become the most dangerous organization in world history.—Noam Chomsky
🐣 🐣 RT @MarkHertling I continue to be amazed by the “they’re making the same mistakes” analysis. ¤ Some armies CAN change/adapt with new commanders IF those new leaders are good and IF that army had a solid training base & soldier culture before the war. ¤ Russia has neither.
⋙ NYT: Russian Military Is Repeating Mistakes in Eastern Ukraine, U.S. Says http://nyti.ms/3NPTHLY🐣 📊 RT @ShibleyTelhami Russia’s blatant violation of sovereignty and international law is what upsets Americans the most about the Ukraine war, across our partisan divide. https://brook.gs/3lBEOR8 via ¤ @BrookingsInst https://twitter.com/ShibleyTelhami/status/1531715870107525121?s=20/photo/1
// both parties ~equally (65%)🚫 🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger Awe. Looks like someone is a bit nervous. “PERFECT”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real The young, ambitious, Radical Left Democrat “Prosecutor” from Georgia, who is presiding over one of the most Crime Ridden and Corrupt places in the USA, Fulton County, has put together a Grand Jury to investigate an absolutely “PERFECT” phone call to the Secretary of State. Many lawyers, from both sides, were knowingly on the call. I also assumed it was taped. I called to fight a Rigged & Stolen Election, and they go after me instead of the people that Rigged and Stole it.
// 🚫=don’t want to amplifyNYT: President Biden: What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3zc21l6 “If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries”
WaPo: Michael Sussmann, who worked for Clinton, acquitted of lying to FBI in 2016 http://wapo.st/3t7LavO
// The verdict is a defeat for Special Counsel John Durham, appointed three years ago by then-Attorney General William Barr.🐣 RT @maxfras Dmitry Medvedev says sanctions prove the West hates all Russians and everything Russian including religion and culture. The West hates Tolstoy, Chekhov, Chaikovsky and Shostakovich. ¤ It was always thus, says Dimon, since Alexander Nevsky’s days ¤ (Via Telegram)
⋙ 🐣 No, the West considers Tolstoy, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich to be part of Western culture. ¤ Russian culture is oligarchs, war crimes, rigged elections, the GULAG, political prisoners and women in uniforms doing synchronized jumping on mini-trampolines⭕ 30 May 2022
Politico: The Putinologist: CIA chief’s long history with Putin gives him special insight http://politi.co/3x7pKRY
// Burns’ extensive experience in Russia makes him a singular figure among President Joe Biden’s aides.NYT: Peter Navarro, Former Trump Aide, Gets Grand Jury Subpoena in Jan. 6 Inquiry http://nyti.ms/3GzQrBR
// The subpoena, the latest indication of an expanding inquiry by federal prosecutors, seeks Mr. Navarro’s testimony and any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year.🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Monday 30 May 2022. Chris Jansing. The battle now an artillery war. Russia huge advantage air power and sea launched cruise missiles. As long as Putin in power his goal will be seizure of UKR and return to Mother Russia.
🐣 🌎 RT @andersostlund Very interesting map, the more read [red] the more intense the fighting is. Despite focusing pretty much all its efforts on capturing Sievierodonetsk Russia is only moving forward very slowly. I don’t think the war is turning in Russia’s favor, I think this might be its end game. https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1531155029511503876?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 29 May 2022
🧵 RT @ 3 month after #Putin declared the #RussianUkrainianWar the idea of ‘denazification’ of Ukraine is still being accepted by many. In this thread I’ll summarise why Putin’s war narrative refers to fighting Nazism and how the myth of the WW2 is interconnected with #RussianColonialism
📌 https://twitter.com/O_Ostapchuk/status/1530829029896605696?s=20⭕ 28 May 2022
NYT: Trump’s Primary Losses Puncture His Invincibility http://nyti.ms/3MZGFLw
// With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates falling to defeat in recent primaries, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.⭕ 27 May 2022
⭕ 26 May 2022
NewEasternEurope, Daniel Jaroslak: Delusions of empires past http://bit.ly/3x5VSFp
// Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is simply another imperialistic adventure. As history has shown, the end of an empire does not mean the loss of imperial ambitions. Unless Russia faces a complete and total defeat in Ukraine and is forced to contend with its past and current aggressions, there is very little to suggest that Russia will end its imperialistic mindset.WaPo Editorial: Now is not the time to seek a deal with Putin http://wapo.st/3t3Tcpj “It would be a disaster — both moral and strategic — if Mr. Putin were invited to talks before his major war objectives had been thwarted”
AlArabiya: Putin can’t dictate peace in war he ‘won’t win’: Scholz http://bit.ly/3MT8AwV
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be allowed to dictate peace in a war that he “will not win” in Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday. ¤ Putin has “already failed in all his strategic aims,” the German leader told the World Economic Forum in Davos. ¤ Russia’s plan to capture all of Ukraine is “further away today than it was at the beginning” of its invasion on February 24 as Ukraine put up an impressive defense.
Putin “underestimated” the “resolve and strength” of allies in countering his aggression in Ukraine, said Scholz, noting that Moscow has also now pushed Finland and Sweden to join the NATO defense alliance.
“Our goal is crystal clear – Putin must not win this war. And I am convinced that he will not win it,” said the German chancellor.
Scholz, who has spoken several times with the Russian leader on the phone since Moscow’s invasion, said “Putin will only seriously negotiate peace when he realizes that he cannot break Ukraine’s defenses.” ¤ And Western allies, who have been arming Ukraine and imposing heavy sanctions on Russia, will continue their backing for Kyiv, he pledged. ¤ “It is a matter of making it clear to Putin that there will be no dictated peace,” said Scholz. ¤ “Ukraine will not accept that and neither will we.”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Behind all of these nuclear threats and claims that America wouldn’t help Europe if Russia decides to nuke it, there’s underlying panic about Russia being economically unprepared to keep waging this war. Watch:
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1529877619986006018?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews No Visa, Mastercard, iPhone, or McDonald’s, crowdfunding for drones, and sending toilet paper to the troops: ¤ The Kremlin’s mouthpieces who hyped up the war in Ukraine are now having a pity party over the crushing impact the conflict has had on Russia.
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin’s Puppets Can’t Stop Bitching About the Grueling Cost of His War http://bit.ly/3lQPiMw
// The Kremlin mouthpieces who hyped up the war in Ukraine are now having a pity party over the crushing impact the conflict has had on Russia.EuroWeekly: Russian troops accused of ‘purposefully exterminating female population in Kherson region’ http://bit.ly/3LTSZfd
Politico: Previously secret ‘alternative’ Mueller report goes public http://politi.co/3MYsy9p Manafort & Kilimnik — who the FBI suspects is a Russian intelligence agent — worked on a peace plan that would have constituted a backdoor means for Russia “to take over eastern Ukraine”
// Compendium of evidence gathered by the special counsel’s ‘Team M’ is heavily redacted.
⋙ Report: http://bit.ly/3z2F4ADThe report focuses on the work of what was known within Mueller’s office as “Team M” a group of investigators and prosecutors focused on connections between Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and businessmen and politicians friendly to Russia. ¤ The report details contacts between Manafort, his campaign deputy and longtime business partner Rick Gates and pro-Russian business figures. It argues that Manafort, who worked for Trump’s campaign without pay, expected to improve his financial situation as a result of his ties to a potential Trump administration.
Mueller’s prosecutors contend in the report that Manafort and Gates worked closely during the period with a Russian-Ukrainian political adviser the FBI has contended had close ties to Russian intelligence services, Konstantin Kilimnik. ¤ After the U.S. election, the men allegedly discussed by email the possibility of getting Trump to offer “a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push)” that could launch a peace process in Ukraine with Manafort as a U.S. special representative. Manafort and Kilimnik were later involved in polling about a peace plan that “Manafort conceded constituted backdoor means for Russia to take over eastern Ukraine,” the report says.
A top deputy to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, revealed in a book published in 2020 that the team he headed prepared a summary of all its work — apparently including details not contained in the final report Mueller submitted and the Justice Department made public in 2019. ¤ “At least for posterity, I had all the [team] members … write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation, and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files,” Weissmann wrote in his book, “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation.” …
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Fascinating. From the alternative Mueller report released today, Manafort and Kilimnik discussed a plan for Russia to take over the eastern part of Ukraine five times. One meeting is redacted for harm to an ongoing matter, and may be within the statute of limitations.
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1529949658998460417?s=20/photo/1🔄 🐣 RT @Lee__Drake Source is @oryxspioenkop’s incredible work here: http://bit.ly/3lLM511
Which then goes to a web scraper build by @mountainherder that feeds to this google sheet every hour: http://bit.ly/3auKzxX
💙 Which finally gets analyzed at this GitHub repo daily: http://bit.ly/3t2fCaB
⇈ ⇊
Orynx: Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine http://bit.ly/3lLM511
// 2/24/2022TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Only Ukrainians Will Decide When the War Is Over http://bit.ly/3ak6MhT
// And if you have to say “this is not appeasement,” it’s probably appeasement.… Kissinger isn’t alone in this opinion; the New York Times editorial board made a similar case a week earlier. Calling on the Ukrainians to be “realistic,” the Times said that Ukraine would likely lose territory and that Kyiv should act before Americans, in effect, get bored with the whole mess. “Confronting this reality may be painful,” they wrote, “but it is not appeasement.” ¤ If you have to say “This is not appeasement,” it’s probably appeasement.
Worse yet are the people who insist that Russia’s “interests” should be taken into account here, as if “Russia” and not Putin started this war. (I mean, of course, people like Professor John Mearsheimer, among others.) These arguments dovetail into warnings that we should not encourage any further humiliation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That ship has sailed (and sunk): Putin and the Russian military are already plenty humiliated. And as Ambassador Stephen Sestanovich recently quipped on Twitter: “Exactly how much Ukrainian territory does Putin get to keep to avoid being humiliated? (And does he get to decide?)” …
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand News: The Biden admin is preparing to send Ukraine advanced, long-range rocket systems—known as MLRS and HIMARS—that are now the top request from Ukrainian officials, multiple officials say. ¤ Approval could be announced as soon as next week.
⋙ CNN: US preparing to approve advanced long-range rocket system for Ukraine http://cnn.it/3Gn03Qa🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Three months into Putin’s genocidal total war on Ukraine, Putin’s Global Rescue Team is assembling again. Heads of state, media, pundits, all the usual suspects eager to preserve a horrific status quo & sacrifice thousands of Ukrainian lives, and call it peace. 1/13
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1529874670970884099?s=20🐣 RT @anneapplebaum I see that many are angry about high gas prices, high food prices….Blame the people who didn’t want to stop Putin when he invaded Ukraine in 2014. And think about how high the costs will be in another eight years if we don’t stop him now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum you think these awful things are happening in faraway places…when world wheat prices rise, they won’t seem so faraway🧵 RT @StratcomCentre Short explainer by Centre of Strategic Communication and Information Security: 1/9
// “Denazification, Putin style: What is it?”
📌 https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1529764136355241985?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @euronews 🇺🇦 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy slams the ‘great geopoliticians’ at the #wef22 in Davos who are suggesting that Ukraine give up some of its territory to halt the Russian invasion. ¤ This would just be an ‘illusion of peace’, Zelenskyy says. #UkraineRussia
💽 https://twitter.com/euronews/status/1529729365910626304?s=20/photo/1⭕ 25 May 2022
WaPo: Donald Trump recalibrates his standing in GOP after primary setbacks http://wapo.st/3PKylRB “Trump’s deliberations follow prominent defeats this month for his chosen candidates in Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina and now Georgia”
// The former president is seeking out information on potential 2024 rivals after defeats for his chosen candidates raise questions about his continued dominance of the Republican PartyWaPo: Brad Raffensperger defied Trump. Georgia voters rewarded him for it. http://wapo.st/3MPpJHC “Raffensperger put 40,000 miles on his Ford F-150 pickup truck, crisscrossing the state to speak to anyone who would listen”
// The Republican secretary of state, who refused the former president’s demands that he overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, prevailed in a GOP primary Tuesday that few thought he could winOn Tuesday, Raffensperger defeated his Trump-backed opponent, U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, by nearly 19 points. He did it by closing the gap among Republican voters, attracting Democrats who had celebrated his decision to uphold the law and, with 52 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field, avoiding the runoff that even his allies were predicting just days ago.
“The vast majority of Georgians are looking at honest people for elected office,” he told a clutch of cameras at his election night party in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta late Tuesday. “Someone who would do their job, follow the law and look out for them regardless of the personal cost to do so.” ¤ He added: “Standing for you, standing for the rule of law and election integrity, standing for the truth and not buckling under the pressure, is what people want.” …
More than 100 Georgians [had] packed into the Grand Theatre in Fitzgerald, the county seat [about a year ago]. Raffensperger learned later that some had driven hours to hear him speak — not because they were admirers, but because they believed he had failed to uncover the fraud that Trump falsely claimed had fueled Biden’s victory.
He told them that night that they did not have the facts. “Simply stated, what happened in 2020 is that 28,000 Georgians skipped the presidential race” while voting in races down-ballot, he recalled telling the crowd, in a speech that he would deliver again and again over the following year. “You have to share the facts, and then they have to understand that I do have the facts.”
Raffensperger put 40,000 miles on his Ford F-150 pickup truck, crisscrossing the state to speak to anyone who would listen. Early this month, he drove nearly four hours to Savannah for a Rotary lunch — and stayed the rest of the afternoon for a meet-and-greet with just over a dozen members of the local Jaycees. …
NYT: Intensifying Inquiry Into Alternate Electors Focuses on Trump Lawyers http://nyti.ms/39V2EEK
// In recent subpoenas, federal prosecutors investigating alternate slates of pro-Trump electors sought information about Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman and others.⭕ 24 May 2022
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump-endorsed candidate results in seriously contested GOP primaries:
Oz-31%
Cawthorn-31%
Herbster-30%
Vance-32%
McGeachin-25%
Hines-32%
Mastriano-43%
Perdue-22%
VJones-20%
Evans-23%
Hice-34%
Gordon-26%🐣 RT @atrupar Checking in on Trump-endorsed candidates in Georgia ¤ Perdue is losing to Gov. Kemp by more than 50 points (!). There will be no runoff ¤ Jody Hice is losing to SoS Raffensperger by 17 points. Raffensperger has over 51% as I type this, meaning a runoff is unlikely ¤ Bad omens for 45
AJC: Raffensperger wins Republican primary for Georgia secretary of state http://bit.ly/3MPY49y
🐣 📊 RT @SamRamani2 Zelensky’s refusal to make territorial concessions in exchange for peace is popular in Ukraine. 82% of Ukrainians support this approach.
🐣 RT @georgesoros Putin seems to have recognized that he made a terrible mistake when he invaded Ukraine. He also seems to know how weak his position is, which could make him an even bigger threat to open societies. Read my remarks from @Davos: https://bit.ly/3aldhRH
🐣 📋 RT @lesiavasylenko 1.3 million Ukrainians have been forcefully removed to #Russia. 250K are children. How did the world allow for deportation to be a real thing again?
🐣 RT @Tsihanouskaya The Belarus regime’s introduction of the death penalty for “attempted” terrorism is widely denounced by democratic nations & human rights groups. US @SecBlinken describes the actions as “those of an authoritarian leader desperate to cling to power through fear and intimidation.”
🐣 RT @jason_corcoran Incredible: Alexei @navalny said that the judge, who replaced his suspended sentence with a real one, handed him a letter “with regrets about her decision. ¤ ● Judge Natalia Repnikova gave him the letter through her lawyers. She regretted her decision and called him “a brave man”
⭕ 23 May 2022
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The War Won’t End Until Putin Loses http://bit.ly/3sU4Pz3 “[A] true defeat could force the reckoning that should have happened in the 1990s, … when the Soviet Union broke up but Russia retained all of the trappings and baubles of the Soviet empire”
// Offering the Russian president a face-saving compromise will only enable future aggression. http://bit.ly/3sU4Pz3[A] true defeat could force the reckoning that should have happened in the 1990s, the moment when the Soviet Union broke up but Russia retained all of the trappings and baubles of the Soviet empire—its UN seat, embassies, diplomatic service—at the expense of the other ex-Soviet republics. The year 1991 was the moment when Russians should have realized the folly of Moscow’s imperial overreach, when they should have figured out why so many of their neighbors hate and fear them. But the Russian public learned no such lesson. Within a decade, Putin, brimming with grievances, had convinced many of them that the West and the rest of the world owed them something, and that further conquests were justified.
Military loss could create a real opening for national self-examination or for a major change, as it so often has done in Russia’s past. Only failure can persuade the Russians themselves to question the sense and purpose of a colonial ideology that has repeatedly impoverished and ruined their own economy and society, as well as those of their neighbors, for decades. Yet another frozen conflict, yet another temporary holding pattern, yet another face-saving compromise will not end the pattern of Russian aggression or bring permanent peace.
🔄 🐣 RT @duty2warn The Jan. 6th Committe, who will reveal bombshell evidence against Trump in six public hearings, has announced its schedule. The first hearing will start at 8P on June 9th. The next 4 hearings will start at 10A on June 13, 15, 16 and 21. The final hearing is 8P on June 23.
♫ 🐣 RT @ua_parliament Thank you for #StandWithUkraine ¤ World must know the truth! ¤ #StopRussia https://twitter.com/ua_parliament/status/1528860031650877441?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @simpleplan The official music video for “Wake Me Up (When This Nightmare’s Over)” is out now! Watch now at https://bit.ly/36uZEOi🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Appearing on Russian state TV, head of RT Margarita Simonyan explained why Russia isn’t nuking Ukraine: not because it’s wrong, but because it’s not practical. They want those territories usable and don’t want to kill all inhabitants—only some of them—and need to sort them first.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Simply incredible language. If we heard an American or Brit TV anchor say this they’d be permanently off air.NYT, Michelle Cottle: Donald Trump Is Desperate for Vindication in Georgia http://nyti.ms/3Nt1IWT “A Kemp win would be a blow not only to Mr. Trump but also to the election denialism with which he has infected the G.O.P.”
MoscowTimes: Russian UN Diplomat Quits Over ‘Bloody and Needless’ Ukraine War http://bit.ly/3PC95Nx “In a statement, Boris Bondarev called the invasion ‘a crime’ and a ‘bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy’”
🐣 The head of the @DNC @Dems & Progressive Caucus should both be replaced for being asleep at the wheel (former) and being unable to compromise (latter): neither seem to see the MAGA train coming and that this election is about survival of Democracy @JamieHarrison__ @RepJayapal
🐣 RT @GlastnostGone Putin no doubt plans to capture all the Donbas region in east #Ukraine & then he’ll call for peace. He’ll gamble western leaders like Macron will again push the appeasement agenda which got us where we’re today. They’ll urge 🇺🇦 to ceasefire & hold years of pointless peace talks.
🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: U.S. announces 12 countries join Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a pact designed to bolster trade with Asian economies.
⋙ AP: Biden: US would intervene militarily if China invades Taiwan
// TOKYO (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China were to invade Taiwan … http://bit.ly/3LCTuKk
// Twitter: ⇈ ⇉ inside: Biden says recession not inevitable as he readies trade pact🐣 RT @GuyReuters TOKYO, May 23 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he would be willing to use force to defend Taiwan and that the United States stands with other nations to make sure China cannot use force in Taiwan.
⭕ 22 May 2022
NYT, Thomas Friedman: My Lunch With President Biden http://nyti.ms/3MItqPm It’s time for the far left to get real about its priorities given the stakes in this year’s election, learn to compromise and drop insane slogans like “defund the police”; democracy itself is at stake
What I felt afterward was this: For all you knuckleheads on Fox who say that Biden can’t put two sentences together, here’s a news flash: He just put NATO together, Europe together and the whole Western alliance together — stretching from Canada up to Finland and all the way to Japan — to help Ukraine protect its fledgling democracy from Vladimir Putin’s fascist assault.
In doing so, he has enabled Ukraine to inflict significant losses on Russia’s invading army, thanks to a rapid deployment of U.S. and NATO trainers and massive transfers of precision weapons. And not a single American soldier was lost. ¤ It has been the best performance of alliance management and consolidation since another president whom I covered and admired — who also was said to be incapable of putting two sentences together: George H.W. Bush. Bush helped manage the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, without firing a shot or the loss of a single American life.
I fear that we’re going to break something very valuable very soon. And once we break it, it will be gone — and we may never be able to get it back. ¤ I am talking about our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately, an ability we have demonstrated since our founding. The peaceful, legitimate transfer of power is the keystone of American democracy. Break it, and none of our institutions will work for long, and we will be thrust into political and financial chaos.
We are staring into that abyss right now. Because it is one thing to elect Donald Trump and pro-Trump candidates who want to restrict immigration, ban abortions, slash corporate taxes, pump more oil, curb sex education in schools and liberate citizens from mask mandates in a pandemic. Those are policies where there can be legitimate disagreement, which is the stuff of politics.
But the recent primaries and the investigations around the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol are revealing a movement by Trump and his supporters that is not propelled by any coherent set of policies, but rather by a gigantic lie — that Biden did not freely and fairly win a majority of Electoral College votes and therefore is an illegitimate president.
Thus, their top priority is installing candidates whose primary allegiance is to Trump and his Big Lie — not to the Constitution. And they are more than hinting that in any close election in 2024 — or even ones that aren’t so close — they would be willing to depart from established constitutional rules and norms and award that election to Trump or other Republican candidates who didn’t actually garner the most votes. They are not whispering this platform. They are running for office on it.
It is stomach-turning to watch the number of Trump Republicans running for office affirming his Big Lie, when we know that they know that we know that they know that they do not believe a single word of what they are saying. That’s Dr. Oz and J.D. Vance and so many others. Nevertheless, they are ready to hitch a ride on the Trump train to gain power. And they do it without even blushing. ¤ It reached its nadir, in my view, when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, so obsessed with becoming speaker of the House at any cost, actually lied about telling the truth. …
Biden is not blameless in this dilemma, nor is the Democratic Party — particularly its far-left wing. Under pressure to revive the economy, and facing big-ticket demands from the far left, Biden pursued expansive spending for too long. House Democrats also sullied one of Biden’s most important bipartisan achievements — a giant infrastructure bill — by making it hostage to other excessive spending demands. The far left also saddled Biden and every Democratic candidate with radical notions like “defund the police” — an insane mantra that would have most harmed the Black and Hispanic base of the Democratic Party had it been implemented.
To defeat Trumpism we need only, say, 10 percent of Republicans to abandon their party and join with a center-left Biden, which is what he was elected to be and still is at heart. But we may not be able to get even 1 percent of Republicans to shift if far-left Democrats are seen as defining the party’s future.
NPR (Mar): In ‘Servant of the People,’ viewers got a glimpse of the future President Zelenskyy http://n.pr/3MGz18L //➔ I just finished watching the entire series now on Netflix. What a ride! I can’t recommend it highly enough 👍
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture While the Russian Army’s offensive in the east continues, it is likely in the short term that they will reach the limit of their offensive capability. As such, today I explore what transitioning to a defensive strategy might mean for the Russians in Ukraine. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1528531623154958336?s=20🧵 RT @GicAriana It’s very exciting to find a growing number of intellectual, Ukrainian-centric voices on Twitter. The dominant narratives about Ukrainian language and culture have largely been out their hands in the Western academic and information space in general. Good to see a shift starting.
📌 https://twitter.com/GicAriana/status/1528533947520524289?s=20🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 As long as Putin is in power the goal of forcibly integrating Ukraine back into Mother Russia can only be put on hold. Vital that UKR actually defeat the Russian invasion forces if lasting peace is to be achieved. UKR needs steadfast economic support.
⭕ 21 May 2022
📋 Insider, Olga Laugman: Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, fires have occurred at 6 facilities of the military-industrial complex and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. http://bit.ly/3wC6w6O
// list; Officially, this is explained by violations of fire safetyWaPo: Russia tries to rebound in Ukraine as prospects for victory fade http://wapo.st/3wHmRFZ
⭕ 20 May 2022
🌎 🧵 RT @YMonastyrskyi Promised [thread] on the colonization of Donbas. ¤ “Donbas” comes from the mid-19th century industrial revolution. It is a type of “rust belt” economic region with a local identity tied to heavy industry. ¤ However, this does not imply that the region was lifeless in pre-modern times.
// Ukraine history with maps
📌 https://twitter.com/YMonastyrskyi/status/1527670597777514496?s=20🐣 RT @jimsciutto Wow: German Amb Emily Haber tells me Germany’s “fundamental assumption” that engagement with Russia would produce “stability, predictability and…even alignment” has been “pulverized.”
⭕ 19 May 2022
🐣 RT @APA Ukrainian medic recorded her time in Mariupol on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail. It was hidden in a tampon, and @AP journalists carried it through 15 Russian checkpoints to get it to the world. ¤ Now Yuliia Paievska is in Russian hands.
⋙ AP: Captive medic’s bodycam shows firsthand horror of Mariupol http://bit.ly/3G0e5qUNYT, Timothy Snyder: We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist. http://nyti.ms/3wD8yCm “It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. It has a cult of the dead, organized around World War II. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness, to be restored by a war … ”
We err in limiting our fears of fascism to a certain image of Hitler and the Holocaust. Fascism was Italian in origin, popular in Romania — where fascists were Orthodox Christians who dreamed of cleansing violence — and had adherents throughout Europe (and America). In all its varieties, it was about the triumph of will over reason.
Because of that, it’s impossible to define satisfactorily. People disagree, often vehemently, over what constitutes fascism. But today’s Russia meets most of the criteria that scholars tend to apply. It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. It has a cult of the dead, organized around World War II. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness, to be restored by a war of healing violence — the murderous war on Ukraine.
Reuters: U.S. aims to arm Ukraine with advanced anti-ship missiles to fight Russian blockade http://reut.rs/3ltjTQk
⭕ 18 May 2022
🧵 RT @IgorSushko 🚨🧵BREAKING: Osechkin’s Source: #Azovstal Prisoners of War, based on the orders of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), are being transported to pre-trial detention facilities in #Russia under control of the military counterintelligence & M departments of the FSB.⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1527059107940663296?s=20 🐣 RT @john_sipher Putin already lost. The myth of the astute strongman is destroyed forever.⋙ WaPo, David Ignatius: The new balance of power: U.S. and allies up, Russia down http://wapo.st/3lj4D8B
“We are now living in a totally new era,” Henry Kissinger, the master of grand strategy, said at a Financial Times forum this month. The former U.S. secretary of state said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “obviously miscalculated Russia’s capabilities to sustain a major enterprise — and when the time comes for settlement … we are not going back to the previous relationship but to a position for Russia that will be different because of this — and not because we demanded it but because they produced it.” …
In a rebalancing world, the United States can advance its interests in every direction. Let’s start with Europe: NATO’s center of gravity will shift eastward, as European nations such as Germany add military muscle and become more independent of Russian energy. NATO’s leverage will also extend north, to the new strategic prize of the Arctic, as Sweden and Finland join the alliance. A more European Ukraine may pull Russia and its remaining satellites toward the West, too. The right first step is a rapid move to draw Ukraine — as much as remains unoccupied by Russian forces — into the European Union.
“Putin has destroyed Russia’s reputation as a reliable supplier of energy,” says former national security adviser Tom Donilon. “Over time, it will mean a rewiring of the energy ecosystem.” …
Putin’s mistakes may be costly, too, for China, Russia’s main ally. President Xi Jinping and Putin pledged “no limits” to their friendship in a joint statement at the Beijing Olympics in early February, but Xi probably didn’t anticipate the folly of Putin’s invasion, and China has maintained only tepid support in the months since. …
Putin’s mistakes may be costly, too, for China, Russia’s main ally. President Xi Jinping and Putin pledged “no limits” to their friendship in a joint statement at the Beijing Olympics in early February, but Xi probably didn’t anticipate the folly of Putin’s invasion, and China has maintained only tepid support in the months since.
Donilon speaks of the “crucial middle powers” — such as India, Saudi Arabia and other gulf states, Southeast Asia, and Brazil — as places where “the United States has tremendous opportunities.”
Latin America is another region where the United States can expand its influence on the tide of Ukrainian success. Brazil, the largest economy in the region, is an obvious partner. The administration has even found a way to advance relations with Venezuela, close to a Russia-Cuban surrogate, announcing a breakthrough compromise on oil production on Tuesday.
The Ukraine war has reminded the world of an inescapable fact: America’s military might, intelligence dominance and strategic partnerships are overwhelmingly powerful. The changes in the balance of power are still in process. But the world is different from what it was before Feb. 24, and for now, it’s going America’s way.
Reuters: Fears for Mariupol defenders after surrender to Russia http://reut.rs/3wpnPIb
⭕ 17 May 2022
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Today, an examination of the Ukrainian strategy of ‘corrosion’, that – so far – has seen it successfully fend off a larger and (theoretically, at least) more powerful invader. 1/25
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1526659648312356865?s=20NYT: Justice Dept. Is Said to Request Transcripts From Jan. 6 Committee http://nyti.ms/38ym2as
// The committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people so far, and the transcripts could be used as evidence in potential criminal cases or to pursue new leads.… Thus far, the Justice Department has prosecuted more than 800 people on charges related to the storming of the Capitol. But over the past several months, the department has taken steps to widen its focus substantially to look at the planning for the rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the riot while also signaling that its investigation would encompass the broader efforts to overturn the election. And in recent weeks, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has bolstered the core team tasked with handling the most sensitive and politically combustible elements of the inquiry.
Several months ago, the department quietly detailed a veteran federal prosecutor from Maryland, Thomas Windom, to the department’s headquarters. He is overseeing the politically fraught question of whether a case can be made related to other efforts to overturn the election, aside from the storming of the Capitol. That task could move the investigation closer to Mr. Trump and his inner circle. …
🧵 RT @IgorSushko All #FSBletters from #WindofChange inside the #FSB so far in chronological order. 1st: The first letter that started it all.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1526733432788701184?s=20⭕ 16 May 2022
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas In case you missed this moral disaster in the making:
⋙⋙ Politico [EU]: Europe’s leaders fall out of key on Ukraine http://politi.co/3FQaDPo
// Germany, France and Italy are making overtures to Moscow.
⋙ 🐣 Russia has made itself a pariah state, rejecting all “European values” (per Putin and his propagandists), and is fighting a barbaric war of annihilation; it has removed ITSELF from the community of civilized nations and should be shunned and shamed for years if not decades🐣 RT @apmassaro3 Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is without a doubt among the great heroes who have emerged in response to Russia’s genocidal war
⋙ NYT: Estonia’s Tough Voice on Ukraine Urges No Compromise With Putin http://nyti.ms/3MtkY6E🐣 RT @HannaLiubakova President @ZelenskyyUa: “A difficult day. But this day, like all others, is aimed at saving our country & our people. I want to emphasize that Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive.” The leader who values human life. 266 Ukrainian servicemen were evacuated from Azovstal as of now
🐣 RT @Hromadske President @ZelenskyyUa confirmed that the operation to rescue defenders of Mariupol is underway. ‘Thanks to the actions of Ukrainian military, Armed Forces, intelligence, negotiation team, ICRC and UN, we hope to save the lives of our service members,’ said the President
🐣 RT @juliaioffe God, I can’t believe what a strategic genius Putin is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters Switzerland’s defense ministry is tilting closer to NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, putting its fabled neutral status to test https://reut.rs/39ri9UEMoscowTimes: Ukrainian Soldiers Evacuated From Mariupol Azovstal Steelworks http://bit.ly/3FVqqwC
// The Ukrainian army said the soldiers in Mariupol had stopped Russian forces from rapidly capturing the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.🐣 📋 RT @StateDept […] Text Block: FACT: The United States and the European Union are home to 780 MILLION PEOPLE who share democratic values and the largest economic relationship in the world. https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1526412193171771392?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EliotACohen Fascinating. By the way, calling the aid program Lend Lease was a wise thing to do, conveying as it does the right scale and urgency of Western support. More broadly, a case of the Russian information bubble being penetrated by reality.
⋙ 🐣 RT @francis_scarr In an extremely rare moment of candour on Russian state TV today, defence columnist Mikhail Khodaryonok gave a damning assessment of Russia’s war in Ukraine and his country’s international isolation. It’s fairly long but worth your time so I’ve added subtitles.
💽 https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/1526402771087462400?s=20/photo/1Reuters: Ukrainian troops evacuate from Mariupol, ceding control to Russia http://reut.rs/3LkUzq9
🧵 RT @MarkHertling This thread on River Crossing Operations (RCOs) by my friend and colleague @WarintheFuture is excellent! [embedded] ¤ MG Ryan speaks eloquently to the doctrine & training requirements of something as difficult as an RCO. ¤ That comes about due to a METL assessment! ¤ What’s that? A [thread] 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1526255906614300679?s=20🐣 RT @Kasparov63 After 15 misspent years acting like everyone, no matter how evil, should be a friend, the US and the Europe are finally realizing that some enemies are worth having. You don’t negotiate with a cancer like Putin while he kills you, you cut it out.
↥ ↧
WSJ, Gary Kasparov: This Is No Time to Go Wobbly on Russia http://on.wsj.com/3FPccx4 “We will see how committed Ukraine’s allies really are as the war moves into a new phase in which defense is not enough”
// Appeasing Putin has cost the free world dearly. We have an opportunity to rediscover our values[W]e have a conflict with global ripples affecting everything from Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas to the food supply of several African nations. This is the high price we must pay to stop Mr. Putin now to avoid an even higher price later—the eternal lesson of appeasement.
There are still signs that some Western leaders haven’t yet learned that isolating Mr. Putin and responding to him with strength is the only way to make lasting progress. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke last week about the need to negotiate with Mr. Putin, to give him face-saving off-ramps. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Russian counterpart Friday to urge a cease-fire, potentially leading to the sort of “frozen conflict” Mr. Putin loves because he simply ignores the restrictions while consolidating and rearming.
I’ve long said that Mr. Putin is a Russian problem and must be removed by Russians. But the West needs to stop helping him. Every phone call that legitimizes his authority, every cubic meter of gas and every barrel of oil imported from Russia is a lifeline to a dictatorship that is shaking for the first time.
If the goal is to save Ukrainian lives, as Western leaders say, then the only way to do it is to arm Ukraine with every weapon President Volodymyr Zelensky wants as quickly as possible. A cease-fire that leaves Russian forces on Ukrainian soil would only allow Mr. Putin to continue his genocide and mass deportations under cover, as he’s been doing since he first invaded in 2014.
There are also those who openly take Mr. Putin’s side even now. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is blocking a European Union ban on Russian oil imports, a supply that is putting tens of billions of dollars every month into Mr. Putin’s war machine. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is threatening to disrupt Finland’s and Sweden’s accession into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, although it’s likely he’s looking to gain something for himself, as usual. In the U.S., Sen. Rand Paul has held up a new emergency financial-aid package to Ukraine—money, by the way, that would mostly be spent with American suppliers.
On May 9, President Biden signed the first lend-lease bill since World War II to speed aid and armaments to Ukraine. It was perfectly timed for Russia’s Victory Day, the annual celebration of the Nazis’ defeat, which has been turned into a perversion of patriotism that frames anyone or any nation that opposes Mr. Putin as a “fascist.” The real fascism is in the mirror as hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing for the exits realize.
As for the 144 million Russians remaining in Mr. Putin’s police state bombarded with increasingly toxic propaganda for more than two decades, they have hard choices to make as Mr. Putin’s facade of stability crumbles and defeat in Ukraine looms. A dozen recent attacks on Russian military-recruiting offices are an indication of what might be coming.
The original Lend-Lease Act of 1941 allowed the Soviet Union to fend off Hitler’s invasion. Now the army boot is on the other foot if the U.S. reclaims its honorable heritage as the arsenal of the free world to help Ukraine defeat Mr. Putin’s invasion.
The bill is also a sign that Mr. Biden is finally shaking off the legacy of his days as vice president, the crucial period when Mr. Putin went from aspiring autocrat to full-blown dictator as the free world sat on its collective hands. When Mr. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, Western leaders said it was better to maintain economic and political ties rather than punish him. This is the engagement policy we were told would eventually liberalize Russia—and China—by tying it to the free world.
Barack Obama epitomized the trend. As a candidate, under pressure from John McCain’s campaign, he condemned Mr. Putin’s incursion into Georgia. But President Obama was quick to make clear to Mr. Putin and other dictators that America would be leading any remaining freedom agenda from behind. The now-infamous “reset” renewed Mr. Putin’s credentials as he cracked down on the vestiges of Russian civil society. In a 2012 debate, Mr. Obama’s mocked Republican challenger Mitt Romney for stating, accurately, that Russia was America’s top geopolitical foe.
This attitude led to 2014, when Mr. Putin was emboldened enough to cast off any democratic trappings in Russia, invade Ukraine, and 2016, when he interfered in British and U.S. elections. In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed ahead with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, increasing dependence on Russian energy when the opposite was needed. Now it’s being done abruptly and painfully. Perhaps Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel could tour Kyiv together to see the damage they helped cause and to apologize to the Ukrainian people.
Mr. Putin’s corrupt and incompetent military is good only at brutality and massacring civilians, but has had eight years to entrench in the occupied east that Ukraine’s forces are now approaching. We will see how committed Ukraine’s allies really are as the war moves into a new phase in which defense is not enough. Will they help Ukraine win, to destroy Mr. Putin’s war machine, and to restore all Ukrainian territory? Will they keep sanctions in place to increase domestic pressure on Mr. Putin and to let his mafia know that there is no way back to the civilized world for them and their families while Mr. Putin is in power?
The free world that won the Cold War is remembering how to fight and rediscovering the values that give meaning to the fight. That’s bad news for Mr. Putin and the other dictators watching closely, from Beijing to Tehran to Caracas. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and their nation, and for the free world. Let it not be as a proxy, but as a partner.
WaPo Editorial: Russia is losing. That might make Putin more dangerous. http://wapo.st/3wylV6B
⭕ 15 May 2022
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs .@ninakhrushcheva discusses the declining power of the high-profile personalities that once dominated Russian institutions and corporations—and the rise of an anonymous and repressive security bureaucracy that answers to Putin alone.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Nina Khrusheva: The Coup in the Kremlin http://fam.ag/3yyOsvE
// Putin and the security services have captured the Russian state.On December 20, 1999, Vladimir Putin addressed senior officials of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) at its Lubyanka headquarters near Moscow’s Red Square. The recently appointed 47-year-old prime minister, who had held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the FSB, was visiting to mark the holiday honoring the Russian security services. “The task of infiltrating the highest level of government is accomplished,” Putin quipped. ¤ His former colleagues chuckled. But the joke was on Russia.
Putin became interim president less than two weeks later. From the start of his rule, he has worked to strengthen the state to counteract the chaos of post-Soviet capitalism and unsteady democratization. To achieve that end, he saw it necessary to elevate the country’s security services and put former security officials in charge of critical government organs.
In recent years, however, Putin’s approach has changed. More and more, bureaucracy has displaced the high-profile personalities that previously dominated. And as the Russian president has come to rely on these bureaucratic institutions to further his consolidation of control, their power has grown relative to other organs of the state. But it was not until February, when Putin gave the orders first to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and then, a few days later, to send Russian troops into Ukraine, that the complete takeover by the new security apparatus became apparent.
In the early days of the war, most branches of the Russian state seemed blindsided by Putin’s determination to invade, and some prominent officials even seemed to question the wisdom of the decision, however timidly. But in the weeks since, government and society alike have lined up behind the Kremlin. Dissent is now a crime, and individuals who once held decision-making power—even if circumscribed—have found themselves hostages of institutions whose single-minded purpose is security and control. What has happened is, in effect, an FSB-on-FSB coup: Russia used to be a state dominated by security forces, but now a faceless security bureaucracy has become the state, with Putin sitting on top. …
… Russia’s security services trace their origins all the way back to Ivan the Terrible’s brutal bodyguard corps, the oprichniki, in the sixteenth century and Peter the Great’s Secret Chancellery in the eighteenth century. Yeltsin’s attempt at reform could not permanently suppress a system with such deep historical roots any more than Khrushchev’s could four decades earlier.
In fact, KGB officers were relatively well equipped to endure the collapse of communism and the transition to capitalism. To the security services, the Soviet-era call for a classless society of proletarians had always been merely a slogan; ideology was a tool for controlling the public and strengthening the hand of the state. Former members applied that pragmatic approach as they rose to elite positions in post-Soviet Russia. As Leonid Shebarshin, a former high-level KGB operative, has explained, it was only natural that those who trained under Andropov for a secret war against external and internal enemies—NATO, the CIA, dissidents, and political opposition—should become the new Russian bourgeoisie. They could handle irregular working hours, succeed in hostile environments, and use interrogation and manipulation tactics when called for. They squeezed every last drop of labor out of their employees and subordinates.
One of their number, Putin, was himself lauded as a pragmatist by Western diplomats after he rose from obscurity to become president of Russia in 2000. Even then, he made no secret of his intention to establish Andropov-style absolute authority, quickly moving to limit the power of the capitalist barons who had flourished in the 1990s under Yeltsin’s frenzied presidency. In Putin’s mind, an independent oligarchy in control of strategic industries, such as oil and gas, threatened the stability of the state. He ensured that business decisions relevant to the national interest were made instead by a handful of trusted people—the so-called siloviki, or affiliates of the state’s military and security agencies. These individuals effectively became managers or guardians of state-controlled assets. Many were from Putin’s native Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg) and most had served alongside him in the KGB. On the corporate side, their ranks include Igor Sechin (Rosneft), Sergey Chemezov (Rostec), and Alexey Miller (Gazprom), while matters of state protection are handled by Nikolai Patrushev (secretary of the Security Council), Alexander Bortnikov (director of the FSB), Sergei Naryshkin (director of the Foreign Intelligence Service), and Alexander Bastrykin (head of the Investigative Committee), among others.
Putin has been convinced that strengthening the state’s “extraordinary organs” would prevent upheaval of the kind that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putting former KGB operatives in charge seemed to offer some economic and political stability. In an effort to maintain that stability, Putin acted in 2020 to extend his presidency, proposing constitutional amendments to circumvent the term limits that would remove him from office in 2024. …
Putin’s decision to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and subsequently to launch a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, followed a similar pattern of punishment for political deviation: he sought to penalize an entire country for what he deemed its “anti-Russian” choice to align with the West. But within Russia, the events leading up to and following the invasion also marked the completion of a political shift that has been years in the making. They exposed the waning power of the siloviki who dominated the early Putin era—and their replacement by a faceless security-and-control bureaucracy. …
Putin’s clandestine operation was even hidden from other clandestine operatives. Leaders of the FSB department responsible for providing the Kremlin with intelligence about Ukraine’s political situation, for instance, didn’t fully believe that an invasion would happen. Many analysts had confidently argued it would be against Russia’s national interests. Comfortable in the assumption that a large-scale attack was off the table, officials kept feeding Putin the story he wanted to hear: Ukrainians were Slavic brothers ready to be liberated from Nazi-collaborating, Western-controlled stooges in Kyiv. A source in the Kremlin told me that many officials now envision a disaster akin to the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which ended in a disgraceful withdrawal and helped precipitate the dissolution of the Soviet empire. But in a government that has become increasingly technocratic, institutionalized, and impersonal, such opinions are no longer permissible. …
As the conflict continues into its third month and evidence of war crimes mounts, most officials and politicians continue to back Putin. Big business is largely silent. Economic elites, cut off from the West, have rallied around the flag. Even though some may be grumbling in private, very few are vocal in public. Rare exceptions include the billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska, who has repeatedly called for peace; the former Putin associate Anatoly Chubais, known for leading Russia’s privatization under Yeltsin, who has fled to Turkey; the oligarch and former Chelsea soccer club owner, Roman Abramovich, who has tried to facilitate a negotiated settlement; and the entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, who was forced to sell his shares in his hugely successful online bank, Tinkoff, for kopeks after speaking out against the “operation.” –
In this atmosphere of complete repression, political figures who once seemed to offer alternative ideas now echo Putin’s uncompromising words. Former President Dmitry Medvedev has insisted that criticism of the operation amounts to treason. Even Naryshkin, a skeptic in February, has found his war footing and now faithfully parrots the government line. People no longer speak with their own voices; the shadow of Putinist Chekism now covers the entire country.
The journalist and writer Masha Gessen once dubbed Putin “the man without a face.” Today, however, his is the only face, sitting atop an anonymous security bureaucracy that does his bidding. Another coup, either in the Kremlin corridors or on the streets of Moscow, is not likely. The only group that could conceivably unseat the president is the FSB, which is still technically run by nationalist siloviki who understand that some foreign policy flexibility is necessary for internal development. But such officials are no longer the FSB’s future. The indistinct body of security technocrats now in charge is obsessed with total control, no matter the national or international consequences.
The last time the Kremlin built such an all-controlling state, under Andropov’s leadership in the early 1980s, it unraveled when the security forces relaxed their grip and allowed reform. Putin knows that story well and is unlikely to risk the same outcome. And even without him, the system he built would remain in place, sustained by the new security cohort—unless a 1980s Afghanistan-style debacle in Ukraine destroys it all. With this bureaucracy holding tight to power, Moscow’s foreign adventurism might abate. But as long as the structure holds steady, Russia will remain oppressed, isolated, and unfree.
🐣 RT @MilesTaylorUSA I spent a decade working in counterterrorism. The rhetoric we are seeing from leaders of my party — the Republican Party — is *directly* fueling violence and a spike in domestic terrorism. This is not a partisan observation. This is a public safety warning.
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Before Macron and pundits like Haass and Ignatius speak more about ceasefires and Ukraine accepting occupation, they should tour Bucha, and consider what happens to Ukrainians in places occupied by Putin’s forces.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1525821398559637504?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Putin is committing war crimes on an industrial scale. Kidnapping, stealing food supplies, a policy of extermination that Ukrainians are familiar with from history. Stop trying to think of ways to placate him and stop him. Only then will there be peace.🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Over 400 Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded last week trying to cross the Donets river in Ukraine. “Western military analysts … say the attempted crossing demonstrated a stunning lack of tactical sense.”
⋙ NYT: Growing evidence of a military disaster on the Donets pierces a pro-Russian bubble. http://nyti.ms/3wn3odm
// As the news of the losses at the river crossing started to spread, some Russian bloggers did not hold back in their criticism …The destruction wreaked on a Russian battalion as it tried to cross a river in northeastern Ukraine last week is emerging as among the deadliest engagements of the war, with estimates based on publicly available evidence now suggesting that well over 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded.
And as the scale of what happened comes into sharper focus, the disaster appears to be breaking through the Kremlin’s tightly controlled information bubble. ¤ Perhaps most striking, the Russian battlefield failure is resonating with a stable of pro-Russian war bloggers — some of whom are embedded with troops on the front line — who have reliably posted to the social network Telegram with claims of Russian success and Ukrainian cowardice. ¤ “The commentary by these widely read milbloggers may fuel burgeoning doubts in Russia about Russia’s prospects in this war and the competence of Russia’s military leaders,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research body, wrote over the weekend.
Satellite images reveal that Ukrainian artillery destroyed several Russian pontoon bridges and laid waste to a tight concentration of Russian troops and equipment around the river. ¤
The Institute for the Study of War, citing analyses based on the publicly available imagery, indicated that there could have been as many as 485 Russian soldiers killed or wounded and more than 80 pieces of equipment destroyed.As the news of the losses at the river crossing in Bilohorivka started to spread, some Russian bloggers did not appear to hold back in their criticism of what they said was incompetent leadership. ¤ “I’ve been keeping quiet for a long time,” Yuri Podolyaka, a war blogger with 2.1 million followers on Telegram, said in a video posted on Friday, saying that he had avoided criticizing the Russian military until now. ¤ “The last straw that overwhelmed my patience was the events around Bilohorivka, where due to stupidity — I emphasize, because of the stupidity of the Russian command — at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two.”
Mr. Podolyaka ridiculed the Kremlin line that the war is going “according to plan.” He told his viewers in a five-minute video that, in fact, the Russian Army was short of functional unmanned drones, night-vision equipment and other kit “that is catastrophically lacking on the front.” ¤ “Yes, I understand that it’s impossible for there to be no problems in war,” he said. “But when the same problems go on for three months, and nothing seems to be changing, then I personally and in fact millions of citizens of the Russian Federation start to have questions for these leaders of the military operation.” …
If the estimates that hundreds of soldiers were killed or injured prove accurate, it would be one of the deadliest known engagements of the war. ¤ There were more than 500 sailors aboard the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva when it was struck by a Ukrainian missile in April. The Kremlin at first insisted that all the sailors were rescued, later saying one was killed. But even as the families of missing sailors have publicly demanded answers, the Kremlin has largely kept up an official silence on the fate of the crew, part of a larger campaign to suppress bad news.
🐣 RT @60Minutes “We know that our database…will be used in…something like a Nuremberg trial,” Bellingcat executive director Christo Grozev tells Scott Pelley. He says his team has been approached by the ICC for material related to Russia’s Ukraine invasion. https://cbsn.ws/3wgUbor
💽 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1525978408156553217?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 60Minutes: Bellingcat’s executive director says it has been approached by the ICCWatch 60 Minutes Sundays on @CBS, or anytime on @paramountplus and https://cbsn.ws/34D1mLY🐣 RT @carlbildt This is the official video of the Eurovision Song Contest winner yesterday. It’s well worth seeing.
💽 https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1525878088445329411?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mhmck Ukrainian defenders have destroyed 9 attempts by the Russian invaders to cross the Siverskyi Donets River near Bilohorivka in Luhansk region. ¤ Russia doesn’t have an army. It has a horde of torturers, rapists, looters and murderers who are incapable of modern military operations.
WaPo: Ruling parties in Sweden, Finland back NATO membership in historic shifts http://wapo.st/37LN2CS
⭕ 14 May 2022
⭕ 13 May 2022
EuromaidanPR: Who are Russians? Learn more historical evidence http://bit.ly/3FJl6vU
// undated; not history, but collection of unflattering quotesRussian philosopher Ivan Ilyin: “Russia is the most vile, absolutely disgusting country in the entire history of the world. By the method of selection, monstrous moral freaks were brought out there, in which the very concept of Good and Evil is turned inside out. Throughout its history, this nation has been wallowing in crap and at the same time wants to drown the whole world in it”.
Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “The people who wander around Europe and look for what can be wrecked, destroyed just for fun.”
French President Charles de Gaulle: “Russian people will never be happy knowing that someone lives better than they do. And since they are not capable of progress, anger and frustration are the constant state of mind of Russians.”
Russian writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin: “If the Russians are allowed to choose their leader, they choose the most deceitful, vile, cruel. They kill, rob, rape along with him and then blame him. After a while, the church proclaims him a saint.”
Russian writer Maksim Gorky: “The main feature of the Russian national character is cruelty, and that cruelty is sadistic. I’m not talking about individual explosions of cruelty, but about the mind, about the soul of the people.
Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “There is no less trivial, degraded and boorish individual in this world than a katsap. Born in a Nazi country, nurtured by Nazi propaganda, this bastard will never become a Human. His country has no friends – either toadies or enemies. His country can only threaten, humiliate and kill. And for preservation of this status by Russia, an ordinary katsap is ready to sacrifice his own life, the lives of his parents and children, the quality of life of his own people. Truly: katsaps are animals. Fierce, bloodthirsty, but … mortal.
German philosopher Friedrich Engels: “Any seizure of territory, any violence, any oppression was carried out by Russia only under the pretext of enlightenment, liberalism, liberation of peoples.”
Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin: “The people who never knew and never spoke the truth are the people of spiritual and physical slaves. Miserable people.”
German philosopher Karl Marx: “Russia, which has nothing to do with Kyivan Rus and received, or rather, stole, its current name at best in the 18th century, nevertheless, brazenly claims the historical heritage of Kyivan Rus, created eight hundred years earlier. However, Moscow history is the history of the Horde, sewn to the history of Kyivan Rus with white thread and completely falsified.
EuromaidanPR/BBC: Ancestors of Irish people originated from present-day Ukraine http://bit.ly/3yy3IZG
// undated; tags: genetics genomicsGenetics from Trinity College Dublin with archaeologists from Queen’s University of Belfast examined the peasant’s skeleton from Neolithic period. ¤ The age of well-preserved remains is estimated at 5200 years. Burial was found in 1855 near Belfast. ¤ According to scientists, the genome of the woman has much in common with the genome of modern inhabitants of Spain and Sardinia. ¤ But the peasant’s ancestors, according to the researchers, came to Europe from the Middle East, where first agriculture has sprung up.
In addition, the team of scientists found the remains of three men from the Ratlin Island, who lived in the Bronze Age around 4200 years ago. ¤ The genome of men differed from peasant’s genome. Third part of the DNA structure indicates that their ancestors came from the Pontic prairies of the Black Sea region, located mainly on the territory of Ukraine.
WaPo: More Republicans are working to undermine Trump endorsements http://wapo.st/3NeIfZI “Many of Trump’s advisers fear grim weeks to come, where his preferred candidates could lose in Georgia and Pennsylvania”
// Some GOP leaders have been actively campaigning — or quietly maneuvering — against Trump’s picks in a way that could threaten his sway over the party🧵 RT @anders_aslund Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, says the war with Russia is going so well, that it will reach a turning point by mid-August and be over by the end of the year.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1525195962393714693?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund “Budanov also said a coup to remove Vladimir Putin is already under way in Russia and the Russian leader is seriously ill with cancer.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Budanov “said he was not surprised by Russia’s setbacks in the war. ¤ “We know everything about our enemy. We know about their plans almost as they’re being made.s “We have been fighting Russia for eight years and we can say that this highly publicised Russian power is a myth.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Budanov: Defeat in Ukraine would lead to the removal of Russia’s leader and the country’s disintegration. ¤ “It will eventually lead to the change of leadership of the Russian Federation. This process has already been launched and they are moving into that way.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Does that mean a coup is under way? ¤ “Yes,” he responded.⭕ 12 May 2022
ForeignAffairs, Christoph Heusgen: The War in Ukraine Will Be a Historic Turning Point http://fam.ag/3sF4Irj
// But for History to Take the Right Path, America and Europe Must Work TogetherThe Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a turning point in history. It brings to a close the chapter that began at the end of the Cold War, when Western countries tried to integrate Russia into an international rules-based order. Russia under President Vladimir Putin has become a pariah state. Much as it did when facing down the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the United States has taken the lead in countering Putin‘s blatant attack on civilization.
Many countries support the U.S.-led response to Putin’s war, but some do so grudgingly. Too many governments see the conflict as a return to the days of the Cold War, when they were forced to choose sides. They imagine that what is at stake is the collision of two geopolitical rivals, not a fundamental question of principle. This is deeply unfortunate. Russia’s aggression should not be seen as ushering in a new Cold War but simply as what it is: the worst act of aggression in Europe since the end of World War II and a brutal violation of international law. …
This effort requires a global alliance. The partnership among countries that commit to international law and its foundational texts, the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should comprise countries from all continents. The international community should not be a euphemism for the West. The perception that there continues to be a conflict between “the West” and “the East” allows too many countries to sit on the fence. The fault line really lies between those who seek to reaffirm a principled, global moral and legal order, and those who do not. A new global alliance should stand tall in its uncompromising efforts to protect international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law. …
China and Russia want to rewrite the international rule book by insisting on national sovereignty being the most important legal principle, one that trumps international law, humanitarian law, and human rights law. Against this backdrop, countries committed to upholding international legal regimes have to join forces. They have to do it on the basis of real partnership. In this respect, the Biden administration’s reaction to Russia’s aggression was exemplary: since late December 2021, President Joe Biden and his team have gone out of their way to coordinate the response to Putin with an alliance that reaches beyond NATO and the EU. Out of 193 countries, only Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria supported Russia in the March vote at the General Assembly that condemned Putin’s invasion. …
🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Polyanskiy is seen as the mad dog of the Russian mission to New York, but surely he’s not mad enough to think Article V wouldn’t be invoked under these circumstances.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy threatens Sweden and Finland: ¤ “As soon as Finland and Sweden become members of NATO and military units of the alliance are there, these territories will become a possible target for the Russian military”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ A Finnish general reacting to Putin’s threats if Finland joins NATO: s “You are most welcome here to join the 200,000 Russians that are already in Finland buried a few meters in the ground after your last attempt in 1939″ #Finland #NATO #UkraineRussianWar [link]🐣 RT @RadioSvoboda [tr.] Russia does not yet have the courage to admit its strategic defeat in the war against Ukraine – Zelensky
UkraineWorld (2019): Why Are Cossacks Key to Understanding the Ukrainian Nation? http://bit.ly/3w7U91O
// 3/13/2019⭕ 11 May 2022
NewLinesMag, Michael Weiss: Is Putin Sick – Or Are We Meant to Think He Is? http://bit.ly/3l4001W
// An oligarch close to the Kremlin was recorded on a tape saying the president is ‘very ill with blood cancer.’ Is this true, idle speculation or disinformation designed to make an erratic and paranoid dictator vulnerable?Reuters: UK strikes new security agreement with Sweden and Finland http://reut.rs/3lccrZr “Both are expected to join NATO, but both are worried they would be vulnerable while their applications are processed, which could take up to a year.”
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Leaked emails from Trump’s lawyer show blueprint for a 2024 coup http://wapo.st/3L7ZVVo
The House committee examining the insurrection attempt has obtained new emails from the lawyer who helped concoct Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election. They reveal a whole new level of scheming behind that effort, which was even more nefarious than previously thought. …
The emails from lawyer John Eastman show him urging GOP state legislators in Pennsylvania to cast doubt on 2020 vote totals, to create cover to certify a slate of presidential electors for Trump. Politico reported on the emails, which the Jan. 6 select committee obtained from the University of Colorado, where Eastman worked at the time.
The key revelation: Eastman’s scheme had an additional layer to it. We already knew his plan centered on urging Trump’s vice president to abuse his role in the congressional count of electors to subvert the election’s conclusion. ¤ Now, in these new emails, Eastman is seen devising a pretext for state legislatures to invalidate Joe Biden’s electors and certify sham Trump electors. He advises a Pennsylvania legislator to use a complex formula — based on treating mailed-in ballots as illegitimate — to extrapolate that enough Biden votes are invalid to show Trump won the popular vote. ¤ Eastman advises the legislator to argue that Biden electors certified by the governor are thus “null and void.”
This is extraordinary stuff. Eastman advised that a state legislature should concoct a fig leaf justification for declaring the correct Biden electors certified by the governor invalid and certifying Trump electors instead.
“Eastman wasn’t doing anything that Trump wasn’t doing himself,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told me. “They were both trying to get officials in the electoral process to substitute a counterfeit for the actual vote totals.” ¤ “Eastman was seeking to implant a new mathematical calculation contrived to produce a Trump win in Pennsylvania,” Raskin said.
These Eastman emails show that manipulating vote totals to create “cover” for state legislatures to appoint sham Trump electors was more central to the scheme than we knew. ¤ Whether this creates more exposure for Eastman and others remains to be seen. But this also has other important implications: It reveals with more clarity an avenue by which nefarious actors might seek to subvert a future election.
WaPo, Max Boot: We’re in danger of losing our democracy. Most Americans are in denial. http://wapo.st/3wodT0f “Panic is generally a bad idea, but sometimes it is warranted. Now is one of those times for anyone who cares about the fate of U.S. democracy.”
⭕ 10 May 2022
InfoPost, Timothy Snyder: Why the Ukrainian Victory is Important for the World http://bit.ly/3L6pKFm
// 10 reasons from the American historian Timothy Snyder🐣 RT @PaulaChertok It’s just insanity that media treat the Republican Party as a legitimate party worthy of power over lives, when every day for 5+ years their leader is exposed as a complete idiot & lawless charlatan wo humanity or morality. It’s dishonest at some point not to be clear about this.
⋙ RollingStone: Trump Kept Asking if China Was Shooting Us With a ‘Hurricane Gun’ http://bit.ly/38eeABl
// The then-leader of the free world also inquired whether the U.S. could bomb China in retaliation for the alleged hurricane attack⭕ 9 May 2022
WaPo, Max Boot: Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out http://wapo.st/3l2inUM
Always grandiose and fascistic, the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow were more restrained than usual on Monday, with the normal aerial display canceled on account of the “weather,” even though the skies were clear. Some experts had worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin would declare war on Ukraine and a total mobilization of Russian society while threatening the West with nuclear weapons. There was even speculation that he might parade Ukrainian prisoners through Red Square as in a Roman triumph. None of that came to pass. Putin was defiant but subdued, trying to portray Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine as a preemptive response to a looming Ukrainian invasion of Russia.
It was ludicrous and pathetic — but also strangely reassuring. There has been much discussion about whether Putin is rational, because attacking Ukraine with such a small army was an act of lunacy. The evidence suggests that, while Putin is isolated and prone to miscalculation, he is not insane. …
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there! ¤ 9 May 2022. On 70th day of Russia’s siege, Ukrainian defenders raise the flag over besieged fortress Azovstal in Mariupol ¤ Mariupol mayor aide Andriushchenko
💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1523801195814342656?s=20/photo/1WaPo, Elaine Hasday: On Roe, Alito cites a judge who treated women as witches and property http://wapo.st/3so2nkh “[Sir Matthew] Hale was a man who believed women could be witches, assumed women were liars and thought husbands owned their wives’ bodies”
🐣 RT @Lucian_Kim Victory Day concert on Russian state TV recycles image of Bonnie and Clyde. (In his speech today, Putin again railed against the “falsification” of WW2 history. https://twitter.com/Lucian_Kim/status/1523777973975150593?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Grateful to @POTUS and people for supporting in the fight for our freedom and future. Today’s signing of the law on Lend-Lease is a historic step. I am convinced that we will win together again. And we will defend democracy in Ukraine. And in Europe. Like 77 years ago.
🐣 RT @POTUS This afternoon, I signed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 into law. This bill provides another important tool in our efforts to support Ukraine and its people in their fight to defend their country and democracy against Putin’s brutal war.
🧵 RT @dcminx Russian TV & online platforms hacked with antiwar message on #VictoryDay ¤ The message read: “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians & hundreds of murdered children is on your hands. TV & the authorities are lying. No to war.” ¤ #wtpBlue #wtpEARTH #DemVoice1
📌 https://twitter.com/dcminx/status/1523682812892643329?s=20WaPo: Inside Mark Meadows’s final push to keep Trump in power http://wapo.st/38lXXDw “Despite Barr’s conclusion that the election was settled in Biden’s favor, Meadows worked behind the scenes to whip up Trump’s conviction that the election wasn’t over”
// The former congressman played a key role in Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to his texts, congressional investigations and interviews🐣 RT @mattia_n Zelenskyy delivered a very powerful speech, while walking down Kyiv’s central avenue: ¤ “There are no shackles that can bind our free spirit. There is no occupier who can take root in our free land. There is no invader who can rule over our free people. Sooner or later we win.”
💽 https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1523581786374426624?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @visegrad24 97-year-old WW2 veteran Ivan Zalyzhnyy saying: ¤ “I wanted to celebrate Victory Day this year with my grandson, a lieutenant of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but he was killed in battle defending his motherland.” ¤ Ivan was 24 years old.
💽 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1523308322367045632?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ukraine_world Kharkiv City Mayor addressing Ukrainian WW2 veterans in the city’s metro: “You could not even imagine in a nightmare that the grandchildren of those people who, together with you, fought fascism 77 years ago, would come to kill us today. But we will win.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1523337863554871296?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Reuters Lockheed Martin looks to nearly double Javelin missile production http://reut.rs/3vWdxiu
🐣 RT @AP Protesters opposed to the war in Ukraine threw red paint on Russia’s ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreev as he arrived at a cemetery in Warsaw to pay respects to Red Army soldiers who died during World War II. http://apne.ws/uz9znRJ
🐣 RT @kiraincongress Today is a day when you answer typical “how are you?” with “no nuclear attack, thank God”. ¤ #StandWithUkraine
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM President Zelensky: “This is not a war of two armies. This is a war of two worldviews.”
🐣 RT @RichardHaass Vladimir Putin mailed in his Victory Day speech. Not surprising as it is tough to give a Victory Day speech when no victories to point to.
🐣 RT @michaeldweiss No air show, no mass mobilization, no declaration of war, a few no-show tanks, allusions to the “moral degradation” of the West (read: gays and the Wizarding World of cultural backlash), & much ado about Castle Wolfenstein fantasies. Punxsutawney Putin crawled back into his hole.
🧵 RT @anders_aslund Putin: “The NATO bloc began active military development of the territories adjacent to us. ¤ Thus, a threat that was absolutely unacceptable to us was systematically created, moreover, directly at our borders.”
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1523586434380472321?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Remarkably, the Kremlin showed only 131 pieces of military hardware and no aviation, though 11,000 soldiers paraded. Apparently parades are the only thing that remains of the Russian military. Quite pathetic.🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en The last parade in the Empire of Evil
💽 https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1523585154341515264?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Hromadske Vladimir Putin delivered a short speech on May 9. He didn’t declare war on Ukraine sticking to a ‘special military operation’ and the mobilization of the population. Putin also onve again accused Western countries and NATO of abandoning the dialogue Russia called for 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @Hromadske The Russian media broadcasted the parade in Moscow and Putin’s address. No foreign politicians have been invited to this year’s parade, including Alexander Lukashenko, who supports the war against Ukraine. The air parade was canceled, allegedly due to bad weather 2/2💙 🧵 RT @ArmUkraineNow #Russia’s failures make them the least worthy of any nation in the world to celebrate victory today.
Over the next 12 hours, this thread🧵will provide 509 examples of why their #VictoryDay #деньпобеды parade should be renamed #FailureDay #Деньнеудач
Reply with your examples ⬇️
📌 https://twitter.com/ArmUkraineNow/status/1523384331410063366?s=20⭕ 8 May 2022
WaPo: Russia’s ultimate political survivor faces a wartime reckoning http://wapo.st/3ypfd5K Russia’s military is a show horse not a work horse
// Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a fixture of Russian political life since the Soviet Union’s fall, could be on the hook for military failures[I]n the 2½ months since the Kremlin launched a war against Ukraine, the facade that Shoigu meticulously presented over the past decade has disintegrated into an ugly reality, laying bare the incompetence and barbarity of one of the world’s biggest militaries. …
Reform efforts that began under Shoigu’s predecessor stalled after he took over in 2012. He jettisoned a program to establish an American-style corps of noncommissioned officers that could have instilled professionalism in the lower ranks. Ambitions to expand the number of professional contract military personnel weren’t fully met, while the ministry spent lavishly to procure expensive weaponry. Russia went into the war without a fully ready combat reserve.
The results have been apparent in Ukraine. Russia has faced high casualty rates and had insufficient personnel. Looting and war crimes, as well as poorly maintained equipment, logistics errors and intercepted communications, have spotlighted the unprofessionalism and indiscipline of the force.
After Shoigu took over as defense minister, transparency within the Russian military dissipated into PR-crafted narratives, according to analysts who track the Russian force. The change boosted confidence in the armed forces among Russians, helping Shoigu’s political standing, but reduced valuable scrutiny.
“The thing that sticks out to me is how much control he wants over the narrative of the military,” Rand Corp. senior policy researcher Dara Massicot said. “If you cannot have a transparent conversation about your serviceability rates, about how proficient your soldiers are or about how old some of your field rations are — if you can’t have some of those debates, the battlefield will show you.” …
“Shoigu built a military that looked good in scripted exercises, and proved effective in limited wars, but when thrown into a large conflict, showed that it couldn’t scale operations and revealed the extent of rot in the system,” Kofman said.
🧵 RT @ Putin wants to present a “win” on May 9, but there is no victory to be had for Russia. Putin is destroying his own country as he seeks to destroy Ukraine. And he’s losing on all fronts: economic decline, brain drain, huge military losses, and pariah state status. Short thread:
📌 https://twitter.com/apolyakova/status/1523420189811146753?s=20
⋙ 📋 🐣 RT @ […] 3/ Russia’s best and brightest are leaving in droves – a staggering 3.8 million have left, unclear when or if they will ever return. [link]🧵 RT @EU_Commission On the eve of Europe Day, Ukrainian colours shine on the EU institutions in Brussels. ¤ Millions of Europeans have mobilised to help their neighbours in need. ¤ Europe stands at the side of Ukraine. 🇺🇦 ¤ #EuropeDay #StandWithUkraine
📌 https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1523407565576556545?s=20⭕ 7 May 2022
WaPo Editorial: Jan. 6 was worse than you remember. It must define our politics. http://wapo.st/3KUfXlJ “Voters must recognize that where politicians stand on democracy is more important than tax rates, inflation, gas prices or any other policy issue”
🐣 RT @RepLizCheney America must stand with the people of Ukraine. They aren’t just fighting for their own freedom. They are fighting for ours, too. ¤ @RepAuchincloss and I explain why America’s defense of freedom must not be a partisan issue.
⋙ WaPo, Liz Cheney and Jake Auchincloss: Our democracy at home depends on preserving freedom in Ukraine http://wapo.st/3May48J🐣 RT @The_IntelHub #Breaking: Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk has stated that all women, children and elderly that remained have been evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant which is known as the last Ukrainian stronghold within the southeastern city of Mariupol.
🐣 RT @sumlenny According to many reports, Russian 64th separated motorized brigade, responsible for mass rape, torture and executions in Bucha, promoted by Putin to a Guard brigade, was completely destroyed at Izyum, Kharkiv region. I will not publish my emotions here.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Senior military expert on Russian state TV argued that mobilization wouldn’t accomplish a whole lot, since outdated weaponry can’t easily compete with NATO-supplied weapons and equipment in Ukraine’s hands and replenishing Russia’s military arsenal will be neither fast nor easy.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1523036461595242498?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AlanAbdo13 “Putin’s worldview cannot allow the option of his defeat. I believe he has been persuaded that doubling military efforts (troop offensive and shelling in Ukraine) could still produce results,” said the CIA Director William Burns.
⭕ 6 May 2022
💙 🧵 RT @RadioFreeTom In forty years of studying #Russia the thing I always struggled to get my arms around is that this remarkable and immense nation, a source of cultural and scientific genius, is also so riven by ignorance and insecurity that it is incapable of living in peace with the world. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1522776827009327105?s=20🐣 RT @ryanstruyk PELOSI: “If Russia is not listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, tear up the list.”
🐣 RT @TheBushCenter “I was honored to spend a few minutes talking with President Zelenskyy – the Winston Churchill of our time – this morning. I thanked the President for his leadership, his example, and his commitment to liberty, and I saluted the courage of the Ukrainian people. …
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBushCenter “President Zelenskyy assured me that they will not waver in their fight against Putin’s barbarism and thuggery. Americans are inspired by their fortitude and resilience. We will continue to stand with Ukrainians as they stand up for their freedom.” -President George W. Bush🐣 RT @The_IntelHub This gives me meat grinder vibes not trained, professional, proficient, capable vibes. Russia is going to have issues even fielding that amount in a timely matter in order to make a deference, unless they transition to a defense.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RALee85 The RSOTM Telegram channel run by Wagner private military contractors currently in Ukraine said that either “there will be a mobilization or we will lose the war.” They think they need 600-800k people to defeat Ukraine. https://t.me/grey_zone/13960🐣 RT @JuliaMendel Italian authorities froze the Scheherazade superyacht—believed to be owned by Russian president Vladimir Putin—in the port of Marina di Carrara on Friday. – Forbes https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1522742187565502465?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 5 May 2022
🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Fascinating that Russian media is reporting the CNN report that US intel helped sink Moskva. The Kremlin will have a lot of explaining to do in the morning after telling Russians for weeks that a “fire” was responsible for the sinking.
🐣 RT @KofmanMichael More interesting developments in the vein of yesterday’s coverage
⋙⋙ NBCNews: U.S. intel helped Ukraine sink Russian flagship Moskva, officials say http://nbcnews.to/3KMGfGI
// The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet sank on April 14 after being struck by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles, according to U.S. officials.
⋙ 🐣 I just wish people would let this go; could be seen by Russia as if we participated in targeting their warship ¤ The line between providing surveillance data and making targeting decisions is a thin one and this headline is really ‘poking the bear’🐣 RT @NewsMax Pentagon press secretary John Kirby: “The US provides battlefield intelligence to help Ukraine. We do not provide intelligence on the location of senior military leaders on the battlefield, or participate in targeting decisions of the Ukrainian military.”
🐣 📋 RT @ukraine_world (Ukraine_history_eng): Affinity between Ukrainian and other Slavonic languages:
Belorussian 84%
Polish 70%
Slovak 68%
Russian 62%
● https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1522276322302734336?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @anders_aslund The big question about Putin’s war in Ukraine is what he will do on May 9, when he must declare victory.1. @McFaul has the best proposal: He just declared[s?] victory and takes home all his troops, since he controls the propaganda. Yet, that is not how Putin acts.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1522114945458089984?s=20
🐣 RT @anders_aslund 2. Telegram channel General SVR claims that Putin is discussing chemical attacks in bordering areas in Russia as false flag actions, to justify mobilization and the use of wmd in Ukraine. That would be in Putin’s style, but he is not likely to win on that – possible & awful.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund 3. The big argument against Putin declaring mobilization is that if he does, the boys in the big cities and the sons of the middle class would be mobilized & slaughtered on a massive scale that would be politically destabilizing.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund 4. Right now, Putin seems to be preparing a fig leaf victory: the seizure of Mariupol, but I doubt that he can accomplish that. The Ukrainian army appears to be on counteroffensive in the north between Kharkiv and Belgorod & in Kherson oblast in the south.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund 5. It looks as if Putin is not going to celebrate any victory but has to recognize a major Russian defeat, similar to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. Well done, Ukraine!⭕ 4 May 2022
Atlantic Council, Henrik Larsen: Foreign policy realists should be bolder about defeating Putin in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3M0jksA “Realism is most credible for the conduct of foreign policy when it acknowledges that interests can never be completely separated from values”
Realism is most credible for the conduct of foreign policy when it acknowledges that interests can never be completely separated from values. Russia clearly crossed the post-Cold War Rubicon with its invasion of Ukraine. Since February 24, it has become impossible for the West to remain true to itself while continuing with pre-war policies of engagement. Likewise, the West cannot allow the defeat of Ukraine while it hesitates to provide the necessary weapons.
There is increasing clarity in Western capitals over the importance of Ukraine’s military success. This is evident in heavy weapons supply breakthroughs including last week’s overwhelming German Bundestag vote, the Polish delivery of more than 200 tanks, French commitments to supply artillery, and much more. The recent US Lend-Lease bill and the Ramstein conference underlined this growing commitment to maintaining a continuous flow of heavy weapons to Ukraine for as long as necessary.
These policies are not without risk. Indeed, Russia has threatened to target Western weapons convoys on several occasions. However, there is nothing to suggest that Moscow would dare to launch any attacks on NATO territory because that would likely trigger a direct NATO response. While Kremlin bluster is to be expected, Russia does not want to risk war with NATO. In that sense, Ukraine follows the pattern of limited war in the Nuclear Age, where the great powers seek to restrict armed hostilities to one territory.
There are limits to what Ukraine can realistically hope to achieve militarily against Russia. Kyiv might never be able to liberate Crimea or the breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine. As matter of its own survival, the Putin regime may be willing to defend these territories by declaring a general mobilization or threatening the use of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, Ukraine will almost certainly need additional heavy weapon supplies to liberate recently occupied regions in the south of the country.
Looking ahead, NATO should certainly continue to refrain from a direct combat role in Ukraine. However, Western leaders should not be afraid of giving Ukraine the conventional weapons it needs in order to win a fight where the West has a significant interest.
Developments during the first two months of the war suggest that Ukraine can defeat Russia on the battlefield if it receives sufficient arms from its international partners. It is equally evident that Russia has no desire at this stage to end the conflict or enter into a negotiated peace. Acknowledging this, foreign policy realists should be bolder about what the West can do to deny Putin victory and punish Russia for its unprovoked aggression.
ForeignAffairs, Georgiy Kasianov: The War Over Ukrainian Identity http://fam.ag/3kET23d The clearest of the brief histories I’ve read on Ukrainian history lately
// Nationalism, Russian Imperialism, and the Quest to Define Ukraine’s HistoryRussian forces have been smashing their way through Ukraine for over two months now, spurred in large part by historical fiction. But history also propels the fierce Ukrainian resistance. Ukrainians, too, harbor a particular understanding of the past that motivates them to fight. In many ways, this war is the collision of two incompatible historical narratives. Putin’s desire to restore an imperial Russia (of which Ukraine is but a constituent part) has crashed into a Ukrainian nationalism that imagines a sovereign Ukrainian state and a distinct Ukrainian people persisting in various forms for over a thousand years. Like all grand narratives, both have their share of mythology. But for Ukrainians, the stakes are more existential: Putin’s reading of history would deny them the very right to exist.
In 1903, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, an academic based in Lviv, published an article that remains powerful today. Weightily titled “The Traditional Scheme of ‘Russian’ History and the Problem of a Rational Organization of the History of the East Slavs,” the essay insisted that Ukrainian history was not a province of an overarching Russian story. Ukraine was not Russia. A coherent and distinct Ukrainian national history, he argued, stretched back over a millennium.
Hrushevsky sketched the story of Ukraine in the following way. Ukraine, as both a nation and a state, had its roots in the Kievan Rus’—a conglomerate of peoples ruled by a warrior elite that traced its ancestry to Scandinavia—that emerged on the banks of the Dnieper River in the late ninth century. Various Ukrainian polities followed, including the principality of Galicia-Volhynia and the kingdom of Ruthenia in the medieval period and a Cossack state in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But by the nineteenth century, the territory of Ukraine was largely divided between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. Ukrainians did not surrender to this imperial domination; just as other eastern European intellectuals turned to national liberation and self-determination in the nineteenth century, so, too, did Ukrainian thinkers and writers seek to revive their nation by constructing a modern language and a master narrative of their nation’s history. That revival set the stage for a modern, independent Ukraine to join the family of nations in the twentieth century. Hrushevsky’s vision of Ukrainian identity had much in common with similar schemes in eastern Europe: it was ethnocentric, teleological (insofar as it treated Ukrainian nationhood as the inevitable outcome of centuries of history), and powerful in its ability to mobilize broad swaths of people.
x Hrushevsky was not just the father of modern Ukrainian nationalism and history but also a key political actor, the inaugural president of the first Ukrainian parliament from 1917 to 1918, and the spiritual leader of the national revolution that led to the creation of an independent Ukrainian republic between 1917 and 1920. Today, many Ukrainians imagine their country through the framework that Hrushevsky put in place. They see Ukraine as the successor to not just the briefly independent republic but to a thousand years of kingdoms, principalities, and other forms of states. They note that Ukrainians have a culture, a language, and religious traditions distinct from their neighbors. This narrative has become the basis for contemporary Ukraine’s school curriculum, civic education, and official historiography.
This vision of Ukrainian history is full of striving dreamers, Ukrainians who sacrificed for their country and fought against many external oppressors. Few notions of national identity exist without some kind of other, an opposing force against which the nation can be defined. For Ukrainians, the principal other, of course, has been Russia. In its imperial and Soviet guises, Russia looms over Ukrainian history as a colonial force of exploitation, assimilation, repression, and humiliation. In this narrative, the Russian state lords over its citizens and imbues them with a false sense of pride and greatness, whereas Ukraine appears as the antithesis of Russia. It embodies the values of democracy, freedom, individualism, private initiative, and national pride. Where the Russian state oppresses, the Ukrainian state should guarantee security and independence for the Ukrainian people. At the broadest level, Ukrainians insist that Ukraine belongs to European civilization, not a Russian one.
For around 70 years, the Soviet Union attempted to dull the distinctions between Russians and Ukrainians. The Soviet version of history admitted ethnographic and cultural differences between the two peoples while insisting on their unity and shared historical destiny. Soviet officials coined the slogan “Forever together!” in 1954 to commemorate the Treaty of Pereyaslav of 1654, when Cossacks in what is now Ukraine declared allegiance to the Russian tsar. The Soviet historical myth still upheld Russia as the big brother in this tandem of fraternal countries.
But this brotherliness came to an end after an independent Ukraine emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the ensuing decade, both Russia and Ukraine adopted pre-Soviet historical narratives that rejected the convivial Soviet reading of the past. Russian officials tried to overcome the surge of local and ethnic nationalisms in Russia that followed the crackup of the Soviet Union by harking back to the imperial past. Many Russian scholars and public figures acquiesced to this return to an imperial version of history, one that enshrined a supranational state as the protector of a greater Russia.
When it came to Ukraine, Russian elites and state-backed historians sought to trace a chronology that would reinforce the notion that Russians and Ukrainians were one people. There should be no schism between the two: both shared descent from the Kievan Rus’, and their union was reaffirmed by the 1654 Pereyaslav treaty. This Russian account demonized or downplayed figures and events that suggested the uniqueness of Ukraine. For instance, Russians vilified the seventeenth-century Cossack leader Ivan Mazepa, who sided with Sweden against Muscovy. They dismissed the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1920 (and the accompanying independent republic) as a fleeting and unfortunate civil conflict within a single community. They portrayed the great famine of 1932–33, which killed as many as four million Ukrainians, as a shared tragedy of all the peoples of the Soviet Union—a view contrary to the one held by Ukrainians, who called the event the Holodomor (“death by starvation”) and saw it as a genocide perpetrated against them. The Ukrainian nationalist movement that followed in the 1930s and 1940s was, in the Russian view, merely the work of anti-Russian collaborators with Nazi Germany.
Many Ukrainian historians saw the same events differently from how their Russian counterparts saw them. They perceived the Kievan Rus’ as the progenitors of the Ukrainian people alone and the founders of Ukrainian statehood. The supposed reunification of 1654 only inaugurated three centuries of Russian colonial oppression. The Cossack leader Mazepa was a hero of national revival and resistance to imperial rule. The Ukrainian revolution and Ukraine’s brief statehood between 1917 and 1920 was the culmination of centuries of struggle against Russian imperial dominance. The Holodomor was an act of genocide committed by Moscow. And the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, including its heroic partisan guerrilla campaigns against the Soviets, was the apogee of the national liberation struggle against Moscow’s totalitarianism. …
In the years following the publication of Ukraine Is Not Russia, the two countries increasingly clashed over history. In international organizations such as the United Nations and UNESCO, Russia effectively blocked all Ukrainian initiatives to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide targeting Ukrainians. Russia’s foreign ministry routinely accused Ukrainian authorities of glorifying Nazi collaborators and disseminating anti-Russian propaganda. In 2008, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev refused to pay an official visit to the opening of a memorial in Kyiv to the victims of the Holodomor, accusing Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko of politicizing the shared tragedy of Soviet citizens. Russia’s state-controlled media caricatured Ukraine as a zoo filled with rabid nationalists.
These claims fueled Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Russia repeatedly invoked historical arguments to justify its annexation of Crimea and its long-running proxy war in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, claiming that these lands were illegally passed to Ukraine by the Bolsheviks between the 1920s and 1950s. It has frequently invoked World War II in the messaging around its interventions in Ukraine. The breakaway republics in Donbas have described their military actions as part of a similar struggle against the “Kyiv junta” and have adopted the Saint George stripe, a symbol that commemorates the Russian defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
For their part, Ukrainians have developed a more bristling and uncompromising understanding of their country’s history in the wake of the 2014 invasion. In 2015, the government launched a massive campaign to purge the evidence of the Soviet era, razing several thousand Soviet monuments and renaming about 50,000 streets and around 1,000 villages and cities. The parliament passed legislation that equated Soviet symbols to Nazi ones and criminalized their public use.
A cult of heroism and military sacrifice gained new importance, adding to the Holodomor’s tragedy of victimhood. Ukrainians trumpeted the rugged resistance of the Cossacks to foreign rule, the bravery of the war for independence between 1917 and 1920, and the heroism of two controversial World War II–era militant organizations: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a radical right-wing group founded in 1929 that sought to secure Ukrainian independence, and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known by its Ukrainian initials, UPA), which fought against the Poles, Soviets, and Germans during and after the war. New state-sanctioned politics of memory ignored the darker aspects of the OUN and the UPA, including their collaboration with Nazis, their xenophobic and totalitarian nature, and the participation of their members in the Holocaust and in massacres of Polish and Ukrainian civilians. A special law passed in April 2015 obliged citizens to respect all Ukrainians who fought for the country’s independence and declared public disrespect or criticism of the OUN and the UPA to be unlawful.
Unsurprisingly, the OUN and the UPA grew increasingly popular during wartime: the share of Ukrainians who held positive attitudes toward these organizations increased from 27 percent in 2013 to a peak of 49 percent in 2017, according to the Ukrainian research organization Rating. But that did not translate into actual support for the far-right nationalist block in Ukraine, which received less than two percent of the vote in the 2019 presidential election and won only one seat in parliamentary elections that year.
Nevertheless, Putin readily presented Ukraine’s commemoration of the OUN and the UPA as a festival of nationalism and what he called “Nazism.” At least in this sense, the Ukrainian right-wingers, who tried to impose the history of their political party on the whole of Ukraine, and the populists who supported them were unwitting allies of Putin’s propaganda; evoking the memory of World War II, Putin could point to the checkered legacy of the OUN and UPA to frame his “special military operation” as a continuation of the struggle against Nazism. This rhetoric points to the abiding power of history and memory in shaping the modern politics of the region. Many Russians and Ukrainians see the battles of the present as echoes of the battles of the past.
Analysts are rightly distrustful of politicians who use history as a manipulative tool for pursuing political, social, or military ends. History, however, is an inescapable part of how people see the world, structure their beliefs, and determine their actions. It shapes and affects the lives of millions in this conflict and cannot be dismissed.
Ukraine as a nation-state finds its legitimacy in the history distilled by such figures as Hrushevsky. Ukrainians see their existence in time and space as resting on this vision of a sovereign history, emancipated from Russia. Putin and his allies use history to claim that Ukraine is not a legitimate country; denying Ukrainians their sovereign history was the first and decisive step in rejecting the right of Ukraine to exist. Both Russia and Ukraine are obsessed with the past and are guilty of distorting the historical record for modern purposes. But there is a fundamental difference in their positions. Russia turns to the past to justify expansion, aggression, and domination, to resurrect an empire. Ukraine does it in self-defense and self-determination to preserve and nurture an independent republic. Russia fights for the past. Ukraine fights for the future.
🐣 RT @andersostlund Good one from the EU. The oil sanctions try to prevent Russia from being able to sell its oil anywhere in the world.
⋙ 🧵 RT @nchrysoloras A key clause from the draft legal text of the latest package of sanctions. The EU is seeking to go beyond an import ban on Russian oil by targeting Moscow’s ability to sell *anywhere in the world*
📌 [Text block:] https://twitter.com/nchrysoloras/status/1521789127418654720?s=20/photo/1🐣 US is 15th, down from 7th in 2008
⋙ 🐣≣ RT @CatoFP The Human Freedom Index is unique because it takes in the whole scope of human freedom. To do that, it produces scores for 82 distinct indicators across 165 jurisdictions, encompassing 98.1 percent of the world’s population. ¤ See more here: https://bit.ly/3MneHIV⭕ 3 May 2022
WaPo Editorial: The Supreme Court might never recover from overturning Roe v. Wade http://wapo.st/3kFJXHi “The court’s legitimacy rests on the notion that it follows the law, not the personal or ideological preferences of the justices”
// “What brought the court to its current precipice was not a fundamental shift in American values regarding abortion. It was the shameless legislative maneuvering of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who jammed two Trump-nominated justices onto the court.”🐣 RT @@Biz_Ukraine_Mag
Putin’s Victory Day cult actively promotes the myth of Russia as a “Victor Nation.” History tells a different story:
1853-56 Crimean War: Lost
1904-5 Russo-Japanese War: Lost
1914-18 WWI: On winning side, still managed to lose
1939-40 Winter War: Lost
1945-91 Cold War: Lost
⋙ 🐣 RT @schtinkygirl Afghanistan-lost
Ukraine-losing🐣 RT @FHeisbourg This is from RTR 1, state owned and state run mainstream TV. Mainstream in Putinian Russia that is: the language used would be considered as murderously deranged in most other countries
⋙ 🐣 RT @KSokirianskaia The first channel propagandists threaten Russians who are against the letter “Z”. They will not be pardoned. Concentration camps and sterilization, says film director Shakhnazarov🐣 RT @Ohra_aho Rumours are swirling in Moscow that a number of former generals and KGB officials are preparing to oust Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and plan to end the war in Ukraine, which is increasingly seen across Russia as a strategic mistake.
⋙ CityAM: Kremlin on high alert as coup rumours grow in Moscow: Disgruntled generals join FSB looking to oust Putin and end Ukraine war http://bit.ly/3ycqC8F🐣 RT @ It about 🇺🇦 right to independence and national self-determination, against Putin’s deranged imperialist revanchism
It is about freedom versus oppression
It is about right versus wrong
It is about good versus evil
And that is why 🇺🇦 must win – 🇬🇧 PM Johnson🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Zelensky’s response to Sergei Lavrov: ¤ “These words mean that Russia’s top diplomat puts the blame on the Jewish people for Nazi crimes. I have no words”
⭕ 2 May 2022
🐣 RT @nexta_tv James #Stavridis, a former #NATO supreme allied commander for #Europe on the “amazing incompetence” of Russia: “In modern history, there is no situation comparable in terms of the deaths of generals. … Here, on the Russian side, (…) we’ve seen at least a dozen, if not more”.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok In any case, the leaker is revealing a Supreme Court that’s lost its legitimacy. We’re fools to expect integrity from a SCOTUS majority made up of seats stolen & appointments made by a treasonous president and a corrupt party who threw the constitution & rule of law out long ago?
🧵 RT @brhodes I’m sorry but no one who came of age with Bush v Gore (eg anyone under like 50) has ever seen the Supreme Court as “apolitical”
📌 https://twitter.com/brhodes/status/1521336182562459648?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Without Bush v Gore there’s no Iraq War and the US leads on climate. Spare me the bullshit about what an island of comity it is – it’s long been the epicenter of efforts to undermine US democracy
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Citizens United and gutting the Voting Rights Act – that’s the Roberts court in action. Viktor Orban couldn’t design a better far right vehicle for illiberal democracy than John Roberts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Overturning Roe only makes sense in a bigger context in which there’s no way they’d stop at overturning Roe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Too many Dems retreat to “history will judge this harshly” – but that misses the point that the right does not think that history will judge them harshly bc they think they’re winning. Why wouldn’t they?🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows https://politi.co/3w1KOHA
// “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court.🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff I am in awe of the courage of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people. ¤ In the face of extreme Russian brutality, Zelenskyy has inspired his people, and freedom-loving individuals across the world. ¤ We are with @ZelenskyyUa and the Ukrainian people.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think we’ve all had a sense that this war is about bigger things than even just the future of Ukraine. It’s obviously about whether or not democracy’s going to survive. It’s also though about wither truth and reality matters” – @brhodes w/ @NicolleDWallace
Bloomberg: Biden Seeks to Rob Putin of His Top Scientists With Visa Lure http://bloom.bg/3vBCwqX
// The Biden administration has a plan to rob Vladimir Putin of some of his best innovators by waiving some visa requirements for highly educated Russians🐣 RT @harrylitman Rejecting First Am arg, fed district court rules RNC’s mass mailing vendor has to turn over emails to 1/6 committee. Emails sent by the RNC and the Trump campaign using the vendor spread false claims that 2020 election was fraudulent or stolen.
// judge was Trump appointeeJournalofDemocracy, David Kramer: Defeating Putin in Ukraine Is Vital to the Future of Democracy http://bit.ly/3kwBKoP “Russia has zero prospects of becoming more democratic as long as Putin remains in power”
// May 2022; Why we must tackle the threat posed by Putin and his authoritarianism head on.💙 TheAtlantic, George Packer: How America Fractured into Four Parts http://bit.ly/3vBfH6Q
// Jul/Aug 2021; People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?⭕ 1 May 2022
WaPo Editorial: Congress must act to prevent an election coup in 2024 http://wapo.st/3s4EkGT ”Electoral Count Act reform can attract 60 Senate votes; voting rights measures cannot”
📋 WaPo: Mass flight of tech workers turns Russian IT into another casualty of war http://wapo.st/3krgml3
// About 10 percent of the tech workforce is projected to leave Russia before the end of May🐣 RT @SpencerGuard This would be huge if true. THE Gerasimov. Top general in the entire Russian military. IMO him being sent to Ukraine at all would be extremely abnormal, a sign the new theater commander (General Dvornikov) not producing results fast enough. Russia is losing (already lost really).
⋙ 🐣 RT @christogrzev Hm. The rumor that Gen. Gerasimov (this time THE Gerasimov) was wounded in yesterday’s Ukrainian shelling of RU command positions near Izyum is now confirmed by the former interior minister Avakov. Still no independent verification though.🐣 RT @bbcworldservice From political novice to Ukraine’s wartime leader – @JonahFisherBBC profiles President Volodymyr Zelensky
⋙ 💽 BBC Documentary: Zelensky: The making of a president http://bbc.in/3ku66s4🐣 RT @KyivIndependent US House of Representatives speaker visits Kyiv. ¤ U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has met with President Volodymyr Zelensky during her visit to Ukraine’s capital on May 1. ¤ Video: President’s press service
💽 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1520663575953608706?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 30 Apr 2022🐣 Donald Trump shut down immigration dramatically, but prior to 2016, most refugees were from Asia, Latin America and Africa. The last influx of Europeans was after the fall of the USSR. Immigration of all types of Europeans has been <20% for decades. @FWhitfield @MSNBC ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1520464688361914370?s=20/photo/1 🧵 ↥ ↧ RT @andersostlund I know many Ukrainians who despite the war in Donbas had a positive view on Russian and Russian culture. That's changed now. Some Russian speaking Ukrainians are disgusted by their own language. The language of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy is now the language of rapists and murderers. 📌 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1520324456576655360?s=20 ⭕ 29 Apr 2022 💙 WSJ, Francis Fukuyama: The Long Arc of Historical Progress http://on.wsj.com/3vO5kwD // A democratic world order is not the inexorable outcome of historical forces, but even amid setbacks, societies are clearly evolving toward equality and individual freedom.
In a recent article in the Atlantic, the historian Anne Applebaum wrote that “There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them.” Her practical point was clear: Only by actively fighting back could the world’s democracies save themselves from Vladimir Putin and the world’s other newly assertive autocrats. But she was also making a deeper point: That there is no broad pattern to history or possibility of historical progress over time; outcomes are simply the result of actors duking it out over and over again. As she tweeted about the piece: “There is no arc of history, nothing inevitable about either democracy or dictatorship. What happens tomorrow depends on what all of us do today.” The “arc of history” likely refers to a favorite phrase of President Barack Obama, who often used it in adapting Martin Luther King Jr. ’s declaration, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”In a narrow sense, Ms. Applebaum’s argument is incontrovertible. There is no underlying historical mechanism that brings us inexorably toward a liberal world order, similar to the Marxist belief that history would culminate in Communism. Mr. Putin’s attack on Ukraine demonstrates that many people in the West had grown complacent about the peace and prosperity brought about by the liberal order that has prevailed in recent decades. They didn’t think that anyone would challenge that order, certainly not with tanks and rockets and outright territorial aggression. And it is clearly true today that the liberal order requires believers in democracy to actively support it, in Ukraine and around the world.
But while we can agree on the short-term urgency of action, it is not at all clear that there is no arc of history or that this arc does not bend toward some form of justice. Social scientists and historians have addressed this question for years under the rubric of “structure” versus “agency” as the source of historical change. Structure refers to broad forces like technology, social classes, climate and geography, as determinants of political and economic outcomes. Agency, by contrast, refers to the decisions and actions taken by individual human beings, whether leaders at the top or actors at the grass roots. The idea of an “arc of history” does not deny the importance of individual agency; it just sees those actions within conditions set by larger structural forces.
“History,” as I used it in my 1989 article “The End of History?” and my 1992 book elaborating on the subject, did not refer to events but to that underlying structure: history with a capital H, what in today’s language would be called modernization or development. Since at least the late 18th century, an important current in Western thought maintained that there was indeed a universal and progressive historical process unfolding over the centuries, as opposed to earlier views that maintained that history was cyclical or simply a random process. This line of thought raises two separate questions: First, does History in the sense of modernization exist, and second, if so, toward what kind of society is it pointing? The first question is rather easy to answer; the second is much more complicated.
If we step back from day-to-day headlines and take a long view of human social evolution, there clearly is an arc of history. Early human communities organized themselves into bands of a few dozen individuals, generally all relatives of one another. They lived initially by hunting and gathering, but as some settled in fertile river estuaries and developed agriculture, their societies grew much larger. These bands were replaced by what anthropologists label “segmentary lineages”—what we commonly call tribes—in which groups claiming descent from a common ancestor could scale up to encompass thousands of people. This form of organization appeared in widely separated parts of the world, including China, India, the Americas, the Middle East and Europe.
Approximately 8,000 years ago, a different type of organization then appeared: the state, in which power was centralized in a single authority that then sought to monopolize the capacity for violence. States also appeared in geographically scattered regions of the world: the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Yellow River Valley in China and the Valley of Mexico. Over time, states proved to be much more powerful than tribally organized societies.
State-level societies grew enormously in scale and could encompass millions of inhabitants. To get to this scale, however, they needed to move away from patrimonial authority and make use of impersonal institutions—bureaucracies—that seek to treat people uniformly as citizens. The first world society to make this transition was China, which had developed the foundational elements of a modern state—a merit-based civil service, centralized taxation, and uniform weights and measures—by the time of its initial unification in 221 BC. It would take European societies another 1,800 years before they too started to evolve modern states.
The next major transition began in the 17th and 18th centuries in Western Europe, driven by a complex set of cultural and economic changes. States had always made use of law as a means of enforcing the ruler’s will on populations, but in certain parts of Europe, law slowly divorced itself from political authority and became embedded in independent legal institutions. Rule by law turned into the rule of law when it came to be applied to the most powerful political actors in a society; this was what drove the English civil war in the 1640s and led to the beheading of the English king. Political authority was no longer the personal privilege of the ruling family but rather a public trust held by the ruler on behalf of the whole society. Law thus became not simply an instrument of power but a constraint on power, allowing private individuals to own property and to buy and sell under a transparent set of rules.
There was, moreover, a critical cognitive shift that took place in Europe around this time, which was the development of the scientific method. That method assumes that there is an objective world beyond our subjective consciousness, one that can be apprehended experimentally and ultimately manipulated to serve human purposes. It was this technique that produced continuous technological change and allowed the modern economic world to emerge.
These ideas were all part of a doctrine that came to be known as liberalism, in which political power would be limited by law and constitutional checks on the ruler’s authority. It quickly became associated with the rapid economic growth that took place in early liberal societies like England and the Netherlands. The scale of markets and efficiency of production increased many fold, aided by technological developments like seaborne transport and long-range navigation. With the direct application of the scientific method to the development of technology, the industrial revolution was born at the turn of the 19th century, producing the steady economic growth that has characterized the world economy ever since.
Modernization is a coherent process involving capital accumulation, investment and increasing economies of scale. It produces similar social results regardless of the cultural starting points of the society in which it occurs. Agrarian societies see peasants leaving the countryside for cities or sometimes being forcibly driven off the land. Cities grow in size and importance, and levels of education begin to rise as requirements for literacy and an increasing range of skill expands. Social classes emerge: One group owns capital, another works for them, and in between there emerges a middle class of professionals, merchants, middlemen and those who provide services for an increasingly complex society.
The 19th-century German social theorist Ferdinand Tönnies described this transition as one from Gemeinschaft (community) to Gesellschaft (society)—from the small, isolated village community to the diverse, urban industrial city. This process unfolded in Western Europe and North America beginning in the late 19th century and took place in Asian societies like Japan, South Korea and China in the 20th century.
So there is an arc of history. The second question is where is it pointing, and in particular, whether it is pointing toward “justice.” When President Obama used the phrase, he was doubtless thinking about justice in two senses: first, a high degree of social and political equality; and second, a political system that protects the autonomy of each individual, that is, a person’s ability to pursue a flourishing life as they see fit, free from violence, war or coercion.
In earlier historical periods, the arc of history bent away from justice. Tribal societies are relatively egalitarian: They disperse power and often operate by consensus. It was only with the development of the state that dictatorship and slavery could exist on a large scale. Many historians have pointed as well to the deterioration of human health and well-being that occurred as diets shifted to grains and peasants were forced into stationary and rigidly limited lives.
Regimes committed to principles of equality and freedom have doubtless spread substantially over recent centuries. But what if the arc of history is pointing elsewhere—toward, perhaps, a Chinese-style hi-tech authoritarianism or to a nationalist illiberal democracy like Viktor Orban’s Hungary? Liberal democracy has not triumphed universally around the world and, indeed, has been in retreat over the last 15 years. This retreat is marked not just by the rise of authoritarian great powers like Russia and China but also by democratic backsliding in established democracies like India and the U.S.
The liberal narrative of historical progress was closely tied to the belief that people were rational and that better education and access to information would make them more critical of unjust authority and open to diverse ideas. This scenario is not playing out in today’s China, where an increasingly well-educated population seems to be content living under a dictatorship. Nor did this narrative anticipate the impact of technology, which has allowed governments to control information in novel ways and malign actors to weaponize it in ways that undermine democratic self-confidence.
In order to see that there has been progress toward justice, it is important to recognize that History is not a linear process in which we make slow but steady improvements every year. Rather, it is marked by huge discontinuities, with periods of peace and spreading freedom interrupted by giant wars and setbacks. One needs to step back and take a long-term perspective. While it may seem counterintuitive at a moment when Europe is consumed by a war between major powers, a number of scholars such as Steven Pinker have shown that aggregate levels of violence have fallen dramatically over the millennia as human societies have evolved from hunting and gathering.
A century ago, the greater part of the earth’s landmass was held in colonial domination by a handful of Western powers. Since then, the idea that each society should be sovereign and free to govern itself has taken hold everywhere. What makes Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine so shocking is that he seems to be still living in that 19th century colonial world, unwilling to recognize the grassroots power of ordinary people like the Ukrainians resisting him.
The great French observer of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville noted that the idea of human equality had been spreading inexorably for centuries prior to his visit to America in the 1830s. He related the story of Madame de Sévigné, the educated and aristocratic patroness of a Paris salon in the 17th century, who wrote a lighthearted letter to her daughter noting she had witnessed a tailor being broken on the wheel for stealing a loaf of bread. Tocqueville comments that her amusement at this scene reflected the fact that she simply could not see the tailor as a fellow human being. Such a lack of empathy, he writes, would be impossible in his own age, which had been shaped by the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution.
We can all point to contemporary instances in which immigrants, refugees or members of racial and sexual minorities are similarly dehumanized and excluded from our circle of human solidarity. But with every passing generation, it has become harder to do this. Virtually no regime today bases itself on an assertion of overt social hierarchy or denies the principle of democratic legitimacy, even if disregarding it in practice. Modern technology has been weaponized, but it has also made the suffering of distant peoples vivid to us in ways that were previously impossible. Witness the upsurge in sympathy for the suffering of Ukrainians that has swept over Europe and North America since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
From a long-term perspective, liberalism has seen its ups and downs but has always come back in the end. It got its start several centuries ago when Europe was exhausted by 150 years of religious warfare; societies decided to lower the stakes of politics by establishing a political order based on the principle of toleration. It was challenged again in the 19th and early 20th centuries by aggressive nationalism that wanted to base community on blood and soil, but it returned again after 1945 in response to two devastating world wars. In the 75 subsequent years, we have lived under a liberal world order that got a tremendous boost with the collapse of Communism in 1989-91. That has produced a feeling of security and even boredom for many people who want a more engaged form of politics and community. Perhaps the current war in Ukraine will remind another generation of the virtues of that older order.
The liberal idea remains very vivid for people all over the world. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people—sometimes millions—leave poor, violent and poorly governed countries in search of a better life. Their destination of choice is never China, Russia or Venezuela. Rather, they seek out well-governed liberal societies where their children will have greater freedom and opportunity. It is they much more than the complacent inhabitants of liberal societies who realize that there is, indeed, an arc of history, with justice as its terminus.
Mr. Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His new book, “Liberalism and Its Discontents,” will be published on May 10 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Appeared in the April 30, 2022, print edition as ‘The Long Arc of Historical Progress Does History Have a Direction?.’ForeignAffairs, Frederick Kagan and Mason Clark: How Not to Invade a Nation https://fam.ag/377lBTI “Russia’s invasion was sweeping and unprioritized rather than sequential and deliberate. It mismatched its forces to tasks and gave Ukraine’s defenders clear ways to fight back”
// Russia’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Case Study in Bad Strategy🐣 RT @Kasparov63 It should be emotional. With recent remarks by Truss and Austen, the West is finally speaking the language Putin & his cronies will understand. No return, no deals, unity against his pariah state, winning in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JimLaPorta .@PentagonPresSec John Kirby gets emotional talking about war atrocities and Putin—“It’s difficult to look at some of the images and imagine that any well-thinking, serious mature leader would do that. I can’t talk to his psychology, but I think we can all speak to his depravity”
💽 https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1520122037896982530?s=20/photo/1WaPo: Second Oath Keepers member pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy http://wapo.st/3yjFtyr
// Brian Ulrich of Georgia drove others in a golf cart to the riot and was charged in the Capitol attack🐣 RT @kiraincongress On 64th day of #war we see that finally things start coming together. More and more sanctions planned and implemented. More and more weapons promised and delivered. ¤ Also, more and more missiles hit our homes. But we are doing everything for it to stop. ¤ @AlJazeeraWorld
🐣 RT @Osinttechnical UK MOD Update- The Battle of Donbas remains Russia’s main strategic focus… Due to strong Ukrainian resistance, Russian territorial gains have been limited and achieved at significant cost to Russian forces. [att]
🐣 RT @andersostlund There are indeed some good news for Ukraine this week. Germany is finally coming around with weapons and potential oil embargo, but words must be followed by actions, and the US support package is of course unprecedented. Ukraine’s chances of victory has grown a lot this week.
⋙ 🐣 RTa_anusauskas [Lith DOD] @ 🇺🇦 US House of Representatives passes lend-lease program for Ukraine.
🇺🇦 German Bundestag gives the official green light to send “heavy weapons” to Ukraine.
🇺🇦 NATO allies have already provided $ 8 billion in military aid to Ukraine
These are some historic moves!
⭕ 28 Apr 2022TheAtlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany (4/28): Why Hunter Biden’s Laptop Will Never Go Away https://tinyurl.com/azs2ce4f How the story became less about the contents of the laptop than about the MSM’s and social media’s attempts to avoid a “Hillary’s emails 2.0”
// 4/28/2022; Could anything that happens with this laptop bring us closure?🐣 RT @mkraju Ten Republicans voted against the Ukrainian Defense Land Lease Act, which passed the House, 417-10. ¤ The 10, per @kristin__wilson:
Andy Biggs
Paul Gosar
Scott Perry
Dan Bishop
Matt Gaetz
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Tom Massie
Ralph Norman
Warren Davidson
Tom Tiffany
⋙ 🐣 the chaos caucusRT @PamelaFalk #BREAKING 🚨Missiles hit Kyiv near hotel of UN Chief ¤ “Immediately after the end of our talks in Kyiv, Russian missiles flew into the city. And this says a lot… about the Russian leadership’s efforts to humiliate the UN” @ZelenskyyUa @CBSNews [link]
🐣 RT @MID_RF [tr] #Захарова : We consider the “freezing” of Russian assets to be illegitimate, violating the principles and norms of international law and the unbiased functioning of the global financial system. ¤ Such actions of the countries of the West are blatant theft by one group of states of the savings of another.
⋙ 🐣 These funds will be used to repair Ukraine from the destruction you have wrought in an unprovoked, illegal war, which you can halt at any moment. ¤ Russia is a rogue state which has by its actions has shown it does not belong in the community of civilized nations.🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Russia stroke Kyiv with cruise missiles right when UN Secretary General @antonioguterres and Bulgarian PM @KirilPetkov visit our capital. By this heinous act of barbarism Russia demonstrates once again its attitude towards Ukraine, Europe and the world.
🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov [DefMin] While the UN Secretary General @antonioguterres is visiting Kyiv, a permanent member of the UN Security Council – russia – is launching missile strikes on the city. This is an attack on the security of the Secretary General and on world security!
🐣 RT @kiraincongress Right now, while #UN GenSec is in Kyiv – two massive air missile hits. s Anybody hoping #Russia would obey any kinds of laws – just look at what happens in #Kyiv now.
🐣 RT @HannaLiubakova President @ZelenskyyUa published this video saying that today in Kyiv, he met with António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations.Just a moment ago, several missiles hit central Kyiv. ¤ Two days ago, Mr Guterres sat with Putin at the long table,listened to his lies
💽 https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1519736555195273222?s=20/photo/1
// Ze meets Guterres in downtown Kyiv🐣 RT @ POTUS Despite the disturbing rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, the facts are plain for all to see: We are not attacking Russia. We are helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression. And just as Putin chose to launch this brutal invasion, he could make the choice to end it.
🐣 RT @JackDetsch NEW: Ukrainian forces received training on U.S.-provided unmanned coastal vessels: senior U.S. defense official
🐣 RT @anders_aslund US Attorney General Merrick Garland told senators Tuesday that the Justice Department would support efforts to ship assets seized from Russian oligarchs directly to Ukraine. (UBN)
🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Biden said that he sent an initiative to Congress that would allow the seizure of the property of Russian oligarchs and send the proceeds to Ukraine.
Politico: White House sends Congress $33B request for Ukraine http://politi.co/3knikTo
// The package is by far the largest single funding proposal of the war.🧵 RT @SpencerGuard “The cost of this fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen. We either back Ukrainian people as they defend their country, or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggression in Ukraine.” @POTUS
📌 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1519706630941646848?s=20🐣 RT @CanadianUkrain1 The General Staff of the #Russian Armed Forces, #Gerasimov, is being sent to #Izyum to salvage the situation. Despite heavy Russian airstrikes and shelling, they continue suffering heavy losses. Offensive capabilities are expected to last for only a couple of weeks ¤ #Ukraine ✊🏻🇺🇦
🐣 RT @ Fascinating and beautifully written story by @shustry – what is likely to be the definitive Zelenskiy-in-the-bunker read [portrait:] https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/status/1519632592731004928?s=20/photo/1
⋙ TIME, Simon Shuster: Inside Zelensky’s World: Interview http://bit.ly/3OJ2QXJ “I’ve gotten older,” he admitted. “I’ve aged from all this wisdom that I never wanted”
// As casualties mount, two weeks in the presidential compound show how the Ukrainian leader has changed🐣 RT @alexrblackwell The Potemkin military.
⋙ Economist: How deep does the rot in the Russian army go? http://econ.st/3OFcOcG
// The fiasco in Ukraine could be a reflection of a bad strategy or a poor fighting force🐣 RT @TheHill Zelensky says he’s been invited to G-20 summit http://hill.cm/oknpTbF
⭕ 27 Apr 2022🐣 RT @DeptOfDefense .@SecDef: Ukraine’s valor and skill will go down in military history. The Battle of Iwo Jima took 36 days. The Battle of the Bulge lasted 40 days. And Ukraine has now beaten back the Russian military for 63 days.
🐣 RT @JackDetsch Pentagon update on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Day 63:
• 🇺🇸 has delivered “half” of the 90 howitzers destined for 🇺🇦
• 🇺🇸 has trained about 50 🇺🇦 military advisors on howitzers, next batch is now in training.
• 🇺🇸 has “appropriate strategic nuclear deterrent” in place🐣 RT @MauriceSchleepe #Russian President #Putin,If Someone Wants to intervene in the situation in #Ukraine from the outside & create a strategic Threat,Then the Blows the retaliatory Strikes will Be Lightning Fast,Russia has all the Tools for this Which NO one else can Boast of Now,RIA NOVOSTI Reports
🐣 RT @olgatokariuk In the occupied Kherson region, Russians have created a prison camp on the territory of a pre-trial detention center where 300 Ukrainian activists and war veterans are being held. According to Ukraine’s defense intelligence, people are interrogated, beaten and tortured there [link]
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Straight out the ISIS terrorist playbook: Russian propagandists promise eternal paradise for killing innocent people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian state TV is raging about WWIII and an inevitable escalation over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Citizens are being primed to believe that even the worst outcome is a good thing, because those dying for the Motherland will skyrocket to paradise.
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1519539122028777472?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @RadioFreeTom If Putin insanely decides that this is a war for the survival of Russia, then we are faced with World War III. Not the rhetorical World War III loosely talked about now, but the real thing, including the deaths of hundreds of millions – in both conventional and nuclear war. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1519454098860429314?s=20⋙ This could happen because of how badly the Russian military and Putin have screwed everything up. But if the only alternative is “surrender Ukraine and then all of Europe,” then the world will have to fight it. It will be Russia’s choice. There is no policy that will stop it. /2
⋙ There are alternatives and Putin may yet satisfy himself with his limited gains. But those of you saying “bring it on” don’t know what you’re talking about, and you don’t understand what all of us will endure, together, if the Russians are stupid enough to go this road. /3
⋙ The choice to escalate now rests in Moscow. It would be one more ridiculous gamble added to a pile of idiotic strategic miscalculations, but all we can do is help Ukraine defend itself and make clear that there is no day that ends better for Russia than the day before. /4
⋙ But if you’re an American whose biggest gripe right now is the price of gas or your student loans or inflation, I understand that we live day to day, but this is the most serious thing in the world and you should be paying attention to it. /5
⋙ I’m already seeing a lot of responses piling on here about “Glory to Ukraine” and “Putin has to go” and the usual stuff. You can just stop that right now; the only thing that matters is ending this war before it finally burns out of control. Diplomats are doing their best. /6
⋙ This war will end with a victory, in the sense that Ukraine will continue to survive. What compromises Zelensky will have to make, I can neither predict nor advise. But there will almost certainly be compromises. /7
⋙ I don’t what the probabilities are of a major escalation. I doubt the Russians know either. This entire crisis is the result of a bunch of gangsters just winging it when a deluded dictator thought he could grab an entire country on the cheap. This is all improv now. /8
⋙ But before you go shooting your mouths off about “taking out Putin” or “it’s inevitable, just fight them,” you might want to let that go. The next decision rests not with us, but with Moscow. We need to be determined and calm and ready. That’s all we can do. /9xCNN, J Michael Luttig: Opinion: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election http://cnn.it/39noIb4 Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years
WaPo: Russia cuts off gas to Poland, Bulgaria, stoking tensions with E.U. http://wapo.st/3ESwTb1 “[T]he Kremlin warned that other countries could face the same fate, escalating tensions between Russia and Europe over the war in Ukraine”
// Zelensky accuses Moscow of ‘energy blackmail’; U.S. says Ukraine has the right to attack Russia in addition to defending itselfWaPo: Mystery fires at sensitive facilities compound Russia’s war challenge http://wapo.st/3vHiDgU “Karma is a cruel thing”
🐣 RT @andersostlund That Russia cut gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria is a big own goal in my opinion. It shows Russia is an unreliable supplier and will speed up efforts in Europe to rid itself from Russian gas altogether.
🐣 RT @expatua President of Moldova says they have no defenses for the country. Moldova is completely at the mercy of Russia. ¤ “For 30 years, the Moldovan army has been left without equipment, without military equipment and combat-ready means. We are now aware of the consequences,” Sandu said.
🐣 RT @dpatrikarakos “I want to say one thing: @elonmusk’s Starlink is what changed the war in #Ukraine’s favour. #Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can’t. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol.” https://twitter.com/dpatrikarakos/status/1519303470192410624?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @apklein51 And that’s why @elonmusk gets a 5-year criticism free card from me. Whoever paid for it, Elon got it up and running and saving thousands of civillian lives. Bloody well done.
↥ ↧
Starlink: Starlink provides high-speed, low-latency broadband internet across the globe. https://www.starlink.com/
// Within each coverage area, orders are fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis. ¤ Using advanced satellites in a low orbit, Starlink enables video calls, online gaming, streaming, and other high data rate activities that historically have not been possible with satellite internet. Users can expect to see download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s and latency as low as 20ms in most locations.🐣 RT @TheRynheart ‘Koch Industries planning ‘exit strategy’ for business in Russia’ ¤ ‘the specific actions that drove their decision were banking sanctions from the Biden administration that made it difficult to pay workers and purchase supplies in Russia’
⋙ TheHill: Koch Industries planning ‘exit strategy’ for business in Russia http://bit.ly/3ESButM
// Koch Industries is working on an “exit strategy” for its business in Russia, after previously saying employees at its glass factories in the country faced personal risks if it pulled out.🐣 RT @Reuters authorities dismantled an eight-meter bronze statue, a Soviet-era monument, in the center of Kyiv meant to symbolize friendship between Russia and Ukraine, a response to Moscow’s invasion, according to the city’s mayor
💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1519297812441313282?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @dpatrikarakos THREAD: I’ve arrived in Dnipro to begin covering the battle for eastern #Ukraine. Dima has been fighting since early March. ¤ “It’s like WWII but with modern technology. 2014 was a playground compared to this.” ¤ * I have permission to tweet his photo & all comments.
📌 https://twitter.com/dpatrikarakos/status/1519270060900106240?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @MarkGaleotti Nikolai Patrushev, hawk’s hawk and a man I described as ‘the most dangerous man in Russia’ (https://buzzsprout.com/1026985/4169738) has given an interview to govt newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. A lengthy thread 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1519222930273619968?s=20🐣 RT @vonderleyen Gazprom’s announcement is another attempt by Russia to blackmail us with gas. ¤ We are prepared for this scenario. We are mapping out our coordinated EU response. ¤ Europeans can trust that we stand united and in solidarity with the Member States impacted.
⭕ 26 Apr 2022
WaPo: Russia cuts off gas to Poland, Bulgaria, stoking tensions with E.U. over Ukraine http://wapo.st/3ESwTb1
🚫 🐣 RT @KimZetter “CIA is also devoting significant resources…to gathering intel with the aim of protecting Ukrainian President Zelenskyy…The agency is consulting with the Ukrainians on ‘how best to move him around, making sure that he’s not co-located with his entire chain of command'”
🧵 RT @anders_aslund Once again, many commentators overestimate Russia’s military might in Ukraine, having learned little form Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv. Russia has only made minor improvements: One general in command, some (but not enough) concentration, better supply lines. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1518933000444125186?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 9. To sum up:
Ukraine has far better soldiers & almost as many as the Russians;
Ukraine has better & more modern weapons;
The Ukrainians are defending their land, while the Russians are clueless.
The Ukrainian army has proven superior in tactics.
Russia has only artillery.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 10. Thus, Ukraine is likely to win.
What does that mean?
At least, Russian forces will be chased out from newly gained territories in Ukraine.
As in the north, retreating Russian troops are not likely to dig trenches but to rush home & Putin wants a decision by May 9.🐣 RT @juliaioffe … The 5,000 Russians living in Germany came out for a car rally for the war also have access to real information. There is no excuse. If you love Putin and his agenda so much, move back to Russia and live the dream.
🐣 RT @StateDept .@SecBlinken: Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine has underscored the power and purpose of American diplomacy.
🐣 RT @nytimes In comments sections, in social media, even in the official pronouncements of the state, Ukrainians are using a new word built from several languages that is not only a condemnation of Russian actions, but also an offering to the Russian language. https://nyti.ms/3K9eacb https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1518279881833996289?s=20/photo/1
⋙ “Ruscism” A new term used by Ukrainians, playing on three different languages, to identify aa enemy – roughly translating to “Russian fascism”🐣 The Twitter software is not complicated. It’s the content stewardship that is difficult. ¤ An alternative to Twitter should be set up as a public utility, a common good, perhaps managed by a coalition of democracies dedicated to human rights
🐣 .@GOPLeader ”But for Wales?”
// quote from “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas MoreWaPo: Putin agrees to U.N. help in evacuations from Mariupol’s Azovstal plant http://wapo.st/3ybx683
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: McCarthy Feared G.O.P. Lawmakers Put ‘People in Jeopardy’ After Jan. 6 http://nyti.ms/38qQPWr
// New audio recordings reveal Kevin McCarthy worried that comments by his far-right colleagues could incite violence. He said he would try to rein in the lawmakers, but has instead defended them.💙 NYT: New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning http://nyti.ms/3vgrV4I
// A court filing and newly disclosed text messages provide additional evidence of how closely some fervent pro-Trump lawmakers worked with the White House on efforts to overturn the election.WaPo, Greg Sargent: A leading Trump sycophant may soon get the humiliation he deserves http://wapo.st/3vhEnRz “Perdue will not ‘allow’ Democrats to win elections, and will justify this with invented claims of fraud, in a way [current GA Governor] Kemp refused to do”
🐣 RT @phildstewart US-hosted defense talks on Ukraine underway here at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, aiming to get weapons to Kyiv at what U.S. officials say is a critical moment in the war.
KyivPost: Russia warns of WWIII ahead of Western summit on arms to Ukraine http://bit.ly/38kPP62
⭕ 25 Apr 2022
CEPA: Vicious Blame Game Erupts Among Putin’s Security Forces http://bit.ly/3ksffBs
// The security institutions, the ‘siloviki’, that are key to propping up the regime are exchanging recriminations for a growing list of failures in the war on Ukraine.Russia’s army is deeply unhappy at the new and curtailed strategy Putin has ordered them to adopt in Ukraine, abandoning the big goal of capturing Kyiv for a much more modest objective of invading Donbas, in the country’s east. ¤ And they are pointing the finger at other agencies, the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch primarily, for misinforming the president about the true conditions inside Ukraine that have led to failure. Other FSB departments appear to share the military’s analysis.
The war in Ukraine sharply divided Russian society. As journalists, we expected to lose many of our contacts in the Russian military and secret services after the invasion began on February 24. After all, it’s one thing to complain to a journalist about corruption in one’s agency, and it’s quite another to speak about the war with those who have taken a public antiwar stand. And indeed, in the first month of the war, some sources refused to answer our calls and messages.
But the situation has now changed dramatically. Last week we began to receive more and more calls and messages from our contacts in the military and in the FSB commenting on our reporting about Sergei Beseda, one of the heads of the Fifth Service of the FSB, who gathers political intelligence on Ukraine and cultivates the pro-Kremlin opposition in Kyiv. The general was sent to the infamous Lefortovo prison in Moscow, which has had a horrible reputation since the Stalin purges — innumerable victims have been murdered in the building’s basement. ¤ The Kremlin has made frantic efforts to hide the details of Beseda’s arrest, going as far as to change the general’s name in prison records. (The Investigative Committee, Russia’s main investigative authority, went so far as to deny the fact of Beseda’s criminal prosecution.)
“Well done!” was a message from our old contacts in Russian Spetsnaz (special forces in the Russian military intelligence.) “All true!” we were told by our contact in the Service of Economic Security of the FSB. Videos about Beseda’s plight have recorded millions of views on Russian YouTube, and were widely debated on pro-Kremlin telegram channels. The rumor mill went wild suggesting that compromising material on Beseda was provided by its rival agency, the foreign intelligence service, the SVR.
Does this mean that the military or the FSB has concluded that the war, with its enormous casualties and incompetent direction, was a mistake? The short answer is no, quite the opposite. ¤ Russia’s military believes that limiting the war’s initial goals is a serious error. They now argue that Russia is not fighting Ukraine, but NATO. Senior officers have therefore concluded that the Western alliance is fighting all out (through the supply of increasingly sophisticated weaponry) while its own forces operate under peacetime constraints like a bar on airstrikes against some key areas of Ukraine’s infrastructure. In short, the military now demands all-out war, including mobilization.
The frustration is becoming so intense that it has spilled over into the public space. Alexander Arutyunov (aka, the blogger RAZVEDOS), a well-known veteran of Spetsnaz of the National Guard, made a video plea to Putin: “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, please decide, are we fighting a war or are we masturbating?” ¤ He demanded a massive escalation, with a choice of airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure or an end to the war. The video went viral, especially with pro-military groups on VK and those Telegram channels affiliated with the Russian army.
The telegram channel “FighterBomber” associated with the Russian air force, posted on April 12 a comment about NATO’s weapon supplies to Ukraine: “Naturally, we’ll further increase air defense units on the border with Ukraine in order to cover our territory from ballistic missile strikes, but it is also clear that NATO countries have far more weapons than Russia.”
The author expressed optimism that the Russian air force will be able to staunch the flow of Western supplies, but warned that further Ukrainian victories “will almost certainly prompt the use of nuclear weapons” against targets in Ukraine.
And then on April 22, Russian army General Rustam Minnekaev announced a second phase of the “special operation” which would aim to “establish full control over the Donbas and Southern Ukraine.
“This will provide a land corridor to the Crimea, as well as influence the vital objects of the Ukrainian economy,” Minnekaev said, according to Russian wire agencies. “Control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria [the Russian-garrisoned breakaway region of Moldova], where there are also facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population.”
This was odd. Minnekaev is Deputy Commander of the Central Military District, and he made his remarks at the annual meeting of the Union of Defense Industries, of all places. The most plausible explanation was that having recently attended General Staff meetings, he became over-excited at what he had heard, and then revealed the news at the first public meeting thereafter. Regardless, it is a sign that the Russian army wants more war rather than less.
What is absent in all these discussions within the military, public or private, is any criticism towards Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Defense, and the public face of the war. Somehow Shoigu has succeeded in keeping the respect of the military, and redirecting all the anger away from the military. ¤ Privately, the army, and even the secret services, have been heard to blame not only the Fifth Service of the FSB for misinforming the president, but also the president himself for making a bad call on changing the military strategy.
In 2014, when the Russian army swiftly occupied Crimea, the military and the security services were on the same page with Putin – they fully supported his decision to annex Crimea and were enthusiastic about the way it was done. It is very significantly different in 2022. ¤ Does it matter? It matters a lot. This is the very first time the siloviki are putting distance between themselves and the president. Which opens up all sorts of possibilities.
🐣 📋 RT @PaulNiland Don’t know how @UATV_en arrived at this number, it’s a huge understatement.
4.5 million Ukrainians have fled to other countries.
Over 7 million Ukrainians are internally displaced.
1 million Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to Russia.
12.5 million people are displaced.
[ link to @UATV_en tweet ]🐣 RT @IgorSushko 🧵Hilarity continues. FSB released a video of documents they fabricated to frame Ukraine which contain the phrase “Signature Illegible” in place of where they were to place an illegible signature.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IgorSushko The FSB also bought 3 The Sims video games instead of 3 phone SIM cards. And included that in the belongings of the imaginary perpetrators. This is an assignation plot the FSB “uncovered” against Solovyev, one of Putin’s dearest TV propagandists.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1518810883018829824?s=20🐣 RT @astroehlein Regardless of who owns Twitter, the company has human rights responsibilities to respect the rights of people who rely on the platform. ¤ Changes to its policies could have devastating impacts, including offline violence.
🐣 RT @oleksiireznikov On behalf of the 🇺🇦 military,I would like to thank 🇺🇲 People and the Government: @POTUS @SecBlinken @SecDef for military assistance. It is not measured in money, but in the saved lives of Ukrainians. Your support brings closer the victory of freedom and democracy over 🇷🇺 tyranny!
🐣 RT @McFaul Ambassador Bridget Brink is a fantastic choice to lead our diplomatic mission in Ukraine! We worked together at the NSC in the Obama years. She’s smart, innovative, extremely knowledgable about the region, and knows well, from 2 tours in Georgia, Putin’s evil ways. Bravo Biden!
⋙ 🐣 RT @washingtonpost President Biden is expected to nominate Bridget Brink to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, a move intended to fill a position that has remained officially vacant for three years — and is now even more crucial during the Russian invasion. [link]🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress This war has truly become a people’s war for Ukraine.” – Zelenskyy’s on 2 monrhs of war ¤ Everyone in the world agrees that the fate of Europe, the fate of global security, and the fate of the democratic system are being decided in Ukraine right now
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The two significant new Jan. 6 disclosures from Mark Meadows’s aide http://wapo.st/3MykoUL
When it comes to whether the proceedings of the Jan. 6 committee will lead to criminal charges, there are two vital questions. Can it be proved that those involved in plotting to overturn the 2020 election:
1. Knew that their actions were illegal, and …
2. Pressed forward with a plan to interfere with Congress’s actions that day?In a 248-page filing in the legal battle over former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s potential testimony, the committee offers new details of testimony from his aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
On the first count, Hutchinson confirmed that the White House Counsel’s Office repeatedly told those plotting to overturn the election that their plan to use alternate slates of electors — or go even further — was not legally sound. Despite this, Meadows and others pressed forward with their attempts to overturn the election and with the Jan. 6 rally.
On the second count — the idea that this could interfere with Congress’s duties — Hutchinson said Meadows was directly warned about the prospect of violence that day. She said Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service agent and political adviser to the White House, discussed the subject with him in early January.
🐣 RT @andersostlund Finally a clear statement of war aim from the West. Demilitarization of Russia is a good first step, a breakup of Russia would be even better but I guess politicians will not go as far as stating that as an aim.
⋙ 🐣 RT @apmassaro3 Secretary Austin says, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Essentially, the demilitarization of Russia. GoodTheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Ukraine and the Words That Lead to Mass Murder http://bit.ly/36IiIZm
// First comes the dehumanization. Then comes the killing.🐣 RT @biz_ukrainw_mag PHOTO: US Secretary of Defense Austin and US Secretary of State Blinken in Kyiv with President Zelenskyy https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1518496643901005824?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 24 Apr 2022
🧵 🌎 RT @CanadianUkrain1 An oil facility directly responsible for the flow of #Russian oil to Europe is on fire in #Bryansk, #Russia. Next to it, just a few km away, a Russian military base is on fire. ¤ Glory to #Ukraine✊🏻🇺🇦. ¤ No typo this time. ¤ Videos below
📌 https://twitter.com/CanadianUkrain1/status/1518414426810036231?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ AdamParkhomenko Friends: Let me remind you that the essential criterion to prove genocide is INTENTION to wipe out a nation. Putin is doing it on the ground, in school textbooks and with his favorite propagandists on Russian weekly TV shows and other social media. His commitment is 100%.
WaPo: France’s Macron wins presidency, holding off Le Pen’s far-right threat to upend Europe and relations with Russia http://wapo.st/3OA4v1D Thank God 🙏 ~ and the good people of France 🇫🇷 ‼️
🐣 RT @Angela_Inca Zelensky :”I simply have no right to be afraid, because our people have shown that they are not afraid of anything.People were stopping tanks with their bare hands.A normal leader does not have the right to be afraid when we are talking about our country and our independence.”
🐣 RT @Ukraine Happy Easter to everyone celebrating today. Light will prevail over darkness. Life will prevail over death. Ukraine will prevail. Amen. https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1518132278823686146?s=20/photo/1
// bombed but intact church⭕ 23 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman The President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, sat and watched on tv a mob of rioters invade and damage the United States Capitol without once calling for any support to quell the insurrection. That explains everything you need to know. We must not forget.
🐣 RT @olliecarroll Zelensky very emotional today: “The world has not seen such barbarism in 80 years. It will be in history books. Little kids will stand up and tell their teachers where rascism рашизм [neologism mixing Russia + fascism] began, and who won in the war against this terrible thing.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll “What did Nazis achieve when they occupied Europe? Everyone hated them. And the second and third generations, who are not even to blame, feel their guilt. The Russians will achieve the same”🐣 RT @expatua Russian Defense Ministry – Presentation showing that the US will commit a massive atrocity, chemical or nuclear, in Ukraine to blame on Russia. ¤ Translation: “Russia will commit a massive atrocity” 💽 https://twitter.com/expatua/status/1517796185788059648?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 22 Apr 2022
💙 CSIS, Jeffrey Mankoff: Russia’s War in Ukraine: Identity, History, and Conflict http://bit.ly/3kdfIr7 A brief history (12p)
// 4/22/2022🐣 📋 RT @KyleWOrton #Russia seems to have accidentally leaked its casualty figures:
– 20,000 overall killed and missing (aligning with claims by #Ukraine)
– 116 confirmed killed when the Moskva was sunk on 14 April, with another 100 missing
– ⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv Pro-Kremlin resource Readovka reported about the death of 13,414 #Russian soldiers while around 7,000 are being missed. These numbers were announced at a closed briefing of #Russia’s Ministry of Defence. The post by Readovka has already been deleted.#Russia seems to have accidentally leaked its casualty figures:
– 20,000 overall killed and missing (aligning with claims by #Ukraine)
– 116 confirmed killed when the Moskva was sunk on 14 April, with another 100 missing https://t.co/ZD7tK3VCzS
— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) April 22, 2022
// Russian deaths Russian casualties ship sinking deleted post deleted tweetWaPo: Meadows was warned of violence ahead of Jan. 6, new court filings show http://wapo.st/3xOmXO9
One of Meadows’s top aides, Cassidy Hutchinson, told congressional investigators that she recalled Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who also held the role of a political adviser at the White House, “coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.” …
The new details came in a filing arguing that a federal court should reject Meadows’s claims of executive privilege and compel him to appear before the House Jan. 6 committee, which is continuing to build a case that Trump knowingly misled his followers about the election, and pressured Pence to break the law in the weeks and hours before the assault.
In the motion, the committee outlines seven “discrete categories of information” it seeks to question Meadows about and argued that his claims of executive privilege should not preclude him from testifying about these categories.
Those categories include testimony and documents relating to communications with members of Congress; the plan to replace acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark; efforts by Trump to “direct, persuade or pressure then Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally refuse to count electoral votes on January 6th”; and activity in the White House “immediately before and during the events of January 6th.”
In the motion, the committee outlines seven “discrete categories of information” it seeks to question Meadows about and argued that his claims of executive privilege should not preclude him from testifying about these categories.
Those categories include testimony and documents relating to communications with members of Congress; the plan to replace acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark; efforts by Trump to “direct, persuade or pressure then Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally refuse to count electoral votes on January 6th”; and activity in the White House “immediately before and during the events of January 6th.”
The committee laid out new examples of warnings Meadows received ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, along with a deepened understanding of his involvement with planning and coordinating efforts to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in Congress. …
Investigators also have found evidence that Meadows repeatedly communicated with GOP Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) before and on Jan. 6, 2021. Hutchinson identified Perry, Jordan, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) as the leading proponents in Congress “who were raising the idea of the Vice President doing anything other than just counting electoral votes on January the 6th.” …
Hutchinson also recounted a Dec. 21, 2020, strategy meeting at the White House ahead of the electoral certification attended by Jordan, Greene and Reps. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). Other GOP members dialed into the meeting, according to Hutchinson’s testimony.
“They felt that he had the authority to — pardon me if my phrasing isn’t correct on this, but — send votes back to the States or the electors back to the States, more along the lines of the [John] Eastman theory,” Hutchinson said of the meeting, referring to a legal theory advanced by Eastman, a conservative attorney.
Medium, NadinBrzezinski: Is a Revolution Starting in Russia? http://bit.ly/3rLb33E “[T]here are a series of seemingly unconnected events that might point to a revolt taking shape inside Russia. The first is a series of suspicious fires”
// This is truly speculative. However, there are a series of seemingly unconnected events that might point to a revolt taking shape inside Russia. The first is a series of suspicious fires. Let’s start in sequence.🐣 RT @Spoonamore A 🧵 on the #Dmitrievsky #Chemical Plant explosion and fire. On @Twitter I mostly post on Data Security (20year as a CxO and #Votehacking. But I also have 9 years as CEO and longer on BODs of #AdvancedMaterials / #NanoMaterials.
📌 https://twitter.com/Spoonamore/status/1517510440598843394?s=20⋙ The extreme damage, perhaps total destruction of this chemical plant is going to have a spectacular and massive impact on the #RussianArmy. Possibly grinding entire systems to a stop in weeks, perhaps even days. […]
⋙ At one of my prior firms, bid products from this plant. AFAIK, they are the only maker of a huge range of solvents and reactives of this kind in W. #Russia. See here: [link]
⋙ Among the products this plant made are the additives needed for advanced rocket/jet fuels, treatments/solvents for servicing metal parts, core input chemicals for explosive and solvents/traces/washes needed to manufacture electronics and circuits.
⋙ This plant, was a PROCESS CRITICAL Tier 2/3 supplier to dozens/hundreds of suppliers for everything needed in war. For those who may think Tier 1/2s will have stock on hand; Nope. At most 2-3 weeks as these are VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) that die on the shelf. […]
⋙ I have been reading the brilliant #RussiaUkraineWar coverage of @OzKaterji @Militarylandnet @KofmanMichael @HN_Schlottman @Nrg8000 but if this #ChemicalPlant Fire is as bad as it appears, this will not be a long war. #Russia has lost a unique key tool it needs to make #War. […]🐣 RT @VerstyukIvan Russians are now putting own flags on the municipal buildings is Southern and Eastern Ukraine. Along with the Russian flags, they also use Soviet flag with hammer & sickle. People get mad at those because USSR destroyed millions of Ukrainians through famines and prisons.
🐣 RT @carlbildt Looks at the flags the 🇷🇺 occupation authorities are putting up in the Kherson oblast in 🇺🇦! Now even the Soviet Union is back.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews It was their plan all along.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews [3/2] State TV host Olga Skabeeva said: “Biden announced the goal of our special operation: he said that Putin wants to restore the USSR. As though there’s anything wrong with that.”
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews [3/2] Host Vladimir Soloviev bitterly noted: “They’re imposing such sanctions against us, it’s a declaration of war. De facto, it’s a declaration of war against us. So why should we stop with Ukraine?”
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews [3/2] Russian state media is having a field day with Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor’s recent suggestion on Fox News that the people of Ukraine should really just lie down and let Putin have his way. [link]🧵 RT @KyivIndependent Zelensky: ‘The territory where Russia should protect the rights of Russian speakers is Russia itself.’ ¤ A country where there is “no freedom of speech, no freedom of choice, no right to dissent, where poverty thrives and human life is worthless,” Zelensky said of Russia.
📌 https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1517661222107234304?s=20🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports “@RepRaskin said the committee will present ‘evidence’ that proves there was coordination among then-President Donald Trump and his inner circle and his supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.”
⋙ NBCNews: Jan. 6 revelations will ‘blow the roof off the House,’ Rep. Jamie Raskin says http://nbcnews.to/3OzsL3W
// The Jan. 6 committee plans to hold hearings in June and aims to have a report out about their investigation by the end of the summer or early fall, Raskin🐣 RT @olliecarroll Russian military for the first time says it is aiming for control ove the entire of southern Ukraine. Forget “denazification,” now it’s officially about joining Transnistria with Russia and denying Ukraine access to the sea. https://interfax.ru/world/837353
🌎 WaPo: What is Transnistria, and will Russia advance toward Moldova? http://wapo.st/3k3GBxD Transnistria is a tiny Russian-speaking break-away section of Moldova. When Russia demands “access” to it, it means taking Odessa, Ukraine’s sole remaining port ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1517583574874169344?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Trump says he threatened not to defend NATO against Russia http://wapo.st/3Ovkpul “Trump said he was ‘amazed’ the conversation hadn’t leaked during his presidency”
🐣 RT @ When talking to TASS about “control over south of Ukraine”, General Minnekaev says: ¤ “We are now at war with the whole world, as it was in Great Patriotic War, the whole of Europe, the whole world was against us. And now it’s the same, they never loved Russia”
Know history much?🐣 RT @biz_ukrainw_mag Russia has announced that the goals of Phase 2 of the invasion of Ukraine include establishing control over the whole of southern Ukraine including Odesa Oblast, which would cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea and leave the country landlocked
🐣 RT @ !!!! “Access to Transnistria” is actually access to Moldova. A small, vulnerable nation without NATO or EU protection.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ASLuhn Russian military says its new goals include “control over southern Ukraine” & “access to Transnistria, where there’s also persecution of the Russian-speaking population.” ¤ Which paints a big target on Mykolaiv & Odesa… https://interfax.ru/world/837353
⋙ 🐣 RT @Oenbennach “Apparently, we are now at war with the whole world, as it was in the Great Patriotic War, all of Europe, the whole world was against us. And now the same thing, they never liked Russia” – TASS🐣 RT @maryilyushina Russian military says its goal in the second phase of the operation is to establish “full control over Donbass and southern Ukraine.” “This will provide a land corridor to the Crimea, as well as influence the vital objects of the Ukrainian economy,” Rus mil official said.
🐣 RT @Podolyak_ 🇷🇺 – country with a complex of inferiority, which tries to assert itself through others. It has no science development, doesn’t produce technology and has nothing to export except natural raw materials. But it dreams of being a “super country” longing for the imperial past. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @Podolyak_ 🇷🇺 lives by the cult of victory in WW2 due to no success in 2022. And decided to start a new war because of that. It sounds funny, but no time for jokes. Hundreds of people die every day. Prank got out of control. The world must stop this madness and impose an oil embargo. 2/2🐣 RT @NewStatesman Both Hitler and Putin are consumed by a deeply held ideology rooted in false memories of world war, writes @RichardEvans36.
💙 ⋙ NewStatesman. Richard Evans: Why Putin’s war in Ukraine turned into a military disaster http://bit.ly/3v5fPeI
// The Russian president is a prisoner of his own delusions – and the similarities with Hitler are hard to ignore.🐣 📋 RT @KevinRothrock In a now deleted VK post, the pro-Kremlin media outlet Readovka claims that Russia’s Defense Ministry stated at a “closed briefing” that it’s lost 13,414 soldiers in Ukraine *plus* another 7,000 who are missing. 116 sailors killed aboard the Moskva, with 100+ still missing. https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1517387374115926017?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 21 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @markmackinnon By refusing to surrender in Mariupol – and just by carrying on in places like Irpin – Ukrainian resistance continues to foil Vladimir Putin’s plans. My report
⋙ Globe&Mail, Mark MacKinnon [CA]: How Ukrainian resistance continues to disrupt Vladimir Putin’s plans to take over http://tgam.ca/37zF9QY🐣 RT @McFaul Read our new “Action Plan on Strengthening Sanctions against the Russian Federation.”
⋙ ≣ FSI: The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions http://stanford.io/3MoHPQk
// Current proposals by the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions focus on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.🧵 RT @BarackObama The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for healthy, inclusive democracy.
📌 https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1517333872375042048?s=20🐣 RT @WarintheFuture The latest assessment from @TheStudyofWar and @criticalthreats on the Russo-Ukraine War is now available.
⋙ ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 20 http://bit.ly/37zCiHK🐣 RT @steven_pifer Wow. ¤ However, by these guy’s twisted logic, there should be simple way for #Russia to stop this: end war and withdraw its military from #Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews I’ve seen Russian propagandists contort themselves into pretzels, but this really takes the cake. Former military spy on state TV claimed that Americans are responsible for the genocide of Russians, because they’re arming Ukrainians in order to exterminate the Russian genotype.TheIndependent [UK]: Nearly 3,000 of Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenaries killed in the war, UK MPs told http://bit.ly/3Mo0Kup
// Wagner Grup is among mercenary groups fighting in Ukraine🐣 RT @IgorSushko UPDATE: The largest Russian manufacturer of chemical solvents – The Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant, blown up today, was a key supplier of propellants for the Russian military. 250 miles EAST of Moscow. Russian saboteurs knew exactly what to hit. This is BIG.
💽 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1517310753983791104?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @IgorSushko UNCONFIRMED RUMOR: The Aerospace Defense Research Institute building in Tver, about 2.5 hours from the Kremlin, apparently housed some kind of military satellite control room utilized for war in Ukraine. Russian saboteurs knew exactly what to hit. BIG DEAL.
💽 on fire https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1517313510425776128?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @StateDept The Kremlin lies when it has something to hide. Learn more about the State Department’s efforts to expose Russia’s disinformation about atrocities in Bucha:
⋙ StateDept: Russian Federation Disinformation About Its Atrocities in Bucha http://bit.ly/3JZeSZD🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 😅Oh lordy! Tapes! @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy today denied saying he would call Trump to recommend he resign over the January 6 insurrection. But @nytimes reporters have the recording. Should be interesting to see how the boldfaced liar squirms out of this one. #Maddow / quotes: https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1517315626674507776?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Acyn Recording of McCarthy and Cheney
🔊 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1517312049612607488?s=20/photo/1💽 NBCNews: Obama warns spread of disinformation is ‘weakening’ democracies http://nbcnews.to/3L8U82H
// Former President Obama gave a speech on the threat of disinformation at Stanford University, discussing deepfakes and social media’s influence. NBC’s Ben Collins has details.TheWeek: Zelensky, Liz Cheney among recipients of JFK Profiles in Courage Award http://bit.ly/3k7u4sR plus Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R), and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, of GA Fulton Country election dept
The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation will, for the first time ever, honor 5 individuals with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Washington Post reports.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R), and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who works for the Fulton Country election department in Georgia, will also receive the award.
“These honorees have placed their careers and lives on the line to protect democratic principles and free and fair elections,” the foundation said. “They embody what President Kennedy admired most in others — political courage.”
The group applauded Zelensky’s “principled leadership,” which has “strengthened the resolve of Ukrainians and people around the globe to protect and defend the fragile human right of self-determination.” Ukraine is currently fending off an unprompted invasion at the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The foundation also praised Cheney, a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump and member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, for refusing “to take the politically expedient course that most of her party embraced.”
Cheney has repeatedly spoken out against the former president and his grip on the GOP, even at the expense of her political standing among colleagues. A Trump-backed challenger is running against her in Wyoming’s upcoming Republican primary.
In a statement, Cheney said she was “grateful” for the “tremendous honor” of the Profile in Courage Award, and called on Americans to help defend democracy.
“If we do not stand for truth, the rule of law, and our Constitution,” Cheney said, “if we set aside our founding principles for the politics of the moment, the miracle of our constitutional republic will slip away.”
NYT: ‘I’ve Had It With This Guy’: G.O.P. Leaders Privately Blasted Trump After Jan. 6 http://nyti.ms/3vA90R7
// In the days after the attack, Representative Kevin McCarthy planned to tell Mr. Trump to resign. Senator Mitch McConnell told allies impeachment was warranted. But their fury faded fast.🐣 RT @ Zelensky and Ukrainians have defined courage and shown the world what it means to speak truth to power, to truly value freedom and democracy. #StandWithUkraine #ArmUkraineNOW
💙 ⋙ NYT, Bret Stephens: Why We Admire Zelensky http://nyti.ms/3xIbNdK “he knows how words can inspire deeds — give shape and purpose to them — so that the deeds may, in turn, vindicate the meaning of words”
// Ukraine’s president reminds us that democracies can still generate great leaders.We admire him because, in the face of unequal odds, Ukraine’s president stands his ground. Because he proves the truth of the adage that one man with courage makes a majority. Because he shows that honor and love of country are virtues we forsake at our peril. Because he grasps the power of personal example and physical presence. Because he knows how words can inspire deeds — give shape and purpose to them — so that the deeds may, in turn, vindicate the meaning of words. …
We admire Zelensky because of who and what he faces. Vladimir Putin represents neither a nation nor a cause, only a totalitarian ethos. The Russian dictator stands for the idea that truth exists to serve power, not the other way around, and that politics is in the business of manufacturing propaganda for those who will swallow it and imposing terror on those who will not. Ultimately, the aim of this idea isn’t the mere acquisition of power or territory. It’s the eradication of conscience.
We admire Zelensky because he has restored the idea of the free world to its proper place. The free world isn’t a cultural expression, as in “the West”; or a security concept, as in NATO; or an economic description, as in “the developed world.” Membership in the free world belongs to any country that subscribes to the notion that the power of the state exists first and foremost to protect the rights of the individual. And the responsibility of the free world is to aid and champion any of its members menaced by invasion and tyranny. As it goes for Ukraine, so, eventually, it will go for the rest of us.
We admire Zelensky because he embodies two great Jewish archetypes: David in the face of Goliath and Moses in the face of Pharoah. He is the canny underdog who, with skill and wits, makes up for what he lacks in fearsomeness and brawn. And he is the prophet who revolts against the diminishment and entrapment of his people — and determines to lead them through trials toward a political culture based on self-determination, freedom and ethics.
We admire Zelensky because he fights. Fighting is not supposed to be a virtue in civilized societies that value dialogue, diplomacy and compromise. But the world isn’t always civilized: There are things for which civilized persons and nations must be prepared to fight if they aren’t to perish. Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have reminded the rest of the free world that a liberal and democratic inheritance that is taken for granted by its citizens runs the risk of being taken at will by its enemies.
We admire Zelensky because he rouses the better angels of our nature. His leadership has made Joe Biden a better president, Germany a better country, NATO a better alliance. He has shaken much of the United States out of the isolationist stupor into which it was gradually falling. He has forced Europe’s political and mercantile classes to stop looking away from Russia’s descent into fascism. He reminds free societies that there can still be a vital center in politics, at least when it comes to things that matter.
We admire Zelensky because he maintains a sense of human proportion befitting a democratically elected leader. Note the contrast between his public encounters with journalists, cabinet members, foreign leaders and ordinary citizens, and the Stalinist antics of the Putin court. In the ostentatious trappings of Russian power we see the smallness of the man wielding it: the paranoia and insecurity of a despot who knows he may someday have to sell his kingdom for a horse.
We admire Zelensky because he models what a man should be: impressive without being imposing; confident without being cocksure; intelligent without pretending to be infallible; sincere rather than cynical; courageous not because he is fearless but because he advances with a clear conscience. American boys in particular, raised on preposterous notions of what manhood entails, should be steered toward his example.
We admire Zelensky because he holds out the hope that our own troubled democracies may yet elect leaders who can inspire, ennoble, even save us. Perhaps we can do so when the hour isn’t quite as late as it is now for the people of Ukraine and their indomitable leader.
⭕ 20 Apr 2022
🧵 RT @MiRo_SPD What’s also incomprehensible for Ukrainians is the German feeling of guilt towards Russia and what appears to be only Russia. But the USSR was an empire – Ukraine and Belarus suffered the most being on the western border, they were completely occupied and devastated 1/5
📌 https://twitter.com/MiRo_SPD/status/1516853630514745344?s=20💙 🧵 RT @McFaul In his invasion of Ukraine, Putin has pursued many war objectives. So far, he has achieved none. 1/ THREAD
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1516823596873617415?s=20⋙ Putin does not believe that Ukrainians are a distinct nation, but just Russians with accents. He vowed to unite this single nation. He has failed dramatically. In fact, his invasion achieved just the opposite. He helped to deepen Ukrainian national and civic identities. 2/
⋙ Putin tried to invade the entire country of Ukraine. On that objective, he also has failed miserably. 3/
⋙ Putin tried to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as a way to decapitate Ukraine’s fighting forces. He failed. Ukraine won decisively the Battle of Kyiv. 4/
⋙ Putin continues to try to capture other major Ukrainian cities in the east and south. To date, he has not captured a single major city. Amazingly, Kharkiv is still free. And even Mariupol fights on. 5/
⋙ Putin also promised to “denazify” — aka kill Zelensky and install a puppet regime —
Putin also promised to “demilitarize” Ukraine. He has failed. 7/
⋙ Putin also has strengthened NATO, maybe prompting 2 more countries to join, deeply ruined his own economy, and done deep damage to the reputation of Russia and Russians around the world. 8/
⋙ It is against this dropback of giant Putin failures that we must understand the Battle for Donbas. That the Kremlin has now explicitly changed the focus of their war to be “defense of Donbas” signals a major defeat in the overall war. 9/
⋙ While winning decisively the overall war so far, Ukraine could still lose this next battle. And a loss in Donbas could encourage Putin to expand his war objectives again. That’s why the West must do everything now to help Ukraine win the Battle of Donbas. 10/↥ ↧
💙 ⋙⋙ 🐣 ◕ Haplogroups are genetic markers, mutations that can be used to map the migration of our ancestors 10-60,000 years ago.
Ukraine and Russia. They are each about half yellow (Slavic) and 10-15% blue (South Slavic). But:
● Russia has a lot more purple (Finnish).
● Ukraine has a mix of Mediterranean Haplotypres (Greco-Roman) as well as Hunnic
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1517004270213730304?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 There is also the historical record, but you know that. It’s long and often tragic, marked by many periods of war with and repression of Ukr by Muscv. Language is a fairly superficial thing by which to define nationality, can change in a generation
💙 ⋙⋙ 🐣 Eurekalert (2021): Ukraine genome survey adds missing pieces to human diversity puzzle http://bit.ly/3jNdgqZ The 1000 Genomes Study, an offshoot of the Human Genome Project, recently identified Ukraine as having a unique genetic signature marked by 13 million genetic variants Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1517000691608436736?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @@ilya_poet I’ve known Anastasia Afanasieva for over a decade. I translated her poems, she translated mine. Then she took a long break from poetry and decided to make fish-hooks. Yes. Fish-hooks. She had a successful business, which is all bombed now. About bombs, here’s what she says:
⋙ 🐣 RT @@ilya_poet What’s terrifying? The planes. Kharkiv’s near border, so gov’t can’t warn if plane’s coming. It takes 3 min for the plane to rise in Russia & bomb Kharkiv. I’d a friend in a border village, message a warning: “Plane”. That meant: 1 min to fall on the floor, shut our ears
💙💛 ⋙ 🐣 RT @@ilya_poet She writes: “Since the war started, I feel it’s like one long day: I still don’t know what day of the week it is or what date.” Yes, she is writing poems again. A Russian language poet she writes abt abandoning Russian language: the second half of the poem is in Ukrainian.📋 UkrWeekly (2020): World War II Victory Days marked differently in Ukraine and Russia http://bit.ly/3MnIoKe
// 5/15/2020According to the publication commemorating the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazism in World War II that was released five years ago by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Ukraine’s total losses in the war ranged from 8 million to 10 million people – equal to the population of modern Austria or Hungary. There are only two countries in the world whose total losses exceeded the losses of the Ukrainian people in World War II: Russia (14 million) and China (15 million).
On the battlefront, Ukrainians’ fight against the Nazis predated that of the USSR. Ukrainians of the Transcarpathian region of pre-war Czechoslovakia first challenged the Nazis in 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland. Ukrainians clustered in the Carpathian region of the country declared independence in 1939 and formed Carpathian Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians from the region, joined by compatriots from the Ukrainian population of Poland, fought heroically against the enemy in 1938-1939 in the military organization Carpathian Sich until the Nazis and their Hungarian allies consolidated their grip on these territories.
In 1939, 120,000 Ukrainians from the Halychyna region fought losing battles in the Polish Army against Wehrmacht troops.
Some 6 million to 7 million Ukrainians fought in the Soviet Army in 1941-1945, comprising up to 25 percent of the combatants – by far the largest non-Russian contingent. Among them were 200 generals and seven commanders of various armies and fronts. Over 3 million military fighters died in combat or in prisons. Half of the survivors sustained injuries and remained invalids. For their heroism, 2.5 million medals were awarded and over 2,000 Ukrainian combatants were recognized with the prestigious title Hero of the Soviet Union, some several times over.
💙 Politico: Jan. 6 panel piecing together details of final Trump-Pence call http://politi.co/3xEDwfl
// Several Donald Trump allies listened in from the Oval Office, but Mike Pence’s side of the call remains elusive.WaPo: Russia announces ICBM test as Ukraine clings to key port city http://wapo.st/36ypbGd
🐣 RT @robreiner It couldn’t be more simple. A vote for Republicans is a vote to destroy Democracy.
🐣 RT @@Simon_the_Pratt Ben continues to be a very helpful source of context and advice on the EU’s better and worse responses to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bctallis “From the fog of war in #Ukraine, the contours of a new European politics are emerging. Not in #Germany or #France, but rather it is in the EU’s Central & East European states that a new hard-edged geopolitical idealism is taking shape.” #CEE @RUSI_org
⋙⋙ Rusi, Benjamin Tallis: Are Czechia and Slovakia the EU’s New Radical Centre? http://bit.ly/3k1vrJy🧵📌 RT @andersostlund Germany’s position, inaction and obstruction is putting enormous values at stake. The most obvious is Ukrainian lives but also western ideals, European security, global business and, not the least, Germany’s own reputation as a western democracy and reliable ally is at stake.
📌 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1516688481858244608?s=20WaPo: One body at a time, a Kyiv coroner documents Ukraine’s death toll http://wapo.st/3954VwU horrifying
AtlanticCouncil, Taras Kuzio: How Putin’s Russia embraced fascism while preaching anti-fascism http://bit.ly/3xFRBcz “[V]eneration of the Soviet WWII experience … evolved into a quasi-religious cult complete with its own lexicon, rituals, monuments, and holy days“
… This veneration of the Soviet WWII experience proved hugely popular with the Russian public. Over the past two decades, it has evolved into a quasi-religious cult complete with its own lexicon, rituals, monuments, and holy days. In 2020, it even received its very own cathedral.
As with any religion, heresy is not tolerated. Deviations from the officially approved narratives of the victor nation are subject to criminal prosecution and blasphemy is dealt with ruthlessly. In Putin’s Russia, there is no greater crime than to question the sanctity of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
The kleptocratic Putin regime has used this victory cult to establish the illusion of an ideological commitment to fighting fascism. In line with this anti-fascist posturing, opponents of the current Russian authorities are routinely branded as fascists and Nazis. These vague but emotive labels have been attached to a dizzying array of adversaries ranging from domestic dissidents to recalcitrant neighbors.
Nowhere is modern Russia’s fixation with “phantom fascists” more immediately apparent than in Kremlin policy toward Ukraine. For years, Moscow has equated Ukrainian national identity with fascism while depicting Russian aggression in Ukraine as a continuation of the struggle against Nazi Germany. …
🐣 RT @NeilBlaser Ukraine has spent hundreds of years with Russia seeking to deny their identity and existence, their version of “far right” is essentially “We exist, we are not Russian and we deserve to exist and will fight to continue to exist.” It is fundamentally anti-colonial.
🧵 RT @IgorSushko My translation of the 17th #FSBletters from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Dated 4/18. Topics: Global food shortage, luring Ukraine to counter-attack Russia, impending mass-cleansing of the General Staff, Odessa, chaos surrounding the missing & economy.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1516658872852697088?s=20⭕ 19 Apr 2022
IgorSushko: All #FSBletters translated as of April 19th, 2022 – Chronological Order http://bit.ly/3kch4m2
WaPo: Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine http://wapo.st/36IYkrb
// A popular Twitter account has morphed into a social media phenomenon, spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and shaping public discourse💙 🧵 RT @Kasparov63 The war in Ukraine is fast and deadly. Ukraine needs every weapon, now. But the battle to bring real peace is in Russia, where for the first time Putin’s cronies & ordinary citizens will finally have to choose between a normal life and Putin.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1516423205237444632?s=20🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Zelensky: ‘If we had access to all the weapons we need, which our partners have, we would have already ended this war.’ ¤ Zelensky renewed calls for weapons to Ukraine, saying “it is unfair that Ukraine is still forced to ask for what its partners have been storing for years.”
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Even I need to admit, I did not expect [Putin] to be as evil in the way that he is fighting this war as he has been… They could’ve cleaned up Bucha, they could’ve hid that. They didn’t do that, they left those bodies on purpose” – @McFaul w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1516538492695760909?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @MavkaSlavka Russia assaulted cities and towns along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long and poured more troops into Ukraine on Tuesday in a potentially pivotal battle for control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.
⋙ AP: Russia pours in more troops and presses attack in the east http://bit.ly/385MdEF
// KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a boomerang-shaped frontRussia assaulted cities and towns along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long and poured more troops into Ukraine on Tuesday in a potentially pivotal battle for control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.
If successful, the Russian offensive in what is known as the Donbas would essentially slice Ukraine in two and give President Vladimir Putin a badly needed victory following the failed attempt by Moscow’s forces to storm the capital, Kyiv, and heavier-than-expected casualties nearly two months into the war.
The eastern cities of Kharkiv and Kramatorsk came under deadly attack. Russia also said it struck areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas with missiles. Multiple explosions were heard early Wednesday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. A hospital was reported shelled earlier in the nearby town of Bashtanka.
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Informed EC President @vonderleyen about the provision of the completed questionnaire – an important step towards #EU membership! Discussed the increase of security aid to 🇺🇦 in the face of RF’s aggression. Also discussed postwar reconstruction. We appreciate the support of 🇪🇺!
🐣 RT @anders_aslund People ask me: But what do the Russians say? My sad answer is that they only lie so I have no clue what they actually think. They are beyond the realm of decent conversation. They had better relearn what truth is & what decency is as opposite to genocide.
🐣 RT @lrozen European official says in short term, Mariupol is the main objective for Moscow. Russia feels it needs to control Mariupol as fast as possible, before May 9. He expects complete destruction of the city, and many civilian casualties. He fears it is going to be worse than Bucha.
🐣 RT @Angela_Inca Zelensky:”In this war, the Russian army will forever inscribe itself in world history as perhaps the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world.And this is vileness, which will mark the Russian state as a source of absolute evil for generations”
🐣 RT @DrRadchenko Here’s my response btw. Text Block: https://twitter.com/DrRadchenko/status/1516641021395968006?s=20/photo/1
⋙ a response to: ForeignAffairs: We asked dozens of experts whether proceeding with NATO enlargement after the end of the Cold War was a mistake. Read their responses here: http://fam.ag/3xH4rraText: The biggest failure of the post-Cold War order was the failure to anchor Russia in the West. This was first and foremost Russia’s failure: the Russians did not enough foresight, persevereence and goodwill to break free from the legacy of imperialism and authoritarianism. But the West failed, too, to find sufficient space for Russia in the relevant economic and security structures, letting it drift off on its own with its toxic grievances. The challenge now is to see around the corner and begin planning for a different Russia within a broader Europe. The lessons of the 1990s will provide important clues about building a more inclusive international order. We must not overestimate our levers with Russia or overestimate our ability to shape it’s political culture. But nor should be write Russia off. We in the West should recognize that Russia’s thinking is that the West seeks Russia’s demise. Our goal should be to try to change this perception. Practical steps in this direction will have to wait until Putin, with his delusional fantasies, is off the stage, but once this happens (and it will happen), we must be in a position to offer Russia a viable path to rejoining the West in respectable terms. We must reimagine Russia — and help Russia reimagine itself.
🐣 RT @sentdefender The United Kingdom and Canada have both announced today that they will soon provide the Ukrainian Military with Heavy Combat Equipment including Artillery Systems, the Systems that both Countries as well as the United States appear to be sending is the M777 155mm Howitzer.
🐣 RT @myroslavapetsa Fighter jets are a game changer. It’s a tectonic shift that Russia has been dreading and Ukraine has been hoping for. Aircraft tops the wish list of both the Ukrainian government and the army. And it’ll surely boost morale within Ukrainian resistance.
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 BREAKING: The Pentagon says that Ukraine has “received additional fighter aircraft” from countries other than the U.S. and “additional aircraft parts” that will allow Ukraine to get more planes in the air
📊 Ipsos: Global public opinion about the war in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3JYvO2b
// Survey finds unity in concern for Ukrainians, willingness to take in refugees, and wariness of getting involved militarily, but diverging views on sanctions and military support🐣 RT @lesiavasylenko Is there a legal system in the world where the court asks the victim what she is prepared to cede to her rapist, so he stops raping her? No? I wander why then the media and the international community still see it fit to ask what #Ukraine could cede in negotiations with #Russia
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR ‘They are firing air-based missiles, which #Ukraine, in particular, handed over to them as a result of the Budapest Memorandum. They have hundreds of such missiles’, Arestovich. ¤ Enemy will launch missile strikes by the end of the war, as it has significant stockpiles of missiles.
🐣 RT @americanpurpose “The disastrous choices made by Russia and China in recent weeks result directly from the authoritarian nature of the two countries’ political systems.” ¤ Read @FukuyamaFrancis’s “Systemic Errors:”
⋙ AmericanPurpose, Francis Fukuyama: Systemic Errors http://bit.ly/3KYhacx “We are being treated today to clear demonstrations of exactly why autocracy is so dangerous” ~ Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; China’s zero-COVID policyOver the past few weeks, we have been treated to two major examples of disastrous decision-making by authoritarian great powers. The first was, clearly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which to date has killed tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians. The cost to Russia has been enormous as well, with a significant fraction of the invasion force having been annihilated and forced to retreat from Kyiv. President Vladimir Putin evidently ordered the attack believing that the Ukrainian government would fall in a matter of days, and that ordinary people would welcome the Russians as liberators. Instead, resistance was fierce and skilled, and Putin has had to scale back his objectives to conquering the eastern Donbas. The NATO alliance has shown strong solidarity. While Putin blamed NATO expansion for his attack on Ukraine, his actions are likely lead to Finland and Sweden joining the alliance as well. The Russian army has been humiliated as Ukrainian farmers tow away abandoned Russian tanks with their tractors.
At the other end of Eurasia, China is engaged in a senseless struggle to maintain its zero-Covid strategy in the face of a massive outbreak of new variants of the virus. The strategy involves locking down entire cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai, with parents being separated from their children, thousands of asymptomatic people being put in massive quarantine facilities, and shut-in citizens wailing about being unable to buy food or medicines. These shutdowns will have huge consequences for the Chinese economy, since China remains crucial to global supply chains that have already suffered huge disruptions from Covid outbreaks outside of China.
All countries make big policy mistakes, and the United States has unfortunately seen a large share of them so far in this century. But the disastrous choices made by Russia and China in recent weeks are the results not simply of poor information or bad judgment on the part of individual leaders; they result directly from the authoritarian nature of the two countries’ political systems. Both Russia and China have evolved a form of personalistic authoritarianism that gives untrammeled authority to a single individual at the top. There are very few checks on that individual’s power, and no easy way of the system reversing course in the face of evident failure.
This lack of checks on power is particularly evident in the case of Russia. Many commentators have noted that Putin has become very isolated in the course of the Covid epidemic. This was symbolized by the photos of him conferring with key advisors at the end of a long table, evidently due to his fear of being infected.
Just prior to the war, he was shown meeting with members of his national security council, who sat in a large circle far away from him. The Russian president went on to deliver a humiliating dressing-down to the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin. Russia evidently had very poor intelligence on its neighbor to the south, and remained unaware of the way that Ukrainian national identity had evolved since the annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas in 2014. There are reports that Putin has ordered the arrest of the FSB officers responsible for Ukraine, as well as the commander of the Black Sea Fleet following the sinking of that fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, by Ukrainian missiles.
This relationship between Putin and his closest advisors, based entirely on fear, does not point to a political system that is capable of intelligent debate and deliberation. One imagines that any subordinate having information that contradicts the president’s preconceptions would be loath to express his views. All of this reinforces the information bubble that Putin has built for himself, and guarantees continuing bad results.
We know somewhat less about the nature of high-level Chinese decision-making, but it is highly likely that something similar has been going on with President Xi Jinping. One of the hallmarks of the political system created by Deng Xiaoping after 1978 was a reliance on collective decision-making within at least the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo. China was ruled by a CCP dictatorship, but it was a highly institutionalized one with term limits on the length of service of senior leaders, mandatory retirement ages, and a distinct aversion to the kind of charismatic leadership characteristic of the Mao Zedong era.
Many of these institutional checks have been dismantled by Xi, most notably the ten-year limit on his own term as party general secretary and president. From what we know about the current system, much of the collective leadership system created by Deng has been dismantled. None of the other members of the Standing Committee has remotely the power and prestige of Xi. The latter has also sought to build a cult of personality around himself, with an ideological emphasis on “Xi Jinping thought” and frequent comparisons of himself to great Chinese leaders of the past. As in the case of Russia, it is not clear that anyone in the senior leadership is capable of standing up against him. Xi has personally invested a huge amount of his own prestige in the zero-Covid strategy, and one imagines that it is extremely dangerous for anyone else in the CCP hierarchy to suggest otherwise.
The world has become increasingly divided between a part that is liberal democratic and a part that is autocratic. This division does not correspond neatly to the old 20th-century ideological divisions between communism, fascism, and democracy, so much as to differing approaches to state power. A liberal state seeks to limit the authority of the executive through multiple mechanisms. The most important is a rule of law, which constrains power by having it exercised under transparent and agreed-upon rules. Liberal polities create constitutional checks and balances to make sure that single individuals cannot simply do whatever they want, and if they are also democratic, leaders are subject to accountability for their actions.
The checks on power of a liberal system accumulated slowly over time. We are all familiar with the Magna Carta of 1215, under which the English King John agreed to limitations on his power over his barons. English kings were required to consult with their privy councils before making important decisions—the “king-in-council,” which was later expanded to the “king in Parliament.” Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, power shifted altogether to Parliament and a prime minister, and an ever expanding circle of power holders.
The Chinese Communist Party from 1978–2013 had in effect a king-in-council system that forced the paramount leader to gain leadership consensus. This system is precisely the system that is being dismantled by Xi. Russia would have benefited greatly had Putin been forced to seek advice from a similar council, as there is evidence that some military officers were leery of invading Ukraine before the fact. What we have instead is a mad king Vladimir who, in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible or Stalin, can make arbitrary life-and-death decisions affecting the lives of millions of people, totally unconnected from reality.
I’ve argued elsewhere that the United States and other liberal democracies have developed overly constrained decision-making systems where so many stakeholders can block initiatives they don’t like such that the system becomes a paralyzed “vetocracy.” Yet this is an argument for loosening up our system a bit, and not for moving toward a Chinese-style dictatorship in the interests of efficiency or decisiveness. Fear of unconstrained power is one of the key reasons for preferring liberal government, with its checks and balances and need for broad consensus. We are being treated today to clear demonstrations of exactly why autocracy is so dangerous.
🐣 RT @WeAreUkraine As we enter the second stage of war, the Grand Battle for Donbass begins. ¤ Here’s the footage of an intense combat that took place last night on our eastern front.
💽 https://twitter.com/WeAreUkraine/status/1516348369836331010?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR Mariupol defenders! Our HOPE! Pray for Ukraine
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @TpyxaNews Our soldiers in Mariupol.
💽 https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1516319417117949952?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Channel4News “No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight.” ¤ President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the battle for Donbas has begun – as the Russians launch a large-scale offensive to take control of Ukraine’s east.
💽 https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1516338493303054343?s=20/photo/1⭕ 18 Apr 2022
RFE/RL: Russian Brigade Accused Of Bucha War Crimes Awarded Honorary Title http://bit.ly/3jUwfAg
SLTrib, Reed Galen: Mike Lee is a Judas on the loose in Utah http://bit.ly/3MzmJyP
NYT: Trump Allies Continue Legal Drive to Erase His Loss, Stoking Election Doubts http://nyti.ms/3JRQSHz “‘This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,’ said J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge”
// Fifteen months after they tried and failed to overturn the 2020 election, the same group of lawyers and associates is continuing efforts to “decertify” the vote, feeding a false narrative.A group of President Donald J. Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner. ¤ Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed.
In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Mr. Trump — including the lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president.
The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Mr. Trump to office.
But just as Mr. Eastman’s original plan to use Congress’s final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election was seen as far-fetched in the run-up to the deadly Capitol riot, the continued efforts are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Mr. Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.
The efforts have fed a cottage industry of podcasts and television appearances centered around not only false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, but the notion that the results can still be altered after the fact — and Mr. Trump returned to power, an idea that he continues to push privately as he looks toward a probable re-election run in 2024.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the impact of the decertification efforts. They warn of unintended consequences, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters — convinced that he could still be declared the winner of the 2020 election — stormed the Capitol. Legal experts worry that the focus on decertifying the last election could pave the way for more aggressive — and earlier — legislative intervention the next time around.
“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” said J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge, for whom Mr. Eastman clerked and whom President George W. Bush considered as a nominee to be the chief justice of the United States. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”
Most of Mr. Trump’s aides would like him to stop talking about 2020 — or, if he must, to focus on changes to voting laws across the country rather than his own fate. But like he did in 2020, when many officials declined to help him upend the election results, Mr. Trump has found a group of outside allies willing to take up an outlandish argument they know he wants to see made.
The efforts have been led or loudly championed by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow; Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist; and Boris Epshteyn, an aide and associate of Mr. Trump’s.
Another key player has been Mr. Eastman, the right-wing lawyer who persuaded Mr. Trump shortly after the election that Vice President Mike Pence could reject certified electoral votes for Mr. Biden when he presided over the congressional count and declare Mr. Trump the victor instead. ¤ Mr. Eastman wrote a memo and Mr. Epshteyn sent an email late last year to the main legislator pushing a decertification bill in Wisconsin, laying out a legal theory to justify the action. Mr. Eastman met last month with Robin Vos, the speaker of the State Assembly, and activists working across the country, a meeting that was reported earlier by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. …
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Serhiy Volyna, 36th Separate Marine Brigade commander, tells me what could save his troops trapped in Mariupol’s Azovstal is a “special military operation right now” with air support and heavy artillery that “in one sharp and deep blow” could allow for Ukrainian reinforcements.
⋙ 🧵 RT @ChristopherJM “I am Serhiy Volyna, Commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade…addressing to you from the besieged Mariupol.” Ukrainian forces holding out in Mariupol make a last-ditch plea for heavy weapons from the West to keep the strategic city from falling to Russia. via FB/Volyna
📌 https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1516546182297837577?s=20/photo/1 -2
// trapped in Mariupol💙💛 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Escalation in Donbas has begun, situation is difficult, attacks & shellings rise, yet Ukraine holds defense & repulsed the offensive in Rubizhne and Popasna, took down Orlan-10 drone & heavy equipment – Luhansk RegHead Serhiy Haidai on air of nat’l telethon
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “At the tactical fighting level, they’re undisciplined, brutal, cruel, using starvation and indirect fires targeted on civilians, not necessarily on military targets. They’re hoping instability… will cause capitulation” – @mccaffreyr3 on Russian troops w/ @NicolleDWallace
🐣 RT @MarkHertling Been saying this for awhile, but will repeat for emphasis: The next few weeks will be a battle of logistics. Ukraine will win it.
🐣 RT @muellershewrote NEW: texts between Proud Boys & Oath Keepers in a court filing from Vallejo (charged with seditious conspiracy) spells trouble for Proud Boys not yet charged with seditious conspiracy. The government has said in a separate filing they could face superseding charges by May.
⋙ 🧵 RT @ NEW: Hundreds of text messages between members of the Oath Keepers militia group show coordination with the Proud Boys leaders in the days leading up to Jan. 6, per exhibits just released in Stewart Rhodes case filing
📌 https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1516219499783065604?s=20🧵 RT @kamilkazani War of memes: why Z-war won’t end with peace ¤ Some Western analysts unfamiliar with Eastern European cultural context perceive Z-war as an accident. They presume that Russian invasion results from some sort of “misunderstanding” or mistake which can be resolved via negotiations
📌 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1516162437455654913?s=20🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Head of RT Margarita Simonyan admits that for 10 years or more, she’s been dreaming about censorship, banning Western media and Russia becoming like China by achieving total information control. Most of all, Simonyan doesn’t want the idea of freedom to ever come back to Moscow.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1515901373837107204?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 They want to create their own media platforms without the IT talent that just left in droves, with no foreigners and with a subpar education system? Good luck with that. A third-world country with nukes, 60% of which likely don’t work. Sadly, 40% likely do.⭕ 17 Apr 2022
AtlanticCouncil, Taras Kuzio: How Putin’s Russia embraced fascism while preaching anti-fascism http://bit.ly/3xFRBcz “[V]eneration of the Soviet WWII experience … evolved into a quasi-religious cult complete with its own lexicon, rituals, monuments, and holy days“
… This veneration of the Soviet WWII experience proved hugely popular with the Russian public. Over the past two decades, it has evolved into a quasi-religious cult complete with its own lexicon, rituals, monuments, and holy days. In 2020, it even received its very own cathedral.
As with any religion, heresy is not tolerated. Deviations from the officially approved narratives of the victor nation are subject to criminal prosecution and blasphemy is dealt with ruthlessly. In Putin’s Russia, there is no greater crime than to question the sanctity of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
The kleptocratic Putin regime has used this victory cult to establish the illusion of an ideological commitment to fighting fascism. In line with this anti-fascist posturing, opponents of the current Russian authorities are routinely branded as fascists and Nazis. These vague but emotive labels have been attached to a dizzying array of adversaries ranging from domestic dissidents to recalcitrant neighbors.
Nowhere is modern Russia’s fixation with “phantom fascists” more immediately apparent than in Kremlin policy toward Ukraine. For years, Moscow has equated Ukrainian national identity with fascism while depicting Russian aggression in Ukraine as a continuation of the struggle against Nazi Germany. …
🔊CNN: State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash: Interview with Volodimyr Zelenskyy http://cnn.it/3KRBJYl
// podcast audio of entire show; Hosted by CNN’s Jake Tapper, State of the Union features interviews with top newsmakers on politics and policy – covering Washington, the country and the world.🧵 RT @johnkonrad This is the Russian Flagship #Moskva before she sank. It’s impossible to fully assess the situation aboard based on one picture but marine salvage masters must make assumptions based on little information. As a ship captain and ship fire author here’s what appears to be likely […]
📌 https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/1515837566356008961?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ So it’s likely been fully abandoned. It’s possible that some people remain down below but staying in the engine room without proper boundary cooling and topside assistance from trained shipboard firefighters would be suicidal. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Remember the golden rule – “save as many people as possible” – well, the people a navy captain has to think about are not just the crewmembers but also the army and marines his ship provides air cover and artillery support for.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ By abandoning his ship early he may save his crew but lose the war.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ By most accounts, this flagship ship was critical to these war efforts. My best assumption – again based on too little evidence – is because of
1) the importance of this ship to the war effort
2) because the Montreux convention prevents Russia from sending a replacement
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 3) the calm weather, reserve buoyancy, and the fact she still had power means she could possibly have been saved
4) the fact the helideck was smoke-free
⋙ 🐣 RT @ For these reasons my best guess is the captain of the Moskva abandoned his ship too early.🐣 RT @Gerashchenko_en 1. The big attack of Russia in Donbas might not happen: Kremlin began to really think and is afraid of possible failure at Donbas #UkraineUnderAttaсk
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 2. Weather: because of heavy rain and overflowing of rivers vehicles cannot pass. Leaves are appearing and hinder the attack. ¤ Each day Ukraine gets more and more weapons. ¤ Huge losses and low morals [sic] in the Russian army.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 3. The defeat will destroy the myth about Russian power once and for all and will make it a secondary, regional country. This will threaten the potential alliances with China and India.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 4. Negotiations seem to be the only way for Putin to avoid “geopolitical catastrophe” and achieve at least something.🐣 RT @MaxBoot Like I said, Ukraine’s superior military culture is its key advantage over the Russian army. ¤ In @PostOpinions: https://wapo.st/3rm16tn
⋙ 🐣 RT @ At the root of Russian atrocities in Ukraine: a brutal culture of cruelty is embedded in Russia’s military, where vicious hazing is commonplace. ¤ “It is the state of the Russian army, this impunity, aggression and internal violence.” ¤ By @antontroian
⋙⋙ NYT: Atrocities in Ukraine War Have Deep Roots in Russian Military http://nyti.ms/3xzISsh
// Like the shelling of cities, the seemingly pointless, close-up killing of individuals recalls wars in Chechnya.🐣 RT @RFERL Ukraine has accused Russian forces of transporting thousands of civilians from shattered Ukrainian cities, taking their documents, and putting them in so-called “filtration camps,” before moving them to Russia. Report by @Azatliq and @ReidStan.
⋙ RFE/RL: Amid Intensified Fighting, Reports Continue To Surface Of Ukrainians Forcibly Relocated To Russia http://bit.ly/3xwjC6n🐣 RT @JasJWright Ukraine’s President Zelensky to @jaketapper, says he wants President Biden to come to Ukraine ¤ “I think he’s the leader of the United states and that’s why he should come here to see.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNNSotu TAPPER: “Do you want President Biden to come here?”
ZELENSKY: “Yes.”
TAPPER: Are there any plans for him to come?
ZELENSKY: “I think he will.” #CNNSOTU
💽 https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1515683766135574533?s=20/photo/1CNN: Exclusive: Zelensky says Ukraine won’t give up territory in the east to end war with Russia http://cnn.it/3ryVj3P
Eurekalert (2021): Ukraine genome survey adds missing pieces to human diversity puzzle http://bit.ly/3jNdgqZ The 1000 Genomes Study, an offshoot of the Human Genome Project, recently identified Ukraine as having a unique genetic signature marked by 13 million genetic variants
// 1/13/2021; International Ukraine Genetic Diversity Project finds a quarter of the genetic variation in Europe, dramatically increasing information on population diversity and medical genetic variation
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1515685515022028807?s=20/photo/1Two decades ago, after the publication of the draft of the human genome, one of the largest exploration projects in the genomics era began: The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP). This is an enormous international effort to map the entire pattern of human genetic variation across the world. To build this map, there have been numerous global surveys of individual genomes in a variety of geographic regions and populations, but crucial gaps still remain. One of the most notable is in Eastern-Europe and the Eurasian steppes.
Central to this is Ukraine, which is the largest country located fully in Europe. It is made up of a population formed via millennia of migration. This territory served as a key prehistoric and historic crossroads for the spread of humans across Europe and into Asia. Migration events here included modern human expansion into Neanderthal territory, the movement of nomads and early farmers just starting to domesticate plants and animals, the great human migrations during the Middle Ages, and the trade exchange routes of the Silk Road.
Lead investigator, Taras Oleksyk at Oakland University, says: “Our study shows there is significant genetic diversity in Ukraine, a country that had not been prioritized in genome surveys. We found more than 13 million genetic variants among the DNA samples — nearly 500,000 of which were previously undocumented.”
These variants, commonly known as mutations, are the result of evolutionary and demographic factors that have shaped Ukrainians’ genetic makeup throughout history.
Oleksyk explains: “As humans moved across the world over millennia, they gained genetic mutations, often due to adaptation to their specific environments. These mutations have been passed down through generations, so when we look at genomes of Ukrainians and other populations, what we see is a reflection of their unique evolutionary histories.”
The survey is an important part of understanding human diversity, as it shows the extensive breadth of genetic diversity in Ukraine — a nation that was once thought to lack genetic relevance.
Oleksyk highlights this, saying their study shows that “Ukraine accounts for roughly a quarter of the genetic variation documented in Europe. It’s a part of the world that cannot be ignored in future genetic and biomedical studies.”
🐣 RT @With__Ukraine (1) In its souvenir shop, the #WhiteHouse presented a commemorative coin dedicated to the historic address of Volodymyr @ZelenskyyUa to the #USCongress on March 7, 2022.
⋙ 🐣 RT @With__Ukraine 2) @ZelenskyyUa’s speech is considered exemplary as a wartime leader, and it is on a par with the legendary speeches of #WinstonChurchill during World War II.
Proceeds from the sale of the coin will be used entirely for humanitarian aid to the #Ukrainian people.💙 🐣 RT @StratcomUA A complex light show performed by scores of drones lights up the skies over Busan, South Korea, in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. #StandWithUkraine
🖼 💽 https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1515583467354001411?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Hromadske The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has launched an information platform for foreign audiences concerning the war in Ukraine. The platform provides verified information on the war and shows specific ways to support Ukraine
💙 🔄 ⋙ MFA of Ukraine: War in Ukraine: official website https://war.ukraine.ua
// On 24 February 2022 Russia attacked Ukraine. This website provides verified information and updates about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Hromadske “When we ultimately win this war, this will become a thoroughly collected archive of Russia’s crimes, atrocities and barbarism, and more importantly – the heroism and unity of Ukrainian people” — Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba🐣 RT @Hromadske The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, which was destroyed by Ukrainian Armed Forces, is the first flagship lost by Russia since the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 — Advisor to the Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine Oleksii Arestovych
⭕ 16 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Open call for genocide on the flagship channel of Russian state television.
⋙ 🐣 RT @shustry More revolting, openly genocidal rhetoric on Russian state TV. The very idea of being Ukrainian, he says, “has to be erased once and for all.” Meanwhile, calling this a war is still punishable by years in Russian prison.🐣 RT @McFaul So @M_Simonyan , you seem to be admitting that Russia’s army is significantly weaker than NATO? Do I understand you right? (my Russian is rusty). I agree with you, by the way. Imagine if you attacked NATO & US soldiers engaged in the fight. Осторожно.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund The always disgusting propagandist Margarita Simonyan sounds as if she is starting to prepare her Russian audience for defeat in Ukraine. First, Ukraine is not Georgia. Second, it is not Ukraine but NATO that we are fighting against. Good luck with that!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Watch what happens when one pundit on Russian state TV tries to ask why it’s taking so long for Russia to win in Ukraine: head of RT Margarita Simonyan nearly pecks his head off, as she argues that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine. He quickly backs down: “I didn’t complain!”
💽 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1515441364640616449?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @nytimesworld With his hallucinatory dystopian novels, the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin has chronicled Russia’s slide toward authoritarianism. Now he is poised to gain a following in the West, with new English-language translations of his work.
⋙ NYT: He Envisioned a Nightmarish, Dystopian Russia. Now He Fears Living in One. http://nyti.ms/3L32UPG
// With eight forthcoming translations of his books, Vladimir Sorokin is gaining recognition in the West just as, he says, Russian writers need to fight back in a semantic war on truth.Sorokin is widely regarded as one of Russia’s most inventive writers, an iconoclast who has chronicled the country’s slide toward authoritarianism, with subversive fables that satirize bleak chapters of Soviet history, and futuristic tales that capture the creeping repression of 21st-century Russia. But despite his reputation as both a gifted postmodern stylist and an unrepentant troublemaker, he remains relatively unknown in the West. Until recently, just a handful of his works had been published in English, in part because his writing can be so challenging to translate, and so hard to stomach. Now, four decades into his scandal-scorched career, publishers are preparing to release eight new English-language translations of his books.
The attention comes as his portraits of Russia as a decaying former empire that’s sliding backward under a militaristic, violent and repressive regime have come to seem tragically prescient. As Russia carries out its brutal invasion of Ukraine, Sorokin sees the conflict not just as a military onslaught, but as a semantic war being waged through propaganda and lies — an assault on truth that writers must combat. ¤ “The role of writers is going to change, given the current situation,” Sorokin said. “If a new era of censorship begins, writers’ words will only be stronger.”…
Speaking from Germany, he seemed disoriented, but not surprised, to find himself facing what could be a long exile. He and his wife Irina, who split their time between Vnukovo, a town outside of Moscow, and a bright, art-filled apartment in Berlin, left Russia just three days before the invasion of Ukraine. Though the timing of their trip was pure coincidence, it felt fated, and Sorokin is wary of returning to Russia as long as Putin remains in power. He has denounced the invasion publicly and called Vladimir Putin a crazed “monster,” putting himself in a precarious position after Putin labeled Russians who oppose the war as “scum” and “traitors.”
Watching the crushing use of force in Ukraine, Sorokin, who compared the Russian invasion to “killing your own mother,” has been reminded of his preoccupation with humanity’s bottomless capacity for violence, a constant theme in his work. ¤ “Why can’t mankind get by without violence?” he said. “I grew up in a country where violence was the main air that everyone breathed. So when people ask me why there’s so much violence in my books, I tell them that I was absolutely soaked and marinated in it from kindergarten onward.”
Sorokin doesn’t fit the classic mold of a dissident writer. While he’s been critical of Putin’s regime, he’s hard to pinpoint, stylistically or ideologically. He’s been pilloried for violating Russian Orthodox Christian values in his stories, but is a devout Christian. He deploys gorgeous prose to describe horrifying acts. He’s celebrated as a literary heir to giants like Turgenev, Gogol and Nabokov, but at times, he’s questioned the value of literature, dismissing novels as “just paper with typographic signs.”
He’s a master of mimicry and subverting genre tropes, veering from arch postmodern political satire (“The Queue”) to esoteric science fiction (“The Ice Trilogy”) to alternate histories and futuristic cyberpunk fantasies (“Telluria”). ¤ “His books are like entering a crazy nightmare, and I mean that as a compliment,” the novelist Gary Shteyngart said. “He was able to find the right vocabulary with which to articulate the truth.” …
🐣 RT @BSBonner Two-month war report card ¤ Subject: Support for Ukraine
A – Baltics, Poland
B- USA, UK, Slovakia, Czech Republic
C- EU (generally), France, Finland, Sweden, Turkey, Canada, Japan, Australia
D- Germany, Israel
F- China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, many others🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russia Shows Off Crew of Sunken Moskva Warship—With Quite a Few Missing.
⋙⋙ YahooNews: Russia Shows Off Crew of Sunken Moskva Warship—With Quite a Few Missing http://yhoo.it/3KLFSge
⋙ 🐣 RT @MinkinaNataly Former deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Ilya Ponomarev said that only 58 people from entire crew of the Moskva cruiser that officially is 510 people were saved. Ponomarev wrote this on Facebook. Fate of the remaining sailors is unknown. [link tr:] http://bit.ly/3jIY528🐣 RT @BrookingsFP The problem for Putin is that spheres of influence are not granted to one great power by others, inherited, or created by geography, history, or “tradition,” Robert Kagan writes @ForeignAffairs. They are acquired by economic, political, and military power.
⋙ ForeignAffairs: The Price of Hegemony http://fam.ag/3KTxJ9u
// Can America learn to use its power?🐣 RT @MargoGontar Russia’s Uralvogonzavod shuts down production. It will no longer be able to assemble any of T-72 tank (main RU tank) or newer T-90 & T-14 tanks (Armata). Reason: lack of imported components. It means more saved UA lives, is direct result of Western sanctions which should continue
🐣 RT @olliecarroll New video from Zelensky in moment of exhausted and emotional late night reflection: “52 days. We work (shows speech), we love (family photo), we are thankful (gifted cockerel from destroyed borodyanka flat), we are proud (flag), we will be victorious”
💽 https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1515561580443971585?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @Mariia_Zolkina THREAD. Day 52d since #RussiaInvadedUkraine. How does situation look on the ground? Below find overview on 1)military situation. 2)developments in temporary occupied areas 3) negotiations 4)what to expect ⬇️1/
📌 https://twitter.com/Mariia_Zolkina/status/1515245916088905729?s=20⭕ 15 Apr 2022
WaPo: Senator Mike Lee worked hard to overturn election, keep Trump in power, texts show http://wapo.st/3vGnZt9
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) worked furiously to overturn the 2020 election and keep President Donald Trump in power before ultimately abandoning the effort when no evidence of widespread fraud surfaced and his outreach to states for alternate electors proved futile, according to texts.
Lee sent the texts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who turned them over to the House committee investigating a pro-Trump mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. CNN reviewed the texts Lee and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) sent Meadows and reported on them Friday.
In texts to Meadows sent in November, Lee is highly supportive of Trump’s efforts to undo the election through legal challenges, offering on Nov. 7, 2020 — the day news organizations projected Joe Biden as the winner — his “unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”…
Lee’s texts show that, soon after the election, it was Lee who encouraged Meadows to give Powell access to Trump, saying she would help him push forward the legal challenges. He provided Meadows with Powell’s contact information and initially seemed confident that Powell could help advance Trump’s case.
“Apparently she has a strategy to keep things alive and put several states back in play. Can you help get her in?” Lee texted. ¤ Two days later, Lee once again vouched for Powell, calling her a “strong shooter.”
As election results were being counted that November, Powell was making all sorts of false accusations of election fraud. She joined other members of Trump’s legal team — including Rudolph Giuliani and Jenna Ellis — at a Republican National Committee news conference on Nov. 19, 2020, in which she falsely claimed that Trump “won by a landslide.” …
In the time since, Powell has not only failed to bring forward substantial proof to back her claims of election fraud, she’s also facing multiple legal challenges, financial penalties and a possible disbarment. ¤ Two hours after that news conference, Lee started to voice his doubts on Powell. ¤ The senator, in a message to Meadows, said he was “worried about the Powell press conference.”
“The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here,” Lee said. “For the campaign and for the president personally. … Unless Powell can back up everything she said, which I kind of doubt she can.” ¤ Meadows agreed, texting back: “Very concerned.”
By late November, Lee had backed away from Powell and instead began encouraging Meadows to hire right-wing lawyer John Eastman. But the trust in Eastman didn’t last long either given that, by mid-December, Lee began expressing doubts to Meadows about the plan to legally challenge the election’s certification Jan. 6.
“If you want senators to object, we need to hear from you on that ideally getting some guidance on what arguments to raise,” Lee texted Meadows on Dec. 16, 2020. “I think we’re now passed the point where we can expect anyone will do it without some direction and a strong evidentiary argument.”
By Jan. 3, Lee was arguing to Meadows that Trump’s effort to have states send alternate slates of electors to Congress would probably fail. ¤ “I don’t think the president is grasping the distinction between what we can do and what he would like us to do,” he told Meadows that day, warning that the efforts “could all backfire badly.” ¤ Hours after a mob stormed the Capitol, Lee voted to certify the election results and Biden’s win.
🧵 RT @mattia_n This wide-ranging conversation with Zelenskyy and his closest advisor Andrii Yermak in the @TheAtlantic really is worth reading. It shows some important sides of Ze’ and covers some new grounds. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1514975519841918985?s=20
💙 ⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldblum: Liberation Without Victory: Interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky http://bit.ly/3viTFV7
// In a wide-ranging conversation at his compound in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells The Atlantic what Ukraine needs to survive—and describes the price it has paid.🐣 USSR lost 26.6M total (Poland not incl)
Russia lost 14M (12.7% of pop) , Ukraine lost 7M (16.3%)
Poland (17.1%) and Belorussia (25.3%) also lost more people as % of pop. than Russia.
Source: Wikipedia http://bit.ly/3LgBnuw
↥ ↧
🐣 📋 The USSR lost 26.6M, of which 14M were Russian. 7M were Ukrainian. Ukraine lost more as % of population. So did Poland. The UK and US suffered fewer casualties but were just as decisive in defeating Nazism, due to modern armed forces and strategic leadership. Wikipedia:
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1518852236868259840?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 📋 Ukraine suffered enormously in WW2. Deaths as % of 1939 pop. (mil ✛ civ):
25.3 Belarus
17.1 Poland
16.3 Ukraine
12.6 Russia
8.5 Germany
.9 U.K.
.3 U.S.
Source: Wikipedia http://bit.ly/3JHO67N
// tags: WWII Deaths World War Two Deaths Second World War Deaths⭕ 14 Apr 2022
💙 🔊Podcast: The Lincoln Project: Vladimir Putin’s Chaos Strategy http://apple.co/3ElKcjO
// Interview for former CIA agent John Sipher💙 🧵 RT @ChrisO_wiki Some thoughts on the apparent sinking of the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva: if confirmed, it’s likely to go down in history as one of the most audaciously successful attacks in modern naval history. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1514498197489659909?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisO_wiki If she’s been sunk, the Moskva will be the biggest warship lost since WW2: at 12,490 tons she’s bigger than Argentina’s General Belgrano, sunk by the Royal Navy in 1982. /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Apart from the symbolism of her likely loss, she’s of great military value as a platform for air defence and missile bombardment of land targets. Her loss is of great significance to both sides. /3
⋙ 🐣 RT @ She will likely be irreplaceable – the only ship of her class, built in Ukraine (!) in 1979. Russia can’t transfer warships from elsewhere to replace her as Turkey has closed the Bosphorus to military traffic. /4 […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Reportedly, the Ukrainians used a Bayraktar TB-2 drone to distract the Moskva. The Ukrainian Navy introduced TB-2s into service in August 2021. /8 [photos ⇈ ⇊ ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ In naval use, they can be employed to find enemy ships and relay their positions to coastal missile batteries, as well as carrying out direct attacks using their own payloads. /9 […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ How did the Russians not see the incoming Neptunes? The Moskva has/had a single main air defence radar – a 3P41 Volna phased array to guide S300 missiles. Problem is, it only has a 180 degree field of vision. /11
⋙ 🐣 RT @ So it’s likely that the Ukrainians purposefully got the Moskva to point its best radar in the wrong direction while the Neptunes sneaked under the coverage of the other radars. Very smart. /13 […]💽 MSNBC, TheBeathWithAri: Trump aide backs down, testifies about elector fraud and insurrection http://on.msnbc.com/3EdYN0K
// Trump aide Stephen Miller spent 8 hours testifying before the Jan. 6 committee, a reversal after initially defying the committee and suing over its request. Miller had openly discussed a plot to steal the election with fraudulent electors prior to the insurrection, drawing more scrutiny as investigations and reports have revealed multiple aides involved in that thwarted effort. MSNBC’s Ari Melber reports on the new testimony, the link to other Trump aides’ admissions, including on The Beat, and other developments in the probe, along with The Nation’s Elie Mystal and New York University Law Professor Melissa Murray.🐣 RT @apolyakova Translation: “US support is working, we are taking heavy losses.” Moscow is on the back foot. Now is the time to send more arms to Ukraine, not less.
⋙ WaPo: Russia warns U.S. to stop arming Ukraine http://wapo.st/3JOqJtg
// The formal diplomatic note from Moscow, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post, came as President Biden approved a dramatic expansion in the scope of weapons being provided to the government in Kyiv🐣 RT @poseofpower Rebel with a cause
paints a thousand sunflowers
on a bright blue wall
each with a hundred hope seeds,
graffiti with a purpose.WaPo, Fareed Zakaria: Putin’s Plan A in Ukraine has failed. We can’t let his Plan B succeed. http://wapo.st/3rvruB9
🐣 RT @ragipsoylu NEW: Putin has “stewed” in grievance, ambition and insecurity over Ukraine — CIA Director Burns
🐣 RT @TheLastWord RNC votes to withdraw from Commission on Presidential Debates events https://on.msnbc.com/37N5jzs
😅 RT @ResusCGMedia Good Morning Putin! 😌 ¤ The Mosvka Effect on The Kremlin.
💽 https://twitter.com/ResusCGMedia/status/1514592744756240386?s=20/photo/1DailyMail [UK]: Putin’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu has had a ‘massive heart attack not from natural causes’ and TWENTY generals ‘have been arrested’ over bungled invasion http://bit.ly/3xzjBPb
● Shoigu is thought to have suffered a heart attack possibly caused by foul play
● Russia’s defence minister, 66, has been a close ally of Putin ever since 2012
● He was a mainstay early in the invasion but has been largely absent for weeks
● Russian-Israeli businessmen Leonid Nevzlin made the extraordinary claim
● If his claims prove to be true, it would confirm suspicions of a major rift between the isolated Russian president and his closest advisers and military leaders
● Nevzlin was once one of Russia’s richest men but fled the country in 2003 when Putin and the Kremlin decided to seize his oil company🐣 RT @warmonitor2 ⚡️Russian MP Mikhail Sheremet urges Russia to bomb decision making centers in Kyiv to prevent Western officials from visiting
🧵 RT @WarintheFuture Soldiers act in accordance with their training, the tasks they are given, the direct supervision from their NCOs and the example of their leaders. 1/5 #Ukraine #Leadership [link]
📌 https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1514736948413612032?s=202/5 When each of these is corrupted, military effectiveness is degraded. In essence, if your military does each of these four things (training, tasking, supervision, leadership) poorly, it will resemble a bedraggled group of murderous hobos, not professional soldiers.
3/5 Further, when Russia’s president believes #Ukraine is a non-country, and its generals are comfortable razing cities & killing their inhabitants, the strategic incentive structure further compromises the professional integrity of the Russian military.
4/5 Consequently, Russian military culture remains similar to that which killed and raped its way to Berlin in WW2. Top to bottom it is a system that incentivises destruction, atrocious treatment of civilians, the murder of POWs, and the brutalisation of its own soldiers
5/5 Unfortunately, this is the Russian ‘way of war’ and a central component of their military culture. Only a defeat of this Russian Army, perhaps the most brutal and stupid of the modern era, can stop these atrocities. Another fine piece from @nataliabugayova at @TheStudyofWar🐣 RT @Conflicts BREAKING: Explosions heard in Kyiv tonight, reports of an electrical power loss in several areas. Air raid siren has been declared in all regions of Ukraine.
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is setting new standards in the field of Russian military incompetence. The top three entries so far:
1. Losing your flagship to a country without a navy
2. Digging trenches in the Chernobyl dead zone
3. Having your tanks towed away by tractors🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Kyiv sank Moscow. It’s hard for them to swallow.
⋙ 🐣 RT @olgatokariuk Air raid alerts almost all over Ukraine’s territory now. The sinking of Moskva ship obviously wasn’t well received in Moscow
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @avalaina Huge explosions in Kyiv. #StandWithUkraine️🐣 RT @TarasKuzio Putin lashing out so much soon no one in the senior ranks of the siloviki will support him. Here Osypov is blamed for the sinking of the Moskva which clearly was not an accident but a Neptune missile fired by the non-existent country of Ukraine by non-existent Ukrainian soldiers
🐣 Follow my UKRAINE Twitter List: “Ukraine, including some Russian sources. News sources, govt, academic, defense, intelligence” (currently follows about 750 accounts)
A Twitter List by Auriandra🐣 RT @OAlexanderDK The Lithuanian Minister of National Defense Arvydas Anušauskas posted this on Facebook about the Moskva (translated). ¤ If this is true, then the ship sank 11 hours ago after capsizing and a heavy loss of life, if 54 sailors were rescued out of the ≈ 500 on board. Text Block: https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1514561198766886923?s=20/photo/1
Text [tr]: “A SOS signal was given from the Russian cruiser “Moscow” at 1:05; 1:14 cruise ship was lying on the side and half an hour later all power went out. As of 2 o’clock at night, a Turkish ship evacuated 54 sailors from the cruise ship and at around 3 o’clock at midnight Turkey and Romania reported that the ship had completely sank. ¤ The loss of Russian personnel related to this is not yet known, although there were 485 people on the ship. the crew (66 of them soldiers).”
🐣 RT @OSINTdefender The Russian Ministry of Defense has Announced that the Slava-Class Cruiser “Moskva” the Flag-Ship of the Russian Black Sea’s Fleet that was Claimed to have been Struck by 2 Ukrainian Navy fired Neptune Anti-Ship Missiles, has Sank in the Black Sea while being towed to Port.
🔄 💙 🧵 RT @MikeAJensen A while ago, I started what I thought would be a quick exercise to confirm the narrative of J6 defendants as “ordinary” people with few links to extremists, extremist groups/movements. I began work on a network visualization and now I no longer find this narrative convincing. 1/
📌 ◕ https://twitter.com/MikeAJensen/status/1514637133973184516?s=20&t=Bwz4BOvs4RcWe-w9KgiJaw🐣 RT @tomishoren Czar LilliPutin: ¤ My fellow Russians, we’ve successfully completed stage 1 in the Ukraine war. We lost Battle of Kyiv. We failed to take Odesa. 20,000 of our soldiers have died ¤ Stage 2 has just started & it will be even more glorious. Our Black Sea flagship the Moskva is sinking
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress 🇺🇦Group of the Special Operations Forces blew up a bridge with 🇷🇺vehicles which were heading for Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast, where the Russian troops have been trying to break through the Ukrainian defenses to capture the area of Slovyansk, Donetsk Obl.
🐣 RT @MauriceSchleep Novorosinform REPORTED:The #Russian Ministry of Defense #Konashenkov,Said that the Russian army Would Strike at Decision-making Centers including in #Kiev, in case of New Sabotage on #Russian territory by #Ukraine Forces.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR The Lychakiv court of Lviv, where the case of Viktor #Medvedchuk was transferred, arrested another 154 objects of movable and immovable property of the Medvedchuk family. ¤ Among other things, 26 cars, 30 plots of land, 23 houses, 32 apartments, 17 parking spaces and a motor yacht
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russia’s Education Ministry drafts regulations allowing the transfer of children forcibly removed from the occupied territories to the families of Russian citizens, including through their adoption ¤ Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy reported this. [link]
🐣 RT @uktaine_world If Russia hits Kyiv with missiles, Ukraine will attack in response, @arestovych said.
🐣 RT @noclador In all of naval history only two capital ships have been sunk by coastal batteries while at sea:
• 🇩🇪German cruiser 𝘉𝘭𝘶̈𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳 on 9 April 1940
• 🇷🇺russian cruiser 𝘔𝘰𝘴𝘬𝘷𝘢 on 14 April 2022
Hey russia, your military is doing amazing! Please continue like this. 😂😂🐣 RT @XSovietNews Lavrov: The West has declared total hybrid war on Russia under the pretext of the Ukraine crisis.
🐣 RT @IntlCrimCourt 📢 Prosecutor #KarimAAKhanQC on visit to #Bucha: “#Ukraine is a crime scene. We’re here because we have reasonable grounds to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the #ICC are being committed. We have to pierce the fog of war to get to the #truth.” #JusticeMatters
🐣 RT @McFaul [tr] Many peoples of the former Soviet Union, not only Russians, defeated fascism in the Great Patriotic War. Moscow does not have a monopoly on celebrating May 9th as a national holiday or as a day when victory is won in Ukraine. Kyiv also has such a right.
🐣 RT @CharlesTannock UAF lured Russian navy into believing UA had no shore to ship missile capability so Moskva confidently sailed into the Neptun 300km range and took a major hit as its ships have only limited radar counter incoming missile engagement capacity as a blindspot was created by TB2 decoy
🐣 RT @DrRadchenko Since Russia has underperformed economically, its claim to great power status has always rested on military power more than anything else. In symbolic terms (and status is a slippery concept), Russia has taken a serious hit. The Chinese are looking at this and thinking hard.
⭕ 13 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Without additional weaponry, this war will become an endless bloodbath, spreading misery, suffering, and destruction. Mariupol, Bucha, Kramatorsk – the list will be continued. Nobody will stop Russia except Ukraine with Heavy Weapons. #ArmUkraineNow
💽 https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1514242356949704709?s=20/photo/1💙❤️ 🔄 UkraineSolidarity, John-Paul Himka: Ten Turning Points: A Brief History of Ukraine http://bit.ly/3vyXENA
WSJ: Putin Taps the Butcher of Syria to Subdue Ukraine http://on.wsj.com/3rr6oUK “Battlefield directions will no longer emanate from the Kremlin or Moscow but from a field headquarters”
// Russian Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov is a ruthless commander with an established record of vicious brutality.After horrendous battlefield losses and failed objectives, Vladimir Putin is concentrating his efforts in Ukraine in the eastern provinces of the Donbas. Recognizing that neither his original plan for a blitzkrieg against Kyiv nor his plan for multiple operations in the north, south and east worked, Russia’s president seems ready now to embrace longstanding principles of war: simplicity, unity of effort and focused logistics. No more adventurous airborne operations against airfields. No more stymied convoys or simultaneous but separate attacks on Kharkiv, Mariupol and Sumy. No more disputes among commanders over logistical resupply. Rather, the Russians will pursue a single coordinated effort with, initially, more-limited aspirations in the Donbas.
Unity of command has long been recognized as an indispensable prerequisite for victory. Battlefield directions will no longer emanate from the Kremlin or Moscow but from a field headquarters. Mr. Putin’s recent appointment of Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov to command all forces in Ukraine is consistent with the principle of unity of command. It’s also worrisome. Unlike Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a politician-cum-general, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, reputedly the designer of the original attack plan for Ukraine, Gen. Dvornikov is not a staff officer in Moscow. He is a seasoned combat veteran with previous responsibility for operations in Chechnya, Crimea and Armenia.
WaPo, Michael McFaul: The West must help Ukraine to win the next phase of the war http://wapo.st/3uFS3Wf “The Ukrainians don’t only need Soviet-era heavy weapons. They also need more modern and effective weapons from the West”
🐣 RT @nicoleperlroth Here we go. New unnamed state 🤔 hackers are infecting U.S. critical infrastructure—like grid operators—with custom tools capable of worst-case scenario attacks. ¤ There’s no soft peddling it. This is very serious. Read @CISAgovm’s advisory in full. And do everything they say. Now
⋙ 🐣 RT @CISAgov With @DOE_CESER, @FBI, & @NSACyber, we published a joint advisory on APT cyber tools targeting #ICS & #SCADA devices. Critical infrastructure organizations – especially in the energy sector – should review our recommended proactive mitigations and actions: http://go.usa.gov/xugmR🐣 RT @nexta_tv #Colombian authorities promise to help Western countries to partially or completely abandon imports of #Russian #oil, #coal and #gas, replacing them with Colombian ones. ¤ President Ivan #Duque has called the Russian invasion a #genocide.
NYT: Captured Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk was a figure in the U.S. investigation into Russian electoral meddling. http://nyti.ms/3E9PZcl
🐣 RT @daxe It gets worse for Russia. No way will Turkey allow one of the remaining two ‘Slava’-class cruisers into the Black Sea to replace ‘Moskva.’ Russia lost half its naval firepower off Ukraine and can’t restore it without going to war with NATO.
🐣 RT @Odessa_Journal In intercepted conversations, russians give hints about Russia’s further plans for Ukraine: “Putin said that if we don’t do anything by 10th May, then level everything with the ground”. Soldiers complain that Ukrainian army keeps destroying them, and they cannot win. #Mariupol
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Really wonderful news. The UKR needs to drive the Russian combatant and amphibs out of the Black Sea offshore threat to Odesa.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MalcolmNance Russia admits the SLAVA Class guided missile cruiser Moskva has suffered major damage “from exploding ammunition”. They forgot the “hit by anti ship missiles part”WaPo: Ominous rhetoric gains grounds in Russia as its forces struggle in Ukraine http://wapo.st/3xrTZ6D “After a month of fighting, the architects of Moscow’s war against Ukraine had to explain to Russians why Kyiv had not fallen. That’s when the most menacing rhetoric began”
After a month of fighting, the architects of Moscow’s war against Ukraine had to explain to Russians why Kyiv had not fallen. That’s when the most menacing rhetoric began. ¤ On state television, a military analyst doubled down on Russia’s need to win and called for concentration camps for Ukrainians opposed to the invasion.
Two days later, the head of the defense committee in the lower house of parliament said it would take 30 to 40 years to “reeducate” Ukrainians. ¤ And on a talk show, the editor in chief of the English-language television news network RT described Ukrainians’ determination to defend their country as “collective insanity.”
“It’s no accident we call them Nazis,” said Margarita Simonyan, who also heads the Kremlin-backed media group that operates the Sputnik and RIA Novosti news agencies. “What makes you a Nazi is your bestial nature, your bestial hatred and your bestial willingness to tear out the eyes of children on the basis of nationality.”
Russia’s astonishing shift toward genocidal speech has been swift and seamless. Moscow officials stepped up warnings that Russia was fighting for its survival. Pundits condemned peace talks and scorned troops’ withdrawal from Kyiv and surrounding areas. ¤ The change of gears, signaling a brutal occupation, appeared deliberate and coordinated in a nation where detailed Kremlin orders on messaging are handed down regularly to state media.
Eugene Finkel, an expert on genocide at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy, said the rhetoric isn’t just “a few crazy hard-liners” spouting off. It’s coming from prominent government officials, showing up in the press, being heard on state television — and is “clearly genocidal.” ¤ “They’re talking about destroying Ukrainians as a group, Ukraine as a state and as an identity community,” Finkel said. “The argument is we are going to destroy this national community as it exists and create something new that we like instead, no matter how many people we kill in the process.” …
The threat of Nazism is one of the Kremlin’s most brazen themes. Last week, RIA Novosti ran a prominent opinion piece by pundit Timofei Sergeitsev, an outspoken supporter of Putin, that urged the liquidation of the entire Ukrainian elite, the division of the country, destruction of its sovereignty and even the abolition of its name. ¤ “Denazification will inevitably be de-Ukrainization,” Sergeitsev wrote, requiring years of ideological repression and severe censorship in political, cultural and educational fields. Ordinary Ukrainians were complicit and must suffer the “inevitable hardships of a just war” before total submission to Russian power “as a historical lesson and atonement for their guilt.” ¤ Others quickly piled on. Former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, wrote on Telegram that “Ukrainianism, fueled by anti-Russian poison and all-consuming lies about its identity, is one big fake.”
Ruth Deyermond, a Russia expert in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, said such arguments are “hard to read in any other way than a justification for mass killing. It’s extremely disturbing language and clearly has genocidal overtones. It’s not that they, Ukrainians, have a Führer or a political ideology or a Nazi system. They’re just Nazi.” …
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia was carrying out mass deportations. “Hundreds of thousands of people have already been deported,” he told Lithuania’s Parliament during a virtual address. “They are placed in special filtration camps. Their documents are taken away from them. They are interrogated and humiliated. How many are killed is unknown.” …
Less than two weeks before the invasion, Putin used a crude reference to express his determination to force Kyiv to accept Russia’s terms for peaceful coexistence: “Like it or not, put up with it, my beauty,” a term associated with rape for many Russians. Ukraine’s resistance has only toughened the Kremlin’s mood. …
🐣 RT @clashreport Probably nothing will be the same for the #Russian navy. In this unexpected attack, the loss of the Russian flagship “#Moskva” would become a breaking point for Russia’s naval power.
🐣 RT @ RALee85 A Russian source is saying the Moskva has sunk and that the explosion was from a Ukrainian Neptun missile strike. Apparently, Ukraine flew a TB2 UCAV to distract the ship while it was targeted by the Neptun. The ship rolled onto its side after the strike.
⭕ 12 Apr 2022
◕ WaPo (4/12): Why inflation is at a 40-year high http://wapo.st/36lVhFb //➔ WAR in Ukraine is impacting the GLOBAL price of gas & the price of food (Ukraine/Russia grow 25% of the world’s grains) ✛ new Omicron outbreak in China is causing new supply chain disruptions
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1515676310890237955?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @With__Ukraine “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away,” Biden said in Iowa, where he was unveiling a new rule on ethanol.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters Biden accuses Russia of genocide in Ukraine http://reut.rs/378i6g4🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Biden called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “genocide” today. ¤ Biden said lbecause it’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian.” ¤ Zelensky’s response:
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa True words of a true leader @POTUS. Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.WaPo: Washington Post contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza arrested in Moscow after criticizing Putin http://wapo.st/3vdZEdV
NYT: A U.S. report describing a global retreat on human rights and democracy singles out Russia. http://nyti.ms/36blRRi
🐣 RT @McFaul Wow
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @FaceTheNation President Biden used the word “genocide” in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in the war in Ukraine. ¤ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian troops of committing “genocide” for the first time during an interview with @margbrennan on April 3.
⋙ 🐣 it’s pretty clear that when you call for “Nazis” to be exterminated and then call all Ukrainians “Nazis” who reject being dominated by Russia, you are talking about genocide, never mind actually acting on it (as they are)
⋙ 🐣 NewVoiceofUkraine, Timothy Snyder: Russia’s genocide handbook http://bit.ly/3jxPWNP “Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine” re: article in RIA Novosti🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Yday ex 🇷🇺 lawmaker Ponomarev announced the alleged arrest of Putin’s top aide Vladislav Surkov ¤ However, acc to 🇺🇦Prez advisor Arestovych, Surkov is under house arrest; 🇷🇺 human rights lawyer Feygin says he may be in Lefortovo SIZO where VIPs are held [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Known as “Putin’s Rasputin,” Surkov curated Russia’s puppet “republics” in Donbas & was one of the masterminds of hybrid war against Ukraine in 2014-2016. His hacked emails of #SurkovLeaks give unique insight into the Kremlin’s kitchen: read our report
⋙⋙ EuromaidanPress (2019): What Surkov’s hacked emails tell about Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine http://bit.ly/3O2QtWl
// 11/12/2019🧵 RT @muellershewrote BREAKING: THE BURIED LEDE: THREAD: So this is a story about a Roger Stone aide named Jason Sullivan telling a group of donald supporters to “descend on the Capitol” on 1/6. Yes, that’s big news, but there’s more here. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1514011715830120448?s=20
💙 ⋙⋙ NYT: In Conference Call Before Riot, a Plea to ‘Descend on the Capitol’ http://nyti.ms/3LXDd3l
// Days before Jan. 6, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr. told Trump backers to make lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results feel that “people are breathing down their necks.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @muellershewrote The person who recorded the call is Staci Burk, and she gave the recording to the 1/6 committee months ago. Here’s the buried lede: Burk is one of Sidney Powell’s kraken lawsuit “voter fraud” witnesses. DoJ has been investigating Powell since SEPTEMBER. 2/ [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @muellershewrote Additionally, at least a dozen of the false electors that signed forged certificates were plaintiffs in Sidney Powell AND 1st Amendment Praetorian lawsuits, and we also know the DoJ is investigating the false slates of electors. 3/ [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @muellershewrote And if that’s not enough, Staci Burk was approached by members of the 1A Praetorian after she became involved Powell, and they MOVED into her home to monitor her, and were on the conference call, too, which is what made her record it (See article in original post). 4/
⋙ 🐣 RT @muellershewrote AND one of the people on the call asked the Roger Stone aide Sullivan about martial law, which was an idea floated by Flynn, who was on the board of Sidney Powell’s PAC and is ALSO under investigation by the DoJ. Connect the dots. END/🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Note to self: never invade Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @pilotmsv Орки біснують від цього відео 🇺🇦
💙 💽 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1514057557194817538?s=20/photo/1
// wow video of woman in trad dress recalling Russian violence against Ukraine and vowing (and demonstrating) retribution, warns: “Welcome to hell!”WaPo, Michael Gerson: If Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine, the Baltics are likely next http://wapo.st/3xmpTkU “Putin has written almost lyrically about the spiritual unity between Kyiv and Moscow. Evidently he bombs only the ones he loves. But his intentions are far more practical”
🐣 RT @theragex BREAKING: The U.S. says it will not object to Slovakia’s potential transfer of MiG jets to Ukraine
🐣 RT @With__.Ukraine Ukrainians which were forcingly deported to Russia are promised to get Russian citizenship within 3 months and a hectare of land in Siberia and Sakhalin. sbThe photo of the relevant leaflet was published by the Mariupol City Council.
DefenseOne: DIA Warns China’s Space Tech Seeks to Block U.S. Radars, Jam Munitions http://bit.ly/3jy5cue
// Beijing’s rapid acquisition of counter-space capabilities is most worrisome, says a new 80-page Defense Intelligence Agency report.🐣 RT @maxseddon Putin’s justifications for the war in Ukraine:
– “the main goal is to help people”
– “we were forced to do it”
– “we couldn’t put up with it any longer”
– “a clash was inevitable”
– “it was just a matter of time”
– “we didn’t have a choice, this was the right thing to do”
💽 https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1513827494125883395?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ The stakes are high, and the positions stark: You either actively support Ukraine, democracy and the rule of law, or you actively, or through inaction, support Russia’s resurgent fascism, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. There is no neutral position to take.
🐣 RT @kgorchinskaya this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Upon its outcome rests the future of European stability and prosperity. If Ukraine succeeds, a diminished Russia will be contained; if it fails, the chances of war between NATO and Russia go up
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: This Is the War’s Decisive Moment http://bit.ly/37IkjhP
// The United States and its allies can tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.… Russia’s sheer brutality and utterly unwarranted aggression, compounded by lies at once sinister and ludicrous, have endangered what remains of the global order and the norms of interstate conduct. If such behavior leads to humiliation on the battlefield and economic chaos at home, those norms may be rebuilt to some degree; if Vladimir Putin’s government gets away with it, restoring them will take a generation or longer.
There will be time enough for recriminations. Germany long claimed that it was extending the hand of reconciliation to Russia when in fact it chose to pursue a policy based on greed and naivete. It was not alone in delusion and hypocrisy. For more than a decade, American leadership proved inept, complete with red lines that melted and indifference to the rending of nations in Europe and the leveling of cities and gassing of civilians in Syria. Smug asides about leading from behind seem particularly reprehensible now, as we see what a world without American leadership looks like.
In the years to come, culpable politicians will attempt to excuse these follies and historians will acidly dissect them. What matters now is that we judge the present moment correctly. And here, again, the West faces potential failure. Those who talk of a stalemate on the battlefield, perhaps lasting years, are likely making as big of an error as when they dismissed the possibility of effective Ukrainian resistance two months ago. Decisive action is urgently required to tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.
… As fighting shifts to open areas where guerrilla tactics and handheld anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles will no longer be as effective, they [Ukrainians] face daunting, if not impossible, odds. They are as motivated as soldiers can be, and creative tacticians too. But they are not supermen, and they desperately need all that the arsenals of the West can provide them.
The Russian military—revealed as inept at tactics, unimaginative in operational design, obtuse in strategy, and incompetent at basic logistics and maintenance—can do only two things well: vomit out massive amounts of firepower and brutalize civilians. It has been bloodied very badly indeed. If, as seems plausible, it has taken losses (killed, wounded, missing, and imprisoned) of a quarter or more of the forces it committed to this war, it may teeter on the verge of collapse. We can see the indicators in reports from the battlefield: equipment abandoned, officers killed by their own men, desperate attempts to dragoon young men into military service, and blocking units to shoot deserters. The Russian military has not established, let alone maintained, control of the air. Russia threw three-quarters of its ground-combat forces into Ukraine, where they were driven from one theater and severely handled in the others, and now has no real reserves on which to draw.
… Having sought to upend the notion of truth in the West, they now fall victim to their own pervasive untruths.
And so Putin will order offensives that, if confronted by a well-resourced Ukrainian foe, can effectively destroy his own army. The challenge for the West is to ensure that this is its fate.
… While Russia itself will likely remain a paranoid and isolated dictatorship after this war, it can be defanged, even as its own folly reduces it to the ranks of a third-rate power. But war is war, and the future is always uncertain. All that is clear right now is that a failure to adequately support Ukraine will have terrible consequences, and not just for that heroic and suffering nation.
🐣 RT @MrKovalenko #Ukraine Security Service finally found & arrested the most notorious pro-Russian politician/lawyer in Ukraine, a Putin’s crony Viktor #Medvedchuk. Since the war began, he disappeared & tried to flee to #Russia. More details soon.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress ⚡️Ukraine’s Security service has detained pro-Russian politician Victor Medvedchuk, whose daughter’s godfather is Putin ¤ SBU promises that the same fate awaits all pro-Russian figures and agents of Russian secret services in Ukraine
🐣 RT @ukraine_world interesting twist. Putin’s key ally in Ukraine, Victor Medvedchuk, detained. — You might ask, why he didn’t flee to Russia. Well, for Russians, he is a key liar “disinforming” Russia about Ukraine and persuading the Kremlin that Russians would be met in Ukraine “with flowers”.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IMatviyishyn Is this real?! We’ve been waiting for this for decades: Putin’s crony Medvedchuk is detained in Ukraine! It’s a sign that justice will prevail. All the war mongers, accomplices of Russia, will be held accountable together with war criminals.🐣 RT @myroslavapetsa Why is Medvedchuk’s capture so significant? Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter. Medvedchuk was Putin’s key ally in Ukraine. He controlled 3 pro-RU TV stations that were later shut down. In 2021 he was charged with treason, was facing up to 15 years in prison if convicted
NewVoiceofUkraine, Timothy Snyder: Russia’s genocide handbook http://bit.ly/3jxPWNP
// From Snyder SubstackRussia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated several times into English.
As I have been saying since the war began, “denazification” in official Russian usage just means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. A “Nazi,” as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “nazification of Ukraine.” Indeed “any attempt to build such a state” has to be a “Nazi” act. Ukrainians are “Nazis” because they fail to accept “the necessity that the people support Russia.” Ukrainians should suffer for believing that they exist as a separate people; only this can lead to the “redemption of guilt.”
On this absurd definition, where Nazis have to be Ukrainians and Ukrainians have to be Nazis, Russia cannot be fascist, no matter what Russians do. This is very convenient. If “Nazi” has been assigned the meaning “Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian” then it follows that no Russian can be a Nazi. Since for the Kremlin being a Nazi has nothing to do with fascist ideology, swastika-like symbols, big lies, rallies, rhetoric of cleansings, aggressive wars, abductions of elites, mass deportations, and the mass killing of civilians, Russians can do all of these things without ever having to ask if they themselves on the wrong side of the historical ledger. And so we find Russians implementing fascist policies in the name of “denazification.”
The Russian handbook is one of the most openly genocidal documents I have ever seen. It calls for the liquidation of the Ukrainian state, and for abolition of any organization that has any association with Ukraine. It postulates that the “majority of the population” of Ukraine are “Nazis,” which is to say Ukrainians.
(This is clearly a reaction to Ukrainian resistance; at war’s beginning the assumption was that there were only a few Ukrainians and that they would be easily eliminated. This was clear in another text published in RIA Novosti, the victory declaration of 26 February.) ¤ Such people, “the majority of the population,” so more than twenty million people, are to be killed or sent to work in “labor camps” to expurgate their guilt for not loving Russia. Survivors are to be subject to “re-education.” Children will be raised to be Russian. The name “Ukraine” will disappear. …
🐣 RT @DefenceU [Ukr] This is how the russian army has been destroying and continues to obliterate Mariupol, killing thousands of Ukrainians. ¤ This is what hell looks like in 21st century Europe. ¤ Footage by @AP #ArmUkraineNow #SaveMariupol
💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1513862849587822599?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ If you watch only one thing today watch this TED talk 👇by @Kasparov63.
Excellent speech. Highlights:
– Strategy is about understanding how actions you take today will impact the future
– There is good and evil
– Evil tempts us with comfort
Watch it!
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov63 When I retired from chess in 2005 to form the anti-Putin opposition, many said, “Garry, this is not chess! Politics is not black and white!” Putin’s war on Ukraine is not chess, it’s true. But it is black and white, good vs evil. My TED Talk:
💽 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1513682220132802560?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ukraine_world “About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant”, reports Lyudmyla Denisova, Ombudswoman for @BBCWorld
🐣 RT @MansRAD This is huge… ¤ Stoltenberg: “What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security. Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a more longer-term adaptation of Nato.”
⋙ “Regardless of when, how, the war in Ukraine ends, the war has already had long-term consequences for our security. Nato needs to adapt to that new reality. And that’s exactly what we are doing.”
⋙ Before the invasion, Nato’s presence on its eastern border amounted to a relatively small “tripwire” force intended to symbolise the alliance’s commitment to defend itself from any Russian attack, rather than repel an invasion.
⋙ Under the plans being worked up by Nato military commanders, that presence would be transformed into a major force capable of taking on an invading army.
⋙ “This is part of the reset which we have to make, which is to move from tripwire deterrence to something which is more about deterrence by denial or defence. This is already in process. We have to ensure that we continue to be able, in a more dangerous world,>>
⋙ to protect and defend all Nato allies.”⋙⋙ Telegraph [UK]: Jens Stoltenberg: We need a beefed-up Nato to face down threats to European security http://bit.ly/3v6yWnk
// Invasion of Ukraine has ushered in ‘new normal’, so the alliance is preparing for ‘reset’ that will allow it to repel attacks from the East🐣 RT @ukraine_world “The 47th day of the Russian-Ukrainian war, this shameful invasion that is gradually wiping Russia out of international relations, is coming to an end”, according to @ZelenskyyUa
💽 https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1513773919374745600?s=20/photo/1KyivPost: Russia Defaults on Its Foreign Debt http://bit.ly/3xmjQwS “Credit-worthiness rating agency S&P Global says Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt after offering bondholders payments in rubles, not U.S. dollars.”
⭕ 11 Apr 2022
TheBulwark, Mark Hertling: I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here’s What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies. http://bit.ly/36prZ8y
// The two armies at war today couldn’t be more different.🐣 RT @avalaina “The same drama theater. But two different universes. ¤ Our peaceful city six months ago. How happy we were…” Source Mariupol City Council #StandWithUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/avalaina/status/1513651875295416322?s=20/photo/1BBC Seriously, (podcast): Puppet Master: Meet the most powerful man you’ve never heard of http://bbc.in/3KDMtsX
// In the BBC Radio 4 series The Puppet Master, reporter Gabriel Gatehouse gets to the bewildering heart of contemporary Russia by exploring the fortunes of a secretive, complicated and controversial man. His name is Vladislav Surkov – also known as Putin’s Rasputin, the Grey Cardinal of the Kremlin or the Puppet Master. Here, Gabriel reveals some fascinating things he learned along the way…Facebook [tr]: Ilya Ponomarev Yesterday at 3:18 AM You will laugh, but Russian z-sources told us about the arrest of Vladislav Surkov: ¤ “Vladislav Surkov is under house arrest. Investigative measures are being carried out in the case of embezzlement in Donbass since 2014” However, the Ministry of Defense always did not like Surkov and can pass off a dream as reality … http://bit.ly/3EesqPG
On the other hand, although Putin dismissed the VYuS from the post of his assistant by official order back in February 2020, Surkov still knows the real situation in the separatist pseudo-republics like no one else and has extensive connections there. And he is close to the Russian “veterans of Donbass.” ¤ On the third hand, Surkov has always been quite close to Kadyrov and it is obvious that the academician does not invent a lot of things himself, but follows the precepts of Vladislav Yurich … ¤ We are waiting for confirmation or refutation of the information about Surkov’s arrest! February Morning – RosAntiCenter
// only source for this “news”🐣 RT @somebadideas Wowwwwww. Surkov the first architect of 21st century politics of nihilism, took ideas from avant-garde art & pop culture to politics to create total confusion & disinformation. A middle manager of a world without meaning. Later, copied by Bannon & Trump & Brexit & all the rest…
🐣 RT @somebadideas Here’s @peterpomeranzev with the essential portrait of Surkov in 2014, noting he keeps a photo of Putin & Tupac on his desk and his rise in a world where ‘PR is everything’
💙 TheAtlantic, Peter Pomerantsev (2014): The Hidden Author of Putinism http://bit.ly/3xm0YOz
// 11/7/2014; How Vladislav Surkov invented the new Russia🐣 RT @carlbilt If Vladislav Surkov has been arrested the knifes are really out in Moscow. He’s allegedly accused of corruption in Donbas. Well, he did run the entire corrupt structure of the Donbas operation from 2014 onwards. And was Putin’s key man on the issue.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DecodingTrolls Vladislav Surkov, under arrest, is so central to Putin’s project here he is as the results came in for Putin’s first election. Surkov is said to have directed snipers that killed 100 demonstrators in Kyiv in Feb 2014. Note that Simeon Mogiliev, the Boss of the Bosses is here too.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DecodingTrolls Surkov under arrest? He was head of Russia’s 🇺🇦 policy 2012-2018. His job included commissioning & paying fake protesters all over Ukraine. “Vladislav Surkov, a Chechen, awakened in the Russian people of the taste for Ukrainian blood… & modified 🇷🇺state of consciousness.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kamilkazani Vladislav Surkov is reportedly arrested. For years he ran Russian domestic politics and later Kremlin’s policy in Ukraine. On Feb 15 he published an article calling for the war to reannex Ukraine, Belarus and Baltics. Today I’ll discuss his role in Putin’s rise to Presidency🧵
📌 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1513681957749596162?s=20⋙ Surkov has mixed heritage. His dad is Chechen – Andarbek Dudaev, his mom is Russian – Zoya Surkova. He spent his childhood in a Chechen village where he was known as Aslanbek Dudaev. But then his parents divorced and his mom took him to Russia proper, where he turned to Vladislav
⋙ After school Surkov served in army, in military intelligence. With the start of Perestroika, commerce was allowed in the USSR. In 1987 Surkov started working for Khodorkovsky, who would soon become the richest oligarch in Russia. Here you see Surkov, Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky
⋙ How did Khodorkovsky get so rich? This story reflects the origins of many oligarchic fortunes. Khodorkovsky was the chief of local NТТМ – Office for Scientific and Technological Initiatives of the Youth. NTTM was a department of Komsomol – the youth branch of the Communist Party
⋙ Until Perestroika positions in these NТТМ centres were not that lucrative. Komsomol functionaries serving there didn’t have much leverage. But then everything changed. To understand why, we’ll do a little trip into the Soviet monetary system and how did the Soviet money function
⋙ The system worked as long as the Soviet economy remained strictly statist. As long as the prohibition to cash out noncash money was enforced. But in Perestroika they experimented with introducing market elements to the statist economy and this new hybrid system didn’t work at all
⋙ In 1988 the new Law on Cooperation officially allowed the commerce. In theory it would allow normal people to do business (“кооператив”). In practice however, Soviet/Russian “business” was mostly about government functionaries cashing out their administrative leverage
⋙ A government agency (factory, ship company, local government) would establish a private firm (cooperative) with the agency’s CEO as the main beneficiary. CEO of a state agency would plunder it in order to transfer resources to his private firm. That’s why they were so lucrative
⋙ In 1988 NTTMs were allowed to break a great Soviet taboo on cashing out the noncash money, making them a leverage for plunder. An NTTM chief would establish a private cooperative, cash out government noncash funds and transfer them to his cooperative, effectively privatising them
⋙ Of course, NTTM chiefs started cashing out as much noncash funds as they could. That triggered hyperinflation, destroying the frailing Soviet economy, but created some enormous fortunes. Such as the one of Khodorkovsky – the future richest oligarch in Russia
⋙ In early 1999 nearly 100% of the non-Kremlin political establishment supported Primakov seeing him as the obvious successor. Those who didn’t were usually outcasts whom Primakov didn’t accept for some reason. And yet, Kremlin did everything they could to prevent Primakov’s rise
⋙ Surkov personally talked with governors and persuaded 39 of them to join Putin. So now Putin had 39 and Primakov only 45. How did Surkov accomplish it? First, he made it clear that Kremlin won’t allow Primakov to win. The fact that Putin had dossiers on all of them might help too
⋙ Surkov also did fund-raising. Berezovsky and Abramovich were the two biggest donors for the Putin’s campaign, but there were many others. On average businessmen would donate just 10 million dollars each – more like insurance in case
⋙ A clique that pushed Putin to power was deeply interconnected. Berezovsky knew Putin since early 1990s when he worked in St Petersburg Government. Reportedly it was Berezovsky who first proposed to the Family that former Sobchak’s deputy
⋙ Dorenko didn’t criticize Primakov. He rather conveyed the idea that Primakov was too old and frail and thus a bad choice for the country. Even if viewers were appaled by Dorenko’s take, they would still associate Primakov with the footage they saw. That undermined his election
⋙ While Surkov was pressuring governors to join Putin, his boss Voloshin was working on a national level. Three strongest parties in Russia were Communists, Fatherland (Primakov) and Unity (Putin). Voloshin made a secret pact with Communists, so that Primakov was isolated
⋙ Once Primakov’s MPs realised they will be in a minority in the Russian parliament with Unity + Communists alliance controlling everything, they started leaving Primakov en masse. Primakov’s party was destroyed not so much by voters choice as by the court intrigues
⋙ The transfer of power from Yeltsin to Putin went very easily. Look at this photo of Putin’s campaign staff celebrating his election as a president. You see Voloshin, chief of Yeltsin’s staff and his deputy Surkov. It wasn’t a real election, it was a quasimonarchical succession
⋙ After securing Putin’s succession, Voloshin considered his job done. He wrote a resignation letter, stating the “transition of power in the country” as a reason and handed it to Putin. Putin smiled and put it away. He decided to keep both Voloshin and Surkov in Kremlin. End of 🧵🧵 RT @IgotSushko My translation of the 14th #FSBletters from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Dated 4/4. Topics: Consequences of large-scale mobilization, what Russia plans to do next, Bucha genocide, Kadyrov, terror attacks. Please share far & wide.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1513745221997060102?s=20⋙ Please listen to this audio as it explains the context and the genesis of the #FSBletters. It will help you understand the prism through which these letters are to be read. You will understand in real human terms why #WindofChange writes to Vladimir.
⋙ As always, my comments for clarification are in (parenthesis). #WindofChange’s parenthesis are in [brackets]. So, let’s roll:
“For all the dynamism of the situation and new events, trend is the same – total violence in all directions.
⋙ But I would like to focus on the subject of mobilization specifically – it is now becoming almost a cornerstone from the point of view of the top leadership.
⋙ On the one side, it’s silly to discuss any prospects of war: Military failure is already evident, and the “brave offensive from Kiev towards Donetsk via Belarus” is perceived by all as an unambiguous escape. (Referring to retreat from Kyiv to Belarus by the Russian battalions.)
⋙ The ОДКБ (CSTO – Russian military alliance which includes Belarus) will not give troops –
⋙ even direct terrorist attacks on their territory successfully attributed to the Ukrainians, and this task cannot be carried out by morons from the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence), is far from being a solution to the problem. Although work is being done in this direction…
⋙ Now to the problems that prevent the start of large-scale mobilization in Russia.
1. Mobilization in the form of agitation to sign the contract is going on, but the result is absolutely useless.
⋙ 2. The status of special operation will have to be scrapped – the legal justification for a “special operation” involving mobilized people is nonsense. Even lunacy must have limits. Hence the next point.
⋙ 3. A transition to total martial law would kill the economy. It will be like imposing sanctions from within against yourself. Mobilization will have to take place for a long time: you cannot just take a man, dress him, and send him away. Even if he served once.
⋙ Just the training will take 2-3 months, and that is very minimal.
⋙ There’s a type of mobilization when trained military personnel, including those in support roles, are sent to the front, and they are replaced, especially those on extra duty in the units, by the mobilized.
⋙ But there are already conscripts who have replaced contract soldiers under this scheme.
⋙ 4. “What if it doesn’t work?” This question was left unanswered when they planned to take Kiev in 3 days. Now we can finally approach the situation from a critical point of view.
⋙ But these are – objectives. But the opportunities may shrink to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Here is the difficulty: capturing Sloviansk or Kramatorsk is not the same as threatening to go to Berlin or Paris.
⋙ 9. It was not for nothing that I once compared the current campaign to the war against Japan a century ago. Back then, too, we played around with getting a “small triumph.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko· Mar 5
(THIS UPCOMING 2nd HALF IS ARGUABLY MORE INTERESTING AND ENDS WITH A PLEASANT SURPRISE)
“100% we’ve repeated our mistake from last century, when we decided to kick the “weak” Japan in order to achieve a quick victory, and it turned our army was in a state of total calamity.
Show this thread
⋙ Analogies repeat themselves, and trying to cover the problem with human resources provides no guarantee of the desired result.
⋙ But risks reveal themselves. In modern warfare, quantitative indicators are completely inferior to qualitative ones. A large contingent is needed primarily for logistics and control of occupied territories.
⋙ If we focus the strike in the direction of Donbass, then “war with flesh” will also have no effect there: over all these years, Ukraine has created solid lines of fortifications there, and it is easier to organize supplies for them there than for our side.
⋙ And our large forces in the attack can turn into great losses and risk, as the classics would say, “transformation of an imperialist war into a civil war.” I exaggerate, of course, but only in part: the risk of internal rebellion from significant failures skyrockets.
⋙ 10. It’s not quite clear what exactly is required for a guaranteed victory from our [Russian] side.
⋙ On February 24, we used all our prepared tricks: the surprise factor, clearing the approaches to Kherson, the head of the Kherson SBU was recruited in advance and carried out this mission, utilized the Belarusian direction, the entire mass of missile attacks,
⋙ the morale of the army [was a head higher than now], using the direction through Chernobyl [no one expected us there, and it’s even clear why we weren’t expected there].
⋙ What exactly do we need to do today to turn the tide? What can we use now that we haven’t used before? Sheer numbers in ground forces that lack proper training – doesn’t appear to be something reliable. This is a topic for the military, but so far there has been little clarity.
⋙ In general, mobilization under such conditions is far from being the solution. For Ukraine, the withdrawal of our troops (from Kyiv) exposed the pathway to Belarus – if the Ukrainians had invaded there, it would have been a chance to turn to the CSTO again.
⋙ But it wasn’t something we could hope for. (Meaning Russian command knew Ukrainian forces wouldn’t go into Belarus to chase the retreating Russian forces.)
⋙ Militarily, to the point of new understanding, we need to wait for two results: whether the attempt to encircle the Donbass position of the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) will be successful for the Russian army,
⋙ and whether it will be possible to make a breakthrough to Transnistria via Odessa.
This second option is military madness, but Moldova, judging by their statements, is frightened and fully believes this.
⋙ Now for the current problems: Bucha is a problem that was not anticipated, but nor is it a surprise. No command would ever order such a blatant extermination of
The situation could escalate to such a level that the consequences are very, very hard to overestimate. (The West’s response to the genocide in Bucha.)
⋙ There are no good solutions here – what is left is the need to jump out of the situation. The key technical point is to try at all costs to seize the initiative in the information confrontation. (With regards to Bucha genocide)
⋙ Be the first to demand an investigation, demand an international commission, they provide their findings – the pattern of behavior of the bureaucratic machine never changes, in fact we have “Boeing #2” in terms of effect and influence.
⋙ (Reference to MH17 Boeing-777 shot down by Russia in 2014 over Ukraine, murdering 298 civilians from 10 countries)
⋙ It’s impossible to rule out our own punishment for those responsible for what happened, and it’s impossible to allow such actions to become public.
⋙ Shifting attention and blame – Ukrainian officials and politicians from cities occupied by Russian forces publicly and directly collaborated. (This will be the false narrative sold to the Russian public & Ukrainian population in occupied territories to explain Bucha genocide.)
⋙ If they and/or their families (Ukrainian officials/politicians in cities currently occupied by Russian forces) are exterminated in an extremely demonstrative and brutal manner, the responsibility in any case will fall on the Ukrainian side.
⋙ (So goes the current Kremlin thinking on how to sell the Bucha genocide to the Russian population & Ukrainian population in occupied territories.)
⋙ From an informational standpoint, we’ll get a chance to shift attention – theoretically.
Politically, we risk losing the loyalty of the population (inside Ukraine in occupied cities), which is already afraid to openly support Russia, and there are very few of them there now.
⋙ But our people began to literally play their moves in advance, patching up the existing gaps and not thinking about what will come out of it later. So, I allow this as a possibility.
⋙ Kadyrov: (Inside Chechnya) He understands what will happen to him if he presses the “stop” button on the war. And it appears he has decided to go for broke. We’ll soon see.
⋙ In any case, there is no more unanimity in the country (Chechnya) – the war party and the peace party are already approaching the point of direct conflict, and the arbitrator is nowhere to be seen. The spillover of foreign war into domestic war under such conditions is very real.
⋙ Everything can go belly-up at any moment (in Russia). The threat of terrorist attacks is at maximum (both false flag & orchestrated by Russian civilian fanatics who support the war). Everywhere.
⋙ Control over the situation is at a critically low level, or has been lost altogether. Almost everywhere. No one knows what will happen next.
⋙ (END OF TRANSLATION of the 14th #FSBletters from the #WindofChange)Politico: Jury convicts former Va. police officer for role in Jan. 6 riot http://politi.co/3jxhfbf “Thomas Robertson was convicted on multiple felony charges, including obstruction of Congress’ Jan. 6 session to count Electoral College votes, a central charge in hundreds of cases”
// A former colleague testified against Rocky Mount police officer Thomas Robertson.🖼 NYT, Carlotta Gall: Bucha’s Month of Terror http://nyti.ms/3xlmxP9
// (graphic images); Photographs by Daniel Berehulak; “They shot my son. I was next to him. It would be better if it had been me.”🐣 RT @thetimes NEW: A “Stalinist” mass purge of Russian secret intelligence is under way after more than 100 agents were removed from their jobs and the head of the department responsible for Ukraine was sent to prison
⋙ TheTimes [UK]: Putin ‘purges’ 150 FSB agents in response to Russia’s botched war with Ukraine http://bit.ly/3xphGMPIn a sign of President Putin’s fury over the failures of the invasion, about 150 Federal Security Bureau (FSB) officers have been dismissed, including some who have been arrested. ¤ All of those ousted were employees of the Fifth Service, a division set up in 1998, when Putin was director of the FSB to carry out operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union with the aim of keeping them within Russia’s orbit.
The service’s former chief, Sergei Beseda, 68, has been sent to Lefortovo prison in Moscow after he was placed under house arrest last month. The prison was used by the NKVD, the KGB’s predecessor, for interrogation and torture during Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s. ¤ The FSB purge was reported by Christo Grozev, executive director of Bellingcat, the investigative organisation that unmasked the two Salisbury poisoners in 2018. He did not reveal the source of his information. ¤The officer had been dismissed for “reporting false information to the Kremlin about the real situation in Ukraine before the invasion”, he said. ¤ “I can say that although a significant number of them have not been arrested they will no longer work for the FSB,” Grozev told Popular Politics, a YouTube channel about Russian current affairs.
Last month FSB officers also carried out searches at more than 20 addresses around Moscow of colleagues suspected of being in contact with journalists. ¤ Beseda, who remains under investigation, is being held on the official charge of embezzlement. In reality, however, the basis for his arrest is the botched invasion, which has been blamed on poor intelligence concerning the political situation in Ukraine. ¤ It is thought he has been replaced by his deputy, Grigory Grishaev, 58.
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian security services, said that in sending Beseda to Lefortovo, Putin had sent a “very strong message” to other elites in Russia. ¤ “I was surprised by this,” he told The Times. “Putin could have very easily just fired him or sent him off to some regional job in Siberia. Lefortovo is not a nice place and sending him there is a signal as to how seriously Putin takes this stuff.” ¤ Lefortovo, which is an FSB-run prison, has an underground shooting range with bullet holes left over from Stalin’s purges, when the room was used for mass executions.
In an article for The Moscow Times, Soldatov suggested that it was possible Beseda was suspected of having passed information to the CIA. ¤ Before taking over the Fifth Service, Beseda worked in counter-intelligence, a role that involved close liaison with the CIA station in Moscow. Were he to be a double agent, it would explain the Kremlin’s suspicions as to how US intelligence had been so accurate in the build-up to the invasion. ¤ Soldatov said he did not believe Beseda was a double agent, but said it suited Putin’s purposes to suggest so. ¤ “It’s good to be able to blame things on a traitor. It’s a very Russian thing to do,” he said.
In the years before the invasion, the Fifth Service had been active in trying to destabilise Ukraine through cultivation of pro-Russian political figures and attempts to foment unrest among far-right groups in western Ukraine. ¤ Grozev said that he believed Russian security services had wasted “billions of dollars” on failed attempts to secure support from the “shady political class” in Ukraine in the lead-up to the war. ¤ “From 2014 to the present day, between 140 and 150 FSB officers had an unlimited budget to spend on recruiting Ukrainians of any level,” he said in a discussion with two journalists from Novaya Gazeta last month. ¤ Grozev added that much of the money was spent wooing Ukrainian recruits with expensive trips to Thailand, Cyprus and the Maldives. “It was money that they never earned,” he added, referring to the total failure of the FSB’s attempts to stir up unrest in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @MoscowTimes Vladimir Kara-Murza, a vocal Kremlin critic who survived two suspected poisonings and spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was denied access to his lawyer and kept in detention overnight on charges of defying police orders.
⋙ MoscowTimes: Twice-Poisoned Kremlin Critic Detained in Moscow http://bit.ly/3M2R5tf
// The reasons for Kara-Murza’s arrest were not immediately clear and authorities still haven’t commented on it as of early Tuesday.🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. 11 April 2022. Russia will be incapable of running truly joint ops. Brutal and screwed up military forces.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1513672471064416257?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Part 2. Monday. 11 April 2022. A new phase of the Russian invasion of UKR requires a war of maneuver and firepower against these repositioning enemy forces. The process doesn’t count. Either there is a surge of modern weapons or UKR dies.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1513720617706565637?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Part 3. Monday. 11 April 2022. The Ukrainians will fight to the death. We need to give them massive emergency support.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1513728227935600644?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ AVindman When confirmed, the U.S. will be forced to act. The Admin established a policy of strategic ambiguity to warn off Russia. If the U.S. doesn’t take severe action in response, it will be inviting further Chem strikes against Ukraine & provocations against NATO & undermining non-Pro
⋙ 🐣 RT @lapatina_ Defenders of #Mariupol just said Russia used chemical weapons on them around an hour ago – soldiers are having difficulty breathing and vestibulo-atactic syndrome. Earlier today Russian puppets in occupied Donbas openly called for the use of chemical weapons against them🐣 RT @CNN “Putin is very comfortable with confrontation.” – CNN’s @FareedZakaria discusses the pushback Russian President Vladimir Putin got from Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen when they met face-to-face today.
💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1513681084550197250?s=20/photo/1NYT: Before Giving Billions to Jared Kushner, Saudi Investment Fund Had Big Doubts http://nyti.ms/3O1QARL
// Before committing $2 billion to Mr. Kushner’s fledgling firm, officials at a fund led by the Saudi crown prince questioned taking such a big risk.🐣 ‘A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking an $2B investment for Jarvanka’ ~ Adderall Dirksen #allinwithchris #inners
NYT Mag: ‘This Was Trump Pulling a Putin’ http://nyti.ms/3DZH11h “‘Trump was using Ukraine as a plaything for his own purposes,’ Hill told me.”
// Amid the current crisis, Fiona Hill and other former advisers are connecting President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to Jan. 6. And they’re ready to talk.… The litany of Trump-Russia intersections remains remarkable: Citizen Trump’s business pursuits in Moscow, which continued throughout his candidacy. Candidate Trump’s abiding affinity for Putin. The incident in which the Trump campaign’s national security director, J.D. Gordon, watered down language in the 2016 Republican Party platform pledging to provide Ukraine with “lethal defense weapons” to combat Russian interference — and did so the same week Gordon dined with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, at an event. Trump’s longtime political consigliere Roger Stone’s reaching out to WikiLeaks through an intermediary and requesting “the pending emails,” an apparent reference to the Clinton campaign emails pirated by Russia, which the site had started to post. Trump’s chiming in: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” The meeting in the Seychelles islands between Erik Prince (the founder of the military contractor Blackwater and a Trump-campaign supporter whose sister Betsy DeVos would become Trump’s secretary of education) and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund in an effort to facilitate a back-channel dialogue between the two countries before Trump’s inauguration. The former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort’s consistent lying to federal investigators about his own secretive dealings with the Russian political consultant and intelligence operative Konstantin V. Kilimnik, with whom he shared Trump campaign polling. Trump’s two-hour meeting with Putin in Helsinki in the summer of 2018, unattended by staff. Trump’s public declaration, at a joint news conference in Helsinki, that he was more inclined to believe Putin than the U.S. intelligence team when it came to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The dissemination by Trump and his allies in 2019 of the Russian propaganda that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 election, in support of the Clinton campaign. Trump’s pardoning of Manafort and Stone in December 2020. And most recently, on March 29, Trump’s saying yet again that Putin “should release” dirt on a political opponent — this time President Biden, who, Trump asserted without evidence, had received, along with his son Hunter Biden, $3.5 million from the wife of Moscow’s former mayor. …
On May 23, 2019, Charles Kupperman, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, and others discussed Ukraine with Trump in the Oval Office. Speaking to the press about the matter for the first time, Kupperman told me that the very subject of Ukraine threw the president into a rage: “He just let loose — ‘They’re [expletive] corrupt. They [expletive] tried to screw me.’”
Because Kupperman had seen how disdainfully Trump treated allies like Merkel, Macron, Theresa May of Britain and Moon Jae-in of South Korea, he knew how unlikely it was that the president could come to see the geopolitical value of Ukraine. “He felt like our allies were screwing us, and he had no sense as to why these alliances benefited us or why you need a global footprint for military and strategic capabilities,” Kupperman told me. “If one were to ask him to define ‘balance of power,’ he wouldn’t know what that concept was. He’d have no idea about the history of Ukraine and why it’s in the front pages today. He wouldn’t know that Stalin starved that country. Those are the contextual points one has to take into account in the making of foreign policy. But he wasn’t capable of it, because he had no understanding of history: how these countries and their leadership evolved, what makes these countries tick.”
In July 2019, Trump ordered that a hold be placed on nearly $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The president stood essentially alone in his opposition to such assistance, Kupperman told me: “Everyone in the interagency process was uniformly united to release the aid. We needed to do this, there was no controversy to it, but it got held up anyway.” News of the freeze became public that September, and the White House variously claimed that the funds had been withheld because of Ukraine’s corruption and because other NATO countries should be contributing more to Ukraine. Alyssa Farah Griffin, then the Pentagon press secretary, recalled to me that she asked Laura Cooper, the Department of Defense deputy assistant secretary for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, whether the hold was part of the standard review process.
“Absolutely not,” Cooper replied to her. “Nothing about this is normal.”
A few days later, the Trump White House released a reconstructed transcript of the president’s July 25 phone conversation with Zelensky. In it, Trump responded to the Ukrainian leader’s interest in purchasing Javelin missiles by saying: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike” — a reference to the cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate its 2016 email security breach, which became a facet of Giuliani’s hallucinatory claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that stole the emails. In the same conversation, Trump requested that Zelensky help Giuliani investigate “Biden’s son,” referring to Hunter Biden, and ominously said of his recently fired ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, that “she’s going to go through some things.”
“My first reaction to it,” Farah Griffin told me in speaking about the phone call for the first time publicly, “was that it was wildly inappropriate to be bringing up domestic political concerns, and it seemed to border on the conspiratorial. I’d been around for a lot of head-of-state meetings and calls, and they’re pretty pro forma. You know the things that you’re not supposed to say. It seemed like such a bizarre breach of diplomacy.” She went on: “But then, once it became clear that the Office of Management and Budget had actually blocked the money prior to the conversation, I thought: Wow. This is bad.” …
Hill, for her part, emerged from the events of 2019 rather dazed by her sudden fame — but just as much so, she told me, by the implications of what she and other White House colleagues had experienced that culminated in Trump’s impeachment. “In real time, I was putting things together,” she said. “The domestic political errands, the way Trump had privatized foreign policy for his own purposes. It was this narrow goal: his desire to stay in power, irrespective of what other people wanted.”
Hill was at her desk at home on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, writing her memoir, when a journalist friend she first met in Russia called. The friend told her to turn on the television. Once she did so, a burst of horrific clarity overtook her. “I saw the thread,” she told me. “The thread connecting the Zelensky phone call to Jan. 6. And I remembered how, in 2020, Putin had changed Russia’s Constitution to allow him to stay in power longer. This was Trump pulling a Putin.”
Alexander Vindman, who was removed from his job as N.S.C. director for European affairs months after testifying against Trump (the president, his son Don Jr. and other supporters accused Vindman, a Soviet émigré and Army officer, of disloyalty, perjury and espionage), told me he experienced a similar epiphany in the wake of Jan. 6. Vindman was exercising at a gym in Virginia that afternoon when his wife, Rachel, called him to say that a mob had attacked the U.S. Capitol. After recovering from his stupefaction, “my first impulse was to counterprotest,” Vindman recalled. “I was thinking, What can I do to defend the Capitol? Then I realized that would be a recipe for disaster. It might give the president cause to invoke martial law.”
In Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the election results, Vindman told me, the president revealed himself as “incompetent, his own worst enemy, faced with too many checks in a 240-plus-year-old democracy to be able to operate with a free hand.” At the same time, he went on: “I came to see these seemingly individual events — the Ukraine scandal, the attempt to steal the 2020 election — as part of a broader tapestry. And the domestic effects of all this are bad enough. But there’s also a geopolitical impact. We missed an opportunity to harden Ukraine against Russian aggression.”
Instead, Vindman said, the opposite occurred: “Ukraine became radioactive for the duration of the Trump administration. There wasn’t serious engagement. Putin had been wanting to reclaim Ukraine for eight years, but he was trying to gauge when was the right time to do it. Starting just months after Jan. 6, Putin began building up forces on the border. He saw the discord here. He saw the huge opportunity presented by Donald Trump and his Republican lackeys. I’m not pulling any punches here. I’m not using diplomatic niceties. These folks sent the signal Putin was waiting for.”
Bolton, a renowned foreign-policy hawk who also served in the administrations of Reagan and George W. Bush, also told me that Trump’s behavior had dealt damage to both Ukraine and America. The refusal to lend aid to Ukraine, the subsequent disclosure of the heavy-handed conversation with Zelensky and then the impeachment hearing all served to undermine Ukraine’s new president, Bolton told me. “It made it impossible for Zelensky to establish any kind of relationship with the president of the United States — who, faced with a Russian Army on his eastern border, any Ukrainian president would have as his highest priority. So basically that means Ukraine loses a year and a half of contact with the president.”
Trump, Bolton went on to say, “is a complete aberration in the American system. We’ve had good and bad presidents, competent and incompetent presidents. But none of them was as centered on their own interest, as opposed to the national interest, except Trump. And his concept of what the national interest was really changed from day to day and had a lot more to do with what his political fortunes were.” This was certainly the case with Trump’s view of Ukraine, which, Bolton said, describing fantasies that preoccupied the president, “he saw entirely through the prism of Hillary Clinton’s server and Hunter Biden’s income — what role Ukraine had in Hillary’s efforts to steal the 2016 election and what role Ukraine had in Biden’s efforts to steal the 2020 election.”Bolton acknowledged to me that he found Trump’s conduct both in the Ukraine scandal and on Jan. 6 to be arguably worthy of impeachment. Still, he offered a rather tangled assessment of the two processes — finding fault with Democrats in the first inquiry for “trying to ram it through quickly” and, in the second impeachment, for not pressing quickly enough and “trying him before January the 20th.”
But Bolton seems to regard the former president’s abuses of power as validation of America’s institutional strengths rather than a warning sign. “I think he did damage to the United States before and because of January the 6th,” Bolton told me. “I don’t think there’s any question about that. But I think all that damage was reparable. I think that constitutions are written with human beings involved, and occasionally you get bad actors. This was a particularly bad actor. So with all the stress and strain on the Constitution, it held up pretty well.”
When I asked whether he believed Trump could be viewed as an authoritarian, Bolton replied, “He’s not smart enough to be an authoritarian.” But had Donald Trump won in 2020, Bolton told me, in his second term he might well have inflicted “damage that might not be reparable.” I asked whether his same concerns would apply if Trump were to gain another term in 2024, and Bolton answered with one word: “Yes.”
At the moment, Trump’s chances of victory are favorable. He remains the putative lead candidate for the G.O.P.’s nomination and would most likely face an 81-year-old incumbent whose approval ratings are underwater. Even in defeat, there is little reason to believe that Trump will concede at all, much less do so gracefully. This January, President Biden said: “I know the majority of the world leaders — the good and the bad ones, adversaries and allies alike. They’re watching American democracy and seeing whether we can meet this moment.” Biden went on to say that at the G7 Summit in Cornwall, England, the previous summer, his assurances that America was back were met by his foreign counterparts with the response, “For how long?”
One former foreign-policy official who played a role in the Trump-Ukraine tensions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the former president, was unsettled but also unsurprised by Biden’s account. “In the back of their minds,” this former official said of America’s allies, “if Trump is elected again in 2024, where will we be? I think it would be seen among struggling democracies as a disaster. They would see Trump as someone who went through two impeachment inquiries, orchestrated a conspiracy to undo a failed election and then, somehow, is re-elected. They would see it as Trump truly unbound. But to them, it would also say something about us and our values.”
Hill agreed with that assessment when I described it to her. “We’ve been the gold standard of democratic elections,” she told me. “All of that will be rolled back if Trump returns to power after claiming that the only way he could ever lose is if someone steals it from him. It’ll be more than diplomatic shock. I think it would mean the total loss of America’s leadership position in the world arena.”
A couple of months ago, Hill told me, she attended a book event in Louisville, Ky. Onstage with her was another recent author, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who was the House Democrats’ lead manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Raskin, who happens to be Hill’s congressman, had also been among the managers in the first trial.
Their event took place on Jan. 24, exactly one month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Though Putin’s troops had been massed along the border for several months, speculation of war was not a public preoccupation. For the moment, Hill’s expertise was in lesser demand than that of Raskin, who is now a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. For much of their hourlong colloquy, it was Hill who asked searching questions of Raskin — who, she told me, “was deeply disturbed by how close we came to basically not having a transfer of power.”
At one point, Hill acknowledged to Raskin and the live audience that she had been thinking lately of the “Hamilton” song “You’ll Be Back,” crooned maliciously by King George to his American subjects. “I have been worried over whether we might be back to that kind of period,” she said. Hill went on to describe the United States as being in a state of de-evolution, with the checks on executive power flagging and the concept of governmental experience regarded with scorn rather than admiration.
What she did not say then was something that Hill has told me more than once since that time. Throughout all our changes, presidents and senior staff in government, she said: “Putin has been there for 22 years. He’s the same guy, with the same people around him. And he’s watching everything.”
Carnegie, Rumer & Weiss (2021): Ukraine: Putin’s Unfinished Business http://bit.ly/3xfD3Qz “[T]he annexation of Crimea and the undeclared war in eastern Ukraine have only reinforced the Ukrainian people’s resolve to leave Russia’s orbit and to seek closer ties to the West”
// 11/12/2021Politico: 5 crucial decisions as Jan. 6 investigation reaches final stage http://politi.co/3E24A9t “Even when the select committee releases the bulk of its findings, the book is unlikely to close on the committee’s investigation”
// Do they push Donald Trump or Mike Pence to testify? Will GOP lawmakers answer questions? The insurrection committee is in the endgame now💙 ForeignAffairs, Anna Reid: Putin’s War on History http://fam.ag/3xeAxu5 “Saying that Ukraine doesn’t really exist is as absurd as saying that Ireland doesn’t exist because it was long under British rule, or that Norwegians are really Swedes”
// The Thousand-Year Struggle Over UkraineOn the evening of February 21, 2022, three days before Russian forces began the largest land invasion on the European continent since World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an angry televised speech. In it, he expressed familiar grievances about the eastward expansion of NATO, alleged Ukrainian aggression, and the presence of Western missiles on Russia’s border. But most of his tirade was devoted to something else: Ukrainian history. “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” Putin said. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” Ukraine’s borders, he asserted, have no meaning other than to mark a former administrative division of the Soviet Union: “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia.”
To many Western ears, Putin’s historical claims sounded bizarre. But they were of more than casual importance. Far from an innovation of the current crisis, Putin’s argument that Ukraine has always been one and the same with Russia, and that it has been forcibly colonized by Western forces, has long been a defining part of his worldview. Already during the Maidan popular uprising in Kyiv in 2013–14, Putin claimed that the people leading the huge protests were Western-backed fashisti (fascists) trying to tear Ukraine from its historical roots. (In fact, the protests caught the West by surprise, and although they included a far-right fringe, they were no fascist takeover.) And in July 2021, well before the buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, the Kremlin published a 7,000-word essay under Putin’s byline with the title “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” Both Russia and Ukraine, it asserted, have not only common roots in language and faith but also a shared historic destiny. Since its publication, the essay has become part of the required curriculum for all service members in the Russian armed forces, including those fighting in the current war. According to Putin’s logic, all divisions between Russia and Ukraine are the work of Western powers. From Poland in the sixteenth century to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the nineteenth century and the Nazis in World War II, they have periodically coerced Ukraine or led it astray. In this reading, Kyiv’s pro-Western outlook over the past decade is only the latest form of external interference—this time by the European Union and the United States—aimed at dividing Russia against itself. Ukraine’s “forced change of identity,” Putin wrote, is “comparable…to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.” In Putin’s meaning, “us” included Ukrainians. Ukrainians and Ukraine, in other words, aren’t just naturally part of Russia; they don’t even really exist.
A variation on the “Ukraine doesn’t really exist” theme is the Kremlin’s assertion that Ukraine is a foregone failure. According to this view—long echoed in a more sophisticated form by Western commentators—thanks to its geography and political history, Ukraine is forever destined to be riven by internal division or torn apart by more powerful neighbors. This was the core narrative of Putin’s propaganda the last time he invaded Ukraine, when he grabbed Crimea and the Donbas following the Maidan protests in Kyiv. Then, Russian state media reported that Ukraine was a failed state taken over by a neo-Nazi junta and that Russian forces were riding to the rescue. The close Putin adviser who directed all this propaganda, the bodyguard turned strategist Vladislav Surkov, reprised the theme in an interview with the Financial Times last year. Ukraine, he said, using an odd analogy, was like the “soft tissue” between two bones, which, until it was severed, would rub painfully together. (With Russian journalists, he was more straightforward: the “only method that has historically proved effective in Ukraine,” he said, is “coercion into fraternal relations.”).
As the extraordinary resilience and unity of the Ukrainian population in the current war have demonstrated, these Russian claims are nonsense. Saying that Ukraine doesn’t really exist is as absurd as saying that Ireland doesn’t exist because it was long under British rule, or that Norwegians are really Swedes. Although they won statehood only 31 years ago, the Ukrainians have a rich national history going back centuries. The idea that Ukrainians are too weak and divided to stand up for themselves is one they are magnificently disproving on the battlefield. As for the neo-Nazi insult, this is belied by the fact that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish and that in the most recent parliamentary elections, in 2019, Ukraine’s far-right party, Svoboda, won less than three percent of the vote. As Putin’s imagined Ukraine has increasingly diverged from Ukrainian reality, the myth has become harder to sustain, the contradictions too acute. But rather than adjusting his historical fantasy to bring it closer to the truth, Putin has doubled down, resorting to military force and totalitarian censorship in a vain attempt to make reality closer to the myth. He may now be learning that reality is hard to defy: the wages of bad history are disaster in the present.
GATHERING RUSSIA
Putin’s obsession with Ukraine’s past can be traced to the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Until 1991, most of today’s Ukraine had been ruled by Russia for 300 years—slightly longer, in other words, than Scotland has been ruled by England. And with a population that is today nearly as large as Spain’s, Ukraine was by far the most significant Soviet republic besides Russia itself. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser, famously wrote, “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire.” This isn’t literally true. Russia today is still a vast multiethnic empire, taking in a 3,000-mile-wide slice of northern Asia and including more than a dozen Asian nationalities, from the 5.3 million Tatars on the Volga River to a few thousand Chukchis on the Bering Strait. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, Moscow lost its West.
For Putin, Russia’s European empire was all-important. Although there has long been an exoticizing streak to Russia’s self-image—“Yes, we are Scythians!” the hitherto gentle poet Aleksandr Blok declared after the 1917 revolution—the country [Russia] has always seen itself as a European, rather than an Asian, power. Its great composers, novelists, and artists have been European in orientation; its historic military triumphs—against Napoleon and Hitler—made it a senior player in Europe’s “concert of nations.” By pushing Russia back into her gloomy pine forests, away from such ringing old place names as Odessa and Sevastopol, the loss of Ukraine, in particular, injured the Russian sense of self.
At the heart of Russia’s Ukraine problem, then, has been a war over history. The first battle is over where the story begins. Conventionally, the story starts with a legend-wrapped leader from the Middle Ages, Volodymyr (or Vladimir in Russian) the Great. A descendent of Norse raiders and traders from Scandinavia, Volodymyr founded the first proto-state in Kyiv toward the end of the tenth century. A loose but very large fiefdom known as Rus, it was centered on Kyiv and covered today’s Belarus, northwestern Russia, and most of Ukraine. Volodymyr also gave Rus its spiritual foundations, converting his realm to Orthodox Christianity.
Although Russians and Ukrainians concur on Volodymyr’s importance, they disagree over what happened after his kingdom broke up. Through the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it disintegrated into warring princedoms, and in the thirteenth, it was overrun by the Mongols, under Batu Khan. In Russian accounts, the population—and, with it, true Rus culture—fled the violence, heading northeast, to Moscow and Novgorod. Ukrainians, however, argue that Rus culture remained squarely centered on Ukraine and that what emerged in Moscow was a separate and distinct tradition. To Western readers, the argument seems trivial: it is as though the French and the Germans were locked in battle over whether Charlemagne, the ninth-century founder of the Carolingian Empire, belongs to modern France or modern Germany. Ukrainians, however, understand the significance of the Russian claims. One of Kyiv’s landmarks is a large nineteenth-century statue of Volodymyr the Great, holding a cross and gazing out over the Dnieper River. When Putin put up his own, even bigger Vladimir the Great outside the Kremlin gates in 2016, Ukrainians rightly saw it not as a homage to a tenth-century king but as a blatant history grab.
In fact, for most of the next seven centuries after Volodymyr’s reign, Ukraine was outside Muscovite control. As Mongol rule crumbled through the 1300s, the territory of present-day Ukraine was absorbed by the emergent Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which in turn combined by dynastic marriage with Poland, so that for the next two and a half centuries, Ukraine was ruled from Krakow. Eventually, even Ukraine’s faith acquired a Western veneer: in 1596, the Union of Brest-Litovsk created the Greek Catholic, or Uniat, Church—a compromise between Catholic Poles and Orthodox Ukrainians that acknowledged the pope but was Orthodox in ritual and allowed priests to marry. A politically canny halfway house between the two religions, the union helped Polonize the Ukrainian nobility, part of what Putin sees as a long pattern of the West pulling Ukraine away from its rightful Orthodox home.
It was not until the late seventeenth century that Moscow forcefully entered the picture. A series of uprisings by Ukrainian Cossacks—militarized frontier groups, centered on the lower Dnieper—had weakened the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. Then, following a long war with Poland over Ukraine, expanding Muscovy was finally able to annex Kyiv in 1686. For Ukrainians, it was an “out of the frying pan into the fire” moment: Polish rule was simply swapped for its harsher Muscovite counterpart. But in Putin’s telling, it was the beginning of the “gathering of the Russian world,” using an archaic phrase that he has resuscitated to justify his war against Ukraine today. Another century later, Poland itself was partitioned among Austria, Prussia, and Russia, with Russia ending up with what is today Belarus and central Ukraine, including Kyiv, and Austria with today’s western Ukraine, then known as eastern Galicia, which included Lviv.
STATE OF STRUGGLE
Ukraine’s modern national movement began in the 1840s, led by the first great Ukrainian-language writer, Taras Shevchenko. Born into an enserfed peasant family in a village near Kyiv, he exhorted Ukrainians to throw off the Russian yoke and excoriated the many who Russified themselves in order to climb the socioeconomic ladder. (These views earned him ten years in Siberia.) As the century progressed, and especially after Tsar Alexander II’s assassination by anarchists in 1881, tsarist rule became more repressive. Hundreds of Ukrainian socialists followed Shevchenko into exile, and Ukrainian-language books and education were banned. At this point, Ukraine’s east-west divide turned into an advantage—at least for those living in the western part—because in Austrian-ruled Galicia, Ukrainians were able to adopt the freer civic culture then taking root in Europe. In Lviv, they published their own newspapers and organized reading rooms, cooperatives, credit unions, choirs, and sports clubs—all innovations borrowed from the similarly Austrian-ruled Czechs. Although disadvantaged by a voting system that favored Polish landowners, they were able to form their own political party and sent representatives to Lviv’s provincial assembly, to which the typical Ukrainian deputy was not a fiery revolutionary but a pince-nez-wearing, mildly socialist academic or lawyer.
Ukraine’s reputation as a land cursed by political geography—part of the “bloodlands” in the title of the historian Timothy Snyder’s best-selling book—was earned during the first half of the twentieth century. When the tsarist regime suddenly crumbled in 1917, a Ukrainian parliamentary, or “Rada,” government declared itself in Kyiv, but it was swept away only a few months later, first by Bolshevik militias and then by the German army, which occupied Ukraine under the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. After the armistice that November ending World War I, Germany withdrew again, leaving the Red Army, the reactionary Russian White Army, the Polish army, a Ukrainian army under the socialist Rada minister Symon Petlyura, and an assortment of independent warlords to fill the power vacuum. In the chaotic civil war that ensued, the group worst hit was Ukraine’s Jews. Scapegoated by all sides, more than 100,000 were killed in 1919, in a series of massacres unmatched since the 1600s. Beaten by the Reds, Petlyura formed a last-ditch alliance with Poland, before fleeing to Paris when Poland and the Soviet Union made a peace that divided Ukraine again, the Russians taking the east and the center, the Poles the west. Two small borderland regions—today’s Bukovina and Transcarpathia—went to newly independent Romania and Czechoslovakia, respectively.
Not surprisingly, Petlyura is a hotly contested figure. For Russians, he was just another pogromist warlord. (That viewpoint saturates the Kyiv-bred but ethnic Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The White Guard, for whose characters Petlyura’s army is a frightening mob.) For Ukrainians, conversely, he led their country’s first stab at independent statehood, which might have succeeded had the Allies only given him the same diplomatic and military support that they did the Balts and (less successfully) the Armenians, the Azerbaijanis, and the Georgians. To accusations of ethnonationalism, they rejoin that the Rada government printed its banknotes in four languages—Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish—and that the leader of the Ukrainian delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference was a distinguished Jewish lawyer, Arnold Margolin. Petlyura’s army rampaged, they concede, but he could not control it, and so did all the others. The controversy played out in 1926 in a Paris courtroom, after Petlyura was assassinated by a Jewish anarchist who claimed to be avenging family members killed by Ukrainian soldiers. The three-week trial was an international sensation, with the defense presenting a devastating dossier of evidence about the pogroms, while the prosecution sought to paint the assassin as a Soviet agent. After only half an hour’s deliberation, the jury declared him innocent, and debate over the affair still rages.
BETWEEN STALIN AND HITLER
In fact, the violence and chaos of the Petlyura era were merely a prelude to much greater Ukrainian tragedies in the years that followed. Beginning in 1929, Joseph Stalin launched the Holodomor—literally, “killing by hunger”—a program of forced deportations and food and land requisitioning aimed at the permanent emasculation of Ukraine’s rural population as a whole. Rolled out in parallel with a purge of Ukraine’s urban intelligentsia, it resulted in the deaths of nearly four million Ukrainians. Covered up for decades, there is no doubt that this extraordinary mass killing was deliberate: the Soviet authorities knew that villagers were dying in great numbers, yet they persisted in food requisitioning and forbade them from leaving the famine areas for the towns. Why Stalin perpetrated the famine is less clear. An estimated three million Kazakhs and Russians also starved to death during these same years, but he chose to hit Ukraine hardest, probably because it embodied his twin demons in one: the conservative peasantry and a large, assertive non-Russian nationality. Even today, however, there is an ongoing effort by Russia to block international recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide. In his “Historical Unity” essay, Putin refers to the famine only once, in passing, as a “common tragedy.” Stalin’s name is not mentioned at all.
Less than a decade later, a new round of horror was visited on Ukraine following the signing of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Red Army occupied the Polish-ruled western part of the country—the first time Russia had ever controlled this territory. Two years later, however, the Wehrmacht marched in anyway, and two years after that, the Red Army returned. Both armies deported or arrested the Lviv intelligentsia—a rich mix of Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews—as they arrived and killed political prisoners as they departed. For a few months in 1943, a large ethnonationalist Ukrainian partisan army controlled most of northeastern Ukraine, establishing a primitive administration and its own training camps and military hospitals. Remarkably, small units of this army carried on an assassination and sabotage campaign for years after the war ended, with the last insurgent commander killed in a shootout near Lviv in 1950.
Overall, 5.3 million Ukrainians died during the war years, an astonishing one-sixth of the population. Again, many died of hunger, after Germany began confiscating grain. And again, it was Jews who suffered most. Before the war, they made up a full five percent of Ukraine’s population, or some 2.7 million people; after it, only a handful remained. The rest had fled east or lay in unmarked mass graves in the woods or on the edge of cemeteries. (In the fall of 2021, as part of an effort to commemorate these events, Zelensky presided at the opening of a new complex at Babi Yar, or Babyn Yar, the park next to a metro station where nearly 34,000 Kyivan Jews were massacred in September 1941. On the sixth day of Putin’s invasion this year, three Russian missiles landed in the park, causing damage to the Jewish cemetery there.)
For the Soviets, and for Putin today, the most important fact about the Ukrainians during the war was not their victimhood but their alleged collaboration with the Nazis. The most controversial Ukrainian figure of the period is Stepan Bandera, the leader of a terrorist organization in Polish-ruled interwar western Ukraine. Having already been sour when the area was under Austrian rule, Polish-Ukrainian relations dramatically worsened with the new government’s Polonization drive, in the course of which Ukrainian-language schools were closed, Ukrainian newspapers strictly censored, Ukrainians banned from even the lowliest government jobs, and Ukrainian candidates and voters arbitrarily struck from electoral rolls. The repression radicalized rather than Polonized, so that the largest Ukrainian parliamentary party, the compromise-seeking Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance, was increasingly squeezed out by Bandera’s underground nationalists. When the Wehrmacht entered western Ukraine in June 1941, Bandera joined forces with the Germans, organizing two battalions, Nachtigall and Roland, although he was almost immediately arrested by the Nazis, who found him too hard to control.
Ever since, Russia has used Bandera as a stick with which to beat the Ukrainian national movement. No matter that far more Ukrainians fought in the Red Army than in the Wehrmacht and that Germany was able to recruit tens of thousands of Russian prisoners of war, too. As in Soviet days, a standard epithet for Ukrainians in Russian state media today is Banderivtsi—“Banderites”—and Putin revisited the trope in an even odder than usual speech on February 25, the day after the Russian invasion began, in which he called on the Ukrainian army to overthrow the “drug addicts and neo-Nazis” in power in Kyiv.
After the end of World War II, and especially after Stalin’s death in 1953, Ukraine enjoyed several decades of relative stability. Compared with the other non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians were simultaneously extra repressed and extra privileged, making up the largest single group of political prisoners but also acting as Russia’s junior partner in the union. The Politburo was packed with Russians and Ukrainians, and in the non-Slavic republics, the usual pattern was for an ethnic national to be appointed first party secretary, while a Russian or a Ukrainian wielded real power as number two. When the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, Ukraine floated to independence without bloodshed, after its own Communist Party leadership decided to cut the tow rope to the sinking mother ship. It is this late-Soviet “little brother” relationship that Putin grew up with—and which he may believe (or have believed) Ukrainians would be ready to return to were it not for the West’s interference.
WESTWARD OR BACKWARD
Ukraine’s political path in the three decades since independence has accentuated all of Russia’s fears. At first, it seemed as if Russia and Ukraine would move on parallel tracks in the post–Cold War era. Both countries were riding the rapids of economic collapse combined with new political freedoms; neither seemed interested in the past. In Ukraine, nobody bothered to take down Kyiv’s Lenin statue or rename its streets. Russia’s new ruling class, for its part, seemed more interested in making money than in rebuilding an empire. It was easy to imagine the two countries developing along separate but friendly paths: like Canada and the United States or Austria and Germany.
That happy illusion lasted only a few years. The two hinge moments of Ukraine’s post–Cold War history were two highly effective and genuinely inspirational displays of people power, both provoked by the Kremlin. In 2004, Putin tried to insert a burly ex-convict and regional political boss from Donetsk, Viktor Yanukovych, into the Ukrainian presidency, an effort that seems to have included having his pro-European electoral rival, Viktor Yushchenko, poisoned. After Yushchenko survived the attack (with his face badly scarred), the vote was blatantly falsified instead. Sporting orange hats and ribbons, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians poured into the streets in protest and stayed there until the electoral commission conceded a rerun, which Yushchenko won. For Putin, the protests, known as the Orange Revolution, were a plot orchestrated by the West.
In 2010, Yanukovych finally won the presidency, after the pro-European bloc rancorously split. For the next four years, he devoted himself to looting the Ukrainian treasury. But in November 2013, he went a step too far: just as Ukraine was about to ink a long-planned and widely popular trade deal with the European Union, he abruptly canceled it and, under pressure from Putin, announced a partnership with Russia instead. For Ukrainians, as for Putin, this was not just about how best to boost the economy but also about Ukraine’s very identity. Instead of heading westward—perhaps even one day joining the European Union—the country was being coerced back into the Russian orbit. Initially, only a few students came out in protest, but public anger grew quickly after they were beaten up by the police, whose upper echelons Yanukovych had packed with Russians. A protest camp on Kyiv’s central square, known as the Maidan, turned into a permanent, festival-like city within a city, swelling to a million people on weekends. In January 2014, the police began a violent crackdown, which climaxed with the killing of 94 protesters and 17 police officers. When the crowds still refused to disperse, Yanukovych fled to Moscow, and the contents of his luxurious private compound—Hermès dinner services, chandeliers the size of small cars, a stuffed lion—went on display in Ukraine’s National Art Museum. In the power vacuum that followed Yanukovych’s flight, Putin invaded first Crimea and then, via thuggish local proxies, the eastern border cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The land grab pleased the Russian public, but if Putin intended to pull Ukraine back toward Russia, his actions had the opposite effect. New presidential elections brought in another pro-European, Petro Poroshenko, a Ukrainian oligarch who had made his money in confectionary rather than corruption-ridden mining or metals. Then, in the years that followed, a mass civilian effort supported Ukrainian forces in a low-level but grinding conflict with Russia in and around Donetsk and Luhansk. (Until the Ministry of Defense was reformed, the previously neglected Ukrainian army was literally crowdfunded by direct donations from the public.) Ukrainian support for NATO membership rose sharply, and in June 2014, Ukraine signed a wide-ranging association agreement with the European Union. Most symbolic and popular—or, in Putin’s eyes, most cunning—was the EU’s 2017 granting to Ukrainians of bezviz, visa-free 90-day travel to the whole of the Schengen area [Euopean countries not req visas]. Russians still need visas, which are extortionately expensive and burdensome. The contrast grates: little brother has not only abandoned big brother; he is better traveled now, too.
RUSSIAN BONES, UKRAINIAN SOIL
Ukraine’s progress before the invasion should not be overstated. Shady oligarchs pulled strings behind the scenes, and the country was hobbled by pervasive corruption. (Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index puts Ukraine alongside Mexico and Zambia but ranks it as slightly less corrupt than Russia.) But for all of the country’s problems, its history since independence has been one of real changes of power, brought about by real elections, between real candidates, reported by real free media. For Putin, the Ukrainian example had become a direct political threat. What if Russia’s own population—and not just the urban intelligentsia—started demanding the same freedoms? In his “Historical Unity” essay, Putin explained away the fact that Ukrainian presidents change as being the result of a “system” set up by “the Western authors of the anti-Russian project.” Ukraine’s pro-Russian citizens, he wrote, are not vocal because they have been “driven underground,” “persecuted for their convictions,” or even “killed.” Whether he actually believes this is unclear, but it might explain the slightly ad hoc tactics used by the Russian army in the first week of his war on Ukraine. Putin may really have expected his tank battalions to be greeted as liberators.
As during the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013–14 Maidan protests, which came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine’s fierce self-defense today is a defense of values, not of ethnic identity or of some imagined glorious past. Putin’s obsession with history, in contrast, is a weakness. Although earlier in his presidency, banging the “gathering of the Russian world” drum boosted his approval ratings, it has now led him down what may turn out to be a fatal dead end. In terms of square mileage alone, Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe, after Russia itself. If you placed it over the eastern United States, as The Washington Post recently observed, it would stretch “from Missouri to the Atlantic Ocean, and from Ohio to Georgia.” Occupying it permanently would be enormously costly in troops and treasure. Moreover, Putin’s war has unified Ukrainians as never before. And whether they are speaking Russian or Ukrainian, their sentiment is the same. Already, video clips have gone viral of babushkas telling Russian soldiers that they will leave their bones in Ukrainian soil and of Ukrainian soldiers swearing joyously as they fire bazookas at Russian tanks, all in the purest Russian. The war is likely to go on for a long time, and its final outcome is unknown. History, Putin may be learning, is only a guide when it’s the real sort.
ANNA REID is former Kyiv Correspondent for The Economist and the author of Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine.
⭕ 10 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @r_stefanchuk It is time for @NATO to make a choice: either to the future with🇺🇦, or to the 13th century with🇷🇺. ¤ And you must make this choice today. And take responsibility for it before our peoples and history.Now is the time for decisive actions and great victories! Help us and win with us
WaPo, Siobhán O’Grady: A former boxer turned Kyiv mayor becomes a rousing wartime leader http://wapo.st/3rbtMp1 Vitali Klitschko
🐣 .@ZelenskyyUa is Ukraine’s George Washington, who also had to beg for the supplies and equipment needed for the fight and managed to win against the greatest power on earth at the time, through endurance, cleverness and and a desire for freedom and self-governance https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1513362594127568905?s=20/photo/1
// photo: Zelenskyy in trench wearing helmet🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC. Sunday. 10 April 2022. Russia does not even remotely have the military or economic power to take on the massive heft of NATO and the EU. The fight will be bitter but Putin will never make these brave people of UKR a vassal state.
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1513343877830242306?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @polialertcom @froomkin: “We can stop talking about Fox like it’s a different form of news — and start talking about how it isn’t news at all. It’s the opposite of news. It’s instead of news. It’s the absence of news.”
⋙ NBCNews, Dan Froomkim: Fox News does serious damage to its fans. But here’s the good news. http://nbcnews.to/38GA9dA
// alt header: Fox News isn’t news
// A new study suggests Fox News viewers aren’t just manipulated and misinformed — they are literally being made ignorant by their consumption habits.🐣 RT @PewResearch 📊 64% of Americans say that Russia’s power and influence is a major threat to the United States. 30% say it is a minor threat and only 5% say Russia is not a threat. https://pewrsr.ch/36V4Pr4 https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/1513339312728940545?s=20/photo/1
// Shrinking partisan gap on views of Russia as a threat;
Major threat (2022): 66% Dems, 64% Indies, 61% GOP
Major threat (2017): 64% Dems, 43% Indies, 35% GOP ( ⇇ approx)🐣 RT @McFaul Historians will record Ukraine’s victory over Russia in the Battle of Kyiv in April 2022 as one of Russias greatest battle defeats. To which other Russian battle defeats should it be compared? (& of course , the was only one battle in a still ongoing, tragic, horrible war)
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Why is Putin bent on destroying Russia? Isn’t the president supposed to work for, and not against, his country?
🐣 RT @UKRintheUSA .@ZelenskyyUa: We are defending the ability of a person to live in the modern world. We are defending the right to live. I never thought this right was so costly. These are human values. So that Russia doesn’t choose what we should do. @60Minutes @CBSNews
⋙ 💽 CBSNews: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The 60 Minutes Interview http://cbsn.ws/3LZApCV
// Ukraine’s president speaks with Scott Pelley about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and recently uncovered alleged war crimes in Kyiv suburb of Bucha.🐣 RT @avalaina Dana Yurivych wrote: I cried at a refugee camp on the border with Poland. Just from the helplessness that my country from young to old is forced to flee and from gratitude that almost the whole world is with us: feeding hot food, providing medicines, trying to talk, hug.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Le Pen is a weapon, part of Putin’s larger war, a second front in attacking Europe and democracy. I am often critical of Macron’s dealings with Russia, but he is an essential bulwark in France today.
🐣 RT @LinkeviciusL As of now #Ukraine is winning #Russia’s war against #NATO. https://twitter.com/LinkeviciusL/status/1513053278430543876?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @peterpomeranzev If Germany doesn’t sanction Russia why don’t we sanction Germany. Not sure I want cars made with the help of Uighur concentration camps or German products powered by Russian gas that fund an atrocity machine
⭕ 9 Apr 2022
CNN, Dean Obeidallah: Why Trump Jr. started pushing for a coup before Biden won the 2020 election http://cnn.it/3KByW57
A coup. That’s what Donald Trump Jr. was advocating for in a text message to his father’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that laid out ways to subvert the Electoral College process and keep his father in power. ¤ There are many alarming — and even bone-chilling — aspects of Trump Jr.’s November 5, 2020, text message. ¤ But the most jaw-dropping is that the text was sent just two days after the 2020 election, when the result was still too close to call. That Trump Jr. was already pushing for several strategies — from pressing Republican state legislators to put forward slates of fake “Trump electors,” to firing the FBI Director and replacing him with a loyalist who would do Trump’s bidding — reveals the level of preparation and dogged determination within Trump’s inner circle to keep him in power, no matter the outcome.
On November 5, 2020, two days before news outlets finally projected Biden won, votes were still being tallied in key states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Yet Trump Jr. was texting Meadows: “We have operational control Total leverage. Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now.” ¤ How was Trump supposed to start a second term when the election hadn’t been called — and he was still trailing Joe Biden by 40 electoral votes?! The complete lack of regard for the will of American voters is in plain view in these texts.
Of course, President Trump started lying about the specter of election fraud in the spring of 2020 — an insurance policy he likely planted because he was trailing in the polls and desperately feared losing. But there was no credible evidence of widespread election fraud then, and none has been found since. Even Trump’s own Attorney General Bill Barr said in December 2020, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” ¤ Let’s be clear: There was never a credible argument behind the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. It was all a lie to keep Trump in power.
Reading some of the contents of Trump Jr.’s text is literally jaw-dropping. He called for firing the FBI Director Christopher Wray and making Trump loyalist Richard Grenell, former acting Director of National Intelligence, interim head of the FBI. ¤ The text called for politically weaponizing the Department of Justice by calling on Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the “Biden crime family.” This is not something that should ever happen in our nation — then again, the same can be said of the January 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol and Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The text also made reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts in swing states to prevent the certification of the results — a strategy the President and his allies used in the ensuing months after the election. ¤ In a statement to CNN, Trump Jr.’s lawyer Alan S. Futerfas said, “After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.” Even if true, here was the son of the President sending the President’s chief of staff ways to upend the election results and abuse the power of the presidency in Trump’s remaining months in the White House.
Just last week, US District Court Judge David Carter wrote an opinion in response to Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman, who asked the judge to withhold certain documents requested by the January 6 House select committee. In it, Carter wrote that Trump and Eastman had “launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history.” But there’s one line in particular that truly resonates upon reading Trump Jr.’s text messages: “It was a coup in search of a legal theory.”
Thanks to the newly revealed text message, we now know the seeds for a coup were planted even before the election results were announced. Would Trump have continued harping on about election fraud had he been declared the winner of the 2020 election? Of course not. It was never about election fraud — or any facts for that matter. Their goal was straightforward: Reinstall Donald Trump and end our democracy. ¤ If we hope to keep our democratic republic, every single person involved in this coup attempt must be criminally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Anything less will only embolden Trump and others to engage in the same conduct — and given how close they got this time, they may just succeed next time around.
ABCNews: With eyes on ‘Londongrad,’ UK seeks to overhaul ties to Russian oligarchs http://abcn.ws/3LU6egh
// Over 1,000 individuals and businesses with Kremlin ties have been sanctioned.🐣 RT @OliviaTroye So now the White House gift records from foreign leaders for Trump & Pence are apparently incomplete/missing…Were they flushed down the toilet? Did Melania hold another auction? Anyone check Don Jr’s texts? eBay?🤷♀️The sedition & grift runs deep. Just wondering.
⭕ 8 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Zelensky reacts to train station attack in Kramatorsk: ¤ “Lacking the strength and courage to fight with us on the battlefield, they (Russians) are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop.”
WaPo, Liz Sly: Nine ways Russia botched its invasion of Ukraine http://wapo.st/3rcAg79
🐣 RT @vonderleyen Ukraine belongs in the European family. ¤ And today, Ukraine takes another important step towards EU membership. ¤ We will accelerate this process as much as we can, while ensuring that all conditions are respected. ¤ #StandWithUkraine
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@AshaRangappa_ has this just right. Most others have missed this key point: Junior’s revelations kill the “innocent state of mind” defense, leaving compelling proof of corrupt intent for each of the several federal felonies the plotters close to the defeated president committed
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ What this makes clear is that Jan. 6 was not based on a belief, good faith or otherwise, that the outcome of the 2020 election was decided incorrectly — they were plotting this before the votes had even been counted! The coup was the plan from the get-go
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rameeksims CNN exclusive: @ryanobles discusses the different ideas that Donald Trump Jr. texted former President Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows about overturning the 2020 presidential election two days after after the vote. [link below ]🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Russia, a country that has always had the potential for greatness but is continually hobbled by its own grandiose paranoia and a whopping inferiority complex, has become both pathetic and lethally dangerous at the same time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @prchovanec I like how they debate on Russian TV whether Ukraine should be allowed to exist. As if they haven’t already tried to destroy it and failed.🔄 ForeignAffairs: How to Understand the Crisis in Ukraine http://fam.ag/3DTRn2B
// Collection of articles; The Origins of the War and What Comes Next🐣 RT @SecDef I spoke w/ Minister @JaroNad to salute Slovakia for providing a critical S-300 air defense system to Ukraine. At Slovakia’s invitation, we will reposition a U.S. Patriot battery to Slovakia to help ensure deterrence & defense of @NATO territory. #WeAreNATO
⋙ DOD: Readout of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III’s Call With Slovakia’s Minister of Defense Jaroslav Nad’ http://bit.ly/3DTDnpz🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Eastern Ukraine right now: “hunger, mass looting and forced deportation at the hands of Russian forces…a highly organized system of arrests targeting activists, community leaders, police officers and members of Ukraine’s military…”
⋙⋙ WaPo: In eastern Ukraine, Russian military razing towns to take them over http://wapo.st/3ji40uQ
// ‘Scorched earth’ tactics seem deliberate as Russian forces try to consolidate control of the Donbas region
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum The violence we saw in Bucha is being repeated, right now, in eastern Ukraine. Russia is sending a clear message to the world: We will continue to destroy, loot and murder, and we don’t care what anyone else thinks.NYT: Pro-Trump Rally Planner Is Cooperating in Justice Dept.’s Jan. 6 Inquiry http://nyti.ms/3xeaXoV
// Ali Alexander, who was a key figure in the “Stop the Steal” movement, said he had received a grand jury subpoena and would assist the expanding investigation.🧵 RT @ New: Discussions about Sweden and Finland joining NATO have gotten extremely serious, officials say, w/applications likely coming in the next month. Finland’s bid “was pretty much a done deal on the 24th of February, when Russia invaded,” said @alexstubb
📌 https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1512566289461563392?s=20🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ BBC: Russia changes its military command. ¤ According to an unnamed Western official, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, who has experience in Syria, will lead the army amid Kremlin’s desire to reach “some kind of success” before May 9, when the country celebrates the victory in WWII.
🐣 RT @francska1 Last night Russian state TV got as close as I’ve seen it get to that horrifying article published by RIA Novosti ¤ I’ve added some subtitles (I hope you’ll excuse my rushed job) ¤ The first man speaking is a pro-Kremlin former Ukrainian MP. The second is presenter Vladimir Solovyov
💽 https://twitter.com/francska1/status/1512348114254020609?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @armyinformcomua ⚡️Over 110 thousand 🇺🇦 citizens joined the Territorial Defense Forces of @ArmedForcesUkr, more than 450 volunteer formations of territorial communities were formed, more than 100 territorial defense fighters have state awards. ¤ #StopRussia #Народна_війна #ТерОборона
🐣 RT @SethAbramson MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: As Votes Were Still Being Counted in 2020, Eldest Trump Son Messaged White House to Say That Trumps Had Attained “Operational Control” Over Levers of American Democracy in a Way That Ensured a Trump Victory Regardless of Voters’ Wishes
⋙ CNN: Exclusive: ‘We control them all’: Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows ideas for overturning 2020 election before it was called http://cnn.it/3NQBCOqTwo days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump’s eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures, CNN has learned.
In the text, which has not been previously reported, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among records obtained by the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.
“It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: “We have multiple paths We control them all.” …
The November 5 text message outlines a strategy that is nearly identical to what allies of the former President attempted to carry out in the months that followed. Trump Jr. makes specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake “Trump electors.”
If all that failed, according to the Trump Jr. text, GOP lawmakers in Congress could simply vote to reinstall Trump as President on January 6. ¤ We have operational control Total leverage,” the message reads. “Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now.”
The text from Trump Jr. is revealing on a number of levels. It shows how those closest to the former President were already exchanging ideas for how to overturn the election months before the January 6 insurrection — and before all the votes were even counted. It would be another two days before major news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner on November 7.
The text also adds to a growing body of evidence of how Trump’s inner circle was actively engaged in discussing how to challenge the election results.
On March 28, Judge David Carter, a federal judge in California, said that Trump, along with conservative lawyer John Eastman, launched an “unprecedented” campaign to overturn a democratic election, calling it “a coup in search of a legal theory.” …
In the weeks following the 2020 election, Trump and his allies eventually filed more than 60 unsuccessful lawsuits in key states, failing to convince the courts that his claims about a stolen election were justified, or uncover any evidence of widespread voter fraud. ¤ They also called for various recounts based on those same unfounded voter fraud claims. A number of states conducted recounts in the months after the election, though none of them revealed any fraud substantial enough to have changed the outcome of the vote in any state.
While Trump Jr. was publicly pushing various voter fraud conspiracy theories and generally casting doubt about the results in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, his text to Meadows reveals there were other ideas being discussed privately. ¤ Specifically, Trump Jr. previews a strategy to supplant authentic electors with fake Republican electors in a handful of states. That plan was eventually orchestrated and carried out by allies of the former President, and overseen by his then-attorney Rudy Giuliani.
In his text to Meadows, Trump Jr. identifies two key dates in December that serve as deadlines for states to certify their electoral results and compel Congress to accept them. Though the dates are largely ceremonial, in his text Trump Jr. appears to point to them as potential weaknesses to be exploited by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election results.
Trump Jr.’s November 5 text to Meadows came as similar notions of faithless electors were starting to percolate publicly on conservative social media. Trump Jr. sent the text to Meadows at 12:51 p.m., just minutes after conservative radio host Mark Levin had tweeted a similar idea and suggested state legislatures have final say on electors.
If secretaries of state were unable to certify the results, Trump Jr. argues in his text to Meadows that they should press their advantage by having Republican-controlled state assemblies “step in” and put forward separate slates of “Trump electors,” he writes. ¤ “Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina etc we get Trump electors,” Trump Jr. adds.
Trump Jr.’s text, however, refers to an untested legal theory that state houses are the ultimate authority in elections and can intervene to put forward a different slate of electors than those chosen by the voters, when in reality this is a ceremonial process and the outcome is essentially a foregone conclusion. ¤ The Justice Department and the House committee are both investigating the fake electors plot within the context of what unfolded on January 6 and Trump’s broader effort to overturn the election.
The strategy floated by Trump Jr. is similar to what was outlined by former Texas Governor and Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who texted Meadows on November 4 suggesting three state legislatures ignore the will of their voters and deliver their states’ electors to Trump. ¤ “HERE’s an AGRESSIVE (sic) STRATEGY: Why can t (sic) the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS,” Perry’s text message read. …
Trump Jr. also texts Meadows that Congress could intervene on January 6 and overturn the will of voters if, for some reason, they were unable to secure enough electoral votes to tip the outcome in Trump’s favor using the state-based strategy. ¤ That option, according to Trump Jr.’s text, involves a scenario where neither Biden nor Trump have enough electoral votes to be declared a winner, prompting the House of Representatives to vote by state party delegation, with each state getting one vote. ¤ “Republicans control 28 states Democrats 22 states,” Trump Jr. texts. “Once again Trump wins.” ¤ “We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021,” he texts Meadows.
In a series of memos in early January, conservative lawyer John Eastman proposed a variation of that idea. ¤ Eastman’s memo laid out a six-step plan for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election for Trump, which included throwing out the results in seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. In fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors — there were merely Trump allies claiming without any authority to be electors.
Eastman, who has been subpoenaed by the House select committee and is fighting to keep some of his records secret from investigators, was accused by Carter of likely engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Trump to overturn the election.s “Dr. Eastman has an unblemished record as an attorney and respectfully disagrees with the judge’s findings,” his attorney Charles Burnham said in response to the judge’s ruling.
Trump Jr. ends his November 5 text by calling for a litany of personnel moves to solidify his father’s control over the government by putting loyalists in key jobs and initiate investigations into the Biden family. ¤ “Fire Wray; Fire Fauci,” he texts, referring to FBI Director Christopher Wray and White House coronavirus adviser Anthony Fauci. Trump Jr. then proposes making former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell interim head of the FBI and having then-Attorney General Bill Barr “select Special prosecutor on HardDrivefromHell Biden crime family.”
As Trump refused to concede in the days and weeks after the 2020 election, rumors swirled that he was still considering firing Wray, along with several other top officials with whom he had grown frustrated. ¤ Trump and his allies sharply criticized Wray for failing to produce information that they claimed would be harmful to the President’s political enemies, including Biden. CNN previously reported that the prospect of Trump firing Wray hung over the FBI for weeks, dating to before Election Day.
While Wray remains in his post and Barr resigned in mid-December 2020 without naming a special prosecutor to investigate the Bidens, Trump Jr.’s text underscores just how precarious the situation at DOJ was in the immediate aftermath of the election. ¤ The same is true for Trump Jr.’s recommendation that Meadows replace Wray with Grenell, someone who not only lacked the usual qualifications to lead the FBI but also had a proven track record of doing the former President’s bidding. …
WaPo: Proud Boys leader admits plan to storm Capitol, will testify against others http://wapo.st/3DVYJmn
// Charles Donohoe pleaded guilty to conspiracy, acknowledging an attempt to stop congressional confirmation of the electoral college voteSubstack, Timothy Snyder: Russia’s genocide handbook http://bit.ly/3uWwGPi Analysis of the article “What should Russia do with Ukraine?” by Timofey Sergeytsev which appeared in the Russian state-owned propaganda news agency RIA Novosti on 4/5/2022
// The evidence of atrocity and of intent mounts💙 EuromaidanPress (2014): How Moscow hijacked the history of Kyivan Rus’ http://bit.ly/3vzdIAx Ukraine’s history is older and more European than Russia’s (more correctly “Muscovite”) whose “psychology absorbed many characteristics [of] the Tatar-Mongol instincts”
⭕ 7 Apr 2022
State[.]gov: Disarming Disinformation: Our Shared Responsibility http://bit.ly/3xAerSX
🐣 RT @thehill In a 100-0 vote, the Senate passed a package to end normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus and codify the administration’s ban on Russian oil imports, capping off weeks of negotiations that had stalled the legislation. http://hill.cm/mBkdGak
🐣 📊 RT @Axios 70% of all U.S. respondents in a new Pew Research survey now consider Russia to be an enemy, compared to 41% in January. ¤ Go deeper https://trib.al/91ggLYT
BylineTimes, Sian Norris and Heidi Cuda: Russian Oligarch Behind Global Anti-Rights Campaign Indicted http://bit.ly/3NY81Tq Konstantin Malofeyev “is connected to a range of European and US anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ movements”
Konstantin Malofeyev, the Russian oligarch responsible for millions in anti-rights funding across Europe, has been indicted by the US Justice Department’s KleptoCapture Taskforce for evading sanctions. ¤ The indictment represents the first US charges against a Russian oligarch since the Ukraine invasion.
The indictment was announced by US Attorney General Merrick Garland on 6 April, who said that millions of dollars had been seized from a Texas account linked to Malofeyev. ¤ Garland also said his department is collecting evidence of war crimes.
Malofeyev had been sanctioned by the US and the European Union after he was accused of being one of the main sources of funding for pro-Russian occupying forces in Crimea in 2014.
“I think it is great that the New York State Department indicted this Russian hooligan who is clearly one of Putin’s most prominent propagandists,” Martin Sheil, retired Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator, told Byline Times. “I applaud the seizure of bank funds from the Texas bank account referenced as belonging to Malofeyev”. …
The oligarch’s indictment follows the arrest in London of his former staff member, American TV producer Jack Hanick.
The former Fox News employee was hired by Malofeyev to run his Tsargrad TV project – a Russian TV channel that ran disinformation, platformed known conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones, and employed Aleksandr Dugin as its editorial lead. Dugin’s far-right philosophy has been influential on Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to him being given the nickname ‘Putin’s Rasputin’.
Malofeyev is connected to a range of European and US anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ movements via his organisation the St Basil The Great Charitable Foundation. His staff member Alexey Komov is on the board of CitizenGO – a global anti-gender campaigning organisation founded in Spain – and is the Russian representative of the World Congress of Families.
The latter organisation’s President, Brian Brown, is a US anti-abortion, anti-LGBTIQ activist best known for campaigning against equal marriage. In 2014, Malofeyev and a fellow sanctioned oligarch Vladimir Yakunin were involved in organising the Congress event in Russia. Sanctions led to its cancellation, although an event titled the Forum for Large Families and the Future of Humanity took its place.
Guests to the event included UK and US anti-rights activists such as Brown, Sharon Slater from Family Watch International, Terrance McKeegan – the legal adviser to the Holy See Mission to the UN – and Donald Feder from the World Congress of Families.
The Forum, and Malofeyev’s links to WCF and CitizenGO, show ongoing close connections between the US and Russian anti-abortion, anti-LGBTIQ movements, even after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.
On the same day Malofeyev was indicted, the FBI in collaboration with U.S. Department of State’s Transnational Organised Crime (TOC) Rewards Programme offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of the alleged leader of the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich, nicknamed “The Brainy Don,” was indicted for allegedly defrauding thousands of investors out of more than $150 million.
It’s understood that Mogilevich and Putin have a “good relationship” and the crime boss lives in Russia. The FSB defector Aleksandr Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London in 2006, linked Mogilevich to his assassination.
Seven years earlier, The Guardian described Mogilevich as typifying “the new global criminal… these men don’t rob banks, they buy them. They take full advantage of globalisation, ill-equipped law enforcement and lax money-laundering laws..as their onshore gateway”. …
🐣 RT @Julie_Vit The private jet linked to Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin is being held at Luton airport. Open source logs for the jet show it regularly flies in and out of the Libyan city of Benghazi, where the Kremlin-backed warlord Khalifa Haftar is based.
⋙ TheTimes [UK]: Private jet linked to Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin seized at Luton airport http://bit.ly/3JjhpgU
// Investigators are trying to untangle the shadowy history of a private jet which was detained last weekend on the suspicion of being linked to the Putin crony🔄 Dkos, CajsaLilliehook: Republican Sexual Predators, Abusers, and Enablers Pt. 1 of 26 and counting http://bit.ly/3NUNX46 Each Part is a List with links, with a total of 675 to date! Link to Part 26: http://bit.ly/3uhC5S7 I was hoping someone would create a list like this!
WaPo: Trump deflects blame for Jan. 6 silence, says he wanted to march to Capitol http://wapo.st/376pd8t “The crowd was far bigger than I even thought. I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to … But this was a tremendous crowd” – Trump (still all about crowd size)
// The former president struck a defiant posture and repeated false claims in an interview with The Washington Post🐣 RT @maxbearak Bucha is worse than initially feared. Russian soldiers there used the city as an arena for a depraved blood sport of torture, execution and mutilation. As investigators sweep through to process the bodies, that cruelty is coming into focus. W/ @leloveluck
WaPo: In Bucha, the scope of Russian barbarity is coming into focus http://wapo.st/3JjGh8i
// Police, local officials and regular citizens start the grim task of clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locationsThe name of this city is already synonymous with the month-long carnage that Russian soldiers perpetrated here. ¤ But the scale of the killings and the depravity with which they were committed are only just becoming apparent as police, local officials and regular citizens start the grim task of clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locations.
As a team from the district prosecutor’s office moved slowly through Bucha on Wednesday, investigators uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses. …
🐣 RT @SecBlinken The @UN General Assembly has voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. Russia will not retain @UN_HRC membership after showing blatant disrespect for human rights in its brutal war against Ukraine.
🧵 RT @mattia_n Russia is planning to destroy #Ukraine by making it unlivable. For over 40 days, Russian forces deliberately targeted critical energy infrastructure, from power plants to oil, fuel and gas production and distribution. The map shows targets as of last week. /1
📌🌎 https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1512169446638501889?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @andrewsweiss Utterly devastating piece about Russian society’s silence about the war in Ukraine by my Moscow-based colleague @AndrKolesnikov
📌 https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1512178531752624138?s=20
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrKolesnikov Passive conformity is no less terrible than active and aggressive conformity. The nation follows Putin like the blind leading the blind. My take on Gleichschaltung, Russian style.
⋙⋙⋙ CarnegieEndow, Andrei Kolesnikov: How Silent Assent Made Bucha Possible http://bit.ly/3rbwDhx
// Summary: Those who approve or stay silent bear, at the very least, collective responsibility for what is happening in their own country and what the state is doing.⋙ 🐣 RT @andrewsweiss Gleichschaltung: the act, process or policy of achieving rigid/total coordination & uniformity by forcibly repressing or eliminating independence and freedom of thought, action, or expression; forced reduction to a common level; forced standardization or assimilation
⋙ Kolesnikov explains how the Putin system’s “ideology is entirely lacking in any positive content. It has no positive goals or image of the desired future. The whole identity of Putinists is based on something negative, and so militarism is an important part of it.”
⋙ This is reflected in public opinion on how Russian citizens think about their govt: “Killing & violence are being heroicized. The main institutions of trust are becoming institutions of violence: the army & the FSB. All of this is blessed by the Russian Orthodox Church.”
⋙ Kolesnikov explains how Putin’s constant falsehood that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people” has been irreparably destroyed by this senseless war.
⋙ But what is the average citizen’s responsibility for the fact “Russia has been cast back into the same moral state as during the most repressive and paranoid years of the Stalinist terror, when denouncing another person was considered a virtue and a duty, when black was white”?
⋙ Kolesnikov:”Normal feelings for a normal citizen of the Russian Federation are a dreadful internal inferno of horror and shame. Shame for what Putin has done, and for the boneheaded obduracy with which many of our compatriots support him, profaning the very concept of patriotism”🐣 📋 RT @BBCYaldaHakim Excellent interview by @markaustintv with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and this extraordinary admission “We have significant losses of troops and it’s a huge tragedy for us” ¤ According to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Russia had lost around 18,900 soldiers since the war began
⋙ 🐣 RT @SkyNews Dmitry Peskov maintained the whole situation in Bucha, where photos show many murdered Ukrainian civilians, was a “well-staged insinuation, nothing else” https://trib.al/XIEcbX1💽 RT @InnaSovsun The legendary band @pinkfloyd remixed Ukrainian folk song in support of #Ukraine. They recorded the feat together with the leader of the Ukrainian band Boombox Andriy Khlyvnyuk, who is currently defending Ukraine in the #Kyiv Territorial Defense.Thanks
🐣 RT @petestrzok Tell me again how carefully Barr reviewed the Mueller Report. ¤ The fact that Barr’s summary of Russia’s attack on the 2016 elections was simply a “hack and dump” tells you everything you need to know about the addled FoxNews brain mush the man carried around in his head while AG.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Bill Barr tells Larry Kudlow that media outlets not reporting on Hunter’s laptop in 2020 was worse than Russia interfering in the 2016 election
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1512169979050921986?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @January6thCmte “We have conducted more than 830 interviews and depositions… Those witnesses didn’t hide behind thin claims of executive privilege. Those witnesses followed the law. They did their patriotic duty. ¤ Mr. Scavino and Mr. Navarro didn’t show up.”-Chair @BennieGThompson
🐣 RT @ BREAKING: we just filed, on behalf of a group of Arizona voters, new 14.3 challenges to the eligibility of Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and Mark Finchem to appear on the 2022 ballot. The mandate of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment must be followed. @FSFP
⋙ NYT: Legal Effort Expands to Disqualify Republicans as ‘Insurrectionists’ http://nyti.ms/3v5poc8
// New lawsuits target Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as Mark Finchem, a candidate for Arizona secretary of state, claiming they are barred from office under the 14th Amendment.🐣 RT @JohnBonifaz NEW from Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg: The Office’s investigation concerning former President Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, and its leadership is ongoing.
Full statement here 🔽
⋙ ManhattanDA: Statement by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Ongoing Investigation Concerning The Trump Organization http://bit.ly/3LLHeYvWaPo: Germany intercepts Russian talk of indiscriminate killings in Ukraine http://wapo.st/36UuEYl
⭕ 6 Apr 2022
💙 TIME, Peter Pomerantsev: Ukraine Is Our Past and Our Future http://bit.ly/3v4OM1N “Ukraine is the place where the invisible is surfaced, where the suppressed will be remembered, where horror is made into meaning. For their freedom and ours.”
[T]he invasion of Ukraine should mean a new understanding of why and how democracies can act together, quickly and ruthlessly, to compete with the aggressive actions of a Russia or a China. The dictatorships will no doubt form their own networks, and that could lead to a new type of mutual deterrence and a chance at stability.
Once again, Ukraine is making us rethink our values, our laws, our policies, our defense. This war is not just a problem you can localize to Russia-Ukraine. There’s an increasingly coordinated network of dictatorships and soft authoritarians who think the 21st century belongs to them. Working out how to help Ukraine win is the first step to fathom this defining question. As so many times a global fault-line in our thinking, one that we wanted to ignore, is being made apparent in Ukraine. The Ukrainian writer Igor Pomerantsev once defined poetry as a bat flying through the night suddenly illuminated in the flashlight of our focus. That metaphor can apply to politics as well. Ukraine is the place where the invisible is surfaced, where the suppressed will be remembered, where horror is made into meaning. For their freedom and ours.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Russian patriots love Russia, unless it involves actually living in Russia and raising their children in Russia
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulSonne Lavrov’s daughter, who was sanctioned by Treasury today, was born in the U.S., went to school at the private Dwight School in New York and graduated from Barnard. This will have a substantive impact on her life.🧵 RT @barbarastarrcnn Breaking from CNN NATSEC team: The US now believes “it will be able to identify the Russian units” that carried out the atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine, according to a US official familiar with the latest information.
📌 https://twitter.com/barbarastarrcnn/status/1511759000429289472?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @barbarastarrcnn Identification of those involved “is an extremely high priority now” for the US intelligence community, official says. US using all avail intel means to help Ukraine identify who conducted atrocities.
⋙ 🐣 RT @barbarastarrcnn The US is also analyzing possible indicators that more than one Russian unit or group of fighters was in Bucha during the time the atrocities occurred.
⋙ 🐣 RT @barbarastarrcnn “I would just tell you, just looking at the imagery, when you see individuals with their hands tied behind their backs, and evidence of being shot in the head, that certainly appears to be premeditated, appears to be planned.”senior defense official–different than first official🐣 RT @SecBlinken We are implementing sanctions on two of the largest Russian financial institutions, designating the adult children of President Putin, the wife and adult child of Foreign Minister Lavrov, and 21 members of Russia’s National Security Council, including former President Medvedev.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Polish president said it’s hard to deny Russian forces are committing genocide in Ukraine. ¤ Duda said atrocities in Bucha show Russia’s “denazification” propaganda was a pretext to invade Ukraine, massacre civilians & extinguish the Ukrainian nation.
⋙ CNN: Polish president said it’s ‘hard to deny’ genocide in Ukraine after images of civilians killed emerge http://cnn.it/3r7yX9rMaddowShow (Ali Velshi): Timothy Snyder:
● More Ukrainian civilians died in WW2 than Russian civilians; plus many soldiers
● Timofey Sergeytsev article [Below]: Not propaganda aa much as perverted hate speech
● Russia using “Nazi” as a term stripped of content, means general condemnation, “not Russian,” “not us,” “other people”
● “Empire” means the other side has no state, no nation🐣 RT @ChasPeeps As Timothy Snyder, author of ‘On Tyranny’ points out, we know when we live in a one party state when the party in power spends more time, effort & money on rigging the rules & electoral system than it does on developing policies that are popular enough to deliver victory.
WaPo: Right-wing Azov Battalion emerges as a controversial defender of Ukraine http://wapo.st/371CWgT
// By Sudarsan Raghavan [interviewed by Velshi], Loveday Morris, Claire Parker and David L. Stern
// Militia with far-right views says it welcomes all volunteers, regardless of ideology, in the fight against Russia📋 Infoukes, Andrew Gregorovich: World War II in Ukraine: Total Losses by Country http://bit.ly/3NTRUWJ
// 1/31/2001; possibly a stretchIn conclusion it seems reasonable to estimate that because of the German occupation and the Soviet repression from 1939 to 1945 during World War II, that Ukraine lost about 10,000,000 citizens or one Ukrainian out of four. It is reasonably estimated that about 50 million people perished in the world because of World War II which means 20 per cent of all the victims were Ukrainians. In this figure are about 600,000 Ukrainian Jews.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Amazing. There are so many people who committed crimes in the January6 attack on the US Capitol, DOJ doesn’t have enough lawyers to bring all the cases. The FBI is literally sitting on 100s of cases, waiting for lawyers to prosecute them, @ryanjreilly reports for @NBCNews #inners
💙 Haaretz, Ksenia Svetlova: Russia’s Chilling Manifesto for Genocide in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3LJZGkf
// ‘The fascist manifesto: Amid revelations of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere, this is what a recent article by a pro-Putin propagandist [Timofey Sergeytsev in RIA Novosti] tells us about what Russia really means by the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine“The peculiarity of modern, nazified Ukraine is in its formlessness and ambivalence, which disguises Nazism as a desire for ‘independence’ and a ‘European’ (Western, pro-American) path of ‘development’…The denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization…’Ukronazism’ poses a much bigger threat to the world and Russia than the Hitler version of German Nazism.” Timofei Sergeitsev, “What Russia should do to Ukraine,” RIA Novosti, 3 April 2022 (English translation here)
The Russian government and its propaganda machine has not, and will not, acknowledge any of the atrocities perpetrated by Russian soldiers in Ukraine – in Mariupol, Bucha, Berdyanka or anywhere else.
First of all, according to the Kremlin, there is no war going on in Ukraine. Second of all – the Russians soldiers there only hit military targets, and as for destroyed cities and slain citizens – they’re the cynical manipulations of the Ukrainian army or local defense battalions who committed those actions themselves in an attempt to defame Russia’s good name.
So when the whole world, horrified by the war crimes revealed in Bucha, asks: “What is next for Russia?” weighing more sanctions and punitive actions against Moscow, the Russian leadership is focused on a parallel question: What’s next for Ukraine?
Whoever thought that failing to blitz Kyiv into submission would derail President Vladimir Putin from his original plan, to return the disobedient Ukraine to its natural subjugation under Russian wings, must revisit their assumptions. Over the last few days, Russia’s propaganda operation has escalated its efforts to explain the logic beyond this “special military operation.”
An op-ed published by RIA Novosti (Russia’s state-owned domestic news agency) written by Timofei Sergeitsev, a writer and a filmmaker who once used to consult for Ukraine’s pro-Russian presidents Leonid Kuchma (1999) and Victor Yanukovich (2004), offers a brutal manifesto for Russia’s plan for Ukraine: a horrifying view of an imperialist ideology that calls not only for denazification, but also for de-Ukrainization and eventually, the dismemberment of Ukraine, “brought back within its natural boundaries and stripped of political functionality.”
While Putin’s references to denazification in his last speech just days before the war were rather vague (was he referring to the Ukrainian government? To specific Ukrainian battalions, like Azov or Aydar?) Sergeitsev is both specific, and comprehensive, about whom the Nazis are and how hard Russia has to hit them.
Sergeitsev explains in his propaganda master-class that: “Denazification is necessary when a significant part of the people, very likely its majority, has been cowed by the Nazi regime and drawn into its political agenda. That is, when the hypothesis ‘the people are good – it’s the government that’s bad’ does not work.”
He describes at length, how (unlike Georgia or the Baltic states) “the modern Ukrainian nation state is a failure,” because any attempt to build such a state will lead to Nazism. “Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that lacks any civilizational substance.”
During the last few years, Sergeitsev has written numerous op-eds about Ukraine and the danger that it presents to the Russian state and the Russian people.
He is a regular guest on the talk shows of Vladimir Soloviev, a top Putin propagandist who has made it on to the EU and U.S. sanctions list. He likes to call Ukraine “country 404,” a riff on the internet error message that appears when a link leads to a page or resource that does not exist, in order to imply that Ukraine is a fiction that doesn’t exist in real life.
And who is to decide whether Ukraine is a successful or a failed state, and thus whether it deserves a national identity, individual freedoms and sovereignty? ¤ It’s Russia, says Sergeitsev, echoing the country’s own leaders – Putin and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. The latter said just recently that “Deep Ukrainianism, fueled by anti-Russian poison and all-consuming lies about its identity, is one big fake,” and continued: Ukraine has become “the Third Reich” and will share its fate. Sergeitsev declares that Russia will be the post-war “guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.”
According to this ideology, the soldiers who fight today against Ukrainians are not fighting against humans but against Nazis, and since a large portion of population voted for its government (called by Sergeitsev, Soloviev and others, “Bandera’s gang,” after the WWII Ukrainian nationalist who allied then broke with Hitler) it is equally infested by the Nazi bacillus.
The horrifying outcome of this logic is that the civilian population, immutable collaborators with Nazism, cannot and must not be spared, just as civilians weren’t spared during the firebombing of Dresden at the end of WWII. Putin, who served in Dresden as a KGB officer, often speaks about Dresden. He knows the story well.
After dehumanizing Ukrainians (Russia’s key propaganda goal), denying them the right to an unique identity different from a Russian one, after justifying atrocities (“the punishment must be harsh”) and glorifying repression, re-education and Ukrainian suffering (“tragedies and dramas are good for those nations seduced to become Russia’s enemy”), Sergeitsev finally explains what Russia – an imperial power tasked with “decolonizing Ukraine,” in his own words, and a state unashamed to flaunt its strength – needs to do to Ukraine next.
The only way to control Ukraine and its inherently Nazi character is to dismember it. The east of the country should be annexed by Russia, while “the Catholic regions,” western Ukraine, “will remain hostile to Russia, but it will be neutral and demilitarized, and Nazism will be banned there. The haters of Russia will go there.”
And what would “guarantee” the quietist subjugation of rump Ukraine and its compliance with Russian diktats? The “threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation,” says Sergeitsev. He also speculates whether ensuring a neutral, and neutralized, residual Ukraine may require “a permanent Russian military presence on its territory.”
No Marshall Plan for Ukraine sponsored by the West must be allowed. No process of Westernization, no return to Europe, can take place after the war. Ukraine must (in language somewhat reminiscent of the Iranian Revolution’s ideologists) “free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.”
Moscow has scripted a different future for Ukraine: To join an alternative, but as yet imaginary, axis, that Medvedev envisions as an “open Eurasia, from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”
This manifesto of hatred, that integrates many features of fascism, resonates with the ideas and assumptions that have floated around in public discourse during the last few years in Russia. While Sergeitsev’s piece isn’t an actual Kremlin action plan, military and political, for Ukraine, it reveals much about how the ideologists and supporters of this war envisage the post-war future – a crushed, dismembered, hollowed out Ukraine lacking any political will, cultural identity, army or independence.
How long will the war in Ukraine last? How long is Russia prepared to dig in? Will the imminent, and highly resonant anniversary next month – May 9th, Victory Day over Nazi Germany – trigger further Russian military escalation beyond conventional weapons?
Timofei Sergeitsev’s op-ed leaves no room for optimism: Russia sees Ukraine as a battleground not only for tanks and missiles, but for an ideological war between Moscow and the collective West. The stakes are existential for Moscow, and therefore for the sake of victory in this war anything can (be allowed) to happen – torture, murder and even genocide.
Russia, under Putin, will not rest until it can broadcast an image of its victory over “the Nazis” and forcefully expand its sphere of influence. As long as Putin’s regime stays in power, Ukraine and Ukrainians will not be safe. It is just as doubtful whether Kyiv will even be allowed to recover.
The question is what will happen if Russia can’t achieve this goal using conventional weapon. Its propagandists aren’t shy of reminding the world that Russia always has other, even more frightful and devastating options.
⋙ Ksenia Svetlova, a former member of the Knesset, is director of the Israel-Middle East program at Mitvim – the Israeli institute for Regional Foreign Policy, and a policy fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Reichmann University. She is the author of “On High Heels through the Middle East” (Pardes, 2021). Twitter: @KseniaSvetlova
⇈ ⇊
Medium, Mariia Kravchenko: What should Russia do with Ukraine? [Translation of a propaganda article by a Russian publication] http://bit.ly/3LPzapt
// 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.[ Introduction: ] 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. ¤ 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. ⠀ 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. ⠀ 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. ⠀ 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. ¤ In this article, the author is describing ways how Russians want to wipe out Ukraine in the same way the Soviet regime did it. ⠀ 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”. ¤ The world should be aware of Russian methods, crimes, and plans. Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
[ Article by Timofey Sergeytsev follows ] […]
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews In case you thought this was just a random dumb thought that ran through the mind of one Kremlin propagandist… there is a pattern. They were all instructed to claim that Biden called Putin a butcher, because the West was pre-planning the Bucha massacre.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian state TV host Olga Skabeeva speculated that the town was chosen for an elaborate Western “fabrication” simply because of its name: “Biden said that Putin is a butcher. Bucha sounds like “butcher.” How could they not take advantage of such a town?”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s Minions Demand Grotesque ‘Rewards’ for Mass Killers: ¤ “During war, we need to support the Russian warrior.” ¤ After the Bucha massacre shocked the world, the Kremlin’s henchmen push for pay raises and debt forgiveness for Russia’s murderous troops.
⋙⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin’s Minions Demand Grotesque ‘Rewards’ for Mass Killers in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3x6cQ7b
// 4/4/2022; After a massacre in a Ukrainian city shocked the world, the Kremlin’s henchmen are now pushing for pay raises and debt forgiveness for those perpetuating the country’s bloodshed.🐣 RT @ianbremmer germany risks a recession if they cut off all russian gas exports immediately ¤ probably a 3% hit to gdp ¤ it’s a real cost ¤ but nothing compared to what ukrainians are experiencing ¤ increasingly untenable to justify in the face of russia’s war crimes
WaPo, Timothy Snyder: By denying a Ukrainian culture, Putin flattens his own http://wapo.st/3ueY2RE
// What is ‘Russia,’ with all creativity and dissent crushed and only conformity remaining?In his 1926 poem “Debt to Ukraine,” Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote: “It’s hard to crush people into one. Don’t raise yourself so high.” After all, the poet continued: “Do we know the Ukrainian night? No, we do not know the Ukrainian night.” But Vladimir Putin wants to crush people into one. He says God told him that Ukrainian souls are Russian. History revealed to him that Ukraine strives to be one with Russia; the very language he speaks entitles him to invade any country where Russian is spoken. An official Russian news service removed any ambiguity a few days ago, publishing a text advocating the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. And so Ukraine must be crushed, and anyone who thinks or speaks of Ukraine must be eliminated.
By way of these deep misunderstandings, Putin has placed the Ukrainian nation at the center of world history, for everyone to see. A Ukrainian actor, Volodymyr Zelensky, is now one of the most recognizable people on Earth. Putin’s invasion made visible not only that courageous, democratically elected president but also functional institutions, an impressive civil society, and journalists, activists and musicians who appear on our television screens and in our newspapers.
Matters are murkier in Putin’s Russia. A war based upon a big lie is also hard on its culture of origin. Everyone is looking at the Russian nation — or perhaps, rather, for it. What does it do to a society to invade a neighbor, which it claims to love, on the basis of bottomless self-deception? Americans have not yet recovered from the lies they told about Iraq two decades ago, and the Russian deception campaign runs far deeper. How are Russian parents altered when they deny to their children in Ukraine that any war is taking place? What sort of nation makes war and then forbids the use of the very word?
This is Putin’s war, but it is far too simple to say that it is only his war. It is made in the name of Russia, and the killing and maiming and abducting and deporting of Ukrainians are being done by tens of thousands of Russian citizens. As north-central Ukraine is liberated by its own citizens, hundreds of corpses of Ukrainian civilians are found in Bucha and other towns, in positions that suggest atrocities including rape, torture and execution. “This is how the Russian state will now be perceived,” Zelensky said. “Your culture and human appearance perished together with the Ukrainian men and women to whom you came.” Massacres seem to be a normal Russian occupation practice. Even as Russians are committing war crimes that violate Ukraine’s right to exist, Russians are told (and often seem to believe) that they are refighting the Second World War and resisting Nazis. That is a very big lie, and big lies do lasting damage.
The active suppression of freedom of speech and assembly turns a culture toward the abyss. It takes labor to produce unceasing televised propaganda and suppress other media. The last few sources of actual war reporting in Russia have disappeared. It takes violence by thousands of Russians to suppress those with a mind and the will to speak it in public. Russians reading poems are arrested. Russians who carry signs with Bible passages are arrested. Russians who carry signs with only asterisks are arrested. Russians wearing hats in blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, are arrested. Russians who carry anti-fascist signs are arrested.
Putin’s police know that anyone talking seriously about fascism is talking about him. Fascism claims to glorify the nation, but it moves a society toward entirely generic behavior, stimulated by a pattern of threat and release from threat. In regime propaganda videos, the police are the protagonists: First their presence inspires fear, then you are meant to feel relief as you realize that the police are on your side so long as you conform in advance to the regime’s demands. In one such video, police sprint from their van toward a group. The viewer is supposed to feel alarmed: The officers are going to beat the crowd! Instead, police and civilians all lock arms to form a giant Z, the symbol of the invasion. Good: The senseless violence is not directed against you but against Ukrainians. Everyone relax. ¤ Is that culture?
Like Hitler’s swastika, the Z the Kremlin uses has no inherent significance. It functions as a stand-in for culture: You display this meaningless symbol to buy time for excuses for mass murder that you will think up later. You pin ribbons with the symbol on your clothes so you do not have to say anything with your mouths. You form a letter with your bodies as an act of loyalty to an undefined cause. You are expressing your readiness to accept that definition, whatever it might turn out to be — you are obeying in advance. You write the Z on the doors of people who think otherwise in order to threaten them.
The rest of us can measure the staggering courage of individual Russian protesters and dissenters against that silencing violence of empty ritual. These Russians create culture by expressing themselves and acting unpredictably, and so they are immediately repressed. Public culture has collapsed as the talented flee or are punished. Educational culture is under threat as schoolchildren and university students are fed war propaganda and as aspiring teachers are denied courses in social sciences and world literature.
Ukraine is a bilingual country where people switch freely between Ukrainian and Russian. At present, Ukraine is the world’s most important shelter for Russian-language creativity. A single line of one of Zelensky’s appeals to Russians has more vitality than the entirety of Russian television since the war began. Putin is not protecting Russian speakers, as he claims; he is killing them. Most of the possibly thousands of Ukrainians killed in the total destruction of Mariupol spoke Russian as a first language. Putin has claimed that Russians in the West or those who somehow think like Westerners are scum, traitors and insects. What then is left? When culture isolates itself, it ceases to exist. The associated procedures of denunciation, persecution and conformism generate a culture of sorts, but a sadly generic one that has nothing specifically to do with the country where they take place.
A culture has to involve unpredictable encounters. Russian culture up to now has been deeply involved with Poland, with Germany, with the United States, with everything that it now defines as alien and untouchable. Putin complains that Russian culture has been “canceled” by the West. “They’re now engaging in the cancel culture, even removing Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff from posters,” he said. “Russian writers and books are now canceled.” He has reached peak tyranny, and therefore peak irony.
It is true that some Western performances of Russian works have been canceled. Yet this is a reaction to an entirely unprovoked war of destruction. And the word “canceled” trivializes what Putin himself has done to Russian culture by silencing his own country, seeking to destroy Ukraine and calling Russians abroad scum. Culture arises from contact, and contact requires humility. In the poem by Mayakovsky, who was Russian, culture arises when we understand our haughtiness toward others as a mask of ignorance. An encounter is only an encounter when we do not know just how the other person will react. Freedom of speech does not mean that everyone in your country starts to make giant alphabet shapes with their bodies when you say so. Putin’s freedom of speech is not violated if Ukrainians act according to their own convictions and resist him.
The actions of Ukrainians during this terrible war have inspired respect — and humility. Would we be so calm, so articulate, so resolute? Americans and the West in general have been right to listen to the Ukrainians — to their desire to exist as a nation and as a state, to their conviction that they can prevail. This is an encounter, one that we did not expect, one whose consequences are unpredictable. In this sense, we all owe a debt to Ukraine.
So does Russia. Much as American culture is unthinkable without English culture, Russian culture is unthinkable without Ukraine’s. Kyiv and Chernihiv, cities that Russia is shelling, were homes to schools that provided educated priests, professionals and bureaucrats to a Russian empire where such people were in high demand. All of Russian literature, goes the saying, came from Gogol — and Gogol came from Ukraine. Russia will now owe an even greater debt to Ukraine. The sooner Ukraine wins this war, the greater the chance that Russian culture will survive.
NYT: U.S. Says It Secretly Removed Malware Worldwide, Pre-empting Russian Cyberattacks http://nyti.ms/3JiMSQ2
// The operation is the latest effort by the Biden administration to thwart actions by Russia by making them public before Moscow can strike.NYT: House Votes to Find Two Trump Aides in Contempt in Jan. 6 Inquiry http://nyti.ms/35LBuhY
// The vote was mostly along party lines to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas.🐣 RT @duty2warn Merrick Garland: “It doesn’t matter how far you sail your yacht, how well you conceal your assets, how cleverly you write your malware or hide your online activity. The DOJ will use every available tool to find you, disrupt your plots and hold you accountable.”
⭕ 5 Apr 2022
TheGuardian: ‘Barbarians’: Russian troops leave grisly mark on town of Trostianets http://bit.ly/3ueajWD
// On a two-day visit, the Guardian found evidence of summary executions, torture and looting🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Justice Dept. Investigation of Jan. 6 Confronts Sprawling Cast of Characters http://nyti.ms/3v24BpU “The investigation appears to be in its early stages and there is no way of knowing at this point where it may go”
// The wide net being cast by prosecutors as they move beyond charging rioters could encompass scores of potential witnesses from inside and outside of government.🐣 RT @muellershewrote BREAKING: All 101 John Eastman emails the judge declared violated the work product doctrine and crime fraud exception are now in possession of the 1/6 committee. #Eastman #January6th
🐣 RT @dcexaminer “@Twitter is committed to impartiality in the development and enforcement of its policies and rules,” Twitter said. “Our policy decisions are not determined by the Board or shareholders, and we have no plans to reverse any policy decisions.”
⋙ DCExaminer: Twitter says no plans to reinstate Trump as Elon Musk takes a seat on board http://washex.am/3NQQfkP
// There are no plans to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, the company insisted as Tesla CEO Elon Musk earned a seat on the board🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “We might not just be talking about war crimes. This is rising to the potential level of consideration of genocide, trying to eliminate the Ukrainians as a people through violence, through deportation, and through political measures” – @brhodes w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1511468842828111872?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ReutersWorld Ivanka Trump testifies before U.S. Capitol riot committee http://reut.rs/3JcE4LC
🧵 RT @hrw 1/ Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv regions of Ukraine.
📌 https://twitter.com/hrw/status/1511321445519007750?s=20🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Many people don’t grasp that just because a person is born and raised in the USA it does NOT mean they support democracy or our Constitution. We see that today with a majority of GOPers who support the Jan 6 attack to overturn 2020 election. Today’s GOP is how democracies Die.
⭕ 4 Apr 2022
💙 HistoryToday, Uilliam Blacker: Ukrainian Tales http://bit.ly/3s7c7PO
// 4/4/2022; “written before invasion”. Since it became its first imperial possession in the 18th century, Russia has denied Ukraine’s national existence, while seeing it as an exotic threat.🐣 RT @AVindman Good 🧵. This phase of the war, through a summer campaign, will be focused on the east and south. If Ukraine stops them in this phase, the Russian ground forces are toast. It will take months to rebuild basic capabilities.
💙 🧵 RT @MarkHertling The National Security Advisor @jakejsullivan just briefed what might happen next. ¤ His brief fits well into my desire to provide a 🧵 on what both sides face in the next weeks/months. ¤ Key topics: what we’ll see, regeneration, & the battle of attrition that is coming 1/22
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1511098952933945347?s=20NYT: Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims. http://nyti.ms/3NQxCNS
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I think news that the 1/6 committee is now leaning toward NOT making criminal referrals is because we learned DoJ is investigating the tippy top of the coup, so there’s no need to politicize it by making the referral. The committee may have thought DoJ was waiting for a referral.
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation“I think Putin is really on the ropes here,” H.R. McMaster, former Trump National Security Advisor says on potential risk Pres. Putin would involve NATO countries in the war in Ukraine. ¤ “What does he have left?…Threats.”
🐣 RT @secupp This has been one of the most disorienting, insanity-driving, head-spinning evolutions of the Fox-right and far-right, among so many. To go from “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” to “Why should I hate Putin?” is truly a mind-f*ck.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaynordlinger I think @DavidAFrench may well agree: For us who came of age in the 1980s, and embraced Reagan conservatism, it has been mind-blowing to see the rise of the right-wing tankie; the purveyor of Kremlin propaganda; the sneerer at a people struggling to hang on to life and freedom.🐣 RT @StateDept .@StateDeptSpox on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and conscripting residents of Russia-occupied Crimea: This war is already a strategic failure. In spite of their failure, the Kremlin is doubling down in its brutal and indiscriminate war that it cannot and will not win.
🐣 RT @ #Ukrainian intelligence has published the names, ranks and passport details of #Russian soldiers who fought in #Bucha : http://bit.ly//3DGSNgD
WaPo, Catherine Rampell: This Republican about-face is so much worse than ‘cancel culture’ http://wapo.st/3LHRr8a “In today’s Republican Party, the primary economic role of the state is not to get out of the way. It is, instead, to reward friends and crush political enemies.”
// Trump’s instinct to wield government power against perceived enemies has infected the rest of the right.🐣 RT @bellingcat This weekend has seen Russian officials, the @mfa_russia and @mod_russia make various attempts to debunk and dismiss videos coming from the town of Bucha. Bellingcat, along with the online community, took a look at those claims.
⋙ Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins: Russia’s Bucha “Facts” Versus the Evidence http://bit.ly/36OCHpxTheIndependent [UK]: Fox viewers transformed after watching CNN for 30 days, report finds http://bit.ly/3u6tWzN
// Study finds changes in attitudes, policy preferences about Covid-19, then president Donald Trump🐣 I’ve been watching “Servant of the People,” the comedy show Zelenskyy starred in. It’s on Netflix (or DVD)(subtitles). It is much better than I expected: lol funny as well as wise about history and politics. Excellent production; great theme song. #HighlyRec
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin has escalated his barbaric killing in Bucha. The West must respond by escalating our military assistance to Ukraine, including more surface-to-air missile systems, artillery, anti-ship missiles, tanks, and MIG29 fighter jets. And as fast as possible.
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum “Russian troops have laid waste to farmland, destroying agricultural equipment and planting landmines in the rich soil where crops should grow” ¤ ‘Food is a weapon’ said one Soviet apparatchik a century ago. Hunger is a tactic used in Ukraine before.
⋙ Politico.eu: The starvation of a nation: Putin uses hunger as a weapon in Ukraine http://politi.co/3NYfoKH
// The specter of the Holodomor famine of the 1930s is haunting Russia’s war..@amyklobuchar Russians are destroying or mining Ukrainian farmland. For this summer at least ALL US farm crops should produce FOOD not FUEL to help prevent a worldwide famine
cc @ChuckGrassley @TinaSmithMN @SecVilsack🐣 RT @DefenceU The russian nazis declared a war of extermination on Ukraine. The russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published a program for the “final solution to the Ukrainian question.” In 30 years, according to the plan, even the memory of Ukraine will be forever destroyed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenceU It calls for the physical destruction of all those who took up arms to defend Ukraine, the entire political and non-russian-oriented cultural elite, as well as total political and economic repressions, and a ban on everything Ukrainian and European.⭕ 3 Apr 2022
🐣 📋 RT @savagebrandon Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were all members of George W. Bush’s legal team to prevent the recount in Florida in 2000 that gave Bush the Electoral College.
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin’s barbaric killing in Bucha requires new sanctions immediately — oil and gas sanctions; all Russian banks out of Swift; all US companies out of Russia, by the end of the week.
🐣 RT @ DAlperovitch Tough message from Zelensky tonight about discovered atrocities in Ukraine: ¤ “This is how the Russian state will now be perceived. This is your image. Your culture and human appearance perished together with the Ukrainian men and women to whom you came”
💽 https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1510735976901103617?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @LaF3mm3Nikita Zelenskyy’s address to #GRAMMYs audience 🇺🇦💙🇺🇦
⋙ 🐣 RT @Variety Here is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s pre-taped speech at the #Grammys, introducing a performance for Ukraine from John Legend: “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals.” https://bit.ly/3LCL5Hb
💽 https://twitter.com/LaF3mm3Nikita/status/1510801355333591049?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @golub The history of Russia is a history of endless massacres
‼️⋙ 🧵 RT @ For those surprised by pictures from Bucha, a little 🧵 1570. Ivan the Terrible terminates autonomy of Veliky Novgorod. Women and children were massacred, churches burnt and looted. About 20 thousand people died, numerous were deported. Following famine did the rest.
📌 https://twitter.com/EasyRid04682094/status/1510558112813666304?s=20🧵 RT @GicAriana There is so much to be absolutely gutted by as this horrifying stage of terrorist Russia’s genocidal war against UKRAINE wears on. ¤ For me, this war isn’t only about grave and gross injustice, it is also deeply personal, directly affecting family and friends, and my life as well.
📌 https://twitter.com/GicAriana/status/1510778085741936640?s=20🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 💙💛#GRAMMYs just did a tribute to #Ukraine🇺🇦, with @johnlegend performing, a poet refugee from Donbas (where Russia’s war began in 2014), all preceded by an impassioned speech by President @ZelenskyyUa himself! ¤ (Music world put Hollywood to shame, folks. Just sayin)
🐣 RT @mrsorokaa Zelensky on Bucha: ¤ “Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Bodies on the streets.“ ¤ “Murderers, torturers, rapists, looters, who call themselves the army, and who deserve only death after what they did.”
💽 https://twitter.com/mrsorokaa/status/1510741135165210630?s=20/photo/1🐣 📋 RT @mmpadellan These 8 GOP members of Congress still haven’t explained why they spent July 4th in Moscow:
Sen. Daines (MT)
Rep. Granger (TX)
Sen. Hoeven (ND)
Sen. Johnson (WI)
Sen. Kennedy (LA)
Sen. Moran (KS)
Sen. Shelby (AL)
Sen. Thune (SD)
As a patriot, don’t YOU want to know why?NYT, Katerina Sergatskova: We Will Fight for Every Brick of Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3wVEfbQ “After the war, we will rebuild it all; we will take back our cities and restore what cannot be destroyed — our culture”
🐣 RT @HannaLiubakova In the Mykolaiv region,a 78-year-old man wanted to enroll in the territorial defense. Due to his age,he was refused to join. So he went to the checkpoint and threw a Molotov cocktail into the Grad multiple rocket launcher.The installation burned down. You won’t break the spirit
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s Russia in a nutshell.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BowmanNancy Shooting dogs, burning a barn full of horses, murdering civilians with their hands tied behind their back, raping girls and women, committing genocide, looting and laughing about it….🐣 RT @PaulaChertok CNN, on #Bucha🇺🇦: Is this genocide? NATO Chief @jensstoltenberg: It is a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades. It’s horrific & absolutely unacceptable to target & kill civilians.… I strongly welcome the investigation by International Criminal Court.
🐣 RT @BSBonner McMaster says “utter failure” of Russian army prompted shift in Ukraine https://youtu.be/rhI-h2_1sO0 via @YouTube
🐣 RT @UKRintheUSA President @ZelenskyyUa: “Indeed, this is genocide. The elimination of the whole nation and the people. We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities”. 1/2
⋙⋙ FaceTheNation: Transcript: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on “Face the Nation,” April 3, 2022 http://cbsn.ws/3NW2ZqD [and video]
⋙ 🐣 RT @UKRintheUSA .@ZelenskyyUa: “We are citizens & we don’t want to be subdued to the policy of russia. This is the reason we are being destroyed & exterminated, & this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century. So this is the torture of the whole nation.” 2/2 @margbrennan @FaceTheNation🐣 RT @Pontifex Let us #PrayTogether for #peace, thinking of the humanitarian tragedy in war-torn #Ukraine, which continues to be bombarded. Let us not tire of praying and offering assistance to those who suffer! #ApostolicJourney #Malta
🐣 RT @gmfus [German Marshall Fund] “Russia’s barbarian war in Ukraine should serve as a wake-up call to the civilized world, leading to the development of a new security architecture and strengthening international peacekeeping legislation…” writes @O_Prokopenko_IR:
⋙ IPQ: Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Future of Global Security http://bit.ly/3DBmekb
// Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the largest security and humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II. Yet the West is not doing nearly enough to discourage Putin’s deadly ambitions.🐣 RT @KatiePhang This @hrw article contains descriptions of brutal war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. ¤ All should be prosecuted.
⋙ HumanRightsWatch: Ukraine: Apparent War Crimes in Russia-Controlled Areas http://bit.ly/3uPGta2
// Summary Executions, Other Grave Abuses by Russian Forces⭕ 2 Apr 2022
WaPo: Russia pulls back from battered Kyiv region in major shift of war to east http://wapo.st/3qZXo8x
🐣 RT @Lincoln_Party_ Russia needs to be kicked off the UN Security Council, by majority vote of the General Assembly, stat. Russia is not the lawful successor of the USSR’s UN seat.
WaPo: Russian forces pull back from Kyiv, exposing horrors of war http://wapo.st/3u2AwY3 //➔ More accurate title:
“Russian forces pull back from Kyiv, exposing war crimes”🐣 RT @AliVelshi To those who argue there is too much coverage of the war, to the exclusion of important U.S. stories, by morning you will see irrefutable evidence of mass civilian massacres & graves, and what is looking like genocide, the prevention of which should be Americas greatest priority
🐣 RT @ChuckPfarrer The collapse of the Russian thrust at Kyiv is an epic in the annals of military incompetence. Had Putin been facing NATO- and a functioning air force- this bumbling retreat would have become a biblical slaughter. How will Russia handle its new role as a 3rd rate military power? Text Block: https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1510428118108024834?s=20/photo/1
// Text: “The rout of Russian troops north of Kyiv is one of the the most stunning military reversals in history. Military observers know, even if Moscow does not, that if Ukraine had a functioning air force- the slaughter would have been biblical.”NYT: Garland Faces Growing Pressure as Jan. 6 Investigation Widens http://nyti.ms/3DxpEEA “[DOJ’s] investigation has produced substantial results already, including more than 775 arrests and a charge of seditious conspiracy against the leader of a far-right militia”
// The inquiry is a test for President Biden and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who both came into office promising to restore the Justice Department’s independenceJustice Department officials emphasize that their investigation has produced substantial results already, including more than 775 arrests and a charge of seditious conspiracy against the leader of a far-right militia. More than 280 people have been charged with obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the election results.
And federal prosecutors have widened the investigation to include a broad range of figures associated with Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power. According to people familiar with the inquiry, it now encompasses planning for pro-Trump rallies ahead of the riot and the push by some Trump allies to promote slates of fake electors.
⭕ 1 Apr 2022
🐣 RT @mhmck For the offensive against Ukraine, the Russian fascist invaders of Europe engaged 75 battle groups. Up to 34 battle groups have been withdrawn for recovery. 16 battle groups were completely destroyed. ¤ – General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as of 12:00 on 2 April 2022
🧵 RT @MarkHertling Ukraine’s strike of the fuel depot at Belgorod was MUCH more than a bold tactical move. ¤ While 1.5 M gallons of fuel is certainly a critical target & will be significant in this logistics war…there’s more. ¤ This is what’s called a “deep strike” in US military parlance. 1/6
📌 https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1510074832544841732?s=20&
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling A deep strike is meant to cause physical damage to the enemy, but it’s also designed to cause increased fear, a feeling that no where is safe, & it sends the message ” we will come after you everywhere, especially when you’re not expecting it.” 2/ […]🐣 RT @McFaul Ukrainian soldiers have made tremendous gains in the last several days. But their efforts will stall without more military assistance, especially artillery, air defense systems, drones & ammunition. Now is no time for complacency. Now is the time to do more and more quickly.
WaPo: A penetrating look behind the Iron Curtain http://wapo.st/3K21qop
// In the waning years of the Soviet bloc, a photojournalist saw past the propaganda and found the humanity
// Story by Richard Hornik; Photography by Arthur Grace/Contact Press Images🐣 RT @FullFrontalSamB Sam sits down with the star of Trump’s first impeachment hearing, @AVindman to talk about the infamous 2019 Trump/Zelenskyy phone call that paved the way for Putin’s war on Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/FullFrontalSamB/status/1510014666629697536?s=20/photo/1WaPo, Randall Eliason: Forget what you heard. The DOJ’s Jan. 6 probe is moving at a good pace. http://wapo.st/3K0Xzbq
⭕ 31 Mar 2022
⭕ 30 Mar 2022
🧵 RT @Joanna_Szostek The infamous “ideologist of the Russian World” Aleksandr Dugin has given a long interview to the Russian tabloid MK. ¤ If anyone in Russia has given up on capturing Kyiv, it is definitely not Dugin. ¤ A , if you can stomach it.
📌 https://twitter.com/Joanna_Szostek/status/1509258426785976328?s=20⋙ He says: Russia has been battling for Kyiv since the middle ages in a “conflict between Great Russians and the Galicians”, so “Kyiv will be ours”.
⋙ He says: “The siege of Kyiv is a battle for the unity of Eastern Slavs and the creation of a sovereign civilization of the Russian World, which is directed against the West.”
⋙ He says: “We are waging an eschatological military operation, a special operation between Light and Darkness in the sitution of the end of times…”
⋙ He says: “Truth and God are on our side. We are fighting the absolute evil, embodied in Western civilization, its liberal-totalitarian hegemony, in Ukrainian Nazism…”
⋙ Asked about nuclear weapons, he says: “We are always balancing on a tightrope. Any weapon is created to be fired… nuclear weapons in certain circumstances, if it’s a clash of civilizations, can become offensive weapons. Of course, Russia will never fire first.”
⋙ He says Russia is “an empire in a sense, which absorbed everything… it won’t be complete until we have united all Eastern Slavs and all Eurasian brothers into a common big space.”
⋙ Asked “how to explain to Russian mothers from Mariupol that it’s all a blessing”, he says explanations will follow “as soon as the flag of East Ukraine, Russia, freedom and independence is raised over Kherson and Novorossiya” and republics are created in other Ukrainian regions.
⋙ Asked if Putin reads his work, he says: “I think we read the same letters written in gold in the sky of Russian history”.
⋙ Now would be a good time for someone to reassure us all that Dugin is not as influential as his reputation suggests. Please? ¤ For several thousand more words of this toxic, terrifying BS, see mk.ru: Александр Дугин: «солнечный» Путин победил «⋙⋙ 🐣 Ukrainians were, in 2021, recognized as a distinct genomic group by the 1000 Genomes Project, an offshoot of the Human Genomes Project — meaning they have a distinct signature: less Finn, more Mediterranean (via Black Sea). Historically, Kiev was founded before Moscow
🧵 RT @Joanna_Szostek The infamous “ideologist of the Russian World” Aleksandr Dugin has given a long interview to the Russian tabloid MK. ¤ If anyone in Russia has given up on capturing Kyiv, it is definitely not Dugin. ¤ A , if you can stomach it.
📌 https://twitter.com/Joanna_Szostek/status/1509258426785976328?s=20🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Justice Dept. expands Jan. 6 probe to look at rally prep, financing http://wapo.st/35p5znm
// Subpoena requests seek information about the planning for gathering outside White House that preceded Capitol riot🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: THREAD: this is BIG news. A grand jury in DC has issued subpoenas to people with direct ties to donald. Let me break it down for you. For a year, we’ve been waiting to hear whether the DoJ probe into 1/6 would go beyond the “boots on the ground” attack at the Capitol 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1509296240722284547?s=20⋙ And though Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco said on multiple occasions that they will go after everyone at any level and wouldn’t shy away from politically charged probes, none of us had heard a peep about what they were doing (because thems the rules) 2/
⋙ Many argued that IF the DoJ was investigating, that we would have heard from witnesses that were called to testify. The counter argument to that was they just hadn’t gotten to the recalcitrant witnesses yet. 3/
⋙ We DID hear from one witness a few months back that told the press they were subpoenaed in an investigation into the funding of Sidney Powell’s PACS on the back of the big lie. But that didn’t necessarily tie to donald directly. 4/
⋙ And others argued that even though Garland said he’d look at everyone at any level, he didn’t directly say he was investigating BEYOND the day of the Capitol attack. WELL NOW WE HAVE WHAT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR 5/
⋙ According to WaPo, in the past two months, a grand jury in DC has subpoenaed officials with direct ties to donald in an investigation into the PLANNING of the rallies leading up to the attack on the Capitol. 6/ ✛
⋙ This development shows the DoJ has moved beyond just probing the storming of the Capitol. “The people familiar with the subpoena demands declined to identify the individuals who had received them or provide additional details.” 7/ ✛
⋙ Mike Sherwin RESISTED the idea in the early days of probe. 8/ ✛
⋙ Here’s a lil’ thread-o-mine on Mike Fucking Sherwin. By the way, it was Ginni Thomas who helped get his predecessor fired. 9/ https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1481808799392415748?s=20&WaPo: U.S. says Putin being misled, as Ukraine refugee tally hits 4 million http://wapo.st/35sR3v0 “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers are shielding him from how badly the invasion of Ukraine is going, top U.S. officials said”
// A day after negotiations showed some progress, Russian officials gave conflicting statements and fighting continuedPutin’s advisers may be afraid to deliver bad news to a leader who has been willing to take increasingly extreme measures against people who dissent within the Russian system, U.S. intelligence officials said. One worrisome consequence, Pentagon officials said, was that negotiations underway between Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly five-week-old invasion could be undermined by misinformed expectations and directives from the Russian side.
“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield told reporters. “We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.” …
“One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that we don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or have the ability to speak truth to power. And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters during a visit to Algiers.
At the Pentagon on Wednesday, spokesman John Kirby called it “discomforting” that Putin “may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing” thus far in Ukraine. ¤ “One outcome of that could be a less-than-faithful effort at negotiating some sort of settlement here,” Kirby said. “If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring?” …
WaPo: Inside Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company http://wapo.st/3IVBUQy
// A Washington Post review confirms key details and offers new documentation of Biden family interactions with Chinese executivesHuffPo [UK]: Ukrainian Soldier Who Told Russian Warship To ‘Go F*** Yourself’ Given Medal http://bit.ly/3LlfnxW
// Roman Gribov’s defiance became a symbol of resistance on the first day of the invasion.🐣 RT @BillBrowder Germany wants to cut all Russian fossil fuel imports, foreign minister says. Wow what a difference six weeks makes. If they follow through (and I believe the Germans when they say something) this will devastate Putin and his regime
⋙ Reuters: Germany wants to cut all Russian fossil fuel imports – Baerbock http://reut.rs/3uEfPAN
// Germany wants to end all fossil fuel imports from Russia, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Tuesday.⭕ 29 Mar 2022
🚫 WaPo: Why the world is so worried about Russia’s ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons http://wapo.st/3Oc5c12
// taxtical nuclear weapons battlefield nuclear weapons low yield nuclear weapons🐣 RT @OliviaTroye Let me be clear on the White House Trump call logs, this is far from normal. Unless you’re using personal cell phones/ encrypted apps (which you shouldn’t be), every call is logged. Every single time Mike Pence called me & vice versa, several staff were made aware of it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ianbassin Exactly the point I just made on @chrislhayes. The layers of staff there to record all of this are extensive. Any gap requires planning, direction, cooperation. Would have to be very conscious and intentional and planned.🐣 RT @SecBlinken Just over one month ago, President Putin launched his war of aggression. Our commitment to Ukraine is ironclad. We have taken actions to sanction Russian government officials, deliver assistance to Ukraine, and collaborate with our partners to press for an end to this war.
💽 https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1508600297286897665?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DeputySecState [Wendy Sherman] The facts are clear. Putin’s war is preventing grain from leaving Ukraine. The ceaseless bombardment of Ukraine’s cities and critical infrastructure is directly responsible for creating one of the fastest-growing humanitarian crises in recent decades.
🐣 RT @brhodes Imagine how this looks from Kyiv. The same Republicans who like to talk tough about Putin embrace this pathetic groveling autocrat as their leader.
⋙ 🧵 RT @atrupar Trump calls for Putin to release dirt on the Biden family right now since now “he’s not exactly a fan of our country” during new interview with Real America’s Voice
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1508955848298704901?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Extended clip is worth watching: “As long as Putin is not exactly a fan of our country… I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it… you won’t get the answer from Ukraine… I think Putin now would be willing to probably give that answer.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1508966584433397766?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV: ¤ Host Evgeny Popov says it’s time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change “the regime in the U.S.” before its term expires “and to again help our partner Trump to become President.”
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1508943310483767302?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Kremlin TV Hopes Russia’s Unhinged Bioweapons Claim Will Help Re-Elect Trump: ¤ State TV pundits are delighted that Russian propaganda about Hunter Biden’s supposed funding of bioweapons in Ukraine has “served up a beneficial deck of cards for Trump.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Kremlin TV Hopes Russia’s Unhinged Bioweapons Claim Will Help Re-Elect Trump: ¤ State TV pundits are delighted that Russian propaganda about Hunter Biden’s supposed funding of bioweapons in Ukraine has “served up a beneficial deck of cards for Trump.”
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Kremlin TV Hopes Russia’s Unhinged Ukraine War Claim Will Help Re-Elect Trump http://bit.ly/3uDLKRT
// State TV pundits are delighted that crazed Russian propaganda about Hunter Biden’s supposed funding of bioweapons in Ukraine has “served up a beneficial deck of cards for Trump.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Popov later tried to clean it up by adding “like I hope we helped him in the past,” but that disclaimer rang hollow. Popov and other Russian state TV hosts, pundits & experts have been boasting for years about helping to elect Trump. One of many examples:
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews [Apr 19, 2019] “Putin has won.”
“Soon, we will help you elect Trump once again. Just like the last time. Get ready!”
My latest for @thedailybeast: http://bit.ly/3iIT0GJ #Russia reacts to the #MuellerReport
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Popov to me in 2019: [tr.] What connections? What and who helped? Read your own report. And further! Soon we will help you choose Trump again. Just like last time. Get ready!
[POPOVRTR bio (tr.) Deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. Deputy Co-Chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Group of the Russian Federation. Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Information Policy, IT and Communications. Host of the program “60 minutes”]🐣 RT @anneapplebaum I would add that these Russian attitudes are often reflected in Europe and the US, where anyone who studied Russian also imbibed the Moscow view of history. Most of the great Western historians writing about Russia (for example Kotkin) were never interested in Ukraine.
📌 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1508853827398635522?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_ostlund The question is often raised:
Why doesn’t the Kremlin know anything about Ukraine?
The short answer is massive imperial Russian contempt, but let me elaborate.
During decades of meetings in Moscow, whenever talking about Ukraine, you receive the reaction “yes, small Russians.”
⋙ Malorossiya!
The contempt goes further. When discussing literature, the “cultured” Muscovites state about the bad writer: He is a real “pismenik,” the Ukrainian word for author. Next, you are informed that the Ukrainian Nikolai Gogol wrote is great works in Russian, etc.
⋙ When I worked in Moscow & Kyiv in the early 2000s, I learned that the Russian Embassy in Kyiv had nobody who followed the Ukrainian media, print or TV, because MID did not consider the Ukrainian domestic debate of sufficient interest for reporting.
⋙ Conversely, you have perhaps noticed that no single Russian expert on Ukraine appears in the media, because there is none. Why would anybody bother to study Ukraine?! The Ukrainians are just like us Russians! We are so similar so we don’t need to study them.
⋙ The Russian attitude to Ukrainian history & the nation is full of contempt. Ivan Mazepa is a major villain, while the only good Ukrainian is Bohdan Khmelnitsky. You dare not mention Stepan Bandera. The conclusion is that Ukraine can only exist as a fiefdom of great Russia.
⋙ Putin’s July 12, 2021, article is a good summary of all these old Russian prejudices about Ukraine, and if you prefer obsolete prejudices and new lies over truth you are likely to get everything wrong, as Putin has shown us so well.
⋙ But who has told Putin about Ukraine? His only close Ukrainian agent is Viktor Medvedchuk, who is probably the least popular person in Ukraine, an early oligarch who has never earned an honest hryvnia in his life, that is, an obvious Putin favorite.
⋙ As the eminent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar recently argued in the NYTimes, Putin’s closest adviser is Yuri Kovalchuk. I would ad his brother Mikhail Kovalchuk & Gennady Timchenko. They are ethnic Ukrainians from St. Petersburg. They must no the country!
⋙ They must know the country. I doubt that Putin has listened to the FSB about information on Ukraine, and the SVR hardly works there. Putin probably disinforms himself listening to Medvedchuk, the Kovalchuks and perhaps Timchenko.⭕ 28 Mar 2022
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder 1/30 Putin is responsible for the invasion, and must redistribute blame for its failure. After a month, some vectors of discord in the Russian government have suggested themselves. (Thread)
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1508546460543074315?s=20⋙ 2/30 I summarize here from open sources certain unusual features of this war. These are odd facts that would seem to suggest prior, or provoke future, dissension among Russian leaders. I draw no conclusions, and will at most suggest where to look.
⋙ 3/30 Putin is the supreme leader. The invasion of Ukraine was predicated on his idea that there was no Ukrainian state or nation. His views are widely repeated, though perhaps not as widely shared. They were immediately proven wrong.
⋙ 4/30 Putin’s idea of regime change in two days failed in practice. His victory declaration of February 26th, accidentally published, revealed a vast gap between aim and achievement.
(For sources, See:)
⋙⋙ Substack, Snyder: The Kremlin’s formula for failure http://bit.ly/3qJkZKw
// How a war of destruction could pit a tiny elite against itself
⋙ 5/30 Putin’s notion was that Russia would be negotiating with a puppet Ukrainian government on the third day of the invasion.
⋙ 6/30 Thus neither extensive Western sanctions nor heavy Russian troop losses could have been anticipated. These add considerable weight to Putin’s primary errors.
⋙ 7/30 To make reality fit Putin’s axioms, Russia must now use its military, National Guard, and Chechen irregulars to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation. Genocide does not necessarily enjoy broad support.
⋙ 8/30 The decision to invade Ukraine was discussed beforehand only among a small group of people.
⋙ 9/30 There are thus a large number of people just beyond Putin’s inner circle who could say, truthfully, that they had no part in the decision to invade Ukraine.
⋙ 10/30 The decision to invade Ukraine seems not to have been accompanied by much of an operational plan. This could well be a result of Putin’s erroneous premise and the lack of consultation.
⋙ 11/30 After Putin, the most important person involved in discussions of the invasion was presumably Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense. Shoigu is or was a public friend of Putin.
⋙ 12/30 Shoigu has an excellent reputation as a manager, but no military experience as such. He has a large PR staff and is self-aggrandizing. Real generals might find him irritating.
⋙ 13/30 Seven real Russian generals are reported to have been killed in Ukraine, along with many other field commanders. Morale seems low. It is reasonable to connect all this to Putin’s error, Shoigu’s inexperience, and the lack of planning.
⋙ 14/30 Shoigu went missing for two weeks, and was reported to be having heart problems.
⋙ 15/30 When Russia’s war aims were publicly recalibrated on March 25th, the announcement came not from Shoigu but from General Sergei Rudskoi.
⋙ 16/30 Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, is unlike Shoigu a real general. Because of the adroit propaganda of the last Russian invasion of Ukraine, 2014, he is associated with the idea of hybrid war.
⋙ 17/30 Whether or not that association is correct, the invasion of 2022 has been a propaganda disaster. Insofar as Gerasimov’s reputation was associated with hybrid war, it has suffered.
⋙ 18/30 Gerasimov is regarded as the mastermind of the decisive 2014 battlefield victory at Ilovaisk during the last Russian invasion of Ukraine. Insofar as his reputation was associated with outwitting Ukrainians on the battlefield, it has suffered.
⋙ 19/30 The American military leadership complains that their Russian counterparts (Shoigu and Gerasimov) will not take their phone calls. This is an unusual and dangerous practice.
⋙ 20/30 The Russians might not be taking the Americans’ phone calls because of a capricious decision by Putin. They might also be afraid of contact with Americans at a time of stress or suspicion.
⋙ 21/30 Putin might wish to believe that intelligence leaks explain the better-than-expected Ukrainian (and the worse-than-expected Russian) performance on the battlefield.
⋙ 22/30 The leak theory would be convenient, since it would distract attention from his own erroneous views about Ukraine, a major cause of both the invasion and its failures.
⋙ 23/30 Sergei Beseda is or was the head of the part of the Russian secret police (Federal Security Service, FSB) that is responsible for international affairs. He now seems to be under house arrest.
⋙ 24/30 Like Gerasimov, Beseda was associated with the last Russian intervention in Ukraine. He was in Kyiv with a team of colleagues on an official mission in February 2014, just when dozens of protestors were shot to death.
⋙ 25/30 Beseda would presumably have been responsible for providing Putin with intelligence on Ukraine prior to the invasion. It is hard to know what he said or whether Putin listened.
⋙ 26/30 Putin might prefer to blame faulty intelligence for the difficulties in Ukraine as a diversion from simpler explanations, ie: his premise was wrong; he failed to consult others.
⋙ 27/30 Perhaps Beseda yielded to Putin’s prejudices, perhaps he gave him good intelligence and was ignored. Either way, if Beseda is blamed, this is a blow to the FSB and its prestige.
⋙ 28/30 The FSB is presumably mindful of its position with respect to rival institutions, such as the National Guard and Chechen irregulars, both present in Ukraine.
⋙ 29/30 Summary: the supreme leader is consistently redistributing blame for his own errors; military leaders are scarcely and unpredictably visible during a war; other important services are under stress.
⋙ 30/30 It is worth looking for fault lines between Putin and his generals; among his generals; between higher officers and soldiers in the field; between Putin and his secret police, and between his secret police and rival services.
#Ukraine #Russia #UkraineRussianWar🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 On MSNBC. ANDREA MITCHELL. 29 March 2022. Noon ET. UKR desperately needs a cease fire to stop the mass killing of civilians. They’ll get one killing Russian soldiers. We need game changer arms technology delivery. Anti-ship missiles. Air defense. M1 tanks.
⋙ 🐣 are any of these weapons deliveries planned (by us or others)? or would these deliveries not be publicized?WaPo: Judge: Trump ‘more likely than not’ committed crime in trying to block Biden win http://wapo.st/3qLe1ot
// The ruling could boost pressure on the Justice Department to investigate the former president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election
⋙ Carter’s 44-page opinion http://bit.ly/3qHKlsc concludes that lawmakers are entitled to have 101 of the 111 documents the committee sought.The determination from U.S. District Judge David O. Carter came in a ruling addressing scores of sensitive emails that Trump ally and conservative lawyer John Eastman had resisted turning over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot and related efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.
Eastman wrote key legal memos aimed at denying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. The judge was assessing whether Eastman’s communications were protected by attorney-client privilege and was analyzing in part whether Eastman, Trump and others had consulted about the commission of a crime.
His ruling does not mean Trump will be charged with a crime, or even investigated. But the opinion will increase pressure on the Justice Department to intensify its probe of the Jan. 6 riot, and potentially examine the conduct of Trump himself. While Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed to hold accountable those responsible for the violent breach of the Capitol “at any level,” there have been scant signs that the Justice Department is directly investigating Trump’s conduct.
The ruling is also a win for the Jan. 6 committee, which has been moving aggressively to subpoena documents and call witnesses. The committee voted Monday night to recommend holding two former Trump aides — former trade and manufacturing director Peter Navarro and former communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr. — in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with its subpoenas. The House will vote soon on whether to refer the men to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. …
On Monday, former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade said Carter’s ruling was particularly significant because he had read “emails that are not yet known to the public, and his reaction is one of serious alarm.” ¤ “While DOJ makes its own decisions about when to initiate an investigation, today’s ruling cannot be ignored,” McQuade said. …
“This may have been the first time members of President Trump’s team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action,” the ruling says. “The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act, and Dr. Eastman’s later memos closely track its analysis and proposal. The memo is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.” …
On Jan. 4, the judge wrote, Trump and Eastman hosted an Oval Office meeting with Pence and his advisers, and Eastman presented a plan “focusing on either rejecting electors or delaying the count.” When Pence was unpersuaded, the judge wrote, Trump sent Eastman to review the plan with Pence’s lawyer. In that meeting, the judge wrote, Eastman was blunt about his intentions, saying, “I’m here asking you to reject the electors.”
On Jan. 6, the judge wrote, Trump posted messages on Twitter beseeching Pence to act and called Pence directly, urging him “‘to make the call’ and enact the plan.” Trump then gave a speech to a large crowd on the Ellipse. Trump warned: “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now.”
Trump ended the speech by asking his supporters to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to give Pence and Congress “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” the judge wrote. ¤ “Together, these actions more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding,” his ruling states.
Carter wrote that Eastman and Trump “justified the plan with allegations of election fraud — but President Trump likely knew the justification was baseless, and therefore that the entire plan was unlawful.” ¤ The judge noted, as the Jan. 6 committee had, that executive branch officials had “publicly stated and privately stressed to President Trump that there was no evidence of fraud,” and that by early January, “more than sixty courts dismissed cases alleging fraud due to lack of standing or lack of evidence.”
“Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” the judge concluded. “Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower — it was a coup in search of a legal theory. The plan spurred violent attacks on the seat of our nation’s government, led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, and deepened public distrust in our political process.”
🐣 RT @Sputnik Kremlin Says Biden’s Remarks on Putin ‘Alarming,’ ‘Personal #Insult’ http://dlvr.it/SMXjtf
⋙ 🐣 what Russia is doing to Ukraine is ‘alarming’ ¤
what Biden said about Putin is shared by most Americans
Putin is a war criminal, a butcher, a cold blooded murderer of children who has made his country a pariah unwelcome in the company of civilized nations ¤
Glory to Ukraine 🇺🇦🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Concern about Biden’s statement about Putin not remaining in power is overblown. The real worry is his admin is not clear on what it hopes to achieve in supporting Ukraine. Without US leadership, the EU, NATO, and the rest will lose their nerve at the first opportunity. 1/13
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1508545477234597891?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 This war will shape the world’s direction for a generation and beyond, for good or ill. This is a fight for the values the free world supposedly holds dear. We need moral and strategic unity and clarity, not backtracking. 12/13
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Ukraine needs weapons to win, not words of support and a partition stalemate. Ukraine deserves to know we are doing everything we can, not everything that Putin allows. Ukraine deserves to be whole, to be free, and to achieve victory. Glory to Ukraine. 13/13🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote 🔥🔥🔥BREAKING🔥🔥🔥 In a MAJOR decision, Eastman must hand over 101 of the 111 emails reviewed by the judge for reasons INCLUDING CRIME FRAUD EXCEPTION. The court concludes it is more likely than not that Trump and Eastman committed 18 USC 371 and 1512(c)(2). 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1508477884863713287?s=20/photo/1 -many⭕ 27 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @Kateryna_Kruk Nazi Germany&Soviet Union were both totalitarian regimes that mass executed people in the name of their ideas.But unlike Germany, USSR never had a moment of collective damnation of the regime and breaking of with it,RU glorified it while turning into authoritarian country itself
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kateryna_Kruk Whatever putin says, true nature of this war is what Russia has become&what hateful regime runs it. As long as men who rule by terror&force are in the kremlin,Europe will not be safe from future wars.This war is not only about Ukraine, it’s about getting rid of authoritarianism🐣 RT @ivanastradner Ukraine arrests yet another ‘Zelensky hit squad of 25 sent by Putin’
⋙ DailyMail [UK]: Ukraine arrests yet another ‘Zelensky hit squad of 25 sent by Putin’ http://bit.ly/35lZ8la
// A 25-man hit squad ‘sent by the Kremlin’ was reportedly rounded up on the border with Slovakia. The elite kill team carried orders to kill ZelenskyiNews: What is a Starstreak missile? Why the UK is sending the anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine in Russia war http://bit.ly/3DiM6Bj “It is … reportedly the fastest short-range surface-to-air system in the world, with a peak velocity above Mach 3”
// The UK is increasing its supply of weapons to Ukraine in response to Russia’s ‘indiscriminate and murderous’ invasion🔄 🧵 RT @McFaul Dmitry Medvedev outlined in detail to the Guardian under what conditions Russia would use nuclear weapons. Note what he said and did not say. THREAD 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1508222641563267075?s=20● “Number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile.” 2/
● “The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies,” 3/
● “The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralyzed our nuclear deterrent forces.” 4/
● “And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardized the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons.” 5/⋙ That’s all good news as none of these conditions are present or even being threatened. None will occur. NATO will never attack Russia preemptively, let alone jeopardize the existence of Russia. Never. 6/
⋙ Note, he did not say ‘If NATO supplies fighter jets to Ukraine.’ 7/
⋙ Note, he did not say ‘if Russia begins to lose on the battlefield in Ukraine’ 8/
⋙ In fact, compared to Russian doctrine before the invasion of Ukraine, I see nothing new at all in what Medvedev said regarding the conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons. What am I missing? 9/
⋙ And as for actions, I have seen no evidence that Russian nuclear forces are on a higher alert now than before invading Ukraine. Correct me if I am wrong. 10/ END THREAD.WaPo, Max Boot: Biden’s support for Ukraine and opposition to Putin were no ‘gaffe’ http://wapo.st/3qGaGap “I would rather have a president who is fearless in calling out Putin’s war crimes than one who toadies to the Russian tyrant”
NYT: Zelensky Gives Interview to Russian Journalists. Moscow Orders It Quashed. http://nyti.ms/3wInqkj
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Putin *is* a butcher ¤ Putin *should not* remain in power
🐣 RT @JCBua Who Would Have Been So Upset If Back In 1944 FDR Said: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”
🐣 RT @kasparov63 When a regime is repressive, murderous, dictatorial, and led by someone who has committed war crimes in multiple countries, including his own, what else should be hoped for and worked toward than regime change?
🐣 RT @Pontifex War doesn’t devastate only the present but the future too. From the start of the aggression in Ukraine 1 of every 2 children has been displaced. This destroys the future, traumatizing the smallest and most innocent. This is the bestiality of war, a barbarous and sacrilegious act!
🐣 🇺🇦 Ukraine 🇺🇦
You may shoot me with your guns,
You may cut me with your knives,
You may kill me with your cluster bombs,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.🌻
(apologies to Maya Angelou)NYT, Roger Cohen: The Making of Vladimir Putin http://nyti.ms/3DcZ97k “Did the United States and its allies, through excess of optimism or naïveté, simply get Mr. Putin wrong from the outset? Or was he transformed over time into the revanchist warmonger of today … ?”
// The 22-year arc of the Russian president’s exercise of power is a study in audacity.🐣 RT @McFaul In the 1990s, Putin was not protesting the collapse of the USSR. He was the consummate opportunist. He worked for Sobchak & Yeltsin, 2 leaders who helped destroy the USSR! He was an accidental president, chosen by Yeltsin. Don’t buy into his revisionist mythology.
⭕ 26 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum To everyone who wants to know what would have happened if the invasion had happened and Trump was president, here is the answer: He would have given in immediately. There would be no Nato support, no arms, no sanctions, no united transatlantic alliance, no nothing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Trump is back to saying Putin is smart. He says he thinks Putin made a mistake but then describes it as a “great negotiation that didn’t go so well for him”
💽 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1507919169953619974?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Here’s why the GOP is flailing on this; Biden did “Tear Down This Wall” for our era. ¤ And many – not all, but many — in the GOP would much rather have Putin in power than not.
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Here’s a solution to the Ukrainian refugee crisis: Preserve an independent, sovereign, democratic Ukraine. Then there won’t be any refugees.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum And no, this isn’t – yet – exactly US or NATO policy. Policy is to help Ukraine defend itself, slow down Russia. The idea that Ukraine might actually win, and might remain a sovereign state, hasn’t quite penetrated the highest levels of US or EU thinking🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Huge Russian shift of the goalposts: now they say they never wanted to conquer Kyiv, and all of Ukraine, after all?
⋙ 🧵 RT @polinaivanovva Russia’s military held a big briefing this afternoon, announcing the war was entering a ‘second phase’. ¤ Here’s a summary of how Russia, at this point in the war, is depicting what it set out to do, why, and where we’re at. (relaying their words, pls don’t shoot msnger)
📌🌎 https://twitter.com/polinaivanovva/status/1507400322829930500?s=20/photo/1⭕ 25 Mar 2022
ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 25 http://bit.ly/3tHP6nR “Russian General Staff issued a fictitious report on the first month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine … claiming Russia’s primary objective is [merely] to capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts”
// from Institute for the Study of War; The Russian General Staff issued a fictitious report on the first month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on March 25 claiming Russia’s primary objective is to capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblastsThe Russian General Staff issued a fictitious report on the first month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on March 25 claiming Russia’s primary objective is to capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Sergei Rudskoi, first deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, gave a briefing to Russian press summing up the first month of the Russian invasion on March 25.[1] Rudskoi inaccurately claimed Russian forces have completed “the main tasks of the first stage of the operation,” falsely asserting that Russia has heavily degraded the Ukrainian military, enabling Russia to focus on the “main goal” of capturing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Rudskoi’s comments were likely aimed mainly at a domestic Russian audience and do not accurately or completely capture current Russian war aims and planned operations. Russia’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine from the outset was the fictitious threat Moscow claimed Ukrainian forces posed to the people in Russian-occupied Donbas. The Kremlin has reiterated this justification for the war frequently as part of efforts to explain the invasion to its people and build or sustain public support for Putin and the war. Rudskoi’s framing of the capture of the rest of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as the “main goal” of the operation is in line with this ongoing information operation.
Rudskoi’s assertion that securing the unoccupied portions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts was always the main objective of Russia’s invasion is false. The Kremlin’s initial campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine.[2] Rudskoi’s comments could indicate that Russia has scaled back its aims and would now be satisfied with controlling the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, but that reading is likely inaccurate. Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine have not stopped fighting and have not entirely stopped attempting to advance and seize more territory. They are also attacking and destroying Ukrainian towns and cities, conducting operations and committing war crimes that do not accord with the objectives Rudskoi claims Russia is pursuing.
Russia continues efforts to rebuild combat power and commit it to the fight to encircle and/or assault Kyiv and take Mariupol and other targets, despite repeated failures and setbacks and continuing Ukrainian counter-attacks. The Ukrainian General Staff reports that the Russian military is building “consolidated units,” likely comprised of individuals or small units drawn from a number of different battalions, brigades, and regiments, to replace combat losses and deploying them on the west bank of the Dnipro near the Chernobyl exclusion zone, among other locations. Russian forces continue their grinding and likely costly advance in Mariupol as well.
The absence of significant Russian offensive operations throughout most of Ukraine likely reflects the inability of the Russian military to generate sufficient combat power to attack rather than any decision in Moscow to change Russia’s war aims or concentrate on the east. Rudskoi’s comments are likely an attempt to gloss the Russian military’s failures for a domestic audience and focus attention on the only part of the theater in which Russian troops are making any progress at this point. The West should not over-read this obvious messaging embedded in a piece of propaganda that continued very few true statements.
Key Takeaways
● The Russian General Staff is attempting to adjust the war’s narrative so make it appear that Russia is achieving its aims and choosing to restrict operations when in fact it is not achieving ● its objectives and is being forced to abandon large-scale offensive operations because of its own failures and losses as well as continuing skillful Ukrainian resistance.
● Ukrainian forces claimed to kill the commander of Russia’s 49th Combined Arms Army, operating around Kherson.
● Ukrainian counterattacks northwest of Kyiv made further minor progress in the past 24 hours.
● Ukrainian forces additionally conducted a successful counterattack east of Kyiv in the past 24 hours, pushing Russian forces east from Brovary.
● Russian attempts to encircle Chernihiv remain unsuccessful.
● The military situation in northeastern Ukraine did not change in the past 24 hours.
● Russian forces continue to take Mariupol street-by-street and have entered the city center.
● Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations around Kherson in the past 24 hours.UkraineWorld: Putin’s 7 Deadly Mistakes http://bit.ly/3NvwlLY “Putin will lose, and all of Russia will lose with him”
// After a month of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it has become evident that Vladimir Putin has made one mistake after another, always choosing the worst possible option. That is why the final result of this war is beyond doubt: Putin will lose, and all of Russia will lose with him. Here are his most crucial mistakes.🧵 RT @anders_aslund 1. The big Russia-Ukraine news today is that Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi, the deputy chief of the Russian armed forces’ General Staff held a press conference with two other generals. He announced changed goals of the war on Ukraine.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1507508548384735237?s=20
⋙⋙ RFE/RL: Russian Military Official Shifts Rhetoric, Says Army Now Focusing On ‘Liberation’ Of Eastern Ukrainian Regions http://bit.ly/384PRyP⋙ 2. Rudskoi said there had been two prior variants for Russia in Ukraine.
First to limit the operation to the administrative borders of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Second “operations on the whole territory of Ukraine with implementation of measures of demilitarization and denazification”
⋙ 3. Now Rudskoi stated that the initial goal of what Moscow calls a “military operation in Ukraine” was to take over Ukraine’s eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
That is a person low down in the Russian rank changes the aim of the war after one month.
⋙ 4. This should have been done by Putin, Shoigu or Gerasimov. Why didn’t they do so? They might have been all too embarrassed and kicked out their underling. Alternatively, the apparently still functioning general staff said: Enough is enough to their superiors.
⋙ 5. The Ukrainian government has reacted as it had to. The Russians still want to expand their hold on Donetsk and Luhansk regions, while they are losing the war. Ukraine first of all wants to kick out the whole Russian army, and they can do so, and recover Crimea.
⋙ 6. In addition, Russia would have to pay Ukraine reparations of at least $200 billion and Putin et al sent to The Hague. Ukraine is winning and has no reason to give up to Putin’s lawless terror.
⋙ 7. To me, this looks as if the Russian General Staff is trying to salvage their remaining military resources before the Ukrainians devastate them and hold on to some gains. As the Ukrainians are starting their offensive, they have no reason to stop now. Russia must leave Ukraine!
⋙ 8. It is interesting, and positive, that the Russian General Staff dared to stick out its neck like this. It will be very interesting to see how the Kremlin (madman Putin) responds to this. Have the Generals cast the glove?🐣 RT @davidfrum Sources say Russia has shifted its focus from trying to win the war it started against Ukraine to avoiding catastrophic and humiliating defeat
💙 TheGuardian, Jonathan Freedland: A key reason Putin’s bloody invasion is faltering? He’s no match for Zelenskiy’s iPhone http://bit.ly/3LeLqzJ Statecraft as stagecraft
🐣 RT @EdwardGLuce Whatever happens next, Putin’s Ukraine invasion already ranks as one of the most epic blunders in modern history – up there with Bush’s Iraq war. Almost every assumption Putin made has been wrong.
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: Ivy League Republicans’ phony rebellion against the ‘elites’ http://wapo.st/3JUwQgk Senators Tom Cotton, John Kennedy, Ted Cruz and Governor Ron DeSantis all went to Harvard Law: they (and more!) are “plutocrats with pitchforks” pretending to be populists
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🧵 RT @polinaivanovva Russia’s military held a big briefing this afternoon, announcing the war was entering a ‘second phase’. ¤ Here’s a summary of how Russia, at this point in the war, is depicting what it set out to do, why, and where we’re at. (relaying their words, pls don’t shoot msnger)
📌 https://twitter.com/polinaivanovva/status/1507400322829930500?s=20⋙ Firstly, the generals said Russia had always intended only to ‘liberate’ the Donbas, that was what it set out to do. It had two options: fight a war in the east, but allow Kyiv to replenish its forces, or start off by knocking out Ukrainian military capacities across the country.
⋙ Over a month of war, Russia has knocked out most of Ukraine’s military capacities, the generals claimed, so can now move on to next phase, which will only be focused on the east, which could involve heavy bombardment.
⋙ Russia had never intended to capture Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities, the generals said – these are not setbacks in other words, it’s all part of the plan. And the plan was to distract Ukrainian forces while Russia/ Donetsk/ Luhansk made territorial gains in the east.
⋙ Numerous statements made about not targeting civilian infrastructure, avoiding civilian casualties.
⋙ Defence ministry briefing also shared a new official figure for the number of Russian soldiers killed, the second statement by Russian side during the course of this war. Said 1,351 were killed – figure is far below Ukrainian and international estimates.
⋙ Here’s the full english text of the briefing per military’s translation just now https://eng.mil.ru/en/special_operation/news/more.htm?id=12414735@egNewsUkraineToday: “Presenting from Putin”: Gerashchenko told what happened to Shoigu http://bit.ly/36JflRE “Adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko writes … in his Telegram channel. ‘Shoigu has a heart attack. Therefore, he has not appeared in public since mid-March…’”
// According to Gerashchenko, the Russian minister is now undergoing rehabilitation in a hospital.🔆 This❗️⋙ 🧵 RT @polinaivanovva Russia’s military held a big briefing this afternoon, announcing the war was entering a ‘second phase’. ¤ Here’s a summary of how Russia, at this point in the war, is depicting what it set out to do, why, and where we’re at. (relaying their words, pls don’t shoot msnger)
📌 https://twitter.com/polinaivanovva/status/1507400322829930500?s=20DailyBeast: Kremlin TV Descends Into Screaming Match Over Putin’s War Failures http://bit.ly/3iACsQX “Military experts proceeded to hammer additional nails into the coffin of popular delusions about the anticipated outcome of Putin’s war against Ukraine”
// There’s no hiding the cracks that have formed on Russian airwaves over the war in Ukraine any longer.🐣 RT @Reuters Vladimir Putin accused the West of trying to cancel Russia’s rich musical and literary culture, including composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninov, in the same way he said it had canceled ‘Harry Potter’ author J.K. Rowling https://reut.rs/3iBD0X2
⋙ 🐣 I love Russia’s rich musical and literary culture: The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite novel; Swan Lake is my favorite ballet (I saw Michail Baryshnikov dance in it in Munich) ¤ I’ve heard people avoiding some Russian restaurants in NYC but that’s it …🐣 RT @FBIWFO Help #FBIWFO find Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin. He allegedly conspired to defraud the U.S. by interfering with the functions of the Federal Election Commission, Justice Department, and State Department. Visit http://tips.fbi.gov to submit a tip. http://ow.ly/oSlT50Ie593
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @FBIWFO Help #FBIWFO find Evgeny Viktorovich Prigogine [Prigozhin]. He allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy to misinform the US population. You can share the available information through the website http://tips.fbi.gov . http://ow.ly/oSlT50Ie593
// Google translate🐣 RT @FBIWFO Help #FBIWFO find Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin. He allegedly conspired to defraud the U.S. by interfering with the functions of the Federal Election Commission, Justice Department, and State Department. Visit http://tips.fbi.gov to submit a tip. http://ow.ly/oSlT50Ie593
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @FBIWFO Help #FBIWFO find Evgeny Viktorovich Prigogine [Prigozhin]. He allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy to misinform the US population. You can share the available information through the website http://tips.fbi.gov . http://ow.ly/oSlT50Ie593
// Google translate🐣 RT @bf79 As a Hungarian, I have to say, it’s probably true. Rosatom builds our nuclear power plant, and an important Russian bank here has diplomacy level protection. They have been bought.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MacaesBruno Hungarian government has been penetrated and compromised. Not complicated
💽 https://twitter.com/bf79/status/1507406302368174081?s=20/photo/1
// video: Zelenskyy pleads/tries to reason with Orban🐣 RT @theragex Thirty days Later
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @clintehrlich [2/23/2022] Many people are predicting that a Russian invasion of Ukraine will look like the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. ¤ They’re wrong. The world will be shocked by the swiftness of Russian victory. ¤ We’re about to witness a Sputnik moment.🐣 RT @BBCWorld Smoke rises from Kyiv fuel depot Russia claims it has destroyed
⋙ BBC: Russia claims large Ukraine fuel depot destroyed http://bbc.in/3829iIA
// Moscow says it targeted the largest remaining military fuel storage facility in Ukraine.🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Yes, invading Kyiv from Belarus was how to degrade the garrisons in Donbas.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko(✓) Haha — Russia says it never had plans to seize Ukrainian cities by assault. ¤ They just want to prevent Ukrainian military from reinforcing their garrisons in Donbas, and that’s it, see? ¤ What happened to “we’ll install a new regime in Ukraine” from late February, huh?WaPo: At Polish site, Ukrainians train to fly drones for rescue missions and targeting Russians http://wapo.st/3Nov2P6 “This is one of the most black-and-white wars I can remember,” Resnick [a developer] said. “I think it’s just about a moral obligation to support them.”
// An American manufacturer is providing the aircraft and teaching the Ukrainians how to operate them🐣 RT @JoeNBC 25 years ago, Senator Joe Biden visited Warsaw and declared “Poland has shown that its Democratic roots have never died”. He returns as President of the United States with the assurance that the US will defend every inch of NATO ground. 🇺🇸 🇵🇱
🐣 RT @phildstewart (Reuters) – The United States and its NATO allies are doing contingency planning for any possible Russian attack on NATO territory, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Friday as U.S. President Joe Biden traveled to Poland.
🐣 RT @RT ‘The Americans are no longer the masters of planet Earth’ – ex-Russian president ¤ Read: https://on.rt.com/bufl
⋙ 🐣 Russia is no longer a regional power; it’s an impoverished, pariah state with an untrained army; it has some old nukes, but 60% of them don’t work
// I’m joking🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ Reuters: US estimates an up to 60% failure rate for Russian missiles attacking Ukraine. ¤ Earlier, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said 467 Russian missiles hit Ukraine since Feb. 24. A total of over 1,200 missiles were launched by Russia since the war began.
🐣 RT @BillBrowder Great and symbolic news. The famous Ukrainian border guards of Snake Island in the Black Sea who told the Russian invaders on the first day of the war “go f..k yourselves” have been freed in a prisoner exchange
⭕ 24 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I absolutely love that President Biden is going to Poland as a member of a new, stronger NATO.
🐣 RT @edokeefe BIG FRIDAY AHEAD: @POTUS ¤ Biden headed to Rzeszów, Poland to “receive a briefing on the humanitarian response to ease the suffering of civilians inside Ukraine” and to meet with “members from the 82nd Airborne Division, who are contributing alongside our Polish Ally” WH says
WaPo: Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show http://wapo.st/3ixGIkn 👀 By Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
// In messages to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after Election Day, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called Biden’s victory “the greatest Heist of our History” and told him that President Donald Trump should not concede.The messages — 29 in all — reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results.
On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
When Meadows wrote to Thomas on Nov. 24, the White House chief of staff invoked God to describe the effort to overturn the election. “This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”
Thomas replied: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!” ¤ It is unclear to whom Thomas was referring.
The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team.
In her text messages to Meadows, Ginni Thomas spread false theories, commented on cable news segments and advocated with urgency and fervor that the president and his team take action to reverse the outcome of the election. She urged that they take a hard line with Trump staffers and congressional Republicans who had resisted arguments that the election was stolen.
In the messages, Thomas and Meadows each assert a belief that the election was stolen and seem to share a solidarity of purpose and faith, though they occasionally express differences on tactics. ¤ “The intense pressures you and our President are now experiencing are more intense than Anything Experienced (but I only felt a fraction of it in 1991),” Thomas wrote to Meadows on Nov. 19, an apparent reference to Justice Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings in which lawyer Anita Hill testified that he had made unwanted sexual comments when he was her boss. Thomas strongly denied the accusations.
The first of the 29 messages between Ginni Thomas and Meadows was sent on Nov. 5, two days after the election. She sent him a link to a YouTube video labeled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.” ¤ Pieczenik, a former State Department official, is a far-right commentator who has falsely claimed that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a “false-flag” operation to push a gun-control agenda.
The video Thomas shared with Meadows is no longer available on YouTube. But Thomas wrote to Meadows, “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???” ¤ “Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she wrote. ¤ During that period, supporters of the QAnon extremist ideology embraced a false theory that Trump had watermarked mail-in ballots so he could track potential fraud. “Watch the water” was a refrain in QAnon circles at the time.
In the Nov. 5 message to Meadows, Thomas went on to quote a passage that had circulated on right-wing websites: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” ¤ The text messages received by the House select committee do not include a response from Meadows.
The next day, Nov. 6, Thomas sent a follow-up to Meadows: “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.” ¤ It is unclear if Meadows responded. ¤ On Nov. 10, Thomas drew a reply from Meadows. She wrote, “Mark, I wanted to text you and tell you for days you are in my prayers!!” She continued by urging him to “Help This Great President stand firm” and invoking “the greatest Heist of our History.” ¤ Thomas added in the message that Meadows should “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta” — appearing to refer to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, as well as lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was involved in Trump’s push to claim victory in Georgia despite Biden’s certified win there. ¤ One minute later, Meadows responded: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.” ¤ Nine minutes after that, Thomas replied, “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!! So proud to know you!!”
Later that night, Ginni Thomas messaged Meadows seeming to react to a cable news segment. “Van Jones spins interestingly, but shows us the balls being juggled too,” Thomas said, referring to the prominent CNN commentator. ¤ Thomas then turned to her frustrations with congressional Republicans and said she wished more of them were rallying behind Trump and being more active with his base voters, who were furious about the election. ¤ She wrote, “House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots… Gohmert, Jordan, Gosar, and Roy.” She appeared to be referring to Republican House members Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Paul A. Gosar of Arizona and Chip Roy of Texas.
This was a troubled time for Trump. News organizations had declared Biden the winner on Nov. 7, after a review of vote totals in each state and the electoral count. Trump’s legal operation was divided between his campaign’s official lawyers and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s confidant and personal attorney who was fast asserting control of his campaign’s legal strategy. While many Republicans supported Trump’s filing of legal challenges in several states, his lawyers stumbled in court and many allies by mid-November were privately confiding that Trump’s legal battle would be short-lived.
Yet Thomas urged Meadows to plow ahead, rally Republicans around Trump and remind them of his enduring political capital. ¤ “Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!” she wrote in her text message to him late on Nov. 10. She then told him to watch a YouTube video about the power of never conceding.
Meadows might not have been Thomas’s only contact inside the Trump White House that week. On Nov. 13, she texted Meadows about her outreach to “Jared,” potentially a reference to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser. She wrote, “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved.” The messages provided to the House select committee do not show a response by Meadows. ¤ Kushner did not respond to a request for comment.
Powell was becoming ubiquitous on television — and winning the president’s favor, according to several Trump advisers — as she claimed without evidence that electronic voting systems had stolen the election from Trump by switching millions of ballots in Biden’s favor. She claimed, again without evidence, that hundreds of thousands of ballots were appearing out of nowhere and that a global communist conspiracy was afoot involving Venezuela, Cuba, and probably China.
Still, while Trump cheered some of Powell’s commentary, she was a polarizing figure in his orbit. Her views were considered so extreme and unsupported by evidence that David Bossie, a longtime Trump supporter, told others that she was peddling “concocted B.S.” After Fox News host Tucker Carlson contacted Powell about her claim that electronic voting machines had switched ballots to Biden, he told his viewers that he found her answers evasive and that she had shown no evidence to support her assertion. He stopped having her on his program.
Ginni Thomas stood by her. “Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead…help her be the lead and the face,” she wrote to Meadows on Nov. 13.The following day, Nov. 14, Thomas sent Meadows material she said was from Connie Hair, chief of staff to Gohmert. It is not clear if she was passing on a message from Hair or sharing Hair’s perspective as guidance for Meadows. The text message seems to quote Hair’s belief that “the most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war.” ¤ “This war is psychological. PSYOP,” the text from Thomas states. ¤ Hair said Thursday that she did not have any specific recollection of that text message.
On Nov. 19, which would be a crucial day for Powell as she spoke at a news conference at the Republican National Committee, Thomas continued to bolster Powell’s standing in a text to Meadows. ¤ “Mark (don’t want to wake you)… ” Thomas wrote. “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.” ¤ “Release the Kraken” had become a catchphrase on the far right after the election, used as shorthand for the anticipated exposure of a voter fraud conspiracy that would upend Biden’s victory with the same force as a “Kraken,” a mythical giant sea monster.
In that same exchange, Thomas also at one point offered Meadows advice on managing the West Wing staff. ¤ “Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark,” Thomas wrote. “The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits.”
“Monica Crowley,” Thomas said, referring to the conservative commentator, “may have a sense of this [from] her Nixon days.” Crowley, a top official in Trump’s Treasury Department, had been an aide to former president Richard M. Nixon years after he resigned from office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal. ¤ Thomas then wrote, “You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all. Lots of intensifying threats coming to ACB and others.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sometimes called “ACB” by her supporters, had joined the Supreme Court in October, shortly before the election. It is unclear to what threats Thomas was referring.
Later on Nov. 19, Meadows replied to Thomas’s long text message by saying, “Thanks so much.”But Thomas’s high aspirations for Powell quickly collapsed that afternoon. Instead of capturing the nation’s attention at the RNC news conference, where she spoke alongside Giuliani and other Trump advisers, Powell was criticized for spreading a false theory about electronic voting machines as a tool for communists. Some Trump aides were horrified by her and Giuliani’s performances and felt they had embarrassed the president by becoming a parody of his post-election fight.
As Giuliani spoke, a dark brown liquid mixed with beads of sweat rolled down his cheek. “Did you watch ‘My Cousin Vinny?’ ” he asked reporters, tying a legal reference to the 1992 comedy. ¤ Thomas wrote to Meadows, “Tears are flowing at what Rudy is doing right now!!!!” ¤ “Glad to help,” Meadows replied.
By Nov. 22, Trump gave his blessing for Giuliani and another Trump lawyer, Jenna Ellis, to issue a statement claiming that Powell “is not a member of the Trump Legal Team.” ¤ Thomas reached out to Meadows that day with concern. “Trying to understand the Sidney Powell distancing,” she wrote. ¤ “She doesn’t have anything or at least she won’t share it if she does,” Meadows texted back. ¤ “Wow!” Thomas replied. ¤ Meadows did not respond.
On Nov. 24, Thomas engaged Meadows again by sharing a video from Parler, a conservative social media website, that appeared to refer to conservative commentator Glenn Beck. ¤ “If you all cave to the elites, you have to know that many of your 73 million feel like what Glenn is expressing,” Thomas wrote. ¤ She said Trump risked his supporters growing disenchanted to the point of walking away from politics. “Me included,” she wrote. “I think I am done with politics, and I don’t think I am alone, Mark.” ¤ Meadows replied three minutes later: “I don’t know what you mean by caving to the elites.” ¤ Thomas responded: “I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences… the whole coup and now this… we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.” ¤ After continued back-and-forth, Meadows wrote, “You’re preaching to the choir. Very demoralizing.”
The text exchanges with Thomas that Meadows provided to the House select committee pause after Nov. 24, 2020, with an unexplained gap in correspondence. The committee received one additional message sent by Thomas to Meadows, on Jan. 10, four days after the “Stop the Steal” rally Thomas said she attended and the deadly attack on the Capitol. ¤ In that message, Thomas expresses support for Meadows and Trump — and directed anger at Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused Trump’s wishes to block the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral college victory.
“We are living through what feels like the end of America,” Thomas wrote to Meadows. “Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!” ¤ “Amazing times,” she added. “The end of Liberty.”
💙 💽 MSNBC, Chris Hayes: Putin’s war is the first conflict in a new global era http://on.msnbc.com/3uutsT0
// Chris Hayes: “This new land war on the European continent—pitting a would-be conquering dictator against citizens of a flawed, but resilient democracy—really does feel like the first armed conflict in a new chapter: a sustained battle between liberal democracy and its enemies.”💙 🐣 RT @ john_sipher “Putin’s attempt to reorder the world is doomed to failure, and his only sure legacy is a place in the rogues’ gallery of history’s villains.”
⋙ WilsonCenter, Lucian Kim: Putin’s War on History http://bit.ly/3ukaE92
// 3/21/2022
⋙⋙ ≣ PresRussia: Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“ http://bit.ly/3GLd2uh
// 7/12/2021🧵 RT @SamRamani2 Putin’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky and foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin just made fiery speeches to rally Russians around the Ukraine war. ¤ Their rhetoric provided an alarming window into Russia’s totalitarian tilt. Some more details /1
📌 https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1507047660062187523?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MontyBoa99 Naryshkin is the guy Putin browbeat in front of his National Security Council for his tepid support for the war. ¤ Sounds like he’s decided to cave and go full-throated agitprop apparatchik.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @skives Tough to choose otherwise when career, family, and life hang in the balance. The FSB “basement” must be getting busy.🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance There is something deeply broken in anyone who thinks this is justifiable or even just survivable. A SCOTUS justice’s wife was text buddies with POTUS’s chief of staff, topic: trying to interfere with the transfer of power to the next elected president. Nothing here is ok.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is said to have repeatedly urged Donald Trump’s chief of staff to try to overturn the 2020 election. https://nyti.ms/3qz0OiF🐣 RT @Odessa_Journal “Heroic resistance of the Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian people to the ruthless invasion of Russia. It’s already a month of our defense against the attempt to destroy us” (Volodymyr Zelensky) 🇺🇦 #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #UkraineRussia
⋙ OdessaJournal: Address by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Ukrainians and the nations of the world http://bit.ly/3II9Qjo🧵 FBI: Four Russian Government Employees Charged in Two Separate Hacking Campaigns Targeting Worldwide Critical Infrastructure http://bit.ly/3urew8d
// Defendants’ Campaigns Targeted Software and Hardware for Operational Technology Systems
📌 https://twitter.com/FBI/status/1507102175704592389?s=20🐣 RT @davetroy 1/Good morning! ¤ A few things: Putin’s war was always intended as a global civilizational war, as it knit together likeminded illiberal, oil+gas, traditionalist and fascist factions from around the world. That network didn’t think they could *lose* and thus has a strong desire…
⋙ 2/ to *win*, globally, at all costs. Bleeding out Putin is necessary but not sufficient; the aligned Fifth Column also needs to be subjugated and deterred. Without the unity of purpose Putin’s civilizational conflict has provided, they are likely to splinter and go rogue.
⋙ 3/ So in addition to ending Putin, we should seek to dismember the global Fifth Column networks and their interests. Investments in renewable energy that immediately lessen reliance on carbon fuels are a good first step. We need to lower demand for carbon and increase supply
⋙ 4/ of renewable electricity. We also need to hunt down the influence of the oil+gas industry and systematically neutralize it, as @RBrulle and @ChristineArena have been doing. We should also call on religious traditionalists to condemn violence and split into factions…
⋙ 5/ that isolate those who remain on the side of carbon extraction. And we should fully regulate (and crush, IMHO) cryptocurrencies and the silly “revenge of the gold standard” agenda. As
⋙⋙ NewRepublic, Craig Unger: How Republicans Spent Decades Cozying Up to Putin’s Kremlin http://bit.ly/3wzKbak
// 3/18/2022; The man who once worked to connect Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff to Russia is now chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Any questions?
⋙ 6/ Putin’s war is a reactionary, mystical quest to achieve an empire he cannot achieve. In the end, it’s a war about nothing. All of this needs to be dragged back into the hole, like the Devil it is, and the Fifth Column needs constructive outlets for its grievances…
⋙ 7/ real or perceived. But we mustn’t assume that once Putin is vanquished that this all goes away. No; it will just shatter into a feudal gang-land of carbon warlords and their zombie churches, aiming to extend the fugazi a decade longer. Putin’s vision was at least unifying.
⋙ 8/ Without a North Star or any countering plan, we are likely to see a lot of other forces unleashed that we didn’t count on. Again, it boils down to choosing oil+gas, or the survival of the species. Which will it be?🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Zelensky to NATO: Don’t say Ukraine’s army doesn’t meet Alliance’s standards. ¤ In a virtual address to NATO, President Zelensky said that he has one demand. “After such a war against Russia… Please, never, never again tell us that our army does not meet NATO standards.”
🐣 RT @JuliaMendel Russia is changing its plans for combat operations in Ukraine: in some areas it’s refraining from offensive, but is concentrating forces for an offensive against Kyiv, as well as continuing its offensive in the east to occupy Donetsk & Luhansk regions in their entirety-GenStaff
// Spox for Pres UA🐣 RT @KyivIndependent President’s Office: Russia will try to shift its war to the attrition phase. ¤ According to Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration, Russia is forced to begin a war of attrition due to the lack of success and a high death toll.
🐣 RT @StratComUA 40,000 foreigners from 52 countries are ready to defend Ukraine and fight for the future of democracy. If you are also a foreigner willing to join the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine, please visit the http://fightforua.org website. #StandWithUkraine #StopRussia
💽 https://twitter.com/StratcomCentre/status/1506969494996103171?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine Olena Zelenska, 🇺🇦 First Lady: ¤ I want to bow to all of you – whether you are currently carrying a weapon or a child. Because you are the ones saving #Ukraine and the whole World: this war is on the edge of #Europe
💽 https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1506915119795781635?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ian bremmer russia’s war in ukraine is not the end of globalization ¤ it’s the end of globalization for russia
🐣 RT @QuickTake [Bloomberg] “We will see who is a friend, who is a partner, and who has betrayed us for money.” ¤ Zelenskiy expects “serious steps” from NATO, the EU and G-7 after their summits Thursday. His virtual world tour is proving a new weapon in the Russia-Ukraine war https://trib.al/X1svmsk
💽 https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1506878572216164352?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Russian TV propagandists are worse than even Russian pilots. Pilots at least risk being shot down. Talking heads sleep in safety, then go on air and call for nuclear strikes or invading NATO members. Sanction each one of them. Block all toxic Russian propaganda and its enablers.
🐣 RT @afneil President Zelenskyy worries about Western resolve and unity at today’s NATO, G7 and EU summits, Says some wavering on need for more sanction against Kremlin. Has Germany/Hungary in mind. Says summits will show “who is a friend, who is a partner, and who betrayed us for money.”
🐣 RT @nytimes About 40,000 troops are currently deployed under direct NATO command across eight Eastern European countries, with the largest contingent in Poland. That is a twofold increase since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.
⋙ NYT: NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe has been building rapidly. http://nyti.ms/3LcO35e🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews A senior administration official said any use of a “small” tactical nuclear bomb by Russia — even inside Ukraine and not directed at a NATO member — would mean that “all bets are off” on the United States and NATO staying out of the war.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The White House has quietly assembled a team of natsec officials to sketch out scenarios of how the US and allies should respond if Putin — frustrated by his lack of progress in Ukraine — unleashes his stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
⋙⋙ NYT: U.S. Makes Contingency Plans in Case Russia Uses Its Most Powerful Weapons http://nyti.ms/3wGuSMO
// “tiger team”🐣 📋 RT @KyivIndependent CNN: Half of all Ukrainian children have been displaced since Feb. 24, according to UNICEF. ¤ “Since the start of the war a month ago, out of every boy and girl in the country, one out of two now has had to flee their homes,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told CNN.
🐣 RT @nytimes “Mr. Putin cannot win this war,” writes Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, in a guest essay. “He cannot even think he has won, or his appetite will grow. We need to demonstrate the will and commit resources to defend NATO territory.”
⋙ NYT, Kaja Kalia: I’m the Prime Minister of Estonia. Putin Can’t Think He’s Won This War. http://nyti.ms/36FVyT6🐣 RT @UKRinNATO One month ago Russia started open invasion of Ukraine…
💽 https://twitter.com/UKRinNATO/status/1506911823232184322?s=20/photo/1NYT: Fed Up With Deadly Propaganda, Some Russian Journalists Quit http://nyti.ms/37XIBVq
// At least four state television employees have publicly resigned, citing regret for their roles in promoting false narratives about Ukraine.🐣 RT @UkraineinEurope The Russian empire has only ever existed as an autocracy. That’s why this moment is so dangerous. A threat to autocratic rule in Russia is perceived as a threat to Russia’s existence.
🐣 RT @hdevreij How do you say ‘Falaise pocket’ in Ukrainian?
How do you say ‘Falaise pocket’ in Ukrainian? pic.twitter.com/uhL0UxA0ec
— Hans de Vreij (@hdevreij) March 23, 2022
// map; Russian map encirclement NW of Kjiv; comments🐣 RT @carlbildt It’s going to be a unique summit of summits in Brussels today – a NATO summit, an EU summit and a G7 summit. I think that’s a first when it comes to these things. President Putin has managed to bring the democratic world together in a unique way with his aggression.
🐣 RT @NakedN3rd It should not matter. ¤ Arguments like these legitimize Russia’s ethnonationalistic bs.
⋙ 🐣 In an earlier tweet, I pointed out that haplotypes represent migration patterns, which underlie settlement patterns, which are the foundation for cultural differences; I think it establishes that Ukraine is not Russia (It has had a separate history and culture for > 1000 yrs)
⋙ 🐣 (similar:) that’s why I used haplotypes which are associated with multiple gene variant clusters; they can be used to trace migration patterns from 10s of thousands of years ago, which in turn, underlie (non-genetic) historical developments (language, traditions, arts etc)🐣 RT @Ukrinform_News #stoprussia ¤ Month of resistance: Zelensky addresses Ukrainians and peoples of the world
💙⋙ ≣ ukrinform.net: Month of resistance: Zelensky addresses Ukrainians and peoples of the world http://bit.ly/3wuJb7i
// For a month now, the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people have been heroically resisting the ruthless Russian Federation’s invasion. — Ukrinform.⭕ 23 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @RFERL Drone video revealed widespread devastation in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on March 22.
💽 https://twitter.com/RFERL/status/1506704053811699715?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @nflmpx “Those close to Putin understand that he views the current conflict as a holy war and has long since passed the point of no return. The Russian ruler will settle for nothing less than the complete subjugation of Ukraine or the country’s destruction”
⋙ AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson: Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine War can end in only two ways: Genocide or defeat http://bit.ly/3D9gii4🐣 RT @andrewmichta The post-conflict future of #Ukraine should be discussed now, not later. Its @NATO membership will depend on the intra-alliance dynamic (I’m in favor of bringing it into NATO). Ukraine must be rebuilt and it should be brought into the #EU. @JJCarafano @AmbDanFried @SlawomirDebski
🐣 RT @LatestAnonNews Anonymous hacks Russia’s Central Bank and more than 35,000 files will be exposed in 48 hours.
🐣 RT @MacFarlaneNews ALERT: In new statement, Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) says: ¤ “President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency… ”
ALERT: In new statement, Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) says:
"President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency… " pic.twitter.com/Qb4unfy23Q
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) March 23, 2022
⋙ 🐣 RT @MacFarlaneNews Brooks statement (more): ¤ “As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @MacFarlaneNews Trying to absorb this. A sitting Member of Congress and vocal Trump defender has just said Trump sought help to “rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House”🐣 RT @BrookingsInst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given the world a visceral reminder of the value of the NATO. But it’s easy to forget just how close America recently came to quitting the alliance—and how uncertain the future of U.S. participation will remain.
⋙ DefenseOne, Scott Anderson: Congress Still Needs to Protect America’s NATO Membership http://bit.ly/3NgiKIi
// Trump was closer than anyone realized to pulling the U.S. out of NATO. Lawmakers must ensure that never happens without them.🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Andrey Isaev, member of the State Duma, claimed on state TV that according to Putin, Russians and Ukrainians have the same ethnicity, and therefore there is no such thing as the Ukrainian nationality, which is “merely an organization” of Russians who don’t want to be Russian.
⋙ 🐣 On average, Russians and Ukrainians share about 65-70% the same genome but Russians are more closely related to Finns and Mongols, Ukrainians to Mediterranean genomes like Greek and Turkish ~ significantly different
// based on haplotype🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger Thank you for the gift @RusEmbUSA this should be very helpful!
⋙ 🐣 RT @space_osint The United States (🇺🇸) will reportedly receive Russia’s (🇷🇺) Krasukha-4 mobile electronic warfare system, which was recently captured in #Ukraine (🇺🇦). ¤ This is one of Russia’s most capable Electronic Warfare Systems and potentially an intelligence goldmine.
💽 https://twitter.com/space_osint/status/1506688082657091584?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Yasha_Mounk Unbelievable courage. ¤ A real-life version of the famous “Marseillaise” scene from Casablanca.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexandruC4 ¤ Just unbelievable – to be played with sound on
💽 https://twitter.com/AlexandruC4/status/1506761204462669834?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @The_IntelHub NATO Secretary General: “Any use of chemical weapons is absolutely unacceptable and will have far reaching consequences.”
🐣 RT @CarlSchreck We looked at crew of superyacht that @navalny’s peeps allege is Putin’s & found connections to multiple other yachts linked to names like Usmanov, Rotenberg, & Prigozhin — & a Russian supplier of the Kremlin’s bodyguard service (w/@kromark & @pustota):
⋙ RFE/RL: ‘A Very Big Secret’: Boat Crews Link Alleged Putin Superyacht To Russian Tycoons’ Other Vessels http://bit.ly/3ItYXBP
// A leaked crew list for a yacht Kremlin critics allege is Vladimir Putin’s shows connections to other superyachts owned by Kremlin-connected oligarchs🐣 RT @With__Ukraine 🇺🇦 Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian forces back on the frontlines east of Kyiv by 25-35 km – CNN citing a source in the U.S. Department of Defense. ¤ Source: @CNN #StopWar
🐣 RT @trussliz Resounding defeat for Russia’s proposed Security Council resolution. The international community sees through Putin’s disinformation & overwhelmingly recognises that Russia is the aggressor. Russia’s text was an insult to Ukraine. We will not stand for it.
⋙ 🧵 RT @UKUN_NewYork #Breaking: ¤ Russia’s resolution has failed at the Security Council. ¤ #UNSC members have rejected Russia’s attempts to abuse its position on the Council to legitimise its war in #Ukraine.
📌 https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1506755431380701185?s=20NYT: Trump Is Guilty of ‘Numerous’ Felonies, Prosecutor Who Resigned Says http://nyti.ms/3uilCvI
// Mark F. Pomerantz, who had investigated the former president, left after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, halted an effort to seek an indictment.
⋙ NYT: [ Text of resignation letter ] http://nyti.ms/3itthlmWaPo, Timothy Snyder: Seeing Putin’s genocidal aspiration can help the rest of us understand where this war has come from, where it is going and why it cannot be lost. http://wapo.st/3up7gcS “Vladimir Putin has been making a case for genocide against Ukrainians for years.”
🐣 RT @ShelbyTalcott NEW statement from Blinken: ¤ “Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.”
CNN: US formally declares Russian military has committed war crimes in Ukraine http://cnn.it/3567hdb
🐣 📋 RT @IlvesToomas The amazing Ukrainians. ¤ 40K out of 190 K Russian troops killed, wounded, taken prisoner or missing (deserted). More than 20% ¤ If anyone has the military prowess NATO needs today, it’s Ukraine.
⋙⋙ WSJ: NATO: Up to 40,000 Russian Troops Killed, Wounded, Taken Prisoner or Missing in Ukraine http://on.wsj.com/3JAb1CV
⋙ 🐣 The Cossacks who were the tsar’s best fighters were from Ukraine. They also were critical to fighting the Nazis🐣 📋 RT @CarlaBabbVOA Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops at heightened readiness…100,000 US troops in Europe… 40,000 forces under direct @NATO command, all backed by major air & naval power, including 5 carrier strike groups in the high north & in the Med, says @jensstoltenberg #Ukraine
🐣 It’s bizarre watching GOP looking for some excuse not to vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson (“too compassionate”?), cutting her off as she explains the context, when they voted for a rapist who went on a rant about beer
🧵 RT @SenWhitehouse Republicans used dark money to capture the Supreme Court, in secret, channeling funds through fictitious front groups. If you look carefully, though, a pattern emerges.
📌 https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1506426820803141632?s=20
// Federalist Society and SCOTUS🐣 RT @AFP UN chief Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that it was time for Russia to end their “absurd war” in Ukraine, declaring the conflict “unwinnable” https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1506358048721354754?s=20
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Putin’s 3-day Ukraine War is one month old. So far, things have not gone to plan:
– 15,000 dead Russian soldiers
– loss of military superpower status
– unprecedented sanctions
– war crimes probe
– international pariah
– total infowar defeat
– tanks stolen by tractors🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Russian military casualties have surpassed that of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
🐣 RT @McFaul Ukraine needs S-300s now!
🐣 RT @McFaul Remember, Putin has no endgame. Ukrainians will never submit to him. Never.
⭕ 22 Mar 2022
TheDrive: Ukraine Just Captured Part Of One Of Russia’s Most Capable Electronic Warfare Systems http://bit.ly/3JFpw8g
// Russia’s lost Krasukha-4 electronic warfare system command module would be a prize for foreign intelligence agencies.A curious ‘container’ that Ukrainian troops captured today looks to actually represent a significant Russian loss and a potential intelligence goldmine. What Ukraine’s forces found looks to be a containerized command post that is part of the Krasukha-4 mobile electronic warfare system. The Krasukha-4 is primarily designed to detect and jam large radars, such as those on airborne early warning and control aircraft, such as the U.S. Air Force’s E-3 Sentry, and spy satellites.
Ukrainian forces reportedly found this command post container outside of the capital Kyiv. Twitter user @UAWeapons was among the first to identify it as most likely being a component of the Krasukha-4 system, which is also known by nomenclature 1RL257, based on a picture that had emerged online. A complete Krasukha-4 consists of two vehicles, both based on the 8×8 KAMAZ-6350 truck, one with the electronic warfare (EW) system and the other carrying the command post module. …
[T]he loss of even one-half of a Krasukha-4 system could be significant for Russian forces from an operational perspective. Though its origins trace back to the late 1990s, this remains one of the Russian military’s most capable mobile EW systems, with serial production only beginning in the early 2010s. It was developed as part of a larger project to field systems to shield Russian assets on the ground and in the air from the prying eyes of various ground-based and aerial surveillance and imaging radars, along with certain radar-equipped intelligence-gathering satellites. …
NYT: As Russia Stalls in Ukraine, Dissent Brews Over Putin’s Leadership http://nyti.ms/3IyQtcG
// Military losses have mounted, progress has slowed, and a blame game has begun among some Russian supporters of the war.In January, the head of a group of serving and retired Russian military officers declared that invading Ukraine would be “pointless and extremely dangerous.” It would kill thousands, he said, make Russians and Ukrainians enemies for life, risk a war with NATO and threaten “the existence of Russia itself as a state.” ¤ To many Russians, that seemed like a far-fetched scenario, since few imagined that an invasion of Ukraine was really possible. But two months later, as Russia’s advance stalls in Ukraine, the prophecy looms large. Reached by phone this week, the retired general who authored the declaration, Leonid Ivashov, said he stood by it, though he could not speak freely given Russia’s wartime censorship: “I do not disavow what I said.”
In Russia, the slow going and the heavy toll of President Vladimir V. Putin’s war on Ukraine are setting off questions about his military’s planning capability, his confidence in his top spies and loyal defense minister, and the quality of the intelligence that reaches him. It also shows the pitfalls of Mr. Putin’s top-down governance, in which officials and military officers have little leeway to make their own decisions and adapt to developments in real time. …
The lack of progress is so apparent that a blame game has begun among some Russian supporters of the war — even as Russian propaganda claims that the slog is a consequence of the military’s care to avoid harming civilians. Igor Girkin, a former colonel in Russia’s F.S.B. intelligence agency and the former “defense minister” of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, said in a video interview posted online on Monday that Russia had made a “catastrophically incorrect assessment” of Ukraine’s forces. ¤ “The enemy was underestimated in every aspect,” Mr. Girkin said.
The Russian forces’ poor performance has also surprised analysts, who predicted at the start of the war that Russia’s massive, technologically advanced military would make short work of Ukraine. Mr. Putin himself seems to have counted on his troops quickly seizing major cities, including the capital, Kyiv, decapitating the government and installing a puppet regime under the Kremlin’s control. ¤ “Take power into your own hands,” Mr. Putin urged Ukrainian soldiers on the second day of the invasion, apparently hoping Ukraine would go down without a fight. ¤ Instead, Ukraine fought back. Nearly a month has passed, and Russian troops appear bogged down in the face of relentless attacks from a much weaker, though far more maneuverable, Ukrainian military. …
The failures in Ukraine have started to create fissures within Russian leadership, according to Andrei Soldatov, an author and expert on Russia’s military and security services. The top Russian intelligence official in charge of overseeing the recruitment of spies and diversionary operations in Ukraine has been put under house arrest along with his deputy, Mr. Soldatov said. Even Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, who vacations with Mr. Putin and has been spoken of as a potential presidential successor, has suffered a loss of standing, according to Mr. Soldatov’s sources. ¤ “It looks like everybody is on edge,” Mr. Soldatov said.
Mr. Soldatov’s claims could not be independently verified, and some independent experts have challenged them. But Mr. Shoigu has not been shown meeting with Mr. Putin in person since Feb. 27, when he and his top military commander, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, sat at the end of a long table as Mr. Putin, on the opposite end, ordered them to place Russia’s nuclear forces at a higher level of readiness. ¤ “The war has shown that the army fights poorly,” Mr. Luzin, the Russian military analyst, said. “The defense minister is responsible for this.”
The battlefield deaths of senior Russian commanders also reflect poorly on the Kremlin’s war planning. … The deaths reflect operational security failures as well as the challenges of the Russian military’s top-heavy command structure in the face of a much nimbler Ukrainian fighting force. “In modern warfare, you don’t have a lot of generals getting knocked off,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “But this is a very lethal battlefield.” ¤ General Joseph L. Votel, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, said that the deaths could reflect Russia’s challenges on the ground — and reports that some Russian units did not understand the mission at hand and had even abandoned equipment. As a result, he said, military leaders appeared to be operating closer to the front to “supervise and keep their troops in the fight, by personal example or intimidation.” ¤ “Continuing to lose senior leaders is not good,” he said in an email. “Eventually, loss of leadership affects morale, fighting prowess and effectiveness.” …
🐣 RT @maria_avdv When I say that Putin will not stop in Ukraine, I mean exactly that. State Russian TV show in prime time discusses possible nuclear strike on Europe, Russian invasion of Poland and Lithuania and corridor to Kaliningrad, threatens Germany and Baltic states. Act now #StopRussia.
💽 https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1506283895771348994?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mhmck Moscow imperialists can’t stand the thought of losing the war to Ukrainians. It means, to them, “Great Russians” being defeated by “Little Russians.” ¤ That’s why it’s likely Muscovy will escalate against NATO. Not because they will win, but because they will lose to a peer.
🐣 RT @chrismillerJM Zelensky mentions Romantschenko in address. “He survived in Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Peenemünde, and Bergen-Belson… And he was killed by a Russian projectile that hit an ordinary Kharkiv high-rise building. Each passing day makes clear what [Russia’s] ‘denazification’ is.”
💙 🐣 RT @navalny(✓) 9 years. Well, as the characters of my favorite TV series “The Wire” used to say: “You only do two days. That’s the day you go in and the day you come out” ¤ I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it, considering the print extremist.
🖼 BBC, John Self: The stories that reveal the soul of Ukraine http://bbc.in/3L7OnBY
// The history of Ukrainian literature reflects the country’s tragic conflicts, its diverse population, and the people’s distinctive humour, writes John Self.WaPo, David Von Drehle: The man known as ‘Putin’s brain’ envisions the splitting of Europe — and the fall of China http://wapo.st/3IrRHWR “Dugin envisions a gradual dividing of Europe into zones of German and Russian influence, with Russia very much in charge”
On the eve of his murderous invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a long and rambling discourse denying the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians, a speech many Western analysts found strange and untethered. Strange, yes. Untethered, no. The analysis came directly from the works of a fascist prophet of maximal Russian empire named Aleksandr Dugin.
Dugin’s intellectual influence over the Russian leader is well known to close students of the post-Soviet period, among whom Dugin, 60, is sometimes referred to as “Putin’s brain.” His work is also familiar to Europe’s “new right,” of which Dugin has been a leading figure for nearly three decades, and to America’s “alt-right.” Indeed, the Russian-born former wife of the white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, Nina Kouprianova, has translated some of Dugin’s work into English.
But as the world watches with horror and disgust the indiscriminate bombing of Ukraine, a broader understanding is needed of Dugin’s deadly ideas. Russia has been running his playbook for the past 20 years, and it has brought us here, to the brink of another world war.
A product of late-period Soviet decline, Dugin belongs to the long, dismal line of political theorists who invent a strong and glorious past — infused with mysticism and obedient to authority — to explain a failed present. The future lies in reclaiming this past from the liberal, commercial, cosmopolitan present (often represented by the Jewish people). Such thinkers had a heyday a century ago, in the European wreckage of World War I: Julius Evola, the mad monk of Italian fascism; Charles Maurras, the reactionary French nationalist; Charles Coughlin, the American radio ranter; and even the author of a German book called “Mein Kampf.”
Dugin tells essentially the same story from a Russian point of view. Before modernity ruined everything, a spiritually motivated Russian people promised to unite Europe and Asia into one great empire, appropriately ruled by ethnic Russians. Alas, a competing sea-based empire of corrupt, money-grubbing individualists, led by the United States and Britain, thwarted Russia’s destiny and brought “Eurasia” — his term for the future Russian empire — low.
In his magnum opus, “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,” published in 1997, Dugin mapped out the game plan in detail. Russian agents should foment racial, religious and sectional divisions within the United States while promoting the United States’ isolationist factions. (Sound familiar?) In Great Britain, the psy-ops effort should focus on exacerbating historic rifts with Continental Europe and separatist movements in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Western Europe, meanwhile, should be drawn in Russia’s direction by the lure of natural resources: oil, gas and food. NATO would collapse from within.
Putin has followed that counsel to the letter, and he must have felt things were going well when he saw window-smashing rioters in the corridors of the U.S. Congress, Britain’s Brexit from the European Union and Germany’s growing dependence on Russian natural gas. With the undermining of the West going so well, Putin has turned to the pages of Dugin’s text in which he declared: “Ukraine as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia,” and “without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.”
So what comes next, should Putin manage to “resolve” Russia’s “problem” in Ukraine? Dugin envisions a gradual dividing of Europe into zones of German and Russian influence, with Russia very much in charge thanks to its eventual stranglehold over Germany’s resource needs. As Great Britain crumbles and Russia picks up the pieces, the empire of Eurasia will ultimately stretch, in Dugin’s words, “from Dublin to Vladisvostok.” …
🔄🐣🌎 Russia looks overwhelming huge on many maps, but remember Russia has less that half the pop. of the US. It’s about twice as big but much further north (20% inside the Arctic Circle). It has about 1/20th the US GDP (about the same GDP as NY state)
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1506431831436111878?s=20/photo/1😅 RT @TourOfTheFuture (Downfall Bunker meme has entered the chat)
💽 https://twitter.com/TourOfTheFuture/status/1505245143749861383?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @andersostlund This is huge. If confirmed, and Ukraine manage to keep the siege, this could become the first major victory of the war. An entire Russian army could be erased. I hold by breath waiting for confirmation.
📌 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1506269779765743616?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @sumlenny According to unconfirmed but realistic looking reports, Russian troops have got surrounded in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel area near Kyiv, cut from supplies. If true – the biggest defeat of a Russian army until now, and Ukraine needs to start worrying about too many POWs.TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Ukraine Must Win http://bit.ly/3IpVcgA Putin “has just thrown away 30 years of economic gains, 30 years of Russian integration with the outside world, 30 years of investment in order to turn the clock back to the era of his youth”
// Ukrainians and the world’s democratic powers must work toward the only acceptable endgame.Precisely because the stakes are so high, the next few weeks will be extremely dangerous. Putin will do what he can to create fear. The extraordinary speech he made last week, describing Russian critics of the war as “scum,” “traitors,” and “gnats,” had exactly that purpose. He spoke of Russia’s need for “self-purification” using a word with the same root as purge, the term that Stalin used when ordering the liquidation of his enemies. Putin is deliberately evoking the worst and bloodiest era of Soviet history to avoid even a hint of domestic opposition. He has just thrown away 30 years of economic gains, 30 years of Russian integration with the outside world, 30 years of investment in order to turn the clock back to the era of his youth—an era that the majority of Russians no longer remember and few wish to see restored. He seems to believe that only elevated levels of fear will prevent them from protesting, once they understand what has happened to their country. He may be right.
Putin and his propagandists are dropping hints about chemical and nuclear weapons for the same reason. They want outsiders, and especially Americans, to fear the consequences of helping Ukraine. The use of hypersonic weaponry; the threats of nuclear war made on Russian television; even the habit, established a few years back, of practicing the use of nuclear weapons during military exercises, sometimes to simulate a hit on Warsaw, sometimes to simulate a bomb exploding in the air—all of that has a purpose. So does the strange, ranting, anti-Polish letter issued by Dimitri Medvedev, the Putin crony who briefly served as president of Russia before Putin decided he wanted the job back again. This screed contained insults, veiled threats, and an old Soviet-era complaint that the Poles were “ungrateful” that the Red Army pushed Hitler out of Poland, and then established a brutal new occupation regime in Hitler’s wake. Among other things, Medvedev was sending a reminder: Poland could be next. The recent Russian strike on a base near the Polish border sent the same message.
How should the West respond? There is only one rule: We cannot be afraid. Russia wants us to be afraid—so afraid that we are crippled by fear, that we cannot make decisions, that we withdraw altogether, leaving the way open for a Russian conquest of Ukraine, and eventually of Poland or even further into Europe. Putin remembers very well an era when Soviet troops controlled the eastern half of Germany. But the threat to those countries will not decrease if Russia carries out massacres in Ukraine. It will grow.
Instead of fear, we should focus on a Ukrainian victory. Once we understand that this is the goal, then we can think about how to achieve it, whether through temporary boycotts of Russian gas, oil, and coal; military exercises elsewhere in the world that will distract Russian troops; humanitarian airlifts on the scale of 1948 Berlin; or more and better weapons.
The specific tactics will be determined by those who best understand diplomacy and military strategy. But the strategy has to be clear. A month ago, nobody believed this war would matter so much, and I’m sure many people wish it did not. But it does. That’s why every move we make must have a single goal: How does it help Ukraine win?
“It’s not our war” was something we might have been able to say three weeks ago. Not now.
🔄 📋 OCCRP: Russian Asset Tracker http://bit.ly/36jjQT9
🚫🧵 RT @IgorSushko BREAKING: Large-scale mutiny is underway inside the FSB. I can’t publish the details until certain preparations & arrangements are made. ¤ Led by the #WindofChange, it’s happening because the #FSBletters are not being acted on by the West to respond to Putin with force to stop him
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1506181620079861760?s=20
// who knows if this is real, not biting⭕ 21 Mar 2022
🔄 📋 TheGuardian: What is the Russian asset tracker and why are we publishing it? http://bit.ly/3tuOBNE
// Transparency is needed if sanctions imposed after invasion of Ukraine are to be properly enforced🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 💙💛ICYMI 7-year-old Amelia Anisovych, who sang “Let It Go” from a #Kyiv bomb shelter, melted an entire arena of hearts at a benefit concert for #Ukraine in #Łódź, #Poland, singing the Ukrainian national anthem. A capella and in perfect pitch!😍
#SlavaUkraini #СлаваУкраїні🇺🇦
💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1506162357940088834?s=20/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
💙 🐣 RT @MichalSzczerba Sunday’s concert „Together with @Ukraine” in Łódź began national anthem sang by Amelia. The girl has become widely known thanks to a viral video in which she sings a touching song from the animated movie „Frozen”, while hiding in a bunker in Kiev.
⋙ 💽 https://twitter.com/MichalSzczerba/status/1506007604052385792?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @GeneralClark Are we doing enough for Ukraine? Some say, Yes. Ukraine says, No. I’d trust Ukraine on this – Do more! If we lose Ukraine, Putin wins – and next fight is the Baltics!
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews So nauseating that we’re witnessing this unfold and it will only keep getting worse. Every time I don’t hear back from friends and family, I keep wondering if I ever will again. They’re all near the areas being bombed
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR Biden says Putin is weighing use of chemical weapons in Ukraine – Reuters
🐣 RT @kasparov63 I’ve been asked several times on shows “Should we put US/NATO pilots into possible combat with Russians?” My reply is, please finish the sentence. “… in order to stop the slaughter of innocents on the ground in Ukraine?” This isn’t an academic exercise.
⋙⋙ 🐣 my concern is not so much a full-blown nuclear war but that Putin would view this as enough justification to use tactical nuclear or chem/bio weapons ¤ unless he’s totally irrational in which case I AM afraid of full-blown nuclear war; oh well, I’ve got a place in remote Montana…
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov63 There are situations in which the answer is obviously yes. To defend the US from attack? Yes. To defend any NATO country? Supposedly yes. To prevent genocide? Apparently not.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Acc to @KattyKay_ on @Morning_Joe, @jensstoltenberg DID NOT rule out tactical nuclear weapons being okay as long as they were used “within” Ukraine and not a NATO country (no mention of fallout). I was literally yelling at my tv
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov63 Putin did not need any pretext to launch this invasion. He did not need any pretext to shell & bomb innocent civilians in Ukraine. He won’t need an pretext to use nuclear weapons. What we do know is that Putin always escalates when he isn’t stopped.🐣 To counteract the missile onslaught in the coming phase of the war, 🇺🇦 desperately needs more robust ground-to-air missile defense systems, not MiGs or a no-fly zone. I hope it’s a good sign we’re not hearing about action being taken to deliver these
⋙ 🐣 as for Patriot systems, why can’t Ukrainians be trained to use these in Poland or another country?🚫 WSJ: U.S. Sending Soviet Air Defense Systems It Secretly Acquired to Ukraine http://on.wsj.com/3tpWuE6
// secrecy; The Pentagon over the years has acquired Soviet equipment as part of a clandestine program, and now such weapons are going to UkraineThe systems, which one U.S. official said include the SA-8, are decades old and were obtained by the U.S. so it could examine the technology used by the Russian military and which Moscow has exported around the world. ¤ The weapons are familiar to Ukraine’s military, which inherited this type of equipment following the breakup of the Soviet Union. ¤ The Pentagon declined to comment on the U.S. decision to reach into its little-known arsenal of Soviet weapons, which comes as the Biden administration is mounting a major push to expand Ukraine’s air defense capabilities.
🐣 RT @TrumpRussiaTies A Nine-Page Document in a High-Profile Jan. 6 Case Reveals What Many Already Suspected About the Capitol Riot
⋙ Slate: A Chilling Nine-Page Document in a Jan. 6 Trial Reveals What Many Already Suspected the Capitol Riot http://bit.ly/3Na5vJd
// “This wasn’t something people were bragging about or trying to flex. This was actual instructions.”🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln As night falls on the 28th day of the war in Ukraine, let’s not forget those who helped make it happen.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1506029497136656387?s=20/photo/1
// GOP enablers🐣 RT @tribelaw “Garry Kasparov reported on Saturday that a joke is making the rounds on what is left of the Russian Internet: ‘We are now entering day 24 of the special military operation to take Kyiv in two days.'”
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Against all odds, Ukrainians are winning. Russia’s initial offensive has failed. http://wapo.st/3CZhx3n🐣 RT @KyivPost “I am confident that by attacking us, they will destroy everything that Russian society has achieved over the past 25 years. And they will return to where they once began to rise from, as they say, to the “the wicked 90’s”,” #Zelensky reported
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Not all of the aid got to Ukraine. And Putin knew that he had an ally not just in Trump (who only allowed the aid to be sent after he was caught) but also in Congressional Republicans who adopted Putin’s disinformation and propaganda in support of Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Ben Sasse on Fox News: “The former president said that he had a ‘perfect phone call’ [w/Zelensky]. It was obviously not a perfect phone call. There was a lot wrong with it. But ultimately, the aid did get to Ukraine.”🐣 RT @MiriamElder The harrowing story of how Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka fled Mariupol, after Russia began hunting them down, knowing the two men’s essential reporting was the biggest threat to their crude propaganda and brutal lies
⋙ AP: We witnessed Mariupol’s agony and fled a Russian hit list http://bit.ly/3JwHfi8NewYorker, David Remnick: Weakness of the Despot http://bit.ly/3t2uk1N “The courage of the Ukrainian people and the bravery and smarts of the Ukrainian government, and its President, Zelensky, galvanized the West to remember who it was” An interview with Stephen Kotkin
// 3/11/2022; An expert on Stalin [Stephen Kotkin] discusses Putin, Russia, and the West.
● [TextBlock:] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1505865775864848385?s=20How do you define “the West”?
The West is a series of institutions and values. The West is not a geographical place. Russia is European, but not Western. Japan is Western, but not European. “Western” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and all the other freedoms that we enjoy, which we sometimes take for granted. We sometimes forget where they came from. But that’s what the West is. And that West, which we expanded in the nineties, in my view properly, through the expansion of the European Union and NATO, is revived now, and it has stood up to Vladimir Putin in a way that neither he nor Xi Jinping expected.
💙 🐣 Bill Taylor, Fmr Amb to Ukraine: ‘We can’t let Putin set all the rules. Ukraine controlling Ukraine would not be in NATO’s interest.’ Bravo! @JoeNBC @Morning_Joe
↥ ↧
🐣 @IgnatiusPost needs to go soak his head in ice water. if ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ are acceptable “inside Ukraine” (the fallout doesn’t care, btw), Russia can simply take over any non-NATO country it wants @Morning_Joe @JoeNBC
↥ ↧
🐣 here’s an idea: what if the US ‘threatens’ Ukraine with tactical nukes *or else* be absorbed into the United States ~ at which point it would be protected by NATO! ¤ @ignatiuspost @JoeNBC @Morning_Joe
↥ ↧
🐣 Proposal: ¤ 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not be the first to use a nuclear weapon (not even a little one) ~ NATO ¤ @Morning_Joe🐣 RT @michaeldweiss U.S. officials see signs Russia is shifting strategy to secure territorial objectives and seek leverage to compel the Ukrainian government to accept neutrality via
@WSJ
⋙ WSJ: Russia, Failing to Achieve Early Victory in Ukraine, Is Seen Shifting to ‘Plan Bhttp://on.wsj.com/3wspsoH
// Tactical shift seeks to pressure Ukraine into accepting neutrality and Russian territorial claims, U.S. officials say🧵 RT @maxfras This morning, Dmitry Medvedev decided to post a lengthy letter “On Poland” – it is a curious mix of Soviet and pan-Slavic mythology with mockery, dire criticism and veiled threats against Poland – here are the key points
📌 https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1505843869707116547?s=20🐣 RT @ukraine_world Putin targets the civillians because is failing to achieve military goals in Ukraine, Lloyd Austin, United States secretary of defense, says.
⭕ 20 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @NovelSci At least, 13 Russian generals and commanders were killed in 3 wks. 4.3/wk is a US Civil or Revolutionary war kind of loss for high-ranking officers. In the US Civil War, we saw an avg of 500 deaths/day. Russia is seeing 2x that every day, per US intel.
⋙ WaPo: Russia’s war for Ukraine could be headed toward stalemate http://wapo.st/
// Casualties, equipment losses and a lack of progress on the ground are taking an unsustainable toll, experts sayWSJ: Who Is Volodymyr Zelensky? What to Know About Ukraine’s President http://on.wsj.com/3tsAetk
// The former actor and comedian now leads his country’s resistance to Russia’s invasion, remaining in Ukraine and determined to fight💙 🧵 RT @Hromadske Mariupol today. We publish the full text by Nadia Sukhorukova.
I go outside in between the bombings. I need to walk the dog. She’s whining, shivering, and hiding behind my legs. I want to sleep all the time. My yard, surrounded by high-rise buildings, is silent and dead. 1/13
📌 https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1505679967107092482?s=20WSJ: Russia’s Push for Self-Sufficient Economy Fails Before Western Sanctions http://on.wsj.com/3Iw3Iuu “Russia’s dependence on imports actually worsened.… In 2021, some 81% of manufacturers said they couldn’t find any Russian versions of imported products they needed”
// Building Fortress Russia was supposed to protect the country from sanctions. It is still highly dependent on imports.🐣 RT @MKarnitschnig „We misjudged Putin,“ Merkel‘s longtime foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen says on German TV. #NoShit
🧵 RT @AfterWestphalia 1/7 There is much discussion over when and how a peace deal should be struck on Ukraine. These are things for the people and leadership of Ukraine to decide. It is informed by more than the destruction of cities. It is rooted in a history of colonialism and imperialism.
📌 https://twitter.com/AfterWestphalia/status/1505555272122646533?s=20⋙ 2/7 It is predicated on fears of cultural, social, & economic repression grounded in historical realities & myths arisen from more than 700 years interactions. It is rooted in the overthrow of the Hetmanate and extends through hundreds of years of foreign conquest.
⋙ 3/7 It is forged in the liquidation of intelligentsia in multiple parts of Ukraine with the rise of the Bolsheviks and crushing of democracy in 1918, and in the forced collectivization and starvation of millions eastern Ukrainians during Holodomor.
⋙ 4/7 It was crystallized in the scorched earth policies of the of the retreats of both the Red Army and then Nazis. And the subsequent rape and pillage of Ukraine by the Red Army as the Nazis retreated. Resulting in millions of Ukrainian deaths.
⋙ 4/7 Cultural oppression and subjugation from the Tsars to the soviets sought to hide Ukrainian culture, poetry, art, and language. It resulted in the forced colonization of millions of Ethnic Russians to Поселок (settlements) throughout Ukraine.
⋙ 5/7 no 🧵can do justice to the complexity of the relationship between Ukraine and Russia this is a simplification. There is immense fear not only in the destruction of cities and the loss of life, but in a reversion to being subjugated under an oppressive colonial power.
⋙ 6/7 When developing a calculus of peace a failure to take into account these fears and to only account for the human toll of cities is to misread the conflict. There are intangible aspects to war and peace that exist beyond a pure rational choice matrix of land and lives.🧵 RT @AfterWestphalia 1/7 There is much discussion over when and how a peace deal should be struck on Ukraine. These are things for the people and leadership of Ukraine to decide. It is informed by more than the destruction of cities. It is rooted in a history of colonialism and imperialism.
📌 https://twitter.com/AfterWestphalia/status/1505555272122646533?s=20🐣 RT @komitet2012 ⚡️⚡️⚡️the recent polls: 77 % Ukrainians think things in 🇺🇦goes to the right direction, 93% believes 🇺🇦will win this war, 47%- victory in a few weeks, 23%- a few months, 82%-don’t believe 🇺🇦will split. Main enemies: Russia (98%), Belarus (84%). The most friendly states: 🇵🇱🇱🇹 🇬🇧 🇺🇸
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on Russian state TV: desperate to corroborate Putin’s ridiculous fabrication about Ukraine’s alleged “Nazi government,” propagandist Vladimir Soloviev argued that President Volodymyr Zelensky “isn’t really Jewish.”
WaPo: Putin’s war propaganda becomes ‘patriotic’ lessons in Russian schools http://wapo.st/3ukTBns “It’s another front in … Putin’s sweeping crackdowns to criminalize dissent and enforce an unquestioning brand of patriotism even as Russia grows increasingly isolated”
🧵 RT @EerikNKross A friend asked for an explanation why “It’s just Putin” is wrong and dangerous. I felt it needs a longer response. Here it is:
📌 https://twitter.com/EerikNKross/status/1505669877809483785?s=20🧵 RT @AseyevStanislav According to the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, there is growing opposition to Vladimir Putin among political and business circles advocating for his urgent removal from power and restoration of economic and diplomatic ties with the West. 1/5
📌 https://twitter.com/AseyevStanislav/status/1505588260453634050?s=20🐣 RT @PaulaChertok I hope NATO is preparing. Putin’s not going to stop killing Ukrainians & not going to stop at Ukraine. Because the threat he wants to obliterate is democracy—not just at Russia’s door (hello Baltics) but anywhere. As long as democracy inspires Russians, Putin will try to kill it.
NYT: Truth Is Another Front in Putin’s War http://nyti.ms/3N4shlH “[T]he Kremlin has cycled through a torrent of lies to explain why it had to wage a ‘special military operation’ against a sovereign neighbor. Drug-addled neo-Nazis. Genocide. American biological weapons factories”
// The Kremlin has used a barrage of increasingly outlandish falsehoods to prop up its overarching claim that the invasion of Ukraine is justified.[T]he Kremlin has cycled through a torrent of lies to explain why it had to wage a “special military operation” against a sovereign neighbor. Drug-addled neo-Nazis. Genocide. American biological weapons factories. Birds and reptiles trained to carry pathogens into Russia. Ukrainian forces bombing their own cities, including theaters sheltering children. …
Using a barrage of increasingly outlandish falsehoods, President Vladimir V. Putin has created an alternative reality, one in which Russia is at war not with Ukraine but with a larger, more pernicious enemy in the West. Even since the war began, the lies have gotten more and more bizarre, transforming from claims that “true sovereignty” for Ukraine was possible only under Russia, made before the attacks, to those about migratory birds carrying bioweapons.
🧵 RT @KofmanMichael Thoughts on the current state of the war and where things might be heading. About 2 weeks ago I suggested that Russian forces have ~3 weeks before combat effectiveness becomes increasingly exhausted. I think that’s generally been right, but we’re not quite there yet. Thread. 1/
📌 🌎 https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1505596135867662336?s=20&t=JJvhpjxX-LVXyL8VzR7Maw/photo/1🧵 RT @PhillipsPOBrien A thread about how we report supposed victories in war (this one and others), why they dont matter nearly as much as people claim, and how they actually deceive us into understanding what really matters. Partly motivated by this @nytimes headline.
📌 https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1505450685260783616?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Pontifex Let us be close to this martyred people, let us embrace them with affection with concrete commitment and prayer. And please let us not get used to war and violence, let us not tire of welcoming them with generosity, not only now, but also in the weeks and months to come. #Ukraine
🐣 RT @AymanM Don’t look away from this. I know it’s hard. It’s graphic. It’s disturbing. Mariupol has been decimated. And this could happen to other cities in Ukraine if Russia is not stopped immediately.
💽 https://twitter.com/AymanM/status/1505592570314952719?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @NickKnudsenUS President Zelenskyy has me in tears with this video. This is pure brilliance.
“Yes, Ukraine was beautiful. But now, it will become great.” – @ZelenskyyUa
Please watch. #LongLiveUkraine
💽 https://twitter.com/NickKnudsenUS/status/1505569754068660226?s=20/photo/1🔊President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy:
We will win.
There will be new cities.
There will be new dreams.
There will be a new story.
There will be, there’s no doubt.
And those we’ve lost will be remembered.
And we will sing again, and we will celebrate anew. 🇺🇦⭕ 19 Mar 2022
WSJ: Reported Detention of Russian Spy Boss Shows Tension Over Stalled Ukraine Invasion, US Officials Say http://on.wsj.com/3iFdaS1 “[T]he campaign that Moscow expected to culminate in a lightning seizure of [Kyiv] has instead turned into a costly and embarrassing morass”
// U.S. deems credible reports that chief of FSB intelligence agency’s Ukraine unit is under house arrest; bickering between FSB, defense ministry🐣 RT @calxandr Ukraine has an inherent right to individual & collective self-defence under article 51 the @UN Charter. ¤ All states upholding the Charter & core principles of international law have a right & duty to join Ukraine’s self-defence. ¤ #StopRussia #CloseTheSky #DefendUkraine
🐣 RT @anders_aslund The International Court of Justice established that Russia started an unprovoked war of aggression & must withdraw instantly. Putin has not done so. Therefore $400 bn of Russian central bank rightly been seized by G-7 governments should be legally confiscated.
🐣 RT @EliotHiggins We’ve never seen a situation where there’s so much evidence of war crimes and so much engagement with the accountability community in that evidence. You just have to look at our civilian harm map to get a sense of that
⋙📲 Bellingcat: Hospitals Bombed and Apartments Destroyed: Mapping Incidents of Civilian Harm in Ukraine http://bit.ly/36wjx70 “Bellingcat and members of its Global Authentication Project have begun to log and map these incidents on an interactive TimeMap”
// 3/17/2022; Bellingcat is mapping incidents that appear to have led to civilian harm and damaged civilian infrastructure in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
// With more videos and images coming to light each day, Bellingcat and members of its Global Authentication Project have begun to log and map these incidents on an interactive TimeMap.🐣 RT @yermolenko_v Ukrainians are showing to the democratic world that democratic values are not only defendable, but defendable heroically. Counter-current to general mood of decadence and frustration in the democratic world over the past decades
🐣 RT @POLITICOEurope US President Joe Biden spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping in a call that exposed a deepening divide between the leaders’ positions on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s claims to Taiwan.
⋙ Politico: Biden’s call with Xi underscores deepening bilateral deadlock http://politi.co/3KXOFLL
// The lack of any substantive results from the discussion calls into question whether the two leaders’ personal relationship can bridge deep differences in their positions.🐣 RT @CoolnessComic Rise up and resist✊🏼 Text Block: https://twitter.com/CoolnessCosmic/status/1505003374038552581?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Text: If Zelenskyy and brave Ukraine men and women can stand in their streets with light weapons and a few Javelins against a mechanized army and say “Fuck you!” to the whiny, belligerent insanity of a thug dictator and his petro-mafiya, can’t we take inspiration and defend our own democracy?
Edward Norton, American actor
HUMAN REFORM POLITICS: A force for positive change🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ NATO to send air defense systems to Slovakia. ¤ Germany and the Netherlands will deliver MIM-104 Patriot PAC-3 air defense systems to Slovakia. ¤ Prior, Slovak Defense Minister said that his country would transfer the Soviet-made S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @StratcomCentre [UA] Ukrainian military took back control over more than 30 towns and villages in the Kyiv region. In some directions, the Armed Forces of Ukraine repelled the Russian troops to positions up to 70 kilometers away from Kyiv. #StopRussia
WaPo: Mixed signals from Ukraine’s president and his aides leave West confused about his end game http://wapo.st/3qf2Nby “If Russian President Vladimir Putin can use military force to compel political change in Ukraine, he could use the same tactic elsewhere”
// Volodymyr Zelensky faces agonizing choices at the negotiation table with Russia. His government is still sorting out what might be acceptable, say U.S. and European officials.⭕ 18 Mar 2022
CleanTechnica: Whose Gas Will Europe Import Now? The Choice Matters http://bit.ly/36zpVdH “Russia’s pipelines are both longer (on an individual basis) and leakier than the infrastructure in the United States and Qatar” (regarding methane leakage of liquified natural gas (LNG)
// Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has brought instability, violence, and human tragedy on a massive scale, with effects rippling across the continent and globally.VOA: Pope Calls Ukraine War ‘Perverse Abuse of Power’ for Partisan Interests http://bit.ly/3ijvvUa “‘The blood and tears of children, the suffering of women and men who are defending their land or fleeing from bombardments shakes our conscience,’ he said.”
🧵 RT @RALee85 [Rob Lee] Thread on the current status of the war. There are 4 areas/cities to watch over the next 1-2 weeks:
-Mikolaiv
-Mariupol
-Joint Forces Operation area
-Kyiv
Russian forces are having some successes pushing against JFO but less against Kyiv and Mikolaiv. (map from @TheStudyofWar)
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1504927427230904320?s=20🐣 RT @BillClinton America stands united with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and against oppression.
💽 https://twitter.com/BillClinton/status/1504932025928667143?s=20/photo/1
// Bill Clinton and George W Bush lay bouquets of sunflowers at Ukrainian church🌎🧵 ThreadReader, @JominiW: 1/ Ukrainian Theater of War, Day 22 & 23: The fourth week of the war opened with a series of Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donbas, and Mykolaiyv areas. Russian forces remain relatively combat ineffective outside the Donbas region. #UkraineUnderAttack #Ukraine http://bit.ly/3wosKt5
📌 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1505043913652027393?s=20🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews I’ve never seen any other American TV program parroting Russian talking points more persistently than Tucker Carlson—along with his recurring pro-Russian guests—nor have I ever seen any other U.S. show translated and broadcast with such frequency on Russian state TV. #TuckyoRose
🐣 RT @avalaina This is 16-year-old Katya. Her family came under fire from the Russians during the evacuation from Vorzel. She covered her brother Igor with her body. When Katya started bleeding, 8-year-old Igor got out of the car and started shouting Russians to stop. ¤ Photo TV channel Ukraine
WaPo: Computer programmers are taking aim at Russia’s propaganda wall http://wapo.st/3u5jKGt “The volunteers behind today’s efforts say they hope to help overcome the Russian government’s suppression of the war’s devastated cities, bombed hospitals and humanitarian catastrophes”
// A scrum of international ‘information warriors’ is racing to pierce the Kremlin’s propaganda bubble by broadcasting on shortwave radio, texting Russian strangers and sifting through military data leaks🐣 RT @PostOpinions The goal for the West in general, and the United States in particular, must be to hasten the defeat of Putin’s army, Michael @McFaul writes:
⋙ WaPo, Michael McFaul: Why the West must boost military assistance to Ukraine http://wapo.st/3MZGQXQ
// 3/16/2022; Ukraine will win. The West’s job is to hasten the end of the war.MoscowTimes [Indep]: Search for Ukraine Theater Bombing Survivors as War Crime Claims Mount http://bit.ly/3whOeI0 “It’s not Mariupol anymore.… It is hell.”
Rescue workers searched desperately for any survivors buried beneath the rubble of Mariupol’s bombed-out theater Friday, as Russia’s forces pounded residential areas across Ukraine, stoking allegations of war crimes.
Twenty-four hours after Mariupol’s once-gleaming whitewashed theater was hollowed out by a Russian strike, the number of dead, injured or trapped is still unclear. ¤ Ukraine’s ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said a bombshelter in the building had survived the impact, and some “adults and children” had emerged alive. ¤ “Work is underway to unlock the basement,” she said, amid fears that up to 1,000 people may have been taking refuge underground at the time of the blast.
The attack on a civilian building marked with the words “DETI,” or “children” in Russian, has sparked a wave of international revulsion and heaped pressure on Russia’s few remaining allies — most notably China — to condemn Moscow’s apparent deliberate targeting of civilians.
In a call later Friday U.S. President Joe Biden is set to warn his counterpart Xi Jinping that Beijing will face “costs” for “any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression,” according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. ¤ In the wake of the theater attack, Blinken also said it was “difficult to conclude” that Vladimir Putin’s regime had not engaged in war crimes by targeting civilians. ¤ Biden hoped China would use “whatever leverage they have to compel Moscow to end this war,” the top U.S. diplomat said.
Russia has routinely denied such allegations and the Ministry of Defense has said it did not strike any ground targets in Mariupol on the afternoon the theater was hit. ¤ It instead claimed Ukraine’s hardline nationalist Azov battalion, a frequent target of Russian propaganda, mined the theater and held civilian hostages there in “a new bloody provocation.”
Russia’s siege of the city — cutting power, as well as many communications links and food supplies — has closed access and made independent verification all but impossible. ¤ Local officials say more than 2,000 people have died so far in indiscriminate shelling, and 80% of its housing has been destroyed.
“In the streets, there are the bodies of many dead civilians,” Tamara Kavunenko, 58, told AFP after fleeing the city. ¤ “It’s not Mariupol anymore,” she said. “It is hell.”
Ukrainian MP Sergiy Taruta said that Russian forces’ blockade of the city, killing of medics and destroying emergency equipment was stymying rescue efforts. ¤ He claimed some people had emerged from the wreckage, but warned: “all those who survived the bombing will either die under the rubble of the theater or have already died.”
Italy’s minister of culture Dario Franceschini said his country was ready to rebuild the theater “as soon as possible.” ¤ With stop-start peace talks ongoing, officials in Kyiv said Russia had agreed to nine humanitarian corridors Thursday for fleeing refugees, including one out of Mariupol. …
🐣 RT @herszenhorn Putin’s war in Ukraine seems destined to go down as one of the greatest strategic mistakes by a leader in human history, exposing his armed forces as inept and his politics as morally bankrupt. Ukrainians are fleeing his bombs; Russians are fleeing him.
⋙ Politico [EU]: Kremlin’s occupation blueprint goes up in smoke as Ukraine fights back http://politi.co/3ihQXZV
// Amid killings, kidnappings and abuse, Ukrainians are thwarting Putin’s plans to rerun his Crimea occupation playbook.Reuters: Missiles destroy aircraft repair plant in Lviv – mayor http://reut.rs/3KV4xP0
🧵 RT @DefenceU МАРІУПОЛЬ [MARIUPOL status]
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1504696091882758147?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenceU ⚓️MARIUPOL⚓️
🤬 Thousands killed by russian invaders!
🤬 90% of the city was destroyed by putin’s soldiers’ shelling it.
🤬 russians hold Mariupol residents hostage, blocking humanitarian corridors.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenceU
🤬 There is no power, gas or heat in the city.
🤬 There is no living, only continuous grief, fire, and endless shelling with all types of fascist weaponry.
❗️Russian monsters will pay for their crimes!⭕ 17 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @USEmbUN Ukraine will never be a victory for Putin. No matter what advances he makes, no matter whom he kills or what cities he destroys. ¤ The United States stands with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people – and we will do everything in our power to end this tragic, unnecessary war.
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag MUST READ THREAD: The Russian siege of Mariupol is one of the worst war crimes of the twenty-first century. Please read this harrowing text to learn more about the suffering inflicted on the civilian population by Putin’s troops
⋙ 🧵 RT @rshereme The faint hearted should not read this. ¤ Yesterday, at our own risk, we left Mariupol under gunfire. We stayed overnight in a field in a gray zone. It was freezing outside, thank God we are alive. We are alive to scream that everyone who stayed in Mariupol needs help!
📌 https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1504579756221558792?s=20
⋙ [last tweet] P.S. I have translated this from Svitlana Zlenko’s post. Please share it for others to understand the horror of Russian war against Ukraine.⋙ There is no connection in the city, no water, no gas, no ambulances. People with torn limbs bleed in their yards and no one can help them. These are peaceful people – our acquaintances and relatives. The dead are simply being covered by soil where they lay.
⋙ Yes, we collected snow, warmed it on a campfire, and cooked macaroni. My family was in the bomb shelter of High School No 2. Three days ago a shell flew there and shattered some of the windows. A woman was wounded in her hip.
⋙ She laid all night on the first floor of the high school asking for someone to give her poison so that she would not feel the pain. There was no one to take her to the hospital. Every day and every night there are fire shots, whistles, shaking walls and horror: Where will it hit
⋙ Doctors from Hospital No 3 (the part that survived) work heroically: they perform surgeries, they save people. The woman with the wounded hip was taken by the Red Cross within a day. I pray for her to survive. Two shells flew into our building and two into our yard.⋙ My mother, Angela, and three brothers, Roman (16 years old), Vasya (11 years old) and Vladislav (9 years old), reside in a city-center building, on the fifth floor. My mother-in-law, Lyubov, and father-in-law, Anatoly, reside on the ninth floor.
⋙ There are almost no shelters in the city left, no bunkers with ventilation. At best, people hide in basements. My mom’s building doesn’t have a basement. People need to be taken out – women, children, elderly people. Give us buses, a green corridor, make an arrangement!
⋙ I pray for my loved ones, every Mariupolian, every Ukrainian soldier. The enemy came to us and left us no choice, but there is nothing more valuable than human life. This needs to end!
⋙ There is no food, no medicine. When there will be no more snow, people won’t be able to go out for water. Pharmacies, grocery stores – everything is either looted or burned. The dead are not taken out. The police recommends to open the windows and put the corpses on the balcony.
⋙ I know you think you understand what’s going on, but you’ll never understand unless you’ve been here. I can now hear the sound of sirens and I’m not afraid. Earlier there was no power for 16 days in Mariupol so we weren’t warned before planes dropped bombs on us.⋙ I beg everyone to stop this! I don’t know what will happen next, but I pray that this will never happen again in any of the cities of Ukraine and the world. Nobody: a pregnant woman in the hospital who failed to give life because a shell fell on the hospital and killed her.
⋙ They show you how buildings burn, but they don’t show you how people burn. Do I need to burn myself for you to believe that this has to stop?! I beg you to stop this!
⋙ These 21 days changed everyone. Everything has changed! Nothing matters now, costs nothing, as long as everyone left in this Mariupol hell would not be shaken in fear and horror.🧵 RT @HannaNotte NOW: #Ukraine President #Zelenskyy addressing the German #Bundestag via video broadcast. I speak to you, the German people, as Russia bombards us, destroys everything that we have built in our country. Over past 3 weeks, 1000s of Ukrainians have been killed, incl. 800 children.
📌 https://twitter.com/HannaNotte/status/1504371316882825221?s=20NYT: As Russian Troop Deaths Climb, Morale Becomes an Issue, Officials Say http://nyti.ms/366zp0n “In 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima during World War II, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed. Now, 20 days after [Putin] invaded Ukraine, his military has already lost more soldiers”
// More than 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in less than three weeks of fighting, according to conservative U.S. estimates.It is a staggering number amassed in just three weeks of fighting, American officials say, with implications for the combat effectiveness of Russian units, including soldiers in tank formations. Pentagon officials say a 10 percent casualty rate, including dead and wounded, for a single unit renders it unable to carry out combat-related tasks.
With more than 150,000 Russian troops now involved in the war in Ukraine, Russian casualties, when including the estimated 14,000 to 21,000 injured, are near that level. And the Russian military has also lost at least three generals in the fight, according to Ukrainian, NATO and Russian officials.
Pentagon officials say that a high, and rising, number of war dead can destroy the will to continue fighting. The result, they say, has shown up in intelligence reports that senior officials in the Biden administration read every day: One recent report focused on low morale among Russian troops and described soldiers just parking their vehicles and walking off into the woods.
The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, caution that their numbers of Russian troop deaths are inexact, compiled through analysis of the news media, Ukrainian figures (which tend to be high, with the latest at 13,500), Russian figures (which tend to be low, with the latest at 498), satellite imagery and careful perusal of video images of Russian tanks and troops that come under fire.
American military and intelligence officials know, for instance, how many troops are usually in a tank, and can extrapolate from that the number of casualties when an armored vehicle is hit by, say, a Javelin anti-tank missile.
The high rate of casualties goes far to explain why Russia’s much-vaunted force has remained largely stalled outside of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
“Losses like this affect morale and unit cohesion, especially since these soldiers don’t understand why they’re fighting,” said Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration. “Your overall situational awareness decreases. Someone’s got to drive, someone’s got to shoot.”
NYT: The Future of Russia Is Leaving.’ Putin’s Critics Are Fleeing the Country. http://nyti.ms/36lUEuS “[T]ens or even hundreds of thousands of members of Russia’s liberal intelligentsia and political opposition are scrambling to escape”
Newsweek: Three Weeks Into Ukraine War, Russian Invasion Has Ground to a Halt http://bit.ly/3th2cYK “Russia’s campaign has faced stern Ukrainian resistance and been hit by military blunders … and low morale among Russian troops who, when captured have spoken of their regret”
🐣 RT @ReutersWorld UK military intelligence says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has largely stalled http://reut.rs/3tknbKt
🐣 As Simon and Garfunkel sang:
♫ Lie, lie, lie,
Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie,
Lie, lie, lie,
Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie,
La-la-la-la-lie🐣 RT @Osinttechnical Zelensky- “My priorities in the negotiations are absolutely clear. End of the war, security guarantees, sovereignty, restoration of territorial integrity, real guarantees for our country, real protection for our country”
🐣 compare https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1504373716465111042?s=20/photo/1
// Trump vs Biden with Milley and SecDef; Lafayette Park v Russia/Ukraine War🐣 RT @Billbrowder BREAKING: Major western governments set up the Russian Elite, Proxies, Oligarch Task Force to hunt down and seize the property of the Russian elite. It consists of America, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the EC.
⋙ WaPo: Biden administration identifies 50 Russian elites as targets for global hunt to seize assets http://wapo.st/366dHtd
// Treasury officials provided the list to the “Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs” taskforce, a new multinational body⭕ 16 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @XSovietNews “We decided to launch a genocide with a claim we were preventing one.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @MFA_Russia 💬 President #Putin: Encouraged by the US and other Western countries, Ukraine was purposefully preparing for a massacre & an ethnic cleansing in #Donbass. ¤ A massive onslaught on Donbass & then Crimea was simply a matter of time. These plans were shattered by our Armed Forces. https://twitter.com/XSovietNews/status/1504364327243026435?s=20/photo/1
// snarly Putin🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine You may not understand the language, but the grief on the faces of these people is clear to everyone. ¤ 📍Donetsk https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1504364531845373954?s=20&t=3t6Xmj0RQmqVQrHAPNtdGg/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine 48-year-old Olga Semidyanova died in battle with Russian Armed Forces. She had been a Military Medic since 2014 in the Donetsk region.
Olga Semidyanova was awarded the Mother-Heroine status as a mother of six children and six more adopted.
#StandWithUkraine #closeUAskyNOW🐣 RT @anders_aslund Russia has become the leading terrorist state of the world. The US, EU, UK & UN need to confirm its status as a terrorist state. ¤ Then, all Russian embassies should be closed and their intelligence officers kicked out. They don’t deal with diplomacy but information warfare.
🐣 RT @chessninja To help keep the Klitschko brothers straight, Kyiv mayor Vitaly is the former heavyweight boxing champ who has a PhD and plays chess. Wladimir is the former heavyweight boxing champ with a PhD and plays chess and is younger and taller.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisReason2 Russia claims its only hitting military targets. What does the Kyiv Mayor say to that? “BULLSHIT!” he spits. A former boxing champion, Vitale Klitschko delivers knockout sound bites that get straight to the point. Feel free to share #Ukraine #Kyiv
💽 https://twitter.com/ChrisReason7/status/1504008559566426115?s=20/photo/1
// live interview🐣 RT @petestrzok Such an honorable moment for the Koch brothers and family. ¤ “Koch Industries is staying put….Koch has several business lines in Russia, and is among the nearly 40 companies described as ‘digging in’ by refusing to curb or stop business in that nation”
⋙ CBSNews: Koch Industries stays in Russia, backs groups opposing U.S. sanctions http://cbsn.ws/34N0c0W🐣 RT @SecBlinken We saw this in Georgia in 2008. In eastern Ukraine in 2014. In Syria in 2018. In the UK in 2018. Now, it’s happening again in Ukraine in 2022. The Kremlin has consistently made up lies to shift the blame and attempt to justify its atrocities.
💽 https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1504270040295788546?s=20/photo/1
// Putin’s Pattern of Lies🐣 RT @anders_aslund Yes, Putin looks like Hitler at his end in the bunker: Recognizing no reality, just complaining that everybody has betrayed him. Can we hope that Putin commits suicide next week when it becomes obvious that his stupidity has led to his loss?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews To me, one of the most striking things about Putin’s latest unhinged speech was that he is STILL trying to sell the idea that his war against Ukraine was necessary and unavoidable. ¤ No matter how he packages it (Nazis, bio-weapons, dirty nukes, etc.), it can never be justified.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund This is an important observation, indicating that Putin is unable to adjust to reality. Therefore he is likely to be ousted, because few people are as stubbornly stupid as Putin.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @drndbl I would not be so optimistic. Stupid tyrants can survive long time. Maduro is the perfect example: his crimes/incompetence created more refugees than the war in Syria. He is still there. Putin can create a N. Korea like nightmare that potentially can even survive after his death.
🐣 First we had to learn about immunology🦠
Now we have to learn about munitions 💣
What a strange time⏳we’re living in🐣 RT @donwinslow These are war crimes. ¤ This is the calculated murder of innocent civilians. ¤ This is the bombing of hospitals and the murder of children. ¤ This is #PutinsWarCrimes
💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1503979467793833987?s=20&t=83kVQlQMlq2Dj96vERLEZg/photo/1🐣 RT @POTUS The world is united in our support for Ukraine — and in our determination to make Putin pay a very heavy price for attacking Ukraine. ¤ America is leading this effort — together with our allies and partners — providing enormous levels of security and humanitarian assistance. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1504253885619355649?s=20/photo/1
// 🖼 nice b&w photo of Blinken Biden and Milley walking🐣 RT @poroshenko Do not try to compromise with Putin, because this is the road to Munich in 1938. He said this on the air @SkyNewsBreak .
⋙ 🐣 RT @mrmikecolarusso Would anyone have imagined a former President taking up arms, fighting invaders, and fully throatily supporting his current government like this? #GloryToUkraine #StrongerTogether2022🐣 RT @PavelLatushka [Belarus government official] ❗️❗️❗️Over the past 3️⃣ hours, about 3️⃣0️⃣ fighter jets, transport planes & helicopters lifted into the sky from #Belarusian airfields in Baranovichi, Gomel, Lida, Luninets❗️
6️⃣ missiles launched near the city of Kalinkovichi. Explosions are heard in various cities of #Belarus.
📌 https://twitter.com/PavelLatushka/status/1504200509481173006?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnMarvellan More from @PavelLatushka – apparently it’s revolution time in Belarus!!!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @PavelLatushka Statement by @nau_belarus on the facts of Belarus’ occupation by #Russia, the significant loss of control over the country’s territory by the illegitimate government of #Lukashenka and drawing #Belarus into a war with #Ukraine.
🎥⬇️ https://youtu.be/J6o2psHkf4c
[[Wikipedia: Latushko became a member of the presidium of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Coordination Council.]]
⋙ 🐣 RT @PavelLatushka We state: #Belarus is an occupied territory, #Russia is an occupying country, & Lukashenka’s regime is a #puppetgovernment. We call on foreign partners to give an appropriate assessment of the current situation. Full statement: https://bit.ly/3JkfQ2S m
@StateDept @SecBlinken🐣 RT @juliaioffe Can anyone tell me why the Channel One broadcast was just interrupted for the singing of the Russian national anthem over shots of the Kremlin? I’ve never seen this. Has Russia gone full North Korea?
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe Lol now they’re onto their morning show, which begins with the most important thing that all Russian women care about, especially those who are watching this show: how not to catch a cold during the deceptive warming of winter. 😅
📌 https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1504294150585438210?s=20
// Russian tv; comments are 😅🧵 RT @anneapplebaum Putin’s call for a “self-purification” of Russian society can have only one intention: To remind Russians of Stalin and his “purges.” He wants them to be haunted by dark, ancestral memories, to remember their grandparents’ stories and to be petrified with fear.
📌 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1504274797127208964?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @mjluxmoore Ominous words from Putin about a “natural and necessary cleansing of the nation” to “spit out like flies” all representatives of a fifth column and “traitors” who do not back the Kremlin line. No wonder thousands are leaving the country in fear.
💽 https://twitter.com/mjluxmoore/status/1504134285401415681?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Get the name of the Russian commander who gave the order to bomb the theater in Mariupol with 1,000 civilians inside. Make it public. Launch a case against him at The Hague. There must be consequences!
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Putin. A dangerous and brutal man. He’s scared. He’s in a strategic disaster of his own making. He will take Russia back in time to Stalinist repression.
⋙ 🐣 RT @just_whatever I have translated and added subtitles to the latest video speech by Vladimir Putin from two hours ago. Please don’t let it go in vain – I want everyone to see what a speech of true fascism looks like. ¤ No further comment needed, it’s all here, in his speech
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1504246647718522882?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CivilWarII_book Concur. @juliaioffe says he will use nukes. She is out best cultural Rus / Putin reader. I’m going with her assessment. We are not prepared for that. […]
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Nonsense. Russians are not going to use tactical nuclear weapons. There will not be a strategic nuclear exchange. We would not tolerate the use of tac nukes. We would take action without question.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @On_Politike Watched this a few times and it is clear:
1. He is absolutely seething with anger and rage. It’s a full public meltdown
2. But the anger seems to be directed internally….at Russians! You just get the sense he is panicky because he made a huge error& may be punished by Russians🐣 RT @anders_aslund The Ukrainians say that 40% of the Russian units involved have been completely lost or lost combat capability. For how long can the deficient and demoralized Russian forces continue fighting? Their collapse might be approaching.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto New satellite images from @Maxar Technologies show that on Monday, the word “children” was spelled out outside the theater that the Mariupol City Council said was bombed on Wednesday. https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1504200008660307979?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @yaros Text Block: https://twitter.com/yaros/status/1504237852263129090?s=20/photo/1
Text: TRUMP’S RECORD ON UKRAINE:
● His hand-picked campaign manager, Manafort, worked for the ousted former pro-Russian government in Ukraine
● Altered the GOP platform to remove support for Ukraine
● Stated repeatedly during his campaign that Putin had a right to Crimea (part of Ukraine)
● Once elected, lifted sanctions against Russia for seizing Crimea
● Attacked Ukraine as “corrupt” on the world stage
● Invited Putin to the WH, but never Zelenskyy, although Zelenskyy repeatedly asked him to, to show Putin that America backed Ukraine
● Attempted to tie Ukraine to Hillary
● Withheld $400M in military aid to Ukraine
● Tried to extort Ukraine in return for them inventing anti-Biden propaganda
● Suggested Ukraine & not Russia interfered with our election
● Tried to get Putin membership in the G7
● Attacked and undermined NATO
● Ordered thousands of troops out of Germany, who have been there since WW2 to counter Russian aggression
● Withdrew America from Open Skies Treaty (which allows US/NATO to do reconnaissance flights)🐣 RT @natsechobbyist It’s critical that we never forget how we got to this moment. Excellent piece by @JoyceWhiteVance
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MSNBC A call with Zelenskyy sparked Trump’s impeachment — and we can’t forget why, @joycewhitevance writes.
⋙ MSNBC, Joyce White Vance: America can’t afford to forget Zelenskyy’s role in Trump’s first impeachment http://on.msnbc.com/36oVZRs
// Many Americans have seemingly forgotten the fateful 2019 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and how that call foreshadowed today.It was the summer of 2019. A soon-to-be whistleblower was stunned to learn about a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A White House lawyer, after learning about the president’s remarks, took a step that was at odds with White House policy: He buried the transcript of the call in an encrypted computer system used for national security information, where it was unlikely to come to light.
According to notes from the call, Trump told Zelenskyy, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” Trump wanted Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, for corruption stemming from Hunter’s work on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian company. Trump hinted that the former vice president could be complicit in the corruption, falsely claiming Biden had bragged about stopping an investigation into his son. Trump told Zelenskyy he’d arrange calls for him with both Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.
Giuliani had already been pressuring Zelenskyy to open an investigation into the baseless theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election. Giuliani also pushed the Biden corruption allegations. Never mind that the timeline didn’t work in Trump’s favor. As retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman writes in his book, Burisma was investigated during the Obama administration but the alleged misconduct transpired before Hunter Biden joined the board. There was no indication he or his father were involved. And yet, Trump later called it “a perfect phone call.”
Zelenskyy was unaware that there was a problem with the approximately $400 million in aid Congress had appropriated for Ukraine. In fact, before the call, Trump had asked his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back the aid. Members of Congress who inquired about the delay were told that it was part of an “interagency process” and members of the administration were instructed not to provide any additional information.
If none of this had come to light, it’s possible Ukraine may have given in. But the call did come to light. The inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson (subsequently fired by Trump, in April 2020) advised the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the director of national intelligence was sitting on a credible whistleblower complaint. The committee had to subpoena the director’s office, but it finally received the complaint. Trump then released a five-page summary of the call. His own version was so damaging that he was still impeached.
Barr seems to have known the whistleblower complaint was bad news from the time he got wind of it. Once the intelligence community inspector general deemed the allegations in the complaint both urgent and credible, Congress would normally have been alerted. But it wasn’t, because the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that overruled the inspector general and forced the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to withhold the complaint. Barr’s DOJ not only tried to keep the whistleblower complain out of sight, it declined to conduct a criminal investigation, concluding there was no crime because Trump hadn’t “sought a thing of value.”
It wasn’t until after the White House learned about the whistleblower complaint that Ukraine finally received the aid Congress had approved months earlier. Ukraine’s national security, which is tied to American’s national security, took a backseat to Trump’s re-election ambitions. If none of this had come to light, it’s possible Ukraine may have given in. But the call did come to light.
Trump now takes credit for the aid Ukraine received and suggests that if he were president, Ukraine would be better off. Indeed, 62 percent of Americans believe Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president. But believing Trump means putting aside reality. Trump is the president who demanded the translator’s notes after a 2017 conversation with Putin. He is the president who kept concealed, even in classified records, details of five face-to-face interactions with the Russian president from 2017 to 2019. Trump, over the course of his presidency, was increasingly hostile to NATO. At the same time, he was smitten with men like Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and Putin.
Trump is not the champion of besieged democracies. His initial instinct was to call Putin’s actions “genius” and characterize his description of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border as peacekeepers as “very savvy.” ¤ We are fortunate Congress got wind of the whistleblower complaint and made it public. We are equally fortunate to have heard the testimony of people like Vindman and former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovich. But, while the House impeached Trump, the Senate acquitted him. Among Republicans, only Mitt Romney of Utah acknowledged the facts. The Republican Party gave Trump a pass.
And Trump was clearly emboldened by his acquittal, going on to concoct an election fraud fantasy — well before the election took place and it would have been possible to know fraud was occurring. His anger when he lost erupted into a tantrum that propelled a crowd toward the Capitol and violence on Jan. 6. Had he won, Trump could have fully denuded NATO and entered into once discussed joint cyber agreements with Moscow. We could have had a president who wouldn’t protest Putin’s Ukraine ambitions; after all, as Trump said originally, they were “smart.”
We could still have a return of that president, with Trump hinting once again over the weekend that he will be a candidate in 2024. The same Trump, with a desperate desire to retake the White House and a willingness to sacrifice national interests to get there. Americans’ memories have seemingly gotten shorter and shorter. But if we are to avoid future disaster, we cannot forget the events — the facts — of July 2019.
🐣 RT @Charles_Lister NEW — S-300 air defense systems have been sent into #Ukraine, by U.S. or #NATO allies — per @RepMcCaul, the top Republican in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (stock image) https://twitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/1504131606562357251?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ABC NEW: Russian airstrikes destroyed a theater in the besieged city of Mariupol where civilians were taking shelter, Ukrainian official says. https://abcn.ws/3wubSBt https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1504226744647266305?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC U.S. to send 800 anti-aircraft systems, 9,000 anti-armor systems, 7,000 small arms, 20 million rounds of ammunition, and drones to Ukraine.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Biden announces additional support package for ‘unprecedented assistance to Ukraine’ http://on.msnbc.com/3wdCzde
// President Biden announced an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including drones and anti-aircraft systems. The president pledged to hold Russia accountable for their invasion and to provide further humanitarian aid to Ukrainians.🐣 RT @tribelaw These are genocidal terms. Putin has ensured his own permanent status as a pariah, never again to be part of the civilized world.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mjluxmoore Ominous words from Putin about a “natural and necessary cleansing of the nation” to “spit out like flies” all representatives of a fifth column and “traitors” who do not back the Kremlin line. No wonder thousands are leaving the country in fear.🐣 RT @jillrussian #Putin’s “scum” speech is one of the scariest things I have ever heard him say.
🐣 RT @nytimesworld President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday referred to pro-Western Russians as “scum and traitors” who needed to be removed from society, describing the war in Ukraine as part of an existential clash with the United States.
⋙ NYT: Putin Assails Russians Who Back the West, Signaling More Repression http://nyti.ms/3KVlGIFPresident Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday referred to pro-Western Russians as “scum and traitors” who needed to be removed from society, describing the war in Ukraine as part of an existential clash with the United States and setting the stage for an ever fiercer crackdown at home and even more aggression abroad.
Claiming that the West was trying to “cancel Russia,” the Russian leader laced his speech with derision for the “political beau monde” in Europe and the United States, and for the “slave-like” Russians who supported it. It was a far more hard-line message than one delivered earlier in the day by Mr. Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who said that Russia saw “a certain hope that a compromise can be reached” with Ukraine to end the war.
The clash in tone indicated that even as Mr. Putin was directing his officials to explore a negotiated end to a war in which Russia faced far heavier resistance than the Kremlin had anticipated, he was prepared to keep raising the stakes in his conflict with the West.
And in reserving his toughest language for fellow Russians who disagreed with him, Mr. Putin opened the door to a new wave of repression that, analysts fear, could hit a much broader swath of society than the activists and journalists the Kremlin has targeted in recent months.
“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths,” Mr. Putin said. “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges.”
The beginnings of a new crackdown quickly emerged. The authorities announced a criminal case against a popular lifestyle blogger, Veronika Belotserkovskaya, for antiwar Instagram posts that “discredited the state authorities and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.” The government blocked access to the website of BBC News and promised that this was “only the beginning of the response to the information war unleashed by the West against Russia.”
“An unprecedented information campaign has been unleashed, which involves global social networks and all Western media, the objectivity and independence of which turned out to be just a myth,” Mr. Putin said. “The struggle we are waging is a struggle for our sovereignty, for the future of our country and our children.”
Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of a political analysis firm, R. Politik, said Mr. Putin was signaling to law enforcement authorities across the country that they should target “all spheres of society that show any sympathy to the Western way of life.”
“This speech was, in part, an informal and indirect sanctioning of mass repression,” Ms. Stanovaya said. “His speech was scary — very scary.”
Mr. Putin insisted in his speech, which he delivered at the beginning of a televised videoconference with senior officials, that Russia’s military tactics in Ukraine had “fully justified themselves.” But even pro-Kremlin analysts said that Russia was becoming bogged down in a far bloodier conflict than anticipated — because Mr. Putin had apparently believed that many Ukrainian soldiers would lay down their arms rather than fight.
“The military operation is, no question, tougher going than had been expected,” said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin commentator who appears frequently on state television. “It was expected that 30 to 50 percent of the Ukrainian Armed Forces would switch over to Russia’s side. No one is switching over.”
As a result, Mr. Putin appears to be probing for an exit that would fall short of his original aim of toppling the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — even as his military continues to pound Ukrainian cities. …
But Mr. Putin has made it clear that he sees Ukraine as only one battlefield in his wider conflict with the West — a fight, he reiterated on Wednesday, that he sees as existential.
Ms. Stanovaya said that Mr. Putin appeared to be leaving the unpleasant work of negotiating a compromise to end the war to his officials, while himself setting the stage for a bigger showdown ahead with the West and with pro-Western Russians.
“It’s dirty work to negotiate with Nazis,” she said, sarcastically alluding to Mr. Putin’s rhetoric about Ukraine’s leaders. “He’s got little to be happy about in this situation.”
🐣 RT @olex_scherba Ukraine conducted a “special operation” and rescued #Melitopol mayor Ivan Fedorov from captivity in the occupied #Luhansk! Melitopol is Ukraine! Thank you all who supported the #FreeIvanFedorov hashtag! ¤ #StandWithUkraine
🐣 RT @Kevinliptakcnn Biden says he believes Putin is a “war criminal”
💽 https://twitter.com/Kevinliptakcnn/status/1504171973055848457?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @djrothkopf Every American member of Congress watching @ZelenskyyUa speak this a.m. not only heard his inspiring remarks but understood the political calculus of the moment–that right now, amazingly, the Ukrainian leader is probably more popular than any of them in their districts/states.
🐣 RT @CIJ_ICJ READ HERE: full text of the #ICJ Order indicating provisional measures in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (#Ukraine v. #Russia) https://bit.ly/3CO5AgP
⋙ Document: http://bit.ly/3JgYV13
// International Criminal Court🐣 ◕ RT @POTUS Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too. ¤ Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31. ¤ Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1504073842871963653?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @just_whatever I have translated and added subtitles to the latest video speech by Vladimir Putin from two hours ago. Please don’t let it go in vain – I want everyone to see what a speech of true fascism looks like. ¤ No further comment needed, it’s all here, in his speech
💽 https://twitter.com/just_whatever/status/1504144895501557762?s=20/photo/1DailyMail: Putin’s chilling warning to the West and oligarchs http://bit.ly/3wiFgKR oh, he maaad!
● Vladimir Putin warned ‘scum’ traitors [oligarches] that Russians will ‘spit them out like a midge that flew into their mouths’
● He said that the West’s ‘attempt to have global dominance’ is coming to end, that it’s trying to ‘cancel’ Russia
● He said that keeping Russia in check was a long-term policy of Western nations to prevent state being ‘strong’
● Russian president told citizens they are fighting for the country’s ‘sovereignty’ and ‘the future of our children’
● Latest in Moscow’s propaganda as it seeks to justify its Ukraine war, claiming it is a ‘de-nazification’ operation🐣 RT @POTUS Watch live as I deliver remarks announcing new assistance the United States is providing to Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1504140822828269568?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ngumenyuk Speeches aren’t enough to win,but they matter. Zelensky in congress: “Now I am almost 45 years old. Today my age stopped when the hearts of more than 100 children stopped beating. I see no sense in life if it cannot stop death. And this is my main mission”
💽 https://youtu.be/6YF0qfAj8IY
⋙ 🐣 RT @ngumenyuk “Strong does not mean big. Strong is brave and ready to fight for the life of his citizens and citizens of the world. ¤ For human rights, for freedom, for the right to live decently and to die when your time comes, and not when it is wanted by someone else, by your neighbor. ”🐣 RT @joshscampbell President Zelensky shows the United States Congress a video of his nation being destroyed by Vladimir Putin’s forces, and tells America: “Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”
💽 https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1504087416256307205?s=20/photo/1💙 ≣ WaPo: Text of Ukrainian President Zelensky’s virtual address to Congress http://wapo.st/3qapn54
// transcript🐣 RT @USEmbassyKyiv Today, Russian forces shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread in Chernihiv. Such horrific attacks must stop. We are considering all available options to ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @MeganJGibson Xi Jinping is in an increasingly difficult position over Ukraine. But, as @katiestallard writes, “to walk away from Beijing’s relationship with Moscow, Xi would have to admit he had made a mistake.”
⋙ NewStatesman, Katie Stallard: Caught between Putin and the West, Xi Jinping faces a crucial choice on Russia http://bit.ly/35VF2yw
// To walk away from Beijing’s relationship with Moscow, Xi would have to admit he had made a mistake – that perhaps his judgement was fallible after all.MSN, Monica Pitrelli: Anonymous declared a ‘cyber war’ against Russia. Here are the results http://bit.ly/3JoqJ40 “‘Many hacktivist groups have strong values,’ said Marianne Bailey, a cybersecurity partner at the consulting firm Guidehouse. ‘It is protesting in the 21st century’”
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress There should be an international tribunal [for Russia] and it will be…The investigative team of the International Criminal Court, together with our law enforcement officers, are already gathering all the evidence in Ukraine – Zelenskyy https://bit.ly/3KP6Umq
TheAtlantic, Brian Klaas: Vladimir Putin Has Fallen Into the Dictator Trap http://bit.ly/3i9U4Dd “To crush prospective enemies, [dictators] must demand loyalty and crack down on criticism. But the more they do so, the lower the quality of information they receive”
// Reality doesn’t conform to the theory of the rational, calculating despot who can play the long game.In the span of a couple of weeks, Vladimir Putin—a man recently described by Donald Trump as a strategic “genius”—managed to revitalize NATO, unify a splintered West, turn Ukraine’s little-known president into a global hero, wreck Russia’s economy, and solidify his legacy as a murderous war criminal.
… In my research, I’ve persistently encountered a stubborn myth—of the savvy strongman, the rational, calculating despot who can play the long game because he (and it’s typically a he) doesn’t have to worry about pesky polls or angry voters. Our elected leaders, this view suggests, are no match for the tyrant who gazes into the next decade rather than fretting about next year’s election. ¤ Reality doesn’t conform to that rosy theory.
Autocrats such as Putin eventually succumb to what may be called the “dictator trap.” The strategies they use to stay in power tend to trigger their eventual downfall. Rather than being long-term planners, many make catastrophic short-term errors—the kinds of errors that would likely have been avoided in democratic systems. They hear only from sycophants, and get bad advice. They misunderstand their population. They don’t see threats coming until it’s too late. And unlike elected leaders who leave office to riches, book tours, and the glitzy lifestyle of a statesman, many dictators who miscalculate leave office in a casket, a possibility that makes them even more likely to double down.
Despots sow the seeds of their own demise early on, when they first face the trade-off between allowing freedom of expression and maintaining an iron grip on power. After arriving in the palace, crushing dissent and jailing opponents is often rational, from the perspective of a dictator: It creates a culture of fear that is useful for establishing and maintaining control. But that culture of fear comes with a cost.
For those of us living in liberal democracies, criticizing the boss is risky, but we’re not going to be shipped off to a gulag or watch our family get tortured. In authoritarian regimes, those all-too-real risks have a way of focusing the mind. Is it ever worthwhile for authoritarian advisers to speak truth to power?
As a result, despots rarely get told that their stupid ideas are stupid, or that their ill-conceived wars are likely to be catastrophic. Offering honest criticism is a deadly game and most advisers avoid doing so. Those who dare to gamble eventually lose and are purged. So over time, the advisers who remain are usually yes-men who act like bobbleheads, nodding along when the despot outlines some crackpot scheme.
Even with such seemingly loyal cronies, despots face a dilemma. How can you trust the loyalty of an entourage that has every reason to lie and conceal its true thoughts? The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophon wrote of that inescapable paradox of tyranny: “It is never possible for the tyrant to trust that he is loved … and plots against tyrants spring from none more than from those who pretend to love them most.”
To solve this problem, despots create loyalty tests, ghoulish charades to separate true believers from pretenders. To be trusted, advisers must lie on behalf of the regime. Those who repeat absurd claims without blinking are deemed loyal. Anyone who hesitates is considered suspect.
In Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, for example, the lies have gotten progressively more ridiculous. Once a lie becomes widely accepted, the value of that individual loyalty test declines. Once everyone knows that Kim Jong Un learned to drive when he was just 3 years old, a new, more extreme lie must emerge for the test to serve its purpose. The cycle repeats itself, and a cult of personality is born.
Plenty of people around Putin understood that dynamic, which is why they were willing to parrot Putin’s outlandish claim that the Jewish president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is presiding over a “neo-Nazi” state. (Such mythmaking can happen in democracies too, if you have an authoritarian-style leader. Just consider how many Republicans have fallen over one another to endorse Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election in order to prove their MAGA bona fides.)
But to stay in power, despots have to worry about more than just their advisers and cronies. They have to win over, intimidate, or coerce their population too. That’s why dictators invest in state-sponsored media. In Russia, the state goes so far as to present fake presidential candidates who pretend to oppose Putin in rigged elections. The whole system is a Potemkin village, an illusion of choice and political debate.
Again, that mechanism of control comes with a cost. Some citizens brainwashed by state propaganda will support a war that is sure to backfire. Others privately oppose the regime, but will be too afraid to say anything. As a result, reliable polling doesn’t exist in autocracies. (Russia is no exception.) That means that despots like Putin are unable to accurately understand the attitudes of their own people.
If you live in a fake world long enough, it can start to feel real. Dictators and despots begin to believe their own lies, repeated back at them and propagated by state-controlled media. That might help explain why Putin’s recent speeches have stood out as unhinged rants. It’s certainly possible that his mind has succumbed to his own propaganda, creating a warped worldview in which the invasion of Ukraine was, as Trump put it, an incredibly “savvy” move.
The risks of miscalculation are compounded, psychology research has shown, by the fact that power literally goes to your head, including in a key way that may be relevant in explaining Putin’s costly gambit in Ukraine. The longer someone is in power, the more they begin to get a sense of what is known as “illusory control,” a mistaken belief that they can control outcomes much more than they actually can. That delusion is particularly dangerous in dictatorships, in which there are virtually no checks or balances, no term limits or free elections to boot someone from power.
Some Russia experts, such as Fiona Hill, have recently suggested that Putin has spent much of the pandemic isolated and alone, poring over old maps of the lost Russian “imperium.” Cumulatively, it’s possible to imagine how these factors combined to convince Putin that his brutal blunder in Ukraine was a good idea.
When despots screw up, they need to watch their own back. Yet again, they can become victims of the dictator trap. To crush prospective enemies, they must demand loyalty and crack down on criticism. But the more they do so, the lower the quality of information they receive, and the less they can trust the people who purport to serve them. As a result, even when government officials learn about plots to overthrow an autocrat, they may not share that knowledge. This is known as the “vacuum effect”—and it means that authoritarian presidents might learn of coup attempts and putsches only when it’s too late. This raises a question that should keep Putin awake at night: If the oligarchs were to eventually make a pmove against him, would anyone warn him?
Clearly, Putin is no fool. But as we debate possible endgames to the war in Ukraine, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Putin, like many despots, isn’t behaving fully rationally. He inhabits a fantasy world, surrounded by people who are afraid to challenge him, with a mind that has been poisoned by more than two decades as a tyrant. He’s made a catastrophic mistake in Ukraine—one that may yet prove his downfall.
Democracy isn’t perfect. It’s messy. It can be shortsighted. Many powerful democracies, including the United States, are dysfunctional. But at least our leaders face real constraints, real pushback for their miscalculations, and real criticism from their population. And, crucially, there’s a built-in mechanism to replace our leaders when they start to behave irrationally or irresponsibly.
That’s why it’s time to jettison the myth of the “savvy” strongman, or the dictator who’s a geopolitical “genius.” Putin has fallen victim to the dictator trap and proved that he is neither.
🐣 RT @mfa_russia 🇷🇺🇫🇷📞 In a phone call with President @EmmanuelMacron, President Vladimir #Putin emphasised that Ukraine settlement s possible in case of consideration for Russia’s legitimate security interests.
☝️ It was noted that Russia is open to negotiations
🔗 https://is.gd/Ku704Q
⋙ 🐣 no disarmament of former Soviet countries
no Donbas
retreat to Russian boundaries
reparations for damages to infratructure
payments to survivors of civilians killed
allow membership in EU
allow vote on change to Constitution on NATO
respect sovereignty (no meddling)🐣 RT @UKRinUNOG The #ICJ will deliver its Order in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (#Ukraine v. #Russia)
⋙ 🐣 RT @CIJ_ICJ PRESS RELEASE: the #ICJ will deliver its Order in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (#Ukraine v. #Russia) this Wednesday, 16 March, at 4 p.m. (The Hague) https://bit.ly/3KJCvpC Text Block [Letter]: https://twitter.com/UKRinUNOG/status/1504026581999755264?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @UA_EUMission President @ZelenskyyUa:
📍Resistance, resilience & courage of our defenders make it possible to save our people & our land.
📍Help #Ukraine. Not in words, but in deeds: weapons, new sanctions against Russia.
Full text of the address by the 🇺🇦 President: https://bit.ly/3MUBEUT🚫🐣 RT @sentdefender There are reports that U.S. Government has Approved a Large Transfer of the AeroVironment Switchblade 300 Tactical Missile System to the Ukrainian Military, the Switchblade is consider a “Kamikaze” Loitering Munitions Drone and can Travel over 4 Miles Miles to hit Russian Targets
// too much detail🐣 RT @Benjamin_P_Ward “Polish court finds European human rights convention ‘incompatible’ with constitution” A reminder that notwithstanding the solidarity of the Polish people on Ukraine, Poland’s government & politically captured court remain contemptuous about human rights
⋙ EuroNews: Polish court finds European human rights convention ‘incompatible’ with constitution http://bit.ly/3icalrb
// A Polish court said the European Convention on Human Rights was partly incompatible with the constitution.DailyMail: [Photos] http://bit.ly/3w9Y26O
🐣 RT @ChrisReason7 Such heavy bombings in Kyiv over 48 hours, it is almost fortunate so many people have left the city. This drone shot shows why. #Kyiv #Ukraine️
💽 https://twitter.com/ChrisReason7/status/1503819545236377600?s=20/photo/1NYT, Ilia Krasilshchik: Russians Must Accept the Truth. We Failed. http://nyti.ms/36slWQs “The invasion of Ukraine marks the end, definitively, of Russia’s postwar era. … Russia is now the nation that unleashed a new evil, and unlike the old one, it’s armed with nuclear weapons”
// Mr. Krasilshchik is the former publisher of Meduza, an independent news outlet.🐣 RT @ maxseddon Zelensky says Ukraine’s talks with Russia are starting to “sound more realistic.” ¤ “However, time is still needed for the decisions to be in Ukraine’s interests. Our heroes, our defenders give us this time defending Ukraine everywhere.”
⋙⋙ ft.com: Zelensky says Ukrainian and Russian positions becoming more ‘realistic’ http://on.ft.com/__
// Despite hints of narrowing differences heavy Russian shelling continues
🐣 RT @maxseddon Possibly big: Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, now says there is “hope for reaching a compromise” with Ukraine at peace talks. ¤ He says there are “absolutely specific wordings that are close to being agreed” on neutrality for Ukraine and security guarantees for Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon “The businesslike mood that has started to come through gives hope that we can specifically agree on this topic,” Lavrov says. ¤ “Although it is clear that the problem is much broader, even if proclaiming neutrality and declaring guarantees will be a significant step forward.”🐣 RT @EuromaidanPR ‘The actions of #Russian invaders at the seized #Zaporizhia and #Chernobyl nuclear power plants threaten radioactive releases and a catastrophe the world has never seen before’, says acting Chairman of Enerhoatom Petro Kotin ¤ #Ukraine #UkraineUnderAttack #RussiaUkraineWar
🐣 RT @EricColumbus Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born on this day in 1933. Her father came here from Odessa, Ukraine, at age 13. “I had the good fortune to be a Jew born and raised in the U.S.A.,” she said in this 2004 speech at https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1503748149512482817?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Serhiy Zhadan, #Ukrainian writer who exchanged his pen for a gun ¤ Recently nominated for the #Nobel Prize in Literature ¤ “Free & independent Ukraine speaks & thinks in words formulated by Zhadan”, wrote Polish Academy ¤ Today, Serhiy is in Kharkiv, fighting for his city & country https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1503965680965758978?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @WendyMerkel5 When a nominee of a Nobel Prize in Literature felt compelled to put down his pen to take up arms to defend his country, you understand why Ukraine is fighting back tooth and nail against the brutal Russian invaders. Power to Ukraine and her amazing people!!🇺🇦🇺🇦🌻🌻🐣 RT @StateDept .@POTUS: Putin is an aggressor and Putin must pay the price. He cannot pursue a war that threatens the very foundations of international peace and stability.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1503898848082628609?s=20/photo/1
// Text: “We will not let autocrats and would-be emperors dictate the direction of the world.” President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.🐣 RT @HenryJFoy Javelins, Stingers, Drones – and scores of burned out Russian tanks. @FinancialTimes explains in graphical detail just how Ukraine’s western-armed resistance has exploited the gaping holes in Moscow’s war machine
⋙ FT: How Ukraine uses western weapons to exploit Russian weaknesses http://on.ft.com/3KRzt2T
// Moscow’s failure to make a lightning advance and capture major cities owes much to the use of compact equipment🐣 RT @StateDept The United States remains committed to Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. Read @SecBlinken’s interview with @wolfblitzer on @CNN: https://go.usa.gov/xzUQK
🐣 RT @Reuters NATO to begin planning for more troops on eastern flank after Russia’s Ukraine invasion http://reut.rs/3KT60Wl
🐣 RT @andrewmichta I hope Russians understand that what Putin is doing will become a permanent stain on their nation. Just like Germany was stained by Hitler’s crimes in WWII, Putin’s unprovoked attack on #Ukraine is on you. UKR civilians murdered and UKR cities leveled are Russian crimes. Period.
⭕ 15 Mar 2022
EuromaidanPress: Russian soldiers are refusing to redeploy to Ukraine, citing reasons including unwillingness to become ‘cannon fodder’ (photographic proof) http://bit.ly/3tgPQzK
The Guildhall news agency in Ukraine received the personal statements written by the soldiers and officers belong to the 41st Combined Arms Army that deployed to Ukraine in full at the start of the invasion. Among the reasons for refusal the soldiers specified their unwillingness to be used as ‘cannon fodder,’ commanders’ failure to explain the reasons for the military operation in Ukraine, scarcity of technical means and ammunition, communications failure within the chain of military command, and many others.
🐣 RT @OSINT_Group313 This intercepted message may be indicative and in correlation with the satellite images displaying a possible intent to conduct an amphibious assault on Odessa #UkraineWar #Ukraine️ #UkraineUnderAttack #war
⋙ 🐣 RT @te3ej
Russian Navy Black Sea Fleet Sevastopol sends priority
flash codeword message via Morse Code.
3531 Kilohertz CW, 16 March 2022, at 0235 UTC
XXX XXX 596E 596E WINTOM 1
(These are command and control messages to the fleet)🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🙏@POTUS, Give Ukraine these drones. Give them everything. They are fighting Putin so we don’t have to.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC Scoop: The Biden administration is considering providing Ukraine with U.S.-made killer drones — cutting edge guided missiles that could accurately target Russian tanks and artillery positions from miles away, two Congressional officials said.
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Exclusive: Biden admin mulls providing Ukraine with Switchblade drones http://nbcnews.to/366lXJI
// The U.S.-made guided missiles can accurately target tanks and artillery from miles away.🐣 RT @ReutersWorld U.S. Senate unanimously condemns Putin as war criminal http://reut.rs/3waZQwD
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Daddy Vladdy can’t pay the bills no more
⋙ 🐣 RT @thedailybeast Trump backpedaled on his previous support of Vladimir Putin: “I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.” https://trib.al/03ZJYaQ🐣 RT @YVindman If true, big news. The purpose of a defense is to sap and grind the enemy until you are ready to go on the offense. An offensive timed against a spent enemy presents significant opportunities to route Russian forces.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sentdefender Unconfirmed reports of a Large Ukrainian Counteroffensive currently occurring Northwest of the Capital City of Kyiv, Heavy Fighting can be heard in cities of Irpin’, Hostomel, and Bucha involving Armor and Artillery, I expect there to be a Statement from the MOD in the morning.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sentdefender This seems to be a Pattern that the Ukrainians continue to exploit Night Attacks due to Russian Forces either not having the Training or the Equipment to Operate Effectively at Night when the Ukrainians can.Source Translated: pic.twitter.com/MrfomZ5bqy
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 15, 2022
JUST FROM A WITNESS OF EVENTS.
(didn’t touch the spelling)
“There is an opinion that we have just won the war! (Well, at least local) For 3 hours in a row there was such a tin in the area of Irpeny, Buchi, Parking, Worzel, Milaya sho the ears were wrapped, the house was walking and the sky was just burning. It didn’t happen even when Irpen and Bucha bombed the orcs. It seems that our people got angry not jokingly, surrounded these nits and arranged a burnt earth for them!
I doubt if anyone is alive there and if they stayed at home there. Wet with rockets, grads and something else so powerful that it was scary to imagine what it was. It was something else… It
was damn nice to see this front row event…
For 40 minutes, our people have been chasing them in the west direction and are soaking them in the full program with rockets into the dogonka. In the direction of Irpen, Buchi, Worzel and Borodanka, there was a grave silence! Mochilovo is moving further and further, with, as they say, in seven-mile steps.…. In 3 with an extra hour, the kilometers moved by 40-50 is so true. Probably to Makarov or possibly even further away….🐣 RT @GicAriana “The number of civilian deaths in the city is approaching 20,000.” ¤ – Advisor to Mariupol mayor
Russian forces have slaughtered 20,000 innocent Ukrainian civilians in just ONE city in 20 days. ¤ This is, without any question, Russian #GenocideOfUkrainians x https://twitter.com/GicAriana/status/1503841147369803779?s=20🐣 RT @phildstewart (Reuters) – NATO is set to tell its military commanders on Wednesday to draw up plans for new ways to deter Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, including more troops and missile defences in eastern Europe, officials and diplomats said.
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin continues to escalate his destruction of Ukraine, bombing now civilians in Kyiv. Time for NATO to respond — send MiG29s and S-300s to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @CNN “There’s going to be an independent Ukraine a lot longer than there’s going to be a Vladimir Putin.”- @SecBlinken discusses with @wolfblitzer the United States and its allies’ resolve to ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty.
💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1503863765871341576?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ukrcancongress
Statement by UCC President on Russian Sanctions ⬇️
Text Block: https://twitter.com/ukrcancongress/status/1503804990367928323?s=20/photo/1
Statement by UCC President on Russian sanctions
March 15, 2022. OTTAWA, ON. Alexandra Chyczij, National President of
the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, issued the following statement in
response to being sanctioned by Russia, together with much of the
leadership of the UCC and the Ukrainian Canadian community: ¤¤¤
LOL.🐣 RT @kenvogel TRUMP, on PUTIN’s invasion of Ukraine: ¤ “I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border,” Trump tells @DavidMDrucker in a new interview. ¤ “I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate.” https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1503891006378422275?s=20
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress “Positions in the negotiations, as I am told, now sound more realistic. However, it takes time for decisions to be in Ukraine’s interests. Our army gives us time, defending Ukraine everywhere Russia wants to break through”–Zelenskyy, 01:20 EET
🐣 RT @nexta_tv Volodymyr Zelensky:”Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki,Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Czech Prime Minister Piotr Fiala and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa.Your visit to Kyiv at this difficult time is a powerful evidence of support We appreciate it very much.
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard My name is John Spencer. I am the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies. I have fought in the hell that is urban warfare. I have studied and written about it for almost a decade. I have advised many militaries. These are my standing orders for the urban defenders. Text Block: https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1503585108195872768?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Document in Jan. 6 Case Shows Plan to Storm Government Buildings http://nyti.ms/3tccFos “The document, titled ‘1776 Returns,’ was cited by prosecutors last week in charging the far-right leader, Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys extremist group, with conspiracy”
// New details from evidence cited in the indictment of Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the far-right Proud Boys, reveal a plan with similarities to what unfolded at the Capitol.NYT: Ukraine War Shifts the Agenda in Congress, Empowering the Center http://nyti.ms/3q54FDG “‘It’s bringing Congress together in a way, frankly, I haven’t seen in my 12 years,’ Senator Chris Coons said … ‘You’d have to go back to 9/11 to see such a unified commitment’”
// With a crisis rocking Europe, the left is shelving demands for defense cuts and a swift end to fossil fuels, while on the right, Trump-era foreign policy and criticism of Ukraine are fading.🐣 RT @ @lyalyaHorsky Ukrainian grannies : “Where are you going? Why don’t you give me your pistol? #!*&% .. Aren’t you ashamed? $#&*%..Your’e a young man *”! May you be dammed *#:*..Go Home**Feed your children…*%^&.. ¤ Did you come here to look for a job? This is Ukraine.. We want a normal life
⋙ 🐣 RT @ mrsorokaa A video from Bilozerka, Kherson Oblast, where Ukrainians block and curse at Russian soldiers. ¤ One older woman shouts at Russians “you scared of fighting a grandma one on one.”
💽 https://twitter.com/lyalyaHorsky/status/1503866816329928708?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @HustleNow “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” – Yehuda Bauer ¤ Twitter Army, Now is NOT the time for silence, Make our voices heard! Like, Follow & RT. Tell them together we #StandWithUkraine & #StopPutinNOW
🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent⚡️Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny predicts that the war with Ukraine, “planned by crazy old men,” will lead to the collapse of Russia.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Zelenskyy to Johnson, March 15: “If we cannot enter NATO’s ‘open door’, then we must work with communities available, communities that will help us. Like yours. And have some guarantees–reliable guarantees that will work for us. And also for you”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Zelenskyy to Johnson:”I ask you: help yourself by helping us. You know we crucially need airplanes” ¤ He also indicated needs: the ban on Russia to use world ports, its complete disconnection from SWIFT, the recognition of Russia as terrorist state, embargo on any trade with RussiaGZERO, Carlos Santamaria: Will Belarus join the war? http://bit.ly/3N5zTVl “Lukashenko is feeling the heat from Putin. Viačorka says he’s walking a tightrope between returning Putin’s favor and staying out of the war.”
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Zelensky: “We are fighting for our lives against missiles, bombs, artillery, tanks, mortars and everything else that Russian troops are using to destroy us. … Every shot at Ukraine, every blow at Ukraine are steps towards Russia’s self-destruction.”
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Putin’s war on Ukraine will either be the catalyst that revives the spirit & credibility of NATO or the end of the global order. As the Korean War shaped NATO after its birth under Harry Truman’s vision of containing Communism, this is democracy vs authoritarianism. 1/13
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1503819568879394822?s=20WaPo, Anna Myroniuk: If there was room for mixed loyalties before, there is none now: Russia has lost Ukrainians forever http://wapo.st/3tf6obJ
WaPo, Max Boot: Putin can’t win the war in Ukraine. But he can’t afford to lose it. http://wapo.st/3u1ERJW “Ultimately what convinces me that Russia cannot win is Napoleon’s maxim: ‘In war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four’”
Here’s the central dilemma of the Ukraine invasion: This is a war Russian dictator Vladimir Putin believes he “cannot afford to lose” (in the words of U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines), but it’s also one he cannot seem to win.
Demolishing a city with artillery and rockets is easy; occupying it is much harder. Rubble creates fighting positions for defenders and impedes movement by armored vehicles. It took Iraqi forces, supported by the U.S. military, nine months from 2016 to 2017 to retake Mosul from only about 6,000 Islamic State fighters. Is Putin willing to wait for a lengthy siege of Kyiv while sanctions continue to hammer the Russian economy and the body bags keep coming home?
U.S. officials conservatively estimate that Russia lost 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers in the first two weeks of the war — or roughly 400 a day. (The real figure might be as high as 700 a day.) Those are the kind of combat losses Russia has not suffered since 1945. In Afghanistan, the Soviets averaged about five soldiers killed in action a day, and even that was enough to undermine the regime. Putin is already feeling the strain — he is trying to recruit Syrian mercenaries and allegedly asking China for military equipment. Those are signs that he does not have enough soldiers or weapons to make up for heavier-than-expected losses in a war that is not going according to plan.
Eventually the Russians might be able to batter their way into Kyiv. They might even be able to kill or capture Ukraine’s courageous president, Volodymyr Zelensky. But that would still not win the war. The free Ukrainian government could simply relocate to Lviv, in western Ukraine, or Poland and continue to rally resistance. ¤ Putin has nowhere near enough troops in Ukraine — fewer than 190,000, according to estimates — to control a country of more than 43 million people. …
… Putin is making life hell for Ukrainian civilians, but Ukrainian fighters supplied by the West can make life hell for Russian troops for years to come — and it will take more than a few missile strikes to cut Ukraine’s supply lines from its NATO neighbors.
If Putin wants to avoid a lengthy quagmire, sooner or later he will need to moderate his maximalist objectives and end this evil war. The only sensible way out is to accept defeat while calling it a victory. Luckily for him, he’s a practiced prevaricator. The big danger is that Putin might not be entirely rational when it comes to Ukraine. Thus he might continue trying to win the unwinnable war at a terrible cost for both sides.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Kremlin TV Hosts Threaten the U.S. with Nuclear Strikes ¤ Russian state media has shut down last week’s minor dissent and now demands an end to sanctions and even reparations for affected Russians. Or else.
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Wild Kremlin TV Hosts Threaten the U.S. With Nuclear Strikes Unless Sanctions End and Reparations Are Paid http://bit.ly/3CLr0LR
// Russian state media has shut down last week’s minor dissent and now demands an end to sanctions and even reparations for affected Russians. Or else.In the surreal world of Russian state television, Russia is about to prevail in its war against Ukraine, which is being presented as a battle against the United States and NATO. According to top Kremlin propagandists, it’s only a matter of time before the West admits its defeat and pays reparations to Moscow or risks a devastating nuclear strike.
Pundits who dared to criticize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not been seen on state-controlled television ever since they spoke out last week. Even though their timid disagreement pales in comparison to the bravery of Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One, who has been detained after interrupting live programming with an anti-war sign. Meanwhile, state TV broadcasts are filled with cheerleaders, who repeatedly insist that the Kremlin’s “special operation”—known to the rest of the world as a brutal war—should not stop until all objectives are achieved. They insist that everything is going exactly as planned.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to negotiate with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is being packaged as a sign of his love and good will, and not the consequence of mounting losses and humiliating defeats faced by the Russian military in Ukraine. Appearing on a state TV show Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, political scientist and Professor of Communications Dmitry Evstafiev argued: “Right now, President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s third proposal to the Ukrainian leadership is on the table. This, of course, is a demonstration of his greatest respect and—I would even say—of love by our President towards the Ukrainian people.” …
Appearing on Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, Russian parliament member Oleg Matveychev, known as the Kremlin’s spin doctor, watched a clip of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson—an everyday occurrence in Moscow’s tightly-controlled media environment. Matveychev noted: “There isn’t a single country in the world that is as easily manipulated as America.” He argued: “Here’s what will be on the table after our victory… After Ukraine’s demilitarization is completed… we’re going to raise the stakes… For example, the lifting of all sanctions… The dissolution of NATO, because the presence of NATO in some countries is getting in our way. Extradition of all war criminals… like [Anton] Herashchenko [former deputy minister at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs], Zelensky, [former President of Ukraine Petro] Poroshenko. Extradition of various oligarchs, like [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky.”
In recent days, Russian state television regressed from Orwellian lies to Kafkaesque nightmares, as pundits started to promote the idea of executing Ukrainians resisting Putin’s war of aggression by hanging. They noted that the so-called “constitution” of the rogue “republics” created in Ukraine by Russian forces conveniently allows for the death penalty. Last Thursday on The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, after listening to other pundits and experts endorse the idea of executing Ukrainian citizens by hanging, doctor of political sciences Elena G. Ponomareva argued: “Never let morality prevent you from undertaking correct actions. I understand the importance of a humanitarian component… but morality shouldn’t get in the way.”
Sunday’s Vesti Nedeli hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov continued the theme of public hangings, broadcasting the scenes from the public execution of German Nazi soldiers on Kyiv’s Independence Square in 1946. The segment was entitled “Denazification of Ukraine—the new opportunities for growth” and appeared to serve as a tool to desensitize the Russian population for the grotesque war trials and executions the Kremlin is reportedly planning to conduct in Ukraine, perhaps in the same public square captured in the historical video.
Bloomberg previously reported that, according to an unnamed European intelligence official, Russia’s intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, has drafted plans for public executions in Ukraine after cities are captured. Russian state media appears to be laying the groundwork to normalize such an idea, in order to make it seem acceptable to average Russians.
Reciting the list of Russia’s future demands during Soloviev’s show, Matveychev became even more brazen: “We should be thinking about reparations from the damage that was caused by the sanctions and the war itself, because that too costs money and we should get it back. The return of all Russian properties, those of the Russian empire, the Soviet Union and current Russia, which has been seized in the United States, and so on.”
The host chimed in to ask: “Are you including Alaska and Fort Ross?”
Matveychev nodded: “That was my next point. As well as the Antarctic… We discovered it, so it belongs to us… Also, the return of all medals that have been unlawfully taken from our sportsmen during all Olympic games, as well as the extradition of [Grigory] Rodchenkov, along with the extradition of multiple other criminals we’ll want. I think we should start voicing all of that, so they understand what will be on the table. You didn’t want to talk to us about something small, like Ukraine’s neutrality, here’s what you get. And that’s not even all of it.”
Soloviev asked: “Does your list include a tactical nuclear strike, or are we going straight for the strategic one?”
Matveychev pompously scoffed, “What for? We can take them down without it.”
On Monday, Soloviev revisited the topic of nuclear blackmail, perhaps blinded by rage after the recent seizure of his two Italian villas. He said: “I still think that those who took our money should be told, you have 24 hours to unfreeze our funds, or else we’ll send you what you know we’ve got. Your choice. Tactical or strategic, take a pick. You took our money, you’re the thieves, our talk is short with you: a bullet to the head.”
🐣 RT @dawn_keith Zelensky is pretty much the hero of the world
⋙ 🐣 RT @Vlad_Davidzon Thank god for Zelensky- not only did he save the cohesion of the state in a time of war but now we Ukrainian Jews can freely engage in toxic masculinity again!
⋙⋙ TabletMag: Zelensky’s Manliness Revives a Western Ideal http://bit.ly/3JeoGPV “It is abundantly clear that Zelensky possesses Aristotle’s crowning virtue of greatness of soul. According to Aristotle, only grave national peril brings out the best in such men”
// The Ukrainian president’s heroism embodies the ancient virtues that distinguish a noble leader🐣 RT @BillBrowder The beginning of Russia’s mass nationalization program begins today with a law passed allowing Russia to seize all 500 foreign owned airplanes in the country worth $10 billion. Many more expropriations will happen in Russia soon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @visegrad24 Putin signed a law today that will make it possible for Russia to nationalize the 500+ airplanes that Western leasing companies have demanded to be returned to them. ¤ The planes are worth more than USD 10 billion. ¤ This is how doing business with Russia often ends. ¤ In theft.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @visegrad24 Source: TASS and CNBC: http://cnb.cx/3MNkNU6🐣 RT @UKRinNATO According to one of 🇷🇺 main propagandist, Ukraine is just an intermediate stage in ensuring the strategic security of 🇷🇺.
If you think that Russia will stop in Ukraine, you are mistaken.
Don’t let other European countries to be destroyed!
#StopRussianAggression
#closeUAskyNOW
💽 https://twitter.com/UKRinNATO/status/1503653471580565504?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @IlvesToomas After this is over, no one, I repeat *no one* who has been an officer of the criminal and genocidal Russian armed forces, nor any member of *any rank* in the VDV should ever be allowed into Europe or the US. ¤ The Russian army is the SS of the 21st Century.
🐣 RT @AFP #UPDATE Foreign Minister Wang Yi warns China does not want to be impacted by economic sanctions on Russia, state media says, as pressure grows on Beijing to withdraw support from Moscow. ¤ “China is not a party to the crisis, still less wants to be affected by the sanctions”
🐣 RT @Exen The prime ministers of Poland (@MorawieckiM) Slovenia (@JJansaSDS) and Czechia (@P_Fiala) are going to meet with @ZelenskyyUa in Kyiv today.
🐣 RT @innasovsun A month ago I had my life. I had my job, which was frustrating sometimes, but although beneficial. I watched movies with my son and boyfriend. I cooked dinner or we ordered pizza. Went running. Now I wake up to explosions in my city at 5 in the morning.
CBSNews, Robert Costa: In private speech, Romney warns of ‘extraordinary challenge’ to preserve American democracy http://cbsn.ws/3i9HMe4 No kidding
⭕ 14 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard .@ZelenskyyUa & #Ukriane is teaching the world what military leaders have known for centuries. Soldiers don’t fight for dictators or when forced, coerced, or paid to. They fight for a cause, for their families, and for each other. Ukraine has the will & power. They will prevail.
WaPo: U.S. warns China not to assist Russia http://wapo.st/3ugjIvN
// Officials meet amid reports that Moscow sought weapons from Beijing; Biden considers a trip to Europe to rally alliesABC, Mick Ryan [AU]: Russia’s military is out of its depth in Ukraine. Was Putin kept in the dark about its weaknesses? http://ab.co/3KBe2D0 “Russia’s poor military performance over the past two weeks has been one of the great mysteries of the war so far”
💙 🐣 RT @MavkaSlavka In darkness, there will be light….
In death, there will be life….
Ukraine will be reborn like the sunflower.
Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to those who fight to protect her!
Glory to those who have laid down their lives protecting her!
#RussiaInvadedUkraine #StopPutinNOWIn darkness, there will be light….
In death, there will be life….
Ukraine will be reborn like the sunflower.
Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to those who fight to protect her!
Glory to those who have laid down their lives protecting her!#RussiaInvadedUkraine #StopPutinNOW pic.twitter.com/JPT0GGvFFv— Mavka Slavka 🧜♀️🌻 (@MavkaSlavka) March 15, 2022
// picture sea parting sunflowers on laptop🐣 RT @ubco2 One died and one still fighting for Ukraine. There are some 57,000 Ukrainian female soldiers fighting alongside the brave Ukrainian men.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russian invaders killed a prominent Ukrainian experimental physicist Vasyl Kladko,–UA Academy of Sciences ¤ Kladko significantly contributed to research on semiconductor nanostructures; had big plans for the restoration of the electronics industry in Ukraine https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1503399098900230150?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @HerodiasDiana And they will keep doing it. Scientists should be sent abroad to be protected, they are designated targets
⋙ 🐣 RT @JanZamoysky This is literally what they did cross the Central and Eastern Europe. Created list of inteligensia, anyone with a brain and a sense of identity. People were deported to Syberia (if you were lucky), shot or rotted in jail.🐣 RT @avalaina Russians started the abduction of activists, volunteers, and journalists in occupied Kherson, Berdyansk, Melitopol, Volnovakha, Nova Kakhovka, Gostomel, etc. Among them – Oleg Baturin, Ivan Fedorov, Yevgen Matveev, Sergiy Priyma, Sergiy Tsygipa, and others #RussianWarCrimes
🐣 RT @CNN CNN’s @jaketapper examines former President Donald Trump’s history of siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Russia’s repeated aggression.
💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1503499497112055822?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @kevinkothrock Here’s her full speech, translated into English. http://bit.ly/3KFXbyU
In a prerecorded message shared on social media after the live-television incident, [Marina] Ovsyannikova made the following remarks:
“What is happening in Ukraine is a crime. And Russia is the aggressor here. And responsibility for this aggression rests on the conscience of a single man: Vladimir Putin. My father is Ukrainian. My mother is Russian. And they’ve never been enemies. And this necklace I’m wearing is a symbol of that fact that Russia must immediately end this fratricidal war. And our fraternal peoples will still be able to make peace.
Unfortunately, I’ve spent many of the last few years working for Channel One, doing Kremlin propaganda, and I’m deeply ashamed of this. Ashamed that I allowed lies to come from the TV screen. Ashamed that I allowed the zombification of Russian people.
We were silent in 2014 when all this had just started. We didn’t protest when the Kremlin poisoned Navalny. We just silently watched this anti-human regime at work. And now the whole world has turned its back on us. And the next 10 generations won’t wash away the stain of this fratricidal war. We Russians are thinking and intelligent people. It’s in our power alone to stop all this madness. Go protest. Don’t be afraid of anything. They can’t lock us all away”
🐣 RT @Hilmatthews 🇺🇦 What the Ukraine flag signifies. A golden field of grain (Ukraine is the world’s 4th largest exporter of barley and corn, and the 5th largest exporter of wheat) beneath clear blue skies. Sky above grain, or freedom above bread.
NYT: Russia Deploys a Mystery Munition in Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3MJMux0 “Each [decoy] is packed with electronics and produces radio signals to jam or spoof enemy radars attempting to locate the Iskander-M, and contains a heat source to attract incoming missiles”
// Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles are releasing a previously unknown decoy designed to evade air-defense systems, an American official said.🧵 RT @petestrzok This is Elena Branson, aka Elena Chernykh. ¤ Yesterday, DOJ and FBI announced a 6 count complaint against her, alleging that for over ten years she “subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States in order to promote Russian policies and ideology.” ¤ thread/1
📌 https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1501711630631149571?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DAlperovitch Valery Kudinov, head of Russian civilian aviation’s airworthiness mgmt department, has been fired after telling reporters about China’s refusal to supply aircraft parts to Russia ¤ He is lucky to have not gone to jail (yet) for revealing such ‘fake’ news https://kommersant.ru/doc/5258274
🧵 RT @malikroxk 📌 https://twitter.com/MalikRoxk/status/1503586027537149953?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @malikroxk Russia committed around 55% of their total regular ground forces to their invasion of Ukraine. It was tactical risk. While there are forces still in Russia for reinforcements, they are either on other missions, in training, or of a lower quality (esp their reserves).
⋙ 🐣 RT @malikroxk It is also a strategic risk. Russia has deployed a large proportion of its ground combat power on a single mission that it hoped would be over quickly. This was not a calculated risk by the Russians; it was a gamble. There is a big difference between the two in military ops. […]🧵 RT @JaneFerguson5 This war is incredibly tough to cover as a field reporter – unlike any I have seen or experienced before, and many colleagues would agree. The intense artillery which reaches for miles, and vague fluidity of various army positions means there is no ‘front line’. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/JaneFerguson5/status/1503463446066651137?s=20🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🔥 @vkaramurza: The only way to end the crimes & atrocities is to get Putin out of power. Only Russians can do that. But the free world must help by providing them with the truth—IN the Russian language, to counter the brainwashing propaganda. The West found a way in Soviet times.
WaPo: How Kyiv’s outgunned defenders have kept Russian forces from capturing the capital http://wapo.st/3JdedEh “Are they in a position to drive Russians forces out of Ukraine? No. Are they in a position to win the war? Yes” ~ Michael Kofman, Dir of Russian studies at CNA
🐣 RT @TheHill .@JakeSullivan46: “The escalation risk with a nuclear power is severe, and it is a different kind of conflict than other conflicts the American people have seen over the years. The American president, Joe Biden, has to take that responsibility extremely seriously.” https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1503544258036330503?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “A Russian occupation would expand the Ukrainian polity’s sense of nationhood, partly by creating many martyrs to the cause—as imperial Russia’s occupation of Poland did in the nineteenth century.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs: What If Russia Loses? http://fam.ag/3tagRVw
// A defeat for Moscow won’t be a clear victory for the West.🐣 RT @petestrzok When the Kremlin allegedly seeks out Carlson for propaganda, it’s important to ask why. ¤ He provides a western voice legitimizing Putin’s barbaric efforts in Ukraine–including the killing of women and children–to a Russian audience. ¤ Thanks @NicolleDWallace for the discussion.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I don’t see how [Tucker Carlson] can not understand the things that he is saying is prolonging the war in Ukraine. It is gathering support for Vladimir Putin within Russia, and it is causing needless death” – @petestrzok w/ @NicolleDWallaceWaPo: U.S. works to keep China on board in Ukraine conflict http://wapo.st/3ugjIvN “In a statement issued after the meeting, Chinese officials said Yang had made it clear that Beijing is not pleased with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. … Still, the statement did not condemn Russia”
// Amid reports that Russia has sought weapons from China, U.S. officials are working to keep Beijing from lining up with MoscowBiden officials declined to disclose any specific warnings Sullivan may have conveyed to the Chinese about offering assistance to Russia, but the senior administration official said that the United States has “deep concerns about China’s alignment with Russia at this time” and that Sullivan was “direct” with the Chinese about “the potential implications and consequences of certain actions.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters during a phone call with reporters.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the consequences for China would be “significant,” and speaking on several Sunday shows the day prior, Sullivan offered a similar refrain, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that “we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions.” …
In a statement issued after the meeting, Chinese officials said Yang had made it clear that Beijing is not pleased with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. ¤ “Yang Jiechi pointed out that the situation today in Ukraine has reached a stage that the Chinese side does not want to see,” the statement said. “China has always advocated respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.” ¤ Still, the statement did not condemn Russia, which unilaterally launched the invasion, saying that “the reasonable concerns of all parties should be responded to.”
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Adm. @stavridisj: Russia’s military has become a terrorist force in Ukraine – killing civilians, kidnapping mayors ¤ “Where we are now is headed back to 15th cen. warfare, reducing cities to rubble… this is not an army at work. This is a terrorist force.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MitchellReports: Adm. Stavridis: Russia’s military has become ‘a terrorist force’ http://on.msnbc.com/3w37bht
// Admiral James Stavridis joins Andrea Mitchell to assess how Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine has transformed since they invaded, and shares what he believes the U.S. should do to help Ukraine. “We’re at a pivot point in this war. It began with a modern warfare blitzkrieg attempt by the Russians. Where we are now is headed back to 15th century warfare, reducing cities to rubble,” says Admiral Stavridis. “When you look at the level of terror that the Russians are spreading, this is not an army at work. This is a terrorist force.”MotherJones: Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson http://bit.ly/3tSqB5Z
// The Russian government has pressed outlets to highlight the Fox host’s Putin-helping broadcasts.🧵 RT @juliaioffe Wow. A woman with a poster that says “No war, stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they’re lying to you” runs out behind the famous anchor on Channel 1, the Kremlin’s flagship TV channel.
📌 https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1503447834288402440?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe This woman doubtless knew what doing this would mean for her—arrest and a long prison sentence—and did it anyway.🐣 RT @TomMcTague The West’s appalling conundrum: The more success it has helping Ukraine, and the worse it gets for Russia, the more danger Putin faces personally—and the more dangerous he and the conflict becomes. A gambler reaches a point when he’s lost too much to fold.
⋙ TheAtlantic: Putin Needs an Off-Ramp http://bit.ly/37kfr2k
// The question for world leaders is how to ensure the Russian president is defeated while nevertheless providing him with a route out of the crisis.🐣 RT @RFERL “We don’t want to return to Russia until Putin is out of power.”
⋙ RFE/RL: Fearing Fallout From Putin’s War, Russians Flee Abroad http://bit.ly/3w4TZbU🐣📋 RT @DAlperovich Curious about what letter markings on Russian troop vehicles mean? Ukrainian General Staff has provided a decoder:
Z: Eastern Forces
|Z| – Crimea Forces
O – Forces from Belarus
V – Naval infrantry
X – Kadyrov’s Chechens
A – Special Forces (National Guard, FSB, Special Ops)
// Russian markings🐣 RT @IntelCrab A Russian UAV was shot down by Ukrainian air defense units after it briefly passed into Polish airspace – @24tvua
🧵 RT @mattia_n A longer thread on the alarming situation in #Ukraine’s occupied southeast. The developments are fluid and both alarming and inspiring. ¤ What we are seeing there is the attempt to set up Stalin-like police states (dressed as “People’s Republics”). Worst is yet to come. /1
📌 https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1503439298581999622?s=20
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @mattia_n An important update: Ivan Fedorov, the detained mayor of Melitopol, is now in the Russian occupied Luhansk, where he faces extremely bizarre charges of financing right wing terrorist groups. This is nothing but a tragic farce. We cannot let Fedorov be disappeared there…
⋙ 🐣 RT @mariia_zolkina Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov, who was abducted by RU occupiers on March,11, is now in occupied Luhansk, where he is gonna be “tried” by occupational authorities for “terrorism”. He refused to work for Russians, was tortured bcs he didn’t betrayed #Ukraine! #RussiaWarCrimes🐣 RT @mbk_center Ukrainian film director and former political prisoner of Putin’s regime Oleg Sentsov addressed Ukraine and the world regarding the ongoing invasion. As a reservist volunteer, he’s now actively fighting the Russian invasion.
⋙ 💽 https://youtu.be/Z0MVDANn7A8🐣 RT @KremlinRussia_E Telephone conversation with Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett: situation around Ukraine, negotiation process https://vk.cc/cbSfg4
🐣 RT @KevinRothrock Marina Ovsyannikova, the woman who ran onto a live state TV news broadcast, even recorded a message beforehand. In it, she says her father is Ukrainian. She calls for anti-war protests, says she’s ashamed about working for Kremlin propaganda, and she denounces the war absolutely.
💽 https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1503453014643949576?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @AlanAbdo13 The International Court of Justice in The Hague is ready to decide on Ukraine’s case against Russia. ¤ The decision is expected on March 16 at 17:00 Kyiv time. @IntlCrimCourt Text Block: https://twitter.com/AlanAbdo13/status/1503451461061074946?s=20/photo/1
BBCSteveR Absolutely astonishing. During Russian Channel 1’s evening news broadcast, a woman ran onto the set with a sign: “No war…Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.”
Absolutely astonishing. During Russian Channel 1’s evening news broadcast, a woman ran onto the set with a sign: “No war…Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” pic.twitter.com/wBdFGtzTsg
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) March 14, 2022
🔄📋 Basic Stats US vs Russia
USA Russia
$23Tr $1.7Tr GDP
$767B $61.7B Military
5550 5977 Nukes
3.8M 6.6M SqMi (Mercator map makes Russia look bigger)
333M 146M Pop.
99.4% 77% (indoor plumbing)
54.5° 33° Avg F°
// most recent: 2021 or 2022⭕ 13 Mar 2022
Reuters: U.S. to warn China of perils of aiding Russia at Rome meet http://reut.rs/3tatnVk
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln The war in Ukraine is a chance for the democratic world to bring authoritarianism to its knees. @AVindman explains on the latest episode of the pod: https://apple.co/3KHFvTC
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1503214081905471492?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ChristopherJM President Zelensky walked to a hospital today to visit wounded Ukrainian soldiers and award them with state honors for their sacrifices.
💽 https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1503024136523767814?s=20/photo/1TheAtlantic, Ben Rhodes: We Have Reached a Hinge of History http://bit.ly/3w0rP1S “Perhaps it is no coincidence that at precisely the time when living memory of World War II is fading away, humanity has failed to heed the lessons of our worst history”
// Out of the righteous rage of this moment, perhaps a new world can be born.Europe’s largest invasion since World War II is a logical outcome of Vladimir Putin’s dominance of Russian politics in the 21st century, a reminder that grievance-based ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism lead inexorably to conflict. Putin’s efforts to reconstitute empire and “protect” Russian speakers beyond national borders tap into currents of history running deep underneath our collective experience. And in many ways, the tolls of the war—cities reduced to rubble, civilians caught amid armies, refugees moving en masse across European borders, threats of nuclear annihilation—recall the circumstances that shocked world powers into creating an international system to prevent another world war. Perhaps it is no coincidence that at precisely the time when living memory of World War II is fading away, humanity has failed to heed the lessons of our worst history.
Yet despite its historical echoes, the war also feels like the product of the peculiar circumstances of our post–Cold War era. The backlash to globalization, consumerism, and cultural homogeneity sent strongmen in search of an updated brand of identity politics. The corruption that enriched kleptocrats isolated them from accountability, engendering cynicism and apathy within societies. The creation of national-security states veiled the machinations of governments while providing endless justifications for defensive aggression. New technologies facilitated the dissemination of propaganda and disinformation on a mass scale, so that it’s hard to tell where Putin’s invented pretexts end and his own motivations begin. ¤ … How could problems be solved, wars avoided, and democracy defended when truth and objective reality were becoming so flexible, with people locked in different closets of information? How much longer could the pressures build before an explosion?
Putin has long been a source of these pressures, simultaneously dragging us back into the darker recesses of history while capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of our present moment. … He suppressed dissent while flooding social media with disinformation that radicalized not only Russians but communities around the world. Vladimir Putin is both a figure of the past and a man of his time. …
Thus far, it is Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is upending Putin’s logic. By standing up to a bully, Zelensky has stripped him of his capacity to intimidate. A younger man—communicating through selfie videos and Zoom, wearing a T-shirt instead of a suit, often surrounded by people instead of sitting at the end of a large table—Zelensky has come to encompass a populism not of cynicism and grievance but of idealism and community. In his fearlessness he resembles Navalny, who has taunted Putin from his prison cell and predicted that the war will be Putin’s downfall.
Out of this kind of righteous rage—shaking democracies from complacency, forcing citizens to discard the luxury of cynicism, rejecting the inevitability of autocracy—perhaps a new world can be born. We have reached a hinge of history. At issue is not just the future of Ukraine but that of the world that will emerge on the other side of this war. If we heed the lessons of this moment, we can rebuild from the rubble a renewed international order that once again places democratic values over the more transitory impulses of profit and immediate gratification. If we don’t, things could get much worse.
Navalny reminded me that his father was Ukrainian and his mother Russian, so he grew up spending time in both countries. He described childhood visits to his Ukrainian family after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when these visits were now to an independent country. “All through the ’90s, we have a family argument. Every dinner, every family gathering, we have this discussion: What is better, to preserve the Soviet Union or to be divided?” …
Navalny clearly saw himself as someone who could become the president of his country. And this, in his view, meant not succumbing to the American position on Crimea. “If I’m president,” he said, “I want to have something fair. A real, fair referendum under independent observers.” This he contrasted with the rushed Potemkin referendum on Crimea’s future that took place under the watch of Russian occupiers in 2014. “Everyone will understand the results of this referendum,” Navalny told me, anticipating—of course—that the result would be the same: Crimea would remain a part of Russia. …
What sustained Navalny was anger at the state of things around him. He was, he told me, determined to “preserve and keep my level of rage to stay in politics.” ¤ What sustained the rage? I asked him. ¤ “It was lying,” he said. “The Soviet Union was an empire based on a lie. And Putin’s Russia is a country based on a lie.” He had seen it firsthand, confronting corruption schemes in Moscow courts and finding that the legal apparatus that was supposed to enforce fairness was on the take. “You are facing these people in the courts and they are lying to you.” …
MotherJones: Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson http://bit.ly/3tSqB5Z
// The Russian government has pressed outlets to highlight the Fox host’s Putin-helping broadcasts.🐣 RT @davidweissman Politics isn’t really that complicated when you can find it in you to think for yourself. It’s simply voting for what’s right, voting for human decency, voting for the rule of law. It just so happens to be that these values are only coming from the Democratic Party.
🐣 RT @Porter_Anderson Media: @Kasparov63 to @AC360: “There’s no way to avoid this confrontation. It’s not *if* @NATO confronts #Putin in the skies over #Ukraine or nearby or on the ground. It’s when. Better to start now and do it on our terms. There will be no way out if he attacks #NATO countries.”
🐣 RT @AlexandraChalup Putin, Mr. Russian Imperialism, is so desperate he’s willing to make Russia a vassal state, begging China for help. Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, is one of China’s top trading partners helping address food security; another issue Putin’s war worsened. Putin has lost it all.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ragipsoylu Russia asked military assistance from China to fight Ukraine: FT🐣 RT @davidaxelrod The horrying vision Putin’s brazen aggression exposes is a world without norms, rules, laws or borders, where nations simply take what they want by force, using any means necesary. ¤ History tells us where that leads. It can’t be a future we accept.
🐣 RT @EliotACohen Another sign of Russian weakness. Which means that this is most emphatically not the time to talk about off-ramps, fear of escalation, and the like. Rather, its a time to press advantages, squeeze the economy as hard as possible, and arm Ukraine to the teeth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon Huge story from @Dimi: US officials claim Russia is already running out of some equipment less than three weeks into the war in Ukraine, and has asked China for help
⋙⋙ FT: Russia asks China for military assistance in its invasion of Ukraine http://on.ft.com/3MM4k2m
// White House fears move is sign of increasingly close ties between Beijing and Moscow🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews On the same Russian TV show where pundits advocated hanging Ukrainians for resisting Russia’s invasion, one argued: “Never let morality prevent you from undertaking correct actions. I understand the importance of a humanitarian component… but morality shouldn’t get in the way.”
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Focus on this story. This is not just a war, it’s a wave of terror. The Russian army is using mass murder, large-scale repression against civilians. Whatever happens next, the impact of this violence will last for decades
⋙ 🐣 RT @IKoshiw I’m only just starting to understand the scale and extent of Russian atrocities in Kyiv region over the past 2 weeks. It’s unbelievable. It’s not just Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel, Borodyanka etc. Dozens of smaller villages were completely terrorized, cut off, people were executed.
⋙⋙ TheGuardian: Tanks, bombs, shootings: Ukrainians describe Russian takeover of villages http://bit.ly/3i9w032
// Witnesses describe soldiers shooting people dead in the street and confiscating phones and laptops🧵 RT @djrothkopf Putin likely knows he cannot win in Ukraine in the sense that he cannot take control of the country and maintain that control. He cannot make Ukraine a vassal state like Belarus. So, it seems likely that for him, the next best option is to destroy Ukraine with maximum brutality.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1502983563020537857?s=20🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 MSNBC Sunday. 13 March 2022. The nuclear option Putin has put on the table. Madness. Not going to happen. Armageddon. No one wins a nuclear war. How could he employ tactical nukes? 15 minute US tactical nuke response. Indicates Putin desperation.
WaPo: 9 dead in Russian strike on military site in western Ukraine, near Poland, Lviv governor says http://wapo.st/3MLj81n
The incident killed nine people and injured 57 at the Yavoriv military range near Lviv, about 15 miles from the Polish border, said Maksym Kozytsky, head of the regional administration, in a statement on Telegram. He said Russia had fired 30 missiles, up from an earlier estimate of eight. Ukraine’s air defense system shot down many of them, he added, and authorities are working to put out a fire at the site.
Also known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, the military facility has for years been used by the United States and other NATO forces for joint exercises with Ukrainian troops. Members of the Florida Army National Guard trained there with Ukrainian forces as recently as February, during the buildup to the Russian invasion.
🐣 RT @rayhandemytrie [BBC] #Russia liberal, educated middle-class has been fleeing their home country they could no longer recognise. #Georgia has become one of the destinations – creating uneasy tension in a country that fought its own war with Russia in 2008.
⋙ BBC: Russia faces brain drain as thousands flee abroad http://bbc,in/3I7UwfB
// Many Russians who can afford it have fled to nearby countries since Russia invaded Ukraine.RT @AP Russian forces struck a Ukrainian military training base near the Polish border, local officials say. The attack follows a warning by a top Russian diplomat that Moscow considers shipment of any military aid to Ukraine a target.
⋙ AP: Russian airstrike hits base in western Ukraine, kills 9 http://bit.ly/3t8CGoMTheMayor[.]eu: Vilnius starts campaign to call 40 million Russians to stave off propaganda http://bit.ly/3i4o9Uw //➔It asks for people who know Russian, but many Russians, especially educated ones, do speak English
🧵 ⋙ RT @ramez This is an incredible analysis of how Putin’s invasion of the world will re-order the global world, largely for the better. By a leading Chinese policy thinker, in Shanghai, originally written in Chinese. Brief thread, but read the whole thing.
📌 https://twitter.com/ramez/status/1502895847301812224?s=20🐣 1914 Ethnic Map of Europe http://bit.ly/3CAPDuw ● /photo/1
🐣 RT @maxseddon Russian air strikes hit a military base in western Ukraine this morning – the closest attack to NATO’s borders so far. ¤ Until last month, US troops trained Ukrainian forces there. ¤ This comes a day after Russia vowed to hit military aid to Ukraine.
⋙ FT: Russia strikes Ukrainian base near Poland as Moscow expands offensive http://on.ft.com/3i1rlQG “The bombing came a day after Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that western arms convoys to Ukraine were a ‘legitimate military target’ for Russia”
// Attack on facility used for Nato weapons training follows Kremlin warning on western arms shipmentsRussian forces launched missiles at a Ukrainian military base near the Polish border, in what appeared to be the westernmost attack they have carried out in the 18-day war. ¤ A statement from the Lviv regional military administration said Russian forces “launched an air strike on the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security”, which is located in Yavoriv in western Ukraine. ¤ “According to preliminary data, they fired eight missiles,” the administration said in a statement. It said it would release additional details about the attack later.
The bombing came a day after Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that western arms convoys to Ukraine were a “legitimate military target” for Russia. The US said on Saturday that it would rush up to $200mn in additional small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine.
RFE/RL: Bodies of Russian Soldiers Filling Up Belarusian Morgues, Residents Say http://bit.ly/3KE3dzV
⭕ 12 Mar 2022
◕📊 NYT: American Voters Now View Ukraine as Favorably as France, Germany and Japan http://nyti.ms/36mHtKh … and the view of Russia has fallen below China, Iran and North Korea
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1503591828578254848?s=20/photo/1
// poll view of UkraineNewYorker, Joshua Yaffe: What the Russian Invasion Has Done to Ukraine http://bit.ly/3D08S0x
// After thwarting a quick victory for Russia, Ukrainians are galvanized—and facing a punitive assault.🐣 RT @PaulaChertok If Russia struck Yavoriv, then Putin really wants to start WW3. Because it’s not only right on the Polish border. It’s where “NATO allies and partners, mentor and advise Armed Forces of Ukraine Observer Controller / Trainers at the Combat Training Center located near Yavoriv.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1502875642152378368?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Source: Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine (Yavoriv) https://7atc.army.mil/JMTGU/🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Day 18 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine begins with more attacks. Lviv’s mayor’s office confirms to me that there was a missile strike on Yavoriv’s military facilities before daybreak. Yavoriv is a military town 10 miles from Poland and home to an international training facility.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 💯Ryabchuk: For the first time, Russia is LOSING the information war. And it’s because CNN reporters are in Ukraine showing what Russia is doing. So every time the Russians open their mouths, everyone can see they are lying. Putin is a thug & wants to kill democracy everywhere.
🐣 RT @gepardtatze 🇺🇸 Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville: ¤ “If you’re going to put an army on the move, if you’re going to conduct combat operations, if you don’t have logistics, don’t have gas, don’t have parts, don’t have all the ammunition, then those weapon systems become paperweights.”
🐣 RT @EliLake As long as Putin remains in power, Russia will be a pariah. It’s an important message for Russian military officers, oligarchs, spy chiefs, hit men etc. to hear and understand.
🔄 🐣 RT @visegrad24 Tell the Russians the truth.
💽 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1502812913458896898?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @visegrad24 Unsure how to help? ¤ This website allows you to send text messages from your phone directly to randomly selected Russians. ¤ https://1920.in🐣 RT @maria_avdv Usually on such a sunny Saturday afternoon streets of Kharkiv will be crowded with youth and families with children. Now I witness deserted streets with a total sense of deja vu with the WWII. You can’t provoke Putin, he’s already started a total war and will not stop in Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1502717479134633991?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @jilevin The January 6 insurrection was a coordinated attempt to end our democracy as we know it [Text Block:] https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1502825800491577344?s=20/photo/1
Text: “What everyone needs to grasp is that elements throughout the Republican Party were involved in January 6: Trump, White House staff, Senators and members of Congress, their staffs, major donors, the Republican Attorneys General Association. IT WAS A COORDINATED, DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO END DEMOCRACY.» – STUART STEVENS, Former Republican Strategist via OCCUPY DEMOCRATS
🐣 RT @SpencerGuard “At this point they [Russians] need 10s of thousands of troops, a lot more armor, and a lot more artillery than I know they have…this is not Grozny…take every tank off the streets” my appearance on @BBCWorld
💽 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1502795827235885065?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @MacaesBruno The war crimes in Mariupol are on a par with Nazi war crimes and will be remembered as such
💽 https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1502742224282726400?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder If you know about this Russian fascist thinker, Putin’s pronouncements are easier to understand.#Ukraine #Russia #UkraineWar
💙 ⋙ NYRB, Timothy Snyder (2018): Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism http://bit.ly/3pWihkA
// 3/16/2018; Ivan Ilyin provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism, which he expressed in practical outlines for a fascist state. Today, his ideas have been revived and celebrated by Vladimir Putin.🐣 RT @stengel Russian foreign ministry accuses the US of trying to persuade Sweden and Finland to join NATO. In the history of NATO, there’s been nothing even close to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to cause Sweden and Finland to want to join.
🐣 RT @McFaul Many countries in the world — the US, several NATO allies, Israel — have effective, defensive surface to war missile systems. They all should be sending more of these systems to Ukraine as fast as possible. Anti-artillery systems too.
🐣 18 U.S. Code § 2381 – Treason: Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them AID AND COMFORT within the [U.S.] or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States
// re: Tucker Carlson Tuckyo Rose🐣 RT @hwag_ucmc Russia captured the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant. Russians want to gain full operational control over the NPP. They state that the station is now controlled by Rosatom. Russia tries to blackmail the world with a new nuclear catastrophe. Putin has to be stopped now #StopRussia https://twitter.com/hwag_ucmc/status/1502753313091207168?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on #Russia’s state TV: host Olga Skabeeva claimed that Jennifer Psaki said Pentagon won’t intervene in Ukraine, even if Russia uses biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1502750500357300228?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @EtoBuziashvili Russia’s ministry of lies and murder whitewashing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mfa_russia Opinion by Maria #Zakharova
This is just one instance that illustrates how #demilitarisation is connected with #deNAZIfication.
Ulyana Suprun – Marco Suprun – George Harry Jurkiw – Ivan Jurkiw
https://t.me/MFARussia/11987Russia’s ministry of lies and murder whitewashing. https://t.co/jKy8gve8jn
— Eto Buziashvili (@EtoBuziashvili) March 12, 2022
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Meanwhile on #Russia’s state TV: host Olga Skabeeva claimed that Jennifer Psaki said Pentagon won’t intervene in Ukraine, even if Russia uses biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
💽 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1502750500357300228?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @expatua 18,000 Ukrainians have returned to Ukraine in past 24 hours – mostly men coming to fight
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv About 220,000 Ukrainians have returned to #Ukraine since the beginning of the war ¤ According to the State Border Guard Service, more than 18,000 people have arrived in the last 24 hours. “Most of them are men who plan to defend the future of their country,” the agency added.🐣 RT @CSIS Watch “Ukraine: The Human Price of War,” a short documentary series by the CSIS Center for Global Health Policy and its Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security. http://cs.is/35CzQiK
💽 https://twitter.com/CSIS/status/1502743984854163459?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @clashreport #Wagner, #Russia’s mercenary power stationed in many countries from #Africa to the Middle East, trains mercenaries to fight for Russia under the train-and-equip programs. The mercenaries trained by Wagner in Africa and #Syria are being deployed to #Ukraine by Russia to fight. https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1502726738094309383?s=20/photo/1
// Wagner Group🐣 RT @StratcomCentre [UA] The Ukrainian army ruthlessly destroys the enemy. The correlation of losses is one killed Ukrainian soldier against ten Russians. Since the start of the war, Ukraine lost about 1300 troops, Russia – more than 12 000 soldiers. #StopRussia #StandWithUkraine
⋙ 🐣 Even if it’s half that as the US says, 1 to 5 is remarkable
⋙ 🐣 RT @GinandJetFuel Great ratio. But Russia has huge reserves.
But in the long run any successful occupying army requires 20 troops per 1000 civilian. (as per the Rand Corporation)
Russia can’t afford to use 800K troops to occupy Ukraine.🐣 RT @mhmck Putin uses the same brutal tactics the NKVD used against Red Army soldiers in WWII. As well as shooting retreating soldiers, Russian officers shoot their own wounded on the battlefield.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlanAbdo13 Russian servicemen confirm information that they are shot if they retreat. Putin is killing his own soldiers. This is a war crime. The Russians should hear this!
💽 https://twitter.com/AlanAbdo13/status/1502705613838688263?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @avalaina Alina Mykhailova: The war has been going on for eight years. ¤ And only 16 days as the whole country is involved in this war. Without exception. Because the enemy who attacked in 2014 decided to move on. Those 16 days changed all of us. ¤ #StandWithUkraine️
🐣 RT @IvoHDaalder The axis of autocracy has miscalculated. ¤ Putin thought liberalism was obsolete. Xi thought the United States and the West were in decline. ¤ In 3 weeks, Ukraine showed liberalism remains very much alive. And the West remains united and strong.
WaPo, Kathleen Parker: Why Russia won’t soon recover from Putin’s Ukraine blunder http://wapo.st/3t5BGl5 “Putin is a war criminal. And if he once concerned himself with the grandiose mission of restoring the Russian empire, he has accomplished the opposite”
NYT: Ukraine War Ushers In ‘New Era’ for U.S. Abroad http://nyti.ms/3t4Abn8 “We’ve been trying to get to a new era for a long time. … And now I think Putin’s invasion has necessitated an American return to the moral high ground” – Ben Rhodes, former Obama NatSec advisor
// President Biden is rethinking relationships with allies as well as rivals — including China, Iran and Venezuela — to counter President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.🐣 RT @NewStatesman: “I was feeding the baby when I heard the explosions” ¤ Refugees fleeing war in Ukraine tell their stories to the New Statesman in this exclusive video filmed on the border of Ukraine in Hungary and Slovakia by @alixkroeger and @philclarkehill.
Read more: Courage and camaraderie on the Ukraine-Hungary border http://bit.ly/3MDtJLE
// As more than two million refugees flee Putin’s war, European nations are offering support, shelter and goodwill. For now, at least.
⋙ BorderStories: Ukraine war refugees tell of their escape from Russia invasion
// As Russia launches terrifying attacks on Ukraine, refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine speak to the New Statesman in this exclusive video filmed on the border of Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/NewStatesman/status/1502632500430086154?s=20/photo/1🧵 Country Differences by,HAPLOGROUPS: Haplogroups are genetic markers, mutations that can be used to map the migration of our ancestors 10-60,000 years ago. Men get the marker on their Y chromosome. The chart below shows some of these the migration paths..
🌎 📌 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1502624689839091712?s=20/photo/1⋙ This chart shows the mix of Y haplogroups in European countries. Look for to dominant colors and how they change (or not) between countries. Notice how England, Ireland, Scotland and Spain are very similar, mostly red. The Nordic countries have the most light green.
🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1502624696692625411?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Now, look at the countries with a lot of yellow. These are the Slavic counties. (There are also ‘South Slavic’ with more blue.) The countries that are around half or more yellow are Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. The Baltic countries are less yellow, more purple (Finnish).
⋙ Now let’s look at Ukraine and Russia. They are each about half yellow (Slavic) and 10-15% blue (South Slavic). But after that, there is little similarity. Russia has a lot more purple (Finnish). Ukraine has a mix of Mediterranean Haplotypres (Greco-Roman) as well as Hunnic.
⋙ In fact, if you look only at the non-yellow part of Ukraine’s chart, you see the similarity to countries like Greece, Romania and Turkey. This reflects Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. Russia, on the other hand, clusters with purple countries, which form a Finnic cluster.
⋙ Well then, if Russia wants to dominate its neighbors, why not the Baltic states? But these states are only about as “Slavic” as Sweden or Norway, their neighbors. However, you can understand why the Baltic states are nervous. Link: BriiliantMaps: http://bit.ly/3KzHKs0⭕ 11 Mar 2022
WSJ, Holman Jenkins Jr: Biden Should Get Enterprising on Ukraine and Russia http://on.wsj.com/35LMiNm “Only NATO intervention will trigger [Putin’s] retreat lest the knives rain down on him from his nearest and dearest”
// The U.S. can take the initiative, increase its touch points, prod Putin to see how he reacts.🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #StandWithUkraine
💙 ⋙ 🐣RT @ArmedForcesUkr Перемога буде за нами! ¤ @GeneralStaffUA
💽 https://twitter.com/ArmedForcesUkr/status/1502525387183734784?s=20&/photo/1🧵 RT @JominiW 1/ Ukrainian Theater of War, Day 16: Russian forces initiate an operational pause to refit and reorganize after failed attempts to encircle Kyiv. The Ukrainians continue to harass Russian supply routes and hold key cities of Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Mikolaiyv. #UkraineRussiaWar
🌎📌https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1502528320369569792?s=20/photo/1💙 NewYorker, David Remnick: Weakness of the Despot http://bit.ly/3t2uk1N “The courage of the Ukrainian people and the bravery and smarts of the Ukrainian government, and its President, Zelensky, galvanized the West to remember who it was. And that shocked Putin!”
// An expert on Stalin [Stephen Kotkin] discusses Putin, Russia, and the West.The biggest surprise for Putin, of course, was the West. All the nonsense about how the West is decadent, the West is over, the West is in decline, how it’s a multipolar world and the rise of China, et cetera: all of that turned out to be bunk. The courage of the Ukrainian people and the bravery and smarts of the Ukrainian government, and its President, Zelensky, galvanized the West to remember who it was. And that shocked Putin! That’s the miscalculation.
How do you define “the West”?
The West is a series of institutions and values. The West is not a geographical place. Russia is European, but not Western. Japan is Western, but not European. “Western” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and all the other freedoms that we enjoy, which we sometimes take for granted. We sometimes forget where they came from. But that’s what the West is. And that West, which we expanded in the nineties, in my view properly, through the expansion of the European Union and NATO, is revived now, and it has stood up to Vladimir Putin in a way that neither he nor Xi Jinping expected.
If you assumed that the West was just going to fold, because it was in decline and ran from Afghanistan; if you assumed that the Ukrainian people were not for real, were not a nation; if you assumed that Zelensky was just a TV actor, a comedian, a Russian-speaking Jew from Eastern Ukraine—if you assumed all of that, then maybe you thought you could take Kyiv in two days or four days. But those assumptions were wrong.
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum More evidence that Russians are treating occupied Kherson like Warsaw in 1945 (or Kyiv 1933), going house to house and arresting anyone suspected of links to Ukrainian institutions
⋙ 🐣 RT @kherradio 11 Mar 2022, #Kherson #Ukraine, Ostriv district: Russians are canvassing the residential areas and arrest the locals related to SBU/Police/TerDef/volunteers. ¤ Where they are failing in making a blockaded Leningrad out of Kherson, they have started making a concentration camp.🧵 RT @UnaHajdari Timothy Snyder, right now at @IWM_Vienna: “The decision of Ukrainians to fight back against the invasion is a gift to the Western world. They gave us time to think about what we want our future to look like. I don’t even want to imagine how grim things would be if they didn’t.”
📌 https://twitter.com/UnaHajdari/status/1502317863482408970?s=20⋙ Snyder: “Just like Hitler thought countries like Austria, Poland and others were invented and shouldn’t have existed in 1938, Putin thinks Ukraine is a country that shouldn’t exist… that on top of the notion that certain language speakers across the border need to be protected.”
⋙ Snyder: “…this despite the fact that German speakers in Austria were freer than German speakers in Germany, just like Russian speakers in Ukraine are freer than Russian speakers in Russia.”
⋙ Snyder: “Mr Putin’s statement that he wants to de-Nazify Ukraine is not just factually grotesque, but it’s also a weapon directed at the European conceptualization of WWII… it is a war of aggression on European memory.”
⋙ Snyder: “According to Putin the meaning of WWII is that the leader of Russia can accuse anyone of being Nazis or of committing genocide. He’s saying the words mean whatever Putin says they mean… and also renders all European institutions and values built after WWII meaningless.”
⋙ Snyder: “There should be no taboos in the discussion of history. It’s the taboos that lead to wars, bc they allow for a situation where a nation or country only sees themselves exclusively as the victim, and others or the side as only the aggressor or the evil side.”🧵 RT @UnaHajdari Timothy Snyder, right now at @IWM_Vienna: “The decision of Ukrainians to fight back against the invasion is a gift to the Western world. They gave us time to think about what we want our future to look like. I don’t even want to imagine how grim things would be if they didn’t.”
📌 https://twitter.com/UnaHajdari/status/1502317863482408970?s=20🐣 RT @MSnegovaya Putin ‘has placed the head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch under house arrest because he is furious at security services for failing to warn him’ that Ukraine could fiercely resist invasion https://mol.im/a/10603045 via @MailOnline
⋙ DailyMail [UK]: Putin places head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence under house arrest http://bit.ly/34GCFio
// Also arrested is Anatoly Bolyukh, Beseda’s deputy, according to respected author Andrey Soldatov, who said Putin is ‘truly unhappy’ with the agencyWaPo: U.S. explores sending Ukraine more advanced weapons after scuttling Polish jet deal http://wapo.st/3pUXWfl
🐣 📋 RT @BrianTBrown2 In the late 1930s, Stalin removed the entire command of the Red Army: 45,000 officers arrested, a third shot. As Red Army general and military historian Dmitri Volkogonov wrote, “Stalin came to strategic wisdom only through blood-spattered trial and error.” Sounds familiar.
🐣 RT @BrookingsInst Russia’s aggression has underscored why President Biden was right that the struggle between democracies and autocracies is the struggle of our time and why authoritarians are such a threat to peace and stability, writes @shadihamid.
⋙ Bookings, Shadi Hamid: There are many things worse than American power http://brook.gs/3IchqCQ🐣 RT @juliaioffe That moment when you slow down for a minute and are hit, overwhelmed, once again by the rage and the grief, by how bone-crushingly unfair and monstrous this all is, for this small, insecure men to destroy so many lives for absolutely nothing.
🐣 RT @OSINT_Group313 We recently saw info, claiming to be from within the FSB, saying no one can say “no” to Putin, and feed him whatever he wants to hear,No one thought he’d actually go to war, so they didn’t give real loss estimates. Well, that leak may have been real it seems #UkraineWar #Ukraine
🧵 RT @igorsushko I’ll be adding on to this thread as I receive further details, but we can get started. This info has been cross-verified from multiple sources. #FSBletters #theracecardriver
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1502345406230892550?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @igorsushko On 3/11, The 5th Directorate of the FSB (Operational Information and International Relations), in charge of foreign intelligence of the FSB, incl. in Ukraine, has been raided by the both FSO, Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation ФСО – Putin’s own security service
⋙⋙ along with the 9th Directorate of the FSB (Internal Security for the FSB). Head of the FSB’s 5th Directorate, Colonel General Sergei Beseda (born 1954), and his deputy, Anatoly Bolyukh (born 1956), have been arrested.
⋙⋙ Raids by the 9th Directorate and the FSO also took place at over 20 other locations associated with the operatives inside the 5th Directorate who are suspected of having connections with journalists and human rights activists.
⋙⋙ The raids, criminal investigations, and the arrests have taken place officially due to some trumped up accusations by the Kremlin against the 5th Directorate of corruption & bribery. The cover story for the raids is so ridiculous I won’t even go into further detail.
⋙⋙ My English translations of the #FSBletters have now been read by over 30,000,000 people on Twitter alone. These raids and arrests are the Putin regime’s de-facto recognition of the authenticity of the #FSBletters and the immense damage they are causing Putin.
⋙⋙ Vladimir Osechin has informed me that our FSB analyst has not been compromised. I cannot disclose the specifics. Our source sends his regards to everyone (THAT’S ALL OF US!) Message: “Our work continues.” 👊👊👊 #FSBletters🧵 RT @igorsushko My translation of the analysis of the current situation in Russia by an active FSB analyst. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The full text is over 2000 words. This is a highly insightful look behind the curtain – covers many subjects.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1500301348780199937?s=20
// First letter
🧵 RT @igorsushko My translation of the 2nd letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin, Russian human rights activist exiled in France. Written 1 day later on March 5th. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1000 words.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1501763583117389827?s=20
🧵 RT @igorsushko My translation of the 3rd letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin, Russian human rights activist exiled in France. Dated March 5th. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1400 words.
📌 https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1501841660505837572?s=20🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I was thinking about this today. The world I’ve known since 1991 is over. What replaces it, I don’t know. But my guess is that it will include a stronger Europe and NATO, stronger international institutions, and a much weaker Russia. I would not have predicted that a year ago.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ak_mack UK Foreign Secretary @trussliz, “The invasion of Ukraine is a paradigm shift on the scale of 9/11. ¤ How we respond today will set the pattern for this new era.”🐣 RT @cirincione You’re hearing more about nuclear threats now for good reason. It is not hype. It is not propaganda. We’re closer to the use of nuclear weapons by accident, miscalculation or madness than at any time since the early 1980’s. Listen:
⋙ https://radioopensource.org/a-new-nuclear-age/🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom This is Russia telling you right up front that Russia is planning to use chems and commit yet more war crimes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mfa_russia ❗️ Radical Ukrainian groups under the control of US special services’ representatives have prepared several potential scenarios of using of toxic #chemicals to carry out #provocations.
Objective – to accuse Russia of chemical weapons use vs civilians.
👉 https://is.gd/hSznIj🧵 RT @EuromaidanPress Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the preparation of a terrorist attack on the Chornobyl nuclear power plant to blame Ukraine, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence says.
📌 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1502251244039159809?s=20🐣 RT @AndreiSoldatov Putin appears to be truly unhappy with the FSB in Ukraine: he attacked the 5 Service SOiMS (FSB’s foreign Intelligence branch). Sergei Beseda, head of the Service, and his deputy Bolukh, head of the DOI, placed under house arrest, according to my sources inside.
🧵 RT @jominiw 1/ Ukrainian Theater of War, Day 15: The third week of the war opened with an underwhelming Russian offensive against west & east Kyiv. The Ukrainians continue to harass Russian supply routes and have retaken suburbs in northern Kharkiv. #UkraineWar #UkraineRussiaWar #Ukraine️
📌 https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1502175936166326272?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @jominiw 4/ Kyiv AO assessment. The ineptitude of Russian offensive action suggests Ukrainian forces will be able to hold Kyiv for the foreseeable future. Russian setbacks and staggering losses among field commanders will drive them toward more indiscriminate attacks. #Kyiv #KyivNow https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1502176338404200450?s=20&t=b7EyEF5NhIKWIqsg7-K1yQ/photo/1Russian Assessment: The long anticipated renewed Russian offensive against Kyiv underwhelming materialized today. Russian forces appear to have attempted simultaneous attacks in east and westKyiv. Though the Russians demonstrated marginally improved employment of BTG-level tactical maneuvers, assaults remain woefully ill-coordinated, poorly planned, not properly supported by indirect fire support, absent of reliable close air & attack aviation support, and unable to command and control formations larger than a regiment (~2-4x BTGs at any one time). Today’s failure by Russian forces to make substantial gains throughout the Kyiv area after days of planning, reorganization, and resupply have provided the clearest indication yet of the limit of Russian offensive capability, and lack of operational innovation and adaptation among Russian field commanders. If the Russians fail to overcome these shortcomings, then expect to see efforts to cut off Kyiv’s southern lines of communication, isolate the city, and use air, artillery, and missile attacks at scale to decimate Kyiv into submission.
Next 24 hours: The Russians will continue to execute a slow, methodical siege-and-starve approach to NW and east Kyiv. The Russian military will continue to prioritize the capture of Sumy over Chernihiv to secure their routes into forward positions around Kyiv. Around Kyiv, Russian forces will renew attempts to encircle Kyiv to the south.,
⭕ 10 Mar 2022
💙 NPR (3/10/2022): The centuries-long fight for Ukraine’s national identity http://n.pr/38Hp100 [audio, transcript] deep dive for history lovers (like me); interview with Serhii Plokhii (from Ukraine, teaches at Harvard) by Ramtin Arablouei, host of NPR’s podcast Throughline
// alt header: Ukraine’s Dangerous Independencw🐣 Bill Taylor, Fmr Amb to Ukraine: ‘We can’t let Putin set all the rules. Ukraine controlling Ukraine would not be in NATO’s interest.’ Bravo! @JoeNBC @Morning_Joe
🐣 @IgnatiusPost needs to go soak his head in ice water. if ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ are acceptable “inside Ukraine” (the fallout doesn’t care, btw), Russia can simply take over any non-NATO country it wants @Morning_Joe @JoeNBC
⋙ 🐣 here’s an idea: what if the US ‘threatens’ Ukraine with tactical nukes *or else* be absorbed into the United States ~ at which point it would be protected by NATO! @ignatiuspost @JoeNBC @Morning_Joe
↥ ↧
🐣 Proposal: ¤ 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not be the first to use a nuclear weapon (not even a little one) ~ NATO ¤ @Morning_JoeSciAm, N Tannenwald: ‘Limited’ Tactical Nuclear Weapons Would Be Catastrophic http://bit.ly/3N4ZjCh On 2/6/2018, SecDef Mattis stated “I do not think there is any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Any nuclear weapon used any time is a strategic game changer” @Morning_Joe
// Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows the limits of nuclear deterrenceNYT, Paul Krugman: America’s Right Has a Putin Problem http://nyti.ms/3tTZVlD “Russia is facing disaster precisely because it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent”
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEW: We accompanied NATO on surveillance mission today over the Poland-Ukraine border. The plane’s radar spotted at least nine Russian-made planes entering Ukrainian airspace from Belarus, appearing to head toward Kyiv. More here on what we saw:
⋙ CNN: Russia using Belarus as a launch point for many air operations in Ukraine, NATO says http://cnn.it/3vU0QoJ🧵 RT @JasminMuj Sensible Western governments would devote resources today to prepare for the collapse of the Putin regime and the almost certain chaos that will befall Russia as a result. And that implosion is coming, I suspect, sooner than many believe.
📌 https://twitter.com/JasminMuj/status/1502136531762364416?s=20
⋙ 🐣 good luck sorting this out https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1502155035802619911?s=20/photo/1
// 🌎 Ethnic map of USSR footprint🐣 RT @business EU leaders issue a joint statement saying they would support Ukraine “in pursuing its European path” and that it belongs in the “European family,” but stop short of mentioning any special or accelerated candidacy status
EU leaders issue a joint statement saying they would support Ukraine “in pursuing its European path” and that it belongs in the “European family,” but stop short of mentioning any special or accelerated candidacy status https://t.co/GhGYyez27d
— Bloomberg (@business) March 11, 2022
🐣 RT @lloydblankfein How possible that most Russians truly believe Putin’s naked lies that Ukraine is the aggressor, is building nukes, that civilians aren’t targeted, etc? Then I realize most Republicans truly believe, despite all evidence, that Trump won the 2020 election. And we have a free press!
AP: US, allies to revoke ‘most favored nation’ status for Russia http://bit.ly/3pVhxw2
🐣 RT @ Powerful appeal of @ZelenskyyUa in Russian to those who believe in pro-Kremlin propaganda. “I am the president of an adequate country and an adequate people. I am the father of two children. No chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction have been developed on my land.
💽 https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1502054315506212868?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mccaffrey3d Russian tactical units in disarray. Poorly commanded. Badly supported. Forcing Putin and his Generals into a savage criminal attack on defenseless civilian populations.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gr8shotkeith The scale of Russian army losses is under reported. The magnitude of the death of Russian soldiers from this one attack on one convoy alone must’ve been staggering. ¤ The Russian army- hungry, cold, out of fuel and motivation. #BlueVoices #DemVoice1
💽 https://twitter.com/gr8shotkeith/status/1501800492325691392?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @anders_aslund Indeed, if Russian money laundering is a major line of your business, how could you abandon Russia? Deutsche Bank is likely to stand tall with Putin’s crimes against humanity. It has some habit.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blu_kryptonian Deutsche Bank defends decision not to exit Russia: It’s not ‘practical’ right now
⋙⋙ MSN/CNBC: Deutsche Bank defends decision not to exit Russia: It’s not ‘practical’ right now http://bit.ly/36eZfiA🐣 RT @TimObrien Hannity: What about Putin and all the other dictators in the world?
Trump: “I got along with these people. I got along with them well…I understood them. And perhaps they understood me. Maybe they understood me even better. That’s okay.”Via @Acyn:
💽 https://twitter.com/TimOBrien/status/1502119237820817410?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @RadioFreeTom I don’t care about the people making bad-faith “why are you scared of Putin” arguments. But I think the “why not match his aggressiveness” question is a reasonable one and deserves an answer. I can only speak for myself here, obvs./1 […]
📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1502115066786856979?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom In effect, I’m saying that Biden and NATO have to be the more responsible parties here to protect world peace. And yes, that sucks. But Kennedy had to help Khrushchev out of the Cuban bungle, even though that was no fault of the United States. /9
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Our goals should be to raise the costs of war to Russia while closing off Putin’s attempts to inflict the burden of escalation on *us*. If he wants to escalate, he should have to take the step. This is a tight needle to thread, that’s why we pay diplomats and elect leaders. /10
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Putin is losing this war, even if he “wins” in the short term. Russia will be weaker when it is over. If refusing to be baited into war while Putin is destroying his own army seems like “weakness” or “being afraid” to you, I can’t help you. /11x🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress “We are working day and night to strengthen our army. I will not comment on the supply of weapons. I can say that tens of thousands of helmets and bulletproof vests, medicine & other important things are heading to Ukraine,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Over 100,000 Ukrainians have joined the ranks of the territorial defense forces. Also, over 200,000 have returned from Europe to defend their homeland – Reznikov🐣 RT @allinwithchris .@chrislhayes: “There is a strong, bipartisan will to do more [for Ukraine]. But none of that waves away the grim logic of mutually assured destruction, the reality of the nuclear age and the existential risks that come with a shooting war with a nuclear power.”
💽 https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1502090147453710338?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace Incredible. @jonkarl @McFaul @stengel and I discussed this today. Unbelievable moment for Fox.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Not a day without Tucker Carlson on #Russia’s state TV. Here’s another clip being used by the Russians to promote their disinformation about #Ukraine allegedly creating “bio-weapons” in its lab. #TuckyoRose delivers again. https://twitter.com/NicolleDWallace/status/1502092198799626270?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 Doesn’t this come pretty close to yelling fire in a crowded theatre? It provides cover for Russia’s pretense for unleashing an even worse level of terror on UkraineNYT, Mikhail Zygar: How Vladimir Putin Lost Interest in the Present http://nyti.ms/3KEnLIN “[S]ome members of Mr. Putin’s entourage have long worked to convince him that he is the only person who can save Russia, that every other potential leader would only fail the country”
🐣 RT @maria_avdv Russia has just attacked the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology. There is an experimental nuclear reactor there. A nearby dormitory is also on fire. Personnel staying in the shelter, shelling continues. Russia systematically attacks nuclear facilities in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @iameurmishvili #Zelenskyy addressed #Russia in Russian to the recent accusation that #Ukraine develops #bioweapons against Russia. “Are you planning dechymification of Ukraine now? Where else will you strike with #ChemicalWeapons? Maternity ward in #Mariupol? Church in #Kharkiv? Kids’ hospital?
🧵 RT @marcowenjones 1/ This is an analysis of all accounts using the terms ‘#Ukraine’ and ‘bio labs’. I wanted to see which accounts were pushing this narrative the most, & which were the most influential. This is an analysis of around 20k Twitter interactions from approx 17k unique account
📌 https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1502052062519083008?s=20🐣 RT @jimsciutto With respect @brithume Russia attacked the election. It stole emails to damage one candidate. Some Americans including the former president dismissed or encouraged the interference to the explicit damage of US interests. Those are facts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brithume Russian interference in that election had little effect on its outcome. But the theory that Trump conspired in that interference poisoned our politics for more than two years, doing real damage. Journalists who fell for it, wittingly or not, were parties to that.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto Americans who dismissed or encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 US election should explain why they’re now tough on Russia on Ukraine. The two acts are part of the same Putin plan to undermine rule of law & the West – aggression that goes back at least to Georgia in 2008.DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Even Russian State TV Is Pleading With Putin to Stop the War http://bit.ly/368lYfQ “The ugly truth about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is slipping through the cracks, despite the government’s authoritarian attempts to control the narrative.”
// State propagandists called for Putin to end the “special military operation” before “frightening” sanctions destabilize his regime and risk civil war in Russia.🐣 RT @PowerUSAID Putin has created 1 MILLION child refugees in just two weeks.
🐣 RT @SenatorRomney Innocent people are dying, and President Zelenskyy needs MiG aircraft to defend Ukraine against Putin’s military aggression. Enough talk–let’s get the job done so we can save lives in Ukraine and defend the cause of freedom. Send the MiGs.
🧵 RT @djrothkopf I’m not going to win any points for saying this but the Biden Admin international team has been doing exceptional work from the outset. They have restored international standing, strengthened alliances, rejoined multilateral institutions, elevated US diplomacy.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1501901031982174214?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 You get a lot of points from me. Biden’s approach is effective and wise. In an environment in which clamor and crazy get too much attention, it takes a while for reason and goodness to make their case⋙ The list of accomplishments is long: the leadership in this conflict is historic and will be studied & emulated for generations. But they rejoined the Paris Accord, rejoined the World Health Organization, led the global fight against the pandemic, and ended America’s longest war.
⋙ Yes…the courageous decision to get out of Afghanistan was the right decision and while the exit from that country could certainly have been handled better, the net benefits were great (including giving us the bandwidth and resources to face key challenges of today).
⋙ They also, in Afghanistan, worked exceptionally closely and well with the international community and oversaw an extraordinary airlift of more than 120,000 people out of the country–the biggest such operation in modern memory.
⋙ They are now also overseeing a similarly daunting and impressive logistic heavy lift bringing weapons and aid to Ukraine. The new strategy for the Indo Pacific region is forward looking and vitally important. They have showed strength against enemies and rivals.
⋙ They have also employed long overlooked techniques to repair alliances. These include: listening, recognizing our limitations, leading not from behind or through bullying but alongside critical partners, respect, and compassion.
⋙ @POTUS and @VP have demonstrated real political courage both in the pullout from Afghanistan (doing the right thing despite pundit outcry) and now, in this crisis. Who among our recent leaders would have risked spiking gasoline prices in an election year?
⋙ But sanctioning Russian energy products was the right thing to do even if it will create hardships for every American. Leading a bipartisan effort to provide unprecedented support for Ukraine is another such accomplishment.
⋙ They have also grown and learned from what mistakes they have made in the past. @SecBlinken has already established himself at the first rank of US Secretaries of State in the modern era. His team at State is doing extraordinary work.
⋙ The team of @SecDef and the brave men and women of DoD have continued to perform at the highest level, leading and inspiring the world. The sanctions regime from @SecYellen and the economic team has been extraordinary.
⋙ The intel community has distinguished itself and the use of intel has been innovative and effective. The national security process has, based on all my conversations with leaders in the administration, worked extraordinarily well and @JakeSullivan46 has, like Blinken…
⋙ …made it clear he is at the first rank of national security advisors, a worthy heir to the late Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who echoes Brent’s style and effectiveness in myriad ways. We are in the early stages of a crisis. Much can happen. Mistakes can yet be made.
⋙ But, at an extraordinarily demanding moment, one that we can now see is a turning point in history, the end of the post-Cold War era, we have been extremely fortunate. We are stronger. Our alliances are stronger. Our leaders are respected. We should be grateful.🧵 RT @NPRInskeep Merrick Garland, in a rare interview, is asked by our excellent @johnson_carrie if he’d shy away from 1/6 evidence that points to Trump or aides: “We are not avoiding cases that are political… What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan bas
📌 https://twitter.com/NPRinskeep/status/1501882396186226692?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @NPRInskeep More Garland on the 1/6 probe: “This is the most urgent investigation in the history of the Justice Department. It is the most resource intensive. We’ve thrown 70 prosecutors from DC, another 70 from across the country. Every FBI office… is working on this matter.” @NPR […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ And here’s the full talk with Attorney General Merrick Garland.@NPR @MorningEdition
⋙⋙ NPR: Garland says the Jan. 6 investigation won’t end until everyone is held to account http://n.pr/3MDfkiG “This had to do with the interference with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. And it doesn’t get more important than that” ~ Garland“Every FBI office, almost every U.S. attorney’s office in the country is working on this matter. We’ve issued thousands of subpoenas, seized and examined thousands of electronic devices, examined terabytes of data, thousands of hours of videos. People are working every day, 24-7, and are fully aware of how important this is. This had to do with the interference with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. And it doesn’t get more important than that.”
🐣 RT @EliotHiggins Here’s a look at Russia’s attempts to create a narrative around false flag chemical attacks in Syria, something they appear to be repeating in Ukraine.
⋙ Bellincat (2018): Chemical Weapons and Absurdity: The Disinformation Campaign Against the White Helmets http://bit.ly/3sX3Zlx
// 12/18/2018EUCom[.]mil: Statement Commander, U.S. European Command http://bit.ly/3CuTvgp “The transfer of MiG-29 aircraft will not appreciably increase the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force. The Ukrainian Air Force currently possesses numerous mission capable aircraft that are flying daily”
We believe the most effective way to support the Ukrainian military in their fight against Russia is to provide increased amounts of anti-tank weapons and air defense systems, which is on-going with the international community. The Ukrainians are making excellent use of these weapons now. Although Russian air capabilities are significant, their effectiveness remains limited due to Ukrainian strategic, operational, and tactical ground-based air defense systems…SAMs and MANPADS.
USEUCOM assesses the military usefulness of additional fixed wing air to Ukraine will be high-risk and low gain. # The transfer of MiG-29 aircraft will not appreciably increase the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force. The Ukrainian Air Force currently possesses numerous mission capable aircraft that are flying daily. Adding aircraft to the Ukrainian inventory is unlikely to change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force relative to Russian capabilities. Therefore, we assess that the overall gain is low.
Lastly, the intelligence community assesses the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in Russian escalation with NATO…producing a high risk scenario. USEUCOM thanks our Polish Allies for their outstanding support and cooperation. EUCOM will continue to evaluate ways to best support and assist our Ukraine friends. However, in the near-term, and based on this assessment, USEUCOM has no plans to facilitate an indirect, or third party transfer of Polish aircraft.?
⭕ 9 Mar 2022
Politico [EU]: ‘We told you so!’ How the West didn’t listen to the countries that know Russia best http://politi.co/3tP8M7Y
// Poland and the Baltic states understand the Kremlin better than Western governments, but found their warnings about Putin ignored.🧵 RT @davidfrum No Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II has done his country so much harm, so fast, as Vladimir Putin. He has isolated Russia from world trade, made the ruble worthless, destroyed 25 years of economic gains in a a week. 1/x
📌 https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1501781004855521281?s=20🧵 RT @michaeldweiss I spoke this afternoon to a senior European intelligence official. The picture shared about what’s happening in Ukraine differs from U.S. government assessments, especially on Russian losses. So let me present (without commentary) what this source said:
📌 https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1501652226330316802?s=20⋙ From our estimate, the KIA figure on the Russian side was anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 a few days ago.”
⋙ “Bad morale, lack of manpower” is a huge issue on the Russian side. “They’re calling in reservists, offering money and contracts to people to go fight and, as you’ve seen, relying on conscripts.”
⋙”It’s not a popular war in the Russian military from what we’ve seen. People are terrorized, threatened with lawsuits if they decline to fight.”
⋙ Anti-armor missiles are “the superstars right now.”
⋙ Ukraine still has “decent air defenses, especially short- to mid- range.”
⋙ One reason why Russian fixed-wing aircraft are being shot down is that “cloudy weather is forcing them to fly at lower altitudes.”
⋙ “Russia doesn’t have the power to keep going like this for very long. Time isn’t on their side, nor do they have a recipe for winning. They can’t win hearts and minds, that’s for sure.”
⋙ In two weeks, Russia has used up “a lot of their precision-guided missiles, a valuable commodity in their arsenal.”
⋙ “As long as the Western resupply channels remain open and Ukraine still fields a decent number of fighters, then they’re OK.”🐣 RT @mccaffrey3d MSNBC. Wednesday. 9 March 2022. ARI MELBER. Putin hammers innocent civilians. [Parts 1-3]
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1501733620829999106?s=20/photo/1
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1501734197894868994?s=20/photo/1
💽 https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1501735112278347778?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @mccaffrey3d If the Russians actually use chemical weapons against the Ukrainian civilian population it would produce catastrophic lethality. Chemical munitions not effective against equipped US troops. Terrible impact on civilians. Predict we would enter the war.
🧵 RT @juliaioffe Perhaps because Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine don’t make sense, Kremlin news and the Ministry of Defense now claim that they’ve magically discovered the Zelensky government’s plan to invade the Donbas. […]
📌 https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1501765862520406020?s=20
// on Russian tv
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe Okay, wow, just got to the part where the special correspondent from @rianru calls in to say that Mariupol is besieged, encircled, and being shelled…by the Ukrainian army.
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe OMG: The host of “Time Will Tell,” on Kremlin’s Channel One, accuses Zelensky of treating the Ukrainian people as “cannon fodder” because he won’t surrender and give Putin exactly what he asked for, therefore he is the one killing the Ukrainian people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe Cool, cool, a guest on the show says that Ukraine is ISIS “and their tactics are just like those of ISIS, they take whole cities hostage.” He then adds, “we cannot negotiate with them.” Kremlin TV, man. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe Aaaaand I’m at the part where they’re comparing Volodymyr Zelensky to Adolf Hitler.🐣 RT @Millermena Putin’s getting his ass kicked. I now believe that short of a total Ukrainian collapse in the south or east Russia will not take Kyiv. I also believe that he will shell every inch of this country if he can’t control it https://twitter.com/Millermena/status/1501774359958020099?s=20
🐣 RT @StateDeptSpox False claims from Kremlin officials about alleged U.S. chemical and biological weapons labs in Ukraine are total nonsense. It is exactly the kind of disinformation we’ve seen Russia use repeatedly to attempt to justify its horrific actions in Ukraine.
⋙ USDeptOfState: The Kremlin’s Allegations of Chemical and Biological Weapons Laboratories in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3vQl3f3The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine. We have also seen PRC officials echo these conspiracy theories. This Russian disinformation is total nonsense and not the first time Russia has invented such false claims against another country. Also, these claims have been debunked conclusively and repeatedly over many years.
As we have said all along, Russia is inventing false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine. The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere. It is Russia that has active chemical and biological weapons programs and is in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention.
Finally, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very crimes that Russia itself is perpetrating. These tactics are an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attacks on Ukraine. We fully expect Russia to continue to double down on these sorts of claims with further unfounded allegations.
🐣 RT @razibkhan “Russia and Ukraine have many similarities…but politically comparing them is a category error. At the UN, they are both present as nation-states, but Russia is a multiethnic and multireligious empire that is clearly heir to the Russia of the Tsars.”
◕ https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1501700995738484741?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Substack, Razib Khan: Getting a sense of the Russian soul http://bit.ly/3HYev08 “[H]istory has forged Russia into a civilization-state with a constitutive imperial ambition that will always clash with the more modest, cooperative aspirations of other peoples and nations”
// Looking into Russian genetics and history (not through Putin’s eyes)SkyNews [UK]: Ukraine war: President Zelenskyy says millions of people could die if world does not act now to stop the bombing http://bit.ly/3tCKYEg
// Speaking to Sky News’ Alex Crawford, Volodymyr Zelenskyy accuses countries of being indecisive on the issue of “closing” the skies against what he called “the Nazis”.🧵 RT @PressSec We took note of Russia’s false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine. We’ve also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.
📌 https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1501676230617321480?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @PressSec This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.
⋙ The United States is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.
⋙ It’s Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny.
⋙ It’s Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons. It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons
⋙ Also, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating. In December, Russia falsely accused the U.S. of deploying contractors with chemical weapons in Ukraine.
⋙ This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.
⋙ Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern.🐣 RT @MSNBC U.S. officials say they are concerned Russia could potentially be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine.
⋙ NBCNews: U.S. warns Russia could use chemical weapons in false-flag operation in Ukraine http://nbcnews.to/3u3FFOz
// White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Russia’s claims that Ukraine is developing chemical weapons “preposterous.”🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Silicon Valley tech worker was the Ukrainian mom lying dead on street in brutal photo that sparked outrage.
⋙ SFChronicle: Silicon Valley tech worker was the Ukrainian mom lying dead on street in brutal photo that sparked outrage http://bit.ly/3Ku4eKX https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1501692374736588800?s=20/photo/1Caption: The bodies of Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, along with her daughter Alise, 9, and son Nikita, 18, attended to by Ukrainian servicemen. The family was shot at by Russian forces as they tried to flee the town of Irpin, a suburb about 15 minutes from Kyiv. Perebeinis was an employee of the Palo Alto company SE Ranking. Andriy Dubchak/Associated Press
A Silicon Valley employee and her children are the subjects of photos so devastating that they shocked the world: a Ukrainian family lying dead on the pavement, killed by Russian mortar fire while trying to flee the conflict.
The images of Ukrainian soldiers tending to the bloodied bodies of a woman, her teenage son and young daughter, and their friend ran on the front page of the New York Times this week, along with online videos of the unprovoked attack on civilians. They stirred international outrage and a pledge from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to punish the perpetrators. “There will be no quiet place on Earth for you,” Zelenskyy said. “Except for the grave.”
Palo Alto startup SE Ranking confirmed Wednesday that the photo depicts its chief accountant, Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, along with her daughter, Alise, 9, and son, Nikita, 18, who were killed by Russian forces as they tried to flee the town of Irpin, a suburb about 15 minutes from Kyiv. They had just dashed across a partially destroyed bridge over the Irpin River into Kyiv when a mortar hit.
“For me as her colleague it’s a tragedy to see those pictures,” Ksenia Khirvonina, the company’s spokeswoman, told The Chronicle. “They show that it’s real. On the other hand they prove that (the) Russian army and Putin himself are monsters who deserve no mercy for their doings.” ¤ Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that his forces are not targeting civilians trying to flee.
Perebeinis “was a very friendly, brave, courageous woman with a great sense of humor, she always cheered everyone around her up, she was truly like a big sister to all of us,” Khirvonina said. She spoke from Dubai, where she had fled on Feb. 23 from Ukraine, where about half of the company’s 110 workers are based. ¤ “She always had answers to all our questions, even the most stupid ones, about personal finances or taxes or how to upgrade your visa cards; she had answers to everything,” Khirvonina said. “We are so shocked, saddened, devastated, angry. There are no words to describe our emotions, we are so heartbroken.”
WaPo: Promotion of Trump’s ‘big lie’ is costing Fox News http://wapo.st/3HZvLSW “In the consequential weeks after the 2020 election, a cabal of Fox News hosts and guests decided to boost the stolen-election claims of the ratings-boosting president”
// lawsuits by Dominion and. Smartmatic🐣 RT @SecBlinken Every Russian has learned about the Siege of Leningrad during World War II. Sadly, history has repeated itself—but now it’s the Russian government cruelly starving Ukrainian cities. https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1501674484197208064?s=20/photo/1
💙🧵 RT @RALee85 Sadly, I am going to start a thread on the Russian-Ukrainian War of 2022. I want to emphasize that everyone should be skeptical of videos and photos that have not been confirmed, which will include some of the posts in this thread.
📌 https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1496752076335947778?s=20
// 2/24/2022 super-long thread of war incidents; documentary threadSkyNews [UK]: Ukraine war: Russia confirms it has used thermobaric weapons, says UK’s Ministry of Defence http://bit.ly/3i0hj2d
// Thermobaric weapons suck in oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion, typically producing a blast wave of a significantly longer duration than that of a conventional explosive.🐣 RT @MFA_Ukraine FM @DmytroKuleba for @FT: “Granting Ukraine EU membership could be a defining victory for Europe and all of its nations, all of its leaders. All Europeans will feel proud of it — proud of standing on the right side of history, making a moral choice for the ages.”
🐣 RT @BBCYaldaHasim The Mayor of Lviv tells me this is a battle between David and Goliath. It is a special moment, a battle between authoritarianism and democracy. Victory is ours #UkraineRussianWar
🐣 RT @MID_RF МИД России 🇷🇺
Государственный орган (Россия)
💬#Захарова: Поставленные цели по возвращению Украины к истокам ее суверенитета, закреплённым в Декларации о независимости, которая провозглашала ее нейтральный статус и сотрудничество с Россией, будут выполнены.
☝️ Лучше, чтобы это было сделано путём мирных переговоров.
Translated from Russian by [Google] :
💬 #Захарова : The set goals of returning Ukraine to the origins of its sovereignty, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed its neutral status and cooperation with Russia, will be fulfilled.
☝️ It is better that this be done through peaceful negotiations.⋙ 🐣 I think it comes down to what “cooperation with Russia” means: if it means being a vassal state, obviously not; if it means having a pro-Kremlin president or pm, no; if it means having friendly relations between two sovereign nations,🙂
🐣 RT @ragipsoyfu 80% of Americans support sanctions on Russian gas and oil imports, despite the rise in fuel prices – Reuters poll
🐣 RT @JohnCornyn Imagine: “You’re a 22-year-old Ukrainian who has just been handed a Kalashnikov, four magazines of thirty rounds, a helmet, and body armor. Last week you were studying architecture at Kyiv National University.
⋙ 🐣 I am astonished by the Ukrainian people’s faith in the justice of their cause and their sheer courage
”the people united can never be defeated”
we should learn from them🐣 RT @MilitarisCath As a neutral non-aligned nation, Austrian pilots could take possession of Polish Migs, fly them to Austria, then fly them to the Ukraine, un armed for delivery, and thus avoid the problems the US Pentagon balked at.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PremierRP_en 🇵🇱🇦🇹 PM @MorawieckiM is on his way to #Vienna, where he will meet with the Chancellor of Austria @karlnehammer.🐣 RT @theragex CIA Director William Burns says that Russia’s president Putin had planned to seize control of Kyiv within two days of the start of the invasion.
⭕ 8 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @mmcauliff House Dem Chair Jeffries: “The conflict right now is not simply one between Ukraine and Russia. It’s a conflict between democracy and autocracy. It’s a conflict between freedom and tyranny. it’s a conflict between truth and propaganda.. Western values and democracy must win.”
😅 RT @TheCoolCenter Stephen Colbert does it again. Brilliant!
💽 https://twitter.com/TheCoolCreator/status/1501418048699478016?s=20/photo/1
// Colbert ♫ The Beverly Hillbillies ‘Story of a man named Vlad’🐣 RT @scotttheprocess “Right now there is a dictator who thinks he can violently conquer a sovereign democracy… but Joe Biden beat him in the last election”-Stephen Colbert
WaPo, David Ignatius: Travels with Milley: The general brings his ‘big green map’ to NATO’s flank http://wapo.st/3hRlRYL “Milley is an archetypal American commander — barrel-chested, gruff, profane, boisterous and sentimental”
≣ ZelenskySpeeches: Address by the President of Ukraine to the Parliament of the United Kingdom [transcript] http://bit.ly/35B7BkB
TheSpectator, Orlando Figes [UK]: Putin’s Russian history is a fantasy http://bit.ly/3hP7WCz “The Ukrainians are a diverse people but many of them trace their origins to the Cossacks, the tsar’s best fighters who won most of Russia’s wars. Putin has forgotten his Russian history.”
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Keep alive in your heart the possibility that Ukraine could actually win: columns stalled, defense fierce, casualties high, morale low, deserters surrendering, food and fuel snafu, population uncowed.
🐣 🌎 RT @NOTSeanMcCarthy Yeah sorry these are two separate countries and everybody trying to get more young men and civilians killed to delay the inevitable split and settlement here is scum https://twitter.com/NOTSeanMcCarthy/status/1500860722212974600?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 1. Since war broke out, many people in the east have moved west.
2. More people want to join the EU than in 2014
3. Anyone in the Donbas who wants to move to Russia can do so
4. Just because I’m for soc medicine doesn’t mean I want Canada to invade the US🐣 RT @TheEconomist He has carried himself with dignity, strength and a dash of humour
⋙ TheEconomist: How Volodymyr Zelensky found his roar http://econ.st/3CqC14Q “When America offered to airlift him to safety, he retorted: ‘The fight is here; I need anti-tank ammo, not a ride.’”
// A man who used to entertain the nation has become its voiceOn the morning of February 26th Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video of himself on Twitter. After a night of the worst fighting Kyiv had seen since the second world war, and of propaganda from Moscow claiming that he had fled the capital in fear, Ukraine’s president emerged from his office red-eyed and unshaven. He was holding a smartphone in his right hand as he filmed himself walking past the House with Chimaeras, a famous Kyiv landmark that serves as the presidential residence. He smiled at the camera and declared: “Good morning to all Ukrainians! There are a lot of fakes out there…[but] I am here.”
Mr Zelensky looked exhausted, but happy: happy to be alive, happy that Kyiv had not fallen and happy to play the role of a national leader, holding his nerve and his country together in the darkest hour of its 30-year history as an independent state. That was not the role he had chosen, but the one that was thrust upon him when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th. He has carried it off with dignity, strength and a dash of humour. When America offered to airlift him to safety, he retorted: “The fight is here; I need anti-tank ammo, not a ride.”
TheAtlantic: Biden Answered the 3 a.m. Call http://bit.ly/3w7bLeX “Biden’s faith in his own foreign-policy chops leaves him unconcerned about proving his bona fides. He knows the dangers of bluster”
// It’s hard to imagine that any of his rivals from the last election could have matched the president’s performance in this crisis.Joe Biden hasn’t received the full credit he deserves for his statecraft during this crisis, because he has pursued a policy of self-effacement. Rather than touting his accomplishments in mobilizing a unified global response to the invasion, he has portrayed the stringent sanctions as the triumph of an alliance. By carefully limiting his own public role—and letting France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz take turns as the lead faces of NATO—he has left Vladimir Putin with little opportunity to portray the conflict as a standoff with the United States, a narrative that the Russian leader would clearly prefer. He’s shown how to wield American leadership in the face of deep European ambivalence about its exercise.
… Biden’s faith in his own foreign-policy chops leaves him unconcerned about proving his bona fides. He knows the dangers of bluster and has steadfastly avoided them. When Putin announced that he was putting his nuclear arsenal into “special combat readiness,” Biden quickly made clear that he wouldn’t reciprocate. He has brushed off calls to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. From the start of his administration, he has tried to telegraph his thinking to Putin, so that the Russian leader could never misunderstand his intentions, and would never mistakenly assume that an American strike against Russia was imminent. …
It’s a quietly bravura performance—and it’s hard to imagine that any of Biden’s rivals from the last election, not just Donald Trump but also the Democrats, could have come close to matching it. If anything, it is reminiscent of how George H. W. Bush led the world through the end of the Cold War, a similarly chaotic moment that could have easily exploded into nuclear conflict. In the middle of Joe Biden’s 3 a.m. call, I find myself grateful that he’s the one answering the phone.
🐣 ◕ RT @carlquintanilla US gasoline costs, as consumer’s share of wallet: (via @MikeZaccardi) #OOTT https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1501242913321324546?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatBullard Tricky bit about that – total energy as % of personal consumption expenditures elides completely the fact that motor fuel is 100%+ of the increase, while gas and power are flat/falling secularly. https://twitter.com/NatBullard/status/1501244418661265414?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @stuartpstevens What @POTUS is doing is very methodically saving the world. This is a moment he has prepared for his entire life. The 2020 election should be regarded as most consequential since WW2. That will hold true until 2024. Democracy was and is very much on the ballot
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I keep saying it: the greatest military blunder in modern European history
⋙ 🐣 RT @iambremmer i see no way putin can emerge from this war in anything but a radically worse position—politically, economically, and strategically—than he was in before he decided to invade. ¤ and every day that passes it’s getting worse for him.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @iambremmer if russia didn’t have 150 million people, a big piece of global commodity export, a massive military and 5000 nuclear warheads, this wouldn’t worry me that much.🐣 RT @cliffordlevy US intel officials:
• “Moscow underestimated the strength of Ukraine’s resistance.”
• “Putin is angry and frustrated right now.” He is likely to “try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties.”
By @julianbarnes
⋙ NYT: Spy Agencies Cite Russia’s Setbacks but Say Putin Is ‘Unlikely to Be Deterred’ http://nyti.ms/3hRFOi9
// Top U.S. intelligence officials told Congress that the Russian leader had underestimated Ukrainian resolve and Western cohesion but was “doubling down” to achieve his goals.🐣 RT @IlvesToomas They are as culpable as Göbbels, who poisoned his own children in 1945. ¤ These clowns will all be at the Hague. ¤ EU countries “host” convicted war criminals in our prisons. I look forward to a whole wing for these thugs in in solitary confinement in one of our Europrisons,
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russia’s state TV is growing increasingly desperate in their attempts to justify Putin’s unjust war against Ukraine. Now they’re claiming it was only a matter of time before Ukraine attacked Russia. Mental gymnastics and hypocrisy, trying to whitewash their bloodthirsty dictator.🐣 RT @DefTechPat CIA Director Burns “President Xi and the Chinese leadership are a little bit unsettled. by what they’re seeing Ukraine. They did not anticipate that the significant difficulties the Russians were going to run into”
🐣 🌎 An map of Ethicities from 1913 shows Ukraine as unified and including parts of current Russia
An map of Ethicities from 1913 shows Ukraine as unified and including parts of current Russia pic.twitter.com/gSyc49HX4E
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) March 9, 2022
🐣 RT @stratosathens Whenever I need a small break from reports of Putin’s ongoing crime against humanity, I have to thank the Ukrainian farmers. God bless them. 🇺🇦
⋙ 🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag After 12 days of stealing Putin’s tanks, Ukrainian farmers are now unofficially the fifth-largest military in Europe🐣 RT @KatyOnMSNBC “This is about humanity.” @HopkoHanna talks to @KatyTurNBC about the dire situation in Ukraine as pressure mounts for a no-fly zone.
💽 https://twitter.com/KatyOnMSNBC/status/1501280330740682752?s=20/photo/1NYT: The Future Turns Dark for Russia’s Oil Industry http://nyti.ms/35BAGfM “[W]hen the hundreds of Western technical experts and managers based in Russia leave, … the Russian industry could develop headaches trying to find high-tech spare parts and software updates”
// An exodus by Western companies and disdain for Russian oil signal the start of a reckoning.❗️WaPo: U.S. to ban oil imports from Russia as White House explores drastic plans to buffer economy from energy shock http://wapo.st/3Krbqr7
// The announcement could come as soon as Tuesday and is the latest move by the Biden administration following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.🐣 RT @andersostlund Russia wants to hide the deaths from the soldiers relatives in Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv ❗️This is the first war in human history when the #Russian army refuses to take its #dead back, says the #Ukrainian Interior Ministry.🐣 RT @markmobility omg. The Ukrainian Ambassador holds up a tweet from Lavrov (saying Russia is in Ukraine to stop a war) and advises Russian diplomats where they can get mental health assistance.
💽 https://twitter.com/markmobility/status/1501162115473752068?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @UKRintheUSA Ukraine requests the ethically and socially responsible global businesses to stop or suspend operations with or in Russia, therefore refusing to finance its violence, murders, and crimes against humanity. Please read and share my full appeal to global business community below.
https://twitter.com/UKRintheUSA/status/1501166815602515979?s=20/photo/1⭕ 7 Mar 2022
Bloomberg: U.S. Spies See Grim Global Outlook With Russia, China Top Foes http://bloom.bg/3Kwi1AN The annual threat assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was completed before Russia invaded Ukraine
● Annual threat report completed before Russia invaded Ukraine
● North Korea bent on expanding its nuclear arsenal, report says
⋙ Report: http://bit.ly/3tCEk0F 31p💙 TheTimes, Tom Ball [UK]: This war will be a total failure, FSB whistleblower says http://bit.ly/3KujhUX
// Archive version via AnonymousSpies in Russia’s infamous security apparatus were kept in the dark about President Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine, according to a whistleblower who described the war as a “total failure” that could be compared only to the collapse of Nazi Germany.
A report thought to be by an analyst in the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, said that the Russian dead could already number 10,000. The Russian defence ministry has acknowledged the deaths of only 498 of its soldiers in Ukraine.
The report said the FSB was being blamed for the failure of the invasion but had been given no warning of it and was unprepared to deal with the effects of crippling sanctions. ¤ The whistleblower added that no one in the government knew the true figure of the dead because “we have lost contact with major divisions”.
FSB officers had been ordered to assess the effects of western sanctions, they said, but were told that it was a hypothetical box-ticking exercise. “You have to write the analysis in a way that makes Russia the victor . . . otherwise you get questioned for not doing good work,” they wrote. “Suddenly it happens and everything comes down to your completely groundless analysis. ¤ “[We are] acting intuitively, on emotion . . . our stakes will have to be raised ever higher with the hope that suddenly something might come through for us. ¤ “By and large, though, Russia has no way out. There are no options for a possible victory, only defeat.”
The letter said that Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and an ally of Putin, was on the verge of outright conflict with the Russians after his “hit squad”, sent to kill President Zelensky, was destroyed by Ukrainian forces.
Even if Zelensky were killed, the report said, Russia would have no hope of occupying Ukraine. “Even with minimum resistance from the Ukrainians we’d need over 500,000 people, not including supply and logistics workers.” ¤ The analyst said that the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, was trying to “dig up dirt” to claim that Ukraine had built nuclear weapons, a pretext for a pre-emptive strike.
The 2,000-word document was published by Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net. ¤ Christo Grozev, an expert on the Russian security services, said he had shown the letter to two FSB officers, both of whom had had “no doubt it was written by a colleague”. ¤ Grozev, who reported the identities of the Salisbury poisoners with the investigative website Bellingcat in 2018, said: “Ukraine had previously leaked fake FSB letters as psy-ops. ¤ “This letter appeared different, though. It came via a reputable source [Osechkin] and it was way longer than a forger would choose to make it.”
The FSB is led by Alexander Bortnikov, a confidant of Putin. They have known each other since the 1970s, when they both served as KGB officers in Leningrad. Bortnikov’s son, Denis, is chairman of VTB bank and is among those sanctioned by the UK.
The war, the writer said, had been given a “provisional deadline” of June because by then the Russian economy will have collapsed. “I have hardly slept at all recently, working all hours, in a brain-fog,” they wrote. “Maybe it’s from overwork, but I feel like I am in a surreal world. Pandora’s Box has been opened.”
The author said they could not rule out international conflict and that they were expecting “some f***ing adviser to convince the leadership” to send an ultimatum to the West threatening war if sanctions were not lifted. ¤ “What if the West refuses?” they wrote. “In that instance I won’t exclude that we will be pulled into a real international conflict, just like Hitler in 1939.” Elsewhere in the letter they said: “Our position is like Germany in 1943-44 — but that’s our starting position.”
Disquiet is growing in Russia, articulated by a senator whose late husband was once a mentor to Putin. ¤ Lyudmila Narusova, 70, was the wife of Anatoly Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St Petersburg, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2000 as Putin ascended to the presidency. She acknowledged the huge number of Russian casualties, saying that out of one company of 100 conscripts only four had survived. ¤ She also confirmed that conscripts had been forced to sign contracts committing them to fight in Ukraine.
Twelve months of military service is mandatory between the ages of 18 and 27 for Russian men. The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia said last week that many soldiers had been tricked into enlisting. They had been told they were heading to the border for drills, the group said, but their contracts were changed to include conflict. ¤ Narusova said: “Yesterday conscripts were withdrawn from the warzone in Ukraine who had been forced to sign a contract. . . from a company of a hundred men only four were left alive.” ¤ Last week she told Dozhd, an independent television channel, that dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine lay “unburied, wild, stray dogs gnawing on bodies that in some cases cannot be identified because they are burnt”. ¤ “I do not identify myself with those representatives of the state that speak out in favour of the war,” she said. “They are following orders without thinking.”
TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: The Strategy That Can Defeat Putin http://bit.ly/3MzsKMH the Russian attack on Ukraine is “an assault not only on that country but on all international norms of decent behavior. … In short, the stakes are enormous, and with them the dangers”
// The U.S.-led coalition of liberal-democratic states should pursue three objectives.… The other wars of the post–Cold War era could be understood or interpreted as the consequence of civil war and secession or tit-for-tat responses to aggression. Not the Russian attack on Ukraine. This assault was unprovoked, unlimited in its objectives, and unconstrained in its means. It is, therefore, an assault not only on that country but on all international norms of decent behavior.
A broader world order is at stake; so too is a narrower European order. Putin has made no secret of his bitter opposition to NATO and to the independence of former Soviet republics, and it should be expected that after reducing Ukraine, he would attempt something of a similar nature (if with less intensity) in the Baltic states. He has brought war in its starkest form back to a continent that has thrived largely in its absence for nearly three generations. And his war is a threat, too, to the integrity and self-confidence of the world’s liberal democracies, battered as they have been by internal disputes and backsliding abroad.
In short, the stakes are enormous, and with them the dangers. And yet there is good news in the remarkable solidarity and decisiveness of the liberal democracies, in Europe and outside it. The roles of Australia and Japan in responding to the Russian invasion are no less significant than those of Britain or France. In that respect, Ukraine 2022 is not Czechoslovakia 1938, not only because it is fighting ferociously but because the democracies are with it in material as well as moral ways. It differs, too, in that this time the aggressor is not Europe’s most advanced economy but one of its least; its military is not the fearsomely effective Wehrmacht but a badly led, semi-competent, if well-armed, horde better suited for and inclined to the massacre of civilians than a fight against its peers. Russia’s failure to command the air, its stalled armored columns, the smoking ruins of its tanks and armored personnel carriers all testify to the Russian army’s weakness. So too does the continuation in office of the long-serving chief of general staff and defense minister who planned and led this operation, a debacle in the face of every advantage of positioning, timing, and material superiority.
Under these conditions, the U.S.-led coalition of liberal-democratic, chiefly European states should have three objectives. The most obvious aim of Western strategy is the liberation of Ukraine, restoration of its free government and institutions, rebuilding of its economy, and guarantee of its independence by placing it in a position of well-armed security against a similar attack in the future. That will include a welding of this country to the European Union. Ultimately, it may include its incorporation into the NATO alliance that has saved many of its neighbors from a similar fate.
Doing this will require defeating Russian forces, but the objectives vis-à-vis Russia have to go beyond this. Ideally, this conflict will end with the overthrow of Vladimir Putin, who bears singular responsibility for it not only morally but also politically. This was not only a war of choice—it is his war of choice, and he has been dangerous and malevolent in its conduct. His fall from power could come about as a result of elite discontent leading to a coup of some kind, or mass upheaval.
However, neither outcome can be predicted and, for the time being, neither seems imminent. Moreover, although Russian dissenters from the war have shown remarkable courage, the regime is skillfully tapping deep reserves of xenophobia and chauvinism through its complete control of Russian media outlets. In that respect, Russia is in many ways a functioning fascist state, in the grip of a nationalist ideology and an all-powerful leader. For that reason, then, and barring a new Russian revolution, the Western objective must be to leave Russia profoundly weakened and militarily crippled, incapable of renewing such an onslaught, isolated and internally divided until the point that an aging autocrat falls from power. Targeting Putin alone is not enough.
Finally, the West has the opportunity, and faces the necessity, of changing the story of democratic decline and weakness to one of strength and self-confidence. Europe’s remarkable response to the invasion is a long step in this direction, as is the American leadership that has rallied so many to oppose Russia and stand with Ukraine. China is watching the invasion of Ukraine; so, too, are Iran and lesser authoritarian regimes, waiting to see whether such opportunities are available to them, or too perilous to attempt. The Western powers must induce them to take the latter view by the visible successes that they achieve. There are internal audiences as well, particularly in the United States. After a decade of deeply self-critical contemplation of America’s internal divisions, this is the moment to restore confidence in the ideals and beliefs that have made the United States at once powerful and free.
Western strategy should rest on three pillars: vigorous and imaginative military support to Ukrainian regular and irregular forces; sanctions that will hobble the Russian economy; and construction of a militarily powerful European alliance that can secure the border with Russia as long as that country remains a menace. … …
Many hazards lie ahead, for that is the nature of conflict with an unscrupulous and possibly somewhat deranged opponent. But all the odds are on the West’s side. The valiant Ukrainian population is willing to fight to the end and, for the moment, the West has found the unity and resolve to aid it. The Western economies are far and away the wealthiest, most resilient, and most advanced. The Western militaries deteriorated after the end of the Cold War, to a shocking degree, but their disarmament is not comparable to their desultory state in the 1930s. And the West faces not an ideological challenge comparable to Nazism or Communism but a vicious form of nationalism entrenched in a country that saw a million more deaths than births last year, that is burdened with a corrupt and limited economy, and that is led by an isolated, aging dictator.
Vladimir Putin has one advantage only. As a KGB officer he learned to play head games with his enemies, be they dissidents or foreign powers. Fear is not the consequence of Russian actions but rather their object. It is Moscow’s chief weapon, and Russian leaders are adept in its use. But fear is also susceptible to the remedy applied by the Ukrainians today, and by many others in the past. Courage, as Churchill famously said, is the virtue that makes all other virtues possible. Without courage, the West cannot succeed, but with it, it cannot fail.
🧵 RT @anders_Aslund The contrast is stunning. The proud Ukrainians think that Putin will lose his war of aggression against them, while the Western observers overwhelmingly think Russia will win. Having studied the Finnish Winter War I am all with the Ukrainians.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1501059274033844228?s=20🧵 RT @djrothkopf Folks, can we please put to rest the “NATO Expansion” got us to where we are with Ukraine fable. This is a story spun up by a psychopath to justify the indefensible. Adding credence to it in any way helps validate his actions. But, let’s get back to the fable part, shall we?
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1500849055617978371?s=21🐣 RT @casternoel Remember when Keith Schiller said Trump was offered prostitutes in Moscow, they declined, so he just hung around outside Donald’s door for a bit and then went to bed? Keith’s job was to look the other way, and I promise you Trump partook that evening and Putin has tapes.
🧵 RT @SethGJones It is highly unlikely that Russia will be able to “hold” territory in Ukraine—as opposed to “conquer” it—for at least three major reasons, making Russia’s invasion a potentially huge strategic blunder 1/11
📌 https://twitter.com/SethGJones/status/1500626329145905152?s=20
⋙ WaPo: Russia can defeat Ukraine, but it can’t hold the territory http://wapo.st/3pN70D1
// Historical precedent suggests 190,000 troops aren’t enough to police a population of 43 million.🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews When Trump said that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “so smart,” Russia was listening. When Trump held up US military assistance to Ukraine, Russia was watching. When Pompeo said that Americans don’t give a f* about Ukraine, Russia loved it. Here we are.
WaPo, Dmytro Kuleba: Ukrainian foreign minister: The world can do more to help us fight Russia http://wapo.st/35F3dkr “[A]s Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to bomb our citizens and kill civilians, his invasion is following Hitler’s and Stalin’s playbooks”
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM New Zelensky address: “There is no blood on our flag. There are no and will never be black spots on it. There are no and will never be any swastikas on it. The Ukrainian flag is the land. Peaceful, fertile, golden and without tanks… So it was. And so it will be.”
🐣 RT @ KyivIndependent ⚡️Reuters: US may ban Russian oil imports without Europe. ¤ The U.S. is willing to ban Russian oil imports into the country without the participation of its European allies, according to the sources cited by Reuters.
NYT: Congress moves to bar Russian energy imports and end favorable trade relations. http://nyti.ms/3MydxLy
// A bipartisan group of lawmakers reached an agreement on legislation that, if passed, would bar imports of Russian energy and suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus.🐣 RT @balticjam ”The first volunteers of Ukraine’s International Legion have joined the defense of Kyiv. The unit includes volunteers from the United States, Great Britain, SWEDEN, Lithuania, Mexico and India”
⋙ Biz_Ukraine_Mag BREAKING: The first volunteers of Ukraine’s International Legion have joined the defense of Kyiv. The unit includes volunteers from the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Lithuania, Mexico and India. Around 20,000 have so far sought to enlist in this global force for goodWaPo: Why Putin needs to watch his back http://wapo.st/35w0kT7 “Neither taking Kyiv and declaring victory nor beginning peace negotiations will save the Russian president from the serious, if not fatal, domestic repercussions of this war”
// Russia has a long history of unsuccessful wars that have led to regime change.🐣 RT @andersostlund Russian forces are planning to storm Kyiv. But are they ready to take Kyiv or are they being pushed by Moscow to do it anyway? Russia hasn’t been able to take Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Mykolaiv. Will they then succeed taking the much larger Kyiv, 40km in diameter?
⋙ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Russia begins to accumulate resources for storming Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Pentagon assesses that 95% of the Russian forces at the borders have already entered Ukraine and that the Russians did not achieve their plans for air domination.Russia begins to accumulate resources for storming Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Pentagon assesses that 95% of the Russian forces at the borders have already entered Ukraine and that the Russians did not achieve their plans for air domination.https://t.co/9G181FqZSZ pic.twitter.com/Hx3yM5UNGb
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) March 7, 2022
// map🐣 So — We’ve heard from #Peskov offering terms (Reuters) and #Lavrov saying the war is to prevent a war [?!] ¤ Where’s #Putin?
🐣 RT @juliaioffe Who wants to tell him
⋙ 🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] FM #Lavrov: The goal of Russia’s special military operation is to stop any war that could take place on Ukrainian territory or that could start from there.🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Russia claims it will stop the war immediately if Ukraine agrees to:
– cease military action
– change constitution to enshrine neutrality
– recognize Crimea as Russian territory
– recognize the Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Source: Statement by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, cited by Reuters.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @waerth Please forward my demands
Russia leaves all occupied territories worldwide
Russia pays for all damages
Kaliningrad will become EU territory
Karelia returns to Finland
Russia signs peace with Japan and returns islands
All Russian leadership to the Hague ICJ
Russia demilitarises
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MTweeder The entirety of Southern Russia and Siberia should become a part of Ukraine. Most of the people who colonized Siberia were Ukrainians and Ukrainian Cossacks were used to conquer the land. Until recently Ukrainians were the majority in these areas.🧵 RT @McFaul “In invading Ukraine, he [Putin] has miscalculated.” 1/ THREAD.
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1500802620746723332?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “After 22 years in power, he is now profoundly isolated, surrounded only by yes men who have cut him off from accurate knowledge about the resilience of the Ukrainian people, the resolve of the West, the low morale for this war within his army …”
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “… and the unpopularity within Russian society of the senseless invasion. The initial attack has not gone according to plan. Now Putin feels cornered and compelled to double down: both in the conduct of the war and in words.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “His recent emotional statements suggest instability. Rational leaders do not hint at launching a nuclear holocaust.” ¤ Opinion | Putin is menacing the world. Here’s how Biden should respond to his nuclear threats.
⋙⋙ WaPo, Michael McFaul: Putin is menacing the world. Here’s how Biden should respond to his nuclear threats. http://wapo.st/3sMWwFz
// 3/3/2022📋 NYT: What Is NATO and Which Countries Are Members? http://nyti.ms/3pMnwDv
Text Block: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1500864363820945409?s=20/photo/1
// This Western mutual-defense alliance, which sees an attack on one member as an attack on all, is central to the war in Ukraine, even though Ukraine is not a member.Which countries are in NATO? In addition to the United States and Canada, 10 other countries became part of NATO in 1949: Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Britain.
Since then, 18 more European powers have joined: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Turkey, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. ¤ Other European countries have, over the years, avoided joining NATO, including Sweden and Finland.
⭕ 6 Mar 2022
AP: What is the US doing to help Ukraine refugees? http://bit.ly/3pS9gZN “The Trump administration cuts to the refugee program forced resettlement agencies to lay off staff and close offices. … Despite the difficulties, the U.S. could handle the arrival of more refugees”
WaPo: Two Ukrainian children killed ‘in front of my own eyes’ while trying to evacuate, official says http://wapo.st/3HQbpLy
🐣 RT @lesiavasylenko Today the metro underground’s and basements are the ‘it’ places to be. Concerts, cinemas, comedy shows – all there. All to keep people’s morale high. And we’re doing good. We keep standing #StandWithUkraine️ #NoFlyZoneOverUkraineNow
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Have Zelensky (and Putin) created a come-to-democracy moment? That’s up to us. http://wapo.st/3Cmk33G “Perhaps this terrible episode will help us recognize that our shared commitment to democracy runs a lot deeper than we thought”
// “We cannot ignore the shadows that have fallen across American democracy, cast largely by the power of an increasingly antidemocratic far right”With his criminal assault on Ukraine, Putin has reminded the world of where nationalist authoritarianism can lead and how costly a smash-mouth brand of politics that accentuates and exaggerates our differences can be. At the same time, the courage shown by Zelensky and his fellow Ukrainians in standing up to brutality should give heart to all defenders of democracy and self-rule.
But Zelensky can’t save anyone else’s democracy. We have to do this ourselves. Perhaps this terrible episode will help us recognize that our shared commitment to democracy runs a lot deeper than we thought. We need to come together to fight for it — starting at home.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️ Kuleba: 20,000 foreigners volunteer to fight Russia. ¤ Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the foreigners from 52 countries have applied to join Ukraine’s military.
🐣 RT @WSJ “Beyond Putin, this is very damning for one person in particular, and that is Sergei Shoigu.” Russia’s defense chief modernized its armed forces, but their failure to quickly seize Ukraine has shown he didn’t create the fighting machine he touted.
⋙ WSJ: Russia’s Military Chief Promised Quick Victory in Ukraine, but Now Faces a Potential Quagmire http://on.wsj.com/3tuS6T4 “Poor logistics, flawed strategy and ill-prepared troops mean any victory will be immensely costly, and an occupation hard to sustain.”
// The close Putin ally modernized Russia’s forces, but those troops have run into ferocious Ukrainian resistanceExperts on the Russian military place some of the blame on Mr. Shoigu’s willingness to back Mr. Putin’s plans, even if they are unrealistic. That has meant agreeing with assumptions the Ukrainian military would quickly fold in the face of a superior force and that Russian troops would be greeted as liberators.
“Beyond Putin, this is very damning for one person in particular, and that is Sergei Shoigu,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization located in Arlington, Va. “By agreeing to these assumptions and this type of operation, he has essentially thrown the Russian military into a disaster.”
It is hard to predict how this plays out for Mr. Shoigu. His acquiescence to the invasion demonstrated loyalty to Mr. Putin’s political objectives in Europe. But if the operation fails, the Kremlin leader would likely look for a scapegoat. “It all depends on how this all ends for Putin,” said Mr. Kofman.
Whether or not Russia prevails in Ukraine, Mr. Shoigu’s initial strategy to quickly topple the Ukrainian government with minimal losses has failed. After 11 days of fighting, Russian troops have failed to take any major city and have suffered unexpectedly heavy casualties. Ukraine has gotten global support and Western sanctions are on track to cripple the Russian economy. To make up for its military setbacks, Russia has increasingly resorted to indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas. …
[H]e took a dispirited and weak military and turned it into a more modern fighting force. Heavy marketing boosted the military’s reputation and drew in young men to be professional soldiers. Every spring, he paraded the military’s new weapons and technology through central Moscow.
Mr. Shoigu’s first success came in Crimea, when he planned a nighttime intervention by special forces to seize the peninsula. They took over government buildings in an operation that ultimately led to the annexation of the Ukrainian territory in 2014. The invasion was seen as retribution for the ouster of a pro-Russian president in Kyiv a month earlier and to protect Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which had its headquarters in Crimea. …
“He’s long been seen as the most likely successor to Putin should the latter drop dead,” said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Rather than being a political threat, Mr. Shoigu helped boost Mr. Putin’s image and his ideology, which is centered on confrontation with the West, Russian nationalism and religion. Mr. Shoigu changed the design of military uniforms to look like those introduced by Joseph Stalin to celebrate the U.S.S.R.’s victory in World War II. He attended the consecration of the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, whose floors were made from the melted metal of Nazi German tanks captured by the Soviets. …
The military became known for sleek, well-produced videos, using drone footage and snappy editing to show Russian victories in Syria. The Defense Ministry’s official television channel, Red Star, visited Russian troops on operations in the Middle East and the Arctic, presenting them as heroes standing up for Russia’s interests around the globe. …
As Mr. Putin elevated the military, the armed forces have cooperated with other, darker aspects of the Kremlin leader’s rule. Mr. Shoigu has entered into numerous contracts with Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-connected businessman, who has bankrolled Russia’s private military company, known as Wagner.
Wagner has provided support on the ground in places like Syria, and the Defense Ministry has rewarded Mr. Prigozhin with military contracts for food services. Mr. Prigozhin didn’t respond to a request for comment.
If the Ukraine invasion continues to go poorly, it could unravel years of image-building for the military and Mr. Shoigu, and show that earlier victories were less impressive than they seemed. ¤ Crimea is less than one-twentieth the size of Ukraine and even under Ukrainian rule, it was a stronghold of pro-Russian sentiment. And the Syrian effort was mostly aerial bombing.
Mr. Shoigu has been one of the most visible proponents of the Russian version of events before and after the invasion of Ukraine. When the U.S. warned of an imminent Russian invasion, he said that Moscow’s intelligence showed the U.S. was helping Ukraine develop nuclear weapons and that Washington was preparing for a chemical weapons attack on the Russian-backed militants in Ukraine’s east. ¤ Last week, when it was clear the invasion wasn’t going as planned, he blankly read from his prepared comments in a widely televised meeting. “The most important thing for us is to protect the Russian Federation from the military threat created by the West, which is trying to use the Ukrainian people in the fight against our country,” he said to a group of officers. ¤ “The grouping of the armed forces of the Russian Federation will continue to carry out the special military operation until the mission put forth has been completed,” he said.
🐣 RT @yermolenko_v Ukraine is now incredibly united. Some compare it with Maidan, but it’s more than Maidan. It’s a cross-party, cross-lingual, cross-regional, cross-ethnic consolidation. Against the 21st century barbarians, against inhumanity. This unity has tragic reasons but no less miraculous
🧵 RT @YourAnonNews We are #Anonymous ¤ We are involved in the biggest Anonymous op ever seen. That being said, we are worried that some governments will indeed see us as a threat and create some scenario to make us look bad (false flag). We only want peace, not war. (continued)
📌 https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/1500644456680378378?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ […]Remember us when various powers turn their attention towards us, because it will happen. We can change the world for the better. That has always been the idea. ¤ Ideas are bulletproof. ¤ Signed,#Anonymous🐣 RT @McFaul International law experts, I know that Russia inherited “de facto” the USSR’s seat on the UN Security Council. Was that ever ratified in a formal vote? Was it legal? Maybe time to give that seat to another Soviet successor state, Ukraine?
🐣 RT @NTenzer First Putin came for the Chechens & I didn’t speak out—because I was not a Chechen.
Then Putin came for the Syrians & I didn’t speak out—I was not a Syrian.
Then Putin came for the Ukrainians, & I didn’t speak out…
Then Putin came for me—& there was no one left to speak for me.🐣 RT @YourAnonTV JUST IN: The hacking collective #Anonymous today hacked into the Russian streaming services Wink and Ivi (like Netflix) and live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One, Moscow 24 to broadcast war footage from #Ukraine. #TangoDown #OpRussia
💽 https://twitter.com/YourAnonTV/status/1500557635686486023?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @hackingbutlegal MORE: All Russian-state TV channels have been hacked.MORE: All Russian-state TV channels have been hacked. pic.twitter.com/fCZaYpQjYP
— Anonymous TV 🇺🇦 (@YourAnonTV) March 6, 2022
🐣 RT @hackingbutlegal This, out of #Ukraine, is 100% one of the most incredible videos I have ever seen. ¤ This Russian POW has the heart of a lion 🦁
💽 https://twitter.com/hackingbutlegal/status/1500465032966062082?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Hacking group Anonymous interrupts Russian state TV programs with footage of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and an anti-war message. ¤ It claims to have accessed TV channels “Russia 24”, “Channel 1”, “Moscow 24”, & streaming services Wink and Ivi.
🐣 RT @john_sipher “Russia articulates quite clearly that they are at war with us already, and they have been for some time. Their primary interest – and why they have resorted to so many grey and below-threshold methods of attack…-is that we never feel sufficient activation energy to fight them.”
⋙ 🧵 RT @MollyMcKew There is no way back. ¤ If we want the war with Putin to end, we must see why the Ukrainians have defied all expectations, and learn to think as they do. ¤ We must learn to see not only risk, but the opportunities born by taking them. ¤ Via @RenewGreatPower
📌 https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1500620397644898306?s=20🧵 RT @kasparov63 Putin has been pumping poison into their heads for 20 years, every channel & outlet. For perspective, it took Trump, Facebook, and one cable news station a few months to turn a third of Americans against democracy.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1500558860200943618?s=20🐣 RT @JoeNBC Stalin murdered 3 million Ukrainian peasants in a deliberate mass starvation campaign to stop a series of rebellions. With that historical backdrop, it is easy to understand why Ukraine is fighting so hard to repel Putin’s invaders.
Stalin murdered 3 million Ukrainian peasants in a deliberate mass starvation campaign to stop a series of rebellions. With that historical backdrop, it is easy to understand why Ukraine is fighting so hard to repel Putin’s invaders. pic.twitter.com/n1RjuU5OEs
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 6, 2022
⋙ 🐣 RT @JP_Quixote With all due respect, that number is quite low. Even the Duma admitted to 7 million, I believe, with some estimates up to 10 million.🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Not always. Stalin successfully covered up the story of the Ukrainian famine in 1932-33
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianstelter Russian officials are building digital and legal walls to shield citizens from the truth. People in other countries are also noticing the consequences — like a sudden lack of live reports from Moscow. But history tells us that info always finds a way out.WaPo: Putin’s full-scale information war got a key assist from Donald Trump and right-wing media http://wapo.st/3Ch4D0g “The circularity and symbiosis of right-wing media and Russia’s own talking points can be quite remarkable”
// Thanks to his skills at the influence game, Putin knew how to ‘soften up the enemy’ — and get a swath of the American public cheering for him🐣 RT @McFaul Fantastic news! Well done @ABlinken. Ukraine is lucky to have such a loyal, principled friend in Blinken at @StateDept right now and the same in @POTUS at the @WhiteHouse.
⋙ 🐣 RT @FaceTheNation .@SecBlinken: The U.S. has given the “green light” to NATO countries if they choose to provide fighter jets to Ukraine, one day after President Zelensky made a plea to members of Congress to provide them during a Saturday Zoom call. https://cbsn.ws/3hGpnoG⭕ 5 Mar 2022
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent CNN: China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the “evolution” of the situation in Ukraine is “something China does not want to see” in a phone call with US Secretary of State Blinken on March 5, according to a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs published by CNN.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyivIndependent China’s foreign minister also called on the U.S., NATO, and the EU to “pay attention to the negative impact of NATO’s continuous eastward expansion on Russia’s security.”🐣 RT @jdawsey1 Trump mused to donors that we should take our F-22 planes, “put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the shit out” out of Russia. “And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”
🐣 RT @shashj A week into the war, these are the sort of questions that experts are now beginning to ask.
⋙⋙⋙ Rusi[.]org, Justin Bronk: Is the Russian Air Force Actually Incapable of Complex Air Operations? http://bit.ly/3Kbqg54
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Amazingly, hardware without training and flying hours has a price.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @john_sipher You can bet though that all the Generals got rich, and that’s the important thing re regime stability.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ruthbenghiat One angle from study autocracy is that massive corruption as in kleptocracy leads over time to lower standards cynicism and deprofessionalization in state institutions including military. Some of this endemic carelessness and lack of mission spirit has been revealed in Ukraine.🐣 RT @tedlieu Putin will never pacify Ukraine. Never.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RexChapman Incredible ad from the Ukrainian army on what motivates them…
💽 https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1500272897075654661?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @therecount “My life today is wonderful, I believe that I am needed… That’s the most important sense of life, that you are needed, that you are not just an emptiness that breathes and walks and eats something.” — Pres. Zelenskyy, via translator, asked about his living conditions in Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @Aralynn2023 He is needed. Ukraine needs him, and the rest of the world needs him and people like him to stand up for what is just, what is fair and what is right. Democracy around the world dies without people like him. ¤ #StandWithUkraine️ 🇺🇦🧵 RT @McFaul To those still debating, it is the absence of NATO expansion to Ukraine that created the permissive conditions for Putin’s invasion. Think of the counterfactual. What if Ukraine had joined NATO in the last big bang announced in 2002? THREAD 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1500268854072668160?s=20WaPo: Pence says there’s no room in the GOP for ‘apologists for Putin’ in veiled swipe at Trump http://wapo.st/3ILYVGl “Ask yourself … Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom?” he said.
NYT, Anastasiia Lapatina: Putin Picked the Wrong Country to Mess With http://nyti.ms/3vHef3p “With every act of bravery and courage, Ukrainians show that we are ready to pay the highest price for democracy — ours and the world over. … Because our freedom is immutable.”
🐣 RT @ggatehouse Narusova was married to Anatoly Sobchak, once Putin’s boss, who died mysteriously as Putin ascended to the presidency. I once asked her whether she thought her husband had been murdered. She didn’t answer. But said: I have the documents that show how he died. In a safe. Abroad.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nexta_tv ⚡️Russian Senator Lyudmila Narusova acknowledged huge losses of the #Russian army ¤ “Yesterday the conscripts, who were forced to sign a contract or signed for them, were withdrawn from the war zone in #Ukraine. But from a company of a hundred men only four were left alive.”Bulwark✛, Jonathan Last: Putin Has Already Suffered a Strategic Defeat http://bit.ly/3tA3oVZ “[O]nce Putin’s choices become not about Ukraine but about his own survival, then his decision matrix gets very dark, very fast”
// The question is how many people will die before the consequences of that defeat come to bear.TheGuardian: Trump’s private schedule reveals no plans for him to join 6 January march http://bit.ly/35P5nO8 “Trump’s promises are significant as they served as one of the primary motivations for his supporters to march to the Capitol alongside militia groups like the Oath Keepers”
// Ex-president said he would join crowd to US Capitol but his schedule indicates he deliberately lied to his supporters🐣 RT @andersostlund Day 10 and Russia has failed to take Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kyiv. When will Putin understand he has lost the war? Does he understand he doesn’t have enough soldiers to waste to take all those cities?
🐣 RT @adamkinzinger Why is Russia not cut off from @Visa and @Mastercard? And why do they still have Most Favored Nation status with the US? End it
⭕ 4 Mar 2022
WaPo: Bolton says Trump might have pulled the U.S. out of NATO if he had been reelected http://wapo.st/3Ce1fmZ
// The former national security adviser said Trump came very close to leaving NATO in 2018, and Russian President Vladimir Putin “was waiting for that.”🧵 RT @McFaul .@Biden and team have been doing great on #Ukraine. But now is the time to do more. Now! Every second counts for those brave Ukrainians fighting for freedom against Putin, not only for Ukraine but the entire free world. I have some recs for weekend homework for USG officials. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1499900267394859014?s=20WaPo: The Roger Stone tapes http://wapo.st/3tqUkTz “Stone privately coordinated post-election protests with prominent figures, and in January he communicated by text message with leaders of far-right groups that had been involved in the attack on the Capitol”
// Previously unseen documentary footage shows the longtime Trump adviser working to overturn the 2020 election and, after the Jan. 6 riot, secure pardons for the former president’s supporters⭕ 3 Mar 2022
WaPo, Michael McFaul: Putin is menacing the world. Here’s how Biden should respond to his nuclear threats. http://wapo.st/3sMWwFz
// 3/3/2022💙 FT: Francis Fukuyama: Putin’s war on the liberal order http://on.ft.com/3MKjqFL “Putin’s Russia is seen clearly now not as a state with legitimate grievances about Nato expansion but as a resentful, revanchist country intent on reversing the entire post-1991 European order”
// Democratic values were already under threat around the world before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now we need to rekindle the spirit of 1989What is liberalism? Liberalism is a doctrine, first enunciated in the 17th century, that seeks to control violence by lowering the sights of politics. It recognises that people will not agree on the most important things — such as which religion to follow — but that they need to tolerate fellow citizens with views different from their own.
It does this by respecting the equal rights and dignity of individuals, through a rule of law and constitutional government that checks and balances the powers of modern states. Among those rights are the rights to own property and to transact freely, which is why classical liberalism was strongly associated with high levels of economic growth and prosperity in the modern world. In addition, classical liberalism was typically associated with modern natural science, and the view that science could help us to understand and manipulate the external world to our own benefit.
Many of those foundations are now under attack. Populist conservatives intensely resent the open and diverse culture that thrives in liberal societies, and they long for a time when everyone professed the same religion and shared the same ethnicity. The liberal India of Gandhi and Nehru is being turned into an intolerant Hindu state by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister; meanwhile in the US, white nationalism is openly celebrated within parts of the Republican party. Populists chafe at the restrictions imposed by law and constitutions: Donald Trump refused to accept the verdict of the 2020 election, and a violent mob tried to overturn it directly by storming the Capitol. Republicans, rather than condemning this power grab, have largely lined up behind Trump’s big lie.
The liberal values of tolerance and free speech have also been challenged from the left. Many progressives feel that liberal politics, with its debate and consensus-building, is too slow and has grievously failed to address the economic and racial inequalities that have emerged as a result of globalisation. Many progressives have shown themselves willing to limit free speech and due process in the name of social justice.
Both the anti-liberal right and left join hands in their distrust of science and expertise. On the left, a line of thought stretches from 20th-century structuralism through postmodernism to contemporary critical theory that questions the authority of science. The French thinker Michel Foucault argued that shadowy elites used the language of science to mask domination of marginalised groups such as gay people, the mentally ill or the incarcerated. This same distrust of the objectivity of science has now wandered over to the far right, where conservative identity increasingly revolves around scepticism towards vaccines, public health authorities and expertise more generally.
Meanwhile, technology was helping to undercut the authority of science. The internet was initially celebrated for its ability to bypass hierarchical gatekeepers such as governments, publishers and traditional media. But this new world turned out to have a big downside, as malevolent actors from Russia to QAnon conspiracists used this new freedom to spread disinformation and hate speech. These trends were abetted, in turn, by the self-interest of the big internet platforms that thrived not on reliable information but on virality. …
The right cherished economic freedom and pushed it to unsustainable extremes. The left, by contrast, focused on individual choice and autonomy, even when this came at the expense of social norms and human community. This view undermined the authority of many traditional cultures and religious institutions. At the same time, critical theorists began to argue that liberalism itself was an ideology that masked the self-interest of its proponents, whether the latter were men, Europeans, white people or heterosexuals.
On both the right and the left, foundational liberal ideas were pushed to extremes that then eroded the perceived value of liberalism itself. Economic freedom evolved into an anti-state ideology, and personal autonomy evolved into a “woke” progressive worldview that celebrated diversity over a shared culture. These shifts then produced their own backlash, where the left blamed growing inequality on capitalism itself, and the right saw liberalism as an attack on all traditional values. …
Putin’s Russia is seen clearly now not as a state with legitimate grievances about Nato expansion but as a resentful, revanchist country intent on reversing the entire post-1991 European order. Or rather, it is a country with a single leader obsessed with what he believes to be a historical injustice that he will try to correct, no matter the cost to his own people.
The heroism of Ukrainians rallying around their country and fighting desperately against a much larger enemy has inspired people around the world. President Zelensky has come to be seen as a model leader, courageous under not metaphorical but real fire, and a source of unity for a previously fractured nation. Ukraine’s solitary stand has in turn provoked a remarkable upwelling of international support. Cities around the world have decked themselves in blue-and-gold Ukrainian flags, and have promised material support. …
The travails of liberalism will not end even if Putin loses. China will be waiting in the wings, as well as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and the populists in western countries. But the world will have learnt what the value of a liberal world order is, and that it will not survive unless people struggle for it and show each other mutual support. The Ukrainians, more than any other people, have shown what true bravery is, and that the spirit of 1989 remains alive in their corner of the world. For the rest of us, it has been slumbering and is being reawakened.
🐣 RT @RSBNetwork Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America https://twitter.com/RSBNetwork/status/1499455013722247174?s=20/photo/1 -3
WaPo: New evidence shows Trump was told many times there was no voter fraud — but he kept saying it anyway http://wapo.st/3Mxrp98
// The House Jan. 6 panel aims to prove that Trump was acting corruptly by continuing to spread misinformation about the election long after he had reason to know he had legitimately lost🐣 RT @HYORKLAW BREAKING: DHS announces designation of Ukraine for Temporary Protected Status for 18 months. “Russia’s premeditated unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence, and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries,” said Sec. Mayorkas.
🐣 RT @mhmck If you’re wondering who would be so insane as to attack a nuclear power plant the answer is, of course: Russian soldiers. More specifically, Russian soldiers who serve in Ramzan Kadyrov’s battalions. Ukrainians know the Kadyrites to be the stupidest in Little Vova Putin’s army.
NYT: Pressure on Justice Dept. as Jan. 6 Panel Lays Out Case Against Trump http://nyti.ms/3hAUlP5
// Building a criminal case against the former president is very difficult for federal prosecutors, experts say, underlining the dilemma confronting the agency.🐣 RT @UKRintheUS President @ZelenskyyUa: Europe must wake up! Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is on fire after the Russian shelling. There are 6 power units in this NPP. There are 15 power units in Ukraine. One exploded in Chernobyl, you remember how it ended.
🐣 RT @IAEA #Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site.
🐣 RT @SecBlinken Discussed with Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba the inspiring resolve Ukraine is showing & the international community’s historic support. Russia’s government & its enablers will be held to account. The United States, our Allies, & our partners are #UnitedWithUkraine #SlavaUkraini
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum This is now genocidal thinking. The “bad” Ukrainians have to be eliminated to make way for “good” Russified Ukrainians. Exactly what Stalin was thinking at the time of the Holodomor
⋙ 🧵 RT @maxseddon Putin speaking to his security council. ¤ “I will never abandon my conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people […] but the way the battle is going shows we are fighting neo-Nazis.” ¤ He claims Ukraine is using civilians and foreigners as “human shields.”
📌 https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1499428529964036103?s=20🐣 RT @anders_aslund This is quite extraordinary. China is more than neutral in favor of Ukraine: ¤ “China-based AIIB freezes lending to Russia and Belarus over Ukraine war”
⋙ FT: China-based AIIB freezes lending to Russia and Belarus over Ukraine war http://on.ft.com/3IGw99T
// Development bank’s move threatens to strain relations between Beijing and Moscow🐣 RT @brhodes Just pure nihilism from Vladimir Putin. The very definition of a war criminal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MegKinnardAP A government official tells The Associated Press elevated levels of radiation are being detected near the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which provides about 25% of the country’s power generation.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MegKinnardAP Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the country’s nuclear plants as fighting intensified. “It is a question of the security of the whole world!” he said.WaPo, David Ignatius: Putin misjudged his adversary and squandered his military advantages http://wapo.st/3vSE2FZ
🐣 RT @matthieuvontohr Russia blocks Twitter, Facebook, BBC, Deutsche Welle, App Stores
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba Another Russian hallucination by SVR head Sergey Naryshkin. He claims that Ukraine has been working on creating nuclear weapons with U.S. knowing about it and being ready to assist. I once again refute this sick fake. Ukraine has always been and remains a responsible NPT member.
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba [foreign minister] Worrying reports: Russians might have pointed multiple rocket-launching systems in the Russian border village of Popovka towards their own territory. Knowing the barbaric nature of Russian actions we fear a false flag operation might be prepared in order to accuse Ukraine.
🐣 RT @jonlemire KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Plant spokesman says Russian troops have begun shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power station in Ukraine. [Comments] https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1499537562309910532?s=20
🧵 RT @kasparov68 We are witnessing, literally watching live, Putin commit genocide on an industrial scale in Ukraine while the most powerful military alliance in history stands aside. It’s impossible not to be emotional, but let us also be rational and focus our rage on the facts. 1/13
📌 https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/1499439820363468802?s=21🐣 RT @RichardHaass High military & economic costs are necessary but unlikely to end the war in Ukraine. The 3rd ingredient is people power, ie, massive public demonstrations vs the policy & govt (think of Iran 1977-79) that overwhelm policy/security forces & compel elites to rein in/oust Putin.
⭕ 2 Mar 2022
🧵 RT @michaelh992 :Ukrainian Defense Ministry claims to have discovered documents maps and plans for the #Russian invasion of #Ukraine, approved back in January (January 18)
📌 https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1499045445712162820?s=20/photo/1 -4
// Russian battle plansRollingStone, JackCrosbie: Fleeing Kharkiv, Leaving Death and Destruction Behind http://bit.ly/3sVTjng “Kharkiv went from a place where one could track specific attacks to a place where violence must be summarized just to understand its scope”
// Rocket strikes had become an omnipresent part of daily life in Kharkiv, even in the city center. But on Monday morning, the scope of the violence changed🐣 RT @NATO Russian people must know that the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine is an unprovoked invasion. They chose to shatter peace in Europe and cause tragic loss of life, enormous human suffering and destruction. Russia must immediately stop the war
NYT: Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Potential Criminal Charges Against Trump http://nyti.ms/3HwWGoQ
// In a court filing, the panel said there was enough evidence to suggest that the former president might have engaged in a criminal conspiracy as he fought to remain in office.🧵 RT @kasparov63 Ok, after years of warnings were ignored and hearing “Garry, you were right!” all damn day today, I’ll repeat what I said in 2014: Stop telling me I was right and listen to what I’m saying now. My recommendations follow: 1/5
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1496865471995523080?s=20🐣 RT @harrylitman DOJ brief is a bombshell. But it’s filed in the context of ongoing litigation, so they essentially had no choice. Nevertheless, all concerned —and particularly the former president— can’t fail to grasp a huge significance of the argument.
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Jan. 6 committee says Trump violated multiple laws in effort to overturn election http://politi.co/35P7JwE
// The select panel suggested that its evidence supported findings that the former president himself violated multiple laws by attempting to prevent Congress from certifying his defeat.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @kyledcheney BREAKING: The Jan. 6 select committee says it believes Donald Trump violated multiple laws in his quest to overturn the 2020 election — including obstruction of Congress and defrauding the United States.
⋙⋙ Court document [pdf] http://bit.ly/3pyhdmF 61p
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney In a major release of findings filed in federal court tonight, the panel revealed broad swaths of its conclusions. Here’s the analysis on obstruction:In a major release of findings filed in federal court tonight, the panel revealed broad swaths of its conclusions. Here's the analysis on obstruction:https://t.co/xfJ5jYQDom pic.twitter.com/SzA2r4eiwX
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 3, 2022
A. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding
The evidence detailed above provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated section 18 U.S.C. $ 1512(c\2). The elements of the offense under 1512(c)(2) are: (1) the defendant obstructed, influenced or impeded, or attempted to obstruct, influence or impede, (2) an official proceeding of the United States, and (3) that the defendant did so corruptly. Id. (emphasis added). To date six judges from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia have addressed the applicability of section 1512(c) to defendants criminally charged in connection with the January 6′ attack on the Capitol. Each has concluded that Congress’s proceeding to count the electoral votes on January 6th was an “officialproceeding” for purposes of this section, and each has refused to dismiss charges againstdefendants under that section.🐣 RT @b_judah Creeping Putin totalitarianism:
– Proposed 15 year jail term for “fake” war news
– Last liberal TV/Radio blocked
– Huge ramp up in censor pressure
– Interrogations at exit borders
– Journalists fired for no-war open letter
– Over 7500 arrested
– Threat to block Wikipedia🐣 RT @PaulaChertok #Russia is in full Orwell hell >> “Defenders of Peace” will teach all Russian school kids a lesson on the “liberation operation in Ukraine”—to explain “the danger NATO poses to Russia.” And will “help kids figure out how to distinguish truth from lies in the flow of information”
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa 1/2 I praise the approval by the #UN GA with an unprecedented majority of votes of the resolution with a strong demand to Russia to immediately stop the treacherous attack on 🇺🇦. I’m grateful to everyone & every state that voted in favor. You have chosen the right side of history
Vote: https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1499072011729096705?s=21/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa 2/2 Destructive results of the vote in 🇺🇳 for the aggressor convincingly show that a global anti-Putin coalition has been formed and is functioning. The world is with us. The truth is on our side. Victory will be ours 🇺🇦!🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress “Our army is doing everything to break the enemy completely. Almost 9,000 Russians are killed! In one week!” – @ZelenskyyUa in his video address.
🧵 RT @navalny 1/12 We – Russia – want to be a nation of peace. Alas, few people would call us that now.
📌 https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1498948871514435588?s=20🐣 NYC properties used as tax shelters for Russian oligarchs should be used to house Ukrainian refugees while they await resettlement here or to stay until it is safe to return to Ukraine
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1499104493174243337?s=20/photo/1United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect (Article II) http://bit.ly/3CftilZ
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1499108147377721344?s=20/photo/1Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
d. destruction in whole or in part;
e. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
f. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Orwellian propaganda permeates #Russia’s state TV. ¤ Panelist claims: “Joe Biden is a Nazi. U.S. Congressmen—Democrat and Republican—are Nazis… German Chancellor is a Nazi… EU leaders are Nazis… because their sanctions are attempting to preserve Neo-Nazism in Ukraine.”
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1499104493174243337?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @emptywheel This is the plan that Manafort was pitched on August 2, 2016, at the same meeting he shared campaign strategy for the swing states and was led to believe he’d get $19M in benefit.
⋙⋙ Text: https://twitter.com/DempseyTwo/status/1499099404401356807?s=20/photo/1
⋙ KyivIndependent: ⚡️Media: Putin wants to reinstate Yanukovych as president of Ukraine. ¤ Viktor Yanukovych is allegedly in Minsk, and the Kremlin is preparing an operation to replace Zelensky with the ex-president ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources⭕ 1 Mar 2022
💙 NewYorker, Masha Gessen: How Putin Wants Russians to See the War in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3HBBZbu “If this is the end of [Putin’s] reign, the events that may surround his downfall are chilling to contemplate”
NYT: Russian Troop Deaths Expose a Potential Weakness of Putin’s Strategy http://nyti.ms/3IRxlaR
// Videos and photos show the bodies of soldiers left behind on the battlefield, officials say, and the charred remains of tanks and armored vehicles.WaPo: Biden’s State of the Union applauds unity against Russia, seeks more unity at home http://wapo.st/3IvKEgN
// At a moment of global chaos, Biden cites Americans’ broad agreement on the Russia-Ukraine war to urge similar unity on domestic issues🧵 RT @dalperovich Now that the Russians have switched tactics from pursuing a rapid victory on the cheap (failed miserably) and reverted to the mean of leveling Ukrainian cities to the ground like they did with Grozny and Aleppo, the goals of the operation are likely changing as well
📌 https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1498772954938757121?s=20🧵 RT @PBS One of the questions raised by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: What led him to this point? Some answers can be found in his past. It’s something we examined in our 2017 film “Putin’s Revenge.” (1/18) https://to.pbs.org/3tm6Wv1
📌 https://twitter.com/frontlinepbs/status/1498807567266549761?s=20🧵 RT @djrothkopf I’m a liberal New York Jew on Twitter so even I do not trust my judgment when it comes to mainstream issues. But when I look at the facts of the Biden Admin record at home and overseas, Biden’s agenda & the good it would do for most Americans & the prospects for the year ahead…
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1498870924896047105?s=20≣ WashEx: READ: Biden’s first State of the Union address, as prepared for delivery http://washex.am/3tloRlI
// [I formed into paragraphs]; Here are the Ukraine parts:Tonight, we meet as Democrats Republicans and Independents. But most importantly as Americans.With a duty to one another to the American people to the Constitution.And with an unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.
Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the foundations of the free world thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways. But he badly miscalculated.He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people.
From President Zelenskyy to every Ukrainian, their fearlessness, their courage, their determination, inspires the world. Groups of citizens blocking tanks with their bodies. Everyone from students to retirees teachers turned soldiers defending their homeland.
In this struggle as President Zelenskyy said in his speech to the European Parliament “Light will win over darkness.” The Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States is here tonight.L et each of us here tonight in this Chamber send an unmistakable signal to Ukraine and to the world. Please rise if you are able and show that, Yes, we the United States of America stand with the Ukrainian people.
[Standing ovation]
Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression they cause more chaos.They keep moving.And the costs and the threats to America and the world keep rising. That’s why the NATO Alliance was created to secure peace and stability in Europe after World War 2.The United States is a member along with 29 other nations.It matters. American diplomacy matters. American resolve matters.
Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine was premeditated and unprovoked.He rejected repeated efforts at diplomacy.He thought the West and NATO wouldn’t respond. And he thought he could divide us at home. Putin was wrong. We were ready. Here is what we did.
We prepared extensively and carefully. We spent months building a coalition of other freedom-loving nations from Europe and the Americas to Asia and Africa to confront Putin.
I spent countless hours unifying our European allies. We shared with the world in advance what we knew Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to falsely justify his aggression.We countered Russia’s lies with truth.And now that he has acted the free world is holding him accountable.
Along with twenty-seven members of the European Union including France, Germany, Italy, as well as countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and many others, even Switzerland.We are inflicting pain on Russia and supporting the people of Ukraine. Putin is now isolated from the world more than ever.
Together with our allies – we are right now enforcing powerful economic sanctions.We are cutting off Russia’s largest banks from the international financial system.Preventing Russia’s central bank from defending the Russian Ruble making Putin’s $630 Billion “war fund” worthless.We are choking off Russia’s access to technology that will sap its economic strength and weaken its military for years to come.
Tonight I say to the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who have bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime no more.The U.S. Department of Justice is assembling a dedicated task force to go after the crimes of Russian oligarchs.We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts your luxury apartments your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.
And tonight I am announcing that we will join our allies in closing off American air space to all Russian flights – further isolating Russia – and adding an additional squeeze –on their economy.
The Ruble has lost 30% of its value.The Russian stock market has lost 40% of its value and trading remains suspended. Russia’s economy is reeling and Putin alone is to blame.
Together with our allies we are providing support to the Ukrainians in their fight for freedom. Military assistance. Economic assistance. Humanitarian assistance.We are giving more than $1 Billion in direct assistance to Ukraine.And we will continue to aid the Ukrainian people as they defend their country and to help ease their suffering.
Let me be clear, our forces are not engaged and will not engage in conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO Allies – in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west.For that purpose we’ve mobilized American ground forces, air squadrons, and ship deployments to protect NATO countries including Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.As I have made crystal clear the United States and our Allies will defend every inch of territory of NATO countries with the full force of our collective power.
And we remain clear-eyed. The Ukrainians are fighting back with pure courage. But the next few days weeks, months, will be hard on them.Putin has unleashed violence and chaos. But while he may make gains on the battlefield – he will pay a continuing high price over the long run.And a proud Ukrainian people, who have known 30 years of independence, have repeatedly shown that they will not tolerate anyone who tries to take their country backwards.
To all Americans, I will be honest with you, as I’ve always promised. A Russian dictator, invading a foreign country, has costs around the world. And I’m taking robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at Russia’s economy. And I will use every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers.
Tonight, I can announce that the United States has worked with 30 other countries to release 60 Million barrels of oil from reserves around the world.America will lead that effort, releasing 30 Million barrels from our own Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And we stand ready to do more if necessary, unified with our allies.
These steps will help blunt gas prices here at home. And I know the news about what’s happening can seem alarming.But I want you to know that we are going to be okay.When the history of this era is written Putin’s war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger.
While it shouldn’t have taken something so terrible for people around the world to see what’s at stake now everyone sees it clearly.We see the unity among leaders of nations and a more unified Europe a more unified West. And we see unity among the people who are gathering in cities in large crowds around the world even in Russia to demonstrate their support for Ukraine.
In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.This is a real test. It’s going to take time. So let us continue to draw inspiration from the iron will of the Ukrainian people.
To our fellow Ukrainian Americans who forge a deep bond that connects our two nations we stand with you.Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Ukrainian people.He will never extinguish their love of freedom. He will never weaken the resolve of the free world. […]
My fellow Americans—tonight , we have gathered in a sacred space—the citadel of our democracy.In this Capitol, generation after generation, Americans have debated great questions amid great strife, and have done great things.
We have fought for freedom, expanded liberty, defeated totalitarianism and terror.And built the strongest, freest, and most prosperous nation the world has ever known.
Now is the hour.Our moment of responsibility.Our test of resolve and conscience, of history itself.It is in this moment that our character is formed. Our purpose is found. Our future is forged.
Well I know this nation.We will meet the test.To protect freedom and liberty, to expand fairness and opportunity.We will save democracy.
As hard as these times have been, I am more optimistic about America today than I have been my whole life.Because I see the future that is within our grasp.Because I know there is simply nothing beyond our capacity. We are the only nation on Earth that has always turned every crisis we have faced into an opportunity.The only nation that can be defined by a single word: possibilities.
So on this night, in our 245th year as a nation, I have come to report on the State of the Union. And my report is this: the State of the Union is strong—because you, the American people, are strong. We are stronger today than we were a year ago.And we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.Now is our moment to meet and overcome the challenges of our time.And we will, as one people. One America.The United States of America.May God bless you all. May God protect our troops.
WaPo: Biden lets European leaders take center stage on Ukraine http://wapo.st/3hwB1Ti //➔ Ask yourself: Would Trump EVER have let the attention not be on him? (He recently took credit for saving NATO when he did everything he could to destroy it)
// The president’s decision to cede the spotlight at times in punishing Russia carries strategic advantages but political risks.😅 RT @AmySpiro Who among us has not played “Hava Nagila” on a piano with their genitals on stage and then gone on to lead their country against a foreign invasion?
💽 https://twitter.com/AmySpiro/status/1498085663786344452?s=20/photo/1😅 RT @Baskerville448 President Zelensky once appeared earlier in his life on Ukraine’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, 2006, which he went on to win! This man is rapidly becoming a much loved, world hero.
💽 https://twitter.com/baskerville448/status/1498009782204002304?s=21/photo/1Here’s the Wikipedia page for him: Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukr spelling) http://bit.ly/3hvfdY7
🧵 🐣 RT @draditnerurkar I’m a doctor with an expertise in stress and resilience. I’ve also worked in refugee health with @WHO. I want to caution us against glorifying the trauma of the Ukrainian people. (1/5)
📌 https://twitter.com/draditinerurkar/status/1498488045158514695?s=21🐣 RT @andersostlund “Those strikes aren’t meant to target specific military targets, but to “punish” the city and force its surrender.”
💽 https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1498748182951510016?s=21/photo/1🧵 RT @michaelh992 Weapons depot likely hit (secondary explosion and shockwave seen on video)
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1498726404661432327?s=21/photo/1
// various munitions🐣 RT @Hadas_Gold You can hear it in the translator’s voice here….
💽 https://twitter.com/hadas_gold/status/1498628657325170690?s=21/photo/1
// Zelensky addresses EU, standing ovation🐣 RT @andersostlund During the 20 year Russia has attacked the democratic world it never fought back, or even defended itself. Russia was not seen as more than an annoying mosquito. Now that the West has had enough Russia will learn what it feels like when democracies fight back.
🐣 RT @cam_joseph “It’s hard for me to describe how little he knows,” @AmbJohnBolton told me about Trump, his old boss. ¤ What if Trump was still in office? “I don’t think ultimately he would have stood in Putin’s way.”
WSJ: International Criminal Court Launches Probe Into Possible War Crimes in Ukraine http://on.wsj.com/3szdk35
🐣 RT @RichardHaass I know many look at history & see progress, & there is. Many live longer, are better off, & are more free. But human nature doesnt change. Progress is not baked in. History is not a tale of linear advance. What Putin is doing & preparing in Ukraine is medieval. Evil persists.
🐣 RT @ukraine_world Standing ovations for Ukraine’s President @ZelenskyyUa in the European Parliament after his speech. Right now MEPs discuss Ukraine’s application for the EU membership #StandWithUkraine
⭕ 28 Feb 2022
🐣 RT @ThinkPrague There’s a reason Putin was complaining about the fact specifically about the idea “that only Ukraine is the real Russia” is because for them “It is impossible to live a lie forever!” They are Moscovians, NOT Rus’.
💙 ⋙ EuromaidanPress: How Moscow hijacked the history of Kyivan Rus http://bit.ly/3vzdIAx
// 5/14/2014🐣 RT @ SputnikInt Prof: Russian Spec Op to De-Militarise & De-Nazify #Ukraine Fully Justified Under International Law https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/1498553146997497860?s=20
⋙ 🐣 except there are no Nazis ¤ Russia, the UK and the US defeated them in 1945, remember (“The Great Patriotic War”)? ¤ oh, and the President of Ukraine is Jewish📊Gallup (2/25): US Public Sees Russia-Ukraine Conflict as Critical Threat http://bit.ly/3CakcqM (n=1008 adults; 2/1-17/2022) In a poll taken BEFORE violence erupted, 89% of Americans said Russia/Ukraine conflict was “Critical” (52%) or “Important” (37%) to US interests
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1498551874898866181?s=20/photo/1📊 WaPo, Aaron Blake: The tide has turned against the Russia apologists — and the neutrals http://wapo.st/35Fm9iM “While [the GOP] favored neutrality by eight points three weeks ago, the latest shows them favoring siding with Ukraine by a whopping 34 points, 58% to 24%”
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1498547386720862209?s=20/photo/1Three weeks ago, the same poll showed that Americans were about evenly split on whether to take Ukraine’s side in the conflict, with 46 percent favoring that view and 49 percent favoring neutrality. It was a striking finding given Ukraine’s status as an ally and Russia’s as an antagonistic foreign power (no matter how many tried to pretend otherwise). Today, the American people are more than 2-to-1 in favor of siding with Ukraine, 57 percent to 25 percent.
The shift has been the most pronounced on the GOP side. While their side favored neutrality by eight points three weeks ago, the latest shows them favoring siding with Ukraine by a whopping 34 points, 58 percent to 24 percent. ¤ Perhaps most strikingly, just 5 percent of Republicans said they sided with Russia — a position Fox News’s Tucker Carlson adopted in 2019, before saying he was joking, and then saying he would pick Russia if forced to decide.
🐣 RT @michaelsderby J.P. Morgan: “We now expect a severe recession in Russia, with output contracting at a 20%ar in 2Q and a cumulative peak-to-trough decline from 1Q-3Q of 10%. By comparison, Russian GDP tumbled 10% peak-to-trough in the 1998 debt default and the currency tanked 75%.”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/michaelsderby/status/1498452273348988929?s=20/photo/1WaPo: In just 72 hours, Europe overhauled its entire post-Cold War relationship with Russia http://wapo.st/3sEi8Ep
🐣 RT @ruthbenghiat Putin is what fascism looks & acts like today. Including the total disregard for his own people, as well as a will to annihilate any nation that stands in the way of his conquest dreams.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IAPonomarenko Yes, Kyiv and Kharkiv have been shelled for the first time since 1941. ¤ Two men gave such an order — Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin.🐣 RT @BillKristol “Five days ago, I would have said that Ukraine is where we must fight the war against Putin. Five days later, I will say that Ukraine is where we can win the war against Putin — deal him a defeat that will be the beginning of his end…”
⋙ GreatPower, Molly McKew: Fulcrum, abyss, salvation http://bit.ly/3hrJCGJ
// For eight years, Ukraine has been the West’s shield against Russian aggression. Now, it is the spear.🧵 RT @selectedwisdom Strangest thing – entire world watching a massive Russian armor formation plow towards Kyiv, we cheer on Ukraine, but we’re holding ourselves back. NATO Air Force could end this in 48 hrs. Understand handwringing about what Putin would do, but we can see what’s coming
📌 https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1498407119464595457?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Ukraine is in this position, because we convinced them to give up nuclear weapons, West didn’t bring them into Ukraine into NATO/EU, reason was told – didn’t want to make Putin angry, Putin seems quite angry, threatening more than just ukraine🚫🐣 RT @BrookingsFP Fiona Hill @POLITICOMag: “If anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, “No, he wouldn’t, would he?” Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.”
⋙ Politico Mag, Maura Reynolds: ‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes http://politi.co/35dZ9Ym
// alarming; Putin is trying to take down the entire world order, the veteran Russia watcher said in an interview. But there are ways even ordinary Americans can fight back.🐣 RT @RussiaUN #Nebenzia: 🇺🇸authorities have undertaken another hostile action against 🇷🇺Mission to UN, grossly violating their commitments under host country agreement. They announce 12 people from our personnel persona non grata and demand that they leave by March 7. http://bit.ly/3vscg2w
🐣 RT @mindyanns In 1941, over 33K Ukrainian Jews were murdered in just 2 days marking one of the deadliest massacres of the Holocaust. ¤ For 🇺🇦 to have a Jewish President descended from a Holocaust survivor standing up to a dictator is powerful. #DemocracyNotAutocracy
In 1941, over 33K Ukrainian Jews were murdered in just 2 days marking one of the deadliest massacres of the Holocaust.
For 🇺🇦 to have a Jewish President descended from a Holocaust survivor standing up to a dictator is powerful. #DemocracyNotAutocracy https://t.co/Yhe8kA7GP3
— Mindy Schwartz, DemCast USA (@mindyanns) March 1, 2022
🐣 RT @zpyarom It’s amazing to see how @Kasparov63 warned of all of this on 2015, in his book “Winter is coming”. And how nobody listened to him.
A popular straw man argument is to suggest that intervention against aggression might lead to World War III or even a nuclear holocaust. To the contrary, the only way the current crisis will continue to escalate is if Putin is not confronted with an overwhelming threat to his hold on power, which is the only thing he cares about. If Putin is allowed to go from victory to victory, wiping out any opposition at home while gaining territory and influence abroad, the risk of an all-out war increases dramatically. Adolf Hitler did not attack Poland in 1939 because the Al- lies stood up for Czechoslovakia; they didn’t. Hitler did not move into the Sudetenland because the world protested vigorously at his Austrian Anschluss, but because the response was so feeble. It was only after all of his early triumphs were accomplished so effortlessly, against so little opposition from the Western democracies, that he had the confidence to go too far.
Of course Putin is no Hitler; that unspeakable evil will never be matched-although those who lived through the horrors of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot may disagree. It is important, though, to remember that in 1936-and even in 1937 and 1938 – Hitler was no Hitler either! The adulation of the foreign athletes and dignitaries at the Berlin Olympic Games, the unopposed ease of the Nazi army’s first steps over the post-WW1 German borders, the eager capitulation of Chamberlain: these are the things that allowed Hitler to become the monster.
🐣 RT @BradHowardNYC ‘U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin is growing increasingly frustrated by his military struggles in Ukraine, and may see his only option as doubling down on violence, current and former U.S. officials briefed on the matter tell NBCNews’
⋙ 🐣 RT @ New: Frustrated Putin may order escalation of violence in Ukraine, U.S. officials say. with @ckubeNBC @carolelee @dandeluce
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Frustrated Putin may order escalation of violence in Ukraine, U.S. officials say http://nbcnews.to/3Maf5v4
// The U.S. has solid intelligence that Putin is expressing unusual bursts of anger at people in his inner circle over the state of the military campaign so far, officials said.As the Russian economy teeters under unprecedented global sanctions and his purportedly superior military force appears bogged down, Putin has lashed out in anger at underlings, even as he remains largely isolated from the Kremlin due in part to concerns about Covid, the sources said.
“This is somebody that’s clearly been caught off guard by the size of the Ukrainian resistance,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on MSNBC. “He has isolated himself, he’s not been in the Kremlin very much… You’ve got less and less inputs and these inputs are from sycophants.” ¤ He added: “I do worry that he’s been backed into a corner. I do worry that there is no obvious exit ramp.”
🐣 RT @anders_aslund When all this is over, and these idiots (Putin & shoigu) can’t last for long, we are likely to see a nice revision: Authoritarianism is extremely bad & democracy is good; authoritarianism and kleptocracy hang together; ¤ they are so dysfunction that they can’t last for long.
🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress #Anonymous takes down more than 1,500 websites of the Russian and Belarusian governments, state media outlets, banks and companies over the past 72 hours. #UkraineWillWin #StopPutinNOW #StandWithUkraine
🐣 RT @CarlBildt Doing business with 🇷🇺 state companies is rapidly becoming toxic. BP 🇬🇧 is now exiting from its ownership in Rosneft, and Equinor 🇳🇴 as well as Shell 🇳🇱 are now also leaving the 🇷🇺 oil and gas sector. Will 🇺🇸 companies like Exxon remain?
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC During European war, FDR in 1941 State of the Union said the struggle around the world and inside US was between democracy and dictatorship. ¤ He warned against “that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.”
TheGuardian: ICC prosecutor to investigate possible war crimes in Ukraine http://bit.ly/3HxncOV
// International Criminal Court; Karim Khan says that although Ukraine isn’t a member of the ICC, it has awarded jurisdiction to the court🧵 RT @anders_aslund The EU published its latest round of sanctions on 26 Russians for “undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.” 3 state CEOs, 6 oligarchs, 8 propagandists, 3 ministers, 4 military, 2 friends & Sogaz.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1498435092393480199?s=20🐣 RT @7Patriot4 The real war for freedom and democracy is in Ukraine. ¤ Genuine patriotic heroism of the Ukrainian people has inspired the world. ¤ The war in America is a manufactured culture tantrum instigated by cosplay patriots, political charlatans and con artists.
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Putin’s attack on Ukraine and Trump’s Jan 6 attack had same goal: End a democracy and install a dictator. We are locked in a world war that pits supporters of democracies vs those who seek to destroy it like Putin & Trump. …
🐣 RT @Anders_Aslund The Western financial sanctions have caused full panic in Russia. Russians are trying to get cash in any foreign currency, but there is none to get. The Central Bank hiked its interest rate from 9.5% to 20% & stopped currency operation and the stock markets in Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Anders_Aslund At the opening of the London Stock Exchange, the prices of Russian stocks collapsed:
Sberbank -77%
Novatek -75,9%
Gazprom -60%
Rosneft -45,5%.
They had better leave international markets. Russian stock trade seems to be over. This is worse than 1998.🧵 RT @ SteveSchmidtSES President Zelensky has inspired Ukraine and the whole world with his magnificent leadership and courage. He has stepped forward at a moment of maximum danger, hunted, with his life on the line and met evil head on with defiance and hope. “Be Not Afraid” is Zelensky’s rallying cry
📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1498361867240042496?s=20RFE/RL: “Under the principle of command responsibility, senior leaders of Russia could be prosecuted if it can be shown that they ordered, planned, or supervised war crimes,” says Anthony Dworkin from the ECFR. Interview by @ReidStan https://twitter.com/rferl/status/1498367496499380230?s=21
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag “The whole of Ukraine has risen to the challenge of Putin’s invasion. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have enrolled in Ukraine’s territorial defense forces. Queues have formed in cities across the country to give blood and volunteer to help.”
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: Putin has fatally underestimated Ukrainians http://bit.ly/3tfYZHURussian President Vladimir Putin has made a terrible miscalculation. ¤ When he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Putin apparently thought it would be possible to wage war specifically against the country’s political leadership. He appears to have fallen into the trap of believing his own propaganda and assuming today’s Ukraine was just like modern Russia, with its largely passive and apolitical population. Based on his own experience of dictatorial government, Putin thought it would be a relatively simple task to intimidate or remove a few key Ukrainian leaders and take over the country. ¤ Instead, he now finds himself at war with an entire nation of 40 million.
Putin has made every single Ukrainian his enemy. During the first five days of the conflict, he has learned the painful lesson that Ukrainian society is far more capable of mobilizing our collective strength than any citizen of an authoritarian regime could possibly comprehend.
🧵 RT @ProfMacNamara Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remaking Europe? @rdanielkelemen & I argue in @monkeycageblog that the urgency of war may result in more unity and centralization in the EU across a wide range of policy areas, not just geopolitical–if history is any guide
📌 https://twitter.com/profkmcnamara/status/1498351999753932801?s=21🐣 RT @jensstoltenberg I just spoke with President @ZelenskyyUa & commended him for the bravery of the people & armed forces of #Ukraine. #NATO Allies are stepping up support with air-defence missiles, anti-tank weapons, as well as humanitarian & financial aid.
🐣 RT @SamRamani2 Vladimir Putin has killed Swedish neutrality and German pacifism in a single weekend
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ It’s obvious that with U.S. and world opinion firmly behind Ukraine, Trump, Fox, and MAGA sycophants are *terrified* that their words and actions (too many to list) facilitating Russia’s goals will come back to haunt them. Never forget — play every clip from now to Nov ad nauseum
🐣 RT @McFaul Did American politicians in 1939 call Hitler “savvy”?
🐣 RT @Acosta CNN: Ukraine’s defenders of “Snake Island” who were initially feared dead after telling the Russians to go “F” themselves are “alive and well” according to the Ukrainian Navy.
🐣 RT @EroComfort The #UNGA will hold an Emergency Special Session on the war in #Ukraine this week, beginning today. It can and should help to galvanise global pressure to reverse Russian aggression and aid its victims via @crisisgroup #RussiaUkraineWar
⋙ CrisisGroup: What the UN General Assembly can do for Ukraine http://bit.ly/3HtCFPV
// The UN General Assembly begins an Emergency Special Session on the war in Ukraine. UN members, and especially those from Africa, Asia and Latin America, should use this opportunity to condemn Russia’s aggression and take steps to contain and de-escalate the conflict.AP: 500,000+ refugees flee Ukraine since Russia waged war http://bit.ly/35emnNT
🐣 RT @nakashimae The sanctions are kicking in: U.S., European allies freeze ‘Putin’s war chest’ as Russia careens toward economic crisis @JStein_WaPo
⋙ WaPo: U.S., European allies freeze ‘Putin’s war chest’ as Russia careens toward economic crisis http://wapo.st/341HAtU
// The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday morning released details of its new economic restrictions against Moscow.🧵 RT @DAlperovitch There are many people right now who are arguing that Putin has somehow changed/lost it/gone mad and is not the man he used to be. ¤ I couldn’t disagree more. They have simply not been paying attention. This is who he has *always* been
📌 https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1498189698858205184?s=20
// list of Putin’s crimes🧵 RT @VoteVets A few observations, as veterans of our country’s wars: ¤ 1. The Ukrainians’ incredible will to fight is the difference in this war. Our veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan dealt with training forces with unity issues. Ukrainians have no such issues.
📌 https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1498275245698002953?s=20🐣 RT @Tom_Winter NEW: The U.S. Treasury has announced new restrictions on Russia’s Central Bank prohibiting any transactions by U.S. persons with the bank which they say effectively freezes their assets in the U.S.
🐣 RT @JeremyDiamond Just in: The US is taking immediate action to prohibit US dollar transactions with the Russian central bank and fully block the Russian direct investment fund, taking aim at some of Russia’s most powerful means of mitigating sanctions, per senior administration officials
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Thanks in part to Biden’s adept release of intelligence, Putin was never able to concoct a “false flag” incident to justify his offensive. The whole world could see what was actually happening: naked aggression reminiscent of the 1939 invasion of Poland.
🐣 RT @mattyglesias The speed with which non-NATO European countries hopped on the sanctions bandwagon underscores the extent to which we have a global public on social media now with enthusiasms spreading across borders at a tremendous pace.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 President Zelenskyy: “This is not just Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is the beginning of a war against Europe, against European structures, against democracy, against basic human rights, against a global order of law, rules and peaceful coexistence.”
🐣 RT @b_judah The Ruble has already lost over 40% of its value — which exceeds the worst day of the 1998 collapse. Gleb Pavlovsky once told me the default that followed was the “second founding of the state.” I am certain the crash we are about to see will in many ways come to be the third.
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1498137793003929601?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivPost #Ukrainian cyber troops hacked the Kremlin’s website and pulled out the contact base of Russian officials. They created a chatbot “Power of the RF” in Telegram with telephone numbers of the Kremlin’s officials. – via http://5.ua
🐣 RT @LincolnWatchman What I’m seeing from the people of Ukraine is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever witnessed in my near 41 years on this Earth. ¤ No matter the outcome, the people of Ukraine will be a constant inspiration as I and WE fight to defend democracy here in America. 🇺🇦 🇺🇸
🐣 RT @phildstewart BREAKING- Website of Russia’s TASS news agency displays anti-Putin message after hack ¤ Regular site replaced with an anti-war message:
“We urge you to stop this madness, do not send your sons and husbands to certain death,” the message read. ¤ “Putin is forcing us to lie”⭕ 27 Feb 2022
NYT: ‘The Day After’: TV as a Rallying Cry http://nyti.ms/3pmUs56
// 11/20/1983; vision of a nuclear holocaust🐣 RT @TheHill .@MittRomney: “That’s what we’re seeing, a small evil feral-eyed man who is trying to shape the world in the image where once again Russia would be an empire and that’s not going to happen. People of the world see Putin and see Russia for what it is and they’re saying ‘no’.”
💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1498142413713383427?s=20/photo/1
// SOTU🚫 WaPo: Barr calls prospect of Trump running for president again ‘dismaying,’ says GOP should ‘look forward’ to others http://wapo.st/3sp9uJG
// don’t want to promote🧵 RT @kamilkazani Why Russia will lose this war? ¤ Much of the “realist” discourse is about accepting Putin’s victory, cuz it’s *guaranteed*. But how do we know it is? ¤ I’ll argue that analysts 1) overrate Russian army 2) underrate Ukrainian one 3) misunderstand Russian strategy & political goals
📌 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1497993363076915204?s=20🧵 RT @BA_Friedman I’m going to respectfully (because he is an absolute essential source on this) disagree with @KofmanMichael here. This isn’t a good army executing a bad plan. It isn’t a good army executing outdated or out-of-context tactics. It’s a bad army! Here’s why.
📌 https://twitter.com/BA_Friedman/status/1498097876970450946?s=20
// thread of threadsWaPo, Max Boot: Putin’s war of aggression has mobilized the strongest international outrage since 9/11 http://wapo.st/3M6VSue “The contrast between Russian villainy and Ukrainian bravery has made a powerful impression on the world”
Thanks in part to the Biden administration’s strategic release of U.S. intelligence, Putin was never able to concoct a “false flag” incident to justify his offensive. He tried to but failed in goading the Ukrainian military into attacking Russian-speaking civilians in the east. When that didn’t happen, he unleashed his army anyway on the unbelievable pretext that he was combating “drug addicts and neo-Nazis” — words that make him appear delusional. The whole world could see what was actually happening: naked aggression reminiscent of the German and Soviet invasions of Poland in 1939.
Social media has turned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian who until recently was seen as an ineffectual and uninspiring leader, into an international idol. Zelensky spurned U.S. offers to evacuate him from Kyiv, saying, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” Every day, Zelensky has been earning the world’s admiration with his resolute, measured words of defiance from a capital under siege.
Zelensky is no Ashraf Ghani, fleeing Afghanistan with the enemy at the gates. Nor are the Ukrainians collapsing as the Afghan armed forces did — and as Putin might have expected. Instead, the news is full of pictures of Ukrainian civilians lining up to get AK-47s and to make molotov cocktails to oppose the Russian invaders.
The contrast between Russian villainy and Ukrainian bravery has made a powerful impression on the world. The Russian attack might have done more to mobilize world outrage than any event since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Putin is turning Russia into a global pariah.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Wow, Fox News has totally turned on Putin. They continue to be on the same page as CNN and MSNBC, glorifying the Ukrainians fighting back, questioning Putin’s mental health -not even bad mouthing Biden. ¤ The 3 aligned continues to feel surreal. ¤ Putin, when you’ve lost Fox News!
🐣 RT @McFaul War is not just about capability, but intent. I just watched a dozen videos of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine. It’s clear they have no idea why they are there. No will to fight. Putin’s rambling 58 speech explaining this horrific invasion didn’t rally the troops.
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas I don’t know about others but to me the last seven days seem the most epoch-transforming since August 1991. ¤ It’s a changed game. ¤ The Post Cold War era is over. ¤ This ain’t no Mud Club, nor CBGBs ¤ Things are different now. ¤ One era finally ended. ¤ A new one quickly was born.
🐣 RT @EricLiptonNYT 10 Consequential Days: How Biden Navigated War, Covid and the Supreme Court. The dizzying events of the past week are already redefining the arc of his presidency. @shearm @KannoYoungs @katierogers
⋙ NYT: 10 Consequential Days: How Biden Navigated War, Covid and the Supreme Court http://nyti.ms/3vpgw2L
// The dizzying events of the past week have pushed to the sidelines the congressional squabbling over President Biden’s domestic agenda, and are already redefining the arc of his presidency.WaPo: Historic sanctions on Russia had roots in emotional appeal from Zelensky http://wapo.st/3pnwt5Y
// A video call by the Ukrainian wartime leader prompted jaded European leaders to act🐣 RT @briantylercohen Just leaving this here now that Fox is rewriting history and pretending that it never breathlessly supported Russia over Ukraine. ¤ h/t @Acyn
💽 https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1498112210433822720?s=20/photo/1
// Tucker Carlson clips🐣 RT @AtlanticCouncil The Zelenskyy delegation’s chance to succeed in talks at the Belarus border with a Russian delegation would be far greater if Putin were confident that the West has Ukraine’s back. ¤ Read Atlantic Council President & CEO @FredKempe’s #InflectionPoints:
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: Ukraine has finally prompted the West to shift course on Putin http://bit.ly/33Y0kuj😅 RT @AmySpiro Who among us has not played “Hava Nagila” on a piano with their genitals on stage and then gone on to lead their country against a foreign invasion?
💽 https://twitter.com/AmySpiro/status/1498085663786344452?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SecBlinken Today, G7 FMs and I spoke with Ukrainian FM @DmytroKuleba to express our united support for Ukraine. We will hold Russia accountable for its premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified invasion and will continue to provide security, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @mccaffrey3d The use of nuclear weapons is quite simply unthinkable. Putin is scared. Starting to act unhinged.
🐣 RT @mccaffrey3d Putin saber rattling of a Russian nuclear threat is dangerously escalatory. NOT possible to decapitate the US nuclear deterrent thru a first strike. The US Navy boomers would vaporize Russia. HOW ARE THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE HEARING THIS?🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Europe was slow: Europeans were not convinced war was real, or that Ukrainians would fight. But it was and they did. Whatever the outcome, I hope we will now have a renewed, changed, American-European partnership, one that will face, realistically, the difficult future together.
🐣 RT @JaimePrimak Holy. Monologue. 😤
⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko wheeeeew.
💽 https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1498023164936400903?s=20/photo/1AP: Germany’s move to help arm Ukraine signals historic shift http://bit.ly/3MbaFEy
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Unbelievably sinister: The article that was taken down begins, “A new world is emerging before our eyes.” It talks about reversing the catastrophe of 1991, turning Rus/Belarus/Ukraine into a single country. And all of that was supposed to happen yesterday. But it didn’t.
⋙ 🧵 RT @ Yesterday, multiple Russian state media published an extremely shocking, even for Kremlin standards, essay: it presumed “Putin solved the Ukrainian question for ever” – i.e. it presumed Russia took over Ukraine and essentially annexed it into a forever-new–old-union. But…
📌 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1498025819054264328?s=20
📌 https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1498029060085075969?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @michaeldweiss In less than a week Putin has turned an internationally integrated economy into something now approaching North Korean isolation. A great tactician or a grand strategist? Does he play 8D chess while, judo-like, using his opponent’s momentum against him? Stierlitz on steroids?
🔆 Wow❗️⋙ TheGuardian: Global support for Ukraine continues: in pictures http://bit.ly/3HlLQln
// Demonstrations in Madrid, Spain. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
From London to Australia protests against Russian🐣 RT @carlbildt This was the scene when Putin ordered his nuclear alert. It tells tons about the state of isolation of the man with his finger on the button.
This was the scene when Putin ordered his nuclear alert. It tells tons about the state of isolation of the man with his finger on the button. pic.twitter.com/B2PFq2k6EB
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) February 27, 2022
🐣 RT @nexta_tv ⚡️⚡️⚡️The #EU announced that they are completely closing the airspace for #Russian aircraft ¤ In addition, the European Commission proposes to ban broadcasting throughout the #European Union of RT, Sputnik and their subsidiaries.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d I can’t remember ever being so appalled and inspired before.
🐣 RT @CNN “This is another one of Putin’s miscalculations” – Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells @FareedZakaria that Vladimir Putin thought he would divide NATO by invading Ukraine, but instead has given NATO a new sense of purpose and unity: https://cnn.it/3hphHHk
💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1497973577026580486?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @ZekeJMiller BRUSSELS (AP) — Top EU official: Bloc will close its airspace to Russian airlines, fund arms supplies to Ukraine, ban pro-Kremlin media.
🧵 RT @MalcolmNance ANALYSIS: If there was ever a sign that Putin’s invasion is bogging down and could actually fail … THIS IS IT. He doesn’t know what to do so he is posturing to “threaten” the entire west with this status change. He feels heat. Real heat. I can see the sweat.
⋙ 📌 RT @KevinRothkopf Here’s Putin just now ordering Russia’s deterrence (nuclear) forces on “a special regime of duty” in response to foreign sanctions. It’s a DEFCON situation.
💽 https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1497922873289326595?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress Zelenskyy on negotiations with Russians: “I do not really believe in the result of this meeting but let’s try… to stop the war when there is a small chance… Our goal is our territorial integrity and unconditional protection of the nation and the state” https://bit.ly/357aJEF
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Tomorrow, Russia will be outside global finances.
Few can travel there because almost all international flights have ceased.
Credit cards and other international means of payment will cease.
The stock market and Russian bonds will collapse.
Putin is a true disaster for Russia.🧵 RT @vermontgmg SHORT THREAD: I’ve had a couple people for my #GMGReads recommendations on Putin, Russia, and the current geopolitics of eastern Europe. Here are the best relevant books I’ve ever come across:
📌 https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1497962674029834253?s=20🧵 RT @atrupar Romney: “This is one of the greatest demonstrations of good versus evil we’ve seen during our lifetimes, and the demonstration of courage — look at Vladimir Putin. Here he is behind this huge table in this big white room. It looks like a mausoleum… contrast that with Zelensky”
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1497943988439035908?s=20🐣 RT @jeffnesbit Mitt Romney recalling the basis of Trump’s impeachment trial – withholding military aid to Ukraine as a quid pro quo attempt. Not sure many in America remember because so much water has flowed under the bridge.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Romney on Trump’s impeachment for withholding military aide to Ukraine: “It was wrong. It was in violation of a president’s responsibility to defend our nation and defend the cause of freedom.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1497946884073267208?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES President Biden and Secretary Blinken have been masterful in this moment of global crisis. They are leading a burgeoning coalition with the same skill that George HW Bush and James Baker led a global coalition 32 years ago
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Ukraine files lawsuit against Russia at the Hague. ¤ President Volodymyr Zelensky requested that the UN International Court of Justice orders Russia to stop its attack against Ukraine and starts trials soon.
🐣 RT @drothkopf The only Russian victory that can come from this war is that Putin is forced to leave office. Every other option will result in prolonged pain, suffering, isolation, & decline for Russia. Putin wanted to restore the Russian empire. He is likely to be the last nail in its coffin.
🐣 RT @McFaul [Tr] I do not know how long this will take, but I am confident in my prediction that this vicious Putin invasion of Ukraine marks the beginning of the end of Putin’s dictatorship and Putinism in Russia. Not a single moral person can support this disgusting war, and there are millions of moral people in Russia.
🐣 RT @danbbaer Excellent. Just excellent. Three cheers for a 1936 international legal agreement!
⋙ 🐣 RT @humeyra_pamuk BREAKING – Turkish foreign minister says the situation in Ukraine constitutes a war, Ankara will therefore implement the articles of the Montreux Convention — meaning passage of Russian warships that are not part of the Black Sea fleet to be denied through Turkish straits
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AksanSertac #SONDAKIKA #Montrö ¤ Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu: ¤ Is there a war here or a conflict? We made our decision. Article 19 is very clear. This is a war.🐣 RT @ukraine_world Despite all Russia’s fake news, Ukraine proved to be not only a SOLID & DETERMINED state but also continues to embody the millennial struggle of the people for freedom.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️FM: Ukraine will not capitulate. ¤ “We will be happy if the result of these negotiations is peace,” Dmytro Kuleba said. “But, and I emphasize this again, we will not give up, we will not capitulate, we will not give away a centimeter of our territory.”
🐣 RT @DmytroKuleba (✓) [tr] A real people’s war is taking place in Ukraine now. Ukraine will not fall. We will not stop and we will not get tired. We are ready for a fierce struggle – as long as it takes to protect our land and people.
🐣 RT @Bundeskanzler(✓) We will never accept the use of force as a political instrument. ¤ We will not rest until peace in Europe is secured!
🐣 RT @Bundeskanzler(✓) We must put a stop to warmongers like Putin. That requires strength of our own. We want a strong, modern Bundeswehr and we will spend over 2% of our economic output on ensuring it is suitably equipped. ¤ Yes, we fully intend to secure our freedom and our prosperity!
🐣 RT @McFaul Chubais criticism is more significant. He has worked with Putin since early 1990s. He helped to rehabilitate Putin’s career in Moscow after Sobchak lost his reelection.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NeilPHauer Add Anatoly Chubais and three big Russian elite have posted antiwar statements/images recently
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MSnegovaya Promising signs of the elite split? Two big Russian Olygarchs: Alfa Bank’s Mikhail Fridman and Rusal’s Oleg Deripaska have cautiously started to speak up against war at this point.🐣 RT @StvenGoldstein Once upon a time, four sons were born to Jewish Ukrainian parents. Three sons were murdered by the Nazis. One son survived. ¤ The survivor’s grandson is now an international hero fearlessly confronting his country’s invaders. He is Volodymyr #Zelensky, President of #Ukraine.
🐣 RT @KyivPost Berlin and Prague now.
https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1497947330770841604?s=20/photo/1 -2🐣 RT @meredithmcgraw Bill Barr has a new book: ¤ The election was not ‘stolen,’” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.” Mr. Barr urges conservatives to look to “an impressive array of younger candidates” who share Mr. Trump’s agenda but not his “erratic personal behavior.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggienyt He also puts the blame for Jan 6 on Trump: “The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Barr writes.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @drothkopf Some context, which I am sure @maggieNYT meant to add. Barr (1) Lied to US about Mueller Report (2) Reversed guilty plea of person who conspired w/ Russia to undermine US policy (3) Fired prosecutors who come too close to investigating/prosecuting Trump Family crimes …
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @drothkopf Barr (4) Ordered/Led tear gassing peaceful protesters (5) Started “investigations” into President Trump’s political “enemies” (including folks long retired) (6) Spread conspiracy theories to undermine election integrity (7) Ignored threat of right-wing terrorism …
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @drothkopf Thus, Barr left US vulnerable on 1/6/21 to insurrection, while committing resources to attacking make-believe left-wing orgs (8) Authorized invasion of multiple Democratic cities by MAGA Paramilitary (using DOJ & DHS personnel) in swing states, under the flimsiest of pretexts …
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @drothkopf After all of that Barr (9) Authorized flimsy investigations designed to undermine faith in elections. But, as @maggieNYT notes: he did jump ship a few weeks before his investigations became backbone of big lie, inspiring insurrection against US.🐣 RT @anneapplebaum If it’s true that Belarusian paratroopers are joining the Russians in their assault on Ukraine, then it’s time to sanction the Belarus banks, companies and oligarchs too
🐣 Wow ~ Romney is on 🔥 fire 🔥 condemning Putin on SOTU. Catch it on vid later if you missed it
🐣 RT @AVindman Cold War-era nuclear saber-rattling intended to illicit self-deterrence. Our predecessors were subjected to generations of it… they were unflinching in defending there interest. ¤ Putin is not suicidal, he is not a madman. These are empty threats to drive a flight response.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kevinrothrock Here’s Putin just now ordering Russia’s deterrence (nuclear) forces on “a special regime of duty” in response to foreign sanctions. It’s a DEFCON situation.
💽 https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1497922873289326595?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @matthewjdowd former President Trump did everything he could to undercut and weaken President Zelensky while simultaneously emboldening Putin, and most in the GOP did nothing to stop Trump or hold him accountable. We must never forget this.
🐣 RT @carlbildt All of us must now face the reality that we will not have peace in Europe until there is regime change in Russia. Then we should seek to welcome a new Russia as a partner for peace.
🧵 RT @anders_aslund A sloppy saying is that Europe has returned to the Cold War. But Putin pursues a hot war in Europe. The most obvious parallel to Putin’s assault on Ukraine is Adolf Hitler’s attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, another unjustified and unprovoked war of conquest.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1497934828892614660?s=20🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Ukraine announces talks with Russia as Putin puts nuclear forces on high alert https://wapo.st/3C0zs9p
🐣 RT @duty2warn Breaking: Putin has put nuclear forces on high alert.
⭕ 26 Feb 2022
🧵📌 RT @brhodes The forceful response from global public opinion, democratic governments, and above all the Ukrainian people to Putin suggests that this *might* be the moment when the pendulum starts to swing back against the corruption, nationalism, and authoritarianism that infects our world
📌 https://twitter.com/brhodes/status/1497746349533511684?s=20🐣 RT @RepDonBeyer Back here on Earth 1, we remember that Donald Trump illegally withheld defensive military aid to Ukraine to blackmail President Zelensky for political favors. ¤ He sided with Putin against American intelligence. He praised Russia, estranged our friends, and weakened our alliances.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Trump calls Putin smart, says NATO is not so smart, and calls our leaders dumb 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1497733342086647809?s=20/photo/1🧵📌 RT @djrothkopf I was reading up on Ukrainian history the other day. It’s an extraordinary story that connects with every part of the world, to many of the world’s peoples and religions. Ukraine, as much as Istanbul, is surely the crossroads of the world.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1497593635600314383?s=20WSJ: Ukrainian Forces Repel Russian Attack on Kyiv, Prepare for Next Assault http://on.wsj.com/3IqfWFX
// Thousands of civilians take up arms to help defend the capital, while Russian forces face fierce resistance throughout Ukraine⭕ 25 Feb 2022
NYT: Ukraine on TV: We’ve Seen This Before. And We’ve Never Seen Anything Like It. http://nyti.ms/3Iwl1fL
// As the invasion unfolded, images straight out of Cold War nightmare dramas butted up against 21st-century politics.🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov I’ve been cautious about #Ukraine’s President @ZelenskyyUa and was not a fan of many of his domestic policies. However, he has so far performed with dignity and bravery as an unexpected war leader of a nation under a foreign attack. Kudos to the Ukrainian president!
WaPo: E.U. will freeze assets of Putin, Lavrov in retaliation for Ukraine invasion http://wapo.st/3JWh0BH
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES What is Trump’s greatest contribution towards the cause of this human tragedy? Putin waited to strike until the truth and the lie stood equal in western society, particularly in America. Trump, the greatest liar to hold political power in American history obliterated truth
📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1497263446122921987?s=20WaPo: On Ukraine’s Snake Island, a defiant last stand against Russian forces http://wapo.st/3vc6MJk “News of the defiant last stand … went viral Thursday, highlighting the grim decisions that Ukrainians have faced during the largest attack on a European nation since World War II”
⭕ 24 Feb 2022
WSJ: Putin’s New World Disorder http://on.wsj.com/3Hpvb0d “[T]he Ukraine invasion proves beyond doubt that Mr. Putin’s goal is to restore Greater Russia, blow up NATO, and create trouble for the U.S. around the world”
// The U.S. and Europe should target his political control at home in Russia.🐣 RT @DrEricDing Let’s honor those who still speak up even when they know the risks and major personal cost. ¤ @AVindman knows this most of all—he blew the whistle on Trump trying to extort Zelensky (the “I would like you to do us a favor though” call)—he got sacked by Trump & lost his Army career.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman Pushkin Square, maybe less than 1000 meters from Red Square and the Kremlin, is the cite of a significant protest. These people know the risks of challenging the regime. They’re on the street in-spite of major personal costs.
💽 https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1496900368344797184?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @KyivIndependent ⚡️Zelensky calls on EU to suspend Russia from SWIFT, stop trade in oil and gas. ¤ “Europe’s fate is being decided in Ukraine: If Putin does not get a decent response now, he will move further,” Zelensky wrote.
🧵 RT @djrothkopf Unilateral sanctions don’t work. So the secret is finding what every major ally is willing to go along with. That will never result in a maximalist list. But what it has resulted in, thanks to effective diplomacy & leadership, is a strong set of sanctions.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1496928920553332740?s=21🐣 RT @ KievPost Zelensky: “If you my dear European leaders, my dear world leaders, leaders of the free world, don’t help us today, if you do not strongly help Ukraine, then tomorrow war will knock on your doors.”
🐣🚫 RT @andersostlund The Russian Federation is a fascist state. The Russian Armed Forces are war criminals. Those two are facts. Russia has soiled itself again, for a long time Russia will only be associated with war of aggression. All those people who supported Putin over the years must pay for it.
⭕ 23 Feb 2022 — WAR ‼️
NYT, Madeleine Albright: Putin Is Making a Historic Mistake http://nyti.ms/3pbXvNq “Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its /neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin”
Mr. Putin has for years sought to burnish his country’s international reputation, expand Russia’s military and economic might, weaken NATO and divide Europe (while driving a wedge between it and the United States). Ukraine features in all of that.
Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.
He’s already set that in motion by announcing on Monday his decision to recognize the two separatist enclaves in Ukraine and send in Russian troops as “peacemakers.” Now he has demanded that it recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea and relinquish its advanced weapons.
Mr. Putin’s actions have triggered massive sanctions, with more to come if he launches a full-scale assault and attempts to seize the entire country. These would devastate not just his country’s economy but also his tight circle of corrupt cronies — who in turn could challenge his leadership. What is sure to be a bloody and catastrophic war will drain Russian resources and cost Russian lives — while creating an urgent incentive for Europe to slash its dangerous reliance on Russian energy. (That has already begun with Germany’s move to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.) …
Mr. Putin must know that a second Cold War would not necessarily go well for Russia — even with its nuclear weapons. Strong U.S. allies can be found on nearly every continent. Mr. Putin’s friends, meanwhile, include the likes of Bashar al-Assad, Alexander Lukashenko and Kim Jong-un.
If Mr. Putin feels backed into a corner, he has only himself to blame. As Mr. Biden has noted, the United States has no desire to destabilize or deprive Russia of its legitimate aspirations. That’s why the administration and its allies have offered to engage in talks with Moscow on an open-ended range of security issues. But America must insist that Russia act in accordance with international standards applicable to all nations.
Mr. Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, like to claim that we now live in a multipolar world. While that is self-evident, it does not mean that the major powers have a right to chop the globe into spheres of influence as colonial empires did centuries ago.
Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin. That is the message undergirding recent Western diplomacy. It defines the difference between a world governed by the rule of law and one answerable to no rules at all.
🐣 RT @McFaul This!
⋙ 🐣 RT @jasonintrator The President of Ukraine is Jewish, and has many family members who died in the Holocaust. Putin’s claim that he is invading to “de-Nazify Ukraine” should shock the world.🐣 RT @mattia_n #Ukraine is attacked from the north, east, south, air, and ground. This is an all-out war, with Kyiv now under threat by Russian tanks moving in from Belarus. There are reports of amphibious landings in Mariupol and Odesa. https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1496722025246769157?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @holmescnn image from the Ukrainian President’s office sent to CNN’s @mchancecnn following the loud explosions the team heard on the ground in #Kyiv #Ukraine https://twitter.com/holmescnn/status/1496712564335599626?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @UN_Spokesperson In the present circumstances I must change my appeal:
President Putin, in the name of humanity, bring your troops back to Russia.
In the name of humanity, do not allow to start in Europe what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century. – @antonioguterres🐣 RT @POTUS Tomorrow, I will be meeting with the Leaders of the G7, and the United States and our Allies and partners will be imposing severe sanctions on Russia. ¤ We will continue to provide support and assistance to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
🐣 RT @jensstoltenberg I strongly condemn #Russia’s reckless attack on #Ukraine, which puts at risk countless civilian lives. This is a grave breach of international law & a serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security. #NATO Allies will meet to address Russia’s renewed aggression.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Russia unleashes military assault on Ukraine that Biden calls ‘premeditated war’ http://wapo.st/3t4NNxr
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Putin announces a ‘military operation’ in Ukraine as the U.N. Security Council pleads with him to pull back. http://nyti.ms/35q21kB
🐣 RT @SiFil_LDF Ambassador from Ukraine says his prepared remarks are now useless. Cites Article 4 of the U.N. Charter. “48 minutes ago,” he says to the Russian ambassador, “your country declared a war against my country.” Says Russia must relinquish leadership of the Security Council.
🐣 RT @maxseddon Reports of explosions all across Ukraine, from Kharkiv in the east to Odessa on the Black Sea and Kyiv in between them. All just minutes after Putin’s speech began airing.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Minister Dmytro Kuleba: “Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression.”
“The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”🐣 RT @KyivIndependent Minister Dmytro Kuleba: “Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression.”
“The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”🐣 RT @tribelaw It’s happening.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNBC Explosions reported in Kyiv as Putin says Russia is launching an attack on Ukraine🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Attacks in Mariupol
⋙ 🐣 RT @ilyayashinn Грады бьют по Мариуполю. Какой ужас.
💽 https://twitter.com/ilyayashin/status/1496689344173719553?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @mozvogaya .@POTUS: “Pres. Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the US and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way”
🐣 RT @juliaioffe What I still can’t understand is why? Why is Putin doing this? Why?
🐣 RT @loogunda explosion in Kharkiv
⋙ 🐣 RT @luckyman_1108 Що це? Розрив в Харкові. Почали https://twitter.com/luckyman_1108/status/1496686579250876418?s=21/photo/1🧵 RT @djrothkopf I’m lying awake here tonight because I honestly can’t fathom how we have gotten to the point that the leader of the GOP, the last SecState, some of the party’s most vocal members & a major US TV network all are actively taking Russia’s side in a conflict with America & the West. 📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1496348077640364035?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf […] One of America’s two major political parties is, at its core, not just corrupt, not just racist, not just misogynist, not just opposed to truth or science or history. They are, their leaders are, actively enemies of the U.S., our system and what we stand for. […]WaPo, Philip Bump (2/23): The long intertwining of the Russia-Ukraine conflict with Trumpian politics http://wapo.st/3zMNSep
⭕ 22 Feb 2022
JustSecurity, Barbara McQuade: United States v. Donald Trump http://bit.ly/3hzUang
// A “Model Prosecution Memo” on the Conspiracy to Pressure Vice President Pence🐣 RT @Michael_F_B So… Promises to not expand to the east mean nothing? 🤣
⋙ 🐣 @Auriandra Until it’s signed into writing, it’s called “negotiation.”
🐣 RT @Michael_F_B No. When something is promised, it’s not a negotiation. It is a promise.
⋙ 🐣 It’s something one person says to another. Unless there is something signed by all parties it is not legally binding. ¤ Just like a marriage is not finalized just because a woman says “yes” to a proposal. Until a marriage certificate is signed, she is not married.
⋙ 🐣 Putin has broken many agreements that WERE signed. I think it reflects Russia not having fully become a literate country where contracts don’t matter as much as loyalties and power
🐣 RT @kergetoo there was not such promises
⋙ 🐣 James Baker said *something* to *someone* but nothing was formalized; I think he was pulled back and corrected. In short, he “misspoke.” Even Gorbachev agrees there was no commitment🧵 RT @McFaul To those arguing that NATO expansion has been a constant source of tension with Russia, a few facts. 1/ THREAD
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1496289085224550404?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul […] In 2001, on whether he opposed the Baltic states’ membership in NATO, Putin stated, “We of course are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way.” 5/ […]
// Putin in support of NATO quotationsWaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Biden lowers the hammer on Russia, just as he vowed http://wapo.st/34WM8Cm “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belong to his neighbors?” Biden asked
You could feel President Biden’s indignation as he announced on Tuesday that he would make good on his vow to enact crippling sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
“Who in the Lord’s name does [Russian President Vladimir] Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belong to his neighbors?” Biden asked. He quickly answered his own question: “This is a flagrant violation of international law and demands a firm response from the international community.”
Biden then announced the toughest sanctions in history against Putin’s regime, including measures to block companies from doing businesses with two large Russian financial institutions, VEB and the country’s military bank; cut off the country from international financing; impose restrictions on Russian oligarchs and their families; and push Germany to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus A whistleblower says Karl Rove told her if a state is within 3%, you can “cheat” undetected. Just a couple of votes per precinct. It’s why Trump panicked at mail-in ballots — can’t cheat. DeJoy ripped mailboxes out of the ground and dismantled $2 mil mail sorting machines.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CheriJacobus And on election night 2016 at 5:01 ABC News’ Chris Vlasto gave Trump secret exit polling data WHILE POLLS WERE STILL OPEN showing Trump lost, but where to “find” the right combo & number of votes to win the Electoral College. No doubt Russia had the info by 5:05 and got busy.🐣 RT @samramani2 BREAKING: The EU will impose travel bans and asset freezes on all members of the Russian State Duma
🐣 RT @NYDailyNews Mitch McConnell calls on Biden to take tough stand to punish strongman Vladimir Putin for what McConnell branded ‘Russian aggression’
⋙ NYDailyNews: Sen. Mitch McConnell calls for new military aid to Ukraine: ‘The world is watching’ http://bit.ly/3HfEEqW🐣 RT @craigunger Yes. Amazing how Biden administration has helped rebuild NATO after Trump nearly destroyed it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @drothkopf If Putin expected a West in disarray, it didn’t happen. NATO has remained unified & strong & is getting stronger. The EU has been effective. Major EU states are pulling their weight. & the U.S. is not only leading but doing so deftly, showing great respect & deference to allies.🧵 RT @drothkopf A rebuttal to the idea that the West contributed to the current crisis by supporting NATO expansion. 1.) It is naive. It accepts Putin’s false rationale for his action. He obliterated this argument when he made his real argument: That Ukraine does not exist & is part of Russia.
📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1496249264204304398?s=202.) Putin’s argument that the historical boundaries of the Russian empire or Soviet Union should fall under Moscow’s control only underscores how important it was that former Soviet states were able to join NATO and gain its protections. ¤ The reason Ukraine was targeted was because it was not a member of NATO not because it was. It was vulnerable and Putin, a predator, sought and seeks to take advantage of that.
3.) The states that joined NATO did so freely and as a matter of their choice. It is ironic that arguments about US or Western over-reach seek to make the case that the west should have decided these states’ future. They are in NATO because they valued the relationship. ¤ It is ironic that these arguments arise now, during the week that Vladimir Putin has done everything in his power to demonstrate that NATO expansion was not only the right path, it was the only path that could guarantee European security such as it has been for 30 years
🐣 RT @joshscampbell Biden: “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called ‘countries’ on territory that belong to his neighbors?”
💽 https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1496205792449638413?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @TheRickWilson The front runner for the 2024 nomination, folks.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1496226684114251778?s=20/photo/1BUCK: Mr. President, in the last 24 hours we know Russia has said that they are recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine, and now this White House is stating that this is an “invasion.” That’s a strong word. What went wrong here? What has the current occupant of the Oval Office done that he could have done differently?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine – of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.
So Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,””and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.
🧵 RT @anders_aslund On @Potus sanctions speech today. Good that he clarified that this was only the first tranche. As Putin acts in steps, sanctions naturally come in steps -contrary to the original intention that gradualism is finished. Great that they are closely coordinated with allies.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1496217285635321856?s=21🐣 RT @JulieDavisNews #Russia’s state TV is proudly showing off Mike Pompeo’s recent commentary, where he said about Putin: “Very shrewd. Very capable. I have enormous respect for him.”
🐣 RT @petestrzok Trump just called Putin a “genius” and suggested the US do the same on the Mexican border. ¤ Should put to rest all those “what would Trump have done” questions. ¤ https://youtu.be/ebHVsWQThMU
Text Block: https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1496223135112302597?s=20/photo/1Text: “I said, ‘How smart is that? the former U.S. president continued. “And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.
“🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder “When you deny that another nation exists, as in Putin’s myth about #Ukraine, you’re making a claim that it’s okay to destroy that other nation. This kind of language is something we have to pay attention to because it usually precedes atrocious actions.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, TheLastWord: Why invading Ukraine could be a ‘real problem’ for Putin http://on.msnbc.com/3s8U1Nx
// Yale University professor Timothy Snyder joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss why Vladimir Putin’s statements on Ukraine could precede “atrocious actions” and what a Russian invasion of Ukraine could really mean for Putin.🐣 RT @maxseddon One thing to make clear is that the banking sanctions don’t really hurt Russia. ¤ VEB isn’t even really a bank – it’s basically a slush fund financed by the state. ¤ Promsvyazbank was nationalized with the specific goal of getting it sanctioned to protect other banks from the US.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon Biden is clearly trying to leave Putin an offramp by not sanctioning big state banks – Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank – because that’d cause problems for ordinary Russians. ¤ But Putin seems to have no interest in stepping back and thinks the US will sanction Russia whatever happens.🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES The United States should destabilize Putin by destabilizing the Russian elite. Make them pay the price. Financial, legal and immigration restrictions should be imposed immediately. Access to Western education should be shuttered to Russian nationals and Russian owned and flagged
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES private vessels 🚢 should be refused anchorages in Western waters. There is still plenty of winter left in Moscow.🐣 RT @Acyn Garland: As the archivist said, the National Archives has informed the Justice Department of this.. and we will do what we always do under these circumstances, look at the facts and the law and take it from there
🐣 RT @tribelaw The judge has put in writing the precise rationale for the Justice Department breaking a tradition of not prosecuting a former president: His seeking to overturn an election and fomenting lawlessness are completely beyond prior American experience.
💙 ❤️ ⋙ Slate, Dennis Aftergut: A District Judge Just Gave DOJ a Precise Rationale for Prosecuting Trump http://bit.ly/3p7q1jvLast week, the federal district court for the District of Columbia broke new ground in the law of the presidency. It ruled for the first time in the country’s history that a former commander-in-chief may be held liable in a civil lawsuit for the harm caused by his conduct while he served.
In Thompson v. Trump, Judge Amit Mehta rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to dismiss three consolidated lawsuits brought by 11 Congressional representatives and two Capitol policemen to hold Trump to account for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The suit alleges that Trump and Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members violated 42 U.S.C. § 1985(1), part of the Reconstruction-era’s “Ku Klux Klan Act.” It, in the court’s words, “aimed at eliminating extralegal violence committed by white supremacist and vigilante groups like the … Klan and protecting … federal officials … against conspiratorial acts directed at preventing them from performing their duties.” …
🐣 RT @RehannaJB NEW – #NATO Secretary General says #Moscow has “moved from covert attempts to destabilise #Ukraine to overt military action,” w/ 🇷🇺 units “forward deployed in combat formations…ready to strike.” He says “this is the most dangerous moment in European security for a generation.”
// Jens Stoltenberg🐣 RT @TheRickWilson The good part about even the most secure-seeming dictators is there’s a better than average chance they end up shot dead by their own people. ¤ Never make a mistake, Vlad.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Just In: SCOTUS turned away Trump’s last appeal to releasing Trump-era records from the Archives to the Jan 6 committee. It was a brief unsigned order issued without comment. This formally ends Trump’s effort to stymie release of schedules, WH call logs, emails and other docs.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 NBC’s Pete Williams: The Supreme Court has formally rejected Trump’s appeal to stop the National Archives from handing over documents to the Jan. 6 Committee. ¤ In the final chapter, Trump’s appeal was rejected with no noted dissents. @NBCNews
🐣 RT @MedvedevRussiaE German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well. Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!
⋙ 🐣 This proves only that importing gas from Russia was and always will be a risky proposition🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 WASHINGTON (AP) — White House now calling Russian moves on Ukraine an invasion, sets stage for strong sanctions.
🐣 Russia has produced great music and literature and I’ve always been fascinated. Watched The Americans last fall ✛ The Blacklist of course. It has such a tragic history. Putin and the oligarchs have raped it and robbed it and now blame us for their failures
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Yes, Putin’s invasion has begun. And the threat extends beyond Ukraine http://wapo.st/3s67KF0 Putin “regards himself in grandiose historic terms as willing to do whatever it takes to return Russia to its former glory”
Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear on Monday that, despite threats of crippling sanctions, he has begun the dismantling of the free and independent country of Ukraine. And in a fiery speech sounding like Soviet leaders of the past, he underscored that his unbridled aggression and extensive ambitions do not end with Ukraine.
In precisely the sort of war-provocation scenario the Biden administration anticipated, Putin signed orders recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — as independent. More ominous, he deployed Russian forces into the territories. This is unmistakably an invasion of a neighboring country, a point that Jonathan Finer, the White House principal deputy national security adviser, conceded on Tuesday morning. Putin’s deployment of troops without defining the borders of the two regions creates ambiguity as to how far Russian forces would venture.
In a background briefing for reporters on Monday, a senior official had resisted using the term “invasion.” He promised, “We are going to observe and assess what Russia does in the hours ahead and overnight, that we are going to respond to any actions that Russia takes in a way that we believe is appropriate to the action.” The official added, “And if Russia takes further actions, I suspect we would take further actions in response to that.” By Tuesday, any ambiguity was gone.
On Monday, President Biden announced sanctions that applied to only two regions. In a written statement concerning new sanctions, the White House declared, “President Putin’s action contradicts Russia’s commitments under the Minsk agreements, refutes Russia’s claimed commitment to diplomacy, and undermines Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The sanctions, the White House said, are “distinct from the swift and severe economic measures we are prepared to issue with Allies and partners in response to a further Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Britain also declared it would issue sanctions, and European allies joined in condemning Russia’s actions. Most critical, Germany announced the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a diplomatic success for the administration that had pressed Germany to take this step.
As frightening as the actions Putin ordered were, his crazed speech was even worse. He deplored Russia for having “allowed” former states to break away and claimed Russia had “created” Ukraine, denying the country ever had a “genuine” tradition of independent statehood. His declared intent to reverse the breakup of the Soviet Union would apply not only to Ukraine but also every former Soviet state, including the Baltic states. In other words, it was Putin’s justification to redraw the map of Europe in effect for more than 30 years. Putin was never going to be diverted by other “security” discussions. This is someone who regards himself in grandiose historic terms as willing to do whatever it takes to return Russia to its former glory.
The administration and its allies must be prepared to address several challenges. First, the Biden administration has no excuse to delay implementation of crippling sanctions. Excessive delay will embolden Putin further and suggest that the West’s commitment to preserving Ukraine’s territorial integrity is less than ironclad.
Second, Russian expertise in disinformation, ambiguity and setting up “false flag” operations requires a degree of unity among allies and within the United States that we have not been able to achieve in recent years. Right-wing stooges of Putin who misread this event as merely about Ukraine’s NATO membership rather than Russian revanchism will make it more difficult to project unity and resolve. Republican leaders in Congress must reaffirm their solid and unwavering support for the West’s response to Russian aggression.
Finally, despite critics ready to pounce on Biden’s foreign policy, the imminent invasion does not show that efforts to deter Putin’s aggression “failed.” Rather, Putin has shown that he is not taking calibrated risks or considering rational arguments of the harm that will befall Russia. He is avenging perceived historic wrongs.
🐣 RT @ZekeMiller WASHINGTON (AP) — White House now calling Russian moves on Ukraine an invasion, sets stage for strong sanctions.
🐣 RT @carlbidlt After some confusion it looks as if the 🇷🇺 ”recognition” only covers the territory under actual control of the 🇷🇺-supported entities. Most of the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are still under 🇺🇦 control.
map: https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1496121724676493316?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 or reconsideration after tactically ambiguous statements
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ZekeJMiller MOSCOW (AP) — Russia says recognition of independence for areas in east Ukraine extends to territory now held by Ukrainian forces.🐣 RT @Mij_Europe Fear in @Elysee this AM: West is no longer dealing with a rational actor. Putin’s TV address last night described as “rigid & paranaoic”. Elysée also says today’s EU sanctions will “not yet be the full package” – harshest measures held back to respond to further 🇷🇺 escalation
🐣📋 Despite it’s land mass, Russia’s population is less than half that of the United States
🇺🇸 United States ~332,403,650
🇷🇺 Russian Federation ~146,036,683
🇪🇺 European Union ~447,700,000🐣 RT @haynesdeborah BREAKING: Ukraine’s President @ZelenskyyUa says he will consider a request from his foreign ministry to break diplomatic relations with Russia
🐣 RT @drothkopf Gotta love this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @USEmbassyKyivGotta love this. https://t.co/7mX3WygX3q
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) February 22, 2022
// photos of Kyiv Kiev and Moscow over the centuries (Moscow is an empty field)🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Brilliant speech
⋙ 🧵 RT @ If you’re gonna listen to any speech about #Ukraine 🇺🇦, let it be this one. ¤ The Kenya ambassador to the UNSC perfectly explains how people across Africa understand Ukraine, and what the Kremlin’s acts of aggression mean in our post-colonial world.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/thomasvlinge/status/1495978202728210435?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov #UK government announced initial #sanctions against #Russia for its hostile actions in eastern #Ukraine, sanctioning 5 Russian banks and 3 wealthy individuals:
⋙ TheGuardian: UK politics live: Boris Johnson unveils sanctions on five Russian banks and three individuals http://bit.ly/3Hb5tfO🧵 RT @navalny (✓) 1/16 Yesterday I watched the “session of the Security Council”, this gathering of dotards and thieves (it seems to me that our Anti-Corruption Foundation has done investigations into the corruption of every single one of them).
📌 https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1496098720076767236?s=21🧵 RT @akoz33 [college prof] A brief comment on “Putin’s aims”, about which Amy people have their own views.
Now, as anyone who listened to Putin’s speech would have noticed, Putin is not a fan of Lenin. But, on the other hand, everyone brought up in the Soviet period in the “power structures” would
📌 https://twitter.com/akoz33/status/1496095769354543104?s=21🐣 RT @maxseddon Wow! Germany is killing the new $10bn Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. ¤ That’s a huge step after refusing to be drawn on it in public for months. It’ll have major consequences for European energy security and suggests the western sanctions against Moscow will be tough.
🐣 RT @phildstewart BREAKING- U.S. can’t commit to a summit w/Putin when it looks like Moscow will take military action, senior Biden administration official tells reporters
🐣 RT @ ZekeJMiller MOSCOW (AP) — Russia says recognition of independence for areas in east Ukraine extends to territory now held by Ukrainian forces.
🐣 RT @Rustem_Umerov [MP UA] I welcome #Germany’s 🇩🇪 decision on halting #NordStream2 approval process. The energetic dependence is one of the #Kremlin’s weapons against the whole #EU🇪🇺. #NS2 has nothing to do with business, it’s a part of #Russian hybrid war. And has to be stopped.
🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: Germany halts the certification of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia as West takes punitive measures against Moscow over Ukraine.
⋙ AP: Ukraine-Russia: Germany suspends Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline http://bit.ly/3v2Cxo6AP, John Daniszewski: Analysis: Putin’s take on history may lay groundwork for war http://bit.ly/3sYIXSv
WaPo (3:48amCT): Russian forces have entered Ukraine’s breakaway territories, European officials say http://wapo.st/3s6ZfJS
⭕ 21 Feb 2022
NYT: Putin Calls Ukrainian Statehood a Fiction. History Suggests Otherwise. http://nyti.ms/3HNhWqv
// In a speech, President Vladimir V. Putin bent Ukraine’s complex history into his own version that served as a justification for his cleaving off more of its territory.NYT Editorial: A Pointed Response to Putin’s Provocations http://nyti.ms/3sTTfmU
≣ Kremlin[.]ru: Address by the President of the Russian Federation via NYT: http://nyti.ms/3sH4sIC
🐣 RT @dcherring “Putin has now affirmed that he refuses to accept the outcome of the Cold War and that he will fight to dismantle the European system of peace and security constructed by the international community after its end.” ¤ @RadioFreeTom, necessary.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Putin Chooses a Forever War http://bit.ly/3v8KFn9
// His partition of Ukraine is an attack on global peace.🐣 RT @joelockhart What ever happens in Ukraine we shouldn’t underestimate the fact the United States has retaken the adult chair in the world. Biden has restored American leadership so damaged by Trump. The world needs us and we have a President who can and does lead.
🐣 RT @MittRomney Vladimir Putin’s KGB mentality drives his malevolent obsession for repression and regression: he shamelessly abuses the sovereignty of a democratic nation to foster his foolhardy dream of rebuilding a soviet empire. The response from NATO must be unified and withering.
🧵 RT @RepSlotkin We’ve been watching this thing in slow motion for months now. The Administration declassified unprecedented amounts of intel to try to prevent Putin from taking this course of action. But this man has a deeply distorted view of the world. 1/9
📌 https://twitter.com/repslotkin/status/1495920608881922051?s=21TheGuardian, Shaun Walker: Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign http://bit.ly/35g7Xwi
// Analysis: This was a supreme leader marshalling his minions for a decision that will change the security architecture in Europe and may well lead to horrific war🐣 RT @imatviyishyn Zelenskiy’s full address to the nation tonight 🧵: [Thread Reader:]
📌https://twitter.com/imatviyishyn/status/1495922668482277381?s=21‘Dear people, we and our state do not have time for long lectures on history. I will not talk about the past. I will talk about current realities and our future. 1/1
#Ukraine is within its internationally recognized borders, and will remain so. Despite any statements and actions of the Russian Federation. We remain calm and confident. I want to thank all our citizens for this. 2/2 #Zelenskyy
You are proving once again that Ukrainians are a smart and wise nation. And in spite of everything we keep a cool head, react calmly, carefully, like an adult. we are ready for anything. But there is no reason for you to have a sleepless night. #Zelenskyy 3.
Tonight we held a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council. Ukraine qualifies the latest actions of the Russian Federation as a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state. #Zelenskyy speech 4/
All responsibility for these decisions are made by Russia’s political leadership. Recognition of the independence of the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions mean Russia’s unilateral withdrawal from the Minsk agreements, and them ignoring decisions within Normandy format
It undermines peaceful efforts and destroys existing negotiation formats. With today’s and, possibly, tomorrow’s decisions, Russia is legalizing its troops, which have actually been in the occupied territories of Donbas since 2014. 6/ #Zelenskyy
A country that has been supporting the war for 8 years cannot maintain peace as it claims. I discussed the situation with French President Macron, German Chancellor Scholz, US President Biden, British Prime Minister Johnson, and European Council President Michel. #Zelenskyy 7/
I also plan to talk with Turkish President Erdogan. What will happen next? We want peace. and we are consistent in our actions. Today, the @MFA_Ukraine sent a request to the UN Security Council member states to hold immediate consultations on the basis of the Budapest Memorandum
I initiated the convening of the UN Security Council and a special meeting of the OSCE. We insist on the OSCE to prevent provocations and further escalation. An emergency convocation of the Normandy summit was also initiated. #Zelenskyy 9/
We expect clear and effective support steps from our partners. It is very important to see now who is our true friend and partner, and who will continue to frighten the Russian Federation with words. #Zelenskyy 10/
#Zelenskyy: We are committed to political and diplomatic regulation and do not succumb to any provocations. Our borders are securely protected. a system of territorial defense was created. Our partners support us.
#Zelenskyy: In accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Ukraine reserves the right for individual and collective self-defense. We can distinguish between the provocations and the offensive of the aggressor’s troops.
Truth is on our side. we will never hide the truth from you. As soon as we see a change in the situation, as soon as we see an increase in risk, you will know all about it. There is currently no reason for chaotic actions. We will do everything to make it so in the future.
#Zelenskyy: We are committed to a peaceful and diplomatic path, and we will follow it. We are on our land. We are not afraid of anything or anyone. We owe nothing to anyone, and we will not give anything to anyone.
#Zelenskyy: We are sure of this, because now it is not February 2014, but February 2022. Our country is different, our army is different. The only goal is peace in Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine. / end of the speech🐣 RT @maxseddon Russia is going to recognize the DNR and LNR’s borders within the whole of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – 2/3 of which are controlled by Ukraine, according to MP Leonid Kalashnikov. ¤ That could mean endorsing separatist territorial claims and de facto war with Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Worth pointing out that another influential lawmaker, Andrei Klimov, said the opposite last night – that recognition would only extend to the existing separatist borders. ¤ Usually Russian MPs and senators are the last to know what Putin’s plans are, but it’s a fraught moment.🐣 RT @Mcfaul ZelenskyyUa has emerged as a strong leader. Respect.
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod This may be a Churchillian moment for @POTUS. We can’t stand idly by and watch Putin snatch Ukraine, crush its democracy and thumb his nose at the world. ¤ Yet the sanctions Biden has promised undoubtedly will require sacrifice from Americans, too.
🐣 RT @POTUS I have signed an Executive Order to deny Russia the chance to profit from its blatant violations of international law. We are continuing to closely consult with Allies and partners, including Ukraine, on next steps.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund After Putin’s unhinged speech today & bizarre choreography in the Kremlin, he must be compared with Hitler, but I start wondering if he is not more unhinged than Hitler.
Stop discussing whether Putin is rational! The question is: How mad is he?
Putin = Götterdämmerung.
⋙ 🐣 Götterdämmerung: “The title is a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war among various beings and gods that ultimately results in the burning, immersion in water, and renewal of the world.” Wikipedia🐣 RT @MaddowBlog The idea that Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine is about NATO is a manufactured excuse, @AnneApplebaum explains. It’s about the challenge of Ukraine’s democracy to Putin’s autocratic system.
💽 https://twitter.com/maddowblog/status/1495958670227775488?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @McFaul I lived in the USSR/Russia for 6+ years of my life. Its hard for me to imagine Russians listening to Putin’s rant today and feeling proud of their leader & ready now to kill Ukrainians. But Ive been on Putin’s sanctions list for 8 years. Maybe I dont understand Russians anymore.
🐣 RT @jmclaughlinSAIS Putin has choreographed this with the hope that we and the Europeans will debate whether this is an “invasion” or not. And hoping that throws us enough off balance that he will pay a minimal price for this first slice of salami.
🐣 RT @sumlenny Ukraine’s president Zelensky speaks live. Russia has left Minsk agreement. Russia has officially acknowledged its occupation of parts of Donbas.Russia is a part of conflict and cannot be seen another way. We want peace and we are consequent. We have asked the UNSC for a meeting/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @sumlenny Calls for OSCE. We will see who are our partners, and who will continue to try to influence Russia with words only. We have right for self-defence according to UN Charta. No reason for chaotic steps. We will go peaceful and diplomatic way. We have fear for nothing. /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @sumlenny We are on our land. It is not 2014. It is 2022. We have strong army. We are not afraid. We want peace. We are one nation. Glory to Ukraine! /END🌎 NYT: Maps: Russia and Ukraine Edge Closer to War http://nyti.ms/35bV9ai “The separatist enclaves claim all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as their territory, but they control only about one-third of the area”
● https://twitter.com/auriandra/status/1495998978642563079?s=21/photo/1
// The separatist enclaves claim all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as their territory, but they control only about one-third of the area. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Putin would recognize the enclaves in their de facto borders or would seek to expand them by force.🐣 RT @radiosvoboda Zelensky addressed the Ukrainians
The main theses of the appeal:
– recognition of the Russian Federation “L / DNR” means the destruction of “Minsk” and the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from the negotiation process
– There is no reason for panic among Ukrainians
– The Russian Federation legalizes the troops which were in the territory of Donbass since 2014🐣 RT @CarlBildt If I compare with his speech in March 2014 when he 🇷🇺 annexed Crimea this was far more rambling, all-over-the-place and unhinged. And also more dangerous. Now he questions the very existence of 🇺🇦 as a nation. It’s a man with immense power who’s lost contact with reality.
🐣 ◕ Military Spending 2020 https://twitter.com/auriandra/status/1495981819740790784?s=21/photo/1
🐣 ◕ Global GDP 2021 https://twitter.com/auriandra/status/1495981615687913472?s=21/photo/1
// Russia circledWaPo Editorial: This is the way the postwar world ends http://wapo.st/3If1WP5 “Putin of Russia attacked and delegitimized not just independent Ukraine and its government but all facets of the security architecture in Europe, declaring both to be creatures of a corrupt West”
This is the way the postwar world ends, and the post-Cold War world, too: not yet with a bang, and not with anything close to a whimper, but with a rant. In an extraordinary soliloquy viewed live around the world Monday, President Vladimir Putin of Russia attacked and delegitimized not just independent Ukraine and its government but all facets of the security architecture in Europe, declaring both to be creatures of a corrupt West — headed by the United States — that are unremittingly hostile toward Russia.
By the time he was done speaking, Mr. Putin had not only broadcast his intent to disrupt institutions that have kept the peace in Europe, mostly, after 1945 but also laid out the ideological basis for launching a war — even if he did not quite declare it. The key point was to recognize two Russian-backed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, and thus to discard any pretense of respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. More ominous, given his subsequent dispatch of “peacekeeping” troops over the border into the regions, was Mr. Putin’s demand that “those who seized and hold power in Kyiv” cease hostilities, or else “all responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the territory of Ukraine.” War looming, he had this warning to those who helped oust a Kremlin-backed regime in Ukraine in 2014: “We know their names, and we will find them and bring them to justice.”
Rebutting Mr. Putin’s arguments is almost beside the point — it’s doubtful even he believes his wild accusations about Ukraine as a future platform for NATO aggression — but not entirely. The truth is that Ukraine is a member state of the United Nations, whose security Russia itself undertook to respect 28 years ago, in exchange for Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. Ukraine has not been waging “genocide” against a Russian-speaking ethnic minority, as Mr. Putin alleged, but defending itself from a 2014-2015 Russian destabilization campaign that created the breakaway regions and engineered the seizure of Ukraine’s strategic Crimean region on the Black Sea. Mr. Putin’s pseudo-history about the kinship of Russians and Ukrainians ignores those facts. His true reason for targeting Ukraine is not Russian national security but to preserve his own power in Moscow, which would be threatened by a successful democratic experiment in a former Soviet republic of Ukraine’s size and cultural importance.
Mr. Putin’s aggressive words and deeds followed a plea Sunday from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to assembled world leaders in Munich, in which he chided the United States and Europe for their failure to counter Mr. Putin sooner. In that city where Britain and France cut a foolish and short-lived deal with Nazi Germany in 1938, Mr. Zelensky used the historically freighted word “appeasement.” We would respectfully disagree, to the extent that after years of Western temporizing about Russia, President Biden has so far effectively rallied NATO to condemn and oppose Mr. Putin’s aggression in recent weeks.
After Monday, it is unfortunately clear that Mr. Putin has not been deterred, war is likely, and there is no longer any reason to wait in imposing sanctions — even extending them beyond the breakaway regions, which the White House immediately targeted. That would be the first step in decisively responding to this geopolitical crisis, but it can hardly be the last.
🧵 RT @AVindman Putin’s actions put the crisis past the point of a diplomatic resolution. Putin has eliminated the last realistic off-ramp for the crisis. He signed away the possibility of achieving his political aim, a veto over Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation, w/o a military offensive.
📌 https://twitter.com/avindman/status/1495866020300472324?s=21
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman Only real bad diplomatic options remain. One of the major parties must now capitulate to avoid military hostilities. ¤ The West would need to abstain from responding to todays major attack on the international system and conced to Russia a veto over European security…
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman Ukraine has no diplomatic path, with Russia, as the Minsk format is dead. ¤ Russia would need to recognize Ukraine as a Sovereign state (Putin mocked the very idea) & return 190k troops to there bases, w/o achieving his main objectives, & while facing the risk of major sanctions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman With the stroke of a pen, Putin has locked in a collision course. The question is whether this course locks in the New Cold War or takes us towards a hot war.🐣 RT @UN_Spokesperson Secretary-General @antonioguterres considers the decision of the Russian Federation to be a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. bit.ly/3JFWl4E
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/un_spokesperson/status/1495896419961556992?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @MacaezBruno For me there was a surprising element in the speech. There was nothing about geopolitics, global order, power. It was all a pogrom-like, racial screech about eliminating Ukraine as a nation
⋙ 🐣 RT @MacaezBruno Putin seems to have become exclusively about racial politics. I had seen it on Russian TV with the descriptions of Ukrainians and Europeans as “dogs” but now Putin himself has embraced a politics of race🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Putin Recognizes 2 Separatist Regions in Fiery Speech http://nyti.ms/3LSZ6RZ “Putin is attempting nothing less than to upend the security structure that has helped maintain an uneasy peace on the continent for the past three decades”
President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday delivered an emotional and aggrieved address laying claim to all of Ukraine as a country “created by Russia,” recognizing the independence of two Russian-backed territories in eastern Ukraine and threatening the government of Ukraine that the bloodshed could continue.
The White House responded by saying that President Biden would begin imposing limited economic sanctions on the two separatist regions, stopping short of imposing any penalties directly on Russia for now but vowing that more would come. Leaders of the European Union also condemned Putin’s move and said they would impose sanctions on those involved.
Immediately after the speech, state television showed Mr. Putin at the Kremlin signing decrees recognizing the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, which were created after Russia fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Mr. Putin also signed “friendship and mutual assistance” treaties, raising the possibility that Russia could move some of the forces it has built up around Ukraine’s borders into those territories.
Mr. Putin’s speech laid out such a broad case against Ukraine — describing its pro-Western government as a dire threat to Russia and to Russians — that he appeared to be laying the groundwork to take action beyond simply recognizing two small breakaway republics.
“As for those who captured and are holding on to power in Kyiv: We demand that they immediately cease military action,” Mr. Putin said at the end of his nearly hourlong speech, referring to the Ukrainian capital. “If not, the complete responsibility for the possibility of a continuation of bloodshed will be fully and wholly on the conscience of the regime ruling the territory of Ukraine.”
It was a thinly veiled threat against the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, which denies responsibility for the escalating shelling on the front line between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in recent days. Russian state television has broadcast extensive reports claiming that Ukraine is preparing an offensive against the separatist territories — claims that Kyiv denies.
By seeking to redraw the post-Cold War boundaries of Europe and force Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit, Mr. Putin is attempting nothing less than to upend the security structure that has helped maintain an uneasy peace on the continent for the past three decades.
WaPo: Moscow formally recognizes two Ukrainian regions as independent, a potential pretext for war http://wapo.st/3vaJnrA
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ Putin’s show today — all the dog and pony, dog-whistle, golden-oldies from K-Tel’s Greatest Hits of the Soviet Era — is an invitation to the West to stand up, take action, and crush his global klept in a sweeping asymmetric tide of lawfare and financial actions.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1495855620511125507?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 2/ Putin and his cronies care about hard power and hard cash. Chaos and division here at home (looking at the vast right-wing media apparatus) are Putin strengths. ¤ The same instinct that led the Russian klept to move their assets overseas…
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 3/ …to nations with the rule of law, economic stability, and better schools, shopping, restaurants, housing, and quality of life is also a massive strategic weakness for Putin now. ¤ The West can and should make this hurt.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 4/ I’m not kidding about seizing Russian yachts and private jets. I’m not kidding about tossing their kids out of U.S. universities. I’m not kidding when I say it’s time to turn Immigration on the Oligarch Girlriend-Industrial complex in Miami.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 5/ Do all the grown-ass adult FINCEN stuff and deal with SWIFT etc. Fine. ¤ But spectacular, showy, visceral pain for the the oligarch class financial diaspora is a front in this war we can fight with low risk and low cost.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BillBrowder This is the moment for Biden to show up with a public list of Putin’s 50 oligarch trustees and tell him that they will all have their assets frozen in the US, EU, the U.K. and Canada the second Russia makes a move. …🐣 RT @SkinnerPm I’ve just been informed by MeanCat that the borders of Skinnerville were incorrectly drawn years ago.
NYT: Putin Prepares Decision on Breakaway Ukraine Regions http://nyti.ms/3H0TQs5 “the United States said such a move would be a violation of a peace settlement with the self-declared territories”
🐣 RT @WorldAffairsPro #BREAKING Russian President Putin says “a decision will be taken today” on officially recognising occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in E Ukraine. Hate to be right – but this Kremlin playbook move is something I’ve been predicting for weeks. They know they can get away with it #Ukraine
🧵 RT @DAlperovitch Putin is holding a meeting of his Security Council today. #WatchThisSpace
📌 https://twitter.com/dalperovitch/status/1495758832303280133?s=21🐣 RT @starsandstripes Russian President Vladimir Putin is aging, isolated, more powerful than ever — and on the brink of waging a possibly catastrophic war.
⋙ Stars&Stripes/WaPo: Wielding the threat of war, a new, more aggressive Putin steps forward http://bit.ly/3HaDPj3⭕ 20 Feb 2022
Links to my Twitter Lists on:
Russia Zone: https://twitter.com/i/lists/825790309284114432
Ukraine: https://twitter.com/i/lists/157259218
National Security: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1336406604808380419 ¤Newsweek: Vindman Accuses Trump Allies of ‘Encouraging Putin to Attack Ukraine’ http://bit.ly/3LOKRhd
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: There Are No Chamberlains in This Story http://bit.ly/3sV9XCl
// But there are no Churchills, either. And Ukraine will fight alone.🐣 RT @SecBllinken The chorus is growing louder every day. We urge the Russian government to de-escalate and choose the path of diplomacy. I stand alongside leaders who are #UnitedWithUkraine.
💙 💽 https://twitter.com/secblinken/status/1495534754128699392?s=21/photo/1
// well-done video of world leaders in solidarity condemning Russian eyes on Ukraine🐣 RT @GeneralClark The Biden strategy is working. Putin seems perplexed: his false flag pretexts for invasion? Exposed! NATO? Increasingly unified! Ukraine? Determined and resilient! Not too late for Putin to withdraw, and be happy to survive the crisis he created.
🐣 RT @JohnHarwood whatever Putin decides, Biden and NATO allies have made Russia stop and think ¤ ex- WH aide Fiona Hill: ¤ “They might have thought we were going to crumble, and we didn’t, ¤ “it might have deterred a full-scale invasion. ¤ “now (Putin) is recalculating.”
⋙ CNN: Former top Trump Russia adviser details the sharp contrast between the former President and Biden http://cnn.it/3oXNyTR🐣 RT @McFaul This is very unusual. I can’t ever remember a message like this (except one time when there was a demonstration outside of our residence at Spaso House, and we told people to avoid the area.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @ElenaChernenko The US embassy in Russia issued a security alert warning about possible attacks on public spaces in Moscow and other citiesThe US embassy in Russia issued a security alert warning about possible attacks on public spaces in Moscow and other cities pic.twitter.com/dA50063ORI
— Elena Chernenko (@ElenaChernenko) February 20, 2022
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews President Joe Biden’s administration has prepared an initial package of sanctions against Russia that includes barring U.S. financial institutions from processing transactions for major Russian banks.
⋙ Reuters: EXCLUSIVE U.S. plans to cut ties with targeted Russian banks if Ukraine is invaded – sources http://reut.rs/3JK3Ebp🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “These acts… would likely target those who oppose Russian actions, including Russian & Belarusian dissidents in exile in Ukraine, journalists & anti-corruption activists, & vulnerable populations such as religious & ethnic minorities & LGBTQI+ persons.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews U.S. letter to the U.N. alleging Russia is planning human rights abuses in Ukraine: “… we have credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation.”
🐣 RT @annespplebaum If this is true, it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did before occupying eastern Poland and the Baltic States in 1939, and the rest of Poland in 1944-45
⋙ 🐣 RT @missy_ryan NEW: The Biden admin, in a letter to UN, says it has info indicating “Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation.” From @John_Hudson & me
⋙⋙ WaPo: U.S. claims Russia has list of Ukrainians ‘to be killed or sent to camps’ following a military occupation http://wapo.st/3p2F4L9WaPo, David Ignatius: Putin warned the West 15 years ago. Now, in Ukraine, he’s poised to wage war. http://wapo.st/3sTBXX9 “‘NATO has put its front-line forces on our borders,’ Putin complained, … ‘We have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?’”
🐣 RT @MoniqueCamarra Duck me this is good.👏
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @DarthPutin If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, denies it’s a duck, demands you prove it’s a duck, accuses you of being a duck, says your dog is a duck, and after saying it will fly away soon is in fact joined on your fence by 190,000 other ducks, it’s a Kremlin duck 🦆🐣 RT @EuroMaidanPR “Russia expected everyone to panic and flee to Europe, to just buy buckwheat and pasta, food, but we all bought machine guns and weapons and cartridges. No one is afraid, no one will abandon their homes, no one will flee.”
⋙ AP: Calm prevails at Poland-Ukraine border despite growing fears http://bit.ly/3s4ivYpPolitico: Finland’s president sees changes in Putin: ‘It was a different kind of behavior’ http://politi.co/3p3Nimd
// He said his nation might consider joining NATO if it felt threatened.🧵 RT @ZaknafeinDC Russia’s war against Ukraine will be catastrophic—for both sides. But it will also be an enormous test of Putin’s decade+ of military reforms & heavy investment in the modernization of the armed forces he inherited from Yeltsin. I think it will be similar in scale to 1991. (1/3)
📌 https://twitter.com/ZaknafeinDC/status/1495377850752507913?s=20🐣 RT @ikoshiw This is surreal. You have the US saying the invasion will happen in the next few days/hours and then you have this, Kharkiv, hours away from the Russian troops.
This is surreal. You have the US saying the invasion will happen in the next few days/hours and then you have this, Kharkiv, hours away from the Russian troops. pic.twitter.com/IsU9i9K9R5
— Isobel Koshiw (@IKoshiw) February 19, 2022
// modern tiered shopping mall interior
⋙ 🐣 RT @gennadius25 perhaps the last normal weekend, why not enjoy it? i live in kharkiv and i know a lot of folks are thinking through various scenarios. the kids won’t know this, and they shouldn’t, before H hour, & parents may be saying goodbye to this shopping mall and their life as they knew it
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @johnhhaskell ok good argument. Now tell me why the store owners have the stores stocked full of merchandise, because if the Russian Army comes though that place is going to be picked clean.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @gennadius25 1. the store owners are busy doing business, just like the customers are busy buying & enjoying themselves — as long as life goes on as before. 2. the despicable russian army isn’t going to “come through that place” in one or two days — or even a week. we’ll fight and stop them
↥ ↧
‼️ CBSNews: U.S. has intel that Russian commanders have orders to proceed with Ukraine invasion http://cbsn.ws/3sX1YEG🐣 RT @McFaul However uncomfortable for some in the audience, @ZelenskyyUa delivered a forceful message to the #MSC2022. The West now needs to support him without qualification. #StandWithUkraine.
💙 💽 ≣ KyivPost: Ukrainian President Makes Historic Speech in Munich (English Translation) http://bit.ly/3oXO3gr
🐣 RT @McFaul I cannot believe that RT head @M_Simonyan would tweet this out unless she knew that invasion was imminent. (Hope I’m wrong of course)
⋙ 🐣 RT @ichbinilya RT head Simonyan:
“2008 Olympics — Liberation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
2014 Olympics — Return of Crimea [to Russia]
2022 Olympics — Fill in the correct answer”Олимпиада 2008 — освобождение Южной Осетии и Абхазии.
Олимпиада 2014 — возвращение Крыма.
Олимпиада 2022 — впишите правильный ответ.
— Маргарита Симоньян (@M_Simonyan) February 19, 2022
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Putin has turned Russia into a rogue state. Russia is not the issue, but Putin’s kleptocratic dictatorship is. Russia cannot be a normal state until Putin is gone, as was the case with Germany under Hitler & Italy under Mussolini. Russia needs regime change!
🐣 RT @ianbremmer a decade of failed red lines by the us and allies have led to this moment in munich
2008 in georgia
2013 in syria
2014 in ukraine
2016 in us elections
today’s russia crisis is not an isolated event🧵 RT @McFaul To add, “verbal commitments” mean next to nothing in diplomacy. During the New START treaty negotiations, Russians heard a verbal commitment from our side to limit missile defenses. Obama personally had to walk it back. 1/ THREAD
📌 https://twitter.com/mcfaul/status/1495306480391647236?s=21
⋙ 🧵 RT @DrRadchenko So when Putin argues that “we were promised” that NATO would not enlarge, he is not entirely wrong. But he tells only one part of this story (the one that’s useful to his narrative). The reality was much more complicated. I’d argue, there never was a deal.
📌 https://twitter.com/drradchenko/status/1495303412145086464?s=21
// Cold War historian⭕ 19 Feb 2022
NYT: Put Sanctions on Russia Now, Ukraine’s President Zelensky Urges West http://nyti.ms/3JJZsIZ
NYT: Shelling Escalates in Ukraine as Thousands Flee, Fearing Attack http://nyti.ms/3H3Vede
// Western leaders repeat calls for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. Russia fires missiles in a blunt warning of where the conflict could lead.NYT: Putin’s Baseless Claims of Genocide Hint at More Than War http://nyti.ms/3I6Xy4v “[I]nvocations of genocide … reflect Moscow’s sincere belief that, in a world dominated by a hostile West, it is the rightful protector of Russian populations throughout the former [USSR]”
// The invocations serve to justify not just Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, but also its wider quest for a new imperial identity rooted in Russian ethnicity.🐣 RT @tribelaw I agree with @harrylitman’s take on Judge Amit Mehta’s 112-page ruling, a brilliant and devastating rejection of every argument Trump advanced to shield himself from this powerful suite of federal insurrection lawsuits. His goose is well and truly cooked.
⋙ 🧵 RT @harrylitman Had a chance now to read the 112-page opinion saying civil case by Swalwell et al can go forward against Trump. This one is potentially even worse for him than the NY action.
📌 https://twitter.com/harrylitman/status/1495132079834558468?s=21🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Given the advance of @ericswalwell’s lawsuit, retweeting this older piece of mine, to underscore that ultimately, civil cases, with their robust discovery, may give Trump as much trouble as the prospect of criminal prosecution.
⋙ WaPo, Joyce Vance: Civil suits may pry out the information we need to hold Trump accountable http://wapo.st/3h1oUNz
// The former president faces at least 10 lawsuits, and procedural rules he can’t dodge
// 3/12/2021🐣 RT @McFaul Biden has given Putin a brilliant off-ramp. By announcing to the world that Putin plans to invade, Putin can now embarrass Biden by not invading and blaming the West for beating the “drums of war.” Take it Mr. Putin. Embarras my president! (Small price to pay for avoiding war.)
🐣 RT @BillKristol President Zelenskyy speaking at the Munich Security Conference a few minutes ago. ¤ “There is no such thing as ‘It is not my war’ in the 21st century…This is not about war in Ukraine. It is about war in Europe…Action is needed. The world needs this action. Not just Ukraine.”
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Putin, Russian diplomats, and state TV hosts have threatened nuclear war over Ukraine. Deploying nuclear blackmail shows just how weak a hand Russia knows it is holding.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeNBC An invasion guaranteed by the threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation? When does it end? Estonia? Poland? Finland?🐣 RT @ianbremmer UK PM johnsons says “if russia invades its neighbor…we will open up the matryoshka dolls of russian-owned companies and russian-owned entities, to define the ultimate beneficiaries within, [and sanction them].” ¤ now that would be something.
‼️ 🐣 RT @EuromaidanPress About 11:30, Russian-hybrid forces attacked the Ukrainian checkpoint Schastia (Luhansk obl) and reportedly the town itself. 💽 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1495008916622782467?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jensstoltenberg These are dangerous days for European security. #Russia has relentlessly massed troops in & around #Ukraine in the biggest military build-up since the Cold War. #NATO Allies continue their strong diplomatic efforts to find a political solution. #MSC2022 💽 https://twitter.com/jensstoltenberg/status/1495007425195352067?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ConStelz Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Moscow‘s case here by Wang Yi. ¤ In fact (apart from suggestion that US might be real problem), CN foreign minister remarkably circumspect on Russia-Ukraine 👇
⋙ 🐣 RT @noahbarkin China’s foreign minister Wang Yi tells #MSC2022 that the sovereignty, independence & territorial integrity of every country should be safeguarded. “Ukraine is no exception,” he says🐣 RT @bellincat Another example of a video published by separatists having a creation date days before the events shown are alleged to have occurred, this time a supposed Ukrainian attack on chlorine storage. https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1494994307614400513?s=20
🐣 RT @DeptofDefense .@SecDef: I believe we should continue to try [to reach a diplomatic solution] until the very last minute, until it’s no longer possible.
Politico, Robert Zaretsky: What Tolstoy would make of Vladimir Putin http://politi.co/3p0CTrs “Not only has a tsar been born in the 21st century, but this tsar believes he can change the course of history”
// It is not the man himself but the deeper forces of history that are shaping current events in Ukraine.🐣 RT @Bundeskanzler Let us stick together, as friends and allies! Only a Europe that is able to act and can independently ensure stability and security, remains an attractive partner for the United States, as its closest friend and partner in values. #MSC2022
🐣 RT @USApoRusski .@POTUS: Мы видим сообщения об увеличении числа нарушений режима прекращения огня со стороны поддерживаемых Россией боевиков, пытающихся спровоцировать Украину, и продолжаем наблюдать распространение дезинформации. Всё это соответствует схеме, которую русские использовали раньше.
⋙ Translated from Russian by Google:
🐣 RT @POTUS : We are seeing reports of an increase in ceasefire violations by Russia-backed militants trying to provoke Ukraine, and we continue to see the spread of disinformation. All this is consistent with the scheme that the Russians used before.🐣 RT @anders_aslund Today Putin has issued a decree calling up the reserves. Russia has carried out its false flag clown shows. Russia’s troop around Ukraine are fully mobilized. Ukraine must mobilize instantly and prepare for the defense of Kyiv.
🐣 RT @gkates There’s going to be a lot happening in the next few days, so let’s not forget how it started: ¤ With two “urgent” videos posted on Friday with metadata showing they were filmed on Wednesday.
NYT, Anton Troianovski: Vladimir Putin: Crafty Strategist or Aggrieved and Reckless Leader? http://nyti.ms/3BC3ZdI “Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Moscow foreign policy analyst … said Mr. Putin’s goal now was ‘to force the outcome of the Cold War to be partially revised’”
// Analysts puzzling over the Russian leader’s intentions say that his troop buildup around Ukraine could be a convincing bluff, but also posit that he could have fundamentally changed during the pandemic.“There’s this impression of irritation, of a lack of interest, of an unwillingness to delve into anything new,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist and former member of Mr. Putin’s human rights council, said of the president’s recent public appearances. “The public is being shown that he has been in practical isolation, with ever fewer breaks, since the spring of 2020.”
“Starting a full-scale war is completely not in Putin’s interest,” said Anastasia Likhacheva, the dean of world economy and international affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “It is very difficult for me to find any rational explanation for a desire to carry out such a campaign.”
Even if Mr. Putin were able to take control of Ukraine, she noted, such a war would accomplish the opposite of what the president says he wants: rolling back the NATO presence in Eastern Europe. In the case of a war, the NATO allies would be “more unified than ever,” Ms. Likhacheva said, and they would be likely to deploy powerful new weaponry along Russia’s western frontiers. …
Russian foreign policy experts generally see the standoff over Ukraine as the latest stage in Mr. Putin’s yearslong effort to compel the West to accept what he sees as fundamental Russian security concerns. In the 1990s, that thinking goes, the West forced a new European order upon a weak Russia that disregarded its historical need for a geopolitical buffer zone to its west. And now that Russia is stronger, these experts say, it would be reasonable for any Kremlin leader to try to redraw that map.
Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Moscow foreign policy analyst who advises the Kremlin, said Mr. Putin’s goal now was “to force the outcome of the Cold War to be partially revised.” But he still believes Mr. Putin will stop short of full-scale invasion, instead using “special, asymmetric or hybrid means” — including making the West believe that he is truly prepared to attack. …
… His harsh crackdown against the network of Aleksei A. Navalny, for example, has contradicted what had been a widely held view that Mr. Putin was happy to allow some domestic dissent as an escape valve to manage discontent. ¤ “Putin, in the last year, has crossed a lot of Rubicons,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute based in Arlington, Va., said last week. “Folks who believe that something this dramatic is unlikely or improbable may not have observed that qualitative shift in the last two years.” …
🐣 RT @StuartKLau Putin and Xi “seek a ‘new era’ to replace the existing international rules,” EU President von der Leyen said in #MSC2022. [Munich Security Conf]
🐣 RT @USEmbassyKiev Ми оприлюднюємо плани Росії. Не тому, що ми хочемо конфлікту, а тому, що ми робимо все, що в наших силах, щоб усунути будь-які причини, які Росія може використати для виправдання вторгнення в Україну. Якщо Росія реалізує свої плани, вона буде відповідальна за катастрофічну війну.
⋙ Translated from Ukrainian by Google:
We are announcing Russia’s plans. Not because we want a conflict, but because we are doing everything in our power to eliminate any reasons that Russia may use to justify the invasion of Ukraine. If Russia implements its plans, it will be responsible for a catastrophic war.
‼️ ⋙ 🐣 RT @POTUS We’re calling out Russia’s plans. Not because we want a conflict, but because we are doing everything in our power to remove any reason Russia may give to justify invading Ukraine. ¤ If Russia pursues its plans, it will be responsible for a catastrophic and needless war of choice.🐣 RT @ianbremmer the story all over the russian media today is that the separatist republics have been subjected to massive ukrainian bombing (false), causing refugees by the thousands to flee into russia. ¤ it’s believed by most russians.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “After 30 years of independence, the genie of Ukrainian national identity and statehood cannot be put back into the bottle, no matter how hard Putin tries.” [Zelenskiy]
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel: Putin Cannot Erase Ukraine http://fam.ag/3sUFNiy
// 2/17/2022; No Russian invasion can undo Ukrainian nationhood.WaPo: [2:32amCT] Separatist leaders sign mass military mobilization orders, raising fears of war http://wapo.st/3H00WNl
⭕ 18 Feb 2022
💙 Axios: U.S. judge rejects Trump’s bid to toss out Congress members’ Jan. 6 lawsuit http://bit.ly/3LQRUFX
⋙ ≣ Judge Mehta Ruling: http://bit.ly/3sUpJgJ
// remarkable 112 page court filing🐣 RT @EUvsDisinfo Here’s the 2022 version of the pro-Kremlin #disinformation ecosystem by @selectedwisdom. It offers the most up-to-date public glimpse into the Kremlin’s machinery seeking to subvert democracies worldwide.
⋙ ◕ Miburo, Max Clicker and Clint Watts: Russia’s Propaganda & Disinformation Ecosystem – 2022 Update & New Disclosures http://bit.ly/3h1AxnK ● https://twitter.com/auriandra/status/1495388789857992706?s=21/photo/1
// 2/15/2022; New revelations and a structural update to our chart🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Putin doesn’t care if it’s convincing or that something “looks bad”. He only cares about consequences. He invaded Georgia in 2008 & Ukraine in 2014. He’s still in power and still runs the richest mafia in the world.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1494755368123174926?s=20💽 NYT: Biden Says Putin Has Chosen ‘Catastrophic’ War Over Diplomacy http://nyti.ms/3GWH39P
// President Biden spoke amid fears that Russia was setting the stage for an invasion that could ignite the biggest conflict in Europe in decades.🐣 RT @BH_Friedman I understand why people are skeptical that just pulling the possibility of NATO expansion to Ukraine wound prevent a Russian invasion (even though no one says it’s this simple) but I cannot understand the hostility to trying, as part of a diplomatic package. It seems deranged.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTo, This is not about NATO, and letting Putin *make* it about NATO – not least by baiting us into this kind of move – is a fundamental error.
🐣 RT @BH_Friedman Russia is about to start a war and kill many people, but as long as we don’t make the fundamental error of agreeing to discuss their stated security concerns about NATO, we’ve done our part? Sucks for Ukraine, but the open door policy, at least for counties not overrun, lives on.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom The fundamental error here is believing that discussing any of this would stop Putin from doing anything he wants to do. It’s like arguing that a spouse will stop beating you once you agree to talk about the things you do that make him mad.
🐣 RT @BH_Friedman You assume you know what Putin’s real goals are. And that agreeing to say Ukraine won’t join NATO wouldn’t work. That strikes me as a bigger error than asserting that we don’t know what he wants and testing what might work through diplomacy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Why yes, I do in fact think I have a pretty good handle on what Putin‘s real goals are.
🐣 RT @BH_Friedman. For those of us who don’t know what he wants, and are skeptical of people who say they do, it seems wise for diplomats to explore if there is a way to address some of Russians’ stated security concerns re NATO, valid or not, as part of diplomacy to avert war.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom You say this as if no diplomat or foreign-policy analyst had ever thought of this before you did. What do you think has been going on for 15 years? Russia’s stated security concerns about NATO are bullshit; they know it’s bullshit and they know we know it’s bullshit.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom And I’m sorry if that comes across as something of a slam on you, but it’s really irritating when someone like you makes the assumption that responsible diplomats haven’t been trying to do the thing you’re talking about for nearly two decades. /1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Putin invaded Ukraine eight years ago because he was humiliated by having his guy run out of town. This is about revenge, about a dictator stomping out democracy, and about trying to overturn 30 years of the post-Cold War order in Europe. /2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I know it seems like there are things we haven’t tried. But Putin‘s demand is to roll European security back 25 years. There is nothing that you can say to that other than “no” /3x🐣 RT @McFaul If Putin had wanted to negotiate, even about NATO, he would be acting differently. He has never demonstrated any real commitment to talks, just publishing unilateral ultimatums as pretexts for war.
WaPo, George Conway III: Trump’s luck may finally be running out http://wapo.st/3I9Y0PO
🧵 RT @michaeldweiss Ukrainian journalist Andrei Tsaplienko posted something very interesting to Telegram today, claiming it’s from a leaked document instructing Russian news organizations on how to cover the last few days. I’ll summarize main points. 📌 https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1494756156010553346?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss – Focus on Shoigu and Lavrov’s comments to Putin, link them to the statement by Igor Konashenkov, general rep. of the Russian General Staff on troop withdrawal. Why has the West changed its position? Because they’re afraid of Russian resolve.
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss – Keep repeating Konashenkov’s statement, show images of Russian military equipment and troops being loaded up, etc.
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss – The main message is: “We’ve achieved a dialogue with the US and NATO, we’ve cooled the crazy heads in Kyiv — serious results have been achieved. Everyone has already felt our strength and will feel it in future.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss – Press the West harder. They may read our prudence and responsibility as weakness (esp. in Kyiv) and ‘radicals’ may take advantage of the situation in Donbas. We have to protect our people in the DNR and LNR.
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaeldweiss – Highlight the “hysteria of high-ranking statesmen” and media about Russian aggression: Sullivan (“bombing”), Truss (“at any moment”), Bloomberg news (“already five times the announced offensive”). Also bring up the U.S. embassy relocation to Lviv, how are Americans settling in?🐣 RT @kromark Both DNR and LNR leaders filmed their “evacuation videos” on February 16th, as Telegram metadata shows. Denis Pushilin even says “today, on February 18th…” . Everything that happens today is clearly and undoubtfully staged. https://twitter.com/kromark/status/1494743813830717454?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AVindman From the pro-Russia/Separatist Telegram channel, Сводки ополчения Новороссии, fabricating a pretext for war, ‘Ukraine’s Armed Forces and the security service plan to fire on buses of evacuees fleeing the Russian controlled DNR/LNR.’
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman [tr] “Ukrainians are preparing a provocation. The SBU, together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, are developing a plan for shelling buses with evacuating women and children. They can fire from the “Hyacinth” howitzer from the Mariupol direction. The Ukrainians want to put the blame on the militia of Donbass!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman God that’s morbid if their pretext for war is really going to be firing on these same people they’re supposedly evacuating.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MarthaM00086745 the buses appear to be empty:
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MichaelH992 First buses of residents of the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) left in direction of the Russian border #Ukraine #Russia 💽 https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1494738493892874245?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @McFaul Imagine if China invaded California, annexed San Francisco and supported separatists in LA (in the name of defending ethnic Chinese). Imagine a few years later, Beijing threatened a full-scale invasion of our entire country unless we changed our constitution…
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul and allowed them to have a veto over our foreign policy decisions. How many Americans would be saying, ‘yeah we better take that deal? Better than the alternative.’ Yet, that’s what some are recommending to Ukrainians right now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Leaders in Kyiv dont trust Moscow. They dont believe Putin would adhere to any new agreement about their security. They point to several treaties/agreements that Putin has violated in past. So why should they trust him now or in the future?⭕ 17 Feb 2022
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Russia Answers NATO http://bit.ly/3h1ZaRs ‘Putin, himself a decaying remnant of the old Soviet order, is saying [that] everything in the former Soviet empire is still under the dominion of the Kremlin. This demand is impossible and Putin knows it’
// Indications and warnings.What’s important here, however, is that this refusal is shot through with a complete rejection of 30 years of peace and diplomacy. Putin, himself a decaying remnant of the old Soviet order, is saying, in effect, that everything in the former Soviet empire is still under the dominion of the Kremlin. Remember, demanding a reset back to 1997 means “before the Baltic states were admitted to NATO.” This would be resetting the Atlantic Alliance back to a time when only Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were on track to join the original Cold War members of NATO. … Of course, this demand is impossible and Putin knows it.
So why make it? Because none of this is about NATO. It is, as my Atlantic colleague Anne Applebaum and the former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul keep pointing out, about a democracy of 40 million Slavs on Russia’s border. This is intolerable to Putin and he will stomp out this small flame of freedom, however weak and inconstant it might be, even at the cost of war.
NYT: N.Y. Attorney General Can Question Trump and 2 Children, Judge Rules http://nyti.ms/3I1D4KF From the ruling of NY State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron: Text Block: ● https://twitter.com/auriandra/status/1494684236753911809?s=21/photo/1
// Former President Donald J. Trump and two of his children had sought to block Letitia James, the attorney general, from interviewing them under oath.
⋙ ≣ Ruling: http://bit.ly/3LM6sqkText: The idea that an accounting firm’s announcement that no one should rely on a decade’s worth of financial statements that it issued based on numbers submitted by an entity somehow exonerates that entity and renders an investigation into its past practices moot is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll (“When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said … it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less”); George Orwell (“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”); and”alternative facts.”
The New Trump Respondents’ lawyers have submitted serious, substantive, sophisticated legal arguments in support of quashing the subject subpoenas. Although this Court finds those arguments wanting, they are plausible and learned, and counsel made them in good faith. To proclaim that the Mazars’ red-flag warning that the Trump financial statements are unreliable suddenly renders the OAG’s longstanding investigation moot is as audacious as it is preposterous.
NYT: Durham Distances Himself From Furor in Right-Wing Media Over Filing http://nyti.ms/3I4KzAC “[O]ver the weekend, the conservative news media treated those sentences in Mr. Durham’s filing as a new revelation while significantly embellishing what it had said”
// The special counsel implicitly acknowledged that White House internet data he discussed, which conservative outlets have portrayed as proof of spying on the Trump White House, came from the Obama era.NewVoiceUkraine: ‘Putin expected capitulation but miscalculated,’ says ex-US presidential advisor http://bit.ly/3p0hI8O (Fiona Hill)
// Russian President Vladimir Putin was expecting to intimidate Ukraine, the European Union and NATO by amassing troops at the Ukrainian border, but received a backlash instead, a U.S. expert said during a Kyiv Security Forum online discussion on Feb. 16.🐣 RT @ByMikeBaker What a lede from AP: ¤ BEIJING (AP) — The gold medalist said she felt empty. The silver medalist pledged never to skate again. The favorite left in tears without saying a word.
⋙ AP: ‘I hate this sport!’: Rage, teen tears and Olympic collapse http://bit.ly/3uZ6a9CBEIJING (AP) — The gold medalist said she felt empty. The silver medalist pledged never to skate again. The favorite left in tears without saying a word.
After one of the most dramatic nights in their sport’s history, Russia’s trio of teenage figure skating stars each enter an uncertain future.
Her Olympics and life turned upside down by a doping case, world record holder Kamila Valieva faces a possible ban and a coach whose first response to her disastrous skate Thursday was criticism. ¤ “Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting?” cameras caught Eteri Tutberidze — the notoriously strict coach who will be investigated over Valieva’s failed drug test — telling the 15-year-old after she fell twice and dropped out of medal contention.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said he was disturbed by the intense pressure on the young skaters, particularly Valieva, and criticized her coaches without naming Tutberidze. ¤ “When I afterwards saw how she was received by her closest entourage, with such, what appeared to be a tremendous coldness, it was chilling to see this,” he said at a news conference Friday. “Rather than giving her comfort, rather than to try to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance.” ¤ Some in skating have pushed to raise the minimum age for participation at the Olympics from 15 to 17 or 18.
As Valieva placed fourth and left in tears, she received a message of support from 2018 silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva. ¤ “I am so happy that this hell is over for you,” Medvedeva posted on Instagram. “I really value you and love you and I’m happy that you can relax now, sweetie. I congratulate you on the end of the Olympics and I hope that you can live calmly and breathe.”
Unfortunately for Valieva, she can’t relax just yet. The failed drug test which turned her life upside down still hangs over her head. ¤ While she was allowed to keep skating in Beijing by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to avoid “irreparable harm,” that ruling is valid only until a full investigation of her Dec. 25 test for the banned substance trimetazidine is resolved. The case could take months and still cost Valieva and her Russian teammates the gold medal they won in last week’s team event.
Runner-up Alexandra Trusova was also in despair after her history-making five quadruple jumps proved not enough to beat teammate Anna Shcherbakova to the gold medal. “I hate this sport,” she shouted at the side of the rink. “I won’t go onto the ice again.” ¤ Trusova said she was happy with the skate but not with the result, an apparent jab at the judging that gave Shcherbakova enough extra points for artistry to keep her ahead. ¤ Trusova could be heard crying that she was the only one without a gold medal. The Russians won the team event using Valieva twice instead of allowing Shcherbakova or Trusova to skate one of the women’s programs. That win could be stripped because of Valieva’s doping case. ¤
Trusova later said her comments about not skating again had been “emotional”, the result of missing her family and her dogs, but didn’t commit to compete at next month’s world championships. ¤ Of the three teenagers, Trusova has had the most fractious relationship with Tutberidze. She switched coaches briefly, returning to the Tutberidze camp in May of last year. And her music selection seemed to send a message. She danced her long program to “Cruella” from the movie soundtrack.
Shcherbakova seemed unsure how to react the drama unfolding around her, and said she felt sorry for Valieva. “I still don’t comprehend what has happened. On the one hand I feel happy, on the other I feel this emptiness inside.” ¤ Shcherbakova arrived in Beijing as the world champion from 2021, but Valieva’s record-breaking scores and Trusova’s all-or-nothing quads turned her into an underdog to her younger teammates. Being called an Olympic champion was “unreal,” Shcherbakova said. “I don’t feel like it’s me they’re talking about.”
Russian skaters’ careers are typically so short that at the age of 17, Shcherbakova almost immediately faced questions over whether she would retire. ¤ “I have the desire to skate, and I can’t even imagine being without figure skating,” she said. The 2026 Olympics are a long way off, and no Tutberidze-trained woman has ever stayed in elite skating long enough to become a two-time Olympian. The last woman to retain the gold was Katarina Witt of East Germany in 1988.
What happens next for Shcherbakova and her teammates-turned-rivals depends on many factors — the eventual doping verdict, any further punishment for Tutberidze and the rest of her entourage and the myriad of injuries which can plague young skaters performing quads.
As she tries to recover from a failure on the sport’s biggest stage, Valieva remains at the center of a confrontation between Russia and international institutions. About six hours before she took to the ice, Russian Olympic Committee president Stanislav Pozdnyakov said he would not give up the team event gold medal “under any circumstances, regardless of the results of the disciplinary investigation into the athlete.” ¤ Just one of many unresolved questions for the three young Russian skaters.
🐣 RT @KyivIndependent: The support rate for the EU and NATO are the highest since 2014 ¤ According to a survey by Rating Group, 62% of Ukrainians support NATO membership & 68% are for joining the European Union. https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1494379515350589442?s=20
WaPo: Kamila Valieva’s torment will be the sad legacy of the Beijing Olympics http://wapo.st/3rXlEsO
🐣 RT @terischulz US @SecDef Austin: Now 150k Russian troops on Ukraine border, up in last couple days. “In many ways this brings Russian troops right up to #NATO’s doorstep,” he says, noting activities seen, ie boosting blood supplies, aren’t what you do if “you’re ready to pack up and go home.”
🐣 RT @loather Congrats to Russia on ruining figure skating and also starting a land war in Asia
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman The Mazars letter Trump attached is remarkable. It says Mazars has no idea whether the reps by Trump are accurate, and then still goes on to list numerous examples of how the statements don’t comply with accounting principles in a way that conflates and inflates values. https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1494330562508570630?s=20
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum The Russian propaganda plan is taking shape
⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll So the outlines of Russian strategy are appearing. State Investigation Committee today opened criminal case re mass graves in Luhansk + Donetsk. It looks like it will be genocide, genocide, genocide, folks — as a way of turning Russians against Ukraine
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll On mass graves. I travelled in region during 2014-15 + saw w own eyes mass burial sites. They were known to locals + Russian-backed proxies. Essentially were where poor, old people w/o relatives & possibly unidentified combatants were buried. These pics fm Oct 2014 in Luhansk
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @olliecarroll On genocide. The cruel war has taken thousands of victims, but calling it a genocide is ludicrous + insulting to very idea. Yet the fact Kremlin has chosen route suggests they aren’t yet sure of public backing for whatever actions they’re planning. Plus: they think they need it🐣 RT @RALee85 Russia has reportedly expelled the US Deputy Ambassador to Russia, Bart Gorman.
🐣 RT @PeterAlexander JUST IN: “The evidence on the ground is that Russia is moving toward an imminent invasion. This is a crucial moment,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield tells reporters.
🐣 RT @drothkopf The Cold War may have ended but no one told Vlad Putin. He’s been waging a war against us & the West for decades-cyber, hybrid, disinformation, political meddling, attacking his neighbors. He’s now threatening to escalate. How do we make Americans care?
⋙ DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: What Happens to Ukraine Matters to Every American http://bit.ly/3uXlYK5 “Putin’s threat against democratic Ukraine is part of a much bigger, long-established strategic plan to weaken the West, the NATO alliance, and the U.S.”
// The global consequences of a Russian invasion will hit Americans where they live, too.President Joe Biden this week delivered exactly the speech he needed to give on Ukraine. It was brief, clear, and it balanced the resolve needed to stand up to Putin with a commitment to searching for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. He spoke directly to the Russian people and said “you are not our enemy.” He let Americans know that his administration would do everything in its power to protect them from the imposition of sanctions on Russia—like rising gasoline prices.
Unfortunately, the president’s speech very likely failed in one crucial respect. It did not make Americans care about Ukraine any more than they did before it was delivered. While pundits from both sides of the aisle praised the speech (including the right-leaning Washington Examiner), it probably lacked the arguments necessary to win average Americans’ support for the costs that a protracted conflict in Ukraine (or further escalating tensions with Russia) might bring.
One hurdle faced by the president in this regard is ignorance. A recent Morning Consult poll showed only about a third of Americans can even find Ukraine on a map. That matters in a practical sense because the same survey showed that half of those who could identify Ukraine were likely to support, for example, shipping arms to that country. Conversely, only 37 percent of those who could not find Ukraine on a map would support such actions. Similarly, support for strict sanctions was higher among the minority who could identify Ukraine than it was among the much larger percentage of the population that could not. …
Putin’s threat against democratic Ukraine is part of a much bigger, long-established strategic plan to weaken the West, the NATO alliance, and the U.S. These are all issues of much greater consequence than was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. (79 percent of Americans supported the Gulf War when it began.) …
… Putin has shown a desire to carve away at sovereign European states—like Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine beginning in 2014—that is unlike anything Europe has seen since the days of Hitler. (And we know what the costs of appeasing Hitler were.)
Putin has, in fact, been waging war against the West for as long as he has been in power. It has included support for ethno-nationalist right-wing parties across Europe. It has included massive disinformation campaigns and election meddling (remember 2016?), and it has included more major state-sponsored cyberattacks against the West than by any other country.
Finally, as real as the Russian threat is, as damaging as Russian actions have been for years, as threatening as they may be right now—even worse is what would happen if Russia thought it could continue its campaign against the U.S. and the West unchecked. …
Putin miscalculated. He concluded that America was in retreat. He concluded that we were hopelessly politically divided (in part thanks to his efforts). And he concluded that NATO could not come together as it has in the past (again, thanks in part to his efforts to foster division, Euroscepticism, and the rise of Putinesque autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orban). ¤ He was wrong. The response of the Biden administration and NATO has been unified and smart, displaying the same balance and foresight as the president’s speech on Tuesday.
But, ultimately, containing the threat posed by Putin will depend on unwavering American resolve, on an ability to withstand threats and a willingness (when necessary) to make sacrifices. ¤ That, in turn, depends on Biden and his administration communicating more clearly why this matters to Main Street, America. They need to sell to the people why advancing our national interests requires confronting threats to the international order.
Biden and his team, who have managed this crisis well thus far, will need to devote more attention to the domestic aspect of this crisis and its underlying causes, if the leadership we have demonstrated is to be sustainable.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🧵 RT @general_ben [Ben Hodges, Former Cmdr USArmy Europe] THREAD on Ukraine: It feels like we’re watching a slow-motion train wreck happening before our eyes… and make no mistake, Putin is driving that train, unless we can get the initiative. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/general_ben/status/1494000850351673348?s=21
🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy 🇷🇺 President Putin (News conference after 🇷🇺🇩🇪 talks): Equal & indivisible security spans more than the right to freely choose methods of ensuring one’s security & joining military alliances; it also refers to a commitment not to strengthen one’s security at the expense of others.
⭕ 16 Feb 2022
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance And, Mr. Trump, looks to me like you’ve just bought your own ticket to a deposition in the NY AG’s office. Nice self-own. You’ve demonstrated you’ve got knowledge she’s entitled to question you about.
↥ ↧
💙 🔄 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote A bit of a letter from the NYAG to the court about Donald’s self-owning statement about his financial disclosures. This is just… 🤣 https://twitter.com/muellershewrote/status/1494065869860732929?s=21/photo/1
⋙ ≣ AG Response to Trump letter. (2/16/2022): http://bit.ly/3LHAlYO
⋙ ≣ Trump Letter: https://twitter.com/realLizUSA/status/1493748938276548608?s=20/photo/1 -4
// Includes (incriminating) letter from Mazars to Trump (11/17/2014)
⋙ ≣ Letter from Mazars to Trump org (2/9/2022) (less detailed) http://bit.ly/355f22zCNN: US says Russian hackers have collected intelligence from American defense contractors http://cnn.it/3GWgUIa “Contractors targeted … over the last two years have been involved in aircraft design & the development of combat and weapons systems, among other things”
WaPo: Texting through an insurrection http://wapo.st/3BqHDvl “The messages made public start days after the 2020 election, tracing a shift in tone from those urging the overthrow of the election results through the aftermath of the Jan. 6 assault”
// Thousands of frantic text messages that might have otherwise been lost to history are now key to piecing together a picture of the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack.🐣 RT @V7VOA “Kremlin approval of this appeal would amount to the Russian government’s wholesale rejection of its commitments under the Minsk agreements,” says @SecBlinken of Duma resolution on eastern #Ukraine. Text Block: https://twitter.com/w7voa/status/1493941904899248130?s=21/photo/1
// Blinken rejects Russian recognition of Donetz and Luhansk as “independent”
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @SecBlinken Kremlin recognition of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as “independent” would signify Russia’s wholesale rejection of the Minsk agreements, which remain the best means to resolve the conflict in the Donbas.🐣 RT @BelarusInSweden Former Putin’s advisor Vladislav Surkov, seen as the architect of Russian aggression against 🇺🇦,has published an article claiming that Russia “feels cramped”&”cannot stay” within the borders of “bawdy” 1918 Brest peace.This means territorial claims against Belarus⚪️🔴⚪️,🇺🇦🇱🇹🇱🇻🇪🇪
⋙ 🐣 “Lebensraum,” iowNYT: Biden Rejects Trump’s Claim of Privilege for White House Visitor Logs http://nyti.ms/3oPuYxe
// The president informed the National Archives that it should turn over the logs sought by the Jan. 6 committee within 15 days.⭕ 15 Feb 2022
Court Filings:
Durham: Motion to Inquire http://bit.ly/3GRepXF
// 2/11/2022
Sussman: Response: http://bit.ly/3rPXtg0
// 2/14/2022CNN: What to know about accounting firm Mazars’ move to back away from Trump http://cnn.it/3BnxFuX
WaPo: Jan 6 panel issues six new subpoenas http://wapo.st/3I9toxT “The subpoenas were sent to current and former Republican officials in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan as well as to two advisers to President Donald Trump”
// The committee is investigating a plan to send ‘false’ slates of Trump electors to WashingtonThe Trump advisers include Michael Roman, the director of Election Day operations for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, and Gary Brown, his deputy director. Roman and Brown, according to Thompson’s letters, were “aware of, and participated in, efforts to promote unsupported allegations of fraud” and encouraged “state legislators to alter the outcome of the November 2020 election by, among other things, appointing alternate slates of electors to send competing electoral votes to the United States Congress.”
Among the state officials subpoenaed were a prominent legislator from Pennsylvania, state Sen. Douglas Mastriano (R), who has long advocated an audit of the 2020 results and was praised by Trump for his efforts. ¤ In addition two Arizonans were subpoenaed, Mark Finchem (R), a state House member running for secretary of state who attended the Jan. 6 protest in Washington, and Kelli Ward, the state Republican chair who sued to block committee efforts to obtain her phone records. ¤ The former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Laura Cox, also was subpoenaed.
💙 WaPo, Matt Bai: I reject both parties’ ideas of Americanism—& I’m not the only one http://wapo.st/3oU7G9s “One is worse than the other. But that doesn’t mean we have to feel jazzed about supporting a party that would grade our worthiness as people on a sliding scale of identity”
Lately, however, I find myself feeling not so much ambivalent about the parties as alienated. I’m confronted with two extreme interpretations of what it means to be American, and I emphatically reject them both.
It seems self-evident that the Republican Party — more a celebrity fan club than a political organization at this point — would, if left to its own devices, destroy the foundation of the republic. I never thought I’d write those words about any U.S. political party, but here we are.
It’s not just that Donald Trump and his imitators would blow up the integrity of our elections, or that they have expressly countenanced a violent insurrection against the federal government, or that they basically admit to having no governing agenda beyond the reclamation of some mythical White heritage. ¤ It’s also that the Trumpist GOP advances the notion, in all kinds of ways, that citizenship alone doesn’t mean you belong here — that your race or ethnicity, the language that you speak, or the identity you choose can somehow make you less American than your neighbor. …
But that doesn’t mean a lot of us who consider ourselves liberal feel kinship with today’s Democratic Party — or that we’d even be welcome if we did. ¤ Rather than focus on traditional American ideals of citizenship over race or origin, the left is in thrall to its own misguided cultural revolution (yes, I use the term deliberately), embracing a vision of the United States that lays waste to the 20th-century liberalism of its greatest icons.
I’ve always liked and respected President Biden, and in most ways he has governed well. His $1.2 trillion infrastructure package was a major achievement. His efforts to counter the pandemic have been steady. He seems poised to make a historic addition to the Supreme Court. ¤ For all of his successes, though, there’s a fire raging in his party that Biden hasn’t even tried to control — and probably couldn’t extinguish if he did. For me (and probably a lot of suburbanites voting this fall), this is more than a backdrop to his presidency. It’s a dealbreaker.
In their zeal to beat back Trumpism, the loudest Democratic groups have transformed into its Bizarro World imitators. Tossing aside ideals of equal opportunity and free expression, the new leftists obsess on identity as much as their adversaries do — but instead of trying to restore some obsolete notion of a White-dominated society, they seek vengeance under the guise of virtue.
One of the bibles of this movement is a book called “How to Be an Antiracist,” in which Ibram X. Kendi declares: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” ¤ This is not — as the celebrated author claims — an expression of support for Lyndon B. Johnson-style affirmative action, which still makes sense to me. It is a case for the kind of social upheaval that occurred when foreign empires relinquished their colonies. It does not end well.
Liberals used to believe in civil debate about such ideas. But now, the arbiters of language are constantly issuing Soviet-style edicts about which terms are acceptable and which aren’t (“woke” was okay, now it’s not) — a tactic used for controlling the debate and delegitimizing critics.
I was taught — and still believe — that in the United States, we are bound not by common origin, language or culture but by a series of laws and values that make us who we are. ¤ As long as you swear allegiance to those laws and values — racial equality, free speech, unfettered worship — then you’re no more or less American than anyone else, and no less deserving of respect, protection and opportunity. ¤ That we’ve failed to honor that promise over the life of the country, and are failing still, doesn’t mean you throw up your hands and abandon the project. It means you rededicate yourself to the ideal of true equality, rather than reducing individuals to a box on a census form. …
This is the ideology that both parties used to call liberalism. There is no longer room for it in today’s stark political dichotomy. ¤ In part, it’s a testimony to the damage that one shameless and unprincipled man managed to wreak on our politics. Trump always had a talent for bringing out the worst in everyone; more than a year after leaving office, he remains the decaying star by which everyone else in our political solar system must orient themselves.
But it’s also the result of an antiquated primary system — at the presidential level and below — that plays to an ever-winnowing group of fervent believers in both parties s .The more people grow disgusted with extremist party politics, the more only those extremists are heard and the more power they exert on anyone who wants to run for higher office.
One is worse than the other. But that doesn’t mean we have to feel jazzed about supporting a party that would grade our worthiness as people on a sliding scale of identity. It doesn’t change the fact that the broad center of the American electorate — traditional conservatives and liberals both — no longer has a political home.
I’ve never been very good at predicting the path ahead. What I do know is that politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum — and, one way or another, a force will arise to fill the space at the eye of our destructive political storm. ¤ Until then, you can call me a dissenter.
🐣 RT @kelly2277 WHOA🔥OMG‼️Look what Trump accidentally provided!!! Mazars wrote that Donald Trump provided financial information that DEPARTED from standard accounting principles accepted in the United States‼️LOOK AT THE NOTES 📝 Trump f**ked himself by posting this. cc @glennkirschner2
⋙ 🐣 RT @realLizUSA NEW! ¤ President Donald J. Trump: ¤ “We have a great company with fantastic assets that are unique, extremely valuable and, in many cases, far more valuable than what was listed in our Financial Statements…”
https://twitter.com/realLizUSA/status/1493748938276548608?s=20/photo/1 -4
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @realLizUSA MORE: ¤ “Mazars has been threatened, harassed, and insulted like virtually no other firm has ever been. They were essentially forced to resign from a great long-term account by the prosecutorial misconduct of a highly political, but failed, gubernatorial candidateLetitia James…”
// response to being dropped by Mazars🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state media has been promoting this idea of “genocide” in #Ukraine for quite some time now (thread). Don’t assume anything is off the table while the Kremlin continues to pursue this narrative as an attempted justification for its future plans. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1493616334109913104?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol “A tyrant thinks along with fear and death. In the case of Putin and Ukraine, thinking with death has perhaps generated a grand vision; thinking with fear has perhaps reminded a tyrant of the kinship of vision and vulnerability.”
⋙ Substack, Timothy Snyder: “What is Putin thinking?” http://bit.ly/3rOpHrA
// Now “what?” but “how?” With fear and death.… Death first. No one must speak of a tyrant’s death, least of all he. And yet death is present, growing ever closer, the silence around it ever louder. Ever more ambitious projects must be summoned to banish the unmentionable. If the dreams are grand enough, perhaps they can even transcend death, by binding the tyrant’s memory with the eternal history of the nation. This is one way to understand the odd essay in which Putin imagines a millennial unity of Russia and Ukraine. The myth suggests a grand project, to be delivered by a decisive deed: a crushing military invasion of a weaker neighboring country. And so a tyrant, thinking with death, devises a policy that delivers it to others.
And yet. A tyrant thinks with death, but also with fear, and the second can be a check on the first. The very sincerity of a tyrant’s wish to overcome death can leave him vulnerable. It can lead him to undertake projects that, in their very grandeur, expose him to ridicule or defeat. Perhaps here Putin might have grasped the folly of invading Ukraine: not for Russia or its interests, about which he need not care, but for himself. Should Russia face difficulty in a war, as it eventually would, this could generate opposition, from people who want their sons back from the front, from people who want peace. Putin could face a challenge, so to speak, from the left.
I would suspect, though, that fear directs Putin’s thoughts in another direction. If he undertakes a major war now, with no element of surprise and facing a concerted Western response, this will strengthen the party of war inside the Russian state. Putin would then face a challenge, so to speak, from the right. He might not be able to keep the spotlight on himself. People would want to know what his generals and intelligence officers thought. New Russian heroes might return from the front. Putin’s shadow games would matter less, and the fog of war would matter more. Under its cover, power could shift, new men could rise, and an old tyrant could recede.
A tyrant thinks along with fear and death. In the case of Putin and Ukraine, thinking with death has perhaps generated a grand vision; thinking with fear has perhaps reminded a tyrant of the kinship of vision and vulnerability. Seeing how tyrants think cannot replace the knowledge about what is taking place. But it can help us to orient and to liberate ourselves. Repeatedly asking “What is Putin thinking?” leaves us mesmerized by shadows. Remembering how a tyrant must think breaks the spell.
🐣 RT @mccaffretr3 On MSNBC. ANDREA MITCHELL. Noon ET. Tuesday. 15 Feb 2022. Ukraine. Photos of Putin today looks like tough night. Invasion all ready to go. Putin determined. His military and intelligence may be getting cold feet.
TheWeek, Peter Weber: Fox News is mangling Special Counsel John Durham’s latest Trump-Russia filing http://bit.ly/34BCAfT
Savage summarizes the competing narratives from Durham and the cybersecurity experts who compiled the contested DNS data, adding that the right-wing mischaracterizations “involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims.” Lawyer Marcy Wheeler, who writes at Emptywheel, has a lot more detail about Durham’s filings and Kash Patel’s involved role in this story.
And Wheeler, a critic of Durham’s Trump-Russia meta-investigation, has a theory about why he dropped this information into an unrelated motion just days after the statute of limitations appears to have expired. “As I keep noting, Durham is obviously trying to pull his fevered conspiracy theories into an actual charged conspiracy, one tying together the DNC, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and Hillary herself,” she writes. “If he succeeds, these flimsy charges (against both Sussmann and [Igor] Danchenko) become stronger, but if he doesn’t, he’s going to have a harder time proving motive and materiality at trial.”
🐣 RT @jonlemire “But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies”
🚫 ⋙ NYT: Court Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets, but Their Narrative Is Off Track http://nyti.ms/33ndZut
// (don’t want to post Durham’s ugly face); The latest alarmist claims about spying on Trump appeared to be flawed, but the explanation is byzantine — underlining the challenge for journalists in deciding what merits coverage.Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t. …
Citing this filing, Fox News inaccurately declared that Mr. Durham had said he had evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid a technology company to “infiltrate” a White House server. The Washington Examiner claimed that this all meant there had been spying on Mr. Trump’s White House office. And when mainstream publications held back, Mr. Trump and his allies began shaming the news media. …
The conservative media also skewed what the filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign. ¤ Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.
“What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, both lawyers for Mr. Dagon. “The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr. Joffe said that “contrary to the allegations in this recent filing,” he was apolitical, did not work for any political party, and had lawful access under a contract to work with others to analyze DNS data — including from the White House — for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats.
After Russians hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, it went on, the cybersecurity researchers were “deeply concerned” to find data suggesting Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, so “prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.”
Mr. Durham was assigned by the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to scour the Russia investigation for wrongdoing in May 2019 as Mr. Trump escalated his claims that he was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy. But after nearly three years, he has not developed any cases against high-level government officials.
Instead, Mr. Durham has developed two cases against people associated with outside efforts to understand Russia’s election interference that put forward unproven, and sometimes thin or subsequently disproved, suspicions about purported links to Mr. Trump or his campaign.
Both cases are narrow — accusations of making false statements. One of those cases is against Mr. Sussmann, whom Mr. Durham has accused of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia. ¤ (Mr. Durham says Mr. Sussmann falsely said he had no clients, but was there on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and Mr. Joffe. Mr. Sussman denies ever saying that, while maintaining he was only there on behalf of Mr. Joffe — not the campaign.) …
A military research organization had asked Georgia Tech researchers to help scrutinize a 2015 Russian malware attack on the White House’s network. After it emerged that Russia had hacked Democrats, they began hunting for signs of other Russian activity targeting people or organizations related to the election, using data provided by Neustar.
Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with the F.B.I. involved odd data the researchers said might indicate communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked institution. The F.B.I. dismissed suspicions of a secret communications channel as unfounded. In the indictment of Mr. Sussmann, Mr. Durham insinuated that the researchers did not believe what they were saying. But lawyers for the researchers said that was false and that their clients believed their analysis.
The meeting with the C.I.A. involved odd data the researchers said indicated there had been communications with Yota servers in Russia coming from networks serving the White House; Trump Tower; Mr. Trump’s Central Park West apartment building; and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company that also played a role in the Alfa Bank matter. The researchers also collaborated on that issue, according to Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch, and Mr. Dagon had prepared a “white paper” explaining the analysis, which Mr. Sussmann later took to the C.I.A. …
But Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch reiterated that YotaPhones are extremely rare in the United States and portrayed three million DNS logs over three years as “paltry and small relative to the billions and billions” of logs associated with common devices like iPhones. ¤ “Yota lookups are extremely concerning if they emanate from sensitive networks that require protection, such as government networks or people running for federal office,” they said.
🐣 RT @akihheikkinen So, NATO intel sees no real pullback for now. ¤ Nice vids tho, Vlad.
⋙ 🐣 RT @terischultz #NATO chief Stoltenberg says there are signals from Moscow that diplomacy should continue but that there have been no physical signs of de-escalation on the ground.🐣 RT @peterjukes If Putin is backing down (and it’s a big if) it is partly because the US and NATO have outgamed them on the information front (pre-empting false flag operations etc) — effectively learning the Kremlin’s lessons when it comes to hybrid warfare
⋙ WaPo: Inside the White House preparations for a Russian invasion http://wapo.st/3oPj8mN
// A “Tiger Team” of administration officials has spent the past several months preparing a clear series of responses, gaming out scenarios from cyberattacks and limited intervention to an invasion of Ukraine.🐣 RT @maxseddon The Duma has voted to ask Putin to recognize the separatists in eastern Ukraine. ¤ This is more drastic than the other option they had, which was to kick the can down the road. But Putin could still use it as a sword of Damocles to push for concessions.
NYT: Russia Says It Is Pulling Back Some Troops From Around Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3H3wYs1
⭕ 14 Feb 2022
Court Filings:
Durham: Motion to Inquire http://bit.ly/3GRepXF
// 2/11/2022
Sussman: Response: http://bit.ly/3rPXtg0
// 2/14/2022🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw BREAKING: @January6thCmte subpoenas 6 Trump collaborators who promoted bogus claims of election fraud and facilitated state legislators to appoint false “alternate” slates of electors. ¤ Note: @TheJusticeDept can and should be pursuing a parallel criminal investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The Select Committee has heard from more than 550 witnesses, and we expect these six individuals to cooperate as well as we work to tell the American people the full story about the violence of January 6th and its causes. Text Block: https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1493755083850407937?s=20/photo/1The Select Committee issued subpoenas for records and deposition testimony to the following individuals:
Michael A. Roman and Gary Michael Brown served, respectively, as the Director and Deputy Director of Election Day Operations for former President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. They reportedly participated in efforts to promote allegations of fraud in the November 2020 election and encourage state legislators to appoint false “alternate” slates of electors.
Douglas V. Mastriano was part of a plan to arrange for an “alternate” slate of electors from Pennsylvania for former President Trump and reportedly spoke with President Trump about post-election activities.
Laura Cox reportedly witnessed Rudy Giuliani pressure state lawmakers to disregard election results in Michigan and say that certifying the election results would be a “criminal act.”
Mark W. Finchem advanced unsubstantiated claims about the election and helped organize an event in Phoenix, Arizona on November 30th, 2020 at which former President Trump’s legal team and others spoke and advanced unproven claims of election and voter fraud. He was in Washington on January 6th, 2021 and stated that he had evidence to deliver to Vice President Pence in an effort to postpone the awarding of electors.
Kelli Ward reportedly spoke to the former President and members of his staff about election certification issues in Arizona and acted to transmit documents claiming to be an “alternate” Electoral College elector from Arizona.DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Fox News Goes Hog-Wild With Exaggerations About the Durham Probe http://bit.ly/3Bq2CyH
// The network has pushed over-the-top and misleading claims about Durham’s motion, falsely declaring it to show the Clinton campaign spied on the Trump White House.Since Fox News published a widely misleading article about the Durham filing, which suggests the special counsel’s filing says that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign “infiltrated” Trump’s White House servers, the network has run wall-to-wall coverage declaring the “bombshell” story “bigger than Watergate” while chastising other media outlets for ignoring it. ¤ Needless to say, Fox News’ own coverage of what it describes as a “massive scandal” has not only been largely exaggerated but has run the gamut from disingenuous to entirely false.
While Durham’s filing was essentially about possible conflicts of interest, the prosecutor also “slipped in a few extra sentences that set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying” on Trump, as New York Times reporter Charlie Savage explained on Monday. ¤ The prosecutor also recounted a February 2017 meeting between Sussmann and the CIA about seemingly strange cyber data suggesting the presence of Russian-made smartphones at Trump Tower and the White House. Durham also noted that Sussmann had obtained this data from his client Rodney Joffe, whose tech company Neustar serviced internet servers at the White House, alleging that Joffe and associates “exploited this arrangement” to gather dirt on Trump.
As Savage reported, Fox News and right-wing media have skewed what Durhams’s filing actually said. For one, despite what countless on-air segments and reports claimed, the special counsel never once used the word “infiltrate.” Additionally, Durham did not claim in the pleading that the tech firm was ever paid by the Clinton campaign.
Much of this confusion stemmed from Fox News reporter Brooke Singman’s early story on the Durham motion, which included the explosive headline “Clinton campaign paid to ‘infiltrate’ Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia, Durham finds.” Those claims were not made by the special counsel but rather by Trump stooge Kash Patel, who seemingly went out of his way to mischaracterize the motion for Fox News. ¤ And, indeed, the cable network ran with Patel’s over-the-top spin as the baseline for its coverage.
From Monday morning until the time of this article’s publication, Fox News has mentioned Hillary Clinton at least 90 times on the air. Durham has also been mentioned roughly 90 times and the network’s hosts and commentators have used the word “hacked” and “hacking” dozens of times. “Watergate” has also received 31 mentions.
Outside of lecturing mainstream news outlets over a supposed “media blackout” of the story, Fox News hosts appeared to be in a competition of one-upmanship on who could present the most over-the-top coverage of Durham’s motion. ¤ During Jesse Watters’ 7 p.m. ET program on Monday, for instance, the Fox News host set the stage with on-air graphics blaring “CROOKED CAUGHT RED-HANDED” and “HILLARY IS THE REAL INSURRECTIONIST.”
From there, he also made a wildly false assertion that was not supported by the contents of Durham’s motion. “Durham’s documents show that Hillary Clinton hired people who hacked into Trump’s home and office computers before and during his presidency, and planted evidence that he colluded with Russia,” the MAGA-boosting host declared. ¤ “Yeah, you heard that right. Hillary broke into a presidential candidate’s computer server and a sitting president’s computer server, spying on them,” he alleged. “There, her hackers planted evidence, fabricated evidence connecting Trump to Russia, then fed that doctored material to the feds and the media.”
Fox News star Tucker Carlson took it several steps further in the next hour, going so far as to revive the cruel Seth Rich conspiracy theory that eventually resulted in the network settling with the late DNC staffer’s family for a reported seven figures. ¤ While declaring it “has been verified” that Trump was the victim of a Clinton plot, Carlson insisted that it “has never been true” that Russian operatives were responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee servers during the 2016 election. (Both the U.S. intelligence community and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe have found that Russia was behind the hacks.)
Unsubtly referencing Rich, who was murdered in 2016 and has since become the subject of unhinged conspiracy theories, Carlson said “the DNC emails were very clearly stolen from within the building, most likely by a Bernie Sanders supporter who wanted to show the world how Bernie Sanders was being shafted by the very same corrupt forces in Washington that later shafted Donald Trump.” ¤ Furthermore, Carlson also displayed a stunning ignorance about the non-private DNS data that the tech firm had mined from 2014 through 2017, according to the Durham filing. “They’re intercepting internet traffic, they must be looking at email or text messages,” the far-right host proclaimed.
Later that night, Trump confidant and Fox News host Sean Hannity devoted most of his primetime show to blustering about Clinton, spying, and how this was—of course—worse than Watergate. ¤ “In the age of the internet, you don’t need to break into a building to steal your opponents’ information, you just need access to their server,” Hannity huffed. “And that’s exactly what the Clinton campaign did. But here’s where this is even worse than Watergate.” He added: “Not only did they hack into the opposing campaign and steal material, like in the case of Watergate, but then they hacked into the office of the president of this great country, according to Durham’s blockbuster filing late Friday!”
Yet, according to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist involved with the data analysis, that information only came from Barack Obama’s presidency. ¤ “What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong,” Dagon’s lawyers said. “The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge, all of the data they used was non-private DNS data from before Trump took office.”
Additionally, Durham’s case against Sussmann itself is extremely narrow and doesn’t appear to be very strong, according to national security experts. While Durham said Sussmann falsely told the FBI he didn’t have any clients during their 2016 meeting even though he was representing Clinton and Joffe, Sussmann denied saying that and insisted he was only representing the latter at the time. ¤ Regardless of the increasingly fact-free nature of their spin, it doesn’t appear that Fox News is going to slow down with its “Trump was right” coverage anytime soon. ¤ The ex-president’s favorite morning show Fox & Friends spent much of its three hours on Tuesday morning beating the drum on the story, complete with holding up a New York Post cover that blared “Hillary the Spy.”
🐣 RT @January6thCmte The Select Committee demands info on efforts to send false “alternate electors” and otherwise interfere with election certification.
The Select Committee issued 6 subpoenas:
•Michael A. Roman
•Gary Michael Brown
•Douglas V. Mastriano
•Laura Cox
•Mark W. Finchem
•Kelli WardWaPo, Philip Bump: Why Trump is once again claiming that he was spied upon in 2016 http://wapo.st/34LbFOx //➔ sound and fury signifying “meh”
You’ll recall that Trump’s core complaint as president was that the investigation into Russian interference and possible overlap with his campaign was unfounded. It wasn’t, involving probes into a number of individuals with obvious links to Russian actors. But Trump and his allies crafted a countervailing narrative centered on malfeasance by government officials — again, a claim downstream from Trump’s initial response to reports about the probe in which he asserted that government officials might be out to get him.
… The Friday filing came from Durham, centered on his examination of a rumor that emerged shortly before the 2016 election in which it was alleged that there was a secret back-channel communication between a Russian bank, Alfa Bank, and a Trump Organization email server.
Last year, Durham unveiled an indictment against an attorney named Michael Sussman centered on the Alfa Bank rumor. Durham claimed that Sussman had lied to an FBI official in September 2016 when trying to get the FBI to investigate the connection, saying he was not working for a specific client as he offered the tip. The allegation is that this was a false statement of the sort that tripped up various Trump allies during the Russia probe: that Sussman was, in fact, working for the campaign of Hillary Clinton. As journalist Marcy Wheeler has written, the criminal case is not terribly strong.
The theory behind the Alfa Bank rumor is complicated. Sussman’s law firm, Perkins Coie, had been retained by Clinton’s campaign (leading it, separately, to engage the investigative firm Fusion GPS that later generated the infamous dossier of reports alleging a more robust connection between Russia and Trump’s team). An unidentified individual first noticed traffic between the Trump server and the Russian bank and brought it to an executive at a technology firm who had retained Perkins Coie and was working with Sussman. (Wheeler has an excellent timeline of all of this.) That triggered an effort to examine the scope of those connections, one that at least some of those involved in the research apparently understood to be an effort to create a jumping-off point for further research that could bolster a Trump-Russia narrative. … Durham’s filing ties the campaign to Sussman and Sussman to the executive, but it’s not explicitly argued that the probe flowed down from Clinton’s team — or up to it.
Remember that in July 2016, there was already attention focused on possible links between Trump and Russia. The prior month, Russian actors had been implicated in stealing material from the Democratic National Committee, material that was released by WikiLeaks at the end of July. Trump’s allies have in the past tried to point to the Clinton campaign’s focus on amplifying that connection as the trigger for the Russia probe when, in reality, that focus came only after the political conversation emerged. There’s no indication that the Alfa Bank probe preceded the Clinton campaign’s public discussion of possible Trump-Russia ties — and there was certainly reason to pay attention to a possible digital connection between the two. …
The traffic between Alfa Bank and the Trump email server — actually run by a company called Cendyn that does a lot of hospitality-industry marketing work — consisted of DNS lookups. The Alfa Bank server was trying to find domain information for trump-email.com (the domain at issue) and the lookups were being logged. …
Both Wheeler and Graham elevated questions about the ethics of digging through collected DNS records to investigate something that was probably outside of any agreement governing what the data was being collected for. But that doesn’t mean 1) that any laws were violated or 2) that this constitutes “hacking.” If I give you a key to my house and you use it to come in and read my diary, I will certainly be angry with you, but it’s not like you committed burglary.
Yet that’s how the paragraph above has at times been conveyed. On Fox News, for example, a story about the Durham filing ran with the headline “Clinton campaign paid to ‘infiltrate’ Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia: Durham.” There are a few problems with this, including that the connection between Clinton’s team and the Perkins Coie Alfa Bank investigation is not direct, nor did Durham use the word “infiltrate,” a word that suggests illicit access to data. ¤ Instead, both of those claims come not from Durham but, as the article makes clear, from former Trump staffer Kash Patel. It’s a statement from Patel that makes the Clinton claim and uses the word infiltrate. It’s Patel — whose recent career has often centered on backstopping Trump’s claims of being unfairly investigated — who drew the line that Fox is attributing to the special counsel. (Fox News later updated its headline.)
[T]here is no question that this is not proof that Trump Tower was “wiretapped.” It is not proof that Mark Levin’s claims in early 2017 were accurate, since they weren’t. (He’s tried to take credit for his foresight in recent days.) If it’s evidence of Trump being “spied on,” as the former president has also claimed in recent days, it’s a very broad sort of spying — collecting all of the domain-name lookups from a physical location or a network — being conducted not by the Obama administration or by Hillary Clinton, but by an anti-Trump lawyer.
“In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death,” Trump said over the weekend, the sort of escalation of rhetoric that is not lessened by our being so accustomed to him doing it. It is also not, as he said at another point, a bigger scandal than Watergate. ¤ This is precisely the same claim he made back in March 2017 — “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” — well before this particular justification of his claims had been generated in the first place.
🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 1/ It’s maddening watching Putin hold these cards. It feels like he’s in charge, holding us all hostage. ¤ But not really – he is operating from a position of severe weakness. Having failed to coax Ukraine back into his orbit, a potentially disastrous invasion is his last resort.
📌 https://twitter.com/chrismurphyct/status/1493444368593821699?s=21🚫🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: AN UNAMBIGUOUS INDICATOR OF WAR: This Russian helicopter assault force has assembled in Crimea. Goal likely to seize the port city of Odessa w/ Amphibious landing &/or land commandos in Kherson, Melitopol ahead of ground assault. Highly irregular. SERIOUS THREAT. https://twitter.com/malcolmnance/status/1493441728296148994?s=21
// too alarming🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Every single reputable news outlet would be called out for such clear and obvious false “reporting.” The motion said that a tech company executive gathered lookups, which are not substantive communications such as emails and texts. This is blatantly false. https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1493398763175653383?s=21
// Durham probe
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @justinbaragona Interesting exchange here. ¤ Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer wonders if the Durham filing’s mention of “infiltrate” means there was “hacking” of computers, only for John Ratcliffe to admit that this was actually “lawful access into government servers” by the tech company involved.
💽 https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493281856887869443?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @kelly2277 🔥Putin put his puppet in as our president. The @GOP, @SenateGOP @HouseGOP and the @NRA aided and abetted Russia… therefore Treason.
⋙ 🐣 RT @60Minutes “This was a well-choreographed military operation with units that not only were set up specifically to hack in to obtain information, but other units… used for psychological warfare, were weaponizing that.” ¤ Meet the Russians who hacked the 2016 election cbsn.ws/2OiEzKM
💽 https://twitter.com/60minutes/status/1198756269068304386?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance One potential characterization of this letter is that Trump’s company engaged in fraud. Tax fraud is a federal crime that carries serious penalties & DOJ has historically prioritized prosecutions of people in positions of trust, including elected officials to advance deterrence.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT AG James’ office has submitted a court filing Re Trump case that includes a letter from his company’s accounting firm saying nearly a decade worth of financial statements can no longer be relied upon. [Letter:] https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/1493324254229766148?s=21/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Bank fraud & insurance fraud are also serious crimes & can also include wire fraud or even mail fraud. It’s a serious matter for Trump’s accountants to not just fire the client but to all but say the information Trump Org provided to them for 10 years was false or misleading.🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Wondering when @DeutscheBank and @jpmorgan will call in their loans to donald now that his accounting firm has said his financial condition statements are bogus.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Tucker Carlson knows absolutely nothing about Ukraine and cares even less. Who is feeding him this information, trying to sway public opinion against U.S. supporting Ukraine, on the eve of a possible invasion by Russia? Those same “Kremlin intermediaries”?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #TuckyoRose lies that “Ukraine is not a democracy” and Zelenskyy “is a dictator, because the main opposition figure is under arrest” (Viktor Medvedchuk, who is closely tied to none other than Putin). Tucker is still spreading blatant Russian propaganda.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Tucker says Ukraine is not a democracy 💽 https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1493399260045271040?s=21/photo/1WaPo: Trump’s longtime accountant says his financial statements cannot be relied upon http://wapo.st/3HROr7S “Trump’s longtime accounting firm informed his company last week that a decade’s worth of Trump’s financial statements ‘should no longer be relied upon’”
// Former president’s accounting firm, Mazars, also cuts ties with Trump amid investigation by N.Y. attorney generalFormer president Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm informed his company last week that a decade’s worth of Trump’s financial statements “should no longer be relied upon” and suggested that any recipient of the documents be alerted, according to a copy of the letter filed in New York court filings.
In the letter, Mazars executive William J. Kelly voiced new concerns about the statements, which the firm helped Trump prepare and which have come under scrutiny recently by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). James has alleged in civil filings that Trump used the statements to inflate the value of his properties and misstated his personal worth in representations to lenders.
Kelly said Mazars reconsidered its work on the documents following questions raised by James’s office in a January filing. ¤ “We have come to this conclusion based, in part, upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources,” Kelly wrote in the Wednesday letter, addressed to Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten. “While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate.”
But in its letter last week, the accounting firm also cut off its relationship with the former president’s company, joining other banks, law firms and consulting firms that have vowed to no longer do business with the Trump Organization. In the letter, Kelly said a “non-waivable conflict of interest” prevented the firm from continuing to work for Trump.
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheHill: Zelensky says Ukraine has been told Feb. 16 will be ‘day of attack’ http://bit.ly/3uOplmA “Zelensky wrote in a statement on Facebook that Ukraine will hold a Day of Unity on Wednesday. He said the relevant decree has already been signed”
🐣 The United States and @wada_ama should issue their own medals to athletes who were supplanted by Russian(s) who failed drug tests. Not just to US athletes: To athletes of ANY country. @USOlympic @Olympics
⭕ 13 Feb 2022
🧵 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) Trump and his insurrectionists are buzzing about the latest nothing-burger in John Durham’s failed revenge plot against the heroes who investigated Trump’s crimes. I’ll summarize the latest farce in this thread. Prepare to be *dramatically* underwhelmed. ¤ Please RETWEET. 📌 https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/1492949595499945988?s=21
🧵 RT @TomTugendhat In 1945 the Soviet Union and her allies brought to justice those who had caused so much suffering to millions of their compatriots in a horrific war. ¤ Those who had waged it faced four possible charges. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/tomtugendhat/status/1492830556358328321?s=21
// tags: history of Russian aggression mob state USSR WW2 World War TwoWaPo, David Ignatius: Putin’s impending ‘march of folly’ in Ukraine http://wapo.st/3HPGdx5 “When leaders fight unnecessary ‘wars of choice’ without a clear endgame, they often confront catastrophic unintended consequences”
The world will be watching in horror if Russia invades Ukraine this week — but just watching. Ukraine will fight alone, as Russian tanks roll across the flat, frozen terrain; precision bombs destroy key targets near Kyiv and other cities; and the country becomes a killing field unlike anything Europe has seen since 1945.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will quickly win the initial, tactical phase of this war, if it comes. The vast army that Russia has arrayed along Ukraine’s borders could probably seize the capital of Kyiv in several days and control the country in little more than a week, U.S. officials believe.
But then Putin’s real battle would begin — as Russia and its Ukrainian proxies try to stabilize a country whose people largely detest them. If just 10 percent of Ukraine’s 40 million people decided to actively resist occupation, they would mount a powerful insurgency. Small bands of motivated fighters subverted America’s overwhelming military power in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Russia’s problems wouldn’t just be inside the borders of Ukraine. As Putin tried to digest what U.S. officials hope will be a Ukrainian “porcupine,” Russia’s economy would be squeezed tight by sanctions; its business and political leaders would become international pariahs; and much of the wealth Putin and his chums have accumulated would be frozen.
Ukraine might seem a triumphal victory for Putin at first, but it’s unlikely to have a happy ending. When leaders fight unnecessary “wars of choice” without a clear endgame, they often confront catastrophic unintended consequences. Think of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which helped create Hezbollah, or President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, which destabilized the Middle East and made Iran a regional superpower. Putin would be the latest leader to join what historian Barbara Tuchman described as “The March of Folly.”
President Biden’s response has rested on three pillars, according to senior officials. First, he believes the rules-based global order would be threatened by an unprovoked Russian invasion, and that Putin must pay a severe cost if he takes this lawless action. Second, Biden is determined to avoid any direct military contact between Russian and U.S. forces, which would risk nuclear war. Third, he is convinced that, as in the Cold War, the security of the United States and its European friends depends on the unity and strength of the NATO alliance. …
The dirty part of this war would be fought by special forces: In the hours before an invasion, the “Spetsnaz” units of the GRU and the intelligence teams of the FSB might seize key targets in Kyiv and other cities, such as radio and television stations, power facilities and government installations. Assassination teams might target senior officials; Russian “false flag” operations that appeared to be Ukrainian would confound and confuse. Russia would seize control of the electronic-warfare space, so that it could jam communications by the Ukrainian government or military commanders. Ukrainian troops might want to fight, but they would have difficulty coordinating their actions with commanders. …
Putin’s ruthless determination against Ukraine, which has been unfolding for a decade, is a product of his convictions and life experience. He truly seems to believe that Russia is threatened from the West; that it needs buffer zones to protect against foreign aggression like those it maintained for centuries. His own family suffered bitterly in the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in World War II. His father was wounded in battle and limped the rest of his life; his mother was left for dead in a pile of corpses and survived only because someone heard her moan. When Putin talks about the weight of Russian history, he feels it viscerally. …
The world will shudder if the tank and missile assault begins, as we witness a weak country confronting a blitzkrieg, alone. The cries for a negotiated settlement will increase, with some proposing new concessions to placate Putin. But after that global shock will come a wave of rage and a demand that Russia pay a price for its aggression. Then this war will enter the porcupine phase, in which Putin, too, will feel the pain.
🐣 RT @business [Bloomberg] The Biden administration believes that China is gauging the U.S. response to Ukraine as a proxy for Beijing’s actions against Taiwan https://twitter.com/business/status/1492695531369508866?s=20
🐣 RT @rshrp350 Sounds like this move is timed for the Super Bowl
⋙ 🐣 The Internet (including Twitter) is always bogged down then
I’ve said for years, if anyone wanted to make a move against the US, they’d do it during the Super bowl🐣 RT @McFaul [1:42am] Putin is mobilizing his military to invade Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheEconomist [1:31am] Around 100 Russian battalion tactical groups—troops, air defence, artillery and logistics—have gathered on Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus. Satellite images have tracked their movement https://econ.st/3rIPYHy⭕ 12 Feb 2022
NYT: Giuliani in Talks to Testify to House Jan. 6 Panel http://nyti.ms/3GKYhXJ
// It is not clear how much assistance he might provide in the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power.TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Why the West’s Diplomacy With Russia Keeps Failing http://bit.ly/3sBlOWa
// A profound failure of the Western imagination has brought Europe to the brink of war.[T]he fact that Lavrov is disrespectful and disagreeable is old news. So is the fact that Putin lectures foreign leaders for hours and hours on his personal and political grievances. He did that the first time he met President Barack Obama, more than a decade ago; he did exactly the same thing last week to French President Emmanuel Macron. Truss [“the lightweight British foreign secretary who went to Moscow this week”] should have known all of this. Instead of offering empty language about rules and values, she could have started the press conference like this:
Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen of the press. I am delighted to join you after meeting my Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. This time, we have not bothered to discuss treaties he won’t respect and promises he won’t keep. We have told him, instead, that an invasion of Ukraine will carry very, very high costs—higher than he has ever imagined. We are now planning to cut off Russian gas exports completely—Europe will find its energy supplies somewhere else. We are now preparing to assist the Ukrainian resistance, for a decade if need be. We are quadrupling our support for the Russian opposition, and for Russian media too. We want to make sure that Russians will start hearing the truth about this invasion, and as loudly as possible. And if you want to do regime change in Ukraine, we’ll get to work on regime change in Russia.
Truss, or Borrell before her, could have added just a touch of personal insult, in the style of Lavrov himself, and wondered out loud just how it is that Lavrov’s official salary pays for the lavish properties that his family makes use of in London. She could have listed the names of the many other Russian public servants who send their children to schools in Paris or Lugano. She could have announced that these children are now, all of them, on their way home, along with their parents: No more American School in Switzerland! No more pied-à-terres in Knightsbridge! No more Mediterranean yachts!
Of course Truss—like Borrell, like Macron, like the German chancellor who is headed for Moscow this week—would never say anything like this, not even in private. Tragically, the Western leaders and diplomats who are right now trying to stave off a Russian invasion of Ukraine still think they live in a world where rules matter, where diplomatic protocol is useful, where polite speech is valued. All of them think that when they go to Russia, they are talking to people whose minds can be changed by argument or debate. They think the Russian elite cares about things like its “reputation.” It does not.
In fact, when talking to the new breed of autocrats, whether in Russia, China, Venezuela, or Iran, we are now dealing with something very different: People who aren’t interested in treaties and documents, people who only respect hard power. Russia is in violation of the Budapest Memorandum, signed in 1994, guaranteeing Ukrainian security. Do you ever hear Putin talk about that? Of course not. He isn’t concerned about his untrustworthy reputation either: Lying keeps opponents on their toes. Nor does Lavrov mind if he is hated, because hatred gives him an aura of power.
Their intentions are different from ours too. Putin’s goal is not a flourishing, peaceful, prosperous Russia, but a Russia where he remains in charge. Lavrov’s goal is to maintain his position in the murky world of the Russian elite and, of course, to keep his money. What we mean by “interests” and what they mean by “interests” is not the same. When they listen to our diplomats, they don’t hear anything that really threatens their position, their power, their personal fortunes.
Despite all of our talk, no one has ever seriously tried to end, rather than simply limit, Russian money laundering in the West, or Russian political or financial influence in the West. No one has taken seriously the idea that Germans should now make themselves independent of Russian gas, or that France should ban political parties that accept Russian money, or that the U.K. and the U.S. should stop Russian oligarchs from buying property in London or Miami. No one has suggested that the proper response to Putin’s information war on our political system would be an information war on his.
Now we are on the brink of what could be a catastrophic conflict. American, British, and European embassies in Ukraine are evacuating; citizens have been warned to leave. But this terrible moment represents not just a failure of diplomacy, it also reflects a failure of the Western imagination; a generation-long refusal, on the part of diplomats, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals, to understand what kind of state Russia was becoming and to prepare accordingly. We have refused to see the representatives of this state for what they are. We have refused to speak to them in a way that might have mattered. Now it might be too late.
🐣 RT @kalmantibs Ominous, jaw-dropping language from Putin at the Macron presser yesterday. This was skipped over by offical translators. Damn. 😳
Russia experts noted that Putin appeared to be quoting from “Sleeping Beauty in a Coffin” by the Soviet-era punk rock group Red Mold. 1/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @kalmantibs “Sleeping beauty in a coffin, I crept up & fucked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty,” the English translation reads. ¤ The lyrics directly imply rape and necrophilia, suggesting Putin wants Ukraine to acquiesce to his demands without putting up a fight. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @kalmantibs Neither the Kremlin nor the state-run Tass news agency published the line as it was said by Putin in their transcripts of the speech. 3/3
⋙⋙ BusinessInsider: Putin quoted song lyrics about rape and necrophilia to explain Russia’s demands from Ukraine http://bit.ly/34DWU03
// Putin made the comments in a joint press conference with Macron, who held the meeting to stop a Russian invasion of Ukraine.At the joint press conference, Putin blamed NATO and the West for provoking Russia, and said Ukraine must be made to implement elements of the Minsk Protocol — a 2014 cease-fire agreement to end fighting between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Putin criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for failing to implement the protocol, and referenced an obscene song lyric to demonstrate what he wanted. ¤ “Whether you like it or don’t like it, bear with it, my beauty,” Putin said. ¤ Russia experts noted that Putin appeared to be quoting from “Sleeping Beauty in a Coffin” by the Soviet-era punk rock group Red Mold. ¤ “Sleeping beauty in a coffin, I crept up and fucked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty,” the English translation of the Russian lyrics reads. ¤ The lyrics directly imply rape and necrophilia, suggesting Putin wants Ukraine to acquiesce to his demands without putting up a fight. ¤ Neither the Kremlin nor the state-run Tass news agency published the line as it was said by Putin in their transcripts of the speech. ¤ A Kremlin spokesperson denied that Putin’s words were drawn from the song, “but rather from folklore.”
The 2014 protocol was a complicated, long-negotiated proposal to end fighting in the Donbas region and give it unique status, including independent elections. ¤ “It is clear to everyone that the current authorities in Kyiv have set a course for dismantling the Minsk accords,” Putin said Monday. “There are no shifts on such fundamental issues as constitutional reform, amnesty, local elections, and the legal aspects of a special status for Donbas.”
Russia launched an attack on Ukraine in 2014 following widespread opposition in Kyiv to a decision by then President Viktor Yanukovich to shun the EU and move Ukraine closer to Russia. ¤ Ukraine’s government eventually impeached Yanukovich, and he fled to Russia. Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched a proxy war in the Donbas soon after. ¤ Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and Putin has spoken before about the need for the two nations to be deeply connected once again. 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews This role has not been incidental. It has been hard won, driven by a modern national identity primarily based not on ethnic or religious affiliation, but on an idea: universal democratic freedom.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ See this, from yesterday but the media here is not posting it.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @2020eScribbles Not [Now?] Putin threatening nuclear war with NATO over #Ukraine and y’all still wanna call the US and NATO the aggressors in this situation??#UkraineCrisis [via MailOnline]
💽 https://twitter.com/2020eScribbles/status/1492621663074148360?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Ukraine’s political & cultural agency has helped shape & reshape the map of Europe for generations. Ukrainians have played an active part in the demise of not one, or two, or three, but four different empires, including Austria-Hungary & the Soviet Union.
⋙ Politico, Rory Finnin: How the West Gets Ukraine Wrong — and Helps Putin As a Result http://politi.co/3GLzUt0
// The extraordinary history and culture of the largest country within Europe needs to be taken more seriously in the Kremlin and everywhere else, too.🐣 RT @andersostlund 30+ normal countries in Europe who are working hard to improve their societies. Then we have this big blob that is permanently stuck in 1942.
WaPo: Biden warns Putin of ‘swift and severe costs’ if Russia attacks Ukraine http://wapo.st/3HP2Npp “Thousands of protesters, many wearing Ukrainian flags draped across their shoulders, filed through central Kyiv on Saturday to support their country’s independence”
// The Kremlin accused the West of ‘hysteria’ as U.S. and other diplomats evacuated from Kyiv.🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Here we have the absolutely deranged, unhinged former President of the United States of America telling absolutely bonkers lies about a meaningless filing from Durham yesterday, while saying people should be executed for spying on him (they didn’t). He is very dangerously insane. Text Block: https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1492660598428995584?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @foreignaffairs The United States is now confronting Russia with a limited ability to deter and coerce, @AVindman and @DomCruzBus write. If a Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely, how should Washington respond? https://twitter.com/foreignaffairs/status/1492432293822087168?s=21
💙 ⋙ ForeignAffairs Alexander Vindman and Dominic Bustillos: The Day After Russia Attacks http://fam.ag/3rAzFLT
// 1/21/2022; What War in Ukraine Would Look Like—and How America Should Respond… Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks nothing short of the complete dismantling of Europe’s post–Cold War security architecture and a rollback of fundamental international agreements governing states’ rights to self-determination—an outcome the United States and its partners and allies will never accept. ¤ Meanwhile, despite assurances that Russia has no plans to “invade” Ukraine—the Russian military has been occupying Ukraine’s territory and fighting a war on Ukrainian soil since 2014—the military buildup along the Ukrainian-Russian border has continued unabated. …
Presuming that diplomacy fails, there are three scenarios that could play out. Which one comes to pass will depend in large part on how Putin decides he can best achieve his ultimate goals: crippling Ukrainian military capabilities, sowing turmoil in the Ukrainian government, and, ultimately, turning Ukraine into a failed state—an outcome that Putin seeks because it would bring an end to the threat of Ukraine as an intractable adversary and increasingly serious security challenge. Putin loathes the prospect of a thriving and prosperous democratic model in the cradle of East Slavic civilization, a development that could provide Russian citizens with an increasingly palatable and inspiring framework for a democratic transition in their own country. Faced with declining influence and control over Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy, the Kremlin can achieve its objectives only with military force.
The first scenario would involve a coercive diplomatic resolution to the present crisis. Russia could move to formally recognize or annex the occupied Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. … ¤ The first scenario would involve a coercive diplomatic resolution to the present crisis. Russia could move to formally recognize or annex the occupied Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. …
Therefore, the third and most likely outcome is a full-scale Russian offensive employing land, air, and sea power on all axes of attack. In this scenario, Russia would establish air and naval superiority as quickly as possible. Some Russian ground forces would then advance toward Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, and others now based in Crimea and the Donbas would advance from the south and east respectively. Meanwhile, Russian forces in Belarus could directly threaten Kyiv, thereby pinning down Ukrainian forces that might otherwise move to reinforce the east and south. These forces could advance on Kyiv to hasten the Ukrainian government’s capitulation.
This operation would focus on punitive strikes on the Ukrainian government, the military, critical infrastructure, and places important to Ukrainians’ national identity and morale. Russia would aim its bombs, rockets, artillery, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles at targets such as the presidential palace, presidential administrative buildings, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s legislature), the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ukrainian Security Service headquarters, and Maidan Nezalezhnosti (the central square in Kyiv and the site of multiple pro-democracy revolutions), among other notable decision-making organs and landmarks. Cyberattacks would hit critical infrastructure, such as Ukraine’s power grid, which could further paralyze the Ukrainian state. Russia would also prioritize the destruction of Ukrainian arms manufacturers. By eliminating Ukraine’s capacity to develop and produce Neptune cruise missiles, Sapsan missile systems, and Hrim-2 short-range ballistic missiles, Russia could remove the prospective threat of conventional deterrence from Ukraine in the immediate future.
The ground and sea offensive would be designed to encircle and obliterate Ukraine’s armed forces, hold only necessary critical terrain, and use airpower and long-range firepower to achieve Russia’s military and political aims. These strikes would inflict tens of thousands of casualties and trigger a humanitarian catastrophe, inducing chaos within the civilian and military chains of command and possibly decapitating the Ukrainian leadership. If all went according to Russia’s plan, the attacks would cripple the Ukrainian government, military, and economic infrastructure—all important steps toward the goal of rendering Ukraine a failed state. […]
Traditionally, there has been strong bipartisan support for Ukraine. But the Kremlin believes that a lack of U.S. internal cohesion will undermine Washington’s capacity for a strong response. Congress must not lend credence to that belief. …
The administration should also follow through on sanctions targeting exports of advanced U.S. technology (such as semiconductors and microchips) to Russia, a measure that could adversely impact the Russian aerospace and arms industries. Additionally, either Congress or the Biden administration must move beyond merely disclosing the assets held by Putin’s inner circle to directly targeting those assets, starting with sanctions on 35 individuals previously recommended by the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Putting pressure on the key oligarchs surrounding Putin will be as important as sanctioning the officials who will be directly involved in military actions—if not more so. …
As a final step, in conjunction with international humanitarian organizations, the United States and its European allies and partners must establish humanitarian corridors with the resources and personnel to protect refugees. Tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands or even millions—may flee the conflict, either as internally displaced persons within Ukraine or as refugees in neighboring countries. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the EU should accommodate this influx of asylum seekers and refugees with emergency special immigrant visas of the kind made available to Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover of their country last summer. NATO members will need to share the burden imposed by this influx; the countries of the alliance’s eastern flank cannot be expected to act alone. …
Washington has no desire to employ hard power to deter Russia, and it will not back down on principles or values that it has espoused for decades. In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s standing is already precarious given his declining approval ratings, his failure to implement a bilateral plan for de-escalation with Russia, middling faith in his ability to lead during a time of war, his focus on prosecuting former President Petro Poroshenko on suspicion of treason, a roiling dispute with the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, and his downplaying of the current Russian threat. For Zelensky, capitulation to Russia would be tantamount to political suicide. And even if Washington or Kyiv did change its stance, there is still no guarantee that Moscow would be satisfied and de-escalate.
The moment a war starts, the geopolitical landscape will become significantly more challenging for U.S. national security. Washington should assume the worst and plan accordingly, leveraging all elements of its power to protect U.S. interests. The Biden administration must maintain a delicate balance: avoiding a one-on-one military confrontation with Russia while punishing Russia for creating this harsh new reality. Right now, no task is more important.
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin believes it’s his sacred duty to right the end of the Cold War youtu.be/taZtSY7i7os via @YouTube 💽 https://twitter.com/mcfaul/status/1492398659572428800?s=21/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul Completely unprovoked and with no justification, Putin is threatening to launch the largest invasion in Europe since 1939. Please stop treating this moment in history like some Twitter parlor game. If he invades, your snide, snarky tweets will not age well.
⭕ 11 Feb 2022
🧵 RT @wiczpedia 82 years ago this week, my grandfather, aged 10, was deported along with his family from present day Ukraine (then Poland) to a Soviet work camp. ¤ In part because of his deportation, I’m sitting on Twitter tonight, writing about current Russian threats to the same land. (1/)
📌 https://twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1492329509076574220?s=21NYT, Evelyn Farkas: We Underestimated Putin Once. We Can’t Make That Mistake Again. http://nyti.ms/3rLXzp6 “If Mr. Putin is allowed to invade Ukraine again unscathed, then what’s to stop other authoritarian powers from doing the same elsewhere?”
In late February 2014 Russian troops swept into Crimea, Ukraine. They seized government buildings and airports. With Ukrainian military units effectively boxed in, Russian reinforcements solidified Moscow’s control of the Crimean Peninsula by early March. There was nothing the Ukrainian military could do — years of corrupt management had left it ill equipped and unprepared. Attempts to retake Ukrainian bases and rescue their personnel would inevitably have led to a blood bath.
As the senior Pentagon official in charge of Russia and Ukraine, I was stunned by the invasion. I remember going to bed praying that the besieged Ukrainian naval, air and marine forces in Crimea would still be alive when I woke up. My colleagues in the White House Situation Room were equally horrified. Even if we had seen troop movements weeks or months in advance, we never would have imagined Mr. Putin would take such a risky and blatantly illegal action.
At the time, we debated how forcefully to confront Mr. Putin. In retrospect, we fell short. We, along with the administration that followed, ultimately appear to have emboldened Mr. Putin. That brought us to where we are today — with Mr. Putin amassing some 100,000 troops at the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade and redraw the global chessboard. To stop him, we must learn the lessons of Crimea and stand up to Russian aggression. The cost of failing to do that would be catastrophic.
Back in late 2013, my colleagues and I had been meeting almost daily after Ukrainians took to the streets to demand that their leader, President Viktor Yanukovych, take steps to bring Ukraine into the European Union. By late February 2014, more than 100 anti-Yanukovych demonstrators had been shot in cold blood. As the protests swelled and the government lost control of the situation, Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia. While we were focused on that situation, Mr. Putin made his brazen move on Crimea days later. ¤ This was the first time since World War II that one European country annexed part of another. The United States had to respond strongly. And we did — at first. […]
… Now that an invasion appears imminent, the Biden administration must immediately treat Russia as a rogue state and aggressively isolate Moscow.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the United States and its allies send troops to push Russia out of Ukraine. But a diplomatic pressure campaign can help stop Moscow’s aggression. Yes, Russia is a nuclear power and Europe depends on its energy supplies, but the world should stop being intimidated into excusing Moscow’s actions.
What is at stake is more than Mr. Putin’s expansion of his sphere of influence. It’s about upholding the principles of the post-World War II order — and specifically a country’s right to its territorial integrity. If Mr. Putin is allowed to invade Ukraine again unscathed, then what’s to stop other authoritarian powers from doing the same elsewhere? …
🧵 RT @kasparov63 Debate over Putin’s war on Ukraine reminds of the thought experiment of the woman who is killed by bandits on the road. Who is to blame? The husband for not picking her up? The late taxi driver? The woman for taking the more dangerous road? No, the bandits.
📌 https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/1492284130058514434?s=21
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov63 Talking about the media, or NATO, or US rhetoric is moral deflection. It’s Putin. Putin’s war of choice and conquest on the free nation of Ukraine from its start in 2014 to whatever comes tomorrow.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov63 Others may act and influence, but it is Putin’s decision, his power and personal choice. There is no popular mandate, no parliament, no security concerns or imperative. Remember that in the coming days.🧵 RT @MalcolmNance SITUATION REPORT FM KYIV: WH actions likely based on Enemy Most Dangerous Course of Action. MY VIEW: US Intell can see all moves but Putin’s GO Order will not be seen quickly. Definitive signs: 1) Ru Air Force Weapons depots will load up at multiple air bases. #UkraineConflict
📌 https://twitter.com/malcolmnance/status/1492255471868256262?s=21ForeignAffairs, Michael McFaul: How to Make a Deal With Putin http://fam.ag/3oJEdyF “Biden should seize the diplomatic offensive and counter with a comprehensive, grand bargain for enhancing European security. Call it ‘Helsinki 2.0.’”
// Only a Comprehensive Pact Can Avoid War🐣 RT @StateDept National Security Advisor @JakeSullivan46: We are in the window when an invasion could occur at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it. We are also ready to respond decisively alongside our Allies & partners & impose severe costs on Russia should they attack Ukraine. 💽 https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1492272240599076866?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DailyBeast Kamila Valieva’s failed drug test again calls into question the IOC’s decision to let Russian athletes compete at these and other Games
⋙ DailyBeast: Skater Did Test Positive for Banned Drug, Making Mockery of IOC Decision to Let Russians Compete http://bit.ly/3GHjXUM
// Kamila Valieva, the young figure-skating sensation, could be barred from competing in next week’s individual competition after helping Russia win a disputed team gold in Beijing.WaPo: NATO warns of ‘dangerous moment’ in Ukraine crisis as Biden tells Americans to leave ‘now’ http://wapo.st/34P06FY “[W]e’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time, and to be clear, that includes during the Olympics” ~ Secretary of State Anthony Blinken
⭕ 10 Feb 2022
(📊) WaPo: In Russia’s borderlands near Ukraine, military buildup becomes part of the scenery http://wapo.st/3swreBM “[J]ust 4 percent of Russians think Moscow is the aggressor in the current escalation with the West, while the majority blame the United States”
WaPo: Some Trump records taken to Mar-a-Lago clearly marked as classified, including documents at ‘top secret’ level http://wapo.st/3sx66Lx
// The existence of documents officially labeled as classified in the trove — which has not previously been reported — raises new questions about why the materials were taken out of the White House.🐣 RT @BeschlossDC If someone in Trump White House deliberately created mysterious gaps in phone records for January 6, 2021, it is now more essential than ever to know whom the then-President was secretly consulting as insurrection attack unfolded. ¤ And were non-Americans among those he spoke to?
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Why the RNC blunder may be a tipping point http://wapo.st/3JhkPkz “Do voters really want to trust their country to people who think a violent insurrection instigated by the worst sore loser in history is ‘legitimate political discourse’?”
… Kinzinger chided McCarthy as “a feckless, weak, tired man, who is doing the bidding of whatever Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks is going to raise her money that day,” referring to the congresswoman from Georgia. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), fresh from getting slammed by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson for describing Jan. 6 as a “violent terrorist attack,” said McConnell shouldn’t have used the word “insurrection” to describe the violence. RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who oversaw the censure debacle as it unfolded, shifted blame for the fiasco to Trump operative David Bossie, who spearheaded the resolution. McDaniel’s uncle, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), called the censure “stupid.” Other Republicans called it “absurd” or “embarrassing.”
Why so much turmoil? A couple factors might explain it. First, this has been building for a while. As Trump continues to hold rallies focusing on Jan. 6, the rest of the party is struggling to get on with the business of winning back House and Senate majorities. This latest incident may have been an untimely reminder of just of how easily the former president can steer the party off course. He really does pose a threat to the party’s ambitions, just as he sunk the party’s shot at a Senate majority by screaming fraud during Georgia’s two Senate runoff elections. …
The subject is toxic for suburban women, business interests and moderate voters who fear the Republican Party is still under the thumb of a dangerous former president and too easily goaded into violence and contempt for elections. While voters understandably want relief from inflation and covid-19, they do not want to return to the chaos and violence of the Trump era. It behooves Democrats to remind them that by voting for candidates with an “R” next to their names, they would be inviting just such a result.
Democrats should not feel bound by a false choice in fashioning their election message. Certainly, they need to make the case to voters that they have produced real and meaningful results on everything from the economy to climate change to the pandemic. But they must also make sure voters understand just how bonkers the GOP has become. Do voters really want to trust their country to people who think a violent insurrection instigated by the worst sore loser in history is “legitimate political discourse”?
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Based on signals, I’m worried Putin’s attack may come out of Donbas in the next couple of days. Whenever it comes, I expect it to be major but small enough for Western appeasers to say it doesn’t qualify as the invasion they warned him against.
📌mhttps://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/1491830214082670592?s=21WSJ, Liz Cheney: The Jan. 6 Committee Won’t Be Intimidated http://on.wsj.com/3HDoHvM “What Mr. Trump had insisted that Mr. Pence do on Jan. 6 was not only un-American, it was unconstitutional and illegal” Text Block: https://twitter.com/auriandra/status/1491860572601733132?s=21/photo/1
// We are focused on facts, not rhetoric, and will present them no matter what our critics say.“The Jan. 6 investigation isn’t only about the inexcusable violence of that day: It is also about fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, and whether elected representatives believe in those things or not. One member of the House Freedom Caucus warned the White House in the days before Jan. 6 that the president’s plans would drive “a stake in the heart of the federal republic.” That was exactly right.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance What was Trump doing that was so awful that it had to be literally flushed down the toilet? All gov’t employees live with document retention rules & sure there’s the stray doodle in the margin you wish wasn’t there, but something even Trump thought was so bad he flushed it?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Axios EXCLUSIVE: While Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, @maggieNYT scoops in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man.”
⋙⋙ Axios: Haberman book: Flushed papers found clogging Trump WH toilet http://bit.ly/3sqVVIq🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Depends what you’re trying to flush. https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1491786018122571777?s=20/photo/1
// Text: “CNNPolitics: Trump claims Americans have to flush the toilet ’10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once’ By Rob Picheta, Nikki Carvajal and Greg Wallace, CNN
// Updated 12:06 PM EST, Sat December 07, 2019🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I don’t care if Dingbat Threenames said Gazpacho on purpose to get me to share it. I trust every single person following me to not become a supporter of Idiotface McFascist based on the joke. And we need to laugh. Laughing is important. #GazpachoPolice
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Trump just issued a statement claiming the stories that he illegally took documents from the WH, and that he flushed torn documents down the toilet, are “fake news.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1491764432732622851?s=20/photo/1
Statement: Following collaborative and respectful discussions, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) openly and willingly arranged with President Trump for the transport of boxes that contained letters, records, newspapers, magazines, and various articles. Some of this information will someday be displayed in the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library for the public to view my Administration’s incredible accomplishments for the American People.
The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy. The papers were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis, which is different from the accounts being drawn up by the Fake News Media. In fact, it was viewed as routine and “no big deal.” In actuality, I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years. Crooked Hillary Clinton, as an example, deleted and acid washed 32,000 emails and never gave that to the
government. Then, they took large amounts of furniture out of the White House. And Bill Clinton kept numerous audio recordings that the archives wanted, but were unsuccessful at getting after going to court. We won’t even mention what is going on with the White House in the current, or various past administrations.Also, another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book. The Democrats are just using this and the Unselect Committee of political hacks as a camoflauge for how horribly our Country is doing under the Biden Administration.
In the United States there has unfortunately become two legal standards, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. It should not be that way.
⭕ 9 Feb 2022
🧵 RT @drothkopf There’s an assumption that underlies the impulses that led to the pardon of Nixon, the decision not to prosecute Reagan for Iran-Contra, the decision not to prosecute the Bush Admin for war crimes, the decision to accept the OLC memo that presidents can’t be indicted… 📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1491613199061368840?s=21
NYT: Archives Found Possible Classified Material in Boxes Returned by Trump http://nyti.ms/3Bb2G4Z “[P]rosecuting him would be extremely difficult and it would pit the DOJ against Mr. Trump at a time when AG Merrick B Garland is trying to depoliticize the department”
// The National Archives consulted with the Justice Department about the discovery after the former president sent back documents that he had improperly taken from the White House when he left office.[D]uring Mr. Trump’s administration, top White House officials were deeply concerned about how little regard Mr. Trump showed for sensitive national security materials. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, tried to stop classified documents from being taken out of the Oval Office and brought up to the residence because he was concerned about what Mr. Trump may do with them and how that may jeopardize national security.
Similar to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka used personal email accounts for work purposes. And even after being warned by aides, Mr. Trump repeatedly ripped up government documents that had to be taped back together to prevent him from being accused of destroying federal property.
Now Mr. Trump faces questions about his handling of classified information — a question that is complicated because as president he had the authority to declassify any government information. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump had declassified materials the National Archives discovered in the boxes before he left office. Under federal law, he no longer maintains the ability to declassify documents after leaving office.
He invoked the power to declassify information several times as his administration publicly released materials that helped him politically, particularly on issues like the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
… In one prominent example of how he dealt with classified material, Mr. Trump in 2019 took a highly classified spy satellite image of an Iranian missile launch site, declassified it and then released the photo on Twitter.
If Mr. Trump was found to have taken materials with him that were still classified at the time he left the White House, prosecuting him would be extremely difficult and it would pit the Justice Department against Mr. Trump at a time when Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is trying to depoliticize the department.
WaPo: RNC censure push pits Trump loyalists against ‘D.C. bubble,’ widening GOP’s internal divide http://wapo.st/3gCAVck
The Republican National Committee’s decision last week to censure two House Republicans investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection has widened a gulf between the GOP’s activist base — fiercely loyal to former president Donald Trump — and some of the party’s most prominent elected leaders in Washington.
The divide was laid bare Wednesday after Trump lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), saying he did not speak for most GOP voters when McConnell criticized the RNC’s rebuke of Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), which also included language describing the events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.”
“Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters,” Trump said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC. “He did nothing to fight for his constituents and stop the most fraudulent election in American history.”
Trump’s statement, in which he continued to repeat false claims about election fraud, came a day after an RNC spokeswoman appeared to suggest that the party’s own elected officials were out of touch with Republican voters. ¤ “Outside of the D.C. bubble, our grass roots are very supportive of the decision to hold Cheney and Kinzinger accountable,” the spokeswoman, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement to The Washington Post. …
While Republican senators have become somewhat inured to Trump’s attacks on McConnell, several said they were taken aback by the RNC statement, which suggested that the political committee knew their voters better than the lawmakers they actually elected. ¤ “What I think is, the RNC got caught up in its own bubble,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said the censure push “demonstrated a complete lack of understanding or awareness of the people they’re supposed to be representing. They’re the ones in a bubble.” …
The censure dust-up is the latest episode in an open political tussle between Trump and McConnell that dates back to December 2020, when McConnell broke with Trump’s claims of a stolen election. He later lambasted Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, calling him “practically and morally responsible for provoking” the attack even as he voted to acquit Trump of impeachment articles last February.
While the feud quieted down over the past year, Trump’s public attacks on McConnell have accelerated in recent months, criticizing his backing of bipartisan efforts to fund infrastructure projects and raise the federal debt ceiling. In the backdrop, the two men — and the broader Republican camps they represent — have maneuvered ahead of the midterm election to position their favored candidates in what amounts to a battle for the future of the party.
Two prominent Republican Senate candidates, Eric Greitens in Missouri and Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, are already pledging to oppose McConnell if elected later this year. Contests in some other states are shaping up to be showdowns between the two wings of the party, such as in Alabama, where Trump endorsee Rep. Mo Brooks is facing off with Katie Britt, a former top aide to McConnell ally Sen. Richard C. Shelby. Even low-key incumbents close to McConnell such as Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) are now facing primary races from political outsiders, though their challengers have been comparatively underfunded and have not attracted Trump’s attention.
The broader GOP divide was on display Wednesday as the Republican Governors Association unveiled a television ad, with a reported $500,000 buy, backing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R). ¤ The Republican incumbent faces a primary challenge from David Perdue, the former U.S. senator who was lured into the race by Trump. Trump is heavily featured in Perdue’s first television ad, in which Trump criticizes Kemp for not intervening to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia. …
In his Wednesday statement, Trump attacked McConnell on several issues beyond his Jan. 6 comments, saying he had not done enough to counter the Biden administration on “the invasion of our Borders,” “rising Inflation,” “Unconstitutional mandates” and the “incompentent [sic] Afghanistan withdrawal.” ¤ Trump then took a shot at McConnell for not intervening to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election: “If Mitch would have fought for the election, like the Democrats would have if in the same position, we would not be discussing any of the above today, and our Country would be STRONG and PROUD instead of weak and embarrassed.”
Some Republican senators have defended the RNC’s censure effort — or at least pushed back on the backlash to it — including some of the chamber’s most prominent Trump loyalists. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters Tuesday that the controversy was being fueled by “a bunch of D.C. Republicans bashing other Republicans.” The censure, he added, “reflects the view of most Republican voters.” …
But when it comes to McConnell, even Trump’s most avid fans continue to choose their words carefully — mindful, perhaps, of the support and esteem that McConnell has earned among GOP senators during his 15 years as party leader, as well as his influence in the operation of a political fundraising machine that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to win Republican majorities. …
WaPo: National Archives asks Justice Dept. to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records http://wapo.st/3uE5x5q “Archives officials suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents”
// The request came amid revelations that officials recovered 15 boxes of materials from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence that weren’t handed back to the government as they should have beenThe National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to examine Donald Trump’s handling of White House records, sparking discussions among federal law enforcement officials about whether they should investigate the former president for a possible crime, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The referral from the National Archives came amid recent revelations that officials recovered 15 boxes of materials from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida that were not handed back in to the government as they should have been, and that Trump had turned over other White House records that had been torn up. Archives officials suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents — including those that might be considered classified — and reached out to the Justice Department, the people familiar with the matter said.
Trump’s years-long defiance of the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties, has long raised concerns among historians and legal observers. His penchant for ripping up official documents was first reported by Politico in 2018, but it has drawn new scrutiny in recent weeks because of a House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Washington Post reported late last month that some of the White House records the National Archives turned over to the committee appeared to have been torn apart and then taped back together. The Post later found — and the Archives confirmed — that officials had recovered 15 boxes of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago.
The materials they recovered included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, people familiar with the matter said. The National Archives also retrieved a map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black marker by Trump in a failed attempt to show he had not been wrong about the storm’s path, according to a person familiar with the contents of the boxes. The Archives in a statement earlier this week said Trump representatives were “continuing to search” for additional records. …
… According to people familiar with the matter, Trump had been counseled by at least two chiefs of staff and the White House counsel to follow the law on preserving documents. …
Trump Statement http://bit.ly/3rCVxaz
Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters. He did nothing to fight for his constituents and stop the most fraudulent election in American history. And he does nothing to stop the lawless Biden Administration, the invasion of our Borders, rising Inflation, Unconstitutional mandates, the persecution of political opponents, fact finding on the incompentent Afghanistan withdrawal, the giving away our energy independence, etc., which is all because of the fraudulent election. Instead, he bails out the Radical Left and the RINOs.
If Mitch would have fought for the election, like the Democrats would have if in the same position, we would not be discussing any of the above today, and our Country would be STRONG and PROUD instead of weak and embarrassed.
⭕ 8 Feb 2022
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Oh good, glad that’s settled! 🙄
⋙ 🐣 RT @SamRamani2 BREAKING: Emmanuel Macron says he convinced Vladimir Putin not to escalate in UkraineWaPo: Russia sends warships toward Black Sea as Europe ramps up Ukraine crisis diplomacy http://wapo.st/3B79AIB
Russian warships sailed toward the Black Sea on Tuesday, stoking alarm among U.S. and European security officials who warned that the final capabilities for a large-scale assault on Ukraine appeared to be falling into place.
On a day of frantic shuttle diplomacy by French President Emmanuel Macron, who hopped among capitals trying to avert a conflict, Russian officials gave little sign that the French leader’s initiatives had changed their calculations.
Instead, U.S. and European officials said they were eyeing the next 12 days with increasing concern, fearing that Russian military exercises scheduled to start Thursday could provide cover for a sudden strike against Ukraine and that the Feb. 20 conclusion of the Olympic Games in Beijing clears away a potential diplomatic barrier for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who may fear upstaging Chinese President Xi Jinping.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: McConnell Denounces R.N.C. Censure of Jan. 6 Panel Members http://nyti.ms/35PtQ5S “Mr. McConnell’s comments were a rebuke of how far the party has gone to deny the reality of the violence that unfolded during the bloody assault on the Capitol”
// Senator Mitch McConnell joined a chorus of Republicans distancing themselves from the committee’s action, describing the Capitol riot as “a violent insurrection.”Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, pushed back hard on Tuesday against the Republican Party’s censure of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and its characterization of the Jan. 6 riot as “legitimate political discourse,” saying the riot was a “violent insurrection.”
The remarks from Mr. McConnell, the normally taciturn Kentucky Republican, added to a small but forceful chorus of G.O.P. lawmakers who have decried the action that the Republican National Committee took on Friday, when it officially rebuked Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for participating in the House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack, accusing them of “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Mr. McConnell repudiated that description, saying of the events of Jan. 6, 2021: “We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
He made the remarks to reporters outside Senate Republicans’ closed-door weekly lunch, where his aides had signaled in advance that he was to make an important statement on the R.N.C.’s action.
Mr. McConnell’s comments were a rebuke of how far the party has gone to deny the reality of the violence that unfolded during the bloody assault on the Capitol, sending lawmakers from both parties running for safety. More than 150 people were injured in the attack, which led to several deaths, and nearly 750 individuals have been criminally charged in connection with it.
In the days since the Republican National Committee passed the resolution at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, a handful of Republicans have criticized the move as everything from a political distraction to a shame on the party. Mr. McConnell, who orchestrated the impeachment acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump and blocked the naming of an independent, bipartisan commission to examine the attack, was among the most blunt in his defense of the only Republicans serving on the committee that rose from that proposal’s ashes.
“Traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues,” he said. “The issue is whether or not the R.N.C. should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views of the majority. That’s not the job of the R.N.C.”
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, by contrast, defended the resolution on Tuesday, telling a CNN reporter that it was meant to condemn the House committee’s targeting of conservatives who were nowhere near Washington on Jan. 6 and had nothing to do with either the attack or the broader effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The censure, pushed by allies of former President Donald J. Trump, was just over one page long, but it has sent Republicans into turmoil, exposing the party’s fissures while underscoring how its fealty to Mr. Trump continues to define everything it does. It has disrupted efforts by congressional Republicans to turn the page from Jan. 6 and focus instead on what they see as the failings of President Biden and the Democratic Party in an election year. …
Some Republicans defended the resolution by noting that it encapsulated the party’s view of what had happened on Jan. 6. ¤ “Whatever you think about the R.N.C. vote, it reflects the view of most Republican voters,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. “In my state, it’s not helpful to have a bunch of D.C. Republicans commenting on the R.N.C.”
But others were clearly appalled. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who castigated the resolution as shameful on Friday before the party vote, told reporters on Monday that he had exchanged texts about it with the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, who is also his niece. ¤ “Anything that my party does that comes across as being stupid is not going to help us,” he said.
Inside the Republican National Committee, the resolution has led to an intensive round of finger-pointing. Several members said they never intended to suggest that those who rioted on Jan. 6, 2021, were “engaged in legitimate political discourse,” even as they conceded the censure resolution’s language said just that.
The resolution, which was drafted by David Bossie, a longtime conservative operative aligned with Mr. Trump, and Frank Eathorne, the Wyoming Republican Party chairman, started out as an effort to expel Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger from the House Republican Conference. But committee members decided against calling for such a move, and instead settled on a censure.
An early draft condemned the two representatives for participating in “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in nonviolent and legal political discourse,” but “nonviolent and legal” was ultimately taken out and replaced with “legitimate,” according to a person familiar with the drafting who attributed the revision to a routine editing decision.
William Palatucci, a committee member from New Jersey, said he had attended the resolution committee meeting but was kept in the dark about the exact wording until he received an emailed copy at 1 a.m. on the morning of the vote. ¤ “The authors of the resolution and the leadership at the R.N.C. have nobody to blame but themselves,” he said, adding that he interpreted the resolution to excuse “anyone who participated in the riot on Jan. 6.” …
Several members of the committee assert that when the censure mentioned “ordinary citizens” and “legitimate political discourse,” it was referring to people like Kathy Berden, a Republican committee member from Michigan who put herself on a fake slate of electors for Mr. Trump. Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the state by more than 154,000 votes, or nearly 3 percentage points. ¤ Republican National Committee members portray Ms. Berden as an innocent victim of an overzealous investigation, noting that she is elderly and a widow. The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Ms. Berden last month as part of an effort to find out who orchestrated the drive to put forward false electors in several states that Mr. Biden won, a potential crime.
Over time, as Mr. Trump has strengthened his grip on the party, more Republicans have become convinced that he was not culpable for the violence. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center, in new polling released on Tuesday, found that fewer Americans, 43 percent, now say Mr. Trump bears a lot of responsibility for the attack than a year ago, when 52 percent said he did. About 32 percent of adults now say Mr. Trump bears no responsibility at all for the mayhem, up from 24 percent. Only 10 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the former president bears a lot of responsibility, down from 18 percent a year ago. …
🐣 RT @marceelias “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress,…who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” Sec. 3, 14th Amendment.
‼️⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm McConnell: Says Jan 6 not “legitimate political discourse” but rather a “violent insurrection” 💽 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1491142220862439425?s=21/photo/1WaPo: ‘Legitimate political discourse’: Three words about Jan. 6 spark rift among Republicans http://wapo.st/3uCqVIk “On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) became the highest-ranking Republican elected official to criticize the RNC for the resolution”
// Use of the phrase in connection with the Capitol insurrection has led to days of attempted political cleanup over a Republican Party resolution censuring Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam KinzingerWhen the Republican Party voted to censure two of its own members of Congress last week at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, it justified the move in part by declaring that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection amounted to the persecution of individuals engaging in “legitimate political discourse.”
Those three words have since sparked a massive backlash among GOP senators who fear the resolution could jeopardize the party’s fortunes in the midterm elections. The move has also led to days of attempted political cleanup by the Republican National Committee over the language and the accompanying censures of Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.).
While RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and party officials say they did not intend to defend violent insurrectionists in the resolution — which passed the committee of grass-roots members overwhelmingly — the words have been widely criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) became the highest-ranking Republican elected official to criticize the RNC for the resolution censuring Cheney and Kinzinger for serving on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. ¤ McConnell described the attack as a “violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, after a legitimately-certified election, from one administration to the next.”
“The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC,” he said.
Several other Senate Republicans similarly voiced disapproval of the censure resolution. Some, such as Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), said it was “absurd” for the RNC to defend the events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.” ¤ “Every moment that is spent re-litigating a lost election or defending those who have been convicted of criminal behavior moves us further away from the goal of victory this fall,” Collins told reporters at the Capitol.
Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday praised “my Republican colleagues who have been willing to speak the truth in the last few days,” but he said that “the vast majority of my Republican colleagues remained silent while the party leaders declared Jan. 6 legitimate.”
The resolution denounces the House committee’s investigation as “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” and states that the behavior of Cheney and Kinzinger “has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.” Violent pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol after months of the former president falsely saying the election was stolen, resulting in five deaths.
The phrase “legitimate political discourse” did not appear in an original draft of the resolution by top Trump ally David Bossie, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post. Instead, Bossie’s version said the committee had a disregard for “minority rights” and “due process” and seemed “intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat Party’s bleak electoral prospects.”
It is unclear how the words “legitimate political discourse” came to enter the document as it was edited in Salt Lake City by Bossie, McDaniel and others. Bossie did not respond to requests for comment. ¤ In phone calls over the weekend, McDaniel told others that she was pushed by Bossie to support the resolution and that she did not intend to support violence, which she wanted Republican lawmakers appearing on TV to make clear. People she spoke to described her as “on the ropes and trying to do damage control,” in the words of one person. …
A person who spoke to McConnell said he was frustrated that the party was focused on “the only liability we have” when he believes Republicans are otherwise well-positioned to win in the November midterms. The person, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said McConnell wanted to be clear he supported McDaniel because he viewed her as a “force for good” in handling a messy situation that she did not initiate. …
In an exchange with a CNN reporter in another Capitol hallway, McCarthy claimed the RNC’s use of the phrase “legitimate political discourse” was a reference to the select committee’s move last month to subpoena individuals who cast bogus electoral votes for Trump in seven states won by Joe Biden in 2020. The text of the RNC resolution made no such distinction.
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin’s ruled Russia for 2 decades. He came to power as Russia started to recover from the 1990s economic depression. Abroad, Putin has invaded countries, annexed territory, meddled in elections, but faced no serious consequences. So he feels confident & not afraid of risky acts
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance McConnell, with who I don’t often agree, did a really good job here, condemning the insurrection in no uncertain terms & questioning his own party’s censure of Reps Cheney & Kinzinger. More of this please. We need to move back to a consensus that country matters more than party.
⋙ 🧵 RT @JanNWolf McConnell calls Jan. 6 a “violent insurrection” and says the RNC shouldn’t have censured Cheney and Kinzinger 💽 📌 https://twitter.com/jannwolfe/status/1491135618910670851?s=21/photo/1🐣 RT @ RFOSCE [Russian Mission to OSCE] Our position is unchanged: we need to focus on dialogue with the US and NATO, in which we seek the conclusion of long-term legally binding security guarantees. In the absence of progress in these areas, the conversation in #ОБСЕ will not bring results.
⭕ 7 Feb 2022
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: There’s a name for someone who calls violence ‘legitimate.’ It isn’t ‘Republican.’ http://wapo.st/35ZRrkz “More accurate words exist for such a person. One of them is ‘fascist.’”
★ 🐣 RT @DelthiaRicks The South is filled w/ folks who are downright medieval — & evil. Clearly, these “lawmakers” have no idea mumps can cause shrinkage of the testicles & deafness. Measles can be deadly. Once they’ve ruined or robbed the lives of countless kids, maybe they’ll come to their senses
⋙ 🐣 RT @LanceUSA70 Georgia lawmakers introduce legislation to prohibit ALL vaccine requirements for children including measles, mumps and chickenpox. https://twitter.com/lanceusa70/status/1490802378655760386?s=21🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 On MSNBC. CHRIS JANSING. 11th Hour. Monday. Feb 7. 11 PM ET. Ukraine and the looming threat of Russian invasion. Germany makes a solid show of NATO solidarity today. Putin is trapped in the open. EU and Ukraine need to give Putin a way out.
NYT: Trump Gives Documents Improperly Taken From White House to Archives http://nyti.ms/3J2qECm “[T]he National Archives said that among the documents that Mr. Trump sought to block from handing over to the committee were ones Mr. Trump had torn up”
// The incident raised more questions about the former president’s adherence to the Presidential Records Act, which requires preservation of White House documents.Former President Donald J. Trump last month handed over to the National Archives 15 boxes of documents, letters, gifts and mementos that he had taken with him when leaving office but that he had been legally required to leave in the custody of the federal government, officials said on Monday.
The materials included the original versions of a letter that former President Barack Obama had left for Mr. Trump when he was first sworn in, as well as correspondence from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. The items also included a map Mr. Trump famously drew on with a black Sharpie marker to demonstrate the track of Hurricane Dorian heading toward Alabama in 2019 to back up a declaration he had made on Twitter that contradicted weather forecasts.
The boxes contained items taken from the White House’s residence during a hasty exit after Mr. Trump had spent the bulk of the presidential transition trying to find ways to stay in power, according to two people familiar with the process of how the boxes were returned. At the time, Mr. Trump’s aides were either preoccupied with helping him overturn the election, trying to stop him or avoiding him.
Other items in the boxes were reams of news clips printed out for Mr. Trump, as well as at least one item of clothing, the people familiar with the process said. ¤ Mr. Trump handed over the materials after several months of back and forth between his lawyers and the National Archives, which houses presidential records and eventually makes many of them public.
The disclosure is yet the latest example of a lack of strict adherence by Mr. Trump and some of his aides to the laws intended to preserve government documents and shield classified information from foreign enemies.
Despite his criticism of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign for using a private email server while she was secretary of state, Mr. Trump was notorious for tearing up White House documents and leaving them in the trash or on the floor. Politico reported in 2018 that some administration officials even had to tape back together shredded documents to ensure the White House complied with federal record keeping laws. ¤ During the administration, top White House aides — including Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner — were found to have used personal email accounts for government work.
More recently, in response to the House select committee investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, provided hundreds of pages of documents, some of which came from his personal cellphone. The committee said it had questions about why Mr. Meadows had used a personal cellphone, a Signal account and two personal Gmail accounts to conduct official business, and whether he had properly turned over all records from those accounts to the National Archives.
🐣 RT @BillKristol You know, if the Democrats just got out of their own way, the extremism of many Republican nominees plus the activism of the conservative Justices plus the fact Trump isn’t going away, could lead to a pretty good off-year election this November. But I guess that’s a big “if”…
WaPo: National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago http://wapo.st/3uuR2kh “[F]ormer advisers described a frenzied packing process in the final days of the administration because Trump did not want to … accept defeat for much of the transition”
// The recovery of 15 boxes from Trump’s Florida resort, including letters from Barack Obama and Kim Jong Un, underscores the previous administration’s cavalier handling of presidential recordsThe Archives has struggled to cope with a president who flouted document retention requirements and frequently ripped up official documents, leaving hundreds of pages taped back together — or some that arrived at the Archives still in pieces. Some damaged documents were among those turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Two former advisers described a frenzied packing process in the final days of the administration because Trump did not want to pack or accept defeat for much of the transition.
NYT: Putin Warns the West and Ukraine, but Keeps His Intentions a Mystery http://nyti.ms/3HBzuGS
// President Vladimir Putin said diplomatic ideas raised in a meeting by French President Emmanuel Macron were worth pursuing, but did not rule out a Russian invasion of Ukraine.💙 WSJ Editorial: Mike Pence’s Constitution http://on.wsj.com/3LbMhlD “Mr. Pence stands out as a rare Republican these days willing to stand up to Mr. Trump’s disgraceful behavior after the election. Too many in the GOP seem to have lost their constitutional moorings in thrall to one man”
// The former Vice President stands up to Trump, despite the potential political cost.The United States desperately needs a Republican Party that is a sane alternative to the ruling Democrats who have lurched to the coercive left. On that score, Americans should welcome Mike Pence’s stand Friday for constitutional principle on elections no matter its political cost.
The former Vice President defended himself against Donald Trump’s charge that Mr. Pence could have overruled state electoral vote tallies on Jan. 6, 2021 at the Capitol. Mr. Pence was presiding over the vote counting as President of the Senate, but he refused Mr. Trump’s pressure to disqualify electors from some closely contested states. It was Mr. Pence’s finest hour.
But Mr. Trump won’t let it die, and last week he claimed again that Mr. Pence could have overturned the election, all but admitting that he hoped to use the gambit to stay in power. Speaking Friday to the Federalist Society in Florida, Mr. Pence rebutted Mr. Trump.
“I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong,” Mr. Pence said. “The Presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President.”
Mr. Pence explained that his decision was rooted in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. He rightly pointed out that the Founders were skeptical of concentrated power, which is why they created the Electoral College and gave states the authority to choose electors. The only power they gave Congress regarding the electoral tally is counting and certifying the votes. The Vice President’s role is ceremonial in presiding over that counting.
Mr. Trump claims that Congress’s current talks to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887 show Mr. Pence had the power to overturn electoral votes. But Congress isn’t debating this law because it agrees with Mr. Trump’s mistaken interpretation of what we and many others believe is an unconstitutional statute. The Members want to make sure that no one can pull Mr. Trump’s stunt again and misread the Electoral Count Act to use Congress and the Vice President to overturn an election despite losing in November.
This threat is bipartisan, by the way. After the 2004 election Barbara Boxer, then a California Senator, joined a House colleague in objecting to electors from Ohio, the decisive state that year. This forced votes in both chambers, which failed. The next time they lose a close election, Democrats aren’t likely to be as ham-handed as Mr. Trump and his allies were after 2020.
“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election, and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Mr. Pence said Friday, underscoring the risks when Republicans put the will to power above the Constitution.
Mr. Pence stands out as a rare Republican these days willing to stand up to Mr. Trump’s disgraceful behavior after the election. Too many in the GOP seem to have lost their constitutional moorings in thrall to one man.
The conventional wisdom now is that Mr. Trump controls the Republican Party and can have the 2024 nomination if he wants it. But someone should remind voters that Mr. Trump ended as a three-time election loser. He mobilized Democrats against him in historic numbers to cost the GOP the House in 2018, then the White House in 2020, and finally the two Georgia Senate seats in 2021.
Mr. Trump had significant policy successes, but Mr. Pence has received too little credit for his policy and personnel advice. His conservative network and instincts helped to avoid more than one Trumpian self-implosion. He was loyal to Mr. Trump, and the President repaid him by pressuring him publicly and privately to commit an unconstitutional act. Loyalty has always been a one-way street for Mr. Trump.
We wrote often during his Presidency that Democrats couldn’t defeat Donald Trump, but Mr. Trump could defeat himself. He did, and his post-election behavior compounded the harm to his party. Republicans who want to repeat the experience may find the electoral result is the same—and this time without the fortunate presence of Mike Pence.
WaPo: Biden vows to stop Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Europe if Russia invades Ukraine http://wapo.st/335iOsl
WaPo, Philip Bump: The big try: How Republicans leverage Trump’s false fraud claims http://wapo.st/3LaCcoS “[I]t’s easy to see the game being played. The concern is the legal votes cast” ~ not the ILLEGAL votes, i.e. there were, simply, « too many votes »
[Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short] offered specifics: “I think there are significant concerns about what transpired in Pennsylvania, what transpired in Wisconsin, what transpired in Georgia,” Short said. “You had election officials overruling state officials and saying, ‘We’ll keep the balloting open,’ allowed universal access and mail-in balloting.” ¤ The thing you will notice about that assertion is that Short is talking about votes cast by voters that accurately reflected their will. He is not saying that the election was tainted by rampant illegal voting that skewed the results. He is saying that people who wanted to vote were able to vote.
From the outset, such purported concerns were how Trump’s party tried to rationalize his obvious nonsense about voter fraud. As Jan. 6 neared, Republicans in the House began lining up to object to electoral votes cast by several states. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to keep his caucus from following suit, but Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) figured out a loophole: He would object not because of fraud but because (1) Pennsylvania expanded its voting rules in possible contravention of its state constitution and (2) because Big Tech. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), never one to be out grandstanded, quickly followed suit.
Hawley really set the pattern. His claims about Pennsylvania had already been considered by the courts, with the chief justice writing that even if the expansion of access (passed by Republican legislators in 2019, mind you) were unconstitutional, it shouldn’t invalidate votes cast under the existing rules. But as his party scrambled to figure out how to back Trump (and still stay in the good graces of Trump supporters) while not exposing themselves to the obvious looming refutation of Trump’s fraud claims, establishment Republicans settled on the idea that the election had been stolen not by nonexistent fraud but by unfair expansions of voting access.
This overlapped with the fraud claims; often, the expansions of voting access were interlaced with nebulous hand-wringing about the purported risk this posed. But given that states expanded access to mail and early voting in 2020 and that, thanks to Trump, those results faced unusual scrutiny without evidence of anything other than insignificant fraud emerging, it’s easy to see the game being played. The concern is the legal votes cast.
🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Republican congressman @AdamKinzinger: “Donald Trump was the worst president the United States of America ever had. He was a liar, he was a charlatan, and he was a man with a more fragile ego than anybody I’ve ever met.” 💽 https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1490894213126701056/photo/1
WaPo, Greg Sargent: The plan to ‘Trump-proof’ 2024 gets a big boost — from Donald Trump http://wapo.st/3sqkTI0 ‘When Trump declared in a statement recently Mike Pence should have ‘overturned the Election,’ it clarified the stakes for Electoral Count Act reform’
As frustrating as Sen. Joe Manchin III has been in the past year or so, the West Virginia Democrat may have found the sweet spot on a very big question: How to get 10 GOP senators to support a plan to safeguard our elections against a rerun of Donald Trump’s 2020 coup effort. ¤ That sweet spot is this: Demonstrate that the extraordinary new revelations we’ve seen in recent days about that coup attempt strengthen the case for reform — without mentioning Trump himself.
Manchin is leading a bipartisan group of senators who are examining how to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, or ECA, which governs how presidential electors are counted. Manchin declared Sunday on CNN that the coup effort underscored the case for action. ¤ “What really caused the insurrection?” Manchin said. “They thought there was ambiguity” and an “avenue they could go through to overturn the election. Because there was.”
When Trump declared in a statement recently that his vice president, Mike Pence, should have “overturned the Election,” this was more than a confession. It also clarified the stakes for ECA reform. ¤ That’s because Trump’s scheme turned not just on pressure on Pence to invalidate Joe Biden’s electors. It also would have required numerous swing states to go back and “find” phony new evidence of electoral fraud to justify appointing sham electors for Trump, as outlined in that now-notorious Trump coup memo.
⭕ 6 Feb 2022
MSNBC: After threats against election workers, DOJ starts making arrests http://on.msnbc.com/3uvIvxB
// Hundreds of election workers faced threats and menacing messages. The Justice Department is now starting to file criminal charges.🧵 RT @MalcolmNance My Assessment fm Kyiv: #UkraineCrisis if Putin wants to take this country by force. My prelim findings: Russian forces are formidable & may be able to take Chernihiv-Sumy-Kharkiv-Luhansk-Donetsk axis but at massive cost & can take Kyiv at a terrible cost. Insurgency will follow. 📌 https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1490467323253301248
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress Full Jake Sullivan: Russian ‘invasion of Ukraine could happen at any time’ ¤ National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan talked to Chuck Todd about the Russian military buildup around Ukraine, during an interview with Meet the Press.
https://nbcnews.to/3gpz4HJWaPo: German Chancellor Scholz says response to Russia will be ‘united and decisive’ if Ukraine is invaded http://wapo.st/3GuDWWn
// In an interview with The Post, the German chancellor, who meets President Biden on Monday at the White House, rejected criticism that his government has not done enough to support Ukraine.🐣 RT @PeterHotez How to interpret the data? >30% of Covid deaths in America after vaccines made widely available. Literally hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated American lives lost needlessly, victimized by political aggression, far right extremism. I say it like no one else, so they target me
★ ⋙ 🐣 📋 RT @BNODesk
– Feb. 2020: 1
– Mar. 2020: 1,000
– Apr. 2020: 10,000
– May 2020: 100,000
– Sept 2020: 200,000
– Dec 2020: 300,000
– Jan. 2021: 400,000
– Feb. 2021: 500,000 _____
– Jun. 2021: 600,000
– Oct. 2021: 700,000
– Dec. 2021: 800,000
– Feb. 2022: 900,000🐣 RT @MeetThePress TODAY on #MTP: Pence’s chief of staff: Trump had ‘many bad advisers’ who were ‘snake-oil salesmen’ https://nbcnews.to/3orQR5e
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost “Let’s face it. Let’s call it what it is. Jan. 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week: Overturn the election” ¤ — Chris Christie this morning ¤ SPOT ON accurate.
🐣 RT @NewYorker A new trove of documents has fuelled a burst of revelations about the Trump White House’s involvement in the events leading up to the assault on the Capitol—and about Trump’s desperate efforts to hold on to the Presidency.
⋙ NewYorker, Amy Sorkin: What the January 6th Papers Reveal http://bit.ly/3J8n49E
// The Supreme Court ruled to give the House Select Committee access to a trove of documents detailing election-negating strategies that Donald Trump and his advisers entertained—including a military seizure of voting machines—but he continues to peddle a counter-narrative in which he’s the victim.🐣 RT @danielsgoldman I will never understand why 10 more GOP Senators didn’t join with the 7 brave ones to convict Trump in Impeachment 2.0 to prevent him from holding office again (and a campaign account). It would have taken some time but it would have eventually neutered his power over the party.
🐣 RT @Sasha_Etkind some updates on Ivashov’s declaration: 1. it’s not a fake; 2. it’s unusually well-written; 3. it states that a R-U war will imminently turn into a European war; 4. it connects waging the war with survival of the regime; 5. Russians read it as an utter sensation
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas RE: Ivashov’s surprise: is he
1. just a 78-year-old yelling at the TV
2. the most respected figure of a group of senior “Decembristist” officers, disgruntled by “Putin’s harebrained” schemes,
3. representing a broad consensus in the military aghast at the abyss of invasion?Letter: Retired General-Colonel Leonid Ivashov, 78, well-known hardliner, now chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, publishes an appeal to the Russian President & citizens not to start any meaningless war in Ukraine & condemns the annexation of Crimea. http://bit.ly/3B3jD16
The acquisition of Crimea and Sevastopol by Russia and their non-recognition as Russian by the international community and, therefore, the overwhelming number of states in the world still consider them to belong to Ukraine) convincingly shows the failure of Russian foreign policy, and the unattractiveness of domestic.
Attempts to”love” the Russian Federation and its leadership through an ultimatum and threats of the use of force are senseless and extremely dangerous. The use of military force against Ukraine, firstly, will call into question the existence of Russia itself as a state; secondly, it will forever make Russians and Ukrainians mortal enemies. Thirdly, there will be thousands (tens of thousands) of dead young, healthy guys on one side and on the other, which will certainly affect the future demographic situation in our dying countries.
On the battlefield, if this happens, Russian troops will face not only Ukrainian military personnel, among whom there will be many Russian guys, but also military personnel and equipment from many NATO countries, and the member states of the alliance will be obliged to declare war on Russia.
In our opinion, the country’s leadership, realizing that it is not capable of leading the country out of the systemic crisis, and this can lead to an uprising of the people and a change of power in the country, with the support of the oligarchy, corrupt officials. lured media and security forces, decided to activate the political line for the final destruction Russian statehood and the extermination of the indigenous population of the country. And war is the means that will solve this problem in order to retain its anti-national power for a while and preserve the wealth stolen from the people. We cannot suggest any other explanation.
From the President of the Russian Federation, we are officers of Russia, we demand to abandon the criminal policy of provoking a war in which the Russian Federation will find itself alone against the united forces of the West, to create conditions for the implementation of Art. 3 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and resign.
We appeal to all retired and retired military personnel, citizens of Russia with a recommendation to be vigilant, organized, support the demands of the Council of the All Russian Officers’ Assembly, actively oppose propaganda and unleashing a war, and prevent an internal civil conflict with the use of military force.
Chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly
Colonel-General Ivashov L.G.WaPo: As U.S. predicts Russia could seize Kiev in days, Moscow calls assessment ‘scaremongering’ http://wapo.st/3GxlIUa
🐣 RT @Anders_Aslund General-Colonel Leonid Ivashov’s harsh attack on Putin’s Ukraine policy appears authentic & deserves great attention.
🐣 RT @OlgaNYT1211 Head of All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, Leonid Ivashov, called on Russian leadership not to use force against Ukraine in an open letter to Putin and Russians. Ivashov’s comments refute all of Putin’s claims and basically call him a liar. Surreal
🐣 RT @MarkGalleotti Ivashov is part of what one could call the nationalist opposition, people (like, in a different way, Strelkov/Girkin) who are both unpleasant nationalists yet who feel Putin is actually selling out the country. Not the first time he has been critical, tho def the most extreme
🐣 RT @ Colonel general (ret) Leonid Ivashov: “We Russia’s officers demand from the president of Russia that he rejects the criminal policy of provoking a war, in which Russia would be alone against the united forces of the West… and retire.”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Non-trivial. Could be theater, but Ivashov was a senior Soviet officer and could well be that this, to him, looks like making war on other citizens of the former USSR. Remarkable that this happened.
🐣 RT @McFaul I’m surprised. Good sign. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1490252762021392384
⋙ 🐣 RT @ConstanceHunter .@McFaul what do you make of this development?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund This is extraordinary. Rtd General-Colonel Leonid Ivashov, 78, well-known hardliner, now chairman of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly, publishes an appeal to the Russian President & citizens not to start any meaningless war in Ukraine & condemns the annexation of Crimea.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @apiontkowsky Colonel General Ivashov is not just another Ehrenburg. This is almost Marshal Beria. Too bad he’s retired. The bill went to the clock. We are waiting for the current Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @YourBunnyWrte “From the president of the Russian Federation, we officers of Russia … demand to create conditions for the implementation of Article 3 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in practice and to resign.”🐣 RT @noclearidea Thank You Olga. This is more than an appeal to stand down the army. It is an indictment of Putins corrupt style of government. I dont think Ivashov is acting in some fake role. He probably has children /grandchildren he doesnt want to scarifice for nothing. God Bless him. Hoping
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 A massive tactical Russian force postured to invade. Air. Ground. Sea. Putin cannot sustain this level of deployment indefinitely. He needs a NATO and Ukrainian failure of will quickly. If Putin doesn’t get it…. How does he back down?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardEngel US government assessment, according to a US official with direct knowledge: ¤ the window for diplomacy is closing. Russia now has 83 Battalion Tactical Groups around Ukraine, and has 14 more in transit to the border area from all over Russia.⭕ 5 Feb 2022
WaPo, Karen Tumulty: A party that censures its defenders of the Constitution has lost its way http://wapo.st/3guGXvi
“The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values.” ¤ So began the almost laughably hypocritical resolution with which the Republican National Committee on Friday censured Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — who are among the all-too-few elected officials in their party standing up for the Constitution against a former president who was willing to overturn the result of a legitimate election and who continues to hold the party in his grip.
Even more shockingly, the RNC declared that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that then-President Donald Trump unleashed was merely a situation in which “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” ¤ The “discourse” in question included threatening to hang those who were performing their constitutional duty to certify the electoral college count, trashing the building and smearing feces on the walls.
As for the party’s supposed “values,” they are spelled out a bit later in the resolution: “Winning back the majority in Congress, including the United States House of Representatives, in 2022 must be the primary goal of the House Republican Conference … and requires all Republicans working together to accomplish the same.” ¤ Well, at least that part of the resolution was clear. The only thing Republicans believe they should care about is regaining power. Which is perhaps the best argument for why they shouldn’t. …
What doesn’t seem to bother the self-proclaimed “party of the Constitution” is the mounting evidence of how far Trump was willing to go to subvert the clear will of the American people as they expressed it at the ballot box in November 2020. How he entertained a proposal to have the Department of Homeland Security seize voting machines in swing states that he lost. How he continues to foment the lie that the election was tainted by massive voter fraud. How he claims that then-Vice President Mike Pence could and should have rejected the electoral college vote tally. How he says he will consider pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters if he gets back into the Oval Office. …
NYT Editorial: Jan. 6 Was a Warning. Will Lawmakers Do Anything to Protect the 2024 Election? http://nyti.ms/3gnKL1A It’s essential to reform the Electoral Count Act. Here’s a description of the needed changes
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Trump got elected in part by attacking Clinton for deleting emails that she deemed personal, then spent four years destroying official documents despite federal law. @AshleyRParker @jdawsey1 @thamburger @JaxAlemany
⋙ WaPo: ‘He never stopped ripping things up’: Inside Trump’s relentless document destruction habits http://wapo.st/3sduyl2
// Trump’s shredding of paper in the White House was far more widespread and indiscriminate than previously known and — despite multiple admonishments — extended throughout his presidency.WaPo: Russia could seize Kyiv in days and cause 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine, U.S. assessments find http://wapo.st/3rtZLkL
// Up to 5 million people likely to flee if Russia invadesRussia is close to completing preparations for what appears to be a large-scale invasion of Ukraine that could leave up to 50,000 civilians killed or wounded, decapitate the government in Kyiv within two days, and launch a humanitarian crisis with up to 5 million refugees fleeing the resulting chaos, according to updated U.S. military and intelligence assessments briefed to lawmakers and European partners over the past several days.
The rising concerns come as the Russian military continues to dispatch combat units to the Ukrainian border in both its own territory and Belarus. As of Friday, seven people familiar with the assessments said, there were 83 Russian battalion tactical groups, with about 750 troops each, arrayed for a possible assault. That is up from 60 two weeks ago, and comprises about 70 percent of what Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to have in place if he wants to maximize the operation.
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Matt Gaetz describes his last meeting with Pence in the WH when he tried to persuade him to overturn the election: “I knew he wasn’t going to show a great deal of boldness .. the defeat in his eyes and the tone .. that we didn’t have the ability to carve out our own destiny.” 💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1490026064705470464/photo/1
// Bannon’s War Room🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger What do you say Kevin? ¤ @GOPLeader https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1489804355540824064/photo/1
// “Select all squares with legitimate political discourse ¤ If there are none, click skip”🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Liz Cheney is not alone. There are many Republicans like her who know their party is going dangerously off the rails, endorsing violence as a means to stay in power. But most of them, unlike Cheney, are staying quiet. And that’s terrifying.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepLizCheney This was January 6th. ¤ This is not “legitimate political discourse.” 💽 https://twitter.com/RepLizCheney/status/1489691175883882496/photo/1🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Best I can tell, only one elected Republican (outside of Kinzinger and Chreney) has publicly rebuked the RNC statement that January 6 was “legitimate,” which means the Republican Party is basically endorsing a coup on our democracy. Am I missing anything?
🧵 RT @RVAwonk If one purpose of QAnon was to create a global far-right communication network to facilitate rapid dissemination of information online and mobilization offline, then it seems pretty clear that it was quite successful. 📌 https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1490080679094362119
NYT, @nytmike and @lukebroadwater: In Scrutinizing Trump and His Allies, Jan. 6 Panel Adopts Prosecution Tactics http://nyti.ms/3AYMHqO Dan Scavino’s lawyer: “They think they’re fighting for the survival of the democracy” //➔ What if they are? (Should be an oped)
// By Michael Schmidt and Luke Broadwater; The House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol and what led to it is employing techniques more common in criminal cases than in congressional inquiries.The House select committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is borrowing techniques from federal prosecutions, employing aggressive tactics typically used against mobsters and terrorists as it seeks to break through stonewalling from former President Donald J. Trump and his allies and develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case.
In what its members see as the best opportunity to hold Mr. Trump and his team accountable, the committee — which has no authority to pursue criminal charges — is using what powers it has in expansive ways in hopes of pressuring Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to use the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute them.
The panel’s investigation is being run by a former U.S. attorney, and the top investigator brought in to focus on Mr. Trump’s inner circle is also a former U.S. attorney. The panel has hired more than a dozen other former federal prosecutors.
The committee has interviewed more than 475 witnesses and issued more than 100 subpoenas, including broad ones to banks as well as telecommunications and social media companies. Some of the subpoenas have swept up the personal data of Trump family members and allies, local politicians and at least one member of Congress, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio. Though no subpoena has been issued for Mr. Jordan, his text messages and calls have shown up in communications with Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and in a call with Mr. Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.
Armed with reams of telephone records and metadata, the committee has used link analysis, a data mapping technique that former F.B.I. agents say was key to identifying terrorist networks in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The F.B.I. said it used a similar tactic last month to identify the seller of a gun to a man in Texas who took hostages at a synagogue.
Faced with at least 16 Trump allies who have signaled they will not fully cooperate with the committee, investigators have taken a page out of organized crime prosecutions and quietly turned at least six lower-level Trump staff members into witnesses who have provided information about their bosses’ activities.
The committee is also considering granting immunity to key members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle who have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as a way of pressuring them to testify.
“Having lived through and being a part of every major congressional investigation over the past 50 years from Iran-contra to Whitewater to everything else, this is the mother of all investigations and a quantum leap for Congress in a way I’ve never seen before,” said Stanley Brand, a Democrat and the former top lawyer for the House who is now representing Dan Scavino, one of Mr. Trump’s closest aides, in the investigation.
It is a development, Mr. Brand suggested, that Democrats might one day come to regret. “When a frontier is pushed back, it doesn’t recede,” he said. “They think they’re fighting for the survival of the democracy and the ends justify the means. Just wait if the Republicans take over.”
The committee’s aggressive approach carries with it another obvious risk: that it could fail to turn up compelling new information about Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after his defeat or to make a persuasive case for a Justice Department prosecution. Mr. Trump survived years of scrutiny by the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and two impeachments. Despite a swirl of new investigations since he left office, the former president remains the dominant force in Republican politics.
The committee has no law enforcement role, and its stated goal is to write a comprehensive report and propose recommendations, including for legislation, to try to make sure the events of Jan. 6 are never repeated.
Nevertheless, its members have openly discussed what criminal laws Mr. Trump and his allies may have violated and how they might recommend that the Justice Department investigate him. Such a step could put considerable additional pressure on Mr. Garland, who has not given any specific public indication that the department is investigating Mr. Trump or would support prosecuting him.
As the House investigation was gaining momentum late last year, the committee’s vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, read from the criminal code to describe a law she believed could be used to prosecute Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress as it sought to certify the Electoral College count of his defeat.
Ms. Cheney and the other Republican on the committee, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, were censured by the Republican National Committee on Friday for their participation in the investigation.
Mr. Trump’s allies have grown angry not just at the aggressiveness of the committee — for example, in making subpoenas public before they have been served — but also at the expansive list of people questioned, some of whom, these allies maintain, had minimal to no involvement in the events of Jan. 6.
The tactics being used by the committee were described by nearly a dozen people, including members of the committee, aides, witnesses and their lawyers, and other people familiar with the panel’s work. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing what the committee says is a confidential investigation.
By comparison, the House select committee that spent two and a half years investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack issued just a dozen or so subpoenas — a small fraction of the number issued by the Jan. 6 committee so far — and made no criminal referrals. The Jan. 6 panel has already recommended criminal contempt of Congress charges against three witnesses who refused to cooperate, and one, Stephen K. Bannon, has already been indicted by the Justice Department.
Members of the Jan. 6 committee say the obstacles thrown up by Mr. Trump and his allies and the high stakes of the investigation have left the panel with no choice but to use every tool at its disposal.
“It’s not a criminal investigation, but having experienced former prosecutors who know how to run complex, white-collar investigations working on a plot to overturn the presidential election is a very useful talent among your team,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member.
To lead the inquiry, the panel hired Timothy J. Heaphy, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. In that position, he oversaw a number of high-profile prosecutions, including one in which the drugmaker Abbott Laboratories pleaded guilty in a fraud case and paid a $1.5 billion fine.
Ms. Cheney and the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, also hired John Wood, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri and a former deputy associate attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. He is a senior investigative counsel for the committee and is focusing on Mr. Trump’s inner circle. Neither Mr. Heaphy nor Mr. Wood had previously worked on a congressional investigation.
Some of the Democrats on the committee were concerned that if the panel was too aggressive, Republicans might turn the tables on the Democrats whenever they took back control of the House. But Ms. Cheney insisted that the committee be as aggressive as possible. ¤ She said that the panel would face significant resistance from Mr. Trump’s inner circle, and that the committee would be criticized no matter what it did, so there was no reason to hold back in the face of efforts to impede its work.
Mr. Trump moved to block the National Archives from handing over documents from his White House, leading to a monthslong court fight that ended with the committee receiving the documents.
At least 16 witnesses have sued to try to block the committee’s subpoenas. Four of the panel’s most sought-after targets — the conservative lawyer John Eastman; Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department lawyer deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s plays to try to stay in power; the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; and the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. — invoked the Fifth Amendment as a way to avoid answering questions without the threat of a contempt of Congress charge.
Three Republican members of Congress — Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; and Mr. Jordan — told the committee that they would refuse to sit for questioning.
The committee’s investigative work related to Mr. Trump’s current spokesman illustrates the aggressive steps the panel is taking. The spokesman, Taylor Budowich, turned over more than 1,700 pages of documents and sat for roughly four hours of sworn testimony.
Shortly after testifying, Mr. Budowich learned that the committee had requested financial records from his bank related to pro-Trump rallies. A federal judge turned down an emergency request by Mr. Budowich to force congressional investigators to relinquish his banking records, which JPMorgan Chase had already given to the committee.
Investigators also sought a broad swath of phone records from Ali Alexander, a right-wing rally organizer who was cooperating with the committee, for two months before Jan. 6, 2021 — well before he claims to have thought of planning an event that day — and for one month after.
Late last month, another example of the panel’s investigative approach emerged. Mr. Jones, the conspiracy theorist, who has sued the committee, was questioned by investigators in a virtual interview. He later said on his radio show that in the interview he had invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination nearly 100 times.
“I just had a very intense experience being interrogated by the Jan. 6 committee lawyers,” he said. “They were polite, but they were dogged.”
Even though Mr. Jones refused to share information with the committee, he said the investigators seemed to have found ways around his lack of cooperation. He said the committee had already obtained text messages from him.
“They have everything that’s already on my phones and things,” he said. “I saw my text messages” with political organizers tied to the Jan. 6 rally.
🐣 RT @joshtpm Is it time to designate the RNC a terrorist organization? Violent attempts to overthrow the govt are now “legitimate political discourse”? https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1489684339436757001
NYT, Jeremy Peters: Where Fox News and Donald Trump Took Us http://nyti.ms/3LfOxbi
// Roger Ailes understood the appeal Mr. Trump had for Fox viewers. He didn’t foresee how together they would redefine the limits of political discourse.💙 WaPo, Dan Balz: This was the week when Trump revealed all http://wapo.st/3gsJoyK
// He really did want to overturn the 2020 election, and he never meant it when he said those who broke the law on Jan. 6 should have to pay⭕ 4 Feb 2022
WaPo Editorial: The Republican Party formally declares that truth is fiction and patriots are traitors http://wapo.st/3sF7s72
The Orwellian censure resolution accuses Ms. Cheney and fellow GOP dissident Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) of engaging in behavior “destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.” Her transgression? Co-leading the House committee investigating the Capitol invasion, an act of political violence Mr. Trump inspired when he was a sitting president charged with protecting the nation from enemies foreign and domestic. The investigation, the censure resolution claimed, is “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
🐣 RT @RonFilipkowski Steve Bannon had a bad day. On Pence’s statement: “You are a stone cold coward .. My head’s blowing up .. I can’t take Pence and Marc Short and all these guys up there ratting out Trump on Capitol Hill right now.”
💽 https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1489778820131475458/photo/1WaPo: As GOP censures Cheney and Kinzinger, Pence says: ‘President Trump is wrong’ http://wapo.st/3Ln6C7J “Christopher Krebs, a former top cybersecurity official … said: “Broadly speaking, I think Trump’s influence is waning, particularly among the reasonable people”
// The battle for the future of the Republican Party played out in elite rooms in Florida and Utah, with remarkable moves supporting and opposing the former presidentThe ongoing battle over the future of the Republican Party erupted into open view Friday as former vice president Mike Pence said it would have been “un-American” for him to overturn the election at Donald Trump’s insistence and the party’s grass-roots members overwhelmingly voted to censure two Republicans for investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump loomed over the day’s action, though he was absent as the party’s top activists and donors huddled in Utah and a prominent conservative legal group hosted Pence and some of the party’s top figures in Florida. ¤ In both cases, grappling with Trump’s repeated false attacks on the 2020 election results — and the pro-Trump mob that ransacked the Capitol one year ago — was the source of discord at a time when the party is trying to remain united ahead of the midterm elections. …
In Florida, Pence, Trump’s ever-loyal vice president, took his most explicit shots at the former president, saying “President Trump is wrong” when he called for Pence to overturn the election by rejecting electors from several states who supported Joe Biden when Congress gathered on Jan. 6 to certify the election. He drew raucous applause from the crowd of conservative lawyers at the Federalist Society conference.
Christopher Krebs, a former top cybersecurity official in the Trump administration who was fired by Trump, said: “Broadly speaking, I think Trump’s influence is waning, particularly among the reasonable people. But it’s really crystallizing in the most malignant way. It’s consolidating and getting much more intense — and more dangerous — among the die-hard supporters.” ¤ Trump remains the most popular figure in the GOP, according to most public and private polling. His political committee has $122 million — more than any other major political party committee — with much of it raised off his false claims that the election was stolen. …
“Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible. Well, the Vice President’s position is not an automatic conveyor if obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist. That’s why the Democrats and RINOs are working feverishly together to change the very law that Mike Pence and his unwitting advisors used on January 6 to say he had no choice,” Trump said, including false statements about the election and the law. …
“Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” Pence said. ¤ Pence said he remained firm in his commitment to the Constitution, “even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise.” …
🐣 RT @ryanjreilly A sampling of Jan. 6 defendant Ryan Nichols’ political discourse: 💽 https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1489747752020066307/photo/1
// “We’re gonna drag your f’ing ass through the street” etc🐣 RT @EverettStern1 I want to make very clear to the American public that Flynn’s operatives are prepared to use Domestic Terrorism to attack the United States. I was told “We will accomplish the mission by any means necessary including the use of Domestic Terrorism.” The threat is real & credible.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Purges are always part of an autocratic project where power is rooted in a cult of personality and favor is dispensed as a reward for obedience. The RNC purge of @AdamKinzinger and @RepLizCheney is a declaration of repudiation towards American democracy. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1489646396978302976
NYT: GOP Declares Jan. 6 Attack ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’ http://nyti.ms/3orIFC5
// The Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol.
≣ NYT: Read the Republican Censure of Cheney and Kinzinger http://nyti.ms/3usT3NW
NYT: GOP Declares Jan. 6 Attack ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’ http://nyti.ms/3orIFC5
// The Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol.
⋙ ≣ [NYT: Read the Republican Censure of Cheney and Kinzinger] http://nyti.ms/3usT3NWThe Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” and rebuked two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.
The Republican National Committee’s voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it. ¤ On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
After the vote, party leaders rushed to clarify that language, saying it was never meant to apply to rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name. ¤ “Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”
But the censure, which was carefully negotiated in private among party members, made no such distinction, nor is the House committee investigating the attack examining any normal political debate. It was the latest and most forceful effort by the Republican Party to minimize what happened and the broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the results of the 2020 election. In approving it and opting to punish two of its own, Republicans seemed to embrace a position that many of them have only hinted at: that the assault and the actions that preceded it were acceptable.
It came days after Mr. Trump suggested that, if re-elected in 2024, he would consider pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6 attack and for the first time described his goal that day as subverting the election results, saying in a statement that Vice President Mike Pence “could have overturned the election.”
On Friday, Mr. Pence pushed back on Mr. Trump, calling his assertion “wrong.” ¤ “I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, at a gathering in Florida. …
“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, wrote on Twitter. “Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.” ¤ He did not mention that the party chairwoman who presided over the meeting and orchestrated the censure resolution, Ms. McDaniel, is his niece.
The censure was also condemned by Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who, like Mr. Romney, voted to remove Mr. Trump from office for inciting insurrection on Jan. 6, and Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, also a Republican, who called Friday “a sad day for my party — and the country.” …
Democrats … were incensed at the resolution’s language. ¤ “The Republican Party is so off the deep end now that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the special House committee investigating the Capitol attack. “It is a scandal that historians will be aghast at, to think that a major political party would be denouncing Liz Cheney for standing up for the Constitution and not saying anything about Donald Trump’s involvement in the insurrection.”
In his own defense, Mr. Kinzinger said: “I have no regrets about my decision to uphold my oath of office and defend the Constitution. I will continue to focus my efforts on standing for truth and working to fight the political matrix that’s led us to where we find ourselves today.” … ¤ Mr. Kinzinger has already announced he will not seek re-election, as have some other House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol. Ms. Cheney, however, has vowed to stand for re-election. …
Ms. Cheney, who faces an uphill battle in her re-election bid against a Republican Party aligned with Mr. Trump, said party leaders “have made themselves willing hostages” to Mr. Trump. ¤ “I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump,” she said. “History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what.” …
🐣 RT @madrid_mike …our country is going to hell! Text Block: https://twitter.com/madrid_mike/status/1489798931210850310/photo/1
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected as quickly as possible. Well, the Vice President’s position is not an automatic conveyor if obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist. That’s why the Democrats and RINOs are working feverishly together to change the very law that Mike Pence and his unwitting advisors used on January 6 to say he had no choice. The reason they want it changed is because they now say they don’t want the Vice President to have the right to ensure an honest vote. In other words, I was right and everyone knows it. If there is fraud or large scale irregularities, it would have been appropriate to send those votes back to the legislatures to figure it out. The Dems and RINOs want to take that right away. A great opportunity lost, but not forever, in the meantime our Country is going to hell!
💽 PublicNotice, Aaron Rupar: Fox & Friends preemptively hammered Biden for a bad jobs report. They were only off by 750k jobs. http://bit.ly/3rs7mjN “Oops”
🐣 RT @RepRaskin It’s official. Lincoln’s party of “liberty and Union” is now Trump’s party of violence and disunion. His cultists just called sedition, beating up cops and a coup ‘legitimate political discourse.’ They censured Cheney & Kinzinger for not bowing to the orange autocrat. Disgrace.
🧵 RT @EvanMcMullin “Legitimate political discourse?” I don’t think so. 📌 https://twitter.com/EvanMcMullin/status/1489759830239846405/photo/1
🐣 RT @RobReiner It’s official. In endorsing the mob who violently attempted to overthrow the Government, the Republican Party has firmly planted its flag in Authoritarianism. If you care about the Rule of Law, the Constitution, and our Democracy, it’s all hands on deck. This can not stand.
🐣 RT @marceelias 🚨BREAKING: North Carolina Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN Republican’s congressional and state legislative redistricting plans. Huge victory for voters of North Carolina. @EliasLawGroup @DemRedistrict
⋙ DemocracyDocket: North Carolina Congressional Partisan Gerrymandering (Harper II) http://bit.ly/3Gsn5nh🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Pence abandons trump. 1/6 committee uncovers a phone call between trump and Gym Jordan the morning of the insurrection. Powell penned the voting machines EO. GA DA adds false electors to her investigation… You know what would really put a cherry on top of the news day?
WaPo: Putin and Xi, united at Olympics, air shared grievances against absent U.S. amid Ukraine standoff http://wapo.st/35FPNnS Make no mistake: US weakness on Ukraine will embolden China’s claims over Taiwan which produces ~92% of the world’s advanced microchips
Their sweeping joint statement to mark the occasion was a unified blast at the United States — and some of the major impasses between Russia and the West playing out with Moscow’s forces massed near Ukraine’s border.
They expressed opposition to NATO enlargement and called out “actors representing but the minority on the international scale” who “continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues.” …
Xi, who has not met another foreign leader in person in almost two years amid the pandemic, said China and Russia “firmly support each other in safeguarding their core interests,” according to a summary of the meeting by China’s state news agency Xinhua.
The Chinese and Russian statement touched on issues of concern to one or both countries, from Taiwan to the centrality of the U.N. Security Council to Japan’s handling of water from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster site. It touted each country’s status as a “world power” and ruminated — at length — on the true meaning of democracy and human rights.
“Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” the statement said, and “intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext.”
Washington and its allies “have an array of tools” that can be deployed against “foreign companies, including those in China” that attempt to evade potential punitive measures against Russia, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday. He declined to offer specifics, but Western officials have floated penalties on Russian financial institutions, curbs on U.S. technology exports and personal sanctions against Kremlin leaders and their associates.
Analysts noted that Chinese support could embolden the Kremlin. The last time China hosted the Olympics, in the summer of 2008, Russia invaded Georgia as Putin watched that event’s Opening Ceremonies in Beijing.
China and Russia have grown closer in the years since. Beijing is frustrated by Western criticism of its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and its aggressive stance on Taiwan, while Moscow has justified its massing of troops near Ukraine by citing the expansion of NATO into what Putin sees as Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. …
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, speaking later in the day at a briefing, sought to remind China that “a destabilizing conflict in Europe would impact China’s interests all over the world, and certainly China should know that.”
💙 NYT: ‘Trump Is Wrong,’ Pence Says of False Claim About Overturning Election http://nyti.ms/3rrfcdk “‘The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes,’ he said. ‘If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country’”
// Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a speech on Friday that he had no right to overturn the 2020 election, as the former president has falsely claimed.Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday offered his most forceful rebuke of Donald Trump, saying that Mr. Trump is “wrong” that Mr. Pence had the legal authority to change the results of the 2020 election and that the Republican Party must accept the outcome and look toward the future.
Speaking to a gathering of conservatives near Orlando, Fla., the former vice president said he shares “the disappointment so many feel about the last election” but repudiated Mr. Trump’s claims that Mr. Pence had the legal authority to reject Electoral College results and alter the outcome last year.
“President Trump is wrong,” said Mr. Pence, in his remarks before the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. “I had no right to overturn the election.” …
[T]ensions have been rising in recent days between the two men. As Mr. Pence positions himself for a possible presidential bid in 2024, Mr. Trump has pushed more intensely a false narrative aimed at blaming his former vice president for failing to stop President Biden from taking office.
“Whatever the future holds, I know we did our duty that day,” Mr. Pence said. “I believe the time has come to focus on the future.”
Legal scholars and officials from both parties say the vice president does not have the power to overturn elections. Mr. Pence agrees with that interpretation of the law: In a letter to Congress sent the morning of the Capitol attack, Mr. Pence rejected the president’s claims, writing that the Constitution “constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Pence could have “overturned the election” in a statement denouncing a bipartisan push to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The former president and his allies misinterpreted that century-old law in their failed bid to persuade Mr. Pence to throw out legitimate election results. And on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said the congressional committee investigating the role of his administration in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol should instead examine “why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval.” …
As the attackers raided the Capitol that day, some chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Mr. Trump initially brushed aside calls from aides and allies to call them off. Since then, Mr. Trump has defended the chants as understandable because, as he said in an interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, “the people were very angry” about the election.
💙 NYT: ‘Trump Is Wrong,’ Pence Says of False Claim About Overturning Election http://nyti.ms/3rrfcdk “‘The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes,’ he said. ‘If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country’”
// Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a speech on Friday that he had no right to overturn the 2020 election, as the former president has falsely claimed.WaPo: ‘Remain in Mexico’ is back under Biden, with little resemblance to the Trump version http://wapo.st/3J4Xxyd After a court order, “the Biden administration has re-implemented the program with a narrow scope and none of the zeal demonstrated by Trump officials”
NBCNews: At RNC gathering, rift emerges between Trump’s interests and the GOP’s http://nbcnews.to/3HwWNkY “A goal of the RNC winter meetings … was for Republicans to project ‘unity.’ Yet Trump remains a source of division that has spilled into the party’s gathering”
// “I think the more you try to look backwards, the less likely you’re going to succeed in this business going forward,” one state GOP chairman said.🧵 RT @GOPChairwoman This story from the New York Times is completely false. ¤ It’s not journalism, it’s the worst type of baseless political propaganda. 📌 https://twitter.com/GOPChairwoman/status/1489693128252698631/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @GOPChairwoman Cheney and Kinzinger chose to join Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol. ¤ The NYT needs to correct this story now, or again expose themselves as political hacks.
⋙⋙ 🐣 none of the people the @January6thCmte are investigating are “ordinary citizens”; the only “discourse“ the “ordinary citizens” are known for was screaming “Hang Mike Pence!“ and “Where’s Nancy?!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @GOPChairwoman I have repeatedly condemned violence on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, this committee has gone well beyond the scope of the events of that day.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Advice: Smart to read things you’re bringing to a vote before you ask for the vote
↥ ↧
NYT: GOP Declares Jan. 6 Attack ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’ http://nyti.ms/3orIFC5 “It was an extraordinary statement about the deadliest attack on the Capitol in 200 years. … Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured”
// The Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol.The Republican National Committee’s overwhelming voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.
On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
It was an extraordinary statement about the deadliest attack on the Capitol in 200 years, in which a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the complex, brutalizing police officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured. The party passed the resolution without discussion and almost without dissent.
WaPo: RNC votes to condemn Cheney, Kinzinger for serving on House committee investigating Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump mob http://wapo.st/3onxSsA “History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic.” Cheney said
// Party leaders meeting in Salt Lake City move a censure resolution against the congresswoman from Wyoming and prepare to fund her primary opponent“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy. I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what,” Cheney said.
In a party that continues to embrace Trump, Cheney and Kinzinger have stood out as being among the few congressional Republicans to criticize denounce the former president’s actions. Joining them on Friday was Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who criticized the actions of the RNC in a tweet, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican.
“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” Romney, the uncle of Ronna McDaniel, said. “Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”
⭕ 3 Feb 2022
🐣 RT @AmbDanFried It’s not about Ukraine in NATO. Or “NATO in Ukraine.” It’s about democracy in Ukraine and why Putin hates it. @anneapplebaum’s essay worth reading.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The Reason Putin Would Risk War http://bit.ly/3on3NcG For Putin and other KGB operatives, the fall of the USSR was not a time of rejoicing, but rather a lesson in the nature of democratic movements, that prodemocracy activists might come for him too
// He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he wants democracy to fail—and not just in that country.… [T]he Soviet ties of the Russian president, most notably his years spent as a KGB officer, matter a great deal. Indeed, many of his tactics—the use of sham Russian-backed “separatists” to carry out his war in eastern Ukraine, the creation of a puppet government in Crimea—are old KGB tactics, familiar from the Soviet past. Fake political groupings played a role in the KGB’s domination of Central Europe after World War II; sham separatists played a role in the Bolshevik conquest of Ukraine itself in 1918.
Putin’s attachment to the old U.S.S.R. matters in another way as well. Although he is sometimes incorrectly described as a Russian nationalist, he is in fact an imperial nostalgist. The Soviet Union was a Russian-speaking empire, and he seems, at times, to dream of re-creating a smaller Russian-speaking empire within the old Soviet Union’s borders.
But the most significant influence on Putin’s worldview has nothing to do with either his KGB training or his desire to rebuild the U.S.S.R. Putin and the people around him have been far more profoundly shaped, rather, by their path to power. That story—which has been told several times, by the authors Fiona Hill, Karen Dawisha, and most recently Catherine Belton—begins in the 1980s. The later years of that decade were, for many Russians, a moment of optimism and excitement. The policy of glasnost—openness—meant that people were speaking the truth for the first time in decades. Many felt the real possibility of change, and they thought it could be change for the better.
Putin missed that moment of exhilaration. Instead, he was posted to the KGB office in Dresden, East Germany, where he endured the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a personal tragedy. As the world’s television screens blared out the news of the Cold War’s end, Putin and his KGB comrades in the doomed Soviet satellite state were frantically burning all of their files, making calls to Moscow that were never returned, fearing for their lives and their careers. For KGB operatives, this was not a time of rejoicing, but rather a lesson about the nature of street movements and the power of rhetoric: democratic rhetoric, antiauthoritarian rhetoric, anti-totalitarian rhetoric. Putin, like his role model Yuri Andropov, who was the Soviet ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 revolution there, concluded from that period that spontaneity is dangerous. Protest is dangerous. Talk of democracy and political change is dangerous. To keep them from spreading, Russia’s rulers must maintain careful control over the life of the nation. Markets cannot be genuinely open; elections cannot be unpredictable; dissent must be carefully “managed” through legal pressure, public propaganda, and, if necessary, targeted violence.
But although Putin missed the euphoria of the ’80s, he certainly took full part in the orgy of greed that gripped Russia in the ’90s. Having weathered the trauma of the Berlin Wall, Putin returned to the Soviet Union and joined his former colleagues in a massive looting of the Soviet state. With the assistance of Russian organized crime as well as the amoral international offshore-money-laundering industry, some of the former Soviet nomenklatura stole assets, took the money out of the country, hid it abroad, and then brought the cash back and used it to buy more assets. Wealth accumulated; a power struggle followed. Some of the original oligarchs landed in prison or exile. Eventually Putin wound up as the top billionaire among all the other billionaires—or at least the one who controls the secret police.
This position makes Putin simultaneously very strong and very weak, a paradox that many Americans and Europeans find hard to understand. He is strong, of course, because he controls so many levers of Russia’s society and economy. Try to imagine an American president who controlled not only the executive branch—including the FBI, CIA, and NSA—but also Congress and the judiciary; The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News, and all of the other newspapers; and all major businesses, including Exxon, Apple, Google, and General Motors.
Putin’s control comes without legal limits. He and the people around him operate without checks and balances, without ethics rules, without transparency of any kind. They determine who can be a candidate in elections, and who is allowed to speak in public. They can make decisions from one day to the next—sending troops to the Ukrainian border, for example—after consulting no one and taking no advice. When Putin contemplates an invasion, he does not have to consider the interest of Russian businesses or consumers who might suffer from economic sanctions. He doesn’t have to take into account the families of Russian soldiers who might die in a conflict that they don’t want. They have no choice, and no voice.
And yet at the same time, Putin’s position is extremely precarious. Despite all of that power and all of that money, despite total control over the information space and total domination of the political space, Putin must know, at some level, that he is an illegitimate leader. He has never won a fair election, and he has never campaigned in a contest that he could lose. He knows that the political system he helped create is profoundly unfair, that his regime not only runs the country but owns it, making economic and foreign-policy decisions that are designed to benefit the companies from which he and his inner circle personally profit. He knows that the institutions of the state exist not to serve the Russian people, but to steal from them. He knows that this system works very well for a few rich people, but very badly for everyone else. He knows, in other words, that one day, prodemocracy activists of the kind he saw in Dresden might come for him too.
Putin’s awareness that his legitimacy is dubious has been on public display since 2011, soon after his rigged “reelection” to a constitutionally dubious third term. At that time, large crowds appeared not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg but several dozen other cities as well, protesting electoral fraud and elite corruption. Protesters mocked the Kremlin as a regime of “crooks and thieves,” a slogan popularized by the democracy activist Alexei Navalny; later, Putin’s regime would poison Navalny, nearly killing him. The dissident is now in a Russian jail. But Putin wasn’t just angry at Navalny. He also blamed America, the West, foreigners trying to destroy Russia. The Obama administration had, he said, organized the demonstrators; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of all people, had “given the signal” to start the protests. He had won the election, he declared with great passion, tears seeming to well up in his eyes, despite the “political provocations that pursue the sole objective of undermining Russia’s statehood and usurping power.”
In his mind, in other words, he wasn’t merely fighting Russian demonstrators; he was fighting the world’s democracies, in league with enemies of the state. Whether he really believed that crowds in Moscow were literally taking orders from Hillary Clinton is unimportant. He certainly understood the power of democratic language, of the ideas that made Russians want a fair political system, not a kleptocracy controlled by Putin and his gang, and he knew where they came from. Over the subsequent decade, he would take the fight against democracy to Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, where he would support extremist groups and movements in the hope of undermining European democracy. Russian state-controlled media would support the campaign for Brexit, on the grounds that it would weaken Western democratic solidarity, which it has. Russian oligarchs would invest in key industries across Europe and around the world with the aim of gaining political traction, especially in smaller countries like Hungary and Serbia. And, of course, Russian disinformation specialists would intervene in the 2016 American election.
All of which is a roundabout way of explaining the extraordinary significance, to Putin, of Ukraine. Of course Ukraine matters as a symbol of the lost Soviet empire. Ukraine was the second-most-populous and second-richest Soviet republic, and the one with the deepest cultural links to Russia. But modern, post-Soviet Ukraine also matters because it has tried—struggled, really—to join the world of prosperous Western democracies. Ukraine has staged not one but two prodemocracy, anti-oligarchy, anti-corruption revolutions in the past two decades. The most recent, in 2014, was particularly terrifying for the Kremlin. Young Ukrainians were chanting anti-corruption slogans, just like the Russian opposition does, and waving European Union flags. These protesters were inspired by the same ideals that Putin hates at home and seeks to overturn abroad. After Ukraine’s profoundly corrupt, pro-Russian president fled the country in February 2014, Ukrainian television began showing pictures of his palace, complete with gold taps, fountains, and statues in the yard—exactly the kind of palace Putin inhabits in Russia. Indeed, we know he inhabits such a palace because one of the videos produced by Navalny has already shown us pictures of it, along with its private ice-hockey rink and its hookah bar.
Putin’s subsequent invasion of Crimea punished Ukrainians for trying to escape from the kleptocratic system that he wanted them to live in—and it showed Putin’s own subjects that they too would pay a high cost for democratic revolution. The invasion also violated both written and unwritten rules and treaties in Europe, demonstrating Putin’s scorn for the Western status quo. Following that “success,” Putin launched a much broader attack: a series of attempted coups d’état in Odessa, Kharkiv, and several other cities with a Russian-speaking majority. This time, the strategy failed, not least because Putin profoundly misunderstood Ukraine, imagining that Russian-speaking Ukrainians would share his Soviet imperial nostalgia. They did not. Only in Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine where Putin was able to move in troops and heavy equipment from across the border, did a local coup succeed. But even there he did not create an attractive “alternative” Ukraine. Instead, the Donbas—the coal-mining region that surrounds Donetsk—remains a zone of chaos and lawlessness.
It’s a long way from the Donbas to France or the Netherlands, where far-right politicians hang around the European Parliament and take Russian money to go on “fact-finding missions” to Crimea. It’s a longer way still to the small American towns where, back in 2016, voters eagerly clicked on pro-Trump Facebook posts written in St. Petersburg. But they are all a part of the same story: They are the ideological answer to the trauma that Putin and his generation of KGB officers experienced in 1989. Instead of democracy, they promote autocracy; instead of unity, they try constantly to create division; instead of open societies, they promote xenophobia. Instead of letting people hope for something better, they promote nihilism and cynicism.
Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.
These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.
CNN: Arizona Republican House speaker effectively dooms GOP bill to allow state legislature to reject election results http://cnn.it/3ATPBwZ’
A Republican bill that would have overhauled elections in Arizona — including giving the state legislature the power to reject election results — proved to be too much even for state GOP leaders this week.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, quietly doomed House Bill 2596 on Tuesday with an unusual parliamentary maneuver. ¤ The speaker assigns all new bills to a committee for consideration before they can have full House votes, a choice that often has a great effect on a measure’s chance of success. But on Tuesday, Bowers took the unprecedented step of ordering all 12 House committees to consider the elections bill, virtually ensuring it will never reach the floor.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Republican state Rep. John Fillmore, referred to the move as a “12-committee lynching” in an interview with CNN affiliate KPHO/KTVK.
Under the bill, Arizona legislators would meet in a special session to review the ballot tabulating process for primary and general elections and decide whether to “accept or reject election results.” If the legislature rejected the results, “any qualified elector may file an action in the Superior Court to request that a new election be held,” the bill says.
The legislation would have made several significant changes to the battleground state’s election procedures, such as mandating that voting occur only on Election Day and in person. ¤ In doing so, the bill would have eliminated early voting and the state’s widely used vote-by-mail program, which does not require an excuse to vote absentee. ¤ Fillmore’s proposal would have required voting by only paper ballots, banning electronic machines for all voters except for those with disabilities. ¤ The bill would have also required that ballots be counted by hand, instead of using electronic equipment to tabulate election results — and returns completed within 24 hours after polls close.
Two senators, including the Senate president pro tempore, Vince Leach, and a dozen other state Republican House lawmakers had signed on as sponsors to the bill.
Bowers told Capitol Media Services that there is no way the bill will secure approval from each House committee and that the provision allowing state lawmakers to reject election results is unacceptable. ¤ “We gave the authority to the people,” he told the outlet.
Bowers also objected to the proposal to hand-count all ballots, according to the outlet, telling Capitol Media Services that “there’s individual elements (of the bill) that harm accuracy, speed and dependability of a vote,” adding: “And if I can stop it, I’m not going to let that happen.”
Fillmore had previously told CNN that he’s trying to “ensure the integrity of the voting process.” ¤ He argued that lawmakers should have the authority as “representatives of the people” to review the vote count. ¤ “If there’s a problem, we’re not overturning anything. We’re just trying to put the skids on it and say, ‘This has to be adjudicated,'” he said.
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 NEW: GOP officials in Salt Lake City quietly passed a rule this week that would allow party to fund & help Liz Cheney’s competitor. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel worked behind scenes to edit & push a resolution calling Cheney a “destructive force” in GOP.
⋙ WaPo: Republicans rebuke Liz Cheney in unprecedented moves http://wapo.st/3onxSsA
// Party leaders meeting in Salt Lake City move a censure resolution against the congresswoman from Wyoming and prepare to fund her primary opponent🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Pence’s aides wouldn’t testify about conversations with Trump b/c his legal team instructed them not to under the guise of exec privilege. Pres Biden, who has the final say on privilege will want a word as may SCOTUS, which has already ruled against Trump.
⋙ CNN: Pence aides decline to talk about direct conversations with Trump even as they answer other questions http://cnn.it/3ooHx2a🧵 RT @djrothkopf The successful strike against the ISIS leader in Syria while a massive, complex NATO-wide response to the Russian threat in Ukraine and parallel negotiations are on-going, sensitive nuclear discussions with Iran are continuing and… https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1489245935020433416
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf …the US is piecing together a new security architecture in China (to pick just a few headline items) is just a sign of the extremely high-functioning and ambitious foreign policy and national security teams of the Biden Administration.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf The media will poke at it for holes and write about the downsides or risks but it will neglect the upside. There was plenty wrong with the exit from Afghanistan but ending America’s longest war when the past 3 admins could not and did not was the bigger story.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf I’ve been writing and teaching about foreign policy for 30 years and, I’m willing to admit, it’s not a tough job. It’s a test on which no administration gets a perfect score. Something always goes wrong or is neglected and so there is always something to criticize.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf But during those 30 years, I’ve seldom if ever seen a group as capable and competent as this team from @POTUS and @SecBlinken and @JakeSullivan46 on down. In fact, I would go further. The US has for most of the past 3 decades been pretty bad at foreign policy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf Bush was a disaster. Obama was smart, earnest & idealistic but too cautious. Trump was another catastrophe. They are signs this group has learned much from those experiences. We can’t count on their always being successful. (Quite the contrary, they won’t be.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf But we’re seeing a team come together (and many key positions have just been recently filled…and still others remain open due to foot-dragging in the confirmation process) that is off to an exceptionally promising start.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf As it turns out, it matters if a president understands foreign policy. That doesn’t happen very often in the US. But when it does (see George HW Bush, Nixon, Eisenhower) the results are often better than when there are long learning curves. (Though again–always mixed.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf We watch any such team with caution but their capacity and their ability to learn from their mistakes is promising and worthy of note.🐣 RT @ryanstruk ROMNEY: “Secretary Blinken and other members of the administration have done a dutiful job negotiating with the Russians, but also a heroic job linking with our allies, and making sure that Russia understands it’s not just the U.S. but it’s all of us that have come together.”
🐣 RT @AdamKinzinger My statement on the RNC censure. I am now even more committed to fighting conspiracies and lies:
Text Block: https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1489426277933195265/photo/1“I’ve been a member of the Republican Party long before Donald Trump entered the field. My values and core beliefs remain the same and have not wavered. I’m a conservative who believes in truth, freedom, and upholding the Constitution of the United States. Rather than focus their efforts on how to help the American people, my fellow Republicans have chosen to censure two lifelong Members of their party for simply upholding their oaths of office. They’ve allowed conspiracies and toxic tribalism hinder their ability to see clear-eyed. My efforts will continue to be focused on standing up for truth and working to fight the political matrix that’s led us to this point.”
🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump now fears betrayal, as he should. He fears the widespread emergence of truth in a way he cannot control. Mostly, he fears humiliation. Being charged with crimes. The exposure of his lifetime of secrets and lies. Loss of relevance. Loss of grift. Being proven to be a loser.
🐣 RT @RepAdamShiff First, Cruz begs forgiveness for saying Jan 6 attackers were terrorists.
Now, Hawley echoes the Kremlin, questioning if Ukraine should be allowed in NATO.
Welcome to Trump’s GOP, where propaganda is policy and Senators grovel at the feet of despots.🐣 RT @jefftimmer Biff McBloatyface has entered the “smearing feces on the walls” phase of his psychosis. https://twitter.com/jefftimmer/status/1489375119331971076/photo/1
Statement by Donald J. Trump,
45th President of the United States of AmericaWhy isn’t the corrupt Unselect Committee of political hacks and highly partisan sleazebags in Washington investigating the massive voter fraud and irregularities that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election, rather than spending all of its time investigating those who were protesting its result? It was the Crime of the Century! Large-scale proof of fraud and serious irregularities exist all over the place. Also, why is Crazy Nancy Pelosi and her files, which reportedly have been largely destroyed and deleted, not under investigation for not properly securing the Capitol with Soldiers or the National Guard that were strongly recommended to her by me and others? I knew the crowd would be extraordinarily large because they were protesting the RIGGED ELECTION. Capitol security was her job, not the President’s, and the American people now know that. If she did with security what she should have, there would have been no “January 6” as we know it. The Fake Unselect Committee wants nothing to do with that subject because they know it was the fault of Nancy Pelosi and, to a lesser extent, the Mayor of D.C. So, if I recommend Soldiers and if she refused to use them, why am I, and those around me, responsible for anything? We’re not, plain and simple!
WaPo: U.S. accuses Russia of planning to film false attack as pretext for Ukraine invasion http://wapo.st/3rqIlpl “[T]he resulting propaganda footage could include ‘graphic scenes of a staged false explosion with corpses’”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I assumed that this would be the Russian first move: Stage a provocation. Old-school USSR stuff.
⋙ 🧵 RT @RepSlotkin Just had a classified briefing on Russia/Ukraine from the SecDef, SecState, DNI and others. It was a powerful reminder of just how much warfare has changed.
📌 https://twitter.com/RepSlotkin/status/1489356522878648328
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RepSlotkin The administration has declassified intelligence on the Russians’ plan to film a fake Ukrainian attack on their forces, complete with a staged set, actors, even fake bodies — all to justify an invasion. Just insane behavior.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RepSlotkin Disinformation & misinformation are real tools in the Russian toolkit, as are cyberattacks that could deliberately target American & NATO civilians. With 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s border, Putin’s achilles heel is what his own people think of him, so let’s use it against him.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RepSlotkin To the Ukrainian people: if Russia does invade, take your cell phones with you everywhere you go. Flood the internet with pictures and videos with all the embarrassing content you can get for the Russian people to see. Help them see their leader for what he is: a fraud & a thug.⭕ 2 Feb 2022
NYT: Memos Show Roots of Trump’s Focus on Jan. 6 and Alternate Electors http://nyti.ms/ 3glZutG
// Just over two weeks after Election Day, lawyers working with the Trump campaign set out a rationale for creating alternate slates of electors as part of an effort to buy time to overturn the results.Fifteen days after Election Day in 2020, James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, received a memo setting out what became the rationale for an audacious strategy: to put in place alternate slates of electors in states where President Donald J. Trump was trying to overturn his loss.
The memos show how just over two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Trump’s campaign was seeking to buy itself more time to undo the results. At the heart of the strategy was the idea that their real deadline was not Dec. 14, when official electors would be chosen to reflect the outcome in each state, but Jan. 6, when Congress would meet to certify the results.
And in that focus on Jan. 6 lay the seeds of what became a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to accept the validity of a challenge to the outcome and to block Congress from finalizing Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory — a campaign that would also lead to a violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters and an extraordinary rupture in American politics. …
… Even before they were written, legislative leaders in Arizona and Wisconsin sought advice from their own lawyers about whether they had the power to alter slates of electors after the election took place and were effectively told they did not, according to new documents obtained by American Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Mr. Trump has long embraced the scheme. Just this past weekend, he issued a statement reiterating that he was justified in using the process in Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the outcome and asserting that Mr. Pence “could have overturned the election.”
The plan to employ alternate electors was one of Mr. Trump’s most expansive efforts to stave off defeat, beginning even before some states had finished counting ballots and culminating in the pressure placed on Mr. Pence when he presided over the joint congressional session on Jan. 6. …
WaPo: Alexander Vindman sues Trump Jr. and Giuliani, alleging retaliation over first Trump impeachment proceedings http://wapo.st/3HqIZIX
🐣 RT @HelenKennedy They filmed themselves fraudulently declaring themselves “duly elected.” Good job guys!
⋙ 🐣 💽 RT @AZGOP [12/14/2020] The Signing. https://twitter.com/HelenKennedy/status/1489010079932329987/photo/1🐣 RT @mkraju Graham stands by his statement after Trump calls him a “RINO” for saying it was “inappropriate” to suggest Jan. 6 rioters should be pardoned.
“Those who actively engage in violence for whatever political cause must be held accountable and not be forgiven.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1488974146549735431/photo/1U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham
February 2, 20221
“As a conservative, I firmly believe in law and order and support the police.
“I reject politically motivated violence in all forms. Those who take the law into their own hands for political reasons – whether thev are Antifa, Black Lives Matter protestors, the Proud Boys, or others – must be held accountable.
“I was in the Capitol on January 6 and know it was one of the darkest days in American history.
“I stand with the police officers who protect our streets, federal courthouses, and the United States Capitol against rioters. They deserve our respect and support and I will not second-guess the decisions they made under dire circumstances.
“For us to remain a nation of laws, not men, we must speak with one voice when it comes to politically motivated violence.
“All Americans are entitled to have a speedy trial and their day in court, but those who actively engage in violence for whatever political cause must be held accountable and not be forgiven.”🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 I read maybe 50 books a year. Politics. Finance. History. Military affairs. Most important this year. HITLER’S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS. Author Peter Fritzsche. Basic Books. Fascinating. Thought provoking. It’s a story of the total and rapid death of a democracy.
NBCNews: ‘Havana Syndrome’ symptoms in small group most likely caused by directed energy, says U.S. intel panel of experts http://nbcnews.to/3HigexX //➔ (of course: it was already on #TheBlacklist lol)
// Injuries suffered by several dozen diplomats and spies were consistent with directed energy, the panel said. About 1,000 people have reported symptoms.🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking Politico: In the final days of his presidency, Trump seriously considered issuing a blanket pardon for all participants in the Jan. 6 riot, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
⋙ Politico: Trump considered blanket pardons for Jan. 6 rioters before he left office http://politi.co/3rkO5AG “He thought … these people would never have to testify or be deposed.” He thought wrong: Those pardoned admit guilt and can be compelled to testify against him
// The previously unreported conversations show the former president wasn’t simply musing when he floated pardoning the rioters if he runs and wins in 2024.Between Jan. 6 and Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump made three calls to one adviser to discuss the idea. “Do you think I should pardon them? Do you think it’s a good idea? Do you think I have the power to do it?” Trump told the person, who summarized their conversations.
Another adviser to the former president said Trump asked questions about how participants in the riot might be charged criminally, and how a uniform pardon could provide them protection going forward.
“Is it everybody that had a Trump sign or everybody who walked into the Capitol” who could be pardoned? Trump asked, according to that adviser. “He said, ‘Some people think I should pardon them.’ He thought if he could do it, these people would never have to testify or be deposed.”
The previously unreported conversations show that Trump wasn’t simply musing when he told supporters at a Texas rally last weekend that he would consider pardoning people prosecuted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack if he runs for president again in 2024 and wins. Even in the immediate aftermath of the riot, Trump was expressing sympathy for those involved and weighing how he could shield them from legal consequences.
WaPo: As Trump rages, a new plan to prevent a 2024 coup quietly advances http://wapo.st/34tCCWq “The plan in question concerns reform of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how Congress counts electoral votes”
// Senator Angus KingWaPo: Biden dispatching additional U.S. troops to Eastern Europe http://wapo.st/3HuQjmY “[A]bout 3,000 service members are expected to deploy in the coming days, U.S. officials said Wednesday”
⭕ 1 Feb 2022
WaPo Editorial: Putin is trying to wipe out the work of his strongest opponent. He won’t succeed. http://wapo.st/3B21GQF
Alexei Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader, often said President Vladimir Putin runs a party of “crooks and thieves.” Mr. Putin’s security forces subsequently attempted to assassinate Mr. Navalny with a military-grade chemical weapon; when he survived, the regime unjustly handed him a prison sentence a year ago Wednesday and later outlawed his organization as “extremist.”
🐣 RT @PeterStrzok “The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government.” ¤ – Chief Justice Roberts, 2021 Report on the Federal Judiciary
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NoLieWithBTC JUST IN: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will be speaking at a Federalist Society event in Florida along with Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Kayleigh McEnany. They are not allowing journalists to attend.
⋙ 🐣 isn’t it better that they be openly hypocritical
than hypocritical in private?🐣 RT @CultExpert The Cult of Trump is actually comprised of MANY other Christian cults. ¤ In this post, I will list these cults, will tell you prominent members, will tell you what they believe, and will explain how their Dominionist vision affects our political system. ¤ Long 🧵 ahead! Buckle up: …
📌 https://twitter.com/CultExpert/status/1488552760828116994⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert Trump is quite obviously an imperfect, seemingly un-Christian figure. He’s a, known philanderer, a crook, and a pathological liar, but the Christian Right has been able to justify their support for him by casting him as a modern-day “King Cyrus.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert (In the bible, the pagan King Cyrus freed a population of Jews who were held captive in Babylon and helped to build the temple in Jerusalem. Cyrus is presented as a model for an ungodly man who carries out God’s purposes). […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert According to the @washingtonpost, Opus Dei’s small Washington Center has “an outsize impact on policy and politics.” Membership in the group is small-only 3,000 in the U.S. and 85,000 worldwide, but the group focuses on “quality not quantity.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert For years, the center was under the direction of Rev. C. John McCloskey (later relocated for groping a young woman). McCloskey recruited then-Senator Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Sam Brownback, & others. ¤ On the board of the CIC, is VP of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert Leo & The Federalist Society have long sought a right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court. Leo helped block Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland and campaigned to put conservative justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett on the bench.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert William Barr (along with Pat Cipillone before he was appointed White House Counsel) was one of the 8 member CIC Board of Directors before becoming Attorney General. In 1992, Barr gave a speech calling for “the imposition of God’s Law in America.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert Many experts contend that Barr’s handling of the Mueller Report was consistent with the Opus Dei mindset to “put away your scruples for the good of the organization/mission.” ¤ For more on Opus Dei, see the book “American Kompromat” by @craigunger. […]
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert Moon started (and his org still runs) the Washington Times propaganda paper in Washington D.C. ¤ The @WashTimes has published many phony stories that have informed other groups in the broader Cult of Trump, as well as penetrated the mainstream including:
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert -Seth Rich conspiracy
-ANTIFA really stormed the Capitol
-COUNTLESS climate change denial stories
Moon had ties to Nixon, Reagan, & George H.W. Bush (and his legacy is now part of the world of Trump and Pence).
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert There are many other smaller cults closely affiliated with the cult of Trump (including “People of Praise” of which Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a member), but these are the big ones.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert I want to close by stressing that most mainstream Christians-including the 38 member denominations of the National Council of Churches, most Catholics, and many evangelicals are not members of cults and reject theocratic strategies and ideas!
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert But it is important to underscore that the political movement we call the Cult of Trump was founded and depends in part on a variety of other cults. It is the dominant force in a major political party and it is not to be underestimated. ¤ Thanks for reading and learning. 🙏
⋙ 🐣 RT @CultExpert If you want to learn more on this, I HIGHLY recommend following @FredClarkson. Fred’s work was invaluable to me when writing “The Cult of Trump” and he is a wealth of knowledge on this topic. ) 🙏🐣 RT @KOVO1029 @maddow reports tonight on #MSNBC that #Trump PAC gave $1 million dollars to nonprofit that #MarkMeadows works for. This payment was made around the same time that Meadows stopped cooperating with #January6th committee. Hey Merrick Garland you listening?
Text Block: /photo/1 https://twitter.com/KOVO1029/status/1488700223484575746/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 ? RT @HermioneIsHere If I’m not mistaken, Rachel said that Meadows Nonprofit organization received the $1M in the 3rd week of July. ¤ But Meadows stopped cooperating I believe, around December 7th. (I remember because of Perl Harbor).🐣 RT @pbump Finally sat down and walked through Trump’s post-election efforts, centered on trying to prove fraud and then using his claims to get official action — until he ran out of time.
💙🔄 ⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: The sloppy, patchwork, spaghetti-at-the-wall effort to steal the presidency http://wapo.st/3giK3CA 3-part ploy: “He tried to prove fraud. He tried to get elections officials to act as if there had been fraud. And then he just tried to steal the election”It’s worth beginning with the observation that it was all so obvious. President Donald Trump’s effort to secure a second term in office regardless of the will of the electorate was so ham-handed and clumsy that it was like watching a little kid do a magic trick: You knew what was coming and how it would work and you just had to let it play out. ¤ Although of course, this particular magic trick ends with the kid’s friend furiously trying to burn your house down.
As you review Trump’s efforts, patterns become apparent. While the overall effort to seize a second term in office was lengthy and complicated, none of the individual efforts to advance it went very far. This was almost never a function of Trump’s simply realizing that he was overreaching or his coming to understand that he was inappropriately crossing a boundary. It was, instead, because those against whom he was applying pressure resisted. At times, this was virtuous, as with Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to execute the last-ditch effort to block electoral-vote counting. At other times, it seems likely that the actions were self-serving, as when Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani objected to the seizure of voting machines as advocated by his rival, the attorney Sidney Powell. But it was others, including state-level institutions and even local actors, who applied the brakes to the plot. It was almost never Trump. … …
Trump’s intent was always no more complicated than that the election results should be ignored and that he should retain his position. Over the months, it was blanketed with rationales and dubious claims and legal thrusts and feints. He tried everything in his power and everything in everyone else’s power to hold onto the presidency. But none of the machinations and rationalizations of his allies should obscure from the obvious truth: Trump aimed to hold power however he could. And if that meant having his allies construct a ridiculous shaky veneer of authority to do so, so be it.
The question moving forward is how the likelihood of success in potential future efforts is lowered. How it stops somewhere before “armed members of the military intervene on behalf of democracy.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr refuses & resigns. DHS is a no. With new post-election appointees at DoD, all former living SecDefs write an Op-Ed demanding hands off & even Rudy agrees. So who keeps it moving-soliciting, attempting & conspiring to overthrow the election? The guy tearing up the records.
WaPo: Trump’s latest claim that election could have been ‘overturned’ looms over electoral count debate in Congress http://wapo.st/3rkaher weedsy
WaPo (2021): During Jan. 6 riot, Trump attorney told Pence team the vice president’s inaction caused attack on Capitol http://wapo.st/3bpbRTC
// 10/29/2021; discussed on MaddowNYT, Shane Goldmacher: Trump’s Words, and Deeds, Reveal Depths of His Drive to Retain Power http://nyti.ms/3GiAtKz
// Donald Trump said he wanted Mike Pence to overturn the election, dangled pardons for Jan. 6 rioters and called for protests against prosecutors. Now, it turns out, he had discussed having national security agencies seize voting machines.A series of new remarks by Donald J. Trump about the aftermath of the 2020 election and new disclosures about his actions in trying to forestall its result — including discussing the use of the national security apparatus to seize voting machines — have stripped away any pretense that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were anything but the culmination of the former president’s single-minded pursuit of retaining power.
Mr. Trump said on Sunday that Mike Pence “could have overturned the election,” acknowledging for the first time that the aim of the pressure campaign he focused on his vice president had simply been to change the election’s result, not just to buy time to root out supposed fraud, as he had long insisted. Those efforts ended at the Capitol with a violent riot of Trump supporters demanding that Mr. Pence block the Electoral College vote.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump also dangled, for the first time, that he could issue pardons to anyone facing charges for participating in the Jan. 6 attack if he is elected president again — the latest example of a yearslong flirtation with political violence.
And, ignoring what happened the last time he encouraged a mass demonstration, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to gather “in the biggest protests we have ever had” if prosecutors in New York and Atlanta moved further against him. The prosecutor examining Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Georgia immediately asked the F.B.I. to conduct a “risk assessment” of her building’s security. …
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said voters were understandably desensitized, if not numb, after a year in which Mr. Trump methodically sought to undermine faith in the electoral process.
“I actually think the American public is dramatically underplaying how significant and dangerous this is,” he said, “because we cannot process the basic truth of what we are learning about President Trump’s efforts — which is we’ve never had a president before who fundamentally placed his own personal interests above the nation’s.” …
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking NYT: The Jan. 6 Committee is scrutinizing Trump’s involvement in proposals to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, including efforts to create a legal basis for directing national security agencies to take such an extreme action.
⋙ NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Examining Trump’s Role in Proposals to Seize Voting Machines http://nyti.ms/3s8hXiT
// The House committee is looking into efforts by the former president’s outside advisers to create a legal basis for national security agencies to help reverse his defeat in 2020.WaPo: Trump says congressional investigators should examine why Pence didn’t reject electoral college results http://wapo.st/32OMVnA
Former president Donald Trump on Tuesday advocated a new focus for congressional investigators: why then-Vice President Mike Pence did not take steps on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject electoral college votes from several states won by Joe Biden. ¤ Trump’s exhortation came two days after he created an uproar with a statement suggesting Pence should have “overturned” the election as he presided over the counting of electoral college votes by Congress. ¤ In a fresh statement Tuesday, Trump offered a more nuanced take on what he would have liked to have seen from Pence, saying he “could have sent the votes back to various legislators for reassessment after so much fraud and irregularities were found.” ¤ There has been no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the election results in any of the battleground states won by Biden.
During a rally this past weekend in Texas, Trump suggested that he would pardon the rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection if he were elected president in 2024. ¤ Asked about Trump’s comments, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Tuesday that the storming of the Capitol “was an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another, which had never happened before in our country.” ¤ In the aftermath, McConnell said, 165 people have pled guilty to criminal behavior, and “my view is I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any of the people who pleaded guilty to crimes.”
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Blatant attempt to wash over his previous statement. But it cannot be undone with these false exculpatories.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney A new string of lies in this new Trump statement, but notably he says he wants *Pence* investigated for refusing to stop Biden’s election. https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1488511027847352321/photo/1Trump Statement: “So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a Vice President cannot ensure the honest results of the election, when just one year ago they said that “the Vice President has absolutely no right to ensure the true outcome or results of an election.” In other words, they lied, and the Vice President did have this right or, more pointedly, could have sent the votes back to various legislators for reassessment after so much fraud and irregularities were found. If it were sent back to the legislators, or if Nancy Pelosi, who is in charge of Capitol security, had taken my recommendation and substantially increased security, there would have been no “January 6” as we know it! Therefore, the Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!”
⭕ 31 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom “I don’t know if Americans care that much anymore… They care more about the price at the pump than the price of freedom.” – @juliaioffe just now on @DeadlineWH ¤ Sadly, true.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Well that was a bananas Monday night news dump. Ripped up archives, donald directly involved in trying to seize voting machines, Barr telling him there’s no evidence to do so, RUDY refusing to go along with it, Marc Short testifies; what could possibly be next?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Angered by the U.S. response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, with the “mother of all sanctions” on the horizon, Russia’s state TV has a message for Trump: ¤ “Donald, we’re waiting for you and are ready to elect you again.”
⋙ DailyBeast: Trump’s Mega-Fans in Moscow Declare They’re ‘Ready to Elect Him Again’ http://bit.ly/3ANgHFM “Kremlin-controlled talking heads seem to be signaling that Russia sees Trump’s potential return as a solution for all of its problems, to the detriment of NATO and the West”
// The U.S. response to Russian aggression in Ukraine has angered the Kremlin’s top pundits so much that they’re publicly implying they’ll help make Donald Trump president again.Trump’s comments encouraging the abandonment of Ukraine were also praised and repeatedly broadcast on Russian state television. His lambasting of NATO appears to fill Kremlin propagandists with nostalgic memories of what might have been. “Trump was ready to disband NATO,” Vladimir Soloviev, the host of state TV show The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, declared this weekend.
Covering Trump’s remarks at his recent Texas rally, state media outlet Vesti published a piece entitled “Trump discussed his friendship with Putin and said that Biden ruined everything.” Kremlin-controlled talking heads seem to be signaling that Russia sees Trump’s potential return as a solution for all of its problems, to the detriment of NATO and the West.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Mr. Trump’s public confession last night, all but daring the Attorney General to seek a grand jury indictment against him for seditious conspiracy and for giving aid and comfort to an insurrection to “overturn the election,” is the last straw. The Government must call his bluff.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Rep Raskin on Trump’s 1/30 memo: “Look no further for the Trump smoking gun: he admits his purpose – to overturn the election. His job was to uphold the Constitution, take care that laws would be faithfully executed. He trashed the Constitution and tried to execute the Republic.”
💙 WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump makes the coup-deniers look silly again http://wapo.st/3AP0bFt Trump “advocated something so anti-democratic that his own lawyers and vice president have said it was illegal, ‘crazy’ and ‘un-American.’” And it makes it clear he’d try it again.
This is precisely the thing Republicans and even Trump’s own lawyers have assured us wasn’t the real goal on Jan. 6 last year — or was even “crazy” or, in Pence’s own words, “un-American.” That’s despite plenty of evidence that it was indeed an option Trump pushed for, and now we have this confirmation.
Before we dive in, it’s worth distinguishing what this is about. There were basically two main options laid out for Pence on Jan. 6:
1. The more drastic one: Pence unilaterally rejecting election results from key states and trying to declare Trump the winner. (At this point, a House with a majority of Republican-controlled delegations would decide the matter, with one vote per delegation.)
2. The supposedly more palatable one: Pence declaring certain states’ results to be in question, and “sending it back to the states” to decide what to do with their electors, effectively buying some time. (The idea was that, because Republicans control many of the Biden-won states in question, those states might send alternate electors and let the House — again, with a majority of GOP-controlled delegations — decide the matter.)
The strategy ultimately landed on the second — not because Trump didn’t want to do the first, mind you, but because it became clear Pence had severe reservations about the whole thing.
And to get a taste of just how extreme Trump’s statement is, you need only look at how those around him have talked about it. ¤ In September, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa revealed the existence of the “Eastman memo,” which was essentially a step-by-step guide for how Trump could overturn the election on Jan. 6 — including the two options above. At the time, the idea that they would have actually pursued Option No. 1 was considered so extreme that the memo’s author, Trump lawyer John Eastman, and Eastman’s employer both distanced themselves from it. …
Trump, of course, has made little secret that he saw this as a viable path. He floated both options as late as Jan. 5, 2021, saying Pence could “also decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House of Representatives for the one-vote-for-one-state tabulation.”
He’s now reasserting, more than a year later, that that’s the path Pence should have indeed pursued. He’s advocated something so anti-democratic that his own lawyers and vice president have said it was illegal, “crazy” and “un-American.” That could certainly bear on both the Jan. 6 investigation — in that it reinforces Trump’s true motive — and the Electoral Count Act overhaul effort — in that it actually reinforces the need to clarify this.
But more than anything, it renders Republican efforts to suggest this was anything other than an attempted self-coup rather silly. And it also renders any suggestions that he wouldn’t try this kind of thing again even sillier.
TheGuardian: Quiet part loud: Trump says Pence ‘could have overturned the election’ http://bit.ly/3uclkrT “Though he has appeared to admit Biden won before, Trump usually insists he won and his opponent stole the election through voter fraud – the ‘big lie’”
// In statement protesting against reform of Electoral Count Act, ex-president appears to admit Joe Biden wonPundits seized on Trump’s latest apparent blunder into the truth. ¤ Bill Kristol, a conservative writer, said: “Talk about saying the quiet part loud. Trump here admits or rather boasts [about] what he wanted Mike Pence to do.”
Chris Krebs, fired as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under Trump but who pronounced the 2020 election “the most secure in US history”, said: “In the last 24 hours the former president: (1) floated pardons for [January 6] defendants, (2) encouraged civil unrest if he’s indicted in [Georgia or New York], (3) once again confirmed he pressured Pence to overturn a lawful election. ¤ He’s radicalizing his base to be his personal Brown Shirts.”
Olivia Troye, a former Pence aide, wrote: “Every Republican candidate and official should go on record with their answer: Do you support sedition and pardoning domestic terrorists?”
On Monday, Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans on the House committee investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, said: “Trump uses language he knows caused the January 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the January 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election. ¤ He’d do it all again if given the chance.”
🐣 RT @JillWineVance Trump Had Role in Weighing Proposals to Seize Voting Machines. The evidence grows daily. The slow-moving coup is now steam rolling along to create an autocracy. DOJ & #Jan6thCommittee must act and you must speak out.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Had Role in Weighing Proposals to Seize Voting Machines http://nyti.ms/3rgaYVZ Using the DOJ, DOD and Homeland Security were all proposed and argued over ~ and Trump was no bystander
// New accounts show that the former president was more directly involved than previously known in plans developed by outside advisers to use national security agencies to seek evidence of fraud.WaPo: Some records sent to Jan. 6 committee were torn up, taped back together — mirroring a Trump habit http://wapo.st/3riBm1i
// The National Archives confirmed Trump’s unusual habit of ripping up documents, which forced aides to attempt to piece them back together in order to comply with the Presidential Records Act.🐣 RT @shannonrwatts This weekend in Orlando, Nazis chanted “The Jew is the devil” and “Jews rape children and drink their blood.” Their signs read “VAX THE JEWS” and “Let’s go Brandon.” They gave Nazi salutes. ¤ This is not a drill, folks. It’s happening here.
💽 https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1487951878419668993/photo/1🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The ex-president having his ‘damn right I called the code red’ moment last night, confessing to the whole thing, a statement that reveals he did not win the 2020 election, that he simply wanted Mike Pence to overturn the real result of the election” – @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1488283609211584515/photo/1WaPo: Trump suggests Pence should have ‘overturned’ the election on Jan. 6 http://wapo.st/3ri2j5e
Trump Statement: “If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?” Trump said in his statement. “Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”
🐣 I don’t think anyone who voted against certification should be seated in Congress. Navarro and Giuliani have each said they briefed Republicans on the plan and rounded up the votes. Those who took part were all part of the Insurrection
WaPo: U.S., Russia clash sharply over Ukraine at U.N. meeting http://wapo.st/3o99tHh “The verbal confrontation, one of the sharpest in years in an international forum, was rife with historical references dating back to the end of World War II”
Russia and the United States clashed head to head at the United Nations on Monday over the situation in Ukraine, as each charged the other with lying about their intentions and promoting panic and hysteria to serve their own ends.
In a blistering attack, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said the United States was “provoking escalation” by falsely charging Moscow with preparing to invade Ukraine. “You’re waiting for it to happen, as if you want your words to become a reality,” he said in remarks directed toward U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
His remarks followed charges by Thomas-Greenfield that Russia was “attempting, without any factual basis, to paint Ukraine and Western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack” by positioning more than 100,000 heavily armed troops it has amassed on Ukraine’s border. …
TheHill: Psaki: Trump raising Jan. 6 pardons, overturning election a reminder he’s unfit http://bit.ly/3ge7Zak
On Sunday night, amid talk in Congress of reforming the Electoral Count Act, Trump argued that former Vice President Mike Pence should have unilaterally “changed the outcome” of last November’s election, his clearest admission to date that he wanted the results completely thrown out so he could remain in power.
“If the Vice President [Mike Pence] had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the presidential election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the vice president to change the results of the election?” Trump asked.
Trump’s remarks have drawn backlash from members of his own party. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) both called Trump’s promise of pardons inappropriate, and his comments on Sunday night drew condemnation from others.
⭕ 30 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @mbk_center Putin gambled that US & EU were weak & NATO divided. He expected his show of force would create internal divisions,forcing NATO to agree to his terms, but his threats strengthened 🇺🇸 & 🇪🇺determination & unified NATO. He even miscalculated the 🇮🇪 fishermen 🎣 and 🐟 resolve. Now he’s boxed in
🐣 RT @Calindel Crazy how it was “undercover Antifa insurgents” who attacked the capitol, not Trump supporters. But now he is willing to pardon them if he’s elected. Hmph. Strange.
NYT: Trump Says He Would Consider Pardons for Jan. 6 Defendants if Elected http://nyti.ms/3uaLsU3
// In a speech in Texas, the former president also urged supporters to stage protests if prosecutors in Atlanta and New York took action against him.🐣 RT @ASlavitt I appreciate all the retrospectives on Biden’s first year. ¤ Now I’m waiting for all the retrospectives on our first year without constant lying, self-dealing, media attacks, appeasing dictators, denying the virus, racism & xenophobia from the White House. ¤ Forget at our peril.
🐣 RT @georgeconway3d Tfg really is dumb as a rock.
🐣 RT @adamkinzinger “He could have overturned the election.” This is an admission, and a massively un-American statement. It is time for every Republican leader to pick a side… Trump or the Constitution, there is no middle on defending our nation anymore.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This feels like a massive shift from “stolen election/election fraud” to “I pressured Pence to overturn the election.” A last resort. Maybe he knows he’s going to jail & is now inciting his base to violence again. A final, desperate move to take the country down with him
🐣 RT @oliviatroye Trump boasting in his latest statement: the goal was to overturn the election—after touting at his rally that he’ll pardon Jan 6 insurrectionists. Every Republican candidate & official should go on record with their answer: Do you support sedition & pardoning domestic terrorists?
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Old enough to remember when it would have been shocking to see a former president admit that his goal was to have “overturned the Election.”
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman “He could have overturned the election.” ¤ Prosecutors thank you for that admission. It will be helpful evidence as they evaluate your true intent.
🐣 RT @marceelias There are many real heroes in the fight for democracy. I am just one lawyer of many doing what I can. ¤ But people who complain that I am too brash or aggressive should take look at what our democracy is up against and ask themselves what they are doing when democracy is at stake.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is what prosecutors call guilty knowledge. And also, intent. Predicting Trump will write it off as a)a joke or b)locker room talk and GOP electeds will shake their heads in agreement.
🐣 RT @harrylitman 100% ¤ Amazing
🐣 RT @Acosta Coup coup for Cocoa Puffs.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Talk about saying the quiet part loud. Trump here admits or rather boasts that what he wanted Mike Pence to do was to “overturn the election.”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1487939062363262981/photo/1“Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
“If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had “absolutely no right” to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”
⭕ 29 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @DavidCayJ Smart insight:
⋙ 🐣 RT @DeanBaker13 I assume all the bogus electors are looking at life in prison — after all, one improper vote got a woman in Texas five years in jail.WaPo: U.S. says Russia ‘clearly’ now has capability to attack as Ukraine complains of Western panic http://wapo.st/3Gb1m2Y
The United States does not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin has reached a decision on whether to again attack Ukraine, but Moscow “clearly now has that capability” to seize important territories from Kyiv, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday.
The Pentagon chief told reporters that Russia has continued to use disinformation channels to manufacture a pretext for a renewed invasion, but added that Putin can still “do the right thing” by calling off the more than 100,000 troops he has stationed near Ukraine’s borders and by pursuing a diplomatic solution.
Washington “remains committed to helping Ukraine defend itself through security assistance material,” Austin added. “Whatever [Putin] decides, the United States will stand with our allies and partners.” (Kyiv is not a NATO member and one of Moscow’s key demands is that the former Soviet state be permanently barred from joining the Western military alliance.)
Even as the West rushes billions of dollars worth of economic and military assistance to Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized how the United States and its close allies have handled the escalating tensions.
The 44-year-old leader faulted the West for waiting to impose more damaging sanctions on Moscow, while also assailing decisions by the United States, Britain and Australia to withdraw some embassy staff and families, and accusing his Western counterparts of inciting “panic” with repeated suggestions that an invasion was imminent.
U.S. intelligence, relying in part on satellite imagery, has found that Russia is massing forces around Ukraine in support of a potential multi-front incursion. Moscow is also stocking blood supplies for wounded troops near the border, Reuters reported late Friday, citing three unidentified U.S. officials.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the impasse remained at a standstill after a Friday morning call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron. Putin has demanded an end to NATO’s open-door policy toward new members and called on the Western alliance to withdraw military personnel and weapons from former Soviet states, saying their presence in the region is a threat to Russian security.
President Biden and his fellow NATO leaders have repeatedly affirmed the right of countries to enter the alliance if they choose. But Putin warned Macron that further NATO expansion was “unacceptable” to Russia, saying the U.S. and NATO response to Russia’s demands did not take into account Moscow’s key security concerns, the Kremlin said.s In response, Macron told Putin that Russia needs to respect the “essential principle of state sovereignty” to ensure security in Europe, according to a French official.
Putin left open the door for further diplomatic engagement, and on Monday, the United States will square off with Russia at the United Nations Security Council, a meeting requested by Washington. The Biden administration hopes to use the session to reaffirm support for Ukrainian territorial integrity, but Dmitry Polyanskiy, a top diplomat at Russia’s U.N. mission, tweeted that the meeting was a “clear PR stunt.”
⭕ 28 Jan 2022
WaPo, Timothy Schnyder: Putin’s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths http://wapo.st/3g6Gvn5
// The Russian leader doesn’t want to believe Ukraine exists. But that’s not how modern nations work.🧵 RT @anneapplebaum How American conservatives came to believe that Russia – where almost no one goes to church, a fifth of the population are not ethnic Russians, at least 6% are Muslim – is a “white Christian nation.” (from 2 years ago) 📌 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1487416212585959426
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic (2019): The False Romance of Russia http://bit.ly/2PcqNKe
// 12/12/2019; American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Remember those phony stories about Swedish and British “no-go zones” allegedly ruled by Sharia law? Russia has an actual province, Chechnya, that is officially ruled by Sharia law, requires women to be veiled and tortures gay men. It is a no-go zone, right inside Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Russia has an abortion rate nearly double that of the United States. Any form of Christianity outside of the state-controlled Orthodox Church is liable to be considered a cult. Only 15 percent of Russians are even interested in religion; only 5 percent have read the Bible.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum I am not writing this in order to attack Russians, but to mock the American far-right. They are just as stupid as the fellow travelers who imagined the Soviet Union was paradise, maybe even more so. There is a lot more information available now than there was in the 1930s.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok American conservatives who refuse to see Russia for what it actually is also refuse to accept America as it is. The common thread is denial of reality—delusional and/or strategic. There are surely those on the far-right who mostly believe they deserve power & like Putin’s help.🐣 RT @WalshFreedom I’m no longer a Republican because I believe:
1. Joe Biden won fair & square.
2. The vaccines save lives.
3. January 6th was an insurrection.
4. Democracy is better than authoritarianism.
5. Telling the truth matters.
6. Donald Trump is an unfit, anti-democratic demagogue.NBCNews, Lawrence Tribe and Dennis Aftergut: Trump’s rally in Texas can ignore his fake electors scandal. The Jan. 6 committee won’t. http://nbcnews.to/3IIG7ak
// Nothing short of convicting Trump will disqualify him from running in 2024 — and claiming the mantle of the martyred hero while doing it.[R]evelation of the phony electoral slates, together with a newly unearthed draft executive order that would have directed the Defense Department to confiscate voting machines, highlights the existence of something we have been calling “Plan A.” ¤ This plan was the first phase of the Trump administration’s plot to overturn the 2020 election.
The Capitol assault aimed at pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory — “Plan B” — would have been needed as a backup in the event “Plan A” failed. On Jan. 28, the select committee subpoenaed 14 of the “alternate electors” in the fraudulent electoral slate scheme. The select committee’s probe continues to accumulate evidence suggesting that the violence on Jan. 6 is inseparable from what led up to it.
At minimum, the criminal investigation of both parts of the plot involves potential charges under 18 USC §§ 371, 1512 and 2384 — defrauding the United States, “corruptly impeding” an official proceeding and seditiously conspiring against the government. ¤ Failure to include both parts of the scheme in any indictment of leaders would be a colossal error. Only by connecting all evidentiary dots of the entire plot can prosecutors show jurors that any attempted coup is criminal, all the worse when the failure of a nonviolent coup triggers bloodshed and death. ¤ The electoral slate scheme and the draft executive order to seize voting machines added pieces to the puzzle of all that was being planned behind the scenes before any insurrectionist stepped foot on the Capitol grounds.
Central to “Plan A” was getting Pence to delay Congress’ official declaration of Biden’s victory by halting the electoral count. To that end, CNN and The Washington Post have reported that members of the Trump campaign solicited Republicans in seven states to submit fraudulent alternate slates. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, helped oversee the effort. Republicans sent the phony certifications to the National Archives for forwarding to the Senate, but the National Archives rejected them.
Trump campaign lawyer Boris Epshteyn was involved, as well. He now admits his participation but pretends he was merely helping create the slates as “contingencies” in case some court somewhere finally found the original slates to be tainted by pervasive voter fraud. (More than 60 courts rejected Trump campaign lawsuits based on the “big lie,” and former Attorney General William Barr called Trump’s voter fraud claims “bull—-.”)
Unfortunately for Epshteyn’s “contingent slates” cover story, the “contingency” language appeared only in New Mexico’s and Pennsylvania’s certificates. In five states’ certificates, the language did not say that the documents had been submitted only “in case” a court invalidated the certified Democratic slate of electors. Rather, the Republican certificates declared falsely and unequivocally that they set forth the states’ official “duly appointed electors.” ¤ Notably, in Pennsylvania, the alternate “electors” had refused to sign the nonconditional version proposed by the Trump campaign. In combination with the five other states’ certificates including the original language, the Pennsylvania electors’ refusal affirms the Trump campaign’s fraudulent wording and design.
In connection with the scheme, the Justice Department should also investigate the involvement of GOP lawmakers like Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas. On Dec. 27, 2020, Gohmert filed a lawsuit seeking a judicial declaration that Pence had the constitutional power to decide what to do with competing slates. The suit falsely stated that “the State of Arizona (and several others) have appointed two competing slates of electors,” leaving little doubt about Gohmert’s knowledge of the fraudulent plan. (The suit was dismissed.)
Some parts of “Plan A” may have been hiding in plain sight, lost in a fire hose of conspiratorial lunacy. On Dec.18, 2020, we might have been excused for thinking retired Gen. Mike Flynn was on a loopy lark of his own when he said Trump “could immediately … seize every single one of these machines around the country.” As it turns out, he may have actually been “in the loop” of Plan A. ¤ In fact, two days later, Flynn and his lawyer, Sidney Powell, participated in a chaotic White House meeting about the plan to seize voting machines. (Powell was sanctioned last year for her misrepresentations in a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s vote.) It was reported at the time that Trump was contemplating appointing Powell as a special counsel.
But for the strenuous opposition of White House Counsel Pat Cipollone at the Dec. 20 White House meeting, the executive order might have gone into effect. As Cipollone knew, 18 USC § 1385 makes it a crime to use the military domestically to “engage in civilian law enforcement unless … expressly authorized by a statute or the Constitution.”
We expect the Justice Department to investigate this scheme and to do so immediately if it has not started already. Should Congress change hands in 2023, it will surely amplify Trump’s framing of the narrative as a witch hunt, complicating the task of any investigation, indictment or trial. ¤ Nothing short of convicting Trump for his role in the insurrection will disqualify him from running again in 2024, and claiming the mantle of a martyred hero rather than of a disgraced and convicted insurrectionist. ¤ For now, the important focus is on robustly investigating the entire post-election plot as an integrated conspiracy with two parts, each aimed at keeping Donald Trump in power.
🐣 RT @UROCKlive1 Good grief. GOP politicians are so afraid of the MAGA base that #TuckyoRose is riling up, that they’re going to side with Vladimir Putin. ¤ Definitely not my father’s Republican Party.
⋙⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Tucker Carlson’s pro-Russia rants give Republicans exactly what they deserve http://wapo.st/3IE6b6G
⋙ 🐣 RT @UROCKlive1 To remain in Carlson’s good graces, Republicans must comprehensively abandon any defense of Ukraine toward Russia. But how can Republicans revert to their usual attack on the Dem POTUS as “weak” no matter what, if they must adopt the posture that the US must do nothing at all?WaPo (above): A striking new report from Axios captures the problem Carlson has created. Republicans are split between those who want to attack Biden as weak by demanding a more bellicose stance toward Russia as it masses for an invasion of Ukraine, and MAGA-friendly Republicans catering to Carlson’s pro-Russian stance.
This conflict, however, is being widely misrepresented as one pitting conventional GOP “hawks” versus Trumpist “isolationists.” Something more pernicious is going on: The Carlsonian stance is perhaps better understood as alignment with a kind of right-wing Internationale, a loose international alliance of authoritarian nationalists who despise liberal internationalist commitments. …
Some very high profile 2022 GOP candidates are toeing this line. They include J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, who are running for Senate in Ohio and Arizona. And numerous House Republicans are adopting this line as well.
Incredibly, Carlson is a key reason for this. As Axios reports: “GOP offices have been fielding numerous calls from voters echoing arguments they heard on Carlson’s 8 p.m. ET show.” ¤ While Carlson piously suggests he is driven by a desire to prevent U.S. lives from being wasted abroad, he has also suggested we should take Russia’s side. He has even attacked U.S. media figures for suggesting Ukraine is a U.S. ally whose territorial sovereignty should be defended.
What’s amusing about this situation — if “amusing” is the right word — is how Republicans are struggling mightily to get around the complications this creates. ¤ Right now, the Biden administration is threatening sanctions to deter a Russian invasion and has rebuffed Putin’s demand for a veto on Ukraine joining NATO. But Biden has also hinted at diplomatic off-ramps by suggesting such a move by Ukraine is far off.
The problem for Republicans under Carson’s influence is they want to keep attacking the Democratic president’s posture as “weak.” But Carlson has complicated this by requiring them to oppose doing anything at all toward Russia in defense of Ukraine. ¤ To solve this, those Republicans are seeking a new safe space. It entails hitting Biden as “weak” on Russia but without getting specific about what they think the United States should do toward Russia in Ukraine’s defense, since detailing that would attract Carlson’s ire. …
Indeed, unlike Carlson, progressives believe defending Ukrainian sovereignty has immense stakes. As a Center for American Progress paper details, to uphold the liberal democratic order and to deter creeping strongman authoritarian nationalism, the U.S. should be prepared to deploy maximal soft-power leverage.
But this may be exactly why Carlson opposes defending Ukraine at all costs: He sees Putin as a kind of ally in that international cabal of right-wing nationalists. As Duss told me: “In the Carlson-MAGA worldview, Putin is an avatar of white Christian nationalism.” ¤ So Carlson’s pull on the GOP base is far more pernicious than merely being a new “isolationism.” But regardless, in denying Republicans the space to reflexively blame the Democratic president for “weakness” without saying how they would handle an intensely complex geopolitical situation, it’s giving them exactly what they deserve”
🐣 🌎 RT @BeAVoter4Life @foxnews Covid deaths have been concentrated in counties outside of major metropolitan areas. Many of these are in red states, while others are in red parts of blue or purple states, like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Virginia and even California. https://twitter.com/BeAVoter4Life/status/1487225782334156803/photo/1
HuffPo, RyanReilly: ‘Quick Reaction Forces’ And The Lingering Mysteries Of The Plot Against The Capitol http://bit.ly/3oa81UV
// The Oath Keeper “QRFs” show how things could have been a lot worse, and how much more there is to learn.TheAtlantic, David Frum: Fox News Abandons the GOP on Russia http://bit.ly/3rZwlKv
// Russia-Ukraine is becoming a trial of strength between different parts of the conservative universe.🐣 I think I never made it all the way from the “Melting Pot” to Intersectionality. I’m not even sure I want to. ¤ As an Irish Catholic, St Patrick’s Day & marrying a Lutheran were enough. I’ve learned Irish history but never felt others needed to see the world through that lens
⋙ 🐣 I mean, what if I were to say that US history “really” started in 1845 with the Potato Famine? I met a Brit once in Munich who said the Irish were racially inferior. The abuse of the Irish lasted til JFK. I still dislike Brits (as a group). So does Biden. Many stories make the US🐣 I think I never made it all the way from the “Melting Pot” to Intersectionality. I’m not even sure I want to. ¤ As an Irish Catholic, St Patrick’s Day & marrying a Lutheran were enough. I’ve learned Irish history but never felt others needed to see the world through that lens
TheAtlantic, Ben Rhodes: This Is No Time for Passive Patriotism http://bit.ly/3INmhLm “There is no sense in avoiding or diluting the magnitude of this turn in our story: One major political party no longer accepts democracy”
// We are a nation of storytellers, and right now we desperately need a good story.Every nation is a story. It’s almost never a simple one, and the story’s meaning is usually contested. National identity itself depends upon how we tell the story—about our past, our present moment, and our future.
Many national stories are rooted in a particular ethnicity or religion that forms the core of that national identity. Here in the United States, things are more complicated. Since our founding, our national identity has been the story that we tell ourselves and the wider world. Consider, for example: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. And: We the people, in order to form a more perfect union. Americans possess the beginnings of a fantastically good story, one based on something different from ethnicity or religion. Yet throughout our history, the most profound divisions in American society have required us to focus on the meaning of our loftiest words: Who is the we? What is the union? Put another way: What does the story mean, and who gets to tell it?
Rarely in our history have the answers to these questions been more contested, with the very fate of American democracy hanging in the balance. Former President Donald Trump’s Republican Party embraces fundamentally reactionary answers to these questions. In doing so, Trump taps into a vein that has run through the American body politic since our founding. The United States, in the most simplistic telling of the story, is a fundamentally ethno-nationalist construction: a white, Christian nation that embraces capitalism and a sense of its own exceptionalism.
Trump’s movement, like many nationalist authoritarian movements around the world, defines the American we by focusing more on an adversarial them: a Black president, who must not have been born in America. Radical Islam, which wants to spread Sharia law in our communities. Black athletes, who kneel during the national anthem. A caravan of brown migrants, making their way to the border. Women of color in Congress, who are told to “go back to where you came from.” George Soros, a shadowy financier (that is: a Jewish person) who wants to control the world. Communists, who want to destroy the country. All of these vaguely foreign forces represent a demographic future in which the United States becomes a majority-nonwhite country, and must be countered by an effort to Make America Great Again.
Democracy has always had an uncomfortable place in Trump’s story. Like other notable autocrats throughout world history, Trump has celebrated certain democratic values—for a time—as a useful populist vehicle for his political ascent. But once he could no longer win a democratic election, in 2020, he rejected the will of the people expressed through votes—and an elemental form of American identity along with it.
Unfortunately, the former president’s autocratic instinct was a natural outgrowth of the Republican Party’s anti-majoritarian playbook, one familiar from the recent history of places such as Hungary. In America, this playbook is fundamentally concerned with the retention of minority Republican political power over the majority. Congressional districts are being redrawn to entrench Republicans with legislative control. New voter-suppression and electoral-subversion laws are intended to distort the electorate that casts votes, and change who gets to decide the winner. Campaign-finance laws allow for a flood of special-interest money in politics. The courts are packed with right-wing judges who will reliably favor these Republican power grabs. Right-wing broadcast media have been turned into a propaganda machine. Unregulated social platforms are being manipulated to spread disinformation. Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election result simply took this anti-democratic playbook to its logical extreme.
There is no sense in avoiding or diluting the magnitude of this turn in our story: One major political party no longer accepts democracy. This once unthinkable political outcome underscores the extent to which we no longer have a shared sense of national identity. Even traditionally shared experiences like media, popular culture, and sports have become extensions of the contest over the American story, as Americans select the history their kids learn, the narrative they accept, the celebrities they admire, and even the lifesaving medicine they will take, all based at least in part on their political affiliations. To put this in the starkest terms possible, Americans are now bound together by the presence of a federal government and laws, but not by a shared sense of what it means to be American. This is a recipe for sustained political instability and social disruption, if not outright conflict.
This predicament presents greater challenges for those of us who feel a sense of fidelity to America’s democratic tradition than for those who are willing to abandon it. If you believe in America’s founding values, it is past time to reckon with the extent to which one party has made them partisan.
The notion that enough Republican leaders would somehow awaken to the dangers of what they’ve been doing fundamentally misunderstands what the Republican Party had already become by the time Trump was inaugurated. And for anyone who doubted this truth, the events of January 6, 2021, and their aftermath left no doubt. On that day, Trump led an assault on the core symbol of representative government. In the year since, he has proved that he can count on broad Republican support to dismantle American democracy and recast American identity in an ethno-nationalist, autocratic image.
No investigation, no select committee, and no traumatic event like January 6 will reverse this radicalization. Those of us appalled by this betrayal are thus confronted with a fundamental question: How do we save America’s democratic identity? For starters, we must tell a story that can consistently win sufficient victories at the ballot box. And, given the bifurcated nature of American politics, the rise of a far-right, nationalist authoritarian story means that the largest and most vocal bloc of opposition will necessarily come from the left. However, to defeat that story, we will have to convince enough Americans who do not think of themselves as progressive, or even center-left, that there is an American democracy that needs to be saved.
Much has been written about what sort of policy agenda can accomplish this goal. This approach misses the point. Of course Democrats should be responsive to voters’ needs with their agenda. But Trump and his cohort are only tangentially interested in policies; prominent Republicans now engage on policy issues to make an argument about identity: the border is open, spending is socialist, America is weak, the Democrats are in some innate way endangering the country. Here is the mission, for any American who wishes to save democracy: We must tell a captivating story—one concerned primarily with an American identity that is broad and resilient enough to succeed in the face of this assault.
The greatness of a nation’s story is not invalidated by its flaws. The Americans who have most memorably told the story of our country always understood its complexities. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had simply lamented the reality of America’s imperfections and the hypocrisy of its aspirations, they would have rendered the political movements they led incapable of achieving change. Conversely, had they simply asserted the fact of American greatness, positive change would not have been possible.
During my decade as a speechwriter for Barack Obama, he used to say that our entire job was to tell a really good story about America. He wasn’t just talking about speeches. Everything from the words he spoke to the way he carried himself to the policies he advocated had to add up to a single story about the pursuit of the promise of multiracial, multiethnic democracy. Of course, he didn’t get everything right. But it was the capacity to joyfully and defiantly tell a patriotic story about progressive change that allowed Obama to win two decisive victories, outperforming other recent Democratic election results. He did not deny the darker aspects of American history and politics. As a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama, he experienced them. However, he was able to succeed politically because he framed the effort to address those flaws not as a repudiation of what it means to be American, but rather as a validation of it.
America, Obama pronounced again and again, was a great country precisely because it gave us the capacity to try to fix what was wrong with us. The failure to try to do so was a betrayal of a civic religion. The flag stands for that; so do protest anthems. The military fights for this very ideal; so do activists who bleed in the streets. This must be the starting point for a different conversation with people who may be unsettled both by Trump and by the reckonings that have accompanied his rise: Change is an affirmation of American greatness, not a rebuke of it.
There is an added difficulty that makes this challenge more vexing. The progressive movement in American politics is inherently more inclined to see clearly America’s own flaws and contradictions. The political left, in many ways, exists to address the gap between the story America has told about itself (all men are created equal) and the reality that has been experienced throughout American history—whether racial injustice, economic inequality, corporate power, gender inequity, environmental degradation, or imperialist foreign policies. As someone who associates myself with this political tradition, I say this with a sense of pride.
Yet wittingly or unwittingly, Trump has created a trap for the left. In so many ways, the resilience of his appeal seems to confirm some of our worst fears about the country we live in, the cold reality of the American story. It is therefore no coincidence that the rise of antidemocratic politics has been accompanied by an insistence on reckoning with the uglier aspects of American history and society. Indeed, Trump himself almost perfectly represents the worst version of what many on the left have feared about American identity. He is a rich, unaccountable white man who spouts racist, xenophobic, and misogynist ideas while associating himself with global autocracy and kleptocracy. He’s the guy who embraces the lazy patriotism of flyovers at football games, hugs the flag (literally), and boasts about dropping large bombs on people in other countries. How tempting it is to point at him and proclaim: This is who we are.
The trap is that this would ensure we lose the contest over the American story. If you cede the terrain of national identity to its worst elements, you are playing straight into the hands of autocracy, which counts on a blend of cynicism and apathy among its opponents. Moreover, politics is ultimately about persuading enough people to vote for your candidate or agenda. If the starting point for your argument is that the very people you need to persuade must accept that core aspects of their identity should be a source of shame rather than pride, then no well-crafted agenda of utilitarian policies is likely to win them over. The same holds true for young people who are ambivalent about participating in democracy but essential for rescuing it: If you are led to believe that America is inherently corrupted, then why would you decide that American democracy is worth saving?
Those who argue that America was founded in sin are correct. So are those who point out that American elites—including high-profile journalists—should be doing more to hold accountable those in the Republican Party who cynically manipulate issues like critical race theory into boogeymen far out of proportion to lived reality. At the same time, persuading a diverse constituency to embrace a shared democratic story can’t just be about diagnosing flaws. A focus on what’s perceived to be broken works for a more uniform and shallow ethnic coalition like Trump’s, but not for the broader United States.
A large share of Americans are currently living in an entirely different and constructed reality. They are locked inside their own prejudices and information ecosystem, which leads them to believe things that aren’t true. But the past two elections show that it’s a mistake to presume this swath of America is big enough to win in the long run. Defeating these MAGA believers requires a refusal to concede that they are the force in American society that gets to determine what it means to be American. But it also requires a sense of optimism in the struggle to defeat them.
We live in a time of profound economic, technological, and societal disruption, which has been exacerbated by COVID-19. One of the frightening and disorienting things about the past few years is how connected the MAGA community is; its members joined in hatred of perceived outsiders—including fellow citizens—and are seemingly impervious to fact-based persuasion. But it is a community, one that offers belonging and solidarity, and there is something to learn from this. Too many of us who have been repulsed by Trump’s movement have been pushed further into isolation in response—tweeting or turning off the news, retreating from one another or arguing over our own differences rather than celebrating what we share, what it should mean to be American. Faced with grim reality, politics itself often appears to be a grim and joyless exercise.
A negative story about the extremism of democracy’s opponents will not sustain the kind of mobilization that is necessary to save it. The pursuit of voting rights, for instance, cannot just be about the danger posed by those seeking to suppress the vote; it has to be about the kind of nation that America should be. And the movement of people engaged in saving democracy cannot afford to be riven by its own divisions and demoralized by the failure to solve everything at once. The opportunity to save a multiracial, multiethnic democracy should be approached as a defiant and joyful enterprise—a source of unity and community at a time when we badly need both.
President Joe Biden has rightly talked about saving “the soul of America.” In recent weeks, he has spoken forcefully about the need to embrace America’s better history of progress and taken aim at an anachronistic Senate rule—the filibuster—that stands in the way of meaningful democratic reforms. Recent years have seen mass mobilization by people opposing Trump or defending Black lives, abortion rights, affordable health care, and access to the ballot. The challenge is weaving these strands together into a single story that can be sustained.
In this existential moment, it is not enough to assert that America is better than this, nor is it possible to pivot from an economic agenda or COVID response to an argument about democracy. All of these things are connected. We must be alert to what is happening elsewhere. For instance, in nations that have recently moved away from democracy, we see that the consolidation of political power is always accompanied by corruption and unequal wealth distribution. A healthy multiracial, multiethnic democracy is necessary to update our social safety net, adapt to life-altering technological advances, and fortify the United States against public-health crises like COVID-19 and the inevitable disruptions wrought by climate change. This sense of national purpose must also be extended abroad, in a world that needs an America that sets a democratic example instead of just talking about democracy.
The last time America had a clear sense of its purpose in the world was during the Cold War. Although that was an era filled with its own hypocrisies and shortfalls, the imperative of anchoring national identity in a defense of freedom helped broaden support for the civil-rights movement and put guardrails around the type of leader who could assume command of the nuclear codes—indeed, it is hard to imagine someone as plainly unfit as Donald Trump being elected president through that era. This value proposition infused everything from American popular culture to the solidarity that American civil society had with dissidents and democratic movements abroad. By 1990, for political, cultural, and social reasons, democracy looked more attractive than the available alternatives.
Today, the diminution of America’s story is propelling the ascendance of authoritarianism and division both in the United States and in the wider world. Meanwhile, the ascendance of ethno-nationalism in America is feeding off of—and in turn fueling—the rise of ethno-nationalism elsewhere. Precisely because of our multiethnic character, America’s own diversity mirrors the world. If we can’t figure out how to make democracy work, how can the rest of the world address the seeming drift into autocracy and conflict? Conversely, if we can fight through our current era to preserve and make more perfect our multiracial democracy, we will set a far more relevant democratic example for the world than dictates from Washington. Having done our part to prove that America is vulnerable to the same trends afflicting everyone, we can show how to recover.
Success will require political leadership and also the mobilization of citizens and various sectors of our society—including cultural, media, and business institutions that have often been reticent to engage in debates that drift in the direction of politics. But this is no time for passive patriotism. American democracy will not survive if Americans lazily assume that enough people will just come to their senses and recognize that it must be saved—that there is something fixed in the national character that ensures Trump and his cohort will inevitably face harsh judgment. There’s nothing inevitable at all about the verdict of history. Part of the reason so many Republicans are willing to place their bet on Trump is that they believe his vision will, in fact, prevail. And even in the absence of Trump himself, it is more likely than not that a different Republican leader would draw (perhaps more skillfully) upon the anti-majoritarian reforms that enable Republicans to wield political power with a minority of voters.
Nor can we succumb to a cynicism that presumes that belief in America’s better story is naive. This is the easy certitude that concludes that it is better to be right than to do the hard work of trying to actually change things. Indeed, there will be failures along the way. To take one example, the latest push for voting rights and democratic reforms hit a wall. But that’s why it’s important to see that effort as part of an ongoing struggle and not the end of the story—to leave a dent in that wall and do the work necessary to succeed next time. That, after all, is what American identity at its best has always been about: doing the work, and insisting that the story we tell ourselves is worth the effort. The obligation to advance the American story—the fact that this country has been one long pursuit of multiracial, multiethnic democracy—is the only way toward a more just and democratic future.
What it means to be American is something that Americans themselves have always determined. That is as it should be. Democratic norms are not self-executing. Whether they survive and are strengthened depends on people. We Americans know who we are. And we, the majority of the people, get to tell the story of where we are going.
Ben Rhodes is the author of After the Fall: Being American in the World We Made. He is a former speechwriter and deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama
🐣 RT @Reuters: EXCLUSIVE: Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine has expanded to include supplies of blood along with other medical materials that would allow it to treat casualties, a key indicator of Moscow’s military readiness, three U.S. officials tell @Reuters https://reut.rs/3G3pCnK 1/5
🐣 RT @juliettekayyem The fake electors investigation is like the dun-dun theme in Jaws, first slow like it seems not a big deal but then picks up speed for the catch. Across multiple states, using same language, lots of people were told to sign a document key to Trump’s plan. It is the sound of dread
WaPo: Ukraine’s president criticizes West’s handling of crisis as Putin warns that further NATO expansion is “unacceptable” to Russia http://wapo.st/3u9COVC
January6thCmte: Select Committee Subpoenas “Alternate Electors” from Seven States http://bit.ly/3gbJKJC
Bolton, MS—Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) today announced that, as part of its investigation into the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and its causes, the Select Committee has issued subpoenas to 14 individuals who participated as purported “alternate electors” for former President Trump. The committee is seeking information from individuals who met and submitted purported Electoral-College certificates in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Chairman Thompson issued the following statement:
“The Select Committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives. We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme. We encourage them to cooperate with the Select Committee’s investigation to get answers about January 6th for the American people and help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again.”
The Select Committee has obtained information that groups of individuals met on December 14th, 2020 in seven states carried by President Biden, then submitted bogus slates of Electoral-College votes for former President Trump. The so-called alternate electors from those states then transmitted the purported Electoral-College certificates to Congress, which multiple people advising former President Trump or his campaign used to justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6th, 2021.
The Select Committee subpoenaed individuals listed as chairperson and secretary of each group of alternate electors:
● Nancy Cottle, Chairperson, Arizona
● Loraine B. Pellegrino, Secretary, Arizona● David Shafer, Chairperson, Georgia
● Shawn Still, Secretary, Georgia● Kathy Berden, Chairperson, Michigan
● Mayra Rodriguez, Secretary, Michigan● Jewll Powdrell, Chairperson, New Mexico
● Deborah W. Maestas, Secretary, New Mexico● Michael J. McDonald, Chairperson, Nevada
● James DeGraffenreid, Secretary, Nevada● Bill Bachenberg, Chairperson, Pennsylvania
● Lisa Patton, Secretary, Pennsylvania● Andrew Hitt, Chairperson, Wisconsin
● Kelly Ruh, Secretary, WisconsinJustSecurity: Putin’s Coercion on NATO Goes Beyond Its Open Door Policy http://bit.ly/35lJMfV “Catalysts … include a desire to further degrade Ukrainian sovereignty, reset the terms of power relations w the United States & undermine internal NATO cohesion & credibility”
Putin’s coercion is not about forcing the alliance to admit explicitly what is already implicitly true. It is about forcing the alliance to bindingly agree to foreswear any potential membership for Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe, a position that he knows would undermine the alliance’s founding principles, European security, and Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Between ongoing tensions and the 2008 Bucharest Summit statement, there are legitimate critiques of the open door. Particularly as it relates to Ukraine and Georgia, for example, the policy vs. practice indicates strategic incoherence within the alliance. But an over-fixation on NATO enlargement in responding to Russia’s current buildup will not create lasting stability. Catalysts are far more complex, as Fiona Hill also noted recently, and include additional factors, such as a desire to further degrade Ukrainian sovereignty, reset the terms of power relations with the United States, and undermine internal NATO cohesion and credibility. Renouncing NATO’s open door policy for Ukraine and beyond would likely come at a significant cost for both Ukraine and NATO.
🐣 RT @NikaMelkorazova Most of @USEmbassyKyiv staff decided to stay in Kyiv. I think that’s a very strong statement
🐣 @TwitterSupport Why are links to individual Tweets suddenly longer? I’ve found if you eliminate the new section (after the “?”, they still link to the Tweet). I archive many Tweets, so it matters to me. Thanks
🧵 RT @January6thCmte The Select Committee has issued subpoenas to 14 individuals who participated as purported “alternate electors” for former President Trump. ¤ The committee is seeking information from individuals who met and submitted purported Electoral-College certificates in seven states. 📌 https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1487139434340442129/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNBC: Jan. 6 riot probe subpoenas 14 people linked to false Trump electoral vote scheme http://cnb.cx/33XCDCh pay dirt
● The select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas to 14 people connected to an effort to submit an alternate slate of Electoral College voters for then-President Donald Trump.
● The committee said Friday it wants information from people who met and submitted false Electoral College certificates in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
● Those people then sent the phony Electoral College certifications to Congress, which were used by multiple Trump advisors to “justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6th, 2021,” the committee said.
🐣 RT @HugoLowell BREAKING: Jan. 6 committee subpoenas the lead participants in scheme to send fake Trump slates of electors to Congress
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 In a sworn declaration submitted as part of an ongoing federal court challenge, a senior Republican state senator with redistricting experience said he believes his party violated federal voting laws when it drew new boundaries for a state Senate district.
⋙ TexasTribune: Texas violated voting rights law during redistricting retiring state GOP senator says in sworn court statement http://bit.ly/35wyNR4
// 1/26/2022; A three-judge federal panel is hearing arguments in a lawsuit claiming that Texas Republicans violated the Voting Rights Act when they redrew state Senate District 10 in Tarrant County to lessen Black and Hispanic voting power.WaPo: Russia vows retaliation if key demand on Ukraine unmet, as France tries another shot at diplomacy with Putin http://wapo.st/35koy1Z //➔ Waiting for France to step out waving a signed document promising “Peace in or time”
⭕ 27 Jan 2022
📊 TheHill: Biden leading Trump, DeSantis by similar margins in new poll http://bit.ly/3GdqS7D Marquette University Poll: Biden/Trump 43%/33%, Biden/DeSantis 41%/33% ~ “Only 29 percent of those polled said they want to see Trump run for president again in 2024”
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom To be clear, I don’t think Tucker is a Russian agent, but he is an agent-of-influence and there’s a distinction which I wrote about a couple years back when this came up before
⋙ NBCNews, Clint Watts (2019): Tulsi Gabbard and Hillary Clinton’s ‘Russian asset’ spat resurfaces problematic assertions http://nbcnews.to/3s0HIBA
// 10/23/2019; Gabbard’s views offer a wonderful vehicle to advance Putin’s agenda amongst America’s populist left. But that doesn’t mean she’s on the Kremlin’s payroll.WaPo: Pentagon defends its preparation for possible Russian invasion of Ukraine http://wapo.st/32BSZjc
// The U.S. military is preparing to potentially send thousands of troops from the United States to Europe.≣ NPR: Read Justice Breyer’s remarks on retiring and his hope in the American ‘experiment’ http://n.pr/3AFrsu3
// transcript Breyer’s farewell… [S]omething I enjoy is talking to high school students, grammar school students, college students, even law school students. And they’ll come around and ask me, “What is it you find particularly meaningful about your job? What sort of gives you a thrill?” And that’s not such a tough question for me to answer. It’s the same thing. Day one, almost up to, day, I don’t know how many.
But what I say to them is look, I sit there on the bench and after we hear lots of cases, and after a while, the impression — it takes a while, I have to admit — but the impression you get is, as you well know, this is a complicated country. There are more than 330 million people and my mother used to say it’s every race, it’s every religion — and she would emphasize this — and it’s every point of view possible.
And it’s a kind of miracle when you sit there and see all those people in front of you, people that are so different in what they think. And yet they’ve decided to help solve their major differences under law. … [O]f course people don’t agree. But we have a country that is based on human rights, democracy and so forth. But I’ll tell you what Lincoln thought, what Washington thought and what people today still think: it’s an experiment. It’s an experiment. That’s what they said.
And Joanna [his wife] paid each of our grandchildren a certain amount of money to memorize the Gettysburg Address. And the reason — what we want them to pick up there and what I want those students to pick up, if I can remember the first two lines, is it “[F]our score and seven years ago, our fathers created here a new country, a country that was dedicated to liberty and the proposition that all men are created equal, conceived in liberty,” those are his words, “and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He meant women, too.
“And we are now engaged in a great civil war to determine whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” ¤ See, those are the words I want to see: an experiment. And that’s what he thought. It’s an experiment.
And I found some letters that George Washington wrote where he said the same thing: It’s an experiment. That experiment existed then because even the liberals in Europe, you know, they’re looking over here, and they’re saying that’s [a] great idea in principle, but it’ll never work. But we’ll show them it does. That’s what Washington thought. And that’s what Lincoln thought. And that’s what people still think today.
And I say, I want you — and I’m talking to the students now — I say, I want you to pick just this up. It’s an experiment that’s still going on. And I’ll tell you something: you know who will see whether that experiment works? It’s you, my friend. It’s you mister high school student. It’s you, mister college student, it’s you mister law school students. It’s us, but it’s you. It’s that next generation and the one after that. My grandchildren and their children. They’ll determine whether the experiment still works. And of course, I am an optimist, and I’m pretty sure it will. …
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “At some point it comes down to the question of accountability. Are these individuals going to skate while others are arrested and go to jail? Is anyone above the law in our system including the former president?” – @SykesCharlie w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1486859142304309250?s=20&t=eehq2iMGnb6TYgVYSbPnpA/photo/1🐣 RT @anders_aslund Today’s thoughts on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine:
1. The Kremlin pursues pure & naked military aggression without any excuse. All see it.
2. Why does Putin do something so blatant? Because he is afraid the Russian people will rise against his authoritarian kleptocracy.
There is no worse excuse for a war than Putin’s.
3. With his massive military mobilization, Putin has cornered himself: If he attacks, he will lose through bodybags. If he does not attack, his silliness will become obvious in any case. Putin, time to flee!🐣 RT @GalwayGirl2520 In Other Words : HE IS BROKE ¤ Donald Trump has only $93 million in cash left, according to Forbes. His properties are all indebted. The Trumps could potentially owe $100 to $300 million or more in back taxes, restitution, and penalties — and that’s just in the NY AG civil case
🐣 RT @Mediaite @Acosta has a message for the Murdochs: “You own Tucker’s program that’s putting our health care workers in peril, putting our hospitals in peril, putting all of us in peril. For ratings, for money — so these American oligarchs can keep pumping out bullsh*t into our homes.”
HuffPost: The 59 Republicans Who Joined Electoral Voter Fraud Scheme For Trump Could Face Prison http://bit.ly/3G75HnX It could come down to how the slates were caveated
// What seemed like political theater at the time actually violated state and federal fraud laws, according to current and former prosecutors.⭕ 26 Jan 2022
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Putin has precipitated a crisis that he alone can postpone. He has threatened additional military aggression while offering a phony peace laid on a foundation of delusion around the territorial restoration of a dead nation. The discredited ideology is long gone. It has been
📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1486382492772978689?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Replaced by autocratic gangsterism fused to politicized religion. The model has scores of admirers across the West including America where both Trump and
@TuckerCarlson fetishize the Russian autocrat. These are consequential days.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Putin holds all of the cards in this moment. He is in control. Should he attack he will lose control of the unfolding events. Those events will be dynamic; the fighting, kinetic. If war comes, the question becomes which players crack first. There are three. Let’s rule out the
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Ukrainians. Their resistance will be fierce and unrelenting. They will fight to the end. That leaves the proverbial West and Putin. Who will break first? For the West, the cost of staying together will only get harder as economic shock waves and refugees surge west. This moment
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Simply tests Western unity at its strongest joint. The Oligarchical status quo that sustains Putin as leader is not voiceless in Russia. There is a cost to Putin’s miscalculations that could be too high for them to bear. Putin will have less room to operate and thus less control
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES of the situation if Western resolve seems to be tightening towards imposing real hardship on Russia’s access to multiple financial systems and institutions. Putin is powerful enough to gamble and bluff recklessly but not powerful enough to maintain control while losing stupidly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES This day has been coming for a long time. The test has come. The outcome will also determine the fate of Taiwan. The stakes are very high.🐣 RT @AriBerman Your daily reminder that Mitch McConnell made up a nonexistent Senate rule to block Merrick Garland 8 months before election then killed filibuster to confirm Amy Coney Barrett 8 days before election when 65 million people had already voted
🐣 RT @TheLeadCNN “Between leaving no door for diplomacy and this massive military build-up, unprecedented, it seems, to me, clear that the Russians are on the cusp of taking action,” says Ret. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman on the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1486114173335580672?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @anders_aslund Let us put the Russia-Ukraine issues right. ¤ 1. There is no Ukraine crisis (Ukraine is calm, peaceful & growing), but Russia appears to be in a mortal crisis because of Putin’s authoritarian kleptocracy. Putin itches to violate international law & start wars.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1486457718663749636?s=20⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 2. The fundamental problem in Eastern Europe is that Putin aspires to war in a vain hope to stay in power although he pursues economic stagnation & reduces the standard of living since he allocates state funds to repression rather than growth & welfare.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 3. The West needs to do two things in defense against Putin’s unprovoked aggression:
A. Build up the defense of the West and its allies (Ukraine, Georgia & Moldova).
B. Insist on human rights in Russia = Helsinki Final Act 1975. Putin should make do with Brezhnev’s standards…
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 4. A natural first step should be to facilitate NATO memberships for Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Finland and Sweden. Apparently, NATO is the only effective peace-preserving mechanism in Europe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 5. Yet, the collective West has to go further: Putin has proven himself a state terrorist with his murders in Qatar, England, Washington, Berlin & Vienna. As long his rules Russia, it is a state terrorist & rogue state and appropriate sanctions should be applied.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 6. Since Putin has made Russia depart from the sphere of civilized countries, we had better impose Iran-style financial sanctions on his regime. Cut Russian state banks & companies out of the civilized world!
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund 7. Yet, oil and gas sanctions will just boost oil and gas prices and thus Russian revenues so they are not in the interest of the West. I think it was a mistake to sanction Iranian oil exports, and to sanction Russian oil and gas exports would be a far bigger mistake.🐣 RT @isakoff At hearing on Eastman emails, lawyer for Chapman U backs 1/6 panel subpoena to turn over 19,000 emails on its server relating to prof’s representation of Trump. Says any use of university server for that purpose was “improper, unauthorized and I liken to contraband.”
🐣 RT @EliotACohen What is about to happen in Ukraine could be very bad indeed. But it will probably end badly for Putin, and for Russia – and we should help it do so. @CSIS @SAISHopkins
⋙ TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: Putin’s No Chess Master http://bit.ly/32DlQDY
// Some believe Putin has not only Ukraine but the whole West exactly where he wants it. A more balanced consideration is in order.NYT: Cawthorn Challenge Raises the Question: Who Is an ‘Insurrectionist’? http://nyti.ms/3ICFeQP “The challenge to Rep Madison Cawthorn’s re-election bid could set a precedent to challenge other Republicans who encouraged the Jan. 6 attack”:
Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
WaPo: U.S. sends written responses to Russia on its demands over Ukraine crisis http://wapo.st/3IBUOMw ‘The responses are expected to fall short of demands to keep Ukraine & Georgia out of NATO & dramatically scale back the military alliance’s presence in Eastern Europe’
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas The Ptolemaic model of the solar system persisted because of blind belief and dogma for 2000 years, requiring evermore bizarre contortions to explain the empirical evidence that the Earth moved around the Sun. Empiricists were labeled and punished as “heretics” 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Why then should we be surprised there are people who ignore the all evidence to the contrary: wars, attempted coups, Covid disinformation, civilian airline shootdowns, poisonings and murders…who after only 80 years think all we need is “dialogue” and “Wandel durch Handel”. 2/2⭕ 25 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @McFaul What Putin is doing today is belligerent, wrong, and evil. Yes, we must negotiate with him. But make no mistake about who is right and who is wrong in this crisis.
🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 So I have been monitoring Russian media and propaganda forever and the increase and specific type of propaganda over the past 2 days is something to keep an eye. There are way more warnings that Ukraine and US are “preparing attacks.” The language is also more hostile
💙 TheAtlantic, Kurt Andersen: The Anti-vaccine Right Literally Brought Human Sacrifice to America http://bit.ly/3fUkaJg
// Since last summer, the conservative campaign against vaccination has claimed thousands of lives for no ethically justifiable purposeBusinessInsider: Cheney hits back at Gingrich after Jan. 6 commission jailing comments http://bit.ly/344Gygi
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming hit back at the veteran GOP operative Newt Gingrich after he suggested that she and other members of the House commission investigating the January 6, 2021, riot could be arrested and jailed.
Gingrich, an ally of former President Donald Trump who was the speaker of the House during the Clinton administration, in an interview with Fox News on Sunday said that if Republicans won back control of Congress in the midterm elections, members of the January 6, 2021, commission could face criminal penalties.
“I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down,” Gingrich told the host Maria Bartiromo. ¤ “And the wolves are going to find out that they’re now sheep and they’re the ones who are, in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking,” he added. ¤ Gingrich appeared to suggest that the investigations of those involved in the riot were illegal.
In a tweet, Cheney hit back at the claim. ¤ “A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels,” it said.
In an op-ed in Newsweek last week, Gingrich accused the Democratic-majority panel of seeking to persecute ordinary conservatives.
“House Republicans owe it to the Constitution and the American people to defeat the wolves and return them to sheep status,” he said, outlining a series of measures he said Republicans should be taking to investigate and punish those involved in the commission.
Trump allies are intensifying their campaign to downplay the seriousness of the riot, even as the committee brings new details to light. Some Trump allies have pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that the FBI instigated the violence in a plot to ensnare Trump supporters.
Cheney and the other Republican on the commission, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, have been ostracized from their party and accused of treachery by Trump and others.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Newt Gingrich Invented Donald Trump’s Lock-Them-Up Politics http://nym.ag/3G1dAv5
🐣 RT @RandiRhodes A caller today asked for the names of the 59 fake electors. Here ya go https://twitter.com/RandiRhodes/status/1483641927471976451?s=20
// AmericanOversight🐣 RT @Reuters Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a televised address, urged his compatriots to stay calm, as Western leaders stepped up preparations for any Russian military action in Ukraine https://reut.rs/3IxpfDm
🐣 RT @anders_aslund This is just right. The aim of German foreign policy should not be to apologize only to Poland & Russia (as is being done), but also to Ukraine & Belarus, and in both cases far more than to Russia. ¤ Check Tim Snyder’s “Bloodlands!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @yermolenko_v Ukraine was at the epicentre of two world wars of the 20th century, one of the bloodlands of a clash btw germanic and russian imperial struggle for eurasia. We simply want to go away from this past now🐣 Tucker Carlson is the new Father Coughlin
🐣 RT @Wendy Siegelman: When Steve Bannon launched his 2019 War Room talk show he handed distribution to Real America’s Voice run by Robert J. Sigg a little-known media mogul, a felon with a record of unpaid taxes, a family history marked by tragedy & violence by @isaacstanbecker
⋙ WaPo: Steve Bannon was deplatformed. An obscure media mogul kept him on the air. http://wapo.st/3AxzdSA
// ‘War Room’ is at the center of a fledgling network monetizing what some employees saw as ‘Trump propaganda.’🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Every day reveals new twists and turns in the attempted self-coup and various efforts to investigate it. But today had a big one: the first confirmation that DOJ is investigating the broader coup. ¤ I’ll be joining @clairecmc on @TheLastWord with @Lawrence at 10pm to discuss.
WaPo: As Ukraine invasion looms, Europe fears Kremlin will cut off its gas supply http://wapo.st/3GeGY1b “With European leaders already split about how much they should sacrifice for Ukraine, the continent’s vulnerabilities are ripe for Kremlin exploitation”
// U.S. scrambles to line up natural gas for allies as Russia threatens long-standing energy flowsRawStory: Bill Barr’s relationship with Trump is ‘nonexistent’ and he has no loyalty to his former boss: NYT’s Haberman http://bit.ly/3nYqofk
🐣 RT @RpsAgainstTrump Former Senator Al Franken says the current state of U.S. democracy feels like 1933 Germany. ¤ Do you agree?
CNN, Dana Bash: How gerrymandering makes the US House intensely partisan http://cnn.it/35cM5BV
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum A Ukrainian friend, responding belatedly to a New Year’s greeting, wrote to me today: ¤ “We hope Russia will not bomb my country or invade it in another way. This is our small and only hope – just to live in my city and my country, to be able to work and raise children.”
WaPo: Federal prosecutors examine slates that offered Trump electoral votes in states Biden won in 2020 http://wapo.st/3G1Feba
🐣 RT @kylecheney NEW: Alex JONES appeared before the Jan. 6 committee yesterday, and in his own telling, pleaded the Fifth nearly 100 times. svThen he used his show to describe what they asked him. They had LOTS of his texts, Jones said. ¤ Details w/ ¤ @nicholaswu12
⋙ Politico: Alex Jones sat with the Jan. 6 panel and repeatedly pleaded the Fifth. Then he revealed what they asked him on his broadcast. http://politi.co/3H1e9GE
// The conspiracy theorist gave his audience what he characterized as his “unofficial testimony.”🐣 RT @TPBlue4 This video by the Lincoln Project is bone chilling. ¤ It brilliantly captures our fight to save the United States from facism. ¤ Please share this far and wide — as often as you can. #BlueForDemocracy
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln It is up to us how this ends. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1485978541183356928?s=20/photo/1🧵 RT @steven_pifer Kremlin spox says Moscow awaits written responses from US to guarantees that Russia seeks in its draft #US-#Russia & #NATO-Russia agreements after Jan 21 Blinken-Lavrov meeting. ¤ Does Kremlin expect something different from what US & NATO officials have said over past 2 weeks? 📌 https://twitter.com/steven_pifer/status/1486018225527681025?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @steven_pifer #US & #NATO officials have indicated readiness to take up arms control & transparency measures if #Russia addresses reciprocal concerns. ¤ Examples: limits on offensive missiles in Europe, constraints on size & scale of military exercises. ¤ There is negotiation to be had here.
⋙ 🐣 RT @steven_pifer #US & #NATO officials have made clear they are not prepared to:
– foreswear further NATO enlargement
– withdraw forces from territory of allies who joined after 1997
– concede #Ukraine to #Russian sphere of influence
US written responses will not concede on these points.🐣 RT @AP Russian authorities have added imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny and some of his top allies to the registry of terrorists and extremists, the latest move in a crackdown on opposition supporters, independent media and human rights activists.
⋙ AP: Russia adds Navalny and his top allies to list of terrorists http://bit.ly/3qXV0Qf🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Tuckyo Rose is in full bloom on #Russia’s state TV. Multiple clips of Tucker Carlson’s rants are being used to corroborate the pro-Kremlin talking points, simultaneously attacking America, Biden, NATO and Ukraine.
TheIndependent [UK]: United States prepares sanctions to ‘maximize pain’ for Russia if it invades Ukraine http://bit.ly/3fZf8uS “Germany is also now braced to halt the final stages of Nord Stream II should [Russia] invade Ukraine, US sources said. This is a significant shift … ”
// Exclusive: Washington has asked major gas suppliers, including Qatar, to divert exports to EuropeThe United States is preparing a sweeping tranche of economic sanctions to “maximize pain in the Kremlin” if Russia invades Ukraine, The Independent has been told by a US government source. ¤ These could include blocking financial transfers from Russia’s three biggest banks, two additional sources said.
Some 100,000 Russian troops are believed to have been deployed to by Moscow to Ukraine’s border with Belarus. British armed forces minister, James Heappey, has said that Russian forces are already in Ukraine. Experts on the region said that an invasion was now more probable than not.
The first US official quoted above said that the US, working with its partners and allies is “preparing massive sanctions” that are far beyond any measures which were on the table in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. These could include export controls, as well as financial sanctions. ¤ They will be designed to “maximize pain the Kremlin while also minimizing the spillover” elsewhere, the US government source said.
In preparation for this effort the country is: “Working with countries and companies around the world to ensure the security of supply of natural gas and to mitigate against price shocks for the American people, Europe and the global economy.” ¤ The US is working with European allies to help consider how best to “deploy their existing energy stockpiles”. ¤ The US has also been in talks with natural gas exporter Qatar and other exporters of the energy stuff including North African countries. The talks with major exporters are aimed at ensuring “a surge in natural gas output to European buyers” the US government official said.
Two additional sources familiar with US government’s planning said that these could include both energy and financial sanctions and include blocking of transactions from some of Russia’s largest banks, such as Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank.
Germany is also now braced to halt the final stages of Nord Stream II, the vast, billion pound gas pipeline from Russia, should the country invade Ukraine, US sources said. This is a significant shift in Berlin’s approach to the issue, won by assurances in talks with the US that there would be strong support for their energy supplies from non-Russian exporters.
It comes after US secretary of state, Antony Blinken told German news outlet ZDF’s Heute Journal last week: “We oppose the pipeline. But I’ve heard the chancellor say as recently as a few days ago that in the event of Russian aggression against Ukraine, there will be severe costs and everything will be on the table.”
There was now an “above 50 per cent chance of invasion”, Helima Croft, managing director and head of commodities strategy at RBC Capital Markets told The Independent. In order to avoid conflict, Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier, would need to “unbundle his demands” that require NATO to be removed from “his sphere of influence”, she added.
Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre For European Reform, told a webinar that he was “pesimistic” about the prospects for invasion, and that he believed there was a very real risk that an invasion could lead to a new Cold War between Russia and western powers.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, British prime minister Boris Johnson said that if Russia does invade Ukraine, the UK would “look to contribute to any new NATO deployments to protect our allies in Europe.” ¤ Mr Johnson said that no one would gain from an invasion, and that “Russia would create a wasteland” in the country.
⭕ 24 Jan 2022
Forbes: How Much Cash Does Donald Trump Really Have? http://bit.ly/3g8iNGZ
// how rich is Tump?Politico: Kerik told Jan. 6 panel that former Army colonel came up with idea to seize voting machines. http://politi.co/33IXHMR
// Previously, Phil Waldron was best known for circulating a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that urged Trump to declare a state of emergency in the wake of the election.🐣 RT @AshaRangappa This is called convergence: Coming to the same conclusions as your adversary, even if for different reasons (in this case, tribal loyalty more than an understanding of geopolitics). @john_sipher wrote about it in 2018, and it’s worth revisiting now
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic: Convergence Is Worse Than Collusion http://bit.ly/359j8H1
// 8/13/2018 Trump and Putin share many more goals than just Trump’s election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Malinowski My office is now getting calls from folks who say they watch Tucker Carlson and are upset that we’re not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine, and who want me to support Russia’s “reasonable” positions.🐣 RT @AnaCabrera NEW: Chapman University refusing to help former employee John Eastman try to block his university emails from January 6 committee
🐣 RT @kasparob63 What I wrote in 2014 when Putin invaded. “Ukraine is the front line of a war the free world doesn’t want to admit exists, and so is losing.” 15 years of democratic decline, led by Putin’s support of autocracies worldwide, backed up by force.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol “Ukraine presents zero military threat to Moscow; it does, however, pose an alternative ideological model that erodes Putin’s own legitimacy…Ukraine today is the frontline state in the global geopolitical struggle between democracy and authoritarianism.”
💙 ⋙⋙ AmericanPurpose, Francis Fukuyama: Why Ukraine Matters http://bit.ly/3Iz5BHb🐣 RT @AC360 “The Ukrainian people will resist, will fight, guerilla warfare. They’ll fight in the villages, in the streets, in the towns.” – Former ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor on why Russian President Vladimir Putin will have a “fight on his hands” if he does invade Ukraine.
💽 https://twitter.com/AC360/status/1485791519722418177?s=20/photo/1🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah NEW: “DA for Atlanta area granted special grand jury to probe Donald Trump’s election interference.” Donald Trump is now OFFICIALLY being criminally investigated!
⋙ CNN: DA for Atlanta area granted special grand jury to probe Trump’s election interference http://cnn.it/3AvSsvC🐣 RT @isikoff At hearing on John Eastman’s efforts to block 1/6 committee from getting his emails, Doug Letter, House counsel, reveals that Eastman, law prof who authored memo on how Pence could block certification of Electoral College vote, invoked 5th Amendment 146 times.
WaPo: NATO to send more ships, fighter jets to Eastern Europe as Russia continues buildup on Ukraine border http://wapo.st/3rNKme8 Kremlin Press Secy Dmitry “Peskov blamed the United States and NATO for the escalation of tensions over Ukraine”
🐣 My Twitter Lists for:
Russia Zone: https://twitter.com/i/lists/825790309284114432
Ukraine: https://twitter.com/i/lists/157259218
National Security: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1336406604808380419CNN: US places up to 8,500 troops on alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe amid Russia tensions http://cnn.it/3H1FYOQ
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 I’m glad to discuss Putin’s latest aggression and how to stop him. But I said it all in my 2015 book Winter Is Coming. Even by then I was furious the West had done so little. Tragically, it’s still valid. 📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1485676597634121733?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I addressed Putin’s war on Ukraine as a test for the US and the rest of the free world. As I’ve been saying since 2007, the longer you wait to deter a dictator, the higher the eventual price. Now a major war is looming.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Instead of running around in a panic at every Putin move, a strategic plan of deterrence by raising the costs of aggression and reducing his leverage should have been implemented in 2008 at the latest, when he invaded Georgia. The mask was off.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Kick Putin’s oligarchs and their families out of the free world and seize their assets. They are war criminals. Aid Ukraine & other targets. Reduce dependence on Russian energy, what I called “dictatorship substitution.” You don’t negotiate with cancer; you cut it out. …🐣 RT @Lucian_Kim “Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s ‘open door’ to Ukraine and taking more territory—he wants to evict US from Europe,” says Fiona Hill. “As he might put it: ‘Goodbye America.'”
💙 ⋙ NYT, Fiona Hill: Putin Has the U.S. Right Where He Wants It http://nyti.ms/3rIXmBOWe knew this was coming. ¤ “George, you have to understand that Ukraine is not even a country. Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe and the greater part was given to us.” These were the ominous words of President Vladimir Putin of Russia to President George W. Bush in Bucharest, Romania, at a NATO summit in April 2008.
Mr. Putin was furious: NATO had just announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the alliance. This was a compromise formula to allay concerns of our European allies — an explicit promise to join the bloc, but no specific timeline for membership.
At the time, I was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, part of a team briefing Mr. Bush. We warned him that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action. But ultimately, our warnings weren’t heeded.
Within four months, in August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia. Ukraine got Russia’s message loud and clear. It backpedaled on NATO membership for the next several years. But in 2014, Ukraine wanted to sign an association agreement with the European Union, thinking this might be a safer route to the West. Moscow struck again, accusing Ukraine of seeking a back door to NATO, annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and starting an ongoing proxy war in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region. The West’s muted reactions to both the 2008 and 2014 invasions emboldened Mr. Putin.
This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s “open door” to Ukraine and taking more territory — he wants to evict the United States from Europe. As he might put it: “Goodbye America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
… [Putin] has a personal obsession with history and anniversaries. December 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Russia lost its dominant position in Europe. Mr. Putin wants to give the United States a taste of the same bitter medicine Russia had to swallow in the 1990s. He believes that the United States is currently in the same predicament as Russia was after the Soviet collapse: grievously weakened at home and in retreat abroad. He also thinks NATO is nothing more than an extension of the United States. Russian officials and commentators routinely deny any agency or independent strategic thought to other NATO members. So, when it comes to the alliance, all Moscow’s moves are directed against Washington.
… Putin hopes he can strike a new security deal with NATO and Europe to avoid an open-ended conflict, and then it will be America’s turn to leave, taking its troops and missiles with it. … In recent official documents, [Russia] demanded ironclad guarantees that Ukraine (and other former republics of the U.S.S.R.) will never become members of NATO, that NATO pull back from positions taken after 1997, and also that America withdraw its own forces and weapons, including its nuclear missiles. Russian representatives assert that Moscow doesn’t “need peace at any cost” in Europe. Some Russian politicians even suggest the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against NATO targets to make sure that we know they are serious, and that we should meet Moscow’s demands.
… Kremlin officials have not just challenged the legitimacy of America’s position in Europe, they have raised questions about America’s bases in Japan and its role in the Asia-Pacific region. They have also intimated that they may ship hypersonic missiles to America’s back door in Cuba and Venezuela to revive what the Russians call the Caribbean Crisis of the 1960s.
… [T]he United States needs to show Mr. Putin that he will face global resistance and Mr. Putin’s aggression will put Russia’s political and economic relationships at risk far beyond Europe. ¤ Contrary to Mr. Putin’s premise in 2008 that Ukraine is “not a real country,” Ukraine has been a full-fledged member of the United Nations since 1991. Another Russian assault would challenge the entire U.N. system and imperil the arrangements that have guaranteed member states’ sovereignty since World War II — akin to the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but on an even bigger scale.
… U.N. censure, widespread and vocal international opposition, and countries outside Europe taking action to pull back on their relations with Russia might give him pause. Forging a united front with its European allies and rallying broader support should be America’s longer game. Otherwise this saga could indeed mark the beginning of the end of America’s military presence in Europe.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 U.S. threatens Russian smartphones: ¤ The Biden admin is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine.
⋙ WaPo: U.S. threatens use of novel export control to damage Russia’s strategic industries if Moscow invades Ukraine http://wapo.st/346oiD5🐣 RT @UChicagoLaw “If we try to stop him and fail — and it will likely fail — then we’ve just added to the Trump mythology,” said Prof. @DanielJHemel re using the 14th Amendment to bar frmr Pres. Trump from holding office, write @blakehounshell & Leah Askarinam in @nytimes
⋙ NYT: How Jan. 6 Gave the 14th Amendment New Life http://nyti.ms/32rB0Mm
// Legal scholars say a long-forgotten provision of the Constitution could bar from office anyone who encouraged the Capitol riot.🐣 RT @pbump Trump is still a powerful force in Republican politics. But there are a number of signs that Trumpism — the ethos and tactics he leveraged — are more powerful still.
⋙ WaPo: Trump is losing to Trumpism http://wapo.st/3tTRiZK⭕ 23 Jan 2022
💙 NewYorker, David Remnick: Putin, Ukraine, and the Preservation of Power http://bit.ly/3KGNv85
🐣 RT @john_sipher @rdouthat Unfortunate article. NATO enlargement is not an offensive or aggressive act. It is the voluntary decision of sovereign countries reacting to Kremlin bullying. Also, we know that Putin is never satisfied with agreements. He lies pushes & for more. Only deterrence works. https://twitter.com/john_sipher/status/1485455868862910466?s=20
💙 💽 RT @MeidasTouch NEW VIDEO ¤ This is a coup in plain sight. History will judge where we stand in this moment. Which side are you on? ¤ #ACoupInPlainSight https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1485417068656799746?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_Mag Ever since 2014, Putin has used history as a weapon in his hybrid war against Ukraine while claiming Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.” Far from being brotherly nations, many Ukrainians see their relationship with Russia as that of an abused spouse
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: Disarming Putin’s history weapon http://bit.ly/3qQ6mpj “Ukraine’s experience of Russian rule is … much darker than Putin cares to admit and makes a mockery of his attempts to sanitize the imperial past”… If the international community wishes to truly appreciate the issues at stake in the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, it must first cut through the layers of historical disinformation constructed by the Kremlin. ¤ Putin’s central message is the idea that Ukraine has always been part of Russia and must remain so. He routinely refers to Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” and frequently blames outside influences for manufacturing what he regards as an artificial divide between the two modern nations.
In reality, while today’s Russia and Ukraine do indeed share long periods of common history, they have spent considerably more time apart than together. Ukraine’s experience of Russian rule is also much darker than Putin cares to admit and makes a mockery of his attempts to sanitize the imperial past. Far from being fraternal nations, many Ukrainians see their historical relationship with Russia as being more akin to that of an abused spouse in a forced marriage.
No honest reading of Russian-Ukrainian relations would characterize bilateral ties as a partnership of equals. Instead, the relationship was defined for centuries by Russian efforts to exert ever greater control over Ukraine while suppressing Ukrainian nation-building efforts. ¤ Early incidents of note include the 1709 Sack of Baturyn, which saw Russian troops slaughter the entire population of the Ukrainian Cossack capital city in an atrocity that echoed across Europe. As Russian imperial control over Ukraine strengthened during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so did efforts to prevent the evolution of Ukrainian national identity.
This process included extensive restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language. No single document captures the Russian denial of Ukrainian identity quite as succinctly as the 1863 “Valuev Circular.” This czarist decree banning Ukrainian-language publications states matter-of-factly, “a separate Ukrainian (“Little Russian”) language has never existed, does not exist, and shall not exist.” …
The next chapter in the Kremlin war on Ukrainian statehood was to prove by far the bloodiest. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin unleashed a wave of coordinated terror against the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian peasantry in a bid to eradicate the threat to Soviet power posed by Ukraine’s statehood aspirations. ¤ Countless Ukrainian writers, scientists, clergy and school teachers were arrested and executed or sent to the Gulag on trumped up charges of “bourgeois nationalism.” Meanwhile, a deliberately engineered artificial famine devastated the Ukrainian countryside, leaving an estimated four million dead. This Stalinist campaign would later be held up as a classic example of genocide by Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term and initiated the Genocide Convention.
Policies of russification remained the norm in Soviet Ukraine right up until the final years of the USSR. They are now being revived in regions of Ukraine currently under Russian occupation as the Kremlin seeks to reassert its authority by eradicating traces of Ukrainian identity. ¤ Since 2014, Ukrainian language education has been removed from the curriculum in Russian-occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Other symbols of Ukrainian identity such as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine have also been relentlessly targeted by the occupation authorities. Russia’s actions expose the grim reality behind Putin’s protestations of brotherly love.
This long record of atrocity and oppression rarely features in international media coverage of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Instead, correspondents are more likely to make casual references to a shared past without seeking to clarify the troubling character of this historical relationship.
Encouraged by the apparently endless credulity of the international community, the Kremlin has taken its distortions to new extremes. In recent months, Russia has surrounded Ukraine from the north, east, and south with a formidable invasion force, while at the same time insisting it is Ukraine that poses a security threat to Russia. The sheer audacity of Moscow’s claims would be enough to make Orwell chuckle.
Russia’s recent demands for “security guarantees” are self-evidently absurd and should be treated as such by the international community. Likewise, Vladimir Putin’s attempts to portray Ukraine’s long and traumatic experience of Russian domination as a benign brotherhood should no longer be allowed to pass unchallenged. For too long, history has been one the Kremlin’s favorite weapons. The time has come to disarm it.
NYT: Biden Weighs Deploying Thousands of Troops to Eastern Europe and Baltics http://nyti.ms/3qSmXZA
// The president is also considering deploying warships and aircraft to NATO allies, in what would be a major shift from its restrained stance on Ukraine.The move would signal a major pivot for the Biden administration, which up until recently was taking a restrained stance on Ukraine, out of fear of provoking Russia into invading. But as President Vladimir V. Putin has ramped up his threatening actions toward Ukraine, and talks between American and Russian officials have failed to discourage him, the administration is now moving away from its do-not-provoke strategy.
In a meeting on Saturday at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, senior Pentagon officials presented Mr. Biden with several options that would shift American military assets much closer to Mr. Putin’s doorstep, the administration officials said. The options include sending 1,000 to 5,000 troops to Eastern European countries, with the potential to increase that number tenfold if things deteriorate.
Mr. Biden is expected to make a decision as early as this week, they said. He is weighing the buildup as Russia has escalated its menacing posture against Ukraine, including massing more than 100,000 troops and weaponry on the border and stationing Russian forces in Belarus. On Saturday, Britain accused Moscow of developing plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine.
“Even as we’re engaged in diplomacy, we are very much focused on building up defense, building up deterrence,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “NATO itself will continue to be reinforced in a significant way if Russia commits renewed acts of aggression. All of that is on the table.”
So far, none of the military options being considered include deploying additional American troops to Ukraine itself, and Mr. Biden has made clear that he is loath to enter another conflict following America’s painful exit from Afghanistan last summer after 20 years.
🧵 📋 RT @davidfrum Instead of threatening Ukraine, Putin could be committing resources to bring indoor plumbing to the 20% of Russians who still lack it. 📌 https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1485254708746981382?s=20
WaPo: How Trump’s flirtation with an anti-insurrection law inspired Jan. 6 insurrection http://wapo.st/3KC9Una
Within days of President Donald Trump’s election defeat, Stewart Rhodes began talking about the Insurrection Act as critical to the country’s future. ¤ The bombastic founder of the extremist group Oath Keepers told followers that the obscure, rarely used law would allow Trump to declare a national emergency so dire that the military, militias or both would be called out to keep him in the White House.Appearing Nov. 9, 2020, as a guest on the Infowars program of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Rhodes urged Trump to invoke the act “to suppress the Deep State” and claimed Oath Keepers already had men “stationed outside D.C. as a nuclear option.”
Invoking the Insurrection Act was an idea sparked in conservative circles that spring as a means of subduing social justice protests and related rioting, a goal that Trump seemed to embrace when he called for state leaders to “dominate” their streets. By the end of the year, it had become a rallying cry to cancel the results of a presidential election. Now, private and public discussions of the law stand as key evidence in the cases against the Oath Keepers. …
That notion began gaining steam in late May 2020, when mass protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis prompted Trump and some of his supporters to suggest the military be called out to put an end to sporadic unrest. … Within days, Trump was suggesting much the same, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) penned a New York Times editorial urging the law’s use. But after the nation watched disturbing images of federal agents using tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters near the White House, government officials, including the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, publicly opposed invoking the Insurrection Act to deal with protests or rioters.
Trump didn’t let it go, declaring later that summer that he was still considering it. Other pro-Trump activists, like his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, issued similar calls for Trump to declare “martial law.” ¤ “Our country’s going to change,” Trump said. “We’re not supposed to go in, unless we call it an ‘insurrection.’ But you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to have to look at it.” ¤ That message resonated with some of Trump’s most fervent supporters — particularly the Oath Keepers. …
CNN: January 6 committee has been talking with ex-attorney general William Barr, chairman says http://cnn.it/3Aq8Bms
🐣 RT @adamrangpr This is where Irish is predominantly spoken in Ireland. But it would obviously be absurd to assume the rest, which is predominantly English-speaking, wants to be part of England. Bear this in mind when being shown maps of predominantly Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine. https://twitter.com/adamrangpr/status/1484984941716938760?s=20/photo/1
// map of Ireland Irish-speaking
⋙ 🐣 But the Russian-speaking parts did vote heavily for Russia-supporting Yanukovich
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1485301049082658820?s=20/photo/1
// Putin’s complaintWaPo, Karen Tumulty: ‘What are Republicans for?’ Just one thing. http://wapo.st/343wbsX “[S]tanding for nothing is not a long-term survival strategy for a party that has managed to win the popular vote in only one presidential election since 1988”
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Thread. Hope it’s true
⋙ 🧵 RT @davetroy 1/It is possible that Putin has made a fatal mistake. If he does not invade, he will lose face at home and then have to face his own people, internal unrest, and various usurpers. ¤ The only way Putin can level the playing field to “succeed” in this confrontation is hybrid war. 📌 https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1485261488604524550?s=20⭕ 22 Jan 2022
WaPo: Trump entertained plan to install an attorney general who would help him pursue baseless election fraud claims http://wapo.st/3pdrCC2
🐣 RT @toniahonen Rudy Insurance Thread 1/ ¤ America’s Vampire, the notorious serial butt-dialer and former attorney, Rudy Colludy once threatened the sitting US President with his ‘insurance’ files. Giuliani clearly thought Trump fears his evidence. Let’s explore this ‘tremendous’ legal gambit 📌 https://twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1484922481949429773?s=20
🐣 RT @RawStory Former Trump aide brazenly admits to fake elector scheme on national TV — but says ‘everything was done legally’
⋙ RawStory: Former Trump aide brazenly admits to fake elector scheme on national TV — but says ‘everything was done legally’ http://bit.ly/33JvCVpA former White House aide admitted Friday night on national TV that he helped organize a campaign to submit fake electoral certificates from several states that falsely claimed former president Donald Trump won the 2020 election. ¤ Boris Epshteyn, who was subpoenaed this week by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, told MSNBC: “Yes, I was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors for when, as we hoped, the challenges to the seated electors would be heard and be successful.” ¤ Epshteyn went on to claim that “everything that was done was done legally, by the Trump legal team, according to the rules, and under the leadership of (Trump lawyer) Rudy Giuliani.”
CNN first reported Thursday that Giuliani “oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme.””The sources said members of former President Donald Trump’s campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6,” CNN reported.
At least two state attorneys general have referred investigations into the fake electoral certificates to the Department of Justice. ¤ Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, has said she believes those who signed the certificates violated multiple state and federal laws. ¤ Clips from Epshteyn’s interview and reactions below. [ On TheBeatWithAri ]
CNN: Videos show ‘Stop the Steal’ rally organizer saying he would work with extremist groups http://cnn.it/32rwq0I
🐣 RT @BillKristol Re the Dec. 16 draft “finding”: As I understand it, findings are meant to authorize covert actions abroad under Title 50 of the U.S. Code. They’re almost always (always?) classified. So DOD would start seizing machines under a pseudo-legal but non-public authority. ¤ Coup, anyone?
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: U.K. accuses Russia of scheming to install a pro-Kremlin government in Ukraine http://wapo.st/35f5q5E The intelligence say[s] that the Russian government is scheming to make Kremlin-friendly former MoP Yevhen Murayev, the country’s new leader
TheGuardian, Ed Pilkington: ‘House of Trump is crumbling’: why ex-president’s legal net is tightening http://bit.ly/33YtOYG
// Some Trumpland observers are convinced that he is in serious legal trouble as New York’s AG investigation of Trump Organizations’s finances intensifies
♡ ૂི•̮͡• ྀ ♡
🐣 I’ll just leave this here
Annual GDP (USD Billions 2021)
California 3,120
Texas 1,772
‼️ ⋙ Russia: 1,709
New York 1,705
Florida 1,111
Illinois 875
Pennsylvania 788
Ohio 683
Washington 632
U.S. Total 22,939TheGuardian: US embassy in Ukraine ‘requests staff evacuation’ amid war fears http://bit.ly/3qMGIlj “‘Putin’s ultimatum demanding Nato push back, of course that was dismissed but that’s given him the pretext to say that there is an aggressor and that he must act’”
// Report comes as arms deliveries promised by Joe Biden arrive in response to threat of Russian invasionThe US embassy in Ukraine has requested the evacuation of all non-essential staff amid increasing fears of an imminent Russian invasion and the arrival overnight of arms deliveries promised by President Joe Biden, according to a CNN report.
US evacuations are likely to start “as early as next week”, the US cable news network said, citing a source close to the Ukrainian government. It marks the embassy’s shift in focus towards “helping Ukraine bolster its defences in the face of growing Russian aggression”.
The embassy in Kyiv also said on Twitter that the first batch of fresh US assistance had arrived in Ukraine, which includes weaponry described as “200,000 pounds of lethal aid, including ammunition for the frontline defenders of Ukraine.” …
Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the commons defence committee, echoed concerns of a nearing military antagonism and said he believed a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be “imminent”.
“Putin is taking full advantage of a weakened west. We are looking risk-averse, somewhat timid,” he told the BBC. “Putin’s ultimatum demanding Nato push back, of course that was dismissed but that’s given him the pretext to say that there is an aggressor and that he must act.” ¤ “We see these combat-ready troop formations. He has actually boxed himself into a corner because so much effort has been put into this,” Ellwood added. “He also recognises that he will never again be as strong as this to take advantage of the west’s weakness. I suspect that an invasion is now imminent.”
⭕ 21 Jan 2022
WaPo, George Conway III: The Supreme Court’s order against Donald Trump is even worse for him than it appears http://wapo.st/3nTTnkv
TheAtlantic, David French: Georgia Has a Very Strong Case Against Trump http://bit.ly/33TRqxr
// To see the most compelling evidence of the former president’s criminality, look to the Peach State.WaPo: Thousands of Giuliani’s communications turned over to Manhattan U.S. attorney following privilege review http://wapo.st/3IwB1hB “He was alleged to have tried to pressure Ukraine’s president into announcing an investigation into President Biden and his son Hunter”
More than 3,000 communications were released to prosecutors on Wednesday, an action reflected in a four-page report submitted to a judge overseeing litigation on the FBI’s April 28 seizure of Giuliani’s phones and computers. The contents of the devices were not disclosed. ¤ The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office has been investigating Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine while he was representing Trump. Prosecutors have said Giuliani might have acted as an unregistered foreign agent, which was the basis for the agents’ search. …
Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine played heavily in Trump’s first impeachment trial. He was alleged to have tried to pressure Ukraine’s president into announcing an investigation into President Biden and his son Hunter in the lead-up to the 2020 campaign.
In October 2019, two of Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested at Dulles International Airport on campaign finance violations, including for using foreign funds to support U.S. political candidates. ¤ Parnas and Fruman also were said to have assisted Giuliani in his efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to make an announcement that would be detrimental to Biden. ¤ Fruman pleaded guilty in September to soliciting a contribution from a foreign national. On Friday afternoon, he was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $10,000. In court, Fruman said his actions are “a shame that will live with me forever.” Parnas was convicted at trial in October and is awaiting sentencing.
🐣 I am a progressive. I supported Bernie Sanders twice. I want both BBB and the voting rights bills to pass. But there are only 48 functional Dems in the Senate. Progressives blew it with BBB where they could hv gotten 80% but got 0. Don’t do it again on VR. @PramilaJayapal
Politico: Dangerous precedent’: Jan. 6 committee trains its sights on false pro-Trump electors http://politi.co/32kHNaC
// GOP officials in five states illegitimately claimed to be qualified to declare Donald Trump the winner in 2020. And Trump allies were openly involved.Politico: Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines http://politi.co/3Kz53ms
// The Jan. 6 select panel has obtained the draft order and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.” Both are reported here in detail for the first time.WaPo: Supreme Court, investigators force Trump and his children on the defensive on multiple fronts http://wapo.st/3nLAkZL
// Probes in Georgia, New York and Washington target the former president, potentially jeopardizing his future — or perhaps yet again allowing him to escape unscathedA flurry of decisions by the Supreme Court and federal and state investigators has forced Donald Trump and his adult children to defend their conduct on multiple fronts, potentially jeopardizing their futures — or perhaps yet again allowing the former president to escape unscathed.
On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) submitted a 157-page filing detailing much of the evidence her investigators have gathered so far on the business practices of Trump and his children, focused on a possible pattern of fraud. The civil investigation is separate from a criminal probe James is running in tandem with new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
Then, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request to block the release of some of his White House records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Thursday brought a double whammy: The House committee sent a letter to Ivanka Trump requesting her voluntary testimony. In the letter, the panel said witnesses have told investigators that the former White House adviser might have direct knowledge of her father’s actions before, during and after the mob of his supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as president.
And in Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) requested a special-purpose grand jury to aid in her investigation into whether Trump and others committed crimes by trying to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Taken together, the events seem to spell bad news for Trump. But some who have observed him for decades are urging caution. After all, Trump survived two House impeachments — avoiding conviction by the Senate — as well as the investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III into Russian involvement in the 2016 election and several congressional probes of his administration.
“Every time there is an investigation of Trump, the media becomes invested in [it] being a possible death knell,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, a Trump biographer and longtime critic of the former president. “Donald Trump has nine lives not because he’s a master dodger, but because it’s hard to prove fraud. It’s worth stepping back and looking at the realities of the legal proceedings and at the bars the prosecutors have to overcome to make a case.”
Multiple advisers said Thursday that Trump was particularly interested in the New York probes and is regularly briefed by lawyers on the matter. James’s office is likely to bring civil charges in upcoming months, and criminal ones are still possible, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The criminal inquiry by James and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating whether Trump’s company broke the law by claiming wildly different valuations for properties to business partners and tax authorities. Experts say such cases are traditionally very difficult for prosecutors to prove.
James’s civil case is focused on similar allegations and may be easier to prove. In that case, James has already deposed Eric Trump and is pushing to depose Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, as well. In her filing Tuesday, James took direct aim at the siblings’ roles in what she alleges was a scheme to pass misleading information to banks, insurers and tax authorities to save the company millions of dollars in costs and taxes. …
Meanwhile, Trump’s team was not surprised by the news that the Jan. 6 committee had requested Ivanka Trump’s testimony as it investigates the events surrounding the Capitol insurrection, two advisers said.
“It was inevitable as she was a fact witness on that day,” said one person in the former president’s political orbit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. “If they’re trying to get to the bottom of what happened that afternoon, how could they not call her?”
Willis launched the criminal probe in February. Trump responded Thursday, saying in a statement that “I didn’t say anything wrong in the call” and repeating his false claims of widespread voter fraud. ¤ “What this Civil Special grand jury should be looking into is not my perfect phone call, but the large scale voter fraud that took place in Georgia,” he said. “Then they would be doing a great job for the people.”
WaPo: In crisis talks, U.S., Russian top diplomats trade demands on Ukraine http://wapo.st/350pKaD
ForeignAffairs, Alexander Vindman and Dominic Bustillos: The Day After Russia Attacks http://fam.ag/3rAzFLT
// What War in Ukraine Would Look Like—and How America Should Respond⭕ 20 Jan 2022
🚫🧵🌎 RT @tomaspueyo Unpopular opinion: in the Ukrainian conflict, I think Russia is right. ¤ It comes down to this: 📌 https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1484315241106132995
// disagree; interesting history, maps◕ WaPo, Philip Bump: The multilayered effort to steal the election on Jan. 6, 2021 http://wapo.st/3InEui9
[Raskin] outlines three tiers of efforts to block Joe Biden’s election on that day: the mob itself, those who came to the Capitol with the goal of inciting violence; and the relatively academic effort to block electoral votes being undertaken inside the building.x
Journalist Marcy Wheeler has written about this plan. ¤ “This discussion and others reveal a key part of the Proud Boy plan for January 6: to incite others — ‘normies’ — to commit violence,” she wrote last week. “And while a number of Proud Boys or close associates engaged in what I’ve called ‘tactical’ violence that day, the vast majority of (and the worst) violence was done by others, mostly by people with either no known or just networking ties to militia groups (such as through anti-mask activism). The Proud Boys weren’t the only militia-linked people attempting to encourage others to engage in violence … [b]ut a stated goal of at least some of the militia members who implemented the assault on the Capitol was to stoke others to engage in violence.”
We know of a number of groups, including the Proud Boys, that apparently organized for violence that day. The most prominent may be the Oath Keepers, nearly a dozen of whom were charged with seditious conspiracy last week. Using the TPP data, we can pick out the number of people known to have been allied with those prominent organizations. It’s harder to determine which of them might have engaged in violence, so, following Raskin, I’ve included them collectively in that leading-edge of violence. …
Then there are the legislators. A majority of Republicans in the House and a handful in the Senate voted to reject electoral votes from states Biden won in the hours after the riot, fulfilling the desired outcome of not only the rioters but the plan endorsed by Trump and his top allies.
We can think of the layers in a different way. The plan for violence occurred in relative darkness, organized online among members of extremist groups. The process for bringing thousands of people to Washington happened transparently, with Trump and outside organizations sponsoring a series of events in Washington on that day. Then there was the congressional effort, which occurred both in the open — with public statements about opposing cast electoral votes — and behind closed doors, as Trump and his allies cajoled legislators. …
TheGuardian: Trump held secret meetings in days before Capitol attack, ex-press secretary tells panel http://bit.ly/3GNjalS
// Stephanie Grisham gave more significant details than expected about what Trump was doing before 6 January, sources say
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen NEW: Trump aides were far more involved than previously known in the 7-state scheme to put forward fake GOP electors in 2020, sources tell CNN. Giuliani led the effort, and Trump aides coordinated the nuts-and-bolts process in the states @ZcohenCNN @merica
⋙ CNN: Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in 7 states http://cnn.it/3nMbvg6
WaPo: As Giuliani coordinated plan for Trump electoral votes in states Biden won, some electors balked http://wapo.st/3GNFFHB
January6thComm: Select Committee Seeks Information from Ivanka Trump http://bit.ly/3IqvUiC
NYT: Jan. 6 Panel Seeks Testimony From Ivanka Trump http://nyti.ms/3IoJ3sM
// The House inquiry into the Capitol riot requested cooperation from the former president’s eldest daughter and revealed new details about what unfolded inside the White House on Jan. 6.
WaPo: Georgia prosecutor requests special grand jury in probe of Trump’s efforts to overturn state’s election results http://wapo.st/3nK7t7X
Kremlin.ru (July 2021): Article by Vladimir Putin “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” http://bit.ly/3GLd2uh as mentioned @Morning_Joe @JoeNBC @MorningMika
// 7/12/2021
⭕ 19 Jan 2022
NYT: How Oath Keepers Are Accused of Plotting to Storm the Capitol http://nyti.ms/3tKetpw
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to shield records from Jan. 6 committee http://politi.co/3InYDVE
// The only member of the high court who signaled he would have granted Trump’s request was Justice Clarence Thomas.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: No. 21A272 DONALD J. TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES v. BENNIE G. THOMPSON, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS CHAIRMAN OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR STAY OF MANDATE AND INJUNCTION PENDING REVIEW http://bit.ly/3nIVyYa
// [January 19, 2022]
The application for stay of mandate and injunction pend- ing review presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE and by him re- ferred to the Court is denied. The questions whether and in what circumstances a former President may obtain a court order preventing disclosure of privileged records from his tenure in office, in the face of a determination by the incumbent President to waive the privilege, are unprece- dented and raise serious and substantial concerns. The Court of Appeals, however, had no occasion to decide these questions because it analyzed and rejected President Trump’s privilege claims “under any of the tests [he] advo- cated,” Trump v. Thompson, 20 F. 4th 10, 33 (CADC 2021), without regard to his status as a former President, id., at 40–46. Because the Court of Appeals concluded that Presi- dent Trump’s claims would have failed even if he were the incumbent, his status as a former President necessarily made no difference to the court’s decision. Id., at 33 (noting no “need [to] conclusively resolve whether and to what ex- tent a court,” at a former President’s behest, may “second guess the sitting President’s” decision to release privileged documents); see also id., at 17 n. 2. Any discussion of the Court of Appeals concerning President Trump’s status as a former President must therefore be regarded as nonbinding dicta.
JUSTICE THOMAS would grant the application.
Statement of JUSTICE KAVANAUGH respecting denial of application. The Court of Appeals suggested that a former President may not successfully invoke the Presidential communica- tions privilege for communications that occurred during his Presidency, at least if the current President does not sup- port the privilege claim. As this Court’s order today makes clear, those portions of the Court of Appeals’ opinion were dicta and should not be considered binding precedent going forward. Moreover, I respectfully disagree with the Court of Ap- peals on that point. A former President must be able to successfully invoke the Presidential communications privi- lege for communications that occurred during his Presi- dency, even if the current President does not support the privilege claim. Concluding otherwise would eviscerate the executive privilege for Presidential communications. As this Court stated in United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 708 (1974), the executive privilege for Presidential communications is rooted in Article II of the Constitution and is “fundamental to the operation of Government.” The Nixon Court explained that the “importance” of “confidenti- ality” to the Presidency was “too plain to require” further discussion. Id., at 705. “Human experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decisionmak- ing process.” Ibid. Yet a President “and those who assist him must be free to explore alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making decisions and to do so in a way many would be unwilling to express except privately.” Id., at 708. By protecting the confidentiality of those internal communications, the Presidential communications privi- lege facilitates candid advice and deliberations, and it leads to more informed and better Presidential decisionmaking. The Nixon Court noted, by way of historical example, that the Constitutional Convention was conducted “in complete privacy” and that the records of the Convention remained confidential for more than 30 years. Id., at 705, n. 15. As was true at the Constitutional Convention, the Presidential communications privilege cannot fulfill its critical constitu- tional function unless Presidents and their advisers can be confident in the present and future confidentiality of their advice. If Presidents and their advisers thought that the privilege’s protections would terminate at the end of the Presidency and that their privileged communications could be disclosed when the President left office (or were subject to the absolute control of a subsequent President who could be a political opponent of a former President), the conse- quences for the Presidency would be severe. Without suffi- cient assurances of continuing confidentiality, Presidents and their advisers would be chilled from engaging in the full and frank deliberations upon which effective discharge of the President’s duties depends. To be clear, to say that a former President can invoke the privilege for Presidential communications that occurred during his Presidency does not mean that the privilege is absolute or cannot be overcome. The tests set forth in Nixon, 418 U. S., at 713, and Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities v. Nixon, 498 F. 2d 725, 731 (CADC 1974) (en banc), may apply to a former Presi- dent’s privilege claim as they do to a current President’s privilege claim. Moreover, it could be argued that the strength of a privilege claim should diminish to some extent as the years pass after a former President’s term in office. In all events, the Nixon and Senate Select Committee tests would provide substantial protection for Presidential com- munications, while still requiring disclosure in certain cir- cumstances. The Court of Appeals concluded that the privilege claim at issue here would not succeed even under the Nixon and Senate Select Committee tests. Therefore, as this Court’s order today makes clear, the Court of Appeals’ broader statements questioning whether a former President may successfully invoke the Presidential communications privi- lege if the current President does not support the claim were dicta and should not be considered binding precedent going forward.
🐣 RT @AVindman The Biden Administration must marshal overwhelming bipartisan support to signal U.S. resolve to punish Russia for an offensive against Ukraine. Passing this legislation immediately still offers a small chance of avoid a major war in Europe. #HereRightMatters
⋙ 🐣 RT @votevets A Russian invasion of Ukraine may be unavoidable at this point. To the degree that we may still be able to stop it, Congress must pass @SenatorMenendez and @SenatorShaheen’s Defending Ukraine Sovereignty Act. ¤ 1/2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @votevets But we must also deploy forces now to Eastern Europe, to deter further Russian aggression and contain the fallout of a major war. Deterrence helps avoid US troops being sucked into a bilateral confrontation w/ Russia. ¤ 2/2
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum A Russian political analyst explains the true motivation of the regime: the *existence* of Ukraine is what threatens Russia. This is nothing to do with NATO https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1483800069388357633?s=20
WaPo: N.Y. attorney general alleges Trump’s business inflated property values, wealth statements http://wapo.st/356xiZF
⭕ 18 Jan 2022
💙 🔄 📋 NCSL: 2021 Legislative Action on Elections http://bit.ly3KlnvyV/
// National Conference of State Legislature
On the heels of an election year unlike any other, it’s no surprise interest in elections peaked during the 2021 legislative session. An astounding 3,676 election bills were introduced last year—the highest number recorded since NCSL began tracking in 2001. Despite this groundswell of activity, the number of election enactments was consistent with other odd-numbered years (2019 being the exception) with 285 bills across 42 states and 2 territories becoming law.
NBCNews: Escape from QAnon: How Jan. 6 changed one person’s path http://nbcnews.to/3Ahwwo9 “At first, it seemed like a gathering of MAGA supporters with elderly people and babies in strollers in tow, but it had become something else at the Capitol”
// Unlike so many fellow conspiracy theorists, Justin would ultimately crawl out of the dark place his own mind had taken him. His first steps began at the U.S. Capitol.
At first, it seemed like a gathering of MAGA supporters with elderly people and babies in strollers in tow, but it had become something else at the Capitol. Justin’s video recordings of the afternoon, shared with NBC News, show people climbing the scaffolding erected for Biden’s inauguration. Competing chants rang out through multiple megaphones: “Stop the Steal” and “Fight for Trump.” Justin’s voice can be heard in some of the videos softly joining in for “USA, USA.”
Then a cry of “Charge!” came from out of nowhere, and people in the front, some in combat gear, began slamming up against the guardrails, facing an outnumbered and seemingly rattled police line. Police officers sprayed the mob with pepper spray as Justin filmed a few feet away. Someone menaced, “There’s a reason they call it a thin blue line!” ¤ “I saw their eyes change,” Justin said of the crowd. “You know, when somebody gets really angry, and you just feel like they’re going to go nuts?” ¤ b“I feel like I was watching people get radicalized.” …
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Not “a crisis with Moscow over Ukraine,” but a crisis Moscow created to grab another chunk of Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters Secretary of State Antony Blinken will seek to defuse a crisis with Moscow over Ukraine when he meets the Russian foreign minister in Geneva this week following visits with Ukrainian leaders in Kyiv and European officials in Berlin https://reut.rs/3fBZ3et
CNN: Former Trump administration officials hold call to strategize against former boss’ efforts in 2022 and 2024 http://cnn.it/3IkWWrF
WaPo: House Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Giuliani, Sidney Powell http://wapo.st/3fAL7Bk and Boris Epshteyn and Jenna Ellis
⭕ 17 Jan 2022
⭕ 16 Jan 2022
NYT: Russia Issues Subtle Threats More Far-Reaching Than a Ukraine Invasion http://nyti.ms/3Icvigw “Putin wants to extend Russia’s sphere of influence to Eastern Europe and secure written commitments that NATO will never again enlarge”
// If the West fails to meet its security demands, Moscow could take measures like placing nuclear missiles close to the U.S. coastline, Russian officials have hinted.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “What we have here is attempted election fraud on a massive scale. Some perspective: If an average voter lied on their registration forms or forged an absentee ballot, they would face criminal charges…But this case is far worse…”
⋙ TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: Trump’s Electoral Forgery/Fraud http://bit.ly/3A3xnZx
// The smoking guns are all around us
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD: We have public reporting that DoJ is investigating Roger Stone, Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani, former trump DoJ officials, Members of Congress, and Donald trump for their roles in 1/6. We also know DoJ is following the money. I wanted to put it all in one place for you 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1482780159077871617?s=20
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman GOP: we will oppose anything and everything Biden/Dems propose and will only support anti-democratic efforts to overturn elections and anti-public health policies. ¤ GOP also: Biden/Dems are divisive! ¤ Once again, GOP creates its own controversy to bitch about.
WaPo, Clint Watts: We’re training our own insurrectionists http://wapo.st/3nww681 “While I learned [Army infantryman] terms and tactics with the express goal of defending my country, Rhodes and his Oath Keepers … used them in pursuit of overthrowing it”
// The Oath Keepers are among those who use their military skills to advance their extremist plots. ⋙ Indictment: [pdf] http://bit.ly/3IaCERL 48p
Sprinkled through the 48-page indictment of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and 10 others for their alleged role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol last year is terminology I learned as a U.S. Army infantryman. According to the indictment: Oath Keepers used a “stack,” a formation designed to breach a building or room, as they entered the Capitol. The group prepared a “QRF”— quick reaction force — in Virginia and conducted a “recce,” or reconnaissance, to Washington for their operation that fateful day. They organized “military style basic” training to get recruits “fighting fit for inauguration,” and Florida members participated in “unconventional warfare” training.
While I learned these terms and tactics with the express goal of defending my country, Rhodes and his Oath Keepers, according to the indictment that charges the 11 with seditious conspiracy, used them in pursuit of overthrowing it. The Oath Keepers logo looks a lot like the black-and-gold half-moon shape of the Army Ranger Tab — what soldiers receive for completing Ranger school — and the lingo they allegedly used in encrypted communications channels as they coordinated preparations has military origins. Alongside military terminology and doctrine, those reviewing Thursday’s indictment will find a group seeking armament and transport — purchasing night vision goggles, rifles and assault weapons, and planning transportation and escape routes.
None of this is coincidence; many of the Oath Keepers present at the Capitol were military veterans. The U.S. government is unintentionally training its own insurrectionists — providing the specialized and strategic-thinking skills needed to carry out an insurrection with any hope of success. …
International military coups have occurred many times over the past century, and at the moment, I still do not worry about one coming from within our current force. But what about America’s former military and law enforcement members? Long before the insurrection were violent extremist attacks from former Army members Timothy McVeigh in the heinous 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Eric Rudolph in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing and Kevin Harpham in his failed IED plot at a 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash. Fears of extremists using military training and skills in violence and terrorism arose in a Department of Homeland Security warning in 2009 before vanishing amid political pushback.
Some have claimed the events of Jan. 6 were not a coup attempt but a largely peaceful protest or even a false flag. The Thursday indictment, however, alleges in some detail how the Oath Keepers prepared to carry out terrorism — violence in pursuit of political change — unlike anything the United States has witnessed in recent history. Never in two decades working on international counterterrorism did I encounter in research or in person an armed al-Qaeda or Islamic State cell that came close to breaching the halls of the Capitol or killing the vice president or members of Congress — a possible outcome that has to be taken seriously since numerous members of the Capitol mob and those who planned for the day said that part out loud. In a post on Nov. 10, 2020, titled “Call to Action! March on DC, Stop the Steal, Defend the President, & Defeat the Deep State,” Rhodes wrote that on Nov. 14, the Oath Keepers militia would be “sending some of our most experienced LEO [law enforcement officers] and military combat veterans into D.C. … and in the days to come.” Rhodes called on “all our LEO, military, Fire, EMS, and search and rescue brothers and sisters nationwide” — those who would be “eminently capable if things turn physical.”
The problem of domestic extremists relying on military training, tactics and knowledge is bigger than the Oath Keepers. Take the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). The Wolverine Watchmen militia charged in the plot conducted firearms training and combat drills in preparation. Constitutional Sheriffs, whose members are drawn from the ranks of current law enforcement officers, some of whom reportedly have ties to extremist groups, may or may not enforce the laws. The military and law enforcement, two essential stalwart institutions of a strong democracy, have been gravely challenged in the era of Donald Trump. The Justice Department’s new charges against the Oath Keepers simply add some of the most alarming details yet to the deeply troubling picture of the political instability that has manifested in this country. …
[I]n recent weeks, we’ve seen Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin seeking to rid the military’s ranks of extremists, but the military’s response is lacking clarity about which groups should be deemed extremist and what behavior might be considered incitement to violence or dangerous. ¤ Unlike in the case of international terrorism, where the U.S. State Department designates foreign terrorist organizations so that the Justice Department can then preemptively pursue investigations based on affiliations, no such designation process exists for domestic terror groups; there’s nothing similar to provide the basis for policing extremism in our own country or in the military’s ranks.
At the moment, extremist groups like the Oath Keepers are not trying to overthrow the government violently — they’re trying to take it over at the ballot box. Oath Keepers have been running for local offices in states like New Jersey and New York. Members of the far-right group the Proud Boys, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are running in elections, too. What is extreme when extremists are in power? ¤ And what needs to happen now? In a less-talked-about move this week, the Justice Department stood up a unit focused on countering domestic extremism. But if members of Congress continue claiming those who participated in last year’s insurrection were peaceful when they were clearly not, or if those elected to office are members of the same extremist groups participating in insurrections, the silent majority will be overtaken by a violent minority.
The federal government must decide beyond cases at the individual level which ideologies and corresponding groups conducting or advocating violence to overthrow the government — in plain sight — are domestic terror groups. And only in the face of consequences will we see domestic terrorists and those inciting them curb their activity. If the evidence of extremist violence is available openly on social media, we must allow our federal investigators to preemptively open inquiries into organizations clearly intending to overturn democratic processes and overturn institutions. Both of these changes require Congress to pass legislation and the Justice Department to update regulations. If such changes are not made, we should not be surprised if the next insurrection succeeds in effectively ending our democracy.
⭕ 15 Jan 2022
NYT: Census Memo Cites ‘Unprecedented’ Meddling by Trump Administration http://nyti.ms/3AcTAEr
// Newly released documents show that top career officials at the Census Bureau had drafted a list of complaints about political interference in the 2020 count.
A newly disclosed memorandum citing “unprecedented” meddling by the Trump administration in the 2020 census and circulated among top Census Bureau officials indicates how strongly they sought to resist efforts by the administration to manipulate the count for Republican political gain.
The document was shared among three senior executives including Ron S. Jarmin, a deputy director and the agency’s day-to-day head. It was written in September 2020 as the administration was pressing the bureau to end the count weeks early so that if President Donald J. Trump lost the election in November, he could receive population estimates used to reapportion the House of Representatives before leaving office.
The memo laid out a string of instances of political interference that senior census officials planned to raise with Wilbur Ross, who was then the secretary of the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau. The issues involved crucial technical aspects of the count, including the privacy of census respondents, the use of estimates to fill in missing population data, pressure to take shortcuts to produce population totals quickly and political pressure on a crash program that was seeking to identify and count unauthorized immigrants.
Most of those issues directly affected the population estimates used for reapportionment. In particular, the administration was adamant that — for the first time ever — the bureau separately tally the number of undocumented immigrants in each state. Mr. Trump had ordered the tally in a July 2020 presidential memorandum, saying he wanted to subtract them from House reapportionment population estimates.
The census officials’ memorandum pushed back especially forcefully, complaining of “direct engagement” by political appointees with the methods that experts were using to find and count unauthorized noncitizens. ¤ “While the presidential memorandum may be a statement of the administration’s policy,” the memo stated, “the Census Bureau views the development of the methodology and processes as its responsibility as an independent statistical agency.”
The memorandum was among hundreds of documents that the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school obtained in a lawsuit seeking details of the Trump administration’s plans for calculating the allotment of House seats. The suit was concluded in October, but none of the documents had been made public until now.
Kenneth Prewitt, a Columbia University public-affairs scholar who ran the Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001, said in an interview that the careful bureaucratic language belied an extraordinary pushback against political interference. ¤ “This was a very, very strong commitment to independence on their part,” he said. “They said, ‘We’re going to run the technical matters in the way we think we ought to.’”
The officials’ objections, he said, only underscored the need for legislation to shield the Census Bureau from political interference well before the 2030 census gets underway. “I’m very worried about that,” he said. ¤ Reached by email, Mr. Ross said he neither recalled seeing the memorandum nor discussing its contents with the bureau’s executives. A spokesman for the Census Bureau, Michael C. Cook, said he could not immediately say whether census officials actually raised the issues with Mr. Ross or, if so, what his response was.
The Trump administration had long been open about its intention to change the formula for divvying up House seats among the states by excluding noncitizens from the population counts. That would leave an older and whiter population base in states with large immigrant populations, something that was presumed to work to Republican advantage.
Mr. Trump’s presidential memorandum ordering the Census Bureau to compile a list of noncitizens for that purpose prompted a far-reaching plan to scour billions of government records for hints of foreigners living here, illegally or not. The bureau proved unable to produce the noncitizen count before Mr. Trump left office, and noncitizens were counted in the allocation of House seats, just as they had been in every census since 1790.
But as the documents show, that was not for lack of effort on the part of the Commerce Department and its leader at the time. ¤ Among other disclosures, undated documents show that Mr. Ross was enlisted to lobby 10 Republican governors whose states had been reluctant to turn over driver’s license records and lists of people enrolled in public assistance programs so that they could be screened for potential noncitizens. ¤ Mr. Ross said in his email that he had “called state officials, both Republican and Democrat, who were slow or reluctant to share data with us.” ¤ He continued, “The objective was to get the maximum sources of data that could help us to have as complete and accurate a census as possible.” ¤ News reports at the time suggested that many states were resisting requests to provide information, and one slide presentation in June 2020 showed that only three states — Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota — had agreed to turn over driver’s license records. …
Political appointees also had taken interest in how the bureau would produce final population figures needed to draw political maps nationwide, as well as estimates of the number of voting-age citizens. Mr. Trump had said he wanted to give those estimates to states as the basis for drawing political maps — another tactic that almost certainly would boost Republican political representation. The memo also said political officials had pushed to reduce the steps used to process and double-check population data so that apportionment figures could reach the White House on time.
The final complaint, about meddling in the methodology used to count undocumented immigrants, came to a head last January, when unnamed whistle-blowers accused Mr. Dillingham, Mr. Trump’s appointee to head the bureau, of caving to political pressure to produce a tally of noncitizens that experts said could not be assembled. Mr. Dillingham, who denied the charge, later resigned.
🧵 RT @atrupar things are going well at the Trump rally [sarcasm] 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1482539709951881217?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar […] “The only thing we didn’t win was the election” — whoops
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1482545429183139843?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JohnWDean This is correct. The midterms and 2024 will determine if our democracy survives. And I am not inclined toward hyperbole!
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch There is only one issue that truly matters in the midterm elections: do we want to live in a democracy or are we ok being ruled by a far right authoritarian government.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch New polling shows that most Americans now believe US democracy is “at risk of extinction.” ¤ It is up to us to expose how the GOP is systematically destroying democracy from the inside out. ¤ We must be ruthlessly honest with what is at stake and pull no punches.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is an Oathkeepers attorney. He suggests they were waiting for Trump to activate them after declaring some form of martial law. If he maintains that position, the next question is, who were they talking to that lead them to believe that would happen?
⋙ 🐣 RT @NewDay The DOJ charged the Oath Keepers leader, Stewart Rhodes, with ‘seditious conspiracy’ related to Jan. 6 riot. ¤ The group’s planning “was about their fanciful idea that … Trump was going to activate them as a militia under the insurrection act,” says his attorney Jon Moseley.
🐣 RT @BillKristol The forged electoral certificates show coordination across seven states. Those fake certificates were key to the plan of the Eastman memo and to the Jeffrey Clark DOJ draft letter to Georgia. The conspiracy involved fraud and force. At the head of the conspiracy: Donald Trump.
🐣 RT @john_sipher “Russia is targeting our elections, our social media, our parliaments and our citizens, and it is become more obvious now that Russia is not part of our value system…”
⋙ NYT, Steven Erlanger: Fear of Russia Brings New Purpose and Unity to NATO, Once Again http://nyti.ms/3zZkqQo
// After years of drift, Trumpian ridicule and failure in Afghanistan, Russian demands for a new Iron Curtain in Europe have created unity in the alliance, at least for now.
… Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s extraordinary new demands and threats, following his military buildup on the borders of Ukraine, has brought NATO back to basics — containing Russian power and imperium. ¤ Mr. Putin’s insistence that NATO stop enlargement and remove allied forces from member states bordering Russia would draw a new Iron Curtain across Europe, and that threat has concentrated minds. It may be just what a lagging alliance has needed. ¤ “NATO relies on momentum, and a lot of the momentum is generated by a sense of threat and fear,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior intelligence officer dealing with Russia, now with the Center for a New American Security.
[I]n talks this week with the Russians, NATO leaders spoke with exceptional unity for a 30-member alliance whose commitment to collective defense was increasingly in question. ¤ The talks allowed Mr. Putin to revisit Russian grievances over how the Cold War ended, in hopes of placing them back on the table for renegotiation 30 years later. His deputy foreign minister, Aleksandr V. Grushko, even warned the alliance off [sic] a “policy of containment” of Russia and insisted that “free choice does not exist in international relations” — suggesting that Ukraine would have to bow to Russian wishes.
But the more the discussion evoked the Cold War — with its firm dividing line through Europe, and its competing Russian and Western systems and spheres of influence — the more it reminded European and American allies of NATO’s purpose. ¤ “Deterring Russia is in the DNA of NATO, because Russia is what can bring existential threats to European nations,” said Anna Wieslander, chair of Sweden’s Institute for Security and Development. ¤ That threat now is more than territorial, she said. Russia is also trying to undermine NATO’s democratic cohesion. “Russia is targeting our elections, our social media, our parliaments and our citizens, and it is become more obvious now that Russia is not part of our value system,” Ms. Wieslander said.
As it drafts a new strategic concept to be ready this year, NATO is concentrating on “resilience” against new hybrid and cyberthreats, highlighting its defense of the democratic institutions of member states, not just their territory. ¤ “NATO is its member states, and it’s what allies make of it,” said Sophia Besch, a defense analyst in Berlin for the Center for European Reform. “It’s not out of business because we didn’t let it, and we’ve changed its raison d’être to what are the major strategic concerns of the day.”
NATO is especially important now for those states bordering Russia, like the Baltic nations and Poland, a country which has had deepening strains with its European partners over the protection of core democratic principles, which Brussels has accused the government in Warsaw of eroding.
But the current crisis is a reminder, even in Poland, of the importance of the alliance as a whole, and not just the country’s bilateral relationship with the United States, said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. ¤ “In Poland there was concern that NATO would lose its focus on Russian security threats, but now it’s obvious that this is the only framework that can protect us and provide long-term security,” Mr. Buras said.
There was also anxiety that President Biden, in trying to stabilize relations with Russia to pivot toward China, would bargain away forward-based NATO troops in Poland and the Baltics that were deployed after 2014. ¤ “But there is no sign that the United States will give in on fundamental issues to NATO,” like its open-door policy and its right to deploy forces in any member state, Mr. Buras said, and Washington has been rigorous in briefing its allies about all of its discussions with Russia. ¤ Still, he said, the current crisis “is a very clear consequence of the U.S. pivot to Asia and the realization of Russia that it might now take advantage of that reorientation of U.S. fundamental security interests,” he said. “And that issue will not go away soon.”
As the security situation in Central Europe has worsened with Russian aggression and threats, Poland “got what we finally wanted when we joined NATO, which is allied and American troop presence on our soil — to finally bring NATO deployments beyond Germany,” said Michal Baranowski, who heads the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund. ¤ That is precisely one of Russia’s current demands — that those deployments in Poland and the Baltic States be removed, a demand rejected by Mr. Biden and by NATO, to Poland’s relief.
Ms. Kendall-Taylor believes that Mr. Putin saw an opportunity to take advantage of a shakier trans-Atlantic alliance, a divided Europe and a polarized America with a weakened president. ¤ NATO unity is real but untested, she said. “It’s too early to declare all restored, because Russia not done anything yet,” Ms. Kendall-Taylor said. “It’s a bit the calm before the storm.”
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa THREAD. Since there’s so much [waves hands everywhere] crazy coming up all of a sudden, let me break down the theory of how the overturning of the election was supposed to go down: 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1482384084433313795?s=20
⭕ 14 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @YahooNews Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., says the upcoming hearings by the Jan. 6 select committee probing the riot at the U.S. Capitol staged by supporters of former President Donald Trump will “blow the roof off the House.”
⋙ YahooNews: Jan. 6 hearings ‘are going to blow the roof off the House,’ Raskin says http://yhoo.it/33n3OGm
“We are going to do everything we can to subpoena all the information we need and to enforce our subpoenas. But even if we don’t get every last person in there, we are going to have hearings that I believe will be compared to the Watergate hearings, because they are going to blow the roof off the House in terms of explaining to America what actually happened in the attack on our democracy,” Raskin, who sits on the select committee, told an audience of approximately 40,000 people who watched his remarks on Facebook.
While former Trump administration figures and supporters have defied subpoenas for information and testimony, Raskin said the committee had spoken with more than 400 witnesses to date who have already laid the groundwork for explosive hearings.
“I hope everybody will watch and I hope everybody will discuss it and then it will lead to a report that, I hope again, will be a game changer in terms of American history,” Raskin said.
In response to questions about holding Trump personally accountable for pushing the disproven claim that he lost the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud, which served as the motivation for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Raskin promised “a reckoning.”
“But you know, the guy’s a walking crime wave, and he has committed crimes all over the country, including sexual harassment and assault on a lot of people. There’s bank fraud and there’s real estate fraud and there’s tax fraud,” Raskin said.
“And there are prosecutors all over the country, looking at all that stuff. I don’t want us to fetishize Donald Trump that much — he will meet you know, his maker, one place or another, there will be accountability and a reckoning with the law.”
The committee has already made headlines by releasing text messages it has obtained that it says show that Fox News host Sean Hannity “had advance knowledge regarding President Trump’s and his legal team’s planning for January 6th,” and that Ivanka Trump had urged her father to stop the violence at the Capitol.
The committee also said this week that it had interviewed Trump supporter Ray Epps and released a statement that attempted to discredit the assertion made by some conservatives that he was acting as an FBI agent or informant when encouraging people to enter the Capitol. Epps appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted list shortly after the Jan. 6 riot, only to be later removed, a fact that some Republicans say points to his involvement with the FBI.
“I’m not certain the FBI is totally competent with everything, but I’m totally certain that they would not be so incompetent as to put their own agent on the Most Wanted list,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans serving on the committee, told Yahoo News.
The Jan. 6 select committee has been conducting its investigation for nearly seven months, and plans to hold televised, primetime hearings to lay out its findings in the coming months. Raskin said he understood that many Republicans were simply trying to “run out the clock” on the investigation until the midterm election, when many political observers expect the Democrats to lose control of the House and, as a result, the Jan. 6 committee.
For now, though, Raskin, who served as a manager during Trump’s second impeachment, sounded confident that the hearings that were soon to commence would have an impact.
“This is the most bipartisan committee I’ve ever been on, with a great Democratic chair and a great Republican vice chair and what I see is constitutional patriots working every single day and every single evening to get the truth out to the American people before it’s too late.”
WaPo: Everything we know about Kevin McCarthy’s conversations with Trump concerning the Jan. 6 attacks http://wapo.st/3ns3GfI
// “Here’s a timeline, based in part on news reports but also McCarthy’s own words at the time — he was quite forthcoming in the days after the attack about his conversations with Trump. Today, he is claiming ignorance about much of this.”
WaPo: Russia planning potential sabotage operations in Ukraine, U.S. says http://wapo.st/3I38KyT “We have information that indicates Russia has already prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine” ~ U.S. official
CNN: ‘Massive’ cyber attack hits Ukraine government websites http://cnn.it/3nqldF4
“Ukrainian! All your personal data has been uploaded to the public network. All data on the computer is destroyed, it is impossible to restore them,” the message, published in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, read.
“All information about you has become public, be afraid and wait for the worst. This is for you for your past, present and future. For Volhynia, for the OUN UIA [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists Ukrainian Insurgent Army], for Galicia, for Polesie and for historical lands,” the web page read.
🐣 RT @nytimes Hackers brought down several Ukrainian government websites, posting a message on the Foreign Ministry’s site saying, “Be afraid and expect the worst.” ¤ The cyberattack came a day after high-stakes talks intended to forestall a Russian invasion.
⋙ NYT: Hackers Bring Down Government Sites in Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3zW0CNT
// A cyberattack defaced the Foreign Ministry website with a message saying “Be afraid,” a day after the latest round of high-stakes talks intended to forestall a
🐣 RT @ A source with knowledge of recent cybersecurity initiatives in Ukraine told BuzzFeed News hours before the cyberattack that Kyiv & Washington had recently seen a “substantial uptick” in Russian cyber activity targeting Ukrainian systems & planting malware.
⋙ BuzzfeedNews: Ukraine Was Hit By A Massive Cyberattack And The Hackers Warned To “Be Afraid And Expect Worse” http://bit.ly/3qtDvao
After days of unsuccessful negotiations between the US, NATO, and Russia, hackers took down more than a dozen Ukraine government websites and posted an ominous warning for the country to “be afraid and expect worse.”
The cyberattack occurred overnight on Thursday and Friday morning, and it took down more than a dozen official websites, disrupting government work and raising questions about whether Russia was signaling that a new offensive against Ukraine was getting underway.
Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry told BuzzFeed News that government specialists were working to restore the websites Friday morning and the Ukrainian Cyberpolice Department had opened a criminal investigation. “It’s too early to draw conclusions. We are assessing the damage caused by the attack,” he said.
But some in Ukraine’s government see Russian fingerprints all over the attack and are already blaming Moscow, which has massed around 100,000 soldiers near the Ukrainian borders and threatened a “military response” against its neighbor unless the US and NATO concede to its demands.
“It’s pretty obvious [Russia is responsible], because hardly anyone else has the motive for such actions,” a Ukrainian official told BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the sensitive matter.
Officials in Russia didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Ukrainian and US officials have warned that if Russia were to launch a fresh invasion of Ukraine it would likely do so in conjunction with cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday that the US intelligence community has information that suggests Russia is laying the groundwork to fabricate a pretext for invading Ukraine.
A source with knowledge of recent cybersecurity initiatives in Ukraine told BuzzFeed News hours before the cyberattack that Kyiv and Washington had recently seen a “substantial uptick” in Russian cyber activity targeting Ukrainian systems and planting malware.
The source said there was evidence to show the malware was designed to be planted and remain idle until a command would be given by the hackers behind it. “So they don’t need to hack anything when the [shooting] war starts… The hack already happened,” the source explained. “They just push the button.”
“We call this preparing the battlefield,” the source said.
Most of the Ukrainian websites targeted late Thursday and early Friday registered error messages when visited. But hackers replaced the homepage on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website with amessage written in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish. “[Every] Ukrainian!” it said. “All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future.”
The message also included references to Ukrainian nationalist fighters in World War 2 and atrocities committed by them against Poles at the time, which has been a point of tension between the two countries despite their close relationship. Some Ukrainians saw that as a ruse to blame Warsaw for the attack.
The Cyberpolice Department said it is working with the State Special Communications Service and the Security Service of Ukraine “to collect digital evidence and identify those involved in the cyber attacks.” No personal or official government data was stolen in the attack, it added.
Ukraine has been the target of several large-scale cyberattacks since 2014, the year Russia forcibly annexed Crimea and fomented the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv has repeatedly insisted that the attacks are part of Moscow’s “hybrid war” – a combination of cyberwarfare, disinformation, and conventional military warfare – against it. Russia has denied responsibility for the cyberattacks.
Past incidents saw attacks on the Ukrainian power grid, government agencies, transportation systems, and businesses. A 2017 attack known as NotPetya emanated in Kyiv but quickly spread to companies across the globe, causing significant damage.
The New York Times reported last month that the US and UK had sent experts to Kyiv to help Ukraine on the cyber front, foreseeing the likelihood of cyberattacks as Russia ratcheted up tensions with its neighbor.
President Vladimir Putin has massed some 100,000 troops and heavy artillery around the border of Ukraine, raising concern in Kyiv and Western capitals that the Kremlin might be preparing to invade anew. Moscow has denied it is prepping for an attack and said that what it does with its military within its borders is its business.
High-stakes discussions between the US, NATO, and Russia in Geneva, Brussels, and Vienna this week failed to secure a deal to see Moscow pull back its troops and military equipment.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters Thursday that Washington and NATO “are not ready to meet our key requirements.” Among those is a guarantee that Ukraine can never join the western military alliance. The US and Ukraine have called the demand a non-starter.
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum As Russian state media mock international negotiations as a farce, as Russian diplomats hysterically threaten to move troops to Cuba and Venezuela, remember why this is all happening: Because Putin is personally threatened by the idea of a free, prosperous Ukraine https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1481872331681275913?s=20
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand 👀National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says the admin will be sharing with press “in the next 24 hours” what US officials have seen Russia doing in terms of disinfo to create a pretext to invade Ukraine
⭕ 13 Jan 2022
🧵 RT @ThePlumLineGS Let’s be clear: Kevin McCarthy’s refusal to testify to the 1/6 committee may be helping cover up possible Trump crimes. ¤ McCarthy can likely detail whether Trump saw the riot as a means to obstruct the electoral count — an official proceeding. ¤ New piece: 📌 https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1481648367650279425?s=20
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Kevin McCarthy’s coverup for Trump may be hiding knowledge of possible crimes http://wapo.st/3KiY2pE
“There’s no doubt that McCarthy is a material witness to a possible crime by the former president,” New York University School of Law professor Ryan Goodman told me. “His conversation with Trump during the height of the riot could provide direct evidence of Trump’s mind-set and scheme.”
The true nature of what that conversation could tell us keeps getting lost. It’s not just that it could reveal that Trump displayed extraordinary depravity and malevolence in ignoring numerous frantic pleas to call off the rioters.
It’s also that this knowledge could reveal that Trump may have come to see the violence as instrumentally helpful to his cause of subverting the election’s outcome. ¤ You can see the importance of this in the select committee’s letter to McCarthy. In it, the committee notes that McCarthy screamed at Trump to call off the rioters. Trump reportedly replied: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
It would only be the tiniest leap from what Trump did say to a hint or an open indication that he would only call off the rioters if Republicans delayed the electoral count. ¤ Remember, while the violence was happening, Trump and his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani reportedly called at least one GOP senator and urged him to secure such a delay. Also recall that Trump thought his procedural coup was in the process of failing — as the committee’s letter notes — and that he needed Republicans to do more that day.
Goodman notes that McCarthy’s direct knowledge of Trump’s conduct during the violence could illuminate whether Trump violated the federal statute that bars such obstruction. ¤
“Trump’s greatest legal exposure is for the criminal obstruction of congressional proceedings, and McCarthy appears to have direct evidence that goes to the heart of what’s needed to prove that crime,” Goodman told me. ¤ “Did Trump say anything that connected his unwillingness to call off the mob to his wanting Republican members of Congress to delay the certification?” Goodman said. “What’s already been reported about the two men’s conversation already comes very close to that being the implied message.”
🐣 RT @marceelias “Right-wing media are lashing out in panic over the possibility that a little known provision of the 14th Amendment could prevent Republican incumbents involved in the January 6 insurrection from holding federal office.”
⋙ MMFA: Conservative media attack constitutional argument over insurrection, whining about idea of holding GOP incumbents accountable http://bit.ly/3nlcO5y
🐣 RT @saletan .@SykesCharlie on Cheney: “At a certain point, who gives a fuck whether you’re [#3] in the House caucus?” ¤ Republicans say “they need to stay in the room, so they that can sound the alarm, but they refuse to sound the alarm so they can stay in the room.”
🐣 RT @brianklaas There’s an unprecedented, systematic authoritarian attack on American democracy and there’s now little hope currently of even modest reforms to help protect democracy. This is a watershed moment that America will come to regret—as our democracy faces serious, existential risk.
WaPo: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes charged with seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 Capitol riot http://wapo.st/3tr2Fs4
The 56-year-old, who was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building, is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. He is charged with seditious conspiracy, along with 10 other Oath Keepers members or associates, officials said.
Most of those individuals were previously arrested, but one, 63-year old Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, Arizona, is also facing charges as part of the case against the Oath Keepers for the first time. Officials said Rhodes was arrested this morning in Little Elm, Texas, and Vallejo was taken into custody in Phoenix.
A federal grand jury in the District leveled the new charges focusing on what prosecutors say is a core group of Oath Keepers adherents who allegedly planned for and participated in obstructing Congress on the day lawmakers certified President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The indictments unsealed Thursday mark the first time anyone has faced charges of seditious conspiracy for the Jan. 6 attacks, though prosecutors have long signaled they were considering using that rarely-applied section of federal law.
In interviews with The Washington Post over the past year, Rhodes — a former Army paratrooper and Yale Law graduate who has become one of the most visible figures of the far-right anti-government movement — has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. ¤ He said he was communicating with members of his group on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to “keep them out of trouble,” and emphasized that Oath Keepers associates who did go into the Capitol “went totally off mission.”
An earlier indictment charged 19 of alleged Oath Keepers adherents with conspiracy and aiding and abetting the obstruction of Congress. Two of those individuals have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators. The rest have pleaded not guilty and are preparing for trials later this year.
In cases in which people have pleaded guilty, defendants acknowledged they were among a group that forced entry through the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors after marching single-file in tight formation up the steps wearing camouflage vests, helmets, goggles and Oath Keepers insignia. ¤ Some defendants also admitted to stashing guns in a nearby Arlington, Va., hotel for possible use by what they called a “Quick Reaction Force.”
In court filings related to the original conspiracy case, prosecutors alleged that the group came to Washington at Rhodes’ urging. Rhodes began discussing plans to keep Trump in the White House by force as early as Nov. 9, the filings state.
Prosecutors allege that before and during the riot, Rhodes exchanged dozens of encrypted messages, phone calls and other communications with members of the Oath Keepers group that breached the Capitol. Rhodes has accused prosecutors of trying to manufacture a nonexistent conspiracy.
Prosecutors say the Oath Keepers, a loose network of groups founded in 2009 that includes some self-styled citizen militias, seeks to recruit current or former members of law enforcement and the military, promoting an apocalyptic vision of the government careening toward totalitarianism and societal collapse.
🐣 RT @QuintForgey .@ChrisMurphyCT says “the consequence of doing nothing” on filibuster reform “is potentially the end of the republic.” ¤ “I know that sounds so hyperbolic. People think that we’re exaggerating the stakes. But let’s remember what Donald Trump tried to do.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @QuintForgey .@ChrisMurphyCT says Democrats should bring voting rights bills to the Senate floor, even if they don’t have enough support: “I think we just have to vote. I mean, I think there’s a chance that we can get all 50 of us behind rules reform. But even if we don’t, let’s put this up.”
⭕ 12 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @usatodayopinion From @BarackObama in his first column since leaving the White House: ¤ Now is the time for Americans everywhere to follow John Lewis’s example and fight for our democracy. Now is the time for the U.S. Senate to do the right thing.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @usatodayopinion 1/ Our democracy isn’t a given. It isn’t self-executing. We, as citizens, have to nurture and tend it. We have to work at it. And in that task, we have to vigilantly preserve and protect our most basic tool of self-government, which is the right to vote.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @usatodayopinion 2/ At the time, various state legislators across the country had already passed a variety of laws designed to make voting harder. It was an attack on everything John Lewis fought for, and a challenge to our most fundamental democratic freedoms.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @usatodayopinion 4/ …members of one of our two major political parties – spurred on by the then-sitting president – denied the results of that election and spun conspiracy theories that drove a violent mob to attack our Capitol.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @usatodayopinion 5/ Although initially rejected by many Republicans, those claims continued to be amplified by conservative media outlets, and have since been embraced by a sizable portion of Republican voters – not to mention GOP elected officials who do, or at least should, know better.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @usatodayopinion 6/ We’ve seen state legislatures try to assert power over core election processes including the ability to certify election results.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @usatodayopinion 7/ These partisan attempts at voter nullification are unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times, and they represent a profound threat to the basic democratic principle that all votes should be counted fairly and objectively.
⋙ USAToday: Former President Barack Obama: We need to follow John Lewis’ example and fight for our democracy http://bit.ly/3qowZBw
// “The world, and future generations, will be watching,” Obama writes as he calls on Senate to “do the right thing” and pass legislation to protect voting rights.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @BarackObama Now is the time for the U.S. Senate to do the right thing and call a vote on crucial voting rights legislation. Future generations are counting on us to protect our democracy. I wrote out some thoughts about why this is so important.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarackObama The filibuster has no basis in the Constitution, and in recent years, it has become a routine way for the Senate minority to block important progress on issues supported by the majority of voters. But we can’t allow it to be used to block efforts to protect our democracy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarackObama That’s why I fully support @POTUS’s call to modify Senate rules as necessary to make sure pending voting rights legislation gets called for a vote. And every American who cares about the survival of our most cherished institutions should support the President’s call as well.
🐣 RT @NAChristakis An attempted coup: ‘Installing slates of “alternate electors” was an integral part of the ill-fated plan conceived by Trump allies to usurp power on January 6 by pressuring VP Mike Pence to throw out the pro-Biden electors that had been chosen by voters.’
⋙ CNN: Trump allies’ fake Electoral College certificates offer fresh insights about plot to overturn Biden’s victory http://cnn.it/3FlOHtF
In the weeks after the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump’s allies sent fake certificates to the National Archives declaring that Trump won seven states that he actually lost. The documents had no impact on the outcome of the election, but they are yet another example of how Team Trump tried to subvert the Electoral College — a key line of inquiry for the January 6 committee.
The fake certificates were created by Trump allies in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico, who sought to replace valid presidential electors from their states with a pro-Trump slate, according to documents obtained by American Oversight.
The documents contain the signatures of Trump supporters who claimed to be the rightful electors from seven states that President Joe Biden won. But these rogue slates of electors didn’t have the backing of any elected officials in the seven states — like a governor or secretary of state, who are involved in certifying election results — and they served no legitimate purpose.
The documents were first posted online in March by the government watchdog group. But they received renewed attention this week, as the January 6 committee ramps up its investigation into Trump’s attempted coup, including how his allies tried to stop states from certifying Biden’s victory, in part, by installing friendly slates of electors who would overturn the will of the voters. …
The real certificates, which have been posted to the National Archives website, correctly stated that Biden won the seven battleground states. They also list the legitimate group of electors from each state, rather than the rogue pro-Trump slate included on the unofficial documents.
Some of the fake certificates with pro-Trump electors were sent to the National Archives by top officials representing the Republican Party in each state, according to the documents.
They sent these fake certificates after Trump himself failed to block governors from signing the real certificates. Specifically, Trump encouraged Republican governors in states like Georgia and Arizona not to certify the election results, and falsely claimed the elections were fraudulent. But these GOP officials ignored Trump, followed the law, and awarded the electors to Biden.
Installing slates of “alternate electors” was an integral part of the ill-fated plan conceived by Trump allies to usurp power on January 6 by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the pro-Biden electors that had been chosen by voters. The idea was promoted by Trump advisers inside and outside the White House, including controversial right-wing lawyer John Eastman.
Eastman, who has been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee, authored a memo outlining a six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election and award Trump a second term. The plan included throwing out results from seven states because they allegedly had competing electors.
In truth, no state actually had two slates of competing electors. The pro-Trump electors were merely claiming without any authority to be electors, as documented in the fake certificates sent to the National Archives. The certificates were essentially an elaborate public relations stunt.
The new documents weren’t the only fake certificates sent to the National Archives. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told CNN’s Don Lemon that a second group called the “Sovereign Citizens of the State of Arizona” sent a rogue document to the National Archives in 2020, and she said they improperly used the Arizona state seal on their fake certificate. ¤ “They used this fake seal to make it look official, which is not a legal activity,” Hobbs said.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance No matter what DOJ has been doing up until now, there’s every reason to open investigation into what appears to be a highly coordinated effort to obstruct the election. Multiple possible crimes in the heartland of election protection work Garland committed to. Follow the facts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brahmresnik NEW In Arizona, journalism can be a team sport. GOP State Rep. Jake Hoffman refused to answer 12News photojournalist’s question (which I provided) re why he signed phony declaration in 2020 that Arizona electors voted for Trump. Watch as AZRepublic’s @ruelaswritings folos up…
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @brahmresnik THE DOCS Here’s bogus declaration signed 12/14/20 by Arizona’s 11 Trump electors, inc. Hoffman. US Senate candidate @jim_lamon also signed. On same day, top AZ Senate Republican announced he’d subpoena Maricopa County’s election equipment for an audit. https://twitter.com/brahmresnik/status/1481443561597857794?s=20/photo/1 -3
🐣 RT @pbump I crunched the numbers, gang, and the odds are pretty good that Mike Lindell has enough evidence to send you to prison for life.
⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: Are you one of the 1 in 11 Americans Mike Lindell doesn’t want to arrest? http://wapo.st/3HZX6Vw 😂
🐣 RT @allinwithchris Rep. Schiff on Rep. Jordan refusing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 probe: “I assume that he reached the conclusion that if he came in and told the truth, it would put him at odds with the former president. And he just doesn’t have the courage to do that.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllIn: Schiff on Jordan stonewalling 1/6 probe: He decided he has ‘a lot to hide’ http://on.msnbc.com/3tpt7Ce
// Rep. Adam Schiff on Rep. Jim Jordan refusing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 probe: “I assume that he reached the conclusion that if he came in and told the truth, it would put him at odds with the former president. And he just doesn’t have the courage to do that.”
🐣 📊 RT @polialertcom The latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows the provisions in the ‘Freedom To Vote Act’ has overwhelmingly broad support among voters.
– Expanding access to early voting: 65% support, 23% oppose
– Prohibiting partisan gerrymandering: 64% support, 19% oppose
– Making it illegal to prevent someone from registering to vote: 62% support,24% oppose
• Making Election Day a federal holiday: 61% support, 26% oppose
– Expanding same-day voter registration: 56% support, 30% oppose
– Expanding access to voting by mail: 55% support, 35% oppose
• Allowing Americans with prior criminal convictions to vote: 54%support, 32% oppose
– Expanding automatic voter registration: 51% support, 33% oppose
WaPo: House Jan. 6 committee asks Kevin McCarthy for information about communications with Trump, Mark Meadows http://wapo.st/3rgb0vH
🔆 This❗️⋙ January6thComm: Select Committee Seeks Information from Minority Leader McCarthy | Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol http://bit.ly/3noMZlg
⋙ ▧ Letter: [pdf] http://bit.ly/3qnNQV4 6p
⭕ 11 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @weareoversight We obtained the fake “electoral certificates” submitted to Congress by Trump supporters in seven states as part of the failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. ¤ See the files here: http://bit.ly/ https://twitter.com/weareoversight/status/1481090180983537669?s=20/photo/1
⋙ AmericanOversight: American Oversight Obtains Seven Phony Certificates of Pro-Trump Electors http://bit.ly/3JZzOkt
// 3/2/2021
American Oversight has obtained copies of phony electoral vote certificates from seven states that were submitted to Congress as part of the failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The fake electoral certificates were assembled by groups of Trump supporters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who sought to replace the valid presidential electors from their state — who had been chosen by voters in free and fair elections — with bogus slates of pro-Trump electors. ¤ None of the certificates contains any indication that they list illegitimate slates of electors not chosen by those states’ voters.
🐣 RT @mkraju New – McConnell told me he agrees with Rounds, as GOP senators come to their colleague’s defense and push back on Trump. “I think Sen. Rounds told the truth about what happened in the 2020 election,” McConnell said. “And I agree with him.”
⋙ CNN: Top Republicans stand up for Rounds after Trump’s attack: He ‘told the truth’ http://cnn.it/3Gm9vTe
Senior Republicans are closing ranks behind Sen. Mike Rounds after he endured a scathing attack from former President Donald Trump for acknowledging the reality that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
“I think Sen. Rounds told the truth about what happened in the 2020 election,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Tuesday. “And I agree with him.”
The back-and-forth is the latest sign that many Republicans — particularly in the Senate — are eager to move past the former President’s obsession with the 2020 elections and instead focus on more fertile ground: The Biden agenda and their efforts to take back both houses of Congress in 2022.
Yet, Trump continues to hover over the party given his outsize influence with the base, his close hold over House Republicans and his ability to generate attention over his outright falsehoods and conspiracies over the outcome of the 2020 election. That has prompted concerns among senior Republicans that his claims over the election could depress GOP voter turnout in the fall, something that a number of senators blame for costing them the two Georgia Senate seats — and the majority — last January.
The latest blowup came over the weekend after Rounds said that any voting “irregularities” in 2020 wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the race. ¤ “The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency,” Rounds told ABC News.
That fact-based comment prompted a broadside from the former President, who called Rounds a “jerk” and “ineffective” and vowed “never” to endorse Rounds for reelection, though he’s not facing voters again until 2026. ¤ “Is he crazy or just stupid?” Trump said in a statement.
Rounds, who has a low-key and genial demeanor and is well-regarded by his colleagues, stood by his comments — and said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by Trump’s statement. Rounds told CNN on Tuesday that Republicans need to speak the truth to voters about 2020 so they can have trust in the results of free and fair elections in 2022 and beyond. ¤ “Nobody is out looking for confrontations,” Rounds said, defending his remarks. “What we are looking for is to be able to provide good information in a timely fashion, but to be seen as being responsible and being honest. I think that’s what the American people deserve. And I think that’s what many of us want to do. We’re not looking to fight. What we’re looking is, is to say here are the facts, and they’re not going to change.”
Rounds added: “Why are we having that discussion today? I think because we’re getting closer and closer to 2022, in which we want people to get out and vote. We want them to have faith in the election process. We want them to feel like they’re a part of it and that their vote really matters.”
Even some Trump allies came to Rounds’ defense on Tuesday. ¤ “I’ve always said I agree that the election was not stolen — at least to the degree that it was illegal theft,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who contended Democrats took advantage of more voting rules eased during the pandemic. “I’ve moved on a long time ago, and most members of Congress have, including Mike.”
Other Republicans said it was time to focus on something other than 2020. ¤ “I say to my colleague, welcome to the club,” Sen. John Thune, the senior South Dakota Republican said of the Trump attack on Rounds — something he has endured himself in the past. “I don’t think re-litigating or rehashing the past is a winning strategy. If we want to be a majority in 2023, we’ve got to get out and articulate what we’re going to do with respect to the future the American people are going to live and the things they’re going to care about when it comes to economic issues, national security issues.”
Many Republicans were angered over the personal nature of Trump’s attacks against Rounds, who lost his wife in November after a battle with cancer. ¤ “I take great exception to anybody that calls Mike Rounds a jerk,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican. “Because he’s one of the kindest, nicest, most sincere members that we have.”
Still, some Republicans wanted to stay above the fray. ¤ “Nothing to add to what’s already out there,” Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and member of GOP leadership, said when asked about the episode.
🐣 RT @ “To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules in whichever way they need… to prevent a minority of Senators from blocking action on voting rights. ¤ When it comes to protecting majority rule in America – a majority should rule in the U.S. Senate.” -@POTUS
// Biden in Georgia
🐣 RT @drhodes Former Soviet Republics are all different. But wherever and whenever people can freely express their views, one thing is consistent: they don’t want Putin’s autocracy and kleptocracy. That’s a reality he can’t change.
WaPo: House Jan. 6 committee dismisses ‘unsupported’ claim of FBI involvement in riot http://wapo.st/3r7T86l The Jan 6 committee debunked claims made to The Senate Judiciary Comm by Sens Cruz & Cotton positing that the Jan 6 insurrection was a “false flag” operation by the FBI
// The panel interviewed Ray Epps, an Arizona man who was on the Capitol grounds on the day of the attack and who is at the center of a baseless, right-wing theory accusing the FBI of planting agents to incite violence that day
WaPo: Justice Dept. forms new domestic terrorism unit to address growing threat http://wapo.st/3GoogFc “The [FBI] assessed racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism and anti-government violent extremism as being the most “lethal” terrorism threats”
⭕ 10 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @JohnBonifaz BREAKING: We are proud to be representing North Carolina voters in this challenge to Madison Cawthorn’s eligibility to appear on the 2022 ballot based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. @FSFP @OurRevolution http://14point3.org First such challenge since Reconstruction.
⋙ 🐣 RT @FSFP BREAKING: ¤ We are representing North Carolina voters in a challenge to Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy for re-election under Sec 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies insurrectionists from re-election. #CawthornIsDisqualified – http://14point3.org http://ow.ly/Ss3m50HqZRm
CNN, Chris Cillizza: This Republican senator just admitted the 2020 election wasn’t rigged http://cnn.it/33czzSr
On Sunday, South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds was asked a blunt question by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “What do you say to all those Republicans, all those veterans who believe the election was stolen, who have bought the falsehoods coming from former President Trump?”
Here’s how Rounds responded … : ¤ “We looked — as a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states.
“While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.
“The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward — and that’s the way we want to look at this — moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it’s going to take to win the presidency.
“And if we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let’s focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can — they can believe and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.”
This is, of course, all perfectly accurate. There is simply no evidence of any sort of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Some states in which the vote between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was very close have recounted the vote multiple times, with no change in result. In Georgia, for example, the vote was recounted three times — including once by hand — and no significant irregularities or changes were found.
Given all of that, it should not be terribly newsworthy when a Republican elected official acknowledges that Biden won fair and square. “Dog bites man” isn’t usually a story.
But, we are in very unusual times. And, for Republicans, Trump has made believing in the Big Lie that the election was stolen a loyalty litmus test. Despite all of the objective facts pointing to a fair election, the former President remains utterly obsessed with relitigating 2020.
“‘Senator’ Mike Rounds of the Great State of South Dakota just went woke on the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020. He made a statement this weekend on ABC Fake News, that despite massive evidence to the contrary, including much of it pouring in from Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states, he found the election to be ok — just fine. Is he crazy or just stupid?” Trump said in a statement Monday morning.
(Trump has also been openly critical of Rounds’ home state Senate colleague — John Thune. Thune, after weighing retirement, announced over the weekend that he is running for another term in 2022.)
Unfortunately for the health and future of the GOP, many of its elected leaders — and rank in file — are falling in line with Trump’s falsehood. ¤ A December 2020 survey of Republicans in Congress by The Washington Post revealed that only 27 members acknowledged that Biden had won the election. ¤ And, on January 6, 2021, 139 Republican House members and 8 Republican senators voted to object to challenges to either the Arizona and Pennsylvania results.
The following month, when asked whether the election was stolen, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise responded this way: “Joe Biden’s the President. There were a few states that did not follow their state laws. That’s really the dispute that you’ve seen continue on.”
In the interim, Republican candidates — for Senate and House — from all over the country have put election denialism at the center of their campaigns as they try to attract an endorsement from the former President. “I get attacked by my opponents for saying this, but I believe it very strongly and so I want to say it up here: I believe the election was stolen from Donald J. Trump,” said Josh Mandel, one of the leading GOP candidates in the Ohio Senate race.
All of which makes what Rounds said — aka the objective truth — a bit of an outlier within his party. Which, well, stop and think about that for a minute. Acknowledging a fact that has been proven time and time and time again in swing states across the country makes you an exception within one of the country’s two main political parties. ¤ That’s what Republicans — like Rounds — who are trying to steer their party back toward a more fact-based reality are up against.
⋙ 🧵 RT @maddowblog NEWS: Attorneys for Donald Trump have met in person with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Georgia. 💽 📌 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1480728158479474690?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @maddowblog MORE: A Trump statement in which he railed against “DA’s, AG’s, and Dem Law Enforcement” came within days of his lawyers meeting with prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, who are investigating Trump criminally for his alleged actions to pressure election officials there. 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1480728158479474690?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @maddowblog Gwen Keyes Fleming, former DeKalb County, GA district attorney points out that it is more likely that Donald Trump is pre-spinning what could be coming from the Fani Willis investigation than that he’s any kind of victim of political prosecution. Watch: 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1480738936452530177?s=20/photo/1
Politico: Jan. 6 panel ramps up investigation into Trump’s state-level pressure http://politi.co/3GfuAP9
// POLITICO has identified the information the committee has received from key swing states, as lawmakers prepare to take their findings public.
The House committee investigating the Capitol attack has gathered thousands of records from state officials and interviewed a slate of witnesses as it attempts to retrace former President Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election, particularly in four key states that swung the presidency to Joe Biden. They’re getting ready to take their work public, possibly as soon as the spring.
“We want to let the public see and hear from those individuals who conducted elections in those states,” select panel chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in an interview. He described those witnesses as particularly important given their mandates to keep elections “fair and impartial” while hailing from one political party.
The voluminous documents state election officials have sent the Jan. 6 committee, obtained by POLITICO through open records requests, underscore the depth of Trump’s pressure campaign directed at the typically lower-level administrators of presidential balloting. The emails, texts and phone recordings also add consequential context to previously reported incidents, such as Trump’s call to Georgia’s top elections investigator and Mark Meadows’ outreach to Georgia election officials.
The select panel asked states for any scrap of evidence to justify allegations of election fraud that Trump baselessly promoted, focusing much of its efforts on officials in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those states found virtually no evidence of fraud, according to Thompson.
Among the officials who spoke with the committee was Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state during the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the situation not authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania secretary of state declined to comment on whether the panel had been in touch with the state’s officials.
Mainly, the records show state officials trying to either mollify or ignore Trump and his allies without distorting election results or embracing debunked claims of vote tampering. A spokesperson for the select panel declined to comment on the documents.
As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.
Spokespeople for the Michigan and Arizona secretaries of state declined to comment on the documents. The offices confirmed that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, and their staff met with the panel in November.
The National Archives sent emails to the Arizona secretary of state on Dec. 11, 2020, passing along the forged certificates “for your awareness” and informing the state officials the Archives would not accept them.
Arizona then took legal action against at least one of the groups who sent in the fake documents, sending a cease and desist letter to a pro-Trump “sovereign citizen” group telling them to stop using the state seal and referring the matter to the state attorney general.
“By affixing the state seal to documents containing false and misleading information about the results of Arizona’s November 3, 2020 General Election, you undermine the confidence in our democratic institutions,” Hobbs wrote to one of the pro-Trump groups.
That group’s leader, Lori Osiecki, had told the Arizona Republic in December 2020 that she decided to send in the certificates after taking part in post-election rallies and after attending a daylong meeting in Phoenix that had included Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
The group that forged the Michigan certification had not used the state seal, and it appears state officials there took no further action after the Archives rejected it.
🐣 RT @radiksikorski Get this, @RussianEmbassy, once and for all, in a language you can grasp. We were not orphaned by you because you were not our daddy. More of a serial rapist. Which is why you are not missed. And if you try it again, you’ll get a kick in the balls.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy FM #Lavrov: #NATO has become a purely #geopolitical project aimed at taking over territories orphaned by the collapse of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation and the Soviet Union.
NYT: Pence and Jan. 6 Committee Engage in High-Stakes Dance Over Testimony http://nyti.ms/330yaOT
// Getting the former vice president to answer questions under oath could be crucial as the House panel focuses on Donald Trump’s responsibility for the Capitol riot.
⭕ 9 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt While Putin accuses the US of breaking an agreement it never made, Russia has violated an agreement it actually did make with regard to Ukraine.
⋙ NYT: In Ukraine Conflict, Putin Relies on a Promise That Ultimately Wasn’t http://nyti.ms/3zFHu6D
// The current confrontation turns partly on what, if any, commitments Secretary of State James A. Baker III made about NATO’s expansion in the waning days of the Cold War.
Nearly 30 years after James A. Baker III stepped down as secretary of state, the current confrontation over Ukraine turns in part on a long-running argument about what, if any, commitments he made to Moscow in the waning days of the Cold War and whether the United States fulfilled them.
President Vladimir V. Putin and other Russian officials have asserted that Mr. Baker ruled out NATO expansion into Eastern Europe when he served as President George H.W. Bush’s top diplomat. The West’s failure to live up to that agreement, in this argument, is the real cause of the crisis now gripping Europe as Mr. Putin demands that NATO forswear membership for Ukraine as the price of calling off a potential invasion.
But the record suggests this is a selective account of what really happened, used to justify Russian aggression for years. While there was indeed discussion between Mr. Baker and the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the months after the fall of the Berlin Wall about limiting NATO jurisdiction if East and West Germany were reunited, no such provision was included in the final treaty signed by the Americans, Europeans and Russians.
“The bottom line is, that’s a ridiculous argument,” Mr. Baker said in an interview in 2014, a few months after Russia seized Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine. “It is true that in the initial stages of negotiations I said ‘what if’ and then Gorbachev himself supported a solution that extended the border that included the German Democratic Republic,” or East Germany, within NATO. Since the Russians signed that treaty, he asked, how can they rely “on something I said a month or so before? It just doesn’t make sense.”
In fact, while Mr. Putin accuses the United States of breaking an agreement it never made, Russia has violated an agreement it actually did make with regard to Ukraine. In 1994, after the Soviet Union broke apart, Russia signed an accord along with the United States and Britain called the Budapest Memorandum, in which the newly independent Ukraine gave up 1,900 nuclear warheads in exchange for a commitment from Moscow “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force” against the country.
Russia trampled Ukrainian sovereignty when it annexed Crimea and sponsored proxy forces to wage war against the Kyiv government in eastern Ukraine. And it is once again threatening the use of force by assembling 100,000 Russian troops along its border to extract guarantees that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO.
The dispute traces back to the final years of the Cold War, when East and West were negotiating the framework of what Mr. Bush would call the new world order. The fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, led to negotiations over unifying the two Germanys formed after World War II.
… On Jan. 31, 1990, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German foreign minister, said in a speech that there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”
He was talking about whether NATO troops would be stationed in territory then constituting East Germany, not whether other countries would eventually be considered for membership in the alliance. Nonetheless, Mr. Baker picked up on Mr. Genscher’s formulation during a Feb. 9 visit to Moscow.
As an inducement for agreeing to German unification, Mr. Baker offered what he called “ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward,” according to a declassified memorandum recording the discussion. ¤ “There would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east,” Mr. Baker told Mr. Gorbachev, coming back to the formula three times during the conversation.
Back in Washington, the National Security Council staff was alarmed. The word “jurisdiction” could imply that the NATO doctrine of collective defense would apply only to part of German territory, limiting German sovereignty. It was one thing to agree not to move troops into the East right away, as far as American officials were concerned, but all of Germany had to be part of NATO.
“The N.S.C. got to him pretty quickly and said that language might be misinterpreted,” Condoleezza Rice, then a Soviet adviser to Mr. Bush and later secretary of state under President George W. Bush, remembered in an interview for a biography of Mr. Baker.
Mr. Baker got the message and began walking back his words by ditching the term “jurisdiction” from all future discussions. Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany likewise rejected Mr. Genscher’s formulation. ¤ “I may have been a little bit forward on my skis on that, but they changed it and he knew that they changed it,” Mr. Baker recalled of Mr. Gorbachev. “He never once again in all the months that followed ever raised the question of NATO expanding its jurisdiction eastward. He then signed documents in which NATO did expand its jurisdiction.”
No less a witness agreed than Mr. Gorbachev. “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years,” he told an interviewer after Russia’s intervention in Ukraine seven years ago. The issue was foreign troops in eastern Germany. “Baker’s statement” about not one inch “was made in that context,” Mr. Gorbachev said. “Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
Having said that, Mr. Gorbachev agreed that NATO expansion was unnecessarily provocative. “It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990,” he said.
As it happens, one of those who suggested a different approach was Mr. Baker. In 1993, as NATO was contemplating admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, he proposed in an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times that the alliance consider another possible member: Russia itself.
The idea would be to force democratic change before it could join, while making clear that Russia was not an enemy. “For our relations with Russia, it can both encourage reform and hedge our bets against a return to authoritarianism and expansionism,” Mr. Baker wrote. That obviously never happened.
🐣 RT @HeathMayo Four pages to say two words: “I’m scared.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Jim_Jordan https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1480329304936529921?s=20/photo/1 -4
// letter
WaPo: Trump’s cable cabinet: New texts reveal the influence of Fox hosts on previous White House http://wapo.st/3t8F3YY
🐣 RT @McFaul I met Putin in 1991. I’ve written about him for 2 decades. I sat in the room with him for 5 years during the Obama administration. Those who believe that Putin will stop undermining Ukrainian sovereignty & democracy with a non-expansion NATO “guarantee” don’t know Putin.
⭕ 8 Jan 2022
🔄 🌎 NYT: How Russia’s Military Is Positioned to Threaten Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3tasuw4
// Russian forces now surround Ukraine on three sides, and Western officials fear a military operation could start as soon as this month.
🔄 NYT: [ Ukraine Articles Index ] http://nyti.ms/3zCNahA
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin does not want a stable and predictable relationship with the United States or the West. And we don’t have the means to force him into a stable and predictable relationship. So we should stop stating this unobtainable outcome as a goal of U.S. foreign policy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @john_sipher We are halfway there. Predictable but not stable. Putin is predictably unstable. He needs chaos, lies and threats. Asymmetric and political warfare. ¤ The sooner we realize it’s impossible, the better. He will always create a crisis if he’s being ignored.
NYT: U.S. Details Costs of a Russian Invasion of Ukraine http://nyti.ms/3taQSO7
// The Biden administration and its allies are developing new possible sanctions ahead of a series of meetings to defuse the crisis with Moscow.
yoWaPo: The future of Europe hinges on the coming talks between the West and Russia http://wapo.st/3zN0XCs
A brutal dictator, having staked a claim to power based on conspiracy theories and promises of imperial restoration, rebuilds his military. He begins threatening to seize his neighbors’ territory, blames democracies for the crisis and demands that, to solve it, they must rewrite the rules of international politics — and redraw the map — to suit him. The democracies agree to peace talks, hoping, as they must, to avoid war without unduly rewarding aggression.
What happened next at Munich in 1938 is a matter of history: Britain and France traded a piece of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler’s Germany in return for his false pledge not to make war. The Munich analogy can be, and has been, overused and overstated. But given how closely the first paragraph of this editorial describes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current bellicosity toward Ukraine, and given that the United States and its allies enter negotiations with Mr. Putin in the coming week, it’s worth reflecting on any and all relevant experience. The Biden administration and European allies must approach the talks with corresponding gravity: If Mr. Putin comes out ahead — either at the bargaining table or on the battlefield — the continent could be lastingly destabilized. …
What the United States cannot do is allow Mr. Putin to win concessions at the point of a gun. In the — all-too-likely — event that he is not bargaining in good faith, and does invade Ukraine, President Biden will have to help that country defend itself, rally NATO and ensure that Russia pays a heavy price.
⭕ 7 Jan 2022
🔄 🌎 NYT: How Russia’s Military Is Positioned to Threaten Ukraine http://nyti.ms/
// Russian forces now surround Ukraine on three sides, and Western officials fear a military operation could start as soon as this month.
NYT, Lilia Shevtsova: Ukraine Is Only One Small Part of Putin’s Plans http://nyti.ms/3GdOiuz
⭕ 6 Jan 2022 ~ Anniversary of Insurrection
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Biden tells the truth in the best speech of his presidency http://wapo.st/3q2jvLH “[I]n one important moment of truth-telling, Biden changed the direction of his presidency…”
[I]n one important moment of truth-telling, Biden changed the direction of his presidency by setting his face against a denialism that has distorted our nation’s debate since the day he was inaugurated. He insisted that Republicans could not be treated as a normal opposition as long as most of them — in their leadership and in their ranks — refuse to break unreservedly with an odious, democracy-wrecking liar.
When Biden was asked by a reporter as he left the Capitol whether his address had been “divisive,” he did not back down. “To heal,” he said, “you have to recognize the extent of the wound. You can’t pretend.”
🧵 🖼 RT @LeahMillis One year ago at 5:04pm, I took this photo of law enforcement using flash bang grenades & tear gas on a violent mob trying to break into the U.S. Capitol. It was hr 4 in my gas mask, helmet & bulletproof vest photographing hand-to-hand combat between police and American citizens. 📌 https://twitter.com/LeahMillis/status/1479124282244579332?s=20/photo/1
// thread of well known iconic photos from Jan 6 by Reuters photographer
🐣 RT @allinwithchris “This last text I am going to read you indicates he was worried Trump was not done on the 6th,” says Hayes on the Hannity texts released by the Jan. 6 panel. ¤ “The idea that Sean Hannity was truly worried about what Trump would do should scare all of us.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllIn: Jan. 6 committee releases ‘explosive’ texts from Sean Hannity http://on.msnbc.com/3t2Zlmu
// The Jan. 6 committee released private text messages sent from Fox News host Sean Hannity to Mark Meadows and others in the days before and during the [insurrection]
WaPo: Ted Cruz grovels to Tucker Carlson over Jan. 6 ‘terrorist attack’ remark http://wapo.st/32WSgt1 Carlson “instantly made clear who had the real power in their relationship”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: How Jan. 6 — and Republicans — enabled Trump’s domination of the GOP http://wapo.st/3tklRYv
When the dust settled on Jan. 6, 2021, even many prominent allies of President Donald Trump agreed that he was responsible — in some measure, and often in large measure — for the first major attack on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812:
● The No. 1 House Republican, Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), said Trump bore “responsibility,” while suggesting a historic censure of a sitting president.
● The No. 1 Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), said, “There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking” the attack.
● Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Trump’s rhetoric about a stolen election had been “irresponsible” and “reckless.” He added that Trump “went way too far over the line.”
● Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called on Trump to “quit misleading the American people and repudiate mob violence” and said Jan. 6 was “in part a result of” such misleading claims.
● Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said Trump’s call for protesters to march to the Capitol “was inciting.”
● Even Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Jan. 7 that Trump had “recklessly encouraged” the events of the day.Exactly one year later, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has basically served only to cement the very same former president’s hold on the same party. And that’s because of this: It was the most significant stress test on Trump’s hold on the party to date, and Trump’s hold bent but didn’t break.
GOP leaders thought they might be able to break with Trump, only to be proved very wrong. The lesson for all of them was that there’s virtually nothing Trump could do to lose the base, and they should act accordingly.
Today, Republican leaders barely bother with discussing Trump’s culpability for what Cruz has repeatedly labeled (including this week) a “terrorist attack”; instead, they are drowned out by those in their midst downplaying the events of the day, likening those who were charged and jailed to political prisoners, and assuring that this is still Trump’s party and that it’s time to move on from the historic attack on U.S. government (often for transparently political reasons).
They also stand by silently as fellow Republicans who push the same “big lie” they blamed for fomenting the Jan. 6 attack run for high-profile offices — including those that control elections — with Trump’s backing. ¤ It is indeed still Trump’s party, and in rather remarkable measure.
The Washington Post’s David Byler this week spotlighted [ ⇊ ] a telling chart from FiveThirtyEight. Some Republicans have fallen out of favor in their party after Jan. 6; it just happens to be the Republicans who found themselves on other side of Trump on Jan. 6. The favorability ratings of McConnell and former vice president Mike Pence, who declined entreaties to help overturn the election on Jan. 6, dropped sharply almost immediately — and have stayed down. …
⋙ ◕ FiveThirtyEight: http://53eig.ht/3qYeEu2 https://twitter.com/databyler/status/1478751990096150528?s=20/photo/1
// “Republicans remain loyal to Trump even after Jan. 6 attack. Net favorability ratings of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Mitch McConnell among Republican registered voters, from Jan 1, 2020 to Jan 1, 2022”For Republicans, though, the calculation is less about what’s ideal than what’s realistic and manageable. They — or at least their leaders — thought the play was to turn the page on the Trump era after the Capitol attack, whether out of principle or something else. They decided this was the moment to come at the party’s king, and they missed. They’ve since reversed course out of political ambition and self-preservation, effectively disowning or ignoring the supposedly principled stand they took earlier against a man they blamed for a historic attack.
🚫 USNews: READ: Trump Statement Marking Jan. 6 http://bit.ly/3F9Pga4
// not posted for obv; Former President Donald Trump on Thursday issued a statement marking one year since the the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday issued a statement marking one year since the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, calling President Joe Biden’s speech on the event “political theater.” Read the statement in full below.
Biden, who is destroying our Nation with insane policies of open Borders, corrupt Elections, disastrous energy policies, unconstitutional mandates, and devastating school closures, used my name today to try to further divide America. This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed. Our Country no longer has Borders, has totally and completely lost control of Covid (record numbers!), is no longer Energy Independent, Inflation is rampant, our Military is in chaos, and our exit, or surrender, from Afghanistan was perhaps the most embarrassing day in the long and distinguished history of the United States – and so much more.
Why is it that the Unselect Committee of totally partisan political hacks, whose judgment has long ago been made, not discussing the rigged Presidential Election of 2020? It’s because they don’t have the answers or justifications for what happened. They got away with something, and it is leading to our Country’s destruction. They want all conversation concerning the Election “Canceled.” Just look at the numbers, they speak for themselves. They are not justifiable, so the complicit media just calls it the Big Lie, when in actuality the Big Lie was the Election itself.
The Democrats want to own this day of January 6th so they can stoke fears and divide America. I say, let them have it because America sees through theirs lies and polarizations.
🐣 RT @RepLizCheney “The importance of January 6th as an historic event cannot be overstated. I was honored & proud to join my daughter on the House floor to recognize this anniversary, to commend the heroic actions of law enforcement that day, & to reaffirm our dedication to the Constitution. (1/2)
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I am deeply disappointed at the failure of many members of my party to recognize the grave nature of the January 6 attacks and the ongoing threat to our nation.” ¤ – Former VP Dick Cheney (2/2)
🐣 RT @POTUS Here is the truth: The former president of the United States has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. ¤ He’s done so because he values power over principle. Because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or Constitution.
🐣 RT @MorrisonCSIS Such a strange surreal configuration.
⋙ WaPo: Dick Cheney returns to the House and receives a warm welcome . . . from Democrats http://wapo.st/3JQnzX0 “‘It was great coming back. I think Liz is doing a hell of a job, and I’m here to support her,’ Cheney told reporters upon leaving the House floor”
🐣 RT @allinwithchris Remembering the reality of the Jan. 6 attack, one year later: “In order to really comprehend what happened one year ago, you have to bring yourself back to the terror of that day,” says Chris Hayes.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllIn: January 6, 2021: The day as it happened http://on.msnbc.com/3HGXUOW
// Remembering the reality of the Jan. 6 attack, one year later: “In order to really comprehend what happened one year ago, you have to bring yourself back to the terror of that day,” says Chris Hayes.
WaPo: Supreme Court is set to review Biden’s vaccine rules for businesses, health-care workers. Here’s what to know. http://wapo.st/33bnmwJ
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom And if you’re still supporting Trump, even now – and making excuses for the Republican Party that he now owns and that enables him – you know exactly what you’re doing and what you’re getting. And that means you are, at the least, a poor excuse for a citizen of a democracy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol “The truth about January 6th was clear then, and it is clear today: the insurrection at the Capitol was not a grotesque outlier in the story of Trump’s tenure but the horrible, logical outcome of it.”
⋙⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Biden, Back Into the Breach http://bit.ly/3n5IsUq
// A year after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, the President delivered the speech that he never wanted to give.
💙 🧵 RT @January6thCmte On January 6th, 2021, our democracy was on the brink of catastrophe. The American people witnessed a violent attempt to overturn an election that came perilously close to succeeding. ¤ Today, we highlight some of the events that threatened the peaceful transfer of power. 📌 https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1479077472356470786?s=20
🐣 RT @POTUS Last year, for the first time in our history, a president who just lost an election tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. ¤ But they failed. ¤ And on this day of remembrance we must make sure that such an attack never happens again.
🐣 RT @BeerHallProject History has shown what happens when attempted insurrections are left unpunished so we’ve founded the Beer Hall Project with a single focus – to fight on the front lines against the far-right’s campaign to erase & revise the events of #January6th Learn more https://beerhallproject.com 💽 https://twitter.com/BeerHallProject/status/1479074224790814720?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell For me Jan 6 started as I presided to gavel the House into session. I asked Chaplain Margaret Kibben to lead us in prayer. A few hours later she’d abruptly return to the podium, as the mob descended on the chamber, to pray for all of us. It felt like a last rites for democracy.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Jan-Werner Müller discusses how the weaknesses of the United States’ two-party system and the Republican Party’s devolution into a cult of personality threaten American democracy itself—and what democracy’s defenders can do about it.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Jan-Werner Müller: The Party Is the Problem http://bit.ly/3G14DTq
// Trump, the GOP, and the long road to January 6.
💙 🧵 RT @AndyKimNJ A year later, the most vivid memory I have of Jan 6 is the moment I returned to the House chamber after the riot had been quelled. I stepped over broken glass to get into the chamber. What ensued over the next hour was the most powerful experience of my career. THREAD 📌 https://twitter.com/AndyKimNJ/status/1479084320719622151?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @acyn https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1479139007019700225?s=20/photo/1
// CNN Chryon: FORMER VP CHENEY AND REP. CHENEY ON HOUSE FLOOR
🐣 RT @MittRomney Text Block: https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1479086160127442949?s=20/photo/1
Text: Today, we call to mind the memory of those who were tragically lost on the 6th and in the following days, and we reflect with gratitude on the heroic efforts of those who protected the U.S. Capitol and all of us inside the building. It is because of their courage that Congress ultimately fulfilled its responsibility to count the votes and that the transfer of power continued unimpeded.
We ignore the lessons of January 6 at our own peril. Democracy is fragile; it cannot survive without leaders of integrity and character who care more about the strength of our Republic than about winning the next election. said last year that the best way we can show respect for voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. The responsibility that elected officials have in this regard is fundamental to reversing the malaise gripping our current politics and ensuring that our democracy endures.
💽 NBCNews, Today: Watch President Biden’s full speech marking the anniversary of Jan. 6 attack http://on.today.com/3HDvB3O
// President Joe Biden speaks from Statuary Hall to mark one year since rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol. He calls upon the nation to reflect on the events of Jan. 6 while looking forward, and calls out the “three big lies” being pushed by former President Donald Trump.
🐣 RT @therecount During Donald Trump’s impeachment trial — the second one @RepRaskin (D-MD) played a 13-minute video montage of the Capitol insurrection. Here it is in full: https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1479132981637824518?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acyn Grisham: All I know about that day is that he was in the dining room gleefully watching on his TV as he often did… “look at all of the people fighting for me” ¤ hitting rewind, watching again
🐣 RT @atrupar Biden: “We must be absolutely clear about what is true & what is a lie. And here’s the truth. The former POTUS created & spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle … he can’t accept he lost.”
💽 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1479105483554189317?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @marceelias Trump and his allies lost 64 of 65 post election lawsuits.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonkarl Trump didn’t just lose the election.
He lost 60-plus legal challenges.
He lost in his efforts to get Republican state legislatures to undo the results
He lost the votes in Congress challenging the results
He lost his effort to get his VP to overturn the results
He lost… 📌
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jonkarl He lost three separate counts in Georgia
He lost an audit conducted by his allies in Arizona
He lost audits in Michigan
He lost in his multiple efforts to get the Supreme Court to intervene
No candidate ever found more ways to lose an election than Donald Trump.
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ A year ago this morning the plan was in place. The conspiracy was in action. The players knew their lines and marks. ¤ They had worked for weeks to contrive a ludicrous legal argument based on specious reasoning to retain Trump’s hold on office.
📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1479081186014244867?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 2/ It ran deep, far across the entire right-wing ecosystem. Near the center was a putrid slurry of Trump, his crime family, his goon squad sycophants, cosplay lawyers, leathery degenerate Roger Stone…
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 3/ …pernicious little ratfuckers like Ali Alexander, conspiracy loons like Alex Jones, and of course the throbbing, cancerous gristle of Steve Bannon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 4/ One ring out was the Fox apparatus and all sniping gulls that follow the sewage barge of its daily content. For weeks, the most powerful normative force in GOP politics blasted out the Big Lie, as they do to this very moment. Its handmaiden Facebook fed algorithmically…
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 5/ …crafted poison to millions of Americans as the kinetic parts of the plot to overthrow the election spoke openly as to their intentions. ¤ But the most important parts of the plot to break American the Republic were elected Republicans bred to a new era.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 6/ In the House and the Senate, a cadre of Republicans was eager for that day. Ready for it. Praying for the short, sharp shock of their nationalist revolutionary fantasies to come to be. ¤ Democracy for them is a hindrance to power. An obstacle.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 7/ Their evolution from oh-God-not-Trump in 2016 to “All hail the Great Leader’s shock troops” in 2021 was complete. Not every Republican felt that way, but the ones who didn’t were worse. ¤ They lived in fear, and after a brief vote went back to living in fear.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 8/ The “good Republicans” still spent the majority of the Trump era — and that fateful day — saying one thing and voting with him. Backing him. ¤ Why were (and are) they so scared of his mob and his enforcers? ¤ Because the purpose of terror is to terrorize.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 9/ Bannon and his ilk would have danced a merry jig if the mob had murdered a Representative or Senator. They would’ve loved it. ¤ Pour encourager les autres, bro. ¤ If not for luck, providence, and the courage of the MCPD and Capitol Police, they would have.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 10/ This was an act of terror, as even Fat Wolverine now admits. It was one more in a chain of crimes and sins by Trump and his movement to break this nation into an authoritarian kleptocracy based on fear and violence. ¤ And the GOP still won’t have a moment of clarity on it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 11/ Oh, in private they still acknowledge it, but the fear of the mob is with them still. The frisson of a bullet passing close by but missing. The narrowly averted car crash. It sticks. They’re trapped in a political and media ecosystem built for mob rule.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 12/ I’ll spare you a discourse on how fundamentally anti-conservative the Trump movement is, but the GOP is ruled now by criminals, cowards, and opportunists. ¤ The fact only two Members stood up to serve on the 1/6 committee is all you need to know.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 13/ One of the great gifts of the GOP is a relentless commitment to staying on message, no matter how absurd it looks in either the moment or in retrospect. (QED my old twitter feed lol). ¤ What will their message be about 1/6?
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 14/ “Democrats are exaggerating because they’re Marxist communist Antifa revolutionaries who want mandatory socialism and sharia gay marriage to your dog.” ¤ “It was a protest that got a little out of hand.” ¤ “But BLM was worse.” ¤ “But Russiagate was worse.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 15/ “Hunter’s Laptop was worse.” ¤ “Trump didn’t do anything wrong.” ¤ You know the drill. You’ve seen the movie. ¤ Now, many do-gooders still believe we can live in a harmonious, bipartisan land of soft cuddles and cute puppies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 16/ With respect…you’re out of your fucking minds. The conspiracy goes on. The plot to reinstall Trump is alive and kicking. Bannon walks free. Stone walks free. The DOJ said the right words, but the top of the chain of an attempt to overthrow the election is still in play.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 17/ The elected plotters and supporters of 1/6, the Insurrection Caucus are doing great — they’re still receiving millions in corporate donations from companies that promised they’d never give to them again.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 18/ The DC Republican media ecosystem — defined more by their hatred of people who oppose Trump and his authoritarian statism than by any remnant of conservatism — shrugged off their qualms and have largely forgiven 1/6.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 19/ And God love the Democrats, but when they straight-facedly say shit like “This election is about BBB and prescription drugs” they deserve to lose to these fuckers. ¤ The Trump side treats this as a cold civil war, and they’re planning and ready for a more kinetic iteration.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 20/ Just as 2020 was at every level a referendum on Trump, 2022 is a referendum on democracy. It’s a stark, hard choice. The work we put in in 2022 will determine just how much the fuckery of 2024 can be contained. ¤ It’s a choose-you-own-adventure for the Republic.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 21/ I’ll wrap this up. ¤ When authoritarians take over, everyone is shocked. ¤ “Wait…those clowns?” ¤ But the other side isn’t working in secret. They’re telling you exactly what they’ll do. ¤ They’ve promised — and executed — political violence.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 22/ Once you cross that Rubicon, all bets are off. ¤ No, it’s not an excuse to imitate them, but unless and until the majority of Americans who don’t believe in the very dark future Bannon, Trump, and Fox are painting get brutally tough in their response to it…
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 23/ …then the bad guys have a powerful advantage. The rule of law and tradition is nice until they’re marching you up the steps of the gibbet. ¤ An unpunished coup is a training exercise. ¤ End.
⭕ 5 Jan 2022
WaPo, George Conway III: Trump must have his day in court for his crimes on Jan. 6 http://wapo.st/3G3GRG7 “As the pawns meet their fates, the man who led them to try to stop the peaceful, democratic transfer of power remains safe in his Palm Beach palace”
// As president, Donald Trump had the duty to intervene and stop the violence he unleashed.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said all the right things. His speech marking the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection was a studied call for patience — and a promise of full justice. He explained how massive, complex criminal investigations proceed: Prosecutors work from the bottom up, from the small fry to the big fish.
Above all, he pledged that the Justice Department has “no higher priority” and would do “whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.” Most important, he made clear that “the Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.” (Emphasis mine.)
If Garland means what he says, then the investigative road must lead prosecutors to the individual most responsible for the events of Jan. 6: former president Donald Trump. To be sure, the Justice Department deserves plaudits for what it has done already: More than 725 people have been charged, and 165 have pleaded guilty. Seventy defendants have been sentenced, 31 to prison.
But however guilty they might be, these defendants do not and should not bear the ultimate responsibility for the attack on Congress and the Constitution. As Judge Amit B. Mehta told defendant John Lolos at his sentencing, “I think you are a pawn. You are a pawn in a game that’s played and directed by people who should know better.”
As the pawns meet their fates, the man who led them to try to stop the peaceful, democratic transfer of power remains safe in his Palm Beach palace. As Mehta put it, “People like Mr. Lolos were told lies, falsehoods, told the election was stolen when it really wasn’t.” Those lies were Trump’s.
And not only did Trump deceive the mob, but also he directed it. Trump urged the rioters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, promising it would be “wild!” On that day, he told his supporters to march on the Capitol, to “fight like hell” — and warned that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He told the crowd that “our country will be destroyed” if Joe Biden took office, and that “we’re not going to stand for that.”
Trump’s intent was obvious well before Jan. 6. I tweeted on Dec. 26, 2020, “It’s pretty clear now that @realDonaldTrump’s next desperate play is to encourage disruption, if not violence, in Washington on January 6.” I wasn’t being prescient; I had just listened to what Trump had been saying. As Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in announcing her vote to impeach, “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.” He did it all in plain sight.
So now the question is, will the Justice Department hold Trump responsible for his role in the attack? If Garland truly means that perpetrators at any level will be held accountable, and that “there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless,” then the department can, it should, and it must.
Garland must not fear that prosecuting Trump would be viewed as a partisan act. He need only look to the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who, after voting against an impeachment conviction on the (meritless) ground that Trump had left office, all but called for Trump’s prosecution. “We have a criminal justice system in this country,” McConnell said. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell added. “He didn’t get away with anything yet. Yet.”
The Justice Department has plenty of statutory tools available to make sure Trump doesn’t get away with what he did. Most notably, it could invoke one of the same provisions it has applied to individual rioters: Title 18, section 1512(c)(2) of the U.S. Code punishes “whoever corruptly … obstructs … or impedes any official proceeding.” The statute makes clear that an “official proceeding” includes one “before the Congress.” At least one judge handling Jan. 6 cases has already held that it includes Congress’s joint session for counting electoral votes.
That Trump himself wasn’t present at the Capitol doesn’t shield him from liability for obstructing the electoral vote count or for any other crimes committed that day. The criminal code provides that whoever “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” the commission of an offense, or “willfully causes … another” to commit an offense, “is punishable as a principal,” as though they had directly committed the deed himself.
A number of criminal law experts have noted that you can aid and abet a crime simply by doing nothing — if you have a duty to intervene but don’t. A bystander who watches a store break-in and does nothing hasn’t committed a crime. The store security guard who sees the break-in and does nothing, knowing that his dereliction is allowing the crime to proceed, has.
As president, Trump had the duty to intervene. Instead, as the Jan. 6 select congressional committee is learning, he spent hours watching the mayhem on TV. And that dereliction of duty, along with his open and manifest desire to stop the electoral-vote count, should suffice to make him guilty of a crime. The evidence is already bad for him, and it can only get worse. ¤ If the attorney general means what he says, Trump’s day in the dock will come — if not soon, then soon enough.
Reuters: Biden to call out Trump’s ‘singular responsibility’ for Jan. 6 attacks http://reut.rs/3HF9MRh Press Secretary Psaki said that President Biden sees the deadly attacks as the “tragic culmination of what those four years under President Trump did to our country”
▧ 📋 WaPo: Transcript: Attorney General Garland’s Speech on the Anniversary of January 6th 2021 Insurrection [pdf] http://bit.ly/31y01oM 7p
Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of January 6th, 2021 — the day the United States Capitol was attacked while lawmakers met to affirm the results of a presidential election.
In the early afternoon of January 6th — as the United States Senate and House of Representatives were meeting to certify the vote count of the Electoral College — a large crowd gathered outside the Capitol building.
Shortly after 2 p.m., individuals in the crowd began to force entry into the Capitol, by smashing windows and assaulting U.S. Capitol police, who were stationed there to protect the members of Congress as they took part in one of the most solemn proceedings of our democracy. •••
In the aftermath of the attack, the Justice Department began its work on what has become one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history. ¤ Only a small number of perpetrators were arrested in the tumult of January 6th itself. Every day since, we have worked to identify, investigate, and apprehend defendants from across the country. And we have done so at record speed and scale — in the midst of a pandemic during which some grand juries and courtrooms were not able to operate.
Led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, DOJ personnel across the department — in nearly all 56 field offices, in nearly all 94 United States Attorneys’ Offices, and in many Main Justice components — have worked countless hours to investigate the attack. Approximately 70 prosecutors from the District of Columbia and another 70 from other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and DOJ divisions have participated in this investigation.
● So far, we have issued over 5,000 subpoenas and search warrants, seized approximately 2,000 devices, pored through over 20,000 hours of video footage, and searched through an estimated 15 terabytes of data.
● We have received over 300,000 tips from ordinary citizens, who have been our indispensable partners in this effort. The FBI’s website continues to post photos of persons in connection with the events of January 6th, and we continue to seek the public’s assistance in identifying those individuals.
● As of today, we have arrested and charged more than 725 defendants, in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia, for their roles in the January 6th attack.
In charging the perpetrators, we have followed well-worn prosecutorial practices.
¤ Those who assaulted officers or damaged the Capitol face greater charges.
¤ Those who conspired with others to obstruct the vote count also face greater charges.
¤ Those who did not undertake such conduct have been charged with lesser offenses — particularly if they accepted their responsibility early and cooperated with the investigation.In the first months of the investigation, approximately 145 defendants pled guilty to misdemeanors, mostly defendants who did not cause injury or damage. Such pleas reflect the facts of those cases and the defendants’ acceptance of responsibility. And they help conserve both judicial and prosecutorial resources, so that attention can properly focus on the more serious perpetrators.
In complex cases, initial charges are often less severe than later charged offenses. This is purposeful, as investigators methodically collect and sift through more evidence.
By now, though, we have charged over 325 defendants with felonies, many for assaulting officers and many for corruptly obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Twenty defendants charged with felonies have already pled guilty.
Approximately 40 defendants have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding and/or to obstruct law enforcement. In the months ahead, 17 defendants are already scheduled to go to trial for their role in felony conspiracies.
A necessary consequence of the prosecutorial approach of charging less serious offenses first is that courts impose shorter sentences before they impose longer ones. ¤ In recent weeks, however, as judges have sentenced the first defendants convicted of assaults and related violent conduct against officers, we have seen significant sentences that reflect the seriousness of those offenses — both in terms of the injuries they caused and the serious risk they posed to our democratic institutions.
The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last. ¤ The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead. ¤ We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money. ¤ But most important, we follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next.
Over 40 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department concluded that the best way to ensure the department’s independence, integrity, and fair application of our laws — and, therefore, the best way to ensure the health of our democracy — is to have a set of norms to govern our work. ¤ The central norm is that, in our criminal investigations, there cannot be different rules depending on one’s political party or affiliation. There cannot be different rules for friends and foes. And there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless. ¤ There is only one rule: we follow the facts and enforce the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties.
We conduct every investigation guided by the same norms. And we adhere to those norms even when, and especially when, the circumstances we face are not normal. ¤ Adhering to the department’s long-standing norms is essential to our work in defending our democracy, particularly at a time when we are confronting a rise in violence and unlawful threats of violence in our shared public spaces and directed at those who serve the public.
In a democracy, people vote, argue, and debate — often vociferously — in order to achieve the policy outcomes they desire. But in a democracy, people must not employ violence or unlawful threats of violence to affect that outcome. Citizens must not be intimidated from exercising their constitutional rights to free expression and association by such unlawful conduct.
The Justice Department will continue to investigate violence and illegal threats of violence, disrupt that violence before it occurs, and hold perpetrators accountable. ¤ We have marshaled the resources of the department to address the rising violence and criminal threats of violence against election workers, against flight crews, against school personnel, against journalists, against members of Congress, and against federal agents, prosecutors, and judges. ¤ In 2021, the department charged more defendants in criminal threat cases than in any year in at least the last five.
As we do this work, we are guided by our commitment to protect civil liberties, including the First Amendment rights of all citizens. ¤ The department has been clear that expressing a political belief or ideology, no matter how vociferously, is not a crime. We do not investigate or prosecute people because of their views. ¤ Peacefully expressing a view or ideology — no matter how extreme — is protected by the First Amendment. But illegally threatening to harm or kill another person is not. There is no First Amendment right to unlawfully threaten to harm or kill someone.
As Justice Scalia noted in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, true “threats of violence are outside the First Amendment” because laws that punish such threats “protect[] individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.” ¤ The latter point hits particularly close to home for those of us who have investigated tragedies ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The time to address threats is when they are made, not after the tragedy has struck.
In the midst of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the department’s first principal task was to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. This meant protecting Black Americans seeking to exercise their right to vote from acts and threats of violence by white supremacists.
The framers of the Civil War Amendments recognized that access to the ballot is a fundamental aspect of citizenship and self-government. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to make the promise of those amendments real. To do so, it gave the Justice Department valuable tools with which to protect the right to vote.
In recent years, however, the protections of the Voting Rights Act have been drastically weakened. ¤ The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby County case effectively eliminated the preclearance protections of Section 5, which had been the department’s most effective tool for protecting voting rights over the past half-century. Subsequent decisions have substantially narrowed the reach of Section 2 as well.
Since those decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative enactments that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their own choosing. ¤ Those enactments range from: practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; to redistricting maps drawn to disadvantage both minorities and citizens of opposing political parties; to abnormal post-election audits that put the integrity of the voting process at risk; to changes in voting administration meant to diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators. ¤ Some have even suggested permitting state legislators to set aside the choice of the voters themselves.
As I noted in an address to the Civil Rights Division last June, many of those enactments have been justified by unfounded claims of material vote fraud in the 2020 election. ¤ Those claims, which have corroded people’s faith in the legitimacy of our elections, have been repeatedly refuted by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both the last administration and this one, as well as by every court — federal and state — that has considered them.
The Department of Justice will continue to do all it can to protect voting rights with the enforcement powers we have. It is essential that Congress act to give the department the powers we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast a vote that counts.
But as with violence and threats of violence, the Justice Department — even the Congress — cannot alone defend the right to vote. The responsibility to preserve democracy — and to maintain faith in the legitimacy of its essential processes — lies with every elected official and with every American.
● All Americans are entitled to free, fair, and secure elections that ensure they can select the representatives of their choice.
● All Americans are entitled to live in a country in which their public servants can go about their jobs of serving the public free from violence and unlawful threats of violence.
● And all Americans are entitled to live in a country in which the transition from one elected administration to the next is accomplished peacefully.
The Justice Department will never stop working to defend the democracy to which all Americans are entitled.
As I recognized when I first spoke with you all last March, service in the Department of Justice is more than a job and more than an honor. It is a calling. Each of us — you and I — came to work here because we are committed to the rule of law and to seeking equal justice under law. We came to work here because we are committed to ensuring the civil rights and civil liberties of our people. We came to work here because we are committed to protecting our country — as our oath says — from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Together, we will continue to show the American people, by word and by deed, that these are the principles that underlie our work. ¤ The challenges that we have faced, and that we will continue to face, are extraordinary. But I am moved and humbled by the extraordinary work you do every single day to meet them.
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse The Attorney General has committed to a fearless investigation that follows the money behind Jan. 6th. That’s good. We must have a thorough inquiry that extends beyond the individuals who stormed the Capitol to the planners & funders who stoked the violence.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d .@JoyceWhiteVance: “Garland is saying that no one is above the law, not even a former president. He’s also answering concerns that his focus is limited to events on Jan. 6, not to the ongoing effort to prevent the transfer of power.” https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1478926324978925572?s=20
WaPo: Another post-Soviet ‘ruler for life’ faces upheaval, as enormous protests sweep Kazakhstan http://wapo.st/3qVeFPs
💽 MSNBC, TheLastWord: ‘I’m very worried’: What really happened on the eve of the insurrection http://on.msnbc.com/3pZk6h4
// MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell looks at the concern coming from Trump allies before the events of January 6, 2021, and details what the Jan. 6th Select Committee has revealed about the events the night before the Capitol insurrection.
WaPo, Jason Crow (D-CO) and Susan Wild (D-PA): We survived Jan. 6 locked in the House chamber. Will our democracy survive, too? http://wapo.st/31tsXhx “We were afraid — not just about what the mob might do to us, but what they were planning to do to our democracy”
A year ago Thursday, along with dozens of our colleagues, we were trapped in the gallery above the House floor making what we thought could be our final calls to our loved ones.
We will never un-hear the sound of a gunshot just outside the House chamber, the mob trying to break down the doors, or the fear in our loved ones’ voices on the phone. We scrambled to find gas masks under our seats, and we can still recall the masks humming loudly around the chamber as members tried to put them on their heads.
We saw brave officers desperately pile chairs and benches into a barricade. Members who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan prepared to dust off skills honed on the battlefield to protect their country, not from foreign enemies but from homegrown terrorists.
Several checked to make sure the many doors to the chamber were locked; others gathered together in clusters on the floor to defend themselves in case the mob broke through. Lawmakers removed their lapel pins to be less identifiable as members of Congress. For many of us, the day resurfaced old wounds of trauma.
We weren’t special. Other Americans won’t forget that day, either — whether they were frightened citizens watching as extremists pulled down American flags outside the Capitol, journalists who risked their safety to report the story in real time, or heroic police officers who held back the mob long enough for lawmakers to escape.
We were afraid — not just about what the mob might do to us, but what they were planning to do to our democracy. We knew this violent attempt to overturn an election was unlike any threat our nation had faced — because it was coming from within.
In the past few years, the United States has witnessed substantial growth in a domestic extremist movement committed to using violence to overturn our democracy. The warped ideas that motivated the insurrection — the demonization of our fellow Americans, the unwillingness to accept the results of an election unless your side wins and racially motivated conspiracy theories — are growing. Astonishingly, recent polling suggests as much as 34 percent of Americans would condone the use of violence against the government for political purposes.
We must respond to this threat with strength and unity. ¤ This begins with a commitment to a new type of American patriotism, one rooted in a humility and honesty that recognizes our faults. We will overcome our challenges as a nation only by recognizing the problems of our past and how they shape our future. This requires an unrelenting commitment to the truth.
And that starts with protecting the right to vote. In 2021, the House of Representatives passed bills to protect voting rights, ensure those votes are counted, and make fair and free elections more difficult to overturn. In 2022, we need the Senate to pass those bills so that President Biden can sign them into law.
In the coming year, every American will have the opportunity to protect the Republic from authoritarian rule. ¤ First, our country needs volunteer poll workers to help our elections run fairly and smoothly. It needs people committed to democracy to run for the local offices that administer elections to ensure that every eligible American can cast a ballot and have it counted. ¤ Second, Americans must get involved in local organizations and show our capacity for honest, respectful discussions and our ability to bridge divisions between neighbors. Ultimately, our democracy must be reinvigorated on main streets, diners, school meetings and neighborhood barbecues — not in Washington, D.C.
American democracy is not inevitable. It exists because, throughout our history, Americans have stood up and fought for it. Now, it’s our turn. We could have lost it last year. This must be the year that we save it.
🐣 RT @pbump Peter Navarro would like you to know that the Trump team’s plan to steal the presidency DID NOT involve breaking any windows or anything and that it was simply meant to be a bloodless coup.
⋙ WaPo: Peter Navarro wants you to know they only intended to overthrow the government peacefully http://wapo.st/3n07ODr
// The former top Trump aide is on a media blitz with the odd aim of differentiating Trump’s plot from the Jan. 6 violence.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Strong, emphatic, and determined speech by Garland. The key quote is when he referred to perpetrators who may not have been at the Capitol on Jan 6. But open question remains whether investig has or will extend to efforts to overturn the election, separate from Jan 6 culpability.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @tribelaw Sorry, I’m just not buying it, Garland’s focus on the Jan 6 attack conspicuously omits any hint of concern with the seditious conspiracy that was designed in Nov & Dec 2020 to pull off a bloodless coup. The attack was Plan B. Plan A violated 18 USC sec. 2384.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Money quote from AG Garland: DOJ commits to holding accountable all perpetrators of the Jan 6 attack “whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the attack on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
NewYorker, David Rohde: The January 6th Criminal Case Against Donald Trump http://bit.ly/3n1caKm “Ultimately, the decision about whether to prosecute Trump lies with Garland … [I]t is increasingly clear that investigating Trump is becoming the defining issue of his tenure”
In hindsight, Donald Trump’s intentions could not appear clearer. During the final months of the 2020 Presidential race, he systematically conducted a disinformation campaign that convinced many of his supporters the election would be stolen by Democrats. After losing, he doubled down on those false claims and repeatedly pressured state election officials, Justice Department prosecutors, federal and state judges, members of Congress, and the Vice-President to overturn the results. After those efforts failed, he appeared at a rally in Washington, D.C., where he urged tens of thousands of his supporters to stop Congress from certifying his defeat. For hours, as they stormed the Capitol, he failed to act.
Those steps, the leaders of the congressional committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol contend, seemingly constitute a crime. But, based on the evidence made public so far, the unprecedented nature of Trump’s actions—together with the vagueness of laws regarding the certification of Presidential elections, legal loopholes, and his manipulation of others—could allow the former President to escape being criminally charged for his role in events surrounding the attack.
A congressional staffer with knowledge of the committee’s investigation said that it is ongoing and “too early to say” what it will yield. The staffer pointed out that Trump has a history of trying to avoid explicitly implicating himself in wrongdoing over the years, as he did in the Oval Office call with Ukraine’s President—which, nevertheless, led to his first impeachment. “Trump seems to have been very careful never to give an order—to strongly insinuate what should happen rather than giving an order,” the staffer told me, comparing Trump with Henry II of England, who famously (perhaps apocryphally) engineered the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury by signalling to subordinates his desire to be free of the religious leader without explicitly ordering it. The staffer, who asked not to be named, invoked a phrase said to have been uttered by the twelfth-century king: “ ‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ ”
Recent statements by the committee chair, Bennie Thompson, and the vice-chair, Liz Cheney—one of only two Republicans on the panel—have raised expectations that the panel will refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Such a step would increase the political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump. In a television interview on Sunday, Thompson said that the panel is examining whether Trump committed a crime: “If there’s any confidence on the part of our committee that something criminal we believe has occurred, we’ll make the referral.” And Cheney, in a speech last month, mentioned a specific charge: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”
Federal prosecutors in Washington have charged dozens of rioters who stormed the Capitol with felony counts of obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, which carry a potential sentence of up to twenty years. But legal experts said that convicting Trump of such a charge could be difficult. Ilya Somin, a libertarian legal scholar at George Mason University and a critic of the former President, told me that Trump’s lawyers would likely argue that it did not apply to him because he did not enter the Capitol on January 6th. “I think it is very clear that it applies to the people who entered the building,” Somin said. “If Trump did enter the building and lead the attack in person, it would be much easier to convict him of this and other offenses.”
The congressional staffer with knowledge of the committee’s work said that the media had exaggerated Thompson and Cheney’s statements. “The criminal-referral stuff has gotten blown out of proportion,” the staffer cautioned. “It has become the shiny new object.” (Another shiny new object emerged on Tuesday, when the committee asked the Fox News host Sean Hannity to voluntarily testify about text messages that he’d sent which show he had “advance knowledge regarding President Trump’s and his legal team’s planning for January 6th.” Hannity warned against Republicans in Congress trying to overturn the results, writing on January 5th that he was “very worried about the next 48 hours.”) The staffer said that the committee is primarily focussed on creating a definitive history of events on January 6th and recommending laws and reforms that would prevent future attempts to overturn elections—“giving the American people the full picture of what happened and making recommendations to help insure that nothing like January 6th happens again.”
Ultimately, the decision about whether to prosecute Trump lies with Garland, a former federal judge who has made restoring public faith in the political neutrality of the Justice Department his core goal. Despite Garland’s attempts to divorce the Justice Department from politically charged prosecutions, it is increasingly clear that investigating Trump is becoming the defining issue of his tenure. The continued defiance of Trump and his allies is forcing Garland to make a decision faced by none of his predecessors: whether to prosecute a former President who tried to subvert an election and appears ready to do so again. Democrats are demanding that Garland move more aggressively, with Representative Ruben Gallego, of Arizona, declaring his effort so far “weak” and “feckless,” and contending that there are “a lot more of the organizers of January 6th that should be arrested by now.”
David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official, said he disagreed with criticism of the Justice Department for not having already charged Trump criminally. “Notwithstanding the horrors of January 6th, D.O.J. should not be pursuing criminal investigations or prosecutions against former President Trump or others connected to the attack on the Capitol unless both the facts and the law support doing so under established policy,” he said. “It’s the ‘Department of Justice’—not the ‘Department of Retribution’—and we don’t want to see the rule of law eroded just to make us feel good.” But Laufman also called for prosecutors to not go easy on Trump, adding that the department shouldn’t “be shying away from using the full weight of its enforcement authorities against Trump or anyone else simply because doing so could be perceived as politically motivated.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Garland gave a speech that was clearly designed to reassure the public and counter critics. The twenty-five-minute address was vintage Garland. He pledged political neutrality and declared that “we follow the facts—not an agenda or an assumption.” He promised equal justice for all: “There cannot be different rules depending on one’s political party or affiliation. There cannot be different rules for friends and foes.” And he vowed further measures. “The actions we have taken thus far will not be our last,” he said, adding that “the Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law—whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.”
In an era when the majority of Republicans falsely believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent and the majority of Democrats think that it was not, Garland will be demonized no matter what action he takes regarding Trump. The Attorney General, based on his speech, continues to believe that he can restore “normal order”—a Justice Department term for basing decisions on whether to charge defendants strictly on the facts of a case. He continues to believe that the majority of Americans still support the principle that all people should be treated fairly under the law, including Donald Trump. And that the majority will reject political violence and trust the judicial system. At the moment, that belief, for Garland and all Americans, is an enormous political gamble.
NYT: Jimmy Carter: I Fear for Our Democracy http://nyti.ms/3mZzJmR “Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy” ~ Five things we must do:
One year ago, a violent mob, guided by unscrupulous politicians, stormed the Capitol and almost succeeded in preventing the democratic transfer of power. All four of us former presidents condemned their actions and affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy.
However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems. These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 36 percent of Americans — almost 100 million adults across the political spectrum — agree that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” The Washington Post recently reported that roughly 40 percent of Republicans believe that violent action against the government is sometimes justified.
Politicians in my home state of Georgia, as well as in others, such as Texas and Florida, have leveraged the distrust they have created to enact laws that empower partisan legislatures to intervene in election processes. They seek to win by any means, and many Americans are being persuaded to think and act likewise, threatening to collapse the foundations of our security and democracy with breathtaking speed. I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home. …
For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct.
First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law. Citizens should be able to participate easily in transparent, safe and secure electoral processes. Claims of election irregularities should be submitted in good faith for adjudication by the courts, with all participants agreeing to accept the findings. And the election process should be conducted peacefully, free of intimidation and violence.
Second, we must push for reforms that ensure the security and accessibility of our elections and ensure public confidence in the accuracy of results. Phony claims of illegal voting and pointless multiple audits only detract from democratic ideals.
Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our identities around politics. We must focus on a few core truths: that we are all human, we are all Americans and we have common hopes for our communities and our country to thrive. We must find ways to re-engage across the divide, respectfully and constructively, by holding civil conversations with family, friends and co-workers and standing up collectively to the forces dividing us.
Fourth, violence has no place in our politics, and we must act urgently to pass or strengthen laws to reverse the trends of character assassination, intimidation and the presence of armed militias at events. We must protect our election officials — who are trusted friends and neighbors of many of us — from threats to their safety. Law enforcement must have the power to address these issues and engage in a national effort to come to terms with the past and present of racial injustice.
Lastly, the spread of disinformation, especially on social media, must be addressed. We must reform these platforms and get in the habit of seeking out accurate information. Corporate America and religious communities should encourage respect for democratic norms, participation in elections and efforts to counter disinformation.
Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.
WaPo: Garland: DOJ will hold those responsible for Jan. 6 riot accountable, whether they were present or committed other crimes http://wapo.st/3mVg5IH “[I]nvestigators are methodically building more complicated and serious cases and would prosecute people ‘at any level’”
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Putin’s Next Door Nightmare Just Came True Right Under His Nose http://bit.ly/3mZz4Ss
// The revolution gripping Russia’s neighbor has sent Moscow into a frenzy, and it all happened while the Kremlin wasn’t looking.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This speech by Garland is so much better than I thought it would be. He’s affirmed everything I’ve been saying, and addressed everyone’s real and reasonable concerns. WELL DONE, @TheJusticeDept #MerrickGarland
⭕ 4 Jan 2022
🐣 RT @brianschatz There was an attempted overthrow of American democracy. And it’s not over. They are organizing the next one, not as a secret conspiracy, but as a central organizing principle for the next election. 💽 https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1478533620562378755?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @gtconway3d Hannity’s not a journalist. And he certainly wasn’t acting as a journalist when he engaged in these communications. Text Block: 📌 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1478525661715304450?s=20/photo/1
// Text Block: A lawyer for Mr. Hannity, Jay Sekulow, said on Tuesday that the committee’s request “would raise serious constitutional issues including First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press.” Fox News referred inquiries to Mr. Sekulow’s statement.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @nytpolitics Breaking News: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has asked Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, to cooperate by answering questions about his communications with Donald Trump before and after the riot.
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: House Panel Asks Sean Hannity of Fox News to Cooperate in Jan. 6 Inquiry http://nyti.ms/3mY3gx0
// The committee told Mr. Hannity it had obtained “dozens of text messages” he exchanged with senior Trump White House officials around the time of the riot.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d […] Hannity wasn’t reporting. He was giving political advice. He has no journalistic First Amendment or similar privilege to invoke.
CNN: Here’s what a subpoena is — and what happens if you ignore one http://cnn.it/330hYN1
🐣 RT @greenspaceguy The letter to Hannity from the House January 6 Committee was meant for the audience of one. They wanted Donald Trump to see what his “friends” were saying behind his back. He just cancelled his Jan 6 celebration.
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: January 6 committee seeks cooperation from Fox News’ Hannity and releases texts between host and White House http://cnn.it/3HGhuuF
Fox News host Sean Hannity was concerned about former President Donald Trump’s strategy and conduct before, during and after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, according to a letter sent to him on Tuesday by the House select committee probing the insurrection.
The committee asked Hannity for his voluntary cooperation with its investigation, noting it had received “dozens” of his text messages sent to and from former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that indicate that he had “advance knowledge regarding President Trump’s and his legal team’s planning for January 6th.” In the letter, the panel said it wants to speak with Hannity specifically about his communications with Trump, White House staff and his legal team between December 31, 2020, and January 20, 2021, when President Joe Biden was inaugurated. …
The committee said it has text messages from Hannity pushing back on the plan to urge Congress to challenge the certification of the election on January 6 and urging Trump to prepare for his departure from office. ¤ On January 5, Hannity wrote that he was “very worried about the next 48 hours.” ¤ In its letter the committee asked Hannity, “With the counting of the electoral votes scheduled for January 6th at 1 p.m., why were you concerned about the next 48 hours?”
The committee also cited a separate December 31, 2020, exchange in which Hannity wrote to Meadows, “We can’t lose the entire WH counsel’s office. I do not see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6th. [sic] He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen.
The committee said it appeared that Hannity has “detailed knowledge regarding President Trump’s state of mind,” and engaged with the former President numerous times. The committee noted that Hannity spoke directly with Trump on January 5 about “his planning for January 6th” and on January 10, when Hannity “may have raised a number of specific concerns about his possible actions in the days before the January 20th inaugural.”
The committee referenced messages from January 10 that Hannity sent to Meadows and Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan: “Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can’t mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say, and I don’t like not knowing if it’s truly understood. Ideas?” ¤ Trump told CNN in a statement Tuesday evening, “I disagree with Sean on that statement and the facts are proving me right.”
In a text to Meadows on January 5, Hannity wrote that he was “very worried about the next 48 hours” and referred to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the certification of the 2020 election, saying: “Pence Pressure. WH counsel will leave.” ¤ And on January 6, Hannity urged Meadows to tell Trump he should “ask people to peacefully leave the [C]apit[o]l.”
Before sending its letter, the committee revealed it had text messages from Hannity to Meadows on the day of the attack, calling for Trump to take action. ¤ According to the previously released text, Hannity said to Meadows: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol?”
In its letter, the panel also made clear that it wants to learn more about the communications Hannity had as the riot was underway. ¤ “We are aware of and interested in your communications to Mr. Meadows and others during the violent attack on January 6th, as the rioters were attempting to occupy the Capitol building,” the letter reads, specifically referencing a text message sent to Meadows about “a potential effort by members of President Trump’s cabinet to remove him from office under the 25th Amendment.” …
Hannity was not the only Fox News host urging Meadows to get Trump to take action.
According to documents on file, the committee has a message from Laura Ingraham to Meadows saying, ” ‘Mark, the President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” ¤ Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade texted Meadows stating, “‘Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”
GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who serves as vice chairwoman of the panel, revealed the text messages last month when the committee was going through its process of holding Meadows for a possible charge of criminal contempt of Congress. ¤ “Indeed, according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the President needed to act immediately,” Cheney said then. “They texted Mr. Meadows, and he has turned over those texts.”
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens .@AriMelber just gets how to do this. So good.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn “Do you realize you are describing a coup?” 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1478522771093082112?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Navarro says he never got to talk to Pence because of “Never-Trumper” Marc Short and describes Pence’s actions as a betrayal of Trump. ¤ Ari: We have an entire system designed to thwart people like you 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1478524925711323139?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HillaryClinton “How can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?”
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenSchumer Make no mistake: This week, @SenateDems will make clear what happened on January 6th is directly linked to the one-sided, partisan actions being taken by GOP-led state legislatures across the country. We can and must take strong action to stop this anti-democratic march. https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1478418376955502599?s=20/photo/1 -2
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Not even a broad shield law like New York’s that probably goes beyond what the 1A provides (a SCOTUS majority never having actually recognized such a journalistic privilege) would help Hannity even if it could be invoked against a congressional subpoena (which it can’t).
⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman Really interesting first amendment issue with Hannity. The whole point here, and a huge theme of Trump rule generally, is he’s acting as a sort of shadow insider and not as a journalist. It’s the improper alliance between press and government.
WaPo, Kathleen Parker: We were lucky more people weren’t killed on Jan. 6 http://wapo.st/3zpnTY2
🐣 RT @RVAwonk Sean Hannity went on his radio show tonight and launched a verbal attack on the January 6 committee, saying: ¤ “It’s a phony committee, it’s a rigged investigation with a predetermined outcome.”
⋙ MMFA: Sean Hannity launches unhinged verbal attack on January 6 committee http://bit.ly/3HxZXEM
// Hannity: “It’s a phony committee, it’s a rigged investigation with a predetermined outcome”
🐣 RT @duty2warn “People like you are who the constitution is trying to stop.” – Ari Melber to Peter Navarro, who I absolutely cannot stand. Navarro tried to say he was stopped from giving Pence “evidence” of voter fraud. Melber was having none of it. Next time maybe, don’t have this idiot on.
🐣 RT @January6thCmte The Committee is seeking information from Sean Hannity. ¤ Chair @BennieGThompson and Vice Chair @RepLizCheney request Hannity answer questions about matters including communications between Hannity and the former President, Mark Meadows, and others in the days surrounding Jan 6th. https://twitter.com/January6thCmte/status/1478489150357651458?s=20/photo/1 -3
⋙ 🐣 RT @January6thCmte “The Select Committee is in possession of dozens of text messages you sent to and received from former White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows and others related to the 2020 election and President Trump’s efforts to contest the outcome of the vote.”
⋙⋙ January6th.house.gov: Thompson & Cheney Request Information from Sean Hannity http://bit.ly/3sYlt1i
// Washington—Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) today announced that the Select Committee is seeking o
⭕ 3 Jan 2022
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The U.S. Is Naive About Russia. Ukraine Can’t Afford to Be. http://bit.ly/3qGirfm
// Putin is right about one thing: A free, prosperous, democratic neighbor is a threat to his autocratic regime.
… Back in 2008, the Russian president told leaders gathered at a NATO summit that Ukraine is “not a state.” Last summer, he published a long essay arguing, among other things, that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.” He then sent that essay to every soldier in the Russian army. Putin’s interest in invading, occupying, dividing, or otherwise destroying Ukraine—a country that has no nuclear weapons and could not invade Russia—is not strategic. It is emotional. The collapse of the Soviet Union was, in his words, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” An expanded Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory might, in his view, help right that wrong.
Putin’s interest is also ideological. Every year, Ukraine becomes more confident, more united, more European. Every year, Ukraine inches a little bit closer to democracy and prosperity. What if it gets there? The idea of a flourishing, democratic Ukraine right on Russia’s doorstep is, for Putin, personally intolerable. Just as Ukrainian independence once seemed to Stalin to be a dire threat to his Bolshevik regime, so too would a successful modern Ukraine pose too great a challenge to Putin’s autocratic, sclerotic, kleptocratic, and ever more brutal political system. What if Russians start envying their Ukrainian neighbors? What if they decide they want a system like that too?
What the pessimists in Kyiv fear is this scenario: If Putin believes that Ukraine must be destroyed sooner or later; if he believes that historical wrongs must be righted; even if he just wants to gain back some of the popularity he has lost to COVID, corruption, and a poor economy, then he might have reasons to think that this is a good moment to do it. The Russians can see that the U.S. is divided, that Europe is exhausted by the pandemic and in need of Russian gas, that nobody is interested in new military adventures. They can also see that pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine are slowly losing ground, that Ukraine continues to invest in its military, and that others are doing so too.
… [T]he best time to give Ukraine more significant military support would have been eight years ago. Or five years ago. Or three years ago. If the U.S. had done so, then there would be a lesser threat, or no threat, of Russian invasion now, because Putin would calculate the risks differently. But Americans didn’t step in, because President Barack Obama never took Russia seriously, because Trump was on Putin’s side in the global contest between autocracy and democracy, and because Democrats and Republicans alike have had other things to think about since Biden took office.
As a nation, the U.S. has also started to forget the most important strategic lesson of the Cold War: Deterrence works. The idea that you invest in weapons in order to create peace has always sounded paradoxical, but decades of stability in Europe, thanks to both the creation of NATO in the 1950s and the expansion of NATO in the 1990s, prove this to be true. If you share a land mass with a bully, then make sure you are well armed enough to keep him at a safe distance.
… [A]lthough Putin varies his tactics, his longer-term goals have been very clear for a very long time. He might use disinformation one year, gas-pipeline blackmail another, bribery or violence the next, but the endgame is always the same: reinforce his autocracy, undermine democracies—all democracies—and push Russian political influence as far as it will go. Break up NATO. Destroy the European Union. Remove American influence from Europe and everywhere else, forever.
… A successful, prosperous, Western-facing democratic Ukraine would indeed pose a dire ideological threat to Russia, as well as to Belarus and to other autocracies in the region and around the world. It would prove to the inhabitants of other autocracies that they can escape the influence of their greedy, brutal leaders. Losing Ukraine, by contrast, would reinforce dictators in Moscow, Minsk, and even Beijing.
Biden has said he wants to “prove that American democracy can still do big things and take on challenges that matter most.” Mostly, he means domestic challenges. But some challenges abroad will also affect American confidence and credibility well into the future. Helping Ukrainians defend Ukrainian democracy is one of them.
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: If we are to save our democracy, there must be a reckoning for the Jan. 6 attack http://wapo.st/3FT8aTL “What happened last Jan. 6 was much bigger and more important than politics. [Accountability] must take precedence over any political concerns”
[T]here are three simultaneous accountability projects whose success the American people must demand.
The House select committee investigating the attack (appointed by Pelosi only after Republicans refused to form a proper blue-ribbon commission) appears to be doing an admirable job of collecting new information, including about Trump’s actions that day. The committee must not let stonewalling by Trump and his inner circle cause delay — a full year has already passed. It is good that the committee plans to issue an interim report this summer but, in the meantime, it should hold public hearings and release as much information as possible. Their work is not just important but also urgent.
Simultaneously, Congress as a whole must shore up the weaknesses in our transfer-of-power process exposed by the insurrection. The mob’s aim was to halt the official counting of electoral votes — and the mob succeeded, at least for several hours. Even the libertarian Cato Institute agrees that the 1876 Electoral Count Act is “a mess of ambiguities and contradictions” and needs to be reformed. Legislation to do so should begin making its way toward Biden’s desk.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department must continue to press criminal charges against the insurrectionists. It is not enough to prosecute and sentence those who participated bodily in the assault. The puppet masters who assembled the crowd and sent it off to sack the Capitol must be held to account as well. ¤ And no one, including Trump, can be considered above the law.
NYT, Jedediah Britton-Purdy: The Republican Party Is Succeeding Because We Are Not a True Democracy http://nyti.ms/3JEUBJD “Majorities of the people, not the Electoral College, should be able to pick the president and decide who controls the House and Senate”
// What’s often called the crisis of American democracy is the result not of too much democracy but of too little.
NYT: The Jan. 6 Committee’s Consideration of a Criminal Referral, Explained http://nyti.ms/3EZ7laM
// The House panel does not have the authority to pursue criminal charges, but it can provide the Justice Department with evidence of any wrongdoing it unearths in its investigation.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman I am familiar with DOJ policy from working in the SDNY for a decade. But there is no point in making this speech if it’s just repeating platitudes. If DOJ is investigating the coup to overturn the election, the AG can and should confirm that. This is bigger than Jan 6.
⋙ 🐣 RT @hugolowell New: Justice Dept official confirms to me that AG Merrick Garland will speak Wednesday about how DOJ will hold accountable those responsible for the Capitol attack. Won’t speak about individuals or charges.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @hugolowell DOJ: “While he will not speak to specific individuals or charges, the Attorney General will discuss the department’s solemn duty to uphold the Constitution, follow the facts and the law”
🐣 RT @duty2warn The “1st Amendment Praetorian” is a shadowy paramilitary that guarded Flynn on 1/6 and passed data to Stop the Steal lawyers. ¤ Sure hope Chris Wray is on it…??
⋙ NYT: Another Far-Right Group Is Scrutinized in Effort to Aid Trump http://nyti.ms/3EL6SbW
// The organization, called 1st Amendment Praetorian, is not as well known as the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, but it worked closely with pro-Trump forces in the months after the 2020 election.
WaPo: New York attorney general seeks depositions from Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. http://wapo.st/3sZWqLD “Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. filed a motion to quash the subpoenas — or to delay them until a parallel criminal probe is completed”
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Pay attention on Jan. 5, 2022: While this will not be a barn burner the fact that he is speaking says volumes. He will be measured, and judicious. The fact he is doing it reassures that he understands DOJ’s responsibility, and that they are on the case!
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: AG Merrick Garland plans speech on Jan. 6 investigation for Wednesday http://wapo.st/3EKNtba “… stressing the department’s ‘unwavering commitment to defend Americans and American democracy from violence and threats of violence’”
Attorney General Merrick Garland will give a speech Wednesday about the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, stressing the department’s “unwavering commitment to defend Americans and American democracy from violence and threats of violence,” a Justice Department official said.
In the address, scheduled for the day before the anniversary of the attack, Garland will not speak about specific people or charges, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the speech had not yet been officially announced. ¤ Rather, Garland, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, will offer broad remarks about “the department’s solemn duty to uphold the Constitution, follow the facts and the law and pursue equal justice under law without fear or favor.”
The remarks will be directed at Justice Department employees and the public, the official said, at a time when the agency has been under growing pressure — especially from the political left — to hold former president Donald Trump and others in his orbit criminally responsible for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Federal prosecutors in D.C. announced last week that they have charged more than 725 people with crimes in connection with the events of Jan. 6, including 225 with assault or resisting arrest and some 640 people with entering a restricted federal building or its grounds.
About 165 people have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, the U.S. attorney’s office said. A Washington Post review of court records late last year found that the vast majority of those charged federally were not part of far-right groups or premeditated conspiracies to attack the Capitol.
The Justice Department’s investigation is running parallel to a House committee probe of the Capitol breach and efforts to nullify Joe Biden’s victory at the polls. ¤ Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of that committee, recently told The Post that lawmakers are particularly interested in why it took Trump so long to call on his supporters to stand down after they stormed the Capitol. ¤ Thompson said the delayed response could be a factor in deciding whether to make a criminal referral, which is when Congress tells the Justice Department it believes a crime has been committed.
💙 WaPo: Since Jan. 6, the pro-Trump Internet has descended into infighting over money and followers http://wapo.st/3sUTn75 ‘The battles center not on policy or doctrine but on the treasures of online fame: donations & subscriptions; paid appearances & crowds of followers’
// Far-right influencers and QAnon devotees are battling over online audiences in the power vacuum created by Trump’s departure from office
The far-right firebrands and conspiracy theorists of the pro-Trump Internet have a new enemy: each other. ¤ QAnon devotees are livid at their former hero Michael Flynn for accurately calling their jumbled credo “total nonsense.” Donald Trump superfans have voiced a sense of betrayal because the former president, booed for getting a coronavirus immunization booster, has become a “vaccine salesman.” And attorney Lin Wood seems mad at pretty much everyone, including former allies on the scattered “elite strike-force team” investigating nonexistent mass voter fraud.
After months of failing to disprove the reality of Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss, some of the Internet’s most popular right-wing provocateurs are grappling with the pressures of restless audiences, saturated markets, ongoing investigations and millions of dollars in legal bills.
The result is a chaotic melodrama, playing out via secretly recorded phone calls, personal attacks in podcasts, and a seemingly endless stream of posts on Twitter, Gab and Telegram calling their rivals Satanists, communists, pedophiles or “pay-triots” — money-grubbing grifters exploiting the cause.
The infighting reflects the diminishing financial rewards for the merchants of right-wing disinformation, whose battles center not on policy or doctrine but on the treasures of online fame: viewer donations and subscriptions; paid appearances at rallies and conferences; and crowds of followers to buy their books and merchandise.
But it also reflects a broader confusion in the year since QAnon’s faceless nonsense-peddler, Q, went mysteriously silent. ¤ Without Q’s cryptic messages, influencers who once hung on Q’s every “drop” have started fighting to “grab the throne to become the new point person for the movement,” said Sara Aniano, a Monmouth University graduate student of communication studying far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories on social media.
“In the absence of a president like Trump and in the absence of a figure like Q, there’s this void where nobody knows who to follow,” Aniano said. “At one point it seemed like Q was gospel. Now there’s a million different bibles, and no one knows which one is most accurate.” …
The feud carved a major rift between Wood and his former compatriots in the pro-Trump “stop the steal” campaign, with an embattled Wood attacking Rittenhouse supporters including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.); Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump; Sidney Powell, Flynn’s attorney; and Patrick Byrne, the Overstock founder who became a major “stop the steal” financier.
Each faction has accused the opposing side of betraying the pro-Trump cause or misusing the millions of dollars in funds that have gone to groups such as Powell’s Defending the Republic. ¤ Wood has posted recordings of his phone calls with Byrne, who can be heard saying that Wood is “a little kooky,” and Flynn, a QAnon icon who can be heard telling Wood that QAnon’s mix of extremist conspiracy theories was actually bogus “nonsense” or a “CIA operation.”
Beyond the infighting, both sides are also staring down the potential for major financial damage in court. A federal judge last month ordered Wood and Powell to pay roughly $175,000 in legal fees for their “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” in suing to overturn the 2020 presidential election. And Powell and others face potentially billions of dollars in damages as a result of defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which they falsely accused of helping to rig the 2020 race.
To help cover their legal bills, the factions have set up online merchandise shops targeting their most loyal followers. Fans of Powell’s bogus conspiracy theory can, for instance, buy a four-pack set of “Release the Kraken: Defending the Republic” drink tumblers from her website for $80. On Flynn’s newly launched website, fans can buy “General Flynn: #FightLikeAFlynn” women’s racerback tank tops for $30. And Wood’s online store sells $64.99 “#FightBack” unisex hoodies; the fleece, a listing says, feels like “wearing a soft, fluffy cloud.”
Their arguments increasingly resemble the performative clashes of pro wrestling, said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher and author of a book on QAnon: full of flashy, marketable story lines of heroes conquering their enemies. The drama, he said, gives the influencers a way to keep their audiences angry and engaged while also offering them a chance to prove their loyalty by buying stuff.
QAnon is “the easiest money that you could possibly make if you don’t have a conscience, but there’s only a certain number of people you can fleece. It’s not a renewable resource,” said Rothschild (who has no relation to the famous banking family targeted in antisemitic conspiracy theories).
“The fact that they’re all mad at each other, that’s all a byproduct of the fact that they’re just desperate for money, and there’s only a certain amount,” he added. So now, he said, the us-vs.-them argument for many QAnon influencers is: “They’re the pedophiles, the Freemasons, the illuminati. I’m the truth-teller. I’m the one who’s trying to save the world.”
QAnon’s credibility didn’t exactly climb when its long-heralded promise — that Trump’s long-secret war against a Satan-worshiping “deep state” would culminate in a righteous apocalyptic battle known as the “storm” — collapsed last January. As Joe Biden entered the White House, Trump took refuge in Palm Beach, Fla., and most of Trump’s enemies were left unvanquished.
Many believers have sought since then to distance themselves from the QAnon name, which they’ve called a “moniker created by [them] to attack us,” though Q is still their central prophet, devotees still call themselves “anons” and the theories remain the same.
Fans of Flynn have argued that, in his caught-on-tape conversation, he was merely disavowing the QAnon media creation, not them, leaving the sanctity of Q intact. On Telegram last month, Wood said that while “Q speaks truth” in the fight against “pedophilia and satanic rituals,” the broader QAnon movement is “likely a Deep State operation.”
But the movement has far from evaporated. Dozens of candidates who have boosted QAnon talking points are running for Congress this year, including Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of Q’s favorite message board, 8kun, (who, as one unproven theory argues, was perhaps once even Q himself.) And Q-inspired offshoots are promoting anti-vaccine propaganda and other bizarre theories: One group in Dallas has camped out for weeks awaiting the second coming of President John F. Kennedy’s long-dead son.
WaPo: Fear, anger and trauma: How the Jan. 6 attack changed Congress http://wapo.st/3JCoQkw But there are some hints of a new bipartisanship in the Senate
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Kremlin Insider Klyushin Is Said to Have 2016 Hack Details ¤ This is so fascinating because the Kremlin is still very quiet about his arrest despite his access. He is very close to Defense minister Shoigu and Deputy Head of Presidential admin Gromov.
⋙ Bloomberg: U.S. Catches Kremlin Insider Who May Have Secrets of 2016 Hack http://bloom.bg/3eOUuxc
// IT executive Vladislav Klyushin’s journey into U.S. custody is a blow to the Kremlin, say people familiar with a Russian intelligence assessment of what he [did]
TheGuardian: US could be under rightwing dictator by 2030, Canadian professor warns http://bit.ly/3Hvbox3 “Trump … will have only two objectives, vindication and vengeance of the lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud”
// Canadian political scientist warns in op ed of Trumpist threat to American democracy and possible effect on northern neighbor
“We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine,” Thomas Homer-Dixon, founding director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in British Columbia, wrote in the Globe and Mail. ¤ “In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.”
Homer-Dixon’s message was blunt: “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a rightwing dictatorship.” ¤ The author cited eventualities centered on a Trump return to the White House in 2024, possibly including Republican-held state legislatures refusing to accept a Democratic win. ¤ Trump, he warned, “will have only two objectives, vindication and vengeance” of the lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.
A “scholar of violent conflict” for more than four decades, Homer-Dixon said Canada must take heed of the “unfolding crisis”. ¤ “A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of Covid-19, reconciliation and the accelerating effects of climate change.
“But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unraveling of democracy in the United States. We need to start by fully recognising the magnitude of the danger. If Mr Trump is re-elected, even under the more optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable.”
⭕ 2 Jan 2022
💙 Globe and Mail, Thomas Homer-Dixon: The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare http://tgam.ca/3qCI6al
// Canadian political scientist; The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then?
// Thomas Homer-Dixon is executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. His latest book is Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril.
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.
Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.
This past November, more than 150 professors of politics, government, political economy and international relations appealed to Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect the integrity of US elections but is now stalled in the Senate. This is a moment of “great peril and risk,” they wrote. “Time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”
I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto.
Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.
I’m not surprised by what’s happening there – not at all. During my graduate work in the United States in the 1980s, I sometimes listened to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk show host and later television personality. I remarked to friends at the time that, with each broadcast, it was if Mr. Limbaugh were wedging the sharp end of a chisel into a faint crack in the moral authority of U.S. political institutions, and then slamming the other end of that chisel with a hammer.
In the decades since, week after week, year after year, Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travellers have hammered away – their blows’ power lately amplified through social media and outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity. The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war.
How should Canada prepare?
In 2020, president Donald Trump awarded Mr. Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The act signalled that Mr. Limbaugh’s brand of bullying, populist white ethnocentrism – a rancid blend of aggrieved attacks on liberal elites, racist dog-whistling, bragging about American exceptionalism and appeals to authoritarian leadership – had become an integral part of mainstream political ideology in the U.S.
But one can’t blame only Mr. Limbaugh, who died in early 2021, and his ilk for America’s dysfunction. These people and their actions are as much symptoms of that dysfunction as its root causes, and those causes are many. Some can be traced to the country’s founding – to an abiding distrust in government baked into the country’s political culture during the Revolution, to slavery, to the political compromise of the Electoral College that slavery spawned, to the overrepresentation of rural voting power in the Senate, and to the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War. But successful polities around the world have overcome flaws just as fundamental.
What seems to have pushed the United States to the brink of losing its democracy today is a multiplication effect between its underlying flaws and recent shifts in the society’s “material” characteristics. These shifts include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality as the country’s economy – transformed by technological change and globalization – has transitioned from muscle power, heavy industry, and manufacturing as the main sources of its wealth to idea power, information technology, symbolic production and finance. As returns to labour have stagnated and returns to capital have soared, much of the U.S. population has fallen behind. Inflation-adjusted wages for the median male worker in the fourth quarter of 2019 (prior to the infusion of economic support owing to the COVID-19 pandemic) were lower than in 1979; meanwhile, between 1978 and 2016, CEO incomes in the biggest companies rose from 30 times that of the average worker to 271 times. Economic insecurity is widespread in broad swaths of the country’s interior, while growth is increasingly concentrated in a dozen or so metropolitan centres.
Two other material factors are key. The first is demographic: as immigration, aging, intermarriage and a decline in church-going have reduced the percentage of non-Hispanic white Christians in America, right-wing ideologues have inflamed fears that traditional U.S. culture is being erased and whites are being “replaced.” The second is pervasive elite selfishness: The wealthy and powerful in America are broadly unwilling to pay the taxes, invest in the public services, or create the avenues for vertical mobility that would lessen their country’s economic, educational, racial and geographic gaps. The more an under-resourced government can’t solve everyday problems, the more people give up on it, and the more they turn to their own resources and their narrow identity groups for safety.
America’s economic, racial and social gaps have helped cause ideological polarization between the political right and left, and the worsening polarization has paralyzed government while aggravating the gaps. The political right and left are isolated from, and increasingly despise, each other. Both believe the stakes are existential – that the other is out to destroy the country they love. The moderate political centre is fast vanishing.
And, oh yes, the population is armed to the teeth, with somewhere around 400 million firearms in the hands of civilians.
Some diagnoses of America’s crisis that highlight “toxic polarization” imply the two sides are equally responsible for that crisis. They aren’t. While both wings of U.S. politics have fanned polarization’s flames, blame lies disproportionately on the political right.
According to Harvard’s renowned sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, in the early 2000s fringe elements of the Republican party used disciplined tactics and enormous streams of money (from billionaires like the Koch brothers) to turn extreme laissez-faire ideology into orthodox Republican dogma. Then, in 2008, Barack Obama’s election as president increased anxieties about immigration and cultural change among older, often economically insecure members of the white middle-class, who then coalesced into the populist Tea Party movement. Under Mr. Trump, the two forces were joined. The GOP became, Dr. Skocpol writes, a radicalized “marriage of convenience between anti-government free-market plutocrats and racially anxious ethno-nationalist activists and voters.”
Now, adopting Mr. Limbaugh’s tried-and-true methods, demagogues on the right are pushing the radicalization process further than ever before. By weaponizing people’s fear and anger, Mr. Trump and a host of acolytes and wannabees such as Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have captured the storied GOP and transformed it into a near-fascist personality cult that’s a perfect instrument for wrecking democracy.
And it’s not inaccurate to use the F word. As conservative commentator David Frum argues, Trumpism increasingly resembles European fascism in its contempt for the rule of law and glorification of violence. Evidence is as close as the latest right-wing Twitter meme: widely circulated holiday photos show Republican politicians and their family members, including young children, sitting in front of their Christmas trees, all smiling gleefully while cradling pistols, shotguns and assault rifles.
Those guns are more than symbols. The Trump cult presents itself as the only truly patriotic party able to defend U.S. values and history against traitorous Democrats beholden to cosmopolitan elites and minorities who neither understand nor support “true” American values. The Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. capitol must be understood in these terms. The people involved didn’t think they were attacking U.S. democracy – although they unquestionably were. Instead, they believed their “patriotic” actions were needed to save it.
Democracy is an institution, but underpinning that institution is a vital set of beliefs and values. If a substantial enough fraction of a population no longer holds those beliefs and values, then democracy can’t survive. Probably the most important is recognition of the equality of the polity’s citizens in deciding its future; a close runner up is willingness to concede power to one’s political opponents, should those equal citizens decide that’s what they want. At the heart of the ideological narrative of U.S. right-wing demagogues, from Mr. Trump on down, is the implication that large segments of the country’s population – mainly the non-white, non-Christian, and educated urban ones – aren’t really equal citizens. They aren’t quite full Americans, or even real Americans.
This is why Mr. Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – a falsehood that nearly 70 per cent of Republicans now accept as true – is such potent anti-democratic poison. If the other side is willing to steal an election, then they don’t play by the rules. They’ve placed themselves outside the American moral community, which means they don’t deserve to be treated as equals. There’s certainly no reason to concede power to them, ever.
Willingness to publicly endorse the Big Lie has become a litmus test of Republican loyalty to Mr. Trump. This isn’t just an ideological move to promote Republican solidarity against Democrats. It puts its adherents one step away from the psychological dynamic of extreme dehumanization that has led to some of the worst violence in human history. And it has refashioned – into a moral crusade against evil – Republican efforts to gerrymander Congressional districts into pretzel-like shapes, to restrict voting rights, and to take control of state-level electoral apparatuses.
When the situation is framed in such a Manichean way, righteous ends justify any means. One of the two American parties is now devoted to victory at any cost.
Many of those with guns are waiting for a signal to use them. Polls show that between 20 and 30 million American adults believe both that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump and that violence is justified to return him to the presidency.
In the weeks before the November, 2016, U.S. election, I talked to several experts to gauge the danger of a Trump presidency. I recently consulted them again. While in 2016 they were alarmed, this last month most were utterly dismayed. All told me the U.S. political situation has deteriorated sharply since last year’s attack on Capitol Hill.
Jack Goldstone, a political sociologist at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and a leading authority on the causes of state breakdown and revolution, told me that since 2016 we’ve learned that early optimism about the resilience of U.S. democracy was based on two false assumptions: “First, that American institutions would be strong enough to easily withstand efforts to subvert them; and second, that the vast majority of people will act rationally and be drawn to the political centre, so that it’s impossible for extremist groups to take over.”
But especially after the 2020 election, Dr. Goldstone said, we’ve seen that core institutions – from the Justice Department to county election boards – are susceptible to pressure. They’ve barely held firm. “We’ve also learned that the reasonable majority can be frightened and silenced if caught between extremes, while many others can be captured by mass delusions.” And to his surprise “moderate GOP leaders have either been forced out of the party or acquiesced to a party leadership that embraces lies and anti-democratic actions.”
Mr. Trump’s electoral loss has energized the Republican base and further radicalized young party members. Even without their concerted efforts to torque the machinery of the electoral system, Republicans will probably take control of both the House of Representatives and Senate this coming November, because the incumbent party generally fares poorly in mid-term elections. Republicans could easily score a massive victory, with voters ground down by the pandemic, angry about inflation, and tired of President Joe Biden bumbling from one crisis to another. Voters who identify as Independents are already migrating toward Republican candidates.
Once Republicans control Congress, Democrats will lose control of the national political agenda, giving Mr. Trump a clear shot at recapturing the presidency in 2024. And once in office, he will have only two objectives: vindication and vengeance.
A U.S. civil-military expert and senior federal appointee I consulted noted that a re-elected president Trump could be totally unconstrained, nationally and internationally.
A crucial factor determining how much constraint he faces will be the response of the U.S. military, a bulwark institution ardently committed to defending the Constitution. During the first Trump administration, members of the military repeatedly resisted the president’s authoritarian impulses and tried to anticipate and corral his rogue behaviour – most notably when Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley, shortly after the Capitol insurrection, ordered military officials to include him in any decision process involving the use of military force.
But in a second Trump administration, this expert suggested, the bulwark could crumble. By replacing the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs with lackeys and sycophants, he could so infiltrate the Department with his people that he’ll be able to bend it to his will.
After four years of Mr. Trump’s bedlam, the U.S. under Mr. Biden has been comparatively calm. Politics in the U.S. seems to have stabilized.
But absolutely nothing has stabilized in America. The country’s problems are systemic and deeply entrenched – and events could soon spiral out of control.
The experts I consulted described a range of possible outcomes if Mr. Trump returns to power, none benign. They cited particular countries and political regimes to illustrate where he might take the U.S.: Viktor Orban’s Hungary, with its coercive legal apparatus of “illiberal democracy”; Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, with its chronic social distemper and administrative dysfunction; or Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with its harsh one-man hyper-nationalist autocracy. All agreed that under a second Trump administration, liberalism will be marginalized and right-wing Christian groups super-empowered, while violence by vigilante, paramilitary groups will rise sharply.
Looking further down the road, some think that authority in American federalism is so disjointed and diffuse that Mr. Trump, especially given his manifest managerial incompetence, will never be able to achieve full authoritarian control. Others believe the pendulum will ultimately swing back to the Democrats when Republican mistakes accumulate, or that the radicalized Republican base – so fanatically loyal to Mr. Trump – can’t grow larger and will dissipate when its hero leaves the stage.
One can hope for these outcomes, because there are far worse scenarios. Something resembling civil war is one. Many pathways could take the country there – some described in Stephen Marche’s new book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future. The most plausible start with a disputed 2024 presidential election. Perhaps Democrats squeak out a victory, and Republican states refuse to recognize the result. Or conversely, perhaps Republicans win, but only because Republican state legislatures override voting results; then Democratic protestors attack those legislatures. In either circumstance, much will depend on whether the country’s military splits along partisan lines.
But there’s another political regime, a historical one, that may portend an even more dire future for the U.S.: the Weimar Republic. The situation in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s was of course sui generis; in particular, the country had experienced staggering traumas – defeat in war, internal revolution and hyperinflation – while the country’s commitment to liberal democracy was weakly rooted in its culture. But as I read a history of the doomed republic this past summer, I tallied no fewer than five unnerving parallels with the current U.S. situation.
First, in both cases, a charismatic leader was able to unify right-wing extremists around a political program to seize the state. Second, a bald falsehood about how enemies inside the polity had betrayed the country – for the Nazis, the “stab in the back,” and for Trumpists, the Big Lie – was a vital psychological tool for radicalizing and mobilizing followers. Third, conventional conservatives believed they could control and channel the charismatic leader and rising extremism but were ultimately routed by the forces they helped unleash. Fourth, ideological opponents of this rising extremism squabbled among themselves; they didn’t take the threat seriously enough, even though it was growing in plain sight; and they focused on marginal issues that were too often red meat for the extremists. (Today, think toppling statues.)
To my mind, though, the fifth parallel is the most disconcerting: the propagation of a “hardline security doctrine.” Here I’ve been influenced by the research of Jonathan Leader Maynard, a young English scholar who is emerging as one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers on the links between ideology, extremism and violence. In a forthcoming book, Ideology and Mass Killing, Dr. Leader Maynard argues that extremist right-wing ideologies generally don’t arise from explicit efforts to forge an authoritarian society, but from the radicalization of a society’s existing understandings of how it can stay safe and secure in the face of alleged threats.
Hardline conceptions of security are “radicalized versions of familiar claims about threat, self-defence, punishment, war, and duty,” he writes. They are the foundation on which regimes organize campaigns of violent persecution and terror. People he calls “hardliners” believe the world contains many “dangerous enemies that frequently operate in and through purported ‘civilian’ groups.” Hardliners increasingly dominate Trumpist circles now.
Dr. Leader Maynard then makes a complementary argument: Once a hardline doctrine is widely accepted within a political movement, it becomes an “infrastructure” of ideas and incentives that can pressure even those who don’t really accept the doctrine into following its dictates. Fear of “true believers” shifts the behaviour of the movement’s moderates toward extremism. Sure enough, the experts I recently consulted all spoke about how fear of crossing Mr. Trump’s base – including fear for their families’ physical safety – was forcing otherwise sensible Republicans to fall into line.
The rapid propagation of hardline security doctrines through a society, Dr. Leader Maynard says, typically occurs in times of political and economic crisis. Even in the Weimar Republic, the vote for the National Socialists was closely correlated with the unemployment rate. The Nazis were in trouble (with their share of the vote falling and the party beset by internal disputes) as late as 1927, before the German economy started to contract. Then, of course, the Depression hit. The United States today is in the midst of crisis – caused by the pandemic, obviously – but it could experience far worse before long: perhaps a war with Russia, Iran or China, or a financial crisis when economic bubbles caused by excessive liquidity burst.
Beyond a certain threshold, other new research shows, political extremism feeds on itself, pushing polarization toward an irreversible tipping point. This suggests a sixth potential parallel with Weimar: democratic collapse followed by the consolidation of dictatorship. Mr. Trump may be just a warm-up act – someone ideal to bring about the first stage, but not the second. Returning to office, he’ll be the wrecking ball that demolishes democracy, but the process will produce a political and social shambles. Still, through targeted harassment and dismissal, he’ll be able to thin the ranks of his movement’s opponents within the state – the bureaucrats, officials and technocrats who oversee the non-partisan functioning of core institutions and abide by the rule of law. Then the stage will be set for a more managerially competent ruler, after Mr. Trump, to bring order to the chaos he’s created.
A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of COVID-19, reconciliation, and the accelerating effects of climate change. But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unravelling of democracy in the United States.
We need to start by fully recognizing the magnitude of the danger. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, even under the more-optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable. Driven by aggressive, reactive nationalism, Mr. Trump “could isolate Canada continentally,” as one of my interlocutors put it euphemistically.
Under the less-optimistic scenarios, the risks to our country in their cumulative effect could easily be existential, far greater than any in our federation’s history. What happens, for instance, if high-profile political refugees fleeing persecution arrive in our country, and the U.S. regime demands them back. Do we comply?
In this context, it’s worth noting the words of Dmitry Muratov, the courageous Russian journalist who remains one of the few independent voices standing up to Mr. Putin and who just received the Nobel Prize for Peace. At a news conference after the awards ceremony in Oslo, as Russian troops and armour were massing on Ukraine’s borders, Mr. Muratov spoke of the iron link between authoritarianism and war. “Disbelief in democracy means that the countries that have abandoned it will get a dictator,” he said. “And where there is a dictatorship, there is a war. If we refuse democracy, we agree to war.”
Canada is not powerless in the face of these forces, at least not yet. Among other things, over three-quarters of a million Canadian emigrants live in the United States – many highly placed and influential – and together they’re a mass of people who could appreciably tilt the outcome of coming elections and the broader dynamics of the country’s political process.
But here’s my key recommendation: The Prime Minister should immediately convene a standing, non-partisan Parliamentary committee with representatives from the five sitting parties, all with full security clearances. It should be understood that this committee will continue to operate in coming years, regardless of changes in federal government. It should receive regular intelligence analyses and briefings by Canadian experts on political and social developments in the United States and their implications for democratic failure there. And it should be charged with providing the federal government with continuing, specific guidance as to how to prepare for and respond to that failure, should it occur.
If hope is to be a motivator and not a crutch, it needs to be honest and not false. It needs to be anchored in a realistic, evidence-based understanding of the dangers we face and a clear vision of how to get past those dangers to a good future. Canada is itself flawed, but it’s still one of the most remarkably just and prosperous societies in human history. It must rise to this challenge.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “A third option…would require filibustering senators to talk continuously…It would guarantee the minority could offer amendments But it would ultimately allow the majority to end debate and force final action with 51 votes, not 60.”
⋙ CNN, John Harwood: Why Democrats haven’t given up on Joe Manchin and voting rights http://cnn.it/3EQ1xjM
PhiladelphiaInquirer, Trudy Rubin: The global legacy of the Jan. 6 insurrection: Foreign friends and adversaries believe U.S. power is in decline http://bit.ly/3sZFWTL
// As the anniversary of Jan. 6 approaches, Trump’s continuing advocacy of the Big Lie about a stolen election has convinced Beijing and Moscow that U.S. democracy is fatally wounded.
🐣 RT @tedlieu More than a year later, not a single one of these Republicans can identify who purportedly stole the election nor how it was done. ¤ That’s because the election was not stolen. The former President got crushed in the popular vote & lost the electoral college. Those are the facts.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @SykesCharlie Bookmark. ¤ The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results – The New York Times
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results http://nyti.ms/32UZmxU
// 1/7/2021
⋙ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Nor can they explain how their own electoral victory was perfectly fine, even though they were on the same ballot as the “stolen” presidential election.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast EXCLUSIVE: Former National Archivist says Trump is hiding his Jan. 6 records to avoid prison time
⋙ DailyBeast, Jose Pagliery: Ex-National Archivist Thinks Trump Is Hiding His Records to Avoid ‘Prison Time’ http://bit.ly/3qI7av9
// “There are things in those records that are going to make real trouble.”
“Given how frantic they are… there are things in those records that are going to make real trouble. I’m talking about prison time,” Carlin mused to The Daily Beast. “It reinforces the fact that they know they’re in real trouble if these things are released—particularly if they’re released soon.”
Those records could show whether the Trump White House plotted to use the Department of Justice to intimidate states to reject 2020 election results, schemed with rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of Electoral College votes that reflected Biden’s win at the polls, and interacted with rally organizers who brought the crowds that violently attacked the U.S. Capitol building.
“It’s important that records are used to get the truth out. Nothing highlights that more than the controversy we’re going through. Records are going to have a huge impact in determining who did what, particularly as you get to the Justice Department,” Carlin said.
Carlin compares Trump’s reticence to the secrecy of Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 rather than turn over White House tapes documenting his crooked tactics. For perspective, Carlin points to his decade at the archives from 1995 to 2005, when he battled the Nixon family over control of records.
“Nixon knew that tapes were going to kill him, and so he obviously fought and said they weren’t records. They were, because they were created in the Oval Office,” said Carlin, a former governor who now lectures at Kansas State University. …
Another fight over presidential records might come from former Vice President Mike Pence. In the book Betrayal by reporter Jon Karl, the ABC News chief Washington correspondent details how an official White House photographer captured images of Pence hidden for hours in the bowels of the Capitol while it was under attack. During a guest appearance on The Late Show, Karl told host Stephen Colbert, “They refused to let me publish the photographs. But I have a suspicion that the January 6th Committee is going to want to see those photos.” ¤ “And those aren’t his photos,” Colbert responded. “We paid for those photos. Those are part of the national archives.”
Wilson and Carlin concur. ¤ “There’s no question about that. The vice president, as he leaves office, doesn’t get to say, ‘They can’t see this.’ They’re creating records, and they’re all permanent. And they belong to the United States of America,” Carlin told The Daily Beast. “I’m really kind of glad to see the special committee and the archives’ role in the middle of this. It does bring attention to presidential records and how important they are—not just for current events but for the future of the country,” Wilson said. “Archives aren’t just a repository. It’s preserving our national history.”
The Daily Beast has filed a public records request with the National Archives seeking the Pence photographs—if they were turned over—and related material. But the agency said the photograph collection is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act until 2026.
🐣 RT @TheHill GOP @GovLarryHogan on 01/06: “We were trying to send the national guard and we kept requesting up and down the flagpole. […] We were repeatedly denied the approval to send the guard. […] It took 2.5 hours.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1477712355106643973?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepLizCheney The Republican Party has to make a choice. ¤ We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepLizCheney/status/1477723817200041988?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @marceelias If anyone tells you that our democracy will be protected, and election subversion prevented, simply by “fixing” the Electoral Count Act they are either uninformed or acting in bad faith. ¤ Don’t be fooled, Congress must pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Advancement Act.
🐣 RT @saletan “The committee has firsthand testimony that President Trump was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office, watching on television as the Capitol was assaulted,” says @Liz_Cheney on FTN. “We know that that is clearly a supreme dereliction of duty.”
⋙ CBSNews, FaceTheNation: Full transcript: Representative Liz Cheney on “Face the Nation,” January 2, 2022 http://cbsn.ws/3HkI5x8
MARGARET BRENNAN: We know Democrats are planning a vigil. We know the former president is planning a news conference. Are you concerned about the country being at risk of political violence this week and in the years ahead?
REP. CHENEY: Look, I think that if- if what he has been saying since he left office is any indication, former President Trump is likely again this week to make the same false claims about the election that he knows to be false and the same false claims about the election that he knows caused violence on Jan 6. I think that it is indeed very concerning, given what we know happened in the lead up to the sixth and what the committee is finding out about the events of that day. But I think that it- it’s not surprising. But again, he knows these claims caused violence and we’ve seen now people who were in the Capitol, people who’ve been arrested because of their activities on that day, they themselves have told us in court filings, they’ve told us on social media, we’ve seen it on videos; that they were here because Donald Trump told them to be here. And so, he’s very- he’s doing this press conference on the sixth. Again, if he makes those same claims, he’s doing it with complete understanding and knowledge of- of what those claims have caused in the past.MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve raised in the past the possibility of criminal culpability for the president. Is that the consensus view of the committee?
REP. CHENEY: Look, the committee is obviously going to follow the facts wherever they lead. We’ve made tremendous progress. We have had now- if you just think about, for example, what we know now about what the former president was doing on the 6th while the attack was underway. The committee has firsthand testimony that President Trump was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office, watching on television as the Capitol was assaulted as the violence occurred. We know that that is clearly a supreme dereliction of duty. One of the things that the committee is looking at from the perspective of our legislative purpose is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty. But we’ve certainly never seen anything like that as a nation before.MARGARET BRENNAN: But one of the things that we’ve seen in CBS polling is that there is just a hard percentage of the population that believes what the former president is claiming. Eight million people believe in violence to restore him to office. Seven out of 10 Republicans still believe President Biden’s illegitimate 66% believe there was widespread voter fraud. So, these numbers are pretty hard here. Why hasn’t this conviction abated within your party?
REP. CHENEY. Look, I think that- that we are in a situation where people have got to understand the danger of President Trump and the danger that he posed on that day. You know, if you think MARGARET, he- he could have simply walked a few feet to the White House briefing room, he could have gone immediately on live television and asked his supporters to stop what was happening, ask them to go home. He failed to do that. He- he instead, we know, had the motivation, at the same time, the violent assault was happening, he’s watching television, he’s also calling at least one senator urging delay of the electoral vote. So, this is a man who has demonstrated that he is at war with the rule of law. He’s demonstrated that he’s willing to blow through every guardrail of democracy, and he can never be anywhere near the Oval Office again. He’s demonstrated a complete lack of fitness for office. I think one of the really important things that our committee has to do is lay these facts out for the American people so that they really have a sense of the truth of what happened that day.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
REP. CHENEY: –And so that they inform us in terms of our legislative activity going forward.MARGARET BRENNAN: That assumes facts can actually persuade. What happens with this committee if Republicans take the majority in 2022? Have you asked Kevin McCarthy to keep it?
REP. CHENEY: Look, Leader McCarthy has said a variety of things. He has both acted to obstruct the operations of the committee, but he’s also, on a couple of occasions, said that he’s willing to come talk to the committee. I think that the- the American people again and particularly the Republican Party, you know, we as Republicans, have a choice to make. I am a conservative Republican. I believe strongly in the policies of low taxes and limited government and a strong national defense. I think the country needs a strong Republican Party going forward, but our party has to choose. We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both. And right now, there are far too many Republicans who are trying to enable the former president, embrace the former president. Look the other way and hope that the former president goes away, trying to obstruct the activities of this committee. But we won’t be deterred. At the end of the day, the facts matter, and the truth matters.MARGARET BRENNAN: It goes beyond the former president, in a number of state capitals around the country in 19 different states, election laws are being changed and in some there is concern that Republican controlled legislatures could be able to change certification of an election if they don’t like the outcome of it. This is undermining confidence among some in the public about the integrity of our elections. Would you ask your fellow Republicans in states around the country to stop trying to do that?
REP. CHENEY: Absolutely. I think that again, you know, as a nation, we’ve got to be founded on the rule of law. We’ve got to be founded on fidelity to the Constitution. And when you look at what former President Trump continues to do to this day in terms of trying to undermine our belief in our democratic process, in terms of trying to undermine the rule of law, in terms of trying to find local officials who will help him do that. One of the really important lessons we learned on January 6th was how important it was that we had a few individuals who stood up. We had individuals at the Department of Justice before Jan. 6 who stood up to the president who said, absolutely not, we will not claim that this election was stolen, who told him the truth. And we had local officials in the party, the Republican Party, who did the same. And so, I think for people all across the country, they need to recognize how important their vote is, how important their voice is. They’ve got to elect serious people who are going to defend the Constitution, not simply do the bidding of Donald Trump.MARGARET BRENNAN: But this is happening in 19 different states. As we mentioned there, there are efforts underway, but I want to come to the future in 2022 as we face elections, this isn’t just about the presidential election, right? We have congressional races in 2022. You yourself are running out in Wyoming. We know the former president endorsed your primary opponent. He’s promised to help campaign against you. You have one of his biggest donors, Peter Thiel, a billionaire throwing money behind your primary opponent. This is a direct challenge here. Given how red your state is, how do you expect to win that primary?
REP. CHENEY: Look, I am absolutely honored and privileged to be able to represent the people of Wyoming in Congress. I absolutely anticipate that we will have a very energetic and hard-fought campaign this year. But at the end of the day, I am also incredibly privileged to be able to stand up and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I’m confident that the people of Wyoming will not choose loyalty to one man. One man as dangerous as Donald Trump is, you know, imagine a man who, while the violent assault was underway, while he was watching television, watching it unfold, not telling his supporters to stop and go home instead was sending out a tweet saying that Mike Pence was a coward. This is a man who is simply too dangerous ever to play a role again in our democracy, and I look forward to the opportunity to continue to help the American people see the facts about what happened and to continue to make the case at home about the kind of representation that we need in Washington for the people of Wyoming.MARGARET BRENNAN: Would you be willing to run against him in 2024?
REP. CHENEY: I’m very focused right now on my re-election and on the work of the select committee, and I can tell you that that the single most important thing, though, is to ensure that the Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and that he certainly is not anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.
🐣 RT @TrumpRussiaTies Chilling Trump Letter Calling For ‘Seizure’ Of Election Material Revealed In Log To Jan. 6 Probers
⋙ HuffPo: Chilling Trump Letter Calling For ‘Seizure’ Of Election Material Revealed In Log To Jan. 6 Probers http://bit.ly/32SZT3B
// The letter was created a day before Trump discussed naming conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell “special counsel” to probe baseless election fraud claims.
Among the documents withheld is one described as a “Draft Letter from POTUS to Seize Evidence in the Interest of National Security for the 2020 Elections.”
Though Trump ultimately didn’t take action to seize election materials, such a letter could be a key piece of information in the investigation into Trump’s strategy to undermine a legitimate election. ¤ Authorities have found no evidence of any notable fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
The letter was created Dec. 17, 2020, a day before Trump met in the Oval Office with advisers including retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and discussed seizing election equipment in states Trump lost. ¤ Trump also discussed naming controversial far-right attorney and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as a “special counsel” to investigate alleged election fraud, The New York Times reported, but Trump didn’t follow through with it.
Flynn had already suggested Trump could invoke martial law to seize control of the election.
The Dominion Voting Systems has since sued Powell for $1.3 billion for the “unprecedented harm” it says Powell wreaked with her “wild,” baseless allegations of voter fraud. ¤ Powell and other attorneys were ordered to pay $175,000 in sanctions to Michigan officials they had unsuccessfully sued over baseless claims of election fraud. ¤ A U.S. District judge said the lawyers had engaged in “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” and called some of the claims “fantastical.”Kerik has agreed to a voluntary interview with the House select committee, possibly on Jan. 13. He was subpoenaed by the panel in November.
⭕ 1 Jan 2022
NYT Editorial: Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now http://nyti.ms/3qIyARA
One year after from the smoke and broken glass, the mock gallows and the very real bloodshed of that awful day, it is tempting to look back and imagine that we can, in fact, simply look back. To imagine that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021 — a deadly riot at the seat of American government, incited by a defeated president amid a last-ditch effort to thwart the transfer of power to his successor — was horrifying but that it is in the past and that we as a nation have moved on.
This is an understandable impulse. After four years of chaos, cruelty and incompetence, culminating in a pandemic and the once-unthinkable trauma of Jan. 6, most Americans were desperate for some peace and quiet.
On the surface, we have achieved that. Our political life seems more or less normal these days, as the president pardons turkeys and Congress quarrels over spending bills. But peel back a layer, and things are far from normal. Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day.
It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, “When can we use the guns?” and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.
In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time.
Truly grappling with the threat ahead means taking full account of the terror of that day a year ago. Thanks largely to the dogged work of a bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives, this reckoning is underway. We know now that the violence and mayhem broadcast live around the world was only the most visible and visceral part of the effort to overturn the election. The effort extended all the way into the Oval Office, where Mr. Trump and his allies plotted a constitutional self-coup.
We know now that top Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures privately understood how dangerous the riot was and pleaded with Mr. Trump to call a halt to it, even as they publicly pretended otherwise. We know now that those who may have critical information about the planning and execution of the attack are refusing to cooperate with Congress, even if it means being charged with criminal contempt.
For now, the committee’s work continues. It has scheduled a series of public hearings in the new year to lay out these and other details, and it plans to release a full report of its findings before the midterm elections — after which, should Republicans regain control of the House as expected, the committee will undoubtedly be dissolved.
This is where looking forward comes in. Over the past year, Republican lawmakers in 41 states have been trying to advance the goals of the Jan. 6 rioters — not by breaking laws but by making them. Hundreds of bills have been proposed and nearly three dozen laws have been passed that empower state legislatures to sabotage their own elections and overturn the will of their voters, according to a running tally by a nonpartisan consortium of pro-democracy organizations.
Some bills would change the rules to make it easier for lawmakers to reject the votes of their citizens if they don’t like the outcome. Others replace professional election officials with partisan actors who have a vested interest in seeing their preferred candidate win. Yet more attempt to criminalize human errors by election officials, in some cases even threatening prison.
Many of these laws are being proposed and passed in crucial battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Trump campaign targeted voting results in all these states, suing for recounts or intimidating officials into finding “missing” votes. The effort failed, thanks primarily to the professionalism and integrity of election officials. Many of those officials have since been stripped of their power or pushed out of office and replaced by people who openly say the last election was fraudulent.
Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.
This isn’t the first time state legislatures have tried to wrest control of electoral votes from their own people, nor is it the first time that the dangers of such a ploy have been pointed out. In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison warned Congress of the risk that such a “trick” could determine the outcome of a presidential election.
The Constitution guarantees to all Americans a republican form of government, Harrison said. “The essential features of such a government are the right of the people to choose their own officers” and to have their votes counted equally in making that choice. “Our chief national danger,” he continued, is “the overthrow of majority control by the suppression or perversion of popular suffrage.” If a state legislature were to succeed in substituting its own will for that of its voters, “it is not too much to say that the public peace might be seriously and widely endangered.”
A healthy, functioning political party faces its electoral losses by assessing what went wrong and redoubling its efforts to appeal to more voters the next time. The Republican Party, like authoritarian movements the world over, has shown itself recently to be incapable of doing this. Party leaders’ rhetoric suggests they see it as the only legitimate governing power and thus portrays anyone else’s victory as the result of fraud — hence the foundational falsehood that spurred the Jan. 6 attack, that Joe Biden didn’t win the election.
“The thing that’s most concerning is that it has endured in the face of all evidence,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of the vanishingly few Republicans in Congress who remain committed to empirical reality and representative democracy. “And I’ve gotten to wonder if there is actually any evidence that would ever change certain people’s minds.”
The answer, for now, appears to be no. Polling finds that the overwhelming majority of Republicans believe that President Biden was not legitimately elected and that about one-third approve of using violence to achieve political goals. Put those two numbers together, and you have a recipe for extreme danger.
Political violence is not an inevitable outcome. Republican leaders could help by being honest with their voters and combating the extremists in their midst. Throughout American history, party leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to Margaret Chase Smith to John McCain, have stood up for the union and democracy first, to their everlasting credit.
Democrats aren’t helpless, either. They hold unified power in Washington, for the last time in what may be a long time. Yet they have so far failed to confront the urgency of this moment — unwilling or unable to take action to protect elections from subversion and sabotage. Blame Senator Joe Manchin or Senator Kyrsten Sinema, but the only thing that matters in the end is whether you get it done. For that reason, Mr. Biden and other leading Democrats should make use of what remaining power they have to end the filibuster for voting rights legislation, even if nothing else.
Whatever happens in Washington, in the months and years to come, Americans of all stripes who value their self-government must mobilize at every level — not simply once every four years but today and tomorrow and the next day — to win elections and help protect the basic functions of democracy. If people who believe in conspiracy theories can win, so can those who live in the reality-based world.
Above all, we should stop underestimating the threat facing the country. Countless times over the past six years, up to and including the events of Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies openly projected their intent to do something outrageous or illegal or destructive. Every time, the common response was that they weren’t serious or that they would never succeed. How many times will we have to be proved wrong before we take it seriously? The sooner we do, the sooner we might hope to salvage a democracy that is in grave danger.
🐣 RT @bandyxlee1 Someone is finally speaking of mass psychosis! Mass psychosis is the state I warned the spread of “shared psychosis” would lead to, as a consequence of a mentally-impaired “leader” going unchecked (and who is still unchecked, even out of the presidency).
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @carolinabonita @P_McCulloughMD stated, “Dr. #Malone as a dedicated physician scientist builds upon my clinical interview with @JoeRogan to tell Americans the truth about mass formation psychosis, big pharma, and how Americans are being harmed with each & every administration.” @carolina_bonita 💽 https://twitter.com/carolina_bonita/status/1477331851324837888?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @bandyxlee1 I have written about it here:
⋙⋙ SciAm, Bandy X. Lee (2021): The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists http://bit.ly/3nJ212F
// 1/11/2021; Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s pathological appeal and how to wean people from it
Do you think Trump is truly exhibiting delusional or psychotic behavior? Or is he simply behaving like an autocrat making a bald-faced attempt to hold onto his power?
I believe it is both. He is certainly of an autocratic disposition because his extreme narcissism does not allow for equality with other human beings, as democracy requires. Psychiatrists generally assess delusions through personal examination, but there is other evidence of their likelihood. First, delusions are more infectious than strategic lies, and so we see, from their sheer spread, that Trump likely truly believes them. Second, his emotional fragility, manifested in extreme intolerance of realities that do not fit his wishful view of the world, predispose him to psychotic spirals. Third, his public record includes numerous hours of interviews and interactions with other people—such as the hour-long one with the Georgia secretary of state—that very nearly confirm delusion, as my colleague and I discovered in a systematic analysis.
What do you predict he will do after his presidency?
I again emphasize in Profile of a Nation that we should consider the president, his followers and the nation as an ecology, not in isolation. Hence, what he does after this presidency depends a great deal on us. This is the reason I frantically wrote the book over the summer: we require active intervention to stop him from achieving any number of destructive outcomes for the nation, including the establishment of a shadow presidency. He will have no limit, which is why I have actively advocated for removal and accountability, including prosecution. We need to remember that he is more a follower than a leader, and we need to place constraints from the outside when he cannot place them from within.
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