Russia's War Against Ukraine

[MengJiao]

Reading that message in context, it sounds like a taunt or veiled threat.

  Something like that or maybe something even stranger: they may know in Belarus that things are shifting in Moscow or maybe its just a bureaucratic foul-up of some kind (as in every year
we send out a nice message...)

[JasonPratt]

they may know in Belarus that things are shifting in Moscow or maybe its just a bureaucratic foul-up of some kind (as in every year we send out a nice message...)

I suspect they think Moscow is falling and they'd better make nice as mutually abused satellite states or whatever. (Which has a real element of truth to it.)

But Russians (broadly speaking 'White Russia' included) can be very odd at propaganda. Christmas Day 1940, Stalin sent Hitler a personal Merry Christmas wish on the front page of Pravda (since they were 'friends' and trade partners at the time) -- right above another front-page Pravda propaganda editorial waxing rhapsodically about the pornographic spectacle of capitalist nations (including the Nazis, whom elsewhere they also praised in the same issue as the socialist workers' heroes of the revolution) tearing each other apart like jackals on a heap of corpses.


It might sound weird that they would call that a 'pornographic' spectacle -- and it is! -- but in context, it fits the militant Marxist ideology which Stalin (and Lenin before him) had been pretty constantly painting, of a second world war being necessary to weaken Soviet opponents so that they could launch the final revolutionary world war and bring the peace and happiness of the workers' paradise to all nations on Earth, inducting them (by conquest of course) as Soviet Republics. So the pleasure at anticipating this result finally coming to fruition should be intense, if you're a good comrade communist.

[Windigo]

Or like Russia, they are full of shit and lying their asses off with their useless platitudes.

[JasonPratt]

That's the short version. ;)

Hard to tell real diplomacy from fake diplomacy in Soviet Eastern Europe.

For that matter, it could be Schrodinger's diplomacy! -- simultaneously real and unreal, to be settled upon perception later. 

[Skoop]

Interesting. If it's a false flag op designed to sacrifice Dugin's daughter to goose support against Ukraine, per se (which is how Russia's government is marketing the attack, of course), it's a subtly unexpected one: Ukraine AND the partisan/terrorist group disavow Ukraine having any knowledge or action of the attack, which Ukraine kind of condemns. ("We don't do that kind of thing; we aren't terrorists.")

From a pragmatic standpoint, at least symbolically (pragmatic symbolism, heh), going after the author of Russia's current "national socialism" ideology does... feel... a lot like an internal civil war move.

Possibly connected to the upcoming expected catastrophic collapse of Russia's industries and key businesses, due to their 6-month reserves running out...? Should be starting about now.

I have no way of knowing of course, but I just think a political bombing in Moscow makes Putin look weak...and therefore a false flag to blame the Ukrainians is not something he would have chosen. Unless of course he wants to start going after Zelensky personally, or to use the bombing as a pretense to drop a few nukes.

As far as sacrificing his buddy's daughter? I don't think so. Not because Putin would care for her, but because it kind of breaks gangster rules (and in my simplistic way, I've always seen Russia as what it would be like if the mafia ruled a country). By that I mean, Dugina was one of his captain's daughters, and killing her would cause a break with Dugin. 

Still, pretty much everything the Russians have said has been a lie. So on that evidence alone, I think we can guess that it wasn't the Ukrainians.

.@holodmedia counts the days it took to name Daria Dugina's killer vs. the days spent looking for the people who ordered the assassinations of politician Boris Nemtsov, human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, and journalism Anna Politkovskaya.

Dude it's funny Nemtsov came up, It's one of my favorite weapons to use on russian nat trolls I come across in DCS servers.

[GroggyGrognard]

From a twitter thread by Sarah Kendzior:

"Dugin and Dugina have long been mascots of Russian genocidal imperialism. Dugin's reputation as "Putin's brain" is overstated. He is more instrumental as an international face of fascism than he is as a direct influence on the Kremlin. Dugin and Putin are both products of a long history of Russian genocidal imperialism, and that culture will outlive them. They're equivalent to the violent neo-confederates of the US, clinging to fascist ambitions and marketing them with nostalgia for a bygone age. Dugin and Dugina called Ukrainians subhumans. Does that mean that Ukrainians killed her? No. Their belief is unfortunately common and wouldn't have motivated Ukraine to make such an enormous move. So who did it? It's not clear. There are a lot of suspects, among them the FSB. Russian state media had a Mark Burnett style propaganda production ready to air right after Dugina's death. They immediately blamed Ukraine for the murder and are using it as yet another pretext for atrocities in Ukraine that they would have carried out anyway. Russia is desperate for more cannon fodder. Morale is low among Russian soldiers. This is bad news for the Kremlin, and it's possible the Russian government sought to shut up Dugin, who is an extremist frustrated over the weak war effort and calling for mass mobilization. Dugin was reportedly complaining loudly about the failures of the FSB in Ukraine. In early 2022, the FSB gave Putin false intelligence that Ukraine would fall in a matter of days. Both Putin and Dugin saw the fall of the USSR as the great tragedy of their lifetimes. Dugin's 1997 book laid out a playbook for imperial conquest that has to some degree been followed by the Kremlin: invasion of former USSR republics, shattering of Western alliances, etc. The Kremlin was not literally following Dugin's dictates, but employing commonsense strategies on how to rebuild an empire that imploded in their lifetimes. Dugin was not their strategist but part of the same rancid Russian colonialist swamp. They're not anomalies."

[GDS_Starfury]

I so hate their soviet culture.

[Uberhaus]

It would have been very different if Yeltsin's protege, Nemtsov, had replaced him instead of Putin.  Nemtsov was an economic reformer well before 1989 and was even well respected in Chechnya.

[Gusington]

Russia is clearly now the basket case country of the 21st century, much like Germany was for the first half of the 20th...except worse because of their nuclear stockpile with a frightening lack of control or oversight.

[JasonPratt]

From a twitter thread by Sarah Kendzior:

"{snip}Russian state media had a Mark Burnett style propaganda production ready to air right after Dugina's death."

WOW! -- so, do they have propaganda productions ready to go for pretty much anyone medium-high profile (occasionally updated I suppose)?? Or just for some people like the Dugins? I guess it's like having a eulogy and funeral service ready to go.

I doesn't have to look suspicious, but of course this is Russia where one of the many mottos is: "Be important: look suspicious!"

[Gusington]

Isn't it the opposite?

[Staggerwing]

Isn't it the opposite?

"Be suspicious: look important!"

[ArizonaTank]

I so hate their soviet culture.

I think the only "good" thing about Soviet culture was the 'subversive' black humor.

I once attended a lecture that was basically an hour-long recitation of Soviet jokes.

I thought they were pretty funny in their own twisted Orwellian fashion.

I can only remember two of those however...

-"Our USSR constitution is much better than the US constitution. Ours is brand new and has never been used."

-"How do they keep Lenin's body looking so good in his mausoleum?  It is easy. Every ten years there is a Lenin look-alike contest."

[JasonPratt]

-"How do they keep Lenin's body looking so good in his mausoleum?  It is easy. Every ten years there is a Lenin look-alike contest."

I would 100% believe that is true!

[Sir Slash]

Rep. Mike Waltz R-Fl. Member of the Armed Services Committee was on FOX News last night, part of a group that just returned from Ukraine. He said Zelensky was VERY worried that if the battle lines solidify into winter, that the Russians will claim victory, annex all the land they control, and wait for warmer weather to try again. Maybe in the spring, or maybe in a couple of years. Zelensky said he doesn't think Ukraine could be a legit independent state as long as Russia can cut them off from the Black Sea by air or sea, and if still in control of the Nuke Power plant in Zaporozhye, Putin will pull the plug come winte,r leaving Ukraine without 30 % of all electrical power generated from there, which could result in Ukrainians freezing to death. And Putin will turn-down, or turn-off, the natural gas pipeline which could tank all European support for them. Waltz said right now, Putin thinks he's, 'winning slowly' which will only encourage him to continue this war indefinitely.